Month: May 2013

Republican hypocrisy on Benghazi

by David Atkins

As Republicans continue their Benghazi conspiracy theory push in an attempt to damage Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspirations, it’s worth noting just how shameless is the Republican hypocrisy on the subject. Bob Cesca at Daily Banter has compiled no less than 13 “Benghazis” that occurred on George W. Bush’s watch:

January 22, 2002. Calcutta, India. Gunmen associated with Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami attack the U.S. Consulate. Five people are killed.

June 14, 2002. Karachi, Pakistan. Suicide bomber connected with al-Qaida attacks the U.S. Consulate, killing 12 and injuring 51.

October 12, 2002. Denpasar, Indonesia. U.S. diplomatic offices bombed as part of a string of “Bali Bombings.” No fatalities.

February 28, 2003. Islamabad, Pakistan. Several gunmen fire upon the U.S. Embassy. Two people are killed.

May 12, 2003. Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Armed al-Qaida terrorists storm the diplomatic compound killing 36 people including nine Americans. The assailants committed suicide by detonating a truck bomb.

July 30, 2004. Tashkent, Uzbekistan. A suicide bomber from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan attacks the U.S. Embassy, killing two people.

December 6, 2004. Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Al-Qaida terrorists storm the U.S. Consulate and occupy the perimeter wall. Nine people are killed.

March 2, 2006. Karachi, Pakistan again. Suicide bomber attacks the U.S. Consulate killing four people, including U.S. diplomat David Foy who was directly targeted by the attackers. (I wonder if Lindsey Graham or Fox News would even recognize the name “David Foy.” This is the third Karachi terrorist attack in four years on what’s considered American soil.)

September 12, 2006. Damascus, Syria. Four armed gunmen shouting “Allahu akbar” storm the U.S. Embassy using grenades, automatic weapons, a car bomb and a truck bomb. Four people are killed, 13 are wounded.

January 12, 2007. Athens, Greece. Members of a Greek terrorist group called the Revolutionary Struggle fire a rocket-propelled grenade at the U.S. Embassy. No fatalities.

March 18, 2008. Sana’a, Yemen. Members of the al-Qaida-linked Islamic Jihad of Yemen fire a mortar at the U.S. Embassy. The shot misses the embassy, but hits nearby school killing two.

July 9, 2008. Istanbul, Turkey. Four armed terrorists attack the U.S. Consulate. Six people are killed.

September 17, 2008. Sana’a, Yemen. Terrorists dressed as military officials attack the U.S. Embassy with an arsenal of weapons including RPGs and detonate two car bombs. Sixteen people are killed, including an American student and her husband (they had been married for three weeks when the attack occurred). This is the second attack on this embassy in seven months.

IOKIYAR.

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One ‘o those days

by digby

For your mental health:

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Who are these “people” you speak of?

by digby

And why should Washington care what they think?

A new poll reveals that Democratic and Republican voters similarly believe Congress should prioritize jobs creation and growing the economy instead of focusing on guns and immigration. The voters surveyed placed reducing gun violence and immigration at the bottom of a list of 12 priorities for Congress and the president to address.

The Gallup poll, released Wednesday, shows 86% of voters believe Congress should make its top focus jobs creation, with 86% saying Congress should prioritize work on improving the economy.

Only 55% of the voters surveyed believed reducing gun violence should be a top priority, with 50% saying Congress should focus on immigration reform.

Whatevs. Onward to Benghazi!

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Tormenting us in our dreams

by digby

Oh God:

Many powerful photographs have been made in the aftermath of the devastating collapse of a garment factory on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh. But one photo, by Bangladeshi photographer Taslima Akhter, has emerged as the most heart wrenching, capturing an entire country’s grief in a single image.

Shahidul Alam, Bangladeshi photographer, writer and founder of Pathshala, the South Asian Institute of Photography, said of the photo: “This image, while deeply disturbing, is also hauntingly beautiful. An embrace in death, its tenderness rises above the rubble to touch us where we are most vulnerable. By making it personal, it refuses to let go. This is a photograph that will torment us in our dreams. Quietly it tells us. Never again.”

Akhter writes for LightBox about the photograph, which appears in this week’s TIME International alongside an essay by David Von Drehle.

I have been asked many questions about the photograph of the couple embracing in the aftermath of the collapse. I have tried desperately, but have yet to find any clues about them. I don’t know who they are or what their relationship is with each other.

I spent the entire day the building collapsed on the scene, watching as injured garment workers were being rescued from the rubble. I remember the frightened eyes of relatives — I was exhausted both mentally and physically. Around 2 a.m., I found a couple embracing each other in the rubble. The lower parts of their bodies were buried under the concrete. The blood from the eyes of the man ran like a tear. When I saw the couple, I couldn’t believe it. I felt like I knew them — they felt very close to me. I looked at who they were in their last moments as they stood together and tried to save each other — to save their beloved lives.

