Month: June 2009

Underground Drama

by digby

For some reason, the mainstream media don’t seem to realize this is even happening:

The Obama administration and House Democratic leadership can’t seem to muscle the votes they need to pass a $108 billion appropriation for the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The stakes are high for both the administration and the world.

The battle is taking place primarily under the radar, with the major media mostly ignoring it, and avoiding the substantive issues in the few reports that have surfaced. The details are very interesting for what they reveal about politics in the United States.

The cast of characters: the U.S. Treasury Department, an opaque institution that is kind of a permanent government; the anti-war movement, which has more clout and representation in Congress than you would know from reading the newspapers; groups concerned about global justice and the IMF’s abuses; the Republican congressional leadership, which hopes to score some political points in opposing the IMF funding; and the various Members of Congress and their personal beliefs and constituencies.

The plot: the Obama administration is trying to get $108 billion for the (IMF) as part of a commitment that President Obama made at the G-20 meeting in April, led by the G-7 (high-income) countries, to raise $500 billion for the IMF from member countries.

But, from the beginning, the administration has faced tremendous obstacles to getting a majority members of the House of Representatives to vote for the money in an up-or-down vote. This is because many members of both parties are afraid that it would be seen as another taxpayer bailout for the financial industry – and foreign banks at that.

Which it appears to be, actually. This unprecedented increase in the Fund’s resources, with a goal of $1 trillion, is vastly higher than anything the institution has ever seen. It happens to coincide with huge expected losses by Western European banks in Eastern Europe, where these banks have at least $1.4 trillion in exposure. To make the issue even more delicate, some of these banks, like France’s Societe Generale, have already received U.S. taxpayer dollars through AIG under the TARP program.

Some of these taxpayer handouts to domestic and foreign financial institutions have been difficult to justify, not least the billions that have ended up as dividends for shareholders or bonuses for executives who helped crash the economy. So it is easy to see why the Administration wanted to avoid an up or down House vote on the IMF money.

This was done by attaching the IMF money to a supplemental war spending bill in the Senate.

It goes on to discuss the recalcitrance among anti-war members in the House along with those Democrats who are properly skeptical of the IMF in general and who recognize that these bailouts have become politically toxic. Which brings us to the Republicans:

Now come the Republicans, who supplied 168 votes for the war spending in the House. If you attach the IMF money, they say, we will vote against it this time. “Against funding for the troops?” asks the Democratic leadership, daring them. That’s right, say the Republicans, unless you put the IMF money to a separate vote.

Interestingly, the Republicans are not trying very hard to get the IMF money removed. They are not saying anything on television or in the media. This indicates that they may want this money to pass with only Democratic votes, so that they can attack the Dems – especially those in conservative districts – when the money ends up bailing out the European banks in Eastern Europe.

So far, the Administration has failed to peel off enough anti-war or pro-social-justice Democrats to get a majority for a bill which includes IMF money.

This story is being ignored because I assume the mainstream media believes the administration will ultimately get its way and pass the supplemental with the IMF money attached. But it’s just possible that it won’t. And the Democrats who stand in the way will be doing the party a great favor politically. These continued giveaways to wealthy, elite institutions are political poison, which is why the Republicans are positioning themselves (completely disingenuously) on the other side of the big money boyz.

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Lizard Brains Exploding

by digby

The last time we heard from Andrew Breitbart, he was forced to admit that he was an utter jackass on the pages of the Washington Times:

Late last month, my wife, Susie, and I took a day trip to Shutters, an elegant, white-veneered hotel along the ritzy Santa Monica shoreline. It’s a special-occasion place, and we went there to take in a rare parental reprieve.

[…]

As they passed, the protesters stared sourly at the second story where we sat. Fellow patrons wondered aloud what this now massive conga line was all about. About 300 people into the procession, I spotted a sign that had “war” written in it. One T-shirt read, “Stop forcing our children to be your soldiers.”

It’s a voluntary army, you stupid kids!

A thousand marchers into the protest, the sour looks aimed at the hotel’s clientele began to wear on us. The marchers’ defiant smugness started to make an enemy of me.

“Oh, no,” I thought. The antiwar movement that I saw growing only days after Sept. 11, 2001, was at it again. I thought: Even with a new president – and one who mostly shares their point of view – the I-love-a-protest-parade political left couldn’t help itself. It likes ruining nice sunny days. Protesting is what these people do. Sneering at their fellow citizens is their chief skill. Projecting arrogance is their birthright.

