Month: April 2015

Can’t help lovin’ those macho barbarians

by digby

I’ve written reams about the dissonance in the right’s insistence that the depraved liberals are in cahoots with the fundamentalist terrorists but this guy has finally put that whole thing together in a way that makes some logical sense. In Bizarroworld. Liberals, you see,  just yearn for a strong, strong man:

Brian Tashman of “Right Wing Watch” reports that on a recent episode of the Family Research Council’s “Washington Watch,” conservative Rabbi Daniel Lapin claimed that the problem with effeminate liberals is that an excess of estrogen in their systems causes them to fall in love with “the masculine strength and brutality of Islam.”

Host Tony Perkins asked him why liberals “favors Islam and actually promotes it, even to their own demise,” and Rabbi Lapin responded with what he characterized as a “zinger” of an answer — there’s a “sexual dimension” in which, much like feminized hostages suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, liberals are attracted to the masculinity of the Islamic extremists.

Rabbi Lapin explains this by way of a crude, but surprisingly fluid, gender stereotypes. He claims that if he and his wife are going to a wedding, she can order him to change his clothes, and in so doing becomes more masculine than him — because being feminine entails submissiveness and dependence.

“It’s just biology,” Rabbi Lapin continues. “There are countless studies showing that feminine-type behavior produces an excess of estrogen in men and vice versa. Essentially, the left has fallen in love with the masculinity of Islam.”

He then spoke of a Golden Age of masculinity, in which the television program “The Waltons” provided men with strong masculine role models. However, “after a thirty or forty year epidemic of leftism that has swept its sordid stain across America, we’ve become much more feminized and we are attracted to the masculine strength and brutality of Islam.”

(Yeah, John-boy was a real Rambo.)

And here I thought conservatives were the very essence of hardcore, aggressive,macho manliness. So how come we aren’t in love with them?

There’s nothing as unintentionally hilarious as a right winger talking about sexual psychology:

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Safeway stands up to lunacy

by digby

I don’t do a lot of petition stuff but this one strikes me as worth doing:

Safeway — one of the largest grocery chains in the country — is asking shoppers to leave their guns at home.

It’s an important policy, and it means they’re committed to a safe shopping experience that we should all keep in mind when it comes to stocking up.

Weak gun laws in most states mean that virtually anyone can openly carry loaded weapons without any permits, training or background checks. When the law doesn’t protect us, private businesses have the responsibility to prohibit the open carry of guns where they don’t belong.

But now gun extremists are attacking the supermarket chain — all because of a common-sense policy that’s meant to keep our families safe where we shop. As pressure builds from the small but vocal opposition, we have to make sure Safeway knows we appreciate their stance.

Use the form on this page to send a thank-you message to Safeway CEO Robert Miller for supporting this common-sense policy.

Honestly, people don’t need to carry their guns into a grocery store. The food is already dead. And if the million to one chance that some terrible person tries to kill them while they’re there comes to pass it’s highly unlikely they’ll do anything more than make things worse by firing back. Far more likely they will accidentally kill someone instead.

It shouldn’t be up to businesses to make a policy saying that they don’t want guns in their stores. This should be a simple matter of public safety in which people aren’t allowed to carry loaded guns in public except under certain discrete circumstances. There are too many gun accidents already and the price we’re paying for it is astronomical.

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There was a reason we wanted to vaccinate against Blue Dog fever

by digby

Ed Kilgore points out that until we managed to chase the Blue Dogs back into their proper Party they routinely voted for such idiotic bills as Estate Tax Repeal, thus making it very difficult for Democrats to take a hardline position on the issue. No more. There aren’t very many of them left and so now only seven Dems voted for it instead of the dozens who used to:

If nothing else, this means Democrats will have no problem making this an issue of “partisan differentiation.” If you think it will become impossible for people to “succeed” in this country if they cannot pass along unlimited wealth without taxation to their heirs, you are very likely a Republican, albeit of a kind who would make Teddy Roosevelt roll over in his grave. If you think a five-million-dollar-plus exemption—plus complete non-taxation of estates where there is a surviving spouse— is probably enough to accommodate family farms and small businesses, you are probably a Democrat. It’s most definitely a difference in perception.

