Month: September 2014

The Religious Right flexes its electoral muscles. Will it make a difference?

by digby

This should be interesting:

Conservative activists are launching “an unprecedented campaign” against three Republican candidates — two of whom are out gay men — because of their support for marriage equality and abortion.

The National Organization for Marriage, Family Research Council Action, and CitizenLink “will mount a concerted effort to urge voters to refuse to cast ballots” for Republican House candidates Carl DeMaio in California and Richard Tisei in Massachusetts and Republican Senate candidate Monica Wehby in Oregon, according to a letter sent to Republican congressional and campaign leaders on Thursday.

“We cannot in good conscience urge our members and fellow citizens to support candidates like DeMaio, Tisei or Wehby,” the presidents of the three groups write. “They are wrong on critical, foundational issues of importance to the American people. Worse, as occupants of high office they will secure a platform in the media to advance their flawed ideology and serve as terrible role models for young people who will inevitably be encouraged to emulate them.”

DeMaio and Tisei are the only out LGBT federal candidates from the Republican Party to be appearing on the ballot this fall.
“The Republican Party platform is a ‘statement of who we are and what we believe.’ Thus, the platform supports the truth of marriage as the union of husband and wife, and recognizes the sanctity and dignity of human life,” NOM President Brian S. Brown said in a statement.

Brown called it “extremely disappointing” to see candidates supported “who reject the party’s principled positions on these and other core issues.”

Obviously, I find their position to be reprehensible. But this is how internecine party politics are played. Those people feel very strongly about these issues and do not want the Party to welcome anyone who agrees with that. They are flexing their muscles. I can easily imagine similar circumstances happening within the Democratic Party. Now if it were the latter, the establishment would immediately disavow the lefty upstarts and the entire political establishment would mock them as foolish extremists.

Will that happen with these folks? I doubt it. They are “sacred” due to their religious affiliations. And they are a powerful faction insides the GOP. But, as I said, it should be interesting…

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Holder’s biggest fans

by digby

At least it isn’t about race.  Here’s a little sampling of the twitter hashtag #HoldersNextJob Via Salon:

At least cable news contributor and respected Republican leader Eric Erickson didn’t stoop that low:

He must be one of those “hip” Republicans everyone’s talking about.

Aspirational boogeymen

by digby

Gosh, this certainly gives me faith in the current war effort:

Several of Mr. Obama’s aides said Tuesday that the airstrikes against the Khorasan operatives were launched to thwart an “imminent” terrorist attack, possibly using concealed explosives to blow up airplanes. But other American officials said that the plot was far from mature, and that there was no indication that Khorasan had settled on a time or location for the attack — or even on the exact method of carrying out the plot.

Some experts said it was more likely that American spy agencies had developed specific intelligence about the location of Mr. Fadhli and others, and that Mr. Obama had ordered the strike to kill the Khorasan operatives before they could scatter.

Isn’t that great? There was this too:

One senior American official on Wednesday described the Khorasan plotting as “aspirational” and said that there did not yet seem to be a concrete plan in the works.

And yet others say it was an “imminent threat.”

Hello???

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Maybe we can cut some more unemployment insurance and meals on wheels to pay for this shockingly expensive war

by digby

If you are wondering why they are hyping the terrorist threat so much even though we’ve been “fighting terrorism” for nearly a decade and a half and presumably should feel pretty confident by now in our ability to repel an attack on the US, perhaps this explains it:

Fears of a potent Syrian air defense system drove the U.S. Air Force to send its silver bullet force of F-22 Raptor stealth fighters into battle for the first time ever. The Pentagon confirmed on Sept. 23 that the $150 million jets had struck an ISIS command and control facility in Raqqah, Syria with a satellite-guided bomb. That was right after an initial wave of U.S. Navy Tomahawk cruise missiles hit their targets around Aleppo and Raqqah.

But the Raptors’ first mission wasn’t cheap. Together, the missiles and airstrikes cost at least $79 million to pull off, according to a Daily Beast tally.

That’s more expensive than India’s mission to Mars, which was successfully completed Wednesday at a cost of just $74 million.

Unless we’re fighting monsters on the level of a Martian attack, it’s pretty hard to justify spending that kind of money.

