Month: August 2014

QOTD: Paul Ryan

by digby

Can you see what’s wrong with this picture? I knew that you could:

Ryan cautioned that people should allow the investigation into 18-year-old Michael Brown’s death at the hands of a white police officer to run its course before drawing conclusions. The Justice Department is conducting its own inquiry in addition to a state investigation, but the Wisconsin Republican cautioned against allowing the federal government to take on a large oversight role in Ferguson.

“There is no problem with the federal government having a role,” he said. “But in all of these things, local control, local government, local authorities who have the jurisdiction, who have the expertise, who are actually there are the people who should be in the lead.”

Because as we’ve seen demonstrated repeatedly over the past week or so, local government is always pure and good and perfect.

In fact, let’s leave the police chief of Ferguson, with all his “expertise” in the “lead.” He did just a heckuva job. And hey, the Governor has been a real pip as well. If this hasn’t been a perfect illustration of the fallacy of local supremacy it’s hard to see what is.

This conservative fetish for “local government” has always stemmed from their desire to reclaim the “freedom” those southern towns used to have when they were allowed to handle their race “problems” as they saw fit. Any citizen who’s ever been exposed to local and state government knows very well that the idea it’s un-corrupted with greed and petty ambition is ludicrous. The fact that Ryan doesn’t understand that the mantra of “local control” in this situation is ridiculous is yet another sign that he’s so ideologically programmed he honestly doesn’t know how to think in any other way.

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Help the CDC Fight Big Chicken before the Next Salmonella Outbreak

by Spocko

For all their power, at least the telcos usually aren’t making people ill, hospitalizing them or killing them when they use the phone or internet (The President’s Analyst was a fictional movie)

One of the most powerful lobbying groups in the country, if not the world, is Big Chicken (and its brother Big Beef). Remember, they sued Oprah! They are the ones funding the ag-gag rules around the country. They are setting up China to send us chicken and toxic seafood from the Pacific Rim.

In addition to filing lawsuits on “food defamation,” giving money to legislators and capturing the USDA, they have another, bigger power. Telling and teaching the media and the public what is “acceptable” and possible when it comes to the safety of its food.

They do this using multiple methods including word choice, pathogen definition and selective reporting of critical numbers. I don’t have time now to tell you how Big Chicken convinced the USDA that no level of salmonella contamination was considered high enough for a recall of chicken parts but it is a fascinating story.

The long process where they convinced the media and the public that if you get sick from eating the contaminated chicken it is YOUR fault, is worthy of an Upton Sinclair novel. I mean the sheer brilliance of that move STILL astounds me. Kudos to you National Chicken Council. Your clients should be thrilled.

You see, unless a cluster of adorable children of powerful people in a media corridor get sick and die from a commercial source, it’s just a sad local story. That is how powerful their story has become. But that can change, and you can help.

When I was covering the death of puppies and kittens from pet food contaminated with melamine one of the biggest problems the six bloggers whose efforts I coordinated was the inability of the media to understand the scope of the problem.

Part of the problem is there is no CDC for pets. Because of this the media had no ‘official’ numbers, from an authority to report. This worked to the advantage of the pet food company and the pet food lobbyists. They were reporting 16 dead when the database the folks at Pet Connection put together listed 3,168 dead and over 8,000 sick. Since it was self reported no one in the mainstream media would use it and there was no CDC putting out data to update them.

My task in our blogger working group was to contact the media and tell them about this discrepancy. Then to tell Dick Durbin’s office about this number and pose other questions before he grilled the people from the pet food industry.

 I really wanted to help the media get this story right, because even a dozen pets dead is unacceptable, but thousands dead is a goddamn emergency. And if you don’t believe me, ask someone who had a pet die, especially if they found out they were feeding them poisoned pet food.

I would like to think that human lives are even more precious than the lives of our furry friends, but apparently not.

We know what the media likes. It’s not just “if it bleeds it leads” it’s also novelty, personal stories, gossip, death of celebrities, cute kids and cats. Your story won’t get covered if it’s “Man eats chicken and gets sick.” Someone needs to find and promote the news or novelty.

Ebola was novel. It got covered even though the odds of it happening here are tiny. Yet in this CDC report they tracked 3,037 deaths from foodborne illness. Over one million people will get sick from Salmonella in the US. Every year.

One of the ways that these cases get down played is how they are reported in the media. I noticed some appropriate pooh-poohing of the alarmist reporting on ebola in the US. But would it be inappropriate if these were the numbers?

 Sickened: 1,027,561
 Hospitalized: 19,336 were
Total Dead: 378*
*from Salmonella in the US

*Those are the CDC numbers on Salmonella, nontyphoidal, cases in their 2011 report. 

