Month: January 2014

Sabotage in plain sight


by digby

There has been some pushback among conservatives at the charge they are sabotaging Obamacare. They insist it’s just imploding all on its own (despite the fact that it actually isn’t.) But as Sahil Kapur reports, in one case, they’re just admitting it right up front:

Conservative wonks and Republican lawmakers are coalescing around a new strategy to sabotage Obamacare by repealing a temporary piece of the law designed to hold down premiums in the event of major market disruptions.

The provision — called “risk corridors,” but dubbed the “Obamacare bailout” by the law’s opponents — seeks to stabilize costs by creating a pot of money that takes in funds from insurers who enroll healthier customers and uses it to pay out insurers who enroll sicker customers. It’s a safety valve that sunsets after 2016. The repeal push is clever messaging in a sense because it lets conservatives snatch the mantle of populism from liberals against wealthy insurance companies. But it comes with its share of dangers, too.

Last November, as TPM reported, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) introduced legislation to repeal this provision. Since then it has picked up 13 Republican co-sponsors, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and spawned two companion bills in the House, which are supported by numerous Republicans. The idea has been championed by conservative lobbying groups like the Club For Growth and Heritage Action, and pushed by writers including Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post, Ramesh Punnuru in Bloomberg View and Deroy Murdock in National Review.

The conservatives are open about the end goal: collapse Obamacare by causing higher premiums on the law’s marketplaces for the newly insured, which progressive experts who support Obamacare agree would occur if the provision is scrapped.

Ponnuru, labeling the risk corridors “outrageous,” writes that without them insurance companies “would have to raise premiums and thus make their plans even more unattractive than they already are — or just withdraw from the exchanges. Obamacare would, in other words, become even less likely to succeed than it already is.”

And then he rubbed his hands together with glee and cackled maniacally.

Keep in mind that this “bailout” is a temporary transition program anticipated as possibly being necessary in the original legislation. There was no way of knowing how long it would take for the healthier people to sign up or how long it would take for the market to even itself out.

They obviously feel they have latched on to an excellent way to derail the reforms. But as Kapur points out, it also allows the Democrats to accuse them of raising premiums — and angering the insurance companies who fund them right along with the Dems.

Lord this is a crappy political system.

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A brand over 2000 years in the making

by David Atkins

Everyone is talking about this little misogynistic gem today:

A Republican member of Congress says in a recently released book that a wife is to “voluntarily submit” to her husband, but that it doesn’t make her inferior to him.
Rep. Steve Pearce’s (R-N.M.) memoir, “Just Fly the Plane, Stupid!” was released last month. Its publication — and his acknowledgment in the book of the controversial nature of the submission debate — come as the Republican Party reevaluates how it talks to and about women.
In the book, Pearce recounts his rise to owning an oil-field service company and winning election to Congress. In the book, the Vietnam War veteran says that both the military chain of command and the family unit need a structure in which everyone plays his or her role.
He said that, in his family’s experience, this meant that his wife, Cynthia, would submit to him and he would lead.
“The wife is to voluntarily submit, just as the husband is to lovingly lead and sacrifice,” he writes, citing the Bible. “The husband’s part is to show up during the times of deep stress, take the leadership role and be accountable for the outcome, blaming no one else.”
Pearce, who is Baptist, emphasizes repeatedly in the chapter that submission doesn’t mean inferiority but rather that husbands and wives play different roles. He also says it doesn’t mean his wife doesn’t have a say in major decisions.
“The wife’s submission is not a matter of superior versus inferior; rather, it is self-imposed as a matter of obedience to the Lord and of love for her husband,” he writes.

The standard analysis is to point out that Republicans still have problems with women, that their attempt to rebrand is a hilarious disaster, etc.

But that’s being just a little cute, isn’t it? It’s de rigueur to make fun of the Republican Party for this stuff, without offending anyone’s religious sensibilities by pointing out the obvious: that he’s only quoting the Bible. And not the brutal adultery-stoning Old Testament of Leviticus, but the “nice” New Testament in Ephesians. Specifically Ephesians 5:22-25:

Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything.

