Month: October 2014

“Oh, you got a sweet swing”

by digby

I mentioned the other day that my friend Adam Wool is running for state office in Alaska and I said that the political scene up there needs new blood. Boy does it ever. The other day there was a debate between Congressman Don Young and his Democratic opponent Forrest Dunbar. During the debate Young called Dunbar immature and naive to which Dunbar replied, “immaturity was the thing you said behind the curtain there, Congressman Young.” Young blustered in response, demanding that Dunbar tell him what he said. Nobody knew what they were talking about and the debate continued.

Here’s what happened:

Dunbar, reached Friday and pressed about the encounter, said the two were walking near each other backstage when Young said angrily, “You’re not from Cordova any more than I’m from Fort Yukon. I had you looked into.”

Dunbar, raised in that Southcentral Alaska town after his family moved there from Eagle in the Interior when he was a child, said he tried politely responding to Young. Young grew up in California and moved to Alaska as a young man, not long after serving in the U.S. Army in the mid-1950s.

Dunbar, who now lives in Anchorage, said he was puzzled and in a friendly gesture touched Young on his arm lightly and asked: “What are you talking about?” Then:

“He freaked out,” said Dunbar. “There is no other way to describe it.

“He kind of snarled at me and said, ‘Don’t you ever touch me. Don’t ever touch me. The last guy who touched me ended up on the ground dead,’” said Dunbar.

Before walking away from the congressman, Dunbar said he waved his hand in a dismissive gesture, saying, “Whatever, man.”

Young replied, according to Dunbar, with a taunting, swishing motion of his own hand: “Oh, you got a sweet swing. You got a sweet swing.”

Nice. Much of this was verified by a journalist who witnessed the event.

Apparently Young has a habit of doing this. He even had to explain in this very debate what happened in a similar incident with a staffer:

During the debate, Young explained his reaction in another infamous incident, when a congressional staffer touched him unexpectedly this summer, and Young twisted his arm.

Young told the Kodiak audience he is a military veteran who has been trained. “Don’t touch me unexpectedly. Don’t do that. He did. He won’t again,” said Young of the staffer.

He’s obviously got some issues. Big ones.

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And yet some things in this world are very good

by digby

And this is one of them:

My blood runs cold. Slick warmongering from a centerfold

by digby

For all you folks who thought that the ghost of isolationist Robert Taft had returned from the great beyond to take over the GOP, this should give you pause:

Radical Islamic terrorists are threatening to cause the collapse of our country President Obama is confused about the nature of the threat. Not me. I want to secure the border, keep out the people who would do us harm and restore America’s leadership in the world.”

Simple, straightforward and to the point. And if you think it can’t work I think you’re being naive. This is mother’s milk to a whole lot of Americans.

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One step at a time, one state at a time

by digby

For all you people out there who think there’s no way we can ever go backwards, just take a look at this:

Amendment 1 on the Tennessee ballot in November would strip the right to abortion from the state’s constitution, the first time that any constitution in the U.S. would be amended to remove an established right. It would also be the first time the word abortion is added to any constitution and singled out as the only medical procedure outside the zone of privacy.

This is the long game in action. It’s taken them almost 15 years to get over the constitutional hurdles to make this happen. They just kept working it and working it. They’re getting ready for that big Supreme Court case that kicks it back to the states:

It has taken a decade for anti-abortion activists and their supporters in the Tennessee legislature to clear all the hurdles to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot. The drive for an amendment began after the Tennessee Supreme Court in 2000 ruled that three out of four restrictions on abortion passed by the legislature and challenged by Planned Parenthood and the ACLU were medically unnecessary and posed an “undue burden” on women, rendering them unconstitutional. “A woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy is a vital part of the right to privacy guaranteed by the Tennessee Constitution,” the judges wrote in their opinion.

To get on the ballot, Amendment 1 had to pass both houses of the Tennessee legislature, the General Assembly and the state senate, not once but twice, the first time by majority vote and then by two-thirds, and in consecutive years. With Republicans a supermajority in the House and a majority in the Senate, victory was assured by 2011 with the vote scheduled for this November. It is the state’s marquee race, with both sides understanding Amendment 1 could be a model that could extend far beyond Tennessee should it pass.