Who controls how these food poisoning outbreaks are reported on? Big Chicken. They influence the USDA, who assert influence over the CDC in both subtle and not so subtle ways–starting with which number are reported.

 Example: Many of you heard of the Foster Farms Salmonella Heidelberg contamination. If you followed closely you might have heard 634 were reported sick. You really had to read close to noticed that the contaminated chicken wasn’t recalled last year. But, and this is the kicker, the USDA said the public was safe as long as they cooked the chicken thoroughly and handled it correctly. (Again, BRILLIANT work blaming the victim Big Chicken!)

Multipliers or Never Tell A Journalist, “You can do the math.” They Won’t.

What the media didn’t tell you is that based on the 634 reported cases of Salmonella Heidelberg the CDC estimates that 18,576 people were also sick but remain uncounted.

The CDC knows that for every person who goes to a hospital there are many others who do not. And for each pathogen, Norovirus, Salmonella–nontyphoidal, Clostridium perfringens, Campylobacter spp. and Staphylococcus aureus they create a number, called a multiplier, to figure out sick but not reported.

The multipler for Salmonella is 29.3

Oh beautiful, for spacious skies

by digby

Good Lord:

IMAGE: SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGES

By the way, here’s Scott Olson, the photographers being arrested by police.

Getty Images photographer arrested #Ferguson pic.twitter.com/ScOaHO8bjY
— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) August 18, 2014

Evidently, he was arrested for not being in the designated media area. I’m sure you can all see the problem with that.

In memory of Jim Jeffords

by David Atkins

Jim Jeffords’ recent passing was a sad moment for many in Washington. He is remembered by many as a decent human being. I’m sure that he took some awful votes over his career. Most Republican electeds do. But his speech switching from Republican to Democrat, and with him control of the Senate, remains one of the more electric moments of the early aughts. It’s also one of the milestones that historians will use to signal a mile marker on the growing radical extremism of the modern GOP.

Watch it again:

In the last 13 years, the Republican Party has only gotten far, far worse. By today’s Tea Party standards, Jeffords would be considered a commie. That should scare observers, but the Village seems remarkably blase about it all.

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Depressing Chart ‘O The Day

by digby

I just … sigh

This, however, is totally predictable:

I’m going to guess that Rand Paul’s stirring talk about racial reconciliation and police jackboots isn’t really resonating in the GOP…

“What’s done in the dark always comes to light …”

by digby

Woman: I was maced and I had come up to QuickTrip because they said I could use their sink. So I was trying to clean out my eyes with some water and one of the employees told me to go get some milk, because that would help. So as I was pouring milk in my eyes, the officers had come in and told me to get out.

Lemon: When was this?

Woman: This was like a month ago. I came outside and I was trying to pour milk in my eyes and Wilson told me if I poured milk in my eyes, I was going to be arrested. And I was trying to tell him that my eyes were burning because I was maced, but he told me to ‘Shut the F up.’ So, another man told me to get in my car and turn the air and put my face in front of the vents, so that’s what I did.

Lemon: So were you arrested? What happened?

Woman: No, I wasn’t arrested. When I got in my car and turned the air on and put my face in front of the vent. Wilson made me get out of the car and sit on the concrete and he took all my information and ran my name. And I was still trying to pour the milk in my eyes because I couldn’t see, and he’s telling me to ‘shut the F up’ and ‘sit the f down’ and I was looking at his name tag and I was telling myself that I would never forget who he was and what he did to me. And I prayed on it and I asked God to get revenge on him and I’m sorry this is the way it happened, but what’s done in the dark always come to the light, and I saw the news this morning—

Lemon: But you’re OK? Everything is OK?

Woman: I’m OK now. And I saw the news this morning when they released his name. I knew exactly who he was and I know who he is right now.

I have no idea if this is true, but considering all the footage we’ve seen of police officers in Ferguson over the past week it sure sounds like their MO.

Is it Big Oil, or is it Rupert Murdoch?

by David Atkins

An almost throwaway line in a Guardian article today on climate change denialism is food for serious thought:

Rejection of human-caused global warming was most prevalent in the USA, UK, and Australia, with Canada not far behind in 7th.

These four countries also share the commonality of highly influential fossil fuel industries, and the wide reach of the Murdoch media empire, known for its global warming denial.

The fact that these are all Anglophone nations says something culturally, probably. You might argue that the fact that so much oil production happens in most of the Anglophone nations, resulting in a powerful oil industry, might be a factor–except that many other nations with major oil reserves don’t share the phenomenon.

