Month: July 2014

The “L” word rehabilitated?

by digby

My piece for Salon this morning discusses what seems to be a rehabilitation of the word liberal — now that they have “progressives” to hate. Here’s the thing: it doesn’t matter what we call ourselves — they are going to demonize it exactly the same way.

There was a time in the not so distant past when the “L” word (“liberal”) was so toxic that only the most die-hard, Birkenstock-shod, soy latte swillers would even dare to identify as such. It was almost as if you were confessing to an affinity for bestiality or a taste for human blood to admit to it in anything but whispered tones among only your closest friends. One called oneself a “moderate” or an “independent” and despite the fact that a large number of people supported liberal policies, they usually felt the need to issue a standard disclaimer to the effect of “I’m not a liberal but … I am a pro-choice, pro civil rights, civil libertarian defender of the welfare state who believes in a strong activist government and mistrusts the military industrial complex.” Just don’t call me the “L” word because I’m anything but that.

It wasn’t always the case. Classical liberalism has been around for many a moon and has a long pedigree on all sides of the political spectrum. But in the modern American parlance, at least, the word “liberal” was most closely tied to FDR’s New Deal, and many members of both parties proudly identified themselves as liberal for decades. President Kennedy called himself a liberal and defined it in these terms:

“someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions…someone who cares about the welfare of the people”

That was obviously in contrast to conservatism, a cramped philosophy obsessed with the past, lacking creativity, tradition bound and unmoved by the concerns of the average person.

Click the link to see none other than Charles “Bell Curve” Murray writing that he knows some liberals and they’re ok, it’s just those progressives he really can’t stand. Naturally, he describes progressives exactly the same way he used to describe liberals. And liberals, whom he now says he respects, are ok because they have principled disagreements with President Obama and believe in free speech — intellectual attributes conservatives attributed to both authoritarian and traitorous tendencies when applied to Republican presidents. Go figure.

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When two good guys with guns confront one another 

by digby

Georgia’s new law goes into effect and everybody’s packing:

A man carrying a holstered firearm entered the store to make a purchase. Another customer, also with a holstered firearm, approached him and demanded to see his identification and firearms license, according to the Valdosta Police Department report.

The customer making demands for ID pulled his firearm from its holster but never pointed it at the other customer, who said he was not obligated to show any permits or identification.

He demanded the man’s ID again. Undeterred by the drawn gun, the man paid for his items, left the store and called for police.

Authorities arrested Ronald Williams, 62, on a charge of disorderly conduct, related to the pulling of a weapon inside of the store, according to the VPD. Police confiscated Williams’ weapon and took him to the Lowndes County Jail.

The police chief said no one can demand a person to show their gun permit. Under the new law, he as police chief and his officers cannot demand to see a firearms permit, Childress said.

“This is an example of my concern with the new gun law that people will take the law into their own hands which we will not tolerate,” he said.

I’m afraid the police chief is missing the whole point of “open carry.” The good guys  are going to help the police by stopping bad guys. You see, police can’t be everywhere at once so the good guys have to step in and do their job for them:

“We’re not breaking the laws,” Haros said. “We’re not here to hurt anybody. We’re not trying to alarm anybody. We’re doing this because it’s our constitutional right.”

Haros, who believes openly carrying firearms helps police, said citizens should know that the demonstrations will continue.

“It’s just for safety purposes,” Haros said. “Officers can’t be there at all times. We understand that. They can only do so much.”

In this case, it gets a teensy bit complicated. Was the good guy with a gun who was stopping a bad guy with a gun the one who asked for the permit or the one who refused to show it? Well, apparently, it was the fellow who asked for the permit. He wasn’t arrested for asking (although one can certainly see the day that will become an illegal act in itself) but for drawing his weapon in the store, which is only illegal if one doesn’t actually shoot someone. That would have been fine since he would obviously have been in fear for his life. After all,there was a man with a gun in the store! (Who wouldn’t be scared?)

