Skip to content

Month: July 2014

I gotcher freedom and liberty rite-cheeyah

I gotcher freedom and liberty rite-cheeyah

by digby

So yeah, the 2nd literally trumps the 1st now:

Several years ago, the American Medical Association advised doctors to ask their patients about firearms and “educate patients to the dangers of firearms to children” in the name of public health. But doctors in Florida may be suppressed from giving this medical advice, now that a federal appeals court upheld a Florida law that became known as the “physician gag rule” because it punishes doctors for talking about guns.

The ruling could have major implications as policymakers examine gun violence as a public health issue. The National Rifle Association-backed law it upheld imposes severe limits on when doctors can ask their patients about guns or keep records in their patients’ charts about firearm safety. Doctors who are found to have violated the provision risk sanctions or loss of their license.

Well, these gun proliferation advocates are right. There is simply no good reason that doctors should even mention the potential of this happening as a public health problem:

A 5-year-old girl is dead after police say another 5-year-old accidentally shot her at an eastern Idaho home.

Lt. Bill Guiberson of the Chubbuck Police Department says emergency workers responded to a Chubbuck home at about 3 p.m. Wednesday and took the victim to Portneuf Medical Center in Pocatello. The hospital confirmed later in the evening the girl had died.

In a statement Thursday, police said adults were in the home at the time of the shooting but were in a different room.

It’s unclear whether the victim lived at the residence; the statement said only that she was there “visiting with friends” when the shooting happened. Police didn’t return a call Thursday from The Associated Press.

Investigators have not released the type of gun involved or said how the children got access to it.

I can’t even make a snide remark about that, it’s so awful.

So everyone has to have guns all the time and everywhere. And it’s now not even allowed for anyone to talk to gun owners about safety around children. Even asking gun owners not to leave their fucking loaded deadly weapons around 5 years olds is an infringement of the 2nd Amendment now.

Also too, this:

Tragedy strikes a family after a pregnant woman is shot in the head. 25-year-old Katherine Hoover died of her injuries early Monday morning. Her baby boy couldn’t be saved.

The shooting happened on Suncrest Drive in Brooksville.

Relatives of the shooter told 10 News this was all a terrible accident.

“We feel terrible about the whole thing,” said Don DeHayes.

Well that’s good.

.
.

QOTD: Mark Udall

QOTD: Mark Udall

by digby

On the revelation that the CIA has admitted to hacking into the the Senate computers and that John Brennan has created and “accountability board” chaired by the noted corporate hack Evan Bayh, Udall said:

“During CIA Director John Brennan’s confirmation hearings, he promised to fundamentally change the culture at the CIA and to respect vigorous and independent congressional oversight. His actions and those of CIA officials whom he oversees have proven otherwise,” Udall said in a statement. “From the unprecedented hacking of congressional staff computers and continued leaks undermining the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation of the CIA’s detention and interrogation program to his abject failure to acknowledge any wrongdoing by the agency, I have lost confidence in John Brennan.”

That’s nice. And it really is very bad that the CIA hacked into the Senate computers, thus violating the separation of powers. Very bad.

But it’s not as bad as torturing people and getting away with it!!

Jesus H. Christ, Brennan was right in the middle of that whole thing and has been complicit in the cover-up. But the straw that broke the camel’s back was leaking and hacking the Senate investigation?

The leak today of a confidential State Department memo says this:

“The report leaves no doubt that the methods used to extract information from some terrorist suspects caused profound pain, suffering and humiliation,” the document states.

“It also leaves no doubt that the harm caused by the use of these techniques outweighed any potential benefit.”

But the document notes approvingly that “America’s democratic system worked just as it was designed to work in bringing an end to actions inconsistent with our democratic values”.

President Barack Obama ordered a halt to the CIA’s enhanced interrogation programme soon after taking office in 2009.

All day I’ve been watching villagers like Andrea Mitchell express righteous indignation over this unprecedented assault on the prerogatives of the Senate. (And yes,again, it’s wrong.) But the torture itself? Well, it was bad, but the system worked. In fact, it worked so well that Obama hired John Brennan, who has spent his entire tenure protecting the CIA from any kind of accountability for the practice he was involved with.

Are the American people being asked to entrust our clandestine spy agency and its killing and interrogation apparatuses to a man who was complicit in illegal torture?

