Month: April 2014

“Personhood” gains steam

by digby

In case anyone wants to tell me again that we needn’t worry about the right wing “moving the goal posts” and that once a group of people have secured a basic human right, there’s no going back, take a look at this from Greg Sargent:

The issue isn’t being discussed at all by Washington prognosticators these days. But you can bet that some of the most hard fought Senate races this fall will feature big fights over “Personhood” measures, which have declared that full human rights begin at the moment of fertilization. 

A number of GOP Senate candidates are on record supporting Personhood in some form. Once primary season is over, and the Senate general elections get underway in earnest, you are likely to see Democrats attack Republicans over the issue — broadening the battle for female voters beyond issues such as pay equity to include an emotionally fraught cultural argument that Dems have used to their advantage in the past. 

This has already appeared in the Colorado Senate race, but it will likely become an issue in other races, too. In Colorado, the Republican candidate, GOP Rep. Cory Gardner, renounced his previous support for Personhood after entering the contest, admitting it would “restrict contraception,” but Dems seized on the reversal to argue that Gardner only supports protecting women’s health when politically necessary. 

Gardner co-sponsored the “Life at Conception Act,” which provides for Constitutional protection of the right to life of each “preborn human person,” defined as existing from the “moment of fertilization.” The Pro-Life Alliance describes this as a “Personhood” measure.
Other GOP Senate candidates are on record in similar fashion. Co-sponsors of the Life at Conception Act include Rep. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Rep. Steve Daines of Montana, both expected general election candidates. Meanwhile, according to McClatchy, three leading GOP Senate candidates in North Carolina — Thom Tillis, Greg Brannon, and Mark Harris — all favor a “Personhood” constitutional amendment that would “grant legal protections to a fertilized human egg and possibly ban some forms of birth control.”

Read on.  There’s more, a lot more. Enough to send chills down your spine.

Now I’m sure that Democrats feel they will prevail on this and it’s likely that it will accrue to their benefit in many places in the upcoming election. But all these candidates and office holders taking this position means that this “personhood” atrocity is becoming a mainstream position among Republicans.

So what’s the point of this latest in the incremental war against a woman’s right to choose when she wants to reproduce?

The single most important goal for any personhood law is to restrict, if not make totally illegal, the right to access abortions. If the zygote is a legal person, then Roe v. Wade was found on false grounds and no longer applies. Also, the idea of “viability” as a test no longer applies. A zygote or fetus must therefore be protected from being killed, just like any other person is.

Following that, most forms of hormonal birth control can potentially be attacked. Birth control works in two ways. First, it regulates the body so an egg is normally not released. No egg, no baby. However, sometimes an egg is released, but the hormones make the uterus a hostile environment for the zygote, causing it to pass out of the body with the woman’s next cycle. If you assume a “person” begins at conception, birth control would necessarily be harmful to that person. Murder, if you will. The Virgina and Oklahoma State Legislators which are pushing personhood bills, were asked by those in opposition to put a basic rider protecting a woman’s right to access hormonal birth control. In both cases, they gave a resounding “no”, despite claims that they are not trying to make birth control illegal.

Another serious issue that is being brought up by ob-gyn’s in the states trying to pass personhood laws, is the effect this will have on risky pregnancies, specifically ectopic pregnancy, because there is not sufficient legal markers/legal language to define a pregnancy as a “healthy one”, nor define the rights of the fetus if it cannot survive…

Less likely, but still possible ramifications can include drastic laws against smoking, drinking or drug use while pregnant. While most women who want to be pregnant limit or remove those from their lives during pregnancy, some women do not, and some women cannot. Especially if they do not want the child in the first place. Though likely a violation of their civil rights, women are already charged for child abuse if they use while pregnant; personhood laws only make that situation worse. One can imagine a woman addicted to drugs who is living on the streets. She cannot have an abortion, but any child she has will face extreme health problems if it survives to term. And our answer will be to put her in jail.

Any miscarriage can potentially be considered manslaughter or a murder, depending on what the woman did or did not do during her pregnancy.

