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Month: September 2010

Defensive Knowledge

Defensive Knowledge

by digby

John King featured an interesting factoid about religion on his show tonight. Out of 32 questions about various religions posed by a recent Pew Poll , it was the Atheists/Agnostics who got the most right, followed by the Jews and the Mormons.

I’m guessing that when you’re in a minority you probably feel it’s more important to know what the majority believes. But I still think it’s interesting that atheists, the most despised religious minority in the nation by far, including Muslims, know more about religion than anyone else.

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Bitches Brood

Bitches Brood

by digby

What do you suppose they were trying to say here?

Are all black musicians gangster rappers? Or maybe they’re talking about Mick Jagger who, after all, learned to dance from Tina Turner who was married to the wife beating Ike, so that’s sort of makes him an honorary gangster. And Dylan did that song about Hurricane Carter. So yeah, if you add in the “R&B” (and I think we know what that’s code for) Obama’s pretty much a Crip. I always suspected it.

(Roy has the rest of the story, here.)

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GOP constituent service —“Buh bye — have a nice day.”

“Have A Nice Day”

by digby

From Howie, this is a horrible story about the typically flippant, glib GOP response to real people’s problems:

Andrew Ko, a … distraught father whose two 10-year old twin sons, Christopher and William, were abducted to Singapore by his ex-wife. Once his sons were spirited out of the country Andrew went to David Dreier, his congressman. Dreier was unhelpful… even insulting, sending him a letter address to Dear “Mr. Yo” and telling him to “have a nice day.”

Read on. Howie has a guest post by the frantic dad. Here’s the ad Andrew Ko took out in the LA Times:

For The record — my feelings aren’t hurt and I want people to vote

For The Record

by digby

My feeling aren’t hurt by Obama finger wagging about the base being ungrateful. I just think it’s a rather silly, unproductive way to deal with a demoralized base and I doubt that it will fly as a strategy for laying blame after the election. I am from the Stephen Colbert “Keep Fear Alive” school which says that this crop of looney tunes Republicans are the most radical throwbacks we’ve ever seen and that it’s important to keep them away from the reins of power. That’s as good a reason for voting as I can imagine, so I’m not sure what more it takes. I’m sorry that we can’t all be ecstatically singing along to a Will.I.Am video this time, but these just aren’t inspirational good times. Right now it’s about stopping something very ugly and bad rather than feeling all gooey and good. And that’s an important part of politics too. It isn’t all Oprah and hugging strangers in crowds.

So, for the record: please vote. No matter how disappointed you are or how rotten you feel about your present circumstances, empowering these crazies is a huge, huge mistake. The Democrats, sadly, will not learn the right lessons if a bunch of neanderthals take over and history shows that in times of great stress and transition, very bad things can happen when you let these people take the reins.

Also: what Atrios said although the substance ship has probably sailed for November.

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“God, thank you for this beating” — creating good little theocrats

Creating Good Little Robots

by digby

Bill Gothard, Daniel Webster’s mentor:

His opening lecture on self-acceptance closes with a prayer to “give God a vote of confidence for how he has made us so far.” Next comes family life. Children must be totally obedient. A religious teenager, for example, should not attend a church college if atheistic parents order him not to. As for a man’s wife, she “has to realize that God accomplishes his ultimate will through the decisions of the husband, even when the husband is wrong.” Citing I Thessalonians 5:18 (“In every thing give thanks”), Gothard even advises a wife whose husband chastises her to say, “God, thank you for this beating.”

Besides following the chain of command in the family, Christians should also be obedient to their employers and their government, Gothard asserts. Only if an order from a parent, the state or a boss conflicts with God’s explicit commandments may it be disobeyed.

Nothing to see here folks, move along.

Update:

“I enjoy the advice he’s given,” Webster said of Gothard. “I think it’s been a major part of my life. I’m not ashamed of that. What he has said I believe to be the truth.” [St. Petersburg Times, 2/16/97, 9/28/03; Sarasota Herald Tribune, 3/09/97]

Sticking up for Webster: fellow right-wing extremists Glenn Beck and Mike Huckabee.

