Skip to content

Month: August 2015

Tattoo them?

Published by digby on August 30, 2015

Tatoo them?

by digby
Uhm:

Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey said on Saturday that if he were elected president he would combat illegal immigration by creating a system to track foreign visitors the way FedEx tracks packages.

Mr. Christie, who is far back in the pack of candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, said at a campaign event in New Hampshire that he would ask the chief executive of FedEx, Frederick W. Smith, to devise the tracking system.

Immigration has become a top issue in the Republican campaign, with the front-runner, Donald J. Trump, having vowed to deport the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the country and to build a wall along the United States’ southern border.

“At any moment, FedEx can tell you where that package is. It’s on the truck. It’s at the station. It’s on the airplane,” Mr. Christie told the crowd in Laconia, N.H. “Yet we let people come to this country with visas, and the minute they come in, we lose track of them.”

He added: “We need to have a system that tracks you from the moment you come in.”

Fed-ex bar codes all it’s packages and puts them through scanners everywhere they go.

Is he suggesting that we tattoo bar-codes on humans and put them through scanners everywhere they go? I don’t know what else he could be talking about.

There’s a history of tattooing people to keep track of them. Not a good history.

.

Funny headline ‘o the day (to me anyway)

Published by digby on August 30, 2015

Funny headline ‘o the day (to me anyway)

by digby

It’s a good article. But anyone who’s been reading me over this past decade knows that I’ve been writing about that problem for a very long time so this revelation falls into the “you don’t say” category.

I consider them nothing more than torture devices more that 90% of the time. And police seem to be reluctant to use them in the situations they are designed for. So, they’re useless.

.

Ten years ago today

Published by digby on August 30, 2015

Ten years ago today 




by digby















This was how it unfolded:


11AM CDT — BUSH SPEAKS ON IRAQ AT NAVAL BASE CORONADO [White House]

MIDDAY — CHERTOFF CLAIMS HE FINALLY BECOMES AWARE THAT LEVEE HAS FAILED: “It was on Tuesday that the levee–may have been overnight Monday to Tuesday–that the levee started to break. And it was midday Tuesday that I became aware of the fact that there was no possibility of plugging the gap and that essentially the lake was going to start to drain into the city.” But later reports note that the Bush administration learned of the levee breach on Aug. 29. [Meet the Press, 9/4/05; AP]

PENTAGON CLAIMS THERE ARE ENOUGH NATIONAL GUARD TROOPS IN REGION: “Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said the states have adequate National Guard units to handle the hurricane needs.” [WWL-TV]

MASS LOOTING REPORTED, SECURITY SHORTAGE CITED: “The looting is out of control. The French Quarter has been attacked,” Councilwoman Jackie Clarkson said. “We’re using exhausted, scarce police to control looting when they should be used for search and rescue while we still have people on rooftops.” [AP]

U.S.S. BATAAN SITS OFF SHORE, VIRTUALLY UNUSED: “The USS Bataan, a 844-foot ship designed to dispatch Marines in amphibious assaults, has helicopters, doctors, hospital beds, food and water. It also can make its own water, up to 100,000 gallons a day. And it just happened to be in the Gulf of Mexico when Katrina came roaring ashore. The Bataan rode out the storm and then followed it toward shore, awaiting relief orders. Helicopter pilots flying from its deck were some of the first to begin plucking stranded New Orleans residents. But now the Bataan’s hospital facilities, including six operating rooms and beds for 600 patients, are empty.” [Chicago Tribune]

2PM CDT — PRESIDENT BUSH PLAYS GUITAR WITH COUNTRY SINGER MARK WILLIS [AP]

BUSH RETURNS TO CRAWFORD FOR FINAL NIGHT OF VACATION [AP]


Here’s what the right had to offer that day:

ATTN: SUPERDOME RESIDENTS [Jonah Goldberg]
I think it’s time to face facts. That place is going to be a Mad Max/thunderdome Waterworld/Lord of the Flies horror show within the next few hours. My advice is to prepare yourself now. Hoard weapons, grow gills and learn to communicate with serpents. While you’re working on that, find the biggest guy you can and when he’s not expecting it beat him senseless. Gather young fighters around you and tell the womenfolk you will feed and protect any female who agrees to participate without question in your plans to repopulate the earth with a race of gilled-supermen. It’s never too soon to be prepared.