Most commentators blame American climate rejection on our particularly corrupt political system. But that claim grows weaker when you throw Canada and Australia into the mix.

The common denominator is Murdoch. I’m still skeptical, since I don’t think Fox News and tabloid journalism have quite the reach that many people think they do. But these stats on climate denialism are such that Murdoch media’s influence may be wider and more pernicious than I had thought.

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Let’s Remove “unnecessary military equipment” from Ferguson-like Police Departments by Spocko @spockosbrain

 I love it when our comedy-media-industrial complex comes to the same conclusions right after I do.

My comedian friend Jimmy Dore @jimmy_dore also addressed the same issue on his very funny radio show and podcast on Friday.

(BTW his show is like the Daily Show on radio, only funnier with more progressive insight from folks like Frank Conniff, @FrankConniff;  Ben Mankiewicz, @BenMank77; Robert Yasumura, @teamyasumura; stef zamorano,
@stefanezamorano and Mike MacRae, @MikeMacRaeMike)

 Last night I asked this question to Cliff Schecter and Avedon Carol on Virtually Speaking hosted by Jay Ackroyd. (My question is at about 23 minutes in. )

 I’ve suggested this on twitter to my few followers and got some ideas.

@spockosbrain could lobby local commissions to require funds allocated to PDs first be spent on community policing efforts before surplus.
— Jim Langendorf (@jplang43) August 17, 2014

 In my post earlier I suggested looking what worked with Occupy or other protests. Cory Doctrow and my friends at Boing Boing found a group called Muckrock that did FOIA requests on who has what military surplus but it’s only for the last two years. (You might want to donate to this group so they can file more and get more info.)

 So we have some the tools, but we also need a strategy, both public and in the media. I’ve worked with municipalities in their purchase of big safety equipment. I’ve worked with city governments to attempt to prevent spending “free money” on projects that are unsafe for the public.

But I’ve never worked on a project that is designed to take away equipment, especially when they got it cheap or free.

In this process we need to think about who are our allies and who has leverage. Who are our opponents and what leverage do they have?

Saturday I said.

Once people have power, and powerful tools, it takes other kinds of power and powerful tools to remove them.

We can anticipate the responses from the organizations that have the equipment, what is our response to that? Can we see anticipate the RW media response? Do we have an answer for that?

This kind of action needs to come from inside the communities, but with support and expertise from outside.

The cities and police depts are very good at hanging onto money and equipment with, ‘What if” scenarios.  They will fight any equipment being taken away, “We need it if…” and we can point to Ferguson or other events and say, “So this can happen?”

They will claim they are better trained, “Really? Where is that in your training budget? Why is it ‘para-military’ training and not community crowd control from experts like the DC police?”

We can propose if they want access to big guns they have to first fund training from community policing people. Who pays? Taxpayers? “No, it comes out of your equipment and maintenance budget first.  Or you can sell your tank to some larger city that really needs one.”

The Right and RW Media. Opponents or Allies?

The RW media often line up with the police and authorities, but they don’t have to. One of the reasons they say that citizens need superweapons is to defend themselves from the government.

We point out to them that their local police now have tanks and M16s. Are they okay with that? They aren’t gearing up for the dirty hippies with no guns, they need that tank to come for you. Maybe you should force ’em to bring in those black helicopters from else where.

The fight over equipment being taken away can be an interesting media story in cities around the country. Police will need to justify the cost of maintaining and use of equipment but also address their mindset and lack of training.

And I REALLY want to get rid of all unnecessary equipment!  However after we fight hard we might settle for no tanks and mandatory training for local departments and neighboring departments.


Who Pays?

Can someone please calculate the PR and eventual financial damage the city will incur if they use the equipment wrong with untrained people?

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No more puppets

by digby

Here’s a good piece on the “story we tell ourselves” from David F. Schmitz in Politico magazine:

It’s no secret that since World War II, from Vietnam to Iran to Nicaragua, the United States has played a role, overtly or covertly, in establishing many governments headed by handpicked rulers. The rationale usually has been based on oversimplified bipolar worldviews, outdated theories of modernization and a paternalistic racism. American policymakers, seeing non-Western Europeans as politically immature and particularly vulnerable to radical political ideas, believed that the United States needed to establish and support proper rulers who would help their countries establish Western economic institutions and practices that would allow for the development of more “mature” societies. Non-democratic methods and leaders became seen as necessary antidotes to radical political movements, social disorder and economic nationalism—even as the United States convinced itself that it was promoting the rise of liberal democracies. More often than not, these efforts have failed miserably.

