Month: April 2012

“This is where I come to do fucked up things”

by digby

I doubt many of you will enjoy this piece. But you should read it anyway. It’s about war:

So I grabbed the chain and dragged it out and shot it again with the shotgun and, uhhhh, brains all over me …

Shut up, faggot. You never did that …

Man, even if you actually got to see some Afghan chick and she was hot, I still wouldn’t fuck her cause she’d still be from here, which means she’d still be covered with shit.

My last deployment, my platoon sergeant, he’d say, “Make sure nothing lives. Cows: Taliban food. Sheep: Taliban food. Donkeys: Taliban transportation. Kill everything.”

You know what? Fuck these people.

Spend time around soldiers and you realize a lot of this is part of the game, part of being a young man in war. Still, I sensed more anger and hatred than I had encountered before. Givens spun at its center like a black hole. He was in his mid-20s, charismatic and quick, a combat veteran. He threw down declarations like a hip-hop star—respect yourself and no one else; fuck bitches, get money—and the younger infantrymen revered him. Even officers appeared to defer to his humor, efficiency, and rage.

Platoons are often structured like high school cliques, and Givens stood at the apex of his, setting the tone and example. A list of characteristics scrolled through my mind as I listened to the men, traits I probably learned from episodes of Law & Order, or Lord of the Flies. Pop-culture sociopathy. Sexualized aggression. The displays of wolves.

“This is where I come to do fucked-up things,” Givens said. “So I don’t do them at home.”

This article isn’t an indictment of war criminals. It’s just observations of the every day way in which war permits the ugly underbelly of humanity to emerge — and dehumanize almost everything it touches. No matter how “good” you are or how righteous the cause, war itself is a form of psychosis.

As I write, furor is waning in the United States over a YouTube video showing four Marines urinating on Taliban corpses. I don’t consider it too surprising, though some writers suggest it is a war crime. It was probably born in a hot moment, without much reflection. Beginner’s foolishness. The men of Destroyer did nothing like that in front of me. They shoved prisoners around, looted cigarettes, wrecked property—things we routinely dismiss in war. But I had seen and sensed enough, and they spoke of past deeds and future desires that leapt beyond the normal bluster of young soldiers.

In speech we give ideas life. I felt I was watching some of the men unravel toward serious crimes, if, in fact, they had not already committed them elsewhere in Afghanistan or Iraq. Evil or atrocity often explodes from a furnace built by the steady accretion of small, unchallenged wrongs. Some men in Destroyer platoon had been drifting that way for a long time.

I think it happens to countries too.

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Mr Unpopular

Thank You, Allen West

by David Atkins

In a way, I’m grateful to Allen West for calling members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus “Communists”, since it has put the Progressive Caucus and it’s very popular People’s Budget back in the news.

Rachel Maddow hit it out of the park yesterday.

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

This, by the way, is what is so frustrating about so-called “Centrists” like Olympia Snowe or Linda Parks. A “Centrist” should stand in the center of American public opinion, not in some no-man’s land of unpopular policies that stand somewhere between the two parties.

There are issues on which majorities of Americans tend to agree more with Republicans on than Democrats. They’re not many, but they’re there. Americans tend to agree with Republicans on things like building an immigration wall, the Keystone pipeline, cutting foreign aid, or cutting deficits (which the progressive budget does, of course.) If some politicians want to occupy “centrist” positions, then let them do so on positions from both sides that are popular with the American people.

“Centrists” who don’t support most of the positions in the People’s Budget can call themselves whatever they want, but “centrist” and “moderate” aren’t appropriate labels.

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Indoctrinating the kiddies

by digby

So AEI is upset that liberal universities are indoctrinating little children into the evils of socialism against their will:

For decades, conservatives have documented and criticized how liberal ideology runs rampant throughout higher education. Hence William F. Buckley’s famous quip from the 1960s: “I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.” Fifty years later, few conservatives would disagree.

