Month: August 2010

Mythbusting 101

by digby

Bill in Portland Maine compiled a very useful list of myths — and links that bust them. Suitable for bookmarking:

> Tea Party’ers are not more likely to have racist tendencies than other conservatives.
(Except they are.) > Democrats are scheming to hit 94 percent of small business owners with tax increases.
(Except they aren’t.) > Bloody violence is out of control along the Mexican border, and illegal immigrants are streaming into America at record levels.
(Except it’s not and they’re not.) > Obamacare will send Medicare spiraling out of control.
(Except it won’t.) > Marriage is a religious union that’s all about procreation.
(Except it isn’t.) > Voters say cutting the deficit is more important than creating jobs.
(Except they don’t.) > Social Security is going broke, it adds to the deficit, and we have to raise the retirement age because people are living longer.
(Except it’s not, it doesn’t and we don’t.) > The earth is getting cooler.
(Except it’s really really not.)

Good to know.

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Extolling The Old School

by digby

For the Ted Stevens story on Hardball, Chuck Todd called in Andrea Mitchell for some affectionate reminiscences:

Chuck Todd: They (Stevens and Inouye) developed those two states. Using the federal government, using their powers in the Senate and teaming up together one Democrat and one Republican money went to those two states because of these two men.

Mitchell: And you didn’t want to be on the wrong side of those two men but that’s true of anyone who’s ever been the head of appropriations. They are feared, they are loved, they deliver.

He was a larger figure than people might caricature him as being. And he did go through an ethics trial and he was found guilty of ethics violation for taking gifts and services from contractors for a vacation home in Alaska. And then Eric Holder from the Obama administration exonerated him and vacated the charges because of prosecutorial misconduct. But he lost his reelection clearly because of those charges.

Todd: Exactly. But one could argue that Ted Stevens was guilty of practicing accepted politics of the 60s 70s and 80s. That doesn’t make it right, but that does seem to be what happened and in the 21st century you can’t get away with that stuff.

Mitchell: But you also can’t get away with convicting someone if the prosecutor hid evidence that could have exonerated you.

Todd: Exactly. This cozy relationship with lobbyists that is what happens with appropriations — we’re seeing it with Charlie Rangel — is this sort of idea there was, quote unquote old school way of doing it. And you had guys that saw others do it and thought, gee, it’s been allowed.

Mitchell: In defense of the old school which is — I’m not defending ethics violations by anybody alleged or not alleged — in defense of the old school, the old school was also the fact that Danny Inouye and Ted Stevens would work across party lines. Inouye campaigned in Alaska for Ted Stevens. And Stevens campaigned in Hawaii for Inouye. And the two party caucuses had to ignore the fact that they were crossing every rule of the political playbook.

“In defense of the old school,” they worked across party lines to strong arm anyone in their way to bring home the bacon. Sure, there was graft and corruption but it was bipartisan, which is the only thing that matters. Why back in the day you could go to a dinner party and we’d all sit together and laugh at all the silly, little people who take this politics thing seriously. Those were the best of times — when nobody in Washington had to care about anything. It’s so tedious now with the “professional left” and the “professional right” all interfering in court business.

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Wrong Turn

by digby

I do hope the Democrats are paying close attention to this because it might just save their bacon if they play their cards right. Here’s the lugubrious GOP star Mike Pence on the passage of the emergency state teacher, cop and firefighter funding:

Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) picked up on that theme today on ABC’s Top Line, calling it a “massive state bailout.” When host Z. Byron Wolf asked what the GOP plan would be to help teachers who are about to lose their jobs — particularly the 3,600 in Indiana, Pence didn’t have much to offer:

PENCE: Well, look I’m married to a school teacher. My wife spent more than a decade in a public school classroom. So I love teachers! Teachers, firefighters, policemen are all Americans and they all know that the economic policies of bailouts and handouts have failed to create jobs.

Can you spot the fear and dissonance there? I knew that you could.

