Conspiracy of Average People
by digby
Oh dear, I’m afraid Beck might have an aneurysm if he sees this.
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"what digby sez..."
Month: February 2011
Politics on the job
by digby
This story of the Tucson firefighter who refused the call to assist in the Giffords shooting is just plain weird. At first blush it sounds as if he is a soulless right winger who didn’t want to help a Democrat. But when you look at it more closely it appears that it might have been that the fire crew was making unsavory jokes and he didn’t think he could keep it together. Or something.
The firefighter has retired and is apparently one of those “never complain never explain” stoic types so any attempt to find out what he was really thinking has been unsuccessful so far. But I wonder if anyone’s tried to talk to the rest of the crew to find out what they were all saying that might be referred to as “political banter.”
Whatever the case, it’s another example of how the polarized politics of this era are filtering down to the every day working lives of Americans. In most cases, I’m not sure this is a bad thing — perhaps people need to get in tough with this reality a little bit more. Certainly it’s happening in Wisconsin and Ohio right now in a way that real and meaningful. But when it becomes an issue in firehouses and police forces (as it has recently in other contexts as well) then we probably need to start asking ourselves where this is heading.
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“I tried to take him, but they kept firing. He’s dead, he’s dead now. We were just here to demand our rights.”
by digby
This is one of those news days in which it’s hard to concentrate on anything because there are too many things going on at once. But I’m catching up on events in the middle east just now and what a day in Bahrain, where it’s gotten very, very ugly.
This article gives a good overview of the politics that led to the protests there —- and the reaction:
The crackdown was brutal.
At 3 a.m. on Feb. 17, hundreds of Bahraini riot police surrounded the protesters sleeping in a makeshift tent camp in Manama’s Pearl Square. The security forces then stormed the camp, launching an attack that killed at least five protesters, some of whom were reportedly shot in their sleep with shotgun rounds. Thousands of Bahraini citizens gathered in the square on Feb. 15, in conscious emulation of the protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, to push their demands for a more representative political system and an end to official corruption.
The tanks and armored personnel carriers of Bahrain’s military subsequently rolled into the square, and a military spokesman announced that the army had taken important areas of the Bahraini capital “under control.” Perhaps alarmed at the recent revolutions that toppled the regimes of Egypt and Tunisia, the Sunni ruling family in Bahrain has been taking no chances against its young and mostly Shiite protest movement. Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa has been able to overcome past troubles by posing as an enlightened autocrat, willing to show leniency. But divisions within the monarch’s family, which he relies on to maintain his authority, may be forcing the king into a harsher position. And that spells trouble for Bahrain’s stability, as well as the country’s halting reform efforts…
For the past few years, quasi-Salafist and arch-conservative elements of the Khalifa family have been gaining power over more liberal members of the family, who advocate widening the economic and political involvement to all spheres of Bahraini society.
That figures, doesn’t it? But just to make matters really complicated:
The United States has a considerable national security stake in what goes on in this tiny island kingdom. Bahrain is home of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, which protects the vital oil supply lines that pass through the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz — an important asset for the United States in the event of a conflict with Iran. Bahrain is also a key logistical hub and command center for U.S naval operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Indian Ocean.
Nicholas Kristoff is there and reported on the crackdown first hand:
The crowd paused, just briefly, to let out a cheer, and turned left. Within minutes they were screaming, “Live fire, live fire,” as the military began shooting — from a high-rise building, from a helicopter and from the road in front of the demonstrators. King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa’s government had warned them: march and you will be shot. The opposition had warned the king that it would never give up. Both sides held fast in a confrontation that continued to escalate by the day as the king, a Sunni, showed his increasing willingness to use lethal force to preserve his absolute authority, and the opposition, mostly from the majority Shiite community, showed that it was increasingly galvanized by that use of force. “My friend, my brother, he just got shot in the head,” said Mazen Al Smeh, 27, as he struggled to catch his breath on the side of the road, his face covered in tears, his hands painted with blood. “I tried to take him, but they kept firing. He’s dead, he’s dead now. We were just here to demand our rights.” When ambulances arrived for the injured, the army opened fire. When the shooting seemed to stop, a few young men dropped to their knees to pray on the bloodstained road, and the army started to shoot at them, again. There are many details that remained unclear on Friday night, including how many died, how many were injured, and what kind of munitions were fired: live ammunition, rubber bullets or both. Doctors at Salmaniya Medical Complex said at least one young man was dead and four or five critically wounded with head and chest injuries.
