Month: February 2015

We have met the enemy …
by Tom Sullivan

The shooting deaths in Chapel Hill, NC of three students sparked candlelight vigils last night:

Thousands gathered on the campus of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill on Wednesday night to pay tribute to three local students who were shot to death the night before.

Deah Barakat, 23, his wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21, and her younger sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, were killed on Tuesday evening in the couple’s apartment in a leafy suburb of Chapel Hill.

The hashtag #MuslimLivesMatter trended early on social media as users complained that media coverage of the shootings would have been greater had the shooter been Muslim instead of the victims. Coverage has since picked up from Sydney to London.

In an emotional press conference, the family of the victims called on federal authorities to investigate the “execution style” shootings as a hate crime (video) directed at the three for their faith.

What strikes me are the reports that the alleged shooter had a history of angry confrontation with neighbors and had an obsession with parking and noise. He had a carry permit and displayed his weapon to the victims in a previous encounter. They and other neighbors were afraid of the guy. Enough so that someone previously called a meeting to discuss how to handle him (more video). The faith of these particular neighbors could have been the factor that allowed the alleged shooter to finally vent his rage on them rather than others.

But then there’s this background on the suspect:

Hicks was known for his temper and confrontational behavior. His ex-wife Cynthia Hurley, who divorced Hicks about 17 years ago, said his favorite film was “Falling Down,” in which a disgruntled and unemployed defense industry worker played by Michael Douglas goes on a shooting rampage.

“That always freaked me out,” Hurley told the Associated Press. “He watched it incessantly. He thought it was hilarious. He had no compassion at all.”

After tragedies like this, our first reflex is to ask, why? Mental illness, maybe. Ethnic hatred, maybe. Too many guns, maybe. Those are our default answers. They’re easy. But is there something bigger going on?

To put this violent incident into a larger context for a moment, just glance at the front page of Raw Story this morning. I found these headlines:

Tech mogul John McAfee reveals he now lives in Tennessee and is ‘constantly armed’

Chris Kyle called man who killed him ‘nuts’ just before shooting: attorney

Tennessee man forces ex to carve his name into her skin with box cutter, then rapes her

Indian man paralyzed after Alabama cop body-slams him for walking in wealthy white suburb

Woman miscarries after Georgia cop who didn’t ‘appreciate her tone’ tackles and sits on her: lawsuit

Senseless violence is widespread in this country. Still, notice anything in common about the geography of those stories? What’s that famous saying from Pogo?

Flat-Earthers 

by tristero

A national embarrassment, that one of the two largest and most important political parties in this country is filled with so many cowards and nincompoops:

The Evolutionists
Nobody. 

The Asterisk
Jeb Bush 

They Aren’t Scientists
Chris Christie
Ted Cruz
Bobby Jindal
John Kasich
Rand Paul
Marco Rubio
Scott Walker 

The Hell No Caucus
Ben Carson:
Mike Huckabee
Rick Perry
Rick Santorum

<br><br>

Oh lordy

by digby

I guess it was inevitable that some horrible killer would end up being an atheist and that would open the door for people of all faiths to come together and demand that other atheists condemn him. That’s how these things work.  For instance, this piece by Elizabeth Stoker Breunig takes on the New Atheists suggesting that it’s time for atheists to reckon with the fact that they are a problem.

Let me just preface this by saying that I am an Old Atheist. By that I mean I’m old. And I’m an atheist. To me atheism isn’t a movement.  It certainly isn’t an identity. It’s just the lack of belief in a deity, period.  If I wanted to join some church I’d pick one with good art and music.  If I wanted dogma I’d use the Bible — it’s a very exciting read. None of this New Atheism stuff holds much interest for me.

I don’t hate people for believing in religion. It seems to me to be quite natural. I am interested in it because the vast majority of humans on this earth are interested in it and it has a huge influence on the world around me.  And because it’s so natural I think understanding and tolerance are necessary for us to be able to live together. In fact,  this atheist has been arguing of late that our self-righteous waving of the bloody Charlie Hebdo shirt might not be entirely justified if what we are aiming for is a decent and tolerant society instead of a “clash of civilizations.” It seems to me that secularism certainly has its blind spots too.  Glass houses an all.

