Month: August 2013

They’re just trying to save lives

by digby

… by conducting a racist harassment campaign against all young men of color:

During an interview for “This Week,” New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly warned that the ruling by a federal judge declaring the way his department carries out its “stop-and-frisk” policy unconstitutional risked reversing the downward trend of violent crime in New York City.

“What we’re doing – and what we’re trying to do — is save lives,” Kelly told ABC’s Pierre Thomas.

“Things are going right here in New York. And this decision certainly has the potential of overturning it,” he said.

If it weren’t for the old-fashioned notions of probable cause and presumed innocence, we could let Ray Kelly lock up every male in New York between the age of 16 and 30. You’d be shocked to see how much less crime there would be. Now obviously, a whole lot of innocent men would be caught up in that net, but that’s the breaks, right? They’ve got a job to do.

Today it’s clear that many people in this country have unilaterally decided that the government’s only job is to “protect” us from people who want to do us harm. Apparently, by any means necessary. And that could be anyone. So that old Constitution and the principles underlying it, have the wrong priorities. If we want to save lives, we’re going to have to give the government free rein to harass, taser, and imprison anyone it sees as a potential threat. Even ourselves. It’s the only way to really ensure they can get the job done.

Only then can we feel safe.

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‘burns ‘n’ perms: Sarsgaard and Seyfried in Lovelace

In 1980, Lovelace wrote an autobiography called Ordeal, in which she alleged that she had essentially been bullied into her career as a porno actress by her then-husband Chuck Traynor (who later married Marilyn Chambers). She claimed that Traynor not only physically and sexually abused her throughout their marriage, but pimped her out; even forcing her to perform some of her movie scenes at gunpoint. After publishing the book and settling down in suburbia to start a family with her new husband, Lovelace became an anti-porn activist for a spell, finding herself feted by the likes of Gloria Steinem (she famously stated on the Phil Donahue show that “Whenever someone sees that film, they’re watching me being raped.”). However, in the years just prior to her 2002 death in a car accident, she had begun to cash in once again on her porn legacy (including a spread in Playboy), causing some to question her credibility. According to one interviewee in Baily and Barbato’s film, she was a person who “always needed someone to tell her what to do.” So was she a real-life Citizen Ruth, willing to be used as anyone’s cause celebre?

Hints and allegations: Mikkelsen in The Hunt

“Is everybody blind?”

by digby

While the Seattle PD is showing remarkable common sense during Hempfest, down in Texas they’re sending in paramilitary SWAT teams to put a stop to unauthorized okra:

A small organic farm in Arlington, Texas, was the target of a massive police action last week that included aerial surveillance, a SWAT raid and a 10-hour search.

Members of the local police raiding party had a search warrant for marijuana plants, which they failed to find at the Garden of Eden farm. But farm owners and residents who live on the property told a Dallas-Ft. Worth NBC station that the real reason for the law enforcement exercise appears to have been code enforcement. The police seized “17 blackberry bushes, 15 okra plants, 14 tomatillo plants … native grasses and sunflowers,” after holding residents inside at gunpoint for at least a half-hour, property owner Shellie Smith said in a statement. The raid lasted about 10 hours, she said.

Local authorities had cited the Garden of Eden in recent weeks for code violations, including “grass that was too tall, bushes growing too close to the street, a couch and piano in the yard, chopped wood that was not properly stacked, a piece of siding that was missing from the side of the house, and generally unclean premises,” Smith’s statement said. She said the police didn’t produce a warrant until two hours after the raid began, and officers shielded their name tags so they couldn’t be identified. According to ABC affiliate WFAA, resident Quinn Eaker was the only person arrested — for outstanding traffic violations.

The city of Arlington said in a statement that the code citations were issued to the farm following complaints by neighbors, who were “concerned that the conditions” at the farm “interfere with the useful enjoyment of their properties and are detrimental to property values and community appearance.” The police SWAT raid came after “the Arlington Police Department received a number of complaints that the same property owner was cultivating marijuana plants on the premises,” the city’s statement said. “No cultivated marijuana plants were located on the premises,” the statement acknowledged.

Hey, these police agencies all have enough military gear to fight a small war. Do you think they aren’t going to find reasons to use it?

