Month: June 2010

Blue America Chat — Crooks and Liars welcomes Beth Krom

by digby

Does everyone remember the bozo John Campbell who introduced the birth certificate bill in the congress a few months back and refused to state categorically that President Obama is an American citizen? Yes, he’s from Orange County I’m sorry to say, and yet another embarrassment to Californians everywhere.

Today, Blue America welcomes his Democratic opponent, Beth Krom for a chat at Crooks and Liars at 11am, 2pm EDT. Here’s Howie:

This year the DCCC has decided to spend virtually all of its resources playing defense. They’re not spending money on replacing out-of-step, obstructionist Republicans– not even vulnerable ones like John Boehner, Paul Ryan, Thaddeus McCotter and John Campbell– but on saving the worthless hides of the mistrusted Blue Dogs who vote most frequently with the GOP and who have opposed most of the president’s Change Agenda– reflexive reactionaries like Travis Childers (MS), Bobby Bright (AL) and Walt Minnick (ID). So once again, its up to grassroots and netroots organizations like ours– who helped find and support progressives the DCCC ignored, like Alan Grayson, Donna Edwards, John Hall, and Carol Shea-Porter– to work toward making Congress a more receptive place for progressive values and ideas that put ordinary working people before wealthy corporate interests. And today we want to introduce you to one of those candidates, Orange County activist Beth Krom.

Beth is a proven, intrepid, can-do progressive– a former mayor of Irvine and current City Council member of that city– who is running for the Orange County seat, CA-48, currently help by one of the most ridiculous of all California Republicans, “Birther Amendment” author John Campbell. The district used to be solidly red but has been changing– and rapidly. Old style pundits and prognosticators may not have noticed– they’re better at reporting what happened than predicting what’s happening– but districts like Beth’s have undergone profound demographic changes. In 2008, in fact, Obama narrowly won the 48th, which helped him run up a 67-31% statewide vote against John McCain.

A dedicated environmental activist, she first ran for City Council in 2000 to stop an international airport from being built at Orange County’s former El Toro Marine Base. Within the first two years she served, a countywide initiative was drafted and passed that rezoned El Toro for park and open space use. Today, where the airport was proposed, the Orange County Great Park is being developed. The park is the missing link in, what will be, once restored, the longest urban wilderness corridor in America, extending from the ocean at Crystal Cove to the Mexican border. When we talked with Beth about the importance of smart growth, open space preservation and balanced planning, she pointed out that “buildings don’t make communities; people make communities.”

Beth is exactly the kind of candidate we would like to see replacing a careerist clown and partisan hack like Campbell. Profoundly anti-environmental– yet representing one of the most beautiful stretches of seacoast in America– Campbell is every irresponsible developer’s fondest dream.

We think Beth can win and we think she’ll bring a tremendous improvement to Congress and to Orange County is she does. If you can, please consider giving her a hand at the Blue America ActBlue page.

Join us at C&L at 11.

The Mark Of The Beast

by digby

Yesterday I noted the assortment of conspiracy theories making their way from the far right fringes and I mentioned the fundamentalists in passing. Well, they’re on it too. Newsweek reports:

A growing conversation among Christian fundamentalists asks the question that may have been inevitable: is the oil spill in the gulf a sign of the coming apocalypse?

About 60 million white evangelicals live in America, and about one third of them believe that the world will end in their lifetime, according to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. Broadly speaking, these Christians subscribe to a theology called “premillennial dispensationalism.” In this world view, they are warriors on the side of God: a cosmic battle—culminating in apocalypse, judgment, and, finally, the reign of Jesus in “a new heaven and a new earth”—will come soon. The most determined of these believers mine the Book of Revelation for signs that the end is near. ..

Now blogs on the Christian fringe are abuzz with possibility that the oil spill is the realization of Revelation 8:8–11. “The second angel blew his trumpet, and something like a great mountain, burning with fire, was thrown into the sea. A third of the sea became blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed … A third of the waters became wormwood, and many died from the water, because it was made bitter.” According to Revelation, in other words, something terrible happens to the world’s water, a punishment to those of insufficient faith. The foul water, according to the New Oxford Annotated Bible, mirrors one of the plagues God called upon Egypt on behalf of his people Israel.

Though maybe it’s Revelation 16:3: “The second angel poured his bowl into the sea, and it became like the blood of a corpse, and every living thing in the sea died.”

Some interpreters are very sure: The oil spill matches biblical prophesy and is another predictor of the end. One commenter at Godlike Productions argues that the redness of the oil seen in pictures can be interpreted as blood. “The water is tinted red from the oil … it ACTUALLY looks like blood. coincidence??? NOT!!!!” On Facebook, at least two discussion groups are devoted to mining the parallels between events in the gulf and those predicted in the bible; and in a heart-rending interview with CBS, a Louisiana minister named Theodore Turner, whose congregation is one third fishermen, said he knew it to be so. “The Bible prophesized hardships,” he said. “If we believe the word of God is true—and we do—we also know that in addition to prophesying hardships he promised to take care of us.”

