Fire Andrew Romano
Really, it defies belief that a political reporter for a major newsmagazine would be so uninformed, unqualified, and incurious.
At this point, there are two types of people in America: the 10 million people who pay attention to Glenn Beck and the 294 million who try, and fail, to ignore him. Until last week I was one of the latter. I’d never watched his show on Fox News. I’d never listened to him on the radio. I’d certainly never read one of his books.
Fire him.
h/t Duncan
Fortune 500
by digby
This brilliant cover art by Chris Ware which Fortune Magazine commissioned but decided not to run is making the rounds. Be sure to click on it to get the detail. (It’s even better at the above link.)
My favorite is Gitmo, followed closely by the Oracle Buffet. You’ll understand when you click the pic.
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Updated below
The Hits Just Keep On Coming
by digby
U.S. Democratic Rep. Raúl Grijalva is closing his Tucson and Yuma offices today at noon because of what he said were multiple death threats and threats of violence.
Police are stationed outside his Tucson office, according to a statement from spokesman Adam Sarvana.
Sarvana said the office received “some pretty scary calls,” including two from the same person, he said, “who threatened to go down there and blow everyone’s brains out then go to the border to shoot Mexicans.”
Grijalva staffer Ruben Reyes said the office has been flooded with calls all week about Senate Bill 1070. About 25 percent are “very racist” in nature, Reyes said, characterizing some as “telling that tortilla-eating wetback to go back to Mexico.”
He said the staff feels “very intimidated” by the calls from this morning
Why, you ask?
Grijalva has been calling for a statewide boycott of conventions to pressure Gov. Jan Brewer into vetoing a controversial immigration bill that authorizes local law enforcement to check immigration status given reasonable suspicion.
It’s all coming to the surface.
Update: the Governor signed the bill, making Arizona an official police state.
And lest all the racists congratulate themselves too much, they ought to keep in mind that because the cops are not going to want to be accused of racial profiling, they are likely going to be stopping non-latino looking people for no good reason just to prove they are color blind. I hope nobody protests this unAmerican activity or has anything to hide because they’ll be tasered to within an inch of their life and locked up in Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s concentration camp in the desert. I hope they look good in pink:
Here’s a short excerpt of a great first person account of what it’s like to be sentenced to Arpaio’s tent city:
I’ve never served a sentence before, and I was relieved to go to a tent outdoors after all of those hours in cells.
“I can do this,” I thought.
There were fences around me, but the sky is still infinite. That’s about where the charm ends.
The tents are old, single-ply, canvas army surplus, most with holes in the sides and tops. Inmates stuff sheets and blankets into the holes against the cold November desert breezes. Side zippers are broken, doors are torn.
Because of age, faulty manufacture, and amateurish tent-raising, most don’t reach the ground on the sides. Aside from the orderly arrangements of the slabs of concrete on which they are constructed, they are reminiscent of slums I’ve seen in Bombay with their multicolored rags stuffed against the weather. In mid-November, when airport lows were reported at freezing, early-morning temperatures were at least 5 degrees lower.
“Heat” is provided by one portable indoor space heater per tent, ankle-high and approximately 3 feet long. They must be seen and experienced to appreciate their ridiculous inadequacy.
Most, if not all, of the inmates are sick with a flulike malady we called “the Estrella crud.” I am one of those fortunates who rarely get sick, but during the aforementioned weekend, I shivered with fever all of one Saturday, with another concerned inmate bringing me chicken soup and hot chocolate from a vending machine in the dorm – which, incidentally, is a breach of rules: No food or drink in the yard. Within a few years of operation, Estrella’s pebble-and-sand yard should be effectively paved with the congealing expectorations from hacking residents.
The conditions of the “Porta-Johns” is repelling. I went into the dorm to urinate but decided to return to the portable toilets after looking at the conditions of the inside. I watched urine/fluid trickle from the overflowing seat of the plastic urinal.
It rained the second weekend – I luckily had no leaks directly above me, but others weren’t so lucky – which left three portable toilets sitting in a large puddle of rainwater and who knows what else.
