Month: March 2011

A Million Dead Fish

by digby

Ok, this is weird:

Authorities in Redondo Beach are investigating what killed millions of fish over the last day at King Harbor Marina. Fish, including anchovies, sardines and mackerel were floating lifeless in Basins 1 and 2 of the north side of King Harbor Marina.

They speculate this it’s because a red tide (a common occurrence in these waters) forced them into the harbor and they crushed themselves against the shore and ran out of oxygen. And I heard someone on TV say it was because of the high winds we had yesterday that made it impossible for them to get out.

Whatever it is, that is not a sight you usually see in that marina, which is down the highway from where I live. Don’t tell Pat Robertson. I’m sure he’ll think it’s a sign of the Apocalypse since its here in California, home of witchy women and homosexuals.

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Ethically Troubling

by digby

From the stating the obvious files:

TOOBIN: There are 172 people in Guantanamo now. We don’t know how many fit into each category but this category of people that we are saying you can hold them —

SPITZER: Hold forever essentially.

TOOBIN: — forever without any kind of trial, without a commission, without a criminal trial.

SPITZER: Right.

TOOBIN: That’s morally, legally, ethically troubling and we have not heard the last about that category of people.

One certainly hopes so. But then I think that many of us believed this one had been definitively decided already when we voted in huge numbers in 2008:

Barack Obama
Democratic Party Nominee – President

President Obama says Guantanamo should be closed and habeas corpus (AP) should be restored for the detainees. He says the United States should have “developed a real military system of justice that would sort out the suspected terrorists from the accidentally accused.” In June 2008, Obama praised (NYT) a Supreme Court decision allowing Guantanamo prisoners to challenge their detention in civilian courts. He called the ruling “an important step toward re-establishing our credibility as a nation committed to the rule of law, and rejecting a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting habeas corpus.” In February 2008, Obama criticized the prosecution of six Guantanamo detainees charged with involvement in the 9/11 attacks. He said the trials are “too important to be held in a flawed military commission system that has failed to convict anyone of a terrorist act since the 9/11 attacks and that has been embroiled in legal challenges” (SFChron). Instead, Obama said, the men should be tried in a U.S. criminal court or by a military court-martial. Obama voted against the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (PDF).

I guess all this is so 2008 and nobody really cares much about it anymore. But the fact that we are going to keep people under indefinite detention forever makes me feel sick to my stomach. It’s hard to imagine a less humane or decent decision.
It’s one thing for people to be locked up and know their fate. It’s quite another to simply be held in limbo forever. Some might even call that torture..

Making Things Worse

by digby

Who could have ever imagined that electing a criminal tea partier to the highest office in the state would cause problems?

Rick Scott, the conservative Republican billionaire who plucked the governor’s job from the party establishment in November with $73 million of his own money and the backing of the Tea Party, vowed during his campaign to run the troubled state like a corporate chief executive (which he was) and not a politician (which he proudly says he is not).

And now it has become a problem, some of his fellow Republicans say.

“The governor doesn’t understand there is a State Constitution and that we have three branches of government,” said State Senator Mike Fasano, a Republican from New Port Richey who upset Mr. Scott with rough handling of his staff during a testy committee hearing. “They are talking about the attitude that he is still the C.E.O. of his former health care corporation, and that is not going to work in this state, in Tallahassee, in my district. The people believe in three branches of government.”

Republican lawmakers in Florida were hoping for a smoother transition. Instead, they say, they got top-down management from a political novice.

With the Legislature convening on Tuesday for a potentially arduous two-month session that is bound to usher in major cuts in spending and jobs and radical changes to education, pensions, unemployment benefits and Medicaid, the governor will be tested on a broader, more public scale. Florida faces an estimated $3.6 billion budget shortfall this year and has a stubborn 12 percent unemployment rate.

“I think there have been some understandable growing pains because government doesn’t function like a corporation,” said Speaker Dean Cannon, a Republican from central Florida, taking a more measured tone than Mr. Fasano.

Read the whole article. Basically, he believes that he is now a monarch and can do anything he wants without any input from the other electe4d leaders. And here’s a little taste of what he plans to do:

Mr. Scott is single-minded in his plans to shake up Florida and create jobs. He wants to create a business-friendly environment, chop up the bureaucracy, peel away regulations and hand out $1.7 billion in tax cuts for corporations and property owners in the first year of his budget. Privatizing Medicaid and prisons is also high on the agenda.

In his budget proposal, Mr. Scott is seeking to eliminate more than 8,500 state jobs, including in the Corrections and Health Departments. His budget for the state’s already lean public schools is $1.75 billion less than this year’s, mostly because federal stimulus money dried up.

