Month: June 2010

$1,150

by digby

Look at this:

A haunting 150-year-old photo found in a North Carolina attic shows a young black child named John, barefoot and wearing ragged clothes, perched on a barrel next to another unidentified young boy.

Art historians believe it’s an extremely rare Civil War-era photograph of children who were either slaves at the time or recently emancipated.

The photo, which may have been taken in the early 1860s, was a testament to a dark part of American history, said Will Stapp, a photographic historian and founding curator of the National Portrait Gallery’s photographs department at the Smithsonian Institution.

“It’s a very difficult and poignant piece of American history,” he said. “What you are looking at when you look at this photo are two boys who were victims of that history.”

In April, the photo was found at a moving sale in Charlotte, accompanied by a document detailing the sale of John for $1,150, not a small sum in 1854.

They think the photo belonged to one of his descendants. Amazing.

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Absorbing Blows

by digby

A lovely sentiment from a CATO scholar:

Apparently, a lot of people think twitter is a private conversation — and this is how they talk among their friends. It’s funny stuff. Revealing too.

But perhaps he was actually talking about how undocumented workers are able to absorb blows and 50,000 volts. When the Border Patrol isn’t shooting down 15 year old kids, they’re beating and electrocuting them with tasers.

Here’s an entertaining news report featuring footage of the man screaming in pain:

Once again, you have police officers killing a human being by tasering them repeatedly while he is in handcuffs and on the ground. His begging “please, please” while screaming in agony was evidently an invitation to taser him some more. And then he “stopped breathing.”

I’m guessing that the lesson here is that when they put you in handcuffs,face down and taser you, you are supposed to stay silent and not respond to the 50,000 volts passing through your body lest they think you are being non-compliant. Good to know, even if it’s impossible. There’s no screaming allowed.

The man they killed had been in the country for more than 20 years and reportedly owned a pool cleaning business. (Naturally, they are saying that he was high on meth, because that’s required if the police are to make the “excited delirium” (aka, the death in police custody disease)defense stick.)

But hey, let’s keep up the jokes. Nothing’s more hilarious than environmental catastrophe and making fun of people who are so low on the social scale that police are allowed to electrocute them with impunity is just too much fun.

h/t to bb

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Drunk On ManTan and Nicotine

by digby

So Boehner is walking back his comments about having the government pay for the BP spill, but let’s face facts. He was just on autopilot, echoing the Chamber of Commerce line verbatim and then got caught. Here’s Greg Sargent:

It all started when TPM asked Boehner at his press conference today whether he agrees with the Chamber of Commerce, which has said BP and the Federal government should pitch in to clean up the spill.

Boehner replied: “I think the people responsible in the oil spill — BP and the federal government — should take full responsibility for what’s happening there.”

Boehner’s office subsequently clarified, saying he’d misheard the question. His aides pointed to this previous Boehner quote: “Not a dime of taxpayer money should be used to clean up their mess.” And Boehner has also said we must “hold BP accountable for the clean up costs.”

Those quotes are pretty clear. But the problem is that the Chamber’s position is that while BP is on the hook for the cleanup, its liability for damages should be limited, meaning inevitably that taxpayers should bear some of that liability.

Sargent reports that the spokesman has subsequently said that Boehner means BP should pay for damages too. Ok. Case closed.

But what that also means is that Boehner must have been drunk on ManTan or high on nicotine and Red Bull when he replied the way he did to this direct question from Brian Beutler:

[L]ast Friday US Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donohue … said he opposes efforts to stick BP, a member of the Chamber, with the bill. “It is generally not the practice of this country to change the laws after the game,” he said. “Everybody is going to contribute to this clean up. We are all going to have to do it. We are going to have to get the money from the government and from the companies and we will figure out a way to do that.”

So today I asked Boehner, “Do you agree with Tom Donohue of the Chamber that the government and taxpayers should pitch in to clean up the oil spill?”

Here’s Boehner’s exact quote in response:

“I think the people responsible in the oil spill–BP and the federal government–should take full responsibility for what’s happening there.”

The Chamber gave the game away. It’s not politically acceptable to talk about Bailing out Big Oil, but that’s the game plan and Boehner slipped up and accidentally told the truth.

They should not be allowed to back off of this. Boehner actually has a viable opponent this time, in West Point graduate and Iraq war veteran Justin Coussoule. The Democrats, following their usual one-sided Marquess of Queensbury rules, will not “intervene” in the majority leader’s district, but that’s no reason that real Democrats shouldn’t.