I was puzzled on my fourth weekend by the uncharacteristic early cleaning of the johns Saturday morning – i.e. before the were full. My confusion dissipated when I saw documentary cameras on the roof that afternoon. The word on the yard was that it was the BBC.
I wrote about this stuff a lot before the last election and it didn’t end up materializing as a big issue. I was hopeful that because Latinos are now such a large demographic it wouldn’t. But that’s being too optimistic, especially in tough times. This is perhaps more relevant today than when I wrote it:
Illegal immigration has long been a political football in America and this time is no exception. There have been bracero guest worker programs and repatriation programs from the beginning of the last century. During the 1950’s, Eisenhower had tens of thousands of Latinos deported under Operation Wetback more than a few of them citizens. (Read that link if you want to see just how similar the arguments then were to today’s.) Migration across the border has been present since before there was a border and it’s a “problem” that always exists and nobody cares about until they suddenly … do.
The issue tends to get ginned up whenever the plutocrats need to misdirect the people from their corruption and malfeasance, so I would be very suspicious of their “support” for CIR in this environment. There is every reason to believe that they will get behind any punitive border enforcement atrocity with everything they have (if they aren’t behind it already.) As much as the Wall Street Journal likes to tout open borders, their real mission at the moment is keeping the people from demanding regulations and laws that will contain their massive greed and reduce income inequality. If it means shutting the border for a little while to keep the rubes from blaming the real culprits, that’s a small price to pay.
But like it or not, the way they do this (over and over again) is by playing to certain xenophobic and racist impulses that are always present among some Americans (or which can be drawn out in others who might not think they have such impulses, but, in fact, do.) It’s one thing to say that we shouldn’t go around willy nilly calling people racists, but it’s quite another to actually believe that racism and xenophobia are not in play in a major way.
We political junkies talk a lot about “intensity” when trying to figure out what issues people vote on and which issues to emphasize in an election. It takes very little scratching beneath the surface of this argument to come up with usual “they live like pigs,” “they’re diseased” and worse among those who say this is the most important issue facing the nation.
But that’s not the whole story either. On their side the intensity is with racists and xenophobes who are pushing their ideas into the mainstream with fervor and focus. On our side the intensity is in all those Latino citizens and legal residents who are living with the same loathing and suspicion as their family members and acquaintances who once were or currently are “illegal” and that’s what our side should be concerned about…
The Latino community — the fastest growing voting bloc in America — is rightfully very concerned by these condemnations of “illegals” as being diseased, dirty and criminal, since those who say such things don’t bother to make certain important distinctions.
Back at the Help Save Manassas booth, volunteers wearing T-shirts emblazoned with “What part of illegal don’t you understand?” displayed photographs of garbage-strewn houses and yards. One showed a tent next to an overturned wading pool propped up by a stick—overflow, Letiecq claimed, from a house full of illegals. An elderly woman in a Democratic Party T-shirt confronted a stocky ex-Marine named Steve, asking, “How do you know that the people living in these houses are illegal? Poor people would live like that, too.”
“Ma’am, they’re illegal. They are,” Steve said. “You’re in denial.”
People like that have made sure that the Republicans have lost the Latino vote for the foreseeable future… Of course not everyone who is concerned about illegal immigration are racists. But it is clear that the ones who claim “illegals” are dirty, diseased and depraved, to make their argument are. I don’t think the vast majority of Americans are comfortable with that kind of talk and if it’s exposed, they might just wise up and realize they are being played — and not want to be associated with such people. And it certainly would reassure our Latino brothers and sisters that the Democratic party is not a party that welcomes people who believe such things.
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Middle Players
by digby
This could be a kabuki strategy so they can call this bill bipartisan, but it could be trouble too:
While numerous Dems took to the Senate floor yesterday to stump for the finance reform bill, an animated Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) said that not only were Republicans objecting to Reid’s push but admitted that some “on the majority side as well” didn’t necessarily want a Senate-wide debate so soon. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the majority whip, told Roll Call last week that he, too, wasn’t sure whether all 59 Democrats supported the bill. That could mean Reid, Dodd, and other top Democrats merely need to twist a few more arms to ensure everyone’s on board. Or are there some Senate Democrats not ready to take the financial reform battle to the floor?
