Month: June 2015

Now *this* is brave

by digby

Right wingers (and some others) are always claiming that Islam is to blame for all the violence in the middle east and elsewhere. And, to be sure, many of these terrorists and extremists think they are following some pre-modern religious instruction. But this is really about human beings, regardless of their religion. And here you see the reality of it played out on that bloody beach in Tunisia:

Images obtained by Sky News showed gunman Seifeddine Rezgui shortly after he began shooting, walking through the surf at Sousse with a Kalashnikov rifle at his side.

Some have been critical of the men shown standing on the beach behind the gunman, described as “horrified onlookers” by the Mail Online, with one commentator saying: “I count nine men standing or walking behind him why didn’t they all attack him?”

But John Yeoman, who was on holiday with his wife at a neighbouring resort when the shooting began, tweeted: “Those in the background formed a human shield to protect another hotel. they are not watching they saved many lives.”

When they flew into Manchester to be repatriated, Mr Yeoman’s wife met another holidaymaker who had been on the beach during the shootings.

This man told her that he and his girlfriend were on the beach on Friday when the attack started. A hotel chef came running towards them, telling them to run for their lives.

“He was the one who told them that the line of people they could see ahead of them were staff from the hotel,” Mrs Yeoman said.

“He said to this couple that they were telling the gunman ‘you’ll have to get past us and we’re Muslims’. Obviously I don’t know the exact words but that was pretty much what they were saying.

“They’d actually made a human barricade – ‘you’re not going to get past us, you’ll have to kill us.’”

She said when she then saw the picture in media reports, it seemed obvious that the photographer had captured the moment described by the other holidaymaker.

Mrs Yeoman said the extreme bravery of the staff “makes you have a little more faith in humanity” and disproves any suggestion that Muslims are all violent extremists.

“Everyone seems to think ‘it’s the Muslims, it’s the Muslims’, but it is not, it is not their way,” she said. “There are no words to express how grateful we are to them [the staff].”

Another Briton, Ian Symes, wrote to Mr Yeoman: “I’m with you – was on beach at Palm marina – whilst we were running to hide, hotel staff were running out to help, very brave.”

Now the gun nuts would say they should have all been armed and run out onto the beach spraying bullets. And maybe they would have succeeded in bringing the guy down before he had a chance to hit so many people. Or maybe not. Maybe they would have hit some people themselves. Or each other. More guns, more bullets.

But one thing we do know is that this guy had a gun and regardless of whether or not others had been armed, his determination to kill people meant that some number of people would be killed. Gun proliferation advocates are fine with that. They believe guns are wonderful tools and toys at best and at worst just part of nature, something that exists and which we must embrace lest someone else use them against us. Some of the rest of us think that such lethal weapons are a man-made catastrophe.

But regardless of all that, I think we should all be able to agree that those who formed a human shield to stop that homicidal maniac are indeed very, very brave.

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QOTD: Cruz

by digby

He’s very upset:

“The Court injected itself into politics…what a crazy system to have the most important issues of our day decided by unelected lawyers.”

He has a point:

Back in late 2000, Ted Cruz found himself with one of the hottest tickets in town.

As a former clerk to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, Mr. Cruz, a junior aide on George W. Bush’s presidential campaign, had scored a seat inside the Supreme Court for the oral arguments in Bush v. Gore, which would decide the election.

That was completely different, of course.

The problem now is that evangelicals and protestants are being discriminated against because there aren’t any of them on the court. It’s just a bunch of Jews and Catholics and you know how they are.

There was a time not so long ago that the conservative evangelicals happily allowed the conservative Catholic intelligentsia carry their water for them. After all, there was a long tradition of intellectual religious thought in the Catholic Church that made for good conservative legal cred and so they pushed Alito, Scalia, Roberts, Kennedy and Thomas to the court with the understanding that they would be good on their issues.

Now they feel there is something “different” about them and that the court is just too full of all these big city Catholic and Jewish lawyers. Evangelicals are now victims of discrimination.

You knew that was going to happen, right?

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The Fast Track Battle is not the TPP War

by Gaius Publius

It would be easy to be deflated after the recent loss of the Fast Track battle. Our 2008 Democratic hero and Corporatist in Chief has managed to shove a Fast Track bill down congressional throats — which were, I must say, mainly eager recipients.

