Month: September 2014

Looks like Rand Paul’s a thumbs up on war

by digby

But he’s adamant, damn it, that the congress should vote to keep it going more often than it has in the past. Here’s the king of the process dodge brushing over the fact that he’s going to vote for war by pretending that it’s more important that he insures that the congress keeps rubber stamping it:

Appearing on CBS “This Morning,” the Kentucky Republican conceded that he has shifted his views in some areas, including on what is an appropriate U.S. response to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. “As world events change, obviously you change your analysis. Five years ago, ISIS wasn’t a threat,” he said, using an alternate name for the terrorist group that has mobilized across much of northern and central Iraq.

Paul acknowledged that his thought process on ISIL has been “influenced” by ISIL’s recent beheadings of U.S. journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and British aid worker David Haines.
[…]
Paul said on Fox News on Monday that because opinions change over time, depending on circumstances, if a vote of whether to go to war against ISIL would make it to Congress, he would vote to “limit the authorization to a time period.”

“I would try to sunset the provision,” Paul said. “I’ve been upset that we voted 15 years ago and people are still using a vote from 15 years ago, so I think if we authorize force or declare war, it should sunset at the end of the year and we should vote again, because I don’t like the idea that one generation can vote to bind another generation to war forever.”

Notice he doesn’t say he will vote against it. Indeed, it’s fairly clear that he’s on board. You see, the really upsetting part of the 15 year war we’ve been waging is the authorization procedures. The war itself? Not a problem, apparently.

Oh well, there’s always Justin Amash.

*It must be pointed out that the DNC is portraying Paul’s wavering as proof that he’s insufficiently hawkish, so he has that going for him.

The conservative id speaks

by digby

Out of the mouth of Russell Pearce, vice chair of the Arizona Republican party and the mover and shaker behind Arizona’s odious SB 1070:

“You put me in charge of Medicaid, the first thing I’d do is get Norplant, birth-control implants, or tubal ligations. Then, we’ll test recipients for drugs and alcohol, and if you want to [reproduce] or use drugs or alcohol, then get a job.”

They actually made him resign. Finally. Apparently you can go too far even for Arizona Republicans to tolerate.

But as Bryce Covert at Think Progress points out, these sentiments have been informing conservative and centrist policy on this for decades:

The Nixon administration pushed through funding for serializations in the 1970s aimed mostly a low-income people, usually women of color, and many were done involuntarily. And while it may sound like long-ago history, the practice of sterilizing low-income women hasn’t been entirely done away with. Between 2005 and 2013, 39 tubal ligations were given to women in California’s prison system without full consent. The majority of those were performed by Dr. James Heinrich, who has said of the practice, “Over a ten-year period, that isn’t a huge amount of money compared to what you save in welfare paying for these unwanted children — as they procreated more.” The state is now considering banning inmate sterilization.

In the absence of outright sterilization, there are other policies that rely on the ugly idea that low-income women need to be stopped from having children. While in most states, families receive more welfare benefits when they have additional children, 16 have family caps that ban any extra money for new children if someone in the household is already receiving aid. There’s no evidence that these policies keep women from having more children, as they are intended to do, but there is evidence that they push people further into poverty and can lead to higher death rates.

You have to love the fact that conservatives who are now arguing against birth control (all the way up to the Supreme Court) and want to ban abortion for everyone are also people who want to require contraception or forcibly sterilize poor women. It kind of shines a light on their real intentions doesn’t it?

Of course it isn’t just Republicans. Democrats made a whole lot of noise about “welfare reform” during the 90s, with the sub-text always being that women on welfare we being encouraged to have “too many children” and they needed to “go to work.” They shouldn’t be let off the hook. It was as opportunistic in its way as the Southern Strategy was for Republicans.

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Peek-a-boo, we spy you
by Tom Sullivan

Why don’t the spy agencies just give their next eavesdropping program a name like “Big Brother” and be done with it? Der Spiegel began its weekend report on the hacking of Deutsche Telekom with the cutsey names British and American spooks give to various Internet snooping programs: “Evil Olive” or “Egoistic Giraffe.” Or the Johnny Depp-ish “Treasure Map,” with a logo featuring a skull with glowing eye holes. [Emphasis mine.]

