Cheney Endorses Obama
by tristero
You can’t ask for a more rousing endorsement of Barack Obama and his presidency than this:
Former Vice President Dick Cheney criticized President Barack Obama and said it was crucial to help elect Mitt Romney, for whom he held a recent fundraiser at his home in Jackson Hole, Wyo.
“I think he’s been a terrible president,” he said on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity” in an interview to air later Monday, adding that he “fundamentally” disagreed with him.
Eisler, Hayes and social distance
by digby
There’s a lot of chit-chat about this post by Barry Eisler in which he discusses an exchange between Glenn Greenwald and Chris Hayes:
[T}he most thought-provoking part of the interview came at the end, when Greenwald asked Hayes about Hayes’s assertion that even the most well-intentioned people will inevitably be corrupted — what Hayes calls “cognitive capture” — by entry into the American elite (aka the One Percent, aka the American Oligarchy). Given that Hayes, who started out writing for The Nation, is now an establishment TV personality and employee of one of the world’s largest media corporations (Hayes hosts his own talk show, Up with Chris Hayes, on MSNBC), Greenwald wanted to know what steps Hayes is taking to prevent his own cognitive capture.
As someone who deals extensively with questions of subornment in fiction (and who once had some training on the subject, courtesy of Uncle Sam), I found the question itself extremely interesting.
It is. He claims that Hayes didn’t have a good answer beyond saying that he would do his best, although later on twitter, Hayes replied to him by saying:
I’ve given this a *lot* of thought. Biggest single element is constant reaffirming willingness to walk away.
Eisler’s entire post is very thought provoking and probably correct, but he gets one thing wrong in the beginning, in my opinion, as relates to Hayes. He writes:
For me, Hayes’s first big test came after he said on his show that he was “uncomfortable” calling American war dead “heroes,” and I wish Greenwald had asked about this specifically, as it was directly relevant to Greenwald’s more general question. There was a predictable Twitter and blogosphere outcry in response to Hayes comments, and Hayes quickly apologized. I thought the apology was unfortunate. Of course my heart goes out to every family that’s ever lost a loved one in combat. But whether it follows from this that every American soldier who dies in combat is automatically a hero is, at a minimum, not a topic that in a democracy should be taboo.
I don’t know the extent to which Hayes’s apology was heartfelt (personally, I find it incomprehensible). But my guess is that he felt he had to make it — perhaps because of pressure from corporate higher-ups; perhaps because he felt that his show wouldn’t be properly heeded if he became a poster boy for rightist attacks.
I don’t have any inside information about that. But I do know, having read Hayes’ book, that the apology was both sincere and comprehensible and I believe he made it out of intellectual integrity, not because of craven professional concerns.
Here is what he wrote:
On Sunday, in discussing the uses of the word “hero” to describe those members of the armed forces who have given their lives, I don’t think I lived up to the standards of rigor, respect and empathy for those affected by the issues we discuss that I’ve set for myself. I am deeply sorry for that.
As many have rightly pointed out, it’s very easy for me, a TV host, to opine about the people who fight our wars, having never dodged a bullet or guarded a post or walked a mile in their boots. Of course, that is true of the overwhelming majority of our nation’s citizens as a whole. One of the points made during Sunday’s show was just how removed most Americans are from the wars we fight, how small a percentage of our population is asked to shoulder the entire burden and how easy it becomes to never read the names of those who are wounded and fight and die, to not ask questions about the direction of our strategy in Afghanistan, and to assuage our own collective guilt about this disconnect with a pro-forma ritual that we observe briefly before returning to our barbecues.
But in seeking to discuss the civilian-military divide and the social distance between those who fight and those who don’t, I ended up reinforcing it, conforming to a stereotype of a removed pundit whose views are not anchored in the very real and very wrenching experience of this long decade of war. And for that I am truly sorry.
