Month: May 2010

The Big Story

by digby

Ok, you might think that there’s some serious news today. There’s this, which people ar beginning to think might turn out to be the biggest man made environmental catastrophe in history:

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Satellite images show the surface area of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is three times larger than it was a day or so ago. Meanwhile, Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen says it’s impossible to pinpoint precisely how much oil is leaking from a ruptured underwater well.

GULFPORT, Miss. (AP) — Experts are cautioning that if the Gulf of Mexico oil spill continues growing unchecked, sea currents could suck the sheen down past the Florida Keys and then up the Eastern Seaboard. President Barack Obama will travel to the Gulf Coast tomorrow to assess the situation.

There’s this:

Angered by a controversial Arizona immigration law, tens of thousands of protesters — including 50,000 alone in Los Angeles — rallied in cities nationwide demanding President Barack Obama tackle immigration reform immediately.

“I want to thank the governor of Arizona because she’s awakened a sleeping giant,” said labor organizer John Delgado who attended a rally in New York where authorities estimated 6,500 gathered.

From Los Angeles to Washington D.C., activists, families, students and even politicians marched, practiced civil disobedience and “came out” about their citizenship status in the name of rights for immigrants, including the estimated 12 million living illegally in the U.S.

And then there’s this:

He’s not the only one. Everyone in DC seems to be furiously tweeting about this like a bunch of teenagers at the Twilight premier. All the cable gasbags can hardly contain their boredom with these stupid environment and immigrant stories. I originally saw that Ed Henry picture on CNN, which did a ten minute segment on “the prom” and is now on non-stop coverage.

There’s something seriously wrong with these people if they can’t even dredge up the decency to behave like adults when something horrifying is taking place before our very eyes. But then, they would have to actually care about something other than what they see in the mirror.

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What’s A World Market?

by digby

The half term Governor tells us all that we need to accept the risk of oil spills because:

Production of our own resources means security for America and opportunities for American workers. We need oil, and if we don’t drill for it here, we have to purchase it from countries that not only do not like America and can use energy purchases as a weapon against us, but also do not have the oversight that America has.

How’s that oversight working out for ya? (Yes, I know — but I just can’t help it.)

Democrats like our president have spread this patent nonsense, so I can’t just blame Sister Sarah. But nonsense it is:

“Right now the price of oil is set on the global market,” says Kevin Lindemer, executive managing director of the energy markets group for the research firm Global Insight. [Offshore drilling] “would not have an impact.”

The reason is simple: the U.S. has an estimated 3% of global petroleum reserves but consumes 24% of the world’s oil. Offshore territories and public lands like ANWR that don’t allow drilling may contain up to 75 billion barrels of oil, according to the EIA. That may sound like a lot, but it’s not enough to make a significant difference in a world where global oil demand is expected to rise 30% by 2030, to nearly 120 million barrels a day. At best, greatly expanding domestic drilling might eventually lower the proportion of oil the U.S. imports — currently about 60% of its total supply — but petroleum is a global commodity, and the world market would soak up any additional American production.

Drilling makes no difference to our security or our access to cheap oil. (Even Palin must wonder why Alaskans pay some of the highest gas prices in the country.) It’s purely political pandering and contributes to the already substantial stupidity of the country on this issue. It would be more understandable if she were the only one doing it since she’s barely sentient. That people who know very well that it’s ridiculous do the same thing is truly reprehensible.

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Farewell To Bill Moyers

by digby

Bill Moyers broadcast his final show last night and it was a good one. (It’s online now if you missed it.) He said something that perfectly illustrates why it’s such a loss. I just don’t think there’s anyone else on TV with this point of view, certainly nobody with his credibility and level of respect:

You’ve no doubt figured out my bias by now. I’ve hardly kept it a secret. In this regard, I take my cue from the late Edward R. Murrow, the Moses of broadcast news.

Ed Murrow told his generation of journalists bias is okay as long as you don’t try to hide it. So here, one more time, is mine: plutocracy and democracy don’t mix. Plutocracy, the rule of the rich, political power controlled by the wealthy.

Plutocracy is not an American word but it’s become an American phenomenon. Back in the fall of 2005, the Wall Street giant Citigroup even coined a variation on it, plutonomy, an economic system where the privileged few make sure the rich get richer with government on their side. By the next spring, Citigroup decided the time had come to publicly “bang the drum on plutonomy.”

And bang they did, with an “equity strategy” for their investors, entitled, “Revisiting Plutonomy: The Rich Getting Richer.” Here are some excerpts:

“Asset booms, a rising profit share and favorable treatment by market-friendly governments have allowed the rich to prosper…[and] take an increasing share of income and wealth over the last 20 years…”

“…the top 10%, particularly the top 1% of the US– the plutonomists in our parlance– have benefited disproportionately from the recent productivity surge in the US…[and] from globalization and the productivity boom, at the relative expense of labor.”

