Month: June 2015

Can Real Americans be terrorists?

by digby

Gawker caught this from terrorist hating (well, except for those nice Irish boys in the IRA) Congressman Peter King:

On ABC’s This Week Sunday, King explained that since jihadis have killed a terrifying total of 28 people in the USA since 9/11, and non-jihadi terror attacks have killed a negligible 48, radical Islam is definitely the far greater threat:

Every murder is horrible … There is no comparison between these white supremacists and an internationally coordinated movement which, if the attacks were not stopped, we could have thousands and thousands of deaths.

King was frankly disgusted by the comparison, because come on, people, everyone knows Muslims are far scarier than rightwing guys with large weapons caches and their own weird dreams of inflicting mass casualties:

“Everything should be investigated, everything should be stopped,” King said. “But to compare these deranged white supremacists with an organized international terrorist movement, that’s The New York Times at its worst.”

Obviously. Because Islamic terrorists are organized and want to kill us all — in increments of 28 per decade, more if possible — while white supremacists are by definition deranged lone nuts who have no organizational ties whatsoever, and more importantly, speako the English.

The people who were killed in the Boston bombing are waaaay more dead than those who were killed in the Charleston massacre. That’s just a fact.

This also flies in the face of what every terrorist “expert” has been telling us about the threat in America — “lone wolf” attacks. They aren’t invading and they aren’t staging massive attacks like 9/11. The threat is from some loser who reads something on the internet and builds a bomb or shoots someone. That’s a terrible thing but it’s no more threatening than Dylann Roof and his personal jihad.

Peter King is showing his little white slip and it isn’t pretty.

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No this Supreme Court is not “just right”

by digby

Polling on the Court’s decisions last week is interesting

Democrats are more apt to say they back the ruling on the 2010 health care law sometimes referred to as Obamacare — 79% back it — than they are to support the same-sex marriage decision, of which 70% favor. Among Republicans, 54% said they oppose the ruling on health care, while 59% oppose the ruling on same-sex marriage, not a statistically-significant difference. Among independents, 63% support each ruling.

The 37% of Americans who say they see the Court as too liberal is the highest share to say so in CNN polling dating back to 1993. Fewer, 20%, say they feel the Court is too conservative and 40% see it as about right.

In a CNN/ORC poll in 2012, just after the Court issued its first ruling upholding part of the health care law, 30% said they felt the Court was too liberal, 22% that it was too conservative.

Republicans are most apt in the new poll to say the Court’s ideology is too far to the left: 69% see the Court as too liberal. That’s up from 2012, when 59% of Republicans called it too liberal.

Among Democrats, 34% now say they see the Court as too conservative and 15% too liberal, 49% say the Court is about right. In 2012, just 6% of Democrats described the Court as too liberal, but the share calling it too conservative was about the same at 35%.

Anthony Kennedy and John Roberts aren’t 100% batshit insane in every single case but that doesn’t mean the court isn’t waaaay too conservative. It’s anything but “just about right.”

Wake up Democrats.

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Oh, what’s the point


by digby

The next time some right wing gun nut starts handwringing about how anti-gun proliferation activists don’t care about “black on black” crime show them this:

With all that “black on black” crime you’d think they’d want to all arm themselves to the teeth.

Of course, they also know that they are already likely to get shot by police whether they have a gun or not so they may figure it’s not a good option all the way around.

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Electro-shock for fun and profit

by digby

There is so much wrong with this I don’t even know where to start:

For the price of a $5 raffle ticket, Van Meter is offering its residents a change to use a police taser on a city official.

City hall is selling the tickets as part of a public safety fundraiser. The raffle winner will get the chance to taser or spare City Administrator Jake Anderson or Councilman Bob Lacy at the Van Meter Fire Association Street Dance July 18.

“I volunteered to be tased,” Anderson said.

A police officer will assist with the tasing, with the proceeds going to help the department purchase a second squad car, add speed radar and possibly expand its six-member part-time and reserve force.

