Month: March 2015

From the red wood forest to the xxxx xxxxxx waters
by Tom Sullivan

I got yer trickle-down right here, pal. Those melty glaciers in the Antarctic and Greenland? Well:

The Gulf Stream that helps to keep Britain from freezing over in winter is slowing down faster now than at any time in the past millennium according to a study suggesting that major changes are taking place to the ocean currents of the North Atlantic.

Scientists believe that the huge volumes of freshwater flowing into the North Atlantic from the rapidly melting ice cap of Greenland have slowed down the ocean “engine” that drives the Gulf Stream from the Caribbean towards north-west Europe, bringing heat equivalent to the output of a million power stations.

Scientists say the change has largely taken place since 1970. According to Stefan Rahmstorf at Potsdam’s Institute for Climate Impact Research, this could be … bad:

The Gulf Stream is just one component — albeit the largest and most powerful — of the system of ocean water flows known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. Similar overturning systems happen in all of the world’s oceans. The latest research supports previous studies that suggest overturning has slowed abruptly over the last several decades.

“If the slowdown of the Atlantic overturning continues, the impacts might be substantial,” Rahmstorf said in a statement. “Disturbing the circulation will likely have a negative effect on the ocean ecosystem, and thereby fisheries and the associated livelihoods of many people in coastal areas. A slowdown also adds to the regional sea-level rise affecting cities like New York and Boston.”

The latest research was published this week in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Charlie Pierce speculates that the American conservative response will be:

a) Don’t trust the science-y scientists with their scientific science and Al Gore is fat, and what are “proxy measurements,” anyway? or

b) Look at England and how nice and temperate it’s been. Carbon dioxide is our amigo!

So long, Gulf Stream, it’s been good to know ya. Maybe Arlo can do the rewrite on “This Land Is Your Land.”

This ISIS threat against US servicemembers is really scary:

An Islamic State “kill list” with the names, addresses and photos of American military members has triggered a federal investigation, the White House confirmed — and one military spouse told Fox News she’s already heard from someone, who said they were with NCIS, urging her family to be vigilant.

The military spouse, who was willing to discuss details on the condition of anonymity because she says her family fears for their safety, said the information posted by ISIS sympathizers is accurate — and she knows several other families identified on the web by the terror group. The original posting listed information for dozens of American servicemembers and called on ISIS sympathizers to kill them.

And I’m not being facetious. It is scary. These are people are fanatics.

But tell me, is there a difference between a threat like that one and a threat like this one?

A Sipsey Street Public Service Announcement:  

The Connecticut Tyrants List: The state of Connecticut is making lists of firearm owners to raid. It seems obvious to me that it is thus only fair to list those anti-constitutional tyrants who will have blood on their hands the moment the first Connecticut citizen is shot by the CT state police while carrying out their orders. I will be sending these folks my own email later today. CT State Senators voting Yes on “An Act Concerning Gun Violence Prevention and Children’s Safety, also known as Public Law 13-3 or Connecticut Senate Bill No. 1160,” 3 April 2013. 

List includes home addresses. Photos and home phone numbers of these tyrants are available here. 

We are at a crossroads. You, in the arrogance of your power and your ignorance of the people you seek to dominate are extrapolating from your own cowardice — you believe that just because the government orders these folks to knuckle under that they will do so BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT YOU WOULD DO. You mistake them, and your mistake is, in the fullness of time, going to get people killed. And who do you think these people who you victimize — these people who you will have state agents seek to round up and kill — who do you think they are going to blame for that? It doesn’t take Madame Lawlor and his crystal ball to predict that such people — victimized by their own state authorities in an unconstitutional law that likely will be found to be null and void anyway — will blame the people who sent the killers. Which is to say, you.  

This is deadly serious stuff, this foray into an undiscovered country that you have so blithely entered upon, like blind men and women tap dancing in a minefield you scarcely comprehend. Fully eighty-five percent of the people you targeted with the law — the people that YOU AND YOU ALONE made into lawbreakers — have just told you by their noncompliance to take your unconstitutional law and stick it where the sun don’t shine. Does that not tell you ANYTHING? These people are ARMED.They are familiar with the finer points of marksmanship. They are principled in a way that perhaps only the Founders would understand — at the risk of their own lives. So what part of “Oh, HELL no” don’t you understand? You have been playing with titanic forces. You are going to send armed agents of the state to their doors to work your collective and collectivist will upon THEM? You have unintentionally sown the wind and if things go predictably south you will reap the whirlwind. 

