President Obama in Burma ~ UPDATE: Political Prisoners Freed

Recap of entire trip from Alex Wagoner on MSNBC:



UPDATE: Good news - the government of Burma (Myanmar) is releasing dozens of unfairly accused political prisoners during President Obama's visit.

Reuters

Myanmar's government began releasing dozens of political prisoners on Monday as Barack Obama arrived for the first visit by a sitting U.S. president to the former dictatorship.

Sixty-six prisoners were scheduled to be freed, two-thirds of them dissidents, according to prison officials and activists.

They included prominent figures such as Myint Aye, a senior Prison Department official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A third of those released were former military intelligence personnel who fell afoul of the junta, according to the 88 Generation Students political group.

Myint Aye is arguably the most prominent dissident left in Myanmar's gulag. He was one of dozens of activists arrested on what Amnesty International says were trumped-up charges and convicted in secret courts on flimsy evidence or confessions extracted under torture.

Welcome to Burma, Mr President #History twitter.com/TheObamaDiary/…
— The Obama Diary (@TheObamaDiary) November 19, 2012

The welcome sign for Myanmar (Burma) after you turn off the road from the airport. twitter.com/chucktodd/stat…
— Chuck Todd (@chucktodd) November 19, 2012

Buddhist monks hold the Myanmar and US flags as they welcome President Barack Obama at Yangon International Airport twitter.com/TheObamaDiary/…
— The Obama Diary (@TheObamaDiary) November 19, 2012

Pres. Obama rings a bell at the Shwedagon Pagoda in Rangoon, Burma. One of the coolest pictures ever. twitter.com/utaustinlibera…

— Nerdy Wonka (@utaustinliberal) November 22, 2012

Reuters

His plane landed in the former capital Yangon, where he will meet President Thein Sein, a former junta member who has spearheaded reforms since taking office in March 2011, and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who led the struggle against military rule and, like Obama, is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. She is now a lawmaker.

. . . Speaking in Thailand on the eve of his landmark visit to the former pariah state, Obama denied he was going there to offer his "endorsement" or that his trip was premature.

Instead, he insisted his intention was to acknowledge that Myanmar, also known as Burma, had opened the door to democratic change but there was still much more to do.

"I don't think anybody is under the illusion that Burma's arrived, that they're where they need to be," Obama told a news conference as he began a three-country Asian tour, his first trip abroad since winning a second term.

"On the other hand, if we waited to engage until they had achieved a perfect democracy, my suspicion is we'd be waiting an awful long time," he said.

Obama's Heartfelt Moment with Volunteers

source: gfln tumblr
Obama has a tearful moment while thanking his volunteers. Sweet.

Gun Nut Fever and Motor Mouth Madness

From Candidate Mitt Romney's Son on Twitter

Ted Nugent, aging Michigan rocker and hunting afficiando, is now being investigated by the Secret Service for saying scary violent things about President Obama and other people in government. No one should just laugh and take this lightly.

In the 1970s, Arthur Bremer planned to assassinate Richard Nixon before eventually setting his sights on George Wallace, shooting and rendering him a paraplegic. He wrote in his diary that he wanted "To do SOMETHING BOLD AND DRAMATIC , FORCEFUL & DYNAMIC, A STATEMENT of my manhood for the world to see." That could be the sentiment of any famous killer from John Wilkes Booth to John Hinckley to the Columbine Killers.Let's recall that Jared Loughner, who tried to kill Congresswoman Gabby Giffords of Arizona,  wrote on an envelope"I planned ahead" and that was considered enough for federal officials to toss him into jail and determine if he was mentally ill.

Sometimes thinking and talking about assassination leads to assassination.

I hope that helps someone out there understand why Ted Nugent is under investigation. Words matter. Anyone is free to criticize the President or urge people to vote against him, but telling a crowd of gun nuts that shooting the president is the only answer, then you begin to sound like John Wilkes Booth jumping into a crowd yelling "Sic Semper Tyrannis' (Thus be to tyrants)." Lincoln actually died - remember? John Kennedy died. Bobby Kennedy, Medgar Evers, and Martin Luther King were all assassinated by people who planned ahead. Ronald Reagan almost died. This isn't a joke.

Obama, he’s a piece of sh-t, and I told him to suck on my machine gun … Hey Hillary, you might want to ride one of these into the sunset, you worthless b—t … Any questions? Freeeeeeeeeeeedom!!!!!”
~ Ted Nugent on stage in 2007, quoted in EW's List of Ted Nugent's Most Outlandish Quotes

I'll tell you this right now: If Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year. We need to ride into that battlefield and chop their heads off in November. Any questions? ...(if you don't) get everybody in your lives to clean house in this vile, evil, America-hating administration, I don't even know what you're made out of....If the coyote's in your living room, pissing on your couch, it's not the coyote's fault. It's your fault for not shooting him.
~ Ted Nugent in April 2012, speaking to the NRA, quoted on Yahoo News

We are aware of the incident and we are conducting appropriate follow-up.
~ Secret Service Head, Brian Leary, also quoted by Yahoo News

The Romney campaign told NBC News that, contrary to Nugent’s claims, they ‘never solicited his endorsement,’ although clearly, they were pleased about it at the time.
~ MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell, quoting the Romney campaign Here

Caterpillars for Change

Now we know there's a full moon. Today, the leader of the Republican National Convention, Reince Priebus, set off a landmine of snark under his own chair by saying:

“If the Democrats said we had a war on caterpillars and every mainstream media outlet talked about the fact that Republicans have a war on caterpillars, then we’d have problems with caterpillars. It's a fiction."