This “social distance” concept is a central thesis of his book, and it makes perfect sense that, upon reflection, he would see his comments as a validation of the very thing he condemns so strongly. And that’s exactly what he says in that apology. I don’t know know if NBC wanted him to write one or what kind of pressure they brought to bear. But it was clear to me from the specific wording that Hayes was very carefully addressing that aspect of the flap and no other.
I wrote about this at the time for Mother Jones, and in the post I questioned the concept of social distance in this instance. I think Hayes is generally right about it (my own Villager trope is related to this idea) but I can also see the downside —- what I would call the “tyranny of personal experience” which says that only people who have direct knowledge of something can have an opinion. But regardless of my own murky intellectual evolution on this subject, I do not doubt that Hayes acutely feels the pressure to not be “a Villager”, and that cuts in a bunch of different directions, not the least of which is a need to be sensitive to the fact that he is not, as all the other wealthy TV pundits would have us believe they are, some regular Joe who has a direct pipeline to “Real Americans.”
I don’t doubt that someone in his position wrestles constantly with the temptations that comes with celebrity, money and power. Any human being would. And I have no way of knowing what kinds of compromises, if any, he’s made and will make now that he’s in that position. (Eisler’s piece spells out the possible pitfalls in chilling detail.) But in my view it’s not correct to attribute that apology over the “heroes” comment to one of them. And at the very least, since there is a perfectly reasonable and obvious explanation as to why he would have done it out of personal and intellectual integrity, I think it’s only fair to grant him the benefit of the doubt.
It’s not as if he’s Jonathan Karl …
Update: Josh Holland asked Hayes about it in this interview and Hayes answers the charge directly.
You can’t fix stupid
by David Atkins
This sums up all you need to know:
I’m sure this man’s great-great-grandchlidren will be proud of his accomplishments one day.
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Jello Biafra has some words for the Wisconsin shooter
by digby
So the Wisconsin shooter was allegedly a Neo-Nazi punk band member. I’m sure he’s very talented. I recall back in my younger days that these same wingnuts tried to identify one of the seminal American punk bands who had recorded a song called California Uber Alles as one of them. Being the morons that Neo-Nazis are, they missed the point, of course and Jello Biafra responded with this little ditty:
That sums up my feelings, how about you?
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Billionaire financed wingnuttia under the radar
“I want to be invisible. I do guerrilla warfare. I paint my face and travel at night. You don’t know it’s over until you’re in a body bag. You don’t know until election night.” — Ralph Reed
I don’t know why nobody’s paying attention to what the far right is doing in this election, but Adele Stan at Alternet is documenting it. She attended Karl Rove’s billionaire financed Americans for Prosperity conference this week-end and filed a report. It’s long and it’s well-worth reading, but this stuck out for me:
At a breakout session titled “Battlefront Wisconsin: What Worked, and How to Repeat It,” Luke Hilgemann, director of Americans For Prosperity’s Wisconsin chapter, showed off the organization’s winning ground strategy, which combined whiz-bang technology with the application of old-fashioned shoe leather, together with some tight messaging that was likely focus-group-tested.
AFP activists were outfitted with iPad-like tablet devices that featured artfully phrased survey questions respondents could answer on the tablet’s touch screen. AFP foot soldiers took these tablets with them to households identified by the kind of micro-targeting strategies used by Web advertisers. (For more detail on these strategies, see our July report, Religious Right’s Ralph Reed Field-Tests Plan to Defeat Obama.) Using the tablet’s GPS feature, activists are directed to particular homes in a given neighborhood, based on the micro-targeted voter database that AFP has assembled.
Hilgemann said that Americans For Prosperity activists knocked on 75,000 doors and made 50,000 calls in the days leading up to the recall election.
As Ralph Reed, a former business partner of Americans For Prosperity President Tim Phillips, explained to activists at his Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in June, the polling that predicted a tight race in the recall election between Walker and Barrett was wrong because the polling models did not account for the uptick in right-wing turnout that vote-wranglers like Phillips and Reed made happen.
