Month: December 2010

The Suggestibility Of Bradley Manning

by digby

I haven’t written much about Bradley Manning’s treatment in his military brig, since Greenwald has done a great job along with many others who are following the story carefully. There seems to be a lot of controversy over whether or not he is being tortured. In my opinion, locking up someone who has not presented any kind of threat to other prisoners and who has not been convicted of a crime for months on end in solitary confinement under tight restrictions is torture. It’s horrible enough to do it someone who has been convicted, but using these techniques on someone you are trying to get to testify against someone else cannot be seen in any other light.

As we well know by now, the line between interrogation and torture has become indistinguishable among far too many people and many of these more suspect interrogation techniques are likely to produce the same kind of false information you get from torture. So one aspect of the Manning story stuck out at me as being pretty damning evidence and that’s the fact that he’s being awakened every five minutes during the day and if the guards “need” to assure themselves that he’s ok, they wake him up at night. Keep in mind that this is a guy who’s completely isolated and has no access to anything unauthorized, not even a real blanket and pillow. (Apparently, he’s got some strange device that makes him miserable.)

Sleep deprivation is well known to enhance “suggestibility” and is commonly used in interrogations:

A person’s suggestibility is how willing they are to accept and act on suggestions by others. Interrogators seek to increase a subject’s suggestibility. Methods used to increase suggestibility may include moderate sleep deprivation, exposure to constant white noise, and using GABAergic drugs such as sodium amytal or sodium thiopental.

There’s no evidence that they are using white noise or the drugs mentioned, but it sure sounds as if they employing moderate sleep deprivation to increase “suggestibility.” And we know what they are suggesting, don’t we?

Months and months of sleep deprivation and isolation cannot be justified for security reasons. This fellow isn’t a commando. He isn’t a professional spy. He’s just some grunt who uploaded some electronic files. The only reasonable explanation for his treatment is that they are trying to get him to implicate someone else in his alleged a crime. And that’s the oldest reason for torture in the books. In the old days, they wanted their subjects to implicate Satan. Today it’s Julian Assange.

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Little “Slip-up”

by digby

Boy they must really, really like Haley Barbour in the Village. Andrea Mitchell and Chris Cillizza twisted themselves into pretzels today trying to excuse his “mess” and explain why he didn’t mean what he seemed to mean, even as they both agree his words were “indefensible”

Cillizza: I’m sure in Haley Barbour’s mind, what he was thinking in this interview was, that he was waxing nostalgic about his time growing up in a small town in the South. This story was about how he was the four year letter winner and he was the class president even when he was a junior and he was the guy everybody thought was going to go do big things and now he’s done big things and now is he going to do it on a bigger stage. The problem is that talking about the 1960s and 1970s, the civil rights movement, race was a huge issue a huge problem, you can’t wax nostalgic about those times. He has to be smarter than that going forward if he’s going to be taken seriously as a presidential hopeful. This is clearly a slip-up — it’s not the end of the road for him, I think that’s a little much but it’s a slip-up.

Mitchell: it’s something he’s going to have to deal with and we saw today him dealing with it. Thank you very much.

Yeah, Haley Barbour’s only been at the very top of the GOP heap for decades, a two term Governor and one of the most successful lobbyists in Washington. Cilizza says in his piece today on the flap that everyone in Washington considers him “the most able political strategist in the party.” Yet we’re supposed to believe that in this case he’s so dumb that he didn’t realize that the issue of race in the South in the 1960s was a minefield. Sure. But the good news is that he’s “dealing with it” — winking and nodding the whole way.

It’s fairly clear that the GOP is seriously looking for a faux populist to run against Obama. And the Tea Party may require it. But while Barbour has a Southern drawl there is no one more “establishment” than he is. He’s got some work to do to separate himself from his moneyed, beltway ties.

