Month: September 2013

The NRA claims a couple of victories. They will be short lived.

by David Atkins

Last night’s elections were bittersweet. Alongside the celebrations of De Blasio’s victory in the New York City mayoral primary were disappointments in the defeat of two Colorado state senators in driven by the NRA:

Two Democratic state lawmakers who backed tighter gun laws in the aftermath of mass shootings in Colorado and Connecticut have been voted out of office in a recall election promoted by both grassroots activists and an influential gun-rights lobbying group.

Colorado Senate president John Morse lost by just 343 votes on Tuesday in a swing district in the Republican stronghold of Colorado Springs while fellow state senator Angela Giron lost by a bigger margin in a largely blue-collar district that usually favours Democrats.

The National Rifle Association said the election sent a clear message to lawmakers that they should protect gun rights and be accountable to their constituents, not to “anti-gun billionaires” – a swipe at the New York mayor, Michael Bloomberg, who supported Giron and Morse.

Democrats will still maintain control of the state legislature and the laws are expected to remain in place. “The loss of this senate seat is purely symbolic,” Morse said.

Angered by new limits of 15 rounds for ammunition magazines and expanded background checks on private gun sales, gun-rights activists tried to recall a total of four lawmakers but only succeeded in launching efforts against two. It was the first for state legislators since Colorado adopted the procedure in 1912.

The recalls were seen as the latest chapter in the national debate over gun rights – and, for some, a warning to lawmakers in swing states who might contemplate gun restrictions in the future.

But the vote also exposed divisions between urban and suburban areas and more rural areas in a state where support for guns has not been a partisan issue. Dozens of elected county sheriffs have sued to block the gun laws and some activists are promoting a largely symbolic measure by some rural counties to secede from the state.

So congratulations to the NRA, I suppose. If Public Policy Polling’s crosstabs are to be believed (and they probably should be, despite the fact that they didn’t even believe it themselves), a full third of Democrats polled supported the recall over gun issues.

But that’s not terribly surprising. Both districts are strongly Democratic districts, with low turnout numbers in this election. It’s not shocking that those animated by pro-gun beliefs, even among registered Democrats, would be likelier to turn out in this election.

The bottom line is that these seats will remain in Democratic hands, the gun control laws will remain on the books, one of the State Senators in question was going to retire anyway, and the emerging Democratic majority of young and minority Americans remain against gun proliferation.

Still, State Senators Giron and Morse deserve credit for making the right stand even at the cost of their political careers. The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee is asking people to sign a thank you card for them, which is a good gesture. Courage in public service should be rewarded.

The NRA can claim a couple of victories today, but it changes nothing in the long run.

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Making new friends. The right wingers who love Assad

by digby

I don’t know how relevant this is, but I didn’t know about it and I thought it was quite interesting:

[N]ow pro-Assad media outlets have found a new way to influence the American debate. Assad supporters’ claims have repeatedly been republished unquestioningly by right-wing commentators in the United States, who share their hostility toward both Sunni Islamists and the Obama administration. It’s a strange alliance between American conservatives and a regime that was one of America’s first designated state sponsors of terror, and continues to work closely with Iran and Hezbollah.

“There is evidence — mounting evidence — that the rebels in Syria did indeed frame Assad for the chemical attack,” conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh told his audience on Sept. 3. “But not only that, but Obama, the regime, may have been complicit in it. Mounting evidence that the White House knew and possibly helped plan the Syrian chemical weapon attack by the opposition!”

Limbaugh’s cited an article by Yossef Bodansky on Global Research, a conspiracy website that has advanced a pro-Assad message during the current crisis. “How can the Obama administration continue to support and seek to empower the opposition which had just intentionally killed some 1,300 innocent civilians?” Bodansky asked.
[…]
Right-wing American partisans have not been shy about simply copy-and-pasting claims made in pro-Assad media outlets when it suits their interests. For example, the website Jihad Watch, which is run by leading Islamophobe Robert Spencer, repeated a claim by the Arabic-language al-Hadath that Syrian rebels attacking the Syrian town of Maaloula “terrorized the Christians, threatening to be avenged on them after the triumph of the revolution.”
[…]
Other stories in such publications, of course, would never see the light of day in the U.S. media. Al-Hadath, for example, features a section dedicated to news about Israel titled “Know Your Enemy” – a strange match for the American right-wing, to say the least.