But could the problem be getting worse? The Pew Research Center released a study in December showing that more Americans age 18 to 29 have a favorable view of socialism over capitalism. In fact, this demographic has a net positive view of socialism (49 percent positive to 43 percent negative) and net negative view of capitalism (46 percent positive and 47 percent negative). When Pew released an earlier version of the same study two years ago, this demographic’s views on socialism were exactly the opposite (43 percent positive and 49 percent negative).
Clearly, more than one’s college education goes into one’s opinions on economic systems. But just as clearly, few would deny that a college graduate’s opinions are shaped during his or her four years at college – that’s why they’re called the formative years. So when we engage in a spirited debate about the liberal dominance of college, let’s also remember that there are real-world consequences to this imbalance within academia.

Yeah. There are also real-world consequences to events in the real world. It has probably not escaped the notice of young people that the titans of capitalism just screwed the pooch big time and that maybe the system is being gamed in their favor. Silly children:

This is the dilemma that confronts a nation whose youths don’t understand or appreciate what underlies our prosperity. The recent Occupy Wall Street protests presented the perfect irony of this generation and its confusion. While decrying the evils of capitalism, the protesters organized their marches via social networks and mobile devices that were the products of capitalism. No government agency or grant created Twitter or the iPhone.

Funny. Who was Al Gore working for again when he invented thew internets? I keep forgetting.

Also too, there’s the massive student loan debt, even for students at state schools which are slowly being drowned in the bathtub by Grover Norquist. You can’t blame young people for being a little less than enthusiastic about the system. But by all means, blame the universities. If conservatives can find a way to finally eliminate education altogether and replace it with compulsory memorization of Atlas Shrugged and the complete works of Jackie Mason they’ll have it made.

BTW: Has it occurred to any of these people that the youngsters who voted en masse for Barack Obama might also be more amenable to socialism since right wingers have been calling their hero a socialist non-stop since 2008? At the very least they’re likely to consider anything the right wing hates so much in a positive light.

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More spreading of our liberty

by digby

When the Supreme Court ruled that police strip searches are legal and that all Americans who are taken into police custody should be prepared to submit to “visual inspection” I wonder if this is what they had in mind for women? From Kevin Gosztgola:

In the prison that operates under the umbrella of the Michigan Department of Corrections, women are forced to remove their clothing and spread the lips of their vaginas so that a guard can peer inside. Female prisoners are forced to do this after they meet with family members, religious workers, their lawyers, or anyone else who may visit them in prison.

Women who have been subjected to this depraved procedure have given voice in a letter submitted to the state’s Corrections Department. Rather than outline what guards in the facility do, here are a few descriptions from victims:

They place you in a chair. You are completely naked. I had the officer then tell me, “spread your pussy lips.” Then I had one tell me to put my heels on the chair and use my hands to open my lips. … I feel like I’m being prostituted by these officers … I am an abused woman, and every time this happens I feel completely lost again.

Here’s a video about the procedure from the ACLU:

In his dissent from the strip search ruling, Justice Breyer specifically mentioned this sort of thing, if not the exact process:

The visually invasive kind of strip search at issue here is not unique. A similar practice is well described in Dodge v. County of Orange, 282 F. Supp. 2d 41(SDNY 2003). In that New York case, the “strip search” (as described in a relevant prison manual) involved:

‘a visual inspection of the inmate’s naked body. This should include the inmate opening his mouth and moving his tongue up and down and from side to side, removing any dentures, running his hands through his hair, allowing his ears to be visually examined, lifting his arms to expose his arm pits, lifting his feet to examine the sole, spreading and/or lifting his testicles to expose the area behind them and bending over and/or spreading the cheeks of his buttocks to expose his anus. For females, the procedures are similar except females must in addition, squat to expose the vagina.’” Id., at 46.

There wasn’t much discussion of visual vaginal searches in the arguments. But it’s a standard part of strip searches in one way or another.

That Michigan practice is appalling. But I’d guess it doesn’t fall outside the boundaries the Supreme Court set for strip searches. So ladies, even if you aren’t a prisoner, if you find yourself in police custody, don’t be surprised if they do this to you too. These things are all about humiliation and domination — breaking your spirit. If they are allowed to do it, and I suspect they are under Florence, they very likely will.

The ACLU says this is sexual assault by the state. But I’m pretty sure the Supreme Court just said that was ok. After all, they said that anyone, even someone who had committed no crime and was in police custody on a trivial charge such as running a red light or failing to pay a warrant for parking tickets — or civil disobedience — could be subject to stripping naked and undergoing the above described procedure.