This is something worth running on. Sure, the Fox/Limbaugh addicts are dumb enough to think that inherited wealth for millionaires is something from which they benefit, but normal people can be educated on what this means and will understand the difference if Democrats are willing to make the case.

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QOTD: Jeb!

by digby

Jeb said today that he wouldn’t change a thing about his behavior during the Schiavo matter which means he’s still a meddling ghoul. And then there’s this:

Bush has previously said that the intelligence used to justify the start of the Iraq war was flawed, but he pushed back against a question Friday about whether his brother had made any other mistakes with his foreign policy.

“I’m not going to get into that,” he said. “That’s not particularly relevant in a world of deep insecurity, focusing on the past is not really relevant. What’s relevant is what’s the role of America going forward?”

Oh my. He’s going to have a tough time with this “politics of the past” thing, isn’t he?

And yeah, it’s a world of deep insecurity. And a big part of the reason why is that his brother W decided to blow up the middle east and get out of town. I think most people are reminded of that every time they see this guy’s face.

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Security mommies and daddies

by digby

I wrote in Salon today about how the election’s foreign policy and “national security” issues are stereotyped by gender and how Clinton might deal with them:

So where does this leave Hillary Clinton? She seems to have as good a resume for the Commander in Chief job as any woman could have with her close proximity to power in the White House for eight years, her eight years as senator and four years as Secretary of State. The only thing missing is a stint in the armed forces — which is also missing on the CV of most of the Republicans presenting themselves as fierce warriors, so it should be no harm, no foul there. (The exceptions being Texas Governor Rick Perry, a pilot in the Air Force, and South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham, a member of the Air Force JAG corps.) But stereotypes are very hard to dislodge; even with her reputation for toughness, and despite her sterling resume, Clinton will be pushing against something very primal. The Republicans know this, which is why some of us have been pretty sure they would try to frame this election as a national security election if they could. And they are. Those elections always give them an advantage in any case, and if a woman is the standard bearer it stands to reason that advantage would be even greater.

But what about the women voters who will presumably be less prone to follow such stereotyping? Unfortunately, it’s not a simple case of men being sexist. As Heather Hurlburt points out in this article in the American Prospect, we live in anxious times, and in anxious times, women can often revert to stereotypes as well:

Gender politics magnify the electoral effects of anxiety in two ways. First, in surveys and other studies, women consistently report higher levels of anxiety. In fact, women poll twice as anxious as men, largely independent of the specific topic. Women are more concerned about security, physical and economic, than men. According to Lake, Gotoff, and Ogren, women “across racial, educational, partisan, and ideological divides” have “heightened concerns” about terrorism. Those concerns make women “more security-conscious in general and more supportive of the military than they were in the past.”

Walmart-sponsored focus groups found women expressing a significant and steady level of anxiety over the months preceding the 2014 midterms. At one session, the explanation was Ebola; another, ISIS—whatever had most recently dominated cable-news headlines. The pollsters interpreted the responses as “emblematic of anxiety they feel regarding other issues, including national security, job security, and people ‘getting stuff they aren’t entitled to,’ such as health care and other government benefits.”

The majority of voters express equal confidence in men and women as leaders, but when national security is the issue, confidence in women’s leadership declines. In a Pew poll in January, 37 percent of the respondents said that men do better than women in dealing with national security, while 56 percent said gender makes no difference. That was an improvement from decades past, but sobering when compared to the 73 percent who say gender is irrelevant to leadership on economic issues.

That isn’t inevitable, of course. A lot depends upon the individuals who are competing for the job. And from the looks of the GOP field there aren’t many who come across as great warrior leaders who can lay claim to any particular national security experience.

But as much as foreign policy and national security will likely be issues, so too will all those other anxiety-producing problems. And in that respect, Clinton is likely to be in much better shape than the Republicans who are retreating to their standard playbook organized around lowering taxes and regulations as the elixer that cures everything. It’s unlikely that anyone, much less working women, will find that to be soothing in these anxious times.