As I said, I don’t know that this means much except that it points out the complexity of the situation and how inadequate American political philosophy is to understand it.

What do you do when “good guys” vs “bad guys” doesn’t apply (or there’s no way to adequately define what that might mean?) I’d guess working for a ceasefire and then working the problem one step at a time is the only way to approach it. More violence certainly isn’t going to help.

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Our long national nightmare is … still going on

by digby

Ned Resnikoff over at All In notices something I think wasn’t supposed to be noticed:

Twelve years after the worst terrorist attack in American history, President Obama yet again extended his predecessor’s Declaration of National Emergency for another year. The declaration, which was originally put into place on September 14, 2001, was renewed on Tuesday.

“The terrorist threat that led to the declaration on September 14, 2001, of a national emergency continues,” wrote President Obama. “For this reason, I have determined that it is necessary to continue in effect after September 14, 2013, the national emergency with respect to the terrorist threat.”
[…]
In his May 23 speech on American counter-terrorism policy, President Obama indicated that the so-called “war on terror” initiated by Bush would soon be drawing to a close.
“Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue,” he said. “But this war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. That’s what our democracy demands.”

Yet the president has retained much of the executive authority invoked by his predecessor, the least of which includes this declaration. Only in his May speech did President Obama suggest that Congress should “refine, and ultimately repeal” the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force which has served as a legal touchstone for the war on terror; he has not yet suggested a rough expiration date for the law. read on …

We have always been at war with terrorism.

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Certifiably nuts

by digby

Our gun laws, that is:

A debate is taking place in Iowa over the ability of people who are legally or completely blind to carry guns in public. The issue stems from a 2011 change in the state’s gun permit rules, allowing visually impaired people to carry firearms in public.

“State law does not allow sheriffs to deny an Iowan the right to carry a weapon based on physical ability,” The Des Moines Register reported Sunday, in a feature that included several videos (we’ve posted one above). The paper added, “Advocates for the disabled and Iowa law enforcement officers disagree over whether it’s a good idea for visually disabled Iowans to have weapons.” 

One person with a unique perspective on the question is Warren Wethington, the sheriff of Cedar County, Iowa. He has taught his visually impaired daughter Bethany, 18, to use firearms.

“People have this preset idea that blind people are going to be shooting at voices, and it’s just not going to happen,” Wethington tells NPR and WBUR’s Here & Now on today’s show.

Wethington acknowledges that there are limitations — but he says that a blind person who is in close contact with an attacker could be more accurate with a gun than a sighted person who is 5 or 10 yards away. 

[…]
“I’m not an expert in vision,” Delaware Sheriff John LeClere says. “At what point do vision problems have a detrimental effect to fire a firearm? If you see nothing but a blurry mass in front of you, then I would say you probably shouldn’t be shooting something.”

Is it even necessary to comment on just how batshit crazy this is? (I’m going to assume they are still not allowed to drive, right?)

I’m completely in favor of disabled people having all the rights that other people have. But any blind person who thinks he can accurately shoot a deadly weapon that clearly requires vision is someone I don’t think should have a gun.

This country has lost it. Our gun culture is so deluded that it’s made the leap that even blind people should be armed at all times. Because tyranny. Yikes.

Incoherent Speechifying

by digby

I didn’t hear the president’s speech until this morning and I’m sorry I couldn’t listen last night so that I could toast the ghost of George W. Bush’s presidency. I may have missed the references to mushroom clouds and crop dusters but it was certainly an homage to the old standby, “we need to fight ’em over there so we don’t have to fight ’em over here” with some lugubrious Gersonian handwringing over “gassing his own people” thrown in for good measure.

I guess he felt he had to make the case that the boogeymen were coming to kill all the nice American children in their beds so that the people will believe they are fighting for their survival instead of getting involved in another war over an abstract ideal that nobody else in the world seems to think is worth fighting for. And maybe he’s right. It’s certainly reasonable to assume that the people can only be moved to support war at this point to defend the country against a direct threat. That they are tired of these abstract entanglements that cost this nation huge sums of money and almost inevitably a pile of dead Americans is obvious.