BUT IT IS WITHIN YOUR POWER TO REVERSE. You own the weather machine, as it were. I’m not asking you to repeal the law, although that makes perfect sense to me. No, I realize that too much of your ego, your own false vision of omnipotence is wrapped up in it to do THAT. What I am asking you to do — no, what I am BEGGING you to do — is to use your power to suspend the enforcement of that Intolerable Act at least until it is ruled constitutional or not by the United States Supreme Court. “An unconstitutional law is null and void.” Do you really wish to risk death and destruction upon innocent people — upon us all — on a bet against the odds? Is your appetite for your own citizens’ liberty, property and lives that insatiable? Or now, as the likely unintended consequences of your actions have been directly explained to you, are you willing to reconsider the menu choices?  

What will your political fortunes be when the first shots are exchanged over this? When the first innocents are killed in carrying out your will? What will your arrogance, your ignorance, your insufferable pride be worth to you then? What will it be worth to any of us? Starting a bloody civil war seems an odd way to avoid “violence against children.”

– See more at: http://www.teaparty.org/connecticut-patriot-group-fights-back-gun-confiscation-order-35917/#sthash.7fZFGXRf.dpuf

They bring bad things to life


by digby

This piece by Tom Engelhardt about our swiftly decaying democracy is a must read for a lot of reasons. He discusses everything from our increasingly corrupt electoral system to the rise of the National Security State and near total congressional dysfunction. It’s quite an indictment.

But I thought this was particularly worth highlighting a bit:

Though the marriage of the state and the corporation has a pre-history, the full-scale arrival of the warrior corporation only occurred after 9/11. Someday, that will undoubtedly be seen as a seminal moment in the formation of whatever may be coming in this country. Only 13 years later, there is no part of the war state that has not experienced major forms of privatization. The U.S. military could no longer go to war without its crony corporationsdoing KP and guard duty, delivering the mail, building the bases, and being involved in just about all of its activities, including training the militaries of foreign allies and even fighting. Such warrior corporations are now involved in every aspect of the national security state, including torture, drone strikes, and — to the tune of hundreds of thousands of contract employees like Edward Snowden — intelligence gathering and spying. You name it and, in these years, it’s been at least partly privatized.

All you have to do is read reporter James Risen’s recent book, Pay Any Price, on how the global war on terror was fought in Washington, and you know that privatization has brought something else with it: corruption, scams, and the gaming of the system for profits of a sort that might normally be associated with a typical third-world kleptocracy. And all of this, a new world being born, was reflected in a tiny way in Hillary Clinton’s very personal decision about her emails.

Though it’s a subject I know so much less about, this kind of privatization (and the corruption that goes with it) is undoubtedly underway in the non-war-making, non-security-projecting part of the American state as well.

The obvious place where this merging of domestic government and special interests happens is in the criminal justice system with private prisons, “asset forfeiture” and the scams like that run in Ferguson. There is even a move toward debtor’s prisons.  And as we saw with the Enron electricity gambit, the move to privatise public utilities and government run services has been moving quickly for some time. One might also say that the insistence on keeping the health care industry profitable was a primary requirement of Obamacare.

Outsourcing and privatization is a huge part of the Republican revolution and one of the main forms of “modernization” enthusiastically adopted by the New Democrats back in the 1980s.  Part of this was surely designed to make it possible for Dems to keep their share of the special interest money that was already flowing into politics. But some of it is simply the fact that elites who spend most of their time with other elites tend to believe that elites know what they’re doing and should be left to do what elites do best. This scheme to give taxpayers money to the private sector to do traditional functions of government was touted as being more “efficient” even though we were paying a profit-taking middle man. The idea stemmed from a belief that those profit-taking middle men were just so much better at everything than some faceless government bureaucrat. And they are very good at what they do — scamming lots of money from the taxpayers.

One of the GOP’s great successes during the Reagan era was persuading people that government was their enemy.  This, in turn fed naturally into the idea that private institutions, corporations, were your friend. They were making it possible for you to live a better life. (GE’s famous advertising slogan was literally that: “We bring good things to life.”)  Now, why average workers actually believed this I never understood except for the idea that they were intimate with their own bosses and co-workers and so saw the essential humanness of them as compared to “the government”. But they did believe it. And the results are in. In nearly all aspects of our lives, wealthy individuals and private institutions in conjunction with government are spying on us, getting us into useless wars from which they profit, putting us in jail and making us financially vulnerable.

This new discussion of income inequality remains quite abstract in many ways.  And it’s hard to tell if it will mean anything if people start to feel a little bit less stressed financially.  But the fact remains that people have been getting royally screwed for decades and things aren’t getting any better.  If the Democrats can shake off their propensity to sell themselves to the highest bidder for campaign cash, they might have a winning message.  This experiment has been a failure for average people. If they are willing to tell the truth about that, people may just be ready to hear it.

