Month: June 2014

Rick Scott and the religious right in Florida decide to play God

by David Atkins

Welcome to Florida, land of the incubation vessels:

Under a new law, abortions will be illegal in Florida at any point in a woman’s pregnancy if her doctor determines that the fetus could survive outside the womb. Gov. Rick Scott signed a bill Friday that redefines that state’s current third trimester abortion ban.

Current law prohibits abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy unless the mother’s life is at risk. The new law will require women to have a doctor determine whether a fetus is viable before having an abortion. It also removes the exception of psychological trouble as an exception.

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Democrats opposed the legislation throughout the committee process and during the 2014 session. Rep. Michelle Rehwinkel Vasilinda, D-Tallahassee, is worried that doctors could be open to criminal prosecution and said different physicians can have different determinations.

“It is commonplace for people to get second and third opinions sometimes when they’re dealing with something very important,” Rehwinkel Vasilinda said. “And we know that physicians do have differences of opinion. “It’s just … something that we shouldn’t have done.” Former Senator Nan Rich is running for the Democratic nomination in the race for Governor this fall. She said in a written statement that Scott’s signing is “an outrage.”

As I said yesterday at the Washington Monthly:

What would the standard for viability even be? If a fetus is born extremely prematurely and has a 50% chance of survival outside the womb, is that viable? What about 30%? If the fetus is severely deformed or diseased and isn’t likely to survive longer than a year outside the womb, is that viable? Are fetuses with anencephaly viable? If a mother with a history of drug and mental health problems is pregnant with a fetus with a rare and crippling disorder, is it best for her, society or even the fetus to bring it to term?

Will we now prosecute women who self-induce abortion or miscarriage for murder based on a doctor’s post-facto determination of viability? What happens when two doctors disagree on fetal viability?

One would think that conservatives obsessed with “freedom” would rather that people make these sorts of difficult choices in consultation with their physicians, instead of forcing physicians to play God, making capricious and ideological decisions with profound consequences for the lives of their patients.

But that’s not what this is about for conservatives. The conservative obsession with abortion has never been about the fetus. It’s about controlling the sexual and reproductive lives of women. It’s about forcing women into the role of incubating vessel, and about valuing the potential human inside them more than the real human in front of them.

And if they have to force doctors to play God at massive risk and liability to themselves, well, that’s all the price of re-litigating the 1960s and winning the culture war against women’s reproductive and sexual freedoms.

It’s never anything new under the sun with these people.

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Doing their dirty work

by digby

Poor British bastards:

If Labour forms the next government, who will be the most hated man in the cabinet? A leading candidate for that unenviable role is Chris Leslie, the MP for Nottingham East. It will be nothing personal. He is a smart and pleasant individual. The “baby of the House” when he first entered parliament in Tony Blair’s 1997 landslide, he has grown into one of the more credible, persuasive and forward-thinking people in Labour’s ranks. The unpopularity that awaits him will be professional. If he moves into the job that he is currently shadowing, he will become the chief secretary to the Treasury, the man who holds the purse-strings.

When his colleagues want to spend money on what they identify as good causes, and it is the default instinct of Labour people to search out good causes and spend on them, he will be the man who has to deny them their dreams. Actually, this nice guy is going to have to be much nastier than that. He will have to laugh at his colleagues’ dreams. He will have to tear up their dreams and stamp them in the dirt. And he will have to do so without mercy. He will be the abominable no-man who has to tell a Labour cabinet that they will have to cut spending, cut often and cut deep. As he noted in a recent speech: “The settlements we will need to make following the general election will be the toughest faced by an incoming Labour government for a generation.”

I’m going to guess that the deficit fetishists will have regrouped here by 2016 as well and we’ll be looking at a similar dynamic. Liberals are always willing to do this dirty work. In fact, they’re really good at it.

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Huckleberry’s panic disorder

by digby

Poor Huckleberry Graham. He’s been in such a frothing panic for so long now that I’m afraid he’s going to have a heart attack. The other day he came out of a briefing on Iraq practically rending his garments and screeching,

We’ve got another Benghazi in the making here! What I heard in there scared the hell out of me!