It always comes down to these perfumed princes and princesses in “the middle” who are representing constituents at odds with their party. They are always problems but because there are so few of them these days, their power is out-sized.
I’m guessing these Dems are holding out until they get a better sense of what’s going to happen with the Republicans. After health care, they don’t want to vote on a party line vote again and fire up the neanderthals against them. Nobody knows quite how to play this one.
And then there’s Holy Joe. With the prospect of the Democrats losing seats in November, who knows what he’ll do?
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Intimidation Probe
by digby
I think it’s the dishonesty of these new forced pregnancy laws in Oklahoma that gets to me more than anything. These people are using the power of the state to shame and dissuade women from exercising their constitutional rights. These laws are clearly and obviously aimed at intimidating women out of having abortion. Even more insulting is the fact that they are using these infantilizing rationales to excuse it. I think I’d prefer it if they just call women whores than treat them like mentally deficient children. At least that gives them some agency:
One of the bills would force a woman to get an ultrasound at least one hour prior to an abortion and be shown the image and given a detailed explanation of it, even if she wishes otherwise. A vaginal probe would be used if it would provide a clearer image of the fetus, which no other state requires; three others do require ultrasounds, but none force the woman to listen to an explanation of it.
State Sen. Anthony Sykes (R-Moore), the bill’s sponsor, said the measure was designed to provide women with additional information before having an abortion.
Other pieces of legislation also require clinics that perform abortions to post signs stating it’s “against the law for anyone … to force you to have an abortion,” forbid state exchange program insurance from covering abortions and prevent wrongful life and wrongful birth lawsuits.
One last bill would require the woman to first answer a lengthy questionnaire and provide information such as her age, marital status, race, education and reason for seeking an abortion. The doctor would then report this information – without the patient’s name attached, however – which would be compiled and put on a state web site and accessible only by certain government personnel.
The bill’s sponsor has said this would provide valuable information on who seeks abortions and why, in addition to helping create programs aimed at preventing abortions. Opponents of the bill, however, argue that this represents an unconstitutional invasion of privacy.
I assume that many women will have to undergo these intrusive, dehumanizing procedures before any case gets to the supreme court, and then it’s up for grabs as to whether or not the court will agree that infantilizing women is constitutional.
Meanwhile, a bunch of corrupt politicians will continue with their crude pandering on a bipartisan basis. Lots of common ground on this.
By the way, this vaginal probe is only necessary in the earliest stages in pregnancy when the embryo is so small and indistinct that you can’t see it with a regular ultrasound. Now that they’ve forced women to compromise their health and families by banning necessary late term abortions, they’re stepping up their intimidation tactics to the first trimester. It’s insidious.
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Agreeing With Cheney
by tristero
From huffpost:
On the Senate floor for a photo session in 2004, Dick Cheney had a run-in with Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). After the two argued over Cheney’s ties to Halliburton and President Bush’s judicial nominees, the then-vice president told the senator “f–k yourself.”
Cheney, who has never regretted the incident, appeared on Thursday’s “Dennis Miller Show” and took a compliment about it from the host.
“I love that move,” Miller said while thanking Cheney for going after Leahy. “One of my favorite stories — muttering that.”
Cheney responded that a lot of people liked the comment. “That’s sort of the best thing I ever did.”
I completely agree.
In the sense that it was less despicable to tell someone to go fuck themselves than to authorize llegal invasions, murder, torture, and surveillance, not to mention arrange payoffs to cronies in the energy business, not to mention [fill this space with the truly endless list of Cheney’s crimes and ethical lapses].
Good Question
by digby
… on so many levels:
The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c Paul Krugman’s Asking For It
by tristero
Y’gotta love the guy. Reading Krugman is like reading everything that blogging should be, but rarely is: Informed, compelling, documented, provocative, pithy, witty, sometimes snarky and angry commentary by someone who knows exactly what s/he’s talking about. And Krugman is sly as a fox – but not the newsy kind of fox, of course.
I suppose I could quote this in context, but why bother? Heaven knows, the rightwing won’t:
[W]hat’s bad for Wall Street would be good for America.