Here’s a post by Coussoule that Howie featured on DWT on the occasion of Blue America’s endorsement of his campaign:

John Boehner: Fighting for Wall Street Bankers

-by Justin Coussoule

If Friday’s filing of a lawsuit for fraud by the Security and Exchange Commission against Goldman Sachs left the Wall Street banks feeling a little uneasy, they can always take comfort in the knowledge that they have a rock solid champion and protector in House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH). Boehner, who has received over $3.4 million from the financial services industry in contributions ($1.2 million more than he has received from any other industry) has been cozying up to Wall Street for years. But his overtures have grown especially bold in the months leading up to Congressional consideration of a sweeping reform bill drafted by Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.

In February of this year Boehner met James Dimon, the chairman and CEO of J.P. Morgan Chase, at a Capitol Hill restaurant. Over drinks, Boehner reminded Dimon that House Republicans, led by Boehner himself, had consistently worked to block efforts by the President and Congressional Democrats to curb Wall Street payouts and pass regulatory reform of the financial industry, and that such obstructionism should not go unappreciated by Wall Street campaign contributors.

A month later, speaking before the American Bankers Association about the proposed Senate bill, Boehner told the crowd of bankers that even if the Senate were to pass a bill, he was confident that reconciling it with the House version would delay reform for at least another year. And after assuring the bankers of delay in the House of the much needed reform bill, Boehner encouraged the bankers to stand up for themselves against Congressional efforts at regulating Wall Street, adding:

“Don’t let those punk little staffers take advantage of you… the more regulations you have to comply with the more cost you have there and less amount you are going to have available to loan to customers.”

Of course, such outrageous remarks by Boehner come as little surprise given his voting record in the House during the eighteen months since Wall Street’s greed and recklessness nearly ruined our country’s economy and dragged us into the depths of a second Great Depression.

Twice, Boehner has voted against Wall Street reform, once against regulatory reform of the mortgage industry and three times against regulating the pay of the Wall Street bankers who nearly destroyed our economy. Votes made even more outrageous by the fact that Boehner voted for the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (‘the bank bailout’).

It seems Boehner had no problem with handing over $700 billion of our taxpayer money to save the bankers who devastated the retirements, home values and investments of million of hard-working, middle-class Americans, but he refuses to impose even the slightest regulation on those same greedy and reckless bankers in order to protect the American people from being victimized yet again. Few issues are more emblematic of how completely Boehner is out of touch with the values of his constituents back in southwest Ohio than his complete opposition to Wall Street reform of any kind in shameless pursuit of Wall Street campaign money.

Misrepresented for two decades by John Boehner, Washington’s ultimate insider, Ohio’s Eighth District suffers from an unemployment rate above the national average, some of the fastest dying communities in Ohio and a once-proud manufacturing base left in tatters by years of failed Republican economic and foreign trade policies. Nearly vacant main streets and shuttered factories throughout the Eighth District have left the residents asking whose interests their absentee Congressman is representing in Washington– working families or Wall Street bankers?

The people of Ohio’s Eighth District deserve much better than John Boehner. We deserve a responsive, accountable public servant to represent us in Washington. The stakes are too high for anything less. The time for change is now.

Boehner is so out of touch and servile to Big Business that he’s making mistakes. Big ones. Party leadership does get defeated — just ask Tom Daschle and Tom Foley. This challenger is as mainstream as they come and he’s very effective.The Democratic leadership should be helping and grooming him but so far, they aren’t. So we should.

Correction: Coussoule is not an Iraq war vet. My mistake.

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Old Hand Luke

by digby

From the sage of Capitol Hill, 24 year old Luke Russert, speaking of the South Carolina Democratic primary:

“I’ve been covering politics for this network for two years and been around politics my whole life and this is the strangest story I’ve ever seen.”

Somebody please stop Luke Russert from trying to channel his father and pretend he’s been on the Hill since the Eisenhower administration. It’s embarrassing to him and to everyone who’s watching.

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Tilting At Oil Covered Windmills

by digby

There seems to be some confusion as to why the Republicans would introduce this clean air bill they know can’t pass a presidential veto, but it isn’t really all that hard to figure out. Republicans often do this when there’s a Democrat in the White House to highlight the differences with the administration and draw contrasts with the Democrats, even though they know they will lose. It also shows fealty to their Big Money donors and tells their base that they are “principled.”

They see value in waging battles for their own sake (something that the Village only criticizes when it’s Democrats doing it.) They are, essentially, fighters who appeal to other fighters.

In this case, they may be overplaying their hand, but I think what’s really happening is that we are beginning to see the oil industry really pushing back hard. It can’t be a coincidence that this asinine argument is coming at the same time:

Boris Johnson, the mayor of London has had enough of President Obama’s blame BP game. of London has had enough of President Obama’s blame BP game . “Well I do think there is something slightly worrying about the anti-British rhetoric that seems to be permeating from America…I would like to see cool heads and a bit of calm reflection about how to deal with this problem rather than endlessly buck-passing and name-calling…. I do think it starts to become a matter of national concern if a great UK company is being continually beaten up on the international airwaves.”