The Republicans say that Clinton is the one saddled with the old ideas of the past. But that’s actually not true at all. This piece by Adam Ozimek at Forbes sets the record straight:

I believe there is a new liberal consensus on economic policy emerging and gathering strength. Department of Labor senior advisor Mary Beth Maxwell identifies it as well in a Medium post on “A ‘New’ Conventional Wisdom on Labor”. She quotes Paul Krugman, who provides what I think amounts to the basic case:

“Low wages, he argues, are not the product of inscrutable market forces, but rather choices. He joins many others in connecting rising income inequality with the decline in workers’ bargaining power.”

It’s not just Paul Krugman and liberal politicians like Barack Obama and labor secretary Tom Perez embracing this “new consensus” either. Even some centrist economists like Larry Summers and Robert Rubin have been making similar arguments.

What’s important is that this isn’t just a restatement of long-time core liberal commitments, but a conclusion that is drawn from recent trends in empirical research. For example, the strain of minimum wage research led by Arin Dube and coathors that suggests little to no impacts of a higher minimum wage. And here’s a recent publication from the Peterson Institute for International Economics with empirical papers arguing for higher wages from Justin Wolfers, Adam Posen, Jacob Funk Kirkegaard and others.

There’s lots more at the link.

Regal-atory capture
by Tom Sullivan

Progressive groups are sure to be fuming over the agreement among congressional leaders on approving “fast track” authority:

In what is sure to be one of the toughest fights of Mr. Obama’s last 19 months in office, the “fast track” bill allowing the White House to pursue its planned Pacific trade deal also heralds a divisive fight within the Democratic Party, one that could spill into the 2016 presidential campaign.

With committee votes planned next week, liberal senators such as Sherrod Brown of Ohio are demanding to know Hillary Rodham Clinton’s position on the bill to give the president so-called trade promotion authority, or T.P.A.

“NAFTA on steroids” may have bipartisan support, but the secret trade agreement — congressional staff must have security clearances to view the draft trade pact text — also “enjoys” bipartisan opposition. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll in January showed Americans were in no hurry to expand trade: “59% said it could be delayed until next year and 16% said it shouldn’t be pursued at all.” Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, said in a press release yesterday, “Congress is being asked to delegate away its constitutional trade authority over the TPP, even after the administration ignored bicameral, bipartisan demands about the agreement’s terms, and then also grant blank-check authority to whomever may be the next president for any agreements he or she may pursue.”

Florida Democrat Rep. Alan Grayson said “we’ve had, I hate to say this, a sellout government.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat, wrote in the Washington Post that the “Investor-State Dispute Settlement,” or ISDS provisions, in TPP “would tilt the playing field in the United States further in favor of big multinational corporations. Worse, it would undermine U.S. sovereignty.” For that and other reasons, the T-party derisively calls the Trans-Pacific Partnership Obamatrade.

The agreement in Congress follows a 240-179 vote in the House to repeal the estate tax. The White House theatens a veto, and The Hill reports Republicans do not appear to have the votes needed to override.

Elizabeth Warren spoke Thursday with Esquire’s Charlie Pierce about the estate tax vote:

“I can’t believe it,” she said. “Well, yes, I can. This isn’t just a really bad idea. This is an attack on our values — getting rid of the estate tax in order to help a handful of really rich people, and telling our children that there’s no money for them to go to school, to help them with their student loans, to build the necessary infrastructure so that they can get to and from the jobs that will help them pay off those loans…well, that’s just…obscene.“

As Digby observed yesterday at Salon, even the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank agrees the estate tax, as it now stands, is not preventing the growth of “a permanent aristocracy” in this country, and “abolishing it entirely turns democracy into kleptocracy.” That is, repeal would codify what we have now. Perhaps we should call our present struggle a fight to ward off regal-atory capture.

Many of our flag-waving, fellow Americans, both rich and poor, are royalists by temperament, predisposed to government by hereditary royalty and landed nobility, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are not created equal. During the Revolution, they sided with the British. After the Treaty of Paris, most stayed here. Their progeny and others so disposed have made it their project, as Digby suggests, to restore control to those whom Republican Sen. Dan Quayle once called “the best people.” And to corporations. Because corporations are the best people too, my friend.

