“Does this penis make me look fat?”
by digby
According to the comments there is no wage gap because the fact is that men work at jobs that are harder to do and are better at doing them so they deserve more money. Also too, there is no such thing as sexism.
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Little pink bits
by digby
I know, I know this is from The Onion right?
It isn’t. It’s for real:
Read more about the Komen/Baker Hughes frack-for-the-cure effort here. Watch a little promotional video about it here. And then share the contents of your heart with Susan G. Komen headquarters: right over here.
As the story explains, when the pink drill bits are shipped in their boxes (and, yes, the boxes are pink, too), they come packed with information about “breast health facts, breast cancer risk factors and screening tips.”
And exactly whose breast cancer awareness quotient will be bolstered out there on the well pad? Inside the trailers and the trucks? Down on the drilling floor? Up on the derrick?
“The hope is that the roughneck who cracks open that container learns a little more about the disease that afflicts 200,000 women per year.”
They’re not joking.
The reporter darkly observes:
Here’s what I’m wagering that roughneck does not learn from the literature shipped with his drill bit this October: I’m betting he does not read about the recent study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control that found dangerous levels of benzene in the urine of workers in the unconventional (aka fracking) oil and gas industry. Benzene is a proven human carcinogen.
Komen for the Cure seems to have completely lost the thread …
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From the sucker born every minute files
by digby
Fergawdsakes. People are stocking up on “Ebola” survival gear:
“I really can’t see that that’s an appropriate or reasonable response,” Arthur Reingold, Head of Epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley, told The Huffington Post. “It’s reasonable for people to be concerned, though I would argue they should be more concerned about the dreadful situation in West Africa.”
“The fact is we don’t have transmission on the Ebola virus here in the community,” Reingold said. “I just can’t see why anybody would want to spend money on those kinds of things in response to concern about Ebola.”
Nonetheless, fears about the spread of Ebola have led to a spike in sales of disease protection supplies. LifeSecure, a Chicago-based emergency preparedness company, has sold more than 100 “Extended Infection Protection” emergency supply kits since officials confirmed the first case of Ebola in the U.S. last week, according to owner David Scott. Typically, LifeSecure sells just a handful of such kits per week.
“People are being reminded that there is a chance something that’s on another continent can make it here in one flight,” Scott told HuffPost. “Sooner or later, these kinds of supplies will have to be used generally by the entire population.”
Government officials and health experts say such an outbreak is extremely unlikely. But Bloomberg News reported that LifeSecure’s infection kits, along with simpler items like preparedness books and surgical masks, have been flying off the shelves.
Survivalists or “doomsday preppers” are also selling advice. For $2.99, Kindle owners can own “Ebola: Natural Remedies + Government Conspiracies,” an e-book published Sept. 4 that accuses the U.S. and the CDC of knowingly allowing the deadly virus to come to America. (In August, two Americans infected abroad had been brought home so they could recover in American hospitals.)
I guess e can officially call the virus a “job creator” now. Somebody’s making money off of it anyway.
Luckily only tens of millions of Americans are really worried about getting Ebola so that’s reassuring.
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I guess we should be glad he wasn’t shot
by digby
Seriously, this could have ended very, very badly:
Ricky and Stacy Tyler have fostered 18-year-old DeShawn Currie for about a year. The Tylers, their three young children and DeShawn moved to Fuquay-Varina in July. They said while they’re still getting to know their neighbors, it’s hurtful someone would assume DeShawn was a burglar just for going about his normal routine of walking home after school.
“He’s my baby boy just as much as my other three children are,” said Stacy.
She left the side door to their home unlocked Monday for DeShawn, who was coming home early from school.
Fuquay-Varina police said when a neighbor saw DeShawn walk in; they called 911 to report a break-in. Soon, three officers were inside the house, all to DeShawn’s surprise.
“They was like, ‘Put your hands on the door,'” said DeShawn. “I was like, ‘For what? This is my house.’ I was like, ‘Why are y’all in here?'”