But the battle is not the war, as explained above, and it’s always true that if you fail to fight to the end, you will always lose. On the other hand, this is what sometimes happens when you do play hard to the end:

There’s no way they win if the Auburn players are checked out during that field goal attempt.

Meteor Blades, keeper of the progressive flame at Daily Kos these days, has this to say (my emphasis throughout):

Some progressives threw up their hands Tuesday after the Senate voted for closing debate on fast-track trade legislation. It’s all over, they said: The nearly completed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement is certain to pass now.

Not so fast.

Although the Senate will undoubtedly approve fast-track legislation today—the trade promotion authority bill only needs 51 votes—the despair and talk of surrender on the TPP shouldn’t be on anyone’s agenda. Certainly, it’s true that blocking that agreement will be exceedingly tough. But it is by no means impossible.

As evidence, he quotes George Zornick in The Nation, who lists a number of reasons to be optimistic that TPP could fail, especially in the House. Here’s the schedule and the possibilities:

Sometime in the late summer or early fall, the Obama administration will finally release the full TPP text, after the president signs it. After 90 days, Congress can vote on it.

Without question, fast track makes the TPP much more likely to pass. No amendments can gum up the process or chase off support, and we already can easily see there are 50 votes in the Senate based on the fast-track votes. But the House remains no sure thing for the TPP. Fast track twice passed by only two votes.

When the TPP actually comes out, there will be some really ugly details that are likely to enrage liberals and solidify opposition among Democrats. For months the White House has been dodging some criticisms of the TPP by stressing that the text isn’t final, but that will no longer be an option.

The unknown details of the TPP, incidentally, are what Hillary Clinton cites for not yet having an official position on the trade deal. If the Democrat base gets truly riled up when the details do come out, she may end up opposing the deal. This would give cover for every congressional Democrat to do the same.

Members of the House will also be in the thick of their reelection campaign this fall, and increased progressive activism and actual primary challengers will no doubt make a TPP vote even harder. …

Again, there’s more at the link.

At the risk of overdoing the sports metaphors, the only way to win is to play. And the only way to play is — block to the whistle, tackle to the ground, play to the end of the game. This game is not over.

(A version of this piece appeared at Down With Tyranny. GP article archive here. My TPP archive here.)

GP

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Great balls of jello
by Tom Sullivan

Frank Rich takes aim at the gutlessness of the GOP’s 2016 presidential hopefuls:

Say this about the Old Confederacy: At least its leaders had the courage of their own bad convictions. Today’s neo-Confederate GOP politicians, vying for primary votes in Dixie 150 years after Appomattox, proved themselves to be laughable cowards. Confronted with the simplest of questions – should a state capitol display a flag that stands for slavery, racism, and treason? – they hedged (all of them), spouted gibberish (Ted Cruz), or went into hiding (Rand Paul). If they’d been the Rebel generals in the Civil War, it would have been over in a week.

This was, Rich writes, “the second time in three months we’ve seen GOP presidential contenders unwilling to stand up to the unreconstructed bigots still infesting their party’s base.” In April, they had caved or hedged over “religious freedom” bills passed to sanction discrimination against gay families. They then retreated faster than Lee at Gettysburg after civil rights groups and the NCAA condemned Indiana’s version, and influential CEOs objected to the states dissing their customers.

Seems like only yesterday that Gov. Bobby Jindal and his legislative tigers were lying down like the Siegfried and Roy cats before the once enfant terrible, Grover Norquist. They wrote asking his and Americans for Tax Reform’s permission to sorta kinda raise state taxes after Republican economic dogma had driven Louisiana’s balance sheet (like Kansas’ before it) deep into the red.*

But boy howdy, whichever of these bowls of jello survives being a debate contestant on the RNC’s “Who Wants To Be The Next War President,” you can be sure we will be treated to months of tough-sounding ads telling us that only he (it will be a he) has the balls to protect Uh-murca from the jihadis’ long, curved knives.

* Meanwhile in Minnesota, Gov. Mark Dayton’s Democratic leadership led the state to the top of CNBC’s list of best states for business in 2015.

Service cats

by digby

They have a job to do and they do it well:

Like the characters played by the actor who inspired his name, Pacino was no scaredy cat. The brown tabby had prowled the streets of Los Angeles, a drifter scraping for his next meal.

