Month: May 2015

Quiverful of secrets

by digby

Good lord:

Josh Duggar confesses the sexual abuse allegations lodged against him as a teenager are true. He also resigned from his position at the Family Research Council.

“Twelve years ago, as a young teenager, I acted inexcusably for which I am extremely sorry and deeply regret. I hurt others, including my family and close friends,” Duggar says in a statement.

Previously released police reports accuse Duggar of molesting five underage children when he was 17 years old. His father Jim Bob reported the incident after Harpo discovered it in research for a Duggar family interview in 2006.

Here’s the rest of the story:

Jim Bob Duggar waited more than a year after his son, Josh, confessed to sexually molesting several female minors before contacting police, In Touch Magazine is reporting exclusively, based on information contained in the official police report.

What’s more, Jim Bob informed the elders of his church about Joshua’s actions and they waited three months before contacting authorities. The explosive new information is contained in a Springdale, Ark., police report obtained by In Touch magazine.

The report has been hidden since 2006 and was just obtained by the mag through a Freedom of information Act request. Jim Bob also refused to allow police to interview Josh when they opened a felony investigation in 2006. The Duggars star on TLC’s hit show 19 Kids and Counting.

In Touch magazine first broke the news of the Duggars’ underage sexual molestation scandal in this week’s magazine. (Note: Josh’s name is redacted from the police report but In Touch has confirmed the passages that refer to him.)

Other bombshells in the police report are: Josh Duggar was investigated for multiple sex offenses — including forcible fondling — against five minors. Some of the alleged offenses investigated were felonies. Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar were interview by the Springdale Police department on Dec. 12, 2006. The report says that James told police he was alerted in March, 2002 by a female minor that Josh — who turned 14-years-old that month — had been touching her breasts and genitals while she slept. This allegedly happened on multiple occasions. In 2006, Jim Bob told police that in July, 2002 Josh admitted to fondling a minor’s breasts while she slept. “James said that they disciplined (redacted, Josh) after this incident.” The family did not alert authorities.

Jim Bob told police that about nine months later in March, 2003 “there was another incident.” Josh was again accused by a female minor of touching her breasts and genitals. Josh was accused by several minors of touching their genitals, often when they slept, but at times when they were awake.

Jim Bob then “met with the elders of his church and told them what was going on.” No one alerted the police or any other law enforcement agency. Instead they decided to send Josh to a “program [that] consisted of hard physical work and counseling. James said that [redacted, Josh] was in the program from March 17, 2003 until July 17, 2003.”

He said the program was a “Christian program.” Michelle Duggar later admitted to police that Josh did not receive counseling and instead had been sent during that time to a family friend who was in the home remodeling business.

Asked about the training center that Jim Bob said Josh was sent to, Michelle told police, according to the report, “it was not really a training center. Det. [Darrell] Hignite asked if the guy [redacted, Josh] talked to was a certified counselor. She said no. She said it was a guy they know in Little Rock that is remodeling a building. Det. Hignite asked if the guy was more of a mentor. She said “kind of.”

The Duggars told police that Josh “apologized” to the female minors and that they had “forgiven” him.

An alleged victim told police in 2006 that Josh had told “mother and dad what had happened… (and) asked for forgiveness.” The report notes the alleged victim says Josh “sought after God and had turned back to God.

Jim Bob told police that “several members of their church were aware of the situation and had been supportive of the family.”

Police interviewed several of the alleged minor victims in December, 2006. They told police that Josh had touched their breasts and sex organs.

Jim Bob told police in 2006 that when Josh returned home in 2003, Jim Bob, accompanied by some of his church elders, took Josh to Arkansas State Trooper, Jim Hutchens. Jim Bob knew Hutchens personally. Hutchens did not take any official action and instead gave Josh a “very stern talk.” As In Touch magazine reports exclusively in this week’s issue, Hutchens is now serving 56-years in prison for child pornography. He took no action on the Duggar case.

