Month: September 2013

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Remarks by Ambassador Samantha Power at the Security Council Stakeout Following Consultations on Syria, September 26, 2013

UNITED NATIONS N.Y. (USUN.State.Gov) – This resolution will require the destruction of a category of weapons that the Syrian government has used ruthlessly and repeatedly against its own people. And this resolution will make clear that there are going to be consequences for noncompliance.

This is very significant. This is the first time since the Syria conflict began 2 ½ years ago that the Security Council has imposed binding obligations on Syria – binding obligations of any kind. The first time. The resolution also establishes what President Obama has been emphasizing for many months: that the use of chemical weapons anywhere constitutes a threat to international peace and security. By establishing this, the Security Council is establishing a new international norm.

As you know, we went into these negotiations with a fundamental red line, which is that we would get in this resolution a reference to Chapter VII in the event of non-compliance, that we would get the Council committing to impose measures under Chapter VII if the Syrians did not comply with their binding, legal obligations.

This resolution breaks new ground in another critical respect. For the first time, the Security Council is on the verge of coming together to endorse the Geneva Communiqué, calling for the establishment of a transitional governing body with full executive powers. If adopted, we will have achieved what we were unable to do before – unable to do for the last 2 ½ years – which is to fully endorse the Communiqué and call for the convening, as soon as possible, of an international conference on its implementation.

As Ambassador Churkin, with whom we’ve worked very productively, has just stated, we are hoping for a vote tomorrow in the OPCW Executive Council on the OPCW Executive Council decision. And then in the wake of that vote – and we hope in the immediate wake of that vote – we would have Security Council adoption of this text, which we are optimistic is going to be received very warmly. We’re optimistic for an overwhelming vote.

Washington: Russia holding Security Council ‘hostage’

UNITED NATIONS N.Y. (AP/Times of Israel) Sept. 6, 2013 — US Ambassador Samantha Power shrugged off Russian President Vladimir Putin’s claim that Russia might support a UN resolution authorizing military force against Syria, saying Moscow has held the Security Council “hostage” on the Syria crisis and Washington does not expect that to change.

Power lashed into Russia in her most extensive comments yet on the Syria crisis since starting her job as ambassador to the United Nations last month. Her criticism came as US President Barack Obama was in Russia for an economic summit of the G-20 nations.

“Russia continues to hold the Council hostage and shirks its international responsibilities.”

Power said Russia has consistently used its veto power to block Security Council action against Syria since the civil war broke out 2 ½ years ago, or blocked the council from issuing statements by consensus. She said she sees no reason to believe that pattern will change.

“I have seen Putin’s comments, there is nothing in the pattern of our interactions with our colleagues in the Security Council, with our Russian colleagues, that would give us any reason to be optimistic.”

“And indeed, we have seen nothing in President Putin’s comments that suggest that there is an available path forward at the Security Council,” Ms Power added.

Russia’s UN Mission declined to comment on Power’s remarks.

Ugly Propaganda by Samantha Power at UN

○ President Obama Nixes Close Foreign Policy Advisors  Sept. 3, 2013

Where does the suicide caucus live and what is it doing to the GOP’s prospects in the Electoral College?

According to Tom Holbrooke, the Democrats basically have a lock on 227 of the 270 votes that are needed to win the presidency. This is less optimistic than the measure of states that have gone Democratic in either five or six of the last six presidential elections. That total is 257, which is about as close to a lock as you can get without having one. Surveying the landscape, about the only piece of good news for the Republicans is that they are trending well in Minnesota and could soon make it a true battleground state. Meanwhile, the Democrats are creeping up in Arizona and Georgia.

Here’s Ryan Lizza on the makeup of the suicide caucus:

As with [Rep. Mark] Meadows [R-NC], the other suicide-caucus members live in places where the national election results seem like an anomaly. Obama defeated Romney by four points nationally. But in the eighty suicide-caucus districts, Obama lost to Romney by an average of twenty-three points. The Republican members themselves did even better. In these eighty districts, the average margin of victory for the Republican candidate was thirty-four points.

In short, these eighty members represent an America where the population is getting whiter, where there are few major cities, where Obama lost the last election in a landslide, and where the Republican Party is becoming more dominant and more popular. Meanwhile, in national politics, each of these trends is actually reversed.