Or not. There always seems to be enough money for wars. Who the hell knows why they’re turning these terrorists into The Greatest Threat The World Has Ever Known again? I’m just throwing out ideas.

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A whole lotta gun violence

by digby

FYI:

Major Findings from the FBI’s Active Shooter Incidents Study

The just-released “A Study of Active Shooter Incidents in the United States Between 2000 and 2013” contains a full list of the 160 incidents used in study, including those that occurred at Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook Elementary School, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Fort Hood, the Aurora (Colorado) Cinemark Century 16 movie theater, the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin, and the Washington Navy Yard, as well as numerous other tragic shootings. Here are some of the study’s findings:

– Active shooter incidents are becoming more frequent—the first seven years of the study show an average of 6.4 incidents annually, while the last seven years show 16.4 incidents annually.

– These incidents resulted in a total of 1,043 casualties (486 killed, 557 wounded—excluding the shooters).

– All but six of the 160 incidents involved male shooters (and only two involved more than one shooter).

– More than half of the incidents—90 shootings—ended on the shooter’s initiative (i.e., suicide, fleeing), while 21 incidents ended after unarmed citizens successfully restrained the shooter.

– In 21 of the 45 incidents where law enforcement had to engage the shooter to end the threat, nine officers were killed and 28 were wounded.

– The largest percentage of incidents—45.6 percent—took place in a commercial environment (73 incidents), followed by 24.3 percent that took place in an educational environment (39 incidents). The remaining incidents occurred at the other location types specified in the study—open spaces, military and other government properties, residential properties, houses of worship, and health care facilities.

Hey, only a thousand or so casualties in these mass shootings! What’s the big deal?

Well, there is this:

IN ONE YEAR ON AVERAGE* (all ages)
More than 100,000 people in America are shot in murders, assaults, suicides & suicide attempts, unintentional shootings, or by police intervention.

31,637 people die from gun violence:
11,690 people are murdered.
18,738 people kill themselves.
591 people are killed unintentionally.
362 are killed by police intervention.
256 die but intent is not known.

74,835 people survive gun injuries:
53,890 people are injured in an attack.
3,753 people survive a suicide attempt.
16,405 people are shot unintentionally.
787 people are shot by police intervention.

Just saying.

Germany’s creeping satisfactionism
by Tom Sullivan

Germans are much happier with their lot than Americans, writes Harold Meyerson. Satisfaction tracks more closely with a country’s economy than its style of government, according to a recent Pew survey of the world’s economies. Nine out of ten people in countries with “advanced” economies were dissatisfied with theirs, and eight felt their economies were “bad.” Except Germany.

A strong, manufacturing-driven export economy (with the Euro a factor) and a weaker financial sector sets Germany apart from the United States. Whereas 58 percent in the U.S. feel the economy is bad, 85 percent of Germans felt things in Germany were going well. Why?

Many of Germany’s most successful companies are privately owned and not subject to investor pressure to reward large shareholders through practices prevalent in the United States, such as slashing wages, cutting back on worker training and research and development and buying back stock. Publicly traded German companies still retain their earnings to invest in expansions, a practice that was the U.S. norm until the doctrine of rewarding shareholders with nearly all of a company’s profits took hold during the past quarter-century.

In the United States, major shareholders and the top executives whose pay increasingly is linked to stock price control the corporate boards that approve these kinds of distributions of their companies’ earnings. In Germany, however, the profits that companies rack up are shared more broadly because shareholders don’t dominate corporate boards. By law, any sizable German company must divide the seats on its board equally between management- and worker-selected representatives. Any company with more than 50 employees must have managers meet regularly with workers’ councils to discuss and negotiate issues of working conditions (but not pay). These arrangements have largely ensured that the funding is there for the world’s best worker-training programs and that the most highly skilled and compensated jobs of such globalized German firms as Daimler and Siemens remain in Germany. They have ensured that prosperity is widely shared in Germany — not concentrated at the top, as it is in the United States.

Damned socialists. No … wait.

