Skip to content

Month: December 2013

Dispatch from taser nation: high school confidential

Dispatch from taser nation: high school confidential

by digby

Tase first and ask questions later:

After a November altercation between a law enforcement officer and a high school student left the student in a coma, civil rights groups are urging the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement to ban the use of non-lethal weapons like Tasers and pepper spray on school grounds.

Last month, Sheriff’s Deputy Randy McMillan, who was a school resource officer at the time, used a Taser on Noe Nino de Rivera, 17, while trying to break up a fight at Cedar Creek High School in Bastrop County, Texas. After receiving the shock from the stun gun, the teenager fell to the ground and suffered a traumatic brain injury, according to the Austin American-Statesman. The teen remains in a medically induced coma.

Remember, tasers save lives. Because before they had tasers, school officials just had to shoot high school students to break up fights. They had no choice. Now, at least, they’re only in comas.

.

Wingnut vs wingnut

Wingnut vs wingnut

by digby

You all remember Georgia wingnut Jack Kingston don’t you?

The bill by Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) would require unemployment claimants to pass a drug test if they are identified in an initial screening as having a high probability of drug use…

Kingston cited an overwhelming number of job applicants flunking drug tests as the rationale for his proposal.

“I had an employer tell me of an overwhelming response for job openings,” Kingston said in a statement. “There was just one problem: half the people who applied could not even pass a drug test.”

Unfortunately for him, he’s now forced to run against someone who is even more of a right wing nutjob than he is:

On January 7, second-term Republican Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia and two friends prayed over a door. It was not just any door, but the entranceway beneath the Capitol that President-elect Barack Obama will pass through as he walks onto the inaugural stage to take the oath of office. “I hope and pray that as God stirs the heart of our new president that President Obama will listen and will heed God’s direction,” Broun proclaimed.

Greg Sargent reports on the first salvo in exciting contest:

Kingston is now furiously walking back his apostasy, pointing to his dozens of votes to repeal the law as proof that his zeal to get rid of it knows no bounds.

The point here is that GOP base voters may force Republican lawmakers to remain chained to a fantasy — that Obamacare’s demise is still a genuine possibility. While Democratic operatives fully recognize that the law is unpopular, that further problems are possible, and that Dems are still in danger, they believe Republican lawmakers and candidates are constrained in a way that will work against them, too.

Democratic lawmakers and candidates at least have some flexibility to deal with problems as they arise — they can call for fixes while defending the law’s broader goal of expanding affordable health coverage. Republicans don’t have any flexibility. Remember, a recent CNN poll showed that only Republican voters believe the law should already be pronounced a failure, while moderates and independents still think its problems can be solved. Republican lawmakers and candidates must continue to insist on full repeal and nothing else, even as the number of people gaining coverage continues to mount.

Greg says that the GOP will suffer for this and I’m inclined to agree when it comes to swing statewide races and, of course, the presidency. They just sounds like assholes to anyone who isn’t a hardcore Obama hater. But unfortunately, I think this could very well work for them in certain red states and conservative districts. This frothing, incoherent hatred for a health care program would logically turn off even hardcore conservatives because it looks unstable and weird. But it’s become a tribal war cry for the true believers and I’ll guess it is going to have organizing power where the right is in a majority, at least for a while.

.

QOTD: Santorum

QOTD: Santorum

by digby

On Mandela:

“He was fighting against some great injustice, and I would make the argument that we have a great injustice going on right now in this country with an ever-increasing size of government that is taking over and controlling people’s lives — and Obamacare is front and center in that.”

Because affordable health insurance is very much like apartheid.

.

“History? We don’t know. We’ll all be dead.”

“History? We don’t know. We’ll all be dead.”

by digby

Krugman reports that the austerians are declaring victory:

There’s a scene in one of the Three Stooges movies — if any readers know which one, please let me know — in which we see Curly banging his head repeatedly against a wall. Moe asks why he’s doing that, and Curly says, “Because it feels so good when I stop.”

Big joke, right? Except that this is now the reigning theory of fiscal policy.

As Antonio Fatas points out, austerians are now claiming vindication because some of the countries that imposed austerity are — after years of economic contraction — finally starting to show a bit of growth. This is, as he says, happening because sooner or later economies do tend to grow, unless bad policy not only continues but gets steadily worse; with austerity still severe but arguably not getting much more severe, some growth isn’t a big surprise. And these countries are still far below where they would have been with less austerity.

