Month: August 2015

Religious liberty trumps all

by digby

Via Raw Story:

A high school principal in Tallahassee, Florida is in hot water over his unilateral decision to drop a controversial book from a summer reading list for students.

According to the Tallahassee Democrat, Lincoln High School Principal Allen Burch pulled The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon after a handful of Christian parents complained that the novel did not show proper reverence for God and the Christian faith.

Curious Incident is the story of a 15-year-old British math genius who is on the autism/Asperger’s Syndrome spectrum. The teenager relays everything that happens around him in the same matter-of-fact, almost emotionless tone, including some adults’ struggles with faith and a belief in God.

Burch’s decision to pull the book has caught the attention of the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) and other major freedom of information, anti-censorship organizations.

“This case is very startling. A handful of parents are making choices for every other parent in that school,” said Sarah Hoffman of the NCAC to the Democrat. “There is a reason policies are in place — to protect educators and the decisions they make.”

This happens all over the country and has been going on for as long as public schools have existed. But I’m going to guess this new theory of religious liberty is going to give it a whole new life. If something offends someone’s religious beliefs then it must not be allowed. Because freedom.

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Pied Piper

by digby

Fergawdsakes:

The Iowa State Fair won’t allow Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump to give kids free rides on his helicopter on fairgrounds, but the real estate developer has secured a nearby location.

The helicopter will take off from a parking lot outside the fair in Des Moines, campaign state chairman Chuck Laudner told CNN on Friday, adding that Trump may hop on a few rides as well.

CNN previously reported that the Sikorsky is one of three that he owns, seats 12 people comfortably, including the pilot.

Why would any individual need three Sikorsky helicopters?

Anyway:

Billionaire businessman Donald Trump offered kids helicopter rides in a show of wealth as he bragged Saturday that he is willing to spend $1 billion on his presidential campaign.

“I’m turning down so much money,” Trump said at a press conference kicking off his weekend trip to Iowa to visit the State Fair, with his black helicopter emblazoned with “Trump” and children standing in the background.

Trump touted turning down a $5 million donation offer this week before saying he would spend $1 billion on his 2016 Republican presidential bid “if I had to.”

“Nobody else would do the job that I will do,” Trump said, mentioning jobs, the military, care for veterans and the “catastrophe” of ObamaCare, which he said he would get rid of.

Oy… I am getting old so I try not to wish my life away anymore but there is a big part of me that wishes I could go to sleep and wake up next summer at this time.

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Canary in the coal mine

by digby

Take the time to read this. It is an investigation of an emerging refugee crisis happening right before our eyes and one which could result in something very, very dangerous happening to the world order:

Passage to Europe: common migration routes from sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East.

The article is a discussion of how Europe is dealing with this and it’s quite interesting. I think we already know how the strains are manifesting themselves politically and it’s likely to become much more unstable over time.

This is being driven by economics, war and climate change (the latter of which is heavily influencing the former.) And it is likely to be a precursor of similar issues manifesting themselves elsewhere.

I don’t think people have quite grasped exactly how the climate crisis is going to play itself out. True, there will be massive environmental impacts. But it’s the way people react to them that’s going to affect us the most. There will be more wars and more migration.

It’s one of the reasons why our homegrown “immigration debate” is so dumb. We’ve been adequately dealing with migration from the south for centuries, as we “allowed” workers to come over and fill jobs that nobody else would do and then travel back or send money to families back home. It’s not a crisis. It’s normal. But at some point this may become a different issue and we should be prepared to think about how to handle it when it does. The kids at the border last summer are a little preview of what could happen.

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Ron stands with Rand

by digby

So Ron Paul finally endorsed his son. I guess there were some people who thought he would do otherwise but seriously — no. They are a family and they believe in the same political ideology. There was never a question that Paul Sr would use his influence (and fund raising capacity!) on behalf of his own offspring regardless of how often the younger Paul sells out. Please.

Dave Weigel reported on the endorsement:

“I know the media likes to play this little game where they pit us, or certain views, against each other,” the elder Paul will write, according to excerpts provided by the younger Paul’s campaign. “Don’t fall for it. They’re trying to manufacture story lines at liberty’s expense. You’ve spent years seeing how the media treated me. They aren’t my friends and they aren’t yours.”

In the e-mail, Ron Paul will say that the enemies of liberty “fear Rand more than any other candidate,” and that “unlike other candidates, Rand isn’t depending on Wall Street fat-cats and banksters who want more special treatment, bailouts and stimulus packages to bankroll his candidacy.”