After the cat was turned in at an L.A. County animal services shelter, there was little hope that Pacino would be adopted. He was too distrustful, too fierce, too mean.

Then Melya Kaplan came along, looking for a cat with grit, street smarts and attitude.

Several hours after the customers and merchants have gone home and the lights are dim, the cats start their patrol in the Los Angeles Flower Market June 25, 2015. The Working Cats program is using unsocialized “feral” cats in a program to keep rodents away from the market.

The Working Cats program is using community cats in a program to rid the Los Angeles Flower Market of rodents. The cats dont kill the rodents they manage to repel them by their scent.
The 10-pound, 6-ounce cat would become the nighttime warden at the Original L.A. Flower Market, making sure rodents and other vermin didn’t get out of hand. He’s part of a group of tough cats recruited by an animal rights nonprofit to find homes in places that could use their hard-scrabble qualities. Along with another cat named DeNiro, Pacino would prowl the Italian side of the flower market. Of course.

“Mother Nature doesn’t make mistakes,” said Kaplan, executive director of Voice for the Animals. “We probably just haven’t found a purpose for it yet.”

As part of the Working Cats program, street cats like Pacino are rescued from animal shelters and sent to locations ranging from police stations, like the LAPD’s Wilshire and Foothill divisions, to private homes, businesses and schools. Over the years, the program has placed about 500 cats in nearly 50 locations.

Kaplan, a frequent customer of the market, developed the program in 1999 when Carl Jones, a market employee, told her about the rats in the workplace. Exterminators would spray the warehouse with poison, but the vermin remained. Every so often, a customer would spot a pair of beady eyes hidden in the row of flowers.

“Anytime you heard a customer scream, you generally knew the rats were to blame. And then I had to stop what I was doing and go chase the little thing away,” said Jones, who has worked at the market for 15 years. “It definitely wasn’t the highlight of my job.”

Scott Yamabe, executive vice president of the Original L.A Flower Market, said the facility had battled rats since the beginning of the 20th century. All kinds of things were tried to get rid of the rats, but the results were always the same: nibbled-on flowers.

“The rodents even chewed through the wooden refrigerator doors where we kept the flowers,” said Yamabe. “Those rats were too smart. We really needed help.”

About 15 years ago, Kaplan made a proposition to Yamabe. She would deliver three cats to the flower market to get rid of the rats. And if they could not take care of the rodents, she would take them back.

The market currently has 15 cats, and Jones and Yamabe said they do not see any rats.

Kaplan attributes the program’s success to the simple fact that adding a predator to an environment will scare away its prey. Once rodents smell a cat on the prowl, they go somewhere else, she said.

“It’s not anything new. People used to have barn cats or church cats to keep out rodents,” Kaplan said. “We just brought [it] to the city, and it seems to be really working.”

There are no rats where I live, that’s for sure:

TBTL: Too big to lose

by digby

I’m sure you’ve been reading a lot about the Greek situation. (If you haven’t this Krugman piece will get you up to speed.) It should be another very interesting week.

Sure, they’ve been dealing with 25% unemployment for 7 years now but the New York Times has found the real victims in this whole horrid odyssey:

For investors around the world looking at Greece, there was but one question Sunday: What is going to happen when the markets open on Monday?

That question is particularly acute for the hedge fund investors — including luminaries like David Einhorn and John Paulson — who have collectively poured more than 10 billion euros into Greek government bonds, bank stocks and a slew of other investments.

This weekend, Nicholas L. Papapolitis, a corporate lawyer here, was working around the clock comforting and cajoling his frantic hedge fund clients.

“People are freaking out,” said the 32-year-old Mr. Papapolitis, his eyes red and his voice hoarse. “They have made some really big bets on Greece.

But there is no getting around the truth of the matter, he said. Without a deal with its European creditors, the country will default and Greek stocks and bonds will tank when the markets open.

The humanity. Won’t someone think of the hedge fund managers? These are people on whom we depend to gamble huge amounts of money for the greater good.  I’m afraid these bets are Too Big To Lose.

