Month: July 2014

Sunday Funnies

by digby

Tom Tomorrow in The Nation

McFadden in the New York Times

Ruben Bolling at The Nib:

.

Loathesome wingnut ‘o the day

by digby

This one is always hard to choose, but I think we’ve got a winner:

“The whole idea is to invite retaliatory fire, to tell your civilians not to hide or to flee the areas where the Israelis are about to hit, and then get the civilian casualty numbers up,” Lowry explained. “And then use that as a propaganda tool, and hope the media will report it as if it’s Israel’s fault.”

“The four little kids, for example who were killed right on the beach, right on the Mediterranean in Gaza, you think that’s Hama’s fault?” Carlson wondered.

“Yeah,” Lowry insisted. “It’s wouldn’t be happening, there’s no reason for this conflict except for that Hamas is sending the Rockets over into Israel.”

“Why don’t they tell people, ‘When Israel warns you that they’re about to hit, please flee, please go somewhere someplace safe’?” he continued. “They don’t. And you’ve had various Hamas officials over the years bragging, ‘We’re going to win because we love death more than you love life.'”

It shouldn’t be surprising. The last few weeks have made very clear that the only children these people care about are ones who haven’t been born yet. Callously blaming them for their own deaths — as if they meant to die to make a political point — is just par for the course. They were children.

Let’s face it, when Tucker Carlson sounds compassionate by comparison, you should know by now that you look like a sadistic ass.

(And you know that these kids were just playing outside a shed on the beach where their father stores his boat. And that they don’t have anywhere to hide anyway. More here.)

.

The Latest Eating Disorder 

by tristero

Eating for health can make you sick. It’s helpful to read Jordan’s original post to see how crazy it got for her.

Eating specifically for nutrition strikes me personally as both puritanical and a fools errand. It’s puritanical because eating should be about pleasure, not a demonstration of moral virtue like “you should live a healthy life,” something Jordan has learned the hard way. As for the actual value of “eating for health,” from what I’ve read, the nutrients in food and their interactions are not well understood even by experts. For a layperson like myself, it is absolutely impossible to remember, let alone follow, most of the recommendations, which, anyway, are often contradictory. Instead, simply eating a highly varied diet of real, delicious home-prepared food seems automatically to take care of my “nutrient balance” – whatever the hell that means. (Treats – edibles high in sugar and/or processed with unpronounceable ingredients – are not really “food,” at least as I see it.)

I suspect it’s likely that Michael Pollan’s famous motto – Eat food, not too much. Mostly plants – is about all most of us need to know unless you have specific diet-related health problems. Food should be served and enjoyed, not prescribed and endured.

.

The executive order that everybody thinks is just ducky

by digby

This piece in the Washington Post by John Napier Tye was a member of the State Department until very recently:

In March I received a call from the White House counsel’s office regarding a speech I had prepared for my boss at the State Department. The speech was about the impact that the disclosure of National Security Agency surveillance practices would have on U.S. Internet freedom policies. The draft stated that “if U.S. citizens disagree with congressional and executive branch determinations about the proper scope of signals intelligence activities, they have the opportunity to change the policy through our democratic process.”

But the White House counsel’s office told me that no, that wasn’t true. I was instructed to amend the line, making a general reference to “our laws and policies,” rather than our intelligence practices. I did.

Even after all the reforms President Obama has announced, some intelligence practices remain so secret, even from members of Congress, that there is no opportunity for our democracy to change them.

Public debate about the bulk collection of U.S. citizens’ data by the NSA has focused largely on Section 215 of the Patriot Act, through which the government obtains court orders to compel American telecommunications companies to turn over phone data. But Section 215 is a small part of the picture and does not include the universe of collection and storage of communications by U.S. persons authorized under Executive Order 12333.