Making fun of Republicans for failing to “rebrand” is gratifying. But this is a brand 2000 years in the making. It’s hard to call oneself a believing Christian without embracing this sort of antediluvian misogyny. It’s right there in the text.

Perhaps it’s time to get honest as a society about the value of using 2000-year-old texts as a basis for social or scientific policy at all, instead of cherrypicking the parts that seem socially unacceptable at the current moment.

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The abortion liars club. And one way they wield it.

by digby

In case you were wondering:

Getting a legal abortion is much safer than giving birth, suggests a new U.S. study published Monday.

Researchers found that women were about 14 times more likely to die during or after giving birth to a live baby than to die from complications of an abortion.

Experts say the findings, though not unexpected, contradict some state laws that suggest abortions are high-risk procedures.

The message is that getting an abortion and giving birth are both safe, said Dr. Anne Davis, who studies obstetrics and gynecology at the Columbia University Medical Center in New York, and wasn’t involved in the new study.

The point being that all these anti-choicers who insist that abortions are dangerous are liars. What else is new?

And don’t think this isn’t one of their many dishonest strategies. The following is from a few years back when Samuel Alito was nominated to the Supreme Court in 2006. I defy you to find a more unctuous liar than this allegedly moral anti-abortion zealot:

BRANCACCIO: The head of Kansans for Life, Mary Kay Culp has a good reason for watching the big story in Washington this week.

Appeals court judge Samuel Alito did not trip up in any grotesque way this week. The conventional wisdom that dictates these things signals that Alito will soon occupy the swing seat on the Supreme Court. And his rulings could shift the court’s position on hot-button issues like abortion.

It’s just that kind of shift on the court that Mary Kay Culp and her group in Kansas have been hoping for.

BRANCACCIO: Thanks for coming in.

MARY KAY CULP: Thanks for having me.

BRANCACCIO: Well, looks like Samuel Alito is going to get this. That must, given all the work you’ve done over these years, make you happy.

MARY KAY CULP: I am glad that President Bush’s nominee looks like he’s going to make it on the court. Whether or not it’s going to make me happy from a pro-life point of view, I think that remains to be seen.

BRANCACCIO: Why are you being tentative? He–

MARY KAY CULP: Well, he looks like he’s a real careful– a real careful, thoughtful, analytical guy, and I like that. And– because I’m a little tired of this being portrayed as if he has an agenda, that all of a sudden, poof is going to happen if he gets on the court.

BRANCACCIO: Agenda being getting rid of Roe v. Wade?

MARY KAY CULP: Exactly. I don’t think that that’s going to happen. And if it does, all it means is that the issue comes back to the states.

BRANCACCIO: But, with all the work that you’ve been doing in Kansas for all these years, don’t you think that if it becomes a State’s matter that in Kansas like that (SNAP) you’ll get rid of abortion? Huh?

MARY KAY CULP: No. I don’t. Unh-uh. I don’t think that’ll happen in the states. But, what can happen is a real discussion. What can happen are committee hearings in your Senate and your House where witnesses are called– witnesses who have had abortions– witnesses on both side of the issue. And, it can be heard — the most frustrating thing about Roe is that it just slammed the door. When you try to get a State law passed even to regulate just a little bit, or partial birth abortion, anything, a legislator will tell you– “Well, you know– we can’t do that under Roe versus Wade anyway.”

BRANCACCIO: But you must be encouraged about the way things are going with Samuel Alito? All right, I’ll encourage you then.

MARY KAY CULP: Okay.

BRANCACCIO: You know– Pat Buchanan?

MARY KAY CULP: Uh-huh.

BRANCACCIO: My favorite conservative commentator.

MARY KAY CULP: Yes. Uh-huh.

BRANCACCIO: He said with Alito– here’s the quote from this week.

MARY KAY CULP: Okay.

BRANCACCIO: “Roe could go. George W. Bush is one Justice away from succeeding where Nixon, Ford, his father and even Ronald Reagan all failed.”

MARY KAY CULP: That would be – one Justice after Alito.

BRANCACCIO: One Justice after Alito.

