Month: November 2014

How the Republicans do oversight

by digby

No, they don’t challenge any National Security initiatives backed by the CIA, NSA or Pentagon or question funding for every last toy the Police and Military Industrial Complex wants.  Those are sacrosanct. But when it comes to “wasting money” on science, they are on it:

Four times this past summer, in a spare room on the top floor of the headquarters of the National Science Foundation (NSF) outside of Washington, D.C., two congressional staffers spent hours poring over material relating to 20 research projects that NSF has funded over the past decade. Each folder contained confidential information that included the initial application, reviewer comments on its merit, correspondence between program officers and principal investigators, and any other information that had helped NSF decide to fund the project.

The visits from the staffers, who work for the U.S. House of Representatives committee that oversees NSF, were an unprecedented—and some say bizarre—intrusion into the much admired process that NSF has used for more than 60 years to award research grants. Unlike the experts who have made that system work so well, however, the congressional staffers weren’t really there to judge the scientific merits of each proposal. But that wasn’t their intent.

The Republican aides were looking for anything that Representative Lamar Smith (R–TX), their boss as chair of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, could use to support his ongoing campaign to demonstrate how the $7 billion research agency is “wasting” taxpayer dollars on frivolous or low-priority projects, particularly in the social sciences. The Democratic staffers wanted to make sure that their boss, Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson (D–TX), the panel’s senior Democrat, knew enough about each grant to rebut any criticism that Smith might levy against the research.

The peculiar exercise is part of a long-running and bitter battle that is pitting Smith and many of his panel’s Republican members against Johnson and the panel’s Democrats, NSF’s leadership, and the academic research community. There’s no end in sight: The visits are expected to continue into the fall, because NSF has acceded—after some resistance—to Smith’s request to make available information on an additional 30 awards. (Click here to see a spreadsheet of the requested grants.)

And the feud appears to be escalating. This week, Johnson wrote to Smith accusing him “of go[ing] after specific peer-reviewed grants simply because the Chairman personally does not believe them to be of high value.” (Click here to see a PDF of Johnson’s letter and related correspondence from Smith and NSF.)

Smith, however, argues he is simply taking seriously Congress’s oversight responsibility. And he promises to stay the course: “Our efforts will continue until NSF agrees to only award grants that are in the national interest,” he wrote in a 2 October e-mail to Science Insider.

I’ve written before about the fact that a lot of this was enabled by the “Fleecing of America” crapola that came out of the reform movement of the 70s and was taken up by the media for decades as a sexy topic for their news magazines. It’s true that the procurement system in the Pentagon was/is a disgrace and there are always going to be some scandals. But it ended up being the catch-all excuse for the conservatives to demagogue anything they don’t like about government — which is pretty much everything but police and military. This is a perfect example.

All these people who like to say “I’m not a scientist” as a way of excusing their servile fealty to the energy plutocrats are always right up in women’s privates with junk science about fetal heartbeats and whatnot — and now they’ve got their interns doing “research” on what scientific studies are “valuable.” Talk about fleecing America …

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Senator Inhofe waits for the bridegroom

by digby

More polling, this time on climate change and religion:

Poll results released by the Public Religion Research Institute on Friday showed that sixty-nine percent of Americans believe there is solid evidence that Earth’s temperatures are increasing. This is good news, as so far this year has been the hottest ever recorded, despite the recent chill covering the United States. But the pollsters also asked about the cause of recent natural disasters, and the responses from some religious people could impact how America responds to climate change.

While 62 percent of total respondents ascribed the cause of recent natural disasters to climate change, 49 percent also thought biblical “end times” were the cause. For white evangelical Protestants, these numbers basically reversed — 77 percent pointed to the apocalypse, and just 49 percent attributed extreme weather to climate change (the numbers add up to more than one-hundred because people could offer more than one cause).

This fatalistic view of the impacts caused in part by burning fossil fuels could influence the national policy responses to the problem. More than half of the total respondents (53 percent) thought that God would not intercede if humans were destroying the Earth, while 39 percent said that God would step in.

People can believe what they want to believe. Unfortunately, this belief is held by some very important people in the most powerful nation on earth. Like the new Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee who said this:

“[T]he Genesis 8:22 that I use in there is that ‘as long as the earth remains there will be seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night.’ My point is, God’s still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous.”