It says, “Nothing in this Constitution secures or protects a right to abortion or requires the funding of an abortion. The people retain the right through their elected state representatives and state senators to enact, amend, or repeal statutes regarding abortion, including, but not limited to, circumstances of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest or when necessary to save the life of the mother.”

“If Amendment 1 does pass, it will open the floodgate and they will be passing every imaginable restriction they can come up with,” says Jeff Teague with Planned Parenthood of Middle and East Tennessee.
The first sentence is straightforward, but the second sentence is craftily written to leave the impression that exemptions are either in place, or could easily be put in place. “The language on the ballot is deceptive and deliberately so,” says Herron. What Amendment 1 would do is allow lawmakers to write and pass laws restricting abortion without having to worry about their constitutionality on the state level. “If you watch the Tennessee state legislature closely, it’s pretty clear they’re all about banning abortion with no exceptions,” says Steven Hershkowitz, spokesman for the Vote No on 1 campaign. “If Amendment 1 is approved, they could pass personhood and they wouldn’t even have to amend the constitution.”

You think that once a right is acknowledged in the constitution that it can’t ever be taken away. And in many cases that’s probably true. But not when it comes to women. Allowing each individual women to control reproduction is a fundamental threat to the established order. They aren’t going to quit with this.

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The don’t even know they’re bigots

by digby

Via Raw Story:

Bill Maher and author and neuroscientist Sam Harris battled actor/director Ben Affleck on Real Time on Friday concerning Maher’s recent remarks criticizing Islam.

“Why are you so hostile about this?” Maher asked Affleck.

“It’s gross, it’s racist,” Affleck replied.
[…]

“Islam is the motherload of bad ideas,” Harris argued.

“Jesus,” Affleck said in frustration.

“That’s just a fact,” Maher said, backing Harris up.

Journalist Nicholas Kristof then cut in, telling Maher he was painting an “incomplete” picture of the religion by failing to account reformers like activist Malala Yousafzai.

“Or how about the more than a billion people who aren’t fanatical, who don’t punish women, who just want to go to school, have some sandwiches, and don’t do any of the things you say all Muslims do?” Affleck said.

But Harris countered that the strongest voices in Islam belong to not only extremists, but conservative Muslims who, while criticizing terrorist groups, still follow practices that keep other members of their communities “immiserated.”

“It’s the only religion that acts like the mafia,” Maher said. “They will f*cking kill you if you say the wrong thing, draw the wrong picture, or write the wrong book.”

Former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele pointed out that Muslim clerics from several countries have condemned the actions of groups like the Islamic State, without getting much attention for it.

“Where was the coverage?” Steele asked. “Where was that story to create a different picture?”

Affleck then rebuffed Maher’s attempt to laugh the discussion off.

“I’m simply telling you, I disagree with you,” Affleck said, before Maher cut him off.

“I know, and we’re obviously not convincing anybody,” Maher said.

Maher did not address criticism directed toward him by religious scholar Reza Aslan, who said on CNN that his views on the religion were “not very sophisticated.”

I am an atheist myself so I suppose I should be sympathetic to Maher and Harris here, but I’m not because because it’s an irrational intellectually nonsensical point of view. There are 1.6 billion Muslims in this world. And a few thousand of them — hell it could be a few hundred thousand of them — are members of the extremist fringe that wreaking havoc in the middle east and causing everyone else to pee their pants. Nobody disputes that these particular Muslims are assholes. But you can’t blame the religion itself when there are more than a billion adherents who aren’t killing anybody and don’t want to kill anybody. As Affleck says, they’re just going about their lives, trying to do their best for their kids, working, praying, screwing — everything everyone does. If Islam is an inherently violent religion, then more than a billion of its believers don’t seem to be getting the word.