Some friends observed that tax and economic policy changes in this country over the last thirty years have shifted the business model from one that encouraged, long, slow growth sustained by good schools, sound infrastructure, and reinvestment — more like the German model — to one that encourages financialization and get-rich-quick schemes. Make your money fast and cash out. If that’s not your business model, said one from experience, American venture capitalists are uninterested in your better mousetrap.

Says Meyerson, since the 1980s U.S. business and government leaned on Germany “to get with the Wall Street program.” The Germans declined. Their economy did not. Overall, Germans seem rather satisfied with the results.

What Rush Limbaugh’s Attack On Activists Is Telling Us by Spocko

Over at Daily Kos Leslie Salzillo wrote a great diary that breaks down the ‘secret story’ that Rush Limbaugh’s crisis communications person wrote about the StopRush movement. Rush Limbaugh Must Be Terrified – He’s Releasing Secret ‘Facts’ About StopRush

Salzillo does a great job pointing out all the nonsense in the report. I want to point out to people why Rush is attacking activists now and how I view the attack as a gift to the community of people alerting advertisers.

Rush’s Report “The Hidden Story Behind Stop Rush” tells us what they are telling the distributors, radio stations and sales reps.  That’s good news, activists can use that information to keep pushing.

When I developed my method, I always liked to learn what the sales rep at KSFO was telling advertisers about the letters, calls, and faxes(!) they were getting from me and my friends.

They tried multiple ways to discount the work I was doing. They made excuses, told lies, attacked my character and threatened me financially and legally. Then I would incorporate their criticisms into my next round of letters to advertisers.

That is why this article is a gift. They are telling us the lines they are giving to radio station owners on why Rush isn’t bringing in the revenue he used to. They are also telling the station owners and sales reps what to tell the advertisers who are leaving.

Things like:

 1) These people aren’t from your community
 2) They aren’t your customers
 3) There are only a handful of them–it’s all robots
 4) They are afraid to use their real names for no good reason
 5) It’s all a big conspiracy, not a grass roots movement.

 In sum. they tell the advertisers, “You are hearing from out-of-state bullies and cowards, paid for by George Soros. Ignore them and keep advertising on the Rush Limbaugh show!”

 (Fun Fact: The reason they think this is what is happening is because that is what THEY do. Projection, it’s not just in movie theaters these days.)

Another thing this report tells us is that the distributors have put pressure on Rush to DO something, such as stop saying such offensive things. But he will not. So they attack the activists.

That is what KSFO, ABC/Disney and the hosts did to me. So instead of the management telling the hosts to stopping spewing violent rhetoric and bigotry, they went after me as a way to stop their financial pain.

 Rush will not modify what he says, so he attacks the people who capture the clips, Media Matters, and all the activists who use them to point out what he is saying to advertisers.

 Putting this movement on the “George Soros funded” Media Matters, and naming them as the leader kills two birds with one stone in their minds. (BTW, am I glad I used a pseudonym? You bet. Who I am would have been the focus instead of the issues of copyright and what the hosts were saying on air.)

The other target for this article are the Rush listeners. They are being educated too. As usual they are given pre-digested talking points to use when questioned about an issue.

The report cues up the real bullies by listing some of the twitter handles of the people involved in the StopRush campaign. I can almost hear the dog whistle to listeners, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” If the activists didn’t have “good evidence” to be afraid before, they will now. Be sure to file the police reports of your death threats folks!

I’m sure women on the internet objecting politely to advertisers about Rush Limbaugh’s comments about women won’t be subject to anything vile by Limbaugh fans. /sarcasm

“Advertisers aren’t leaving Rush because of what he says, but because they are being bullied by those mean ol’ libs! Rush is the real victim here.” – a fine red whine, circa 2014

Remember, the Right always wants to be The Victim, especially when they are in power.

The Leverage Point for Advertisers Isn’t Money, It’s Brand

The people whose voices really matter to the distributors and stations are the advertisers. The advertisers have figured out that Rush isn’t going to change. Appealing to their desire to make more money by advertising on Rush’s show isn’t going to work like it used to. Now not supporting Rush is a message about who they are and what their brand is.

Before writing an advertiser I always would go to the advertisers’ web page and look at their values statements. I asked them. “Does this host, who you are sponsoring, reflect your values? This is what you say on your page.” I also looked at the people who worked there, who are they as people? I found lots of decent folks, just like you and I.