The Duggars told police that at the time Josh was accused of, and admitting to, these sexual acts, “a family friend aware of what had happened had written down in a letter what he knew of [redacted, Josh’s] actions…That letter had been placed in a book and had subsequently been forgotten about. Just recently [in 2006] the book had been loaned to someone else with the letter in it and another person discovered the letter.

The Duggars refused to tell police who wrote the letter and who found it.

When the family was scheduled to appear on Oprah Winfrey’s talk show in 2006, an email was sent to the show warning them about the alleged molestation. The email was written by a 61-year-old female who is not identified.

Harpo Studios faxed the letter to the Department of Human Services hotline. The report was then opened for investigation, leading to the investigation by Springdale police.

When police asked Jim Bob to bring Josh in for an interview in 2006, he attempted to hire a lawyer and refused to produce his son for questioning. At least two lawyers refused to take his case. “Det. Hignite received a voice mail from Mr. Duggar stating that [redacted] had hired an attorney and would not be coming in for an interview.”

In Touch magazine broke the story of Josh Duggar’s dark past in the issue currently on sale. The magazine obtained the police report, hidden since 2006, through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Police had to abandon pursuing charges because the [then] three-year statute of limitations had expired.

The alleged victims all described a consistent scenario of Josh touching their breasts and genitals and later apologizing. They said Jim Bob was aware of the situation and did not go to authorities for more than a year.

Why in the world would any family with a secret like this put themselves on television and parade around like paragons of Godly virtue knowing that there are people out there who know about it? One can only assume they wanted to be caught.

I’ve written quite a bit about the Duggars even before they became the big People Magazine stars they’ve lately turned into. As you can imagine, this patriarchal system with the big smiles on all their faces isn’t my thing. I try to be respectful of people’s beliefs and it really isn’t any skin off my nose if these people choose to live their lives this way. But I’ve always felt sorry for the girls in that family. They look happy but they are so limited in their options in life. They’re only purpose is to have children, lots of children, and that’s drummed into them from the time they’re babies themselves.

And as for the sexual repression, well I think we’re seeing where that leads. The whole thing is kind of sad. And sick.

POlice report is here. It’s pretty clear he molested his sisters.

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In Ayatollah we trust


by digby

Huh. It seems as though Russ Feingold (or some PAC supporting him anyway)ought to be able to do something with this:

“I don’t know, I hate to admit it, but in terms of this framework, do I trust President Obama, or do I trust the Ayatollah? In terms of what the framework actually says? I’m not so sure I’m trusting President Obama on this.”

That was Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, who Feingold is challenging to take his seat back. Let’s just say when you’re forced to issue a statement saying that you never said you trusted the Ayatollah, you’ve got bigger problems. What he did say was that he “hated to admit” that he didn’t know if he trusted the Ayatollah. Which in wingnut world is like saying you don’t know if you trust Beelzebub.

He’s schmaht as whip. You’ll recall he the guy who built a statue of Ayn Rand. No, he did, really:

Thursday, January 31, 2013

Atlas Shrugged for dummies

by digby

John Nichols compiles a list of quotes from some of the “Randiest” members of congress (and I’m talking about people who have the hots for a dead Russian romance novelist.) But then he features one who makes even the Rand lovin’ Paul Ryan look like a casual reader:

But it is now safe to say that no congressional Republican is more in the thrall of Rand than Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson. The Tea Party favorite who came into the limelight last week, first with his convoluted questioning of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about the tragic killings of Americans at Benghazi in Libya, and then with his acknowledgement after a dressing down from secretary of state nominee John Kerry that he had not actually been a member of the committee when some of the basic briefings on Benghazi were presented.

While Johnson may not be prepared for Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings, he’s entirely up to speed on Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged…

Before his election to the Senate, Johnson helped purchase and erect a statue honoring the book. And in a newly produced video he tells an interviewer that he thinks we’re living in an Ayn Rand moment and that he’s a lot like one of the characters from Atlas Shrugged.

“Ayn Rand wrote Atlas Shrugged in 1957, partly as a warning against the growth of government. Do you see parallels between the plot of Atlas Shrugged and current events?” asks Laurie Rice of the Rand-focused Atlas Society in the interview.