Johnson’s major concern, and that of other British politicians, is that huge numbers of British pensioners are losing their retirements because every time America blames BP the company’s stocks takes a serious hit. “BP’s shares fell by 12 percent at one point today on the London market, after hitting their lowest level since 1997 in New York trading overnight, amid intensifying political attacks in the US…. The slump means the firm’s share price has almost halved since the spill started.”

(When people used to ask why Tony Blair was so gung-ho on going into Iraq, I always said “two letters — BP.” Just saying.)

I’m surprised it took the damage control experts (the real professionals — PR, not oil spill) to get to this argument. “By coming down hard on BP you are destroying old people’s pensions.” It’s one of the most important reasons the Big Money Boyz pushed for 401ks and social security privatization — so they could always argue that what’s good for Rapacious Corporations is good for grandma.

I just heard an analyst on MSNBC report that Americans should be worried about this too because BP is 35% owned by Americans. And you know what that means, right? We’re all Tony Hayward now.

*I’m proud to say that I don’t own a dime’s worth of BP stock. But then I don’t own stock. Which I think makes me an illegal alien or something.

Update: Well, the Murkowski bill failed but not by much — thus proving that it would a real uphill battled to get 60 votes for a climate and energy bill. Well played.

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Avoiding The Issue

by digby

Andrea Mitchell was asking an environmentalist about Murkowski’s attempt to limit the president’s ability to act in the face of environmental disaster and the impossibility of passing an energy bill.

Here’s how she put it:

Mitchell: Do you think there’s an opportunity here for an energy bill? Up until now the conventional wisdom has been that the oil disaster will actually make it harder to get around any kind of energy bill. The comprehensive energy bill the president introduced on March 31st included off shore drilling and at the time he went along with what he had been told — that there were no great risks. Now we know there are great risks.

That’s a very confused comment but it’s because Mitchell is avoiding the real reason why the energy bill is dead: it’s because Republicans completely refuse to entertain any kind of energy bill that doesn’t include offshore drilling — despite the known risks and the fact that we are facing an oil spill of such epic proportions that the entire food chain is going to be affected and there’s no end in sight.

What she’s avoiding is telling the American people the truth about the Republican party (and their oil drenched friends on the other side) — they are nihilists who don’t care how many people and animals die if it means giving in to the reality that they were wrong and that their ideological symbiosis with Big Business is a death sentence for the planet. It’s that simple.

The idea that you can’t pass some sort of energy bill in this environment is the equivalent of the government throwing up its hands and saying there’s no reason to rush to defend ourselves against the Japanese when they attacked Pearl Harbor. It is literally crazy.

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Thanks Carly

by digby

You can say what you want about Barbara Boxer, but I’ve always thought everyone could at least agree that she had pretty great hair. What’s Fiorina talking about?

I heard someone comment that these throw aways on hot mics are sort of unfair and shouldn’t be disseminated. I think they’re fair game and that professionals who work on camera should be aware of this and should learn to hold their tongues. Certainly, any woman who is running for high public office should restrain her bitchy inner mean girl — at all times. It not only makes her look petty it reflects badly on all women, turning the race into more of a punchline than it already was, especially in one between two women. There just aren’t enough females in leadership for the ones who make it to the top to be unaware of these stereotypes and play into them.

This signals that this race is going to be pretty awful. Just what we need.

*Before anyone makes a rude comment about Carly’s hair in the comments, be advised that she just went through chemo therapy for breast cancer, so her hair is growing back in. So let’s not go there.

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Big Oil Bailout?

by digby

Does that sound insane to you in this environment in which the congress is refusing to extend unemployment benefits? Me too. But John Boehner is actually pushing it:

Congressional Democrats and the White House are toying with different ways to force BP to cover the costs of damages from the Gulf oil spill. But they face stiff opposition from industry…and it seems leading Republicans. In response to a question from TPMDC, House Minority Leader John Boehner backed Tom Donohue, President of the Chamber of Commerce, in saying taxpayers should help pick up the tab.

“I think the people responsible in the oil spill–BP and the federal government–should take full responsibility for what’s happening there,” Boehner said at his weekly press conference this morning.

On Friday, Donohue made clear that he opposes efforts to stick BP, a member of the Chamber, with the bill. “It is generally not the practice of this country to change the laws after the game,” he said. “Everybody is going to contribute to this clean up. We are all going to have to do it. We are going to have to get the money from the government and from the companies and we will figure out a way to do that.”