Every time I look back to this photo, I feel uncomfortable — it haunts me. It’s as if they are saying to me, we are not a number — not only cheap labor and cheap lives. We are human beings like you. Our life is precious like yours, and our dreams are precious too.

They are witnesses in this cruel history of workers being killed. The death toll is now more than 750. What a harsh situation we are in, where human beings are treated only as numbers.

More at the link.

New study shows college is a bad financial bet for many

by David Atkins

It’s a standard trope among conservatives and economic neoliberals: globalization, they say, has created a knowledge economy in which only the well-educated will thrive. Everyone, they say, needs to go to college to meet the jobs that are out there. It’s not the economy that is broken, but Americans who are undereducated, and if young people and their parents need to privatize education and take on debt to make it happen, that’s a good investment.

Not so fast, it seems:

College can be a bad financial investment, and a fair number of people actually should not go to college, according to a new study.

Higher education remains a smart financial choice for most people, especially those who attend selective colleges and get degrees in financially promising fields, such as science and technology, according to the analysis by the Brookings Center on Children and Families.

But college may not pay off for students pursuing majors in low-paying fields, such as the arts, or going to lower-tier schools. That’s hammered home for students with large student loans, and especially true for those who take on debt but drop out of school and never get a degree, the study found.

One of the study’s more startling statistics is that 170 of the 853 schools studied — or an astounding one in five colleges – had a negative return on investment.

“By telling all young people that they should go to college no matter what, we are actually doing them a disservice,” Stephanie Owen and Isabel Sawhill write in “Should Everyone Go to College?”

The study seems likely to intensify the heated debate over the financial merits of college, especially when heavy students loans are involved.

Many studies lately have reinforced the notion that college is a good financial bet and, indeed, the age-old wisdom holds for top schools.

Students attending the “most selective” colleges have a “lifetime earnings premium” exceeding $620,000, the study says. The premium for those at “minimally selective” schools is only one-third as much.

What you study and the career you go into also matter. Sometimes, the study found, graduates of unimpressive schools, or those who majored in low-paying fields, earned less than people with only a high school education.

The lifetime earnings of an education or arts major working in the services sector are lower than that of a high school graduate, the study points out.

So let’s narrow it down. It’s not just that you need a college education. You’re not supposed to study liberal arts–which, after all, formed the core of what Western society used to call “education” for hundreds of years and is essential to the development of an informed, reasoned electorate. You also have to go to the “right” college.

So what our leaders are saying is that only those who study engineering and computer science at top universities need apply for decent jobs in the new economy. And that’s supposed to be OK.

It’s not OK. It’s not OK to tell 70-80% of the American public that they’ll never have a decent job or working conditions by default, since they didn’t study the right subjects at the right institutions of higher learning. Anyone who says that should be called out for perpetuating and enabling a broken economic system that does not serve the public interest.

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I guess this means we’re winning?

by digby

A new Pew Poll:

Let’s drill down a bit, shall we?

Eight-in-ten Republicans (79%) say the GOP could do the better job dealing with the economy, while just 9% say the Democratic Party. Fewer Democrats (65%) say their party could do better on the economy, while 22% say the GOP could do better.

Similarly, while 76% of Republicans say the Republican Party better reflects their views on gun control, 66% of Democrats choose the Democratic Party. On dealing with immigration, 69% of Republicans prefer the GOP while about as many Democrats (63%) say the Democratic Party could do better.

Huh. I wonder why the disparity? I don’t suppose it might be because the Democrats have been consistently betraying their own values? No, of course not.

I suppose they all figure that the Democrats have nowhere to go so to hell with them. But I’d be just a little bit cautious about that. There is an alternative. The gerrymanderinhg didn’t go just one way — after all, if the Republicans have barricaded themselves into safe districts for the next decade, that also means that Democrats are in safe districts too. Which means that primaries become a distinct possibility for Democrats as well. They should be mindful of the possibility.

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Torture by execution

by digby

I wrote earlier about this appalling case of a Mississippi man being scheduled for execution despite the fact that DNA was available and testing had not been done — and the state Supreme Court had ruled that there was no need to bother.

Something changed, thank goodness. The Supreme Court reversed itself and stayed the execution at the last minute.

Chris Hayes had the breaking details last night:

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

I think this system is a form of torture in itself. I cannot imagine the hell of knowing the exact hour you are going to die, preparing for it and then getting a last minute reprieve without knowing if, and when, it will be reinstated. Just another reason why the death penalty is a barbaric throwback to a more primitive time.

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Fox on the hunt


by digby

Speaking of Benghazi, I think this shows just how orchestrated this is:

A new book from Jonathan Alter claims that Fox News President Roger Ailes told producers to cut off the microphone used by Fox host Geraldo Rivera as he pushed back against Fox’s politicization of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. 