This story about an ex marine officer testifying before his town council made the rounds this week and well… it’s not exactly wrong:

“What we’re doing here, and let’s not kid about it, is we’re building a domestic army and shrinking the military because the government is afraid of its own citizens … “

“The last time more than 10 terrorists were in the same place at the same time was September 11th, and all these [armored] vehicles wouldn’t have prevented it, nor would they have helped anybody.”

“We’re building an Army over here and I can’t believe people aren’t seeing it, is everybody blind?”

But what about the scourge of narco-terrorists growing illegal okra and blackberries, huh? What are we going to do about that?

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See what happens when you legalize? Common sense, community and good humor.

by digby

Check out the bags of Doritos the Seattle Police Department is handing out to the Hempfest revelers:

That’s called common sense community policing.

I can’t go along with the Dark Side of the Moon thing though. It really must be heard at the highest volume possible.

H/T@GrahamKIRO7

Welfare reform 2.1

by digby

I think Bob Borosage is on to something here when he calls it “welfare reform 2.0”

Why did House Republicans refuse to fund the food stamp program last month?

According to Rep. Steve King of Iowa, food stamps aren’t about feeding hungry people; they are an administration conspiracy:

“You might have thought that America had a safety net. No, sir; it’s a hammock. And this administration is promoting the expansion of them [sic] for political purposes.”

Steve King isn’t alone. Rep. Louie Gohmert thinks food stamp recipients feast on mountains of king crab legs. Laura Ingraham thinks anyone needing help should be shamed at the grocery store.

This is starting to look like a strategy. Last week, Fox News ran a one-hour “documentary” called “The Great Food Stamp Binge” full of similar nonsense.

This is exactly the kind of rhetoric we heard for years before the Democrats finally got on board with the original welfare reform and pretty much ended it. So, I think this is probably going to be part of their strategy.

But never say we aren’t making progress. Sure, there are probably people of color using food stamps and just as with welfare reform, the GOP base is angry at the idea of these undeserving POCs getting something for nothing. However, I don’t know that most people think the face of food stamps today is black or brown, at least not yet.

For instance:

At a town hall in Welch, OK on Thursday, Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) called for the outright elimination of aid programs for low-income Americans, claiming that he has witnessed food stamp fraud firsthand. Mullin said he would like to “do away with a lot of these programs” because they allow people to slack off.

“The food programs are designed to take care of people who can’t work, not won’t work. And we all know those people that won’t work, right?” he asked the audience. “They’re abusing the program, and we’ve got to get them off of it.”

Mullin knows for a fact that food stamps are abused, because he saw them being used by people who did not fit his idea of what poor people are supposed to look like:

So I’m in Crystal City and I’m buying my groceries…and I noticed everybody was giving that card. They had these huge baskets, and I realized it was the first of the month. But then I’m looking over, and there’s a couple beside me. This guy was built like a brick house. I mean he had muscles all over him. He was in a little tank top and pair of shorts and really nice Nike shoes. And she was standing there, and she was all in shape and she looked like she had just come from a fitness program. She was in the spandex, and you know, they were both physically fit. And they go up in front of me and they pay with that card. Fraud. Absolute 100% all it is is fraud…it’s all over the place. And there you go, to the fact that we shouldn’t be supporting those who won’t work. They’re spending their money someplace.

I’ve written before about this story and this bizarre idea that people who are physically fit can’t possibly be poor. But what’s interesting to me about it is that it isn’t a racist dogwhistle (at least that I can see.) It’s maybe a “liberal elite” dogwhistle — as if the Real Housewives of Crystal City are all scamming food stamps. But it doesn’t appear to be racial.

Now I happen to think this is all just a cover for the essentially racist nature of right wing opposition to government programs. But still, it’s a little bit of progress. When you think about the way they used to do this with the “welfare queens in Cadillacs” spew, you can’t help but see it as an improvement. Maybe someday, they’ll go so far that their resentment filled base will even be able to see themselves in that scenario.

