Month: July 2008

Drill Now! Pay L- Oops.

by dday

So John McCain decided to head out on an oil rig in Louisiana to prove once and for all that we need responsible, environmentally safe drilling to lower gas prices (even though they won’t lower anything for ten years, and even then only a nickel).

And then this happens.

The DEQ has sent out this notice concerning the major oil spill occurring on the Mississippi River in which 9980 barrels of oil were lost:

On July 23, at approximately 2 a.m., a collision between a ship and a barge occurred on the Mississippi River at mile marker 98, near Harahan, splitting the barge in half. The barge was carrying #6 fuel oil and lost all of its contents, estimated at 9980 barrels. The barge came to rest at mile marker 97 at the Crescent City Connection Bridge.

Because drilling is TOTALLY safe.

CNN is now reporting that this spill is up to 400,000 gallons of fuel oil and the Coast Guard has closed 29 miles of the river. This could effectively end the “drill now” campaign. And now, McCain has cancelled the oil rig trip. Due to “weather.” B-but, how could there be a weather problem, I thought no oil was ever spilled during Katrina!

They really are running the worst campaign of all time.

UPDATE: Check out this activism at the GOP’s ridiculous “drill now” presser:

House Republican leaders were caught off guard Wednesday afternoon when, during the official unveiling of their “all-of-the-above” energy package, some 200 protesters showed up with pre-printed signs and in costumes to boo the proposal’s call for drilling offshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The 15-minute GOP event on the West Capitol steps was overrun by members of environmental groups, including the National Wildlife Federation, the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters.

Protesters booed during the news conference and waved signs that read, “Grand Oil Party” and “Climate Action Now;” one person dressed as a polar bear carried the sign, “I love wilderness.”

The GOP didn’t even know about it. Here’s a good point-by-point rebuttal to the Republican’s plan put out by Ed Markey’s group, too. But the ultimate pushback is the 400,000 gallons floating down the Mississippi right now. Human error and environmental reality demands renewable resources.

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Homegrown Torture

by digby

Just remember, tasering is harmless. You can get up and walk away afterwards, so there’s no harm no foul. Unless it kills you. Just like waterboarding.

A police officer shocked a handcuffed Baron “Scooter” Pikes nine times with a Taser after arresting him on a cocaine charge.

He stopped twitching after seven, according to a coroner’s report. Soon afterward, Pikes was dead.

Now the officer, since fired, could end up facing criminal charges in Pikes’ January death after medical examiners ruled it a homicide.

Dr. Randolph Williams, the Winn Parish coroner, told CNN the 21-year-old sawmill worker was jolted so many times by the 50,000-volt Taser that he might have been dead before the last two shocks were delivered.

Williams ruled Pikes’ death a homicide in June after extensive study.

Winn Parish District Attorney Christopher Nevils said he will decide on any charges against the ex-officer, Scott Nugent, once a Louisiana State Police report on the case is complete.

“It’s taken several months for this case to even be properly addressed, so one has to wonder, why did it take so long?” said Carol Powell Lexing, a lawyer for the Pikes family. “Obviously, a wrongful death occurred.”

Nugent’s lawyer, Phillip Terrell, said his client followed proper procedure to subdue a man who outweighed him by 100 pounds. But Williams said Pikes was already handcuffed and on the ground when first hit with the Taser, after the 247-pound suspect was slow to follow police orders to get up.

See, it’s not that they couldn’t subdue the guy. It’s that he failed to follow orders as quickly as they wanted him to. That’s what tasers are really for — teaching the people who’s boss.

But Winnfield police Lt. Chuck Curry said race “isn’t an issue at all” in the matter.

“This has come down to a police officer that was trying to apprehend a suspect that they had warrants for,” he said. “He done what he thought he was trained to do to bring that subject into custody. At some point, something happened with his body that caused him to go into cardiac arrest or whatever.”

That’s a good one. “Something happened that caused him to go into cardiac arrest or whatever.”Likely it was the nine shots of electricity delivered directly into his body. But evidently, this cop thinks that’s perfectly ok. It’s the prisoner’s fault for “whatever.”