DeShawn said he became angry when officers pointed out the pictures of the Tyler’s three younger children on the mantle, assuming he didn’t belong there. An argument ensued and DeShawn said one of the officers pepper-sprayed him in the face.
Nice.
You can certainly understand why parents of young black males are absolutely freaked out with worry about their sons walking the streets of this country. It breaks my heart to hear them talk about it:
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“I like your gun. Give it to me”
by digby
Hey, it’s a rough world out there:
According to KOIN Channel 6, 21-year-old William Coleman III of Gresham was standing and talking to his cousin shortly after 2:00 a.m. on Saturday when another man approached him and asked for a cigarette.
The other man — described as a black male around 6 feet tall with a lean build and wavy hair — asked Coleman about his weapon, a Walther P22 pistol.
He then pulled a pistol from the waistband of his pants, pointed it at Coleman and said, “I like your gun. Give it to me.”
And he did. Smart kid.
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Picking sides
By Tom Sullivan
The Boston Globe’s Noah Bierman examines the struggle between the populist, Elizabeth Warren Wing of the Democratic Party and corporate-backed, Third Way centrists. When critics charge there is no difference between the major parties, Democrats have their Wall Street Wing to thank:
Third Way’s founders dispute that they are doing Wall Street’s bidding or are trying to leave the poor behind. They also insist their financial supporters on the board of trustees do not influence the organization’s political and policy positions.
And yet, Bierman points out,
Third Way’s insistence on linking tax hikes to a grand bargain — which has been impossible to obtain in the Obama era — has a direct bearing on the wallets of the group’s wealthy funders.
Among those are Goldman Sachs Gives. The charitable fund donated a total of $850,000 in 2010 and 2011. So even as the middle class erodes and the party itself moves further left, “financial dependence on Wall Street effectively ties the hands of the Democratic Party,” contends former Clinton labor secretary, Robert Reich.
In a surprising attack on the Warren Wing in the The Wall Street Journal last December, Third Way warned that Warren-style economic populism is a dead end for Democrats. Populist candidates may appeal to the party’s liberal base, writes Bierman, but sound anti-business to the party’s corporate funders.
“That really has never generated a hell of a lot of support on Election Day,” said former JP Morgan Chase senior executive, former Obama chief of staff, and Third Way board member, William M. Daley — no doubt also an authority on neighborhood organizing.
Or not. Especially since the country hasn’t heard a Warren-style populist message since FDR. And you know how that worked out.
As a matter of fact, while Third Way defends the Democrats’ right flank, the rest of the party is moving left, according to Harold Meyerson in The American Prospect. Since 2000, Gallup reports, as party moderates shrank from 44 to 36 percent, the ranks of self-described liberals swelled from 29 to 43 percent. Shifting demography fueled by immigration is one reason.
Nonetheless, business-cozy groups such as Third Way (supposedly concerned with electing Democrats) favor trade agreements unpopular with the Democratic base, but that cater to the “job creators” who bankroll them. But those agreements tend to create more new jobs offshore for people who cannot vote in U.S. elections! Meanwhile, the profit creators — American workers themselves — see fewer of those rising corporate profits in their paychecks. Therefore, as the American middle class continues to shrink, Meyerson believes it’s time for the party to — as both Roosevelts did — pick a side.
Meyerson offers several prescriptions you can read about here.
Village Democrats are consistently about a decade behind their base. Their dependency on corporate money is a big reason why. Money has such a nice, insulating effect that way. But it’s time party leaders caught on and caught up. Perhaps defending the status quo is the real dead end.
No wrongdoing, no accountability
by digby
A Habersham County grand jury has decided not to charge any of the law enforcement officers involved in the botched drug raid that disfigured a toddler.
Nineteen-month-old Bounkham “Bou Bou” Phonesavanh’s nose was detached from his face after a stun grenade landed in his playpen during the raid, carried out by a Habersham SWAT team in May. According to an incident report obtained from the Habersham sheriff’s office, deputies were told to anticipate a cache of weapons and armed guards at the home.