MARY KAY CULP: Unless– not with Alito. Yeah.

BRANCACCIO: So, it’s gettin’ there.

MARY KAY CULP: Right.

BRANCACCIO: I don’t understand how Kansas wouldn’t– ban abortion quit quickly after that. What do you know about the state of that debate in your state…

MARY KAY CULP: It isn’t that. It’s just that I know how the political system works. Then you can have real discussion. Then every– both sides are gonna get aired, and if the media’s fair about it, both sides are gonna get aired. That– you know, that’s a question. But at least democracy will have a chance to work on it. But, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything either way.

But, well, I do know what might happen in Kansas. We have late term abortions in Kansas, and we’re known for having late term abortions in Kansas. Those, yes, we might be able to get rid of right away.

BRANCACCIO: But, really there are two questions here. There’s the political calculation that I did ask you about. Do you think that Roe v. Wade’s going to be overturned and therefore abortion will become illegal? You don’t think so. But, what about your goal? Would it make you happier? Is this your vision of America where abortion is illegal.

MARY KAY CULP: It would be nice to know that tomorrow morning no knives are gonna be taken to unborn babies. That’d be a nice thing. But, in order for that to happen and for it to– to stay in place, I mean, if you just boom turn it around– without people really understanding the issue, it’s not as– certainly not as satisfying as it happening for the right reasons.

Because, the media in this country becomes unafraid to actually hear both sides of this issue, ’cause that hasn’t been the case for 30 years. It’s been getting better. But, really it’s kind of an interesting dynamic, because– I didn’t notice really a change until a partial birth abortion issue came along in Congress, and that really earns you a lot of credibility. And, then people start to look and listen. And, as we got stronger politically, it’s really– it’s amazing how a political win really can draw peoples’ attention to an issue.

BRANCACCIO: You know, Mary Kay, from your discussion, though, there are a lot of people who do not like abortion, who want to reduce the number of abortions I America–

MARY KAY CULP: Uh-huh.

BRANCACCIO: But are very concerned about an America where if a woman chooses to do this for whatever complicated reason that they have that choice. You could have some of these States deciding based on a different Supreme Court, “We are gonna outlaw it.” And, that means if you got the money, you go to another state. If you don’t got the money and your poor, terrible things could happen.

MARY KAY CULP: You know, terrible things are happening right now– terrible things. But, nobody knows about ’em, because nobody’s really looking at the other side of this issue. Terrible things can happen on both sides of this issues, if it’s recognized for what it is and the way it impacts a woman’s life and impacts society. And that’s what I think we need to look at.

There are a lot of mainstream Americans out there that care about this issue. It isn’t– you know– people can stereotype us and call us names if they want to. You know what? We don’t care, because there’s just more and more of us, and we’re having more of a political effect. And, I hope we’ll get some credibility with the media only so that we can look at these issues in a– in a real way.

BRANCACCIO: Well, Mary Kay Culp, Kansans for Life, thanks for coming in to help us understand where you’re coming from and possibly understand where the ascent of Samuel Alito came from.

MARY KAY CULP: Thank you for allowing me to come. I appreciate it.

Sure, they just want to have a “discussion.”

Here’s Culp this week:

Kansas has tightened restrictions on late-term abortions, banned sex-selection procedures, strengthened a law requiring doctors to obtain parental consent before performing a minor’s abortion and barred abortion providers from providing materials or instructors for public schools’ sexuality courses.

Mary Kay Culp, executive director of Kansans for Life, compares the incremental approach favored by her group to a football team relying on a grind-it-out running game to score points.

“If you shoot that football into the end zone, over everybody’s heads, things can happen,” Culp said.

She’s one hell of a dishonest running back.

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The perils of pathology

by digby

I think that in this age of CSI and Law and Order we think that science has advanced to the point at which it can answer all of our questions about how a crime may have been perpetrated and by whom. Not so fast:

Pediatric neurosurgeon Dr. Norman Guthkelch had wondered about a medical mystery reported for decades — some babies bleeding atop their brains, despite little outside evidence of head trauma.