I’m telling you, this is where the vulnerable underbelly of their “just say no” campaign is. They are voting against nice, white, suburban middle class Americans this time (along with nice brown and black suburban middle class Americans) with this crusade. And going after teachers, cops and firefighters is a very, very dangerous thing to do. And as I wrote before, the Democrats should throw it right in their face.

In 2005, Arnold Schwarzenegger called a special election to dramatically cut funding for teachers, firefighters and nurses. He campaigned by calling them “special interests.”

They fought back hard with a series of ads that reminded Americans that he was talking about them and their neighbors. He tanked in the polls, his initiatives were soundly defeated and at the time people wondered if he could win reelection.

Here’s one of them:

“They aren’t fighting the special interests. They’re fighting us.”

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Welcome Their Hatred

by digby

What with all the hoopla over Robert Gibbs’ comments today it pays to simply remember that everyone in Washington hates liberals. It’s a fact of life and until something happens to change the dynamic in which Democratic politicians are afraid to even mutter the words liberal, much less boldly and persuasively make a case for liberalism, I expect this will be the case. (The irony, of course, is that the liberals who do so have been proven right on the politics and the substance far more often than those who bet with the conservatives.)

Kevin Drum says that Democrats do this because only 20% of the country identifies as liberal so they are making a play for the center. I think he’s right that they think this way, but one could easily make the case that they’d do better by demonizing the 30% that calls themselves conservatives instead of their own voters. The center, by definition, doesn’t identify with them any more than the liberals, right?

There is also a case to be made that the Democratic establishment should be concerned about enthusiasm — that the activist base needs to be handled with a little bit more respect because they are the ones who knock on doors and make the calls. There’s something to that, of course, particularly in the mid-terms which depend so heavily on getting the base out.

But what’s dangerously myopic about going ballistic as Gibbs did in his statements is that just 10 years ago we had a little event in which only a tiny portion of the base went with a third party bid from the left — and the consequences were catastrophic. Democrats, of all people, should remember that every vote matters.

It’s embarrassing to have David Frum point out the obvious — that the Republicans fear their base and the Democrats hate theirs, but it has been so since I was a kid — a long time ago. At some point they are going to realize that their demanding activist base is the way it is and that they need to figure out a way to deal with it rather than rail against it. You cannot browbeat people into loving you and you can’t argue them into being enthusiastic. Certainly characterizing them in cartoon terms by saying “they want to eliminate the Pentagon”, they are on drugs and — worst of all — suggesting they are not part of America — isn’t going to get you there.

On the other hand, if they just want to use them as doormat as a way to appeal to “the center” then they take their chances that their activists won’t turn out to volunteer — or worse. Sometimes all it takes to lose is a quixotic third party bid, 535 disputed votes in Florida and Antonin Scalia. Why would they ask for that kind of trouble?

Update: It appears that Gibbs was specifically referring to cable commentators, one of whom apparently is Dylan Ratigan, who isn’t a lefty at all. But I’ve got a cure for his problem. Watch Fox instead. It puts things right into perspective.

But let’s not be so precious about this. Gibbs was referring to criticism from the left in general, not just cable commentators. And that means you and me and Paul Krugman and gay rights groups and the ACLU anyone else who is frustrated by the administration’s political strategy and ideological/policy failure. They aren’t alone.

And why shouldn’t activist liberals be as angst ridden as anyone else in the country anyway? I realize we aren’t considered Real Americans by the Villagers, but the truth is that our lives are just as fucked up as the tea baggers’. The clap louder routine doesn’t work with 10% official unemployment, an escalation of an unwinnable war and a lot of talk about cutting the safety net to balance the books. We are not immune to the same stresses that affect everyone else in the country. Perhaps we are the canaries in the liberal coal mine and they should be a little bit more mindful.

