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Month: January 2015

QOTD: Hezbollah and Hamas

QOTD: Hezbollah and Hamas

by digby

I keep hearing from various Muslim commentators that we should be aware that the big battle going on today really isn’t between the west and Islamic extremists, it’s between mainstream Islam and Islamic extremists. I get the sense that few Westerners believe it. But this indicates that it might just be true:

Islamic extremists following a ‘takfiri’ ideology are more offensive to the Prophet Mohammed than Western satirical cartoons, chief of the Lebanese military faction Hezbollah, Hasan Nasrallah, said following the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack.

“The behavior of the takfiri groups that claim to follow Islam have distorted Islam, the Koran and the Muslim nation more than Islam’s enemies … who insulted the prophet in films… or drew cartoons of the prophet,” the Hezbollah leader said in a televised speech to mark the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed, according to Lebanon’s Daily Star.

Militant Islam practices a ‘takfiri’ doctrine that allows it to brand other Muslims apostates for allegedly going against the faith’s true teachings.

A tragic attack on Wednesday took the lives of 12 people, when armed gunmen stormed the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, prompting a citywide manhunt. The magazine had printed cartoons that mocked the Prophet.

Nasrallah went on to say that “Takfiris are the biggest threat to Islam, as a religion [and] as a message.”

This too:

Palestinian Islamist group Hamas condemned Saturday the killing of 12 people in an attack on French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo’s offices by two French Islamists.

A statement in French said Hamas “condemns the attack against Charlie Hebdo magazine and insists on the fact that differences of opinion and thought cannot justify murder.”

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Objectively pro-Islamic fundamentalist

Objectively pro-Islamic fundamentalist

by digby

Before the self-righteousness of the hawks gets too far out of hand, perhaps they should consider this:

A Saudi blogger convicted of insulting Islam was brought after Friday prayers to a public square in the port city of Jeddah and flogged 50 times before hundreds of spectators, a witness to the lashing said.

The witness said Raif Badawi’s feet and hands were shackled during the flogging but his face was visible. He remained silent and did not cry out, said the witness, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity fearing government reprisal.

Badawi was sentenced last May to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes. He had criticized Saudi Arabia’s powerful clerics on a liberal blog he founded. The blog has since been shut down. He was also ordered to pay a fine of 1m riyals or about $266,600.

Rights activists say Saudi authorities are using Badawi’s case as a warning to others who think to criticise the kingdom’s powerful religious establishment from which the ruling family partly derives its authority.

London-based Amnesty International said he would receive 50 lashes once a week for 20 weeks. The US, a close ally of Saudi Arabia, has called on authorities to cancel the punishment.

Despite international pleas for his release, Badawi, a father of three, was brought from prison by bus to the public square on Friday and flogged on the back in front of a crowd that had just finished midday prayers at a nearby mosque. His face was visible and, throughout the flogging, he clenched his eyes and remained silent, said the witness.

Why should the flag-waving defenders of freedom think about that?  Well …

The second-largest holder of voting stock in News Corp. is Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, a nephew of the Saudi king. 

And this:

Despite the differences between the two countries—an ultraconservative Islamic absolute monarchy, and a secular, democratic republic—the two countries have been allies. In recent years, the two countries have occasionally been described as having a Special Relationship with one another. U.S. presidents, George W. Bush and current president, Barack Obama have strong and close relations with senior members of the Saudi Royal Family.

Just saying.  All the breast-beating in recent days from the American right wingers and liberal hawks probably should be tempered by just a little bit of self-awareness.

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Yes, wingnuts did blame campus speech codes for the violence in Paris

Yes, wingnuts did blame campus speech codes for the violence in Paris

by digby

Apparently some people don’t believe that Fox commentators actually blamed the terrorist attacks on campus speech codes. Behold Greg Gutfield:

“It’s good to see all these vocal free speech supporters, many of whom were silent when [Ayaan] Hirsi Ali, Condoleezza Rice and others were kept from speaking on campuses,” Greg Gutfeld quipped. “I suppose you only express solidarity when it’s cool and there’s a neat hashtag.”

Gutfeld cautioned that terror wins when fighting evil is labeled as bigoted by the media, campuses and our leaders.

Gutfeld played a clip of CNN’s Christiane Amanpour calling terrorists “activists,” reacting with a bewildered, “What?!”