I actually don’t think those last are less likely. Since the point of all this is to control women, I have no doubt that any pregnant women would be subject to legal problems if busy bodies thinks she is failing to behave in what certain people believe is a properly maternal way.

This is not some hysterical fringe discussion anymore. It’s going to be part of the Fall campaign. And win or lose, the anti-abortion zealots will have succeeded in making the unthinkable thinkable.

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President Obama reinforces conservative economic framing

by David Atkins

The White House twitter account posted today:

President Obama: "Our economy is growing again. Our businesses are creating jobs." #ActOnJobs pic.twitter.com/kfS5SKt2od— The White House (@WhiteHouse) April 16, 2014

Regular readers of this blog will be able to identify the problem here: businesses don’t actually create jobs. In fact, the goal of a business is to be able to make as much profit as possible while employing as few people as possible.

Companies don’t create jobs. Customers do. It would be nice to have a President who helped communicate that reality to the American public.

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Your wingnut whine ‘o the day

by digby

Courtesy the WSJ:

The choice of Mr. Colbert is a strange business model for CBS. Gallup calibrates 38% of Americans as conservatives, 34% as moderates, and 23% as liberals. Friends who know Mr. Colbert, even some conservatives, tell me he’s a good human being. But if he doesn’t widen his appeal beyond those who lean strongly left, CBS will be writing off a large part of its potential audience. Carson hit the advertisers’ sweet spot with a broad appeal to all consumers. It’s a misnomer that comedians are rebels. At least not the successful ones who reflect the views of their fans.

Politically, Mr. Letterman took a left turn in recent years. It enraged many on the right when he mocked Sarah Palin’s daughter and even today continues to bash Mr. Bush. And it didn’t help his ratings. Now, by picking Mr. Colbert, CBS seems to be signaling that its target demo is Democrats of a decidedly liberal stripe.

I think they’ll be content to keep Letterman’s audience, thank you very much.

That piece was written by Johnny Carson’s longtime head writer who has become a political consultant. Gosh I wonder what party he consults for?

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Big streaming event today at 6pm Eastern, 3pm Pacific: Thomas Picketty with Krugman, Stiglitz and Durlauf

by digby

Via Moyers:

On Wednesday, April 16 at 6 p.m. Eastern time, Thomas Piketty will join economists Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz and Steven Durlauf in New York to talk about his new landmark book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century.

In a review, Krugman, who will appear on Moyers & Company this week, calls the book “magnificent” in part because it will “change both the way we think about society and the way we do economics,” adding that the French economist’s influence “runs deep.”

“The big idea of Capital in the Twenty-First Century is that we haven’t just gone back to nineteenth-century levels of income inequality, we’re also on a path back to ‘patrimonial capitalism,’ in which the commanding heights of the economy are controlled not by talented individuals but by family dynasties.”

Click here to watch the livestream.

This is the book everyone’s talking about. It’s said to be a towering work of scholarship and a tremendous breakthrough in the way we understand how the economy works.

Krugman wrote about it here in a piece called “Why We’re in a New Gilded Age.”

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Those birthpangs are getting life-threatening

by digby

It looks like there are some major complications in that birthing of the democracy over in Iraq. We got them pregnant but the baby has two heads and may not survive:

[A]s Iraq prepares for its first national election in four years on April 30, it is hard to imagine democracy activists rallying weekly in Iraqi streets. For months, suicide bombers have been dynamiting themselves in crowded Shiite markets, coffee shops, and funeral tents, while Shiite militias and government security forces have terrorized Sunni communities. The Iraqi state is breaking apart again: from the west in Anbar province, where after weeks of anarchic violence more than 380,000 people have fled their homes; to the east in Diyala province, where tit-for-tat sectarian killings are rampant; to the north in Mosul, where al-Qaeda-linked militants control large swathes of territory; to the south in Basra, home to Iraq’s oil riches, where Shiite militias are once more ascendant; to Iraq’s Kurds, who warn that the country is disintegrating and contemplate full independence from Baghdad.