“…[and they] are likely to get even wealthier in the coming years. [Because] the dynamics of plutonomy are still intact.”

And so they were, before the great collapse of 2008. And so they are, today, after the fall. While millions of people have lost their jobs, their homes, and their savings, the plutonomists are doing just fine. In some cases, even better, thanks to our bailout of the big banks which meant record profits and record bonuses for Wall Street.

Now why is this? Because over the past 30 years the plutocrats, or plutonomists — choose your poison — have used their vastly increased wealth to capture the flag and assure the government does their bidding. Remember that Citigroup reference to “market-friendly governments” on their side? It hasn’t mattered which party has been in power — government has done Wall Street’s bidding.

Don’t blame the lobbyists, by the way; they are simply the mules of politics, delivering the drug of choice to a political class addicted to cash — what polite circles call “campaign contributions” and Tony Soprano would call “protection.”

This marriage of money and politics has produced an America of gross inequality at the top and low social mobility at the bottom, with little but anxiety and dread in between, as middle class Americans feel the ground falling out from under their feet. According to a study from the Pew Research Center last month, nine out of ten Americans give our national economy a negative rating. Eight out of ten report difficulty finding jobs in their communities, and seven out of ten say they experienced job-related or financial problems over the past year.

So it is that like those populists of that earlier era, millions of Americans have awakened to a sobering reality: they live in a plutocracy, where they are disposable. Then, the remedy was a popular insurgency that ignited the spark of democracy.

Now we have come to another parting of the ways, and once again the fate and character of our country are up for grabs.

So along with Jim Hightower and Iowa’s concerned citizens, and many of you, I am biased: democracy only works when we claim it as our own.

I don’t know if he’s right that millions of people have yet awakened to this sobering reality. And even those that have haven’t figured out a way to deal with it. But it’s pretty to think they will and Moyers is one of the few people on TV who was helping them get there. He’ll be missed.

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Losing Ground

by digby

Charles Blow’s column in today’s NY Times shows that the war against a woman’s right to own her own body is taking its toll. We are losing this debate.

I suspect that some of this is due to the social changes that allow women to be single mothers, which back in the day was a cause for shame and ostracization. There’s some progress in that, to be sure, and something that pro-choice advocates have always supported. But it certainly doesn’t provide any basis for the belief that abortion should now be outlawed. Millions of women each year have reason to have abortions even in this more tolerant environment and they aren’t fools who need to be lectured to by the likes of social conservatives like Kathleen Parker about the meaning of their decision.

Here’s an example of the kind of real life situations that women and their families find themselves in every day — situations which these busy body zealots who infantilize women can’t imagine since they think that women who have abortions are either hard partying sluts who can’t be bothered with birth control or mentally deficient dumb animals who need to be shown pictures of zygotes so they can understand what pregnancy means:

Editor’s note: State Rep. Scott Randolph, D-Orlando, made the following remarks Friday on the House floor shortly before passage of HB 1143. The bill, which is now headed to the governor’s desk, would require all women seeking an abortion to submit to an ultrasound. In nearly all cases, medical personnel would be required to orally describe to the woman the ultrasound image before her abortion is performed.

Members, I like to paraphrase Pedro and say that there is no crying in lawmaking. But I’ll try to make it brief today. This amendment is so shortsighted as to be blind. You imagine that this only affects those wishing to terminate the pregnancy for no other reason than because it is their legally protected right to choose what to do with their body. But members, this affects every pregnant woman, including those that are losing their baby because of other reasons.

Last January my wife and I went to the doctor and we had our first ultrasound. At first we thought, ‘This is fantastic.’ It was just us and the (ultrasound) technician. At first everything looked fine. And all of a sudden, there were three doctors in the room. They tell us, ‘The measurements say this fetus has a genetic abnormality.’ We go to the next doctor; we get a second opinion, a third opinion. We’re told, this fetus is going to die. We don’t know if it’s two weeks left. The heart will stop beating in eight more weeks, 10 more weeks. It could be there for six months. We are asked, do you terminate the pregnancy now, or do you refuse, and naturally miscarry at some point in time?

We’ve seen three ultrasounds already at this point. And you act like this ultrasound machine is in another room, that you walk out into and go, oh, there it is. Actually, that ultrasound machine is right next to that bed, where my wife is laying, looking at this fetus. And she’s starting to cry. And she asks that that ultrasound machine be turned in the other direction because she can’t see it anymore. But this bill right here is saying “no, we’re going to demand one more time when you go in to finally terminate that fetus — because God and nature told you ‘not this time,’ that you be forced to see that screen, or you be told what’s on that screen, and that you demand it be turned away, but you’re still going to have to listen to the description of what’s still there. Members, this is something we’re about to do to women in this state.