It’s infuriating. Do we condemn all of Christianity because of Operation Rescue? Is it ok to condemn all of Judaism because of the violent right wing settlers? Is Buddhism inherently violent because some Buddhist monks in Myanmar and killing people left and right? It’s not as if we haven’t seen exactly the same behavior among humans forever for entirely secular, avaricious, tribal, egomaniacal, nationalistic reasons. This is what we do! That this particular group of human assholes has seized upon religion for their justification for it is meaningless. It’s always something.

And yet, we’re not just hearing this from Maher and Harris who see themselves a clear thinkers because they are politically incorrect atheists who aren’t afraid to call out any religion’s hypocrisy and true nature. This is coming from people like Chris Cuomo and that team of braindead bozos on CNN who refused to hear what Reza Aslan was saying. This isn’t good. In the post 9/11 period there was a lot of visceral hostility to Muslims in this country (and Sikhs and anyone else that dense Americans thought looked like they might be terrorists.) But President Bush went out of his way to make sure that he didn’t give permission to his yahoo followers to demonize the religion itself. (I don’t think he personally meant the “crusades” remark literally — he isn’t that scholarly.) With ISIS it seems that that they’re just letting themselves go. And its penetrated the media bubble.

Maher and Harris are celebrity iconoclasts and I’m glad that Affleck wasn’t afraid to call them out on their smug bigotry. But as an avid media watcher, it’s obvious they are not alone and it’s worrisome. Watching Fox News right now is like watching a lurid horror movie where diseased monsters are invading the country, beheading people at random and infecting everyone else with an incurable, fatal disease. They have people on there who are literally agitating for a total ban of all travel to and from the United States. I’m going to guess the old stand-by of “glassing Mecca” has been whispered as well. This could get out of hand.

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“You just get worn out, your spirit gets worn down”

by digby

I wonder how often this sort of thing happens?

Ashley Huff, a 23-year-old woman from the city of Commerce [Georgia], was the passenger in a car that was pulled over on July 2. Police noticed she had a spoon in her bag that had “some residue” on it. Huff told them it was just SpaghettiO sauce, but they slapped her with a charge of possession of methamphetamine.

Huff was jailed for about two weeks, then released on her own recognizance, her attorney, Chris van Rossem, told The Huffington Post. However, one of the conditions of her release was that she would make a series of court appointments, and after she missed one, she was reincarcerated on August 2.

Unable to afford to pay bond, Huff stayed behind bars until September 18, when a lab analysis found that the substance on the spoon contained no illicit substances.

Van Rossem speculated that the reason the crime lab analysis took so long was simply because of the sheer volume of cases the lab needs to process. Huff’s results, he said, actually came back “relatively quickly.”

Even though Huff knew she was innocent, during the weeks she sat in jail she was strongly considering taking a plea deal — and a permanent criminal record — just so she could get out, Van Rossem told HuffPost.

“You just get worn out, your spirit gets worn down,” the attorney said. “You reach a point where you’ll do anything just to get out of jail.”

Ok, so she missed one of her court appointments. That’s on her. But considering that she was being hounded for eating SpaghettiOs, one can’t exactly blame her. But to jail anyone anyone on a suspicion that some unidentified “substance” might be drugs is simply outrageous.

The horrifying stuff about plea bargains is sadly common. It’s also not uncommon for people to confess to crimes they didn’t commit simply to end the agony of interrogation or incarceration. What an incredible waste of time, money and energy.

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So this is what they mean by “voluntary”

by digby

So this is how that throwback Colorado school board proposes to change the AP History curriculum:

As an example, I note our slavery history. Yes, we practiced slavery. But we also ended it voluntarily, at great sacrifice, while the practice continues in many countries still today! Shouldn’t our students be provided that viewpoint? This is part of the argument that America is exceptional. Does our APUSH Framework support or denigrate that position?

Apparently, this woman doesn’t know that one of the most exceptional historical facts about America was that we were last Western nation to outlaw slavery by a long shot. And I’d guess she missed class the day they discussed that little dust-up from 1860 to 1865. (Of course, it’s always possible that like so many wingnuts she has thinks the civil war wasn’t about slavery at all. It’s just a coincidence that the country “voluntarily ended it” after over half a million people died over the most important moral cause humankind has ever known: states’ rights.