[…]

As soon as my finger was raised, a phalanx of photographers began snapping away at the white middle-aged man wearing a white LaCoste shirt next to the old red, white and blue. Cognizant of the power of imagery, I owned the moment and refused to back down. The fist wielder immediately dropped his arm. I clearly had won and envisioned photos of the anti-antiwar protester making the front pages of the Los Angeles Times.

Satisfied by the small victory, I sat down to finish my cocktail…

The e-mail began like this:

“On 4/25/09 an event hosted by the Invisible Children called ‘The Rescue’ took place in Santa Monica. I shot the event. 4,000 youth marched in solidarity for the children abducted and forced to fight for the LRA in Northern Uganda and more recently in the Congo. I had felt a sense of hope in my generation’s methods of activism at the event.”

Oh, no. It only got worse.

“I believe most people in America are in agreement that human slavery, genocide and child soldiers are a terrible thing. This event was hardly controversial. The protest marched by ‘Shutters on the Beach.’ After reviewing the photographs I was taking for the event and confirming the facts (you were in Santa Monica at the date and time) I realized you were flipping the protesters off. I am curious to why this is the case.”

So, let’s just say that Breitbart isn’t the most discerning political observer and has an admittedly reflexive, negative reaction to certain people based purely upon his own prejudices. You would think after an embarrassment like that, he’d question his assumptions a little bit before he opens his gob, but no:

Former Drudge alter ego Andrew Breitbart thinks James von Brunn was a “multiculturalist just like the black studies and the lesbian studies majors on college campuses.” How do we know? He left us an enraged voicemail!

Go ahead, listen. Breitbart is angry that anyone would call a neo-Nazi a “right-wing extremist.” Here’s a sample:

It’s such a fucking slander on people like me. This guy’s political philosophy is more akin to the drivel that you hear on a college campuses that delineates us by group and not by individuality…. It’s deeply offensive that you would use this for political gain.

He’s not alone of course. Limbaugh also said, “this guy’s beliefs, this guy’s hate stems from influence that you find on the left, not on the right.” The history of right wing extremism has been airbrushed out.

Right wing commentators have obviously developed a serious delusion. It started a while back when they disingenuously tried to brainwash young people into believing that Hitler was a product of the left. It took on steam after 9/11 when they accused “the left” of being in sympathy with the misogynistic, repressive fundamentalist Islam and has now apparently evolved into a widespread belief that the left are white supremacists due to their multiculturalism.

The cognitive dissonance may finally be taking its toll.

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DIY Insurance

by digby

Ezra says:

Earlier today, Sen. Kent Conrad, the North Dakota Democrat who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, introduced a “potential compromise” on the public plan: A system of federally-chartered co-ops that could offer a non-profit alternative to the for-profit insurance industry. In this telling, the co-ops preserve the central feature of the public plan — they’re a competitor to the traditional insurance industry — but are free from the baggage of government control.

I spoke to the Senator this evening about the co-op model, and he said a few things that surprised me. First, his search for an alternative was on behalf of the G-11 — the key Senate powerbrokers on health care. Second, it proceeded from the premise that the public plan doesn’t have the votes. All Republicans are opposed and, according to Conrad, “at least three Democrats.” And third, he thinks reconciliation is basically out as a viable option for comprehensive health reform. A lightly edited transcript follows.

Good to know. Maybe we should just send the congress home and have Kent and the “G-1” decide what’s best for everyone. Actually that’s what’s happening.

Here’s the DIY part:

Who would charter these? What is the process? Do I go over to my local health insurance exchange and put in an application?

The way co-ops typically are formed, people who feel they’re not appropriately served, or not served at all, band together. They form an org, elect a board, hire people to do the work, pool their money, and the organization goes forward. These cooperative entities would provide their contracts through the exchange just like everyone else, be subject to the same rules as everyone else, in terms of reserve requirements, in terms of what kind of contracts they could offer. People would go to their exchange, they’d see the option, and if they liked it, they sign up, and then they become one of the members, because every member is an owner. And they have elections and that elected board chooses leadership.

Would there be regulations on how many of these there would have to be in each state?

We’ve not contemplated having that in the health care reform law, but there is clearly an economic requirement in order to have the leverage to negotiate with providers to get competitive rates, you need greater bulk. That’s were we believe we need 500,000 lives to be competitive.

