Month: November 2013

Karen Tumulty Pumpkin Cake

For cake

* (3/4 cup) softened unsalted butter.
* 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour plus additional for dusting pan
* 2 teaspoons baking powder
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* 1 teaspoon cinnamon
* 3/4 teaspoon ground allspice
* 2 tablespoons crystalized ginger, finely chopped
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1 1/4 cups canned pumpkin
* 3/4 cup well-shaken buttermilk 
* 1 teaspoon vanilla
* 1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
* 3 large eggs

Icing

* 2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons well-shaken buttermilk
* 1 1/2 cups confectioners sugar, 
* 1/4 cup chopped walnuts
* a 10-inch nonstick bundt pan 


Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter bundt pan generously.

Sift flour (2 1/4 cups), baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, allspice, and salt in a bowl. Whisk together pumpkin, 3/4 cup buttermilk, ginger and vanilla in another bowl.

Beat butter and granulated sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, add eggs and beat 1 minute. Reduce speed to low and add flour and pumpkin mixtures alternately in batches, beginning and ending with flour mixture, just until smooth.

Spoon batter into pan, then bake until a wooden pick inserted in center of cake comes out clean, 45 to 50 minutes. Cool cake in pan 15 minutes, then invert rack over cake and reinvert cake onto rack. Cool 10 minutes more.

Icing:

Whisk together buttermilk and confectioners sugar until smooth. Drizzle over warm cake, sprinkle with chopped walnuts (keep a little icing in reserve to drizzle lightly over walnuts) then cool cake completely. Icing will harden slightly.

Easy as pie (easier, actually.) 


Update: Taste’s great with some eggnog.  If you’ve never made the real thing, this one from Alton Brown is really, reallllly gooooodmmmmmm….




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McClatchy takes the 60 Minutes “review” to task

by digby

McClatchy, which did an excellent analysis of problems beyond the hoax in Lara Logan’s Benghazi story now takes a look at the obvious deficiencies in the “review” that resulted in Logan and her producer being suspended (with pay evidently):

Ortiz’s 10-point summary of his findings skirts some of the main issues still lingering about the segment. He offered no explanation, for example, of how Logan came in contact with Dylan Davies, the main source for the story, or why Logan did not reveal that Davies had written a soon-to-be-published book for another CBS-owned company. The book project since has been canceled.

The review also did not explain Logan’s assertions that al Qaida was behind the attack – that is a widely disputed assertion – or that the hospital where Stevens was treated was controlled by al Qaida, something that was inaccurate. The review concluded only that Logan had not attributed those assertions properly.
[…]
Ortiz did not address whether Davies was put in touch with “60 Minutes” by the would-be publisher of his book, Threshold Editions, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, which is owned by CBS. “‘60 Minutes’ erred in not disclosing that connection in the segment,” Ortiz concluded.

The review also refers to other questions raised by McClatchy. The 15-minute segment repeatedly referred to the attack as an al Qaida operation, saying that fact was “well known,” and claimed Stevens was treated at a hospital controlled by al Qaida.

But who took part in storming the compound is disputed, and there is no known information that the attack was led by al Qaida. Instead, the attackers consisted of members of several jihadist groups, including Ansar al Shariah, a Libyan militia that was responsible for security in much of Benghazi. Several Libyans told McClatchy the hospital was guarded by Ansar al Shariah, not al Qaida.

The journalistic review did not question the accuracy of Logan’s assertions about al Qaida but said they were inadequately attributed in the segment.
[…]
The review also backed the report’s assertion that Stevens’ schedule for Sept. 12, 2012, had been found in the compound more than a year after the attack. But it skirts the fact that the only person CBS dispatched to Benghazi during what “60 Minutes” called a “year-long investigation” was a security contractor who, in his words, “works in journalism.”

“Video taken by the producer-cameraman whom the ‘60 Minutes’ team sent to the Benghazi compound last month clearly shows that the pictures of the Technical Operations Center were authentic, including the picture of the schedule in the debris,” the memo said.

But the contractor did not describe himself as a producer-cameraman in a conversation with McClatchy, in which he recounted hiring two Libyans to accompany him on Oct. 4-7 for the story. The contractor, who contacted McClatchy, refused to give his real name or name the company for which he works, but he provided photos from his visit.

On Tuesday, McClatchy found the memo shown in the “60 Minutes” report, lying on top of debris in the compound’s technical operations center.

