Month: January 2015

72 Headlines O the Day

by digby

h/t @mathieuvonrohr

QOTD: Bob Corker

by digby

Let’s forget about all that oversight nonsense, shall we?

“To me, Congress having oversight certainly is important, but what is more important relative to these types of events is ensuring we don’t overly hamstring the NSA’s ability to collect this kind of information in advance and keep these kinds of activities from occurring,” Sen. Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, told National Journal.

Corker said that in recent months, public support for the NSA has been fading as national security risks increase, a dangerous prospect for stopping future terrorism plots. The only way public opinion changes, Corker says, is for the American people to be reminded that threats still exist.

“I think events like [the shooting in Paris] and people’s recognition that the only way to keep those from happening is through outstanding intelligence-gathering. That alone, unfortunately, does shape people’s opinions,” Corker said.

In other words, it’s really lucky there was a terrorist attack in Paris to scare people into letting the government collect all their information with no oversight.

Huckleberry Graham was predictably measured and mature:

“I fear our intelligence capabilities, those designed to prevent such an attack from taking place on our shores, are quickly eroding. I believe our national security infrastructure designed to prevent these types of attacks from occurring is under siege.”

Translation: Oh my dear God! Runferyerlives! They’re going to kill us all!!!!

Basically, these right wingers are stirring in defense of free speech — they just want to make sure the government collects it all so it can bring the hammer down on anyone who says something they don’t like.

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They don’t miss a trick

by digby

Via Salon, we have the latest gambit from the anti-abortion zealots:

Mark Gietzen, founder of Kansas Coalition for Life, said the videotaped beheadings of journalists by Islamic terrorists have raised concerns about what he calls the “decapitation” of fetuses during abortions, making an attempt to ban it timely.

No state has ever tried for such a law, he said, but he is working with the American Center for Law and Justice, founded by Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson, on language that would make such a bill work in Kansas and in the U.S. Supreme Court.

If the right language can be found, Gietzen said, “I don’t think there’s a judge on earth that’s willing to say, ‘Decapitations are just fine.’ ”

They think they’re being clever. And often they are. We’ll have to see if they can succeed in comparing pregnant women to ISIS, which is essentially what they’re doing. It’s Kansas.

Turning up the hate

by digby

Here’s a good piece by Juan Cole on today’s terrorist attack in France. It’s well worth reading the whole thing but this is the nut:

Al-Qaeda wants to mentally colonize French Muslims, but faces a wall of disinterest. But if it can get non-Muslim French to be beastly to ethnic Muslims on the grounds that they are Muslims, it can start creating a common political identity around grievance against discrimination.

This tactic is similar to the one used by Stalinists in the early 20th century. Decades ago I read an account by the philosopher Karl Popper of how he flirted with Marxism for about 6 months in 1919 when he was auditing classes at the University of Vienna. He left the group in disgust when he discovered that they were attempting to use false flag operations to provoke militant confrontations. In one of them police killed 8 socialist youth at Hörlgasse on 15 June 1919. For the unscrupulous among Bolsheviks–who would later be Stalinists– the fact that most students and workers don’t want to overthrow the business class is inconvenient, and so it seemed desirable to some of them to “sharpen the contradictions” between labor and capital.

The operatives who carried out this attack exhibit signs of professional training. They spoke unaccented French, and so certainly know that they are playing into the hands of Marine LePen and the Islamophobic French Right wing. They may have been French, but they appear to have been battle hardened. This horrific murder was not a pious protest against the defamation of a religious icon. It was an attempt to provoke European society into pogroms against French Muslims, at which point al-Qaeda recruitment would suddenly exhibit some successes instead of faltering in the face of lively Beur youth culture (French Arabs playfully call themselves by this anagram). Ironically, there are reports that one of the two policemen they killed was a Muslim.

Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, then led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, deployed this sort of polarization strategy successfully in Iraq, constantly attacking Shiites and their holy symbols, and provoking the ethnic cleansing of a million Sunnis from Baghdad. The polarization proceeded, with the help of various incarnations of Daesh (Arabic for ISIL or ISIS, which descends from al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia). And in the end, the brutal and genocidal strategy worked, such that Daesh was able to encompass all of Sunni Arab Iraq, which had suffered so many Shiite reprisals that they sought the umbrella of the very group that had deliberately and systematically provoked the Shiites.

“Sharpening the contradictions” is the strategy of sociopaths and totalitarians, aimed at unmooring people from their ordinary insouciance and preying on them, mobilizing their energies and wealth for the perverted purposes of a self-styled great leader.

