Month: January 2012

Don’t listen to the douchebags

by digby

Desecrating for flag and country

by digby

Wow. Rick Perry is proving to be the nasty piece of work we always thought he was:

Texas Gov. and presidential aspirant Rick Perry believes the Obama administration is using “over-the-top rhetoric” and shows “disdain for the military” in its handling of the Marines videotaped urinating on dead fighters in Afghanistan.

Speaking to CNN Chief Political Correspondent Candy Crowley Sunday, Perry said, “What’s really disturbing to me is the over-the-top rhetoric from this administration and their disdain for the military.”

“When you’re 18 or 19, you do dumb things. These kids made a mistake, there’s not any doubt about it,” Perry continued.

He added that those involved in the incident should be “appropriately punished,” but that charging the Marines with a criminal act is “over the top.” He maintained that the soldiers were following in the tradition of Gen. George Patton, who he said acted similarly in war times.

Now that’s the kind of Commander in Chief we’ve been waiting for: the kind who says that urinating on corpses is a part of the great American military tradition.(Just don’t do it on an American flag or you’ll regret it.)

I’m not surprised that this is Perry’s strategy in South Carolina.Only a few years ago it would have been a huge winner there. It’s a testament to changing times (and Perry’s remarkable inability to appeal to anyone but bloggers at Red State) that it’s not working. Standing up for crude martial violence is usually quite successful in that state, but it doesn’t appear to be working. Baby steps?

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Making the GOP kiss his ring

by digby

Questions for Focus on the Family

by David Atkins

The odious Focus on the Family people have taken an interest of late in the careers two people: Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow, and presidential candidate Rick Santorum. Tebow was a subject of the organization’s Super Bowl ad last year, while organizational leader James Dobson and fellow Godbothers just met to back Santorum’s futile bid for the presidency.

During last night’s Broncos-Patriots playoff game in which Tebow’s Broncos got crushed 45-10 by the heathen Northeasterners, Focus on the Family aired this bit of creepiness:

A normal person might just see a football game and a presidential election where the hyper-religious stars just happened to lose. But given the tendency of Focus on the Family to see the hand of the Lord in everything, one might ask the following questions concerning the failures of the organization’s standard-bearers:

1) Did God already know Tebow and Santorum would fail? If so, why not help them?

2) Did God make Tebow and Santorum fail, presumably as a cruel test of faith?

3) Did God give Tebow and Santorum the free will to perform better, but they failed Him?

4) If they had the potential to do better but failed Him, did God know they would fail Him in advance? If so, why the interest, and why create the conditions for their failure?

5) If God knew they would fail and made them fail, and Tebow’s and Santorum’s victories were important enough to involve Himself, how could God find testing the faith of their followers more valuable than showing the righteous glory of their ideals through victory?

So many questions, so little time.

The alternative, of course, is that if there is some Divine Power that guides the universe and meddles in mortal affairs, Her grace and interest are about as far from the likes of Tim Tebow, Rick Santorum and James Dobson as can possibly be imagined.

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Seismic political activity

by digby

And here I thought they were all populists too:

Homicide rate at near 50-year low, probably thanks to low lead levels

by David Atkins

The nation’s homicide rate is at its lowest point in nearly 50 years:

Things weren’t so hot for the American economy and a lot else in 2010, but for the health of the American people, it was a pretty good year.

Life expectancy improved, mortality rates fell for all five leading causes of death, and the homicide rate was as low as it has been in almost 50 years, according to data released Wednesday.

he gap in life expectancy between whites and blacks narrowed slightly, although the difference between men and women remained unchanged, at 4.9 years. Hispanic men and women continued to have the longest life expectancy, a finding that has puzzled demographers in recent years but that now appears to be unquestionable.

“We sort of expected those trends would continue, but what grabbed us here was the drop in homicide,” said Robert N. Anderson, chief of mortality statistics at the National Center for Health Statistics.

Homicide climbed into the top 15 causes of U.S. deaths in 1965. It placed tenth for three years in the early 1990s. In recent years, it has been hovering at 13 or 14. In 2010, it fell to 16.

“We’re really not sure what’s driving this. That’s the million-dollar question,” Anderson said.

‘
What is driving it? There’s still no agreement on the subject. Traditional liberal theories on crime would suggest that poverty should be correlated with criminal activity–that people turn to crime when they lack alternatives, and that people shy away from crime given better opportunities. And yet the numbers put the lie to those claims, and hence to a certain left-leaning views about criminal behavior and the reasons for it. Crime rate statistics have until recently been one of the very few feathers in the cap of rational conservatives to promote their worldview.

But it turns out that conservative arguments fail here as well. There is, of course, the theory popularized in Freakonomics that abortion is the cause of dropping crime rates. I never really bought into this, as the leap from correlation to causation seemed too great to be conclusive. Same goes for more conservative-leaning arguments about crack cocaine.