Obviously, there old tribal and religious grievances at work and other issues specific to the individual places where this is taking place. But when you strip it all away, it comes down to people rising up to demand their rights and facing down the forces of authoritarianism and repression. It’s ugly, but it’s beautiful at the same time.
Kristoff concludes his piece with this:
At 5:45 p.m., Ali Maltani, 25, with a scarf wrapped around his face and shaking with rage, grabbed a fist-size rock and started to run toward the soldiers. It took five people to restrain him. “My darling, my darling,” said Aziz Abu Dris, 37, kissing the man on the forehead repeatedly, “Throwing a rock at these animals is not worth your life. We should remain peaceful.”
By nightfall, the army had posted soldiers all around the square. On a bridge overlooking the area, the army stationed an armored vehicle with a large gun.
But still there was no sign that the opposition would relent. A group of political parties announced that they planned to march on Saturday, from the Bahrain Mall — to Pearl Square.
Stay tuned.
Update: CNN has created a useful interactive map with a country by country rundown on the issues and protests. This is amazing.
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“It Just Overwhelmed Me”
by digby
Rep. Jackie Speier listened to debate on the House floor on Thursday evening as a Republican Rep. Chris Smith read a long, detailed description of an abortion and a “mangled image of a dead, tiny baby.” Finally, Speier stood up and told her colleagues she had undergone an abortion in the early 1990s following a complication nearly four months into her pregnancy. “As the night wore on, the vitriol and grotesque commentary got worse and worse,” Speier, a second-term Democrat from California, told HuffPost. “I sat there thinking, none of these men on the other side have even come close to experiencing this, and yet they can pontificate about what it’s like. It just overwhelmed me.” Speier underwent an abortion in her early 40s, while she was serving in the California State Assembly. The procedure used to terminate the pregnancy was the same type that Smith’s book described. As she listened, Speier said she became more emotional and made the decision to speak out. “This was a wanted pregnancy, it was the second miscarriage I had had,” she told HuffPost. “What they express doesn’t come close to the experience that a woman goes through when she is losing a baby or when a pregnancy is terminated. It’s a painful, gut-wrenching loss.” She said she had spoken publicly about her experience with abortion only once before, while debating late-term abortion in the California state legislature. After she told her story, Speier said many colleagues — both male and female — offered their support, some saying she put tears in their eyes. One Republican told her the amendment was inappropriate, she said, while Smith, whose remarks caused her to speak up, said nothing.
Representative Speier shouldn’t have to bare her personal life to the whole country. But she did because cynical, paternalistic Congressmen like Smith and Mike Pence thinks she is a child, a cruel child, who like all women cannot be trusted to make her own decisions. They have no clue about these experiences and no respect for the agency and autonomy of those who have to deal with them. (The women who support these patriarchal nincompoops are just as disrespectful.) It is a rare woman who has an abortion without understanding the seriousness of it and no one but she can rightly make the decision.
The House passed this punitive, partisan “defund the left” law banning funding for Planned Parenthood earlier today. It was almost a party line vote, but a larger percentage of Democrats crossed over to vote with Republicans than the other way around, which says something considering the GOP’s large majority.
This is an ACORN gambit, of course. I just saw some forced pregnancy robot on Matthews pimping those Lila Rose videos as if they came down from Mt Sinai. Sadly, Matthews didn’t know what she was talking about, so he just let it go when she said that Planned Parenthood is working with pimps to put underage prostitutes back out on the streets after their abortions. Steve King (R-mental damage) on Candy Crowley was even worse, going on about the “filthy, disgusting Planned Parenthood offices.” Crickets from Crowley.
It would be really neat if our pro-choice President could issue a veto threat right about now so that we can shut down this assault before it gets to the Senate. This is just sickening.
Update: Via Mike Stark, another cruel and stupid little girl who can’t be allowed to make her own decisions:
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Joe Klein Takes A Trip Down Memory Lane
by digby
Wow, talk about misreading the zeitgeist. Joe Klein has been so immersed in the Third Way centrist babble on public employee unions for so long that he’s completely lost the thread.