When a colleague suffered similar bleeding after riding a roller coaster, Guthkelch suggested whiplash-type injuries were to blame. He published a paper in 1971, warning parents about the dangers of shaking their children.

In the years that followed, shaken-baby syndrome became widely accepted in the medical community, diagnosed through a triad of symptoms: subdural bleeding (blood collecting between the brain and the skull), retinal bleeding (bleeding in the back of the eye) and brain swelling.

Courts recognized the syndrome, and the triad became proof of fatal abuse — “a medical diagnosis for murder,” said Deborah Tuerkheimer, author of the new book, “Flawed Convictions: ‘Shaken Baby Syndrome’ and the Inertia of Injustice.”

In 1987, public questions began to arise when biochemical engineers from Penn State University found shaking alone failed to cause the blood vessels in the brain to rupture. It was only when the head made impact that researchers observed bleeding in the brain.

Despite the findings, shaken-baby syndrome continued to be diagnosed and used to prosecute.

In 1995, prosecutors in Wisconsin charged caregiver Audrey Edmunds with murder, concluding she had shaken 7-month-old Natalie Beard to death — despite no witnesses and no outside evidence of trauma.

The jury convicted Edmunds, who insisted on her innocence, but had no explanation for the injuries. The judge sentenced her to 18 years in prison.

In the years since, medical belief that the shaken-baby syndrome’s triad of symptoms provided ironclad proof of homicide has begun to crumble with several studies raising doubts. Some biomechanical studies suggest shaking a baby to death would be impossible without also injuring the child’s neck or spine

In 2008, the Wisconsin Supreme Court granted Edmunds a new trial. The emergence of a “significant dispute within the medical community as to the cause of those injuries … constitutes newly discovered evidence,” the court concluded.

Her previous trial and hearing lacked “fierce debate,” justices wrote. “Now, a jury would be faced with competing credible medical opinions in determining whether there is a reasonable doubt as to (her) guilt.”

After the Wisconsin court’s decision, prosecutors dismissed the charges against Edmunds, and the mother of three walked free after 11 years in prison.

Mississippi Democratic state Rep. Kevin Horan said he would like to see a review of the cases in this state that have relied on shaken-baby syndrome.

Horan, a former prosecutor who handled the appeal of a man convicted in a shaken-baby case, said, “Most of the shaken-baby cases are legitimate. They’re not really shaken baby, but blunt force trauma.”

As for Guthkelch, the pioneer of the shaken-baby syndrome, he now has doubts about the way his theory is being used.

He told the Medill Justice Center that he regrets writing his 1971 paper “because people are in jail on the basis of what they claim is my paper, when in fact it is nothing like it.”

As it turns out, what we were told was “shaken baby syndrome” — the consequence of irrational anger at a helpless infant — is far more likely to have been caused by trauma. That could be the result of irrational anger at an infant, but it can also be the result of an accidental short fall or bump on the head, something for which there is no intent to hurt or cause harm and could easily happen to anyone. A tragedy, not a crime.

There are a bunch of people in jail, some of them like the one discussed in the article who are facing the death penalty. Some prosecutors will, as usual, never give up the idea that they’ve caught an evil person doing an evil thing and will defend their convictions to the end. But every one of those cases should be revisited and convictions overturned if they were based on this faulty scientific theory. That’s what science calls for and it’s certainly what justice calls for.

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Mitch’s heart

by digby

This is really telling:

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is out with a new campaign ad touting his success in securing free preventive health care services for Kentuckians. The spot, titled “Cares,” tries to paint the Senate Minority Leader as a compassionate Republican who carries a moral obligation to provide sick people with access to government-sponsored health care.
It’s a message you wouldn’t expect from a Republican senate leader who has voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act and continues to oppose its implementation in Kentucky. But the minute-long ad, featuring Robert Pierce, an energy worker and throat cancer survivor, highlights the Republican Senate leader’s effort to secure “cancer screening programs” for Kentuckians and provide them with government compensation.

The Think Progress piece linked above explains that Mitch has long brought special health “entitlements” home to Kentuckians even as he scorns any kind of health care help for others. But times have changed. Are people supposed to know the difference here between Obamacare and “Mitchcare?” I think that’s a long shot in this environment.

