Why?
by digby
The world is full of very strange people. And Hollywood features a high percentage of them. But this is really out there:
Lindsay Wagner star mangled 4 days, finally stolen last night @HollywoodLA311 @HollywoodHelper @wofstargirl pic.twitter.com/gbsSejN5ho
— Beverly Baker (@BeverLuLu) April 29, 2014
What could someone have against Lindsay Wagner of all people?
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So we can use the “T word” after all
by digby
Funny story. Somehow, that fine fellow with the sunglasses, who was the Afghan “torturer in chief” known for his extreme brutality from 2001 until 2009, has landed in Southern California. And nobody knows how or why. The CIA and the State Department say they had nothing to do with it and they aren’t talking. The word is that they feared for his safety. Imagine that.
But we can all rest easy at night knowing “the US doesn’t torture”, at least according to George W. Bush and Barack Obama. But evidently we also have compassion toward torturers. But then we knew that. After all, Dick Cheney roams free bragging about waterboarding.
Still, it’s a little disconcerting to think that the local torturer in chief under the US occupation of Afghanistan is living a nice suburban California lifestyle now. I guess he’s one guy the allowed to “jump the line” and get legal status without a lot of interference. I wonder why? You don’t suppose he knows things …
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On Netroots Radio talking Piketty, Inequality, Rent-seeking and Donald Sterling
by David Atkins
I was on Netroots Radio with Justice Putnam yesterday talking about inequality and rent-seeking by wealthy elites, and how the Donald Sterling mess is a microcosm of the problems and prejudices in the larger economy. It was a great discussion, and Justice always keeps things lively.
Give it a listen if you have a few moments free…
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From the “extremism in defense of bigotry is no vice” files
by digby
In Bucks County, Pa., school board overrides student newspaper’s ban on use of ‘Redskins’
… A school board committee in Pennsylvania passed a policy this week that prohibits a school newspaper from banning the word from its pages, according to an article that appeared in the Bucks County Courier Times.
In October, the staff for the school paper, the Playwickian, voted to ban the word, which describes the school’s teams and mascot. But on Tuesday night, a Neshaminy school board committee decided the newspaper does not have that right, with one board member citing the First Amendment rights of students who want to contribute to the publication. “If my son wants to write something proud about being a Redskin football player, the students on that paper, under the law, have no right to tell him he has to take the word ‘Redskin’ out of there,” school board member Steve Pirritano said, according to the Courier Times….
The Playwickian’s editor, Gillian McGoldrick, told the Courier Times that the newspaper’s staff voted 14 to 7 to ban the word after conversations and research on the subject….
Yes, if your son wants to be bigot he does have the right to say so out in the real world. However, right wingers have gone all the way to the Supreme Court to ensure that school kids do not have unfettered free speech. In fact, the court explicitly ruled back in 1988 that schools have the right to censor their newspapers. These right wing parents don’t have a problem with any of that until somebody decides that it’s wrong to use racial epithets.
I like free speech and I frankly think kids should have the right to it as well. But the fact that any parent thinks this kind of bigotry is worth defending makes them a real jackass regardless. And sadly, they’re probably raising more jackasses to take up the jackass banner for the next generation. The good news is that there will be fewer of them.
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Charlie Pierce tackles the Hillary Hit so I don’t have to
by digby
I was just gearing up to take on today’s masterpiece of Villager mythology about Hillary Clinton in POlitico and realized that I would rather stick chopsticks in my ears than do it. But it has to be done and luckily we have Charlie Pierce to do it:
The kidz at Tiger Beat On The Potomac plainly are trying to kill Gene Lyons down there in Arkansas. They have given us a “deep dive” into Why Hillary Hates Da Press. Now, for those of us who lived through those thrilling days of yesteryear, the answer may be, “Because she was accused by allegedly serious people of killing Vince Foster in her lesbian dominatrix pied-a-terre in Dupont Circle. Let’s all go grab a beer now.” But the TBOTP crew isn’t satisfied with easy answers. Oh, no, sir. They have produced what is an, ah, interesting survey of our none-too-distant past.