The memo, however, undercuts Logan’s assertion that the Benghazi Medical Center was under al Qaida control at the time of the attack. The schedule shows that Stevens was scheduled to visit the medical center at 11 a.m. – an unlikely destination if the hospital had been controlled by al Qaida.

I don’t even know what to say about the fact that this contractor-journalist just happened to find Ambassador Stevens’ schedule lying atop the rubble a year after the event, but it is more than a little bit curious.

Up until now, I haven’t written about Logan’s contractor husband because I’m just not comfortable attributing any problems with her journalism to what he does. But this does make me curious now because it turns out we’re dealing with two contractors in the middle of this bogus story, one who’s been completely discredited and one who’s some kind of mercenary reporter. And Logan’s also married to one (although there’s some dispute as to just how much of a real spook sort he really was.) When you combine tall hat with Logan’s lugubrious characterization in her piece of the contractor con man as someone “who’s been keeping our diplomats safe from harm for years” you start to think there really could be a connection. I have no real evidence of it obviously, but it’s pretty clear that the world of contractors in general may have been a factor in this hoax.

In any case, you just have to laugh at this:

When Logan and Burkett began their affair in Baghdad, he was married and she was in a relationship. They were married in 2008. “I knew him for about six years before we got together,” she told The New York Times in a soft-focus feature in 2012. “He had a very secretive job, and I always respected that. I know tons of people in that world, and I never ask them questions because it’s a violation right there.”

“He never crossed my boundaries,” Logan said of Burkett. “I never crossed his.”

Can you see the problem here? She knows tons of people in “that world” but never asks them questions because it would be a “violation?” Logan is CBS News’ Chief Foreign Correspondent. I don’t know what she thinks she’s “violating” but it’s obvious to me that she’s violating the terms of her employment. Journalists ask questions. It’s the most basic requirement of the job.

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No, private charity can’t make up for government programs

by David Atkins

Not that anyone with a modicum of intelligence should have had any doubt about this since the 1930s, but cuts to food stamps are forcing private charities to try to help pick up the slack. Needless to say, they aren’t able to keep up with the need:

American food banks that saw demand for emergency meals take off during the recession are working to meet yet another increase for 2014, following cuts to food stamps that took effect Nov. 1, 2013.

The $5 billion cuts in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program will affect 47.7 million people, one out of every seven Americans. A family of four will lose $36 a month in food assistance, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, dropping from $668 to $632 a month.

In New York City, with 63 percent of pantries and kitchens reporting shortages, the cuts will add stress to an already strained system, says Triada Stampas, a spokesperson for Food Bank for New York City. That food bank, the nation’s largest, delivered 72 million meals last year. The organization calculates that across the five boroughs, SNAP cuts will mean that New Yorkers who get assistance will eat a total of 76 million fewer meals acquired with food stamps in the next year.

“We’ve been talking to private donors for months about these cuts,” said Stampas. “But I want to dispel the notion that private charity can make up for the cuts, that’s simply not possible. “

Bob Aiken, the CEO of Feeding America, a network of 200 food banks nationwide, said their branches are going to see more visitors as SNAP cuts shrink monthly food budgets.

Feeding America expects to deliver 3.3 billion meals in 2014, an increase from the 3.2 billion meals delivered in 2013 and the 2.2 billion meals delivered in 2009.

With a 46 percent increase in the number of people seeking meals after the recession hit — from 25 million in 2006 to 37 million 2010 — Feeding America has been struggling to keep up with demand.

“We are very concerned about the impact this cut will have on struggling low-income people and our network food banks,” Aiken wrote in a statement in response to the SNAP cuts. “Unfortunately, our food banks across the nation continue to be stretched thin in their efforts to meet sustained high need in the wake of the recession.”

When conservatives insist that private charity substitute for real universal programs, they are in essence saying “let people die.” It never did work, doesn’t work now, and won’t work in the future.

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Rush Limbaugh declares war on the Pope

by digby

Well, not really. But he might as well have:

LIMBAUGH: I mentioned, last night — I was doing show prep last night — usual routine. And I ran across this — I don’t actually know what it’s called — the latest papal offering, statement from Pope Francis. Now, up until this — I’m not Catholic. Up until this, I have to tell you, I was admiring the man. I thought he was going a little overboard on the “common man” touch, and I thought there might have been a little bit of PR involved there. But nevertheless, I was willing to cut him some slack. I mean, if he wants to portray himself as still from the streets of where he came from and is not anything special, not aristocratic, if he wants to eschew the physical trappings of the Vatican — OK, cool, fine.