The only effective response to this manipulative strategy (as Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani tried to tell the Iraqi Shiites a decade ago) is to resist the impulse to blame an entire group for the actions of a few and to refuse to carry out identity-politics reprisals.

Will they?  Let’s hope so.

Freedom fries

by digby

The killings in Paris are horrifying. If you need to catch up on the details, this constantly updating storify is a good way to do that in a hurry.

Mainstream Muslims have led the way in condemning the attack. CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said: CAIR “condemn[s] in the strongest possible terms the brutal and cowardly attack.” This is consistent with their statements whenever soemthing like this happens. Ed Kilgore reprinted this statement from CAIR back in 2010 when Southpark’s creators were threatened:

In reaction to the recent controversy over a depiction of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad in an episode of Comedy Central’s “South Park,” a Seattle cartoonist apparently declared May 20th to be “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day.”

I say “apparently,” because cartoonist Molly Norris — the creator of the cartoon showing many objects claiming to be a likeness of the prophet — now says she never intended to launch “Draw Muhammad Day.”

On her web site, she has since posted a statement that reads in part: “I did NOT ‘declare’ May 20 to be ‘Everybody Draw Mohammed Day’…The cartoon-poster, with a fake ‘group’ behind it, went viral and was taken seriously…The vitriol this ‘day’ has brought out, of people who only want to draw obscene images, is offensive to the Muslims who did nothing to endanger our right to expression in the first place…I apologize to people of Muslim faith and ask that this ‘day’ be called off.”

Norris even visited a mosque at the invitation of the local Muslim community.

The creator of a Facebook page dedicated to the day also repudiated the “inflammatory posts” it inspired. He said, “I am aghast that so many people are posting deeply offensive pictures of the Prophet…Y’all go ahead if that’s your bag, but count me out.”

Despite the cartoonist’s and the Facebook page creator’s seemingly sincere attempts to distance themselves from the fake event, Muslim-bashers and Islamophobes made sure the call to “draw Muhammad” went viral on the Internet. They are hoping to offend Muslims, who are generally sensitive to created images of the Prophet Muhammad or any prophet.

[The majority of Muslims believe visual representations of all prophets are inappropriate in that they distract from God’s message and could lead to a kind of idol worship, something forbidden in Islam.]

So how should Muslims and other Americans react to this latest attempt by hate-mongers to exploit the precious right of free speech and turn May 20 into a celebration of degradation and xenophobia?

Before I answer that question, it must first be made clear that American Muslims value freedom of speech and have no desire to inhibit the creative instincts of cartoonists, comedians or anyone else.

The mainstream American Muslim community, including my own organization, has also strongly repudiated the few members of an extremist fringe group who appeared to threaten the creators of “South Park.” That group, the origins and makeup of which has been questioned by many Muslims, has absolutely no credibility within the American Muslim community.

I, like many Muslims, was astonished to see media outlets broadcasting the views of a few marginal individuals, while ignoring the hundreds of mosques and Muslim institutions that have representatives who could have offered a mainstream perspective.

I dread the blowback. Conservatives are the worst dupes of terrorists on the planet.  And they will undoubtedly do just what these killers wanted them to do.

Unfortunately, I made the mistake of tuning in to Fox News a few minutes ago to watch them all eating croissants and marching around the table singing “La Marseillaise”. Ok, maybe I’m exaggerating. But they do seem to have rather suddenly become Francophiles which is ironic to say the least. I couldn’t help but recall this National Review article by neocon icon Michael Ledeen:

March 10,2003:

Assume, for a moment, that the French and the Germans aren’t thwarting us out of pique, but by design, long-term design. Then look at the world again, and see if there’s evidence of such a design.

Like everyone else, the French and the Germans saw that the defeat of the Soviet Empire projected the United States into the rare, almost unique position of a global hyperpower, a country so strong in every measurable element that no other nation could possibly resist its will. The “new Europe” had been designed to carve out a limited autonomy for the old continent, a balance-point between the Americans and the Soviets. But once the Soviets were gone, and the Red Army melted down, the European Union was reduced to a combination theme park and free-trade zone. Some foolish American professors and doltish politicians might say — and even believe — that henceforth “power” would be defined in economic terms, and that military power would no longer count. But cynical Europeans know better.

They dreaded the establishment of an American empire, and they sought for a way to bring it down.

If you were the French president or the German chancellor, you might well have done the same.