It’s unbelievably painful to read, so read Pierce’s treatment before you go there. Thank you Charlie.
Let’s just say it’s perfect that this article comes out the same week as the vacuous Washington Correspondence Dinner. It’s all of a piece:
A bunch of GOP millionaires decide that working people don’t deserve a raise
by digby
That’s right. As promised the Republicans in the Senate filibustered the proposed minimum wage hike.
As expected, Senate Republicans voted on Wednesday to block debate on legislation to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour.
The procedural motion to begin debate received 54 votes for, and 42 against — short of the 60 needed to break a filibuster.
The only Republican who voted with Democrats to begin debate on the bill was Sen. Bob Corker (TN). “While I think the underlying policy is problematic, I think we should always debate ways to help improve the standard of living of Americans,” he said in a statement sent to TPM.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) had expressed willingness to play ball on the minimum wage but decided that hike to $10.10 per hour — phased in over three years — was too high for her. Democrats, who are aggressively touting the issue on the 2014 campaign trail, declined to budge on the $10.10 figure.
Susan Collins, the allegedly compassionate Maine “moderate” who always finds a way to vote with the hard-liners while expressing how much she cares.
I don’t think it makes sense for her to be in the Senate anymore, pretending to be someone the Republicans can “deal with” and then never actually dealing. She has an opponent in this cycle and a really good one, Shenna Bellows. Here’s what she says about the minimum wage:
“I know what it’s like to grow up in poverty, working to break into the middle class. In the minimum wage debate, the guiding principle should be that mothers and fathers who work 2 or 3 jobs should not be living in poverty. The guiding principle should not be: What will out-of-touch Republican politicians, many of whom are millionaires, agree to in order to keep their corporate funders happy.
“Instead of fighting to give American workers a $10.10 living wage, Susan Collins is joining corporate interests and national Republicans to water down the bare minimum that workers need to stay out of poverty. She is fighting to reduce wages for thousands of Mainers and millions of Americans. If I were in the Senate, I’d be leading the fight to rally the public and get out-of-touch Republican politicians to do the will of the people on this issue.”
She’s a terrific progressive on all the issues, including civil liberties. She was head of the Maine ACLU. She’s living proof that you don’t have to be a libertarian crank to stand up for the Bill of Rights and that being a progressive doesn’t mean that you automatically assume the government is always right. The best progressives have a sophisticated and principled understanding of how our government works on behalf of the people and Shenna Bellows is one of the best. She also has a big heart.
You can contribute to Shenna’s campaign here. She has a chance to beat Collins — Maine is an odd state with a very flukey electorate (just look at Governor laPage and Angus King …) and she could pull it off. They may be ready to vote for something other than a right winger disguised as a bucket of lukewarm water this time.
The Village press decides that the only honest men in politics are the Kochs
by digby
I wrote about the Village media today. And it was fun:
Yesterday a gimlet-eyed Ken Vogel of Politico took a deep sniff of snuff, shook out his lace cuffs and declared to no one in particular that the Democratic Party’s wealthy benefactors are all hypocrites and liars. Then he sighed dramatically, flounced over to a gilded Louis the XIV loveseat and threw himself upon it in despair. Why oh why can no one see the truth as only he can? The burden of such knowledge is exhausting.
Well, perhaps he didn’t flounce. But he did write a very smug, self-serving piece about the hypocrisy of wealthy donors in the Democratic Party. He contends they are not only no better than the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson but are actually worse because they act “morally superior,” which obviously annoys him to no end. Sure, they may be backing candidates who will vote to raise their personal taxes and many of their preferred policies are bound to put a crimp in their profits. But that doesn’t mean they are any better than those nice $100 billion men the Koch brothers who also have at least one issue that might cost them the equivalent of pocket change: ethanol subsidies. And of course there’s that paragon of religious virtue Sheldon Adelson, whose only reason for spending hundreds of millions of dollars on politics is his supposedly overriding concern for Israel. Evidently, Vogel forgot to Google his name or he would have been reminded of this other little issue of intense concern:
“I am willing to spend whatever it takes,” Adelson said in his first interview since The Washington Post revealed that he had hired an army of lawyers and lobbyists to try to convince Congress to ban online gambling. Read on …
I’m quite sure that wealthy liberal donors are not always your salt-o-the-earth defenders of the down-trodden. I noted that Vogel failed to mention the Wall St connection that overwhelms both parties and the fear of populism that permeates the upper 1% regardless of ideology. But he and other Villagers seem to think that it’s hypocritical for liberals to put money into politics when they are trying to get money out of politics and that’s just silly. They are legitimately working against their self-interest in a number of different ways and I’m sure it’s not their first choice to have to spend huge amounts of money to get it accomplished but they’re doing it anyway. Somehow that shows they have bad character. Or something.