Williams, who ruled Pikes’ death a homicide in June after extensive study, said Nugent fired his Taser at Pikes six times in less than three minutes — shots recorded by a computer chip in the weapon’s handle. Then officers put Pikes in the back of a cruiser and drove him to their police station — where Nugent fired a seventh shot, directly against Pikes’ chest.

“After he was given that drive stun to the chest, he was pulled out of the car onto the concrete, ” Williams told CNN. “He was electroshocked two more times, which two officers noted that he had no neuromuscular response to those last two 50,000-volt electroshocks.”

Williams said he had two nationally known forensic pathologists, including former New York city medical examiner Michael Baden, review the case before issuing his conclusions. He said it’s possible Nugent was shocking a dead man the last two times he pulled the trigger.

“This fellow was talking in the back seat of the car prior to shot number seven,” he said. “From that point on, it becomes questionable [if Pikes was still alive].”

Oh, and the police lied:

Curry said Pikes told officers he suffered from asthma and had been using PCP and crack cocaine. But Williams said he found no sign of drug use in the autopsy, and no record of asthma in Pikes’ medical history.

I’ve written many times about tasers. I honestly don’t understand why people are so complacent about the fact that we are allowing the police to torture citizens into compliance, completely based on their own judgment and with no threat of sanction. Even if you kill someone with one, the authorities defend you.

This is a barbaric practice that should be ended. I know they can be a useful tool if used correctly. But they’ve been out there for years, there has been ample evidence of abuse and torture with them, and nothing gets done. At this point the police have lost the benefit of the doubt — they refuse to adhere to strict guidelines and always rush to defend the psychos who happen to get caught using them for no good reason. They’ve left no choice but to ban them.

Update: more from the newly reconstituted Daou Report.

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I Am Now Become Death, Destroyer Of Worlds

by dday

Novakula started a new day job as The Grim Reaper this morning, and apparently he’s not so good at it:

Syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak was cited by police after he hit a pedestrian with his black Corvette in downtown Washington, D.C., on Wednesday morning […]

“I didn’t know I hit him. I feel terrible,” a shaken Novak told reporters from Politico and WJLA as he was returning to his car. “He’s not dead, that’s the main thing.” Novak said he was a block away from 18th and K streets Northwest, where the accident occurred, when a bicyclist stopped him and said, “You hit someone.” He said he was cited for failing to yield the right of way.

The bicyclist was David Bono, a partner at Harkins Cunningham, who was on his usual bike commute to work at 1700 K St. N.W. when he witnessed the accident.

As he traveled east on K Street, crossing 18th, Bono said a “black Corvette convertible with top closed plowed into the guy. The guy is sort of splayed onto the windshield.”

Bono said that the pedestrian, who was crossing the street on a “Walk” signal and was in the crosswalk, rolled off the windshield and that Novak then made a right into the service lane of K Street. “The car is speeding away. What’s going through my mind is, you just can’t hit a pedestrian and drive away,” Bono said.

I’m thinking the fact that he didn’t kill the guy, as Beelzebub commanded, was deeply embarrassing, and Novak wanted to ditch the whole assignment and wanted to get back to the business of destroying careers instead of lives. The Angel of Death is not a high-paying job to begin with, and when you fail in your core function of, you know, causing death, the Great Netherworld temp agency typically calls out for reinforcements.

Satan is really not going to be pleased, Novak’s going to have to give him a few column inches this week…

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Sweet Neocon

by dday

It’s a long list, but yesterday could very well have been the stupidest day of John McCain’s campaign, and he has brought the stupid in ways so reminiscent of the national catastrophe of the past eight years. First, he lets us know who the bosses are.

My friends, we have to drill off shore. We have to do it. It’s out there and we can do it. And we can do that. The oil executives say within a couple of years we could be seeing results from it. So why not do it?

