Month: January 2015

“The ultimate beat sweeteners”

by digby

Glenn does the honors on the egregiously gullible media accounts of the Sony hack. It’s well worth your while. The way people reacted to this story proved once again that we’ve learned absolutely nothing from the past decade of revelations and the need for skepticism.

Meanwhile, check out Billmon’s twitter feed on the subject:

Glenn does point out the few who showed skepticism, or at least allowed skeptical voices to be part of the conversation. Chris Hayes stands out in this regard having featured a number of experts and skeptics on his show from the beginning, most recently in this segment from Tuesday.

It was interesting watching the media unquestioningly swallow the idea that North Korea is so sophisticated about the way Hollywood works that they very cleverly made sure that Amy Pascal’s embarrassing emails about Angelina Jolie and other major stars were leaked first so that the whole company was scared to death that their personal thoughts and private information was at risk. And then they cleverly timed the whole thing so that everyone in the world was fascinated by the gossip before they revealed their evil intent to destroy the American way of life by denying us the right to see a crappy movie. I don’t think any executive in Hollywood would have bought that script. At least not until they checked with their foreign distributors to make sure that their governments had no objections.

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Headline ‘O the Day

by digby

New York Times:

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“Our” billionaires are still billionaires …

by digby

I have a piece up at Salon today about the way our political system is evolving into a competition between the liberal billionaire and the conservative billionaires. There are far fewer liberal billionaires — and they aren’t fighting the same fight as the conservative billionaires are:

It’s ironic that there was such consternation across the liberal landscape that a magazine that for many decades positioned itself as the home of liberal establishment contrarianism and only under Chris Hughes seemed to be turning itself into a publication with a much more straight-ahead ideology. But the upshot of the whole episode seems to be that people thought Hughes bought the magazine as a way to advance a political philosophy and it turned out that really wasn’t his goal. And it raises an important issue: In this new world of billionaires in politics, where everything seems to be coming down to a sort of cage match between billionaires on the left and billionaires on the right, can liberals count on “their” billionaires to put their money where their hearts are?

This has actually been a long-standing discussion among activists on the left. Setting aside the natural worries about rich people of all political bents keeping one eye on their bottom lines, many liberal donors prefer to put their efforts toward specific charitable efforts they care about. It’s very hard to argue with it — those good deeds are necessary. But it is a very different approach to the way the right-wingers go about using their money to advance their political ideology and directly influence the political process itself.

Now one cannot really fault someone like Tom Steyer who is dedicating a lot of his money to fighting climate change. That is one issue that is so profoundly threatening to the entire planet that you have to be grateful to anyone for putting their fortunes to work to fix it. But so many others are either like Hughes, who everyone thought was political but just turned out to be another tech entrepreneur putting his skills to work in the political field for a brief period, or they are dedicated to their specific causes and allegiance to mainstream Democratic Party politics. And that is definitely not what the Murdochs and the Kochs and the Adelsons and the Foster Friesses are all about. They are attempting to dominate the political process by using their money to directly influence the ideological and political makeup of our society. They leave no stone unturned. From Fox News to think tanks to super PACs to political campaigns they are using their fortunes to actively change American politics. Oddly, unlike their liberal counterparts, they seem to respect state power.

I don’t think putting our faith in billionaires is a very good way to achieve progressive goals. At the moment it has to be part of the mix, however, simply because the .001% is so awash in money that they can dominate the system without even feeling it. But they need to be educated about the necessity of engaging systemically in the same way the right wing billionaires are doing.

So next time you are hanging out with your favorite lefty billionaire pal, give them a clue ok?

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Happy New Year Everyone!

by digby

A final heartfelt thank you for your amazing generosity and support for my annual holiday fundraiser. I cannot fully tell you what it means to me. It makes it all worthwhile (even watching Fox News so you don’t have to!)

We’ve got a lot to talk about and a lot of work to do in 2015. This rickety old blog will keep going thanks to you.

Happy New Year,

digby, Dennis, David, Tom, Gaius and Spocko.

Move over Karl Rove

by digby

Political advice from white supremacists:

The Stormfront crowd offers its own helpful political advice, not only for Scalise but also for the entire GOP.

“If Republicans truly wanted to take this country back, they would make use of the majority of people in this country — Whites — and mobilize,” posts a user named Cyan Sky. “The Dems play identity politics with non-whites. The only way the Republicans will win is if they do the same with Whites.”

“Cyan Sky” is clearly a major GOP strategist. And they’ve been taking his advice:

These results are based on more than 338,000 interviews conducted as part of Gallup Daily tracking in 2012, and clearly underscore the distinct racial profiles of partisan groups in today’s political landscape.

Republicans are overwhelmingly non-Hispanic white, at a level that is significantly higher than the self-identified white percentage of the national adult population. Just 2% of Republicans are black, and 6% are Hispanic.

Unfortunately for them, while they have persuaded virtually all people of color as well as Jewish citizens that they aren’t welcome in the Republican Party, they haven’t been able to persuade every last white citizen to vote for them. Therefore, the Democrats remain competitive.

Perhaps they think that by putting white supremacists in the House leadership they can attract more white people. I don’t think that’s going to work. They already have the white supremacist faction all wrapped up. The rest of us are appalled.

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Gettin’ medieval
by Tom Sullivan

With 2014 gone (and good riddance), perhaps in 2015 America will look itself in the mirror and reflect on what it means to behave as if civilized rules only apply to everyone else. We look somewhat less exceptional from across the pond. Take this op-ed from Christian Christensen, a professor in Stockholm, for example:

… 2014 has been a year in which the mythology of domestic U.S. legal egalitarianism — reinforced by the mantra of blind justice and a near religious reverence of the U.S. Constitution — was exposed as a pretense. As abroad, so at home: Some people are more equal than others.

After the police killings of unarmed black men, Michael Brown and Eric Garner; after the botched execution of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma; after the SCCI report on a torture program approved by the White House — more brutal than the world already knew, and in violation of domestic and international law; and after a majority of Americans when asked approved the torture; on reflection, exceptionalism looks more like license. There are not two sets of rules in America, Christensen concludes, but three: “one for white killers, one for black killers and one for police officers who killed black suspects.” And a fourth for rich, Wall Street bankers, I might add.

Christensen continues:

One thread ties together all these cases: The willingness of the U.S. to bend the law and condone the barbaric treatment of human beings is grounded in differences of race, ethnicity or religion. Police violence, the death penalty and torture are predominantly applied to nonwhites or non-Christians. How supportive would white Americans and lawmakers be of procedures such as “rectal rehydration” — a gruesome procedure that, according to the torture report, was applied to hunger-striking inmates — if they were performed on white Christians? How long would they would be to willing to tolerate routine police killings of unarmed white citizens?

It all seems, I don’t know, a little medieval:

Perhaps critics are right. Perhaps we’ve been wrong to base interrogation and prisoner treatment on traditions and superstitions of past centuries. Maybe as citizens of a democratic republic we should strive in the 21st century to live up to our lofty, Enlightenment ideals of freedom, equality, and justice for all. Maybe instead of falling prey to jingoism, we should reflect, examine our assumptions analytically, through experimentation and a “scientific method”. Maybe this scientific method could be extended to other fields of learning: the natural sciences, art, architecture, law. Perhaps it could lead the way to a new age, an age of rebirth, a Renaissance! … Naaaaaahhh!

Biggest scandal of 2015?

by digby

I think the revelation that President Barack Obama is a secret furry has to be it:

He seemed like such a regular suburban dad too ..

Cheers everybody!

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