Huckabee and Beck’s “Black Robed Regiment” pastor are followers of Gothard as well.

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Strategery Gone Awry

Daddy Can’t Make Us Do It

by digby

One thing I know about Barack Obama. He’s a smart, careful politician. He and Gibbs and Biden aren’t admonishing the base by accident. It’s a strategy. And that means they assume that the base is already going to vote and they are trying to attract independent voters by making them see themselves as common sense adults in comparison to the self-indulgent and petulant liberals. Because unless they really believe that hectoring people into feeling guilty for not recognizing how great the administration has been (which seems remarkably undisciplined and immature for Obama) nothing else makes sense.

I’ve said this before: you simply cannot browbeat people into loving you. And until voting becomes mandatory, you can’t make them vote either. Getting out he vote requires that you either inspire them into loving you or scare them into fearing the other guy. Appeals to duty and guilt are for mommies and right wing preachers, not politicians.

*Oh, and yes, they can blame the base for their losses in November, but that won’t fly either. It’s results that matter and people don’t blame voters for not voting — they blame the politicians for failing to get them to vote. Winners get credit and losers get blame. It’s just how it works.

Update: Michael Moore. Just read it.

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Disavowal Movement Resurgent

Disavowal Movement Resurgent

by digby

So, I’m hearing on the internets that liberals had better disavow Grayson’s Taliban ad or risk being seen as hypocrites when we complain about the other side doing it. All I can say is, “Oh dear, not that.” (And I have never been much for the bi-annual “disavowal ritual” in general. You can look it up.)

Ever since Jesse Helms ran this ad and Daddy Bush ran this one I’ve haven’t given the moral dimension of attack ads much thought at all. They are part of American politics and you can rail against them all you want, but they aren’t going anywhere. Fretting about such things is the province of very upright, highly moral liberals who believe that it is better to lose than to run ads which sink to the other side’s level. I guess I just don’t think ads are more important than keeping corporate sponsored theocrats from being in positions of power, so we will have to agree to disagree.

At this point in the United States it is permissible for Republicans to attack Democrats as treasonous, Godless/Muslim socialists and compare them to Hitler and Stalin but Democrats are only allowed to attack Republicans for their differences in policy. Can we see the asymmetry here? Is it any surprise that they have dominated politics for the past 30 years? Sure, every once in a while there are moments when their act gets old and the nation will look for hope and change rather than fear and loathing, but let’s just say that their willingness (and institutional support) will give them the advantage most of the time.

As for Webster, whether you call him the “T” word or not he’s a theocrat — the real thing:

Speaker Has Strong Ties to Institute

by Peter Wallsten, T. Christian Miller, St. Petersburg Times, February
16, 1997

Last summer, Daniel Webster journeyed to South Korea on a religious
mission, meeting with the country’s president and other political and spiritual leaders.

He was joined by Bill Gothard, the head of a $30-million Christian evangelical group.

Four months after the trip, Webster ascended to one of the most powerful positions in Florida: speaker of the state House of Representatives.

He brings with him 14 years of experience with Gothard’s Institute in Basic Life Principles, where Webster has not only attended seminars, but also taught classes and even made an instructional video that raised money for the institute.

The group preaches a literal interpretation of the Bible, including the belief that women should submit to their husbands’ authority. With programs for lawmakers, judges, doctors, juvenile delinquents and home- schooling courses, the institute’s reach is wide. It says that 2.5-million people around the world have participated in its programs.

Webster is an enthusiastic supporter. His six children learn at home, taught by his wife, Sandy, using the institute’s curriculum. The family, which also is active in its Orlando Baptist church, has participated in numerous institute seminars over the years.

Webster said he does not want to force his beliefs on other people.