While I agree that this sounds like sexual assault by the state, it’s probably perfect legal.

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Romney Struggles

by digby

I think it was wrong for Hilary Rosen to say that Ann Romney had never worked a day in her life. She certainly has, as this article points out:

Every adult amateur knows how tough it can be to fit riding into a busy lifestyle. But the demands of Ann Romney’s schedule would make her fellow competitors’ collective heads spin.

She’s raised five boys, doted after 11 grandchildren, managed charity programs at both state and national levels and played an increasingly active role in her husband Mitt Romney three—first Senate, then gubernatorial and now presidential—political campaigns.

Along the way she’s beaten back multiple sclerosis, a debilitating disease that, nine years ago, left her bed-ridden and in despair.

In the rarefied world of upper-level dressage, Romney has achieved goals many amateurs only dream of. Riding her beloved Baron, a 19-year-old, Austrian Warmblood gelding, and coached by her long-time trainer and friend Jan Ebeling, Romney earned her U.S. Dressage Federation silver and gold medals in 2006. That same year, she was the New England Dressage Association Adult Amateur Champion at Grand Prix level, on a score of 63.33 percent.

“I’m just like any other crazy horse person,” she said. “You find a way to make the time to ride. If I have to get up at 5 a.m. to fly to California and then ride until 10 p.m. at night, because that’ll be my only chance to ride for a month, then that’s what I’ll do.”

And anyway, as Paul Ryan points out, people with Ann Romney’s wealth aren’t rich, they’re job creators. This article doesn’t even mention the time and effort it takes to manage the servants. If that’s not work, I don’t know what is!

Besides, as Ann Romney said just this morning:

“I know what it’s like to struggle.”She admitted that she may not have struggled financially as much as others in the U.S. “I would love to have people understand that Mitt and I have compassion for people who are struggling,” Ann Romney said. “We care about those people that are struggling.”

In fairness, dealing with MS is a struggle and nobody can take that away from her. It is undoubtedly less of struggle when you have hundreds of millions of dollars andcan afford the very best medical care int he world. But it’s till a struggle.

However, her life in general hasn’t exactly been rags to riches:

Born Ann Lois Davies, she was raised in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, by parents Edward R. Davies and Lois Davies. Her father, originally from Caerau near Bridgend, Wales, was a self-made businessman who became president of Jered Industries, a maker of heavy machinery for marine use; he also was mayor of Bloomfield Hills.

Ann Davies knew of Mitt Romney since elementary school. She went to the private Kingswood School in Bloomfield Hills, which was the sister school to the all-boys Cranbrook School that he attended. The two were re-introduced and began dating in March 1965; they informally agreed to marriage after his senior prom in June 1965.
While he was attending Stanford University for a year and then was away starting two-and-a-half years of Mormon missionary duty in France, she decided on her own to convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints during 1966. In doing so she accepted the guidance of Mitt’s father George Romney, the Governor of Michigan. (Within a year her two brothers followed her in converting.)

She graduated from high school in 1967 and began attending Brigham Young University (BYU). She also spent a semester at the University of Grenoble in France during her freshman year. The Mormon missionary rules only allowed her two brief visits with Mitt and very rare telephone calls with him. While at BYU she dated future business academic Kim S. Cameron. She sent Mitt a “Dear John letter”, while Mitt sent letters back imploring her to wait for him.

Immediately after Romney’s return from France in December 1968, the pair reconnected and agreed to get married as soon as possible. Ann Davies and Mitt Romney were married by a church elder in a civil ceremony on March 21, 1969, at her Bloomfield Hills home, with a reception afterward at a local country club.The following day the couple flew to Utah for a wedding ceremony inside the Salt Lake Temple; her family could not attend since they were non-Mormons, but were present at a subsequent wedding breakfast held for them across the street.

She spent the rest of her life dedicated to raising her five children and supporting her husband’s business and political career. They always had money and status. And she worked at that, obviously. She’s also had her personal struggles. But they certainly weren’t financial struggles.