“Absolutely,” replies Johnson, while discoursing on how he thinks “we’re all suffering collectively from the Stockholm Syndrome. That’s where people who have been kidnapped are grateful to their captors when they just show them a little bit of mercy. And collectively, we just don’t understand the freedoms we’re really losing.”

The highlight of the interview comes when Rice asks the senator: “What do you see as the differences between your ideas and the ideas of Ayn Rand?”

“I’m not sure there are too many differences,” he says with regard to the writings of the author who decried “the appalling disgrace” of Ronald Reagan’s administration because of its deference to ideas emanating from what she referred to as “the God, family, tradition swamp.”

Then Johnson goes all in, finding something of himself in a favorite Ayn Rand novel.

“I guess when you take a look at the book Atlas Shrugged, I think most people always like to identify with the main character—that would be John Galt,” chirped Johnson. “I guess I identify with Hank Rearden, the fella that just refused until the very end to give up. And I guess I’d like to think of myself more as a Hank Rearden—I’m not going to give up.”

That’s the sort of confidence you’d expect from a senator who boldly interrogated the Secretary of State without bothering to prepare.

This reminds me of nothing so much as girlfriends who half drunkenly confess to each other which character in Sex in the City is most like them. (“I’m deffffinately Miranda, but, you know, I’m short of like Charlotte too.“)

I think the true brilliance of Rand may be that she wrote it as a novel rather than an outright polemic. By putting her philosophy into the mouths of strapping heroes and the sexy women who love them, she gave young teen-agers a way to access the ideas through identification with the lead characters. And those who never emotionally or intellectually mature beyond that age continue to see their self-centered philosophy from that “heroic” perspective. Just as 14 year old narcissists see themselves as uniquely gifted and special, so too does Ron Johnson.

Erecting a statue dedicated to Atlas Shrugged is the equivalent of erecting a statue dedicated to The Hardy Boys There’s nothing wrong with honoring a book you liked as a kid, of course, but you wouldn’t want to run a country based on The Hardy Boys. Not that the Bush administration didn’t try … 

When war crimes are provocative and when they are not

by digby

Per Greenwald, the Obama administration has filed a request for an emergency stay to keep the court from making the government reveal photos of torture and atrocities which they say will endanger America’s national security if people see what we have done. How convenient.

But for some reason it’s ok for the former Vice President to go around patting himself on the back for ordering torture and calling it a “no brainer.” It’s fine for former top level CIA officials to appear on camera and defend the use of torture by saying “it’s war, bad things happen in war” and make ridiculous comments like:

“The CIA faced a real dilemma here. On the one hand, we knew this program would be contentious. On the other hand, we asked ourselves, wouldn’t it be equally immoral if we failed to get this information and thousands of Americans died?”

These people are all over the media bragging about torture and declaring that they’d do it again. Evidently, this is not considered to be provocative or possibly motivate our enemies to attack us. These photos, on the other hand, will do that and must be suppressed.

The ACLU’s Jameel Jaffer said of the government’s arguments over the photos:

To allow the government to suppress any image that might provoke someone, somewhere, to violence would be to give the government sweeping power to suppress evidence of its own agents’ misconduct. Giving the government that kind of censorial power would have implications far beyond this specific context.

Basically, the US government is saying that it has a moral obligation to do anything it chooses and by any means it deems necessary to carry out its mission to defend the nation. If that means suppressing evidence of US wrongdoing because it might provoke our enemies, then that’s what it will do. If it means torturing people that’s what it will do. To hell with all that constitutional mumbo jumbo — if they want people to have free speech, they will have it. If they don’t, they won’t. There is no consistency. It’s random and depends upon whose ox is being gored on a particular day. Might makes right.

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QOTD: Ben Carson

by digby

Oops:

In the case of Vietnam, we were trying to stop the spread of communism, which seems like a noble cause to those who hate communism. However, many people love communism, and certainly everyone should have the right to live under the system of their choosing.

That’s from Carson’s book “America the Beautiful”. I’m thinking his fans on the far right may not have read it.