More than 2,500 Iraqis have been killed since the start of the year, including nearly three hundred in the first ten days of April; in the capital itself, which has become a showcase for the country’s multiplying conflicts and uncontrolled violence, there have been several brazen attacks on government buildings, and a terrifying string of car bombings, including eight on April 9 alone.

In theory, this month’s parliamentary elections, which are being contested by parties from across the political spectrum, will allow voters to take a stand against extremism. While many Iraqis say they are disillusioned with their current leaders, however, few think their vote is likely to produce major changes: Most of the candidates play to the fears of their own sects, or seem too weak to change the currently hateful mood. Across Iraq, people seek diversions through a trip to a mall or coffee shop, half-expecting a fatal explosion, or they lock themselves away at home losing themselves in American movies and video games. Others seek solace in the sectarian fantasies now promoted by the elite political parties: the stories told by many Sunnis of Iran’s domination of Iraq through militias and political figures, and by the Shiite religious parties of a plot hatched in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, and Turkey to destroy the Shia communities in Syria and Iraq.

Oh, and then there’s this:

Decades ago, in the years after Iraq gained independence, a tradition of child marriage persisted in its hills and plains. Upon their fathers’ orders, Iraqi girls were betrothed to strangers and rivals alike to resolve tribal disputes or incur favor.
childmarriageBut in the mid-1970s, such acts — called “fasliyah” — were prohibited as the nation moved toward secularization and modernity.

“This decree [banning fasliyah] constituted the first step toward a civilized Iraqi community,” reports the Middle East publication Al-Monitor, “which would put an end to the failures of the tribal… society.”
[…]
Now the Iraqi government is poised to legalize child marriage for the nation’s majority Shiite Muslim population. But the law, which some expect to pass before this month’s parliamentary elections, would do significantly more than that.

Called the Jaafari Personal Status Law, it would prohibit Muslim men from marrying non-Muslims, prevent women from leaving the house without their husband’s consent, automatically grant custody of children older than two to their father in divorce cases and legalize marital rape.

The law, which proponents say will save women’s “rights and dignity,” would also permit boys to marry as young as 15 and girls to marry as young as nine. Girls younger than nine would be permitted to marry with a parent’s approval.

Ayad Allawi, a former Iraqi prime minister, expressed outrage this week in an interview with the Telegraph. He said the law would legalize the abuse of women.

“It allows for girls to be married from nine years of age and even younger,” Allawi said. “There are other injustices [in the law] too.”

The legislation, which was introduced late last year, was condemned by international rights groups.

“Passage of the Jaafari law would be a disastrous and discriminatory step backward for Iraq’s women and girls,” said Joe Stork of Human Rights Watch.“This personal status law would only entrench Iraq’s divisions while the government claims to support equal rights for all.”

The irony of all this is that one of the main human rights rationales for the invasion, as it was with Afghanistan, was that it was going to free the ladies. Remember this?

“We’re getting the band together,” White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett told the group on their first conference call last week.

The “Band” is made up of the people who brought you the war in Afghanistan—or at least the accompanying public-relations campaign. Their greatest hit: exposing the Taliban’s treatment of women.

Now, they’re back for a reunion tour on Iraq. The Band’s instrument, of course, is information.

Karen Hughes famously toured the Middle East clumsily telling anyone who’d listen that she was “a working mom” and Laura Bush made the women of Afghanistan and Iraq her personal cause. This was mostly for domestic consumption, of course, and it worked to some extent. A lot of feminists were torn on this account — they had been trying to alert the world about the Taliban for years.

But it’s always dicey to try to fix such problems with a war against religious fanatics. Particularly when that’s only a convenient humanitarian excuse for a ruthless war over resources. So, here we are, 11 years after the invasion — Iraq is exploding and women are being driven back into medieval times. Heckuva job, Bushie.

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Enlisting the ladies

by digby

“I just don’t have time for anything,” a housewife told a newsmagazine. “I’m fighting Communism three nights a week.”

