Month: May 2015

Grifter wedding goes wrong

by digby

The next time you see John McCain or any other Republican talking about “judgment” and responsibility, think about this:

The eleventh hour cancellation of Bristol Palin’s Memorial Day Weekend wedding left mom Sarah with little alternative but to go ahead with the already planned reception – although significantly her daughter chose not to attend.

The bizarre set of circumstances mean’t that while the former vice presidential candidate hung out with her daughter’s ex-fiance and ex-Marine [and medal of honor recipient] Dakota Meyer and his family in Kentucky, Bristol made a very public showing of her non-attendance by posting a series of photos of her enjoying a ‘weekend getaway’ back in Alaska with her best friend who is an exotic model.

Sarah Palin had taken to Facebook last Monday to reveal that her 24-year-old daughter would not be marrying Meyer as previously planned just days after accusations emerged that the 26-year-old Marine had covered up a ‘secret wife’ he had married at 19 and then legally divorced.

Despite the cancellation, the former vice presidential candidate confirmed a celebration would still be held on May 23 and both families would be gathering for a barbecue at Meyer’s Kentucky farm.

‘This Kentucky farm is a beautiful setting for our friends and families to gather in celebration of life itself this Memorial Day weekend,’ wrote Palin.

‘Nothing is more precious to us than family, faith and America’s freedom.’

But the ‘celebration of life’ appears to have quite heated at one point as this photograph showing Sarah Palin raising her finger in what appears to be a heated exchange with the man who was supposed to have become her son-in-law.

Days earlier Meyer had put out his own statement on Facebook page around the same time as the elder Palin and bearing striking similarities to her message, suggesting a concerted public relations offensive.

But if both sides were supposed to be maintaining a united front someone forgot to tell Bristol

She was absent from the ‘celebration of life’ in Kentucky and instead spent the weekend posting photos of her enjoying a ‘getaway weekend’ back home in Atlanta.

Sarah Palin makes a big issue of her family’s supposed belief in traditional Christian family values, but after the embarassment of a cancelled wedding Bristol’s choice of friend for her trip – ‘exotic model and video vixen’ Marina Lupas – was the last thing the family’s tarnished image needed.

Lupas aggressively markets herself as an ‘exotic model’ on the internet, and her public photos leave little doubt about what she means. She and Bristol are long time friends and they spent the weekend enjoying the outdoors and driving an RV.

Photos from the family barbecue in Kentucky suggest Bristol didn’t miss much with only about 100 people showing up.

Although in attendance was Fox News correspondent Rick Leventhal who tweeted photos of himself with both Palin and Meyer.

She would have been one heart attack away from running the world.

Will we ever know?

by digby

I was just cruising through my archives looking for something and came upon this story from the New York Times:

Report on 9/11 Suggests a Role by Saudi Spies
By JAMES RISEN and DAVID JOHNSTON
Published: August 2, 2003

WASHINGTON, Aug. 1 — The classified part of a Congressional report on the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, says that two Saudi citizens who had at least indirect links with two hijackers were probably Saudi intelligence agents and may have reported to Saudi government officials, according to people who have seen the report.

These findings, according to several people who have read the report, help to explain why the classified part of the report has become so politically charged, causing strains between the United States and Saudi Arabia. Senior Saudi officials have denied any links between their government and the attacks and have asked that the section be declassified, but President Bush has refused.

People familiar with the report and who spoke on condition of not being named said that the two Saudi citizens, Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Bassnan, operated in a complex web of financial relationships with officials of the Saudi government. The sections that focus on them draw connections between the two men, two hijackers, and Saudi officials.

The report urges further investigation of the two men and their contacts with the hijackers, because of unresolved questions about their relationship and whether they had any involvement in the 9/11 plot.

The edited 28-page section of the report, produced by a joint panel of the House and Senate intelligence committees, also says that a Muslim cleric in San Diego was a central figure in a support network that aided the same two hijackers. Most connections drawn in the report between the men, Saudi intelligence and the attacks are circumstantial, several people who have read the report said.

The unclassified parts of the report also suggest a connection between Mr. al-Bayoumi and Saudi intelligence. The report says that “one of the F.B.I.’s best sources in San Diego informed the F.B.I. that he thought that al-Bayoumi must be an intelligence officer.” The report also says that “despite the fact that he was a student, al-Bayoumi had access to seemingly unlimited funding from Saudi Arabia.”