Unfortunately, the threat of al Qaeda getting hold of these weapons is demonstrably more likely if Assad loses his civil war than if he doesn’t, so that rationale is somewhat incoherent. And nothing we do with respect to Syria will make any of them anywhere less likely to want them. Gassing people is right in their wheelhouse.

The assertion that American soldiers will face chemical weapons on the battlefield if this isn’t adequately addressed in Syria is also unlikely. I don’t know what “battlefield” he’s talking about, but I think everyone knows that the banned chemical weapons are ineffective in war and that the US would respond very harshly if its own soldiers were attacked with them. Over the course of many decades these weapons have rarely been used and always in a very limited way by creepy middle eastern despots (often with our knowledge and permission.) To imply that American soldiers are at risk if we don’t respond militarily to this action in Syria is unbelievable and frankly, over the top.

Moreover, while the president went out of his way to convey that we, as a people, must be morally outraged by this use of chemical weapons, he also went out of his way to assure us that we are not so morally outraged that we will do anything more than beat our chests and lob a few bombs and call it a day. The laundry list of previous military actions, from Iraq to Libya and Kosovo, that these proposed strikes aren’t anything like, makes you wonder just what the point is. Meanwhile, I suspect that the people, hearing moralizing refrains about “gassing his own people” as an echo of Iraq are wary of taking the president at his word. It’s all very confusing.

I’m not surprised that he asserted that it was the threat of force that brought Russia and Syria to the bargaining table but to believe that, one would have to assume that they don’t read the papers and be aware that the British gave a thumbs down, the president is not backed by the American people and that he stands to lose his vote in congress. It’s not as if George W. Bush is out there screaming “we WILL disarm Bashar Assad” while the country is reeling from a catastrophic terrorist attack. I suspect they know very well that President Obama has a very difficult political road to walk here at home which means the threat of force isn’t what brought them to the negotiating table — it’s the hope of a face saving way out of an increasingly impossible situation made possible by his weak domestic position on this. So continued saber rattling is probably not the greatest idea in the world. (They will, of course, continue to insist that the threat of force is necessary “leverage” to gain support in the congress. Just as they did with Iraq. So …)

Anyway, I doubt the speech changed anyone’s minds, but who knows? The people are often moved by the president making the case for war — yanking the patriotic heart strings is tried and true. But this CNN snap poll (which is a very dicey measure of public opinion so take it with a grain of salt) didn’t show a lot of movement. We’ll have to wait to see how it sets with the public over the course of the next few days to really know:

The president said in his speech that he’s asked congressional leaders “to postpone a vote to authorize the use of force” against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s military while diplomatic efforts to address the crisis continue. “It’s too early to tell whether this offer will succeed, and any agreement must verify that the Assad regime keeps its commitments,” Obama said. “But this initiative has the potential to remove the threat of chemical weapons without the use of force.”

According to the poll, 61% said they support the president’s position on Syria, with 37% saying they oppose his response to the Syrian government’s alleged use of chemical weapons against its own citizens.

The poll indicates that nearly two-thirds of those who watched the speech think that the situation in Syria is likely to be resolved through diplomatic efforts, with 35% disagreeing.

But Obama said that he’s ordered the U.S. military “to maintain their current posture to keep the pressure on Assad, and to be in a position to respond if diplomacy fails.”

According to the poll, those who watched the president were divided on whether Obama made a convincing case in his speech for U.S. military action in Syria, with 47% saying he did and 50% saying he didn’t.

The survey indicates that the speech didn’t move the needle very much on whether U.S. air strikes against Syria would achieve significant goals for the U.S. Thirty percent of speech-watchers questioned before the address said yes. That number edged up to 36% following the address. And 39% said it was in the national interests of the U.S. to be involved in the conflict in Syria, edging up from 30% before the speech. Sixty percent said it was not in the national interests to get involved, down just five points from before the speech.

Fifty-two percent said following the speech that they were more confident of the president’s leadership on military and international issues, with 16% saying they were less confident. But 52% said the speech did not change their opinion.

Sigh. This will play out as it will play out. And it’s fluid so I don’t think anyone can predict what’s going to happen.