Did he order the Code Red?

by digby

Mysterious goings-on at Gitmo:

A career Navy fighter pilot and former Top Gun instructor takes charge at the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in a low-key ceremony on Friday, completing a transition that started in January with the unceremonious removal of the base’s last commander.
[…]

Culpepper replaces Navy Capt. Scott Gray who since Jan. 21 filled in as base commander after their boss, Rear Adm. Mary Jackson, fired Nettleton “due to a loss of confidence” in him.

The body of commissary worker Christopher Tur, 42, was found in the bay near the base airstrip on Jan. 11. He’d gone missing a day earlier, after last being seen in the Officer’s Club. The base undertook a massive search that included having troops go door to door in the trailer park housing U.S. forces on temporary prison duty before his body was found in the water.

The Naval Criminal Investigative Service conducted a still-open probe, according to NCIS spokesman Ed Buice, and advertised on the base’s internal TV network asking people to come forward with tips.

On Thursday, both NCIS and the Armed Forces Medical Examiner’s office said the autopsy report was complete but would not release it, citing the ongoing investigation.

At the time of Tur’s death, his wife was working as the base commander’s director of the Fleet and Family Support Center which, according to a Navy site, provides counseling and crisis intervention “during some of the most stressful and challenging times of a military career.”

Can the Top Gun Maverick solve this one too?

News of the weird from NBC

by digby

Do you all remember that awful story of NBC correspondent Richard Engel and some colleagues being taken hostage for five days by pro-Assad forces in Syria from a while back? Greenwald recounts the story here and then discusses today’s New York Times Bombshell:

Last night, Engel posted a new statement on the NBC News website stating that, roughly one month ago, he had been contacted by the New York Times, which “uncovered information that suggested the kidnappers were not who they said they were and that the Syrian rebels who rescued us had a relationship with the kidnappers.” That inquiry from the NYT caused him to re-investigate the kidnapping, and he concluded that “the group that kidnapped us was Sunni, not Shia” and that “the group that freed us” – which he had previously depicted as heroic anti-Assad rebels – actually “had ties to the kidnappers.”

That’s all fair enough. Nobody can blame Engel – a courageous reporter, fluent in Arabic – for falling for what appears to be a well-coordinated ruse. Particularly under those harrowing circumstances, when he and his fellow captives believed with good reason that their lives were in immediate danger, it’s completely understandable that he believed he had been captured by pro-Assad forces. There is no real evidence that Engel did anything wrong in recounting his ordeal.

But the same is most certainly not true of NBC News executives. In writing his new account, Engel does not mention the most important and most incriminating aspect of the New York Times reporting: that NBC officials knew at the time that there was reason to be highly skeptical of the identity of the captors, but nonetheless allowed Engel and numerous other NBC and MSNBC reporters to tell this story with virtually no questioning.

In a very well-reported article this morning, the NYT states that “Mr. Engel’s team was almost certainly taken by a Sunni criminal element affiliated with the Free Syrian Army, the loose alliance of rebels opposed to Mr. Assad.” That rebel group is “known as the North Idlib Falcons Brigade” and is “led by two men, Azzo Qassab and Shukri Ajouj.” Amazingly, NBC executives knew that this was at least very possible even during Engel’s kidnapping, and yet:

NBC executives were informed of Mr. Ajouj and Mr. Qassab’s possible involvement during and after Mr. Engels’s captivity, according to current and former NBC employees and others who helped search for Mr. Engel, including political activists and security professionals. Still, the network moved quickly to put Mr. Engel on the air with an account blaming Shiite captors and did not present the other possible version of events.