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“Well tell him to stop lying!”


by digby

This is what happens when you elect a patriarchal theocrat with an IQ of 22 to represent you in congress:

Webster was responding to several constituents’ questions about the consequences that repealing Obamacare — which House Republicans, including Webster, have voted to do on 40 separate occasions — would have for the people in his district. Attendees asked Webster if he had any plans to replace consumer protections included in Obamacare, such as guaranteed insurance coverage for Americans with pre-existing medical conditions and free preventative health screenings for seniors:

QUESTIONER: What happens to us when Obamacare is repealed? What happens to people with pre-existing conditions that can’t get health care? What happens to those of us who finally have access to health insurance for the first time in nine or ten years? What happens to us? And you want to make this local, I’ll make this local. I’m a constituent, right now I can’t get health care. I’m waiting for this [insurance marketplace] to open and I’d like to know why we keep repealing [Obamacare]?

The congressman defended his repeal votes by saying the law would drive up Americans’ health care costs by requiring insurers to cover people with pre-existing conditions. He then claimed that President Barack Obama himself thinks his signature law is unworkable. As evidence, Webster implied that the law’s protections — such as its cap on consumers’ annual out-of-pocket medical costs — were being dismantled by the Obama administration. That prompted an outcry from the audience, as people booed and countered Webster’s claims. 

An event official interrupted at that point, asking the audience to be respectful and give Webster a chance to speak. One audience member replied by saying, “Well, tell him to stop lying!”

Good luck. This fine fellow is one of the weirdest members of congress and that’s saying something. When he lies, he believes he’s doing it for the Lord:

Webster is a Christian Reconstructionist from waaay back. He’s a follower of one of those evangelical cultleaders,Bill Gothard, who’s been training CRs for decades with his “seminars.” And he isn’t the only one. (How about GOP leadersSarah Palin and Mike Huckabee?)


Gothard has some very unusual views, not the least of which is this:

At his Advanced Seminars in 1983, Gothard introduced sex regulations based upon Old Testament commands. Under the session titled “Six Purposes, Principles, and Keys To Fulfillment In The Marriage Relationship,” he told married couples to abstain from physical relations: 1. During the wife’s menstrual cycle; 2. Seven days after the cycles; 3. 40 days after the birth of a son; 4. 80 days after the birth of a daughter; and 5. The evening prior to worship. 

Some may even find the sexual guidelines found in his 1986 volume, Research in Principles of Life Advance Seminar Textbook, intrusive and offensive. What most would feel is personal and private between a couple and their physician, Gothard spells out.

On pages 170-171, Gothard suggests that a man keep track of his wife’s menstrual cycle and use it as a reminder of the sufferings and death of Jesus, then quotes Isaiah 53:4-5.

It’s a good thing these people aren’t primitive and backwards like those awful fundamentalist Muslims.


How do I know that Webster is one of his disciples?

Speaker Has Strong Ties to Institute

by Peter Wallsten, T. Christian Miller, St. Petersburg Times, February
16, 1997

Last summer, Daniel Webster journeyed to South Korea on a religious
mission, meeting with the country’s president and other political and spiritual leaders.

He was joined by Bill Gothard, the head of a $30-million Christian evangelical group.

Four months after the trip, Webster ascended to one of the most powerful positions in Florida: speaker of the state House of Representatives.

He brings with him 14 years of experience with Gothard’s Institute in Basic Life Principles, where Webster has not only attended seminars, but also taught classes and even made an instructional video that raised money for the institute.

The group preaches a literal interpretation of the Bible, including the belief that women should submit to their husbands’ authority. With programs for lawmakers, judges, doctors, juvenile delinquents and home- schooling courses, the institute’s reach is wide. It says that 2.5-million people around the world have participated in its programs.

Webster is an enthusiastic supporter. His six children learn at home, taught by his wife, Sandy, using the institute’s curriculum. The family, which also is active in its Orlando Baptist church, has participated in numerous institute seminars over the years.

Webster said he does not want to force his beliefs on other people.

“I’ve never tried to say this is what’s right for everybody,” he said. “”All I’ve said is, “Here’s what works for me.’ ”

Webster said he will not let the institute’s teachings dictate his legislative agenda in the House, where he is the first Republican speaker in 122 years.

Still, the institute is attracting increasing interest in Tallahassee. Webster has hired four House staffers whom he met through the institute, although Webster’s press secretary, Kathy Mears, pointed out that hundreds of people work for Webster. Mears herself has participated in institute courses.