Anyway, in case it’s actually necessary to say it, I condemn the killing of people, period, by atheists or anyone in the name of religion or anything else.  I’m against it, no matter who is perpetrating the act and that includes the state when it executes people, by the way. If this guy down in North Carolina killed those people because he was an atheist who hates Muslims he is a psycho. But I’m not going to “disavow” him because we aren’t members of an “organization” and we don’t share an identity. It makes no sense to me that the fact that I don’t believe in something that he doesn’t believe in either would make me responsible for his actions.

[M]ost political conversations aren’t as shallow as the ones you see on TV. On op-ed pages and around dinner tables, Americans have substantive conversations about politics. And while the facts aren’t always right, the discussion is often valuable. Stewart gives short shrift to that kind of talk. Instead, in the world of The Daily Show, the only politics is cable politics, where venality rules, serious disputes are obscured, and cynicism is the only response that works.

Not only does this discourage people who want to make a difference—like the earnest young viewers of Stewart’s audience—but it blurs the picture and makes it hard to see when those arguments really matter. It’s how we get the spectacle of Stewart’s rally, when tens of thousands of liberals gathered on the National Mall in Washington to hear an ode to civility—with an extended metaphor about the Lincoln Tunnel—as if Washington gridlock were a case of bad manners and not deep-seated ideological differences about government and its place in the world.

Again, there are times when this basic perspective is vital, when we need someone to bathe our government in light and mockery and challenge the dishonesty, incompetence, and self-seriousness of our leaders and elites. But this approach, which worked wonders during the Bush administration, isn’t always the best one. For liberals in particular, the idea that government is only hypocrisy and dysfunction is self-defeating and nihilistic.

I’ll just say that I agree with a lot of it. But there’s another dimension to it as well, which I wrote a while back after the “rally for sanity”:

Stewart really does seem to believe that there’s some happy “middle” where most people live. And I think he believes that middle is pretty much like him. But that just isn’t true. People disagree, for real. Yes, we all put aside our politics at work because we have to in order to keep our jobs. And social mores require that we not break into heated political arguments all the time at the kids’ soccer practice. Our political disagreements haven’t made the society devolve into total anarchy (yet.) But the fact is that there are competing ideologies and philosophies at work in this country about how to govern ourselves. Denying that doesn’t make it go away. We can certainly argue for days about the best way to wage the battle, but a battle it is.

I think what disappointed me about Stewart’s closing was that I thought he’d staged a pretty nice gathering of the liberal tribe, replete with its hipster irony and inside jokes and recognizable signs of solidarity. No, it’s not “We Shall Overcome” but it is a response to the kooks on the right and it’s not an invalid way for the true believers to communicate with each other. (God knows the other side has no problem practically speaking in tongues amongst themselves.) No, nobody explicitly called for people to vote, but I think it’s fairly clear that anyone who watches Stewart and Colbert are engaged in politics enough to know that an election was imminent. 

The problem was that by calling out both sides at the end, he sent a signal to the Villagers that their false equivalence, he said/she said, above it all, “view from nowhere” approach to politics was correct and I think that’s a shame. The right doesn’t give a damn about this phony construct and the only ones who lose are the liberals. Olbermann under fire for being explicitly political is a good example of where that leads. 

Anyway, I think Maher and Stewart and especially Colbert are brilliant political observers and satirists — the best communicators our side has — but they sometimes succumb to the same conceits to which all of us liberals have a tendency to succumb: the overriding need to prove we aren’t hypocrites …

I’m sure I’ll be writing more about the end of the Stewart-Colbert era which I think has been hugely important to liberal politics. But I have always had some reservations about Stewart’s “serious” commentary which I’m seeing a whole lot of liberal pundits applaud today as if that’s what made him important.  What made him important was that he took the piss out of pundits.

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Tweety wants to unleash hell

by digby

Via FAIR:

Now, this sounds pretty tough, but when are we going to stop this? I mean, we get a person over there, we all know who they are, what happens then? Do we change the rules? Do we go into it with a Rambo-style attack and do what we can to get them out?…

I just don’t know how long we can take this as human beings. I just think it’s a real problem. And I’m thinking of Rambo kind of stuff, because at some point you have got to go in there with what you got and do the best you can, or you’re not going to be very proud of yourself.