One very clever thing about this is the fact that they are framing this spill as being the equal fault of BP and the Federal government, which means it’s all the fault of an oil company and the Democrats.

The article says that Democrats will jump all over this, and one would certainly hope so. Unfortunately, I would bet some big money that quite a few Dems will join in and give it some bipartisan cover. Mary Landrieu certainly will.

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Where Did Their Love Go?

by digby

More pouting:

Asked to explain why the White House would so quickly disparage the labor unions (namely the SEIU and AFL-CIO) after an embarrassing primary outcome, another White House aide said that “folks are just tired,” noting that the administration has also taken a heaping of criticism from speakers at the progressive Campaign for America’s Future conference taking place this week in Washington D.C.

Is the ghost of Richard Nixon working in this administration or what?

Honestly, this is beneath the White house and they need to put a muzzle on it. Primaries are a legitimate part of the democratic process and no president (or his men) should ever, ever dismiss them publicly or imply in any way that members of the rank and file shouldn’t have a voice in these decisions. It’s truly embarrassing and offensive to see the Republicans responding with more class to their crazed teaparties than the White House does to its labor union and netroots allies.

I was at the session in which Richard Trumka came down hard on the government for its failure on jobs and Jared Bernstein really did look as though he’d rather be anywhere else on the planet but there. He probably knew that his canned speech touting the administration’s list of accomplishments was unresponsive to the questions raised by Trumka and the activists at that conference. I’m sorry that was uncomfortable for him, but that’s what he’s paid for. Nobody was rude. It was an adult conversation.

Bernstein left the dais as soon as he could and missed the excellent speech from Bob Herbert which was far, far more critical than Trumka’s was, and probably would have made him cry. (It almost made me cry.) But it would have been really good for him to hear it.

Two years ago this same conference was the most giddy gathering of Obama worshippers you were likely to see anywhere. I think he took something like 90% in the primary straw poll, far more than in the real primary electorate. The administration should be asking itself not why all these dirty hippies are so unruly and unpleasant, but what happened to all that love? I don’t get the sense that anyone’s interested in the answer to that question.

And, by the way, going to this length over Blanche Lincoln who is about to sign on to Murkowski’s move to limit presidential power to regulate on behalf of the environment is just too ironic. What exactly are these guys fighting for?

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Asymmetrical Warfare

by digby

I’m reading things like this and this and I’m struck by a stark difference in how the two parties respond to crisis. Thinking back to 9/11 when the Democrats all rallied around the president and backed him nearly unanimously, or later during the Iraq debate when they publicly agonized and worried out loud about whether or not they could remain viable as national candidates if they voted against it, I realized that one of the reasons the Republicans seem to get the benefit of being seen as “principled” is that they never, ever bend to the zeitgeist against their will, no matter is going on. And the Democrats almost always do.

We are witnessing the most horrific oil spill catastrophe in history. It is ongoing, nobody knows if they will be able to stop it, even months from now. It’s impossible to estimate the damage to the environment. The public horrified and has never been so critical of the oil industry or more worried about the future. And all of this is happening within the knowledge that our dependence on fossil fuel is drawing us into wars around the world and that global warming is reaching a tipping point.

Common sense would seem to tell you that there has never been a worse time to defend the oil industry or obstruct a clean energy policy. You would think politicians would be petrified to face voters as supporters of those who are to blame for this unprecedented catastrophe and that it would be very easy to garner a super majority, a la The Patriot Act, to get something passed. Instead, Lisa Murkowski — with the help of key Democrats — is going to try to prevent the president from using executive power to enhance the Clean Air Act, and Huckleberry Graham has just made a pivot and become a global warming skeptic. None of them seem to have any fear of being seen as unresponsive by the public or being ostracized by erstwhile political friends.

Why is that? I’m not convinced it’s all about money, although that certainly enters into it, particularly at a time of great economic stress. These politicians also seem to be very confident that they will not be held accountable by the voters, the press and most importantly, their political opposition. Yet those who may have privately been skeptics about the wars were utterly convinced that they would be signing their political death warrant if they opposed them. It’s an asymmetry of political will that’s quite astonishing.

Perhaps war and environmental disaster are so different that the political calculus isn’t comparable. But this spill is so bad that I actually think it’s about a close as you can get. And yet, the right is doubling down on their head-in-the-sand agenda (demanding more drilling!) and the left seems to be impotent to do anything about it. If the environmental agenda can’t gain ground in this moment, and can’t raise the specter of electoral punishment for whorishness and blind indifference, it’s hard to believe that we will ever be able to deal with climate change — or anything else.

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