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The boys and girls who cry dildoes

by digby

Vox has a rundown of the hilarious CNN “bunch of dildoes and buttplugs” flub yesterday which, if you haven’t heard about it, needs to be seen to be believed:

Yes, folks, they actually worked up a terrorist scare over a gay pride parody flag with dildoes and butt plugs. (It doesn’t seem to have occurred to even one of them that ISIS is not exactly a friend to the gay community and isn’t likely to join their pride parade but whatever …)

Anyway, Vox does point out an important point about all this underneath the absurdity:

Mistakes happen — we at Vox have made our own — but the way that CNN covered this is a bit concerning, and not for the error so much as for the fear-mongering.

The network spent several minutes telling Londoners that ISIS was in their midst, frequently reminding viewers of last week’s bloody terror attacks in Tunisia and Kuwait. They portrayed the London gay pride rally as sullied by violent Islamist extremism. And they displayed on screen, for long stretches, the image of a totally innocent gay pride supporter, repeatedly suggesting that this man is in fact a terrorist.

CNN does not normally confuse ISIS flags with satirical dildo flags. This was clearly their JV team making a flub. But that flub was totally consistent with the network’s approach to terrorism, which for years has over-hyped threats, blasting viewers with hysterical warnings of imminent and omnipresent danger. It is a network whose terrorism coverage has been not just clumsy and irresponsible but cynical, exploiting people’s earnest fears and the bloodshed of real victims in order to create a more titillating TV viewing experience.

In many ways, the CNN team responsible for this bit was just following normal protocol: over-hyping threats is, for the network, part of the daily routine. It just so happened that they went a little more overboard than usual here and got caught doing it. Usually, the act is not quite so obvious, and it’s not at all funny.

The Islamic terrorism fear-mongering on television is way out of proportion to the threat of it in the US. And it’s done with this underlying implication that they are not only coming to “kill us all” as Lindsay Graham put it, but that we are under a serious threat of ISIS taking over the country. Why else would this threat be taken as something we must pull out all the stops to confront when we can’t even get background checks for the kind of gun violence that we live with routinely? Mass killing is dangerous to individuals regardless of the motivation. The people who were killed in the Boston bombing are no more dead than those who were killed in Charleston.

ISIS is not going to take over America. It’s not going to take over Europe either. They can kill people with terrorist attacks, absolutely. And we should be concerned with that. And they can cause global havoc, no doubt about it. But since we are so blase about the 30,000 people who die each year from guns and don’t seem to see the necessity to roll up the constitution to stop those who kill for any other political ideologies, maybe our media could dial down the threat mongering a little bit. Lindsay Graham is going to have a heart attack.

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Jerk ‘O the Day

by digby

A true statesman in action:

Chick-fil-A kind of day pic.twitter.com/D1HqJd3Umh— David Vitter (@DavidVitter) June 27, 2015

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What the Bible tells us about marriage

by digby

As we listen to all these preachers, politicians and Christian laypeople drone on and on and on about how their religious beliefs are being violated because the Bible says marriage is between one man and one woman and legalizing gay marriage is a form of discrimination against Christians, read this piece by Juan Cole about what the Bible actually says about marriage. Hint: there’s not a thing about gays and a whole lot about plural marriage. Lots and lots. And about wives being sex slaves who belong to their husbands. It’s scary.

He concludes with this:

[As for Biblical marriage],you can do that in all kinds of imaginative ways– take two wives and someone else’s sex slave as Abraham did, or 300 sex slaves as Solomon did (not to mention the 700 wives), or your brother’s widow in addition to your own wife. And remember, if your sex slave runs away because you’re cruel to the person, the Bible (Philemon) says that other people have the duty to return the slave to you, i.e. basically imposes the duty of trafficking slaves back to sadistic sex maniacs who exploit them. But if the owner is nice and a good Christian, he might consider letting the sex slave go. But he doesn’t have to.

Oh, and for all this blathering all morning on the various shows from people like Cokie Roberts about how marriage is the only natural way to live (thus making unmarried people into some kind of freaks) I’d just point out that (as far as we know) Jesus was a single guy. But who cares about him? After all, when Scalia said “ask a hippie” it’s really just another way of asking WWJD.

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Mr. Robot Will Scratch The Corporate Justice Itch in Your Brain  

by Spocko

The pilot of Mr. Robot is the most interesting TV show I’ve seen all year. (Watch it free at USA’s site here)

 It has the potential to become as enlightening (and predictive) about how our current computer-connected corporate power elite function as Person of Interest did when dealing with the ramification of widespread surveillance and the morality (or lack of) in our detection and execution of possible terrorists.

