Month: December 2008

Throwing Bullets

by digby

Your daily taser death:

A man has died in police custody today after being shocked by police Tasers, city officials said.

Officers responded to Highland and Jefferson avenues in Peaselburg neighborhood about 11 a.m. to a report of a man with a gun, Covington police Lt. Col. Spike Jones said. The initial report over police radio was that a man had put a gun into his pocket.

When confronted by at least three officers, the man refused to follow their orders, Jones said. The man became combative and started throwing things at the officers, he said. One of the things thrown was a box of bullets, Jones said.

Officers then fired Tasers at the man during the struggle to arrest him, he said.

“The officers then became very fearful for their safety,” Covington Fraternal Order of Police president Chris Gangwish said. “They deployed Tasers to try to gain control of the individual. Fortunately, the officers had the necessary means to subdue the subject although (the Tasers) were not completely effective in and of themselves.”

The man pulled the electrical probes out of his body to stop the shock, Gangwish said.

At some point during the struggle, the suspect began having “physical difficulties,” Jones said. An ambulance was called transported the man to St. Elizabeth Medical Center in Covington. Jones said medics were unable to revive the man after he stopped breathing.

“We are extremely thankful that none of our officers were injured,” Gangwish said. “Unfortunately following the arrest, the individual died.”

It’s a good thing they didn’t have to use lethal force.

Read the whole article for a rundown of other taser incidents in the area.

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41% Solution

by digby

Todd Beaton catches the latest so-called evidence for center-rightism —Chambliss’ win:

On AC360 earlier David Gergen declared:

I think this actually puts a lot more pressure on Barack Obama to govern much more from the center and not from the left. He is going to need Republicans now, he is going to need a bipartisan approach…

Right, a 41 vote minority should by all means have Barack Obama shaking in his boots. I wonder if Gergen said something similar about Republicans on Nov. 4th, perhaps something like…

I think the fact that Barack Obama won 53% of the vote tonight and that Democrats will have won at least 7 more seats in the Senate and 20 more seats in the House puts a lot more pressure on Republicans to govern much more from the center and not from the right.

Oh, he didn’t? Ya don’t say…

In fact, Gergen said something quite interesting about all this after Bush’s (much closer) victory in 2004:

“From beginning to end, this election was about George W Bush, and he can claim that an apparently insurmountable lead in the popular vote vindicated his policies, his persistence, his personal qualities and his political strategy,” wrote Todd S Purdum in the New York Times.

In the Washington Post, John Harris wrote: “George W Bush’s presidency – its governance and its politics – was organised from the outset with an unwavering eye on keeping the conservative base of the Republican Party intact, energised and loyal.”

And exit polls showed that morality and values were the issues motivating President Bush’s core conservative supporters.

“This was not about a difference of policies but a difference over values,” said David Gergen on CNN.

And he said that disagreement on social issues such as gay marriage might lead to division in the country and a sense of alienation for John Kerry’s supporters.

For Democrats, “there will be a sense of isolation from the majority. A feeling of ‘is this the country that we thought it was’?” Mr Gergen said.

Right. But Saxby Chambliss keeping the Democrats from having a 60 seat majority means that the Republicans must be accommodated.

Todd puts it very well:

Gergen’s refusal to put the burden on the Republicans to be cooperative and “centrist” rather than the Democrats is really a symptom of the persistent beltway “center right nation” conventional wisdom, which always puts the burden on Democrats to be the centrist ones since the Republican Party, so goes the logic, is where the people already are.

This is why people like me are chafing at all the bipartisan chatter, which does nothing to change that perception. Indeed, it feeds into it.

And until that default rightist mentality is changed, nothing changes over the long term. Sure, the country will hire Democrats to come in and clean up conservative messes from time to time, but they won’t ever realize that the party that is identified as the center-left is actually the majority unless someone claims it. The result will be that when the smoke has cleared the country will reflexively want to go back to “normal” by electing Republicans, the true representatives of our naturally center-right country.