From 2011 until April of this year, I worked on global Internet freedom policy as a civil servant at the State Department. In that capacity, I was cleared to receive top-secret and “sensitive compartmented” information. Based in part on classified facts that I am prohibited by law from publishing, I believe that Americans should be even more concerned about the collection and storage of their communications under Executive Order 12333 than under Section 215.

Bulk data collection that occurs inside the United States contains built-in protections for U.S. persons, defined as U.S. citizens, permanent residents and companies. Such collection must be authorized by statute and is subject to oversight from Congress and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The statutes set a high bar for collecting the content of communications by U.S. persons. For example, Section 215 permits the bulk collection only of U.S. telephone metadata — lists of incoming and outgoing phone numbers — but not audio of the calls.

Executive Order 12333 contains no such protections for U.S. persons if the collection occurs outside U.S. borders. Issued by President Ronald Reagan in 1981 to authorize foreign intelligence investigations, 12333 is not a statute and has never been subject to meaningful oversight from Congress or any court. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has said that the committee has not been able to “sufficiently” oversee activities conducted under 12333.

Unlike Section 215, the executive order authorizes collection of the content of communications, not just metadata, even for U.S. persons. Such persons cannot be individually targeted under 12333 without a court order. However, if the contents of a U.S. person’s communications are “incidentally” collected (an NSA term of art) in the course of a lawful overseas foreign intelligence investigation, then Section 2.3(c) of the executive order explicitly authorizes their retention. It does not require that the affected U.S. persons be suspected of wrongdoing and places no limits on the volume of communications by U.S. persons that may be collected and retained.

Did you know about this? If you were reading Emptywheel, you did, but I’d guess that most people are unaware that our democratic process is completely short-circuited in this way. Everyone understands that their communications don’t stay within US borders, right?

For all the caterwauling about the president abusing his power by delaying the implementation of a law they’ve voted over 50 times to repeal, the Republicans have no problem with this sort of thing for some reason. (Of course it was signed by Ronald Reagan so it’s divinely inspired …) Still, the difference between these National Security orders and the order to delay a little piece of he Affordable Care Act is profound. The people can see the results of this alleged Obamacare tyranny and decide at the voting booth if they approve. All this National Security abuse is always, always done in secret, classified to death and the details even kept from those tasked with oversight.

I guess if you think being allowed to temporarily delay offering health insurance to your employees is worse than 30 years of unaccountable government spying on Americans with no oversight then this makes sense.

.

Don’t ask for a living wage or you’ll be replaced by an iPad

by David Atkins

This is an actual billboard in San Francisco:

Pando Daily has more on this:

Its message — that minimum wage increases will lead to service workers being replaced by apps — is continued on an accompanying website — BadIdeaCA — which claims to be “holding activists accountable for minimum wage consequences.”

So who the hell pays for billboards threatening waitstaff with redundancy if they demand a living wage? A bit of digging and clicking reveals that the campaign is backed by Employment Policies Institute, the conservative lobbying group which regularly campaigns on behalf of the restaurant industry.

So, this is obviously disgusting on the part of the restaurant industry and its flacks. But it’s worth noting that restaurants are already beginning to replace servers with tablets.

There are a lot of progressives out there who are very hostile to the idea that mechanization of jobs has had a huge impact on the workforce and will increasingly do so in the future. It runs against the narrative that the entirety of the screwing over of the middle class was a pure product of Reaganomics and political decisions to benefit the rich, and the correlated narrative that we really can return to the economy of the mid-twentieth century if we only go back to the old tax rates and trade deals.

The fact remains that within one year a bunch of server jobs will be gone because restaurants will replace order-taking with tablets. Within a decade or two we won’t need truck or cab drivers anymore. IBM can already diagnose cancer five times better than doctors. The flattening of the teaching profession will continue apace as the technology and techniques behind MOOCs continue to improve. 3D printing will render much of what manufacturing remains obsolete. Anything requiring mid-level management or analysis will be done better by computer within two decades at the max, and probably sooner.