A search inside turned up neither guns nor drugs. Wanis Thonetheva, who didn’t even live at the house, was arrested later that day without incident and charged only with possession of methamphetamine.
Mawuli Davis, the attorney for the Phonesavanh family, said the family was “devastated” to learn no criminal charges would be brought.
The 23-person grand jury heard evidence for six days before releasing their 15-page presentment.
The Feds are looking into the case now. But it doesn’t change the fact that the de facto police immunity from prosecution for negligence in this country is now killing a lot of people. Some things are beyond the pale and to fail to check to see if children are on the premises before throwing incendiary devices into it is one of them. Obviously, there was no need to use these battlefield tactics for such a low level crime in the first place but if they insist on using their robo-cop gear they have a special responsibility to ensure that innocent people are not in the line of fire. No one is more innocent than a baby. They should have to pay a price for that failure. Any of the rest of us would for doing something this derelict and irresponsible.
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Fox News Alert: Our anchors are idiots
by digby
Gretchen Carlson:
And do we trust that we know all the answers yet about Benghazi? What more and more people seem to be asking about Ebola now isn’t that they are necessarily scared about actually getting the disease, but that they’re scared the government agencies responsible with helping us if we do get sick might not be up to the task. So if Ebola becomes a bigger issue, the question still remains: will we be safe?
I won’t even address the inanity of bringing Benghazi into this. The idea that this person thinks it’s “government agencies” who are responsible “with” helping us if we get sick is puzzling as well. I guess she’s talking about the CDC, but surely she’s aware that the cases of Ebola we’ve seen in the US are being treated in hospitals. Does she think they are special government hospitals we’ve created under Obamacare or something?
She’s not the only one though. Here’s Ron Fournier, who doesn’t even work for Fox:
How much faith can the public summon toward an administration that used incompetence as a defense in scandals involving the IRS, Benghazi, and Obamacare; that lied about its surveillance of Americans; and that just recently acknowledged dangerous misjudgments regarding the Secret Service and ISIS?
sigh …
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A Village oracle thinks everyone’s waiting for Jeb
by diugby
My Salon piece today opens with an explanation of The Village and a discussion of one of the most Villagey of Villagers:
Which brings me to Mark Halperin’s latest. Halperin is perhaps the quintessential Villager, a man who exhales conventional wisdom the way the rest of us exhale carbon dioxide. Though he lives in New York, he is a legacy Villager, his father having been an influential foreign policy expert respected by members of both parties. The younger Halperin became a political journalist eventually ascending to the highest levels of the celebrity media hierarchy as a “top political analyst.” Salon’s Alex Pareene granted Halperin the highest honor awarded to a Villager back in 2011 when he named him number one on the annual Political Hack list as the world’s laziest dispenser of conventional wisdom. In bestowing Halperin the first prize, after having been narrowly edged out the previous year by Richard Cohen (who will surely be a contender for something in 2014 for the chapter in his new book called “Ethnic Cleansing for a Better World”) Pareene noted:
He’s still both fixated solely on the horse race and also uniquely bad at analyzing the horse race.
That election cycle featured a brilliant Halperin analysis and forecast about the upcoming presidential race:
I think [Donald Trump is] much more serious about running than you do. He spent a fair amount of time about talking to people working for his campaign. I don’t know why he would have gone through hours and hours of meetings if it were all just a charade… [H]e, like Sarah Palin, looks at this field and says, this is a field that can be taken down by a strong, late entry. And if you’ve got the ability to manipulate the media as both of them do to an extraordinary extent, you could imagine a scenario of getting in late and riding a populist wave to the Republican nomination. It’s never happened before, but they both have the ability, I think, and they both have the ambition to think about doing it more seriously than you do.
You read that right. The shop steward of the union of Village sages believed that both Sarah Palin and Donald Trump had the ability to ride a “populist wave” to the top of the GOP ticket.