He also charged editors with worrying “more about right-wing reaction to terror than terror itself.”

“The enemy is pre-ordained. It’s us. Which means Howard Dean is right. This is a cult, a cult of apologists. But Dean is also right when he says this is not a religious issue, which means, if I don’t see Islam when I fight terror, then you cannot see Islamophobia when I fight it,” Gutfeld remarked.

Gutfeld said that we should see “a death cult, one that needs no understanding, just eradication.”

Gutfeld wondered where this cult has learned to punish language.

“How about Harvard and our modern cult of hate speech activists, who see language as violence, creating speech codes with penalties? Seeing ‘activists’ silence critics so easily must make them drool with envy.”

Yes, they are saying that.

Hippies still hurt their feelings

Hippies still hurt their feelings

by digby

It seems the NYPD has long had self-esteem problems:

Perhaps this explains why they feel the need to exert force and coerce instant compliance. They are very insecure little guys and gals. And always have been. They need to grow up.

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Defend our water by @BloggersRUs

Defend our water
by Tom Sullivan

We seem to have created a political environment in which for some reason our communities can no longer afford to maintain public infrastructure. Oh, right. That requires taxes. (That’s 5 letters. Hmmm, I was sure it was a four-letter word.)

Now that We the People have seen fit to ensure we no longer have the revenue to do on a not-for-profit basis the things a Great People once did to create a Great Nation, companies that lobbied long and hard to reduce their taxes (and public revenues) are stepping up, eager to do them for us. For a profit. Go figure.

One of the first public properties that goes into the carts at the Chop ‘N Shop is water. Right now, Portland is fighting to retain control of its water system:

A simmering water war is about to come to a boil over the fate of historic, well-loved public reservoirs in Portland, Oregon. At the heart of the controversy is a breakdown in public trust that reflects the dangers of corporate-led water privatization schemesin the United States and around the world.

A 2006 EPA ruling (called LT2) to protect systems against Cryptosporidium precipitated the fight over modifications to reservoirs on the National Register of Historic Places.

At Truthout, Victoria Collier details alleged cronyism in the water project involving contracts with CH2M Hill. (Full disclosure: I did some engineering for them on a factory some years back.) Furthermore, it seems the firm is involved in a coordinated effort to privatize infrastructure on the west coast (emphasis mine):

The West Coast Infrastructure Exchange (WCX)was launched collaboratively by Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber and CH2M Hill, though the corporation has since recused itself from an official partnership position.

Now comprised of governors and state officials from California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia, the WCX is quietly developing a regional “public-private partnership” (PPP) model to fast-track private financing and development of infrastructure – everything from schools, bridges and highways to energy, waste and fresh water systems.

Citing the crippled tax base of so many US states, the WCX notes with regret that crumbling public infrastructure and future development needs can no longer be met by the public sector.

You bet your assets, they regret it. That “crippled tax base” just happened, of course. It just happened to coincide with the interests of international corporations that want to get their hands on public infrastructure across the planet. They want to buy it for a song from tax-starved cities and then sell it right back at a profit. It makes the payday loan industry look benign. As I observed:

Privatizing water supplies is a growth industry. Whether it’s American Water, Aqua America, Suez, Veolia Water, or Nestle, private water companies are competing to lock up water resources and public water systems. If not for you, for the fracking industry. As with charter schools and vouchers in public education, public-private partnerships are one of business’ favorite tactics for getting this particular camel’s nose under the tent.

This is a theme you see repeated with P3s across the country from Michigan south to Georgia and west to California as corporations lobby hard to gain control of public utilities and infrastructure. From schools to prisons to water and sewer. We have already discussed how that is working out for highways.

When Michigan’s Governor Rick Snyder placed Detroit under receivership and appointed Kevyn Orr in March 2013 as emergency manager – effectively negating citizen control of their own city government – the first items considered for privatizing were the water and sewer systems. (Receivership ended in December 2014.)

When the GOP took control of North Carolina’s legislature in 2011, removing airports and water systems from control of the cities was top of the ALEC agenda. Where cities have fought the state takeovers in court, judges have sided with the cities.

But that’s just Round One. Because for the GOP, privatization is a twofer: it lines their corporate donors’ pockets and it weakens cities where the remaining large blocks of blue votes are. It’s the next phase of Defund the Left.