And he wants to cut costs in Florida’s pension fund by requiring more than 600,000 government workers, including police officers, teachers, firefighters, judges and retirees, to contribute 5 percent to their retirement. New employees would use plans similar to a 401(k). This has angered state workers, who have gone without a general raise since 2006. They plan large demonstrations around Florida on Tuesday.

Maybe this is what Floridians wanted, but I doubt it. On the other hand, it’s what they should have expected. Rick Scott may be the looniest, most dishonest, powerful elected official in the country. And it was easy to see that going in. Stay tuned.

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FYI

by digby

I know this will come as a huge shock, so gird yourself:

“The U.S. government is not broke,” said Marc Chandler, global head of currency strategy for Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. in New York. “There’s no evidence that the market is treating the U.S. government like it’s broke.”

The U.S. today is able to borrow at historically low interest rates, paying 0.68 percent on a two-year note that it had to offer at 5.1 percent before the financial crisis began in 2007. Financial products that pay off if Uncle Sam defaults aren’t attracting unusual investor demand. And tax revenue as a percentage of the economy is at a 60-year low, meaning if the government needs to raise cash and can summon the political will, it could do so.

To be sure, the U.S. confronts long-term fiscal dangers. Over the past two years, federal debt measured against total economic output has increased by more than 50 percent and the White House projects annual budget deficits continuing indefinitely.

“If an American family is spending more money than they’re making year after year after year, they’re broke,” said Michael Steel, a spokesman for Boehner.
$1.6 Trillion Deficit

A person, company or nation would be defined as “broke” if it couldn’t pay its bills, and that is not the case with the U.S. Despite an annual budget deficit expected to reach $1.6 trillion this year, the government continues to meet its financial obligations, and investors say there is little concern that will change.

I know it’s very stimulating to believe that we are on the precipice of insolvency but it just ain’t so. We have big economic problems, however. But nobody seems to care about those.

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Do You Like Gladiator Movies Tony?

by digby

If it weren’t for the religious right’s hostility to the first lady’s anti obesity campaign and their own tendency to girth, I might be more worried about this:

For months now, we have been chronicling how self-described prophets and apostles have been merging 7 Mountains/Dominionism with “mainstream” Religious Right activism … and increasingly the man at the center of this appears to be the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins.
[…]
Just today …I stumbled across this video of Perkins, Joyner, Boykin and Frank Turek discussing the importance of Christians getting deeply involved in politics.

Perkins explains the absolute necessity of getting Christians into all levels of government while Boykin compared Christians today to the Spartan army and quoted King Leonidas by declaring “molon labe” [“come and get them”] when he and his army were told to lay down their weapons.

Likewise, Boykin declared “molon labe,” stating that he will not be silenced and challenged those in Washington who are out to take his liberties, rob his grandchildren, and destroy America to just try to take them from him.

Finally, Joyner announced that Christians have more than enough people to take control, but they need to bind together and, as such, would soon be unveiling coalition called “300.”

These guys love those sword and sandal movies. But they’ve been working on their own Christian soldier project fro quite some time. Remember this?

Providing entertainment for the U.S. troops serving in Afghanistan and Iraq is one thing; the Pentagon’s promotion of a Trojan horse tour that preaches eliminationist theology and crusades for Christ in Islamic nations is another. It is a small wonder that the Department of Defense lends its imprimatur to a conservative Christian organization that invites current as well as former military commanders to help proselytize on military bases. And given the Pentagon’s policy of discrimination against gays in the military, it is ironic that the Christian missionary group that they promote sells T-shirts that display what can only be described as homoerotic art. In short, the Pentagon seems to have adopted a new missionary position for the Operation Straight Up Tour and its “Tough-Men Meetings.” Basically, the OSU Tour is promoting a holy war against the alleged enemies of Christ — not unlike, say, a jihad. But there’s a difference: jihad does not come with a homoerotic T-shirt.

Another reminder:

From April 1998 to February 2000, he served as the Commanding General, U.S. Army Special Forces Command (Airborne) at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. From March 2000-2003, he was the Commanding General, United States Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center, Fort Bragg, N.C. In June 2003, he was appointed Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence under Dr. Stephen Cambone, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence.

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She Knows One When She Sees One

by digby

Per Media Matters, Sarah Palin has some very specific ideas about what constitutes a terrorist:

JEANINE PIRRO (host): Here’s a sound of P.J. Crowley speaking for the Obama administration. Take a listen.

P.J. CROWLEY, State Department spokesperson (video clip): We are looking into the individual who shot our service members. We’re looking into his relationship with others. I don’t know that we’ve made a judgment yet on whether it was someone acting alone or somebody acting in concert with others. [BREAK IN VIDEO] Was, you know, for example was the shooting of Congresswoman Gabbie Giffords a terrorist attack? I mean, you have to look at — you have to look at the evidence and look at the motivation. Then you make a judgment.