Meanwhile, I think Jon Stewart had a good take:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook

Record income inequality hits another new record

by David Atkins

I’m sure we’re all shocked that the rich are taking yet another record share of the national economic pie:

The gulf between the richest 1% of the USA and the rest of the country got to its widest level in history last year.

The top 1% of earners in the U.S. pulled in 19.3% of total household income in 2012, which is their biggest slice of total income in more than 100 years, according to a an analysis by economists at the University of California, Berkeley and the Paris School of Economics at Oxford University.

The richest Americans haven’t claimed this large of a slice of total wealth since 1927, when the group claimed 18.7%. The analysis is based on data from Internal Revenue Service data.

Is it any wonder that New Yorkers just voiced such strong support for a strident economic progressive like De Blasio? It appears the dam is beginning to burst at long last.

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Speaking of grotesque cartoons…

by digby

Just as the carnage of a terrible car accident compels your eyes toward it despite your best efforts to look away, so too does this latest atrocity from The Daily Caller:

To watch this latest incarnation of Crossfire is to confront, head-on, the defining unspoken reality of human existence: bad people like Stephanie Cutter can climb, in defiance of taste and public demand, to a position of success.

A loathsome creature like Stephanie Cutter, the roots jutting out from her blonde dye job as black as the recesses of her soul, can push her way onto national television to sit next to a former Speaker of the House and two sitting U.S. senators. A charmless, dead-eyed, tacky sociopath with no sense of ethics, an empty shell spewing her flat-throated bile without the slightest trace of self-awareness, can beat all of us to the front of the Darwinian line.

A figure of hatred and dishonesty, a person devoid of any pleasantness or redeeming human value, a treadmill-stomping, Starbucks-chugging monument to modern self-absorption, someone incapable of appreciating good art, fine food, or the love or kidness of her fellow man, can shove and kick and lie her way ahead of the rest of us in this misbegotten society. This unmitigated monster can appear before us, talentless, grating, fraudulently tanned, thrusting in our faces the career trophies she earned simply because we didn’t care enough to stop her from getting them.

Who is responsible for this speed-talking tragedy? Who, among us, will stand in the public square and admit “I helped cause Stephanie Cutter.” Will anyone? Should we all?

Stephanie Cutter is feminism mutated into grotesque cartoon. She is the 90-IQ suburbanite Student Council vice president smugly doodling her gel pens in the front row of the class, mixed with the ranting fever dreams of the Smith College lecture halls, doused with half a dash of unearned metropolitan haughtiness and marinated in the despicable shouting matches of post-Carville politicking. She is Carrie Bradshaw without the literacy, Chelsea Handler without the punch lines, Kirsten Powers without the prettiness, gorging her face with the spoils of ill-gotten first-world privilege. How did we allow this American with a Social Security number to power-walk through the halls of our society for 44 years (yes, Stephanie, forty-four) without recognizing the warning signs?

The ‘Crossfire’ debut dwells on the subject of Syria, with colorful Gingrich and good doctor Rand Paul and (cough) Bob Menendez debating the merits of U.S. military intervention. But their voices were lost amid the cackles and jagged bursts of violent faux-laughter put forth by makeup-coated Cutter. By the time she chokes out her staged “Ceasefire” in agreement with Gingrich at the show’s long-awaited end, we the viewers have squirmed, have sighed, have shaken our heads in suspended disbelief, have clutched our sides in indescribable, throbbing pain. She leaves us exhausted in our discomfort.

Did America request this? Could Jeff Zucker have possibly taken any focus group data before sitting Stephanie Cutter before his cameras? What perverted kind of ‘Q’ rating could have convinced these cable executives that middle-income 18-to-49 year olds desire an evening date with this catty air-kissing backstabbing specimen? Where are the John and Jane Q. Citizens crying out and calling in, “Give us more Cutter”?

Why? On behalf of every cute, shy, intelligent young woman rejected by sororities at the fuchsia nails of clipboard-toting middle managers like Cutter, we ask, ‘why?’ On behalf of every hardworking man forced to report to vaguely qualified female “corporate consultants” in a post-Anita Hill world, we ask, ‘why?’