It’s not that she chose to stay at home and raise her kids. That’s a perfectly valid choice. It just isn’t a possibility for most people who don’t have her resources. Let’s just say that her life has not been that of a typical American woman. And that’s ok. The problem is that her husband’s policies are designed for privileged women like his wife not for the rest of us.

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Linda Parks in CA26: the TV ad

by David Atkins

Remember former Republican-turned-centrist candidate extraordinaire Linda Parks, running in California’s 26th Congressional district? She’s made a cable TV ad buy with three ads. The first of them is here:

The joking–and halting–reference to her favorite ice cream flavor is supposed to quirky and funny, but comes off as an insult to the voters who have been repeatedly asking for some of her concrete stances on issues but coming up empty due to her unwillingness to answer basic policy questions.

Ms. Parks’ consistent answer to these policy questions is to demur, stating that her website issues page is at least available, while her opponents’ are largely works in progress. Yet that, too, is a dodge. With mainstream Republican and Democratic candidates, one automatically knows about 80% of their positions, particularly in a Democratic district. There are some pretty serious differences, of course, between a blue dog and a progressive–differences that consume much of our time on liberal blogs. But we know that a Democratic representative in Congress, particularly one from California, can be counted on to vote against repeal of the Affordable Care Act, to vote for at least some Wall Street such as exists in Dodd Frank, to support passage of at least basic environmental protections, etc. In terms of solving the country’s problems the baseline Democratic position is admittedly often weak sauce, but the distinction between it and traditional Republican policy is quite stark. And in a similar fashion, Republicans ranging from Olympia Snowe to Newt Gingrich can be counted on to vote for a pretty standard set of principles that differ widely from those of Democrats.

So a candidate choosing not to be beholden to any political party must do all the more to clarify for the voters where they stand on major policy issues, because the usual hermeneutical shortcut of party affiliation isn’t available.

The closest Linda Parks has gotten to that point is this tweet from Wednesday evening:

Hi Josh. I’m a fan of Olympia Snowe and saw you are following her. I’d like to carry on her efforts if I’m elected

That would be the same Republican Olympia Snowe who voted against equal pay for women and against the Affordable Care Act. The country needs more politicians in the mold of Olympia Snowe like it needs a porcelain hair net. But she stands a real chance of winning this race, or at least denying the victory to a real progressive Democrat.

If you’d like to help, please consider a donation to the excellent Julia Brownley’s campaign for congress, and help take over this Republican seat, and keep it out of conservative hands–whether those conservatives are in traditional Republican garb, or in the newfangled sheep’s clothing of Linda Parks.

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Remind me never to hire these lawyers

by digby

This is just weird. Yesterday, one of George Zimmerman’s ex-attorneys let fly with this obtuse statement:

UHRIG: This has been a terribly corrosive process. George Zimmerman, in our opinion and from information made available to us, is not doing well emotionally and probably suffering from posttraumatic stress syndrome. We understand from others that he may have lost a lot of weight. George can`t get in the car and drive down to the office center and go in and see a psychologist. George can`t go down to the 7-Eleven and buy a Diet Coke. There`s a bounty out on his head.

Today, Zimmerman’s new attorney said the same thing:

In trying to portray his client in as sympathetic terms as possible, Zimmerman’s new attorney Mark O’Mara said this evening that Zimmerman is “troubled by everything that has happened.” O’Mara added, “Truly, it must be frightening to not be able to not be able to go into a 7/11 or into a store and literally to be in fact a prisoner wherever he was.”

If there are any lawyers out there who would like to explain to me how this could possibly help George Zimmerman, I’d love to hear it. Each time I heard it I gasped at the insensitivity — and foolishness of using that example. One mistake I could understand, I guess. But twice? Is this an inept strategy to conflate their client with the victim or are they both just clueless?

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Better to die than to fight it

by digby

Anyone who saw Sicko and followed the health care debate since will remember Donna Smith. In case the name doesn’t ring a bell, here’s she is in 2008 talking to Laura Flanders about her ordeal with the health care system:

Here she is with Bill Moyers.

And here she is yesterday, writing at Michael Moore’s place:

There has never been any doubt in my mind that if I face another cancer diagnosis that requires prolonged treatments and has an uncertain outcome, I would rather die than fight it. As an insured American who knows first-hand how quickly a cancer in my body turns to full out trauma in my career and in my finances, I just cannot do it again nor can I ask my husband to risk his own life and security either. It wouldn’t be fair.