But this that I came across last night — I mean, it totally befuddled me. If it weren’t for capitalism, I don’t know where the Catholic Church would be. Now, as I mentioned before, I’m not Catholic. I admire it profoundly, and I’ve been tempted a number of times to delve deeper into it. But the pope here has now gone beyond Catholicism here, and this is pure political. Now, I want to share with you some of this stuff.

“Pope Francis attacked unfettered capitalism as ‘a new tyranny.’ He beseeched global leaders to fight poverty and growing inequality, in a document on Tuesday setting out a platform for his papacy and calling for a renewal of the Catholic Church. In it, Pope Francis went further than previous comments criticizing the global economic system, attacking the ‘idolatry of money.’ “

I’ve gotta be very caref– I have been numerous times to the Vatican. It wouldn’t exist without tons of money. But, regardless, what this is — somebody has either written this for him or gotten to him. This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the pope. There’s no such — “unfettered capitalism”? That doesn’t exist anywhere.

Ok, now I’m starting to really enjoy this. Has anyone alerted Wild Bill Donohue to the fact that Rush Limbaugh is calling the pope a Marxist? If Donohue were anything other than a broken down right wing hack, he’s be bringing forth the anti-gay, drug addict slurs right about now. (After all, the guy usually defends everything the Church does, including priest pedophilia.) Nothing? Chirp???

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Obamacare’s 54 Percenters

by idgby

The latest polling isn’t too bad:

The latest CNN/ORC International poll showed that 53 percent of Americans think it’s too early to characterize the health care law as a failure, while 54 percent expressed optimism that the problems currently plaguing Obamacare be resolved.

Almost four in 10 called the law a failure and 45 percent said its flaws will never be fixed.

The survey also showed a majority of Americans (58 percent) are opposed to the Affordable Care Act — a continuation of a recent trend —but the pollsters provided context for the source of the opposition.

Forty-one percent said they oppose the law because it’s too liberal, while 14 percent said it isn’t liberal enough. As CNN noted, this means that 54 percent either support the Affordable Care Act or believe it isn’t liberal enough.

A pretty good majority thinks the mess will be fixed. Unfortunately, it’s composed of liberals and moderates so I have very little faith that this congress will be able to do anything about it. So it’s up to the administration to use whatever executive power it has in the short run. But this also means that progressives have to come out of their defensive crouches and start building a mandate for really needs to be done to improve this thing. Obviously, we need to work on the Medicaid part — this reform will never be seen as a success if millions and millions of working poor are the only people who have no way to get coverage. There are actual winners and losers, some of whom can afford to be losers and some of whom cannot. And there are issues that are going to come to the fore in individual states that will have to be attended to.

Beyond that are a whole lot of interesting ideas out there, from ending the anti-trust exemption for insurance to single payer coming online in Vermont, and we should be exploring all of them. Despite all the hysteria, a majority of the people are hanging in there and are, quite rationally, withholding final judgement until the thing is actually in effect. It gives you a little faith in the power of reason, doesn’t it?

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You say the government is tracking everyone’s online sex habits? Of course it is.

by digby

And why are they doing it? For the usual reasons: defamation and blackmail. Here’s the latest from Greenwald, teaming up this time with Grim and Gallagher at the Huffington Post:

The National Security Agency has been gathering records of online sexual activity and evidence of visits to pornographic websites as part of a proposed plan to harm the reputations of those whom the agency believes are radicalizing others through incendiary speeches, according to a top-secret NSA document. The document, provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, identifies six targets, all Muslims, as “exemplars” of how “personal vulnerabilities” can be learned through electronic surveillance, and then exploited to undermine a target’s credibility, reputation and authority.

The NSA document, dated Oct. 3, 2012, repeatedly refers to the power of charges of hypocrisy to undermine such a messenger. “A previous SIGINT” — or signals intelligence, the interception of communications — “assessment report on radicalization indicated that radicalizers appear to be particularly vulnerable in the area of authority when their private and public behaviors are not consistent,” the document argues.