But we’re not alone. Statistics show that about 25 percent of pregnancies are terminated naturally by God and nature. With today’s medical care, women don’t have to wait for the mother to keep a dying fetus inside their womb until it finally terminates on its own, or it finally miscarries by nature. So my wife and my sister are not alone. There are thousands and thousands of women that will be in the same position.

There are thousands and thousands of women who will be in that same position after this bill passes.

We knew the facts — we knew the heart chamber was slowly filling with fluid; we knew the facts — we didn’t need to be told that the fetus was slowly dying inside my wife’s womb. So don’t stand there and talk about facts.

Members, we constantly hear that this chamber is all about small government. The only thing this body has proven in the last six years is how this Legislature defines small government — six years ago this Legislature wanted government so small that it could fit down a tube into an individual woman’s throat named Terri Schiavo; this decade we have shown time and again that you want government so small that it can fit under someone’s bedroom door; and members, this year you are showing that you want government so small that it could fit between a woman’s leg and into her uterus. It’s not the small government that anyone wants.

I know that I have changed no one’s vote today because this body is controlled more by ideology than empathy. But I tell my story today because I want you to go home tonight and when you are by yourself and you have closed your eyes to sleep that your mind is filled with the personal pain you have brought to my wife, my sister and the thousands and thousands of women who want nothing more than to have the baby that is growing inside of them, but that unfortunately, God, nature and fate have chosen that it will not happen at that time. When you close your eyes every night, I want you to see their faces and their pain and the trauma you have personally brought them.

They won’t see their faces. And they don’t care. On some level they must realize that each decision to have an abortion is unique, every person with a different set of details, there can be no legal framework that doesn’t cause these kinds of tragedies and many more. They simply want to use the blunt instrument of the law to make a sweeping moral judgment about issues which are so intimate and personal that the only way they can accomplish this is to demand that doctors and nurses use medical instruments to physically probe a woman’s body to make a moral point. It’s medieval.

But then we seem to be embracing the medieval in so many ways in our culture these days, so I suppose it isn’t all that shocking in itself. Maybe the teabaggers are right. If things like this and the Arizona immigration law and the taser killings and Gitmo and all the rest just continue apace, I’ll be hard pressed to argue that it really is their country and they’re taking it back.

h/t to bb
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Winger Confusion

by digby

I happened to watch Fox news a couple of minutes ago and they were interviewing some “market analyst” who made the observation that the oil spill was pretty bad and that a lot of people on the Gulf would suffer but they would suffer far more if gas prices go up because the Obama administration uses it as an “excuse” to stop offshore drilling.

The Fox news anchor went to say that this issue mattered to him because he owned land on the Florida coast, which is typical of right wingers, who only ever care about things that happen to them personally.

Last night on Bill Maher the allegedly reasonable Ross Douthat since this sort of environmental catastrophe happens only once every 20 years or so on American shores, it may not be a big price to pay for our way of life.

They don’t know what to say, although they are all blaming Obama just because. And as I wrote yesterday, it’s very hard to defend him on this. He made an idiotic decision to open up offshore drilling, for reasons which are not based in good science or reason, because he trusts “savvy businessmen” despite the fact that they are self-serving greedheads (or themselves deluded.) This is the result.

Maher’s rant about this was pretty good:

During the panel segment on “Real Time,” Maher pointed to the Gulf Coast oil spill and wondered why less than a month ago, President Obama proposed lifting the ban on offshore oil drilling along much of the East Coast.

While the president’s proposal was part of a larger climate bill, for Maher, it was an unnecessary concession to Republicans.

“I understand politics is the art of the compromise and all that,” Maher said. “But you know, when you compromise on something like that, that’s a bridge too far to me, as a supporter.”

There have been a whole lot of bridges too far, for a whole lot of supporters on a whole range of issues. the good news is that it’s really worked out politically for the Democrats with Republicans joining them on masse.

You can see the whole segment here.

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May Day Marches

by digby

People will be marching all over the country on Saturday to NO to Arizona and YES to federal immigration reform with a strong legalization program for the undocumented. (There’s also a demand to stop these awful ICE deportations, a policy which is an unadulterated mess.) If you are moved to get into the streets, you can find out where the marches are gathering at this website.

America’s Voice will be tweeting the DC march here. This one may be lively. They expect to be joined by Members of Congress and others who will be risking arrest.