But hey, it feels good, at least relatively, when the countries stop banging their heads against the wall. Austerity rules!

Right. The hell with all those lost years, opportunity costs and human suffering. In the long run, everything will work out. (I wrote a lot about this during the Bush administration.)

This is always how the conservatives explain their failures. Here’s Dick Cheney:

I had the experience, for example, of working for Jerry Ford, and I’ve never forgotten the travails he went through after he had been president for 30 days when he issued the pardon of former president Nixon. And there was consternation coast to coast…I know how much grief he took for that decision, and it may well have cost him the presidency in ’76.

Thirty years later, nearly everybody would say it is exactly the right thing to do, that if he’d paid attention at the time to the polls he never would have done that. But he demonstrated, I think, great courage and great foresight, and the country was better off for what Jerry Ford did that day. And 30 years later, everybody recognized it.

And I have the same strong conviction the issues we’re dealing with today — the global war on terror, the war in Afghanistan and Iraq — that all of the tough calls the president has had to make, that 30 years from now it will be clear that he made the right decisions, and that the effort we mounted was the right one, and that if we had listened to the polls, we would have gotten it wrong.

And Bush himself:

On the last page of Bob Woodward’s Plan of Attack (2004), Bush, asked how history would judge the war in Iraq, verbally shrugs: “History. We don’t know. We’ll all be dead.” And on the first page of Robert Draper’s Dead Certain (2007), Bush cautions, “You can’t possibly figure out the history of the Bush presidency—until I’m dead,” then inserts a piece of cheese into his mouth. This exit clause isn’t something he invokes only to reporters. In Bill Sammon’s The Evangelical President (2007), an aide confirms to the susceptible author that Bush doesn’t brood about the petty setbacks that bedevil less serene souls: “His attitude is a very healthy one. He says, ‘Look, history will get it right and we’ll both be dead. Who cares?’ ” If only the estimated 1.5 million Iraqis displaced by the war and driven into Syrian exile could adopt such a healthy outlook, maybe they too would learn how not to sweat the small stuff.

I was shocked by this at the time but I’ve since realized that the conservative project in general really, truly doesn’t give a damn about human suffering. They live in an abstract universe in which their dedication to their rigid ideology simply trumps all moral concerns about real human beings in the here and now. They just don’t give a damn.

.

Ted Cruz really steps in it this time: he said nice things about Nelson Mandela

Ted Cruz really steps in it this time: he said nice things about Nelson Mandela


by digby

So Ted Cruz wrote a tribute to Nelson Mandela on his Facebook page:

Nelson Mandela will live in history as an inspiration for defenders of liberty around the globe. He stood firm for decades on the principle that until all South Africans enjoyed equal liberties he would not leave prison himself, declaring in his autobiography, ‘Freedom is indivisible; the chains on any one of my people were the chains on all of them, the chains on all of my people were the chains on me.’ Because of his epic fight against injustice, an entire nation is now free.

We mourn his loss and offer our condolences to his family and the people of South Africa.

Here is a sampling of the responses of his Facebook followers:

Tom Griffin
Sad to see you feel this way Ted. He was a terrorist. I guess you have only seen the Hollywood movies
Like · 80 · Reply · Yesterday at 3:23pm
7 replies
Derek Cranford
stunned to see you support this scumbag,Mr. Cruz…Mandela was a murderer, and a terrorist..not to mention a communist…
Like · 31 · Reply · Yesterday at 3:37pm
Mike Buescher
Mmmm… I found something I disagree with Cruz on.
Like · 29 · Reply · Yesterday at 3:25pm
George Taylor
sorry senator u be wrong on this one. He is nothing or was nothing but a criminal
Like · 26 · Reply · Yesterday at 3:26pm
2 replies
Dan Noxon
Why don’t all you Mandela lovers head on over to South Africa and see what’s going on now that “Mandela’s people” have control of the nation. And no staying in palaces ala Sean Penn and other “entertainers” … get out and mix with the people, experience what life is really like. Especially if you’re white.
Like · 26 · Reply · Yesterday at 3:33pm
26 replies
Kris Smith
Senator Cruz, He was communist terrorist.
Like · 21 · Reply · Yesterday at 3:30pm
1 reply
Seliqua Bodina
you’re joking, aren’t you Mr. Cruz? how about we light up a South African necklace in his honor? wow you stepped in it this time.
Like · 19 · Reply · Yesterday at 3:38pm
Rob Kordelski
lets not forget his idol karl marx and his best friend gaur redebe….a communist. he is not the great hero that cnn says he is. he was a huge fan of jawa nehru who wanted indian independence sooo badly that he would’ve joined up with the nazis. yes lets all say sorry that this communist died. while we are at it lets send out condolences for when north korea’s ruler dies too…..
Like · 19 · Reply · Yesterday at 3:34pm
Jeff Petersen
This would be the time to just stay silent on the subject. Mandela admitted to tossing grenades into school buses occupied by children and his wife was a proficient practitioner of the tire and gasoline combo around the necks of her victims…
Like · 36 · Reply · Yesterday at 3:24pm
7 replies
Bryan Smith
he was a commie terrorist
Like · 16 · Reply · Yesterday at 3:27pm
1 reply
Sasha Chamorro
Just look up “necklacing” (a form of murder endorsed by his wife at the time) to see what a fine man Mandela was.
Like · 15 · Reply · Yesterday at 3:32pm
André Augusto Custódio
Mandela was a communist trained by the Kgb who sings racial hate songs… And now, the South Africa is a worst country for both whites and blacks… this is the inspirations of americans conservative politicians?
Like · 33 · Reply · Yesterday at 3:38pm
Dusty Roop
Sorry Ted, I found something I disagree with you on. Mandella was a terrorist. Plain and simple. Hid regime was brutal. He was not a hero. You have listened to lies.
Like · 32 · Reply · Yesterday at 3:35pm
21 replies
Looney Floyd
he was an unrepentant terrorist
Like · 12 · Reply · Yesterday at 3:39pm
Philip Lanks
Just another shakedown artist. Goodbye bum.
Like · 12 · Reply · Yesterday at 3:25pm
2 replies
Bob Ciuffa
Mandela was a white hating killer and his wife continued his tradition. .including torture and immolation of enemies. With Rev. Tutu they tried to help the east Germans in Angola to invade and take over S. Africa. He remained tribal and killed other blacks not of his tribal affiliates. Honoring him is like honoring the Prince of Darkness
Like · 29 · Reply · Yesterday at 3:30pm
8 replies
Davidius Maximus
Nelson singing about killing white people: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKiePbTcAfY
Mandela: Speaking to reporters after singing to kill whites

Like · 11 · Reply · Yesterday at 3:28pm
2 replies
Paul Emslie
Ted, I love ya, but you might want to do some research and delete your post on this one.
Like · 12 · Reply · Yesterday at 3:57pm
Randy Dietmeyer
I am sure there are some dyed-in-the-wool Marxists that love cute little puppies as well. I’m not gonna celebrate them either.
Like · 12 · Reply · Yesterday at 3:31pm
1 reply
Arran Hersey
I am disappointed in senator Cruz. Mandela was not a good human or a defender of freedom, he very much was an avowed communist.
Like · 12 · Reply · Yesterday at 3:27pm
John W Toewater
Ted, long before you were born, his reputation was the complete opposite. He was, in fact, a terrorist and a criminal, he persecuted and killed Zulus All the apartheid B S you hear in today’s media, is all lies

And apparently one of his other major crimes was supporting women’s rights:

He was also a huge supporter of abortion! Don’t put him too high up! Careful Mr Cruz.
Like · 7 · Reply · Yesterday at 3:30pm
2 replies

Uhm…maybe not so much. My friend’s post: I see that the convicted terrorist and abortion-lover Mandela has finally met the Maker whom he never acknowledged as far as I know.
whyiamprolife.blogspot.com
Like · 4 · Reply · Yesterday at 4:47pm

That’s the tip of the iceberg. There were a few people who agreed with Senator Cruz’s words,or took issue with the comments but not many.

Who are these people?

.

A reminder of what Republicans thought of Mandela, by @DavidOAtkins

A reminder of what Republicans thought of Mandela

by David Atkins

The world is rightly eulogizing Nelson Mandela, who is unquestionably one of the greatest human beings to have graced this planet.

But let’s not forget that Mandela didn’t just meet with opposition from racist conservatives in South Africa. He was met with prejudice by the highest ranks of Republican leadership in America as well. Dick Cheney considered him a terrorist, and Ronald Reagan vetoed the Anti-Apartheid Act.

Let history not forget this:

In the U.S. Congress, lawmakers were ready to show their opposition to the South African regime with the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, a bill that imposed tough sanctions and travel restrictions on the nation and its leaders, and called for the repeal of apartheid laws and release of political prisoners like Mandela, then leader of the African National Congress (ANC).