On the other hand, ogel claims that the Kochs are true believers which means that if everything they believe in happens to make them even more vastly wealthy, it’s a sign of their consistency. How convenient for them.
Basically I think it just annoyed Vogel the Villager that he wasn’t allowed to attend their strategy meetings and that they refused to talk to the press — as if doing so was another sign of their hypocricy. He devoted paragraph after paragraph describing it anyway. In the end, it’s always all about them.
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As we move into the post-antibiotic era, a collapse-prone world is asleep at the switch
by David Atkins
When we look at the history of civilization collapse, we usually see a variety of factors at play. These tend to involve overstretched militaries, devalued currencies, social malaise, and rampant economic inequality.
But that only tends to weaken civilizations. The final knockout punches tend to be delivered in the form of natural disasters and plagues.
Climate change is going to do a bang-up job of providing the natural disasters assuming the world fails to act. The antibiotic resistant plagues aren’t far behind if we don’t do something fast:
The ‘post-antibiotic’ era is near, according to a report released today by the World Health Organization (WHO). The decreasing effectiveness of antibiotics and other antimicrobial agents is a global problem, and a surveillance system should be established to monitor it, the group says.
There is nothing hopeful in the WHO’s report, which pulls together data from 129 member states to show extensive resistance to antimicrobial agents in every region of the world. Overuse of antibiotics in agriculture — to promote livestock growth — and in hospitals quickly leads to proliferation of drug-resistant bacteria, which then spread via human travel and poor sanitation practices.
“A post-antibiotic era — in which common infections and minor injuries can kill — far from being an apocalyptic fantasy, is instead a very real possibility for the twenty-first century,” writes Keiji Fukuda, WHO assistant director-general for health security, in a foreword to the report.
Perhaps the most worrying trend is the spread of resistance to carbapenems, the ‘antibiotics of last resort’, says Timothy Walsh, a medical microbiologist at Cardiff University, UK, who was an adviser for the report. “That’s taken us by surprise,” he says. “All of us are rather like rabbits in front of the headlights in how quickly this has taken off.”
The report finds that, in some areas of the world, more than half the infections caused by one major category of bacteria — Gram-negative, which includes Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae — involve species resistant to carbapenem drugs.
The article goes on to point out that the private sector doesn’t think it can make enough money off new antibiotics to develop them, and that governments are woefully underfunding the research if at all.
Meanwhile, an inhumane and climate-changing inducing big ag animal husbandry industry is keeping profits high and prices cheap on meats pumped full of hormones and antibiotics.
The free market isn’t a genius system that will lead to utopia. If we continue going at this rate, the free market in fossil fuels and modern big ag will wind up destroying civilization as we know it.
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Meddling with the primal forces of nature
by digby
The U.S. is holding off on sanctions against some Russian companies because it doesn’t want to hurt American holders of their debt, according to Fitch Ratings.
“We’ve heard quite a lot of anecdotal evidence that there’s actually a lot of consultation with big investors and bondholders in terms of what sanctions might be imposed by the U.S.,” James Watson, a managing director at Fitch, told reporters today in London. “It seems there has been a significant push back on potentially sanctioning companies that have significant foreign debt.”
How silly to think otherwise.
As @billmon1 quipped on twitter, it’s eerily reminiscent of something:
You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no Third Worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems. One vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multi-varied, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rands, rubles, pounds and shekels.
It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic, and sub-atomic and galactic structure of things today.
And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature.
And you will ATONE.
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