Over the years, Webster and state Rep. Stephen Wise, R-Jacksonville, have recruited at least eight other Florida lawmakers to the program, including Sen. John Grant, R-Tampa, and Rep. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey.

But Webster said there is no connection between Gothard’s seven Bible-based principles and the five principles Webster is using to rank every measure the House will consider this year…

20 million queries here, 20 million queries there, pretty soon you’re talking about real numbers

by digby

I’m fairly sure they keep saying this intending to make people feel more comfortable and I cannot figure out why:

The top National Security Agency official charged with making sure analysts comply with rules protecting the privacy of Americans pushed back on Friday against reports that the N.S.A. had frequently violated privacy rules, after the publication of a leaked internal audit showing that there had been 2,776 such “incidents” in a one-year period.

The official, John DeLong, the N.S.A. director of compliance, said that the number of mistakes by the agency was extremely low compared with its overall activities. The report showed about 100 errors by analysts in making queries of databases of already-collected communications data; by comparison, he said, the agency performs about 20 million such queries each month.

WTH? Everybody comfortable with the government making 20 million queries of these databases a month? Good lord. We’re either on the verge of being invaded by terrorists from Mars or this is overkill of the highest order.

And the fact is that we don’t really know what those “incidents” of rule breaking represent. Those numbers are potentially very high as well. Amy Davidson at the New Yorker wrote:

What does the National Security Agency consider a small or a big number? The Washington Post’s Barton Gellman has a report based on documents the paper got from Edward Snowden about an N.S.A. audit that found two thousand seven hundred and seventy-six “incidents” in 2012 in which it broke its own rules about spying on Americans, either accidentally or on purpose. That is seven times a day, which sounds less like a slip than a ritual. But to call those violations frequent, according to the agency, would be to misunderstand the scale of its operations: “You can look at it as a percentage of our total activity that occurs each day,” a senior N.S.A. official told the paper. “You look at a number in absolute terms that looks big, and when you look at it in relative terms, it looks a little different.” We spy so much that the math gets hard; even thousands of privacy and legal violations can’t really be held against us.

But how many thousands? As it turns out, there are numbers packed into the numbers. An “incident” can have affected multiple people—even multitudes. In a single one of the two thousand seven hundred and seventy-six cases, someone at the N.S.A. made a mistake in entering a number into a search request. As a result, instead of pulling information on phone calls from Egypt (country code 20) the agency got data on “a large number” of calls from Washington, D.C. (area code 202). How many, and what did they learn? There are more Egyptians than there are Washingtonians, but the N.S.A.’s mandate forbids it from spying on Americans, and singling out an area as politicized as Washington seems particularly unfortunate. Mistyping the country code for Iran could have left analysts looking at calls in North Carolina and Louisiana. Another incident involved “the unlawful retention of 3,032 files that the surveillance court had ordered the NSA to destroy…. Each file contained an undisclosed number of telephone call records.” The Post said that it was not able to tell how many Americans were affected in all. Those two examples suggest that the number could be very, very big—even by the N.S.A.’s standards.

I guess we’re supposed to be “comfortable” with the fact that the US government collects massive amounts of information of virtually everyone on the planet, stores it into a gigantic database and then “queries” that database at least 20 million times a month. And who knows how much of that even follows the arcane and unaccountable legal structure they’ve allegedly set up to keep this practice from violating the US Constitution since everything is top secret.

The implication from these mind-boggling numbers is that the world as we know it is coming to an end. Either that or we have secret government programs employing new technology that virtually nobody understands and have taken on a life of their own. Since we have little evidence that we are dealing with an existential threat on the scale of a Martian invasion, the latter seems to be a bit more realistic.

Oh, and by the way, Senators Udall and Wyden issued a statement:

“The executive branch has now confirmed that the rules, regulations and court-imposed standards for protecting the privacy of Americans have been violated thousands of times each year. We have previously said that the violations of these laws and rules were more serious than had been acknowledged, and we believe Americans should know that this confirmation is just the tip of a larger iceberg.