In one sense, these eighty members are acting rationally. They seem to be pushing policies that are representative of what their constituents back home want. But even within the broader Republican Party, they represent a minority view, at least at the level of tactics (almost all Republicans want to defund Obamacare, even if they disagree about using the issue to threaten a government shutdown).

Remember when RNC Chairman Reince Priebus came up with a plan to make the GOP more attractive to a national audience?

How’s that working out?

The only real questions are how long will this charade will go on and what kind of smoking husk will be left of the Republican Party when it’s over.

White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer likened House Republicans to suicide bombers, kidnappers and arsonists in a single interview on Thursday.

“What we’re not for is negotiating with people with a bomb strapped to their chest,” Pfeiffer told CNN’s Jake Tapper in laying out the president’s refusal to compromise with the GOP to win an increase in the nation’s debt limit. “We’re not going to do that.”

…

Pfeiffer also offered up analogies comparing Republicans to kidnappers and arsonists.

He referred to a list of Republican add-ons to a debt-limit bill as “ransom demands,” and said “it’s not a negotiation if I show up at your house and say give me everything inside or I’m going to burn it down.”

All day long, Republican senators have been going to the floor to badmouth the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, using language that is either distorted, one-sided, or simply made up. And they are the reasonable ones. The Mighty Right-Wing Media Wurlitzer has churned out so many lies about ObamaCare and raised so many false fears and expectations, that they have created a singularity. Like a supermassive black hole, this singularity has an immense gravitational pull, and it is pulling the entire Republican Party into its maw. Logic, reason, political common sense, understanding of the Senate rules, self-preservation, relations with the business community, our credit rating, realism, practicality, and the truth are all being sucked right into this black hole of “asininity.”

And it is already chewing them to pieces. Nothing any of them are saying has even a passing resemblance to the truth unless it is immediately preceded or succeeded by one of the biggest lies you have ever heard. And, in the end, the whole farce will be shown for what it is. The Republicans will have to cave completely and totally, and have nothing to show for their efforts except disappointment, disillusionment, and a health care bill that doesn’t do any of the harmful things they all agree it will do.

I always knew that there would be a time of reckoning. It turned out that the opening of the ObamaCare exchanges is that time. Now they pay the consequences for their sustained mass hallucination. It will be much like when Romney convinced himself that he was about to be elected president, but on a far broader and consequential scale for the Party of Lincoln.

No one in their leadership or their rank-and-file or their base is prepared, even a little, for the sting that is coming.

I thought Erick Erickson’s essay on the disconnect between Washington Republicans and their “heartland” base was actually kind of interesting. It’s kind of a template for understanding how unhinged rubes feel about being played by much smarter political strategists. It reads like a history of how nutszoid lunatics have been led along by the nose by the likes of Karl Rove, and now they are sick and tired of the whole business and are forcing the Washington Establishment to actually act on their heat-fevered obsessions.

Who cares if it will work? The important thing is that they all feel better.

Ironically, I think this will end somewhat quickly with the whole party broken like Humpty Dumpty. What comes next, I can’t even say.

I think Noam Scheiber’s analysis is very interesting. As he sees it, the only way that John Boehner can emerge from this fiasco with his speakership intact is if he intentionally causes a government shutdown, allows his party to be flayed alive for it, and then convinces them that their only option is to back down on making demands on the debt ceiling. For Mr. Scheiber, the post-shutdown public outcry is a prerequisite to any degree of reasonableness from Boehner’s caucus. And, in any case, since Boehner will have to pass his CR with primarily Democratic votes, he can only hope to be forgiven for it if his caucus comes to see, in a very vivid way, just how politically isolated they have become.

Maybe Mr. Scheiber has correctly sussed out Boehner’s thinking. But he hasn’t exhausted all of Boehner’s options, nor has he anticipated all the ways that the Democrats can make mischief.

Let’s walk through this. First, let’s assume that the Democrats are telling the truth and that they will never negotiate on the debt ceiling, nor will they make any concessions on ObamaCare in order to avoid a government shutdown.

Whether a shutdown happens next Tuesday or is pushed off for a week, Boehner will eventually have to pass a CR that relies mainly on Democratic votes. There is no reason that the Democrats have to accept the clean CR that the Senate is offering. If Boehner needs their votes, the Democrats can attach conditions. Steny Hoyer, who is hardly a liberal firebrand, has already said, “I am not going to vote to continue the sequester. I believe it is inimical to the interests of the United States of America — to our government, to our economy and to our national security.”