That’s probably one of the two major items of discussion still remaining here. They’re various options for consideration if you will. I offered the G-11 group three models. One is state-based, so every state has one. I don’t think that works frankly. in states like mine, the pool wouldn’t be big enough. The second would be a national entity. That’s probably too limiting as well.

What you probably need is a national entity with state affiliates, and the further flexibility so those states can have regional pools. So in our part of the country, you might have North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming go together. Out east you might have Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire together. We’re consulting with experts tomorrow about that.

Where did this idea come from? I’ve done a fair amount of health care reporting, and this is the first I’ve heard of it.

I guess it came out of conversations in my office after we were asked to see if we couldn’t come up with some way of bridging this chasm. Part of it is that we’re so used to cooperative structures in my state. They were begun by progressives, they came out of the progressive era. And they’re so successful in our state. So I can’t really say we came up with some brand new idea. We just thought about our own experience.

It’s good to know they’ve thought this through.

One thing’s for sure — the insurance companies are happy. One only wonders if the G-11 had them in the room with them.

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Falling Into The Ocean

by digby

We’d all better start thinking about this because it’s a huge, huge problem. There has never been a scarier case of “as California goes, so goes the nation:”

Imagine a western country with a population of about 40 million people and an economy the size of Spain or Italy. After years of dysfunctional politics and amid a global recession, it teeters on the verge of bankruptcy—forced to choose between eliminating the most basic services for its citizens and defaulting on its massive debts. Such a country has a way out through the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

But if the dysfunctional economy is not a country but, say, California, a way out suddenly seems less clear.

In 1978, California’s voters approved Proposition 13, which changed the state constitution to require a two-thirds majority vote of the state legislature to raise taxes. Meanwhile, the state’s progressive constitution allows voters to impose spending requirements on the legislature, borrow money or amend the constitution by a simple majority vote.

Voters everywhere want low taxes and generous government benefits. In most government systems, they elect legislators who try to balance these imperatives. But only in California can voters both give themselves tax cuts and require the state legislature to spend more money on their chosen programs. Well-meaning initiatives have taken large chunks of the budget out of the legislature’s control and have saddled the state with heavy interest payments on endless bonds used to pay for infrastructure such as new schools and earthquake retrofitting for public buildings. These sound nice when described in one sentence on a ballot, but funding them through debt is unnecessarily expensive and limits the legislature’s options, short-changing less sexy programs such as services for the poor.

Slightly more than a third of the seats in the legislature are firmly controlled by Republicans. Amid a constant threat of primary challenges from the right, these legislators refuse to support any tax increases under virtually any circumstances. The results are predictably disastrous: California faces massive debts, declining services and a budget that seems perpetually in crisis.

The Obama administration seems disinclined to help, even as it is seeking $100 billion in loans for the International Monetary Fund itself—an amount that could easily solve California’s problems.

The article goes on to point out all the reason why California asked for this problem, the dysfunction in its government and among its people. It does not let anyone off the hook. But the problem will end up being a problem for all Americans if something isn’t done. Unless California is expelled from the union, its problems are America’s problems and its huge failing economy will drag down the whole enchilada.

And the ramification for millions and millions of fellow Americans, many of them children who don’t have a vote, are chilling:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was out of the state the day of the ballot-box meltdown, has proposed slashing services for the poor with much more enthusiasm than he ever brought to defending the initiatives he backed. If his proposals are adopted, the California Budget Project estimates the state will stop providing medical coverage for 1.9 million people, including 900,000 children, and also stop providing home care for 400,000 disabled senior citizens.

The governor also proposes entirely eliminating CalWorks, the state’s welfare-to-work program which currently provides 1.1 million children and 300,000 adults from low-income families with cash grants. Dozens of other programs, from school buses to poison control, are being cut or eliminated altogether. California’s already beleaguered education system is seeing further cuts, the state government is raiding local governments, and the governor proposes borrowing $5 billion from next year’s tax revenues to balance this year’s budget. No state has ever declared bankruptcy—but there’s a first time for everything: The situation is so bad that the state is cutting funds that are matched 2-1 or even 3-to-1 by the federal government, multiplying the pain for California’s poor.

President Obama has said he doesn’t want to run car companies, but he also knows that letting giants like General Motors collapse would be far worse. Similarly, the president surely doesn’t want to run California, but letting it slash government to the point where it makes Alabama look like Sweden would cause vastly more suffering than a failed GM ever could.