How could it be done? No military operation could possibly defeat the United States, and no direct economic challenge could hope to succeed. That left politics and culture. And here there was a chance to turn America’s vaunted openness at home and toleration abroad against the United States. So the French and the Germans struck a deal with radical Islam and with radical Arabs: You go after the United States, and we’ll do everything we can to protect you, and we will do everything we can to weaken the Americans.

The Franco-German strategy was based on using Arab and Islamic extremism and terrorism as the weapon of choice, and the United Nations as the straitjacket for blocking a decisive response from the United States.

This required considerable skill, and total cynicism, both of which were in abundant supply in Paris and Berlin. Chancellor Shroeder gained reelection by warning of American warmongering, even though, as usual, America had been attacked first. And both Shroeder and Chirac went to great lengths to support Islamic institutions in their countries, even when — as in the French case — it was in open violation of the national constitution. French law stipulates a total separation of church and state, yet the French Government openly funds Islamic “study” centers, mosques, and welfare organizations. A couple of months ago, Chirac approved the creation of an Islamic political body, a mini-parliament, that would provide Muslims living in France with official stature and enhanced political clout. And both countries have permitted the Saudis to build thousands of radical Wahhabi mosques and schools, where the hatred of the infidels is instilled in generation after generation of young Sunnis. It is perhaps no accident that Chirac went to Algeria last week and promised a cheering crowd that he would not rest until America’s grand design had been defeated.

Both countries have been totally deaf to suggestions that the West take stern measures against the tyrannical terrorist sponsors in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Saudi Arabia. Instead, they do everything in their power to undermine American-sponsored trade embargoes or more limited sanctions, and it is an open secret that they have been supplying Saddam with military technology through the corrupt ports of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid’s little playground in Dubai, often through Iranian middlemen.

It sounds fanciful, to be sure. But the smartest people I know have been thoroughly astonished at recent French and German behavior. This theory may help understand what’s going on. I now believe that I was wrong to forecast that the French would join the war against Iraq at the last minute, having gained every possible economic advantage in the meantime. I think Chirac will oppose us before, during, and after the war, because he has cast his lot with radical Islam and with the Arab extremists. He isn’t doing it just for the money — although I have no doubt that France is being richly rewarded for defending Saddam against the civilized countries of the world — but for higher stakes. He’s fighting to end the feared American domination before it takes stable shape.

If this is correct, we will have to pursue the war against terror far beyond the boundaries of the Middle East, into the heart of Western Europe. And there, as in the Middle East, our greatest weapons are political: the demonstrated desire for freedom of the peoples of the countries that oppose us.

Radio Free France, anyone?

I’d imagine there are going to be plenty of people suggesting that France will now be on the side of the “good guys” against the “bad guys” and, as always, the complexity of these issues will be lost. These terrorists do seem to have our number.

This attack was a terrible thing and not just the horror for the victims. It was an attack on the very notion of free speech. But let’s not get too self-righteous. As Glenn Greenwald pointed out in this article yesterday, attacking free speech is very much in vogue these days. And the great irony is that we will likely suppress more of it in reaction to this attack. And so it goes.

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The first of a thousand cuts

by digby

Via Vox:

A Republican bill to change how Obamacare defines a full work-week would raise the deficit by $53.2 billion over the next decade.

The bill would also leave more Americans uninsured

The bill would change Obamacare to only require employers to cover people who work 40 hours each week. The current bill mandates coverage for those who work 30 hours, a rule that critics say leads to employers cutting hours to stay under the threshold.

And the beauty of this is that they can blame the Democrats for all of it.

It’s highly unlikely that President Obama will sign any bill that will degrade his signature program. But he’s only got another 2 years. We don’t know what will happen after that.

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The new congress just like the old congress

by digby

Following up on my post below, I wrote a piece for Salon yesterday about the new congress that you might find amusing. it opens with this:

If there is one thing on which I wish I’d laid a bet over the past few years it’s that despite their successful strategy to make the economic recovery as weak as possible, the minute it started to substantially improve, the conservatives would be standing at the head of the line taking credit for it. It was as predictable as the sun coming up tomorrow that they would claim their obstructive tactics resulted in Morning in America. After all, it just rewarded them with a Republican majority in the Senate and enlarged their majority in the House so they must be on the right track, right?

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Told you so

by digby

They have no shame. None:

“After so many years of sluggish growth, we’re finally starting to see some economic data that can provide a glimmer of hope. The uptick appears to coincide with the biggest political change of the Obama administration’s long tenure in Washington: The expectation of a new republican congress.”