It’s important to note that Kentucky is one of the few red states with a Democratic governor who took the challenge seriously and went to some lengths to implement the ACA properly. Therefore, public opinion may be more positive than where they sabotaged the law. And McConnell is clearly feeling the heat from his Democratic rival Allison Lundgren Grimes. Still, he is the majority leader of the Senate. And he’s out there touting his health care credentials. That’s good.

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Tragedy in the Village

by digby

Leave it to the Village press to describe a corruption indictment as a tragedy:

And yes, I realize they are probably alluding to Greek tragedy. It’s still obtuse and stupid.

It has always been difficult to pin down McDonnell’s persona — or even to understand what made him tick behind his square jaw and perfectly combed hair. Now, as McDonnell faces the real prospect of ending his public life as a felon, it is harder than ever to answer the question: Who is Bob McDonnell, anyway?

When he ran for governor five years ago, the people of Virginia were introduced to Bob McDonnell the zealot: a religious extremist tutored at Pat Robertson’s university, a man Democrats warned would try to keep women in the home and make it easier for criminals to get guns.

The labels didn’t fit. McDonnell won his 2009 governor’s race easily and avoided social issues in office 

Next, Americans met McDonnell, the modern-day Mr. Republican: a beaming politician of total integrity and boundless personal confidence, a man who governed more or less from the center, passing landmark transportation reform and writing the playbook for GOP swing-state victory.

That wasn’t quite right, either. By the end of his four-year term, McDonnell was snarled in a gift-giving investigation that was at least tawdry, if not actually criminal.

Finally, we met McDonnell the dupe: a well-intentioned man, pure of heart but weak in dealing with the people around him, led cluelessly into dangerous legal territory by an acquisitive and ill-tempered wife — Lady Macbeth with an Amex card.

The indictment handed down Tuesday against both McDonnells gives the lie to that portrayal, as well. In a 43-page document filed in federal district court, the former GOP governor is depicted by prosecutors as a man preoccupied with improving his family’s financial condition, going well out of his way to accommodate his financial benefactor, Star Scientific CEO Jonnie Williams, and communicating directly and often with the former first lady about various money-making enterprises.

So he was a total phony. And a corrupt greedhead. There’s no hint of tragedy in all that except for the Villagers who admired him so for his well-coiffed, “well-rounded” personality and his easy going style. They didn’t want to look at the reality which was a man who changed personas like he changed his ties. The only consistency in him was ambition. And in second gilded age America, it doesn’t take Woodward and Bernstein to go one step beyond that and look for signs of naked greed.

McDonnell ran as a right wing zealot and then changed into a centrist corporatist, which is the most soothing of all political trajectories among the Villagers. That’s the trajectory that slaps the rubes of both parties square in the kisser.  How great. They liked it so much that until fairly recently he was commonly seen as presidential material. And they don’t have the excuse that he was from some far away state and they didn’t know what he “really” was. He was, for most of them, their own Governor. They genuinely liked him a lot. That he turned out to be little more than a gifted conman makes them feel bad.  And that’s the real “tragedy” here — Villager disappointment.

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The face of evil

by David Atkins

If this statement by Kevin O’Leary doesn’t qualify as “evil”, I’m not sure what does:

A lot of progressives aren’t comofortable speaking in terms of good and evil. It’s too judgmental, too moralizing, too tribalistic, too reminiscent of religious doctrine, etc.

But at a certain point this isn’t a rational political conversation anymore. It’s a moral one.It’s in the gut, and it’s not subject to debate.

We’ve moved to a point in history where thankfully having a conversation about whether some races are inherently superior to others isn’t tolerated not just because it’s wrong, but because it’s evil. The conversation doesn’t get off the ground because it’s repulsive and people know that now in their gut. We don’t have conversations about whether it’s OK to have sex with prepubescent children because it’s repulsive and evil. It’s not a topic for debate, and we don’t give credible space in the public square to the “having-sex-with-children” crowd. There are areas of potential “debate” where we draw the line and simply say “no, that’s wrong, and you’re disgusting.”

