Here's Pat Robertson giving his undying support for Gbagbo. Do you think they are strange bedfellows?

I've been writing about the Ivory Coast volatile situation for a while now. My last post summed up the situation a few days ago, but things are happening fast. Ivory Coast's Gbagbo threatens international journalists in wake of reports of 'heavy weapons' being used on civilians I grilled Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Advisor on a blogger call yesterday about the possible genocidal ramifications there since Gbagbo has refused to give up power after losing the election and since the Obama administration has backed the Libya conflict. Enter the new crazy by James Inhofe. He's now calling for the US to back a new election altogether and shows his love for Gbagbo.

INHOFE CALLS ON U.S. TO SUPPORT NEW ELECTIONS IN COTE D'IVOIRE

Amidst post-election fighting that threatens to evolve into a civil war in Cote d’Ivoire, U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC), yesterday called on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to chart a new U.S. position that demands new elections in Cote d’Ivoire to bring about peace. Inhofe, who has travelled extensively to the continent of Africa over the past fifteen years, including nine trips to Cote d’Ivoire, wrote for the second time to Clinton regarding this issue.

Through his letter to Clinton, Inhofe said, “I am aware that my position is different from that of the Obama Administration, which has recognized Alassane Ouattara as the winner. I ask, however, that you change your position in light of the evidence I have provided, and that you call for a new election. Such a change would not be viewed as inconsistent, but a wise reevaluation in light of new evidence presented. It is also consistent with our American dedication to the principle that democracy works best when it works for all and not for some. I am convinced that only through a new election will the people of Cote d’Ivoire end the increasing bloodshed, stop another civil war and ensure free and fair elections.”

The election results were already sanctioned by an International body so a do-over is first of all insane, but impossible because. the people have already spoken. Justin Elliott finds the ties that bind them: Why the Christian right is backing a brutal despot

While the crisis has gotten substantial press attention, one aspect of Gbagbo's past -- and present -- has flown under the radar: his longtime ties to the Christian right in the United States, a movement in which he still finds at least some support.

That includes a U.S. senator and acquaintance of Gbagbo who declined to intervene in the crisis when asked by the State Department earlier this year, a former congressman who was hired by Gbagbo as a lobbyist, and a Christian right TV network that ran a fawning profile of Gbagbo, even as violence engulfed Ivory Coast. The senator, Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, today released a letter to Hillary Clinton calling for new elections in Ivory Coast, putting him in direct opposition to the view of the Obama administration, the United Nations and the African Union that Gbagbo lost a fair election.

Gbagbo, along with his influential wife, Simone, are evangelical Christians who are known for lacing their speeches with religious rhetoric. "God is leading our fight. God has already given us the victory," Simone Gbagbo, who is both first lady and politician in her own right, said at a rally in January. Both Gbagbos have attended the National Prayer Breakfast, a big annual Washington event run by the secretive Christian group known as the Family, or the Fellowship.

OMG, it's the C Street connection. Of course. The Fellowship had spread it's wings there.

Chief among Gbagbo's American supporters is Inhofe, who is the most influential Republican in the Senate when it comes to African affairs. Inhofe has been traveling to Africa regularly since the late 1990s and, while the trips are paid for by the taxpayer and typically involve some official business, the senator also engages in missionary work. He has been to Ivory Coast nine times and knows Gbagbo personally. That's why, early on in the post-election crisis, when the State Department was frantically looking for intermediaries to reach out to Gbagbo to try to convince him to leave the country peacefully, the Obama administration asked Inhofe to talk to Gbagbo. But, according to a source familiar with the situation, Inhofe declined to do so.

It's still not entirely clear why Inhofe wouldn't help at a moment when it might have made a real difference; I've asked his spokesman for comment. But a letter to Hillary Clinton released by his office today offers some clues. In it, Inhofe explicitly takes Gbagbo's side in the election dispute -- even though all international observers and election monitors say that Gbagbo lost...read on

Read the whole thing. Mark Leon Goldberg earlier wrote that people were being fenced in by Gbagbo's forces and couldn't get much needed medicine.