But he’s actually quite the foreign policy genius. Via No More Mr. Nice Blog:

“I actually wrote President Bush a letter before the war started and I said, you know, what I would do is I would use the bully pulpit at this moment of great national unity and, very much in a Kennedy-esque type fashion, say within 10 years we’re going to become petroleum independent. And that would’ve been much more effective than going to war because, first of all, the moderate Arab states would’ve been terrified. And they would’ve handed over Osama Bin Laden and anybody else we wanted on a silver platter to keep us from doing that.”

I think the fact that he’s a highly respected and accomplished brain surgeon is key to understanding why he’s so incredibly dumb about politics. Brain surgeons are treated like Gods and they come to believe they’re Gods and never question themselves. So he has no idea that the stuff he’s saying is sophomoric and ignorant. It never occurs to him to even check. Why would he? In his mind, he’s infallible.

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Psychobushbabble

by digby

When they start writing this about you, I think you’ve got a problem:

But if sibling rivalry is unlikely, there is convincing evidence of Jeb’s internal conflict between his desire to become “his own man” and his fear of separating from and antagonizing his family, especially the brother he idealized as a child. This dynamic may be even more conflicted because Jeb’s personal history demonstrates that he has already strongly differentiated himself from his family to become his own man.

He married a Mexican woman whose father had been a waiter and migrant worker, for example, not a society debutant. He became fluent in Spanish and converted to Catholicism. His policies as Florida governor were far closer to conservative than moderate. He also made Florida his home rather than the family favorites, Maine and Texas.

Separating from your family is part of growing up. You go from extreme dependency as a baby and throughout childhood to the independence of adulthood. Teenage acts of rebellion, when adolescents can disagree with virtually everything parents say and stand for — is part of this transition. The turbulance of adolescence reflects the internal conflict between a teen’s desire to remain a child and the desire to separate and become his or her own person. It culminates in a break that enables teenagers to form separate identities.

As teenagers reject their parents and their values, they create the internal space to develop their own opinions, tastes, ideals and goals. Though they may retain many aspects of their parents’ views and values, they develop their own distictive framework for them. They create who they are in the world.

Mark Twain described this transition. “When I was a boy of 14,” he wrote, “my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”

But it could be that, in striving to step into the presidential shoes of his long-idealized older brother and his even more idealized father, Jeb somehow regressed and lost confidence in himself.

Children with powerful family members are frequently filled with self-doubt. They can feel like failures when comparing themselves to older siblings and parental figures. They might experience normal manifestations of separation or individuation — including adolescent rebellion or just the act of forming their own opinions — as if they are attacking or even killing their family members. Understandably, this causes them not just guilt but a growing fear of alienating their family.

Clinging to family love through idealization is a defensive reaction against aggressive feelings from separation and individuation. Most adolescents resolve this conflict as they realize they are merely killing off their family’s controlling influence over them — not their actual family members.

If these are the psychodynamics that caused Jeb to flounder this past week, his major challenge is if and how quickly he can work through them. He has to fully recover a mind of his own — and convince the American public that he is not George W. Bush II.

Reading that almost makes me feel sorry for Jeb. Not because of the armchair psychological profile of his family dynamic which is cheap speculation. I feel sorry for him because he’s being discussed this way at all.

I guess it’s inevitable but I hate it. Yes, he’s shackled to his family’s political legacy and he is having to pay a price for his father and brother’s failures. But this stuff is junk. Who knows what his motivations are and whether or now he’s gone through the normal processes of “separation and individuation”? And who cares? What matters is how he deals with the reality that his brother’s presidency was an epic failure and how or if he would do things differently.

It should be noted that this writer cites Maureen Dowd who has apparently staked out yet another puerile position by framing Jeb’s run as a case of sibling rivalry. Of course.

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If Fast Track passes, anything put into a “trade” bill will be fast-tracked

by Gaius Publius

We recently discussed the “Fast Track” method by which Dodd-Frank legislation can be overturned without going through anything like the normal Congressional process. Under Fast Track, “trade” bills cannot be filibustered in the Senate, can’t be amended in either house, are subject to limited debate and must receive a simple up-or-down vote.