I know you knew this already. I just thought it was worth mentioning again since poor old former Senator Bob Graham is still trying to get those pages declassified more than a decade later.

You simply cannot take what the government says about our policies in the Middle East at face value. It operates on a different level. But again, you knew that.

.

Headline ‘O the Day: Feature not bug edition

by digby

Bernie who?

by digby

Honest to God …

ok pic.twitter.com/Ia9nuUcR0k

— Michael Whitney (@michaelwhitney) May 24, 2015

Meanwhile I’m sure they’ll continue to tell their audience about Ben Carson’s every utterance. Because he represents Real America.

.

It only took one lobster eating surfer dude …

by digby

My piece for Salon this morning …

Imagine making it so that banks can collect extra fees from mothers with small children who are trying to feed them on less than four hundred dollars a month. How cruel do you have to be to think that making them only carry 20 dollars cash will somehow teach them a lesson?

But this is what’s happening in states governed by miserly Republicans who are determined to wring every last dime out of people who have nothing and give it to people who have more than they can spend in a lifetime. In Scott Walker’s Wisconsin, for instance, they are making long lists of prohibited foods for those who use SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programs.) The list of other prohibited purchases includes “herbs, spices, or seasonings,” all nuts, red and yellow potatoes, smoothies, spaghetti sauce, “soups, salsas, ketchup,” sauerkraut, pickles, dried beans sold in bulk, and white or albacore tuna.

They were particularly adamant that nobody on the program be allowed to eat shellfish, lobster in particular, which seems odd considering that it’s Wisconsin and the lobster catch there is decidedly small. (In fact, it’s non-existent.) I’m sure you’ll be surprised to learn that this lobster hysteria stemmed from a Fox News documentary which seems to have been the catalyst for these crackdowns on foodie welfare cheats. Media Matters reported on it back in 2013:

Prior to its August 9 airing, Fox News hyped the special, “The Great Food Stamp Binge,” on Fox News Insider, FoxNews.com, and several of its daytime shows. Each preview focused on Jason Greenslate, a freeloading surfer who Fox correspondent John Roberts interviewed in Southern California. FoxNews.com described Greenslate at length in an article that teased the “new documentary”:

“The Fox News Reporting documentary profiles, among others, a California surfer and aspiring musician named Jason Greenslate. Greenslate shows how he supports his beach-bum lifestyle with food stamps, while dismissing the idea of holding down a regular, steady job.

“‘It’s not that I don’t want a job, I don’t want a boss. I don’t want someone telling me what to do. I’m gonna live my own life,’ Greenslate tells Fox News’ John Roberts. ‘This is the way I want to live. And I don’t really see anything changing. I got the card. It’s $200. That’s it.’”

As promised, “The Great Food Stamp Binge” labeled Greenslate “the new face of food stamps,” devoting two full segments to his lifestyle in a shameless attempt to characterize SNAP recipients as freeloaders.

Yes, he was shown eating lobster on screen. Since Fox News viewers are the most misinformed people in the universe (well, America anyway) and elected Republicans seem to be among Fox News’ most ardent fans, it stands to reason that some California surfer hippie refusing to work would inflame them so much that they couldn’t see past it. Fox even had staffers deliver copies of the documentary to members of congress prior to a vote on cutting food stamps, just to make sure that hippie didn’t go unnoticed by even one Republican. You can bet it’s made the rounds of all the state houses as well.

.

Asking for it

by digby

Ok, this is very creepy.  It’s about a document from Bill Gothard’s home schooling cult that tells people like the Duggars how to deal with sexual abuse:

The document describes a situation in which social workers visited a home and informed the parents that their oldest son had sexually abused younger members of his family.

According to the document, the boy repented for what he had done and was later asked to answer a list of questions in writing to shed more insight on what happened.

The questions included asking what factors had contributed to his sin, what could have been done to prevent it, and what factors “in the home contributed to immodesty and temptation.”

“The information he gives is so helpful that every parent should read it and diligently apply the lessons that this family learned the hard way,” the document states.

The most striking part of the document comes when the boy seems to blame his actions on the lack of “modesty” in his home, especially when it came to his young sisters.

The boy wrote that modesty was a “factor” in his actions because it “was not at the level is should have been in my family.”