And now he thinks it’s Jeb’s to lose. So much for the Bush dynasty.
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Some people would call this harassment
by digby
… and I’m not talking about what Lois Lerner was doing:
Lois Lerner attempted to bust into a neighbor’s home uninvited, in a desperate attempt to avoid answering questions about her involvement in the targeting of conservative groups.
Jason Mattera, author of the explosive new book CRAPITALISM: Liberals Who Make Millions Swiping Your Tax Dollars, recently caught up with the disgraced former IRS official in her ritzy neighborhood outside Washington, D.C.
Mattera, who publishes the Daily Surge, asked Lerner if she had any regrets for her role in the ongoing IRS corruption case, and if she wanted to take the opportunity to give a genuine apology to conservatives for using the force of government to harass and single them out.
But, similar to her testimony before Congress where she pleaded the fifth, Lerner didn’t show any remorse, and, on a more latent level, showed her disregard for people’s privacy rights in general. In the video above, you can see Lerner fleeing from Mattera as she rushes through what appears to be a random person’s front yard.“Could you call the police?” Lerner begs an elderly woman, while pounding on her door. “Please let me in. These guys are with the press and they’re not leaving me alone.” The elderly woman is heard telling Lerner that she just had surgery and was in no position physically to let her in the house.
But that didn’t stop Lerner. She implores that same elderly woman to open up her garage instead.
“It’s almost a perfect proxy for her actions in the targeting scandal,” Mattera said.“She keeps badgering an innocent woman with zero regard for her wishes. It’s an incredible crystallization of Lerner’s character or lack thereof.”
The natural question the viewer asks, he notes, is, “If she’s willing to barge into a person’s home, how much more so is she willing to barge into a conservative’s IRS records to inflict her personal will?”
Eventually, the elderly woman’s husband sees Lerner’s antics and kicks her off his property. “Out. Out!” he demanded.
I can’t help but be reminded of this from Michelle Malkin back in 2004:
After meeting in Washington for its annual convention this weekend, NPA members descended on the Washington, D.C., homes of Labor Secretary Elaine Chao and White House adviser Karl Rove. NPA targeted Chao after the Department of Labor refused to meet with the group and acquiesce to its demand to “form a partnership” to “improve opportunities for low-wage workers.” In other words, the gang didn’t get a government contract through legal channels. So it’s going to bully its way into the public coffers.
An estimated mob of 800 protesters trampled on Rove’s lawn to demand passage of Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch’s abominable “DREAM” Act granting amnesty to illegal alien college students and allowing them to receive in-state tuition discounts. The Washington Post reported that after chanting and knocking on Rove’s door, the “crowd then grew more aggressive, fanning around the three accessible sides of Rove’s house, tracking him through the many windows, waving signs that read ‘Say Yes to DREAM’ and pounding on the glass.” An angry Rove called the authorities and berated the protest leaders for driving the children inside his home to tears.
As a vocal critic of Rove’s idiotic pro-illegal alien policies, I am not all that sad to see Rove come face to face with the consequences of his politically expedient ideas. (Rove is the one who declared that Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., the nation’s leading advocate for secure borders and immigration enforcement, would “never darken the White House door.”) Now Rove knows how millions of ordinary Americans — who don’t have Secret Service protection — feel when illegal invaders overrun their homes and darken their doors.
That said, NPA’s militant tactics cross the bounds of decent political debate. (Aren’t liberals always the ones moaning about the need for civility?) Grievance-mongering belongs on the Capitol steps, not private doorsteps.
For the record, I wasn’t in favor of that action either. I do think political actors of all persuasions should not be stalked at their homes. That’s an awful video.
And Malkin, you’ll recall, went on the publicize the phone numbers of some college student in Santa Cruz and then stalk the family of Graehm Frost to report that they had granite counters in their kitchen and there fore had no right to government help for health care for their sick kid.
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