Phillips noted with pride that the AFP Wisconsin chapter now has “more grassroots activists than the Wisconsin teachers’ union has members.” And if Wisconsin activists could do all that, so could AFP activists around the country, officials told conference attendees throughout the two-day confab.
For many in attendance, the highlight of the weekend was a Friday night speech delivered by Scott Walker, whose career was shaped by Americans For Prosperity going back to the days when he was the elected executive of Milwaukee County. In his speech, Walker cast himself as a David against a labor-backed Goliath in the days when the state erupted in an uprising in February 2011, after Walker sent a bill to the legislature that effectively ended collective bargaining rights for the state’s public employees.
Nah, nothing to see here…
Again, this is the kind of organizing that could pay off this fall but is far more likely to come to full fruition in the 2016 election. Unlike liberal donors, who either get bored or frustrated when the world doesn’t immediately turn on their dime, the conservatives fund their infrastructure for the long term.
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If you ever wanted to see a quintessential Villager in action, look no further than Jonathan Karl, boy reporter, on This Week yesterday:
Well, first of all, it’s one of the most outrageous charges that I’ve ever seen actually made on the Senate floor. Sometimes you see this stuff out, you know, first there was an interview with Huffington Post, that’s one thing, but when Harry Reid comes to the floor of the Senate and makes this outrageous charge that has absolutely no evidence — I mean, Mitt Romney paid $3.1 million to the IRS in the one tax return that we’ve seen so far. He paid taxes. It’s a completely false charge. But Reid loves it. The Democrats love this. Because no matter how much he digs in, no matter how much he gets attacked, you know, here or by Jon Stewart, or anywhere else, it gets the story out there again and again.
Here’s the thing. As Charles Pierce points out in his piece on the subject, nobody is talking about the tax returns we’ve seen. It’s all the tax returns he refuses to show to the American people. So Karl is being disingenuous.
And no, this is not the most outrageous thing ever said on the floor of the Senate. I seem to recall a gentleman by the name of Joe McCarthy saying some pretty outrageous things. Indeed, a Senator was once caned by another one there. However, Karl wasn’t around for any of that and he didn’t personally see them, so I guess they aren’t relevant. However, he was around for the Senate testimony of Representative Bill McCollum, who gave this recitation on the floor before the entire country, which was watching with rapt attention:
If you believe Monica Lewinsky, the President lied to the grand jury and committed perjury in denying he had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky even if you accept his interpretation of the Jones court’s definition of sexual relations. There isn’t anything clearer in this whole matter. Just look at the President’s grand jury testimony on pages 93-96. (CHART 5) I urge you to read every page of this carefully. Specifically I call your attention to the following questions and answers:
Q So touching, in your view then and now – – the person being deposed touching or kissing the breast of another person would fall within the definition?
A That’s correct, sir. …
Q If the person being deposed touched the genitalia of another person would that be – – and with the intent to arouse the sexual desire, arouse or gratify, as defined in definition in (1) would that be under your understanding then and now – –
A Yes, sir
Q – – sexual relations?
A Yes, sir.
Q Yes, it would?
A Yes, it would. …
A You are free to infer that my testimony is that I did not have sexual relations, as I understood this term to be defined.
Q Including touching her breasts, kissing her breasts, or touching her genitalia?
A That’s correct.
In her sworn testimony Ms. Lewinsky described nine incidents of sexual activity in which the President touched and kissed her breasts and four incidents involving contacts with her genitalia. On these matters Lewinsky’s testimony is corroborated by the sworn testimony of at least six friends and counselors to whom she related these incidents contemporaneously.
Nothing outrageous there. As Pierce points out, Jonathan Karl proudly lists this in his bio:
In 1998, Mr. Karl was the first reporter to obtain the Starr Report, one of the most sought after political documents in recent years.