I don’t expect national politicians to take on labels that have been made toxic by their enemies. But I think it is very shortsighted to continually reinforce these destructive themes and use their own base as a convenient foil. All they do is plant the seeds of their own obsolescence once the country has forgotten what they didn’t like about their last rightwing president.

Progressivism needs progressive rhetoric to match policy if it wants to be around long enough to make a real impact. If Democrats make things better without making it clear that their ideology (I know that’s a bad word) is superior, the country will simply continue to treat politics like entertainment and vote for whoever puts on the best show and makes them feel good about themselves at a particular time, irrespective of their policies. It would be foolish to think the Republicans will never again be able to compete in that arena. They have shown themselves to be very adept at that kind of politics.

Now, if their ideas could be so discredited that nobody wants to ever be associated with them again it wouldn’t matter if they ran the reanimated Elvis, nobody would want to vote for them. But that’s not going to happen if progressives believe that it doesn’t matter if our politicians distance themselves from progressivism simply because it’s easier than challenging the myth that the country is center-right.

This is a two party country. You can say you aren’t “ideological” and that you are a pragmatist, as Obama does, but polarity is the norm. This isn’t just semantics — it matters in a very prosaic, practical way if the country identifies itself with the party that has staked out the conservative side of the line. You can see from the two different responses to presidential victories by Gergen how that plays itself out politically.

There’s a reason why armies wear identifiable uniforms and it’s so their own fellows will recognize them.

The Great Restoration

by dday

It’s a good thing that the Bush team is working hard with unusual focus and competence on what matters the most right now – making sure that reporters properly spin his legacy.

President Bush’s interview with ABC’s Charlie Gibson this week was the “first of several planned ‘exit interviews.’” According to White House press secretary Dana Perino, Bush’s next interview will be with ABC’s Cynthia McFadden on the topic of the faith-based initiative. It will air on Nightline next week. If the first interview with Gibson provides any clue as to what we can expect from these interviews, Bush will paint a rosy picture of his legacy and “refuse to take responsibility for a single thing that went wrong on his watch.” Heather at Crooks and Liars catches the Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes revealing that Karl Rove is currently orchestrating the Bush legacy project:

[T]here’s an ongoing Bush legacy project that’s been meeting in the White House, really, with senior advisers, Karl Rove, Karen Hughes has been involved, current senior Bush administration advisers and they are looking at how to sort of roll out the President’s legacy.

Why, there almost seems to be more planning going into restoring the legacy than has gone into prewar planning in Iraq, planning for the TARP program, planning after Katrina, etc., etc. How curious!

By the way, this isn’t the “Bush legacy project” at all – I’m sure he’s content to go back to Texas and get the hell away from that fake ranch and start getting down to the business of drinking cocktails out of the public spotlight. He could give a damn about his legacy – that’s been very clear.

BUSH: I’ll be frank with you. I don’t spend a lot of time really worrying about short-term history. I guess I don’t worry about long-term history, either, since I’m not going to be around to read it — (laughter) — but, look, in this job you just do what you can. The thing that’s important for me is to get home and look in that mirror and say, I did not compromise my principles. And I didn’t. I made tough calls. And some presidencies have got a lot of tough decisions to make–

No, this is the Karl Rove legacy project. He’s the one concerned about his place in history. And his future power resides in everyone still considering him a genius and not a complete failure responsible for bringing the worst President in American history to the attention of the country. Similarly, blurring the lines on conservative extremism is the one way to lull the country into forgetting how destructive those policies truly were. So this isn’t about making Bush look good in the past, it’s about making Republicans look good in the future. This is why he’s trying to restore his own credibility by claiming that the United States wouldn’t have invaded Iraq if they had known there were no WMD, going much further than the President ever has.

In what was a remarkable admission that contradicted – to a large extent – the past statements from his onetime boss, former Bush strategist Karl Rove said on Tuesday evening that had the President known Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction, the United States would not have gone to war.

“In the aftermath of 9/11 the concern was about a tyrant accused of enormous human rights abuses,” but who also possessed weapons of mass destruction, said Rove. “Absent that, I suspect that the administration’s course of action would have been to work to find more creative ways to constrain him like in the 90s.”