There are a variety of reasons for this. While the United States has the power to overthrow governments and prop up leaders, it cannot install political legitimacy along with power. But that lesson is never learned in Washington, and previous failures are dismissed as stemming from their shortcomings or our lack of will.

We have quite a history of these misadventures post WWII now that show we just don’t do this well. In fact, we are very bad at it and we usually make things worse. I suppose there’s always the chance that we will develop the skills to do it better but considering the dysfunction in our own system I’m going to guess that’s fairly unlikely. I get the impulse to “do something.” But it should be resisted without a massive global effort and a clear set of objectives.

I’ve been with the President so far in Iraq. But any escalation in the midst of all this fear-mongering about ISIS simply must be met with skepticism. Our history shows that what is being said about the “threat” is what they always say. For instance, Lindsay Graham this week-end almost had a full blown nervous breakdown on Fox News over the president’s unwillingness to go on TV and scream “runferyerlives!!!”

“I’m disappointed in the commander in chief for not addressing the threat that [ISIS] presents to the United States. Not leveling with the American people that the threat we face is not just in Iraq and Syria, but these people intend to attack us here at home and he has no strategy to deal with that.

That’s what the intelligence community is telling me and every other member of Congress,” he continued. “These people intend to hit us here.”

Ok. Let’s assume that’s true. But here’s what the counter-terrorism officials are really saying, according to Michael Isikoff:

ISIL’s conquest of vast swaths of Iraqi territory this spring and summer netted it a “significant” arsenal of U.S. weapons from two Iraqi military bases, including hundreds of tanks, heavily armored Humvees, assault rifles, and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, officials say. One U.S official tells Yahoo News ISIL is now considered “the most potent military force” of any terrorist group in the world.

Ok, that’s bad. But it’s unlikely they’ll be driving those US made tanks into the streets of New York any time soon. So we can probably relax about the “military” threat.

But what about the terrorist threat?

Led by its charismatic chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the radical Islamist group is looking beyond its short-term goal of overthrowing the Iraqi and Syrian governments and replacing them with a self-proclaimed Islamic Caliphate. “We’re seeing an expansion of its external terrorist ambitions,” one U.S. counterterrorism official said in a briefing for reporters Thursday. “As its capabilities grow, it has attracted thousands of foreign extremists — some of whom are going home to start cells. As it carves out territory [in Iraq], it wants to go beyond that and do attacks outside. ” U.S. counterterrorism agencies had put the number of ISIL fighters at about 10,000, but that figure is now being reassessed and is likely to be raised, officials say.

That’s it. They want to form a fundamentalist Islamic State in the middle east, which is bad, but it’s not bad in the same way that invading New York is bad. They are growing and with that growth they may form terrorist cells somewhere who want to do attacks outside the middle east. And I’m sure that’s true. That’s how it’s gone in the past. But as Steve Benen says, if President Obama were to go to the American people with all this, here’s what he would say based on all that information:

By the way, ISIS terrorists want to kill Americans. There’s no imminent threat; we don’t have any actionable intelligence; and I’m not instructing the public to take any specific actions, but I thought I’d mention it. You know, just FYI.”

And I’d actually amend that to say that “just knowing how terrorists tend to be ISIS terrorists probably want to kill Americans …”

None of that is to say that ISIS isn’t a very dangerous development. It requires a thoughtful analysis of what they want and what can be done about it. But I’m a believer in the Obama Doctrine of “don’t do stupid shit” and if you listen to Lindsay Graham you would rarely do anything else. Hysterical hand wavers like him, along with the cynical warmongers looking for opportunity to dominate, are what’s led us into the disasters outlined in that Politico piece. When they start talking about “threats” it’s time to take a deep breath. We’re about to be smothered in bullshit. Again.

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They just ain’t cool

by digby

My piece in Salon this morning:

One of the most poignant characteristics of the conservative movement is the extent to which they deeply yearn to be cool and yet are inescapably uncool on the most fundamental level. From their “conservative Woodstock” obsession to their sad attachment to Ted Nugent, the rare remnant of ’60s rock ‘n’ roll who will have anything to do with them, they continue to insist that they are the true counterculture, the real rebels with a real cause. It’s just sad. With age should come wisdom, but unfortunately Republicans are still living with their faces pressed against the glass, wistfully yearning to join the party…

Read on to see how hilariously this is manifested by a right wing operative (and critic of Rick Perlstein’s scholarship and integrity) Craig Shirley. He wants so badly to be cool that he has conceived a thesis that conservatives are the Deltas in Animal House. It’s absurd, of course and ultimately just pathetic…

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