If the House Democrats refused to support the Senate bill, they would have to take partial responsibility for a government shutdown, but the government will have to open some day. And Boehner would have no other option than to meet the Democrats’ demands. Of course, meeting their demands would ensure that Boehner would face a challenge from his right, but the Democrats could offer to join with Boehner’s loyalists and vote for him in any fight for the speakership.

At that point, Boehner would face three alternatives. He could resign in frustration. He could be ousted as Speaker by his own caucus. Or he could retain his position as the head, not of the Republican Party, but of an ad hoc coalition of mainly Democrats.

The Democrats have every interest in pursuing this strategy because, first, they want to end the sequester and, second, they want to break the grip the Tea Party has on the House.

Getting back to Mr. Scheiber’s analysis, I think he overstates Boehner’s chances of leveraging outraged public opinion into getting his own caucus to back down and refrain from ousting him. It may be Boehner’s most obvious play, but that doesn’t make it very likely to succeed. The Crazy is very strong with his caucus, and they almost ousted him at the beginning of the year. They seem very insulated against public opinion, and they tend to operate in their own media bubble.

I continue to believe that the Dems can take de facto control of the House if they simply demand an end to sequestration in return for their support on a CR.

A few minutes into his long-winded speech, Sen. Ted Cruz said something that made me want to punch him in his throat.

“Yet I will tell you, Madam President–you and I have both served in this institution some 9 months, not very long, but in the time we have been here we have spent virtually zero time even talking about jobs and the economy. It doesn’t make the agenda. It apparently is not important enough for this body’s time. We spent 6 weeks talking about guns, talking about taking away law-abiding citizens’ Second Amendment rights, and we spend virtually no time talking about fundamental tax reform, about regulatory reform, about getting the economy going. And politicians wonder why it is that Congress is held in such low esteem. This is unfortunately a bipartisan issue, on both sides.”

Set aside the idea that we responded to the murder of twenty first-graders and their teachers with an effort to take “away law-abiding citizens’ Second Amendment rights.” What really angered me was the idea that Congress isn’t focused on jobs because it isn’t on the agenda.

Let’s talk about what is on the Republicans’ agenda. Right now, the leaders in the House are cobbling together a bill that is supposed to pay our debts so we don’t destroy the full faith and credit of the United States of America. Let’s take a look at the goodies that Boehner is attaching to that bill.

The debt-limit measure, which was still being loaded with new provisions late Wednesday, amounts to a grand conservative wish list. In addition to delaying implementation of the health-care law for one year, the bill would establish a timetable for tax reform, squeeze $120 billion from federal health programs over the next decade — in part by tightening medical malpractice laws — and cut federal civil service pensions.

The measure also would approve construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline and advance other GOP economic goals, including increasing offshore oil drilling, blocking federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions and restricting most forms of federal industry regulation.

About the only major piece of the Republican agenda missing from the bill is a ban on late-term abortions — and some lawmakers who oppose abortion were arguing to add that, GOP aides said.

Quite a “jobs” agenda, isn’t it? Slashing people’s pensions, cutting down on their earned benefits, denying them medical attention, making it harder to sue bad doctors, allowing and enabling people to pollute the environment with impunity…these are supposed to be job-creating policies. And the Senate Democrats and the president are supposed to go along with these policies or we get to default on our debts.

It would be hard to design a more malevolent set of policies. And these fools seem convinced that these policies are popular.

This is why we can’t pass legislation that will create jobs. We have no partner to work with.

I wonder what Charlie Cook thinks about the numbers the GOP is getting in North Carolina. The Tarheel State may be a purple state, but it’s still a southern state that has a lot in common with other southern states like South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee, where there are going to be several Senate elections next year. I don’t think generic congressional numbers mean much at this point in the cycle. I don’t think we can learn much from self-reported independents. What we can learn is that the GOP is cratering in some of their cultural strongholds. With districts so strongly gerrymandered, the only way the Dems can win the midterm elections is if we see nationally what we are already seeing in North Carolina. People are changing their minds rapidly and districts that were drawn to be safe, may no longer be so.

Don’t rub your eyes. That really is Cruz’s name in the Yea column with all the other 99 members of the Senate who voted for Harry Reid’s cloture motion. After speaking for 22 hours, and after having repeatedly argued that a vote for cloture was a vote to fund ObamaCare, Ted Cruz was too embarrassed to actually vote against funding ObamaCare. He thought he could shield his failure by voting for it. I guess his pal, Mike Lee, figured the same thing.