I don’t know about Inhofe, but it’s important to remember that many Christian fundamentalists welcome this event joyfully. It’s not scary to them at all. I’m once again reminded of this post I did a few years back when the Middle East was erupting for the umpteenth time and everyone was being well … apocalyptic about it. This was how a group of fundamentalists greeted the news:

Is it time to get excited? I can’t help the way I feel. For the first time in my Christian walk, I have no doubts that the day of the Lords appearing is upon us. I have never felt this way before, I have a joy that bubbles up every-time I think of him, for I know this is truly the time I have waited for so long. Am I alone in feeling guilty about the human suffering like my joy at his appearing some how fuels the evil I see everywhere. If it were not for the souls that hang in the balance and the horror that stalks man daily on this earth, my joy would be complete. For those of us who await his arrival know, somehow we just know it won’t be long now, the Bridegroom cometh rather man is ready are not.

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If He tarries, I will just have time to get my hair and nails done (you know let all I come into contact with know of my Bridegroom and what He has/will do). So i am all spiffied up for Him when He does arrive to take me home. No disappointment, just a few last minute details to take care of to be more pleasing to look at.

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I too am soooo excited!! I get goose bumps, literally, when I watch what’s going on in the M.E.!! And Watcherboy, you were so right when saying it was quite a day yesterday, in the world news, and I add in local news here in the Boston area!! Tunnel ceiling collapsed on a car and killed a woman of faith, and we had the most terrifying storms I have ever seen here!! But, yes, Ohappyday, like in your screen name , it is most indeed a time to be happy and excited, right there with ya!!

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Can you imagine being a hate filled person that “preaches” tolerance but really really hates Christians when the rapture does happen. It must be sad to live like that. I feel sorry for them and feel we should pray for them. Their tolerance doesn’t include anyone but themselves, and all they preach is hate.

These folks are a small minority in the country. And as I said, they have a perfect right to believe what they want to believe. But how do they differ from the incoming chairman of the Senate Environmental Committee?

Poll ‘o the Day: stupid voters speak

by digby

This should be good news. Unfortunately, nobody really cares what the people think about anything so I’m not sure it’s relevant. Still:

Voters respond favorably by an overwhelming 39-point margin to executive action by President Obama that would focus immigration enforcement efforts on threats to national security and public safety while allowing some illegal immigrants to stay and work in the United States (67% favorable, 28% unfavorable). Support is broad, incorporating a majority of voters in every region of the country, among both men and women, and in states won by both Barack Obama (67% favorable) and Mitt Romney (65% favorable). Younger voters under age 35 express particularly strong support (72%), but more than 60% feel favorable in every age cohort.

Executive action receives support from 91% of Democrats and 67% of political independents. While a narrow 51% majority of Republicans oppose executive action (41% favor), this is driven mainly by a 34-point margin of opposition among Tea Party Republicans (30% favor, 64% oppose). Among non-Tea Party Republicans opinion is more divided, with 47% in favor and 45% opposed.

o Description of executive action: The action would direct immigration enforcement officials to focus on threats to national security and public safety, and not on deporting otherwise law-abiding immigrants. Immigrants who are parents of children who are legal US residents could qualify to stay and work temporarily in the United States, without being deported, if they have lived in the United States for at least five years, pay taxes, and pass a criminal background check.

Ø Many individual elements of the executive action are very popular with voters:

o Allow undocumented immigrants who are parents of children or young adults living legally in the United States to stay in the United States without being deported (66% favorable, 28% unfavorable);
o Expand the DACA program that provides temporary legal status and work permits to undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children (63% favorable, 27% unfavorable);
o Provide temporary work permits to qualifying immigrants (76% favorable, 21% unfavorable);
o Shift more security resources to the Mexican border (79% favorable, 16% unfavorable).

Ø Republican leaders are challenging President Obama’s legal authority to take this executive action aggressively. The survey results show that Democrats have the better of this debate, with voters agreeing by a 10-point margin (51% to 41%) that the president does have legal authority to act. Independents agree that the president is acting lawfully by an 18-point margin (54% to 36%).

Sadly, the Tea Party — also known as hardcore conservatives — run the GOP. The leadership encouraged them, created them. And now they have tremendous power.

On the other hand, the Republicans are all about stoking controversy and ginning up scandals. Political theater is what they substitute for governing. Their tactics often work. So, it’s a mistake to believe they cannot benefit from their position here, especially in the short run. Still, important to note that the public wasn’t scandalized by the President’s allegedly tyrannical move when they first heard about it.

I’m going to guess the conservatives are simply blaming the voters for being stupid.