The UN reports that 1 million people have fled Abidjan. At least 462 people have been killed since the crisis began in December, not least of whom were six women gunned down by Gbagbo supporters during a peaceful demonstration three weeks ago. If heavy fighting spreads from the strategic town of Duekoue, an untold number will be killed.

Genocide is not out of the realm of possibility. There are already reports of mass graves in Abidjan. At the very least, the country seems to be inching ever closer toward an ethnic based mass atrocity event.

enlarge

Credit: AFP

News today broke that rebels have taken over the capital city:

Forces loyal to UN-backed President-elect Alassane Ouattara have captured Ivory Coast's capital, residents of Yamoussoukro say.

They have continued their advance from the north despite incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo's ceasefire appeal. Mr Gbagbo refuses to stand down despite the UN saying he lost November's poll.

Abidjan is Ivory Coast's main city, but a BBC reporter says Yamoussoukro's capture is a major symbolic victory for the pro-Ouattara forces. The pro-Ouattara soldiers are also reported to be 100km (60 miles) north of the port of San Pedro, a major cocoa exporting centre.

One million people have fled the violence - mostly from Abidjan - and at least 462 people have been killed since December, according to the UN. 'Residents clapping'

I don't think any sane person thinks a new election is the answer there, except for the mind of Sen. James Inhofe and his C Street buddies. What will they say when more innocents are killed while they cheer on their unelected religious despot?

(photo courtesy of AP)

Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe is the Grand Poobah of right wing nutjobs in the Senate, and is probably the leading Global Warming denier on Capitol Hill. On Friday, he proved yet again why he is nothing short of an embarrassment to the United States. Using taxpayer money he flew to Copenhagen with no schedule, no plans or arrangements made, and did little more than put on a right wing sideshow for anyone who would listen. He found the European press a little less accommodating than the media lap dogs here in the good old USA:

COPENHAGEN — Sen. Jim Inhofe flew across the Atlantic and — on little sleep — braved the snow, the cold and the dark to deliver his skeptical message at the international climate conference.

What he found when he got here: a few aides and a single reporter.

“I think he’s going to be a little disappointed,” one of his aides remarked.

When he was finally able to find a few reporters to listen to him, he went full on lunatic fringe:

“We in the United States owe it to the 191 countries to be well-informed and know what the intentions of the United States are. The United States is not going to pass a cap and trade,” he said. “It’s just not going to happen.”

A reporter asked: “If there’s a hoax, then who’s putting on this hoax, and what’s the motive?”

“It started in the United Nations,” Inhofe said, “and the ones in the United States who really grab ahold of this is the Hollywood elite.”

One reporter asked Inhofe if he was referring to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Another reporter — this one from Der Spiegel — told the senator: “You’re ridiculous.” Read on...

DOWNLOADS: (704)

PLAYS: (1907)

Embed

Chris Wallace pushed the phony "Climate-gate" story on FNS today and actually tried to make an argument supporting the deniers, but no matter how much Kim Strassel says otherwise, the hacked emails taken out of context prove nothing. Chris Wallace's logic is that since these freaks don't believe in real science, then science should welcome the debate.

Wallace: Now, oftentimes that phrase is used -- Holocaust deniers. But the Holocaust was a historical fact. We’re talking here about science, and science usually welcomes opposing views.

Huh? When science is explained then the discussion is over. It's that simple. Let's say the conservative crazies were arguing that the earth is flat and science comes in and disproves that hypothesis and proves that the world is round then there is no debate or an opposing view any longer. It's settled. The earth is round and no matter how many of the Inhofers cry that the earth is still flat, it's immaterial. What the Inhofers are doing is scientifically proving that they are certifiably insane.

Sen. Inhofe is a notorious global warming denier and after Chris Wallace promoted the fraudulent Climate-Gate hacked email story, he asked wacko Sen. Inhofe to explain the fact that this decade has been the warmest ever recorded if there is no such thing as climate change. here's what a conservative crank responds.