The “banksters” language is a mainstay of Ron Paul’s own fundraising appeals, which roll out of his Campaign for Liberty as frequently as CDs used to roll out of Columbia House (R.I.P.). It can be read as a knock on, well, anyone else; the libertarian reader might think first of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), whose fundraising has lapped Paul’s with the help of hedge funds.

Cruz’s campaign has already been trying to pull support from Paul, taking advantage of a polling slump that some libertarians blame — ironically — on the candidate’s attempts to broaden his appeal. Ron Paul’s letter addresses this directly.

You would think with both the left and right wings condemning the “banksters” and Wall Street that we’d find some way to create a coalition to actually do something to rein them in. But there’s a tensy little problem: to the extent that the right wing isn’t being totally cynical and dishonest by trying to leverage this populist point of view to their own advantage, they also cannot bring themselves to endorse the only remedies available: taxation and regulation.

I guess they figure they can just shake their fists at the elites while proposing to lower their taxes and get rid of all regulations and their rubes will go along. And they’re right. Never mind.

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Shoot first and ask questions later


by digby

There is a lively debate about whether or not cops are routinely shooting unarmed citizens because there are so many guns on the street they constantly fear for their lives. I’m sure there’s some truth to that.

But really, the problem is many police think they are in a war with the citizens and any interaction that does not result in citizens reacting with total and instant compliance is a lack of respect for their authority.

Here’s a good example:

The police had responded to a dispute between neighbors.  As you can see in the video a family dog with a wagging tail came up toe the officer and he pulled his gun on  the dog. The dog’s owner ran up to stand between her dog and the officer, the officer threw her to the ground and then arrested her.

Police shoot dogs constantly despite the fact that there is no record of a police officer ever being killed by a dog.

They don’t even bother to keep decent records of humans being killed by police so they obviously don’t keep records of police killing dogs. But there have been many incidents reported in the media. Like this one.  And this one, which was particularly egregious:

The Berwyn Heights mayor’s residence drug raid was a controversial action taken by the Prince George’s County, Maryland, Sheriff’s Office and Police Department at the home of Berwyn Heights mayor Cheye Calvo on July 29, 2008. The raid was the culmination of an investigation that began in Arizona, where a package containing 32 pounds (15 kg) of marijuana was intercepted in a warehouse, addressed to the mayor’s residence. Instead of intercepting the package in transit, the police allowed the package to be delivered. Once the package arrived at the house, a SWAT team raided and held the mayor and his mother-in-law at gunpoint, and shot and killed his two dogs, one while it attempted to run away.

The event gained national and international media attention. While the Calvos were cleared of wrongdoing, the police were accused by the Calvos and civil rights groups of lacking a proper search warrant, excessive force, and failure to conduct a proper background investigation of the home being raided. Despite the criticisms, no action has been taken against the officers or their respective police departments. In August 2010, Sheriff Michael A. Jackson stated that “We’ve apologized for the incident, but we will never apologize for taking drugs off our streets. Quite frankly, we’d do it again. Tonight.

This is what we commonly refer to in America as “freedom and liberty.”

So, yeah, I’m sure all the guns on the street are a factor in the way the cops respond to perceived threats. But I think it’s clear that police attitudes are a huge part of the problem.

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Not Lincoln’s Republican Party, nor Eisenhower’s either
by Tom Sullivan

The Washington Post’s Editorial Board scolds Republican presidential hopefuls (with the exception of Jeb!) for “kneeling before [Grover] Norquist’s make-believe anti-tax theology.”

It is ludicrous, the Board believes, to “pre-reject an entire range of policy options” for dealing with government spending projected to expand from the 20.1 percent of gross domestic product the U.S. averaged from 1965 to 2014 to 25.3 percent by 2014:

At that time, federal revenue is projected to equal about 19.4 percent of GDP absent any policy changes. There is, in other words, a vast budget gap that will need to be filled. Unlike his opponents, Mr. Christie has proposed specific benefit cuts that would narrow the gap somewhat. But neither his proposals, nor any other, can close the gap entirely in the absence of increased revenue. Trying to do so would leave the government paying pensions and rising interest costs (as it borrowed more and more) and devoting little or nothing to the other things Americans expect from government: defense, roads, bridges, basic scientific research, national parks and more.

When it comes to blowing up things or threatening other countries with sanctions or invasion, Republicans take nothing “off the table.” When it comes to paying bills or leaving their country better than they found it, they take away the table.

