Month: June 2014

Vessels

by digby

Science fiction in Louisiana:

Pregnant women injured beyond a decision-making capacity in Louisiana will in most cases be kept on life support, regardless of their family’s wishes, if a doctor deems the fetus has a viable chance to live.

Legislation concerning mentally incapacitated pregnant women advanced to Gov. Bobby Jindal’s desk Monday (June 2) to become law after receiving final passage from the Louisiana Legislature on its last day in session. The governor is likely to sign the legislation, which is opposed by abortion rights groups and received overwhelming support from the legislature.

The only situation in which a woman or her family’s wishes could override a doctor’s government-sanctioned order to initiate “life-sustaining procedures” would be if she had a will that specified “do not resuscitate” while pregnant. The legislation, sponsored by Rep. Austin Badon, D-New Orleans, directs doctors to make the call, erring on the side of protecting the fetus, in the event that there’s any legal ambiguity. Badon defined ambiguity in that situation as a DNR order that fails to specify “while pregnant.”

“Do we really want to pull the plug of that healthy baby?” Badon said.

Right. And the woman in whom it resides is just an irrelevant birthing vessel whose wishes — and the wishes of her family and loved ones — are to be ignored.

Personally, I don’t see why this principle would allow an exception even if the mother wrote the words “while pregnant” in big red letters in her living will. Her wishes are either binding or they’re not. I’m surprised they didn’t insist that the fetus sign off on it. After all, that’s the only life they are about. (Well, until it’s born.)

I don’t know how many carcasses we’re going to have around the country incubating fetuses but it might be a good business opportunity for someone. Women in comas are a dime a dozen, amirite? Why not have them earn their keep? Who cares what they would want. They’re not conscious so we might as well put them to work.

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Can some beltway wags really not walk and chew gum at the same time?

by digby

Greg Sargent is much too nice to characterize the Ron Fourniers of the world as out of touch, beltway fops as I did in my piece at Salon yesterday. But he makes a similar point here about the absolutely nonsensical notion that anyone should care about how and why our politics are so screwed up:

Let’s try a thought experiment. Take this series of solutions to many of the major challenges we face: 1) New EPA regs that fall short of the carbon reduction targets we need and give states implementation flexibility while making global climate talks more likely to succeed over the long term. 2) Immigration reform that combines increased border security (which Republicans want) with legalization (which Dems want). 3) A combination of short term job-creation stimulus with spending cuts and tax loophole closings to bring down the deficit.

Broadly speaking, Democrats have proposed variations of all of those things. Even if you quibble around the margins — by arguing, for instance, Dems have not proposed enough in spending cuts or long term debt reduction — it is still broadly true that Dems have offered multiple solutions to major challenges facing the country that require concessions by both sides. Broadly speaking, Republicans have said No to them. And yet, is there any doubt that Olympia Snowe and other former Republican officials who regularly wring their hands about generalized “polarization” and “Washington dysfunction” would support these general outlines of solutions?

I think we know the answer to that. For all of her paeans to bipartisanship, Snowe’s record is one that only a few years ago would be seen as a starkly partisan one. The only reason Democrats cling to the fiction that she isn’t as rabid as the rest of them is that there is a 1 in 10 chance she might sign on to some essential legislation after it’s been watered down to essentially nothing at her behest. And even then she might back off — they do that.

This is not to let the Democrats off the hook, by the way. When it comes to many of the most important issues of our time in the realm of economics and national security, the two parties are much more closely aligned that anyone likes to admit. They posture around the edges but when push comes to shove they are perfectly happy with the status quo: the financial elites who fund our politics have the upper hand in the one realm while the national security establishment has the upper hand in the other. The people and their desires are relegated to the role of bystanders.

However, there is also simply no doubt that the Republicans have gone batshit crazy and are literally trying to bring down the state from within. Their attitude on climate change and immigration are the tip of the ice-berg. They want to literally dismantle the nation’s governmental infrastructure. Their approach to the basic workings of our government is far more radical and dangerous than anything the tepid Democrats have roused themselves to do. (If Obamacare is seen as an equal example of extremism in the beltway these days, I’m afraid we’re doomed …) The disdain for the processes of democracy is openly expressed on the right — they simply do not acknowledge the basic legitimacy of their opposition. That is a radical departure from our historic norm (well, with one little exception that led to a little civil war.)

