Virtually Speaking
by digby
I’ll be chatting with NYCEve for a bit at 5pm pst on Virtually Speaking if you’d like to tune in or call in.
Or go here and join the chat in Second Life.
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"what digby sez..."
Month: March 2010
Snip Snippy
by digby
This is fun. Last week Alan Grayson and Michele Bachman appeared together on Larry King.
Here’s the Youtube of their entire interview:
Here’s the edited Youtube of their appearance from Michele Bachman’s office:
I can certainly see why they want to edit her appearances since she comes across as slightly high or deranged most of the time. It’s less understandable why they would think nobody would wonder why they did it and go looking for the whole thing. But I suppose they know their audience.
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If It Ain’t Broke
by digby
I was going to write a post about how surprising and hopeful it was that some of the right wing warrior lawyers had criticized the heinous Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol ads questioning the loyalty of Justice department lawyers who had defended terrorist suspects. But then I read this and realized that it wasn’t out of any great respect for the rule of law or even the integrity of the legal profession, but rather something more predictable: some of the lawyers who are being criticized are actually carrying out the right’s preferred policies in their new positions:
Ted Olson, who served as Bush’s solicitor general, says he has the “greatest respect” for lawyers who represented Gitmo clients; they were acting “consistent with the finest traditions of the legal profession,” he says. He calls the attacks on one of the targets, Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal, “outrageous.” Four years ago, Katyal represented Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s former driver, in a landmark Supreme Court case that overturned the military tribunals that Bush created. (Katyal did a “marvelous job” on the case, says Olson.) But two months ago, Katyal argued before a U.S. appeals court a controversial Obama administration position against giving accused terrorists at the American prison in Bagram, Afghanistan, the right to challenge their detention in federal court—a stand that has drawn stiff criticism from human-rights groups.
Another top Justice lawyer Cheney’s group is targeting, Tony West, who runs the civil division, once represented accused “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh. But since joining Justice, West has repeatedly signed off on legal briefs opposing the release of Gitmo detainees—and approved appeals when federal judges ordered the detainees released, according to court records. “To demonize [the Justice lawyers] on the basis of who they represented in the past is wrong,” says Jack Goldsmith, another former top Justice lawyer under Bush.
Well, he would say that wouldn’t he? He worked for the Bush administration.
But I’m assuming that most of the right wing attorneys who are criticizing the Cheney ad are either those whose client list isn’t filled with upstanding patriotic Christians or are aware that many of the lawyers Cheney is calling out are actually carrying out Bush administration policies. Either way, there’s no point in making a stink about it. Why scream and yell about politicizing the DOJ when it’s working for you?
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Conversations Will Continue
by digby
DOWD: One very important, I think, controversial thing, is that a
few votes — Representative Bart Stupak has talked about the need that
the Senate bill has to include abortion language that was in the House
bill, to prevent federal funding of abortion and an expansion on
services. He says he carries with him 11 votes. Can you pass a bill or
can the president pass a bill and the Congress pass a bill without those
votes?SEBELIUS: Well, the goal is the same. The president has said from
the outset, we don’t want to change the status quo on abortion funding.
Neither the Senate or the House bill has any federal funding for
abortion, none. Yes, abortion services are provided, and people will
pay out of their own pockets, in both the Senate and the House, but they
do it in slightly different ways–DOWD: Is Representative Stupak wrong about this?
SEBELIUS: Well, I think Representative Stupak has worked as a
member of Energy & Commerce. He wants universal health care. He wants
health reform for the people whom he represents. I think we’ll continue
to work on getting this done. He shares the goal with the president,
that no federal funding will be provided for abortion.DOWD: Do you think a deal can be done that does not include the
language he wants, but something in (inaudible), is that one of the
things that can be considered? SEBELIUS: I think the Senate bill, actually, has a different set of
words than the amendment that Representative Stupak had in the House,
but confirmed by legal scholars and various people that it does exactly
the same thing. There are no federal funds for abortions. But I think
that if that does not satisfy the congressman, the conversations will
continue. But certainly, his goal and the president’s goal are the same
— do not change the status quo on abortion.
I’m pretty sure the Catholics Bishops want to maintain the status quo alright but its the health care status quo which means the Democrats pass nothing at all.
Both the Stupak and Nelson amendments change the status quo which right now allows women in the private insurance market to easily purchase policies that cover all reproductive services. The Nelson amendments makes it difficult for both the insurance companies and the consumers to buy such coverage and the Stupak amendment prohibits it. How that is considered the status quo, I don’t understand.