Here he was just 9 months ago

The trifecta from hell is unfolding in front of us,” Graham said. “Iran is about to get a nuclear weapon. Syria is about to infect the entire region, taking Jordan down, and Egypt could become a failed state.”

And later, as if trying to bolster his feverish portrayal of current events, Graham laid down the bottom line. “I’m just telling you,” he told Fox’s Greta Van Susteren, “we live in the most dangerous times imaginable.”

He added:

Sen. Lindsey Graham said on Saturday that he was going to get Congress to authorize President Barack Obama to use military force to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program “to make sure they get a clear signal that this debacle called Syria doesn’t mean we’re confused about Iran.”

Here he was a month later wringing his hands about Russia:

“I want a world that’s not about to blow up! I want Russia to change and if you’ve got a better idea how to deal with Putin, let me know. He’s running all over us, running all over the world,” said Graham, pointing back to the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany and arguing that the host country uses the event to “sell itself.”

A couple of months after that:

Graham told reporters in Goose Creek on Tuesday that taking action against Syria in response to the situation is not a question of yes or no, but rather a question of bad or worse choices.

He says if there is no U.S. response, Iran will not believe America’s resolve to block Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Graham also says those nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists could result in a bomb coming to Charleston Harbor.

Here he was after Obama’s State of the Union address this year:

“The world is literally about to blow up!” Graham said, saying he completely disagrees with Obama on Iran policy.

“The world as I know was not remotely described by the president. Syria is a contagion,” Graham said.

“Explain to me what happens if the Syrian conflict goes on another year and Assad continues to win,” Graham said, referring to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. “Iraq is disintegrating. The whole region is moving toward chaos, and we’re doing nothing. We’re talking about limiting drones?” said Graham, who brought “Duck Dynasty” co-star Korie Robertson to the speech as his guest.

And now today he’s babbling about Stalin and Hitler again and talking about an alliance with the great Satan:

A Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee says Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki cannot keep his country together, and a U.S. alliance with Iran might be needed to do so.

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said Sunday a U.S. partnership with longtime foe Iran makes him uncomfortable but likened it to the United States working with Josef Stalin in World War II against Adolf Hitler. He says the United States has to do what it can to keep Baghdad from falling to insurgents.

Well at least he’s not confused.

One silver lining in this whole thing: if the idiotic Bush Doctrine (“yer either with us or yer with thuh terrists!”) wasn’t dead before it’s definitely a goner now. The complex alliances in this latest conflagration are sufficiently complicated that all of the simplistic bombast about “Good ‘n Evil”  is finally seen for the puerile drivel it always was.

I think the Obama administration should send Graham and McCain to Israel to explain our new working relationship with Iran. Should be a fun trip. Just don’t tell Michael Ledeen.

Oh, in case you were thinking that Graham has any credibility, think again. This was his statement March 20, 2003:

“I fully understand why President Bush had to resort to the use of force to disarm Saddam Hussein. It has been readily apparent for many months that Saddam would not voluntarily part with his weapons of mass destruction.

“It’s long past time for Saddam Hussein to be replaced. President Bush used the only reasonable option available to him and our nation.”

Oh, and this too, from 2005:

We cannot win this war on terror if people are undercutting us. And one way to undercut us is to empower Iran.

Graham has been saying the world is blowing up for well over a decade. And it probably will actually blow up some day. But that won’t mean that Lindsay Graham’s endless shrieking about it, no matter what the circumstances, will have been right. In fact, we should change the old saw “crying wolf” to “crying Huckleberry.”

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Sick and tired of being tired

by digby

Kathy Geier has a great piece up at the Baffler about an under-reported story: America’s culture of overwork. She starts off by discussing the horrific accident involving Tracy Morgan which turned out to be caused by a truck driver for Walmart who was on a hellish schedule and hadn’t slept in 24 hours. And then she lays blame where it properly lies:

In truth, it’s our political system that deserves to be indicted. Labor protections in the trucking industry are notoriously lax; and sadly, so are scandalously overworked truckers. A statement from the Teamsters noted that “[d]rivers feel pressure from their employers to drive more than 60-70 hours a week with insufficient rest.”