The link goes to a Perlstein discussion of the Tea Party back in 2010. It’s such a perfect example of the way the GOP enlists women to work on their behalf: it’s just another housewife chore. Here’s their 2014 version:

Signaling that the Republican Party is getting serious about wooing women, the Washington Post reported Monday that the Republican National Committee is planning to recruit an army of volunteers who will court young female voters in Democratic-leaning suburban areas.

The co-chair of the RNC, Sharon Day, is slated to launch the “14 in ’14” program Monday in West Virginia, according to the Post, aiming to “sign up women who will commit 30 minutes per week in the 14 weeks before the election, making calls, recruiting other women, identifying voters and getting people to the polls.”

President Barack Obama carried female voters in 2012 — unmarried women in particular — and winning over that voting bloc could tip tough mid-term elections in the GOP’s favor.

“Women are a very important part of the electorate and the RNC is very serious about engaging,” Day told the Post. “The Democrats have relied on desperate attacks and we are going to aggressively work to correct the record and build relationships with women voters.”

I want you to look at the picture here:

There are only a couple of women there who are younger than I am. If the idea is that these women are going to be able to persuade their single granddaughters to vote for throwback patriarchs who think they’re sluts if they use birth control, I suppose this might work. Otherwise, I think they have a long row to hoe. But then political strategists who declare proudly that “women are an important part of the electorate” — as if it needs to be pointed out — might not be as tuned into the real world as one might hope.

The GOP is one of the two major American parties and wields considerable power in our government. And their women sounds little different than that housewife back in the 60s. It’s actually rather depressing.

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Rand Paul, the sin-eater

by digby

My Salon piece this morning is about the Republican establishment dreaming of forming a grassroots rebellion against … Rand Paul and the base of the Republican Party.

In a time of partisan gridlock and a political scene that’s become so dull and predictable that cable networks are devoting weeks of 24-hour news coverage to an airplane that doesn’t exist, progressive news junkies can turn to one bright spot to lift their spirits and feed their political souls: the open warfare breaking out between the various factions of the Republican coalition. The tension between the radicals and the establishment has been around for decades and the energy waxes and wanes depending on the circumstances. Even in the bright glow of the Reagan apotheosis, Newt Gingrich and his revolutionaries were making trouble from the back benches. But this time is a little different[…]

What’s new in this cycle is the rise of the agitated “moderates” who are taking to the pages of their traditional media to lash out in anger at Tea Party excesses — or at least at a certain “non-mainstream” Republican who can sit in as the far right’s all-purpose sin-eater. (You don’t want to directly confront that rabid Tea Party base. It bites.) That man is Sen. Rand Paul.

Read On …

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House conservatives STILL can’t figure out what their healthcare “alternative” is

by David Atkins

This story, perhaps more than any about Wall Street, foreign policy or national security, shows just how far to the right both parties have gone:

Top House conservatives are pressuring Republican leaders to bring an ObamaCare replacement bill to a vote by the August recess.

Conservatives cheered when Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) pledged a vote during the House GOP’s annual retreat in January, viewing the commitment as a central element of the party’s vow to be “the alternative party” and not merely stand in opposition to President Obama.

Yet 10 weeks later, party leaders have given no indication when they might present a plan or what form it will take.

Conservatives like Rep. Steve Scalise (La.), chairman of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), are pushing for a vote by the time lawmakers leave town for five weeks at the end of July.
“At the end of the day, we feel it’s really important to bring a bill to the floor that is a true replacement to the president’s healthcare law,” Scalise said in a phone interview Tuesday. “Look, leadership’s come a long way in the last six months on that, and we’re continuing to talk to them to try to get to a point where we actually have a vote on the House floor by the August recess.”

Scalise wants the party to adopt a single, comprehensive replacement for ObamaCare, but party leaders have not signed off on that approach. In recent weeks, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has suggested the House might vote instead on a series of healthcare bills.

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has shied away from making any commitment at all, appearing to downplay the importance of holding a floor vote within a specific timeframe.

At a press conference last week, Boehner said Cantor and other top Republicans are “trying to build a consensus over what an alternative would look like.”