This is confusing for those of us who can’t automatically tell if someone with a deadly weapon is a “good guy” or a “bad guy.” It’s probably smart to make the cautious assumption that a yahoo with a gun is a bad guy or a fool, in which case it makes sense to simply walk away and take your business elsewhere. If you see two yahoos with guns having some kind of disagreement, run. Even if you know who the good guys and the bad guys are, their bullets don’t make such distinctions.

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Six years in, Obama finally realizes that Republicans cannot be worked with

by David Atkins

Republicans have lost their leverage, at long last, as even compromise-obsessed President Obama realizes they simply cannot be dealt with:

It’s become clear in recent weeks that President Obama and congressional Republicans are reading from very different scripts. The notion that the two institutional forces are butting heads is plainly wrong – they are two trains on separate tracks moving in completely different directions.

GOP lawmakers are now fully invested in fake “scandals” and an upcoming lawsuit/campaign stunt, the point of which they’re still trying to figure out. Obama, clearly tired of waiting for a Congress that will not govern, has become more enthusiastic about using his executive authority on everything from climate to discrimination to the minimum wage.

Clearly, the president’s willingness to keep governing without them has only enraged congressional Republicans – who were already livid. But it’s now obvious that the president simply does not care. Not even a little. The more GOP lawmaker scream, “No more executive actions!” the more Obama thinks to himself, “I wonder what other executive actions I can take.”

The Republicans may have stymied any legislative action by being the most obstructionist Congress in history.

But in so doing they’ve also eliminated their leverage over a seemingly newly liberated president. Steven Benen puts it perfectly:

Some pundits have suggested the president giving up on Republicans who refuse to govern will only make things worse, but I’m not sure how that’s even possible. If Congress is doing nothing, what’s worse than nothing?

Obama added, “We’re not always going to be able to get things through Congress, at least this Congress, the way we want to. But we sure as heck can make sure that the folks back home know that we’re pushing their agenda and that we’re working hard on their behalf and we’re doing every single thing we can do to make a difference in their lives. So I want to make sure that we emphasize not what we can’t do, but what we can do in the coming months.”

If congressional Republicans find this outrageous – and we know they do – their remedy couldn’t be simpler: try working on meaningful legislation that’s intended to pass. Obama has said repeatedly, including today, that he’d prefer to sign some actual bills, if only Congress would pass some.

But in the meantime, this is a president who no longer cares whether his unhinged critics are unhappy. It’s a welcome shift in posture, which is arguably overdue.

In the meantime it’s a very long shot, but if the differences are stark enough and obvious enough to the public, it might even help provide a more pliable Congress during the final two years of the President’s term.

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Stupid cop tricks

by digby

Sigh:

An Indianapolis woman has sued the city’s police department, contending that an order to remove an “Unmarked Police Car” bumper sticker from her minivan violated her rights to free speech, the group representing her said on Monday.

A lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana on Friday argued that Indianapolis police did not have the right to question and make demands of Pamela Konchinsky after pulling over her vehicle earlier this month.

“We contend that the police officers who detained and interrogated our client without legal grounds to do so violated her constitutional rights,” ACLU attorney Kelly Eskew said in a statement. “The promise of our Constitution is that these lines cannot be crossed.”

According to the complaint, Indianapolis police officers told Konchinsky the bumper sticker would make people think she was impersonating a police officer and could get her shot, before demanding that she remove it from her rear window.

Forget the constitutional issue. What about the fact that these cops actually think that someone would believe police put stickers on their windows declaring themselves to be “unmarked.” And assuming they are cops, they then shoot at them? Does that happen a lot? Or is it that these are good friends of the police who just open fire on people they think are impersonating cops?

If this is a big problem then I’m going to guess that cops should stop wearing uniforms and driving around in those black and white cars.