And then this:

Knuckle Smacking [Jonah Goldberg ]

Doc Bainbridge chastises me for my insensitivity and implores my more mature colleagues to take me to task. He even goes so far as to call me Taranto-esque, for what that’s worth.

Perhaps Professor Bainbridge — of whom I am a fan — thinks something really awful will befall the denizens of the Superdome and therefore making a joke at their expense is wrong. My guess is that it will simply be a really unpleasent time for the remainder of the day, but hardly so unpleasent as to sanctify them with refugee or some other victim status. I assumed the reference to gill-growing and whatnot made it clear where I was coming from. I’m sorry if we don’t always fulfill the good professor’s expectations around here. But it can’t be all brandy-snifters and Latin puns in the Corner.



Immediate reactions to tragedy are always telling. And it only got worse as the week wore on.

Playing Washington for a sucker by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on August 30, 2015

Playing Washington for a sucker
by Tom Sullivan

Nicholas Kristof offers a reverie this morning on “our extraordinary national inheritance, one of the greatest gifts of our ancestors — our public lands.” Visionaries such as Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot fought to preserve them for the enjoyment of all:

Their vision reflected a deep belief at the time, among Republicans as well as Democrats, in public services that transcended class. The result was the world’s best public school system at the time, networks of public libraries, public parks and beaches, and later a broad system of public universities and community colleges.

Those are at risk today in a venal culture driven more by bottom lines than common goods. One half expects any day to hear a plan to sell off Yellowstone or Yosemite as “weekend homes for Internet tycoons,” as Kristof suggests. The Midas cult has not yet taken drills and sledgehammers to our heritage the way ISIS has to the cradle of civilization. But while our financial cult’s methods are more subtle, its goals are similar: to erase the very memory of a culture. Here, monuments to collective achievements dim the gleam of personal shrines erected to Self.

Public universities accessible to all are under threat from the cult’s policy drills and sledgehammers. Washington Monthly  profiles LSU Chancellor F. King Alexander, whose fight to preserve public higher education puts him at odds with efforts to remove the public from higher education. At a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing this summer chaired by Republican Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, LSU’s King Alexander argued for more federal regulation:

The “greatest challenge facing public universities,” King Alexander explains, is that states today spend about half as much on higher education on a per capita income basis as they did in 1981. This is a direct result, he says, of a regulatory failure built into federal law. In other areas of federal policy, such as transportation and health care, federal dollars come with strings attached—states have to pitch in a set amount of money too. That’s not the case for higher education, where money follows the student to private and public colleges alike, and states have no requirements to fund public universities at a certain (or indeed any) level. The result is that when states are under budget pressure, as they have been in the years since the financial crisis, they slash spending on higher ed. The burden of those cuts then gets shifted to students, in the form of higher tuition, and to the federal government, in greater spending on grants, tax credits, and subsidized student loans.

Pouring more money into federal higher education support, argued Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, will do no good so long as states keep disinvesting in it. Freshman Republican Bill Cassidy of Louisiana reluctantly agreed, “I’m against states being mandated to do something, but it appears unless states are mandated to do something they’re not going to do so.” The hearing did not go in the direction Lamar Alexander had wanted. He hopes to rewrite the Higher Education Act (HEA) to remove “costly and burdensome federal red tape imposed on states and colleges.”

To that end, King Alexander wants federal dollars to come with strings requiring states to live up to their obligation to provide adequate public funding as so many state constitutions (and statehood enabling acts) require. He believes “that as a condition of federal higher education aid, states should be required to provide a minimum amount of their revenues to their public colleges and universities.” King succeeded in getting a “maintenance of effort” provision into a piece of 2008 federal legislation that set a floor for state funding as a qualification for federal support. While many states cut their funding to within 1 percent of the floor, they did not go below it. Not until the law expired.