In other words, NBC executives at least had ample reason to suspect that it was anti-Assad rebels who staged the kidnapping, not pro-Assad forces. Yet they allowed Engel and numerous other NBC and MSNBC personalities repeatedly and unequivocally to blame the Assad regime and glorify the anti-Assad rebels, and worse, to link the hideous kidnapping to Iran and Hezbollah, all with no indication that there were other quite likely alternatives. NBC refused to respond to the NYT‘s questions about that (The Intercept‘s inquiries to NBC News were also not responded to at the time of publication, though any responses will be added (update: an NBC executive has refused to comment)).

The Brian Williams scandal is basically about an insecure, ego-driven TV star who puffed up his own war credentials by fabricating war stories: it’s about personal foibles. But this Engel story is about what appears to be a reckless eagerness, if not deliberate deception, on the part of NBC officials to disseminate a dubious storyline which, at the time, was very much in line with the story which official Washington was selling (by then, Obama was secretly aiding anti-Assad rebels, and had just announced – literally a week before the Engel kidnapping – “that the United States would formally recognize a coalition of Syrian opposition groups as that country’s legitimate representative”). Much worse, the NBC story was quite likely to fuel the simmering war cries in the west to attack (or at least aggressively intervene against) Assad.

That’s a far more serious and far more consequential journalistic sin than a news reader puffing out his chest and pretending he’s Rambo.

No kidding. These executives knew that their story was possibly completely wrong and yet they let their star correspondent unknowingly go out and tell it anyway, without caveat or disclaimer. WTH?
Read the whole Greenwald piece. It’s quite a shocker. I cannot fathom how something like this could happen without serious repercussions.

What a weird, weird story.

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Paul’s millennial pipe dream


by digby

Does this seem likely to you?

While Clinton has overwhelming support from Millennials who grew up under her husband’s administration, the growth of libertarian ideology among young voters may peel away some of Hillary’s reliable supporters, swayed by Paul’s “leave-me-alone-coalition” of voters, reluctance toward the use of military force abroad, support of medical marijuana legislation, his platform position on criminal justice reform, and his sometimes-unpolished appearance in interviews and stump speeches that connote a sense of “realness” that is uncommon in GOP candidates. Paul gains headlines for what he’s not: a non-threatening Republican with a cadre of platform stances that are nearer to obsolescence than relatability. His brand of digestible libertarianism is made for the post-Obama generation. Hillary, on the other hand, is likely seen as a successor of Obama’s administration; she is the torch-bearer that Vice President Joe Biden would be, were he cut out for the presidency. Young voters who came of age during Obama’s two exciting campaigns may find Hillary to be a less magnetic choice compared Paul—if he finds traction with any Republican voters willing to compromise the beliefs of the base for the betterment of the party.

They might end up taking a look at Paul’s actual comments about foreign policy and wonder why a so-called libertarian has propensity to hire unreconstructed racists and is anti-choice. His longtime relationship with crackpot Alex Jones, someone he’s been friends with since 1996 and whose show he went on regularly until recently. Here are just a few of the things Paul and Jones agree upon:

Jones and Paul pushed fringe conspiracy theories and rhetoric during Paul’s appearances. Paul worried that “martial law” with “mandatory” vaccines could surface. Paul agreed with Jones that Democrats want to start a “shooting war” marked by ammunition confiscation. Paul predicted that an “army of armed EPA agents” would enforce climate regulations. He connected the Obama administration to Nazi Germany. And he promised Jones he would help him fight the “globalist agenda” and help expose a White House adviser’s purported support for eugenics and forced drugs in the water supply.

And despite some uniformed Villager hype to the contrary, Paul is anything but a climate hawk:

Paul, who is announcing a presidential run on Tuesday, is an anti-government extremist and a climate change denier. Just last April, he said he is “not sure anybody exactly knows why” the climate is changing. He went on to call the science “not conclusive” and complain about “alarmist stuff.” If you’re wondering what he means by “alarmist stuff,” in 2011, while arguing for a bill that would prevent the EPA from regulating carbon emissions, Paul said, “If you listen to the hysterics, … you would think that the Statue of Liberty will shortly be under water and the polar bears are all drowning, and that we’re dying from pollution. It’s absolutely and utterly untrue.” Paul went on to assert that children are being misled into believing that “pollution” has gotten “a lot worse,” when “It’s actually much better now.” Paul, of course, was conflating conventional air pollution — like sulfur dioxide, which has declined in the U.S. — and climate pollution, which is cumulative and global, and therefore gets worse every year, even if America’s annual emissions drop.