As Russ Feingold says, it’s a rigged process.

The method that could be used to overturn Dodd-Frank — attach the rollback requirement to a “trade” treaty negotiated by the president alone, then fast-track it through Congress — could also be used to move anything though Congress, so long as it can be attached to a trade treaty, even a bilateral one between the U.S. and just one other country. Any other country. Togo. Nauru.

How to Fast-Track a Law You Don’t Like

Let’s take a hypothetical example. Say some U.S. president receives large campaign contributions from the imported meat industry — that’s a pretty big industry, by the way, so they have lots of what it takes to make large contributions with.

Now let’s say — in a completely unrelated development — this industry wanted to sweeten CEO income and industry sales by asking the U.S. president to get rid of “country-of-origin labeling” laws (called COOL in the world of acronyms). The thinking goes like this:

• Many countries, like China, have weaker meat inspection laws than the U.S.
   
• That makes their beef and pork cheaper to import and sell.
   
• This means more profit for the importers.
   
• But consumers are suspicious of imported meat, because they know about the inspection problem.
   
• This means less profit for the importers.
   
• So … just make it illegal to tell people where any meat is from.

How could a future president, who coincidentally supports the profit goals of this industry, get “country-of-origin labeling” laws overturned, almost by executive action? She could add a requirement to any trade treaty that these laws be repealed, then fast-track this treaty through Congress. No amendments, no filibuster, little debate, just an up-or-down vote on the whole treaty. Done deal. All she needs is Fast Track.

Fast Track legislation (so far) always “sunsets” (expires). This one is written to expire in three years, but could be renewed for another three. Simon Johnson thinks if this Fast Track bill passes, its renewal for the full six years is nearly certain; he notes that “terms of renewal are almost automatic.”

Six years is a fairly large window within which to make a president queen of all she surveys, so long as she can put it in a “trade” treaty.

Those Country-of-Origin Labeling Laws … They’re Already Gone

Actually I was being playful with my hypothetical “country-of-origin labeling” example. Those laws already exist, and they’re already set for repeal because of the existing trade treaty that established the WTO. From Food Safety News:

WTO Rejects U.S. Appeal of COOL Ruling

The World Trade Organization has rejected a U.S. appeal of its decision that country-of-origin labeling (COOL) on meat unfairly discriminates against meat imports and give the advantage to domestic meat products.

The final ruling launches a WTO process to determine the level of retaliatory tariffs Canada and Mexico can impose on the U.S., and the U.S. will have to revise or repeal the COOL law in order to avoid such sanctions. Opponents of COOL are hoping for a swift repeal, while proponents are saying it’s not yet time to act.

The WTO report released in October was the second time that body has ruled against the U.S. in the dispute. After passing mandatory COOL rules in 2008, the U.S. amended COOL in 2012 following an earlier WTO ruling against it.

Last November, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack told the 2014 National Association of Farm Broadcasting convention that there is no additional regulatory fix for COOL that would be consistent with U.S. law as it exists and would also satisfy the WTO.

According to Politico (no link; subscription required):

The WTO announced Monday morning that its seven-member Appellate Body found that a previous panel — investigating whether the U.S. had implemented a 2012 ruling on COOL — was mostly correct in its finding that the regulations give United States livestock producers an unfair advantage over producers from Canada and Mexico when it comes to doing business in the United States by imposing extra costs associated with separating animals. …

Geneva, Canada and Mexico will most likely act quickly to ask that arbitrators work to determine how much they can retaliate based on their losses, most likely by raising tariffs. A panel would then have 60 days to set the amount, though the two sides will likely discuss a settlement to preclude that from happening.

That means the United States has at least two months to determine its next course of action. However, for his part, House Agriculture Committee Chairman Michael Conaway said he is “not interested in waiting on the next step.”

Conaway said last week he plans to introduce a bill soon after the ruling to do away with USDA’s COOL requirements for beef, pork and poultry, saying he will introduce it “just as quickly as we can to get it out of legislative counsel.”