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The Canadian Candidate


by digby

I assume liberals are not going to jump on this Ted Cruz being born in Canada business with the same fervor as the right’s masturbatory obsession with Obama’s birth certificate because the facts are clear: he is eligible to run for president.  But it cannot pass unnoted that the right wing spent years attacking Obama for allegedly not being a “natural born American” even to the extent that they claimed he faked his birth certificate. But the fact is that he was born in the US and it wouldn’t have mattered if he hadn’t been since his mother was American, just like Ted Cruz’s.

This is the situation with Cruz. His father was a Cuban citizen when Cruz was born, his mother was American and he, unlike Obama,  actually wasn’t born in the US and held a dual citizenship with Canada until last year. All of that makes him perfectly eligible to be president, of course. But the idea that these right wingers are a-ok with Cruz’s circumstances after having made such a spectacle of themselves over Obama shows them to be … hypocrites. Shocker, I know.

But get a load of this from the New York Times story about it this morning:

Critics of Mr. Cruz sought to stir controversy about his candidacy on social media, noting that he was born in Canada and saying that he could never legally become president.

The trope is a common one for would-be presidents, and President Obama and Senator John McCain both faced questions about their birthplaces and eligibility as recently as 2008.

The difference in “questioning” those two (and Cruz, no doubt) is substantial. The right wing had an entire cottage industry dedicated to attacking President Obama’s legitimacy, largely based on questions about his race and his religion. It was a disgusting display that continued for many years. There were maybe three questions in the Daily Kos comments section about McCain. The scale of the questioning makes them completely different in substance.

Cruz probably will get some ribbing from the left for the hypocrisy of his followers and he’ll probably try to turn it into some sort of martyrdom to the flag and be somewhat successful at doing it. That’s how they operate. And maybe in this case hypocrisy really is the tribute vice pays to virtue — Cruz’s father is an immigrant and Cruz himself is a highly accomplished ethnic minority. The right is going to be forced to defend that. Sure, they would easily turn around and condemn a Democrat for the same thing. They’ve proved what they are capable of. But every time they have to defend Cruz they defend the law as it is. And that’s the best you can hope for.

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Two years of hell 

by digby

Via Daily Kos Comics

Loathing Rahm — and what you can do about it

by digby

I wrote a piece for Salon today about the history of the progressive Netroots and its particular loathing for Rahm Emmanuel. It’s not just that he never fails to show maximum contempt for the left. It’s that he has done everything he can over many years to drive the party into the arms of the national security hawks and the Wall Street billionaires.

Way back in the day (a decade ago) when the Progressive Netroots were just starting to organize, the first “scalp” any of the left leaning movement activists took was that of a Democratic hack from Maryland named Al Wynn when they backed a progressive challenger by the name of Donna Edwards. Edwards defeated Wynn in 2008 and is now running to replace Senator Barbara Mikulski who recently announced her retirement. In each congressional cycle Netroots progressives have fought a number of hard-fought primaries, losing more often than they won (just like the Tea Party) but slowly managing to make the House of Representatives a bit more progressive than it was before. Congressional representatives like Matt Cartwright, Beto O’Rourke and Senators like Jon Tester were backed strongly by the grassroots of the party and managed to unseat incumbents. Nobody in the beltway noticed or cared, of course. (Progressives always forget to order their tri-corner hats and Betsy Ross wigs…)
[…]
Back in 2006 when all this really started to come together there was one Democrat who quickly determined that this nascent progressive movement was a major threat to the status quo. His name was Rahm Emanuel who was, at the time, an Illinois congressman in charge of candidate recruitment for the congressional Democrats. If there’s anyone who can take credit for being the catalyst for this long term Netroots commitment to elect progressives to congress it is him. His crude dismissal of grassroots concerns was blatant. His contempt for anyone who disagreed with his centrist Blue Dog/New Democrat philosophy was palpable. While his wholehearted support for big money interests was seen as the ultimate in strategic brilliance by the beltway elites, it repelled Democratic activists everywhere.

Despite the fact that lame-duck George W. Bush and the war in Iraq were so unpopular that virtually anyone who could draw a breath who had a D after his or her name could have won, the conventional wisdom said that Emanuel’s DCCC win in the off year election of 2006 was a validation of his political savvy. (In case you were wondering, Emanuel wasn’t elected to congress until after the Iraq war resolution but was on record supporting it, saying that the U.S. needed a “muscular projection of force” there. You can let the shrinks sort out just what that language says about him …)

When the newly elected President Obama tapped him as chief-of-staff, you could hear progressives screaming “nooooooo” across the land. And when he departed to run for mayor of Chicago, the collective sigh of progressive relief (everywhere but Chicago) was just as audible. He is, in other words, the symbol of everything progressives are trying to change about the Democratic Party.

