Month: April 2015

Did Teresa LePore design Florida’s voter registration form?

by digby

You’ve probably heard by now that Jeb Bush checked the box that says “Hispanic” on his voter registration form  in Florida. He says it was an accident and everybody’s havin’ a laugh over the whole funny thing. Andrea Mitchell explained “in fairness, one box was just above the other.”

I couldn’t help but be reminded of the Butterfly Ballot  debacle which was one of several different factors that would have given us Al Gore for president in 2000 instead of then-Governor Jeb Bush’s brother. Recall that the boxes didn’t line up there either.

Is there something about Florida under Republican rule that makes official forms incomprehensible? I’m sure this is just another one of their cock-ups, but you do have to at least consider the fact that if someone is relying on voter registration data, it’s quite helpful to Republicans that Democrats think there are more Hispanics in a district than there are. Democrats would likely run campaigns with an appeal to a diverse population while Republicans could run as the old-fashioned conservatives they are and win. And Democrats wouldn’t have a clue as to how it happened.

Again, Occam’s Razor says these are just accidents of lousy form design.  They seem to be especially prone to this in Florida.  But it is interesting how all these accidents seem to favor the GOP.

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Insulted by Power Point

by digby

So, the right wing has gone completely apeshit over this story. This rather subdued version is from The Blaze:

The U.S. Army is investigating an unauthorized diversity training presentation on “white privilege” shown to hundreds of Georgia soldiers, USA Today reported, citing an Army spokeswoman.

“Race privilege gives whites little reason to pay a lot of attention to African Americans or to how white privilege affects them. ‘To be white in American (sic) means not having to think about it,’” one bullet point read.

After an image of the slide was posted to a Facebook page, the reaction was swift and pointed.

“That should be instant UCMJ and Dishonorable Discharge for the instructor who deviated in this manner,” George Stevens wrote.

“Pretty sick of hearing about white privilege. Nearly my entire chain of command and NCO support channel have been Hispanic or black since I joined,” Tim Wilson Jr. added.

“True story: I went to a forced EEO class and the white female SSG said we white folks were a problem. I looked around the room and everyone of every race were rolling their eyes,” Scott Hampton Truelove recalled. “We of all races went fishing, eating out, having BBQs, went to the club, together. We all never had a problem with race. We as a group stood up and walked out. She was cutting into our beer drinking time.”

Sigh.

Command of the Army’s main combat units — its pipeline to top leadership — is virtually devoid of black officers, according to interviews, documents and data obtained by USA TODAY.

The lack of black officers who lead infantry, armor and field artillery battalions and brigades — there are no black colonels at the brigade level this year — threatens the Army’s effectiveness, disconnects it from American society and deprives black officers of the principal route to top Army posts, according to officers and military sociologists. Fewer than 10% of the active-duty Army’s officers are black compared with 18% of its enlisted men, according to the Army.

Nothing to see here folks. Move along …

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“Relatable” is in the eye of the beholder

by digby

On MSNBC:

“Hillary is trying to make herself more relatable…”

I will just say this: there is one respect in which she’s more “relatable” to more than 50% of the country than virtually any other candidate in the history of the nation.

“Relatability”, of course, has not been something that only male journalists struggle to apply to Clinton or other women politicians. Many women find them “unrelatable” too. But then none of us have much to go on when it comes to women leaders.  They are, after all,  few and far between. This is new ground.

*And yes, I know he’s really talking about the fact that Clinton doesn’t seem like someone you want to have a beer with.  But then,  you can see the problem there too …  “having a beer with” doesn’t automatically bring to mind an older women with a grandkid, does it? It does, however, bring to mind a man of any age.

Just a little observation… now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

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“An aggressive solution”

by digby

So Benjamin Netanhayu said that the Iran deal is a nightmare and pretty much vowed to do everything in his power to derail it. But here’s what an ex-Mossad chief had to say about it:

Obama was right, Iran capitulated

The document approved in Lausanne is full of loopholes and lacks numerous details. There’s a great deal of exhausting work to be done before the talks are completed, and we can expect some tough battles over the coming months before the formulation of a final agreement.

Nevertheless, US President Barack Obama was right in labeling the document a “historic” one – and for the following reasons:

1. For decades, Iran rejected the international community’s demand to hold talks of any kind with respect to its nuclear program. The interim agreement reached in Lausanne proves that Tehran capitulated, by agreeing to conduct negotiations about its plans and the nuclear infrastructure it has built up for years, primarily in secret.

2. Iran was forced to agree to the curtailment of its programs, the destruction of valuable equipment at some of its facilities, and a drastic reduction in the number of centrifuges that will remain in operation. The vast majority of the centrifuges will be removed from the production sites and stored in known locations under international supervision. The new centrifuges will be removed from the existing facilities and stored under international supervision.