It will be interesting to see if the media bother to cover it. I hear Jay Leno’s coming to town so they may be busy.

Update: And the hits just keep on coming, Mojo Reports:

Brewer felt she had to sign last week’s immigration bill, because she felt Arpaio’s breath on her neck. She had to appear as tough on brown people as Arpaio does, lest he decide to challenge her in the GOP primary. So she signed it. And guess what? Arpaio’s still going to run against her. Sources in the sheriff’s department, which will likely double as his campaign staff (no new thing there), say his paperwork’s filed. And on his Twitter account – where you can read about his Washington Post interview today, or his “crime suppression/illegal immigration” operations briefings, or his anger about “out of town critics” – he recently tweeted that his wife wants him to run. And he’s already the frontrunner in Arizona Republicans’ minds. So why not run? What does he have to fear? Latino turnout in the Phoenix metro area? Problem solved!

If you don’t know the story on Arpaio, click the link.

Update II: Wow.

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Two Out Of Four Ain’t Bad

by digby

I’m beginning to think the mentally ill might be better off being shot with a gun to subdue them. Their survival rate might be higher:

A 32-year-old Fairfax County man who was in apparent psychiatric distress, died early Friday after being jolted with a Taser charge by an Arlington County officer trying to subdue him inside an apartment where the man was visiting relatives, police said. It was the second death in a police Taser incident in Arlington this year, coming after a January case in which a District man died shortly after a Taser was used on him at the Pentagon City Metro platform. A final medical examiner’s report is pending in the earlier death police said. Police and medics called to the 5500 block of Columbia Pike at 12:41 a.m. found Adil Jouamai naked and uncooperative, according to police who said Jouamai was combative and ignored commands by officers. An officer deployed a Taser to bring him under control and shortly after, Jouamai did not appear to be breathing, said Lt. William Griffith, a an Arlington police spokesman. Medics began trying to resuscitate Jouamai and took him to Virgina Hospital Center where he was pronounced dead.[…]
The incident was the fourth time this year that Arlington police have deployed Tasers, which administer an electric jolt and are designed to be safer than firearms. Two of those confrontations did not involve death or injury, Griffith said. But on Jan. 17, a 36-year-old District man died after being Tasered during a confrontation with police on the Pentagon City Metro platform. William R. Bumbrey III allegedly became aggressive when an officer approached him on the Metro platform to question him about a recent theft from a nearby pharmacy, police said. After the officer used his Taser, Bumbrey continued to struggle, police said at the time, but eventually was restrained and handcuffed. Soon after, officers saw that Bumbrey was in medical distress. He was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead.

Hey, tasers only killed people 50% of the time in this department. There’s no reason to think there’s a problem.

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Negative Impact

by digby

I’ve been wondering what the Baseball players union was going to say about Arizona and they finally came out with a statement:

New York, NY, Friday, April 30, 2010 … The following statement was issued today by Major League Baseball Players Association Executive Director Michael Weiner regarding the immigration law recently passed by the state of Arizona. “The recent passage by Arizona of a new immigration law could have a negative impact on hundreds of Major League players who are citizens of countries other than the United States. These international players are very much a part of our national pastime and are important members of our Association. Their contributions to our sport have been invaluable, and their exploits have been witnessed, enjoyed and applauded by millions of Americans. All of them, as well as the Clubs for whom they play, have gone to great lengths to ensure full compliance with federal immigration law. “The impact of the bill signed into law in Arizona last Friday is not limited to the players on one team. The international players on the Diamondbacks work and, with their families, reside in Arizona from April through September or October. In addition, during the season, hundreds of international players on opposing Major League teams travel to Arizona to play the Diamondbacks. And, the spring training homes of half of the 30 Major League teams are now in Arizona. All of these players, as well as their families, could be adversely affected, even though their presence in the United States is legal. Each of them must be ready to prove, at any time, his identity and the legality of his being in Arizona to any state or local official with suspicion of his immigration status. This law also may affect players who are U.S. citizens but are suspected by law enforcement of being of foreign descent. “The Major League Baseball Players Association opposes this law as written. We hope that the law is repealed or modified promptly. If the current law goes into effect, the MLBPA will consider additional steps necessary to protect the rights and interests of our members. “My statement reflects the institutional position of the Union. It was arrived at after consultation with our members and after consideration of their various views on this controversial subject.”

Amato is all over the baseball angle over at Crooks and Liars and he’s getting some traction. Arizona has a history with sports and wingnut politics colliding and they know it. The Diamondbacks are whining like crazy. And then there’s this:

Rep. José Serrano (D-NY) has even suggested that the Major League Baseball All-Star Game, scheduled to take place in Phoenix in 2011, should be moved to another location.

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