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Confront the bullies and look what happens

by digby

Look what happens when you defy the Republicans. Why, it turns out it leaves them reeling so much that they don’t know if they’re coming or going:

All of those gathered had reason to be angry: Here was the president pretending, absurdly, that he hadn’t just had his butt whipped in the midterms, and defying the biggest GOP House majority-to-come in more than 80 years. Almost exactly a year before, some in the room had been among the most vocal Republicans pushing for a government shutdown as a legislative strategy against Obama.

But now came a stern message from Boehner: The GOP shouldn’t take the bait this time. And as discussion moved around the table, there was little desire for another shutdown, even from the conservatives, over the president’s executive action on immigration. No one wanted to let Democrats off the mat and hand them a political win — especially not now, barely two weeks after the GOP’s historic midterm victory. “There was definitely a sense that they didn’t want to do that [the 2013 shutdown] again,” said an aide to one of the participants.

Outwardly, Republican rhetoric toward the president hasn’t softened much, especially since Obama’s speech Thursday night. The consistent meme is that he is behaving like an unconstitutional monarch.

“The president has taken actions that he himself has said are those of a ‘king’ or an ‘emperor’ — not an American president,” Boehner said in a statement the morning after the speech. “With this action, the president has chosen to deliberately sabotage any chance of enacting bipartisan reforms that he claims to seek. And, as I told the president yesterday, he’s damaging the presidency itself.”

What has changed is the underlying balance of power in the party and, perhaps, the terms of debate within the GOP over how to deal with the Democratic Party and its surprisingly aggressive leader. Obama might be behaving like a usurping monarch without a mandate, in the eyes of the newly powerful GOP, but no one is seriously threatening to impeach him — as Republicans have repeatedly done in past years. Nor, despite the angry rhetoric, does there seem to be a serious possibility of government shutdown.

Now it’s true that the immigration issue is unique in that the Democrats believe it will benefit them politically and hurt the Republicans politically in the long run. Of course if you believe in your policies and are halfway decent at politics that should always be the case, no? But you rarely see this situation because the Democratic Part rarely directly confronts the GOP quite this openly.The Republicans don’t know what to do. Perhaps the Democrats should take advantage of it.

There’s a lesson in this somewhere.

Meanwhile, for all the talk of the Party taming it’s loonies, and putting the grown-ups back in charge, there’s this:

Iowa Rep. Steve King, one of the GOP’s most divisive figures on immigration, is approaching a moment of maximum impact. And Republicans looking to improve the party’s standing with Latinos are nervous about what that could mean.

Throughout next year, Republican hopefuls will face a litmus test: seek approval from King, who represents a wide swath of caucus-goers, and risk being tethered to his views on immigration; or ignore him and risk King using his bully pulpit against them.

So far, some major names among the potential GOP 2016 contenders are seeking King’s approval, a worrisome development to party leaders eager to broaden the GOP’s appeal with immigrants and Spanish-speaking voters. King has already spoken privately with about 10 potential presidential candidates, he told POLITICO in an interview last week, pressing them to detail their views on immigration.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie held an October fundraiser for King and pledged he’d be a supporter of the congressman “for as long as he continues to be in public life.” And most of the potential Republican presidential field has been invited to King’s first “Iowa Freedom Summit” in January, co-hosted by Citizens United; so far, three prospective candidates — Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, ex-Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee — have accepted.

You don’t get any loonier than Steve King. And they’re calling him a Kingmaker … I think that says it all.

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Never say inevitable

by Tom Sullivan

Hillary Clinton’s New York troops are figetting, waiting for a formal declaration, yet still organizing. Meanwhile, writes Ryan Lizza in the New Yorker, their “candidate” remains silent. On the Keystone pipeline. On NSA reform.

But, despite the clear remarks about Ferguson and immigration, Clinton’s views on many crucial issues remain opaque. She seems to be repeating the same mistake that she made in 2008, when the inevitability of her candidacy overwhelmed its justification.

At the Ready for Hillary festival, Mitch Stewart, one of Obama’s top organizers in the 2008 contest, suggested that Clinton needed to be careful to develop a message and stick to it. He noted that she had failed to do that in the 2008 primaries. “Every six weeks, there seemed to be a new slogan, and there was nothing people could wrap their arms around,” Stewart said.

Mainstream Democratic candidates have a thing for repeating mistakes. Like the many that ran away from their president and their own brand a few weeks ago and lost big. Like Al Gore did in 2000. Eight years we endured George W. Bush.

Paging George Santayana. Or at least a campaign adviser who knows who the hell he is.