See, the oil executives say that we’ll see results from drilling, and there’s literally no more trustworthy a group in American life. Just like the energy task force in 2001 hiding away in Fourthbranch Cheney’s office, McCain appeals to oil executives to set his energy policy. We know how that movie played out, right?

Gas prices in July 2000: $1.47/gal.
Gas prices today: $4.055/gal.

Then there was the schoolyard taunt that Obama would rather lose the war to win the campaign, which caused him to even lose Joe Klein (wonder if Jon Chait wants to rethink that statement that McCain would put an end to the politics of Karl Rove).

And finally, there was this.

Kate Couric: Senator McCain, Senator Obama says, while the increased number of US troops contributed to increased security in Iraq, he also credits the Sunni awakening and the Shiite government going after militias. And says that there might have been improved security even without the surge. What’s your response to that?

McCain: I don’t know how you respond to something that is as– such a false depiction of what actually happened. Colonel McFarlane [phonetic] was contacted by one of the major Sunni sheiks. Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening. I mean, that’s just a matter of history. Thanks to General Petraeus, our leadership, and the sacrifice of brave young Americans. I mean, to deny that their sacrifice didn’t make possible the success of the surge in Iraq, I think, does a great disservice to young men and women who are serving and have sacrificed.

Sean McFarland, in fact, was contacted by Sunni sheikhs in September 2006, months before the surge troops arrived, months before the President even DECIDED on the surge. And everybody knows this – heck, even Kimberly Frickin’ Kagan knows this. As Ilan Goldenberg puts it, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of Iraq from the candidate who presumes to be a national security expert.

This is not controversial history. It is history that anyone trying out for Commander and Chief must understand when there are 150,000 American troops stationed in Iraq. It is an absolutely essential element to the story of the past two years. YOU CANNOT GET THIS WRONG. Moreover, what is most disturbing is that according to McCain’s inaccurate version of history, military force came first and solved all of our problems. If that is the lesson he takes from the Anbar Awakening, I am afraid it is the lesson he will apply to every other crisis he faces including, for example, Iran.

There were even additional factors beyond Anbar that led to the slight drop in violence, relative to 2005, that you’re seeing today, including the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad and the Sadrist cease-fire. And the surge, of course, didn’t work on its own terms, as the political situation is still stalemated, the region is still chaotic, hundreds still die every month, and the endgame is still as far away as it was before the escalation of troops.

(There’s a media angle here, too, as CBS apparently deleted this part of the interview from their broadcast. Looks like all that whining about how the media loves Obama is working.)

Here’s the point. John McCain has been consistently wrong for six years about Iraq (watch the video). And in the one instance where he wants you to know he got it right, on the surge, he fails to recognize countervailing factors and lies about the timeline of those factors. This is the same obfuscation we’ve been subjected to for eight years. McCain simply won’t talk straight with the public about Iraq, and substitutes his judgment for literally everyone else’s. This is rampant neoconservatism.

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Superprick

by digby

This is a clear choice that the American people have. I had the courage and the judgment to say I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign.

Whatever you do, don’t impugn this man’s character. He did something worthy 40 years ago which allows him to say any nasty thing he pleases and then lead the entire political establishment in a group whine if anyone calls him on it.

And let’s hear no more about how modest the maverick is. When’s the last time you heard a candidate, much less a certified, unassailable hero, bragging about how courageous he is? I’m not sure I even ever heard the Codpiece go quite that far.

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Just Say No

by digby

Congress should explicitly declare a state of armed conflict with al Qaeda to make clear the United States can detain suspected members as long as the war on terrorism lasts, U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey said on Monday.

Mukasey urged Congress to make the declaration in a package of legislative proposals to establish a legal process for terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo, in response to a Supreme Court rulinglast month that detainees had a constitutional right to challenge their detention.

“Any legislation should acknowledge again and explicitly that this nation remains engaged in an armed conflict with al Qaeda, the Taliban and associated organizations, who have already proclaimed themselves at war with us,” Mukasey said in a speech to the American Enterprise Institute.