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Friday night respite from the cares of the world

by digby

Grab yourself an adult beverage and then come back and watch this video. You will feel so much better about everything. I promise:

This video posted by the Taipei Zoo features the reunion of a giant baby panda and its mother. And it may be the sweetest thing you have seen in a very long while, watch it and you’ll see — oh, and to skip ahead to 1:10 for the actual union.

The mother panda named Yuan Yuan has been separated since from her baby for over a month since the its birth to prevent her from potentially smothering or eating the cub. But it’s obvious that time means nothing when it comes to mothers and their babies. Yuan Yuan immediately scoops up the tiny panda and cuddles it closely.

I can feel my blood pressure dropping …

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Egyptian military telling it like it is

by digby

You have to give them credit. Unlike some governments, the Egyptian government isn’t afraid to tell it like it is:

[T]he Egyptian Ministry of Interior, which oversees the police, announced that they would be issuing their officers live ammunition, with standing orders to shoot anyone who attempted to take over government buildings. A spokesman for the Egyptian Ministry of Defense, Ahmed Ali, told The Wall Street Journal on Thursday that the security forces would continue to use all means at their disposal to quell protests and unrest. “When dealing with terrorism, the consideration of civil and human rights are not applicable,” he said.

That’s right. Protests, unrest and riots are now officially defined as terrorism. And “when dealing with terrorism, the consideration of civil and human rights are not applicable.” See how easy that is?

I’ll bet there are quite a few members of Western governments that envy such freedom and transparency…

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Cause the boyz n tha hood are always hard

by digby

No dissing allowed:

A police department in Indiana has launched an internal investigation after a firefighter said he was thrown to the ground and threatened with a Taser for waving at several officers, who thought he was flipping them off.

Evansville firefighter George Madison Jr. told the Evansville Courier & Press that he filed a formal complaint over the incident that happened on Tuesday. Madison, who also serves as a youth pastor at at Memorial Baptist Church, said that he was riding his bicycle on South Weinbach Avenue when he waved at several officers in a patrol car.

The next thing he knew, the officers had pulled him over.

“The officer jumped out and says, ‘What are you doing throwing your hands up at us?’” Madison recalled. “He is talking to me as he is coming toward me. I tried to explain, but I couldn’t get a word in edgewise.”

Madison said that he knew Evansville Police Chief Billy Bolin from community events, so he took out his cellphone to call him for help calming the situation. But the officer told him to put the phone down. And when he hesitated, the Taser came out.

“It was literally maybe inches from my face,” the father of four said. “I immediately threw my hands in the air. What he asked me to do I was more than willing to do. I said ‘Please don’t hurt me.’ The next thing I know I’m laying down the ground and they cuffed me.”

“I remember looking down the barrel of a Taser, because [the officer] was gritting his teeth and saying, ‘Don’t make me pull this trigger.’”

After the officers asked him where he worked, their attitudes changed, Madison said.

You know who else gets upset when someone “throw their hands” and looks at them in a certain way? Street gangs. That’s right, Crips and Bloods in their various permutations.

Such “disrespect” can cost you your life on the mean streets of many inner cities. But the police are supposed to be different. Nowadays, a whole lot of them have adopted this gangster ethos of demanding instant “respect” and total compliance. They just use a taser to do it instead of a gun. Homicide requires a whole lot more paperwork.

This isn’t confined to police officers either. My husband was in a TSA security line at LAX earlier this week and got into a conversation with a women who told him she’d been harassed at a Canadian airport recently. He said to her that she should always comply with the TSA because they have a lot of power over individual citizens and it makes no sense to fight it. He was yanked out of the line by TSA agents and taken to a secure corner where they quizzed him about what he meant by saying that TSA has “power” over people. They went through every item in his carry on bags and he almost missed his plane. He tried to explain that he was only telling the woman that she should comply with their orders, but they were apparently upset at being characterized as people who might abuse their power. So they abused their power and harassed a citizen for saying something completely obvious.

This is creeping authoritarianism. We’ve got millions of people in America wearing uniforms and carrying some kind of government authority and we’re all going to have to learn that they will not be disrespected, even if they are delusional idiots. No, it’s not the end of the world and we’re not being rounded up and sent to the gulag. But it’s not exactly freedom and liberty either.

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