The fact that so many members of the beltway are unable to grasp this is frankly kind of scary. Yes, the Democrats wield power and yes, elected officials of both parties, along with the permanent political establishment, do have some large areas of fundamental agreement (agreements that are also at odds with their respective voters, by the way.) All you have to do is look at the way the government reacted in the wake of the two great crises of the new century — 9/11 and the 2008 crash. Nonetheless, only one party believes that their duty is to completely eliminate the vital functions of the government that are not police and military related — and they seek to do it by any means necessary. They have shown they are serious with government shutdowns and repeated standoffs. And the Democrats have been almost entirely flummoxed by their crash and burn tactics. The austerity budgets of the last few years show how successful they’ve been.

I don’t see why it’s so hard for the commentariat in Washington to see that all these things can be true at the same time.

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The War at Home

by digby

I’ve written reams about this issue over the years and great journalists like Radley Balko have written entire books. The militarization of the police is a national emergency and it’s not getting any better. We’ve got to do something with all that hardware we’ve paid for, right?

Here, Balko lays out some bullet points from the just released report by the ACLU on the use of military style SWAT tactics in the land of the free:

62 percent of the SWAT raids surveyed were to conduct searches for drugs.

Just under 80 percent were to serve a search warrant, meaning eight in 10 SWAT raids were not initiated to apprehend a school shooter, hostage taker, or escaped felon (the common justification for these tactics), but to investigate someone still only suspected of committing a crime.

In fact, just 7 percent of SWAT raids were “for hostage, barricade, or active shooter scenarios.”

In at least 36 percent of the SWAT raids studies, no contraband of any kind was found. The report notes that due to incomplete police reports on these raids this figure could be as high as 65 percent.

SWAT tactics are disproportionately used on people of color.

65 percent of SWAT deployments resulted in some sort of forced entry into a private home, by way of a battering ram, boot, or some sort of explosive device. In over half those raids, the police failed to find any sort of weapon, the presence of which was cited as the reason for the violent tactics.

Ironically (or perhaps not), searches to serve warrants on people suspected of drug crimes were more likely to result in forced entry than raids conducted for other purposes.

Though often justified for rare incidents like school shootings or terrorist situations, the armored personnel vehicles police departments are getting from the Pentagon and through grants from the Department of Homeland Security are commonly used on drug raids.

To keep this simple, the police are commonly raiding private homes dressed like commandos, using military equipment to search for drugs.

This certainly disproves the gun nuts’ starry-eyed view that guns can can defend from the government. If they do happen to come under suspicion (usually for drugs) they’ll almost certainly get themselves killed in raids like these.

You can read the whole report here. It’s … sobering.

Update: This is really sobering — a first person account by the mother of that poor little boy who was sleeping in his crib and had his chest blown up by a flash grenade by a SWAT team entering the house in the middle of the night. It was a drug raid. They found no drugs. And hadn’t bothered to check if there were any kids in the home.

My husband’s nephew, the one they were looking for, wasn’t there. He doesn’t even live in that house. After breaking down the door, throwing my husband to the ground, and screaming at my children, the officers – armed with M16s – filed through the house like they were playing war. They searched for drugs and never found any.

I heard my baby wailing and asked one of the officers to let me hold him. He screamed at me to sit down and shut up and blocked my view, so I couldn’t see my son. I could see a singed crib. And I could see a pool of blood. The officers yelled at me to calm down and told me my son was fine, that he’d just lost a tooth. It was only hours later when they finally let us drive to the hospital that we found out Bou Bou was in the intensive burn unit and that he’d been placed into a medically induced coma.

These sorts of “mistakes” aren’t entirely rare, unfortunately.

And remember, these raids are almost all about drugs, not hostages or crazed gunmen. Drugs.