Treasure Map is anything but harmless entertainment. Rather, it is the mandate for a massive raid on the digital world. It aims to map the Internet, and not just the large traffic channels, such as telecommunications cables. It also seeks to identify the devices across which our data flows, so-called routers.

Furthermore, every single end device that is connected to the Internet somewhere in the world — every smartphone, tablet and computer — is to be made visible. Such a map doesn’t just reveal one treasure. There are millions of them.

Soon, they’ll teach your smartphone to bark out commands and lead you in morning calisthenics:

“Smith! 6079 Smith W.! Yes, you! Bend lower, please! You can do better than that. You’re not trying. Lower, please! That’s better, comrade.”

But before getting to that, according documents from Britain’s GCHQ leaked by Edward Snowden, the plan is to map out the entire geography of the worldwide Internet. And not just the hardware.

Treasure Map allows for the creation of an “interactive map of the global Internet” in “near real-time,” the document notes. Employees of the so-called “FiveEyes” intelligence agencies from Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which cooperate closely with the American agency NSA, can install and use the program on their own computers. One can imagine it as a kind of Google Earth for global data traffic, a bird’s eye view of the planet’s digital arteries.

Unless your are Angela Merkel, the spying revealed by Snowden has, for the most part, always seemed abstract, theoretical. Here, it gets personal. Der Spiegel reviewed some of the Snowden documents with staff from a German telecom, Stellar. In Der Spiegel’s video (watch it here), we see the engineers “visibly shocked” as they realize not only have their systems been hacked and client passwords compromised, but key engineers sitting in the room have been “tasked” for surveillance because of their level of access to the network. Pointing to a name in one of the Treasure Map documents, the reporter says, “That’s you,” to the stunned guy sitting across the table. The security breach, the engineer explains, would allow the spy agency to remotely see “the exact point on the globe that a customer is located.”

Don’t you feel safer knowing you’re paying the salaries of the Americans doing the same? That they work for you?

Aggressive kinetic action

by digby

This, from the NY Times, struck me as funny — in a dark, depressing sort of way:

“There have been offers both to Centcom and to the Iraqis of Arab countries taking more aggressive kinetic action,” said one of the officials, who used the acronym for the United States Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East.

I think it’s great that they explain that Centcom stands or US Central Command. But it probably would have been even more helpful if they explained that “aggressive kinetic action” means — war.

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“This idea that we’re never going to have boots on the ground in Syria is fantasy.”

by digby

I think he means it:

“This idea that we’re never going to have boots on the ground in Syria is fantasy. All this has come home to roost after the last three years of incompetent decisions,” Graham said on “Fox News Sunday.” “It’s delusional in the way they approach this.”

“I will not let this president suggest to the American people we can outsource our security and this is not about our safety!” he said.

Remember, most villagers consider Graham a moderate. Really.

Here’s the clip:

You know who’s trying to kill American children? (Hint: it isn’t terrorists.)

by digby

So Fox news is having a hissy fit over this, naturally. (Sorry didn’t mean to offend by using the word “natural.”)

Vermont Bans Brownies, Turns Kids On To Kale, Gluten-Free Paleo Lemon Bars

It’s a best-seller at bake sales, a king of American confections, even a mandatory munchie of marijuana users. But the iconic chocolate brownie, that perfect blend of cake and cookie, is banned in Vermont schools.

In its place are new hoped-for kid favorites like fruit shish kebab, kale and even gluten-free paleo lemon bars.

The switch stems from nutrition mandates required under the new Smart-Snacks-in-Schools program in effect for public schools.

“The new school lunch pattern has low-fat, leaner proteins, greater variety and larger portions of fruits and vegetables; the grains have to be 100 percent whole-grain rich,” Laurie Colgan, child nutrition program director at the Agency of Education, told Vermont Watchdog.

The article goes on to explain that the rules only apply to fundraising held between midnight and half and hour after school and that it doesn’t ban brownies, just the disgusting masses of chemical glop that most people call brownies.