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Don’t Waste Your Time Arguing

by tristero

Insane:

Some liberal politicians have extrapolated the theory of relativity to metaphorically justify their own political agendas. For example, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama helped publish an article by liberal law professor Laurence Tribe to apply the relativistic concept of “curvature of space” to promote a broad legal right to abortion.[45] As of June 2008, over 170 law review articles have cited this liberal application of the theory of relativity to legal arguments.[46] Applications of the theory of relativity to change morality have also been common.[47] Moreover, there is an unmistakable effort to censor or ostracize criticism of relativity.[48]

Insane:

The theory of relativity is a mathematical system that allows no exceptions. It is heavily promoted by liberals who like its encouragement of relativism and its tendency to mislead people in how they view the world.[1]

And, in case you were wondering what the reference is for this assertion, here it is:

↑ See, e.g., historian Paul Johnson’s book about the 20th century, and the article written by liberal law professor Laurence Tribe as allegedly assisted by Barack Obama. Virtually no one who is taught and believes relativity continues to read the Bible, a book that outsells New York Times bestsellers by a hundred-fold.

The entry goes on:

Here is a list of 24 counterexamples any one of them shows that the theory [of relativity] is incorrect…

9. The action-at-a-distance by Jesus, described in John 4:46-54.

I know, I know. It really is very funny but I can’t laugh at this.

Why? Because some of you, right now, are starting to waste the little time you have here on earth by marshalling reasoned arguments and accurate facts to refute Conservapedia’s lies. And so are others. And that is terribly sad.

Worse, it is counterproductive, because every moment you spend engaging right wing lunatics over tired, out-of-date, and utterly nonsensical argument over science they think is too liberal, is a moment taken away from encountering the truly exciting discoveries being announced almost hourly (here’s one: a crocodile with the teeth of a mammal!). And if you are so busy refighting the past that you can’t keep up with the present, then it becomes all that harder to understand what science is doing, and to support it. I’m not talking, say, a Palin/McCain/Jindal level of ignorance, of course. But if you truly think that it is vitally important to engage people who question Einstein’s theory of relativity, it becomes that much harder to muster the cultural courage to fund research that takes relativity for granted. After all, even if I “believe in relativity” wouldn’t it be better to fund research that proves relativity beyond a shadow of a doubt than stuff that assumes it’s true?*

But wait! you protest. We can’t let that garbage hang out there uncontested. Besides, people will learn a great deal about physics if we address the arguments in a clear, accessible fashion, and teach reality.

Yes, sure, I’ll agree that’s all true. So what?

Sure, we can contest them. But if we completely ignore their utterly ridiculous lies, distortions, and antiquated disputes, then we, not they, get to set the terms of the discourse. That is one reason why great scientists won’t bother to lower themselves to engage folks like the bozos behind Conservapedia (doing so also elevates the bozos). I see no reason why anyone, scientist or layperson, should enter an argument over the relativism of relativity. On the other hand, I do think we need to expose right wing ignoramuses as often as possible. In order to ridicule them. And to sneer. But argue over whether E=MC squared makes Jesus’ miracles impossible? That’s a waste of time. Ok, go ahead if you want to. Whatever. But if want to do some real good, you’ll laugh at them instead.

As for learning a great deal about physics through debunking lies…well, yeah, that’ll work. But I think you could learn much more physics by exploring truth. And that requires honest discussion which, almost by definition, cannot take place with people who insist on an enagagement over lies and distortions.

Please people, laugh all you want at these clowns. Mock them. Denounce them, rail against them. Just don’t make the mistake of arguing with them. Don’t waste your time, and ours.*** We can’t afford it now. We never could.

h/t Megan Charpentier at TPM, who inadvertently overlooked one of the most important, and ugliest, aspects of Conservapedia’s assault on Einstein: its blatant anti-semitism.

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* I’m obviously not talking about recent challenges within physics to Einstein’s theories. I’m talking about ideological challenges that object to relativity because they think it’s too…relativistic, and therefore immoral, and therefore can’t possibly be right and therefore will seek out every little niggling question then hype those questions as if they’re somehow proof that the theory is a liberal canard.