And guess who’s the antichrist?

[A]ccording to such fringe commentators as this one, President Barack Obama embodies many of qualities of the Antichrist, as described in Revelation 13:5–7: “The beast was given a mouth uttering haughty and blasphemous words, and it was allowed to exercise authority for 42 months. It opened its mouth to utter blasphemies against God … It was given authority over every tribe and people and language and nation, and all the inhabitants of the earth will worship it.”

The conspiracy nuts are coming out if full force from every possible perspective. This is, in fact, the one that’s least surprising.What shocked me about the article was the final paragraph, which I think probably shows the distraction people at Newsweek are feeling as they wait to find out the fate of their magazine. Or perhaps they just feel liberated and able to tell it like it is for once.
Get a load of this:

Yet through a biblical lens, it’s hard to see the oil spill as anything but God’s punishment for greed and a disrespect of Creation—and both of those sins fall mostly on the shoulders of the Republicans, who have been aggressively lobbying for more offshore drilling, without, obviously, ensuring that appropriate safeguards are in place. (Remember “Drill, baby, drill”? According to OpenSecrets.org, Republicans in the last decade have far outstripped Democrats in donations from big oil, sometimes by a factor of four.) So the question for biblical literalists becomes one of political alliances. Does God wreak apocalyptic wrath on members of one’s own party—or only on the opposition?

Booyah!

.

Ostracizing The Losers

by digby

The other day Brad Delong asked if we are seeing the creation of an underclass of long term unemployed. Here is some more evidence that we are:

In a current job posting on The People Place, a job recruiting website for the telecommunications, aerospace/defense and engineering industries, an anonymous electronics company in Angleton, Texas, advertises for a “Quality Engineer.” Qualifications for the job are the usual: computer skills, oral and written communication skills, light to moderate lifting. But red print at the bottom of the ad says, “Client will not consider/review anyone NOT currently employed regardless of the reason.”

In a nearly identical job posting for the same position on the Benchmark Electronics website, the red print is missing. But a human resources representative for the company confirmed to HuffPost that the The People Place ad accurately reflects the company’s recruitment policies.

“It’s our preference that they currently be employed,” he said. “We typically go after people that are happy where they are and then tell them about the opportunities here. We do get a lot of applications blindly from people who are currently unemployed — with the economy being what it is, we’ve had a lot of people contact us that don’t have the skill sets we want, so we try to minimize the amount of time we spent on that and try to rifle-shoot the folks we’re interested in.

There’s more evidence that this is fairly widespread at the link.

I don’t even know what to say baout this except that it appears we are definitely seeing a sort of systematic stigmatization of the unemployed, from the sick caterwauling of the wingnut gasbags about “lazy” people who just want to stay on the dole, to employers claiming that they are advertising for jobs that nobody wants to this. Apparently, many of the people who have jobs think that they are unique and special John Galtian super-workers, unlike those losers who can’t find work. I’m guessing most of those are people who vote Republican.

Here’s a normal person’s reaction. Judy Conti, federal advocacy coordinator for the National Employment Law Project:

“Not only are these employers short-sighted in their search for the best qualified workers, but they are clearly not good corporate citizens of the communities in which they work. Increasingly, politicians and policy makers are trying to blame the unemployed for their condition, and to see this shameful propaganda trickle down to hiring decisions is truly sad and despicable.”

Aside from the fact that “good corporate citizen” has become an oxymoron, I think this correctly captures the phenomenon.

Leo Hindery was on with Spitzer earlier today talking about the unemployment rate and he said that it is actually double the official rate — or close to 19%. If that’s the case, we have a huge, huge problem if our culture decides to cope with this by ostracizing these people. We pretty well managed to abolish most awareness of “there but for the grace of God go I” sense of empathy as it is, but this takes it to an entirely new level. That is a whole lot of people we are going to have to step over on our way to the mall.

.

Nowhere Man

by digby

Oh spare me:

At the end of the ceremony, Sir Paul appeared to offer praise of Obama while taking a jab at President Bush. “After the last eight years, it’s great to have a president who knows what a library is,” he said.

The view that Obama is more of an intellectual than Bush is one that many well-known figures publicly hold — including the Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev. Nevertheless, House Minority John Boehner (R-OH) found McCartney’s opinion too much to handle, and demanded that he apologize:

“Like millions of other Americans, I have always had a good impression of Paul McCartney and thought of him as a classy guy, but I was surprised and disappointed by the lack of grace and respect he displayed at the White House,” Boehner told HUMAN EVENTS. “I hope he’ll apologize to the American people for his conduct which demeaned him, the White House and President Obama.”