Pushing for a higher minimum wage is important. But ultimately we’re going to have to decouple human dignity from “having a job.” There just won’t be enough jobs to go around, and tweaking the tax rates of super-wealthy just won’t cut it at a certain point.

.

Numbers that may surprise you

by digby

Via Moyers:

51 percent

Of all pregnancies in America in 2008 were unintended, according to a study published this year in the American Journal of Public Health.

40 percent

Of those pregnancies ended in an abortion.

1 in 3

Women will get an abortion in her lifetime, according to a 2011 study published in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology.

51 percent

Of women who get an abortion had used contraceptives in the month that they got pregnant.

18 percent

Of women who have abortions are teenagers.

61 percent

Of women who get an abortion have already given birth to at least one child.

9 in 10

Abortions occur during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. At 12 weeks of development, the average fetus is just over two inches in length and weighs just under a half-ounce.

84 percent

Of abortion providers have experienced a form of harassment or violence.

66 percent

Of abortion clinics don’t offer the procedure after 20 weeks of gestation.

$495

The average cost of a surgical abortion at 10 weeks in 2012, the most recent year for which data is available.

Every last one of those millions of dizzy broads had no idea what they were doing. They need some decent people with morals to help them understand that they either need to “close their legs” or have many more children than they want.

.

The bright spot of the week


by digby

In the midst of a week of horrors in Ukraine and Gaza, there was a bit of welcome news:

Iran and six world powers on Friday agreed to a four-month extension of negotiations on a long-term nuclear deal that would gradually end sanctions on Tehran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear programme, diplomats close to the talks said.

Iran, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China had set a July 20 deadline to complete a long-term agreement that would resolve the decade-old dispute over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. But diplomats said they were unable to overcome significant differences on major sticking points.

“We have reached an agreement to extend the talks,” a senior Iranian diplomat told Reuters on condition of anonymity. Several Western diplomats echoed his remarks.

The extension agreed to on Friday begins on July 21 and negotiations on a long-term deal are likely to resume in September, diplomats said. They added that the talks were set to conclude by late November.

Talking is always better than war. As long as they’re talking there’s a chance we’ll muddle our way through this particular problem. There are so many of them and the collapse of these talks in the middle of all the rest of it would not be good.

.

Chart ‘o the day, tax dodge edition

by digby

Via Joe Weisenthal:

One of the hottest strategies in corporate America right now is the use of so-called “tax-inversion” deals.

The concept is simple. A US company buys a company headquartered in a country with lower taxes (like Ireland or the UK) and then re-incorporates the entire company in that country to reduce the corporate tax bill.

A major tax inversion was announced yesterday, with Illinois-based pharmaceutical company AbbVie buying Irish-based Shire Pharmaceuticals. The entire company will be registered in Jersey, the island in the English Channel, which is famous for its low tax status.

Rumblings about these deals are growing in Washington. This chart from Goldman Sachs explains why: The strategy is exploding right now.

As you can see, there have been anti-inversion laws passed in the past. The 2004 one specified on the chart prevented intra-company inversions (inversions without deals), according to Goldman.

I’m sure I’m not the first person to ask if such corporate “persons” lose their citizenship when they do such things. Or is this the one case where human rights know no borders?

And I wonder if all that spying the NSA is doing on behalf of “American” companies applies to these corporations? I’d guess yes. After all, there’s really no way to tell anymore what an “American” company really is, taxes or not, so we can simply assume that our government is working on behalf of the oligarchs who run these multi-national companies and their shareholders who own them. I’m going to guess that the interests of the American worker isn’t high on the list of concerns.

.

President John McCain

by digby

Here’s your honest truth-telling Maverick:

“You’ll find this surprising,” he said, “but I think I would’ve been more reluctant to commit American troops.”

McCain was a strong supporter of the war in Iraq; one of his sons fought in the war.