Matthews, like most of Washington apparently, thinks movies are real. And I’m guessing he thinks that because Seal Team 6 famously executed bin Laden and the “American Sniper” could kill they can also go in and pick off the bad guys. And because he’s probably seen all those Marvel movies he also thinks they can use supernatural powers to magically extricate hostages.

But then there’s this:

MATTHEWS: What do we make of this? And what’s it going to do to us?… I’m just wondering how long we’re going to put up with this, Michael…. If we hadn’t been through these wars of Afghanistan and the two Iraq wars…. We would just, all right, we’re going to war, you know? All right, you’re doing this to our people — like, even Jimmy Carter, who could be pretty pacifist — and I worked for him — if they had started executing our diplomats back in the ’70s, I think we would have gone to war.

And I think — when do we say enough?

SHEEHAN: Well…

MATTHEWS: And just start bombing the hell out of them?

SHEEHAN: Well, we are…

MATTHEWS: Are we bombing the hell out of them?

SHEEHAN: We are…

MATTHEWS: Are we really prosecuting a real war there?

SHEEHAN: We are bombing the hell out of them, and I think we might be able to expand that bombing more into Syria, as well…

And finally:

Are we going to let this continue? This is my conundrum here…. Are we going to let them keep executing people, pouring gasoline? Wait until they get somebody over there, a nun over there, and start pouring gasoline on her.

At what point are we going to say we’re going to blow that place up with anything we got, even if we don’t win? When do you just explode as a country and say we’re not going to take that anymore? When is that going to happen?

I guess nuclear war really is on the table. Or at least a massive bombing campaign waged out of anger and revenge that will turn the whole middle east into a burning conflagration.

So they won’t pour gasoline on a nun.

Because we’re good and they’re evil.

It would just be another Tweety moment except he’s hardly the only one who sounds like a puerile hysteric:

How much longer will the world permit the brutality of ISIS? Why can’t we go after them harder?
— David Gergen (@David_Gergen) February 4, 2015

Update: Here’s your isolationist GOP, btw.  I’m going to guess they aren’t going to stand in Obama’s way. But then we knew that didn’t we?

My AUMF: Congress hereby authorizes the President to use any means necessary to defeat and destroy the Islamic State.
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) February 11, 2015

Update II: In response to the alleged political historian Chris Matthews’ contention that if they had started killing our ambassadors back in the 70s we would have gone to war, real political historian Rick Perlstein produced this list of Ambassadors who were killed in the 1970s:

* John Gordon Mein, in Guatemala, on August 28, 1968
* Cleo A. Noel, Jr., in the Sudan, on March 1, 1973
* Rodger P. Davies, in Cyprus, on August 19, 1974
* Francis E. Meloy, Jr., in Lebanon, on June 16, 1976
* Adolph Dubs, in Afghanistan, on February 14, 1979

Out of the 8 ambassadors killed in the line of duty in the past 65 years,  two were in plane crashes, one was Ambassador Stevens in Libya and the rest were those listed above.  I’m sure you noticed where they happened too.

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Run the Gaffer’s Tape

by digby

Matt Yglesias makes an excellent point about gotcha journalism. It’s a point that’s been made for years but it’s still worth a comment:

In Vox’s interview, Obama contended that terrorism is “absolutely” over-hyped compared to a threat like climate change or epidemic disease. This is something Obama said, as far as I can tell, because he thinks it’s true.

Similarly, Obama argued that “redistribution” is now, and always has been, a good in and of itself. He seemed to endorse all-payer rate setting, or something close to it, which would take the United States’ health-care system nearer to single payer than Obamacare ever considered. He called for a constitutional amendment to overhaul campaign finance. He suggested we should take some of the money we’re currently spending on the military and move it to foreign aid, and that doing so would actually help us achieve our national security goals.

These are all incredibly controversial opinions. The question of who is right and who is wrong on them has huge stakes for national policy. They would be good things to debate! But instead we got Randomgate.

(If you haven’t been following “randomgate” just take my word for it — it’s as stupid as it gets. Look it up if you must.)

I have obviously participated in the perpetuation of this outrage culture over the years. Pretty much anyone who makes a living on political social media does. And frankly, it’s exhausting and pretty boring.