WALLACE: Whatever you want to say about the e-mails, Senator Inhofe, the fact is that just this week, the World Meteorological Organization said that this decade is the warmest on record and that 2009 is the fifth warmest year on record. Does that mean nothing?

INHOFE: It -- well, it means -- it means very little because that was based on the same flawed science, the IPC science, that we have been looking at.

Now, we have to say on the science thing that this is something that -- we saw this coming years ago, and for those individuals who doubt the fact that it’s flawed science, listen to what the U.K. Daily Telegraph said. They said it’s the worst scientific scandal of our generation. Publications all over have looked at this and decided that.

You see, proof means nothing in conservative circles. Science means nothing to conservative nitwits. The earth is flat dammit!

Transcript via CQ Politics:

Continue reading »

(h/t Jamie)

Founder of the blog Little Green Footballs, Charles Johnson has seen the light and decided he can no longer support the right wing of his party and makes no bones about why:

1. Support for fascists, both in America (see: Pat Buchanan, Robert Stacy McCain, etc.) and in Europe (see: Vlaams Belang, BNP, SIOE, Pat Buchanan, etc.)

2. Support for bigotry, hatred, and white supremacism (see: Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Robert Stacy McCain, Lew Rockwell, etc.)

3. Support for throwing women back into the Dark Ages, and general religious fanaticism (see: Operation Rescue, anti-abortion groups, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Tony Perkins, the entire religious right, etc.)

4. Support for anti-science bad craziness (see: creationism, climate change denialism, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, James Inhofe, etc.) Read on...

Conservatives like Kathleen Parker and Christopher Buckley found out that leaving the GOP fight club isn't easy -- and Johnson will undoubtedly suffer the same fate. Johnson is taking major heat for his defection, which comes as no surprise, and comments like these at Politico merely prove his point.

I don't expect to see Charles Johnson showing up with Code Pink at any war protests any time soon, but this post covers much of what C&L and other progressive blogs have been saying about the GOP for some time now. It is a dying party that has been taken over by religious extremists, bigots, conspiracy theorists and worse.

Johnson's observations about his party mirror those of my conservative friends and family...well, most of them. They wonder what happened to their party and where they belong in the political spectrum.

I agree with Nicole Belle who wrote backstage - "I don't want him on the left. But it's nice to see someone on the right injecting a little sanity into the discussion."

From NOW on PBS--Power Struggle. More available here.

This is what I hate having to explain to my relatives and friends abroad in Europe about politics in the US. We know that global warming is a fact. We know that our actions, if they didn't cause global warming, definitely exacerbate it. We know that we must reduce our dependency on oil, for both ecological and political/strategic reasons. And yet, what we are able to do is hampered so predictably by the Republican party:

Here we go again. James Inhofe, the most prominent climate change denier in the United States Senate, has concocted a new and innovative strategy to thwart the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act. To wit, he and his Republican colleagues on the Environment and Public Works Committee have worked up a plan to simply not show up for next week’s markup:

But Boxer cannot hold the markup unless at least two Republicans show up, and EPW ranking member James Inhofe (R-Okla.) signaled that he has unanimous support among the panel’s minority members to boycott the session until they get more data on the legislation from U.S. EPA and the Congressional Budget Office.

Inhofe said he will wait for Boxer to file an official notice of the markup — expected today — before responding with his own declaration of the GOP’s markup strategy.

“As soon as we find out what her announcement is and what she wants to do, we’ll have our response,” Inhofe told E&E last night. “We’ll have our unanimous expression ready.”

Sadly, this is a continuation of the GOP’s longstanding strategy of delaying clean energy legislation:

• As Chairman Markey shepherded his American Clean Energy and Security Act through the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Republicans employed multiple parliamentary tricks to — as Politico put it — “nitpick the bill into legislative oblivion.” Brian Beutler called these nefarious stall tactics, and noted that Democrats responded by hiring a speed reader.
• Last year during the debate over the Climate Security Act, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell demanded that the entire 491 page bill be read on the floor of the United States Senate. A strategy memo was leaked at the time detailing the Republican strategy for delaying the bill as much as humanly possible.