But one compelling thesis stands out, as bizarre as it may appear. It has to do with lead. Kevin Drum has been harping on this point for a while now, and the evidence is very compelling. The Washington Post had a great story on the connection between violent crime and lead levels in 2007:

The theory offered by the economist, Rick Nevin, is that lead poisoning accounts for much of the variation in violent crime in the United States. It offers a unifying new neurochemical theory for fluctuations in the crime rate, and it is based on studies linking children’s exposure to lead with violent behavior later in their lives.

What makes Nevin’s work persuasive is that he has shown an identical, decades-long association between lead poisoning and crime rates in nine countries.

“It is stunning how strong the association is,” Nevin said in an interview. “Sixty-five to ninety percent or more of the substantial variation in violent crime in all these countries was explained by lead.”

Through much of the 20th century, lead in U.S. paint and gasoline fumes poisoned toddlers as they put contaminated hands in their mouths. The consequences on crime, Nevin found, occurred when poisoning victims became adolescents. Nevin does not say that lead is the only factor behind crime, but he says it is the biggest factor.

Giuliani’s presidential campaign declined to address Nevin’s contention that the mayor merely was at the right place at the right time. But William Bratton, who served as Giuliani’s police commissioner and who initiated many of the policing techniques credited with reducing the crime rate, dismissed Nevin’s theory as absurd. Bratton and Giuliani instituted harsh measures against quality-of-life offenses, based on the “broken windows” theory of addressing minor offenses to head off more serious crimes.

Many other theories have emerged to try to explain the crime decline. In the 2005 book “Freakonomics,” Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner said the legalization of abortion in 1973 had eliminated “unwanted babies” who would have become violent criminals. Other experts credited lengthy prison terms for violent offenders, or demographic changes, socioeconomic factors, and the fall of drug epidemics. New theories have emerged as crime rates have inched up in recent years.

Most of the theories have been long on intuition and short on evidence. Nevin says his data not only explain the decline in crime in the 1990s, but the rise in crime in the 1980s and other fluctuations going back a century. His data from multiple countries, which have different abortion rates, police strategies, demographics and economic conditions, indicate that lead is the only explanation that can account for international trends.

Because the countries phased out lead at different points, they provide a rigorous test: In each instance, the violent crime rate tracks lead poisoning levels two decades earlier.

“It is startling how much mileage has been given to the theory that abortion in the early 1970s was responsible for the decline in crime” in the 1990s, Nevin said. “But they legalized abortion in Britain, and the violent crime in Britain soared in the 1990s. The difference is our gasoline lead levels peaked in the early ’70s and started falling in the late ’70s, and fell very sharply through the early 1980s and was virtually eliminated by 1986 or ’87.

“In Britain and most of Europe, they did not have meaningful constraints [on leaded gasoline] until the mid-1980s and even early 1990s,” he said. “This is the reason you are seeing the crime rate soar in Mexico and Latin America, but [it] has fallen in the United States.”

Lead levels plummeted in New York in the early 1970s, driven by federal policies to eliminate lead from gasoline and local policies to reduce lead emissions from municipal incinerators. Between 1970 and 1974, the number of New York children heavily poisoned by lead fell by more than 80 percent, according to data from the New York City Department of Health.

Lead levels in New York have continued to fall. One analysis in the late 1990s found that children in New York had lower lead exposure than children in many other big U.S. cities, possibly because of a 1960 policy to replace old windows. That policy, meant to reduce deaths from falls, had an unforeseen benefit — old windows are a source of lead poisoning, said Dave Jacobs of the National Center for Healthy Housing, an advocacy group that is publicizing Nevin’s work. Nevin’s research was not funded by the group.

The later drop in violent crime was dramatic. In 1990, 31 New Yorkers out of every 100,000 were murdered. In 2004, the rate was 7 per 100,000 — lower than in most big cities. The lead theory also may explain why crime fell broadly across the United States in the 1990s, not just in New York.

What is it about lead that leads to violent crime? It’s a neurotoxin that prevents impulse control:

The centerpiece of Nevin’s research is an analysis of crime rates and lead poisoning levels across a century. The United States has had two spikes of lead poisoning: one at the turn of the 20th century, linked to lead in household paint, and one after World War II, when the use of leaded gasoline increased sharply. Both times, the violent crime rate went up and down in concert, with the violent crime peaks coming two decades after the lead poisoning peaks.

Other evidence has accumulated in recent years that lead is a neurotoxin that causes impulsivity and aggression, but these studies have also drawn little attention. In 2001, sociologist Paul B. Stretesky and criminologist Michael Lynch showed that U.S. counties with high lead levels had four times the murder rate of counties with low lead levels, after controlling for multiple environmental and socioeconomic factors.

In 2002, Herbert Needleman, a psychiatrist at the University of Pittsburgh, compared lead levels of 194 adolescents arrested in Pittsburgh with lead levels of 146 high school adolescents: The arrested youths had lead levels that were four times higher.

“Impulsivity means you ignore the consequences of what you do,” said Needleman, one of the country’s foremost experts on lead poisoning, explaining why Nevin’s theory is plausible. Lead decreases the ability to tell yourself, “If I do this, I will go to jail.”