This is why you need teacher’s unions and tenure. When people like this take over school boards (and this isn’t the first time) they will happily fire anyone who teaches evolution and refuses to teach the kids that the US “voluntarily ended slavery.”

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America’s Dunning-Kruger defect
by Tom Sullivan

The two middle-aged aged women spoke with an English accent familiar from Monty Python sketches.

“Look at that one there,” said the first. “It’s got a swastika on it.”

I was traveling in Europe after college and visiting the Louvre in Paris. I was standing in the Roman antiquities section beside two British tourists. Before us, a glass case filled with ornate silver bowls and trays – ancient relics covered with intricate designs.

“Look at that one there,” said the first. “It’s got a swastika on it. Must be German.”

Her companion read the little white card lying in front of the tray, and in a non sequitur I remember to this day, said, “‘Donated by friends of the Louvre.’ Well, there you are.”

A polite-sounding name for this is the Dunning-Kruger effect, “a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their ineptitude.” Here, let John Cleese himself explain it:

I bring this up because Digby twice commented this week on a CNN interview with Reza Aslan. The producers had invited the religion scholar onto the show to comment on ISIS and Islam-inspired violence. Aslan insisted that mistreatment of women, say, in Saudi Arabia and Iran was a product of local cultural, not the religion. Turkey and Indonesia are quite different cases, he offered as counter-examples. But the anchors were so unshakable in what they didn’t know they didn’t know about “Muslim countries” that Aslan grew visibly exasperated. And by his “tone” confirming – to CNN, at least – the innate “hostility” of a faith held peaceably by nearly a quarter of the world’s people.

It would be like pointing to Klan lynchings in the South as typical of all Christendom. But as tourists in a world not even our leaders bother to understand, many Americans simply don’t know what they don’t know. Mark Twain made great satire of clueless tourists a century and a half ago. It might still be funny today if it didn’t keep leading people in this country to support bombing Others in countries we can’t even find on a map.

As David Atkins recalled this week, during a briefing on the potential fallout just weeks before invading Iraq and unleashing a civil war, President George W. Bush appeared unaware of the distinction between Sunnis and Shiites. Bush allegedly told briefers, “I thought the Iraqis were Muslims!”

Tourists.

A student teacher I had once recounted a story from his visit to Stonehenge. Another American visitor had remarked that it was good that they’d put Stonehenge close to the road so the stones weren’t a long walk from the parking. That tourist might have been a future president or CNN host.

So Reza Aslan might as well be ISIS

by digby

… or at the very least he’s promoting violence. How? By having the temerity to get annoyed by the morons on CNN:

On Thursday, CNN’s Chris Cuomo said Aslan’s “tone” was an example of why people are scared of Muslims in the first place.

“He wound up kind of demonstrating what people are fearful about when they think of the faith in the first place, which is the hostility of it,” he said, as though responding verbally to attacks on your religion is some sort of wild-eyed practice.

“The Muslim world is responsible for a really big part of religious extremism right now,” Cuomo continued. “And they are unusually violent. They’re unusually barbaric in the places where it is happening. And it’s happening there more there than it is in other places. Do you therefore want to generalize? Of course not. But you do want to call a situation what it is.”

Jesus H. Christ. I watched the Aslan interview in real time and (and wrote about it here)was literally screaming at the TV. I don’t know how he kept from screaming, “read my lips, you ignoramuses! There’s no such thing as “Muslim countries” doing anything! They’re all different! Like Christian countries are all different.  Don’t you get it!?”   And I’m not Muslim! But hey, I guess my impatience with intellectual rot makes me a terrorist anyway.

Aslan was much, much more reserved than I was here at home. And yet, according to Chris Cuomo his mild annoyance at CNN’s version of Beavis and Butthead is what gives Islam a reputation for violence.