This is a slow motion train wreck of epic proportions. And at some point soon the horror of it is going to become very, very acute.

It will be fun to blame the California fruits and nuts for their foolishness, and there’s a lot of truth in it. But what this is, is an actual real life demonstration of the Republican “Starve The Beast” strategy and it should be an object lesson to everyone. California is on the verge of becoming the Republican dream state right before your eyes: Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.

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50 Votes

by digby

So the AMA came out in oppositione to a public plan. Anyone who is surprised by that hasn’t been paying attention. They were always going to fight any effort to control costs because one of the main costs is them. (The AMA has always been mostly a bunch of rich conservatives. There are other, newer physician groups who are far less reflexively ideological.)

Meanwhile, we have the Dean with yet another onanistic paean to bipartisanship:

The goal of the Obama White House is to come up with a health-care plan that can attract bipartisan support. The president has told visitors that he would rather have 70 votes in the Senate for a bill that gives him 85 percent of what he wants rather than a 100 percent satisfactory bill that passes 52 to 48.
There is good reason for that preference. When you are changing the way one-sixth of the American economy is organized and altering life for patients, doctors, hospitals and insurers, you need that kind of a strong launch if the result is to survive the inevitable vagaries of the shakedown period.

Right-o. Hardly worth doing if it isn’t bipartisan. Except everything he says is total bs.

Here’s Howie Klein with a little reminder of how this actually works:

In 1932 when FDR and the New Dealers rolled up their sleeves and set about to rescue the country from a Great Depression caused by decades of unfettered corporate excesses and grotesque Republican misrule, the Republicans went on an orgy of obstructionism. When Social Security came up for a vote in the House, not a single Republican voted in favor– not one. Instead, it was seared into the minds of voters that the GOP was the Party of Sore Losers. While FDR was busy rescuing and rebuilding, the Republican Party decided to re-brand the Democrats… as socialists. And how did that work out for them? When Hoover won the presidency in 1928, on the eve of the Depression, 270 Republicans were elected to the House and the Senate had a 56-35 seat GOP majority. Republicans with a world view identical to that of John Boehner, Miss McConnell, Jim DeMint, Newt Gingrich, and Rush Limbaugh put together their multi-cycle obstructionism/rebranding strategy which resulted in a loss of nearly 200 House seats by 1936. That’s right; the GOP sank from 270 seats to just 88 in the House. And their healthy majority in the Senate? After the 1936 election their 56 seats dwindled down to just 17 impotent, barking chihuahuas.

The Democrats only need 50 votes to pass health care reform and the country will be grateful for it for a long time to come. This idea that everyone has to sign on is just utter and complete nonsense — a foolish beltway truism born of some fantasy about ‘Ole Tip and Ronnie throwing down martinis after work. People do not care how many senators voted for something. They desperately need health security — this problem is metaphorically killing the economy and literally killing the citizens. Just pass the damn bill.

Correction: The voting numbers above are incorrect at least as pertains to the final passage, according to the Social Security web site, here. Republicans did vote for the final bill.

But their demagoguing of the bill was not forgotten by the American people and they did suffer a huge loss in the mid-terms.

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Nobody Puts Billionaire In The Corner

by digby

In case there are any remaining doubts about who runs the show in America, this should dispel them:

In early spring, Tom Golisano went to Albany from his home in Rochester to meet with Malcolm A. Smith, then the Senate majority leader.

Mr. Golisano, a billionaire business executive, had spent heavily to help Mr. Smith and other Democrats win control of the Senate in the November election, and was angry to hear they were now planning to raise taxes on the wealthy. He expected an audience befitting a major financial patron.

Instead, he said, Mr. Smith played with his BlackBerry and seemed to barely listen.

“I said, ‘I’m talking to the wall here,’ ” Mr. Golisano recalled in an interview on Tuesday.

That meeting led to the dramatic collapse Monday of the Democrats’ grip on the Senate majority as a frustrated Mr. Golisano secretly planned with Republicans to persuade two Democrats to join them in ousting Mr. Smith.

[…]

Along with Mr. Golisano, a key figure who helped pull off the plan to overthrow Mr. Smith was Steve Pigeon, who is not only Mr. Golisano’s top political adviser but also a longtime friend of Mr. Espada’s.