What Obama said in those instances above aren’t boring, however, and you should click through the links if you missed the interview. I am one of those people who believes that what the president says has an impact — lots of people hear him and take his expertise and worldview seriously. A whole lot of Democrats see him as their leader. Therefore, it’s great that he’s saying this stuff. I wish he’d said it earlier. Even if he couldn’t get any of his programs passed through congress his endorsement of those ideas matter and can influence the way Democrats and others think about these issues. Better late than never.

That’s where these “gaffe” stories are destructive. As Yglesias said, his positions on those issues are incredibly controversial and it would have been good for the nation if people could see them aired and debated. Instead we’re talking about some passing turn of phrase that only people who live in the right wing fever swamps could consider significant. But perhaps that’s a sign that Obama’s controversial positions are so threatening to them that they prefer to bury them. We live in hope.

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Obama, Biden & Pelosi Lobbying Hard for TPP

by Gaius Publius

As you may know, I’ve been writing a lot lately about TPP, the next NAFTA-style job-killing (and sovereignty-killing) trade agreement — for example, here:

I’ve also discussed TPP and its congressional prospects with Rep. Alan Grayson in a recent one-hour interview. He’s as concerned as the rest of us. There is absolutely no question that TPP is a corporate (meaning, billionaire) wet dream, a profit maker and a U.S. job killer in one sweet package. (Yes, killing U.S. jobs is a goal, not a by-product. No billionaire CEO worth his luxury jet wants to pay one dime for an overpaid U.S. worker when slaves in China are next to free. Let them eat joblessness until they change their pay demands.)

TPP is also the next step in the neutering of democratic government by the global wealthy, who see the creation of even more wealth as the only goal of life on earth and the only real use for government. (Click for a short explainer on the sovereignty-killing feature of these agreements.)

In addition, I’ve written about Obama’s recent on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand “progressivism.” He gives what appears to be protection to the Arctic Wildlife Preserve from carbon extraction (addressing climate in a small but visible way) and takes back by opening large areas of the eastern seacoast for further drilling (and spilling). He gives what appears to be an open Internet (finally) and takes back in failing to prosecute Darren Wilson for his alleged crimes, or Rupert Murdoch and NewsCorp for theirs.

But there’s no on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand about TPP. It’s a bad deal all round, for the U.S. and for the world. It’s a billionaire parting gift from his last two years in office — only they will benefit from it — and a hard slap at his legacy and America, with zero to offset it.

Ask yourself: What’s the strongest argument its proponents make for TPP? It’s NAFTA only better, this time with jobs.

Everyone on the planet who cares, or is unbought, knows that the results of the 20-year-long NAFTA experiment are in. NAFTA was a disaster for everyone in the world without at least a million in wealth, and a feast for everyone with more than a billion.

Obama, Biden and Nancy Pelosi are selling the next NAFTA

I meant those two classes of TPP opponents — people who care about the health of the nation, and people who are unbought by wealth. Everyone else, TPP proponents, are either unconcerned about you and me, bought and paid not to care, or just plain deluded. As you read the following, pick a category for the actors mentioned (and bolded) below. Each will fall into one or more of those three groups.

Politico:

Obama cranks up trade pitch to Dems

The president and Joe Biden both made their case at the House Democrats’ retreat in Philadelphia.

President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and a phalanx of top administration officials are making the sales pitch to congressional Democrats for fast-track authority on trade deals.

Obama and Biden each made that plea during their appearances at this week’s House Democratic retreat in Philadelphia, which ended Friday. Top White House economic adviser Jeffrey Zients, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker and Labor Secretary Tom Perez have also joined the effort to sway House and Senate Democrats, as well as some skeptical Republicans.

The administration hopes to secure the 30 to 50 Democratic yes votes in the House that might be needed to push a trade bill over the top. …

Obama also pledged to work with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) so that members have better access to the “substance of the agreements,” sources said.

Biden also gave a forceful pitch for trade during his closed-door appearance at the retreat Friday.

The legislation also has support from the New Democrat Coalition, an alliance of pro-business lawmakers. The group estimates that roughly 30 of its members will ultimately support the fast-track measure, according to a private memo obtained by POLITICO. …

Any legislation from Senate Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), top committee Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon, and House Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) will probably be unveiled in late February. The Finance Committee is expected to first. …

“We only have one of three options,” [Rep. Ron] Kind said. “Continue the status quo; have a global trading world with a China rule; or us being at the head of the table. That’s all we got.” …

House Democratic leaders say they’re keeping an opening mind but that lawmakers will pay close attention to how wage protections are included in any proposal.