The remarks, delivered at a debate in New York on Bush’s legacy, came amidst a vigorous defense by Rove on behalf of the war’s purpose and outcome.

Preposterous, yes, but you’ll notice that the word “Bush” is absent in Rove’s remarks. Having already lied their way into invading – and yes, distorting that intelligence which was apparently so “faulty” that it would have changed the very outcome of the invasion – the spinmeisters are now lying about the events of just five years ago, and making Bush disappear in the process. And it’s working with a media that has always been too willing to accept whatever version of history they’re spoonfed from on high.

The big news orgs seem eager to help Bush do this. Not a single one of their reports on the interview that we can find bothered to tell readers that there was plenty of good intel — ignored by the Bush administration — saying that Saddam wasn’t the threat Bush was claiming he was. Nor did any of them bother mentioning that the weapons inspectors in Iraq were saying the same thing — something that also went ignored.

These facts are absolutely central to understanding Bush’s efforts to falsify history in yesterday’s interview. Yet they went unmentioned in reports by Reuters, The Washington Post, the Associated Press, CNN, and The New York Times.

Worse, at least one news org pretended that Bush was making some kind of admission or concession here. WaPo hailed Bush’s “candor” and said he was being “unusually blunt.”

Let’s go over this very slowly. For Bush to blame the failure of intel for his decision to invade is not a concession at all, and it is not an admission of failure on his part. Rather, it is the opposite of these things. It is an evasion of responsibility for what happened.

Obama’s campaign ran on stepping away from Bush policies and toward change. The whole time there was this assumption that everyone knew what those Bush policies were, and therefore there was no need to delineate very specifically. That was a healthy assumption when 4/5 of the country thinks we’re on the wrong track, but with the passage of time, that failure to specifically target Bush and Republicans will lead to convenient amnesia. And with another Bush ready to step in and make everyone forget about ol’ W., the whitewash project will be complete.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush — the younger brother of the president — is weighing a run for the Senate seat currently held by Republican Mel Martinez.

Martinez announced Tuesday that he will not seek reelection in 2010. Asked whether he was interested in running for the seat then, Bush told Politico by e-mail Tuesday night: “I am considering it.”

Jeb is popular enough in Florida that he could prevail despite the surname, and we’ve all been told over and over that he’s really the smart one and Poppy wanted him to be President first and all that.

When conservative governments get away with their crimes, when they are given sanction to set the terms of their own legacy, the consequences for the future, when the same band of thieves returns to Washington to plunder, are grave.

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“Why Would We Want That?”

by digby

Huzzah to Matt Browner-Hamlin (via Somerby) for correctly diagnosing Maureen Dowd Jr’s projection disease regarding the “Clinton drama.” We are dealing with an illness which, regardless of your personal loathing for all things Clinton, should disturb you greatly: the press delusionally believes it is their prerogative to decide who is allowed to be in politics and who is not.

For reasons that have already been explored on this blog and many others in great depth (but which have long since morphed into reflexive, unctuous mendacity) the press turns into puerile, snotty schoolkids at the mere mention of the Clinton name. (Just observe the knowing smirks on their faces the minute “the drama” is discussed. It’s creepy.)

There are those who believe that the Clintons deserve this or that they should just get out of politics because their presence, under these constraints, makes life difficult for Democrats. But wherever you come down on that, anyone who cares about the country must recognize that the press believes it has the right to engage in a slavering, witchhunt behavior even when it goes against the wishes of the public.

I just heard Chris Matthews ask how Obama is going to keep the inevitable drama (catfight!) between Clinton and Susan Rice from exploding. Clarence Page replied: “why would we want that?”

And anyway, if the bitches end up being boring old political professionals just doing their jobs, it makes no difference. They’ll create the drama themselves, as they always do, and then blame the stars of their sophomoric fantasies for “making” them do it.