But “the conversations continue” so that’s good. The way we’re going they’re going to agree to ban birth control and women’s right’s activists will be told they need to go along for the good of the poor women with all those extra children.
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Incentives
by digby
Asked whether it was bad strategy to make a budget stand on a $10 billion extension of unemployment (as opposed to, say, the Bush’s $720 billion prescription drug package), Delay insisted that if the PR had been done right, Bunning would have been applauded. Helping the unemployed with federal assistance, he said, was unsound policy. “You know,” Delay said, “there is an argument to be made that these extensions, the unemployment benefits keeps people from going and finding jobs. In fact there are some studies that have been done that show people stay on unemployment compensation and they don’t look for a job until two or three weeks before they know the benefits are going to run out. Host Candy Crowley: Congressman, that’s a hard sell, isn’t it? Delay: it’s the truth.
I would guess that this is going to catch on among the dittoheads. The right is reasoning that they can appeal to a good number of the majority who are employed and make them question why they should subsidize all those losers who are not. It worked with health care.
Empathy for your fellow man, or even a selfish sense that you might personally need some assistance someday, is being attacked by the right wing head on. And I would guess that there are more than a few people who secretly have thought these things but didn’t have the social support necessary to say it out loud. Now they do.
This isn’t a widely accepted point of view. Yet. But its infecting the body politic.
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The Birther
by digby
Steve Benen asks a good question:
What possible reason could there be to have DeLay on as the featured guest on [CNNs] “State of the Union?”
Perhaps they want to further probe his views on this important issue:
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Saturday Night At The Movies
Pre-Oscar marathon: Top 10 Best Pictures…evah
By Dennis Hartley
I’m sure you are aware that the Academy Awards are coming up this Sunday (can’t avoid the hype). As an alleged “movie critic”, I’m ashamed to admit that I have only seen 5 out of the 10 nominees for 2009’s Best Picture. Then again, it’s been a good number of years since Academy voters and I have seen eye to eye as to what constitutes a “best picture”. Either my sense of film aesthetic has changed, or the Academy has lowered its standards over the years. And I don’t think my personal sense of film aesthetic has changed, if you catch my drift. At any rate, this is my way of explaining in advance as to why you may notice that no “Best Picture” winners from the last two decades made my list, which I have culled from the previous 81 Academy Awards. Perhaps it is just my long-winded way of saying “They don’t make ‘em like they used to.” And you kids stay off my lawn. You Can’t Take It with You
- When you’re a Jet, you stay a Jet.
- Something’s coming; don’t know when…but it’s soon.
- I like the island Manhattan.
- Breeze it, buzz it, easy does it.
- It’s alarming, how charming I feel.
- Deep down inside us, there is good.
You’re welcome. Lawrence of Arabia
The Godfather
Avatar (9 nominations) Crazy Heart (3 nominations) District 9 (4 nominations) The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2 nominations) In the Loop (1 nomination) Inglourious Basterds (8 nominations) The Messenger (2 nominations) A Serious Man (2 nominations) Star Trek (4 nominations) My Top 10 of 2009
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Dirty Work
by digby
I’ve been meaning to discuss this post over at Angry Bear for a while, but just couldn’t get it together. So, I’ll just link it and let you read it for yourself. I think it makes a good case for something I’ve felt instinctively since this event. They really do plan to “reform”social security, particularly now that they are under siege, which is automatically interpreted as a message that they’ve gone too far left. Sadly, this chaotic political environment virtually guarantees that the Democrats will do everything they can think of to convince Real Americans that they aren’t foolishly spending taxpayer dollars, and they will stupidly do it by disturbing something that Real Americans need and value. There is nothing that the GOP would love more than for the Democrats to volunteer to be the instrument that destroys America’s faith in social security.
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The Political Utility Of Force
by digby
It looks as though the mainstream media have finally decided to take a look at tasers. CNNs report yesterday focused on the possibility of heart attack from tasering, which is obviously a problem — since people are having heart attacks when they are tasered.
It’s likely that it will be the civil courts that end up restricting the use of these weapons if it ever happens — we’re way too far down the torture road already to confront the constitutional and moral reasons why they are antithetical to a free society. But nonetheless, I do see this as a civil liberties question. I just don’t believe that police should be allowed to inflict pain on citizens unless they are physically threatened themselves, period. And the evidence is overwhelming that these weapons are used far more often to force compliance in non-violent situations.