** I’m sure somebody will accuse me of being narrow-minded, unwilling to challenge conventionality, and so on, so on, so on. Zzzzzz…..

Being open-minded is not the same as being born yesterday. I can be quite intellectually curious yet refuse to consider seriously the notion that a UFO was hidden in the tail of the Hale Bopp comet. Likewise, a refusal to take seriously rightwing attacks on evolution and physics says absolutely nothing about my willingness to entertain unusual, interesting, and often very unconventional ideas.

All it means is that Mama Tristero raised no fools.

From The “What Do They Have To Do, Kill Medgar Evers?” File

by digby

Think Progress:

Although instances of racist sentiment at Tea Party rallies can be easily found, defenders of the movement argue they are aberrations, if not part of a liberal conspiracy to smear tea partiers.

[…]
National surveys of the Tea Party have found that explicit racist sentiment is a strong component of the tea-party make up, in addition to economic conservatism and strong Republican partisanship. The April, 2010 New York Times/CBS News national survey of Tea Party supporters found that they are:

– More than twice as likely as the general public (25% vs 11%) to believe that “the policies of the Obama administration favor blacks over whites.” – Half as likely as the general public (16% to 31%) to believe that “white people have a better chance of getting ahead in today’s society.” – Almost twice as likely as the general public (52% to 28%) to believe that “too much has been made of the problems facing black people” in recent years.

In a broad study of adults in Georgia, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, and California conducted between February and March, the University of Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race, and Sexuality (WISER) asked a number of questions about “racial resentment” — such as whether blacks don’t try hard enough or have gotten more than they deserve. Conservatives are 23 percent more likely to be racially resentful, and Republicans 15 percent more likely than Democrats. However, the institute found that this racial sentiment isn’t simply a byproduct of white conservativism:

[E]ven as we account for conservatism and partisanship, support for the Tea Party remains a valid predictor of racial resentment.

It is untrue, as political commentator Dave Weigel argues, that racism in the Tea Party is merely reflective of its conservatism. The WISER study found that compared to other conservatives, Tea Party supporters are:

– 25 percent more likely to have racial resentment. – 27 percent more likely to support racial profiling. – 28 percent more likely to support indefinite detention without charges.

They also believe that blacks and Latinos are far less hard working, intelligent and trustworthy than other people.

All of this could be some sort of coincidence or statistical static but I doubt it. It’s true that these attitudes are a common feature of conservatism, but they are a prominent motivating feature of the far right, which is what the Tea Party represents. Anyone who has a sense of how modern racism works can see that this movement is comprised of a large number of people who hold these beliefs. It’s not hidden. But these polling numbers give some objective data to back up the heuristic assessments, so perhaps we can start to deal with this honestly.

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Birdie!

by digby

Ed Schultz was very excited about our Boehner campaign yesterday and opened his show with a long segment on the subject. He’s absolutely right about John Boehner being the poster boy for the out of touch Republicans who are offering up nothing but non-sequitors as the answer to our problems.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

(You’ll notice that Ed said to send him a email if you want to see the ad every day on his show. You can do that here.)

However, as Sam Stein at HuffPo noted yesterday:

The ad is not some cheeky effort for additional media recognition. It will be airing in Butler County on CNN, MSNBC, Fox (though not the Glenn Beck program) and Comedy Central and will be bolstered by a fundraising drive to keep it on air.

If you like to help us keep the pressure on, you can donate to help us keep the ad on the air here.

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Ginning Up The Next Big Thing

by digby

Chuck Todd, subbing for Matthews today, had John Harris on to discuss his comments from This Week (which I wrote about here.)

Todd: John you talked about this over the week-end. I saw some of your comments. And this feels like cynical base politics that some Republicans are playing. You heard former senator Istook there giving a very reasoned policy defense of this. What you don’t hear a lot of these elected Republicans doing… Is this a total cynical ploy?