Domestic meat suppliers want the laws in place, but importers don’t and Congress is eager to respond to the WTO requirement — all in the name of “free” trade. This is what critics like Elizabeth Warren mean when they talk about “loss of sovereignty.” Repeal of these laws could happen before Memorial Day, according to the rest of the article. Who said DC was gridlocked?

Anti-TPP Rep. Mark Pocan’s statement in response (my emphasis):

U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (WI-02) issued the following statement on today¹s final ruling by the World Trade Organization (WTO) against a popular U.S. country-of-origin meat labeling (COOL) policy, which requires labeling of pork and beef sold in the United States to inform consumers the country in which the animals were born, raised and slaughtered:

“Today’s ruling is a clear example of how bad trade agreements hurt America’s sovereignty and weaken consumer and environmental policies enacted to protect our health and well-being. From the roll back of U.S. Clean Air Act regulations to altered auto fuel efficiency standards and even possible changes to our financial regulations, bad trade deals negotiated in secret have consistently shown why it is important to get trade agreements done right, not fast.

“With the Trans-Pacific Partnership encompassing more than 40 percent of the world¹s economy we have to get it right and ensure we do not put the health and safety of the American people at risk. Congress should not grant fast track authority and rubber stamp the largest trade deal since NAFTA, when we don¹t know enough about the TPP and its potential consequences on our communities.”

The COOL policy was created when Congress enacted mandatory country-of-origin labeling for meat in the 2008 farm bill and was signed in to law by President George W. Bush. Today’s ruling is not subject to further appeal.

“Today’s ruling is not subject to further appeal,” not in a U.S. court nor in any appeals court higher than the WTO. This could happen to any law attached to any trade treaty under Fast Track.

And lest we forget, recall where the original example got started — with the hypothetical push-for-profit of some industry leaders and their ability to … “discuss” their concerns with the president ahead of a trade deal.

GP

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Get your hot GOP sex right here

by digby

I wrote about the GOP and sexy time for Salon today:

Ted Cruz is getting sick and tired of being asked about sex, sex, sex all the damned time. Everywhere he goes, the liberal media is dogging him about it, and Cruz finally snapped:

“Is there something about the left – and I am going to put the media in this category – that is obsessed with sex?”

I suppose one couldn’t blame him if it were true that they were badgering him about his sex life or perhaps implying that his own sexual proclivities didn’t quite match his rhetoric for some reason. But that’s not what they were asking him about. They were trying to pin him down on his views about gay marriage. After all, the far right social conservative, who held his grandiose announcement in the round at Liberty University, had just recently gone on a pilgrimage to New York City to fundraise with some very high profile, gay billionaires; while there, he told his hosts that he would have no problem if one of his daughters were gay, and said only that he’d leave marriage equality up to the states. This came a something of a surprise to those who had heard him just a couple of weeks before speak in fire-and-brimstone terms about the “Jihad” being waged against “people of faith who respect the biblical teaching that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.” Is it any wonder that the press is questioning him about his views on this?

So, to characterize it as an obsession with “sex” would be a bit of a reach, unless one thinks that Cruz’s own obsession with lurid descriptions of sadistic violence has some kind of sexual component:

“ISIS is executing homosexuals – you want to talk about gay rights? This week was a very bad week for gay rights because the expansion of ISIS, the expansion of radical, theocratic, Islamic zealots that crucify Christians, that behead children and that murder homosexuals – that ought to be concerning you far more than asking six questions all on the same topic.”

This has become a common refrain among certain hawkish right-wingers who try to paint their own attitudes as a trifle by comparison to the “real bad guys.” And it is actually similar to the argument one often hears from certain men on both the left and the right when they become exasperated by feminist identity politics. They’ll often retort that western women have it easy compared to others and they should probably shut up and thank their lucky stars they aren’t being stoned to death for adultery or forced to work for a dollar a day in Bangladeshi garment factories. “You’ve got it easy! We could be beheading you! Think about that for a minute.”

Be that as it may, the fact that Cruz and his ilk are actually criticizing liberals for being obsessed with sex is truly amazing, particularly when the questions are all related to marriage equality. It’s not as if they’re agitating for free love and public orgies. (This is marriage we’re talking about.) It makes you wonder just what it is that goes on in their bedrooms that makes the mere discussion of the institution such a hot topic.