Indeed, Paul is prone to making ignorant, conspiracist statements about science in general. In October, he suggested to Breitbart News that Ebola may be more easily spread than scientists say and that the White House had been misleading the country on the issue. And in February, Paul told CNBC, “I’ve heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines.” This despite the fact that the supposed connection between autism and vaccination has been thoroughly debunked.

Like almost every other Senate Republican, Paul has voted to strip the EPA of its legal authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, to force approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, and to prevent Congress from placing any tax or fee on carbon pollution. Paul’s lifetime voting score from the League of Conservation Voters is 9 percent.

But sure, it’s possible that millennials will vote for Paul anyway, especially the young white guys who tend to gravitate to the “rebellious” libertarian political identity. But the idea that they will go for him because of the specifics of his policy platform is unlikely. He’s running as an unreconstructed conservative whose main mission in life is shrinking the government down to the efficient, fair level of the Ferguson city council. Oh, except for military and national police agencies. — those he’ll flood with whatever money they feel they need. If they listen to what he actually says instead of how he “seems”, from everything we know about them, they won’t like what they hear.

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“The care and feeding is four star…”

by digby

It seems like a good time to trot out this notorious story from the 2000 campaign. It was written after Bush was caught on tape calling a New York Times reporter an “asshole” with Cheney chiming in “big time.”

Although trivial in the end, the outburst was a setback in Bush’s wooing of the press. He routinely comes to the back of the plane to pinch cheeks and hand out nicknames. He asks about the budding romances of the reporters on board; his favorite scribes get their bald heads palmed. The care and feeding is four star. The last time I was on the plane, I had six meals–one featured lobster–over the course of three events, an excellent ratio. Sleep was plentiful, thanks to Bush’s light schedule, which protects his naps, nights and weekends.

Such a genial host has the quiet effect of curbing pointed questions. Who wants to bring up politics, religion or money at a family dinner or when there are Dove Bars on demand? One day in Pittsburgh, after Bush and his press pack filled the plane with talk of jogging routes, pickup trucks and heifers, it was the reporters on the ground who pressed Bush to clarify his mushy position on abortion and whether he could prove, given the absence of official documents, that he had actually put in all his time in the National Guard. The charm vanished, the lips pinched, discussion ended. As he so often says when crossed, who are we to judge what’s in his heart.

By contrast, Gore’s way is not to be chummy but not to be petty either. He has never held it against Time magazine for breaking a story about his hiring of author Naomi Wolfe as a secret adviser or reporting his suggestion that he and Tipper were an inspiration for Love Story. Until the campaign-finance scandals seared him, he’d always been accessible. But he doesn’t coddle. The regulars are treated like tourists on Aeroflot: on some days, the food is timely; on others you have to survive on fruit roll-ups and chicken-salad sandwiches past their sell-by date. The most reliable thing is courtesy Rolaids in the bathroom. Bedtime is just something you dream about until well past midnight. Air Gore was a grumpy place, and the alpha male in earth tones with his earnest town-hall meetings couldn’t catch a break for much of the campaign.

Just to be fair she went on to point out that Gore became more chummy when the polls starting moving in his direction and Bush got less friendly when the race tightened up.

But that’s not what’s important here: it’s the admission that for many campaign reporters, it’s really all about them. And it is. Just keep that in mind when you listen to today’s caterwauling about Clinton not being “accessible” to them in the first four days of her campaign. They all sit around and whisper to each other like a bunch of 8th graders and these memes take on a life of their own.

Of course if Clinton provides premium chocolate and lobster dinners, she’ll be dinged for being a hypocritical elitist, so she can’t really go that way anyway. (“It’s not so much that there’s anything wrong with giving out expensive Dove bars, it’s the appearance of hypocrisy that’s the problem here, Andrea”…) All she can do is endure the inevitable. But we, at least, can be aware of what’s really going on.

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