3. The Fordow facility will be left with just 1,000 of its more than 6,000 centrifuges, and these will be used for research and development for civilian purposes only, under international supervision. No fissile material will remain in Fordow, and uranium-enrichment operations will not take place there for a period of 15 years.

4. Iran was forced to agree to an unprecedented regime of international supervision and monitoring of its nuclear facilities and the dismantling of critical systems. The facility in Natanz will be left with approximately 5,000 old-model centrifuges, and 1,000 new ones will be removed from the site and stored under supervision. The Arak reactor will cease production of plutonium, the original core of the reactor will be destroyed or removed from the country, and the facility will be used for research and development programs only with the approval of the superpowers.

5. Iran has agreed to not enrich uranium over 3.67 percent for at least 15 years. It has also agreed to reduce its current stockpile of about 10,000 kilograms of low-enriched uranium to just 300 kilograms. The surplus quantities will be removed from the country or handled in a different manner, but will not remain under Iranian control.

6. Iran has agreed to implement measures, the details of which have yet to be finalized, to meet the demands for clarification with respect to trials it has carried out in the field of nuclear weapons systems.

7. Obama’s speech following the signing of the framework agreement was broadcast live on Iranian state television without any censorship or breaks in the middle. Never before, since the Islamic Revolution, has an American president been afforded such a stage, and on such a sensitive subject to boot.

And thus President Obama could say there is a historical dimension to the agreement that was reached. Anyone who has followed events in Iran in recent decades or has studied the matter has to admit truthfully that he never believed Iran would ever agree to discuss these issues, let alone agree to each of the clauses I have mentioned.

According to the introduction to the understandings reached, “Important implementation details are still subject to negotiation, and nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.” This statement, along with Obama’s open invitation to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to enter into an intensive dialogue, affords the Israeli government the opportunity to improve the agreement in its final version. However, Israel’s hasty response – its total rejection of the memorandum of understanding – seems to herald the beginning of an Israeli campaign designed to thwart the deal. Scrapping the deal would of course mean scrapping all the understandings already achieved.

You can’t have your cake and eat it too; you can’t conduct an all-out war against the president to thwart his historic achievement and, in the same breath, hold talks with him to improve the product. Moreover, taking the fight to Congress would require deeper Israeli intervention in the approaching elections in the United States.

One of the arguments being voiced against the continuation of the talks is that Iran has a history of lies and cunning, and can thus be expected to breach the agreement and deceive the world. True, the Iranians have a tendency to deceive, but they could do so even if they agreed to zero centrifuges, the closure of all their nuclear facilities, and supervision on the part of the Mossad itself. Loopholes can always be found, so there is no such thing as a “good agreement.” The Iranians will uphold an agreement only if it is worth their while.

Netanyahu has raised a new demand – that the framework agreement should include Iran’s recognition of Israel’s right to exist. Clearly, Iran is not going to change its spots; therefore, anyone who voices such a demand is signaling that he doesn’t want the agreement and has his eyes on an aggressive solution.

Yeah. The “aggressive solution” is also known as war. Which seems odd. To say the least.

Oliver!

by digby

A fascinating interview with Edward Snowden:

One note about the fact that people in Times Square didn’t know who Snowden was from Greenwald:

The data on American political apathy is rather consistent, and stunning. Begin with the fact that even in presidential election years, 40% to 50% of the voting age public simply chooses not participate in the voting process at all, while 2/3 chooses not to vote in mid-term elections.

Even more striking is what they do and do not know. An Annenberg Public Policy Center poll from last September found that only 36% of Americans can name the three branches of government, and only 38% know the GOP controls the House. The Center’s 2011 poll “found just 15 percent of Americans could correctly identify the chief justice of the United States, John Roberts, while 27 percent knew Randy Jackson was a judge on American Idol.”

A 2010 Findlaw.com poll found that almost 2/3 of Americans – 65% – were incapable of naming even a single member of the U.S. Supreme Court. A 2010 Pew poll discovered that 41% of Americans are unable to name the current Vice President of the U.S; in other words, Oliver could just as easily (if not more easily) compile a video of Times Square visitors looking stumped when asked if they knew who Joe Biden, or Antonin Scalia, is.

he goes on to point out how them media is complicit in this.

The interview is great, well worth watching.

That voodoo that you do so well
by Tom Sullivan

It was voodoo economics then. It’s voodoo economics now. Conservative governors are finding out that George H.W. Bush was right about trickle-down economics as early as the 1980 Republican primaries. That hasn’t stopped generations of Republican lawmakers from pursuing the policy over and over, trying to make it work. (There’s an old saw about that, as I recall.) Plus, there’s got to be a pony in there somewhere.

