Month: June 2014

I learned a new word today

by digby

I suppose many of you already know it, but it was new to me:

Hoplophobia is a neologism, originally coined to describe an “irrational aversion to weapons, as opposed to justified apprehension about those who may wield them.” It is sometimes used more generally to describe the “fear of firearms” or the “fear of armed citizens.”

Firearms authority and writer Jeff Cooper claims to have coined the word in 1962 to describe what he called a “mental aberration consisting of an unreasoning terror of gadgetry, specifically, weapons.” The term was constructed from the Greek ὅπλον – hoplon, meaning, amongst other things, “arms,” and φόβος – phobos, meaning “fear.” Although not a mental health professional, Cooper employed the term as an alternative to other slang terms, stating: “We read of ‘gun grabbers’ and ‘anti-gun nuts’ but these slang terms do not [explain this behavior].” Cooper attributed this behavior to an irrational fear of firearms and other forms of weaponry. Cooper’s opinion was that “the most common manifestation of hoplophobia is the idea that instruments possess a will of their own, apart from that of their user.” Writing in an opinion piece, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review columnist Dimitri Vassilaros asserted that the term was intended by Cooper as tongue-in-cheek to mock those who think guns have free will.

I don’t think guns have free will. But they do go off by accident and kill and main people. Often.  And they are also often in the hands of people who like to intimidate and threaten others. It’s hard to know who those people are just by looking at them so the common sense reaction is to stay away from people who have deadly weapons. That doesn’t seem irrational to me.

But them I’m obviously afflicted with this disorder so there you go. I just can’t help wondering about a culture that insists a zygote deserves state protection from its mother because it’s immoral to kill innocent children thinks this is ok:  “Your dead kids don’t trump my Constitutional rights.”

Or this:

Apparently, they include their own kids.

Abrasive success

by digby

I noted this, and a few other bloggers did as well, but Dave Weigel is the only well known journalist that I know of who bothered to write it up:

One of my little congressional obsessions is the under-the-radar success of Rep. Alan Grayson, the Democrat who became despised by Republicans in his first term (2009-2011), lost by 20 points, and after returning via a new, safe, seat, became a master of the amendment process. This week, he managed to attach this amendment to a mini-omnibus funding bill:

It’s true that Grayson has been extremely effective in using one of the tools of the minority party — the amendment process — to actually legislate from the minority for the good of the people. You’d think he’d get some credit for that among Democrats and allegedly liberal commentators in the media. But as is so often the case, those folks are more concerned with what they consider to be his abrasive personality (regardless of the necessity for somebody, somewhere, who is not a Tea Partier to call out the powers that be from time to time.) So the real work he does, work that virtually none of the mannered snobs that are so beloved by the Village ever bother to do, is discounted and derided. But then, that seems to be the operating principle on left now as well as the right: we only respect the work of people we’d like to have a beer with.

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Today’s long read: Michael and Jamie Bérubé

by digby

Michael Bérubé is most often fondly recalled by early bloggers as a writer with scathing wit who helped define the genre in the early days. (This is one of my favorites, although it’s a close thing.  He wrote wonderful stuff all the time.) He eventually quit blogging.  He’s and English professor, after all, and had better things to do.

He has kept writing about his son Jamie, however, and I feel as if I’ve watched him grow up. Jamie has Down’s Syndrome and his journey from childhood to manhood, as seen through his dad’s eyes, has been a fascinating tale. Today Bérubé talks about Jamie’s search for gainful employment and it’s a wonderful read. If you have the time for a really satisfying long read, this is the one:

The first time I talked to Jamie about getting a job, he was only 13. But I thought it was a good idea to prepare him, gradually, for the world that would await him after he left school. My wife, Janet, and I had long been warned about that world: By professionals it was usually called “transitioning from high school.” By parents it was usually called “falling off the cliff.” After 21 years of early intervention programs for children with disabilities; a “free appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment,” as mandated by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act; local after-school programs; the LifeLinkPSU initiative that allows high school graduates with intellectual disabilities to take appropriate Penn State classes — after all that, there would be nothing. Or so we were told.

When Bérubé writes about Jamie it often opens up a window into our culture and illuminates it for us from his unusual perspective. Jamie’s challenge in this world is so profoundly human that anyone can relate.

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Border control

by digby

Surprisingly, this actually had to be written down:

The federal agency in charge of U.S. border security on Friday issued a revised handbook on when its agents may use lethal force, adopting changes aimed at reducing dozens of killings that have generated a handful of lawsuits and cast agents as quick to pull their triggers.

Customs and Border Protection Commissioner R. Gil Kerlikowske also released a blistering report that had been kept secret for more than a year that lays out how some agents had taken actions to justify firing their weapons, including placing themselves in the path of moving cars or failing to retreat from rock throwers.