Nevin’s work has been published mainly in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Research. Within the field of neurotoxicology, Nevin’s findings are unsurprising, said Ellen Silbergeld, professor of environmental health sciences at Johns Hopkins University and the editor of Environmental Research.

“There is a strong literature on lead and sociopathic behavior among adolescents and young adults with a previous history of lead exposure,” she said.

If true, there are two interesting conclusions one can draw:

1) Contra conservative claims, “tough on crime” statutes have had little to do with dropping crime rates. Instead, we can thank all those liberal hippie environmentalists for having the best crime prevention policies out there, and we can add violent murders to the list of costs that polluting corporations have externalized and forced society to pay for;

and

2) More disturbingly, contra claims from both liberals and conservatives alike, civilization seems to be a pretty thin veneer on human nature. If the difference between a rising wave of murders and record low crime rates, is simply a question of impulse control, that would mean that we all have moments where we would often like very much to do horrible things to people, but fear of reprisal and bouts of conscience get in the way just in time. It doesn’t speak well for basic human nature, and serves as another data point for my earlier arguments about the guiding force behind liberalism as an idea.

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Krugman says the Eurozone is still barreling down the road to nowhere even as their credit rating is being downgraded by the S&P. Here’s why:

S&P:

We also believe that the agreement [the latest euro rescue plan] is predicated on only a partial recognition of the source of the crisis: that the current financial turmoil stems primarily from fiscal profligacy at the periphery of the eurozone. In our view, however, the financial problems facing the eurozone are as much a consequence of rising external imbalances and divergences in competitiveness between the EMU’s core and the so-called “periphery”. As such, we believe that a reform process based on a pillar of fiscal austerity alone risks becoming self-defeating, as domestic demand falls in line with consumers’ rising concerns about job security and disposable incomes, eroding national tax revenues.

Angela Merkel today:

German chancellor Angela Merkel has called on eurozone governments speedily to implement tough new fiscal rules after Standard & Poor’s downgraded the credit ratings of France and Austria and seven other second-tier sovereigns.

This really has taken on the cast of ritual sacrifice now. It makes no sense, they just want to “purge the rottenness out of the system [so that] high costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life — values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up from less competent people.” It’s not economics it’s religion.

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Chris Hayes on Guantanamo. Just watch this:

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

He wasn’tthe only one. Recall this awful story:

Blue America Chat — Annie Kuster for congress

by digby

On election night 2010, when progressives around the country were pummeled and defeated, one race kept us all up late, hoping against hope that we’d have a memorable victory among the defeats. As it turned out New Hampshire’s 2nd congressional district candidate Ann McLane Kuster lost to Charlie Bass that night by only a few votes, but showed that even in a GOP tsunami she had what it took to compete as a progressive. So naturally she’s challenging Bass to a rematch in 2012.

This time there’s no doubt about what she’s up against. Bass has turned out to be a very typical Republican by voting to end Medicare and then whining about semantics when Democratic groups called him on it. He’s collecting money from all the usual suspects, notably energy and insurance companies who have business in front of the energy and commerce committee, along with practically every other lobbyist from tobacco to Walmart. It didn’t take him long to put his hand out and start collecting the big bucks from the corporations and the 1 percent.

By contrast Annie has had over 11,000 individual donations, 90% of which are under a hundred dollars. (You can join the crowd, by donating to her campaign here.)

She’s running a grassroots campaign with an army of progressives on the ground and around the country who are anxious to see a “frugal yankee” put these priorities to work for the people:

I believe we need to cut wasteful government spending — like the billions in subsidies for oil companies, the corporate tax breaks for moving jobs overseas, and the billions more spent on redundant weapons systems that our military leaders have identified as wasteful and unneeded. But instead of these cuts, the US House of Representatives is cutting what we need most: education, public safety, and the clean energy research that will reduce our dependence on foreign oil. It makes no sense. America can do better than this — so, it’s time for all of us to do something about it.

From the beginning Annie has been a strong voice against the American empire, opposing the Iraq invasion, the Afghanistan surge and additional war funding over the past few years. In 2010 she was endorsed by NH Peace Action which said “It is Ms. Kuster’s outspoken criticism of the war in Iraq and the surge in Afghanistan that brought us to this decision.” She says that everywhere she goes in her district, people are tired of war and want to bring the troops home and spend the money to rebuild America — just like many of you.

America can do better — with the help of dedicated, energetic progressives in the House, fighting for the people instead of catering to the special interests. Blue America is very excited to once again endorse Ann McLane Kuster for the congressional seat in New Hampshire’s second district and are pleased that she has accepted our invitation to join us for the first Blue America chat of the 2012 campaign at 2pm est and 11am pst at Crooks and Liars. Please join Annie and us for a freewheeling conversation about her campaign, the state of politics and her plans to help us all create a better country for the 99%.

And if you would like to help her with this grassroots endeavor, you can contribute to her campaign here.

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