There is strong circumstantial evidence that the answer is yes. At minimum, Brennan favored rendition and what he called “enhanced interrogation tactics” other than waterboarding. As Andrew Sullivan put it in 2008, when Obama first considered Brennan as CIA chief, “if Obama picks him, it will be a vindication of the kind of ambivalence and institutional moral cowardice that made America a torturing nation. It would be an unforgivable betrayal of his supporters and his ideals.”

Whatever. Just as long as they don’t do something personally to Dianne Feinstein. That’s a bridge too far.

.

Mississippi mud slinging

Mississippi mud slinging

by digby

This made my day. Conservative writer Charles C. Johnson is standing his ground against the GOP establishment — which he seems to believe wants to kill him. Why? Because he went down to Mississippi and fell for a bunch of local con men:

Johnson thrust himself into the middle of Mississippi’s tense political dispute earlier this month when he reported on Stevie Fielder, a self-proclaimed minister who claimed that Sen. Thad Cochran’s (R-MS) campaign bribed black voters in the Republican runoff against tea party challenger Chris McDaniel.

Fielder was paid by Johnson for the story, which was strongly disputed by the Cochran campaign. Jim Hood, Mississippi’s Democratic attorney general, said Wednesday that his office is investigating whether or not Johnson paid Fielder to make a deliberately false claim.

Fielder, who’s already changed his story previously, “admitted he got paid $2,000 to lie,” according to Hood. Although it’s not a crime to pay someone to make a false statement, Hood’s office is looking into the source of the funds.

Fittingly, Hood’s comments were reported by Clarion-Ledger reporter Sam R. Hall, who’s become Johnson’s biggest journalistic adversary during the fallout over the runoff.

On Tuesday, in fact, Johnson vowed to sue Hall for defamation over an article on Johnson’s purportedly improper use of photographs from other news outlets.

Although he wouldn’t share the details, Hall told TPM in an email on Wednesday that the Clarion-Ledger had already received a letter from Johnson.

Johnson indicated that he sent the newspaper an email “outlining my request for correction which is required under Mississippi law” and that he’s also corresponded with the Clarion-Ledger’s executive editor, Brian Tolley.

Lulz. Getting involved in an internecine Mississippi political dispute is like those bozos who jump in the lion exhibit at the zoo to break up a cat fight.

.

If GOP wants to attracts working women they’d better change their tune on contraception

If GOP wants to attracts working women they’d better change their tune on contraception


by digby

My piece for Salon today is about the GOP’s silly “War for Women”.

Yesterday, high-ranking Republican woman Cathy McMorris Rogers unveiled a bold new campaign to reach out to the half of the population the GOP has been trying to keep broke, barefoot and pregnant. And to prove that they are the party of business and branding, Republicans even came up with a scorching new slogan that’s destined to set the meme-world on fire:

“The War for Women.”

That’s right, they’ve cleverly declared that they are not, as is widely assumed, waging a war on the fairer sex — it’s actually all for them. So now the GOP is fighting against those who are saying it’s a war on women. No wait. It’s a war among women, against the people who say they are fighting for them…?

Well, you get the picture. There’s a war. They’re fighting it. And it has something to do with women.

And Cathy McMorris Rogers knows exactly how to get that message across:

You think about a changing 21st-century workforce and how women make up half of our workforce. Fifty percent are the primary income earners in their households. They are making the majority of purchasing decisions — 80, 85 percent of purchasing decisions – yes, women like to shop.

You betcha! And not just for shoes, either. (But let one run wild in a shopping mall for for an afternoon and they’ll mortgage the house and the car, amirite?)

Anyway, women are working and they are making money and they are buying things. Which means that something has changed since 1953 when Cathy McMorris Rogers was put into the cryogenic chamber from which she apparently emerged just this week. After all, this is hardly a recent phenomenon. Women have been flooding into the workforce for the past 40 years.

And boy are these Republicans missing the point:

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, ”government mandates outlawing discrimination against women in hiring and higher education” had a huge effect, as did the change in attitudes in society at large, thanks in large part to the feminist and civil rights movements.

But there was one other thing, above all else, that contributed to this change:

The birth control pill had the direct effect of reducing both the risk and the cost of having sex. It therefore also eliminated an important reason for early marriage, making investment in a career-oriented education more feasible.