“It was not uncommon for my younger sibling to come out of their baths naked or with a towel,” he wrote.

He also said his younger sisters acted inappropriately when they wore dresses, saying they “did not behave in them as they should.”

He then said his sisters didn’t realize what they were doing to him because they didn’t realize their “own nakedness,” and it wasn’t taught properly to them. He seems to blame this on his mother, who he says didn’t see the human body as a big deal because she is a nurse.

The boy said he spoke with his mother who had “no idea” how “visual” men are sexually compared to women. He said changes have since been made in his home.

“This was not a major reason for the offending, but it allowed my little sister to be open to what I made her do,” he wrote.

He then wrote, “A different lifestyle, with more modesty, might have prevented what happened.”
The document then provides guidelines as to how to prevent this type of situation. These include “[insisting] on modesty at all times” and “[not allowing] boys to change diapers.”

There was this as well:

The document suggests that a victim of sexual abuse is damaging themselves by being “bitter” about what happened.

It also seems to imply the victim should be feeling guilt about what happened. The reasons for this guilt may be “disobedience” or “not reporting it,” it states.

In addition, the document reference there is a potential for “moral vaccination.”
That term is described in an article by Recovering Grace:

Moral vaccination” seems to reference a concept Gothard shared in seminars and conferences in the 1980s, when he told the story of a woman who struggled with unwanted sexual thoughts and eventually was raped. In the anecdote, Gothard described the rape and the woman’s subsequent aversion to sexuality as inoculation against lust.

I think we can all agree that this throwback attitude should have been left in the caves. But then you stop to think about it and see that there are many people, not just the Duggar Quiverful types for whom this attitude still subconsciously informs their views about women and assault. The right sees sexual assault as a false narrative in which women are pretending to be victims when they were actually active participants in the act in one way or another. (Those little girls who were “immodest” in their dresses for instance.) And if women are assaulted they likely put themselves into a situation they shouldn’t have been in in the first place and must take some responsibility for what happened to them.

That’s Bill Gothard’s gothic patriarchal culture. It’s also our culture.

Update: Because he cares about the victims, this Republican politician wants the chief of police fired for releasing Josh Duggar’s arrest report. Uh huh.

Update II: That Buzzfeed story I linked at the beginning should have included some acknowledgement to Kathryn Joyce for her book Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement
and Sarah Posner who has written reams about Gothard as well. You really should read up on this if you haven’t.
.

“Bring ’em on”

by digby

The original Arlington West memorial, Santa Barbara, California; the USS Ronald Reagan is in the background

With all the bellicose talk coming from the right these days, it appears we are on the cusp of forgetting. We shouldn’t do that.

Damned dirty hippies
by Tom Sullivan

The sun is just up and I put out the flag. It is Memorial Day again. There will be a ceremony downtown later to honor America’s war dead. Some in Washington are clamoring to send more Americans to join them.

We have seen stories lately that Memorial Day originated in 1865 with freed slaves in Charleston, SC. They took it upon themselves to give a proper burial to hundreds of Union soldiers from a prison camp at the Washington Race Course and Jockey Club who had been buried in a mass grave. Whether that event was the inspiration for the national holiday established in 1868 is conjecture. According to Yale historian David W. Blight, the “Martyrs of the Race Course” have since been moved to the National Cemetery at Beaufort, South Carolina. The track is now a park adjacent to the Citadel military college.

I was on the Isle of Palms a few miles east of there on October 7, 2002, watching, the night George W. Bush gave the televised speech in Cincinnati. He threw everything but the kitchen sink at Saddam Hussein in an effort to convince the American people we needed to go to war against Iraq (as the White House had already decided). The well-orchestrated, Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld propaganda effort has been much in the news lately. A decade later, Americans have largely concluded, knowing what we know now, that we, the Bush administration, and a cheerleading national press were misled by bad intelligence.

No, we weren’t. David Corn put it plainly last week: “George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, & Co. were not misled by lousy intelligence; they used lousy intelligence to mislead the public.”

Matt Taibbi mocked the “bad intelligence” argument last week, “It was obvious even back then, to anyone who made the faintest effort to look at the situation honestly, that the invasion was doomed, wrong, and a joke.” What’s more:

Do people not remember this stuff? George Bush got on television on October 7th, 2002 and told the entire country that Saddam Hussein was thinking of using “unmanned aerial vehicles” for “missions targeting the United States.”