“I’ve never tried to say this is what’s right for everybody,” he said. “”All I’ve said is, “Here’s what works for me.’ ”

Webster said he will not let the institute’s teachings dictate his legislative agenda in the House, where he is the first Republican speaker in 122 years.

Still, the institute is attracting increasing interest in Tallahassee. Webster has hired four House staffers whom he met through the institute, although Webster’s press secretary, Kathy Mears, pointed out that hundreds of people work for Webster. Mears herself has participated in institute courses.

Over the years, Webster and state Rep. Stephen Wise, R-Jacksonville, have recruited at least eight other Florida lawmakers to the program, including Sen. John Grant, R-Tampa, and Rep. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey.

But Webster said there is no connection between Gothard’s seven Bible-based principles and the five principles Webster is using to rank every measure the House will consider this year…

Let’s hope some of Gothards more archaic “old testament” views aren’t among them:

Under the session titled “Six Purposes, Principles, and Keys To Fulfillment In The Marriage Relationship,” he told married couples to abstain from physical relations: 1. During the wife’s menstrual cycle; 2. Seven days after the cycles; 3. 40 days after the birth of a son; 4. 80 days after the birth of a daughter; and 5. The evening prior to worship.

As religious right expert Sarah Posner (who disapproves of using the word Taliban and thinks Grayson erred in making the ad) writes this morning:

As Julie reported yesterday, Florida Democrat Alan Grayson ran an ad against his Republican opponent, Dan Webster, calling him “Taliban Dan,” and pointing to statements he made to the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP) about wives’ submission to their husbands — a topic covered authoritatively by RD contributor Kathryn Joyce in her book, Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement.Factcheck.org asserts that the quotes were taken out of context, claiming Webster was saying not to pick and choose Bible verses, and was pointing out that he doesn’t pick and choose only the ones about wifely submission.

But Joyce tells me Factcheck.org misunderstands Webster’s statements, even in context:

While the Grayson campaign can be taken to task for taking Webster’s comment out of context, in the larger context, they’re correct. Grayson’s campaign argued that Webster seemed to be supporting submission in his comments to an audience of conservative men, whom he directed to pray that they would better fulfill their biblical duty to love their wives, and leave prayers about women’s submission to their wives. However, the emphasis of these remarks, as those familiar with Christian rhetoric could recognize, is not on the optional nature of wives’ submission. Wifely submission is part of an often-unbalanced equation to Christians who subscribe to “complementarian” or “patriarchal” marriage roles, where men must “love” and women “obey.” Saying that a woman should pray for God’s guidance in submission, if she wants to, is not leniency, but rather standard evangelical language that emphasizes individuals must obey biblical mandates regardless of how others around them behave. So, Webster is saying, men must be accountable to God for their responsibility to love their wives regardless of whether she submits — that they must pray to do right, even if she doesn’t.

However, the much more relevant application of this principle on following God’s orders despite your circumstances is on women. Submission is a contentious and tricky issue even within conservative evangelical churches. Most churches promoting submission make certain to couple demands for submissive wives with those for loving, servant-leader husbands. But at the end of the day, it’s women who bear the brunt of the principle; their obligations are to God, not to a husband who may or may not keep his end of the contract. Accordingly, the message is impressed by countless women’s ministries and leaders that women must continue submitting even when their husband doesn’t show love, because they owe their obedience, above all, to God. In circles that take submission seriously — as does any organization associated with Bill Gothard — that’s what wives’ options really look like.

[…]

Politico
claims this morning that the Grayson ad “backfired.” If it did, it was because Grayson — and more fundamentally, Factcheck.org — failed to grasp what was crucial about this story.

I think it’s premature for Politico to say the ad “backfired” since, you know, the election hasn’t happened yet, but Posner’s point about Factcheck missing the forest for the trees is correct. The truth is that Webster does adhere to the view that women should submit to their husbands.