Previous research on the effect of changes in state laws that allowed young women access to birth control pills suggests that it is strongly and positively related to both age at first marriage and the fraction of women pursuing professional careers. Because reliable contraception combined with changing social attitudes and laws making labor markets more hospitable, large numbers of women left traditional forms of female employment and sought careers. They are the reason that today’s commentators can have meaningful discussions about “women at the top.”

That’s certainly not something Cathy McMorris Rogers wants anyone to think about too deeply.

Read on …

.

The most effective member of congress

The most effective member of congress

by digby

One of the more idiotic beltway tropes is the old “both sides do it” nonsense, used most often by timorous journalists who are afraid of crazed conservatives calling them liberal if they describe what conservatives are actually doing. Yesterday provided a perfect example with this charmingly naive little piece by someone who works for Charlie Cook in which he calls this Republican House candidate the most frightening politician he’s ever interviewed because she couldn’t cite sources for her claim that climate change is a hoax. (This guy doesn’t get around much, apparently. I can’t imagine there’s even one climate denier who can do that …) Anyway, he naturally had to compare this foolish, superstitious lady with .. you guessed it … Alan Grayson. Because both sides do it.

Except for the fact that Grayson is a brilliant and effective congressman who not only leads the progressive wing of the party he also gets more actual legislation accomplished than any other Democratic congressman. Dave Weigel profiled him last year:

Grayson and his staff scan the bills that come out of the majority. They scan amendments that passed in previous Congresses but died at some point along the way. They resurrect or mold bills that can appeal to the libertarian streak in the GOP, and Grayson lobbies his colleagues personally. That’s how he attached a ban on funding for “unmanned aerial vehicles,” i.e. drones, to the homeland security bill. He swears that they don’t back away from him because of his old persona—well, his relationship with Webster is “strained,” but he points out that Webster won re-election by 5,000 votes and Grayson won with 70,000. Never mind that. Are the members of Congress more forgiving than members of the press?

“It’s either that, or we’re all senile,” he says. “In some cases it’s a short conversation. In some cases it’s a long conversation. In some cases, they’re desperate to talk to somebody. Some members are actually very lonely people.”

This is how he brings members aboard on bills that either keep resources in Florida or enshrine some liberal or libertarian principle in the law. “They might come from the perspective that Barack Obama is a horrible president, and I come from the perspective of being critical of the military-industrial complex.” Grayson added one amendment to the last homeland security funding bill that prohibited “funds in the bill from being used in contravention of the First, Second, or Fourth Amendments.” That was surprisingly easy to do.

“We knew they couldn’t vote against it,” he says. “They wouldn’t want to roll call vote against the Constitution. They’re constantly trying to acquire the Constitution for their own purposes, and claim that they’re the guardians of it, so we knew that couldn’t fail.”

The real prize of passing that amendment was writing the legislative justification for it into the Congressional Record. “The intent of Congress with this legislation,” Grayson wrote, “is to place an absolute prohibition on any DHS involvement of any type or to any degree with any surveillance of Americans without specificity or without probable cause, such as the National Security Agency’s recently revealed surveillance program.” That, he says, was “the benefit of future courts, for the benefit of future administrations.”

He’s been doing this at a tremendous clip ever since 2012. I guess you can think that’s nothing, but it’s actually pretty much the only thing Democrats are accomplishing in the House.

Not only that, his experience as a skilled litigator stands him good stead in his committee hearings where he is often extremely successful at questioning witnesses:

Perhaps people don’t realize that Alan Grayson isn’t just another lawyer/congressman. He’s an experienced litigator who fought whistle-blower fraud cases aimed at military contractors. The Wall Street Journal characterized him in 2006 as “waging a one-man war against contractor fraud in Iraq.” And he was very successful at it. As a politician Grayson is usually seen as a pugnacious fighter always at the ready with a pithy put-down on cable news shows. His floor speeches are often fiery indictments of his political opponents and the power elite.