Only a handful of news outlets at the time, most of them tiny Internet sites, bothered to point out that such “UAVs” had a range of about 300 miles, while Iraq was 6,000 miles from New York.

What was the plan – Iraqi frogmen swimming poison-filled drones onto Block Island?

It was nuts. It was nuts at the time. What Bush’s “intelligence” lacked in quality he had made up for in quantity. That was obvious. If he had anything solid, he would not have recited a laundry list of conjecture. The intelligence wasn’t just bad. It was a joke. Anyone with a scrap of remove could see it, as Taibbi says. Yet most of the country went along, including our watchdog press. Taibbi concludes:

Now a lot of these same people are green-lighting stories about how wrong Jeb Bush is for not admitting to what is at last obvious, “knowing what we know now.” But forget what we know now. We knew then, but we’re just not admitting it.

For the record, I wrote this to my senators and congressman from that Isle of Palms kitchen the day after the Bush speech in 2002:

Senator,

“Facing clear evidence of peril,” George W. Bush last night recalled President Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis. I lived through the Cuban missile crisis, Senator. Those were real missiles, only 90 miles away, and not weapons we worried might be developed, might be intended for us.

Clear evidence of peril? I grew up and lived most of my life under the threat of nuclear annihilation on thirty-minute notice from hundreds of Soviet nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles. We knew – unequivocally – that the Soviets had the bombs and the delivery systems, and that their ICBMs were aimed right at us. This country has never faced a more imminent and direct threat.

Against this backdrop the President would have us shaking in our shoes and supporting immediate preemptive war against a dictator and tyrant who might – if he has a death wish in development, too – threaten the United States from halfway round the world using crop dusters armed with mustard gas?

This is Bush’s “significant threat”? So why do Iraq’s immediate neighbors Saudi Arabia and Turkey – both defended by our military – not support Mr. Bush on this? On Larry King Live last night Sen. John McCain observed that the worst-case scenario from Iraq is Hussein launching a chemical or biological attack against Israel, not against us. Israel faced something like this already. And if Hussein tried it again, the Israelis – if unfettered – would reduce him to a greasy patch, and we would help them do it.

Bush keeps trying unsuccessfully to tie Iraq to 9/11 to gain support for his jihad. Again last night, he was unsuccessful. His reasoning as to why we should act immediately against Iraq? “We’ve experienced the horror of September the 11th.” “Saddam Hussein’s regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America.” Because there are bad people out there who don’t like us, and Saddam Hussein is one of them. (And he keeps bad company.) He might be tempted someday to commit illegal acts of violence against us, so we are justified in committing illegal acts of violence against him first. Shoot at anything that goes bump in the night… and ask questions later.

A brilliant foreign policy. It makes me nostalgic for the good old days of 1962.

Let’s let the U.N. authorize legal military action, if it will, before Bush straps on his six guns and sets off on a lynching party. Do not support this Texas vigilante’s putsch.

Damned dirty hippie.

Observe Memorial Day without so much saber rattling, okay?

Bipartisanship at last


by digby

I have always said that the only way to achieve bipartisanship in the modern era is for President Obama to enlist the Democrats to pass the conservative’s agenda unchanged and without compromise. It would especially good if he could twist some liberals’ arms to get it done so the Villagers would see it as legitimately mainstream.

Looks like we might see this in action at long last:

House Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and GOP leaders have turned to some unlikely allies to rally support for a key trade bill: Tea-Party conservatives, including some prominent names from the raucous House Freedom Caucus.

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) recently tapped Rep. Tom McClintock to give the weekly GOP address, in which the conservative Californian declared: “Trade means prosperity.”

At the monthly “Conversations with Conservatives” event, Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kansas) informed his colleagues he’s an unequivocal “yes” on granting President Obama so-called “fast-track” trade powers.

And both McClintock and Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.) huddled with reporters in a leadership office last week to talk up the virtues of legislation to help pass Obama’s trade agenda.

Salmon, typically a source of heartburn for leadership, denounced some of the conservative “Pat Buchananites” he runs with as “protectionists.” Those who warn Obama can’t be trusted on trade are making a weak argument, he said, because Congress has given Republican presidents the same authority.