It’s certainly possible that he just misspoke. Cillizza seemed to think that Barbour just got too comfortable with his pals in the press and didn’t realize how toxic this would sound.it’s possible, but Barbour is no George Allen — he’s a very sharp guy. And he knows that if he’s running for president he has a much different constituency to worry about than a bunch of beltway chatterers and bloggers. He needs to let these Tea Partiers know for sure that he isn’t some Gucci loafer wearing insider, but an authentic Real American who understands them very well. There are certain ways to do that and this one is an old GOP standard.

And while it’s true that this isn’t the good old days of the Southern Strategy, a smart politician can always find a way to put something “out there” and then take it back, having the best of both worlds.

Update: Did Haley suddenly change back to a sloppy white supremecist since 2004?

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Two Words For Frank Zappa On His 70th Birthday, With A Promise of More To Come

by tristero

Thank you.

Annual Holiday Fundraiser going on right now. If you can help support the blog, I appreciate it. Cheers! — d

Inching Toward Reason

by digby

What with our recent embrace of torture and the like, it seems as though we are always moving backward lately. So here’s some welcome news:

Executions in the United States continued to decrease in 2010, with the 46 death sentences carried out representing a 12% drop from the year before, according to a report issued Tuesday.

The 2010 figure is just over half the 85 people executed a decade ago in 2000.

Meanwhile, 114 people were added to death rows around the country this year, just under half the number from 2000, said the report by the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), a Washington-based group that opposes capital punishment.

While the issue of capital punishment can generate emotional political and public debate, the center’s report suggested practical reasons for the decrease in executions.

The capital appeals process can be expensive, causing many lawmakers to re-examine the financial consequences of pursing death sentences in a weakened economy, according to the report. Illinois officials reported $100 million had been spent statewide in the past seven years on death penalty prosecutions, despite not executing anyone in 12 years.

“Whether it’s concerns about the high costs of the death penalty at a time when budgets are being slashed, the risks of executing the innocent, unfairness, or other reasons, the nation continued to move away from the death penalty in 2010,” said Richard Dieter, the center’s executive director who wrote the report.

I suspect the knowledge that DNA has exonerated so many people who’ve been convicted of serious crimes is as responsible as anything. There aren’t a lot of people who are comfortable with the idea of executing innocent people (although there are some who consider it collateral damage.)But however you feel about the death penalty on a philosophical or moral basis, it’s clear that our legal system isn’t capable of meting out the death penalty with fairness or justice, much less without error.

The Supreme Court has again scheduled arguments in coming months on a range of capital appeal issues, which apparently would please retired Justice John Paul Stevens, a powerful voice against the death penalty.

Stevens, who stepped down over the summer at age 90, wrote an essay this month in the New York Review of Books that lamented the continued use of capital punishment as “unwise and unjustified.”

“The finality of an execution always ends that possibility” that death row inmates may repent and have a positive impact on society from behind bars, he wrote. “That finality also includes the risk that the state may put an actually innocent person to death.”

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The Dance Of The Sugarplum Patriots

by digby

Susie Madrak gives us the latest in the war on Christmas:

I just needed to tell someone what happened at the Chester County Ballet production of the Nutcracker. Yes, I know I live in rightwingville but did you know that the Nutcracker now has the songs “God Bless America” and “America the Beautiful” in it? At the end of the first act, a lovely ballerina comes out and dances to God Bless America, in the middle of a Russian ballet!!! Then the end is Barbra Streisand singing America the Beautiful with the whole company dancing in red, white and blue costumes. I was really taken aback. The worst part was no one, I mean no one, cared. It was all, meh. I know I am to the left of everyone I know, but this is insane right? Right?

No. It’s just that Uncle Sam has joined up with Jesus to fight the anti-Christmas forces at long last.