Another liberal terrorist symp speaks out

Another liberal terrorist symp speaks out

by digby

These PC Policemen are too much :

On his radio program today, Bryan Fischer speculated that the attack by radical Muslim terrorists on the French magazine Charlie Hebdo that killed twelve people may have been God’s retribution for the magazine’s blasphemy.

Given that the magazine, in addition to mocking Islam and Muhammad, also had a long record of running satirical articles and cartoons about Christianity and Jesus, Fischer raised the possibility that this attack was punishment for the magazine’s repeated violation of the commandment that “you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.”

“They made a career out of taking the name of God, the God of the Bible, the father of the Lord Jesus,” said Fischer, who has made the case in the past that instituting anti-blasphemy laws in America was entirely feasible.

Noting that Exodus 20 states that “the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain,” Fischer theorized that just as God regularly sent “idolators” to attack Israel as a “rod of correction” in order to “discipline his own people” for their transgressions, so too had God used these radical Muslim attackers as retribution for against Charlie Hebdo for its anti-Christian blasphemy.

So, here we have a Christian leader taking the cartoonists to task because they blasphemed against Jesus and the Bible, the ultimate authority, says that’s wrong. The cartoonists had it coming. On the other hand, we have seen some liberals affirming that free speech is a basic human right and that no authority, whether it be government or religion, should stop anyone from saying what they choose — but asking that people search their own consciences before ridiculing the less powerful or gratuitously insulting religious beliefs. Surely we can see the difference between those two ideas, can’t we?

Now we have the right wing defenders of Charlie Hebdo talking about next steps. I’m sure you’ll be impressed with their commitment to free speech. It’s quite inspiring:

Carlson: What should we make of the situation back at home?

Williams: I think it’s a very concerning thing when, you know, our fearless leader fails to acknowledges Islamic terrorism for what it is. it’s almost like a Trojan horse headed towards the west except this time we know the contents of the horse and our leader won’t acknowledge what’s inside.

Williams: We need to be concerned about those who are sympathetic, that approve of those committing violence. I think we should be asking questions like, ‘do you want Sharia law in the US and if you do, in what way would you support it? Would you support it with money? We got Megan’s Law for child molesters and rapists that might be a threat to our community.

Carlson: I can’t imagine any America who right now sitting at home who would say yea, I’m going to put up with this type of activity that we saw in Paris happening on a regular basis here in America.

Williams: Like I said before, Sharia law is the antithesis of the Constitution, it’s against freedom and so if we’re surrounded by people who really want to after our freedoms we’ve got Megan’s law for people out there who want to go after children and go after women and rape them. We’ve got an eye on them.

I think we need to be looking at people who want Sharia Law with a little greater scrutiny. There should be some kind of ‘Muhammad Law’ like…Sharia…something we need to be using to identify those that want to really try to overthrow freedom. “

Smell the freedom.

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The Paul Doctrine needs work

The Paul Doctrine needs work

by digby

Senator Paul reveals his foreign policydoctrine:

Rand Paul: I’m calling for it, can’t make it happen, but what I can do is withhold money from these crazy countries, if they are gonna not be supportive of us, if they are indiscriminately arming crazy/radical Islam in Syria, Libya and across the globe.

Howie Carr: Which countries would you call crazy?

“What I would say is what I just said, Howie. Do you want me to repeat myself?”

Rand Paul
RP: What I would say is..

HC: Is Jordan crazy?

RP: Jordan has been a good ally of ours, and I don’t think Jordan has been fomenting or sending arms into the middle of the Syrian civil war.

HC: Saudia Arabia? Are they crazy?

RP: I wouldn’t characterize it by using that word. What I would say …

HC: But that was your word.

RP: Yeah … I would say in this instance, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait have all sent arms indiscriminately into the Syrian civil war and many of the arms have ended up in the hands of ISIS, even American arms have landed in the hands of ISIS. And we need to let our allies in the region know this is unacceptable, and we will no longer be giving arms, selling arms, or giving money to them if they behave this way.

HC: So are Qatar and Kuwait crazy?

RP: What I would say is what I just said, Howie. Do you want me to repeat myself?

HC: No I’m just saying, you went out kind of on a limb with the word crazy.

RP: Unacceptable is a better word to use there, Howie.

What we need to do is tell our close allies that being crazy is “unacceptable.” That ought to do it.