After Mr. Golisano’s fruitless meeting with Mr. Smith in March, Mr. Pigeon and Mr. Golisano returned to Albany to meet with Mr. Smith’s top aide, Angelo J. Aponte, the secretary of the Senate. Mr. Golisano insisted that there had to be a way to balance the state budget without raising taxes, and at one point snatched a pad from one of Mr. Aponte’s aides and began scrawling back-of-the-envelope calculations.

One of Mr. Golisano’s aides asked whether the state could issue billions of dollars worth of bonds. Mr. Aponte said it was unlikely the bonds would find buyers in the economic slump. (Mr. Pigeon disputed that account. “We were there to hear their presentation and they didn’t seem to have any good answers,” he said.)

Mr. Golisano gave up on the Democrats and Mr. Pigeon moved quickly to set up a meeting with three top Senate Republicans. Secrecy was imperative, so they decided to meet at a small Albany rock club, Red Square, an unlikely locale for lawmakers.

“You wouldn’t find anybody there that we knew,” recalled Senator George D. Maziarz, a Republican from western New York who attended. Within days, the trio — Mr. Maziarz, Mr. Skelos and Senator Tom Libous of Binghamton, went to Rochester to meet with Mr. Golisano. The meeting was a chance for Mr. Skelos to meet Mr. Golisano for the first time.

Mr. Pigeon soon set to wooing Mr. Espada, a Bronx Democrat who had once caucused with the Republicans. Mr. Pigeon and Mr. Espada had a long relationship, going back to Mr. Pigeon’s days as a counsel to the Senate Democrats. Mr. Espada drafted Mr. Monserrate, one of his close friends in the Senate, to join him in his defection.

Mr. Espada has said he joined the effort because he wanted to change how Albany does business.

Do read the whole thing. It only gets better, even including the nefarious Roger Stone. And keep in mind that this was a Democratic donor.

“Those who own the country ought to govern it.” John Jay

Update: Not that California’s any better, mind you. We’re so inept even our billionaires can’t get anything done…

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Flashback

by digby

From 2004.

Four members of a US special operations unit in Iraq have been disciplined for using electric Taser stun guns on prisoners, the Pentagon says.

Spokesman Lawrence DiRita said the four had been switched to other duties and could face a criminal investigation.

He said they had been punished for excessive use of force.

He was speaking after it emerged that interrogators from a different part of the US army had reported seeing members of the unit abusing Iraqi prisoners.

Memos obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a civil rights group, detail the experiences of US Defence Intelligence Agency workers who were told to keep quiet about the alleged abuse.

The documents also show that special forces officers ignored FBI fears over their interrogation methods.

FBI and Defence Intelligence Agency concerns were ignored or brushed aside by special forces, says the ACLU.

The ACLU obtained the documents under the US Freedom of Information Act.

The memos were written in June, two months after photographs were published of abuse at the Abu Ghraib jail, near Baghdad.

At a Pentagon news briefing on Wednesday, Mr DiRita said four individuals had received “administrative punishments for excessive use of force – it in particular was emphasised it was the unauthorised use of Tasers”.

He said he did not know what form the punishment had taken, but it would normally involve loss of pay and demotion to a lower rank.

According to the memos obtained by the ACLU, detainees held in Iraq often arrived at prisons, including Abu Ghraib, bearing “burn marks” on their backs.

[…]

Seven US military police and an intelligence officer have been charged in connection with the abuse. One reservist has been jailed for his role.

It’s interesting that the military actually punished people for the use of tasers in a war zone. But here in the US we have police defending their use on people who are belligerent over traffic violations.

I have often wondered about the use of tasers in the torture regime. Doesn’t it strike you as odd that they aren’t mentioned very often in this debate? (It has come up from time to time in different reports.) Electric shock is a tried and true method of obtaining confessions and has been used for that purpose since electricity was first harnessed.

This article from the Boston Globe is a very useful compendium of torture devices and methods through the years and “electrotorture” has been at the top of the list of preferred methods for the last century — particularly, it turns out, by democracies:

The most famous electrotorture device was adjustable, portable, and based on the magneto, a simple generator that produces a high-voltage spark. The idea of using a magneto generator for torture came to be closely associated with the Nazis, who employed it ruthlessly in France and Belgium during World War II. But it wasn’t the Germans who developed it: It was the French colonial police, the Sûreté, who pioneered the technique and used it throughout the 1930s fighting Vietnamese nationalists. The Nazis learned about the technology from a Vichy police officer, Inspector Marty of Toulouse, in 1942.