That is also why I contacted not just the person responsible for advertising, but the head of HR, marketing and PR. They all needed to hear what it was that the hosts were saying that they were paying for. The fact that many times the head of PR and HR were women helped clarify the case.

Additionally these people usually helped write those value statements and their brand identities. Sometimes these people cared about their brand because it also reflected something about who THEY are. Very few people and companies like to associate themselves or their brand with sexism, racism, bigotry and violent rhetoric. Today we also can include homophobia.

 However, some were fine with what Rush was saying. I was always polite as a way of telling them I respected their decisions although I didn’t agree with them.

The Advertisers Chooses. Let the Host Taint Your Brand or Walk Away.

The Spocko Method isn’t a boycott, I never threaten anyone. I ask them. “Do you agree with what he is saying? Is this host for you? Imagine the host wearing your company logo shirt and saying the things he said on air at a company meeting. Do you still want to sponsor him?”

This reports shows they are grasping at straws (and straw men!) in order to stop the continuing financial pain. By focusing on the activists they are telling the advertisers, “We have no intention of changing anything, your money isn’t that important to us, we’ll find some RW think tanks to funnel us money.”

The entire radio industry advertising model for RW radio has been upset. They don’t like to talk about it, but the managers and distributors are hoping the money hemorrhage will stop during political advertising season. But that is a temporary reprieve. They have lost thousands of customer facing advertising and they aren’t coming back as long as Rush keeps being Rush.

 If I allowed my human emotions to show now I would be smiling.

QOTD: Protect and serve edition

by digby

So some cops were pulling over female drivers in Oklahoma an raping them. A local TV station asked a police officer what women could do to protect themselves in these situations. From the sound of it, not much.

But he did have one excellent piece of advice. He said the best tip he can give a woman who doesn’t want to be raped by a police officer is: “follow the law in the first place so you don’t get pulled over.”

That ought to keep the beyotches in line.

Update: Here’s another good piece of advice from someone who cares:

Hannah Graham: When You Walk Around Drunk in Half a Shirt Alone @ Night, This Happens

By Debbie Schlussel

Is it just me . . . or are you also tired of hearing the sob stories about Hannah Graham, the missing University of Virginia student with the weirdly “sculpted” eyebrows?

Not that I excuse any crime or violence, but if you walk around alone and drunk in half a shirt at night, this kind of thing does happen. I mean, do people really not get this exercise in the utterly obvious?

On Sunday afternoon, while I was at the gym running on the treadmill, I watched as every single cable news network broke into Graham’s teary-eyed parents’ press conference. Her father held up some silly stuffed animal rabbit and blamed her disappearance on the fact that she forgot this lucky child’s toy at home. I burst out laughing at this absurdity. I understand these parents are at wit’s end about their missing daughter. But, um, sorry, but her disappearance had nothing to do with this dumb stuffed animal. She’s an adult . . . or is supposed to be. And instead of maybe realizing that her disappearance might have had something to do with not acting like one, they blame it on her forgetting the plaything accoutrement of a kid. Yes, if she had only had her stuffed rabbit in her possession while gallivanting drunk and alone in almost no shirt on the dark streets of Richmond, she’d be fine. Right?

She sure seems like a lovely person.

I think I need to start drinking now …and it’s early. But I’ll do it at home. Clearly, just leaving your house is an invitation to kidnapping, rape and mayhem these days.

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Isolationist in everything but non-stop war

by digby

My piece in Salon today is about the right’s allege “isolationism” and Ted Cruz, specifically about how he’s framing the war against Islamic terrorism as a Christian crusade:

What can we say about these rather startling comments from presidential candidate Ted Cruz?

It’s not our job to be social workers in Iraq and put them all on expanded Medicaid. It is our job to kill terrorists who have declared war on America and who have demonstrated the intention and capability to murder innocent Americans…ISIS right now is the face of evil. They are crucifying Christians, they are persecuting Christians, they are beheading children. They have promised to take Jihad to our shores …”

He has said that they are “right now crucifying Christians in Iraq, literally nailing Christians to trees.” Having seen no corroborating reports of Christians being crucified, Politifact checked out Cruz’s contention and found that in the city of Raqqa, ISIS headquarters, the terrorist groups had tied some dead Muslim rivals up on crosses but there was no record of nailing anyone to them — or on trees either.