Is that the point? Are we supposed to see visions of the worst villains from our own lives while gazing up at the specter of Cutter, conjuring in us an indescribable stew of self-disgust that will keep us coming back, masochistically, to this demented cable program like the characters of the Marquis de Sade?

Good God.

Why do I get the feeling that this fine fellow knows from the the Marquis de Sade?  (May the good lord — and the local police — help the poor “cute, shy, intelligent young woman” being currently stalked by this freakshow.)

That screed was written by sad, limp provacateur wannabe Patrick Howley  but I’m sure he and Tucker Carlson giggled like schoolgirls together over the edit. It’s got Tuck written all over it — sophomoric, bitchy, crude and sexist. His trademark. Which makes this “review” even more astonishing. You remember Tucker Carlson, don’t you? The man so singularly unappealing that even Newt Gingrich is considered charismatic by comparison? A man so completely without dignity that he actually did this in order to boost his flagging celebrity?

Yes, that Tucker Carlson, editor of an unfortunate little Breitbart wannabe website that employs the misogynist head case who puts his disturbed little wet dreams on the internet. They make quite a team.

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QOTD: Steve Bracknell

by digby

Lake Mary, Florida Police Chief to an LA Times reporter:

“Man, it would be fantastic if you have an apartment out there [in California] for George Zimmerman. This guy is killing me.”

Uhm, no thanks. We have more than enough gun-toting yahoos around here. Luckily, we don’t also have concealed carry for morons or Stand Your Ground laws. If he wants to carry his gun openly it can’t be loaded. I don’t think he’d be happy here.

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And if Damascus does become Pyongyang on the Levant?

by David Atkins

Max Fisher at the Washington Post has an interesting take today on the notion that Assad may adopt the Kim Jong-Il approach to international negotiations over its chemical weapons, stringing the world along for months and years while making no real concessions.

That may in fact be the case. It’s even likely. But that’s only a significant problem for those who believe the objective really is to take away Assad’s chemical weapons stockpiles, rather than prevent him from using them. If the objective is to stop more children from dying by sarin gas, then it doesn’t much matter who has control of the stockpiles as long as they don’t get used.

The argument does, however, bring to light the fact that the world still hasn’t figured out what to do about intractable, brutal dictators who blackmail the world while abusing their people. Both war and sanctions tend only to hurt the people the dictators oppress, while freezing assets and restricting travel doesn’t seem to have much effect. If the world has an interest in controlling murderous dictators, perhaps the first step should be the creation of a consistent set of protocols to maximize the inconvenience to the dictators, their family and their friends.

As it stands, international policy seems to be to hurt the victims with economic and military violence while the elites still eat caviar. It’s time to turn that on its head by removing the focus from sanctions and warfare, and increasing the focus on making the lives of the oppressors as miserable as possible.

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Golly, I feel so safe

by digby

From David Carr of the New York Times:

Barrett Brown makes for a pretty complicated victim. A Dallas-based journalist obsessed with the government’s ties to private security firms, Mr. Brown has been in jail for a year, facing charges that carry a combined penalty of more than 100 years in prison.

Professionally, his career embodies many of the conflicts and contradictions of journalism in the digital era. He has written for The Guardian, Vanity Fair and The Huffington Post, but as with so many of his peers, the line between his journalism and his activism is nonexistent. He has served in the past as a spokesman of sorts for Anonymous, the hacker collective, although some members of the group did not always appreciate his work on its behalf.

In 2007, he co-wrote a well-received book, “Flock of Dodos: Behind Modern Creationism, Intelligent Design and the Easter Bunny,” and over time, he has developed an expertise in the growing alliance between large security firms and the government, arguing that the relationship came at a high cost to privacy.

He is also, by all accounts, an eccentric personality who is hard to get along with. And he’s facing life in prison for … linking. Seriously:

In 2010, he formed an online collective named Project PM with a mission of investigating documents unearthed by Anonymous and others. If Anonymous and groups like it were the wrecking crew, Mr. Brown and his allies were the people who assembled the pieces of the rubble into meaningful insights.

Project PM first looked at the documents spilled by the hack of HBGary Federal, a security firm, in February 2011 and uncovered a remarkable campaign of coordinated disinformation against advocacy groups, which Mr. Brown wrote about in The Guardian, among other places.