Anderson said the idea came up during a meeting with police about funding.

“The joke was sort of, yeah, let’s tase the administrators. They make all the friends,” Anderson said. “I was like, yeah, that’s funny. Do you think you could raise some money?”

Lacy volunteered to add a little competition, and Anderson was glad.

“I didn’t want there to be a 100 percent chance I’d be tased,” he said.

Anderson said he’s never been tased before, adding, “I imagine it will hurt.”

Police Chief Bill Daggart, a former Waukee officer, admitted he’s never been tased either. But he hopes to purchase tasers for Van Meter’s department once they’ve raised the $5,000 to $10,000 desired to expand the force.

“A taser reduces suspect-officer physical confrontations immensely,” Daggart said.

The police department is also raffling gift cards for Sportsman’s Warehouse valued at prices equal to a number of firearms, including a Ruger AR556 Patrol Rifle.

Daggart said the desire to expand the force isn’t the result of any crime increase in the town of roughly 1,100 residents. Van Meter is hoping to attract a data storage industry from companies such as Microsoft or Facebook.

Though the city has a patch of land suitable for that industry, those companies often require specific response times from police and fire services.

“It’s not a crime issue as much as it is a growth issue, “Daggart said. “It’s a way we can compete with Omaha and West Des Moines.”

A poster created by the police department that advertises the raffle reads, “It is taser time!!!” adding that citizens can “vote to taser Jake or Bob.” The bottom of the poster reads, “Don’t tase me bro!!!!!”

And for 50 bucks, you can waterboard the mayor! Fun!!!!

I sure hope the public officials get a full cardiac work-up and take some strong downers and pin killers before they submit because tasering can kill you if you get too “excited”. Or have an underlying condition. Or they shoot you full of electricity in the chest. Or you fall and hit your head or knock out your teeth when your muscles all seize up and you fall to the ground.

Best take some precautions. Unfortunately, the people who get tasered for mouthing off or failing to submit to an order quite quickly enough don’t have a chance to get a medical evaluation before they are shot through with electricity, but that’s their tough luck.

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The Christian right at war with itself

by digby

I wrote about that at Salon this morning. It could portend yet another fault line in the GOP coalition:

“[T]o allow the policy question of same-sex marriage to be considered and resolved by a select, patrician, highly unrepresentative panel of nine is to violate a principle even more fundamental than no taxation without representation: no social transformation without representation.”

Read on. The history of this partnership is pretty interesting and the fraying of it right now has very little to do with theology and everything to do with politics.

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Them boys ain’t goin’ gentle into that good Knight
by Tom Sullivan

You knew it was coming as soon as calls to remove Confederate battle flags caught fire across the South starting in Columbia, SC:

The Ku Klux Klan has been approved to hold a protest rally at the Statehouse next month against removing the Confederate battle flag, with the group calling accused mass murderer Dylann Roof a “young warrior.”

The Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan applied for the permit last week to hold a rally for 100 to 200 people on July 18 on the north side of the Statehouse.

If you are holding your breath for Fox News’ Griff Jenkins to cover the Klan rally live just to remind us all that racism is dead and only racists and race baiters say otherwise, don’t.

Actually, this Klan group hails from North Carolina:

Calling itself the “Largest Klan in America,” the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan are based in Pelham, N.C., according to the group’s website.

A man identifying himself as the “great titan” of the N.C. chapter of the Loyal White Knights left a message with The State saying his group is holding the demonstration because “to us they are erasing white history and white culture right out of the history books. That’s why they want to take that flag down.”

Violent insurrection ending in what Southerners in other circumstances call an ass whuppin’ (followed by decades of Jim Crow, domestic terrorism, and thousands of lynchings) is the heritage some here are most proud of and remember with Confederate battle flags. Of 400 years of history on these shores, the 4 years of violent treason are the ones by which some Southerners still define themselves. This makes them a very special breed of 1%-er. As John Fugelsang put it in the video I linked to the other day, it is “a heritage of quitting America because you want to start your own country to keep people as pets.”