This is reminiscent of the highly sophisticated McCain Doctrine:

“One of the things I would do if I were President would be to sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, ‘Stop the bullshit'”

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We need to “do nuance”

We need to do nuance

by digby

Political cartoonist Joe Sacco really nails the complexity of the moral questions surrounding the Charlie Hebdo attacks:

This is a challenging issue. I’m a free speech absolutist who believes that the only way to guarantee human rights and liberties is to let people speak freely. But I’m also a person who doesn’t believe that it’s usually wise or decent to insult people’s deepest religious beliefs or ridicule the least powerful among us. It’s a difficult line to walk and the only thing I can say with any consistency is that official censorship of any kind must be banned and the rest of us must make our decisions about how to deal with this by searching our consciences.

I’ve been reading this 2006 piece by Robert Wright written in the wake of the Danish cartoon controversy and I’m persuaded that simply being defiant is not going to get us anywhere. I think we need to think harder about this and be more evolved in our approach. Nobody can “win” these sorts of arguments, we already know that.

The Silent Treatment

By ROBERT WRIGHT

Published: February 17, 2006 

THE American left and right don’t agree on much, but weeks of demonstrations and embassy burnings have pushed them toward convergence on one point: there is, if not a clash of civilizations, at least a very big gap between the “Western world” and the “Muslim world.” When you get beyond this consensus — the cultural chasm consensus — and ask what to do about the problem, there is less agreement. After all, chasms are hard to bridge.

Fortunately, this chasm’s size is being exaggerated. The Muslim uproar over those Danish cartoons isn’t as alien to American culture as we like to think. Once you see this, a benign and quintessentially American response comes into view.

Even many Americans who condemn the cartoon’s publication accept the premise that the now-famous Danish newspaper editor set out to demonstrate: in the West we don’t generally let interest groups intimidate us into what he called “self-censorship.”

What nonsense. Editors at mainstream American media outlets delete lots of words, sentences and images to avoid offending interest groups, especially ethnic and religious ones. It’s hard to cite examples since, by definition, they don’t appear. But use your imagination.

Hugh Hewitt, a conservative blogger and evangelical Christian, came up with an apt comparison to the Muhammad cartoon: “a cartoon of Christ’s crown of thorns transformed into sticks of TNT after an abortion clinic bombing.” As Mr. Hewitt noted, that cartoon would offend many American Christians. That’s one reason you haven’t seen its like in a mainstream American newspaper.

Or, apparently, in many mainstream Danish newspapers. The paper that published the Muhammad cartoon, it turns out, had earlier rejected cartoons of Christ because, as the Sunday editor explained in an e-mail to the cartoonist who submitted them, they would provoke an outcry.

Defenders of the “chasm” thesis might reply that Western editors practice self-censorship to avoid cancelled subscriptions, picket lines or advertising boycotts, not death. Indeed, what forged the chasm consensus, convincing many Americans that the “Muslim world” might as well be another planet, is the image of hair-trigger violence: a few irreverent drawings appear and embassies go up in flames.

But the more we learn about this episode, the less it looks like spontaneous combustion. The initial Muslim response to the cartoons was not violence, but small demonstrations in Denmark along with a lobbying campaign by Danish Muslims that cranked on for months without making it onto the world’s radar screen.

Only after these activists were snubbed by Danish politicians and found synergy with powerful politicians in Muslim states did big demonstrations ensue. Some of the demonstrations turned violent, but much of the violence seems to have been orchestrated by state governments, terrorist groups and other cynical political actors.

Besides, who said there’s no American tradition of using violence to make a point? Remember the urban riots of the 1960’s, starting with the Watts riot of 1965, in which 34 people were killed? The St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Bob Gibson, in his 1968 book “From Ghetto to Glory,” compared the riots to a “brushback pitch” — a pitch thrown near a batter’s head to keep him from crowding the plate, a way of conveying that the pitcher needs more space.

In the wake of the rioting, blacks got more space. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People had been protesting broadcast of the “Amos ‘n’ Andy” show, with its cast of shiftless and conniving blacks, since the 1950’s, but only in 1966 did CBS withdraw reruns from distribution. There’s no way to establish a causal link, but there’s little doubt that the riots of the 1960’s heightened sensitivity to grievances about the portrayal of blacks in the media. (Translation: heightened self-censorship.)