Appearing on Fox & Friends the day before the 2012 election, Rivera accused The Five’s Eric Bolling of being “a politician trying to make a political point” with Bolling’s claim that the government did “nothing” in response to the attack.  

The New York Times reports that Alter writes in the upcoming book The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies that “Ailes called the control room and told the producers to cut Rivera’s mic.” 

Media Matters has the video:

I watched MSNBC with Alex Wagner, Glenn Thrush and Joan Walsh this morning and they all scoffed at the whole thing. But I noticed that it was done with the disclaimer that “the administration obviously did something wrong here, but it’s not what they are saying it is.”  And so it begins.

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Scandal mongering 101: the Tillman gambit

by digby

Any Washington scandal watcher could see this coming a mile away:

The mother of one of the state department officials killed in the Sept. 11 Benghazi attack pointed the finger of blame directly at former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday.

Pat Smith’s son, Sean Smith, was one of the four Americans killed last year when the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, was attacked. Speaking to CNN’s Jake Tapper the day before three State Department witnesses are set to deliver congressional testimony on the event, Smith expressed outrage at what she claimed was the continued refusal by officials to give her information about the events that lead up to her son’s death.

After viewing a clip of Clinton’s heated response to questioning during Senate testimony in January, Smith said she ultimately held Clinton accountable for the failure to protect Americans at the U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya.

“I blame her,” she said. “[T]hat’s her department. She is supposed to be on top of it. Yet she claims she knows nothing. It wasn’t told to her. Well, who is running the place?”

I’m going to call this the Tillman Gambit, named after the Tillman family’s appalled reaction to the Bush administration cover-up of their son’s death.

This is a classic Republican style scandal tactic: project one of their own real scandals onto the Democrats. If they’re lucky the press will even attach a name that sounds similar so that people will automatically associate it in their minds. (Watergate=Whitewater, etc.) So far, “Benghazi” is a catch-all term for the GOP version of 9/11. (Yes, it’s lame, but they have to work with they have.) The point, I believe has always been to tar Hillary with a scandal that will evoke a lizard brain reaction to the “Clinton Scandal” era among both Republicans and timorous Democrats. (Also too: revenge for the beating Bush took over 9/11 and Iraq. If the Democrats hit one of theirs, they are going to hit back.)

I think they see that Hillary Clinton is a very formidable opponent and they are seeking to wound her early and often. And the memories of the Clinton years are sweet for them in that way. They may have ultimately lost all the battles they waged — and the Clintons certainly lived to fight another day — but the right ultimately prevailed in dozens of different ways. And even if it doesn’t stop the Hillary juggernaut, this is one of their tried and true ways of keeping their troops engaged and the Democrats on the defensive. It’s just how they roll.

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Your daily armchair activism on the boss’ dime

by digby

The easiest armchair activism you’ve ever done: Watch this at 9:30 AM pacific time and send one person the link to watch it too:

Sens. Sanders, Warren, Reed, Franken and Whitehouse Host Summit to Protect Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Veterans’ Benefits

Members of the Defending Social Security Caucus, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the Alliance for Retired Americans and the Strengthen Social Security Coalition host a summit to protect Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and veterans’ benefits.

Livestream link: http://www.strengthensocialsecurity.org/senateshowdown

Washington, DC – Please join with every major organization representing senior citizens, working families, veterans, women, and persons with disabilities in support of protecting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits.

The summit will highlight the growing opposition to cutting Cost of Living Adjustments (COLAs) for Social Security and disabled veterans.

• Under the chained CPI, average 65-year-old retirees would lose $658 a year in Social Security benefits by their 75th birthday, $1,147 by their 85th birthday, and $1,622 by their 95th birthday.

• The chained CPI would cut the benefits of more than 3.2 million disabled veterans in this country. Permanently disabled veterans who started receiving disability benefits from the VA at age 30 would see their benefits cut by more than $1,400 a year at age 45, $2,300 a year at age 55 and $3,200 a year at age 65.

• The chained CPI also would amount to an across-the-board tax increase on working families. More than three-quarters of the new revenue raised by the year 2021 under the chained CPI would come from Americans making less than $200,000 a year. Those making between $30,000 and $40,000 would be hit the hardest.

WHO: -Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

-Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI)

-Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)

-Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)

-Sen. Al Franken (D-MN)

-Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN)

-Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ)

-Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR)

-Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI)

-Ed Coyle, Executive Director of the Alliance for Retired Americans & three senior citizens: Jody Weinrich – Allentown, PA , Martin Walsh – St. Louis County, MO, Martina Alvarado – San Antonio, TX

-Eric Kingson, Co-chair, Strengthen Social Security Coalition