Read on.

Today all those Netroots groups along with the SEIU are running a “money Bomb” for Chuy Garcia, the progressive Chicagoan who is giving Rahm the run of his life. This is what we sent to Blue America members this morning:

View this email as a web page or share on Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr.

Dear Friend,

Chicago’s mayoral race is two weeks from Tuesday– April 7. Today, Monday, is the first day of early voting. The race pits the “pay-for-play politics” and endemic corruption embraced by careerist and Wall Street shill Rahm Emanuel against the communities and neighborhoods of one of America’s great cities trying to reclaim its dignity and its independence. The race is a neck and neck contest between Emanuel and Jesus “Chuy” Garcia.

Today Blue America has joined with our friends and allies at DFA, PCCC, MoveOn, Daily Kos, SEIU and Illinois Working Families to launch a money bomb on behalf of Chuy’s campaign.

Does it seem too late in the cycle to make an effective contribution? It isn’t– thanks to electronic contributions delivered directly to campaigns by ActBlue. Netroots donors can still have a significant impact on the outcome of the race.

No one ever thought Chuy would have the ability to raise as much money as Emanuel, who had already spent $30 million in the first round to Chuy’s $1.2 million. But no one thought Chuy needed to match Emanuel either.Emanuel’s record as mayor has devastated Chicago’s neighborhoods and most voters have soured on him. Chuy’s campaign was designed from the beginning to be a person-to-person operation– street politics, door-to-door, friend-to-friend, neighbor-to-neighbor.

Money contributed today isn’t going to be wasted on expensive network TV ads– which Rahm is spending $10 million on– but will be spent on real community outreach efforts.

If you’re thinking about donating, remember that it costs the campaign $6 to provide a box lunch for a volunteer out in the field. This campaign is going to be won because of a get-out-the-vote effort. That’s what Chuy’s operation is all about right now. Providing 50 buttons for distribution at an event is $25. It costs $100 to print 1000 copies of an 8½x11 piece to pass out on street corners, outside grocery stores, on subway platforms, in front of churches and synagogues and community centers, outside high school basketball games, at parades and rallies. Money contributed today–even small amounts– combine with others’ to make a real difference.

If Rahm loses, it will shake up Democratic politics to its core; a shake-up that is long overdue. Pleaseconsider contributing what you can– today, 2 weeks out– via ActBlue. There is no such thing as a contribution being too small to make a difference. 

Last week, looking back at his presidential run in 2004, Howard Dean explained that he had

“represented the ‘Democratic wing of the Democratic Party’– a line inspired by Paul Wellstone that captured the spirit of my grassroots campaign. Jesús ‘Chuy’ García is running a similar people-powered campaign in Chicago and that’s why I am proud to announce that I am endorsing him as the progressive choice to be Chicago’s next mayor. Chuy García brings years of experience standing up for the people of Chicago. He worked with Harold Washington, Chicago’s reform mayor, to clean up Chicago in the 1980s. He also served alongside a then-unknown Illinois State Senator, Barack Obama, in the 1990s. In that time Chuy García fought for better schools and neighborhood services while developing the leadership skills required to lead Chicago in the 21st century. As mayor, Chuy García will focus on the needs of Chicago’s working and middle class. He’ll work to improve public schools and take a community-oriented approach to ending the violence in Chicago’s neighborhoods. Chuy García will put the people first, not the 1%.”

Like Chuy says in the video (that I highly recommend you see) at the donate link, “Chicago doesn’t belong to ‘$omebody.’ Chicago belongs to Everybody!” Let’s see how far a progressive Money Bomb for Chuy Garcia can go to start the ball rolling towards a progressive tidal wave sweeping the Country.

Thanks for always doing what you can to make this a better world,

–Howie, for the entire Blue America team

Well, somebody’s taking to the streets
by Tom Sullivan

As we wonder when people will take to the streets in America over growing inequality, they’re taking to the streets in Brazil over government efforts at lessening inequality. Aljazeera reports that the center-left Workers’ Party (PT) under President Dilma Rousseff saw hundreds of thousands demonstrating on March 15. She faces “the most conservative National Congress since 1964 as well as a decelerating economy, hostile media and a corruption scandal that implicates her party.” It doesn’t help that her trade unionist and social movement activist base have been alienated by “pro-market political appointments.” (Nope. No foreshadowing there.)