As I wrote yesterday, this is nothing but a transparent attempt to get bipartisan buy in, before the election, to the GWOT. They need to keep the torture, rendition and concentration camp regime under wraps and ensure that a larger ongoing war narrative, which favor conservatives no matter who runs the government, remains firmly in place.

It would be a political mistake of epic proportions for the Democrats to agree to anything like this, setting the table for possible decades of being pressured and intimidated into supporting wars and military interventions against the best interests of the country and the world — not to mention their own political interests. It is not a winner for liberals to help the conservatives pursue their imperial goals. There’s no political need for this, so if they do it, one can only assume it’s because they actually support the Orwellian concept of endless war.

We’ve been here before, during the Cold War, which was a real existential threat, at least in the beginning. It’s unbelievably foolhardy to do it again.

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Central Front

by digby

This stuff worries me:

“There is security progress, but now we need a political solution” in Iraq, Obama said in the first news conference of his highly publicized trip abroad. Afghanistan is now the “central front in the war against terrorism,” he added.

I guess it’s inevitable that we would see this formulation used. But is it really necessary to have a “central front in the war on terrorism?” If so, can someone explain what “winning” this “war on terrorism” will look like?

Politically it probably makes sense. It’s easier to use familiar phrases than to fight them. And it ensures that the DC establishment will proclaim that Obama is Very Serious:

Analysis: Obama’s Gravitas

Barack Obama’s press conference this morning in Amman, Jordan, was a major moment — perhaps the major moment — of the Illinois senator’s much-ballyhooed trip abroad this week.

All eyes were on Obama to see how he would perform on a world stage with every political reporter of any consequence either on the trip with him or watching closely on television.

And, as he has done before in the course of the campaign, Obama seemed to be up to the moment — sensing the need to convey gravitas and bipartisanship while also strongly defending his own beliefs about America’s role in Iraq and the broader Middle East.

Gone were the jokes and “rah rah” language that won over many Obama partisans but left many undecided voters wondering whether there was any there there when it came to the Illinois senator. Instead, we saw a serious explication of his position on removing combat troops in Iraq, a position bolstered in recent days by repeated calls by the Iraqi government to remove U.S. military forces from the country by 2010.

“Regardless of who becomes next president we are going to have to strip away ideology, strip away the politics,” Obama said when asked the proper future course for Iraq. “The next president is going to have to make a series of very difficult judgments.”

As for the disagreement between him and Sen. John McCain about the future of the country, Obama again took the high road, insisting he was not interested in having a “colloquy” with the Arizona senator over the next four or five days about the issue because it was not in the best interests of the country. (Well played, although does the average person have any idea what the world “colloquy” means? The Fix had to look it up.)

While Obama largely avoided any attack on McCain or his approach to Iraq, he did offer a vigorous defense of his plan to redeploy troops from the country and dismissed the idea that there were only two ways to approach the future of American involvement: a rigid timetable or an open-ended commitment.

“I reject that those are the only two options,” said Obama, adding: “My job, should I be commander-in-chief, is to set a strategic vision for what’s best for U.S. national security” — a directive that requires flexibility and a belief that the situation is not as Manichean as many people in the states present it.”

[…]

(McCain’s campaign, too, is already showing signs of using the allegedly fawning coverage of Obama’s trip against him. In an e-mail entitled “The Media is in Love”, McCain announces a video competition to choose between two different ads that reveal the press’ “bizarre fascination with Barack Obama.” )

Overall, however, Obama cleared a crucial bar in today’s press conference. He looked and sounded presidential at a moment when the eyes of the world were on him.

Will it dramatically affect the race at home when Obama returns? It’s hard to tell. But, rest assured that if Obama today had come across as flip or not sufficiently versed on the issues in Iraq and the Middle East, it would have been a major problem for his candidacy. Obama cleared that hurdle with ease.

(Too bad he used all them big wuurdz. That’ll kill ‘im with Real Murikans.)

Cilizza is right that Obama looks presidential — the pictures are perfect. Perhaps what Karl Rove famously said — “politics is TV with the sound turned off,” — is true. If so, it doesn’t really matter what any of them say, only how they look when they are saying it. And he looks great.