You know, I really am starting to get a little bit freaked out by the level of sheer inanity in the press right now. There is some serious stuff going on and they are all behaving like a bunch of hysterical children in a haunted house. It must be the bubble … Whatever it is they seem determined to create a panic.

A conversation about fraud

by digby

Bill Moyers and Bill Black talk about prosecuting mortgage fraud:

BILL MOYERS: Yet Eric Holder didn’t bring one criminal case against any executives in charge of the banks’ lending. You’ve called this the greatest strategic failure in the history of the Department of Justice.

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Yeah, in baseball terms they’re batting 0.000. But they’re not just batting 0.000, they took called strikes. They never got the bat off their shoulder and even swung. They didn’t even try.

BILL MOYERS: Do you remember when President Obama told “60 Minutes,” I think it was late December of 2011 that, “Some of the most damaging behavior on Wall Street…wasn’t illegal?”

WILLIAM K. BLACK: I do.

BILL MOYERS: What did you think?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: I thought that he was wrong. That in fact if he listened to what the United States of America has demonstrated in court and through investigations, the activity was clearly illegal, it was a violation of a whole series of laws that make it felonies.

And these are just the frauds that caused the crisis. In addition to the frauds that caused the crisis, which are massive and we could talk about, we have the largest cartel in world history. This was the bid rigging of Libor, which is an international standard that sets the prices on over $300 trillion in contracts.

A trillion is a thousand billion, right? And then we have the foreclosure frauds where we have false affidavits. Over 100,000 felonies in that context. And then we have the bid rigging on bond prices where all the major banks, according to the Justice Department, were involved.

And then we had the Federal Housing Finance Administration, a federal agency suing virtually every largest, of the largest 20 banks in the United States of America, saying they defrauded Fannie and Freddie through false sales. And it goes on and on.

The savings and loan debacle, we made over 30,000 criminal referrals. Here, zero criminal referrals as far as we can get any public information. So the first thing Holder should’ve done is reestablish the criminal referral process. Because, you know, banks don’t make criminal referrals against their own CEOs.

BILL MOYERS: Do you tell yourself, well, there is a justifiable and understandable reason why they don’t prosecute?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: No, there is no justifiable reason. Apparently modern financial regulators are vastly more sophisticated than we were as financial regulators 25 years ago. Because we had never figured out that the key to financial stability was leaving felons in charge of the largest financial institutions in the world.

Well, in their defense the Department of Justice was very busy prosecuting the real bad guys. Just yesterday they bagged a big one:

“Real Housewives of New Jersey” stars Teresa and Giuseppe “Joe” Giudice faced a harsh dose of unscripted reality Thursday at a federal courthouse in Newark, New Jersey.

The New Jersey U.S. Attorney’s office tweeted that Joe Giudice received a sentence of 41 months in prison while his wife was sentenced to 15 months. The couple had earlier pleaded guilty to multiple federal fraud charges.

In addition to the prison terms, Judge Salas sentenced each to two years of supervised release, and ordered the couple to forfeit $414,588. Additionally, the judge fined Giuseppe $10,000 and Teresa $8,000

It brought to a close a case that had been pending against the pair who reportedly lived lavishly and were accused of various offenses including conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and lying on mortgage and loan applications.

Officials said the jail terms will be staggered to make sure that the Giudice’s four daughters will be taken care of. Teresa will surrender first, beginning her sentence January 5, and once she has returned from prison her husband will report.

They lived lavishly while they were lying on mortgage documents. Imagine that.

The judge showed no mercy:

Upon sentencing Teresa Giudice, the judge said she considered probation “for a moment” but then determined the fraud “merits incarceration.”

Although she believed the reality TV star showed “genuine remorse,” she added, “my gut tells me Teresa Giudice deserves to be in jail.”[…]

“Your four daughters need to understand discipline. If you don’t have it you shouldn’t spend it,” she said. “If they won’t like you because you’re not driving a Benz or walking on Jimmy Choos or Manolo Blahniks then they’re not your friends.”

The real problem is that they weren’t doing God’s work.

Update:  Great minds and all that. Here’s Dday with the full indictment in  the New Republic.