South Carolina state senator Paul Thurmond (yes, son of the famous Dixiecrat/Republican) spoke to WBUR in Boston about his speech outlining his decision to support removing the flag from the state capital grounds. Thurmond thinks it is the right thing to do. It is “a symbol of hatred that needs to be brought down.” Thurmond is worried about his safety.

The boys were out over the weekend celebrating their heritage with Confederate flags flown from the backs of their pickup trucks. At my SC hotel last night, a guy just finishing fixing a flat on his truck stuck a Confederate flag onto the left rear, as in this picture a friend shot in Marion, NC.

A reporter in Asheville spoke with an eighteen year-old kid doing the same:

We were talking about the reaction he’s gotten flying the battle flag, and Billingsley said it’s been overwhelmingly positive — lots of honks, thumbs-up, and more than 600 likes on a Facebook page.

“I’ve only had one negative, and it was a colored looking at me,” Billingsley said. “He made it look racist, but it’s really him being racist by judging me for flying it.”

Congratulations, Fox News. Mission accomplished. Mr. “I know you are, but what am I?” is America’s future.

Thurmond is probably right to worry about his safety, judging by the driving prowess the Southern Pride faction showed over the weekend in Dalton, GA:

You’re all weak, I tell you, weak!

by digby

So NBC dumped Trump (the Miss Universe pageant anyway — he’d already resigned from Apprentice) because of his Ann Coulter inspired “Mexicans are rapists” comments. Here’s his response:

As of today, Donald J. Trump is no longer affiliated with NBC. Mr. Trump stands by his statements on illegal immigration, which are accurate. NBC is weak, and like everybody else is trying to be politically correct— that is why our country is in serious trouble.

“We must have strong borders and not let illegal immigrants enter the United States. As has been stated continuously in the press, people are pouring across our borders unabated. Public reports routinely state great amounts of crime are being committed by illegal immigrants. This must be stopped and it must be stopped now. Long ago I told NBC that I would not being doing The Apprentice because I am running for President in order to Make our Country Great Again.

“If NBC is so weak and so foolish to not understand the serious illegal immigration problem in the United States, coupled with the horrendous and unfair trade deals we are making with Mexico, then their contract violating closure of Miss Universe/Miss USA will be determined in court. Furthermore, they will stand behind lying Brian Williams, but won’t stand behind people that tell it like it is, as unpleasant as that may be.”

I don’t often agree with Allahpundit, but we’re on the same page with this one:

Not only will Trump pay no price with populists for having long associated with a network as reviled on the right as NBC, he’ll actually get a bump in the polls now that they’ve declared him persona non grata. Everyone wins — NBC gets bouquets from SJWs for cutting him loose, Trump gets to revel in being the media’s new public enemy number one, and the media itself gets a sweet little gotcha to pester the other candidates with this week. The only loser, as usual, is the Republican voter.

Exit question: Odds that Trump will actually be leading the GOP field by the time of the first debate in early August? I’d say 50/50.

He upped it to 60-40 after Trump’s statement came out.

I’m not sure the Republican voters think they are losers though. They seem to like this stuff.

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Thank you daddy

by digby

Here’s the most insincere, paternalistic commentary you will see all day from none other than Rick Perry responding to the Supreme Court refusing to force women’s clinics in Texas to close pending ongoing litigation:

Seriously, because he’s “worried” about their health. So he thinks they should go to back alley butchers and bleed to death instead.

This whole line is such blatant bullshit I can’t believe they don’t burst into laughter whenever they try to sell it. He’s saying what men have been telling women for millennia: you can believe me or you can believe your lying eyes. (It’s for your own good. Now get in there and make my dinner.)

Grrrr.