The people in the streets, “whiter and wealthier than the typical Brazilian,” are part of a growing conservative backlash among the elite and middle class:

Since Rousseff’s re-election campaign in 2014, political discourse in Brazil has become more polarized than ever. Legislators elected from historically progressive states openly defended policies such as torture and the extermination of indigenous peoples. Congress now includes a sizable “bullet caucus,” which supports militaristic responses to crime, as well as a substantial Christian fundamentalist caucus opposed to gay rights and a very large rural caucus that opposes land reform and indigenous rights. Meanwhile, the PT and parties to its left lost seats, and nearly 30 percent of voters cast blank ballots or abstained — a historic high.

Rousseff’s administration has fallen short of expectations on certain scores, including land redistribution and the reform of the political system. But most progressive commentators agree that the PT represents a significant break from the free-market orthodoxy that previously prevailed in Brazil. There are a number of impressive social achievements based on the unapologetic redistribution of resources and opportunity. Extreme poverty has been reduced by 75 percent since the PT came to power, and overall poverty gone down 65 percent, largely by means of direct cash transfers now received by 44 million Brazilians, or nearly 1 in 4. The inflation-adjusted minimum wage has doubled in the last 12 years, and domestic workers have won expanded rights, including paid vacation.

On its own, clearly not a situation the right people can allow to stand. But it’s the affirmative action program in the country’s public universities that has the elite really riled. Tuition is free, Aljazeera reports, but now future politicians, government ministers, and judges, etc. find themselves having to share those elite educational institutions with working class and lower middle class students and, yes indeed, issues of racial inequality are adding to the political friction. Furthermore, Rousseff’s party “has failed to present the redistributive project as one that benefits the entire nation and not just the dispossessed.”

The Guardian describes how the Latin American left is seeing pushback elsewhere. The global financial crisis has caught up with the reforms in Venezuela as well, and Argentina’s fight with “vulture funds” such as Paul Singer’s Elliott Management has dried up its credit:

Many see a conspiracy at work. “The Latin American left is coming up against an enemy that it has never prepared itself for,” said Federico Neiburg, an economic anthropologist at the Museu Nacional. “It’s an alliance between shifting geopolitical interests, economic and financial elites trying to impose politics that are beneficial to them, and political action on behalf of the media …

Paging Naomi Klein.

QOTD: Maverick McCain

by digby

John McCain addressing the president this morning on State of the Union:

“Get over your temper tantrum. The least of your problems is what Bibi Netanyahu said during an election campaign. If every politician were held to everything they say during a campaign, obviously that would be a topic of long discussion. This is one of the most Orwellian situations I have ever observed.”

He does know from temper tantrums, that’s for sure. And I’m going to guess McCain doesn’t really understand what “Orwellian” means.

But I think this will look good on his tombstone:

If every politician were held to everything they say during a campaign, obviously that would be a topic of long discussion.

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My kingdom for a funeral

by digby

A long time coming:

King Richard III’s remains have arrived at Leicester Cathedral ahead of his reburial.

His funeral cortege entered the city at the historic Bow Bridge after touring landmarks in the county.

Cannons were fired in a salute to the king at Bosworth, where he died in 1485.

His coffin will be on public view at the cathedral from 09:00 GMT on Monday. He will finally be reinterred during a ceremony on Thursday.

Richard’s skeleton was found in 2012, in an old friary beneath a car park.

The former king’s coffin, which is made of English oak from a Duchy of Cornwall plantation, emerged during a ceremony at the University of Leicester.

Archaeologists, academics, researchers and descendants of Richard III’s family, including Michael Ibsen who built the coffin, placed white roses on it during the ceremony.

Richard III’s remains were found under a car park in Leicester

The reburial procession began at Fenn Lane Farm, believed to be the closest spot to where the king was killed.

Ceremonies were held for the king as his cortege travelled through the county, including those at Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre and Bow Bridge.

Ahead of the cortege arriving in Leicester, city mayor Peter Soulsby said: “It was from Leicester in 1485 that Richard rode out to battle and it was to Leicester that he returned, defeated, slung ignominiously across the back of a horse.

“It’s now our opportunity to put it right and to make sure this time that it’s done with dignity and honour.”

However, campaigners who petitioned for Richard III to be reburied in York have described the events in Leicester as a “pantomime”.

Louise Hollingsworth wrote on Facebook: “The more I see of the undignified, money-grabbing pantomime surrounding King Richard III in Leicester this weekend, the more incensed I become.”

After which, she exclaimed,”off with their heads and set them on York gates!”

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Sunday funnies

by digby

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