PIRRO: Alright Governor, there you have it. They absolutely refuse to call this terrorism. Even though the shooter shoots two airmen on a military bus yelling Allahu Akbar.

PALIN: Right.

PIRRO: And why is he so afraid — why is the administration so afraid to admit that this is terrorism?

PALIN: Why is the administration so naive in assuming the American public is going to accept a comment like P.J.’s that essentially equates a crazed maniac in Arizona, shooting Gabbie Giffords to this terrorist who tried to and was successful in gunning down our servicemen overseas as he did yell out Allahu Akbar? This is, to me, I think reflective of remember the incident at Fort Hood where it took weeks and weeks and weeks for the Obama administration to finally admit that there was a terrorist involved there.

PIRRO: But why do you think, Governor, he’s afraid to call it terrorism? I don’t understand why the reluctance to be objective about what’s going on.

PALIN: His world view, our president’s world view certainly seems a bit different than I believe than most Americans. Because Judge, I think if you ask most Americans on the street, if someone was hell bent on killing one of our military personnel, yelling Allahu Akbar and had terrorist ties, if you can’t see that clearly as a terrorist, then we’ve got some things quite askew in our administration. [Fox News, Justice with Judge Jeanine, 3/5/11]

What about this guy?

But then Palin and her followers’ world view is that such murders can’t be defined as terrorism because terrorism requires that someone be Muslim. Killing doctors who perform abortion is doing God’s work and that’s completely different.

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How many enemies can they afford?

by digby

It seems that Republicans are determined to antagonize every demographic except conservative white males and the elderly. Do they think they will be able to win consistently this way?

New Hampshire’s new Republican state House speaker is pretty clear about what he thinks of college kids and how they vote. They’re “foolish,” Speaker William O’Brien said in a recent speech to a tea party group.

“Voting as a liberal. That’s what kids do,” he added, his comments taped by a state Democratic Party staffer and posted on YouTube. Students lack “life experience,” and “they just vote their feelings.”

New Hampshire House Republicans are pushing for new laws that would prohibit many college students from voting in the state – and effectively keep some from voting at all…

The measures in New Hampshire are among dozens of voting-related bills being pushed by newly empowered Republican state lawmakers across the country – prompting partisan clashes akin to those already roiling in some states over GOP moves to curb union power.

I’m sure by now that everyone has noticed that since taking power across the country in November, the Republicans have concentrated on one specific thing, nearly across the board: defunding and dismantling any institutional support for Democrats from systematically attacking voting rights to specific constituencies to their most essential organizing institutions. This isn’t Tea Party politics or social conservatism or even a direct result of plutocratic economics although they will all certainly benefit. This is a hard core partisan attack on the organizing and funding functions of the left.

They’ve never been shy about trying to do this before. Certainly vote suppression is a very old right wing tactic. But they seem to have taken all this to the next level in the last couple of years. The question is whether or not they launch a coordinated attack on every constituency but their own base and expect to continue to win elections. It looks like we’re going to find out.

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Rabbit Hole politics

by digby

One of the Shock Doctrine’s characteristics is taking advantage of crises and catastrophes to impose free market fundamentalism on a frightened population.It’s bad when it happens as a result of war or natural disaster. But there is nothing more egregiously immoral than doing it in the wake of a disaster made by the very people who are imposing their will. In fact, it’s criminal.

Here we have a perfect example:

Wisconsin’s public employees have already agreed to accept pay cuts and to place more of their compensation in Wisconsin’s public employees pension fund. And upon closer examination, Walker’s house-on-fire rhetoric regarding his state’s finances doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, as McClatchy found:

Ironically, in Wisconsin, where Republican Gov. Scott Walker is trying to weaken public-sector unions and reduce pension benefits, he’s exempted police and firefighters, who are among the most unionized public employees. And Wisconsin’s public-sector pension plan still has enough assets today to cover more than 18 years of benefits.

Keep in mind, that’s nearly two decades of benefits that could be paid even before the changes to which Wisconsin’s current public employees have agreed go into effect. Overall, Wisconsin’s pension system is 97 percent funded, according to the Center for Retirement Research. In fact, as the Center for Economic and Policy Research pointed out, “the shortfalls facing most state and local pension funds have been seriously misrepresented in public debates”:

The major cause of these shortfalls has not been inadequate contributions by state governments, but rather the plunge in the stock market following the collapse of the housing bubble. Given the low PE ratios in the stock market, pension fund assumptions on the future rate of return on their assets are consistent with most projections of economic growth and past experience. Furthermore, when expressed relative to the size of their economies, most states are facing shortfalls that appear easily manageable.