Local Scum

by digby

Media Matters issued a report a couple of weeks ago on local conservative radio that is just mindboggling. As terrible as Limbaugh, Hannity and Savage are, the even more odious lower tier creeps are just stomach churning. Here’s just one example of the typical sort of thing that was said during the campaign:

“Jews for McCain because Obama wants to gas the Jews, like the PLO wants to gas the Jews, like the Nazis gassed the Jews.

I recall wondering where all the lunacy we heard from those people at the McCain and Palin rallies was coming from and now we know.

One of the major themes among these local jackasses is aggressive misogyny. This fellow from Minneapolis is an especially loathesome little person:

In a recent report by Media Matters for America documenting the right-wing echo chamber of local and regional radio hosts, Minneapolis’ KTLK radio host Chris Baker stood out as one of the most prolific purveyors of inflammatory rhetoric.

The report “RadioActive Smears” notes that Baker, among others, often engages in sexist and misogynistic commentary. Baker mocked Nancy Pelosi, the nation’s first woman House Speaker, by saying her response to the financial crisis is “another reason why it’s rare to find a woman worthy of serving in political office.” He has also said, “I’m not excited about women voting” and said that Republican vice-presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin “shoulda had a little cleavage going. … I noticed a little panty line on her.”

[..]

• Baker: Media have “blood on their hands” for murder of transgender woman because they created “false sense of reality”
• Baker called Obama a “little bitch” who “won’t even stand up to” “smoking-hot” Palin
• Baker: “I don’t think homeless people should vote”; “I’m not that excited about women voting”
• Baker on Palin’s appearance at VP debate: “Shoulda had a little cleavage going … I noticed a panty line on her”
• Minneapolis radio host Baker said Code Pink protesters “ought to have all their tubes tied”
• Radio host Baker referred to Thomas Beatie as a “mutilated lesbian”
• Minneapolis radio host Baker promoted video of pastor calling Obama’s mother “trash”

I don’t know if this is a chicken or and egg thing. Is it that these guys are giving reprehensible audiences what they want or is it that the audiences are being taught to hate by reprehensible hosts? (Or is it just that all these people have sexual anxieties that make them need to reach out to fellow insecure morons for reassurance?)

Whatever the cause of their psychological impairment, these radio hosts — and their listeners — are disgusting.

Room To Move

by digby

Whether due to enthusiastic support or a desperate hope (or some combination of the two), the public is behind Obama in huge numbers.

President-elect Barack Obama gets soaring marks for his handling of the transition and his choices for the Cabinet, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, even at a time the public is downbeat over the economy.More than three of four Americans, including a majority of Republicans, approve of the job Obama has done so far — broad-based support he’ll need as he faces tough decisions ahead.By 69%-25%, those surveyed approve of his pick of New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, his former Democratic primary rival, as secretary of State.By an even wider margin, 80%-14%, they favor his decision to ask President Bush’s Pentagon chief, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, to stay on the job.[…]In the poll, Americans by more than 3-1 say they trust Obama more than Bush to handle the economy. By 58%-33%, they support Obama’s plan for a huge spending package to spur economic growth.

Regardless of whether you agree with the majority on these specifics, this is a huge advantage that should give him a honeymoon regardless of how sharply the media turns.

Bloggers have been wondering whether or not the administration was planning to scale back it’s support for the Employee Free Choice Act (based upon some rather broad hints and pundit speculation) and they say they aren’t. This is important, especially at a time of such economic insecurity. Businesses need help and it’s liberals, rather than conservatives, who are supporting strong government measures to do that. But they also refuse to allow this crisis to be used to exploit workers in standard Shock Doctrine fashion. It’s really not too much to ask that business owners and their workers at least be given equal consideration by the government.

With the kind of support Obama’s got going in, EFCA is something that’s both achievable and necessary. Despite the hysterical commentary from the right these days, the fact is that unions strengthen the economy not weaken it.

On Not Using Corporate-Created Buzzwords

by dday

I know that he appears to be doing one interview after another and spinning reporters on how good his Presidency was, but George Bush is keeping busy by stripping collective bargaining rights from federal employees and throwing more dirt into possible sources of drinking water. These may not SEEM like vital national priorities, but then again, you don’t personally profit from them, do you?