More than five weeks ago, when some of my cancer markers were elevated, I began the process of bartering with the insurance company, doing the tests they said would be covered, and then coming all the way back to the start to finally getting the tests my doctors originally ordered. My full diagnosis and treatment considerations have been pending ever since, and that has given me time to think and to remember. Waiting, worrying, and wondering.

It’s not that I believe every cancer is a death sentence. I certainly know that isn’t the case. I am a uterine cancer survivor. My mom is a two time breast cancer survivor. But I am 57 years old now — old enough to be an expensive liability in our society, especially if I get sick and need care, but too young to be covered by Medicare. If I face a serious illness like cancer again that costs me an awful lot in out-of-pocket expenses not covered by insurance and lost time from making the money we need for survival, I will doom my husband to struggles he doesn’t need and that are not his fault. Bad enough that one of us should be sick, there is certainly no need for me to take him down with the ship.

I am not being morbid or feeling sorry for myself. I am trying to be pragmatic as an American trying to maneuver our broken, for-profit healthcare system. Working class people are expendable; sick working class people are costly. Better to die quickly and get out of the way for another healthier, less expensive worker, and better not to suffer needlessly if the outcome will be lousy anyway.

Perhaps waiting so long and worrying has clouded my thought process a bit, but I know that when my Medicare-covered husband is ill, he feels worried and upset about his health. When I am ill, I worry first about our finances, my job, and then finally about my health – being privately insured creates pressures that are very real and damaging. So as I wait what seems like endless days waiting for the test results again since the initial insurance company denial of care delayed everything, I feel like I need a game plan in order to feel in control at all.

She says, “when the other shoe drops, I want Medicare.”

Me too. It’s not just about the illness. It’s also the fear that your entire life will be in shambles and you’ll have to start all over again if you are lucky enough to recover. The years between 50 and 65 are quite terrifying in that respect. Not much time left to rebuild …

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“I had no idea that they tortured the children”

From Mother Jones:

In 2007, we ran a devastating exposé of the Judge Rotenberg Center, a “school” that took mentally and psychologically troubled kids from across the country and treated them by hooking them up to electrodes and shocking them whenever they misbehaved or displayed symptoms of their disorders, like autism. Reports from former students and staff were horrific, and Jennifer Gonnerman’s extensive reporting helped launch or fortify state and local investigations in the school, and its founder Matthew Israel. Yet despite the investigations and ongoing lawsuits, the school managed to stay open open.

The mother of one of the students has sued the school and a video of her son being restrained head down and hit with electro-shock 31 times for failing to take off his coat was shown in court this week:

Graphic video of teen being restrained, shocked played in court: MyFoxBOSTON.com

This video has been sealed for years. The founder Matthew Israel was convicted of obstructing justice by destroying other videos. This is the first time any jury has seen what these people actually did.

Keep in mind that this has been known about for a decade. And yet this school is still in existence, still using this “treatment” apparently.

You don’t really have to wonder why we are a culture that loves electro-shock torture so much — why we find it so entertaining, therapeutic and benign. It’s very simple: it doesn’t leave marks.

Electric shocks are used as a method of torture, since the received voltage and current can be controlled with precision and used to cause pain and fear without physically harming the victim’s body.

Electrical torture has been used in war and by repressive regimes since the 1930s:The US Army is known to have used electrical torture during World War II; Amnesty International published an official statement that Russian military forces in Chechnya tortured local women with electric shocks by attaching wires onto their breasts; Japanese serial killer Futoshi Matsunaga used electric shocks for controlling his victims.

Advocates for the mentally ill and some psychiatrists such as Thomas Szasz have asserted that electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is torture when used without a bona fide medical benefit against recalcitrant or non-responsive patients—however such arguments do not apply to ECT when used after the patient has been anesthetized. See above for ECT as medical therapy. A similar argument and opposition apply to the use of painful shocks as punishment for behavior modification, a practice that is openly used only at the Judge Rotenberg Institute

I would argue that tasers are widely used for exactly that purpose a good part of the time.

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