Although the Gestapo carried magneto torture to Paris and Belgium, the key distributors of magneto torture after the war were the United States and France. The French resumed magneto torture in Vietnam as early as 1947, passing it to the South Vietnamese, who passed the technique to American military interrogators during the Vietnam War. The Americans introduced magneto torture into Brazil in the late 1960s, and – just as the French had – the Americans eventually brought it home. Chicago police used magneto torture in the 1970s and 1980s to extract confessions. Most alleged incidents implicated Commander Jon Burge, a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, and the detectives he supervised.

Electrotorture is only one example of how torture spreads via democracies. “Forced standing” is a technique used in the Soviet Union and made famous by the hooded men of Abu Ghraib: They were forced to stand for hours, balanced on a box with the threat of electric torture if they collapsed. It is not nearly as harmless as it sounds: Humans are not designed to stand utterly immobile, and accounts of the practice from Soviet-era victims and psychologists hired by the CIA describe immense pain.

(But that was just a bunch of bad apples from Appalachia having fun with the prisoners, right? The fact that this is a known Soviet style torture method is simple coincident. Move along, citizens …)

It seems unlikely to me that tasers weren’t at least considered as part of the torture regime. Nearly every cop in America is armed with one these days. So the question is, was the use of tasers ruled out at some point? (And if that’s the case, what does it say about their common use on American citizens for simple failure to comply with a police request?) Or is it that tasers are so accepted that the torturers commonly used them to interrogate prisoners and nobody felt it was necessary to even mention it because it was so obviously legal and “harmless?” (That story linked at the top indicates otherwise, but perhaps that was an anomaly.)

I can’t help but wonder what would happen if the answer to that question were revealed. If Americans tasered prisoners as part of their interrogation scheme, it leads to all kinds of unpleasant associations with the worst torturers in history. On the other hand, if tasers are considered so off limits that waterboarding and painful stress positions are considered to be less cruel means of extracting information, their continued use on American citizens would have to be questioned. Either way, the use of electrotorture would finally be debated.

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Toil And Trouble

by digby

In case you were wondering what Glenn Beck thinks about all this right wing violence (and who doesn’t?) here it is:

The pot is boiling and this is a warning to all Americans of things to come.

It looks like this was the work of a lone gunman, nut-job, who once wrote an article titled “Hitler’s Worst Mistake: He Didn’t Gas the Jews.” But you’re going to see a lot of nut-jobs coming out of the woodwork.

Two very important things are happening here: First, the go-go-go mentality of our enemies. Our country is vulnerable; our enemies know it as much as we do and groups like Al Qaeda are even planning to work with white supremacists (which police say this guy might be), coming through our southern border.

I showed you this scary video last week.

By the way, that was one of not just some average radical teacher, but one of Usama bin Laden’s close friends. Does that seem much more relevant in light of what’s just happened? We’re under attack, America, and we need to look out for enemies foreign and domestic.

Second, there’s going to be a witch-hunt for two groups: the Jews and conservatives. Two years ago, I spoke with Benjamin Netanyahu and I told him to look out, because Israel is being set up. Iran’s goal of nuclear weapons is putting Israel in the crosshairs.

Those who have read history know that when things go bad, the Jews become scapegoats; and it’s happening again.

Meanwhile, there have been Department of Homeland Security reports about right-wing extremists. And left-wing bloggers and others have blamed conservative talk radio hosts like me for stirring the pot, even though we’re just pointing out that it’s boiling.

Common sense tells you this is not the work of conservatives, but rather the work of someone who is possibly racist or crazy, or most likely both. Common sense also tells you there are very hateful people on the left as well.

The world will use any excuse to come after unpopular groups. Whether you choose to ignore it or not, there’s no longer a question of if the pot is boiling. We can all see the pot is boiling.

It doesn’t have to make sense, folks. It just has to hit a certain emotional truth. And his audience’s “truth” is that al Qaeda is in cahoots with lone nuts to kill Jews and blame it on conservatives — and they are sneaking in from Mexico with “illegals” to do it. This makes perfect sense to them.