This issue may become even more controversial quite soon. This article in Harper’s by Ando Arike called “The Soft-Kill Solution — New Frontiers In Pain Compliance” (subscription only) will send a chill down your spine:
Not long ago, viewers of CBS’s 60 Minutes were treated to an intriguing bit of political theater when, in a story called “The Pentagon’s Ray Gun,” a crowd of what seemed to be angry protesters confronted a Humvee with a sinister-looking dish antenna on its roof. Waving placards that read world peace, love for all, peace not war, and, oddly, hug me, the crowd, in reality, was made up of U.S. soldiers playacting for the camera at a military base in Georgia. Shouting “Go home!” they threw what looked like tennis balls at uniformed comrades, “creating a scenario soldiers might encounter in Iraq,” explained correspondent David Martin: “angry protesters advancing on American troops, who have to choose between backing down or opening fire.” Fortunately—and this was the point of the story—there is now another option, demonstrated when the camera cut to the Humvee, where the “ray gun” operator was lining up the “protesters” in his crosshairs. Martin narrated: “He squeezes off a blast. The first shot hits them like an invisible punch. The protesters regroup, and he fires again, and again. Finally they’ve had enough. The ray gun drives them away with no harm done.” World peace would have to wait.
The article goes on to discuss the impending use of a variety of “non-lethal” pain inducing weapons by government authorities. I knew about these weapons and have written about them quite a bit. But this article gets to the rationale behind using them:
As communications advances in the years since have increasingly exposed such violence, governments have realized that the public’s perception of injury and bloodshed must be carefully managed. “Even the lawful application of force can be misrepresented to or misunderstood by the public,” warns a 1997 joint report from the Pentagon and the Justice Department.
“More than ever, the police and the military must be highly discreet when applying force.” It is a need for discretion rooted in one of the oldest fears of the ruling class—the volatility of the mob—and speaks to rising anxieties about crowd control at a time when global capitalism begins to run up against long-predicted limits to growth. Each year, some 76 million people join our current 6.7 billion in a world of looming resource scarcities, ecological collapse, and glaring inequalities of wealth; and elites are preparing to defend their power and profits. In this new era of triage, as democratic institutions and social safety nets are increasingly considered dispensable luxuries, the task of governance will be to lower the political and economic expectations of the masses without inciting fullfledged revolt. Non-lethal weapons promise to enhance what military theorists call “the political utility of force,” allowing dissent to be suppressed inconspicuously.
And here’s where the taser comes in:
The next hurdle for non-lethality, as Colonel Hymes’s comments suggest,will be the introduction of socalled second-generation non-lethal weapons into everyday policing and crowd control. Although “first-generation” weapons like rubber bullets and pepper spray have gained a certain acceptance, despite their many drawbacks, exotic technologies like the Active Denial System invariably cause public alarm. Nevertheless, the trend is now away from chemical and “kinetic” weapons that rely on physical trauma and toward post-kinetic weapons that, as researchers put it, “induce behavioral modification” more discreetly. One indication that the public may come to accept these new weapons has been the successful introduction of the Taser—apparently, even the taboo on electroshock can be overcome given the proper political climate…
Originally sold as an alternative to firearms, the Taser today has become an all-purpose tool for what police call “pain compliance.” Mounting evidence
shows that the weapon is routinely used on people who pose little threat: those in handcuffs, in jail cells, in wheelchairs and hospital beds; schoolchildren, pregnant women, the mentally disturbed, the elderly; irate shoppers, obnoxious lawyers, argumentative drivers, nonviolent protesters—in fact, YouTube now has an entire category of videos in which people are Tasered for dubious reasons. In late 2007, public outrage flared briefly over the two most famous such videos—those of college
student Andrew Meyer “drivestunned” at a John Kerry speech, and of a distraught Polish immigrant, Robert Dziekanski, dying after repeated Taser jolts at Vancouver airport—but police and weapon were found blameless in both incidents. Strangely, YouTube’s videos may be promoting wider acceptance of the Taser; it appears that many viewers watch them for entertainment.
I have sometimes wondered if the Taser people didn’t put those out themselves, just so people would become desensitized to seeing it. Certainly the news reporters who “bravely” submit themselves to it (without any threat of arrest, of course, or other violence at the hands of authorities)go a long way toward making these things seem benign.