Among the vulnerabilities listed by the NSA that can be effectively exploited are “viewing sexually explicit material online” and “using sexually explicit persuasive language when communicating with inexperienced young girls.”

The Director of the National Security Agency — described as “DIRNSA” — is listed as the “originator” of the document. Beyond the NSA itself, the listed recipients include officials with the Departments of Justice and Commerce and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

“Without discussing specific individuals, it should not be surprising that the US Government uses all of the lawful tools at our disposal to impede the efforts of valid terrorist targets who seek to harm the nation and radicalize others to violence,” Shawn Turner, director of public affairs for National Intelligence, told The Huffington Post in an email Tuesday.

Perhaps the most concerning part of this revelation is the part about tracking “radicalization.” I’m quite sure that any American Muslim should assume they are being watched now, if they haven’t already. Because it’s clearly not even enough to be someone who has never been involved in political activities. You could say something some day that could be a sign that you are being “radicalized.” Like, I don’t know, you could write in an email that you think the American government shouldn’t kill innocent Pakistani people in drone attacks, for instance. I’m going to guess that could make some analyst decide you need to be on a list someplace.

And let’s be honest.”Radicalization” is a very elastic term, isn’t it? It’s not going to just be Muslims, although they are certainly at the leading edge of government paranoia. This is exactly the sort of thing that’s routinely used against political dissidents in times of crisis. We know this because it’s happened. We don’t even have to go back to hoary old 1960s COINTELPRO stuff. Recall that after 9/11 they did stuff like this:

The demonstration seemed harmless enough. Late on a June afternoon in 2004, a motley group of about 10 peace activists showed up outside the Houston headquarters of Halliburton, the giant military contractor once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney. They were there to protest the corporation’s supposed “war profiteering.” The demonstrators wore papier-mache masks and handed out free peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches to Halliburton employees as they left work. The idea, according to organizer Scott Parkin, was to call attention to allegations that the company was overcharging on a food contract for troops in Iraq. “It was tongue-in-street political theater,” Parkin says.

But that’s not how the Pentagon saw it. To U.S. Army analysts at the top-secret Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), the peanut-butter protest was regarded as a potential threat to national security. Created three years ago by the Defense Department, CIFA’s role is “force protection”—tracking threats and terrorist plots against military installations and personnel inside the United States. In May 2003, Paul Wolfowitz, then deputy Defense secretary, authorized a fact-gathering operation code-named TALON—short for Threat and Local Observation Notice—that would collect “raw information” about “suspicious incidents.” The data would be fed to CIFA to help the Pentagon’s “terrorism threat warning process,” according to an internal Pentagon memo.

That’s not all, though. One of the things we must understand about all this is the fact that if any part of the US Government dragnet turns up what they think is evidence of a crime, they can pass it on to other agencies. So basically, if they are monitoring all of us,which they are, that means all of our private information can theoretically be used by the government if they can find some connection to a potential crime. All police agencies, whether it’s the DEA or the FBI or Homeland Security (or the Commerce department!) can use such evidence to squeeze possible witnesses, set up stings, infiltrate what they believe to be criminal associations, create informants and otherwise use people who they believe might have something to hide in order to make a case. It’s done all the time. But until now there was no central database available to go fishing in for blackmail material.  (And keep in mind that we now know they routinely go back and dummy up the paper trail so the court and the suspect never knows where the original “tip” came from, a practice that might be understandable if it only pertained to confidential informants, but apparently is also used to cover up government surveillance.)

These programs create a huge, global matrix of associations (and associations of associations) and a massive record of information about individuals, all of which could be accessed to provide the government with private and intimate details that people might not want the world to see and which could be used to discredit them or get them to cooperate. I think we know where this sort of thing can easily lead. It’s not just “terrorism” at stake here. We have an entire police state apparatus that could use this information and no way of knowing how or why they might be allowed to do it.

Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said these revelations give rise to serious concerns about abuse. “It’s important to remember that the NSA’s surveillance activities are anything but narrowly focused — the agency is collecting massive amounts of sensitive information about virtually everyone,” he said.

“Wherever you are, the NSA’s databases store information about your political views, your medical history, your intimate relationships and your activities online,” he added. “The NSA says this personal information won’t be abused, but these documents show that the NSA probably defines ‘abuse’ very narrowly.”

Finally, in this report we find that they are using private sexual information to discredit their targets.  I wonder if they’ve had any successes?