The measure passed with bipartisan support, despite strong and largely Republican opposition. President Ronald Reagan was among those most opposed to the bill, and when he finally vetoed the measure over its support of the ANC, which he maintained was a “terrorist organization,” it took another vote by Congress to override it. Among the Republicans who repeatedly voted against the measure was future Vice President Dick Cheney, then a Republican congressman from Wyoming.

Cheney’s staunch resistance to the Anti-Apartheid Act arose as an issue during his future campaigns on the presidential ticket, but the Wyoming Republican has never said he regretted voting the way he did. In fact, in 2000, he maintained that he’d made the right decision.

“The ANC was then viewed as a terrorist organization,” Cheney said on ABC’s “This Week.” “I don’t have any problems at all with the vote I cast 20 years ago.'”

It’s a constant theme of conservatism to falsely take credit for the progressive causes of yesteryear while attempting to destroy contemporary ones. It bears repeating: in 1776, a conservative was a Tory. In 1860, a centrist advocated more compromises and a conservative was a Confederate or Confederate sympathizer. In 1880, a conservative was a friend of the robber barons. In 1935, conservatives advocated that the elderly die in the streets rather than receive Social Security. In 1955, a conservative was a McCarthyite red-baiter. In 1965, a conservative was a Beatles-hating, MLK-hating opponent of Medicare, civil rights and birth control. In 1986 conservatives were calling Mandela a terrorist while clandestinely selling arms to Iran to funding fascist Central American death squads. In 1996 conservatives were led by Newt Gingrich and impeached Bill Clinton over sex acts. In 2006 they were committing war crimes in Iraq while trying to private Social Security and subvert the justice department.

It’s not any different in 2013. The issues change, but the heart and soul of conservatism remains the same.

.

First dog report

First dog report

by digby

Well, I guess it’s technically a second dog report:

var p = new anv_pl_def();p.loadVideoWithKey(“eyJtIjoiR1JUViIsInAiOiIzNCIsInYiOiIyNzMxOTM4In0=”);

“When is she bringing the dogs out!?” two-year-old Ashtyn Gardner insistently nagged her father, Navy Lt. John Gardner.
The Gardner family was attending a White House holiday celebration where they and other military families viewed decorations and mingled with first lady Michelle Obama.

“Ashtyn is a dog lover, we have a black lab at home,” so she was “most excited” about meeting Bo and Sunny, Lt. Gardner explained. The two-year-old was decorating cookies with the other children when the moment she’d been anticipating finally happened – the first lady let the dogs out.

“She was so excited!” “She went straight for them, reaching out to hug Sunny,” Ashtyn’s father recalled. “The next thing you knew her shiny shoes were in the air!” Without shedding a tear, Ashtyn got right back up. While it was unclear from her father’s vantage point whether Ashtyn tumbled herself, or the dog knocked her over, the two-year-old later told her parents the fall was a result of Sunny’s affection, “he was kissing me.”

When the first lady bent down to console Ashtyn, “she asked, ‘are you okay sweetie?'” to which Ashtyn nodded her head. Obama then inquired “Do you like my dog?” Ashtyn’s response was firm, “NO.” Her blunt response was “the most hilarious part for us,” her father reminisced. “She loves dogs! I have no idea where that came from!”

The Gardner family left the White House in great spirits, and assured that “if Ashtyn remembers anything from the event, it’s getting that big hug from the first lady and playing with the dogs.”

Health care scams kick into high gear

Health care scams kick into high gear

by digby

What the California Republicans are doing with Obamacare is probably the lowest of the low, but they aren’t the only ones trying to scam citizens. I just got a robo-call from someone telling me that “the records” show that under the new health care laws I will qualify for low cost insurance and should cive them all my personal information in order to “verify.”  Needless to say, it’s a con. Apparently, there are a lot of them:

Buses running up and down the streets of San Francisco are plastered with ads for Covered California, the state’s official health insurance exchange. But a passenger who goes home and visits coveredcalifornia.com on Thursday would be greeted with a blank white page—not because of any website glitches, but because it is one of ten imitation sites that has been shut down by the California Attorney General’s office.

“These websites fraudulently imitated Covered California in order to lure consumers away from plans that provide the benefits of the Affordable Care Act,” state Attorney General Kamala Harris said in a statement. “My office will continue to investigate and shut down these kinds of sites.”