I think we have just witnessed the new Guinness Book of World Records official winner for jackass.

No, Chris Cillizza, the filibuster is not a unicorn. It is not mythological. It is not impossible to define. You have a job at the Washington Post where you are expected to explain politics to the American people, and you are failing at it.

So, what is the filibuster? At its most basic, 99% of the time, the filibuster is simply the lack of unanimous consent for any motion proposed by the Majority Leader of the Senate. Any time even a single senator objects to a motion, the Majority Leader must decide whether to drop the matter (which means that the filibuster succeeded) or to file for cloture. If he has to file for cloture, it imposes a one day (plus one hour) delay followed by 30 hours of debate before a vote on cloture can be held. Therefore, withholding consent is dilatory, even if you ultimately lose on the cloture vote and the Majority Leader gets to proceed as he intended to three days prior. If you succeed on the cloture vote, you have successfully filibustered. If you fail on the cloture vote then you have unsuccessfully filibustered.

So, how should we treat Ted Cruz’s long speech?

It’s fairly simple. Harry Reid asked for and was denied unanimous consent to proceed to the House’s continuing resolution. That’s a filibuster. It’s a silent filibuster because it delays things automatically under Rule XXII of the Senate rules. No one needs to speak to cause the delay. The Senate is currently operating within the 30 hour rule for post-cloture debate [ed. note, I got this wrong. The Senate is currently voting to begin the 30 hours of debate], but Harry Reid granted Ted Cruz the right to talk his head off during this time. Sen. Cruz isn’t delaying anything, so he isn’t technically filibustering, but the Senate is undergoing a filibuster nonetheless.

To fully understand the filibuster, you need to understand not only the silent filibuster but the more understandable Mr. Smith-Goes-to-Washington talking filibuster.

When a senator goes to the floor to speak, he or she reserves the right to speak for as long as they want. The other ninety-nine senators cannot shut them up. So, it is possible to delay action in the Senate simply by talking for a long time. This isn’t ordinarily very effective for a couple of reasons. First of all, most of the time the Senate considers bills under what is called a “consent agreement” that limits the time for debate, meaning that all 100 senators have agreed that the talking filibuster will not be allowed. So, normally, the talking filibuster can only work before bills are under consideration. Secondly, because the cloture rule automatically causes a 55-hour delay, it is more dilatory than even the most talkative senator can hope to be. For these reasons, the old-fashioned talking filibuster has basically disappeared.

Because Cruz received special permission from the Majority Leader to talk for a long, but still time-limited, amount of time, and because his speech did not actually delay any Senate business, he cannot be considered to have filibustered anything. What he did was talk during a filibuster that will fail as soon the post-cloture debate time expires.

How could Ted Cruz have filibustered?

He could have sought recognition on the floor prior to the Majority Leader filing for cloture and then could have talked in order to prevent the Majority Leader from filing for cloture. This is what distinguishes the talking filibuster from the silent filibuster. When Harry Reid gives us a list of all the filibusters he’s faced, he is using the list of all the times he was forced to file for cloture because he was not afforded unanimous consent. But you can prevent him from asking for unanimous consent by not yielding the floor. You can also refuse to allow any time limits on debate by refusing to accede to any consent agreement. That allows a talking filibuster during debate on a bill or nomination.

So, when can you say that a filibuster has succeeded?

If the Majority Leader fails to get 60 votes for cloture, then the filibuster has succeeded. If he doesn’t bother to even try for cloture because he knows that he will not win, that isn’t technically a filibuster, but it has the exact same effect. Finally, by continuously forcing the Majority Leader to waste time on cloture votes, you can cumulatively chew up so much legislative time that you limit what the majority can accomplish. This is has been one of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s most aggravating innovations.

In any case, that’s a lot of words but it isn’t really all that complicated. A filibuster is used to delay and frustrate the majority. Any time the Majority Leader is frustrated in his effort to move to a new piece of business and has to suffer some delay, that’s a filibuster. Ted Cruz didn’t accomplish that by talking. It was accomplished when Harry Reid was not given unanimous consent to take up the House’s bill.

I’d like to live in a country that would ratify a treaty banning the sale of “tanks, armored combat vehicles, large-caliber artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, warships, missiles and missile launchers, and small arms and light weapons” to governments that are engaged in genocide or crimes against humanity.

But, I don’t.