Revolutions everywhere–in the middle east, in the middle west. But there is a difference: in the middle east, the protesters are marching for democracy; in the middle west, they’re protesting against it. I mean, Isn’t it, well, a bit ironic that the protesters in Madison, blocking the state senate chamber, are chanting “Freedom, Democracy, Union” while trying to prevent a vote? Isn’t it ironic that the Democratic Senators have fled the democratic process? Isn’t it interesting that some of those who–rightly–protest the assorted Republican efforts to stymie majority rule in the U.S. Senate are celebrating the Democratic efforts to stymie the same in the Wisconsin Senate? An election was held in Wisconsin last November. The Republicans won. In a democracy, there are consequences to elections and no one, not even the public employees unions, are exempt from that. There are no guarantees that labor contracts, including contracts governing the most basic rights of unions, can’t be renegotiated, or terminated for that matter. We hold elections to decide those basic parameters. And it seems to me that Governor Scott Walker’s basic requests are modest ones–asking public employees to contribute more to their pension and health care plans, though still far less than most private sector employees do. He is also trying to limit the unions’ abilities to negotiate work rules–and this is crucial when it comes to the more efficient operation of government in a difficult time.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think that Joe just dusted off an old column from 1993, changed a few names and just threw it on line. He clearly has not been following the changing debate on these issues over the past few years and certainly hasn’t the vaguest clue about what Walker is really doing.
Klein has been schooled a lot over the years by his readers and, I would guess, some of his friends about his ossified, anachronistic political worldview. They need to stage another intervention. The next thing you know he’ll be reviewing that hot new band Hootie and the Blowfish and talking about last night’s Seinfeld episode. I liked the 90s as much as anyone, but they’re over, Joe.
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This Is how We Do It
by digby
This is how a smart progressive makes the argument:
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
It’s a little bit unfair since Hayes has all the facts on his side and yet he’s forced to argue with a lying bozo like Rick Lazio, but that’s the way it usually plays out. And it needs to be done by every progressive spokesperson who goes on TV and speaks to reporters. Over and over and over again. It’s difficult because they are having to push against years of right wing propaganda — it sounds “funny” when you first hear it and the reporters and spokesmodels will look at them as if they are speaking in Swahili. But over time, if everyone does it, people will begin to get comfortable with the truth and be able to see through the lies.
It’s a dirty job, but Hayes does it well.
h/t to reader
Cheese And Koch
by digby
Well here’s a big surprise. Adele Stan reports that Governor Walker of Wisconsin has a hidden agenda:
Gov. Walker claims that his war on the public workers in his state is simply about balancing Wisconsin’s budget; believe that and there’s a collapsed bridge in MInnesota I’d like to sell you. UPDATE: TPM’s Brian Beutler reports that half of Wisconsin’s budget shortfall results from three of Walker’s own business-coddling initiatives. According to the Capitol Times, as quoted in Beutler’s piece, in January, Walker pushed through “$140 million in spending for special interest groups.” Walker claims a budget shortfall of $137 million. You do the math. The fact is, Walker is carrying out the wishes of his corporate master, David Koch, who calls the tune these days for Wisconsin Republicans. Walker is just one among many Wisconsin Republicans supported by Koch Industries — run by David Koch and his brother, Charles — and Americans For Prosperity, the astroturf group founded and funded by David Koch. The Koch brothers are hell-bent on destroying the labor movement once and for all. During his election campaign, Walker received the maximum $15,000 contribution from Koch Industries, according to Think Progress, and support worth untold hundreds of thousands from the Koch-funded astroturf group, Americans For Prosperity. AlterNet recently reported the role of Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus and Americans For Prosperity in a vote-caging scheme apparently designed to suppress the votes of African-Americans and college students in Milwaukee. In 2008, Walker served as emcee for an awards ceremony held by Americans For Prosperity. There, he conferred the “Defender of the American Dream” award on Rep. Paul Ryan, now chairman of the House Budget Committee.
But this isn’t a local thing. It’s a national campaign:
It’s said that states are the laboratories of democracy, but the Kochs are determined to make Wisconsin a laboratory of corporate oligarchy. Nationwide, the war on public workers — and government in general — is not simply a facet of an ideological notion about the virtues of small government. The war on government is a war against the labor movement, which has much higher rates of union membership in the public sector than it does in the private sector. Labor is seen by corporate leaders as the last strong line of resistance against the wholesale takeover of government (and your tax dollars) by corporations. So, by this line of thought, labor must die.