Kerlikowske released the revised handbook and the once-secret report in a move he said would address the “need for openness and transparency” at his agency — the largest federal law enforcement arm — and bring about “better public trust.”

Specifically:

The February 2013, 21-page report by the non-profit Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) looked at all CBP “deadly force events” from January 2010 through October 2012.

According to the report, “The case reviews raise a number of concerns, especially with regard to shots fired at vehicles and shots fired at subjects throwing rocks and other objects at agents.”

The report recommended “significant” changes in two areas:

1. “…officers/agents should be prohibited from shooting at vehicles unless vehicle occupants are attempting to use deadly force — other than the vehicle — against the agent…”

2. “…officers/agents should be prohibited from using deadly force against subjects throwing objects not capable of causing serious physical injury or death to them.” 

The report was commissioned by the CBP, and border activist groups had been pushing for its public release for more than a year. Both reports are available online at gvnews.com.

Some of you may be surprised that it took an investigation and a “scathing report” to make those recommendations — or that decent people didn’t already follow such policies just out of common sense. But the report indicates border killings without cause are shockingly common.

This happened just hours after these new policies were released:

The Pima County Sheriff’s Department on Saturday continued its investigation into a fatal shooting by a Border Patrol agent in Green Valley just hours after the Border Patrol released a 2013 report critical of its handling of several incidents involving deadly force.

The agent on Friday shot and killed the driver of a vehicle packed with 21 bales of marijuana after the man drove across Torres Blancas Golf Course, became stuck in a wash and fled on foot into the pecan grove.

The driver was identified Saturday as 31-year-old Jose Luis Arambula, a U.S. citizen from the Tucson area. Sheriff’s officials said Arambula was involved in a similar incident April 4.

The PCSD said Saturday that Agent Daniel Marquez fired multiple shots at Arambula. A spokesman declined to say whether Arambula was armed or if he fired a weapon. He said two agents were on the scene but only one fired.

They killed a marijuana smuggler. And yeah, it’s possible that he was firing a gun at them although it’s unlikely that wouldn’t have been indicated in the initial reports. But even beyond that, considering the fact that his crime was smuggling pot across the border — a substance which is completely legal in two states and partially legal in a bunch of others — it’s hard for me to understand why they needed to give chase in the first place. He left the product behind, after all.

In case you were wondering what the right wingers think about it, this is a fairly good example of the commentary over at Fox:

Build a small fence out of dead mexicans with holes in them, and there’ll be no more problems at the border.

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The right wingers are still incontinent, all these years after 9/11

by digby

There is literally nothing they won’t bitch and moan about. Even the release of an American POW:

“Trading five senior Taliban leaders from detention in Guantanamo Bay for Bergdahl’s release may have consequences for the rest of our forces and all Americans. Our terrorist adversaries now have a strong incentive to capture Americans. That incentive will put our forces in Afghanistan and around the world at even greater risk,” House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard P. McKeon (R-Calif.) and the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, James M. Inhofe (Okla.), said in a joint statement.

The most famous POW in American history was also unhappy

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said that the detainees transferred from Guantanamo to Qatar, where they are to stay for at least a year, “are hardened terrorists who have the blood of Americans and countless Afghans on their hands. I am eager to learn what precise steps are being taken to ensure that these vicious and violent Taliban extremists never return to the fight against the United States and our partners or engage in any activities that can threaten the prospects for peace and security in Afghanistan.”

It probably would have been better not to torture these people if that’s a big concern. And the idea that releasing these prisoners will somehow put the nation at risk because they are “bad” is fatuous in the extreme. I hate to break the news but the world is full of bad people. Some are even … gasp … American. No lie.

By the way, McCain was all tangled up in Iran-Contra — an illegal policy to sell arms to an enemy in exchange for prisoner release — although it wasn’t well known at the time. And while he pulled his usual “maverick” con during that period, he vociferously defended Ollie North and Ronald Reagan.

Ted Cruz is on TV right now, condemning this action and talking about foreign policy. Let’s just say that if this Tea Party favorite is supposed to be a libertarian isolationist, I think people need to think again.

You really don’t want this man to be president. Not that it seems likely. But history shows that even those who most people dismiss as clowns can actually come to power from time to time.

Update: Scanning the morning shows I see that the press is taking up these absurd arguments. Apparently, it’s not necessary for the interviewers to point out that this is not the first time in history that the US Government has “negotiated with terrorists” for the release of prisoners.