Recently, even the minimal legal protections that truckers do enjoy have come under fire. In the days before Morgan’s horrific accident, Senate Republicans were working like fiends to roll back important safety provisions for drivers. As Autoblog’s Pete Bigelow reports:

[T]he Senate Appropriations Committee approved legislation that would undo rules that only went into effect last year that mandated certain rest periods for truck drivers. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) added an amendment to the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development bill that would suspend a regulation that truck drivers rest for 34 consecutive hours, including two nights from 1:00 AM to 5:00 AM, before driving again.

“With one amendment, we’re doing away with rules we worked years to develop,” [transportation safety advocate Daphne] Izer said Monday.

The scary thing is that Collins, the senator leading this assault on public safety and human decency, is what passes as a “moderate” in the G.O.P. these days.

The Republicans’ attempt to force drivers to stay behind the wheel longer and with less rest comes at a time when truck accidents are on the rise. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, truck accident injuries were up 18 percent in 2012, the most recent year for which data is available, and truck accident deaths had increased by 4 percent.

Isn’t that special? That wonderful gal Susan Collins thinks we’d all be better off if the roads we have to travel are filled with either sleep deprived or articiallially stimulated truck drivers. Because freedom.

Vox featured a series of graphs the other day that shows how free we Americans are:

Maybe I’m crazy, but I think that Collins amendment could be used as a perfect example of how corporations are killing us. The idea that they think it’s ok for truck drivers to be sleep deprived and in a hurry (and possibly on stimulants to stay awake) is scary in a way that really hits home for average people.

Be sure to read the Geier piece and consider how free you feel. If you’re not too tired. As she says:

Our culture of overwork has many victims. Even the privileged classes who are supposed to benefit most from our deregulated, capitalism-on-steroids modern workplace frequently pay a price. Professional-class workers pay with their health. Our worship of the free market god has so seriously threatened public safety that even the rich and famous like Tracy Morgan aren’t safe from the risks it poses.

Americans began agitating for the right to an eight-hour workday over 200 years ago. Countless workers fought and died for that right before it was institutionalized under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. But, sadly, it looks like this is one battle that we all must continue to fight.

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Somehow I don’t think bad behavior is a deal breaker

by digby

Josh Marshall says:

Cochran recognizes the obvious, which is that he can’t out-Tea Party, out-crazy or out-conservative McDaniel, though it’s an interesting semantic question whether McDaniel is really more ‘conservative’ than Cochran in any comprehensible sense of the word. The aim seems to be to make the case that McDaniel just lacks the dignity to represent the state in the Senate.

That’s probably his best play at this point, although dignity is a freighted word when it comes to Cochran who is clearly not very engaged. But I think that a Southern GOP electorate that’s spent a couple of decades listening to Rush and Fox News has little interest in dignity. McDaniel just sounds like your average everyday right wing conservative.

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Yeah, it’s a real mystery how the neocons got away with Iraq

by digby

So, I hear that Chris Matthews is hopping mad about the neocons and Iraq:

“We were united after 9/11. They were the ones who divided us,” Matthews said. “They were the ones who divided Iraq into the two warring factions we see today battling for control of Baghdad. They were the ones who went into Iraq and took apart the Iraqi army, the Iraqi government, the Iraqi establishment, and replaced it with a sectarian bunch primarily interested in getting even with their fellow Iraqis.”

The current Shia regime, Matthews said earlier on his show, was on the verge of being overrun completely by the Sunni insurgent group calling itself the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which has taken over several large cities and has announced its intentions to advance upon the capital, Baghdad. Matthews described this recent wave of violence as the latest episode in years of strife.

“Just look at the spectacle of Saddam Hussein being hanged [in 2006] to a jeering of a mob of Shiites engaged in something we should’ve had no part of,” Matthews said.

But it was American “neo-cons,” Matthews argued, who instigated that turmoil by rushing the U.S. into war there from a position of aggression that contradicted the country’s ideals.

“I will never understand how a president so limited in his ability or sense of history as George W. Bush, a vice-president as uncharismatic as Dick Cheney, or a band of unelected ideologues could so screw this country to the wall of history as the band that ran things in the early years of this century,” he said.

Uhm, they had some help.