My recap has spoilers, some you could tell from watching the extended trailer. Here’s the marketing blurb.

In MR. ROBOT, Elliot, a cyber-security engineer by day and vigilante hacker by night, is recruited by a mysterious underground group to destroy the firm he’s paid to protect. Elliot must decide how far he’ll go to expose the forces he believes are running (and ruining) the world.

The opening scene takes place in a urban coffee shop. Elliot, the lead character, is describing to the shop’s owner why he ending up finding the 100 terabytes of child pornography the owner had that was serving 400,000 users. We don’t see a single computer screen or keyboard during this, just Elliot and the owner.

 It all started because he liked the fast wi-fi in the shop.

 “It was so good it scratched that part of my mind that doesn’t allow good to exist without conditions.”  -Elliot, Mr. Robot, S01E01

Elliot has a curious mind. “What’s the catch?” he wonders. So he digs. First figuring out what is hinky, then how was it done technically. This is about solving an interesting puzzle, which is a critical thing to understand about many hackers.

Then comes the human puzzle solving side which is more important that people realize. (BTW, in the industry they call lying to people to get the information you want “social engineering” because that sounds like something you go to college to learn. Calling it plain old lying sounds like any shlub could do it. )

His actions, upon finding the porn, reveal part of his moral code. He isn’t going to blackmail the owner. Money doesn’t drive him. He’s going to the police.

The opening scene’s hero/villain morality play was designed to be fairly cut and dried. Serving up child porn is widely condemned as immoral and is illegal. The villain is unrepentant and has few obvious allies. He was caught off guard, was unprepared and didn’t instantly retaliate.  A clear cut win for our hero.

Evil Corp Is Made of People! PEOPLE!

Still, on the subway home Elliot knows he destroyed a man’s life in 3 minutes. That is where he first encounters the mysterious Mr. Robot (Christian Slater) who looks and sounds a bit like a drunk homeless person.

Next we see Elliot at his job in the cyber security firm. (Cyber? Really? 1990’s much?) He has an internal monologue about the company whose computers he defends from external attacks. He calls them Evil Corp. They sound like BofAGoldman MonsantoJPMorganChase and use the Enron crooked E as their logo–nice touch.

At work we meet his childhood friend, Angela, who is the new account manager on Evil Corp, Gideon, the boss and Angela’s boyfriend who also works there.

Angela wants to know why Elliott didn’t come to her party the night before, he says he was working, but the scene cuts to him standing outside the bar afraid to come in.  His social anxiety around other people overwhelms him, even though he clearly has feelings for Angela.

If Your Password is Lame, Do You Deserve Protection?

While Angela and the boss meet to discuss the ongoing computer attacks on Evil Corp, Elliott slips out to see his therapist. It sounds like it is court ordered, which gives us an idea of a back story involving hallucinations.  He describes how he uses his ability to read people to figure out their passwords. No fancy hacking tools, just close observation and understanding human habits.

During the session we learn more about his view of people, “I look for the worst in them.”  But we also learn of  his desire to help and protect the people who have helped or befriended him.

He proceeds to use his knowledge of his therapist’s password to read her email and Facebook posts. She went through a devastating divorce and is now dating “losers” she meets on e-Harmony.  He uses this information to find out that the guy she is currently dating is cheating on his wife. He does this by stalking the therapist, then lying to the guy in person and on the phone.

 Once again, we are given a craven individual Elliott defeats. It’s a fairly clear moral code case, but still it’s creepy.

He can tell himself he’s doing this because he wants to help her. That, “people put all sorts of stuff on Facebook” and “she shouldn’t have such an easily guessable password.” But these are all rationalizations. Doing something “for the greater good” as he sees it, justifies his lying, stalking and threatening

Elliott is called into work by Amanda during a massive late night attack on Evil Corp that is big enough to warrant Gideon and Elliott hopping on the corporate jet and going to the data center.

Elliott saves the day, but there is a mysterious message left for whomever fixed this problem. When he returns he again meets Mr. Robot in the subway who promises answers about the message.  Elliott, curious, decides to go with him to an old building in Coney Island.

Slater explains that Elliott has been selected and introduces him to the gang (A black man! A woman! Yay casting director!) He lays out some of his philosophy and mentions a big project they are all working on.

