Month: March 2015

The Right is the Right is the Right

by digby

… the same the world over it seems:

Funding from foreign governments to get more Israeli Arabs to vote worked, which means all right-wing people must make sure to go to the polls, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Tuesday.

“The right-wing government is in danger. Arab voters are going en masse to the polls. Left-wing NGOs are bringing them on buses,” he said.

If you could just keep the wrong people from voting everything would be fine.

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From my cold, dead fingers

If there’s anyplace that defines exceptional in this big, ol’ beacon of freedom called America, it’s Texas.
They are SO American in Texas, they can even take exception to the First Amendment and puff out their chests with pride about it.

Molly Ivins, I think, used to call the Texas state legislature “the Austin Funhouse,” noting once that state legislators there are the lowest paid in the country and Texas gets what it pays for. As Digby reported yesterday at Salon, Republican state legislators are “extremely bothered by the idea that a citizen might film the police in the course of their duties.” Ergo:

The House Bill 2918 introduced by Texas Representative Jason Villalba (R-Dallas) would make private citizens photographing or recording the police within 25 feet of them a class B misdemeanor, and those who are armed would not be able to stand recording within 100 feet of an officer.

As defined in the bill, only a radio or television [station] that holds a license issued by the Federal Communications Commission, a newspaper that is qualified under section 2051.044 or a magazine that appears at a regular interval would be allowed to record police.

Isn’t that exceptional? It takes exception to the United States Court of Appeals For the First Circuit in Glik v. Cuniffee (2011) and to the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit in ACLU v. Alvarez (2012), both of which uphold the right of citizens to film police.

Villalba’s bill, if it passes, will likely face challenge, however reasonable the state argues its restrictions are on private citizens filming police. But even among those Digby describes with “traditional values” who believe in “deference to authority and a bedrock belief in the integrity of those who don a uniform,” this might be a bill too far. Even Breitbart Texas is concerned. The idea that to be considered “the press” under the First Amendment you have to be licensed is absurd. Is that how gun owners think the Second Amendment works? One in-your-face tee shirt insists, the Second Amendment “is my gun permit.” And that raises a question.

Why should Second Amendment activists be the only ones to act like jerks about how their rights under the constitution “shall not be infringed”? It is, after all, the second amendment. Who gave them sole rights to what is “explicitly American“? Imagine a movement where citizen journalists demand their First Amendment right to concealed and open carry of cameras and recording devices just as belligerently as gun rights activists. Any where. Any time. Free-DOM!

We would loudly decry anything less tyranny, a slippery slope leading inevitably to “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,” to jack-booted, government thugs kicking in our doors and confiscating our phones and digital cameras.

We would go to phone-and-camera shows where we could buy accessories and gear without background checks, trade vintage Nikons and Nagras, and buy flash memory in bulk. We would train on weekends and whisper threateningly of “First Amendment remedies.”

We would have Bundy Ranch-style standoffs with federal agents. We could form an American Recording Association (ARA) backed by manufacturers to lobby Congress on behalf of owners of digital cameras and cell phones, and primary any politician who stands in our way. And they would listen to us.

Do you think Fox News could get behind that? Maybe cover our rallies? What if we wore costumes?

And thumb-in-your-eye tee shirts, it goes without saying:

YOU CAN HAVE MY PHONE
WHEN YOU PRY IT FROM
MY COLD, DEAD FINGERS

It’s hard out here for a One Percenter

by digby

Wall Street bonuses just aren’t what they used to be.

As the industry’s profits declined, the average bonus for Wall Street employees grew just 2 percent in 2014, to $172,860, according to a report on Wednesday by Thomas P. DiNapoli, the New York State comptroller. Although still large by many standards, these bonuses grew far more slowly than in the previous two years.

“Although still large by many standards ….” 

Yah think?

Update:

Real women go to Tehran too

by digby

Apparently, we should declare war immediately.

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Utter baloney and cheese

by digby

That questioner was James Rosen of Fox, ICYWW.

Nice of him to give the boss a big wet kiss with that description of Rupert’s flagship tabloid New York Post as a “leading New York newspaper.” Must be raise time.

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Keepin’ it real

by digby

Here’s a headline for you:

What is the US Government supposed to do with this I wonder? Palestinian statehood has been its policy for a long time. Sure, it’s likely that Netanyahu never meant it when he said he favored it, but his rhetoric at least allowed for the pretense that the US and Israeli governments shared the same goal.