I was reminded by a twitter follower today that I’d forgotten to wish Matthews a Happy Codpiece Day:

It seems like only yesterday that the country was enthralled with the president in his sexy flightsuit. Women were swooning, manly GOP men were commenting enviously on his package. But there were none so awestruck by the sheer, testosterone glory of Bush’s codpiece as Tweety:

MATTHEWS: Let’s go to this sub–what happened to this week, which was to me was astounding as a student of politics, like all of us. Lights, camera, action. This week the president landed the best photo op in a very long time. Other great visuals: Ronald Reagan at the D-Day cemetery in Normandy, Bill Clinton on horseback in Wyoming. Nothing compared to this, I’ve got to say.

Katty, for visual, the president of the United States arriving in an F-18, looking like he flew it in himself. The GIs, the women on–onboard that ship loved this guy.

Ms. KAY: He looked great. Look, I’m not a Bush man. I mean, he doesn’t do it for me personally, especially not when he’s in a suit, but he arrived there…

MATTHEWS: No one would call you a Bush man, by the way.

Ms. KAY: …he arrived there in his flight suit, in a jumpsuit. He should wear that all the time. Why doesn’t he do all his campaign speeches in that jumpsuit? He just looks so great.

MATTHEWS: I want him to wa–I want to see him debate somebody like John Kerry or Lieberman or somebody wearing that jumpsuit.

Mr. DOBBS: Well, it was just–I can’t think of any, any stunt by the White House–and I’ll call it a stunt–that has come close. I mean, this is not only a home run; the ball is still flying out beyond the park.

MATTHEWS: Well, you know what, it was like throwing that strike in Yankee Stadium a while back after 9/11. It’s not a stunt if it works and it’s real. And I felt the faces of those guys–I thought most of our guys were looking up like they were looking at Bob Hope and John Wayne combined on that ship.

Mr. GIGOT: The reason it works is because of–the reason it works is because Bush looks authentic and he felt that he–you could feel the connection with the troops. He looked like he was sincere. People trust him. That’s what he has going for him.

MATTHEWS: Fareed, you’re watching that from–say you were over in the Middle East watching the president of the United States on this humongous aircraft carrier. It looks like it could take down Syria just one boat, right, and the president of the United States is pointing a finger and saying, `You people with the weapons of mass destruction, you people backing terrorism, look out. We’re coming.’ Do you think that picture mattered over there?

Mr. ZAKARIA: Oh yeah. Look, this is a part of the war where we have not–we’ve allowed a lot of states to do some very nasty stuff, traffic with nasty people and nasty material, and I think it’s time to tell them, you know what, `You’re going to be help accountable for this.’

MATTHEWS: Well, it was a powerful statement and picture as well.

Yeah, It’s really hard to figure out how Bush and Cheney got away with what they got away with …

Chart ‘o the day

by digby

“Collective bargaining is the bedrock of our economy.This chart says it better than I ever could.”#BidenBroughtAChart pic.twitter.com/P4IgoYo7TX
— Vice President Biden (@VP) February 5, 2014

h/t to RG

Corporations are people. Except when they aren’t.

by David Atkins

Corporations aren’t just people, my friend. They’re superior people beyond the petty accountability standards of normal humans:

ate last year a massive data hack at Target exposed as many as 110 million consumers around the country to identity theft and fraud. As details of its lax computer security oversight came to light, customers whose passwords and credit card numbers had been stolen banded together to file dozens of class-action lawsuits against the mega-chain-store company. A judge presiding over a consolidated suit will now sort out how much damage was done and how much Target may owe the victims of its negligence. As the case proceeds, documents and testimony pertaining to how the breach occurred will become part of the public record.

All this may seem like an archetypical story of our times, combining corporate misconduct, cyber-crime, and high-stakes litigation. But for those who follow the cutting edge of corporate law, a central part of this saga is almost antiquarian: the part where Target must actually face its accusers in court and the public gets to know what went awry and whether justice gets done.

Two recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings—AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion and American Express v. Italian Colors—have deeply undercut these centuries-old public rights, by empowering businesses to avoid any threat of private lawsuits or class actions. The decisions culminate a thirty-year trend during which the judiciary, including initially some prominent liberal jurists, has moved to eliminate courts as a means for ordinary Americans to uphold their rights against companies. The result is a world where corporations can evade accountability and effectively skirt swaths of law, pushing their growing power over their consumers and employees past a tipping point.