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Your moment of zen

by digby

Eddie Vedder singing “Let It Go”

h/t Salon 

Asymmetrical punditry

by digby

I made Ron Fournier mad today:

The latest Pew Poll deep dive into American political attitudes inspired a very bored Ron Fournier to sigh deeply, dust off his lace cuffs and blithely wave off all concerns about “asymmetrical polarization,” the notion that the conservatives are moving farther and faster to the right than the left is moving left. “This is my fundamental disagreement with partisan journalists and political scientists who dedicate their careers to measuring increments of fault—the GOP’s share of blame is 20 percent or 60 percent or 80 percent,” Fournier gripes. “Who cares? Not the average voter who merely wants her leaders to work together and get results.”

Yes, if there’s one person qualified to speak for the average voter it’s Ron Fournier. Perhaps Pew should simplify its model and just interview him in the future. Who better to speak for the people than a well-connected Washington, D.C., insider?

He didn’t like that …

The larger point of the piece is that asymmetrical polarization does in fact exist and if Democrats are finally moving further left it’s in reaction to that — and what they’ve seen their elected officials do in response to it.

I also point out some of the Democrats’ tactics to keep the left in line and how that’s likely to keep the asymmetry alive at least in Washington for the near term.  I also predict that the liberals will probably discover that there is power in showing the Party that they can play the Tea Party game too — and that means going after fellow liberals in safe blue districts. I don’t know if that will happen, but you don’t have to be an oracle to see that unless the Party figures out a way to stop the rightward tilt in DC, there is inevitably going to be a reaction from their own voters who are starting to identify as more left than center in fairly large numbers.

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A win for the EPA against the Koch Brothers at the Supreme Court

by David Atkins

Here’s some pleasant news from the Supreme Court, with a wider margin than some had expected:

The Supreme Court on Monday handed President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency a victory in its efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources like power plants, even as it criticized what it called the agency’s overreaching.

“E.P.A. is getting almost everything it wanted in this case,” Justice Antonin Scalia said in summarizing the decision from the bench. “It sought to regulate sources it said were responsible for 86 percent of all the greenhouse gases emitted from stationary sources nationwide. Under our holdings, E.P.A. will be able to regulate sources responsible for 83 percent of those emissions.”

Justice Scalia said the agency was free to do so as long as the sources in question “would need permits based on their emissions of more conventional pollutants.”

It’s not a huge win, but it sets but the fact that even Scalia sided with the majority is heartening. EPA Regulations to significantly impact climate emissions seem safe for now on a legal basis even from from the Kochtopus onslaught.

And that’s crucial, since EPA regulations are one issue that can be enforced by executive power even in spite of an intransigent Republican congress.

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Dr Oz and the health hype

by digby

John Oliver explains why Dr. Oz being a crank is important.

Snake oil. And I say this as someone who takes supplements from time to time and eagerly reads every article about health and well-being I come across. But then I’m getting old and at this stage of life you start to think about that sort of thing a little bit more often. A lot more often, in fact. But the truth is that if you are a person who reads and researches it’s not hard to debunk the snake oil all by yourself (with the help of Mr Google.) If you’re inclined to worry about your health or your weight it’s a really, really, really good idea to skip the mainstream news media, which is shallow and uninformed on this stuff and do your own research — with the full understanding that you cannot believe everything you read on the internet. It takes practice, but it can be done. And I suspect that at the end of the day you’ll end up back in the same place most of us do with just a few tweaks here and there: cook and eat real food and move your body. And be mindful of changes, 99% of which are normal.

If there’s one thing that growing older teaches you, it’s that many of the things you thought were permanent aren’t. Especially in your physical self. It’s quite an evolution …

The great thing about being young is that you don’t know that. The bad thing is that you do things to yourself that potentially make those changes negative. But very few people think that way when they’re young. I didn’t. It’s like saving money. By the time you get around to doing it it’s too late to do it right. On the other hand, the human body is a magnificent machine that can take an amazing amount of abuse and still keep going. But it’s still a good idea to treat it well. You’re going to need it until the bitter end.