Now perhaps it’s considered quaint for “exceptional” good Americans to hold pre-modern views like that while it’s weird and creepy for evil Afghan Muslims, but it’s fairly hard for me, as a secular feminist, to see much difference between them — or frankly care about the nuances. The delicacy people have toward using the word “Taliban” strikes me as a sort of self-defeating PC that once again takes religion — like patriotism — off the menu for criticism.

What I hear most often about all this is that it’s wrong to call fellow Americans the same thing we call “the enemy.” But these people make it clear every day that they certainly consider secular, liberal feminists like me the enemy and they make no bones about it. Being as I’m not a follower of Jesus, the whole “turn the other cheek” thing doesn’t really resonate with me.

I believe people who hold beliefs like Daniel Webster to be unfit for public office. They do not believe in the separation of church and state and if elected they will work to make Dominionist laws. Yes, he has a right to hold his views and he has a right to run. But he doesn’t have a right to expect people to be polite and deferential about his extreme fundamentalist views.

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Mission Creeps — The New Surveillance State

Mission Creeps

by digby

Glenzilla talks about the latest domestic spying government power grab and offers this observation:

What these Obama proposals illustrates is just how far we’ve descended in the security/liberty debate, where only the former consideration has value, while the latter has none. Whereas it was once axiomatic that the Government should not spy on citizens who have done nothing wrong, that belief is now relegated to the civil libertarian fringes.

He’s right, of course, but I think we tend to lose sight of another problem in allowing the government to have unfettered power to go on fishing expeditions in citizens’ private business. The fact that it’s ineffective against terrorism is problematic enough and monitoring everyone’s financial transactions with overseas banks in this age of globalization is somewhat terrifying. But it’s the inevitable mission creep that’s really chilling.

Check this out:

Kathy Parker, a 43-year-old Elkton, Md., woman, who was flying out of Philadelphia International Airport on Aug. 8.

She says she was heading to Charlotte, N.C., for work that Sunday night – she’s a business support manager for a large bank – and was selected for a more in-depth search after she passed through the metal detectors at Gate B around 5:15 p.m.

A female Transportation Security Administration officer wanded her and patted her down, she says. Then she was walked over to where other TSA officers were searching her bags.

“Everything in my purse was out, including my wallet and my checkbook. I had two prescriptions in there. One was diet pills. This was embarrassing. A TSA officer said, ‘Hey, I’ve always been curious about these. Do they work?’

“I was just so taken aback, I said, ‘Yeah.’ “

What happened next, she says, was more than embarrassing. It was infuriating.

That same screener started emptying her wallet. “He was taking out the receipts and looking at them,” she said.

“I understand that TSA is tasked with strengthening national security but [it] surely does not need to know what I purchased at Kohl’s or Wal-Mart,” she wrote in her complaint, which she sent me last week.

She says she asked what he was looking for and he replied, “Razor blades.” She wondered, “Wouldn’t that have shown up on the metal detector?”

In a side pocket she had tucked a deposit slip and seven checks made out to her and her husband, worth about $8,000.

Her thought: “Oh, my God, this is none of his business.”

Two Philadelphia police officers joined at least four TSA officers who had gathered around her. After conferring with the TSA screeners, one of the Philadelphia officers told her he was there because her checks were numbered sequentially, which she says they were not.

“It’s an indication you’ve embezzled these checks,” she says the police officer told her. He also told her she appeared nervous. She hadn’t before that moment, she says.

She protested when the officer started to walk away with the checks. “That’s my money,” she remembers saying. The officer’s reply? “It’s not your money.”

At this point she told the officers that she had a good explanation for the checks, but questioned whether she had to tell them.

“The police officer said if you don’t tell me, you can tell the D.A.”

So she explained that she and her husband had been on vacation, that they’d accumulated some hefty checks, and that she was headed to her bank’s headquarters, where she intended to deposit them.

She gave police her husband’s cell-phone number – he was at her mother’s with their children and missed their call.

Thirty minutes after the police became involved, they decided to let her collect her belongings and board her plane.

“I was shaking,” she says. “I was almost in tears.”