Amid the cartoon protests, some conservative blogs have warned that addressing grievances expressed violently is a form of “appeasement,” and will only bring more violence and weaken Western values. But “appeasement” didn’t work that way in the 1960’s. The Kerner Commission, set up by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1967 to study the riots, recommended increased attention to the problems of poverty, job and housing discrimination, and unequal education — attention that was forthcoming and that didn’t exactly spawn decades of race riots.

The commission recognized the difference between what triggers an uproar (how police handle a traffic stop in Watts) and what fuels it (discrimination, poverty, etc.). This recognition has been sparse amid the cartoon uproar, as Americans fixate on the question of how a single drawing could inflame millions.

Answer: depends on which million you’re talking about. In Gaza much of the actual fuel came from tensions with Israelis, in Iran some fundamentalists nursed longstanding anti-Americanism, in Pakistan opposition to the pro-Western ruling regime played a role, and so on.

This diversity of rage, and of underlying grievance, complicates the challenge. Apparently refraining from obvious offense to religious sensibilities won’t be enough. Still, the offense in question is a crystalline symbol of the overall challenge, because so many of the grievances coalesce in a sense that Muslims aren’t respected by the affluent, powerful West (just as rioting American blacks felt they weren’t respected by affluent, powerful whites). A cartoon that disrespects Islam by ridiculing Muhammad is both trigger and extremely high-octane fuel.

None of this is to say that there aren’t big differences between American culture and culture in many Muslim parts of the world. In a way, that’s the point: some differences are so big, and the job of shrinking them so daunting, that we can’t afford to be unclear on what the biggest differences are.

What isn’t a big difference is the Muslim demand for self-censorship by major media outlets. That kind of self-censorship is not just an American tradition, but a tradition that has helped make America one of the most harmonious multiethnic and multireligious societies in the history of the world.

So why not take the model that has worked in America and apply it globally? Namely: Yes, you are legally free to publish just about anything, but if you publish things that gratuitously offend ethnic or religious groups, you will earn the scorn of enlightened people everywhere. With freedom comes responsibility.

Of course, it’s a two-way street. As Westerners try to attune themselves to the sensitivities of Muslims, Muslims need to respect the sensitivities of, for example, Jews. But it’s going to be hard for Westerners to sell Muslims on this symmetrical principle while flagrantly violating it themselves. That Danish newspaper editor, along with his American defenders, is complicating the fight against anti-Semitism.

Some Westerners say there’s no symmetry here — that cartoons about the Holocaust are more offensive than cartoons about Muhammad. And, indeed, to us secularists it may seem clear that joking about the murder of millions of people is worse than mocking a God whose existence is disputed.

BUT one key to the American formula for peaceful coexistence is to avoid such arguments — to let each group decide what it finds most offensive, so long as the implied taboo isn’t too onerous. We ask only that the offended group in turn respect the verdicts of other groups about what they find most offensive. Obviously, anti-Semitic and other hateful cartoons won’t be eliminated overnight. (In the age of the Internet, no form of hate speech will be eliminated, period; the argument is about what appears in mainstream outlets that are granted legitimacy by nations and peoples.)

But the American experience suggests that steadfast self-restraint can bring progress. In the 1960’s, the Nation of Islam was gaining momentum as its leader, Elijah Muhammad, called whites “blue-eyed devils” who were about to be exterminated in keeping with Allah’s will. The Nation of Islam has since dropped in prominence and, anyway, has dropped that doctrine from its talking points. Peace prevails in America, and one thing that keeps it is strict self-censorship.

And not just by media outlets. Most Americans tread lightly in discussing ethnicity and religion, and we do it so habitually that it’s nearly unconscious. Some might call this dishonest, and maybe it is, but it also holds moral truth: until you’ve walked in the shoes of other people, you can’t really grasp their frustrations and resentments, and you can’t really know what would and wouldn’t offend you if you were part of their crowd.

The Danish editor’s confusion was to conflate censorship and self-censorship. Not only are they not the same thing — the latter is what allows us to live in a spectacularly diverse society without the former; to keep censorship out of the legal realm, we practice it in the moral realm. Sometimes it feels uncomfortable, but worse things are imaginable.


Robert Wright, the author of “The Moral Animal,” is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation.

I don’t know that “peace” reigns in America. The level of gun violence the French experienced this week is a common event in America. But if we are going to make distinctions between violence intended to intimidate people into silence and violence for violence sake as we commonly see here, then it’s worth thinking about what Wright says above.