Update: I’m hearing gasbag rumblings that Obama believes “his judgment is better than The Man Called Petraeus’.” (How dare he demean the service of the troops this way.) The Republicans are obviously fighting back.

Update II: As Media Matters (via Atrios) notes here, Obama has been talking about sending troops to Afghanistan for years. Indeed, all the Democrats have, going all the way back to Kerry and the 2004 campaign. There’s absolutely nothing new here. I haven’t heard him call it the “central front in the war on terror” before, but it’s certainly possible that he has done so.

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Accountability Moment

by dday

The capture of Radovan Karadzic was a great day for human rights. He was the leader of the Srebenica massacre, and his arrest shows that the International Criminal Court can be effective in bringing fugitives to justice through pressuring member nations and rallying the international community.

The United States is not a signatory to the ICC, as George Bush is always keen to point out. And as Charlie Savage wants us to know, the White House may not wait before assuring that the war criminals inside its walls cannot be charged with any crimes domestically.

As the administration wrestles with the cascade of petitions, some lawyers and law professors are raising a related question: Will Mr. Bush grant pre-emptive pardons to officials involved in controversial counterterrorism programs?

Such a pardon would reduce the risk that a future administration might undertake a criminal investigation of operatives or policy makers involved in programs that administration lawyers have said were legal but that critics say violated laws regarding torture and surveillance.

Some legal analysts said Mr. Bush might be reluctant to issue such pardons because they could be construed as an implicit admission of guilt. But several members of the conservative legal community in Washington said in interviews that they hoped Mr. Bush would issue such pardons — whether or not anyone made a specific request for one. They said people who carried out the president’s orders should not be exposed even to the risk of an investigation and expensive legal bills.

I don’t think they’ll lose any sleep over the public assuming guilt, as long as they’re kept far from the jails. The usual suspects are quoted in the article, including Victoria Toensing, the featured bobblehead for the White House during the Plame case. And we’ve already seen the Village pronounce that there ought to be no accountability for war crimes, torture, rendition, indefinite detention, or any of those mere trifles. After all, Bush’s re-election in 2004 allows him to do whatever he wanted, right? It’s that whole “accountability moment” thing. The courts simply don’t have the jurisdiction of a random election 4 years ago.

Is there any doubt that this will happen, either on Christmas Day or New Year’s? After all, like father, like son.

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Charming Patriarchs

by digby

Over two years ago, Maria Hinojosa of NOW on PBS did a story on father daughter purity balls. I wrote about it and it remains one of the most linked posts I ever did. People were uniformly appalled. It smacked of regressive male dominance and a more than slightly inappropriate involvement by fathers in the sexuality of their daughters:

HINOJOSA: LAST FRIDAY NIGHT, YOUNG GIRLS FROM AROUND SOUTH DAKOTA CAME TO SIOUX FALLS FOR A SPRING BALL. THIS ONE IS CALLED “THE PURITY BALL” IT’S A YEARLY EVENT RUN BY LESLEE UNRUH’S ABSTINENCE CLEARINGHOUSE.

THE IDEA IS THAT THESE YOUNG WOMEN COME WITH THEIR FATHERS. TO CELEBRATE THEIR SEXUAL PURITY.

UNRUH:We think that its important for fathers to the be the first ones to look into their daughters eyes and To tell her that her purity is special, and its ok to wait until marriage.

HINOJOSA:IT MIGHT HAVE ALL THE TRAPPINGS OF A REGULAR PROM… BUT THIS ONE ENDS A LITTLE DIFFERENTLY.

GIRLS RECITING PLEDGE:”I make a promise this day to God…

HINOJOSA:
THE YOUNG WOMEN HERE ALL MAKE A PROMISE TO THEIR FATHERS THAT THEY WONT’ HAVE SEX UNTIL THE DAY THEY GET MARRIED.

GIRLS RECITING PLEDGE:…to remain sexually pure…until the day I give myself as a wedding gift to my husband. … I know that God requires this of me.. that he loves me…and that he will reward me for my faithfulness.