Update: Here’s what the ACLU has to say about “radicalization”:

Counterterrorism policies based on flawed models of so-called terrorist radicalization are ineffective and undermine constitutional rights. Despite substantial empirical evidence to the contrary, the government continues to embrace a theory that argues that adopting radical ideas is a first step toward terrorist violence. Based on this discredited model, intelligence and law enforcement agencies are increasingly implementing flawed and wasteful “preventive” policies that result in discrimination, suspicionless surveillance of entire communities, and selective law enforcement against belief communities and political activists.

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Here’s a whiff ‘o freedom for you

by digby

There’s a lot of loose talk (mostly from me) about Big Brother and Orwellian language these days. But I swear that until now I didn’t know that Taser International’s slogan was “Protect Life.”

Civilization collapse in the climate-devastated world

by David Atkins

This column on the consequences of climate change by Iraq War vet and brilliant author Roy Scranton is a must read and should be a wake-up call for the politics-as-usual folks. The man is not exaggerating. These really are the stakes in the new man-made climate era, the Anthropocene:

With “shock and awe,” our military had unleashed the end of the world on a city of six million — a city about the same size as Houston or Washington. The infrastructure was totaled: water, power, traffic, markets and security fell to anarchy and local rule. The city’s secular middle class was disappearing, squeezed out between gangsters, profiteers, fundamentalists and soldiers. The government was going down, walls were going up, tribal lines were being drawn, and brutal hierarchies savagely established.

I was a private in the United States Army. This strange, precarious world was my new home. If I survived.

Two and a half years later, safe and lazy back in Fort Sill, Okla., I thought I had made it out. Then I watched on television as Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. This time it was the weather that brought shock and awe, but I saw the same chaos and urban collapse I’d seen in Baghdad, the same failure of planning and the same tide of anarchy. The 82nd Airborne hit the ground, took over strategic points and patrolled streets now under de facto martial law. My unit was put on alert to prepare for riot control operations. The grim future I’d seen in Baghdad was coming home: not terrorism, not even W.M.D.’s, but a civilization in collapse, with a crippled infrastructure, unable to recuperate from shocks to its system.

And today, with recovery still going on more than a year after Sandy and many critics arguing that the Eastern seaboard is no more prepared for a huge weather event than we were last November, it’s clear that future’s not going away.

This March, Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III, the commander of the United States Pacific Command, told security and foreign policy specialists in Cambridge, Mass., that global climate change was the greatest threat the United States faced — more dangerous than terrorism, Chinese hackers and North Korean nuclear missiles. Upheaval from increased temperatures, rising seas and radical destabilization “is probably the most likely thing that is going to happen…” he said, “that will cripple the security environment, probably more likely than the other scenarios we all often talk about.’’

Locklear’s not alone. Tom Donilon, the national security adviser, said much the same thing in April, speaking to an audience at Columbia’s new Center on Global Energy Policy. James Clapper, director of national intelligence, told the Senate in March that “Extreme weather events (floods, droughts, heat waves) will increasingly disrupt food and energy markets, exacerbating state weakness, forcing human migrations, and triggering riots, civil disobedience, and vandalism.”

On the civilian side, the World Bank’s recent report, “Turn Down the Heat: Climate Extremes, Regional Impacts, and the Case for Resilience,” offers a dire prognosis for the effects of global warming, which climatologists now predict will raise global temperatures by 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit within a generation and 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit within 90 years. Projections from researchers at the University of Hawaii find us dealing with “historically unprecedented” climates as soon as 2047. The climate scientist James Hansen, formerly with NASA, has argued that we face an “apocalyptic” future. This grim view is seconded by researchers worldwide, including Anders Levermann, Paul and Anne Ehrlich, Lonnie Thompson and many, many, many others.

This chorus of Jeremiahs predicts a radically transformed global climate forcing widespread upheaval — not possibly, not potentially, but inevitably. We have passed the point of no return. From the point of view of policy experts, climate scientists and national security officials, the question is no longer whether global warming exists or how we might stop it, but how we are going to deal with it…

Now, when I look into our future — into the Anthropocene — I see water rising up to wash out lower Manhattan. I see food riots, hurricanes, and climate refugees. I see 82nd Airborne soldiers shooting looters. I see grid failure, wrecked harbors, Fukushima waste, and plagues. I see Baghdad. I see the Rockaways. I see a strange, precarious world.

