National

Alternate title to this post: ::Get your Popcorn:: As you know, the right wing has lied for years that President Obama was not born in Hawaii, and was instead born in Kenya. This lie has continued despite the fact that both the short form and the long form birth certificate from the State of Hawaii have been released proving that Mr. Obama was born in Hawaii, and despite the fact that a birth announcement regarding the young President's birth was placed a couple of days later in the Honolulu Advertiser. Anyway, the right wing could not handle the fact that a non-white man had been elected President, and they reacted by making the President an "other," an "alien," literally. Well now their tea party champion, Ted Cruz, has decided to run for President. But he really wasn't born here. But the right wing has no problem with that. Well, all except The Donald.

The New York Times says that the "roughly 300 emails from Mrs. Clinton’s private account that were turned over last month to a House committee investigating the ]Beghazi] attack showed the secretary and her aides closely monitoring the fallout from the tragedy[, but] they provided no evidence that Mrs. Clinton, as the most incendiary Republican attacks have suggested, issued a ‘stand down’ order to halt American forces responding to the violence in Benghazi, or took part in a broad cover-up of the administration’s response, according to senior American officials.” I always wondered what Republicans thought Hillary did. That she personally ordered the attack? That she ordered a stand down order to prevent Marines or other military from responding to the attack? I suppose that is akin to those on our side of the aisle that believe that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney personally ordered the 9/11 attacks. The difference is, our crazies don't control a political party or Congress.

The Washington Post reports that Hillary Clinton “is already running her presidential campaign — against the Republican Congress.

"In blasts of rapid-fire Twitter messages just this week, Clinton accused Republicans of waging a war on women, playing politics with a black nominee, shortchanging students, endangering the economic recovery and trying to yank health-care coverage for 16 million Americans.”

What I want from Hillary is no triangulation. I want her to run against Republicans in Congress and out, and run with and support Democrats inside Congress and out. Let's elect Democrats, not just the Clintons.

I love how the Clintons allow their adversaries to drive themselves crazy. It is easy to predict that this discussion of "camps for adults" will cause countless aneurisms and heart…

This is freaking excellent: FEMA will no longer give any disaster aid to states that do not plan for climate change. Florida is likely the state that suffers the most, as their Skeletor of a Governor had declared that no state employee can even mention the term 'climate change' without being burned at the stake. So when a Cat 5 levels Miami this September, Florida is shit out of luck. And all those tornado alley states are fucked too. Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas, all deny climate change. Good luck rebuilding. I love blackmail.

This Kim Messick piece in Salon is great. It discusses the GOP's love letter to Iran in terms of the rise of the GOP's congressional fanaticism. But I found this brief description of how wingnut welfare is playing into the destruction of the GOP as a legitimate national political party particularly insightful.

Josh Marshall: “The relationship between the Clintons and the press and the political class generally is codependent, toxic and frankly ridiculous on both sides – with extreme self-protection and legalism on one hand [The Clinton's] and hyperbole, nonsense and wolf-crying penalties on the other [the press and pundits]. Like any perennial and bad relationship it is exhausting to watch and generally impossible to pick apart where one part ends and other starts. Which is a reaction to the other, which is first? I have no idea anymore. It hardly matters.” The public doesn't care. Despite the controversy over her use of private email while Secretary of State, a new CNN/ORC poll finds 57% of Americans say Hillary Clinton is someone they’d be proud to have as their president.