Month: November 2014

A twitter convo about torture

by digby

So, Chuck Todd had a “tweet the press” with Katherine Hawkins of @openthegov about the Torture Report. Since very few people will see it, I thought I’d just copy some of the highlights here.

Todd should have her on the show rather than the usual pundit gasbags babbling boring talking points for the hundredth timeB but this is better than nothing and I’ll take what I can get.

Todd assumes that nobody will give a damn about this. And he’s probably right — but it’s because the press is going to treat this as business as usual, something only “foreigners” care about apparently, so they won’t give this the treatment it requires. And we will end up taking one more step toward normalizing torture. Again.

Seriously, if nobody is punished and the elites act like this is no big deal, what do you suppose will happen the next time the government determines we need to “take the gloves off?”

Chuckle of the day

by digby

Hahahahaha:

The comparisons between @GovPerry in ’16 and Bill Clinton in 1990 after latter’s disaster at the ‘ 88 DNC r obvious: http://t.co/gc6uiBXgLT
— Hugh Hewitt (@hughhewitt) November 29, 2014

*You’ll recall that Bill Clinton spoke too long at the Democratic Convention in 1988 when nobody knew who he was.  You’ll also recall the Rick Perry appeared to be mentally disabled numerous times in Republican debates in 2008.

Also too, this:

“The audacity of taupe”

by digby

Scott Olson/Getty Images

That’s not my line, it’s Michael Shaw from Bag News who has a fascinating post today about some of the images from black Friday in the context of Ferguson.

Michael makes an interesting observation about the image above:

After the post 9/11 admonition to “go shopping,” how striking to see the National Guard called in to defend big retail. Even more provocative is the way the color blending merges the military and the retail industrial complex. Of course, the greater irony has to do with how much investment in the war and civil defense has not only come at the expense of social welfare but, through the distribution of military hardware, increased the lethality of the local police force.

He takes a look at some other pictures from yesterday as well.  I think the last one, and his comments about it are very thought provoking.  The commodification of “protest” is a subject that deserves more discussion.

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Damn, she’s good
by Tom Sullivan

Just last night we were breathing a sigh of relief to hear that Notorious R.B.G. had left the hospital after a stent procedure. I still remember watching Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Senate confirmation hearings and thinking, damn, she’s good.

But these are more troubled times. It is odd to think the fate of the nation may hang on the 81 year-old Ginsburg staying for now right where she is.

During this fall’s campaign, we had a time convincing people to get off their couches to vote because the Supreme Court was at stake in the Senate race. The workings of the unelected court are that much more removed from the way people think about issue- and personality-driven electoral politics. The Washington Post’s Paul Waldman might agree.

Ordinarily, the Supreme Court is brought up almost as an afterthought in presidential campaigns. The potential for a swing in the court is used to motivate activists to volunteer and work hard, and the candidates usually have to answer a debate question or two about it, which they do in utterly predictable ways (“I’m just going to look for the best person for the job”). We don’t usually spend a great deal of time talking about what a change in the court is likely to mean. But the next president is highly likely to have the chance to engineer a swing in the court. The consequences for Americans’ lives will probably be more consequential and far-reaching than any other issue the candidates will be arguing about.

After Democrats lost ground in this fall’s election, the prospects for getting any remotely progressive SCOTUS nominee approved by a Republican Senate during Obama’s tenure are slim. (Not that Obama would nominate anyone remotely progressive.) However long Ginsburg remains, Waldman believes the next change of personnel on the conservative 5-4 court “could be an earthquake.”

Consider this scenario: Hillary Clinton becomes president in 2017, and sometime later one of the conservative justices retires. Now there would be a liberal majority on the court, a complete transformation in its balance. A court that now consistently favors those with power, whether corporations or the government, would become much more likely to rule in favor of workers, criminal defendants and those with civil rights claims. Or alternately: The Republican nominee wins, and one of the liberal justices retires. With conservatives in control not by 5-4 but 6-3, there would be a cascade of even more conservative decisions. The overturning of Roe v. Wade would be just the beginning.

Unless state Democrats can get their act together soon, it could take more than a 2016 presidential win to ensure SCOTUS replacements for Ginsburg and others that will tilt the balance more to the left. They also have to reclaim the Senate state-by-state. But a big presidential win in 2016 could help. Take it with a grain of salt, but one GOP columnist thinks 2016 prospects look better for Democrats:

Democrats in 2014 were up against a particularly tough climate because they had to defend 13 Senate seats in red or purple states. In 2016 Republicans will be defending 24 Senate seats and at least 18 of them are likely to be competitive based on geography and demographics. Democrats will be defending precisely one seat that could possibly be competitive. One.

As Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham said about geography and demographics, “We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.” Still, I’m sure we all want to know where that one seat is.

In the meantime, good health to you, Notorious R.B.G.

When geniuses had to be nuns

by digby

In a conversation last night with friends about how in the past one of the only ways a woman could get educated or pursue her intellectual passions was to join a convent, one of them brought up this woman (of whom I am embarrassed to admit I had never heard) as an example of genius of the ages whose accomplishments go far beyond the saintly or mystical:

Saint Hildegard of Bingen, O.S.B. (German: Hildegard von Bingen; Latin: Hildegardis Bingensis) (1098 – 17 September 1179), also known as Saint Hildegard, and Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, Benedictine abbess, visionary, and polymath. Elected a magistra by her fellow nuns in 1136, she founded the monasteries of Rupertsberg in 1150 and Eibingen in 1165. One of her works as a composer, the Ordo Virtutum, is an early example of liturgical drama and arguably the oldest surviving morality play.

She wrote theological, botanical and medicinal texts, as well as letters, liturgical songs, and poems, while supervising miniature illuminations in the Rupertsberg manuscript of her first work, Scivias.

Although the history of her formal recognition as a saint is complicated, she has been recognized as a saint by parts of the Roman Catholic Church for centuries. On 7 October 2012, Pope Benedict XVI named her a Doctor of the Church.

She was obviously an amazing person of great intellect and talent. The litany of her accomplishments, religious, literary, musical, scientific is truly astonishing.

I guess my point of bringing this up is that someone recently asked me why I thought it was that women had left so little mark on history compared to men. There must have been many Hildegards through the ages. But it’s also true that history has been written by men for men so who really knows?

Perhaps everyone knows about her and have heard her sublime music a thousand times. But if, like me, you were unaware, here’s one Hildegard of Bingen’s greatest hits. Enjoy:

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Democracy in action 


by digby

Here’s a shocker.

Researchers at Duke University have developed a mathematical model that shows how changes in North Carolina’s congressional voting districts could affect election outcomes.

Focusing on the last election, the researchers varied the state’s congressional districts to calculate what the outcome of the 2012 U.S. House of Representatives elections might have been had the state’s districts been drawn to emphasize nonpartisan boundaries. The team re-ran the election 100 times — using the same votes as in 2012 and tweaking the voting map with only the legal requirements of a redistricting plan in mind. Not once did they get the split of Democratic and Republican seats seen in the actual election…

During the 2012 elections in North Carolina, Republicans took nine of the state’s 13 U.S. House seats although 51 percent of the two-party vote went to Democratic candidates.
[…]
After re-running the election 100 times, with a randomly drawn nonpartisan map each time, the average simulated election result was 7 or 8 U.S. House seats for the Democrats and 5 or 6 for Republicans. The maximum number of Republican seats that emerged from any of the simulations was eight. The actual outcome of the election — four Democratic representatives and nine Republicans – did not occur in any of the simulations.

Here’a the punchline: the researchers say they hope this will bolster calls for redistricting reform. Yeah, that’ll happen.

Still, it’s another great illustration of how our “democracy” works in practice. I wonder how people explain this to kids?

“Sonny, the United States of America is the greatest democracy in the world. But just because a majority of people vote for a certain party or candidate, that doesn’t mean they win. What determines who wins is who has the power to manipulate the system in their favor. Is this a great country or what?”

Southern Democrats turn left?

by digby

I saw this headline and inwardly groaned thinking oh boy, here we go, another piece about how the Democrats have to move right.

Southern Democrats Urge A Return To Party Basics

But it isn’t that at all:

Southern Democrats are joining others in the party who say that a return to advocating to lift people out of economic hardship and emphasizing spending on education and public works will re-energize black voters and attract whites as well.

“It’s time to draw a line in the sand and not surrender our brand,” Rickey Cole, the party chairman in Mississippi, said. He believes candidates have distanced themselves from the past half-century of Democratic principles.

“We don’t need a New Coke formula,” Cole said. “The problem is we’ve been out there trying to peddle Tab and RC Cola.”

Cole and other Southern Democrats acknowledge divisions with prominent populists such as Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is expected to run for president in 2016, and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Yet they see merit in pushing stronger voting rights laws, tighter bank regulation, labor-friendly policies such as a higher minimum wage and other familiar party themes.

I’d say it’s worth a try anyway. It’s certainly better than Blue Dogism which was all about being business friendly and obsessive about taxes.

I did think this was sort of funny though:

While the party’s positions on gay rights, minority voting access, women’s rights and immigration are not wrong, Cole said, “those people who don’t see themselves in those groups say, ‘What have the Democrats got for me?'”