While this Republican obstructionism is not necessarily surprising, it is especially egregious this time. Here are a few things about this episode that struck me:

1. Despite the fact that Senator Inhofe has been working to orchestrate this obstruction for a week now, Republicans are pretending the effort is being led by the two moderate Republicans on the committee. Politico handled the stenography.

The Politco, acting as a mouthpiece for the Republican Party? Say it isn't so!

Can you imagine how much further we'd get in this country if we didn't have so many idiots in office?

I just loved this little tidbit from Paul Krugman this morning:

David Broder has a column this morning calling for bipartisanship. I know, you’re shocked. But what struck me was this bit about Al Franken:

Franken, the loud-mouthed former comedian, will be the 60th member of the Senate Democratic caucus …

Two points.

First, implicit in this characterization of Franken is the notion of the Senate as a decorous gentlemen’s club. I doubt that club ever existed in reality; but in any case, these days the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body is, not to put too fine a point on it, chock full o’ nuts. James Inhofe: I rest my case.

Second, Al Franken’s dirty secret is that … he’s a big policy wonk.

I used to go on Franken’s radio show, all ready to be jocular — and what he wanted to talk about was the arithmetic of Social Security, or the structure of Medicare Part D.

In fact, the only elected official I know who’s wonkier than Al Franken is Rush Holt, my congressman — and he used to be the assistant director of Princeton’s plasma physics lab. (The campaign’s bumper stickers read, “My Congressman IS a rocket scientist.”)

So what will Franken do to the level of Senate discourse? He’ll raise it.

Angry Bear: Chris Dodd, having played along with the "this is urgent" call has now presented the "if this is so urgent, show us what it's really worth to you" card.

OurFuture: Behind the financial debacle: Conservative Misrule. Vote No Bailout!

Legal Schnauzer: Proof that Siegelman was wrongly convicted

The Gist: Hypocrisy Bombshell! Antigay John McCain has a gay chief of staff

Booman Tribune: Rush Limbaugh is still a lying sack of sh*t

Grist: John McCain's environmental record is as bad as climate change denier James Inhofe
So he just lies about it.

Late last week, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) released a so-called "report," pointing to hundreds of alleged independent scientists who agree with him about climate change -- which is to say, they deny the reality of global warming.

More than 400 scientists challenge claims by former Vice President Al Gore and the United Nations about the threat of man-made global warming, a new Senate minority report says.

Far-right blogs pounced, heralding Inhofe's "expose."

There is, however, one small problem: Inhofe's report plays fast and loose with the facts.

“Padded” would be an extremely generous description of this list of “prominent scientists.” Some would use the word “laughable” (though not the N.Y. Times‘ Andy Revkin, see below). For instance, since when have economists, who are pervasive on this list, become scientists, and why should we care what they think about climate science?

There's been a lot of great coverage of this, highlighting Inhofe's many errors of fact and judgment, including items here, here, and here.

Via The Guardian:

A military cargo plane carrying three senators and a House member was forced to take evasive maneuvers and dispatch flares to avoid ground fire after taking off from Baghdad on Thursday night.

The lawmakers said their plane, a C-130, was under fire from three rocket-propelled grenades over the course of several minutes as they left for Amman, Jordan.

"It was a scary moment," said Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., who said he had just taken off his body armor when he saw a bright flash outside the window. "Our pilots were terrific. ... They banked in one direction and then banked the other direction, and they set off the flares."

Sens. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., and James Inhofe, R-Okla., as well as Rep. Bud Cramer, D-Ala., were also on the plane.

"We were jostled around pretty good," said Cramer, who estimated the plane had ascended to about 6,000 feet. "There were a few minutes there where I wondered: 'Have we been hit? Are we OK?'" Read more...

During today's hearings on global warming, global warming denier James Inhofe was asking Al Gore questions, but didn't want to hear the answers because he thought the responses would take "too much time". Barbara Boxer then explained to Inhofe how things work in Senate now.

Download | play Download | play

Boxer: "You're not making the rules. You used to when you did this, you don't do this anymore. Elections have consequences"

Everyone in the chamber appeared to love Boxer's comments also.