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Nuclear Pout

by digby

Poor Huckleberry Graham. He really didn’t want to have to vote against allowing children to have a decent life or against allowing gays to serve openly in the military. In fact it’s excruciating for him:

But sounding vexed during the show, Graham seemed not only chafed by the Senate voting down a Republican effort to amend the preamble of the treaty; he also linked the START treaty to his resentment over how the current lame-duck session of Congress has turned out. Graham exclaimed how hard it was to pass a bipartisan compromise over extending the Bush era tax cuts, and expressed his disappointment over repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy banning openly gay service members. “If you want to have a chance of passing START, you better start over and do it in the next Congress, because this lame duck has been poisoned,” Graham told CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer. “The last two weeks have been an absolutely excruciating exercise. ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ a controversial topic – some say the civil rights issue of our generation, others say battlefield effectiveness – was passed in the lame-duck session without one amendment being offered,” Graham said.

Oh boo-hoo-hoo.

But he’s keeping his word. He’s going to vote against it.

If anyone had it in their heads that merely giving in to millionaires and businesses would be enough, well I hope they’ve been disabused of that illusion. It’s never enough.

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The New Compromise

by digby

It just doesn’t get any more obvious than this. From today’s Hardball:

Matthews: Here it is. A new CNN poll shows President Obama approval rating among moderates rose five points since last month and it dropped eight points [among liberals.] Fair enough. It looks like the moderates were watching and the liberals were watching. He moved to the center.

Chris Cilizza: Chris I would say the best political thing that happened to President Obama during this lame duck — House liberal Democrats expressing their displeasure with the tax cut compromise. He looked big, he looked kind of like the level headed voice who’s looking at the big picture, let’s do what good for America. I don’t know if they did this on purpose, my guess is they probably didn’t, but that worked, it accrued to the president’s benefit. Again the bigger a President can look, I mean bigger and magnanimous and nonpartisan, the better for your poll numbers.

That amazing analysis was based on the fact that Obama lost 8% of liberals and only gained 5% of moderates. How that adds up to a big win I don’t know. I guess liberals are only worth three fifths of a moderate in American politics. (Update: I apologize for the very bad analogy.) I guess liberals aren’t worth as much as moderates.

Whether or not it made Obama look “bigger” to the country is unknown. But hitting the left where it hurts certainly made him look like a big, big hero to the Villagers. And I feel quite confident that the White House knew that would happen. After all, it’s not like it’s an original tactic.

Update: more from the Village gasbags on CNN

Candy Crowley: Overall, he’s got a 48% approval rating, not great but not horrible. Look what’s happened since November. Liberals, support fell since November 79% to 72%, conservatives it’s a wash, same thing. But look at the moderates, he’s picking up with moderates. If you were looking at this from a political point of view, moderates decide elections and this was a good move for him.

John King: It is a stepping stone to a more stable political situation. He was ending the year in pretty bad shape. Now can he sustain having liberals mad at him? Having seven in ten liberals mad at him, that’s pretty good over all, when it comes to turning out the vote he doesn’t have to worry about that until 2012. He’s got some repair work to do with his liberal base but iff the republicans just got from 40 to 60 because of the allegiance of independent voters, that’s what president Obama has to worry about. How do you get the independent, the middle, back. That’s the first bandaid he has to fix, then he’ll worry about his base.

Gloria Borger: Can I just say something about the liberals? I bet the total will go up after he signs “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.” But when you have 72 percent support among any group, why are you worrying about them so much?

Crowley: .. it’s not like the rest of them are going to go out and vote for Mitt Romeny or Sarah Palin…

Borger: Exactly. And we hear all of this “Oh my God, the base, the base, the base..”

King: But, but, but … this is important though. After the census when the seats move around, the electoral votes move around, the map is going to change in a way not to the president’s liking. If the 2012 election were tomorrow, he would need that base and he would need a much higher than 70% approval rating.

Crowley: And it isn’t just voting either right? it’s about “la la”, licking envelopes …

Borger: Getting out the vote. But as opposed to what? Are they still going to support Barack Obama as opposed to say … Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Haley Barbour? I would say he’s doing fairly well with liberals so stop worrying so much.