Harris: Uh, it’s a strange one and even your conversation there Chuck, which was a good one, but kind of an abstract one, for three months out from an election going back to the history of the 14th Amendment passed a hundred and forty some years ago. I think members in the most competitive districts are not going to want to get into an abstract debate, which is what the 14th amendment is, even if you think illegal immigration is a huge problem, it doesn’t do anything to address the problem in the here and now. The best argument that Republicans have is that “look, we’ve had to act in Arizona because Washington hasn’t acted.” So this to my mind undercuts this argument because it makes them look like they’re engaged in an ideological argument or a base charging argument or even and abstract constitutional argument rather than address tangible problem in the here and now.

Let’s review what Harris’ comments were this week-end before we go any further. Former bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, hardly a bleeding heart liberal, was aghast at this 14th amendment move, on moral, legal and strategic grounds, and made an impassioned argument against it. Here’s Harris:

In fairness to the … I mean one argument you could make Michael is that uh, immigration reform is never going to happen unless this issue is at a boil. Perhaps that’s what Lindsay Graham is doing. Ok, let’s turn this up to a boil and only in that environment …

To which Gerson replied:

Gerson: That is a deeply cynical approach. To take an issue this sensitive and this symbolic to use that to leverage other political reform, I think that would be very cynical.

As I mentioned in the earlier post, Harris also went on about how the “problem” of illegal immigration is so important that politicians need to address it, which is, of course, nonsense. Illegal immigration has eased recently and there is no uptick in crime or public expenditures. There is no “reason” other than rank xenophobia for all this angst over border issues, something which Harris doesn’t seem to even be interested in knowing, much less reporting. If he were, then this 14th Amendment strategy wouldn’t seem so darned “abstract” would it? Indeed, he would realize that the whole thing is partisan demagoguery.

The guest just prior to Harris, former senator Ernest Istook simply said that the 14th amendment was never meant to cover people who are in the country illegally, full stop. You can call that abstract if you want, but it sounded like something those who want to deny citizenship to “anchor babies” will accept very readily. And those who are agitated over bogus tales of Mexicans terrorizing little old ladies are hardly likely to see this as an abstract concept.

As Allison Kilkenny points out here, this is mostly a move to appease the base and to move the goalposts on immigration to give the Democrats room to find “common ground” on conservative terms, hence her title “let’s just agree that Mexicans shouldn’t be publicly executed.” It’s how they roll. But after listening to Istook, I was carried back to a time when I was younger and I used to hear conservative kooks out there parsing the Second Amendment to create an inalienable right to bear arms out of an archaic phrase obviously intended to make it possible to muster a militia. We know where that went. Istook’s argument didn’t seem to be ridiculous on its face and once people hear it enough times many of them will see it as good old common sense.

It’s never a good idea to underestimate people’s willingness to deprive others of things they take for granted themselves. I think this is dangerous for both the reasons Kilkenny stated and on the merits of the amendment itself. If they can’t pass it now, I could easily see this becoming a long term cause that could find its way through the now thoroughly conservative federal legal system over the next couple of decades.

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M Is The New BP

by tristero

That’s M as in Monsanto:

One of the primary concerns with transgenic (aka genetically modified) crops is the risk of genetic contamination, i.e. the transfer of engineered genes to wild versions of the same plant. The corporations involved in genetic engineering, such as Monsanto and Bayer CropScience, have time and again assured regulators and the public that this risk is minimal. Still, the government mandates “buffer zones” around such crops’ plantings and the corporations who sell the seeds have created their own protocols to ensure this kind of thing never happens.

Well, surprise! It’s happened. Big time.

Scientists from the University of Arkansas announced at the Ecological Society of America annual meeting the results of a study that showed genetically engineered pesticide-resistant canola growing like a weed in North Dakota. They found that up to 80 percent of wild canola in their sample from various North Dakota roadsides contained genes that conferred resistance to either glyphosate (the active ingredient in Monsanto’s RoundUp Ready pesticide) or gluphosinate (from Bayer’s LibertyLink seeds).