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Payback time in Mississippi?

by digby

Yesterday I wrote a piece for Salon about what might happen if Thad Cochran turns out to be as much of a vindictive bastard as Joe Liebermans was after he was challenged from the left.I don’t get the sense that Cochran is as bitter as old Joe was, but if he and his staff are even half as angry, the state of Mississippi will have itself a one man Tea Party wrecking crew. Lieberman sure showed us —

I recall the reaction:

It caused much pearl clutching among the cognoscenti, who sensed that allowing the activist riffraff to have their way would be to introduce all forms of chaos into the establishment. Even the liberal Jonathan Chait sounded the warning in the Los Angeles Times:

In the end, though, I can’t quite root for Lieberman to lose his primary. What’s holding me back is that the anti-Lieberman campaign has come to stand for much more than Lieberman’s sins. It’s a test of strength for the new breed of left-wing activists who are flexing their muscles within the party. These are exactly the sorts of fanatics who tore the party apart in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They think in simple slogans and refuse to tolerate any ideological dissent. Moreover, since their anti-Lieberman jihad is seen as stemming from his pro-war stance, the practical effect of toppling Lieberman would be to intimidate other hawkish Democrats and encourage more primary challengers against them.

(Chait has written with equal contempt for the Tea Party many times but nonetheless celebrated the right-wing insurgent victory over former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Apparently, even the Tea Party is a lesser threat to good order than those “fanatics” who supported Ned Lamont.)

The analogy between the two campaigns is imperfect simply because Lieberman was actually a much more disloyal backstabber than Cochran has ever been. His willingness to cozy up to the Republicans was legendary, while Cochran is just a standard-issue conservative Republican who gets what he needs for his state and otherwise doesn’t rock the boat. When challenger Ned Lamont won the primary outright and became the legitimate Democratic nominee for the Senate, Lieberman refused to take no for an answer and ran as an independent. He kept his seat. Seventy percent of Republicans voted for him in the end.

He was very angry. So angry that he tanked his own proposal to lower the medicare eligibility age to 50 simply out of spite.

It’s hard to imagine anyone being that malicious, but maybe he’ll pay back those Tea partiers by voting to allow black people to vote or something. That’s sure to make them livid…

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When executive action is all you have left, that’s what you have to use

by David Atkins

Whether it’s climate change, immigration or contraception, the hate-and-greed fueled corporatists are basically leaving the President no choice but to act unilaterally:

“As we assess the impact of this decision, we’ll consider whether or not there is a range of other options that may be available that don’t require legislative action,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters.

Democrats signaled in the hours after the high court’s decision that they think the issue could boost their turnout in the fall by highlighting GOP opposition to abortion rights. That makes it even more likely that Obama will not fear taking executive steps.

…

Still, extending the accommodation to include closely held businesses appears to be the path of least resistance for the administration.

“The most obvious next move is to have HHS adopt a regulation — perhaps even an emergency regulation, as authorized by law — saying that the accommodation provided to religious nonprofits is now available for for-profits covered by the Hobby Lobby decision,” Harvard Law professor Mark Tushnet said.

Alternatively, the president could issue an executive order requiring that all contractors who work for the federal government provide contraception coverage.

This will, of course, increase the conservative crocodile tears about “imperial presidency” and “Obama the King” and all that nonsense. So be it. Conservatives have destroyed the credibility of the Supreme Court and used gerrymandering to lock themselves into a congressional majority. They’ve done so at the expense of their future and their ability to be a viable national party, losing a race for the White House that all traditional indicators said they should have won.

Let them reap the consequences.

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Capital punishment for sleeping in a stairwell?

by digby

This is just awful:

Murdough “basically baked to death” in the overheated cell, a city official earlier told the AP, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the official wasn’t permitted to discuss the case. An initial Department of Correction investigation disclosed in an unrelated federal lawsuit in April found Murdough’s internal body temperature was 103 degrees and the cell was 101 degrees.

The medical examiner hasn’t officially determined the cause and manner of death, but an investigator said he likely died of hyperthermia, according to the initial corrections investigation. Murdough suffered from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, according to his family. He was on psychotropic drugs that experts say can make people more sensitive to heat.

The officer assigned to tour the mental observation unit where Murdough was housed abandoned her post 20 minutes before he was discovered, according to the investigation. The AP reported in May that jail guard had been disciplined four years earlier for doing the same thing.

Murdough was arrested a week before his death on a misdemeanor trespassing charge for sleeping in the stairwell of a public housing building. He was sent to Rikers after being unable to make a $2,500 bail.