And we might want to think about how we all reacted to this:

On July 27, 2008, a politically motivated fatal shooting took place at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. Motivated by a desire to kill liberals and Democrats, gunman Jim David Adkisson fired a shotgun at members of the congregation during a youth performance of a musical, killing two people and wounding seven others.

Adkisson, a former private in the United States Army from 1974 to 1977, said that he was motivated by hatred of Democrats, liberals, African Americans and homosexuals. According to an affidavit by one of the officers who interviewed Adkisson on July 27, 2008:

During the interview Adkisson stated that he had targeted the church because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country’s hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of major media outlets. Adkisson made statements that because he could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement that he would then target those that had voted them into office. Adkisson stated that he had held these beliefs for about the last ten years.

Additionally, one of Adkisson’s former wives had been a member (in the 1990s) of the church where the attack occurred.

Adkisson’s manifesto also cited the inability to find a job, and that his food stamps were being cut. His manifesto stated that he intended to keep shooting until police arrived and expected to be killed by police. Adkisson had a waist satchel with more ammunition, totaling 76 shells of #4 shot.

In his manifesto, Adkisson also included the Democratic members of the House and Senate, and the 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America of Bernard Goldberg in his list of wished-for targets.

During the interview Adkisson stated that he had targeted the church because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country’s hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of major media outlets.

I didn’t see a lot of people showing solidarity with the folks who were killed in that church for their religious and political beliefs or declaring war on the people who held such ideas. Nobody seemed to react to it much at all. Why was that?

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What do Independents really want?

What do Independents really want?

by digby

538 has the goods.  It’s what we all suspected:

Gallup reported Wednesday that 43 percent of Americans identify as political independents — a record high. Thirty percent call themselves Democrats, and 26 percent call themselves Republicans. So what does this mean for our political future? Absolutely nothing.

Many of these independents are closet partisans. They say they are independent but consistently lean towards one party or the other. In Gallup’s latest survey, only 13 percent of Americans don’t favor the Democratic or Republican party. In other words, 87 percent of Americans prefer one party over the other, which is about on par with data since 1991.

Political independence isn’t more popular, it’s just more fashionable.

Ain’t that the truth. Nobody wants to be associated with the two parties. They are embarrassing in dozens of different ways. But the press commonly mistakes that identifiers as having some ideological meaning and it doesn’t. The country is politically polarized and it’s socially uncomfortable for a lot of people to take sides in the argument. So they call themselves “independents” and have it both ways in terms of personal identification. It’s much easier to do that. But in the end, their philosophies and voting patterns consistently go with one party or another. They have to — our system is very polarized and we would have to have split personalities to vote for both parties. This is not about ideology.

I get it. But the political press needs to stop assuming that people who identify as “independent” really want moderation and compromise. That’s a projection. We don’t know what they “really want.” We only know they don’t want to be identified with either party and that can mean anything.

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People are working again (for peanuts)

People are working again (for peanuts)

by digby

Good news about job growth. A lot more people are working. Unfortunately:

The story on wages is less encouraging. The widely touted November jump in wages was almost completely reversed, with the December data showing a 5 cent drop from a downwardly revised November figure. The average over the last three months grew at a 1.1 percent annual rate compared with the average of the prior three months, down from a 1.7 percent growth rate over the last year. This may be in part due to a shift to lower paying jobs in restaurants, retail, and the lower paying portions of the health care industry. However, it is also possible that we are just seeing anomalous data. However the claims of accelerating wage growth have no support in the data.

Interestingly, there seems to be some shrift to generally less skilled production and non-supervisory workers. The index of weekly hours for these workers is up 3.6 percent from its year ago level. By contrast, the index for all workers is up by just 3.3 percent. Since the former group is more than 80 percent of the payroll employees, hours for supervisory workers would risen by just 2.5 percent. This is consistent with employment data showing much sharper employment gains for workers with high school degrees or less than for college grads. The EPOP for college grads is actually down by 0.2 pp over the last year.

I think this is probably inevitable. After such a long period of high unemployment people are conditioned to stick with their jobs and not make waves by asking for raises — and bosses are still keeping wages low because they can. It’s going to take a while for that to change. And every day it takes makes people fall further behind. Wages need to grow

But good news is good news. At long last.