I’d say he’d better worry just a teensy bit about liberals in the congress even if he agrees that liberals in the country can be taken for granted since “everyone” knows they have no choice but to vote for him anyway. Congresspeople have to be responsive to their constituents. And many of them represent that same liberal base. They might want very much to support the presidents long march to the right so that he can get all those moderates out there who allegedly want tax cuts for millionaires, but they may just start feeling the same kind of pressure from their liberal constituents that the conservatives face from the their Tea partiers (who for some reason, these gasbags never seem to think can be safely ignored.)

The Tea Party has shown that successful primaries against stalwart conservatives gives them power. Do the Villagers think the left didn’t notice that? Do they think that the liberals in congress didn’t notice it either?

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Barbour’s Southern Strategy

by digby

There’s lots of chatter about these comments by Haley Barbour, “whitewashing” the Conservative Citizens’ Council and saying that racism in the South before the civil rights movement “wasn’t that bad.” Reporters are all scratching their heads wondering why he would “go there.”

Joan Walsh tweeted that it’s clearly a strategy, and I agree. If he’s running for president, as it seems he is, then I’d guess he’s going to have to appeal to those Tea Partiers to win a primary. (You’ll recall that he dissed Sarah Palin pretty badly.) This is a dogwhistle and a clever one. He’s simply saying that racism in America was always overblown with the implication being that those who complain about it have always been whiners. It’s a good one and I give him credit for his ingenuity. Dogwhistles aren’t easy these days.

Now before i get hammered for being unfair to old Haley, who reporters seem to just love and are willing to grant him a pass, let me point out that Haley Barbour is a very smart guy. He was head of the RNC, one of the top lobbyists in DC and a successful two term governor. He doesn’t misspeak. But let’s stipulate that everyone can make a mistake. But is there any possibility that a smart guy like Barbour would make exactly the same “mistake” twice?:

Barbour’s Ole Miss-takes

by digby

I think the boldest rewriting of history I’ve heard recently (and gawd knows I’ve been hearing a lot of it) is Haley Barbour’s contention that it was the Republicans working for Nixon in the south who led the way on civil rights. A generous reading of that fantasy would say that means the people who enacted the Southern Strategy feel culpable for their opportunistic race based politics and are trying to assuage their guilt. (A less generous reading would say they are just liars.)

But this story provides a fascinating glimpse into the reality that the deluded guilt ridden or fantastic liar Barbour is unable or unwilling to admit. Barbour claimed to recall a black student at Ole Miss in the late 60s who was so successfully integrated that nobody even gave it a second thought. They were so friendly, she shared her notes with him:

“When I became a Republican in the late ’60s, in my state and probably some other Southern states the hard right were all Democrats,” he said. “They didn’t want to have Republicans because, in their words, ‘It split the white vote.’ And young people were more likely to be Republicans than our grandparents.”

That’s when he brought up Bailey.

He said she was “a very nice girl” who “happened to be an African-American, and, God bless her, she let me copy her notes the whole time. And since I was not prone to go to class every day, I considered it a great — it was a great thing, it was just — there was nothing to it. If she remembers it, I would be surprised. She was just another student. I was the student next to her.”

Bailey, reached by phone, reacted to Barbour’s story with surprise that bordered on confusion.

“I don’t remember him at all, no, because during that time that certainly wasn’t a pleasant experience for me,” she said. “My interactions with white people were very, very limited. Very, very few reached out at all.”

Bailey is now the principal of an elementary school in Beaverton, Ore. While she may have seemed like just another student to Barbour, history hasn’t viewed her that way. For her role in the civil rights movement, she was inducted into the Ole Miss Alumni Hall of Fame and has a scholarship named after her.

She’s sometimes asked to speak to groups about her experience. Her recollections are filled with details of pain, humiliation, isolation and courage.

She left Mississippi at 24, following her brother to the more liberal Pacific Northwest. It seemed beautiful and welcoming. She worked in Seattle, and eventually was recruited to Oregon. She got a master’s degree, began a doctoral program.