Of course they can’t figure out what a conservative alternative would look like. Beyond going back to the old system of basically letting people with pre-existing conditions get sicker and die, there’s isn’t a more conservative alternative than the ACA. The ACA was the conservative alternative. It was the Heritage Foundation’s idea. It was the idea implemented by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts. It’s essentially a hefty government subsidy to health insurance companies to give them millions of new customers who previously couldn’t afford coverage.

That doesn’t make it bad per se, and it’s certainly better than what we had before. But of all the possible forward-looking solutions to the healthcare crisis in this country, the ACA was the most conservative option possible. It’s most progressive aspect is the Medicaid expansion–which Republican governors are blocking out of pure spite.

Democrats adopted that conservative approach partly to keep the medical and pharmaceutical industries happy, partly because many Americans currently covered by their employers would stupidly but understandably want to stick with the devil they know instead of take a chance on a “Euro-Socialist” approach, and partly because they were hoping for a few Republican votes to make it “bipartisan.”

Republicans should have been thrilled with the result. Instead, they acted like the ACA was a nefarious Communist plot, and used atrocious lies about the bill to win big in 2010. That victory in turn helped them cement what will likely be over a decade in control of the House.

But it also means there’s almost nowhere left for Republicans to go on healthcare. They can’t really advocate for going back to the old system. And they certainly can’t come up with a solution for those with pre-existing conditions and those priced out of healthcare entirely without a solution that looks very much like the ACA. They’re all the way out on the right edge of the cliff, backed against the precipice by the right-leaning ACA. To go any farther right would mean jumping off the ledge.

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Girls up front

by digby

I’m pretty sure they feel darned clever about this:

Some allies of rancher Cliven Bundy were prepared to make as much of a media spectacle as possible if violence were to erupt, saying they would put women on the front lines in the event federal officials turned to deadly force. Former Arizona Sheriff Richard Mack told Fox News Monday, as reported by the Blaze:

We were actually strategizing to put all the women up at the front. If they are going to start shooting, it’s going to be women that are going to be televised all across the world getting shot by these rogue federal officers.

Mack, a self-professed Tea Partier, is one of a host of right-wing figures who stood behind Bundy and made him a conservative celebrity after he refused to pay grazing fees based on his claim that the federal government is not entitled to own land.

Mack served as sheriff for Graham County between 1988 and 1997, and is part of a group known as the “Oath Keepers” that denies the supremacy of federal law and has been deemed part of a wave of new militia groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. He was also a plaintiff in the lawsuit against the federal government that challenged the constitutionality of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act.

This is actually not all that uncommon. Human shields are often used in certain kinds of conflicts. The Taliban does it, for instance. Bashar Assad does too. Saddam and Qaddafi both did it with relish.

You can certainly see who their inspirations are.

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Fergawdsakes. Shoe Truthers? Really?

by digby

The right wing is staging one of the stupidest hissy fits ever. They are saying that Hillary Clinton staged that shoe throwing incident the other day. It’s so dumb even Rush seems a little bit embarrassed by it and I didn’t think that was possible:

Rush Limbaugh jumped on board the crazy train Monday, telling listeners that he can “totally relate” to those who believe that “everything the Clintons do is staged or choreographed.” While he has not studied the incident in detail, he believes what people told him about Clinton’s reaction not being “natural.”

“I’m sorry, I’m ill-equipped to comment,” Limbaugh said, proceding, of course to comment at some length. “Maybe it’s because, in my subconscious, I think it was staged, or set up, or whatever. … I don’t know why anybody would be throwing a shoe at Hillary unless — maybe it’s an attempt to make the Benghazi people look like nuts and lunatics and wackos.”

You don’t need to have shoes thrown at you to make the Benghazi people look like nuts and lunatics.

The think Clinton didn’t “react naturally” because in their minds she should have jumped on a broom and flown at the assailant cackling madly and screaming “I’ll get you my pretty!!!!”

Jesus. Did they find that plane yet?

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