To understand this new legal environment, consider, by contrast, what would have happened if Amazon had exposed its 215 million customer accounts to a security breach similar to Target’s. Since Amazon has taken advantage of the Court’s recent decisions, even Amazon users whose bank accounts were wiped clean as a direct result of the hack would not be able to take the company to court. “The lawsuits against Target would almost certainly not be possible against Amazon,” says Paul Bland, executive director of Public Justice. “It’s got its ‘vaccination against legal accountability’ here.”

Following the 2011 and 2013 Supreme Court rulings, dozens of other giant corporations—from Comcast and Wells Fargo to Ticketmaster and Dropbox—have secured the same legal immunity. So have companies ranging from airlines, gyms, payday lenders, and nursing homes, which have quietly rewritten the fine print of their contracts with consumers to include a shield from lawsuits and class actions. Meanwhile, businesses including Goldman Sachs, Northrop Grumman, P. F. Chang’s, and Uber have tucked similar clauses into their contracts with workers.

One day, when all of this is illegal and grossly objectionable, people will wonder why we put up with it at all. Why indeed?

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Saturday Night at the Movies 

Teenage rampage: Palo Alto & We Are the Best!

By Dennis Hartley

School daze: Palo Alto

It’s tempting to call Gia Coppola’s directing debut, Palo Alto, a Hollywood home movie. Her mom (Jacqui Getty) is in the cast, as well as her cousin (Bailey Coppola) and her great aunt (Talia Shire). Another cousin (Robert Schwartzman, brother of Jason and son of Talia) is co-credited for the music. And her granddad (do I need to tell you who he is?) has a voiceover cameo (unbilled, but obvious). But I won’t do that; I will maintain professional integrity, and judge her film strictly on its own merits (are you buying this so far?). Okay, one more thing I should give you a heads up on. Coppola’s film revolves around the travails of bored, mopey, privileged teenagers, which puts her at risk being accused of riding aunt Sofia’s coattails. Again, I won’t go there (well…maybe just a little). 


While the film is largely an episodic ensemble piece about a group of northern California high school students, there is a protagonist. Her name is April (Emma Roberts, daughter of Eric). Saddled with the mantle of “class virgin”, April is a sensitive and withdrawn senior who plays on the school soccer team. As her hormones begin to burble and roil, exacerbated by peer pressure from her sexually active girlfriend Emily (Zoe Levin), April finds herself conflicted by a dual attraction to her coach (James Franco) and (more age-appropriate) classmate Teddy (Jack Kilmer, son of Val…who plays April’s dad). Emily has already taken Teddy for a test drive, as well as his best bud Fred (Nat Wolff), who is a surly, unpredictable James Dean type (we know this thanks to his tell-tale red jacket).

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Wingnut rescue

by digby

Oh, this should work out well:

A group of bikers in Arizona are organizing a ride to the border to try and free jailed U.S. Marine Andrew Tahmooressi, who is being held in Mexico. Tahmooressi got lost on the way back to San Diego from Tijuana and was arrested when Mexican police found guns, which are legal in the U.S. but illegal in Mexico, in his car.

According to our friends at Young Conservatives, ride organizer John Harrington said that the breaking point – what inspired him to do this – was “when we let five terrorists go to spring a traitor.” The Obama administration traded five Guantanamo Bay prisoners for Bergdahl, who has been accused of deserting his post and his country, while ignoring pleas to free Tahmooressi.

While it’s unclear what the bikers will do when they get to Mexico and how effective this will be, one thing is clear: they’ll be doing something other than ignore it. And that’s a lot more than the folks in Washington can say.

I’m sure the American authorities would be very understanding of a Mexican national coming over the border with a bunch of guns claiming that he got “lost.” But that’s because we’re good and they’re evil.

And I have no doubt the Mexican authorities will understand that these vigilantes are just standing their ground. Sure, it may not technically be American ground but isn’t it the reality that the entire planet is American ground? We’re that exceptional …

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