Three Little Words

Update: Greg Sargent:

And the random deep thought of the day: Paul McCartney’s crack about George W. Bush’s lack of familiarity with libraries is far more controversial and worthy of discussion than Bush’s glib claim that he would authorize torture again.

.

Pack Up Everyone

by digby

…you’re all going to camp. Stephanie Mencimer at MoJo reports:

Is there a covert government plan to forcibly evacuate up to 50 million people from the Gulf Coast and move them into FEMA trailers somewhere in Missouri and elsewhere because of the oil spill? Some of the nation’s survivalists are convinced that the Obama administration is plotting just such an operation. Last week, Greg Evensen, a former Kansas state trooper and a regular on the “Patriot” movement talk circuit, appeared on the Internet radio show “Shattering the Darkness” to warn listeners that government is moving to evacuate basically everyone from the coast of Texas to Cape Cod. Evensen says the move will come after these areas become uninhabitable due to an “oversaturation of benzene” from the chemical dispersants BP is using to try to clean up the oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico. Yes, even an eco-tragedy can breed conspiracy theories. Interviewed by a man known only as “the Hawk,” Evensen predicted on May 27 that the evacuations would begin sometime around June 15, after the government brings together “people who can be engaged in combat”—possibly including foreign troops—and stations them at 500-mile intervals. He predicted that people as far north as Cape Cod might have to be evacuated, given that the oil is likely to end up “on beaches of England.” These events, Evensen warned, would show the “rolling thunder effect of how it will bring America to its knees,” to which the Hawk responded, “This could be larger than anything we could ever imagine.”[…]
The podcast of this show soon made its way into the Tea Party world and was circulating on various listservs this week, with headlines like “Forced evacuations of 40 million begin in less than two weeks. Anyone within a thousand miles of the Gulf of Mexico needs to listen to every word of this.” John Kaminiski, a “truther” who believes Jews blew up the World Trade Center, warned in an email that “If you don’t leave now, you will never make it. You will either die on the road, or in a FEMA camp. The troops are already in place.”

In an interview with Mother Jones, Evensen explained that he had heard about this massive governmental operation from a “buffet meal of state and local law enforcement” sources, many of whom find him—rather than the other way around—thanks to his media appearances and Internet postings. (Evensen lives in Michigan.) The podcast of this show soon made its way into the Tea Party world and was circulating on various listservs this week, with headlines like “Forced evacuations of 40 million begin in less than two weeks. Anyone within a thousand miles of the Gulf of Mexico needs to listen to every word of this.” John Kaminiski, a “truther” who believes Jews blew up the World Trade Center, warned in an email that “If you don’t leave now, you will never make it. You will either die on the road, or in a FEMA camp. The troops are already in place.”

Yes, I know. They’re all a bunch of fringe nuts, nothing to worry about. But as conspiracy theory scholar Michael Barkun wrote in A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America:

The danger lies less in such beliefs themselves than in the behavior they might stimulate or justify. As long as the New World Order appeared to be almost but not quite a reality, devotees of conspiracy theories could be expected to confine their activities to propagandizing. On the other hand, should they believe that the prophesied evil day had in fact arrived, their behavior would become far more difficult to predict.

Peter Daou tweeted a startling observation the other day:

Catastrophic #GulfSpill, #Sept11, #HaitiQuake, #04Tsunami… we’re witness to some of the worst disasters in recorded history

Add to that Katrina and the increasing anxiety that the American Dream might really be done for and you can see how some of this kooky stuff might not look so kooky to the New World Order and Left Behind despensationalist types who number in the millions in this country.

.

Eat Strawberries. Get Cancer.

by tristero

Michael Pollan is absolutely right: Perhaps the only way in 21st Century to get crazy stuff like this to stop is for the health insurance lobby to take on the Big Food lobby.

That’s right: Nobody gives a shit about the poor losers who can’t afford to avoid Methyl Iodide and buy organic. Hell, if you’re that poor, you shouldn’t be eating gourmet food like strawberries anyway. No, the problem is that spraying carcinogens all over the fucking place, not to mention directly on stuff that’s supposed to be eaten, will harm the insurance industry’s bottom line. And that is Just. Plain. Wrong.

Is this a great country or what?

Sign the petition.

h/t my friend NK

In Case You Missed It

by digby

John Oliver interviewing Evan Bayh and … Larry Craig on The Daily Show. There’s even singing:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Evan Bayh’s Senate Retirement
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Joke Of The Day

by tristero

Now here’s a real corker to brighten your day. First the set up

…if the news articles are accurate, the Justice Department should bring criminal charges against BP, and possibly Transocean and Halliburton, for violations of the Clean Water Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Refuse Act — the same charges brought in the Exxon Valdez case.