Krugman’s riffing, of course, on the infamous, “What’s good for General Motors is good for the country” (which was also taken out of context, although from what I can tell, the context barely helps). He’s cruisin’ for a bruisin’, baiting his hook with rhetorical flies for Newts and other slimy critters. I can hear the howls of horror, that a Nobel Prize Winner would dare to assert so, so… crudely that the financial industry, one of the great engines of American economic prosperity – one third of total domestic profits in 2008!* – are working at exact cross-purposes with US interests. That is, Wall Street is traitorous scum.**
It will be interesting to see if he is called on this by the usual suspects. And even more interesting to see how he reacts and handles them. All of us would learn a lot. Or maybe they’ll ignore him. It doesn’t matter. Sooner or later Krugman will succeed in saying something equally “outrageous” at a time when the right will judge it is politically appropriate to attack him.
Krugman’s throwing down the gauntlet – he not only welcomes their hatred, he is courting it.Thanks, Professor K. You made my morning. I’m still chuckling.
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*My God, is something that dangerously, insanely unstable possible? But that’s what Krugman says. Could an economist-type verify this, please, for the ignoramuses amongst us (starting with the present author)?
** I know, I know, that’s not what Krugman said, unless you squint really hard, twist yourself into knots, and really hate the fellow’s guts. In other words, that’s exactly how the rightwing and the media will hear it.
Economic Stimulus
by digby
These government bureaucrats really know how to party:
Senior staffers at the Securities and Exchange Commission spent hours surfing pornographic websites on government-issued computers while they were being paid to police the financial system, an agency watchdog says.
The SEC’s inspector general conducted 33 probes of employees looking at explicit images in the past five years, according to a memo obtained by The Associated Press.
The memo says 31 of those probes occurred in the 2 1/2 years since the financial system teetered and nearly crashed.
The staffers’ behavior violated government-wide ethics rules, it says.
It was written by SEC Inspector General David Kotz in response to a request from Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.
The memo was first reported Thursday evening by ABC News. It summarizes past inspector general probes and reports some shocking findings:
• A senior attorney at the SEC’s Washington headquarters spent up to eight hours a day looking at and downloading pornography. When he ran out of hard drive space, he burned the files to CDs or DVDs, which he kept in boxes around his office. He agreed to resign, an earlier watchdog report said.
• An accountant was blocked more than 16,000 times in a month from visiting websites classified as “Sex” or “Pornography.” Yet he still managed to amass a collection of “very graphic” material on his hard drive by using Google images to bypass the SEC’s internal filter, according to an earlier report from the inspector general. The accountant refused to testify in his defense, and received a 14-day suspension.
• Seventeen of the employees were “at a senior level,” earning salaries of up to $222,418.
This was happening between 2007 and 2008. That’s very clarifying.
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Food Inc
by digby
Following up on tristero’s post from this morning about “foodie elites” I thought I’d throw out this fascinating documentary that appeared last night on PBS called “Food Inc.” (You can watch the whole thing online at the link.)
I think the part that struck me the most (after the horror shows of animal cruelty and killing, as always) was the news that Monsanto patented a genetically modified soy bean seed and since the 1990s has pretty much taken over all soybean cultivation in the US. The problem is that since they “own” the patent, they also own the seeds and so farmers aren’t allowed to keep them and use them for next years crops anymore. Those that Monsanto suspects of doing this are tracked down by private detectives and sued by the company, often losing tens of thousands of dollars in the process, just trying to defend themselves. They interviewed a bunch of farmers, some of whom had never even used the Monsanto seeds but ended up with some through that high tech method called pollination, who were so ground down they just gave in. It was something out of a dystopian novel.
And that’s just one small segment of the problems with our food supply. The biggest is that we are all subsidizing the growing of the crops that are making us the most unhealthy, almost to the exclusion of anything that is. It explains a lot.
BTW:I’m privileged to live just blocks away from a world class Farmer’s Market,so buying tasty, just picked produce in season is easy and cheap. (I don’t know what this guy is talking about.) We’re lucky that way. If that makes me a foodie, then I’ll wear the label (dripping with Chandler strawberries and heirloom Brandywine tomato juice)proudly.
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