Unfortunately, there’s no need to wonder too much if you’re genuinely curious. There are a spate of new reality shows on TV that are mining this subject of conservative marriage, the most recent being a two-hour TLC special called “The Submissive’s Wife’s Guide To Marriage.” (And no it’s not a “50 Shades of Gray” marriage manual, although from the looks of it, that kind of submission would certainly not be considered out of line either.)

The show focused on several couples, but primarily on Tara and Tim Furman from North Carolina, who have been married for 20 years but found themselves ten years into it unhappy and drifting apart. Inspired by their Bible study they entered into what they call a submissive marriage, which basically means that the wife subordinates all of her desires and needs to the desires and needs of the patriarch. Tara put it this way: A wife’s “job description is to help her man, serve her man, submit to her man and sleep with her man” and that means any time and any way he wants it.”

She counsels a younger woman named Kristin who is trying this concept by telling her that her own marriage is hot, hot, hot. She tells the audience:

“She needs to be having hot sex with her man. That means making sure that his love tank is full. That’s what I call it in my household — the love tank. And when the love tank is empty I got a grumpy man… Kristin is not to deprive her man physically. It doesn’t matter the way she feels. She has to do it anyway. She has to suck it up and do it anyway.”

Yes, she used those very words. And then she spells it out for the younger woman directly saying:

“Grab his butt! Be in the kitchen and grab his butt. You know what I mean by that. Girl you’ve got to be showing the goods and you got to be dressing like the hoochie momma. When you’re around your man talk dirty to him. Bring it girl.”

The men are obviously quite happy with the arrangement, although Tara’s husband does sigh heavily and complain that when a wife submits you have to “give her something to submit to,” but it’s not readily apparent what that means. (It sounds menacingly like that old fashioned parental threat, “stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about.”)

read on… there’s more. With Rick Santorum.

Doubling down on double standards
by Tom Sullivan

There’s a double standard in this country when dealing with crime. Cue Claude Rains.

Charles M. Blow this morning explores the media double standard in reporting on crime committed by whites and blacks. Last Sunday’s gunfight in Waco, TX was between “bikers” or “outlaw motorcycle gangs.” Those terms, Blow writes, evoke the American romance of the Old West and the open road:

While those words may be accurate, they lack the pathological markings of those used to describe protesters in places like Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore. President Obama and the mayor of Baltimore were quick to use the loaded label “thugs” for the violent rioters there. That the authorities have not used that word to describe the far worse violence in Waco makes the contrast all the more glaring.

Blow continues,

Does the violence in Waco say something universal about white culture or Hispanic culture? Even the question sounds ridiculous — and yet we don’t hesitate to ask such questions around black violence, and to answer it, in the affirmative. And invariably, the single-mother, absent-father trope is dragged out.

Bikers? I thought they said bankers. Word spread this week that six of the world’s largest banks would pay fines of $5.8 billion in pocket change to the Department of Justice for currency-rigging, and five would plead guilty to felony charges. No one goes to jail. The banks say thank you — “thankyou” 600 times — and get back to the business of crime.

How many corrupt, white bankers were raised by single-mothers or had absent-fathers? We don’t ask. In Ferguson or Baltimore, thugs commit crimes. In the white-collar world, crimes commit themselves.

Charlie Pierce at Esquire Politics:

This is altogether remarkable. Here we have a staggering series of crimes that did very real damage to thousands of people all over the world. Here we have a staggering series of crimes, but not a single identifiable criminal. Who rigged the markets? The bank buildings? A shadowy cabal of ledgers? Motorcycle gangs made up of quarterly reports? This is the only area of criminal justice where law-enforcement actively avoids identifying anyone as a criminal.

Let us face facts. Within these institutions, there have to be hundreds of people who were involved in some way with a scam this large. There were people who supervised those hundreds of people, and people who supervised them. Somewhere, in that mass of criminal activity, I’m willing to bet something substantial that a human being committed an actual crime.