But that’s not why the Democrats should tap him for the job. As notable as all those characteristics are, they are not where Grayson’s true talent lies. He is a master at the task of committee questioning. During his first term as a member of the Financial Services Committee he practically had bankers whimpering on the hot seat and he took on everyone from Ben Bernanke to Timothy Geithner, eliciting important information. Unlike the vaunted prosecutor the GOP has tapped to lead the inquiry, Trey Gowdy (who specializes in browbeating and histrionic questioning), Grayson is never rude and he isn’t dismissive or insulting. He is serious, composed and extremely well prepared. And when he has the floor he is completely in control.

All of this is to say that Grayson as the Democrats’ designated clown doesn’t happen by accident. The Villagers and the Republicans have turned him into that stereotype because he’s a unique politician who not only is rhetorically capable of rousing supporters to his side but he also understands how the congress works and can get an agenda accomplished as a member of the House minority. He’s independent and they can’t stand that.

Alan Grayson proves that fearless progressivism has a place in our politics and can be far more effective than all the lukewarm, corporate bipartisan bilge the Party insists we have to swallow ever will be.

He’s doing a money bomb. If you can, it would be very helpful to support him. He proves those Village wags wrong every single day. And that’s a good thing.

CA Republican governor candidate Kashkari goes homeless for a week as a stunt, and learns all the wrong lessons. by @DavidOAtkins

CA Republican governor candidate Kashkari goes homeless for a week as a stunt, and learns all the wrong lessons.

by David Atkins

California Republican gubernatorial candidate Neel Kashkari did a stunt spending a week homeless in Fresno looking for a job, then wrote about it in the Wall Street Journal. It turns out–shock!–that getting a job isn’t as easy as asking for one, and–double shock!–relying on our patchwork safety net doesn’t exactly deliver results or human dignity.

Kashkari supposedly spent six nights sleeping outdoors getting rousted off park benches by cops, and getting his meals from a homeless shelter during his supposedly fruitless job search. His upshot? That California is over-regulated and over-taxed, that he didn’t need government programs, that all he needed was a job, and everything would have been just fine. No, really. He wrote that.

I walked for hours and hours in search of a job, giving me a lot of time to think. Five days into my search, hungry, tired and hot, I asked myself: What would solve my problems? Food stamps? Welfare? An increased minimum wage?

No. I needed a job. Period. Like others, I have often said the best social program in the world is a good job. Even though my homeless trek was only for a week, with a defined endpoint, that statement became much more real for me. A job was the one thing that could have solved my food, housing and transportation problems.

California’s record poverty is man-made: over-regulation and over-taxation that drive jobs out of state…

Any normal person would have come away from the experience saying, “Whoa, there but for the grace of god go I.” Or perhaps “what the hell is wrong with the economy that no one will even hire me for $9/hour to sweep floors or wash dishes?” But not Republicans like Kashkari. They immediately assume that taxes and regulations must be to blame for all of it.

But Kashkari’s experience would have been far more instructive if he had actually gotten a minimum wage job. It would have been far more interesting to have seen Kashkari’s reaction to trying to find an apartment, decent food and workable transportation on $9 an hour. Methinks just “getting a job” wouldn’t have really solved his problems.

Maybe that can be his next stunt. He could even learn from Democrats who have documented their own time “living the wage” that just having a job doesn’t really cut it.

.

The Brooks and Marcus Maui-Wowie comedy hour

The Brooks and Marcus Maui Wowie comedy hour

by digby

Over on Salon today I wrote about the Brooks and Marcus Maui Wowie comedy hour on Meet the Press this past week-end:

You’ll recall that last January, as the Colorado legalization took effect, both Marcus and Brooks wrote screeds denouncing the nasty practice after admitting that they too had partaken of the devil’s temptation themselves with apparently little effect. Brooks famously opened his piece with this fond recollection:

For a little while in my teenage years, my friends and I smoked marijuana. It was fun. I have some fond memories of us all being silly together. I think those moments of uninhibited frolic deepened our friendships.

Then he warned everyone that it’s a very, very bad thing to do, and unless you want to end up a wealthy newspaper columnist someday, you should never touch the stuff.

Marcus, meanwhile, clutched her pearls over the inevitable brain damage — after admitting that she also had passed a joint or two in her time:

On balance, society will not be better off with another legal mind-altering substance. In particular, our kids will not be better off with another legal mind-altering substance.