I’d guess that if he wins the US will simply accept it and move on, papering this difference over with … something. It sends a clear signal, however, for the American right wing to openly join him in this provocative stance. And that’s not good, not good at all. For anyone.

Keeping my fingers crossed that the Israeli public has grown weary of this man’s extremism and votes him out of office. If not …

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Tyrants, tyrants everywhere

by digby

My piece at Salon today talks about a little dust-up down in Texas between the liberty loving freedom lovers and the authority loving cop lovers in the conservative coalition:

One would be hard-pressed to find another state which prides itself more on it’s commitment to freedom and liberty than Texas. It is so determined to make its citizens “free” that it is now in the process of allowing people to openly carry guns pretty much anywhere they choose, including college campuses. (What could go wrong?) It is, after all, the home of the libertarian elder statesman Ron Paul and it prides itself on its low taxes and low regulations.

But Texas is also a very traditional conservative state with a strong sense of loyalty toward the military and police authority. A belief in law and order doesn’t begin to describe its justice system: it has, for instance, executed nearly five times as many people as any other state in the modern era and it’s leaders are unapologetic about that. No one can accuse Texas of being soft on criminals.

One might think these two values would clash, what with guns being everywhere and the police having to try to keep order while ducking all the flying bullets. But it doesn’t seem to be a major problem. The police are not putting up much of a fight against gun proliferation, anyway. So “freedom” in Texas seems to be safe, at least as far as the 2nd Amendment is concerned.

The 1st Amendment? Not so much.

While gun toting extremists have nothing to fear from the authorities, The Houston Chronicle reports that some Republicans (are there any other kind?) in the Texas State House are extremely bothered by the idea that a citizen might film the police in the course of their duties… read on.

There are fault lines in the conservative movement that are very interesting watch. Respect for authority is baked into the cake of conservatism — it’s the foundation on which it’s built. But the libertarian boys aren’t quite so thrilled with the uniforms telling them what to do. (Remember Cliven Bundy?) It will be interesting to see how this sort of thing plays itself out. If you read the piece you’ll see that the same people who threaten the gun control folks are using the same language against those who want to regulate the filming of police.

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“Constitutional idolatry and boundless bellicosity”

by digby

I cannot tell you how much I like this Rolling Stone piece by Jeb Lund. He’s writing about Tom Cotton, whom he describes as looking “appropriately like Anthony Perkins in Psycho” (God, does he ever…) but which is really about the Republican Party. There is a lot of great history in the piece about Republican foreign policy that is just so … great. But this, this says it all:

Critics who leapt on Cotton and his 46 fellow clowns for “treason” for violating Nixon’s nemesis, the Logan Act, were so close to getting the point. To read most analyses, Cotton engaged in an act of political grandstanding that went too far and undermined the faith and function of the United States. It’s a judgment that relies on the begged question that Cotton even remotely gives a shit about that. He doesn’t. Undermining the United States’ function as it is presently constituted is a feature, not a bug.

The American Republic has always been a fundamentally screwheaded experiment in the perversion of democracy, empowering property as much as people, while aggregating people in distorted non-representative territories to diminish their leverage on power. And that’s just in one branch of government. At the same time, it structured the two active branches – the legislature and executive – to be mutual antagonists, glossing such an instantly sclerotic system as a check against tyranny when a look at the early conditions for the franchise reveal a much more profound check against any momentum from great mass of human beings within its domain. Tom Cotton likes that just fine. Anything like the smooth, responsive performance of a parliamentary democracy is anathematized by Cotton and his ilk because it is theoretically possible for them to, at some point, lose power.

To be fair, a large portion of this fondness for a non-functioning government stems from the president being a black Democrat, but stopping there imputes solely a racial motive to a comprehensive and enduring contempt for government’s existence at all. Holding government hostage over the debt ceiling again and again, holding it hostage over a Homeland Security bill, holding a knife to its throat over Iran – these are just elaborations on a theme from the 1990s. Back then, Cotton’s fellow travelers and their predecessors shut down the government when it was run by a self-made white bubba from Cotton’s own Arkansas, a guy who embodied the American dream about as much as anyone can, a drawling southern burger-fiend who liked chicks with big hair. The point wasn’t who was running the government, but that someone was trying to run it in the first place.