When she got home, her husband of 20 years, John Parker, a self-employed plastics broker, said the police had called and told him that they’d suspected “a divorce situation” and that Kathy Parker was trying to empty their bank account.

The job of the police is to find criminals and the bigger the police state, the more police looking for criminals there are. And the constitutional constraints against giving the government unrestrained power to nose into anyone and everyone’s lives to find criminal behavior that isn’t obvious has always been considered a hindrance to their jobs. (This is the old “if you haven’t got anything to hide, then why should you care?” argument.)

They are clearly finding lots of creative ways to use the powers of the surveillance state to do just that:

What happened sounds like a violation of a TSA policy that went into effect Sept. 1, after the American Civil Liberties Union sued the agency on behalf of the former campaign treasurer of presidential candidate Ron Paul.

In that case, Steven Bierfeldt was detained after screeners at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport discovered he was carrying about $4,700 in cash. He challenged their request that he explain where his money came from.

The new TSA directive reads: “Screening may not be conducted to detect evidence of crimes unrelated to transportation security.” If evidence of a crime is discovered, then TSA agents are instructed to contact the appropriate law enforcement agency.

So just what evidence made them treat Kathy Parker like a criminal?

Lt. Frank Vanore, a Philadelphia police spokesman, said that TSA personnel had called his officers, who found the checks to be “almost sequential.” They were “just checking to make sure there was nothing fraudulent,” he said. “They were wondering what the story was. The officer got it cleared up.”

TSA spokeswoman Ann Davis said the reason Parker was selected for in-depth screening was that her actions at the airport had aroused the suspicion of a behavior detection officer, and that she continued to act “as if she feared discovery.”

“We need to ascertain whether fear of discovery is due to the fact a person is concealing a threatening item, be it a dangerous weapon or some kind of explosive,” Davis said. “If the search is complete, and shows individuals not to be a threat to the aircraft or fellow passengers, they are free to go.”

But why call police? Davis said, “Because her behavior escalated.”

Essentially what they are saying is that at American airports if the government finds someone’s behavior “suspicious” they have a right to detain them and search them for evidence of terrorism. If they don’t find evidence of terrorism, but they still find the person “suspicious” they can then call in police, who will look for evidence of non-terrorist related crimes. What constitutes suspicious behavior? Only the “specialist” knows for sure. And if you demand to know why they are calling the police, that constitutes “escalating behavior” which gives them cause for further inquiry.

This is how the creeping police state slowly takes over. They use the excuse of national security to chip away at the constitutional constraints that prevent the government from abusing its authority. The citizens are in a constant state of paranoia, worried that what they know is innocent will “look” guilty and afraid of asserting their rights because the act of asserting them is considered evidence of something to hide. There are thousands and thousands of people in every aspect of American life now granted the authority to do this in the name of anti-terrorism.

* I should add that I don’t honestly know how the evidence obtained in these searches is treated by the courts. I have to assume that once you have consented to the search, as we all do when we attempt to fly (or open a bank account) then it’s admissible. But even if it isn’t, it’s hard to have faith that the police running fishing expeditions in your private business won’t lead to mischief and trouble regardless. Besides, it’s unAmerican.

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Mrs Taliban Dan submits and dutifully defends her husband

Mrs Taliban Dan Submits

by digby

If you haven’t seen the ad that’s causing a flurry among the very, very delicate Republicans, check it out:

The good wife speaks up:

Twenty-four hours after Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson launched a scalding TV attack comparing his opponent to the Taliban for his positions on women’s issues, Florida Republican Daniel Webster is pushing back. In a statement from the campaign Monday afternoon, Webster’s wife and campaign manager derided Grayson’s ad as “shameful” and “ludicrous.” But the response does not refute any of the charges leveled in the ad – titled “Taliban Dan Webster” – which claimed that Webster, a former state Senate majority leader and state House speaker, wanted to make divorce illegal and deny abused women health care. Grayson’s ad even claims that Webster “tried to prohibit alimony to an ‘adulterous wife’ but not an adulterous husband,’” and that he “wants to force women to stay in abusive marriages.” Webster’s response also does not address footage in the ad of Webster saying, “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husband,” and “She should submit to me – that’s in the Bible.”