The disagreement over maintenance of effort is one over the proper role of the federal government. Lamar Alexander reflected the Republican Party’s view on states’ rights when he told me that maintenance of effort “usurp[s] the prerogative of the constitutional authority of governors and legislators to decide how to spend state dollars by, in effect, being coercive.” King, for his part, describes himself as a “federalist” when it comes to education policy and says “states’ rights is George Wallace standing in front of the Alabama admissions office not letting anybody in.” To King, the debate over maintenance of effort is nothing less than a battle over whether Americans of modest birth will have anything like the same opportunities as the affluent to better themselves through higher education. Spend enough time around King, and you get the sense that he became a public university president less because he wants to run a school than because it provides him a parapet from which to fend off the hordes trying to destroy public higher education.

King has been making his arguments for twenty years, but until recently Democrats were more focused on expanding the direct student aid program to help poor and middle-class students by increasing Pell Grants and middle-class tax credits, and creating generous repayment plans for student loans. But as student loan debt has risen and governors like Bobby Jindal and Scott Walker in Wisconsin cut higher education budgets, Democrats are increasingly realizing that their unquestioning advocacy of federal direct aid has allowed states to play Washington for a sucker. That’s why they chose King Alexander as their witness.

There is a cost to maintaining a country and its character. Not just in blood, but in treasure. Too many of our leaders quick to spend the former are more miserly when it comes to the latter.

The Death Hour: How Hollywood tried to warn us by Dennis Hartley

Published by digby on August 30, 2015
Saturday Night at the Movies

The Death Hour: How Hollywood tried to warn us


By Dennis Hartley













I love it. Suicides, assassinations, mad bombers, Mafia hitmen, automobile smash-ups: “The Death Hour”. A great Sunday night show for the whole family.


-from Network, screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky


There is an oft-repeated lament that Hollywood and/or television has “run out of original ideas”. Which is (mostly) true, but not necessarily indicative of a dearth of talent or creativity in the business. The blame for this particular writer’s block, I believe, can be laid fairly and squarely at the feet of…Reality. Short of plundering Middle Earth or the comic book universe for ideas, it’s getting harder to dream up a scenario as “outlandish” as, say, having to undergo a security check before taking your seat at a movie theater, or as “unthinkable” as switching on the local TV news and witnessing the horror of what happened to the 2 WDBJ reporters and the interviewee while live on air last Wednesday.


You’re television incarnate, Diana. Indifferent to suffering, insensitive to joy. All of life is reduced the common rubble of banality. War, murder, death are all the same to you as bottles of beer.


-from Network, screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky


While just as horrified and empathetic as anyone in their right mind should be when the WDBY story broke, I’m sad to report that I wasn’t necessarily surprised. It was only a matter of time. The on-camera assassination of two TV reporters filing an innocuous story about a mall seemed a relatively tiny jump from the random murders of two theater patrons in Lafayette earlier this month…who likely assumed they weren’t risking violent death by seeking out 2 hours of escapism at the matinee showing of a romantic comedy.


The common denominator of both incidents was all-too-familiar: An extremely disturbed individual with a legally purchased firearm, which they never should have been permitted to own in the first place. But who am I to judge, because, you know…Freedom. And Tyranny. And The Constitution. Never mind that in early August, Amy Schumer (star of the film that the Lafayette victims went to see) and now this week, Andy Parker (father of slain TV reporter Alison Parker) have both made public vows to crusade for stricter gun control. As Mr. Parker was quoted, from an article in the August 27 New York Times:


“I’m for the Second Amendment,” he said on CNN Thursday morning, “but there has to be a way to force politicians who are cowards in the pockets of the N.R.A. to make sure crazy people can’t get guns.” Citing previous killings by people with mental illnesses, Mr. Parker asked, “How many Alisons will it take?”