Finally, Salmon pointedly challenged critics who’ve complained about the secrecy of the process to head down to a classified briefing room in the Capitol’s basement to read details of a major 12-nation trade deal, known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

“I’ve read every jot and tittle … 123 pages,” Salmon told reporters during the press briefing, while seated next to House GOP Conference Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), the No. 4 leader. “To go out there and rail against it when you haven’t even looked at it is insane.”

Salmon, who chairs the Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, didn’t stop there. In a closed-door GOP conference meeting the following morning, he was the first one to step to the open microphone, making an impassioned plea in support of fast track and the trade deal as Ryan looked on.

“I can’t believe Republicans — the party of free trade — are coming out against this,” Salmon told his colleagues, according to sources in the room.

There are just as many House conservatives who have their doubts about handing President Obama broader trade powers, referred to in Washington parlance as Trade Promotion Authority or TPA.

But the aggressive lobbying effort by these conservative lawmakers is seen as a positive sign for TPA following weeks of chatter that the bill was on life support in the lower chamber.

“I’m as conservative as any of them. Salmon’s a great spokesman, I’m a great spokesman. McClintock’s a great spokesman. That’s the reason I think we’re gonna see it pass,” said Rep. Roger Williams (R-Texas), a member of Majority Whip Steve Scalise’s GOP vote-counting team who’s bullish that TPA will be sent to Obama’s desk. “I think it looks good.”

After clearing several tough procedural hurdles, the fast-track bill is slated to pass out of the Senate this weekend. But the House won’t take up the measure until early June, after the chamber returns from its weeklong Memorial Day recess.

TPA specifically would give Obama the ability to send trade pacts to Congress for fast-track approval, meaning lawmakers could cast an up-or-down vote but not amend the agreement.

Scalise’s whip team won’t disclose how many of the 245 possible GOP votes they’ve locked up so far. But one leadership ally, Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), told The Hill the target is roughly 190 Republican votes and 30 Democratic votes.

“Every week, we’re starting to move in the right direction and pick up a lot of these members we normally don’t get for big initiatives,” said a GOP aide who is familiar with the TPA whip count. “Even if there is opposition from the Tea Party/Freedom Caucus side, it has been relatively muted.”

Part of the reason there hasn’t been more organized, vocal conservative opposition to the trade bill is because Republicans typically are big boosters of free-trade, open-market principles. So for many GOP critics, coming out against the trade legislation has been a tricky endeavor.

“I’m a free trade guy,” Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), a Freedom Caucus member, said before explaining that he’s still “undecided” on TPA as he works to add trade-preference language for Israel back into the bill.

While Freedom Reps. John Fleming (R-La.) and Dave Brat (R-Va.) are firmly opposed to TPA, other members — including Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Reps. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho), Ken Buck (R-Colo.) and Justin Amash (R-Mich.) — say they are “leaning no.”

“I have supported all previous trade agreements we voted on in the House. I will support future trade agreements … but TPA is a process bill and I want to have a good grasp of the process before I would support it,” Amash told The Hill. “I am a ‘lean no’ because I don’t have enough information about the process, but I am not a firm no.”

The split among conservatives is a good omen for Ryan and GOP leaders, who likely wouldn’t be able to move the bill if there was united Tea-Party opposition in the conference.

Yes, many of these are the same “populist”  Tea Partyers who pretend to be antagonistic toward big business.

Yes, as I said, as long as the president agrees to pass a conservative agenda he will be able to claim some “bipartisan” achievements. I’m sure there will be much celebrating in Washington if he can get this one done. The hippies really hate it —

.

Yes, our police torture citizens who are in the midst of medical emergencies

by digby

David Washington crashed into a car and a street sign after having a medical emergency, but the officers just assumed he was disobeying orders. They tasered him, blasted a long shot of pepper spray directly in his eyes and when he fell out of the car they let it run over his foot. And then the cop asked the sick citizen if he understood why he had to be sprayed.

I’ve been writing about this for years. They torture people who cannot respond. They don’t bother to even try to ascertain if there might be something wrong. They do it to deaf people and people who are having epileptic seizures. Obviously, they do it to people who are mentally ill and not a danger to anyone all the time. They do it at will and rarely does anyone care.

If there wasn’t a body cam recording this, they would have said he was like a raging Giant, threatening them menacingly and they had no choice but to subdue him by whatever means they could.

And think about this. They are at the scene of an accident. How could possibly not have been concerned that the man was injured? The lack of common sense is staggering.

.