Our new home.

The human psyche naturally rebels against the idea of its end. Likewise, civilizations have throughout history marched blindly toward disaster, because humans are wired to believe that tomorrow will be much like today — it is unnatural for us to think that this way of life, this present moment, this order of things is not stable and permanent. Across the world today, our actions testify to our belief that we can go on like this forever, burning oil, poisoning the seas, killing off other species, pumping carbon into the air, ignoring the ominous silence of our coal mine canaries in favor of the unending robotic tweets of our new digital imaginarium. Yet the reality of global climate change is going to keep intruding on our fantasies of perpetual growth, permanent innovation and endless energy, just as the reality of mortality shocks our casual faith in permanence.

The biggest problem climate change poses isn’t how the Department of Defense should plan for resource wars, or how we should put up sea walls to protect Alphabet City, or when we should evacuate Hoboken. It won’t be addressed by buying a Prius, signing a treaty, or turning off the air-conditioning. The biggest problem we face is a philosophical one: understanding that this civilization is already dead. The sooner we confront this problem, and the sooner we realize there’s nothing we can do to save ourselves, the sooner we can get down to the hard work of adapting, with mortal humility, to our new reality.

The choice is a clear one. We can continue acting as if tomorrow will be just like yesterday, growing less and less prepared for each new disaster as it comes, and more and more desperately invested in a life we can’t sustain. Or we can learn to see each day as the death of what came before, freeing ourselves to deal with whatever problems the present offers without attachment or fear.

I’ve only taken the beginning and end snippets of the column. Do read the whole thing.

Our entire civilization depends on our actions today.

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Hobby Lobby and the Christian Nation it wants to build

by digby

I’m sure you’ve read by now that the Supremes are going to hear the “Hobby Lobby” case and will decide whether or not a business owner can be exempted from providing birth control coverage if he is a religion fanatic who believes that women are chattel.

In an email chat the question arose as to whether this person would have to prove his religious sincerity to the court and if so, how one could go about doing that. Let’s just say this fellow will have no trouble proving that he’s a major right wing fundamentalist — this court’s favorite kind of guy:

An Oklahoma school district is debating a proposal that would create a Bible class for Mustang High School students.

School officials stress that the class would be an elective, but even so, there are clear reasons to be concerned. The proposal is based on curriculum designed by Hobby Lobby president Steve Green, infamous for his ongoing legal battle against the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate.
[…]
A compulsive collector of Biblical artifacts, Green has dedicated much of his personal fortune to the promotion of Bible education. And it’s evident that he prefers a sectarian approach to the subject. In 2012, he decried the Bible’s declining influence in an interview with The Christian Post.

“In some cases in America, I believe the Bible has become commonplace and it’s not necessarily read and known as it has been in the past. I think we probably have the most ignorant population we’ve ever had because we don’t teach it in our schools like we used to,” he said.

Green also partners with our favorite Christian “historian,” David Barton, to run full-page newspaper ads promoting the exhausted myth that America is a “Christian nation.” This is disturbing on its own, but Green also has strong ties to Bill Gothard, the leader of an extremist Christian fundamentalist sect roiling with allegations of child abuse.

Gothard’s religious empire includes a homeschool curriculum popular with fundamentalist families, and a nationwide network of training centers and youth programs that exclusively rely on Gothard’s teachings.

Among his more controversial beliefs: Gothard thinks he can determine a person’s character simply by staring into their eyes, that disease has spiritual causes and that men are the sovereign rulers of the household. His books provide detailed instructions on how women ought to stand, in addition to diagrams of the appropriate length of men’s pants and illustrations of suitable female hairstyles.

In 2002, Green, acting through his family trust, purchased and then leased a vacant college campus to Gothard’s ministry. A year later, Green, this time acting through Hobby Lobby itself, purchased a shuttered hospital in Little Rock, Ark., and donated it to Gothard for the purposes of building a local training center.

These weren’t mere business transactions, either. The website of one of Gothard’s many ministries features video of Steve Green describing Hobby Lobby’s “desire to share Christ and Disciple others.” And in a review of Gothard’s book, The Amazing Way, David Green, father of Steve Green and founder of Hobby Lobby, wrote that, “Through the example and teachings of Bill Gothard and the Institute in Basic Life Principles, we have benefited both as a family and in our business. It is as we take those lessons from God s Word that Bill clearly articulates that we live the full life that God intends.”