Uhm. They can’t refute it because it’s all true. Webster is a far right Christian Reconstructionist loon.

Mrs Webster knows very well that it is a sin to lie so she cleverly accuses Grayson of being untruthful without refuting the irrefutable:

In her statement, Sandy Webster said: “Alan Grayson’s latest attack on my husband is shameful. Mr. Grayson seems to have a problem telling the truth and no problem misleading the public. Dan has been an amazing husband and father, and the finest man I have ever known. Mr. Grayson should be ashamed of his nasty smears against my husband.”

The Village is having a full blown hissy fit about the ad, although I notice that it seems to be quite a bit less offensive to women than men. I wonder why?

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The Whining Rich and their high class problems

High Class Problems

by digby

If you haven’t read Bill Maher’s righteous rant about the whining rich, it’s a corker. This excerpt is just the conclusion. The rest is just as good:

Another of my favorites, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann said, “I don’t know where they’re going to get all this money, because we’re running out of rich people in this country.” Actually, we have more billionaires here in the U.S. than all the other countries in the top ten combined, and their wealth grew 27% in the last year. Did yours? Truth is, there are only two things that the United States is not running out of: Rich people and bullshit. Here’s the truth: When you raise taxes slightly on the wealthy, it obviously doesn’t destroy the economy — we know this, because we just did it — remember the ’90’s? It wasn’t that long ago. You were probably listening to grunge music, or dabbling in witchcraft. Clinton moved the top marginal rate from 36 to 39% — and far from tanking, the economy did so well he had time to get his dick washed. Even 39% isn’t high by historical standards. Under Eisenhower, the top tax rate was 91%. Under Nixon, it was 70%. Obama just wants to kick it back to 39 — just three more points for the very rich. Not back to 91, or 70. Three points. And they go insane. Steve Forbes said that Obama, quote “believes from his inner core that people… above a certain income have more than they should have and that many probably have gotten it from ill-gotten ways.” Which they have. Steve Forbes, of course, came by his fortune honestly: he inherited it from his gay egg-collecting, Elizabeth Taylor fag-hagging father, who inherited it from his father. Of course then they moan about the inheritance tax, how the government took 55% percent when Daddy died — which means you still got 45% for doing nothing more than starting out life as your father’s pecker-snot. We don’t hate rich people, but have a little humility about how you got it and stop complaining. Maybe the worst whiner of all: Stephen Schwarzman, #69 on Forbes’ list of richest Americans, compared Obama’s tax hike to “when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.” Wow. If Obama were Hitler, Mr. Schwarzman, I think your tax rate would be the least of your worries.

This whining has been deriving me crazy since the beginning of the financial crisis. I really thought the Master of the Universe, while ruthless and greedy, at least were tough. But this constant sniveling about their poor hurt feelings has made me totally lose whatever sliver of respect I had left for them. It’s nice to see more people calling them out on it.

Update: McJoan pointed out this morning that these whimpering babies only represent a third of the wealthy:

In the long list of polls that reflect majority support in the country for allowing the tax cuts for the rich to expire, there was one highlighted by the Wall Street Journal that has gotten lost in the hub-bub:

As Congress and President Obama fight over the Bush tax cuts, a small number of left-leaning rich people have come out in support of paying higher taxes. The most famous are the members of the Responsible Wealth Project, who say they pay too little in taxes and want to address inequality. They may be an eccentric minority, or (in the view of conservatives) a lunatic fringe. But a Quinnipiac University poll this year showed nearly two-thirds of those with household incomes of more than $250,000 a year support raising their own taxes to reduce the federal deficit. So not all of the wealthy are angry about tax hikes. But that doesn’t mean they just want bigger government. What they want is better government – and investment in growth.

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