That’s good old Mitch McConnell. He said it with a straight face.

This is what they do. Back in the 90s when the economy started to grow strongly under President Clinton after they all voted against his economic plan claiming it was going to take the country into a depression, they all claimed it was the cuts they insisted upon in subsequent budget deals that ushered in that boom.

I wrote this a while back about the utter failure of Sam Brownback’s dystopian budget “experiment”:

It’s probably true that the economy will improve a bit soon, barring some new calamity. And when that happens, his “experiment” will wrongly get the credit. All the suffering, the long term degradation of services for the needy, the ongoing economic insecurity will be lost in the celebration of improving numbers that are happening in spite of Brownback’s nihilistic philosophy rather than because of it.

This is the essence of our problem and goes right back to that famous quote by John Maynard Keynes. He was responding to the assurance by economists that in the long run everything would work out:

But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task, if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us, that when the storm is long past, the ocean is flat again.

In a capitalist system, it’s the upheavals and dislocation in the short run (“the tempestuous seasons”) that destroy lives and consigns some people to great poverty even as it rewards others with great wealth. The result is often an unstable society and tremendous pain for many people. Keynesians believe the role of government is to try to even things out, prevent and mitigate undue suffering for humans as the system goes through its destructive cycles.

Conservatives like Brownback see capitalism as a sort of sacred, supernatural force and believe that their angry market God requires human sacrifice in order to be appeased. When the suffering abates, as it does eventually, they will feel sanctified emerge with their beliefs in suffering (for others) as a purification ritual intact. “See, I told you it would work!”

In fact, the only thing any politicians can really get credit for in these situations is how well they mitigate the suffering and contain the damage. The Democrats and President Obama didn’t do enough. And they’ve been insisting there was a recovery pretty constantly for years even though it was tepid at best until recently. But they did do something. The Republicans did everything in their power to stop any government action that would be useful and went out of their way to make things worse.

But as I noted in the piece I quote above, this is what they think recoveries are all about: suffering.Nobody ever said it better than Hoover advisor Andrew Mellon:

“liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate… it will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up from less competent people,”

Take them at their word. They’re not playing.

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There’s many a slip twixt the cop and the news clip
by Tom Sullivan

Writing at Wonkette, Shrill unearthed a revealing story the other day that you might have missed:

Anyway, on New Year’s Eve, the New York Police Department requested the public’s help in finding a man who grabbed an MTA worker, threw her on the ground, throttled her, and then ran away with a jaunty and satisfied smirk on his face.

Being the New York subway system, surveillance cameras captured the play-by-play. Turns out the attacker was an off-duty police officer. But here’s where Shrill turns it into a man-bites-dog story:

The hilarious coda to this story is the treatment of this story in the news by the New York Daily News. Here’s the headline from the story they wrote before they knew that the culprit was a police officer:

And here’s the lede of that story:

A hulking brute grabbed a 28-year-old MTA employee up in a bear hug at a Bronx train station, shoved her onto the platform and began choking her in an unprovoked attack – then ran away smiling, authorities said Wednesday.

Here’s the story after they found out that the culprit was a police officer:

And here’s the lede of that story:

Police Officer Mirjan Lolja, 37, was suspended after the assault in which the Metropolitan Transportation Authority worker — who was on-duty and in her uniform — was allegedly put into a bear hug, thrown to the floor and choked, cops said.

Notice anything? Gone is the evocative “thug” in the headline and the “hulking brute” of the lede, and the sensationalism of the label of an “unprovoked” attack, replaced by plainspoken and bare nouns. Gone, too, is the directness of the active voice, replaced by a circumspect passive voice, accompanied by the (necessary) lawyerly “allegedly”. The callousness of him smiling has been dropped, too, demoted to the second paragraph. This is no surprise — it’s just an example of the subtle way in which our media defers to and genuflects before law enforcement, shaping and coloring the narrative in their favor.

That’s about as plain as it gets. “There was an officer-involved shooting,” etc. An officer “discharged his weapon,” etc. News language is indirect and allows that things “just happen” when police are involved. Or as Jameson Parker snarks:

“A shot rang out from the officer’s gun.” Who is the actor there? The gun? So much for the old NRA adage “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” Apparently officers’ guns do.

No thugs around the station house, either, people. Move along.

He hadn’t otter

by digby

You need this. I know I did.

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