Considering the rank partisan gossip they routinely pass off as news, the mere idea that these reporters are claiming that Reid must produce his anonymous source is hilarious.
But this is the Villager in action — putting on bourgeois affectations in order to appear as if they are morally upright Real Americans when, in fact, they live in a decadent world of double dealing and backstabbing and participate in it with relish, just as courtiers have done for millenia. Jonathan Karl clutching his pearls over Reid’s political gambit is akin to the NRA protesting gun violence. Except the NRA would never try to get away with something so absurd.
As to the merits, Joe Conason and Juan Cole have both written about the legal doctrine known as the “missing evidence instruction” which explains better than anything why Jonathan Karl and the rest of the doofuses who are rending their garments over Reid’s ploy are wrong:
There is a legal doctrine that applies to Romney’s current behavior, as Indiana attorney John Sullivan points out – and it doesn’t place the burden of proof on Reid:
At law, if a person in control of evidence refuses to produce the evidence, then the jury is instructed that there is a presumption that the evidence would be against the party failing to produce. It is called the “Missing Evidence” instruction.
The missing evidence is in Romney’s grasp, yet he insists that he will never produce it. Does anyone need instruction from a judge to make the correct inference.
Here’s how Illinois law defines it:
5.01 Failure to Produce Evidence or a Witness
If a party to this case has failed [to offer evidence] [to produce a witness] within his power to produce, you may infer that the [evidence] [testimony of the witness] would be adverse to that party if you believe each of the following elements:
1. The [evidence] [witness] was under the control of the party and could have been produced by the exercise of reasonable diligence.
2. The [evidence] [witness] was not equally available to an adverse party.
3. A reasonably prudent person under the same or similar circumstances would have [offered the evidence] [produced the witness] if he believed [it to be] [the testimony would be] favorable to him.
4. No reasonable excuse for the failure has been shown.” IPI Civil (Supp. 2003) No. 5.01.
No reasonable excuse for the failure has been shown. These are documents that presidential candidates routinely provide and thre’s nothing stopping him from doing it. But for the first time in history, the press and many commentators have decided that it’s indelicate to cite an anonymous source who claims to know why they are not being released.
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The apathy strategy
by digby
Just this, via Daily Kos Comics
That expresses my feelings perfectly on this Monday …
Eternal Parasites
by David Atkins
The “Curiosity” rover/lab landed on Mars last night, pulling off a nerve wracking and difficult landing stunt. It was a project over a decade in the making that will yield invaluable scientific insights.
These are the amazing men and women that a Macau casino magnate will spend hundreds of millions of dollars to say are greedy parasites mooching off “producers” like the vulture capitalist wannabe President. How small and pathetic.
Two hundred years from now, the world will not care that men like Sheldon Adelson, Mitt Romney and George Will walked this earth. If they are remembered at all, it will be with only mildest sneer of contempt.
But the fine souls who made this technologically marvelous contribution to the welfare of all mankind possible will be revered and remembered for their contributions to humanity as long as records and historians exist to tell the tale. And even after their individual names are lost to history, their fledgling accomplishments will live on as the building blocks of future generations of human endeavor. That advancement can take many forms, from science and medicine to academics to social justice. But helping along that advancement is the true purpose of our being alive.
Sadly, most of us living today are at great pains simply to eke out survival for ourselves and our families. That means that those fortunate enough to have spare time and resources have an intrinsic moral obligation to do our part to further that purpose on behalf of all those who will never have the opportunity to do so.
All people die. All memory of our lives eventually fades into dust. But what we did to advance enlightenment, make the world a better place and elevate humanity beyond our current chrysalis: that is eternal so long as sentient life is able to bear us witness.
Men like Adelson and Romney are worse than parasites. Worthy of nothing but disdain, they hold the keys to the temple but enter not within. They are dismal blots on the human existence destined for oblivion, dragging our species toward the darkness in an attempt to buy a true happiness and fulfillment that no wealth, prestige or hollow belief can deliver.