In its Constitutional idolatry and boundless bellicosity, Cotton’s Republican Party has arrogated to itself the presumption that anything it does is explicitly American. The normative conditions of patriotism are whatever they want to do at any given moment, because only they have the courage to defend you from enemies abroad with guns and enemies at home via a fundamentalist reading of the texts and hadith of Our Founding Prophets (which, conveniently, also mentions guns). Anything outside their chosen agenda is met with the word no, which is the finest distillation of their agenda for anyone other than their own. [emphasis mine]

Read on, I beg you. Yes, they do want war. Of course. Always.

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Does the pro-TPP “Progressive Coalition for American Jobs” Exist as an Organization?

by Gaius Publius

I wrote this as a second-half to this piece below, but it deserves to be its own post. Click here and here for the context.

Bottom line: It appears that the pro-TPP, Obama alumni–led “270 Strategies” media shop is running a fake pro-TPP organization and branding it a “Progressive Coalition for American Jobs.” This is more than “astroturfing.” It appears to be sock-puppetry. Does this organization exist? Let’s look. (If 270 Strategies wants to set me straight, I’ll be glad to print what they send as a reply.)

I’ve had it in mind to talk with the officers of the pro-TPP organization “Progressive Coalition for American Jobs.” They are, it seems, a client of 270 Strategies. Here’s their website, but I can’t find much else about them. They have “offices” in a building on 15th and K Street (yes, that K Street) in DC. But so do a lot of others. Notice, if you click, that all of these organizations are listed for one suite in that building — not separate suites; one suite. (Who rents that suite?)

Dave Johnson has been asking, “Who’s in this ‘Coalition’?” — i.e., what organizations are affiliated with them? I have a different question: “Who is this ‘Coalition’?” — who answers their mail, who keeps their books? Do they even have books, or employees? Or mail? Do they even exist?

Here’s the WhoIs info on the PCAJ.org website. Set up in mid-February 2015, set to expire in a year (unless renewed), and identity-protected by an apparently anonymizing Canadian registrant (my bolding for readability):

I’m sure the email and telephone listed above are anonymizing as well. And note, nothing shows that K Street address.

So the questions — If PCAJ exists, who are they? If they don’t exist, where’s the money for the website and left-washing PR campaign coming from? One can guess, of course — my guess is the (also fictional) “Neoliberal Coalition for CEO Compensation & Enrichment” (NCCCE) — but it would be nice to know for sure.

Is there a Jimmy Olsen in the house, or a Clark Kent? This is as far as I can take it for now.

GP

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Pro-TPP “270 Strategies” Also Supports Rahm for Mayor

by Gaius Publius

There are two points in this piece. To skip to the second, about the existence of this so-called “Coalition,” click here.

If you’ve been following along, you know I’ve been following the Obama alumni–led, pro-TPP media shop “270 Strategies” and their work with the pro-TPP (and apparently non-existent) “Progressive Coalition for American Jobs” (PCAJ):

Thanks to an email correspondent, we now learn that 270 Strategies is also trying to re-elect Rahm Emanuel as Mayor of Chicago:

Way to go, 270 Strategies. Not surprising, given your record:

but still, perhaps not the best way to sell yourself to progressives. On the other hand, $97,000 in three months from one client is not nothing, and must have its own set of comforts.

Does the “Progressive Coalition for American Jobs” Exist as an Organization?

While we’re at it, I’ve had it in mind to talk with the officers of the pro-TPP organization “Progressive Coalition for American Jobs.” They are, it seems, a client of 270 Strategies. Here’s their website, but I can’t find much else about them. They have “offices” in a building on 15th and K Street (yes, that K Street) in DC. But so do a lot of others. Notice, if you click, that all of these organizations are listed for one suite in that building — not separate suites; one suite. (Who rents that suite?)

Dave Johnson has been asking, “Who’s in this ‘Coalition’?” — i.e., what organizations are affiliated with them? I have a different question: “Who is this ‘Coalition’?” — who answers their mail, who keeps their books? Do they even have books, or employees? Or mail? Do they even exist?

Here’s the WhoIs info on the PCAJ.org website. Set up in mid-February 2015, set to expire in a year (unless renewed), and identity-protected by an apparently anonymizing Canadian registrant (my bolding for readability):

I’m sure the email and telephone listed above are anonymizing as well. And note, nothing shows that K Street address.

So the questions — If PCAJ exists, who are they? If they don’t exist, where’s the money for the website and left-washing PR campaign coming from? One can guess, of course — my guess is the (also fictional) “Neoliberal Coalition for CEO Compensation & Enrichment” (NCCCE) — but it would be nice to know for sure.

Is there a Jimmy Olsen in the house, or a Clark Kent? This is as far as I can take it for now.

GP

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