Saying that it’s wonderful for the world’s richest 85 people to have more wealth than 3.5 billion of the world’s poorest, because it encourages them to work harder, is an abomination. It is evil. It is beyond the point of debate, and moves instead to gut convictions about pure right and wrong.

And that’s OK. It’s OK to feel and express that moral revulsion. It’s what keeps us human. The only problem is that we haven’t yet evolved in society yet to the point where Kevin O’Leary feels the same weight of public scorn and shame as a Neo-Nazi or a member of NAMBLA.

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QOTD: Dick DeVos

by digby

This story of the fantastically wealthy DeVos family and their rich friends’ efforts to defund the left is fascinating. It’s systematic, it’s long term and it’s very, very well financed by very, very wealthy wingnuts.

Jon Schwarz brought this amazing quote to my attention:

“Sitting around that table we felt like a rag-tag grouping of Davids, in the historic Biblical story,” DeVos told me in an email. “But we left the table committed to doing our best to change Michigan’s future for the better.”

Like all far right zealots, despite their huge influence within one of the two major parties they feel as if they are just a bunch of average citizens up against the powerful hippie Goliath. With guns. And billions of dollars. But other than that they are weak as a box of newborn kittens…

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We don’t do kings

by digby

This piece by Peter Ludlow is well worth contemplating on many levels. But I was particularly struck by this one point, which clarified something important for me. He writes:

Philosophers have long noted the utility of fear to the state. Machiavelli notoriously argued that a good leader should induce fear in the populace in order to control the rabble.

Hobbes in “The Leviathan” argued that fear effectively motivates the creation of a social contract in which citizens cede their freedoms to the sovereign. The people understandably want to be safe from harm. The ruler imposes security and order in exchange for the surrender of certain public freedoms. As Hobbes saw it, there was no other way: Humans, left without a strong sovereign leader controlling their actions, would degenerate into mob rule. It is the fear of this state of nature — not of the sovereign per se, but of a world without the order the sovereign can impose — that leads us to form the social contract and surrender at least part of our freedom.

Most philosophers have since rejected this Hobbesian picture of human nature and the need for a sovereign. We have learned that democratic states can flourish without an absolute ruler. The United States of America was the original proof of concept of this idea: Free, self-governing people can flourish without a sovereign acting above the law. Even though the United States has revoked freedoms during wartime (and for some groups in peacetime), for most of its history the people have not been under the yoke of an all-powerful sovereign.

However, since 9/11 leaders of both political parties in the United States have sought to consolidate power by leaning not just on the danger of a terrorist attack, but on the fact that the possible perpetrators are frightening individuals who are not like us. As President George W. Bush put it before a joint session of Congress in 2001: “They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.” Last year President Obama brought the enemy closer to home, arguing in a speech at the National Defense University that “we face a real threat from radicalized individuals here in the United States” — radicalized individuals who were “deranged or alienated individuals — often U.S. citizens or legal residents.”

The Bush fear-peddling is usually considered the more extreme, but is it? The Obama formulation puts the “radicalized individuals” in our midst. They could be American citizens or legal residents. And the subtext is that if we want to catch them we need to start looking within. The other is among us. The pretext for the surveillance state is thus established.
[…]
We are conditioned to fear persons in caves in Pakistan but not the destruction of our water supply by frackers, massive industrial accidents, climate change or the work-related deaths of 54,000 American workers every year. Fear of outside threats has led us to ignore the more real dangers from within.

Fear has also driven us to wage a “war on terror” that, as the political writer Jeremy Scahill has shown in his book “Dirty Wars,” creates still more enemies. As Scahill describes the results, the United States Special Forces kill lists of seven targets gave rise to kill lists of hundreds, which in turn gave rise to kill lists of thousands today. Does it not occur to the United States that the drone strikes and assassinations are creating more terrorists than they are neutralizing? Perhaps it has, but the calculation has been made that it does not matter. The newly minted enemies can be used to gin up more fear, more restrictions on our freedoms, and so the cycle goes. One might argue that the United States has become a government of fear, by fear, and ultimately, for fear.