Once more, with feeling:

The Iran–Contra affair also referred to as Irangate, Contragate or the Iran–Contra scandal, was a political scandal in the United States that was uncovered by Daniel Sheehan and the Christic Institute, and became national news in November of 1986. During the Reagan administration, senior administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran, the subject of an arms embargo. Some U.S. officials also hoped that the arms sales would secure the release of several hostages and allow U.S. intelligence agencies to fund the Nicaraguan Contras. Under the Boland Amendment, further funding of the Contras by the government had been prohibited by Congress.

The scandal began as an operation to free the seven American hostages being held in Lebanon by a group with Iranian ties connected to the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution. It was planned that Israel would ship weapons to Iran, and then the United States would resupply Israel and receive the Israeli payment. The Iranian recipients promised to do everything in their power to achieve the release of the U.S. hostages. The plan deteriorated into an arms-for-hostages scheme, in which members of the executive branch sold weapons to Iran in exchange for the release of the American hostages. Large modifications to the plan were devised by Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North of the National Security Council in late 1985, in which a portion of the proceeds from the weapon sales was diverted to fund anti-Sandinista and anti-communist rebels, or Contras, in Nicaragua.

While President Ronald Reagan was a supporter of the Contra cause, the evidence is disputed as to whether he authorized the diversion of the money raised by the Iranian arms sales to the Contras. Handwritten notes taken by Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger on December 7, 1985, indicate that Reagan was aware of potential hostage transfers with Iran, as well as the sale of Hawk and TOW missiles to “moderate elements” within that country. Weinberger wrote that Reagan said “he could answer to charges of illegality but couldn’t answer to the charge that ‘big strong President Reagan passed up a chance to free the hostages'”. After the weapon sales were revealed in November 1986, Reagan appeared on national television and stated that the weapons transfers had indeed occurred, but that the United States did not trade arms for hostages. The investigation was impeded when large volumes of documents relating to the scandal were destroyed or withheld from investigators by Reagan administration officials. On March 4, 1987, Reagan returned to the airwaves in a nationally televised address, taking full responsibility for any actions that he was unaware of, and admitting that “what began as a strategic opening to Iran deteriorated, in its implementation, into trading arms for hostages”

Oh, and remember that George Bush St pardoned all those who were convicted in that scandal on his way out the door.

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Republicans still not cool with basic modernity

by David Atkins

As Digby mentioned yesterday, I’ve begun taking on alternating weekends at the Washington Monthly. I’ll be writing 12 posts there a month, 3 per day over the course of four weekend days on alternating weekends. I’ll still be covering my usual paces here of one or two (usually two) posts every week day, and a morning post every weekend day.

Here’s a snippet from one of yesterday’s Washington Monthly bits, this one using Gallup’s latest polling to make a point about the GOP’s inability to engage modernity or an accurate view of the “independent” voter:

So-called independent voters may not identify themselves with either party to a pollster or on their voter registration form, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have a strong partisan preference. The vast majority of “independent” voters are just as partisan as nominally Democratic or Republican voters. In fact, they’re often even more so as many independents are far left or far right types unhappy that their otherwise preferred party doesn’t tilt far enough in their direction. Only 12% of voters switched sides between 2008 and 2010—and there were just as many GOP-to-Dem switches as the reverse. The 2010 “shellacking” wasn’t the result of voters changing their minds on party or policy, but the result of Democratic-leaning voters staying home from the polls.

So it shouldn’t surprise us to see that on most issues, the “independent” opinion falls pretty squarely in the middle of the Democratic and Republican ones. That’s what you should expect when you take an equal aggregate of Democratic and Republican opinions, throw them into a jumbled mix, and call it the “independent” vote.

…

Even so, the Republican resistance on issues that have largely been decided in the public sphere is a little shocking. Only 6 in 10 Republicans think it’s OK to have a divorce, and barely a majority think it’s OK to even have sex outside of marriage—even though the average marriage age is approaching 30 years old. Meanwhile, in a world that is increasingly concerned about animal rights and welfare, wide supermajorities of Republicans support wearing fur and conducting animal testing.

This is part of why the Republican party is having such trouble reinventing itself. The base voters of the GOP aren’t even successfully adjusting to where society is today or even where it was 10 years ago, much less where it’s going over the next 10 years. That’s a big problem for a party facing a tidal wave of Hispanic and Millennial voters.

Many GOP strategists are assuming and hoping that “independent” voters will flock to their side as social mores continue to shift. But that’s a faulty assumption based on a false premise. Most independents are squarely set in their ways, and the percentage of the electorate that holds the GOP’s antiquated values shrinks every day.

Click on over for the whole thing. On a related note, there’s also a take on the GOP’s abandonment of substantive policy and even coherent talking points in favor of pure gimmickry.

Have a great Sunday!

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SIFF-ting through cinema: Wrap party!

By Dennis Hartley