She’d go back to Mississippi to visit her parents. Her father was a prominent local civil rights leader who didn’t share Barbour’s view of Republicans as enlightened on the issue. Both her parents are deceased.

Barbour left Ole Miss before he finished his bachelor’s degree to work for the Nixon campaign, then came back to earn his law degree. Bailey said she finished her undergraduate degree in three years, not because she was a great student, but because she wanted to get out of Oxford, Miss., as fast as she could.

She recalled dancing in Oxford Square once with another black student at a school celebration when a crowd of whites began pelting them with coins and beer. “It was just an awful experience. I just saw this mass of anger; anger and hostility. I thought my life was going to end.”

A campus minister, one of the only whites she remembers showing her kindness, took her by the hand and led her to safety. She said the minister was ostracized.

During her undergraduate days, she was inundated with intimidating phone calls to her dorm from white men. “The calls were so constant,” she said. “Vulgar, all sexual connotations, saying ni**er bitches needed to go back to the cotton field and things of that nature.” She’d complain, have the phone number changed. Then the calls would start again. Funeral wreaths with what appeared to be animal blood on them were found outside her dorm.

That’s the enlightened world Barbour the Nixon acolyte inhabited, in which he sat next to “just another student .. who happened to be African American.” Again, I don’t know if he’s just delusional or lying but the fact that he’s dishonestly arguing that the Southern Strategy wasn’t consciously designed to exploit the racial turmoil of the time argues strongly for the latter. The Republicans recruited young Southern racists to carry out their plan. If Barbour wasn’t one of them, he was a rare bird. His “memories” notwithstanding, this is all well documented and Barbour has been in politics his entire adult life, so this isn’t the first he’s heard of it.

I’m sure there are people who are going to argue that Barbour’s memories are as valid as Bailey’s and therefore this is just another matter of he said/ she said. But the travails of the students who integrated Ole Miss are also well documented and anyone who argues that a black student during that era was “just another student who happened to be black” is flat-out wrong.

As I wrote before, I suppose it’s a good thing that these people have enough shame about their past that they are trying to airbrush it now. But considering that he’s also dogwhistling the birther nonsense, it would appear that old Haley’s just moved on to the newer, shinier form of right wing racism. I guess we can hope that he’ll airbrush all that too at some point. Baby steps.

He’s running. And ironically, he’s running on a Southern Strategy.

Update: This is pretty good. I don’t know if they’ve thought it through this thoroughly, but Barbour’s spokesman’s comments are an excellent appeal to solidarity with Tea Partiers who also respond with fury whenever their racism is noted:

I just spoke with Dan Turner, the official spokesman for Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS), who responded in strong terms to criticism of Barbour’s recent praise for the segregationist Citizens Council groups of the Civil Rights era. “You’re trying to paint the governor as a racist,” he said. “And nothing could be further from the truth.”

Read the whole post.
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Ownership Society

by digby

Krugman took on the “revisionist historians” who insist that the only reason for the housing crash was those horrible poor people who had no business buying houses in the first place and never would have done so if it hadn’t been for a bunch of bleeding heart liberals forcing Banks to loan to them.

I’ve got yer history for yah right here. Here’s one of those bleeding heart liberals at the 2004 Republican Convention:

Another priority for a new term is to build an ownership society, because ownership brings security and dignity and independence.

Thanks to our policies, home ownership in America is at an all- time high. (APPLAUSE) Tonight we set a new goal: 7 million more affordlable homes in the next 10 years, so more American families will be able to open the door and say, “Welcome to my home.”

Just keep that in mind when you get it into your head that the right wingers have abandoned racism. It’s all very well and good when things are booming. But when things go wrong … well let’s just say they haven’t abandoned scapegoatism.

h/t to RP
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Virtually Speaking Sunday

by digby

I’m chatting with Susie Madrak today at 5pm PST on Virtually Speaking. You can listen in on blogtalk radio.

We’re going to wind up the year. And what a year it’s been.

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