Peter Ludlow, a professor of philosophy at Northwestern and a fan of Mr. Brown’s work, wrote in The Huffington Post that, “Project PM under Brown’s leadership began to slowly untangle the web of connections between the U.S. government, corporations, lobbyists and a shadowy group of private military and infosecurity consultants.”

In December 2011, approximately five million e-mails from Stratfor Global Intelligence, an intelligence contractor, were hacked by Anonymous and posted on WikiLeaks. The files contained revelations about close and perhaps inappropriate ties between government security agencies and private contractors. In a chat room for Project PM, Mr. Brown posted a link to it.

Among the millions of Stratfor files were data containing credit cards and security codes, part of the vast trove of internal company documents. The credit card data was of no interest or use to Mr. Brown, but it was of great interest to the government. In December 2012 he was charged with 12 counts related to identity theft. Over all he faces 17 charges — including three related to the purported threat of the F.B.I. officer and two obstruction of justice counts — that carry a possible sentence of 105 years, and he awaits trial in a jail in Mansfield, Tex.

According to one of the indictments, by linking to the files, Mr. Brown “provided access to data stolen from company Stratfor Global Intelligence to include in excess of 5,000 credit card account numbers, the card holders’ identification information, and the authentication features for the credit cards.”

He’s not accused of stealing it, selling it or using it. He’s accused of linking to it.

By trying to criminalize linking, the federal authorities in the Northern District of Texas — Mr. Brown lives in Dallas — are suggesting that to share information online is the same as possessing it or even stealing it. In the news release announcing the indictment, the United States attorney’s office explained, “By transferring and posting the hyperlink, Brown caused the data to be made available to other persons online, without the knowledge and authorization of Stratfor and the card holders.”

And the magnitude of the charges is confounding. Jeremy Hammond, a Chicago man who pleaded guilty to participating in the actual hacking of Stratfor in the first place, is facing a sentence of 10 years.

Last week, Mr. Brown and his lawyers agreed to an order that allows him to continue to work on articles, but not say anything about his case that is not in the public record.

Speaking by phone on Thursday, Charles Swift, one of his lawyers, spoke carefully.

“Mr. Brown is presumed innocent of the charges against him and in support of the presumption, the defense anticipates challenging both the legal assumptions and the facts that underlie the charges against him,” he said.

Others who are not subject to the order say the aggressive set of charges suggests the government is trying to send a message beyond the specifics of the case.

“The big reason this matters is that he transferred a link, something all of us do every single day, and ended up being charged for it,” said Jennifer Lynch, a staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group that presses for Internet freedom and privacy. “I think that this administration is trying to prosecute the release of information in any way it can.”

It must be noted that after the FBI charged his mother for obstruction of justice for allegedly trying to hide his laptop Brown went a little nuts and threatened the FBI in a rambling, drugged up Youtube. But the big charges against him are for the linkage, not the threat. Basically, he’s being charged with hundreds of years in prison for linking to stolen documents which has been done by well … all of us who write about politics online. I just did it the other day when I linked to der Spiegel’s latest NSA story. Certainly all the journalists who work on stories with classified documents are potential targets.

It’s this sort of governmental overreach, harassment and intimidation that makes all the unctuous calls for “Ed” Snowden to come back and face a trial absurd. They drove Aaron Swarz to suicide.  They’re harassing this guy into mental breakdown.  Why would anyone believe that the government would act in a fair manner toward someone like Snowden who’s been accused of espionage on top of it all?

I have no doubt that it’s had an effect on journalists. Obviously, those who work for big institutions have a degree of safety with rooms full of lawyers and the protection of their friends in the media.  But even they feel the pressure from the examples of reporters for  like James Risen of the New York Times and be likely to hold back.  Certainly their sources are.  And I guess that’s the point.  Too bad for the people they’ve chosen to use as “examples.”

BTW: His lawyer, Charles Swift, is a certified American hero in my book.  At least Brown is well defended by someone who understands fully what he’s up against.

Update: Here’s another example of harassment for alleged illegal linking. This one happened just yesterday. To a university professor. Now the NSA doesn’t even have to act. Institutions that do business with it will do it for them.

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