And now….drum roll, maestro, please!….the punch-line!!!!

Exxon ultimately paid a criminal fine of $125 million, the largest ever for an environmental crime.

Isn’t that just hilarious? Remind me to laugh once I finish hurling.

(Actually, the entire op-ed is very good, a cogent summary, by an expert… what a concept! someone who knows what he’s talking about… as I was saying, by an expert in the law covering environmental crimes. The bad news: the only people who might be liable for jail time are the low-level employees: it will be very hard under present law to build a case against the real crooks here. I do think, also, that the author doesn’t quite grok the nature of public opinion, if he thinks that people weren’t utterly enraged at the Exxon Valdez disaster: people forget and tempers cool over the very long, very tortuous course of legal proceedings. The very same thing will happen here, beyond any shadow of a doubt. Maybe BP will have to pay more than $125 million. Assuming the leak is 4 times the size of the Exxon spill, they’ll simply argue for a cap of $500 million.

It’s Tough Stuff

by digby

So our last president confessed to being a war criminal and said he’d do it again. Gosh, that sure makes me proud to be an American, how about you?

George W. Bush’s casual acknowledgment Wednesday that he had Khalid Sheikh Mohammed waterboarded — and would do it again — has horrified some former military and intelligence officials who argue that the former president doesn’t seem to understand the gravity of what he is admitting.

Waterboarding, a form of controlled drowning, is “unequivocably torture”, said retired Brigadier General David R. Irvine, a former strategic intelligence officer who taught prisoner of war interrogation and military law for 18 years.

“As a nation, we have historically prosecuted it as such, going back to the time of the Spanish-American War,” Irvine said. “Moreover, it cannot be demonstrated that any use of waterboarding by U.S. personnel in recent years has saved a single American life.”

Irvine told the Huffington Post that Bush doesn’t appreciate how much harm his countenancing of torture has done to his country.

“Yeah, we waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,” Bush told a Grand Rapids audience Wednesday, of the self-professed 9/11 mastermind. “I’d do it again to save lives.”

But, Irvine said: “When he decided to do it the first time, he launched the nation down a disastrous road, and we will continue to pay dearly for the damage his decision has caused.

“We are seen by the rest of the world as having abandoned our commitment to international law. We have forfeited enormous amounts of moral leadership as the world’s sole remaining superpower. And it puts American troops in greater danger — and unnecessary danger.”

Dan Froomkin’s headline(linked above) says, “Bush’s Glib Waterboarding Admission Sparks Outrage,” which it should, and Probably does among a minority of this country, but it certainly shouldn’t surprise us that Bush would make a “glib” statement about something so despicable and immoral. He was always like that:

From: “Devil May Care” by Tucker Carlson, Talk Magazine, September 1999, p. 106

“Bush’s brand of forthright tough-guy populism can be appealing, and it has played well in Texas. Yet occasionally there are flashes of meanness visible beneath it.

While driving back from the speech later that day, Bush mentions Karla Faye Tucker, a double murderer who was executed in Texas last year. In the weeks before the execution, Bush says, Bianca Jagger and a number of other protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Tucker. ‘Did you meet with any of them?’ I ask.

Bush whips around and stares at me. ‘No, I didn’t meet with any of them,’ he snaps, as though I’ve just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. ‘I didn’t meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with [Tucker], though. He asked her real difficult questions, like ‘What would you say to Governor Bush?’ ‘What was her answer?’ I wonder.

‘Please,’ Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, ‘don’t kill me.’

I must look shocked — ridiculing the pleas of a condemned prisoner who has since been executed seems odd and cruel, even for someone as militantly anticrime as Bush — because he immediately stops smirking.

‘It’s tough stuff,’ Bush says, suddenly somber, ‘but my job is to enforce the law.’ As it turns out, the Larry King-Karla Faye Tucker exchange Bush recounted never took place, at least not on television. During her interview with King, however, Tucker did imply that Bush was succumbing to election-year pressure from pro-death penalty voters. Apparently Bush never forgot it. He has a long memory for slights.”

Sometimes I worry that all the attention to the psychopathy of Dick Cheney has diminished the malevolent nature of George W. Bush. He was there and he enthusiastically signed off on all of it, proud to be the bold decider. I’m quite sure that in his mind these were among the best moments of his presidency.

George W. Bush was an idiot but he was a nasty idiot, never an innocent:

During Abu Zubaydah’s interrogation President Bush learned he was on painkillers for the wounds he suffered during his capture and was therefore difficult to get information from. President Bush exclaimed to then CIA director George Tenet “[w]ho authorized putting him on pain medication?” It would later be reported that Abu Zubaydah was denied painkillers during his interrogation.

.

Evolutionary Psychology Bingo

by digby

Hilarious

.