Stephen Colbert, for his part, agreed with Brooks’ and Marcus’ perspectives:

Well said! Kids don’t need another mind-altering substance. It’ll screw with their Adderal. And like her friend David Brooks, Marcus admits to being more than just friends with her roommate Mary Jane, saying “I have done my share of inhaling. Next time I’m out in Colorado, I expect I’ll check out some Bubba Kush, why not?”

Why not? Other than the column you just wrote? I applaud Marcus and Brooks for taking a firm stand against legalizing the pot they smoked. I assume they’re going to turn themselves into the police now and serve their time. Hopefully that will keep them from ever smoking again. Because they might get high and write something really confusing.

One would have thought that would have put a kibosh on their involvement with this issue, if nothing else out of sheer embarrassment. But it didn’t.

Read on I go on to discuss the fact that Ruth marcus is peddling some bogus studies about IQ losses out of what she calls “mommy concern”, ignoring the fact that we have just been through a massive experiment in pot use in which includes over a hundred million guinea pigs.

I have wondered if there was going to be any real backlash at this point or if we’d really crossed the rubicon on marijuana. I think the jury’s still out. The scolds and anti-pleasure police have been a bit sleepy on the issue in recent years (most of them are probably stoned) so it’s hard to know if they have any pep left in them to battle this back. But it’s clear that marcus and Brooks aren’t going to get anywhere with this ridiculous approach. It’s ludicrous.

.

QOTD: Rush talking about sex again

QOTD: Rush talking about sex again

by digby

Here he’s discussing a Washington Examiner story that blow the lid off of Sandra Fluke’s campaign for office in which they expose the fact that she has given her campaign money.This is, apparently, a sign of … well something. The article doesn’t spell out what’s wrong with it, especially considering the fact that her Republican opponent has loaned his campaign money.

Be that as it may, this gave old Rush a chance toweigh in on something that cost him dearly in the past but which he just can’t seem to stay away from. He recounts Fluke’s testimony (in his own mendacious way) and then says this:

“Three thousand a year for this?” We found out it cost nine dollars a month over-the-counter, said, “Whoa, how much of this is going on?” And we started raising questions. Why in the world should this be something all the rest of us should pay for? Particularly when, if you don’t want to get pregnant, there’s a certain thing you just don’t do. It has consequences and if that’s what you want to avoid… And then I was chastened because I sounded like I was somebody who was against sex, and I’m not against sex, but I also don’t think contraception and all that should be part of Obamacare.

Can somebody, could just one group of people accept responsibility for their lives in this country? Cannot one group do it? Can just one person say they’re not gonna feed off the public? Can one person just stand up and say, “You know what? I’m gonna live on what I provide myself.” Apparently not, apparently everybody seems to want everybody else to pay for what they want. Well, this irritated me, and it resulted in characterizations which required an explanation and an apology.”

Poor lil’ guy. He’s just so misunderstood.

But again, the idea here is that women should just “close their legs.” You need to factor birth control into your recreation budget, apparently, and if you don’t have a lot of money you need to instruct your husband or boyfriend that you can’t “afford” sex this month and he needs to masturbate instead. Because that’s the way responsible people behave when it comes to sex.

By the way, this is a former drug addict who abused his prescriptions so badly he made himself deaf. And he also uses Viagra, which is covered by his insurance. And that’s because it’s covered by all insurance. Erections, you see, are a necessary part of life even for elderly men like Rush who are not simply doing it for procreative purposes. Maybe he should just close his legs.

“Freedom of speech is fine but by God you don’t do it publicly”

“Freedom of speech is fine but by God you don’t do it publicly”

by digby

So, singer John Legend made a patriotic plea for the Israeli government to treat the United States’ Secretary of State with more respect:

Here’s the patriotic right’s answer:

What a lovely guy.  It reminds me of the good old days, only then they took the opposite tack and told people to shut up if they criticized the government.  Why, if I didn’t know better, I’d think they were partisan hacks who want to shut up anyone who doesn’t agree with them.

By the way, in case you didn’t know it, this popular right wing meme was created by Cercei Lannister (aka Laura Ingraham) in her book called “Shut Up and Sing: How Elites from Hollywood, Politics, and the UN Are Subverting America” which predated the Dixie Chicks controversy.  The people issuing the death threats got it from her toxic screed. As did Podhoretz.

.