The problem is that we are treating the mentally ill in this country as criminals.

If this species makes it beyond the next century or so, I’m going to guess it will categorize our time as bararic as we categorize the middle ages. Except we know better.

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Hate rules

by digby

In my piece this morning at Salon, I talk about how the nativists are succeeding in thwarting the corporatists in the GOP. It’s hard to believe, I know, but the far right haters actually have the upper hand over money:

The minute they saw John Boehner making the tiniest of moves toward a compromise bill, they went to work. Led by right-wing crank Steve King of Iowa, a group opposed to CIR was quickly mobilized. It seems some newer members hadn’t been properly schooled in GOP partisan politics:

“The new Republicans in the House and Senate — you know how their mind worked?” said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a key senator involved in the effort. “It was, ‘We need to end the lawlessness at the border and build a fence but I love immigrants and I really think we should welcome immigrants and we need more immigrants.’”

“Well, that sounds good on the campaign trail, but few of them had actually read data about we admit a million on a path to citizenship every year, we have 600,000 guest workers in addition every year,” Sessions continued. “Few of them had asked themselves, in a time of high unemployment and slow growth, you want to increase the number?”

Yes, that Jeff Sessions, the man whose racist past was so notorious he couldn’t get confirmed for a seat on the federal bench. King’s group in the House and a Senate group including Tea Party leaders Ted Cruz and Mike Lee met frequently and bombarded Boehner’s annual House GOP retreat with hysterical propaganda when the Speaker deigned to release a tepid set of “principles” that might lead to some sort of compromise.

Read on. Money uber alles — except for hate. Hate rules.

Kids escaping hell

by digby

Vox has produced a nice explainer on the child immigration story that simply lays out the controversy and statistics if you aren’t familiar with the details. What is most pertinent from my perspective is the question of why these unaccompanied children are coming here in greater numbers than before.

The miserable right wing misanthropes see these kids as Machiavellian mini-criminals who are just trying to get over on us hard working Americans. Sober people point out that there are a lot of reasons for the wave, but that one inescapable fact is that violence in these countries is exploding and these kids are basically running for their lives. They aren’t “illegals.” They’re refugees.

How do we know this?  They aren’t just coming to the land ‘o the free to eat our McDonalds and steal our health care. They’re seeking asylum everywhere:

[N]earby countries — including Mexico, Belize, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama — saw 712 percent more applications for asylum from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador in 2013 than they had in 2009:

Also too: they’re kids. Are we really talking about sending children back to hell to appease a bunch of xenophobes?

Data ‘o the day

by digby

All those people out there who are so concerned about the slutty beyotches who are killing innocent little blastocysts with their birth control pills might want to give a thought to the millions women who have other issues:

The most common reason U.S. women use oral contraceptive pills is to prevent pregnancy, but 14% of pill users—1.5 million women—rely on them exclusively for noncontraceptive purposes. The study documenting this finding, “Beyond Birth Control: The Overlooked Benefits of Oral Contraceptive Pills,” by Rachel K. Jones of the Guttmacher Institute, also found that more than half (58%) of all pill users rely on the method, at least in part, for purposes other than pregnancy prevention—meaning that only 42% use the pill exclusively for contraceptive reasons.

The study—based on U.S government data from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG)—revealed that after pregnancy prevention (86%), the most common reasons women use the pill include reducing cramps or menstrual pain (31%); menstrual regulation, which for some women may help prevent migraines and other painful “side effects” of menstruation (28%); treatment of acne (14%); and treatment of endometriosis (4%). Additionally, it found that some 762,000 women who have never had sex use the pill, and they do so almost exclusively (99%) for noncontraceptive reasons.

But then, to many of those who believe in the literal translation of the Bible as those Hobby Lobby folk do, pain is a feature not a bug. Because Eve was a terrible hoyden for eating that apple and God was really, really pe-oed about that and increased her labor pains because of it. I’ll guess that since all women are lying, cheating, devious whores underneath it all anyway, any pain “down there” is probably Godly.

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