The pot is boiling, he’s right about that. Glenn Beck, after all, is a ratings phenomenon on Fox News. And here’s a sample of the comments to his little essay:

My mind has been swirling around with the question of “I want to STAND UP as you put it, but what does that MEAN?” At this point in the “game” (because let’s face it, political power is a game to be played by those in office right now) It would seem that writing letters or holding rallies are just not enough anymore. Too much power has been granted to those in office that are seemingly part of the problem. It would appear, at this point, that drastic measures are needed for something to change. Please understand that I am NOT an extremist that is looking for a reason to invoke violence. However, coups and civil wars have been started in other countries over less than what is happening in our country RIGHT NOW. Wasn’t our American civil war based on a war of opinions? Think about that for a moment. President Lincoln knew that we as humans have certain God given rights to freedom and happiness regardless of skin color, but there were others who would dismiss this as being an opinion and that THEIR opinion was the right one – that one race was greater than the other. Because of this, the civil war started.

Are we not finding ourselves in the same predicament today?

I wish there was SOMETHING I knew to do that would sincerely make me feel empowered. But unfortunately, at this point, anything short of exercising the rights of the 2nd amendment and what it truly stands for (guarding ourselves against the tyranny of our own government) I feel would be in vein.

Ok, one more:

I agree with Matt and Glenn. The sad thing is that the right is being set up. In pre-WWII Germany the J`e`w`i`s`h people were set up. It is happening again. Those who don’t know history are bound to repeat it. This time I don’t think it is the J`e`w`s being set up, but conservatives. W`h`i`t`e fan`atics are being labeled as Republicans, while M`u`s`l`i`m ter`ror`ists who k`i`l`l soldiers in the US are not mentioned. In Germany it was the Depression that was the catalyst. Today it is???? Looks like the same thing to me.

On Krystal Knacht , or The Night of Broken Glass, on 11- 10,11 -1938 Germany m`u`r`d`e`r`e`d 91 Jews and rounded up 20-30,000 and sent them to Conc`ent`ration Camps. Many think this was the beginhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifning of the ex`term`in`ation of the J`e`w`s. If we continue the way we are going what will be our Krystal Knacht?

There you have it. The right wing is black and Jewish.

The pot is boiling their brains out evidently.

Update: David Neiwert has much more on beck’s little rant, including video. Get out your handkerchiefs.

h/t to bb
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IMF Bailout 101

by digby

Here’s a useful explanation from Ohio Senate candidate Jennifer Brunner about why the House should reject the administration’s request for a bailout for the IMF in the emergency supplemental.

COLUMBUS — Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner today called on the U.S. Senate to reject the Obama Administration’s request for $108 billion in bailout funds for the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

“Many of the European banks made a series of risky and speculative loans in central and eastern Europe that are likely to go into default,” Brunner said. “We are looking conservatively at more than a trillion dollars in bad loans, loans that the United States had no part in, and we simply cannot afford to step in now and bail them out through the IMF. “ We have too many families and our own institutions struggling here at home who need our help first.”

Some have argued that the money is necessary to help provide a global stimulus and to help people in poverty in countries with poorer and less sophisticated economies. But the actual amount of money that will go to assist these countries is indirect and minute. Most of the money would aid struggling European banks that are facing potential losses in the hundreds of billions of dollars. That money would be sent via the IMF, which, unlike TARP funds, would not be subject to any semblance of oversight of or accountability to the U.S. Congress.

“American taxpayers are weary of business bailouts, especially ones that do not help create American jobs,” Brunner added. “And as we speak, some American banks are chafing at the regulations placed on them by the latest in bailout funding and want to repay it quickly to have a say in their own operation and to attract the best talent to their operations. Bailing out European banks through the IMF, without even the minimal regulations placed on American banks, only increases the potential for a wider imbalance in trade, giving away American wealth and self-sufficiency, and jeopardizing not only our economy but our traditional sense of American self-determination. Before aiding foreign banks, Congress must demand a thorough auditing of the Federal Reserve by the Government Accounting Office. We must protect our American tax dollars and ultimately the wealth of our country for now and for future generations. No bailouts without transparency and accountability,” stated Brunner.

The fiscal scolds are multiplying like rabbits in Washington this spring with even the president giving sonorous lectures about budgetary restraint and sacrifice. Fine. But if that’s the case then these bailouts are done. They can’t have it both ways and give away billions upon billions to wealthy gamblers all over the planet and then come and lecture average Americans about how they have to pull in their belts and learn to live within their means. Sorry, it just doesn’t scan.