It’s all part of the great normalizing of torture in our country, a slow but steady erosion of the moral consensus that people in authority cannot force others to submit to their will using physical pain. Police brutality wasn’t fought only because it caused lasting injury. Many people, after all, survived the beatings they took by police. It was determined that it was illegal for police to use pain (“excessive force”) to get people to comply. Shooting people with electricity is inflicting excruciating pain and should, therefore, by definition be called excessive force. Instead, in true Orwellian fashion it’s touted as a alternative to excessive force and praised for the fact that it can be used on anyone with few ill effects. Huzzah, a torture instrument that everyone loves.
What the Harper’s article suggests is that this is an ongoing effort on the part of the ruling elites to normalize the use of these new weapons using a sophisticated propaganda campaign to both downplay the ugly effects of government oppression in the age of Youtube and TV, while at the same time desensitizing people to the use of these weapons by using them constantly. I have joked before that perhaps they should just implant all of us at birth with a device that could shock us from a remote location, thereby saving the authorities from even having to be in the same space. It sounds ridiculous. But when you read things like this, you have to wonder:
Taser’s distributor has announced plans for a flying drone that fires stun darts at criminal suspects or rioters.
I urge you to buy the magazine and read the whole article if you have an interest in this subject. I’m becoming more hopeful that people may wake up to what this really means to an ostensibly free people. This article is a good start.
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Conservatives vs Humans
by digby
Yesterday’s D v R showdown in the House wasn’t about healthcare reform or even about the dirty filthy banksters stealing the national wealth. It wasn’t about Afghanistan or about taking the ability of corporations to purchase the services of wily politicians. But it was a showdown that went to highlight one of the basic differences in worldview between conservatives and humans.
What was this issue that so illuminated these clashing worldviews?
George Miller’s H.R. 4247, the Preventing Harmful Restraint and Seclusion in Schools Act passed with a wide majority, 262-153, all but 8 conservative Democrats joined by two dozen mainstream Republicans pushing it over the finishing line (where Jim Bunning, Richard Burr and Jim DeMint are likely laying out their strategy to filibuster it to death in the Senate).
Yes, there were actually 8 Democratic non-humans and 145 Republican non-humans who voted in favor of torturing children:
The legislation stems in part from a government report last year that found evidence that hundreds of children– from preschool age to high school– had been traumatized or physically harmed by being held down or locked alone in rooms, some even tied to chairs. Many had developmental problems or were in special needs programs; many others were in regular classes. Some children have died, apparently because of overly aggressive discipline, according to numerous reports over the last decade.
The bill would prohibit, except in cases of imminent danger, any restraint that restricts breathing; any mechanical restraint, like straps; and chemical restraint, by drugs other than those prescribed by a child’s doctor. It allows for “time outs” but not for a child to be locked in a room, away from supervision. It requires states to keep careful records of incidents of restraint and seclusion, and for schools to report incidents promptly to parents.
One of them was the insane Virginia Foxx, of course. She doesn’t want kids to even have school lunches, so the fact that she thinks torturing them is fine isn’t surprising. Another one was Ken Calvert, who Howie describes this way:
Calvert, who was arrested in the act of receiving fellatio from a young, drug addicted prostitute in his car, and who steals from taxpayers and refuses to pay child support or alimony, has no empathy and no respect for anyone in a position of vulnerability. I was able to contact the Democrat running against him, Bill Hedrick, who is a public school teacher in Corona. He’s been a teacher for 35 years and is currently in his 5th term as president of the Corona-Norco Board of Education, which is responsible for over 50,000 children. Bill’s wife is also a school teacher. Unlike Calvert, Bill favored this legislation:
“Every child deserves to be treated with dignity. Schools need to use the many research-based, humane behavior techniques available. The prohibited practices read shockingly like a page from the Inquisition.
“I don’t know what is worse– the need to end such abusive practices through federal action, or the fact that 153 members of Congress saw fit to oppose ending medieval methods.”
Coincidentally, Bill is the latest challenger to be added to the Blue America list of endorsed candidates.
Howie hosted a chat today with Hedrick over at Crooks and Liars if you’d like to get a better sense of who he is.
Is it really too much to ask that our elected officials at least be among the human species? This vote is yet another sign that this rightwing assault on basic decency toward your fellow man is inexorably defining deviancy down. If you can defend a vote to allow the continued torture of special needs children you can defend anything.
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