Apparently TIME just heard about this thing and they sent out one of their anthropologist/reporters to investigate these real Americans. And what do you know? She came back mightily impressed with the whole thing:

Leave aside for a moment the critics who recoil at the symbols, the patriarchy, the very use of the term purity, with its shadow of stains and stigma. Whatever guests came looking for, they are likely to come away with something unexpected. The goal seems less about making judgments than about making memories.

[…]

Purity is certainly a loaded word–but is there anyone who thinks it’s a good idea for 12-year-olds to have sex? Or a bad idea for fathers to be engaged in the lives of their daughters and promise to practice what they preach? Parents won’t necessarily say this out loud, but isn’t it better to set the bar high and miss than not even try?

Here’s what Daddy preaches:

I, (daughter’s name)’s father, choose before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity. I will be pure in my own life as a man, husband and father. I will be a man of integrity and accountability as I lead, guide and pray over my daughter and as the high priest in my home. This covering will be used by God to influence generations to come.

Some of these little girls are only six years old. They don’t even know what their “purity” means until daddy tells them that it belongs to him, the “high priest” in his home. And no, it’s not a good idea for dads to be this involved in their daughter’s nascent sex lives. In fact, it’s completely inappropriate and weird for a daughter to pledge her virginity into her father’s keeping for him to “give” to her husband. Are we really going to pretend that the “memories” they are making with this sick shit is something to celebrate?

This reporter Nancy Gibbs leaves her cushy urban world to venture out in to the hinterlands and report on what the rustics are doing to deal with the sex in our culture. And what she finds is something she takes completely at face value as a charming, primitive ritual, sort of like an African fertility dance, only with heartland dads and their daughters. And even if she knows that this is a somewhat startlingly barbaric return to ancient patriarchal norms, it stems from a religious belief and therefore, must automatically be granted respect.

But people like her would no more ask their own kid to do this than they would suggest she join the Hell’s Angels, and any husband and daughter of her social circle would thinks she was nuts if she even tried. No, this lovely rustic ritual is for the little people who are “authentic” and “natural” and have Better Morals Than Us.

It’s that phony Village provincialism running amok again spreading patronizing, anti-intellectual drivel that allows these elites to wallow in salt of the earth moral superiority that they do not personally possess but take credit for by writing glowing paeans to primitivism and barbarity that nobody but a few fundamentalist weirdos actually believe in. And it isn’t harmless. Not only does it hurt those poor little girls to have this archaic practice foisted upon them, it leads to truly atrocious policy like this:

The Bush administration is up to its old tricks again, quietly putting ideology before science and women’s health. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is poised to put in place new barriers to accessing common forms of contraception like birth control pills, emergency contraception and IUDs by labeling them “abortion.” These proposed regulations set to be released next week will allow healthcare providers to refuse to provide contraception to women who need it.

If you read my original post on this you will find that the “purity balls” were conceived by a scary, anti-abortion zealot in South Dakota. It’s all part of the same heavy tapestry of guilt and repression that only looks “charming” if you aren’t subject to its suffocating weight.

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The Long National Nightmare Is Over

by dday

Nipplegate ends with a whimper.

A federal appeals court on Monday threw out a $550,000 indecency fine against CBS Corp. for the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show that ended with Janet Jackson’s breast-baring “wardrobe malfunction.”

The three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Federal Communications Commission “acted arbitrarily and capriciously” in issuing the fine for the fleeting image of nudity […]

The court found that the FCC deviated from its nearly 30-year practice of fining indecent broadcast programming only when it was so “pervasive as to amount to ’shock treatment’ for the audience.”

“Like any agency, the FCC may change its policies without judicial second-guessing,” the court said. “But it cannot change a well-established course of action without supplying notice of and a reasoned explanation for its policy departure.”

Clearly the 3rd Circuit isn’t thinking of the children. That 9/16 of a second of boob will be the source of psychological scars for young football fans well into the next century. I hope Justice Sunday gets extended to a week.

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