A colleague this week expressed frustration (and I don’t work among lefties) at how, as The Wire‘s Frank Sobotka once said, “We used to make shit in this country.” Now we don’t seem to have the stomach for it. It might cost us money. We’ve broken faith with the promise. We’ve outsourced our dreams. As the highways decay, all our so-called leaders want to do is suck the marrow out of America’s bones. Building things is too risky and too much work:

Flag-pin-wearing American exceptionalists tell crowds this is the greatest nation on Earth, and then repeat “we’re broke.” They hope to dismantle safety net programs, telling Americans working harder than ever – at jobs and looking for jobs – that they don’t have enough “skin in the game.” Wake up and smell the austerity. America can no longer afford Americans.

No guts, no glory? The GOP has neither. Too many in the Democratic Party as well. The most the clown car can manage is saber rattling and bullying — Viagra for the visionless.

Those who can’t make it in chop-shop capitalism, America’s growing homeless population? Those we we declare illegal as persons. We “criminalize homelessness itself in situations where people simply have nowhere else to sleep.” It’s easier than tackling the problem itself.

Easy money. That’s the metric of success we’ve substituted for an America that was on the move during the Eisenhower and Kennedy years. What was it Peter Fonda said at about easy money the end of 1969’s Easy Rider? “We blew it.” Our political and economic leaders never got the memo.

The only remedy the clown car has to offer is another bleeding.

Just another politician

by digby

I’m talking about Ben Carson. He’s a world renowned brain surgeon. And he’s also a hack, which is sad. He could really do some good by educating the throwback GOP base about science.

Not long after the revelation that Republican presidential candidate and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson participated in a study that used fetal tissue – despite his claims that such research is never necessary – Carson sought to distance himself from the work.

“Today I was accused by the press as having done research on fetal tissue. It simply is not true,” Carson said in a Facebook post late Thursday. “… I, nor any of the doctors involved with this study, had anything to do with abortion or what Planned Parenthood has been doing. Research hospitals across the country have microscope slides of all kinds of tissue to compare and contrast. The fetal tissue that was viewed in this study by others was not collected for this study.”

The study’s methods section says the slides were obtained from “two fetuses aborted in the ninth and 17th week of gestation.”

Carson, as well as the rest of the Republican field, has condemned Planned Parenthood doctors discussing the donation of fetal tissue in secretly recorded videos, and some Republicans have condemned the entire practice. Carson previously called the videos evidence of “how far we have drifted in terms of our humanity.” Last week, Carson told msnbc, “It should be made very clear to people that the types of things we’re discovering by using fetal tissue can also be discovered by using non-fetal tissue. So it’s not like it is the only source as they try to make it sound.”

On Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor Thursday night, Carson called the reports “propaganda.” But he also said, “Just because they get the fetal tissue doesn’t mean they should throw it out. Of course they don’t. That’s how science is advanced.”

I don’t think that’s going to fly…

Another Republican candidate who is trailing Carson in the polls, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, told CNN Friday that he would not have conducted research involving fetal tissue. (As a congressman, Santorum voted against lifting the ban on fetal tissue research.) “It’s used to, I won’t say coerce, certainly make women more comfortable about having an abortion,” Santorum said.

That’s just a lie. They don’t ask about donation until after the woman has asked for an abortion.

Women don’t need to be “coerced.” They are there because they do not want to be pregnant and give birth. They understand all the implications of what they are doing — far better, apparently, than even world renowned neurosurgeons do.

Ugh.. this whole argument is infuriating. Women have a constitutional right to abortion and they have always had abortions. Fetal tissue is used to cure terrible diseases that afflict people who are already alive. Why are we even talking about this?

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“There was absolutely nothing else I could have done”

by digby

If you want to know what is driving these Black Lives Matter protesters to act up, you need look no further than this:

Defiant, sometimes choking back tears, a Charlotte police officer testified on Friday that he had had no choice but to shoot an unarmed 24-year-old car crash victim on a darkened road, despite never seeing anything in the man’s hands.

“He had a good chance to get my gun from me and take it from me,” the police officer, Randall Kerrick, who was suspended without pay after the fatal shooting, told his defense lawyer. “There was absolutely nothing else I could have done.”

Officer Kerrick is on trial for voluntary manslaughter for the killing of Jonathan Ferrell in the early hours of Sept. 14, 2013. Mr. Ferrell, who was black, had sought help at a house in the Bradfield Farms subdivision near Charlotte’s eastern edge after climbing out of the wreckage of his fiancée’s car. But the woman who owned the house, fearing that Mr. Ferrell was a burglar, called the police.