Officials from Washington to New Hampshire have been dealing with websites that closely resemble government portals. The Kentucky Attorney General has sent cease and desist letters to similar mimicker websites, and Pennsylvania officials shut down a private “exchange” site brandishing the state’s seal this summer.

These are mostly insurance brokers trying to get uninformed people to buy the crappy insurance they’re offering outside the exchanges. And the sites look authentic:

I wonder how many marks they’ve found.

Why do they hate Obamacare so much? This might have something to do with it… by @DavidOAtkins

Why do they hate Obamacare so much? This might have something to do with it…

by David Atkins

It’s always been a little puzzling why the entire right wing is still so upset about the Affordable Care Act. No, they don’t want government getting a good name by helping people. They hate the idea of subsidizing the less fortunate in any way. And they’re afraid that the ACA might be a stepping stone toward single-payer.

But still, as progressive critics often point out, the ACA is also something of a giveaway to big business. It mandates health insurance coverage, gives insurance companies millions of new customers and does them the favor of dropping the cost curve and stabilizing the private market, reducing the mounting pressure to adopt a saner single-payer system. That’s why the Heritage Foundation supported it in the first place, as did Mitt Romney in its Massachusetts incarnation.

Under normal circumstances the law should have passed, the Right should have whipped its people into a froth, used it to win an election, then shrugged its shoulders and sat down in some quiet satisfaction as millions of people settled in to their new, somewhat cheaper private insurance. But that’s not what happened. The powers that be on the Right continue to rave and rant against the ACA as if it were the devil’s spawn itself. That’s always been something of a mystery.

Well, perhaps this, courtesy RASalvatore at Daily Kos, might have something to do with it:

You see, up until Obamacare, the truly wealthy in our society, that passive income crowd that dodged the top tax bracket by getting their compensation in capital gains and such, was EXEMPTED from the Medicare portion of FICA.

This tax (2.9%) went up .9% for incomes over 250k under PPACA. .9%’s not that bad, of course, but for those living on passive income, the hit is much larger.

Until now, this law, they were exempt from that tax.

Now they’re not.

Take a guy like Romney – he makes $20,000,000 a year, most if not all of it in the form of passive income. So he was paying at the 15% rate, thanks to the special treatment for such “special” income.

That went up to 20% when parts of hte Bush tax cuts expired in 2012.

And now, to add insult to that injury, Romney’s income is subjected to that dastardly Medicare tax (which, unlike the Social Security portion of FICA, doesn’t cut off at $106,000, or $133,000, or whatever it is this year).

3.8% of $20,000,000 is $760,000 dollars in taxes. That has to sting that generational wealth plan Romney was hatching.

Imagine the hit the Kochs and the hedge fund guys are taking. The 25 top hedge fund guys in 2009 averaged $1Billion each…3.8% of a billion? Get your calculators out: mine says that means about $38,000,000 in new taxes for these guys.

So if they spend a few million trying to kill it, who could blame them, right?

3.8%.

They hate Obamacare. They hate Obama. It’s pretty simple, when you think about it.

That would explain it, don’t you think?

.

It was a privilege to have lived when he lived

It was a privilege to have lived when he lived

by digby

Nelson Mandela, standing in the dock before the South African Supreme Court in 1964, made a speech before he was sent off to spend most of the next 3 decades in prison. It concluded with this:

Above all, we want equal political rights, because without them our disabilities will be permanent. I know this sounds revolutionary to the whites in this country, because the majority of voters will be Africans. This makes the white man fear democracy. But this fear cannot be allowed to stand in the way of the only solution which will guarantee racial harmony and freedom for all. It is not true that the enfranchisement of all will result in racial domination. Political division, based on colour, is entirely artificial and, when it disappears, so will the domination of one colour group by another. The ANC has spent half a century fighting against racialism. When it triumphs it will not change that policy.

This then is what the ANC is fighting. Their struggle is a truly national one. It is a struggle of the African people, inspired by their own suffering and their own experience. It is a struggle for the right to live. During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

Luckily for all of us, this great man lived to see his dream fulfilled. After all of his suffering he became president of South Africa and lived many years beyond as a living inspiration for people everywhere.
But read that whole speech from 1964 to also be reminded that for all of his historic sacrifice and reputation as a man of peace and rare forgiveness, he was a true political radical in his time. It’s rare that a single person can come to be the living symbol of a movement’s struggle and evolution but Nelson Mandela was that.

He died peacefully today at the age of 95. He was a true hero.

Here is his 1994 inaugural speech:

.