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Amid all the progress we are still barbarians

by digby

Ian Millhiser on today’s death penalty decision authored by a real sick piece of work by the name of Samuel Alito:

At oral arguments, Alito was openly contemptuous of the work of death penalty opponents — many of whom work for companies that manufacture drugs that various states would like to use in their execution protocols. The reason why Oklahoma was in court seeking the ability to use a painkiller of questionable reliability in its executions is because many drug companies have refused to sell their products to states if those states intend to use them to kill a human being. During arguments in this case, Alito labeled this effort a “guerrilla war against the death penalty.”

As a legal matter, it is not at all clear why the actions of drug companies have any relevance whatsoever to a constitutional challenge to the death penalty. Drug companies are private actors, not government actors, so they are free to sell or not to sell whatever they choose so long as they comply with the law. Alito’s opinion, however, effectively punishes these drug companies for their opposition to the death penalty by holding that, should the companies continue to make their more reliable drug unavailable, then executions will just move forward with less reliable painkillers.

They key paragraph in Alito’s opinion is a declaration that, no matter what happens, there must always be a way to execute inmates:

Our decisions in this area have been animated in part by the recognition that because it is settled that capital punishment is constitutional, “[i]t necessarily follows that there must be a [constitutional] means of carrying it out.” And because some risk of pain is inherent in any method of execution, we have held that the Constitution does not require the avoidance of all risk of pain. After all, while most humans wish to die a painless death, many do not have that good fortune. Holding that the Eighth Amendment demands the elimination of essentially all risk of pain would effectively outlaw the death penalty altogether.

Ordinarily, lawsuits claiming that a particular method of punishment is unconstitutionally cruel and unusual limit their focus to a narrow question — whether the specific method used by the state is cruel and unusual or not. With this one paragraph, Alito turns that analysis on its head. Now, there must always be a method of execution available to the state. And if the only method available inflicts cruel and unusual amounts of pain on an inmate, that’s not the Court’s problem.

As a final blow to anti-death penalty advocates, Alito effectively drafts them into the task of determining how their clients should be killed. Alito reaches his conclusion, at least in part, “based on petitioners’ failure to satisfy their burden of establishing that any risk of harm was substantial when compared to a known and available alternative method of execution.” In other words, a lawyer challenging a particular method of execution must name another, alternative method that can be used instead. Needless to say, this places attorneys who have an obligation to represent the interests of their client in a serious ethical bind.

We have a court majority that literally says that the death penalty is inviolate and it doesn’t matter how it’s done as long as it is done. Not only that it’s up to the lawyers who handle death penalty cases to pick which method they want the state to use to kill their clients. It’s so sick I can’t wrap my mind around it.

I’m going to guess that the only hope for this lies in some application of “religious liberty” in the future in which anyone who isn’t a total cretin, from the corporate reps to the lawyers to the public officials, will claim that it violates their religious beliefs to participate in the premeditated killing of a human being who is in custody and presents no threat to them.

And even that probably won’t work on the blood-thirsty Alito. But maybe some other willing executioners will be persuaded.

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Casting out Coulter

by digby

I wrote about the weird career of Ann Coulter at Salon today:

• The “backbone of the Democratic Party” is a “typical fat, implacable welfare recipient.”
• “My libertarian friends are probably getting a little upset now but I think that’s because they never appreciate the benefits of local fascism.”
• “If you don’t hate Clinton and the people who labored to keep him in office, you don’t love your country.”
• “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity”
• “Congress could pass a law tomorrow requiring that all aliens from Arabic countries leave… We should require passports to fly domestically. Passports can be forged, but they can also be checked with the home country in case of any suspicious-looking swarthy males.”

“We need to execute people like John Walker [Lindh] in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors,”

“When I said we should ‘execute’ John Walker Lindh, I mis-spoke. What I meant to say was ‘We should burn John Walker Lindh alive and televise it on prime-time network TV’. My apologies for any misunderstanding that might have occurred.”

It goes on to discuss the fact that she has fallen from grace in recent years …