The Century Foundation’s Amy Dean, writing for Aljazeera, describes the hangover Republican governors have from drinking all that tea. Those tax cuts for the wealthy haven’t performed as advertised:

In Kansas, Brownback lowered tax rates for top earners by 26 percent. Now the state faces a $334 million budget deficit. Kansas’ public services are so emaciated that the State Supreme Court ruled the funding of the school system unconstitutional. Economic growth has stalled and the state’s employment growth currently ranks 34th in the nation.

[snip]

Wisconsin is experiencing similar woes from supply-side tax cuts and union busting. In 2013 the Federal Reserve ranked Wisconsin 49th in economic outlook and 44th in private-sector job growth. Wages fell 2.2 percent that year. Wisconsin is now raiding public employees’ retirement funds to make up for a budgetary shortfall of nearly $280 million. By contrast, neighboring Minnesota raised taxes on top earners in 2013 and now has one of the fastest growing economies in the nation. The state raised its minimum wage and balanced its budget without resorting to financial accounting games.

What Republican governors have resorted to is raising taxes on the middle class through consumption taxes and raiding state pension funds. Will voters remember come election time?

Not likely, writes Paul Krugman in his Monday New York Times column. Voters have notoriously short memories, and tend to judge a government’s economic policies not over the long haul, but perhaps only over the two quarters leading up to the election:

This is, if you think about it, a distressing result, because it says that there is little or no political reward for good policy. A nation’s leaders may do an excellent job of economic stewardship for four or five years yet get booted out because of weakness in the last two quarters before the election. In fact, the evidence suggests that the politically smart thing might well be to impose a pointless depression on your country for much of your time in office, solely to leave room for a roaring recovery just before voters go to the polls.

Please, don’t give these guys any more clever ideas.

Clearly Crazy (like foxes)

by digby

I just saw “Going Clear” Alex Gibney’s documentary about Scientology. Yikes. It’s not up to me to tell other people what they can or cannot believe or to whom they choose to give their money but let’s just say that this religion gives credence to the notion that the tax-exempt status of churches is something worth revisiting. In this case, it seems that a religion may have been created for the purpose of sheltering money from the IRS.

It is a riveting tale about something I thought I knew a lot about already and realized I didn’t know the half of it. This video they made after they finally achieved their prime objective, exemption from taxes, is just plain … unbelievable. They literally proclaimed that they had “won the war” — the war against paying taxes:

The Church teachings are very weird to my ears and seem to have obviously been directly lifted from L. Ron Hubbard’s massive production of sci-fi stories in the 1930s. But then I have a hard time dealing with the idea of today’s celebration of Jesus Christ’s ascension into heaven too so I’m no proper judge of what supernatural religious teachings are normal and which ones aren’t. Still, this is a very recent set of tales that were created by a person who made a living making up such tales so it’s probably easier for many of us to see it as a cult. According to the movie, it’s losing adherents left and right (even as it amasses billions from its tax-free holdings) so it’s possible that it’s going to end up being a historical artifact — and one of the great scams of all time.

But the tax exemption story is very instructive. They beat the US Government by using the legal system to harass individual IRS employees. I’m a little bit surprised we haven’t seen anyone else using this tactic and I have to wonder if the right isn’t warming up to it with their crusade against Lois Lerner. Certainly, I would expect to see some billionaires try something similar. All this “religious liberty” stuff could have some very unexpected results if wealthy people and businesses figure out a way to use this precedent and the conservative courts take an expansive view of what constitutes religion and what constitutes liberty.

In any case, it’s a fascinating story, truly a must-see if you’re interested in these things.

Oh, and here’s SNL last night actually taking on Scientology. This is not something anyone’s been willing to do for a very long time since the leadership is vicious and unrelenting toward critics. It seems the genie’s out of the bottle now:

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Chest pounding for peace

by digby

This is the kind of stuff that makes me pick up my copy of The Guns of August and re-read the early chapters …

The Very High Readiness Joint Task Force will include about 5,000 troops primarily from France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain, with maritime, special operations and aviation units. It’s meant to give the rest of the 30,000 service members in NATO’s response force time to mobilize.

The high-readiness force will take a major step this month with part one of Operation Noble Jump. Running from April 1 to April 10, the exercise includes missions in the Czech Republic and the Netherlands, and marks the first time that the forces will practice rapid “orders to move,” NATO officials said.

This is also known as “saber-rattling”, which is just a slightly more civilized way of doing what gorillas do when they march around roaring and pounding their chests to psych out their rivals. Hey, sometimes it even works.

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Lulz

by digby

Happy Easter everyone.

Best Easter cartoon ever: RT @evewrites: Tale of two bunnies RT @makizdat pic.twitter.com/8HTtwUj6S4
— Regina Schrambling (@gastropoda) April 4, 2015

Sunday Funnies

by digby

Tom Tomorrow:

McFadden;