I’m not sure I buy the story given by Mr. Robot, it has a generic, “Get back at the rich bastards who hurt my family” feeling that appeals to Elliott’s sense of justice.  (Elliott’s own father was harmed by a corporation, but he couldn’t prove it.)

Maybe Mr. Robot, like Elliott, knows how to read people and offers them what they want.  Elliott is painfully lonely and this is a group of like minds he can talk to in real life.  (There is a stunningly shot scene of Elliott huddled in a small space between his bed and the dresser crying about his loneliness.)

Elliott is still not certain he wants to join this crew, so he prepares to turn them in after revisiting the Coney Island site. There he hears more of Mr. Robot’s reasons for doing what he is doing, and his plan. He wants to take down Evil Corp because they own 70% of consumer debt.  If done right the group could erase all people’s debt and mortgages and create “the single biggest incident of wealth redistribution in history.”

 Elliott reminds Mr. Robot of how bad the last financial crisis was and how framing the jerky CTO at Evil Corp won’t accomplish much. Mr. Robot explains:

“You don’t take down a conglomerate by shooting it in the heart, they don’t have hearts. You take them down limb by limb.”

The next day Elliott is at work where Angela is explaining what happened to Evil Corp’s CTO, the FBI and US Cyber Command. Elliott is getting ready to expose the Mr. Robot gang when Evil Corp’s CTO has Angela kicked off the account.  Elliott, upset at how she was treated, changes his mind and provides the FBI and Cyber command with the info that frames Evil Corp’s CTO.

A few weeks go by and still no news of any arrest, meanwhile Angela is distant from Elliott. She explains that she was embarrassed by what happened and doesn’t want to talk about it. In the future he should let her fail, “Even if I’m losing, let me lose, okay?”

This exchange is very important. The character that he wants to protect, doesn’t want the protection. She wants to deal with the situation herself and move on. She doesn’t want the experience taken out of her hands by someone who thinks he knows what is best for her. I’m glad they are showing an important female character doing this.

Mr. Robot sees a huge problem with how wealth is distributed in our country, but it is Elliott’s personal relationship with Angela, who is in debt, that helps him justify a larger action.

Dealing with the big issues reminded me of some of the people who I met and worked with during Occupy Wall Street. So much of that was about first pointing out income inequality.  Think about the phrase: The 99% vs. the 1%. This is an accepted concept now, but it represents a major mental metaphor shift for the country.

However, the mainstream media, used to finding, elevating and then destroying leaders that challenge the status quo was frustrated. They needed individual humans with backstories and motivations to focus on, otherwise it’s too abstract.

With no humans, but an interesting idea, the media asked, “So what are you going to do about it?” This is where the show Mr. Robot picks up. It provides humans and a plan to do something about it.

So, really, what is to be done? Worried about massive student loan debt, and want to stick it to the corporate jerks who hurt your friends? You could blow up the entire system, but are there other alternatives?

One of the post Occupy Wall Street groups that I like is “Rolling Jubilee” They buy debt for pennies on the dollar and then forgive it. That is the kind of lateral thinking and problem solving that should be explored and encouraged. 

As the show ends Elliott is brought into the inner sanctum of the men who “really run the world.”

These people have a powerful world view and the ability to enforce it on entire governments. They can make it seem “right,” and even the best choice, to starve Greek children and crush a generation of students with debt. The only alternate they present if things aren’t done their way is the the world will burn, for everyone.

For dramatic purposes crashing Evil Corp from the inside makes for exciting TV. But the reasons why they would want to do it, as well as alternatives to the status quo, makes it thoughtful.

Following the end of Season 2 of House of Cards my friend Joel and I discussed the importance of  how our nation’s storytellers write about the economy. What models and metaphors do they have in their heads? Ones articulated by Elisabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders or Jamie Dimon? 

I don’t know where the rest of the series is going. They just got renewed for a second season. My hope is that the writer/ creator Sam Esmail* keeps intelligently digging into the characters and ramification of the story line he lays out in the first episode.

*Hey Sam. If you want to talk about the economy for the second season with Bernie Sanders or Elisabeth Warren I can totally set you up, I know people who know people. You don’t even need to hack my email to contact me! I’m spockosbrain at gmail.