The demonization of the public sector unions — police, firefighters, teachers, forest rangers, all those devils who are sucking the lifeblood of decent Americans everywhere — has been going on for a long time, but has really picked up speed lately. It’s not being to paranoid to wonder if those Koch gathering had something to do with it.Stan’s entire article is a must-read to understand just how influential the Kochs are in Wisconsin. For instance:
You’d think that a big business like Koch Industries would love the idea of stimulus spending, since it’s bound to improve the economy. So, what gives? Why do these guys hate the stimulus funds so much?Well, it seems that too much of it, in their view, goes to preserve the jobs of unionized workers — like autoworkers and teachers — which, in turn, preserves unions as part of the U.S. workforce. So that’s why, presumably, Americans For Prosperity President Tim Phillips today sent out a newsletter touting an anti-stimulus bill introduced by a House member from the Midwest Frontier Province of Kochistan:
By the way, newly-elected Congressman Sean Duffy from Wisconsin (emphasis mine) made one of his first efforts in Congress a bill that returns non-obligated stimulus funding to the taxpayers. Now his bill has been included in the continuing resolution the House is working on this week. It’s great to see our efforts to end government overspending become the core of actual legislation and not just something we all rally for.
And Wisconsin isn’t the only place.
This uprising couldn’t have happened in a more important place or illustrate the threat of corporate dominance in our culture and economy any better. It’s a full-blown war on workers, and not just union workers. After all, if union wages and benefits are stripped, all wages and benefits will go down. That’s the point.
And, by the way, as I keep pointing out, this is an allegedly libertarian Tea party governor who is threatening to unleash the “men with guns” of the government on American citizens and it doesn’t seem to aise an eyebrow. Why is that?
Update: Not one fatuous gasbag on television this morning has yet reported that the budget problems in Wisconsin are due to this Koch puppet’s tax cuts of last month. Not one. They are just going on and on and on about how broke the country is. Norah O’Donnell was practically crying just now about the “crisis”.
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Silly Little Girls Just Need Guidance
by digby
Mother Jones has been doing great work tracking the conservative assault on women and I think these maps showing where and what kind of restrictions are now in place are particularly illuminating:
You can by looking at those various tactics just how phony, paternalistic and deeply insulting the forced pregnancy zealots have become. Women are being treated like slow children who don’t know their own minds and have to be lectured to and “taught” before they can be trusted to exercise their rights.
Is there any other constitutional right which requires this kind of “education” before a citizens can use it? I’m guessing that the old African American voter tests are the last ones formulated quite like this.
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Marxist Budget Cutters
by digby
This is what happens when a Democrat suggests cutting a favorite GOP program, in this case the Pentagon’s NASCAR sponsorship:
It’s Marxist to request that the US government not fund a private race car team? I think maybe this person doesn’t know what the word “Marxism” means.
But I suspect he (or she) does know what the rest of the epithets in his threatening fax mean. He seems quite comfortable with the language.
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Political Sleight of Hand
by digby
This needs to be sent to every gasbag in DC because they are getting the Wisconsin story very wrong, mostly from interviewing GOP ideologues and listening to uniformed Democrats:
Wisconsin’s new Republican governor has framed his assault on public worker’s collective bargaining rights as a needed measure of fiscal austerity during tough times. The reality is radically different. Unlike true austerity measures — service rollbacks, furloughs, and other temporary measures that cause pain but save money — rolling back worker’s bargaining rights by itself saves almost nothing on its own. But Walker’s doing it anyhow, to knock down a barrier and allow him to cut state employee benefits immediately.Furthermore, this broadside comes less than a month after the state’s fiscal bureau — the Wisconsin equivalent of the Congressional Budget Office — concluded that Wisconsin isn’t even in need of austerity measures, and could conclude the fiscal year with a surplus. In fact, they say that the current budget shortfall is a direct result of tax cut policies Walker enacted in his first days in office. “Walker was not forced into a budget repair bill by circumstances beyond he control,” says Jack Norman, research director at the Institute for Wisconsin Future — a public interest think tank. “He wanted a budget repair bill and forced it by pushing through tax cuts… so he could rush through these other changes.”
That is amazing. I don’t think I’ve heard one journalist point this out. On Hardball I just listened to some Republican legislator say this was all about unaffordable pensions and Matthews featured some footage of Ed Rendell saying basically the same thing. They don’t know the facts, and as people are just tuning in to the amazing events in Wisconsin, it would be helpful if they weren’t fed a bucket of BS on the subject.
TPM has great coverage of Wisconsin. Read it all. It’s very exciting:
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