What makes Cruz’s comments so interesting is that he’s also said the U.S. should “bomb ISIS back into the stone age” which means he’s for all-out holy war. As Peter Beinert observed in this piece about Cruz’s crusade, Cruz is a “militaristic pessimist” because he has no interest in the idea of helping the warring parties to find some reconciliation. In his view, they’ve been fighting for centuries and they can keep fighting for centuries more. It’s only the fact that they’re allegedly killing Christians that makes it necessary to unleash hell — which he clearly is in favor of unleashing with everything we can bring to bear 

[…]

Ted Cruz is the guy who best represents what so many in the Beltway persist in seeing as a new “isolationism” in the GOP. It’s isolationist in the sense that the only American overseas involvement they countenance is military action. We should not offer foreign aid or diplomatic initiative or humanitarian help but our war machine should be used liberally and without prejudice whenever it suits our interest to use it. That’s what it’s there for.

Is the right making public schools into re-education camps?

by digby

No, actually, they’re just trying to make public schools into conservative propaganda mills. Fortunately, the teachers an the students are having none of it:

Hundreds of students walked out of classrooms around suburban Denver on Tuesday in protest over a conservative-led school board proposal to focus history education on topics that promote citizenship, patriotism and respect for authority, in a show of civil disobedience that the new standards would aim to downplay.

The youth protest in the state’s second-largest school district follows a sick-out from teachers that shut down two high schools in the politically and economically diverse area that has become a key political battleground.

Student participants said their demonstration was organized by word of mouth and social media. Many waved American flags and carried signs, including messages that read “There is nothing more patriotic than protest.”

“I don’t think my education should be censored. We should be able to know what happened in our past,” said Tori Leu, a 17-year-old student who protested at Ralston Valley High School in Arvada.

The school board proposal that triggered the walkouts in Jefferson County calls for instructional materials that present positive aspects of the nation and its heritage. It would establish a committee to regularly review texts and course plans, starting with Advanced Placement history, to make sure materials “promote citizenship, patriotism, essentials and benefits of the free-market system, respect for authority and respect for individual rights” and don’t “encourage or condone civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law.”

The proposal from Julie Williams, part of the board’s conservative majority, has not been voted on and was put on hold last week. She didn’t return a call from The Associated Press seeking comment Tuesday, but previously told Chalkbeat Colorado, a school news website, that she recognizes there are negative events that are part of U.S. history that need to be taught.

“There are things we may not be proud of as Americans,” she said. “But we shouldn’t be encouraging our kids to think that America is a bad place.”

A student demonstrator, Tyrone G. Parks, a senior at Arvada High School, said Tuesday that the nation’s foundation was built on civil protests, “and everything that we’ve done is what allowed us to be at this point today. And if you take that from us, you take away everything that America was built off of.”

The proposal comes from an elected board with three conservative members who took office in November. The other two board members were elected in 2011 and oppose the new plan, which was drafted in response to a national framework for teaching history that supporters say encourages discussion and critical thinking. Detractors, however, say it puts an outsize emphasis on the nation’s problems.

My favorite thing about this is that they admit that all the “bad things” happened but just don’t want kids to know about them lest they think the less of the United States. I don’t know about you but if there’s one thing that makes me think the less of a nation or a culture is airbrushing their own history and being unwilling to admit error. It’s a very, very bad lesson for people to learn. And it makes it impossible to progress. But then, I suppose that’s the point.

There have been plenty of examples of nations that did this and the right used to think they were terrible places. But they have become what they once abhorred. This is Soviet-style education, teaching the next generation not to think critically, not to question, not to evolve in the face of things that do not work. They want to teach them to believe America is perfect and that they should obey authority. Period.

Sounds like a great place to live. Unfortunately for the totalitarian right, there is just too much information available these days to pull it off. ;You can’t airbrush the internet.

Update: Also too, I forgot. This is why the much loathed “public employee unions” in this case the teachers are important. If you don’t have them these authoritarians will just fire anyone who doesn’t agree with them. That’s how they roll.

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