The hysterical ninny protocol

by digby

So I’m sure you recall Chris Christie’s hysterical reaction to the ebola threat a few weeks back. He ordered Nurse Kaci Hickox into isolation and lectured her to stop whining about being inconvenienced. Eventually she went to Maine where she lived and that was that.

But Josh Marshall at TPMs wondered what happened to Christie’s plan to isolate anyone who had been in the affected countries and found out that it doesn’t exist. In fact, the state public health official are monitoring over 70 people for symptoms and they are all at home doing their normal thing and just taking their temperature twice a day. You know, the scientific protocol as opposed to the hysterical ninny protocol.

But get a load of this:

The state paid more than 500 hours of overtime during a three-week period to Human Services police officers who were stationed around the clock at a former psychiatric hospital in Hunterdon County after it was identified as a location to quarantine West African travelers who had contact with Ebola patients, NJ Advance Media has learned.

So far, Gov. Chris Christie’s administration has not needed to use the former Hagedorn Psychiatric Hospital in Lebanon Township as a quarantine area. Only Doctors Without Borders Nurse Kaci Hickox has been quarantined in New Jersey after arriving at Newark Liberty International Airport, and she was held at an isolated tent at University Hospital in Newark from Oct. 24-27.

But once the state Department of Human Services decided to use Hagedorn to temporarily house “asymptomatic” travelers, department officials decided to deploy police to the location, Human Services spokeswoman Nicole Brossoie said.

“As we were surveying the building for appropriateness, there was media and community interest/trespassing so we did have two officers on rotating shifts to provide perimeter and building security,” Brossoie said in a email.

The number of officers who were assigned — and how many were paid at the overtime rate — is in dispute.

Brossoie said the payroll office logged 1,080 hours at Hagedorn, with 557 of them paid at the time-and-a-half overtime rate. The 23-day assignment ended Wednesday. She said she did not have an accounting of the labor costs.

PBA Local 113 Attorney Stuart Alterman said two officers and a supervisor were assigned to Hagedorn, and they were all paid at the overtime rate.

Human Services police officers on average earn in the high-$70,000 range and sergeants in the $80,000 range, according to state payroll records.

Alterman called the Hagedorn assignment “an impulsive way to deal with an acute situation that was neither planned very well or executed very well.” He said officers in the 94-member police force were concerned and frustrated they were provided no training to respond in the event a quarantined person become ill.

Yes, it was impulsive allright. And a good test of leadership for the macho Christie as he runs for president. If you want a panic artist at a time of crisis, he’s your man.

Oh, and just to make sure you understand the totality of the fuck-up-edness, Christie was going to lock up people who were not sick in an old psychiatric hospital. Talk about optics …

Meanwhile, at least his priorities are straight:

T

he security detail at Hagedorn coincided with the Nov. 15 disbanding of a 23-member unit within the 92-member Human Services police department whose officers accompanied child welfare workers to dangerous neighborhoods and to search for missing children. The unit was disbanded to cut down on runaway overtime expenses.

Now this is scary looking

by digby

[A]lthough the black seadevil seems menacing as its swims towards the camera, it is only about 3.5 inches long.

Little is known about the fish. Male black seadevils have a much shorter life span than females and are much tinier in comparison. Their sole purpose is to attach themself to a female, living as a parasite.

Pretty sure I’ve known a few human male sea-devils. They’re not that rare on land.

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QOTD: It’s Giuliani time

by digby

Via TPM

“It is the reason for the heavy police presence in the black community,” he said. “White police officers won’t be there if you weren’t killing each other 70 percent of the time.”

Yes, that’s what he said. The “black on black” crime is a very big thing on the right but this is the first time I’ve heard a big shot Republican say that all these white cops wouldn’t be having these little “mishaps” if African Americans weren’t “killing each other 70 percent of the time.” Even the unarmed ones, apparently.

And those of you who’ve been around a while know by the title of this post that old Rudy should be careful about this sort of thing. He has a history.

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Who are the liberals who trust Fox News?

by digby

That’s my question after looking over these charts:

Not at the bottom that the liberal group has been growing over the past 20 years while the conservative group is … not. Unfortunately, I’ll guess that at least some those “liberals” who think Fox is on the up and up are voting for Republicans. And a good portion of the others will vote for an incumbent conservadem over a liberal challenger because of name recognition etc.

Still, it’s an interesting look at how these people all get their news. It appears that the entire media landscape except for Fox, Beck, Drudge and a couple of others are sell-out commies which the Real Americans tune out so they don’t get brainwashed.

Sunday Funnies

by digby

Tom Tomorrow Via Kos:

Brian McFadden Via NYT:

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