Pelosi said Friday that she is searching for a “path to yes.” …

Well? The whole article is filled with inside-baseball reporting, unnamed troubled “pro-business” lawmakers, and on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand argumentation. A good read, in other words.

All you need to know

Your President and Vice-President; the Treasury Secretary (who represents Banking); the Secretary of Commerce (who hates workers); the Secretary of Labor (what?); “liberal” senator Ron Wyden; “liberal” House Leader Nancy Pelosi — all want to craft a path to Yes on TPP. “The administration hopes to secure the 30 to 50 Democratic yes votes in the House that might be needed to push a trade bill over the top.” Remember that magic number. Thirty-to-fifty Democrats.

While we’re at it, here are a few magic numbers of our own:

You don’t need permission to call; they all claim to work for you.

The president needs to pass “Fast Track” legislation first or TPP is dead, so that will be the crucial House vote. (And if Fast Track gets to the Senate, the vote on cloture will be the crucial vote. Don’t take any nonsense about “I voted to break the filibuster because I wanted to kill the bill.” We’ve seen that plane before; it won’t fly twice.)

We’ll be following this. Stay tuned. (And please, operators really are waiting. Do call.)

GP

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Hallelujah

by digby

“My sense is that the Supreme Court is about to make a shift, one that I welcome, which is to recognize that — having hit a critical mass of states that have recognized same-sex marriage — it doesn’t make sense for us to now have this patchwork system,” Obama said in an interview with BuzzFeed News. “It’s time to recognize that under the equal protection clause of the United States Constitution, same-sex couples should have the same rights as anybody else.”

And here it was less that two years ago that I was roundly scolded for suggesting that this would be the right position for any American president to take. Prematurely anti-federalist, I guess.

I understand, of course, what the strategy was and I even get why Obama reluctantly went along in 2008 with the “civil-unions vs gay marriage” line. (He could have laid it on a little less thickly with the “marriage is between a man and a woman” thing but that was mainstream at the time. They were all doing it). But by May of 2012, only 21 months ago, the writing was on the wall and I felt he really did not have to endorse states’ rights on a civil rights issue:

PRESIDENT OBAMA: … what you’re seeing is, I think, states working through this issue– in fits and starts, all across the country. Different communities are arriving at different conclusions, at different times. And I think that’s a healthy process and a healthy debate. And I continue to believe that this is an issue that is gonna be worked out at the local level, because historically, this has not been a federal issue, what’s recognized as a marriage.

ROBIN ROBERTS: Well, Mr. President, it’s– it’s not being worked out on the state level. We saw that Tuesday in North Carolina, the 30th state to announce its ban on gay marriage.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well– well– well, what I’m saying is is that different states are coming to different conclusions. But this debate is taking place– at a local level. And I think the whole country is evolving and changing. And– you know, one of the things that I’d like to see is– that a conversation continue in a respectful way.

But that’s water under the bridge. I think he’s probably relieved that he doesn’t have to speak that way anymore. His comments with Robin Roberts were clearly tortured and made little sense, especially coming from a president carrying his historical significance. For the most part I think he has handled this issue well and will be remembered as a president who significantly supported the advance of civil rights during his term. You can’t ask for more than that.

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Twisted in Tacoma
by Tom Sullivan

You know, in an alternate timeline we might chalk up this kind of attacker to congenital misogyny, inappropriate toilet training, or just being a horrifically twisted excuse for a human being:

Police in Tacoma were searching for a suspect who allegedly attacked a lesbian woman by stabbing her and writing homophobic slurs on her body.

It was late. She was looking for her lost dog.

“He ran up behind me and he said something like why don’t I sound like a boy, that I look like a boy,” she recalled. “And that’s when it started.”

“Are you a dyke?” she said the man asked. “God hates fags.”

Chris told Tacoma police that the man stabbed her in the breast, jaw, left forearm and left thigh with a pocketknife. Police said that the suspect then stripped away her clothes, and wrote “dyke” on her buttocks and back.

But in this timeline, we could just as easily blame the suspect’s religion and ask Congress to authorize airstrikes.

The terrorist is still at large.

Williams Suspension Designed to Show NBC News’ Values Trust and Truth

by Spocko

Breaking: From NBC News president Deborah Turness