Obama’s drone wars also arise from Hobbesian assumptions about society — that the sovereign, enlisted to impose order, is above the law. The sovereign is free to do whatever is in his power to impose order. If the United States must be in charge of providing order in the world, then its sovereign is above the law. Here lie the roots of so-called American exceptionalism.

Svendsen describes the dynamic thus: “The social contract is absolutely binding on all citizens, but the sovereign himself is not subject to the contract that he undertakes to guarantee. Similarly, the U.S. is conceived as being the guarantor of a civilized world, as the country that can maintain moral order, but that stands outside this order.” Fear is driving the United States to believe it is above the law.
[…]
Whatever their motivation, by using fear to induce the rollback of individual rights, politicians, judges and lawmakers are working against the hard-won democratic principles and ideals that we and other democracies have defended for almost 250 years. They are manipulating our fears to undo centuries of democratic reform. And it doesn’t matter if the empowered leader is called a king or a prime minister or a president; the end result is that fear has been used to place us back under the yoke of Hobbes’s sovereign and Machiavelli’s prince.

The rejection of the sovereign is bred deeply into my All-American psyche. It’s as obvious to me as the idea that we should be free to speak our minds or be tried by a jury of our peers or observe or not observe any religion of our choice. In fact, it’s the foundation of all those principles. We don’t do kings. Or at least we think we don’t. And yet, here we are.

I think Americans get confused on that because they think of the King only in terms of the hereditary title. As long as we have elections, (financed by wealthy princelings) we can tell ourselves that we do not answer to a sovereign. But this is not just about a leader being sovereign and therefore, above the law. It’s about an entire nation believing it is sovereign over the entire globe. America: fuck yeah! Exceptionalism!

I think this is why I am so mistrustful of the secrecy, government police power, heroic tales of spreading democracy and saving the poor unfortunates because we’re so good and they’re so evil. It’s more than just my “question authority” youthful indoctrination. To me the concept of the sovereign itself is just fundamentally unAmerican. Everything about it just feels … wrong, somehow.

sov·er·eign [sov-rin, sov-er-in, suhv-]
1.
a monarch; a king, queen, or other supreme ruler.

2.
a person who has supreme power or authority.

3.
a group or body of persons or a state having sovereign authority.

4.
a gold coin of the United Kingdom, equal to one pound sterling: went out of circulation after 1914.
adjective

5.
belonging to or characteristic of a sovereign or sovereign authority; royal.

6.
having supreme rank, power, or authority.

7.
supreme; preeminent; indisputable: a sovereign right.

8.
greatest in degree; utmost or extreme.

9.
being above all others in character, importance, excellence,

I urge you to read the whole piece. It isn’t all that long and it discusses our descent into fear over the past few years in a way I haven’t come across recently. The only thing I would add is that it’s actually not all that new: it’s been going on since the beginning of the Cold War, more than 60years ago. But globalization and our total military dominance required a deep shot of primal fear to justify our ongoing national security state. 9/11 gave it to us. And we’re still wallowing in it.

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Get off my lawn or I’ll shoot you dead

by digby

Just remember folks, if you accidentally find yourself in someone else’s yard, ssome gun toting yahoo will feel he has the right to chase you down and shoot you. Because freedom:

On Thursday, an Orlando man shot and killed a 21-year-old who was fleeing his yard. He didn’t appear to be stealing anything, according to witness accounts. He didn’t appear to be threatening anybody. But Claudius Smith said he feared he was a burglar, followed him over the fence to a neighboring apartment complex, where he shot him after he said he felt threatened, according to a confession documented in an Orlando Police Department report. Smith even said he feared victim Ricardo Sanes was armed “because his pants were falling down” and his hands were in his hoodie pockets, according to a report obtained by the Orlando Sentinel.

He was very afraid, you see, So he had to “defend himself.”

This is where this “stand your ground” “castle doctrine” bullshit inevitably leads and it’s why we decided long ago that people have a duty to retreat. There are too many stupid, paranoid, highly armed people in this world who cannot be trusted to accurately assess the situation and will just start killing people for no good reason.

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