And by the way, this is a perfect example of the danger of validating phrases like “clean coal”.

In giving his blessing to the new regulation, Mr. Johnson, the head of the E.P.A., noted that Mr. Bush had promoted the use of clean coal technology as a way to reduce dependence on foreign oil.

“Americans should not have to choose between clean coal or effective environmental protection,” Mr. Johnson said. “We can achieve both.”

Clean coal technology refers to the capture and sequestration of carbon and other harmful byproducts. And, I might add, no such technology currently exists). Clean coal has nothing to do with allowing rock and dirt to cascade into valleys and streams. But you repeat the phrase enough, and in particular you get a Democratic President-elect to repeat it, and you give polluters and anti-environmentalists the ability to apply it to virtually anything. And when Obama or Democrats in general object that we maybe shouldn’t be slicing off the top of mountains and let the residue fall into streams and reservoirs, they are suddenly going against their promise to deliver “clean coal.”

There’s nothing new about PR maneuvers like this from coal manufacturers. In the 1920s and 1930s they called it “smokeless coal”. It’s how they continue to extend an industry that consistently makes people sick.

You can make the argument about how technology may be able in the future to capture carbon cleanly and safely, but under no circumstances should anyone who presumes to be committed to the environment or global warming ever use the term “clean coal.” And this of course is just one example. Controlling the terms of a debate is fundamental to controlling the debate itself.

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Grownup Aristocrats

by digby

You’ve probably already read Greenwald religiously, but if you haven’t in the last couple of days, check out these two posts about “grownups” and “aristocracy.” Both are important observations about the current state of politics.

I wrote a couple of posts on aristocracy that may inform the discussion, if you are interested in this subject. The thing to remember about such things is that conservatism is designed to protect aristocracy and regardless of party affiliation, the perpetuation of aristocracy is fundamentally conservative. The ruling class may be a tiny bit more open in America than in traditional aristocracies, but a ruling class it still is.

Pardon My French

by digby

Stop the presses. Tucker Carlson is still a huge asshole.

He says Bush should pardon everyone in sight. And he seems to be under the misapprehension that he’s some sort of a wit:

Scooter Libby. For the same reason: It’s immoral to let people who work for you suffer for your sins. Whatever Libby did, he did on behalf of his superiors. A pardon is the least they owe him. Also, it would drive Paul Krugman crazy. Really crazy. Even crazier than he is now.

Some things just never get old with people who failed to progress beyond the 7th grade. Like fart jokes.

He pretends to be upset that Bush hasn’t pardoned more people, but this silly column is really just an excuse to regurgitate a bunch of wingnut cant:

Clinton went to one extreme – accepting favors to exonerate Marc Rich, pardoning Puerto Rican terrorists. Bush responded by going to the other. Typical political overcorrection, but a shame nonetheless.

No mention of this one, but then there wouldn’t be since he thinks pardoning all of your loyal henchmen is what pardons are for.

Team Of Drivel

by digby

If you’re looking for an intelligent dissent from the received wisdom that Obama’s “team of rivals” is really all that diverse, Tomgram has one. Here’s the intro:

Historian Steve Fraser, author of Wall Street: America’s Dream Palace, has been writing at TomDispatch about both the Great Depression and the possibility of a modern version of the same for some time. Now, he returns to the dawn of the Rooseveltian era to offer a unique and telling comparison — between FDR’s expansive, experimental “brain trust” and Obama’s new “team of rivals.” In his usual fashion, he raises the truly pregnant question: What kind of new administration could actually get beyond Roosevelt’s era as well as our own staggering disaster, leaving “the bailout state” behind us?

His view is that rather than concentrating on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s pop history about Lincoln, Obama should be thinking about Roosevelt’s first cabinet, which brought together a very diverse group of original thinkers to do some seriously imaginative experimentation. He characterizes the Obama choices so far as being from a fairly narrow group of neo-liberals who are unlikely to bring the kind of intellectual diversity that’s needed for the magnitude of this crisis.

It’s well worth a read.