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Moyers and Bacevich talk American “exceptionalism” (and more)

by digby

Bill Moyers had a fascinating conversation with Andrew Bacevich over the week-end to which you really should listen if you care about what seems to be a rapidly escalating Iraq problem. Bacevich doesn’t mince words — words that Americans don’t want to hear but need to:

“We have been engaged in the Islamic world at least since 1980, in a military project based on the assumption that the adroit use of American hard power can somehow pacify or fix this part of the world. We can now examine more than three decades of this effort.

Let’s look at what U.S. military intervention in Iraq has achieved, in Afghanistan has achieved, in Somalia has achieved, in Lebanon has achieved, in Libya has achieved. I mean, ask ourselves the very simple question. Is the region becoming more stable? Is it becoming more democratic? Are we alleviating, reducing the prevalence of anti-Americanism?”

In the extended interview, they go more deeply into an area I think is vastly important for us to start thinking about. WWII was a long time ago:

BILL MOYERS: How can one hold to the notion of exceptionalism when America performs so miserably in Vietnam and Iraq? Failed in those two wars fought within 30–

ANDREW BACEVICH: Well, the, I mean, the belief in American exceptionalism is accompanied by a very specific, historical narrative. I mean, a story of contemporary history to which we swear fealty or give our allegiance. And that’s the story which is centered on World War II. And centered on a very specific interpretation of World War II as a fight of good against evil, in which the United States liberated Western Europe and overthrew Nazi Germany. Now, that story’s not wrong. It’s just radically incomplete.

And the preoccupation with World War II, particularly the European war, then makes it possible to gloss over much of what followed World War II, during the Cold War, those episodes like overthrowing governments that we didn’t like, befriending autocrats and corrupt dictators around the world making monumental mistakes such as the Vietnam War.

BILL MOYERS: What’s the conclusion you draw from that reading of history?

ANDREW BACEVICH: My reading is that there are no simple, moral lessons to be drawn. My reading is one in which yes, of course, there is evil in the world that needs to be taken into account. And some time must be confronted. But my reading would be, let’s not kid ourselves in somehow imagining that the United States represents all that is good and virtuous, we, ourselves, have committed many sins. And we ought to be cognizant of those sins before we go pronouncing about how the world ought to be run.

Are we allowed to say that?

Take the time to watch this today if you possibly can. Bacevich is an extremely well informed critic with an original take on these issues. And right now, we need some solid analysis — the media excitement at the prospect of a new “terrorist threat”  and the comfort of being thrown into another military engagement in the familiar territory of Iraq has them very obviously stimulated. You’re not going to get much out of watching the usual cable news scream fest (if you ever do.)

This is important. I suspect we are in some danger of this “mission” hurtling out of control more quickly than we might realize…

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Ammosexual style

by digby

“The AR-15 weapons platform is very modular,” said Shim, referring to a type of rifle used by the U.S. military. “It’s like Barbie for men.”

And apparently, Barbie’s dream house is a great, big silencer.

Suppressors are for “the graduate-level gun buyer,” said Schauble, a veteran of the Iraq war and the former Chief Executive Officer of TrackingPoint, a Texas-based maker of smartscope rifles that cost more than $20,000.

“I owned 50 guns before I bought my first silencer,” he said.

Ooooh baby.

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A classic thong for the ammosexual


by digby

It’s on sale.  Hurry before they run out!

For those who don’t know, that slogan is the one used by gun nuts. It means “come and take it”, which makes Atrios’ new moniker for these people — Ammosexuals — all the more apt. Rick Perlstein found this bizarre little item and refers to it in his piece at Salon today about how these gun nuts really are nuttier than they’ve ever been. (Yes, we’ve actually found something new under the wingnut sun.)  It’s a fascinating article in which he rightly emphasizes how this escalated when the Democrats, in their quixotic quest to regain the white Southern male vote, completely punted on the issue.  Until then they had at least kept the rightwing nuts in a stand off and had preserved the practical notion that guns were dangerous.  It’s a good read, highly recommended.