Okey-Dokey Artichokey.
Of course, the Internets Went All Snarky.
Rachel Maddow had this picture up on her show tonight. I think it's just beautiful! Thank you, Reince Priebus, for giving women a new reason to vote for President Obama, and a new symbol of rebirth for the Democratic Party.

Broccoli Supreme

Via The Bloomington Herald-Times 

Yesterday, Justice Scalia compared the health care mandate to a rule that would force us all to eat our broccoli. It reminded me of  the Elder President Bush carping that he didn't like broccoli and by God he wasn't going to eat it, as if his old nanny was forcing it down his throat back in 1930. G.H.W. Bush sounded silly then, and Scalia sounds silly now. I realize the Supremes don't have to answer to the actual citizens of the country, but shouldn't they take their power a little more seriously? Turning this into an episode of Veggie Tales makes the Supremes sound like first year law students mulling over hypotheticals without any real knowledge of the pain and suffering out health care system foists on the disenfranchised. Apples versus . . . Broccoli anyone?  If they are worried about their image and their legacy, they jolly well should be after this.

As one writer put it: Good Luck Treating Cerebral Palsy with Broccoli.

Charles Pierce blogged on Esquire: Tony Scalia's Retirement Has Started Early

It is plain now that Scalia simply doesn't like the Affordable Care Act on its face. It has nothing to do with "originalism," or the Commerce Clause, or anything else. He doesn't think that the people who would benefit from the law deserve to have a law that benefits them. On Tuesday, he pursued the absurd "broccoli" analogy to the point where he sounded like a micro-rated evening-drive talk-show host from a dust-clotted station in southern Oklahoma.

In a New York Times op-ed entitled Broccoli and Bad Faith Paul Krugman wrote:

Let’s start with the already famous exchange in which Justice Antonin Scalia compared the purchase of health insurance to the purchase of broccoli, with the implication that if the government can compel you to do the former, it can also compel you to do the latter. That comparison horrified health care experts all across America because health insurance is nothing like broccoli. Why? When people choose not to buy broccoli, they don’t make broccoli unavailable to those who want it. But when people don’t buy health insurance until they get sick — which is what happens in the absence of a mandate — the resulting worsening of the risk pool makes insurance more expensive, and often unaffordable, for those who remain. As a result, unregulated health insurance basically doesn’t work, and never has.

So often in this political year the whole thing seems like a Funhouse Nightmare, but it's terrible when a Supreme Court Justice sounds like a cross between Rush Limbaugh and Dana Carvey singing the Broccoli Song on SNL. Then again, maybe the fact that this nonsense is on the record and will be in the history books is some kind of justice after all.

The Supreme Court Has no Cred with the Public

All day I've been referring to the Supreme Court as "The Supremes," which is probably irritating my daughter, who is in Law School. But in a way, these illustrious judges have become no different from any other narcissistic celebrities with delusions of grandeur. Appointed for life with all the benefits, and treated like royalty by the Washington elite, they answer to no one but themselves. Too bad they only talk and pontificate instead of sing and dance.

Do I sound cynical? Maybe it's because I remember all too well the Bush v. Gore decision which gave the election to George W. Bush even though later it was discovered that Gore won the popular vote. Before the 2000 election, I had faith that the Supremes were truly above politics, and that they would let the recount proceed in Florida because it was the American Way. Before Citizens United decided that "Corporations are People" we could placate ourselves that at least they recognized the basic rights of human beings to run their own country instead of big business. But I don't see them as infallible Gods of Law anymore, and no one should. Yes, even now with a natural split they sometimes write a nearly unanimous decision. But they won't be remembered for that. In fact, whatever they decide in this case about Obama's Affordable Care Act, that's what people will remember. When the verdict is handed down from Mt. Olympus sometime in June, one side or the other will damn the Supremes and take to the streets.

 Rachel Maddow had a great recap of all that Supreme Court history tonight. Watch it Here She brought up the following poll showing that the American Public is skeptical that the High Court will be fair and untainted by partisan politics. People expect the Republicans on the Court to side with...the Republicans and against President Obama. That's okay. I'm glad we know. This could get us one step closer to Medicare for everyone or Single Payer like the rest of the civilized world. From Bloomberg

Mad Mash-Up from Hardball

The Obama - Mad Men Mashup from the Chris Matthews show on MSNBC. Wow - so creative! And also indicative of the role played by propaganda, spin and branding in modern elections. We have the imagery of the campaign signs and the commodities, with gasoline and medicine used as talking points, not to mention the fact that Romney (if not Santorum) could walk right into an episode of Mad Men.  But thank God this is 2012 and not 1964 ~ Obama wouldn't have been President back then.

And I think he will still be Chairman of the Board come next January!