“If presented with that same evidence today, I would vote the same way,” McCain said of his vote to deploy troops in the country. “I respected and trusted the Secretary of State, Colin Powell. But it’s obvious now, in retrospect, that Saddam Hussein – although he had used weapons of mass destruction – did not have the inventory that we seem to have evidence of. Which now looking back on it, with the benefit of hindsight, (the evidence) was very flimsy.”

If he had been president, McCain said, “I think I would have challenged the evidence with greater scrutiny. I think that with my background with the military and knowledge of national security with these issues that I hope that I would have been able to see through the evidence that was presented at the time.”

McCain specifically cited one of the sources of the faulty intelligence. “The guy named ‘Curveball’ that we were relying on turned out to be some guy in a German prison that was an alcoholic.”

The senator noted, “I’m not blaming President George W. Bush. It’s not for me to critique my predecessors, especially those that I lost to.”

Yeah, he would have “seen through” all this and wouldn’t have invaded even though he’d been desperate for an opportunity to do it for more than a decade:

Throughout the late ’90s, McCain criticized what he called Clinton’s “feckless photo-op foreign policy,” but he also emerged as an important bulwark for the administration against Republicans who reflexively opposed Clinton’s every move as commander in chief. McCain strongly supported airstrikes against Sudan and Afghanistan, in retaliation for terrorist attacks on two American Embassies, and against Iraq, where Saddam Hussein was obstructing weapons inspectors. In 1999, McCain took the lead in supporting the bombing of Serbia to prevent another genocide in Kosovo. His tone had changed considerably since the days before Srebrenica. “Our interests and values converge clearly here,” McCain said in a speech from the Senate floor. “It seems clear to me that Milosevic knows no limits to his inhumanity and will keep slaughtering until even the most determined opponent of American involvement in this conflict is convinced to drop that opposition.”

By the time McCain ran for president in 2000, he was the one arguing in debates for a more robust military presence in humanitarian crises, while George W. Bush forswore “nation building” and vowed a more “humble” foreign policy. During that campaign, McCain introduced the closest thing he had found to a doctrine for foreign intervention: the “rogue-state rollback,” under which he proposed arming and training internal forces that might ultimately overthrow menacing regimes in countries like Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

McCain’s more ambitious view of American power made him a natural ally of neoconservative thinkers like William Kristol, the editor of the fledgling Weekly Standard (now a New York Times columnist), and Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Empowered during the Reagan era, the neocons were largely shoved aside during the ’90s by the more isolationist, anti-Clinton voices who dominated Republican politics. By the time McCain expanded his circle of influence to include Kristol and other neocons in the late ’90s, they had rallied around a single unifying cause: the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. In 1998, McCain was one of the sponsors of the Iraq Liberation Act, signed into law by Bill Clinton, which officially changed American policy from containing Hussein to deposing him, and he became a leading figure in the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, a lobbying group founded by Randy Scheunemann, who is now his chief foreign policy adviser. McCain met with Ahmad Chalabi, the smooth Iraqi dissident who was a favorite of the neocons, and supported him publicly.

After the terrorist attacks of 2001 and the sudden elevation of Al Qaeda as a defining national security threat, McCain never had any doubt that Iraq, with its supposed capability to unleash or share weapons of mass destruction, posed an existential threat to the United States. Reading his statements from the time, there is no indication that he ever judged the invasion of Iraq by the standard he had used earlier in his career — whether it had the potential to become another Vietnam. Instead, as American troops swarmed Baghdad, McCain repeatedly compared Hussein to Adolf Hitler and predicted that the occupation of Iraq would be remembered in much the same way that history celebrated the liberation and rebuilding of Europe and Japan.

See? No reason to believe the warmongering piece of work would have seized the opportunity to invade.

But setting all that aside, you have to love this:

“It’s not for me to critique my predecessors, especially those that I lost to.”

He certainly has no problem criticizing Obama — to whom he also lost. But from the sound of it he doesn’t know that. He refers to George W. Bush as his “predecessor.” Somebody needs to tell President McCain the bad news.

.