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Miranda On The Battlefield

by digby

While most of the news media were focusing on the Holocaust Museum Shooting yesterday, this is what consumed the round table on Bret Baier’s Fox news broadcast. Steven Hayes (of “Cheney was right about the Iraq Al Qaeda connection” fame) is all worked up about this report that the US is allegedly giving Miranda warnings to foreign fighters in Afghanistan:

When 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was captured on March 1, 2003, he was not cooperative. “I’ll talk to you guys after I get to New York and see my lawyer,” he said, according to former CIA Director George Tenet. Of course, KSM did not get a lawyer until months later, after his interrogation was completed, and Tenet says that the information the CIA obtained from him disrupted plots and saved lives. “I believe none of these successes would have happened if we had had to treat KSM like a white-collar criminal – read him his Miranda rights and get him a lawyer who surely would have insisted that his client simply shut up,” Tenet wrote in his memoirs. If Tenet is right, it’s a good thing KSM was captured before Barack Obama became president. For, the Obama Justice Department has quietly ordered FBI agents to read Miranda rights to high value detainees captured and held at U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan, according a senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. “The administration has decided to change the focus to law enforcement. Here’s the problem. You have foreign fighters who are targeting US troops today – foreign fighters who go to another country to kill Americans. We capture them…and they’re reading them their rights – Mirandizing these foreign fighters,” says Representative Mike Rogers, who recently met with military, intelligence and law enforcement officials on a fact-finding trip to Afghanistan. Rogers, a former FBI special agent and U.S. Army officer, says the Obama administration has not briefed Congress on the new policy. “I was a little surprised to find it taking place when I showed up because we hadn’t been briefed on it, I didn’t know about it. We’re still trying to get to the bottom of it, but it is clearly a part of this new global justice initiative.” That effort, which elevates the FBI and other law enforcement agencies and diminishes the role of intelligence and military officials, was described in a May 28 Los Angeles Times article.

The FBI and Justice Department plan to significantly expand their role in global counter-terrorism operations, part of a U.S. policy shift that will replace a CIA-dominated system of clandestine detentions and interrogations with one built around transparent investigations and prosecutions. Under the “global justice” initiative, which has been in the works for several months, FBI agents will have a central role in overseas counter-terrorism cases. They will expand their questioning of suspects and evidence-gathering to try to ensure that criminal prosecutions are an option, officials familiar with the effort said.

I’ll wait for someone other than a lone right wing congressional nutball to confirm that they actually are giving Miranda warnings to foreign fighters. But the fact that the FBI is back in the mix is good news. The covert actions of the CIA, as usual, have been cloddishly ineffective and counterproductive. They don’t know zilch about interrogations and investigations. The FBI is far better suited to this task, since that’s what they are trained to do. Let the spies be spies, the analysts be analysts, the special forces be soldiers and the cops be the interrogators. Everyone has their job.

It is somewhat amusing, however, that the right wing is now the sworn enemy of the FBI, which they consider to be a bunch of panty-waisted wimps beholden to silly rules like the Fourth Amendment. These people just won’t rest until we have a full-blown Stasi style secret police.

Until it comes after them, of course, at which point they’ll start squealing like little schoolboys about freedom and jackboots and political persecution. It’s just how they are.

Update: Jake Tapper reports:

The Obama administration announced this week that some detainees captured and held abroad have been read Miranda rights to preserve evidence for a potential prosecution.

Administration officials say the Bush administration did this as well in some instances relating to certain criminal cases.

The question of detainees being Mirandized was raised by theWeekly Standard’s Steven Hayes who wrotethat “the Obama Justice Department has quietly ordered FBI agents to read Miranda rights to high value detainees captured and held at U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan, according a senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.”

The Obama administration took issue with the notion that this was a blanket policy change, one ordered by the Justice Department.

“There has been no policy change and no blanket instruction issued for FBI agents to Mirandize detainees overseas,” Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller said. “While there have been specific cases in which FBI agents have Mirandized suspects overseas, at both Bagram and in other situations, in order to preserve the quality of evidence obtained, there has been no overall policy change with respect to detainees.”

I doubt very seriously that this explanation will get in the way of the impending hissy fit. Their eyes were already rolling back in their heads and they were all clutching their white hankies like their lives depended on it. You could feel the rising hysteria coming through the TV screen.

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