But it gets better, er, worse. The scientists also found wild canola with both properties. And as lead scientist Cynthia Sagers observed in an accompanying news report, “these feral populations of canola have been part of the landscape for several generations” — plant generations, mind you, not human generations. Still, this is not a new phenomenon. It’s true that biotech companies do sell seeds with multiple forms of pesticide resistance, so-called “stacked trait” seeds. But these wild canola plants managed this interbreeding feat all by their lonesome.

So, these genetically engineered plants — which, when out in the wild, are considered weeds — are cross-pollinating and transferring “alien” genes that confer pesticide resistance. The next step in the chain is for the canola to interbreed with other related weeds. Suddenly, the prospect of our nation’s bread basket infested with superweeds becomes very, very real.

And from the link within the quote above:

The scientists behind the discovery say this highlights a lack of proper monitoring and control of GM crops in the United States…

The extent of the escape is unprecedented,” says Cynthia Sagers, an ecologist at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, who led the research team that found the canola (Brassica napus, also known as rapeseed)…

Monsanto sez No Big Deal, the situation is just fine, and so on, so on, so on, so on.

I believe them. Who wouldn’t?

Dispatch from Torture Nation

by digby

Sigh:

When her son with Down syndrome grew enraged in April, Ana V. Ramirez called 911 for help, but with a warning for police: Do not use a Taser on the young man. But an officer did use a stun gun, prompting Ramirez and another adult son to frantically try to pull the electrified prongs from Christian Pagan, 25, who suffers from a delicate heart condition. Now, the mother and brother face trial on a charge of resisting arrest without violence. Prosecutors had dropped Ramirez’s case last month, but refiled the charges Thursday after police complained, according to her defense attorney, Ricardo P. Hermida, who said the state was “browbeaten into a bogus refile.” “In this case, the young prosecutor absolutely did the right thing and dumped the case” initially, Hermida said. Ramirez, 57, a former Circuit City manager, cares for her son full-time at their West Kendall house. Christian Pagan, a graduate of G. Holmes Braddock Senior High School, was born with a hole in his heart. On April 22, Pagan had a violent outburst, storming around the house and cutting his hand as he thrashed about. Ramirez dialed 911, but warned the dispatcher against using the Taser, according to a recording of the call. “He’s a handicap kid. I don’t want them to shoot him with a Taser,” she told the dispatcher. In an interview Friday, she said: “His heart is not like mine or yours. It’s weak.” Miami-Dade police Officer Idania Felipe wrote in a report that Pagan, “visibly agitated and in a fit of rage . . . violently charged at me” outside the house. Felipe said she fired the Taser because she feared “for my safety.” Ramirez and her other son, Hernando Yunis, 21, hurled themselves over Pagan, pleading with police to stop. Ramirez said officers shot Pagan with the Taser six times, and herself once. But Felipe wrote that the mother and son refused to obey commands and “continued to obstruct and resist my efforts to perform my lawful duties.” Ramirez and Yunis were charged with resisting arrest without violence, a first-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to 364 days in jail. Pagan was not charged. “The officers were acting in good faith,” Miami-Dade police spokesman Javier Baez said of the episode.

The police insisted that the prosecutor refile this case. I guess they truly believe that the mom and her other son deserve to be jailed for “interfering” even though they had warned the cops that the kid had a heart condition.

This should serve as a warning to anyone in the country. Do not call the police into any domestic situation in which someone involved has a heart condition or is otherwise in poor health. They might just get electrocuted regardless of your warnings about their health condition. (If someone’s on drugs you might as well put them in a bathtub and throw a live toaster in with them — they WILL be tasered and if they die nobody on earth will care.)

BTW: tasers are very, very dangerous to anyone with an underlying heart condition. Unfortunately, not everyone knows that they have any underlying heart condition so they might think it’s safe to exercise their constitutional rights. Probably best to just not do that.

h/t to BG

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