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Ixnay on the ungay alktay
by digby
I realize that frequent mass shootings are just a fact of life in America, like historic drought brought on by man made climate change. Oh wait…
But even so, when we start averaging a couple of mass shootings a month you do have to wonder whether the constant admonition not to talk about gun violence is really quite … sane.Take this for instance:
Less than a month before Florida hosts the Republican National Convention, the state’s right-wing governor is pushing for an unusual law that privileges the Second Amendment over the First Amendment. Gov. Rick Scott announced Monday that his administration will pursue a court appeal to defend the state’s controversial “Docs vs. Glocks” law, which makes it a crime for doctors to ask patients if they own guns.
The 2011 “Firearm Owners’ Privacy Act”—one of a series of NRA-backed, aggressive pro-gun laws passed by Florida’s conservative Legislature in recent years—aims at keeping physicians from gathering information on patients’ weapons while discussing their health risk factors. (Decades of studies have shown that even law-abiding, responsible gun owners and their families have higher risks of death by gunshot when they keep a firearm in the home.)
“Patients don’t like being interrogated about whether or not they own guns when they take their child with a sore throat to a pediatrician, nor do they like being interrogated in an emergency room when their Little Leaguer broke his leg sliding into first base,” the NRA’s gun for hire in Florida, longtime firearms lobbyist Marion Hammer, told the Tampa Tribune last fall.*
Doctors have long been permitted to ask patients about other risk factors, like smoking and drinking (and patients, of course, have long had the freedom to lie about their bad habits). But asking about guns is different, say backers of the law, which could cost offending doctors their medical licenses and a $10,000 fine. Some even argue that federal power makes the law especially important. “Now we’ve got Obamacare, the government owns our health care,” a 58-year-old Floridian told Sunshine State News. “They can coerce the names and habits of gun owners out of doctors’ medical records, that’s what scares me most. Maybe it won’t happen today or tomorrow, but the ability to do it is there.”
Apparently, you sometimes have to destroy the Constitution in order to save it. A federal judge tossed the “Docs vs. Glocks” law out of her district court last September, ruling that it trampled doctors’ right to free speech. The law, Judge Marcia Cooke wrote, “aims to restrict a practitioner’s ability to provide truthful, non-misleading information to a patient”—information that she said “simply does not interfere with the right to keep and bear arms.”
The governor disagrees. “This law was carefully crafted to respect the First Amendment while ensuring a patient’s constitutional right to own or possess a firearm without discrimination,” Scott said in his statement. “I signed this legislation into law because I believe it is constitutional and I will continue to defend it.”
Guns are so sacred, that people cannot even be asked about it. Because apparently, if a doctor asks, they are required to answer and they must tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth due to the government takeover of medicine.
Either that or they are bunch of guilty people who know that they are perpetuating something evil and don’t want to admit it. Take your pick.
*Here’s Mother Jones’ updated map of America’s mass shooting of the last 3 decades. Horrifying.
The Illustrated War on Women
by digby
BagNews Notes always does great work, but I particularly enjoy their salons with academics, visual analysts and photo journalists discussing how images shape the issues of the day.
Earlier today they did one about the War on Women that was just fascinating:
Host: Michael Shaw, Publisher, BagNewsNotes Moderator: Nate Stormer, Professor of Communications and Journalism/U. of Maine Discussants: Bonnie Dow, Associate Professor & Chair, Communication Studies and Associate Professor, Women’s and Gender Studies, Vanderbilt University; Janis Edwards, Associate Professor, Affilate in the Dept. of Gender and Race Studies, University of Alabama; Holly Hughes, Editor, Photo District News; Rita Leistner, photojournalist; Instructor, University of Toronto. Salons are produced by Ida Benedetto.
You can read the #BagSalon twitter feed for highlights. Great stuff.
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