That’s a pretty roundabout way of saying the Democrats need to attract white men.It’s an improvement over the old nonsense about putting “illegals” in the bait can and other retrograde nonsense we used to hear on this subject. He goes on to say this:

Unapologetic populism, he said, would “explain better that the Democratic Party is for justice and opportunity — with no qualifiers — for everyone.”

Unfortunately, part of the problem with the white male working class is that Democrats also seem to believe that they’re required show that they have disdain for these other groups in their coalition or they just aren’t appealing. Maybe that’s not so — maybe they can just make a direct, universal, populist appeal and when they’re questioned about all these “wedge issues” just say they believe everyone is entitled to a fair shake. It would be very interesting if they tried anyway. They certainly aren’t going to reconstitute the Blue Dogs. That ship sailed.

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DALLAS – Three members of an open carry group called Come and Take It Texas had rifles over their shoulders as they followed a small group of Ferguson protesters who marched through downtown Dallas Wednesday night.

Unlike Tuesday night, protesters did not close streets nor did they walk onto a freeway. In fact, this crowd was about a tenth of the size from what Dallas saw 24 hours earlier.

About two dozen people took part Wednesday night chanting “No justice, no peace” among other things as they protested police treatment of African-Americans.

Marchers stayed on the sidewalk the entire time and never left Lamar St. as they walked into downtown by El Centro College and returned to Dallas police headquarters where they started.

The open carry advocates said they respected the marchers’ right to protest but decided to show up to protect private property.

Luckily, nothing went wrong there. It was just three yokels playing cops and robbers. But Jesus, that’s just nuts.

I wonder what the right wingers would have said if the cops had harassed these guys, roughed them up —shot them because they felt scared? Maybe I’m wrong, but I’d guess they would be very,very, very upset at the behavior of jackbooted thugs concluding they were in danger simply because some God fearing American men were exercising their 2nd Amendment rights. Just because you’re scared it doesn’t mean the constitution is no longer in force, amirite?

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Is “kill or be killed” replacing t”o protect and to serve”


by digby

Here’s another person making the case that  you should be able to shoot unarmed people if they scare you. He is one of the editors of Red State, via TPM:

Remember, Mike Brown did not have a gun with which to kill Darren Wilson. He didn’t have any weapons at all.  In a later tweet, after being criticized, Howe says, “if you have shot him multiple times and he’s still coming what do you do? You take him down if you can.”  Let’s just say it’s a little hard to to believe that he meant that he would have shot Brown “right in the face” while he was allegedly charging at him.  His original tweet pretty clearly meant he would have shot Brown in the face while sitting in the police cruiser.

Guess who’s starting to worry about labor protests?

by digby

You know the Big Money Boyz have some concerns when they hire right wing PR firms to pull out the old lazy, dirty hippie tropes to get the rubes on the other side. I wrote a piece for Salon about the history of that moldy tactic and how it’s being applied to today’s Black Friday protests.

Just check this out first:

Read on to find out who’s behind that puerile piece of garbage:

All that’s missing is a bunch of insults about the women having hair under their arms and the men smelling like pigs. Some things never get old. It’s quite clear that somebody has decided to tickle the right wing lizard brain and deploy it service of Big Business again. It worked pretty well every other time, after all.

You will not be surprised to learn that this video was made by a professional PR firm that’s been working on behalf of these corporations to push back the low wage worker’s movement for some time. Lee Fang at the Nation has the scoop:

TheNation.com has discovered that Worker Center Watch was registered by the former head lobbyist for Walmart. Parquet Public Affairs, a Florida-based government relations and crisis management firm for retailers and fast food companies, registered the Worker Center Watch website.

The firm is led by Joseph Kefauver, formerly the president of public affairs for Walmart and government relations director for Darden Restaurants. Throughout the year, Parquet executives have toured the country, giving lectures to business groups on how to combat the rise of what has been called “alt-labor.” At a presentation in October for the National Retail Federation, a trade group for companies like Nordstrom and Nike, Kefauver’s presentation listed protections against wage theft, a good minimum wage and mandated paid time off as the type of legislative demands influenced by the worker center protesters.

The presentation offered questions for the group, including: “How Aggressive Can We Be?” and “How do We Challenge the Social Justice Narrative?”

They could be honest and just announce they are a bunch of greedheads doing everything in their power to keep wages as low as possible so that they can keep more of the money for themselves. But that might not be quite enough to defeat “the Social Justice Narrative.” After all, that narrative in this instance merely says that people should be paid a decent wage and be treated like human beings in the workplace.