Three officers responded to the scene, expecting to find a burglary in progress. But only Officer Kerrick, who is white, pulled out his gun. He fired 12 shots at Mr. Ferrell, hitting him 10 times and continuing to shoot after both men had fallen to the ground.

The defense called Officer Kerrick to the stand on Thursday, in the second week of the trial. Over two days, he explained repeatedly that he had felt he had to shoot Mr. Ferrell almost immediately after arriving on the scene because he believed he posed a potential threat. In an indirect video taken by another officer’s dashboard camera, Mr. Ferrell, barefoot and in a light green shirt, can be seen walking, then running, shortly after the police arrive.

Officer Kerrick testified that he did not fire any warning shots or order Mr. Ferrell to show his hands.

“I gave him loud verbal commands to stop and get on the ground, and if he could see I was a police officer, I would think he would obey those commands,” he said.

“He had a good chance to take my gun away from me?” What the hell is that?

This tells you what black people are facing every day in this country. Some cop rolls up sees a black man and shoots him. And then he excuses himself by saying the unarmed man could have gotten his gun away from him at some point so he needed to shoot him 10 times.

This is the one of the rare occasions when a cop is put on trial without video. And it happened, obviously, when they realized that the poor victim was just some dude who’d been in a car accident and was looking for some help.

But you have to love this. When the prosecutor brought up the inconsistencies in the officer’s testimony he replied:

“Ma’am, this was taken just a little bit after I was in a fight for my life,” Officer Kerrick said. “I’m sorry if there are a few inconsistencies.”

Except he wasn’t in a fight for his life, was he? The man was an unarmed car accident victim. But apparently this man still believes he was fighting for his life. There’s your problem — police believe that everyone they encounter is trying to kill them. Particularly if they’re black.

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Another cold war relic on the ash heap

by digby

The American flag was hoisted Friday over the U.S. Embassy in Cuba for the first time in more than half a century, marking the end of a Cold War-era diplomatic freeze between two countries 90 miles apart.

“We are gathered here because our leaders made a courageous decision to stop being prisoners of history,” Secretary of State John Kerry declared. He is the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit the communist island since World War II.

“My friends, it doesn’t take a GPS to realize that the road of mutual isolation and estrangement that the United States and Cuba were traveling is not the right one and that the time has come for us to move in a more promising direction,” Kerry said. “In the United States, that means recognizing that U.S. policy is not the anvil on which Cuba’s future will be forged.”

It only took 25 years after the Berlin Wall came down, but who’s counting?

It’s pathetic that this nonsense carried on for such a long time but when rich exiles want their ill-gotten property back, the US government is not going to thwart them. It’s what we’re all about.

Now, if they want to give Guantanamo back to them, I think that would be a useful trade …

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Another failed government program

by digby

They said it would never work.  And they keep saying it. And yet it’s been going strong for 80 years, making  it possible for the elderly and disabled to live in some degree of dignity in the richest country on earth.  It is literally the least we can do.

Happy birthday Social Security.  And pay no attention to all the naysayers out there today pretending to be wringing their hands over the imminent bankruptcy of the program.  They’ve been crying wolf on that from the beginning too:

Here’s St Ronnie’s famous “Time for Choosing” speech on the issue back in 1964:

A young man, 21 years of age, working at an average salary—his Social Security contribution would, in the open market, buy him an insurance policy that would guarantee 220 dollars a month at age 65. The government promises 127. He could live it up until he’s 31 and then take out a policy that would pay more than Social Security. Now are we so lacking in business sense that we can’t put this program on a sound basis, so that people who do require those payments will find they can get them when they’re due—that the cupboard isn’t bare?

Barry Goldwater thinks we can.

At the same time, can’t we introduce voluntary features that would permit a citizen who can do better on his own to be excused upon presentation of evidence that he had made provision for the non-earning years? Should we not allow a widow with children to work, and not lose the benefits supposedly paid for by her deceased husband? Shouldn’t you and I be allowed to declare who our beneficiaries will be under this program, which we cannot do? I think we’re for telling our senior citizens that no one in this country should be denied medical care because of a lack of funds. But I think we’re against forcing all citizens, regardless of need, into a compulsory government program, especially when we have such examples, as was announced last week, when France admitted that their Medicare program is now bankrupt. They’ve come to the end of the road.

Blah, blah, blah …. same old nonsense for decades. Social Security and Medicare are the programs that put the lie to their entire ideology — they are universal government programs that work. Oops.

It always requires liberal vigilance and commitment to keep the right from destroying them. Because if they can, they will. So far so good.

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