I’ve written a lot about Bill Gothard and David Barton in years past. Gothard is sort of the godfather of the right wing fundamentalist homeschooling movement and a very sincere theocrat. Notice the bolded bit above: Gothard believes that diseases have spiritual causes. His devoted follower Bill Green might just believe his religious freedom is being infringed by more than just the birth control mandate. He might think medical science itself is an affront to his constitutional rights.

Here’s a long article from CAP explaining all the reasons why this will be a dangerous precedent. Hint: it isn’t just about birth control.

Neocons now say Obama isn’t Hitler, he’s Prince Metternich. And that’s even worse.

by digby

I see that this Iran deal is bringing Neocon wingnuttery back.(Them other boys just don’t know how to act.) Check this out from AEI. After positing that this all might have been a wag the dog scenario (with the Ayatollah obviously in on the scam) they come up with a much more cunning plan from the Kenyan Usurper:

Rather than merely being feckless, the administration may actually have a long-term plan, and this initial nuclear deal is only a tactic in a broader strategy. The overall aim is a strategic partnership with Iran because the administration sees that country as the only island of stability in a sea of chaos and violence.

Iran has a population of 76 million, a government that hasn’t changed in 34 years, and a GDP greater than Egypt, Iraq, Tunisia, Libya, Jordan, and Yemen combined. No one knows who will be running Egypt or Saudi Arabia a few years from now, but Iran has withstood a serious rebellion with impressive resilience – and has rescued the Syrian regime from an even more threatening uprising.

That, at any rate, is how a self-styled realist might view Iran. Blinkers are clearly required. The administration has to ignore what a tilt to Iran would do to relations with the Israelis, Saudis, and Sunnis in general. It has to ignore that the United States has traditionally stood for freedom and against religious tyranny – both for moral and practical reasons. But what are the other choices? The Iranian temptation is strong.

Imagine a kind of order that Prince Metternich pulled together for Europe with the Congress of Vienna: a century (1815-1914) practically without warfare. The White House evidently sees the modern analogue as an alliance among the US, Russia, China, Europe, and…Iran.

We draw this conclusion not from any special knowledge of presidential deliberations but from simple deduction. First, why would the administration – any administration – duck the opportunity to strike Iran a significant blow by helping the insurgents in Syria? Or by using force in response to Bashar-al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons? In fact, the White House opened a back channel to Iran at least eight months ago, and we can only assume that the president decided not to attack Syria in part because he saw the event as a prelude to the Iranian nuclear negotiation – and that negotiation was another step closer to a strategic partnership.

Second, an entente cordiale with Iran would be just the kind of grand gesture that would justify and sanctify five years of what has appeared to be a stuttering, meandering foreign policy. So this is what the president was up to! Finally, a broader deal would mean that the president could get back to work on domestic affairs without having to worry about pesky international problems.

Again, we are speculating. But from the facts at hand, we find no better explanation. The administration may be on its way to fulfilling – with a vengeance – its initial pledge to “engage” with Iran. Unfortunately, by doing so the president will make the world a more dangerous place.

Right. There simply cannot be any other explanation as to why the administration didn’t grind Iran into dust other than some nefarious plot to create a new world order. Why in the world would any president give up the opportunity to get into a war in Syria? What could be better than that? How can any president justify failing to take advantage of the possibility of a long term quagmire in the middle east perhaps even with Al Qaeda involvement and against the will of the international community? We’ve done so well with that sort of thing in the past few years. And anyway, Iranians are a primitive people who have little experience in world affairs. If you just keep kicking them in the face, like dogs they will eventually come to heel. Everyone knows that. It’s only been 34 years. Let’s give this thing a chance to work!

Of course it’s always possible that the administration merely thinks they might have a chance to prevent another nation from going nuclear in a region filled with religious fanatics who hate each other. But that would be feckless. Real Men go to Tehran — riding triumphantly an armored vehicle, goddammit.

They conclude:

As Henry Kissinger wrote in 1957, “It is a mistake to assume that diplomacy can always settle international disputes if there is ‘good faith’ and ‘willingness to come to an agreement…. Appeasement is the result of an inability to come to grips with a policy of unlimited objectives.” He was talking about France under Napoleon and Germany under Hitler, but he might as well have been speaking of Iran under the mullahs.

Of course he was …
.