You see, it’s perfectly possible to make a brownie from something other than a box. And if you do that you can control the ingredients and make the brownies comply with the guidelines. Oh, and the kids will still like them, I guarantee it. In fact once upon a time people used to make all kinds of treats from scratch to sell at school bake sales. And they didn’t have fancy food processors and mixers to help. They tasted good. Really good.

Being a little smarmy and nannyish with kids is an adult’s responsibility. Sure, if you want to eat bowls full of raw brownie mix that’s made from plastic, as an adult that’s your right. But when did we decide that kids have some God-given or constitutional right to eat as much junk food as they want to and anyone who says otherwise is some kind of commie? It’s just weird.

I guess these right wingers are the real believers in the “if it feels good, do it” school, and don’t want their children to be deprived of even the tiniest bit of sugary, transfat laden garbage or exhorted to eat something green that isn’t called a Shamrock shake. Party on dudes.

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QOTD: The Pope

by digby

Isn’t this guy supposed to have a direct line to God? Isn’t he supposed to know stuff we don’t know?

“Humanity needs to weep, and this is the time to weep. Even today, after the second failure of another world war, perhaps one can speak of a third war, one fought piecemeal, with crimes, massacres, destruction…”

Now that’s dark. Is the Rapture really happening? If not, maybe some of these world leaders might think about being a little less apocalyptic lest these prophesies become self-fulfilling.

Sheesh.

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Nice little rights you have there… BASIAHTT

by digby

I’m a coward so if the police ask me for ID I’m going to give it to them even though in California it’s not legally required if they have no good reason to ask. (When you’re driving you do have to.) Until recently I didn’t even carry my ID if I was walking at the beach, as I do every night. But my husband was stopped a while back by LAPD on the Venice boardwalk and got detained for an hour and rousted pretty rudely because he didn’t have his driver’s license on him. (There was a report of a middle aged homeless man sleeping in someone’s garage in the neighborhood who was wearing jeans and a blue hoodie — like my husband. Like a thousand other people on the boardwalk that day …)

Anyway, since then, I’ve always carried my ID with me. And it irks me that I have to. I wish I was brave enough to face down armed police and assert my rights but I’m not. I’m not brave enough argue with an armed gang member either and the hostile, aggressive way these interactions happen feel very similar. The smart move in both cases is to keep your head down, do as you’re told and hope you get out of there unscathed because if either cops or gang members want to exercise their power over you they can mess up your life — even take it. (Of course police are just as likely to use a little electro-shock ultra violence on you to make sure you comply, but you won’t die from that. Probably.)

Here’s someone who took the more difficult path and got herself handcuffed and harrassed. Why? She was a black woman kissing her white boyfriend, fully clothed, in their car:

A Django Unchained actress is claiming she was ‘handcuffed and detained’ by police after being mistaken for a prostitute as she kissed her white husband.

Daniele Watts, who played slave CoCo in the award-winning film, posted the news on her Facebook page on 2 September and said her arm was cut when she was handcuffed.

Watts and her husband Brian James Lucas claim that they were kissing on a Hollywood street when police were called and they were asked to show their ID card to which Watts refused.

Watts wrote on her Facebook page: ‘Today I was handcuffed and detained by 2 police officers from the Studio City Police Department after refusing to agree that I had done something wrong by showing affection, fully clothed, in a public place.’

She also posted a photo of crying as she stood in the street wearing patterned shorts, a t-shirt with ‘New York’ written on it and running shoes with a policeman next to her.

Watts, who plays Martin Lawrence’s daughter on the new FX comedy Partners, continued: ‘When the officer arrived, I was standing on the sidewalk by a tree.

‘I was talking to my father on my cell phone.

‘I knew that I had done nothing wrong, that I wasn’t harming anyone, so I walked away.

‘A few minutes later, I was still talking to my dad when 2 different police officers accosted me and forced me into handcuffs.

‘As I was sitting in the back of the police car, I remembered the countless times my father came home frustrated or humiliated by the cops when he had done nothing wrong.

‘I allowed myself to be honest about my anger, frustration, and rage as tears flowed from my eyes.