Walker has already been scolded by his state’s finance director for falsely claiming that he would have to lay off state employees if his budget bill wasn’t passed by a certain date. Politifact also rated Walker’s repeated assertions that his state is broke as “false.”

I think most people assume that both the federal and state governments are on the verge of collapse. Certainly, that’s the narrative. And they are further convinced that the reason they are on the verge of collapse because of their pension and health obligations to their citizens. This is not true on every level. But most importantly, it is not the cause of the current budget shortfalls, which are also a result of the recession and the lower tax revenue due to unemployment.

We are taking a national trip down the rabbit hole cutting spending to solve problems that won’t exist for decades (if at all), in order to pretend to be doing something about the current economy which is starved for stimulus. It’s a great disaster capitalist play, for sure. But this country will look back on this in a decade or so and wonder what these wealthy elites put in the water to make the populace so docile and accepting of their own demise.

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White Male Panic

by digby

I’ve come to the conclusion that the only reason that CNN hired Erick Erickson is because Pat Buchanan wasn’t available:

ROMANS: But Erick, don’t you think — this is a little bit different. Because we have a history that’s tortured and painful in this country that makes, even today when you start talking about a white-male only scholarship it makes people kind of cringe. Because there was a time when white men frankly ruled this country and had all of the access, and the reason why we have all of these —

(CROSSTALK)

ERICKSON: Absolutely. But they don’t anymore. You can justify that, for example, a scholarship for African-Americans, given the history of this country. But can you for Asians or Hispanics or for women? Now we’ve reached the point in Texas, at least, where the white men are no longer the majority in Texas.

I suppose it’s progress that he admits that there has historically been discrimination against African Americans. Haley Barbour would have us believe that Jim Crow wasn’t “all that bad.”)But evidently he looks around him and sees a world in which Hispanics, Asians and females are in positions of social and professional dominance. That may, in fact, be true on camera at CNN. But if you look at the power structure behind it and every other corporation, university, government agency and elected body, I think he can feel safe in assuming that the white male isn’t in any immediate danger of having his power usurped.

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History’s Actors

by digby

Nobody can rationally accuse him of not reaching out that’s for sure (although the irrational right will certainly do so):

President Barack Obama says he’s willing to make deeper spending cuts if Congress can compromise on a budget deal that would end the threat of a government shutdown.

Obama’s appeal for common ground came Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address, but lacked specifics on how to bridge the $50 billion gulf that divides the White House and Democratic budget proposal from the deeper reductions offered by Republicans.

The competing plans are headed for test votes in the Senate in the coming week; neither is expected to survive, setting the stage for further negotiations.

The government is running on a temporary spending bill that expires March 18, so the parties have until then to come up with a plan to pay for the remainder of the budget year through September.

“We need to come together, Democrats and Republicans, around a long-term budget that sacrifices wasteful spending without sacrificing the job-creating investments in our future,” Obama said.

“My administration has already put forward specific cuts that meet congressional Republicans halfway. And I’m prepared to do more,” said Obama.

But the claim that Democrats are meeting Republicans halfway only stands up under the Democratic explanation of the intricate numbers game being played on Capitol Hill.

Isn’t that special? The administration has staked out a position that it’s willing to meet the Republicans halfway and now beyond. Surprise! Now the issue is what “halfway” really means. Is he going to allow the GOP to shut down the government over a dispute about that definition? I’d say it’s unlikely. Indeed, I’d say that we are going to end up with at least 50 billion in cuts at the very least. And that’s just to keep the government funded until September.

I’d suggest that they just throw in the towel and accept all the cuts except those to Planned Parenthood (for the purpose of demanding our gratitude forever more) except that a total capitulation will almost certainly require the Republicans to insist on defunding Planned Parenthood. It’s just how they roll. So, I guess we’ll have to play this out.

I won’t be surprised if at the very end they’ll agree on draconian cuts and the Republicans will insist that the cuts were much higher than they are and the Dems insist the opposite.(After all, the numbers are now hopelessly confused.) The Villagers will extol the virtues of bipartisanship and everyone will be happy. Except the people affected by the budget cuts, of course, but we’ll just blame that on “the deficit” and cut some more next year.

The only one’s who will know are some cranky liberal economists who nobody pays any attention to anyway. After all, those who care about real numbers are people like you, people who:

*…believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality. That’s not the way the world really works anymore. When the oligarchs act, they create their own reality. And while you are studying that reality—judiciously, as you will— the oligarchs will act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. The oligarchs are history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what they do.

* slightly modified, but just as pertinent.

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