But I want to talk about that thong and what it says. Rick explains the genesis of the slogan in this previous article:

Back in 2010, when the nascent Tea Party began rallying in public places, a legend was frequently seen on T-shirts and signs: “Molon Labe.” That means, “Come and get them,” or, literally, “Come and take”—a reference to the words of defiance supposedly spoken by King Leonidas when the Persian Army demanded Spartans surrender at Thermopylae. In the contemporary context it refers to the paranoid fantasy of gun nuts that liberals are out to disarm them. The words curl within them an implication of violent defiance—for instance as articulated on this lovely item. Shamefully, Senator Ted Cruz sent out a dog whistle to these folks at the Republican convention, in his keynote speech’s story of the Battle for the CIty of Gonzales: “When General Santa Ana demanded that they give up their guns and the cannon that guarded the city, they responded with the immortal cry, ‘Come and take it!”

True enough.  But somehow I don’t think these yahoos have been reading much Herodotus lately.  In fact, I’m pretty sure they got it from this cartoon:

But recall how Newsweek covered the phenomenon back in 2007:

…the cultural significance and popular appeal of “300” reach beyond the thrill of watching pixilated decapitations. The Persians in “300” are the forces of evil: dark-skinned, depraved and determined to terrorize the West. The noble, light-skinned Spartans possess a fierce love of liberty, not to mention fierce six-pack abs. “Freedom is not free,” says the wife of Spartan King Leonidas. The movie was adapted from a graphic novel by Frank Miller (“Sin City”). Miller’s post-9/11 conservatism (he is reportedly working on a new graphic novel pitting Batman against Al Qaeda, titled “Holy Terror, Batman!”) suffuses his comic-book fantasies. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that “300” resonates for some real warriors. At a theater near Camp Pendleton outside San Diego, cheers erupted at a showing of “300,” the Los Angeles Times reported. The Marines (“The Few, the Proud”) identify with the outnumbered Spartans.

And the marines weren’t the only ones.  So too did members of the government — the same government which these gun proliferation activists are ostensibly arming themselves to fight:

The analogy between the war on terror and the death struggle of ancient Greece with Persia has not been lost on some high administration officials either, especially Vice President Dick Cheney. (A White House spokesman declined to comment about the film.) In the months after 9/11, a classics scholar named Victor Davis Hanson wrote a series of powerful pieces for the National Review Online, later collected and published as a book, “An Autumn of War.” Moved by Hanson’s evocative essays, Cheney invited Hanson to dine with him and talk about the wars the Greeks waged against the Asian hordes, in defense of justice and reason, two and a half millennia ago.

And here is how the right wing defenders of the Second Amendment against the Big Bad Government saw the lesson at the time:

The mind set reflected in the reviews of “300” suggest that the reviewers, with their apparent discomfort with the open expression of defiant aggression expressed in the movie, are too sophisticated to partake, even vicariously, in the Spartan heroics. It is unclear whether the pacifist left would ever fight, even to save themselves, let alone to save the civilization that they cannot imagine is under siege. If the sophisticates of Athens had refused to pick up the sword, they would have been dead or enslaved. Our modern day sophisticated Athenians of the MSM who refuse to wield their weapons, their pens and computers, in the service of Western Civilization, have already shown their willingness to live as slaves. After all, what did the Danish cartoon saga tell us except that the members of the elites in Academia, Hollywood, and the MSM are willing to offer up their free speech rights in obeisance to the barbarians at the gates.
“300” resonates because Americans have not yet shown themselves so willing to live as slaves as their “betters” in the effete elites.

I bring this up only to note that the macho, gun wielding warrior theme that pervades among the allegedly libertarian right these days was obviously repurposed from the hyper-hawkish “interventionist”  GWOT stance they were taking just a few years ago.

So it isn’t all about Big Government tyranny — after all, they enthusiastically used exactly the same arguments to support the War on Terror  — thesame arguments the Big Government uses as an excuse to curb American citizens’ freedom. It’s just about a bunch of guys who like Gladiator movies wanting to run around in costume and pretend to be warriors.

And, by the way, the right will always respond to a patriotic Republican call to kill foreigners on behalf of the red, white and blue. Don’t doubt it. Robert Taft is long dead and he isn’t coming back.

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