None will face punishment. Matt Taibbi yesterday speculated how that might work if they ever did:

I think eventually what's going to happen is banks are going to pay the unemployed to do criminal jail sentences for guilty executives.— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) May 20, 2015

As Taibbi found out, that’s how it works in China right now. Can you say freedom ? Sure, I knew you could.

“It’s business as usual, and it stinks,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts wrote of the bank settlement in an email:

“The big banks have been caught red-handed conspiring to manipulate financial markets, and several have even admitted in court that they’re felons — but not a single trader is being held individually accountable, and regulators are stumbling over themselves to exempt the banks from the legally required consequences of their criminal behavior,” Warren said. “That’s not accountability for Wall Street.”

Wall Streeters had better pray to their gods (or to themselves?) that Elizabeth Warren never gets offered a job as U.S. Attorney General.

This one’s for you Pastordan

by digby

Actually, it’s for everyone:

Those are Clouded Leopard cubs. Look at them.

I said LOOK AT THEM!!!

A Hollywood creep gets exposed


by digby

So that last creepy pig from Mad Men’s final episodes who made Joan quit McCann after his disgusting sexual demands is actually like that in real life:

While I looked over my questions for the actor, my co-workers helped me with what I consider the hardest part of the interview: making small talk. Little did I know, it was Johansson who would make things more uncomfortable than I ever could’ve imagined.

“Why are you so tan?” Johansson asked one of my colleagues.

“I was outside playing tennis all weekend,” she answered.

“I play tennis,” he said. “I’m not very good though.”

“I could probably beat you,” she replied.

“This is what we refer to as flirting where I am from,” he responded blithely. “I’ll find your weak spot.”

“I don’t have any,” she responded.

“My serve is pretty strong,” he said. “I’ll serve the ball right down your throat.”

My head snapped up. I was so alarmed, I’d nearly missed his next words, which involved him telling my co-worker that he wanted to take her into his cave (apparently a reference to Canada, where he’s from), where he’d put her on her back.

What did he just say? I mumbled to another colleague, who was standing beside me. None of Johansson’s comments up until that point had been recorded, as the camera hadn’t began rolling. I felt uncomfortable but was focusing on getting the shoot done. Without hesitation, I sat down next to Johansson with my laptop, explaining to him the process of creating reaction GIFs — at which point he slung his arm around my back.

Then, in the middle of the shoot — for which we asked Johansson to act out reactions to so-called dicks in the workplace — the actor made another comment, one we did capture on camera. “I’m not shy,” he said to my colleagues and me under the hot fluorescent lights inside the studio. I laughed at his improvisation, which admittedly was pretty funny. Then he said, a little too casually, “I’m sweating like a rapist,” wiping his forehead and the sides of his face, seemingly not paying attention to the camera that was recording those very words.

It took me a second to register what I’d just heard. Still, none of us in the room objected or expressed our discomfort. Instead, I forced myself to laugh before proceeding. After all, it was just the culmination of about three comments from Johansson that would’ve been inappropriate in an ad agency in the early 1970s, like the one his misogynistic character works at on Mad Men. But this is hardly 1970. It’s 2015, and we work at BuzzFeed — far from the time or place where I would’ve expected his remarks.

I’m sorry that’s still happening in Hollywood. It certainly happened all the time when I was working there. I once worked with the top legal counsel for a major film distributor who was the most sexually obnoxious man I’ve ever known. He would call each woman into his office on Monday mornings, close the door and tell us all about his sexual conquests of the week-end before. And they were often somewhat violent and would make you queasy just to hear about them. He finally got reprimanded when he went too far and talked about one of the male executive’s wife in such terms.

Sexual harassment is always wrong. But when it comes couched in terms of sexual violence it’s got an edgy intimidation component that’s frightening. And it’s meant to be. The reporter beats herself up a little bit for failing to confront it immediately, but it’s perfectly understandable. We’re trained to be respectful of authority on the job and in this case,  to treat  your interview subjects politely. You don’t register immediately what’s happening and then often you just want to get the interaction over with and get out of there.  The whole thing makes your skin crawl.

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