‘The tears I cry for a country that calls itself ‘the land of the free and the home of the brave’ and yet detains people for claiming that very right.

Separately her chef husband posted on his Facebook page that he thought that the person who called the police had decided they looked like a prostitute and a client.

He wrote: ‘From the questions that he asked me as D was already on her phone with her dad, I could tell that whoever called on us (including the officers), saw a tatted RAWKer white boy and a hot bootie shorted black girl and thought we were a H* (prostitute) & a TRICK (client).
‘What an assumption to make!!!Because of my past experience with the law, I gave him my ID knowing we did nothing wrong and when they asked D for hers, she refused to give it because they had no right to do so.

‘So they handcuffed her and threw her roughly into the back of the cop car until they could figure out who she was. In the process of handcuffing her, they cut her wrist, which was truly NOT COOL!!!’

An LAPD public information officer said there was no record of the incident as Watts was not arrested or brought into the station for questioning, according to the Chicago Tribune.

There are pictures, so it happened. The question is why the police needed to do anything in that situation? Once they talked to both of them it should have been clear that no law was being broken. Her refusing to give her ID was irrelevant at that stage. They simply decided they needed to know who she was — just in case there was some reason they needed to know who she was. That’s not legal.

Anyway, the.story made me embarrassed. Here I am a privileged older white woman being afraid to challenge police. I can’t imagine how much courage it takes to be African American and do it. My God that’s brave. My hat’s off to her and others who are willing to take a stand. That’s real patriotism in my book.

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The “idea” of America

by digby

I think this is a nice video( from Matthew Modine, whose heart is in the right place. The “idea” of America is an egalitarian, multi-cultural, democratic society where everyone is free to pursue their happiness — at least for many people.  Let’s not forget that there are also Americans who believe this is an explicitly Christian country or those who think that our culture is being polluted by immigrants. Among other things.) We are a varied people, to be sure, but it’s not all a bed of roses.

But the real problem here is that to an awful lot of people in the middle east America is this:

And this:

I’m not suggesting that the idea Modine expresses isn’t real.  It is.  It’s real to me. But you can’t ignore the reality that for all of our highminded “ideas” about what we are, we are most definitely  are also a globally dominant military empire, something which is bound to provoke hostility among at least some people on this planet.  And that would happen even if we were a completely benevolent and perfect empire, which we clearly are not. (Can empires even be perfect?)

I’m all for the “idea” of The New Colossus being the one that Emma Lazarus intended:

  But I’m afraid that much of the rest of the world we look like the old one:

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Piece of crap
by Tom Sullivan

In a lead Sunday op-ed, I once slammed local planners for wanting to develop a former factory site into yet another strip mall anchored by big-box stores. Low prices, low wages. Just what unemployed factory workers need, right? I couldn’t believe the editors allowed it to run with the line about stores selling “cheap, plastic crap from China.”

Now this from the WaPo: The Postal Service is losing millions a year to help you buy cheap stuff from China

Via an arcane treaty mechanism, the U.S. Postal Service delivers small packages from Chinese merchants to destinations in the U.S. at below its cost. The inspector general’s office estimated that foreign “ePacket” treaty mail cost the USPS $79 million in 2013 and another $5 billion last year.

But this has still been a money sink for the Postal Service. In 2012, USPS was paid only 94 cents on average for each piece of Chinese ePacket mail, according to a February report from the Postal Service’s inspector general’s office. That report estimated that the Postal Service was losing about a dollar on each incoming item, adding up to a $29.4 million net loss in 2012.

Forums on eBay are filled with angry notes about ePacket. “I must say that it is simply an economic disaster for US Sellers,” one person wrote. “One product that we sell for 2.00 with 2.50 shipping a chinese company is selling for .99 with free shipping,” another complained. The person added, “Too much work no money here anymore. Let the Chinese have it.”

The irony? writes Jeff Guo, “In a way, those who mail stuff abroad are helping to pay for other Americans to get cheap shipping on purchases from China.” And this on top of the retirement fund requirement imposed by Congress.

Our local USPS mail processing facility is slated for closure. So a little Sunday Morning Music.