What is uncommon about this latest tragedy, is that the alleged perpetrator himself was a former TV reporter, adding a chilling layer of irony to the already complex pathology in this case (note all the networks have taken pains to run that file clip of him reporting from a gun shop). This brings to mind a scene from Billy Wilder’s 1951 noir, Ace in the Hole:


Charles Tatum: What’s that big story to get me outta here? […] I’m stuck here, fans. Stuck for good. Unless you, Miss Deverich, instead of writing household hints about how to remove chili stains from blue jeans, get yourself involved in a trunk murder. How about it, Miss Deverich? I could do wonders with your dismembered body.


Miss Deverich: Oh, Mr. Tatum. Really!


Charles Tatum: Or you, Mr. Wendell-if you’d only toss that cigar out the window. Real far…all the way to Los Alamos. And BOOM! (He chuckles) Now there would be a story.


Tatum (played to the hilt by Kirk Douglas) is a cynical big city newspaper reporter who drifts into a small New Mexico burg after burning one too many bridges with his former employers at a New York City daily. Determined to weasel his way back to the top (by any means necessary, as it turns out), he bullies his way into a gig with a local rag, where he impatiently awaits The Big Story that will rocket him back to the metropolitan beat. Of course, he’s being sarcastic when he exhorts his co-workers in the sleepy hick town newsroom to get out there and make some news for him to capitalize on. But the ultimate irony in Wilder’s screenplay (co-written by Lesser Samuels and Walter Newman) is that this becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy for Tatum; in his Machiavellian attempt to purloin and manipulate the scenario of a man trapped in a cave-in into a star-making “exclusive” for himself, it’s Tatum who becomes The Big Story (and not in the manner he intended).


Could it be that the Virginia shooter was using a similar kind of pretzel logic? Was he surmising that if he couldn’t achieve the notoriety he craved as someone who reports the news, perhaps he’d have better luck by simply grabbing a gun and creating some headlines himself? Was he really that hungry for attention? The fact that his refrigerator door was papered with photos of himself could be a clue that at the very least, we are dealing with a case of narcissistic personality disorder. It’s only a theory, but there’s a film that eerily presages that scenario, Gus Van Sant’s 1995 mockumentary, To Die For.


The film centers on an ambitious young woman (Nicole Kidman, in one of her best performances) who aspires to elevate herself from “weather girl” at a small market TV station in New England to star news anchor, posthaste. A calculating sociopath from the word go, she marries into a wealthy family, but decides to discard her husband (Matt Dillon) the nanosecond he asks her to consider putting her career on hold so they can start a family (discard…with extreme prejudice). Buck Henry based his screenplay on Joyce Maynard’s true crime book about the Pamela Smart case (the most obvious difference being that Smart was a teacher and not an aspiring media star, although it could be argued that during the course of her highly publicized murder trial, she did in fact become one).


There is an even darker, uber-macabre element about the Virginia shooter’s twisted act that, while it boggles the imagination, also has precedent in narrative films. Apparently not satisfied with orchestrating the murder of his victims to full effect in front of a live TV camera, he filmed his own POV version of what the viewers at home saw (it’s almost like he was directing a film, envisioning the different camera angles of the same event). It gets worse. He then proudly posted said video on his Facebook page for the world to see.


That was once only the stuff of horror movies, like Michael Powell’s 1960 thriller, Peeping Tom. The story profiles an insular, socially awkward member of a film crew (Carl Boehm) who works as a technician at a movie studio by day, and moonlights as a soft-core pin-up photographer. He’s also surreptitiously working on his own independent film, which goes hand-in-glove with another hobby: he’s a serial killer who gets his jollies capturing POV footage of his victim’s final agonizing moments. It’s truly creepy; a Freudian nightmare. Powell, one-half of the revered British film making team known as The Archers (The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp) nearly destroyed his career with this one, which, due to its “shocking” nature, was largely shunned by audiences and critics at the time (thanks to Martin Scorsese, the film enjoyed a revival decades later and is now considered to be a genre classic on a par with Psycho).


Several subsequent films can be viewed as direct descendants of Peeping Tom; most notably Manhunter (1986), Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986), and perhaps more tangentially, Man Bites Dog (1992) and Natural Born Killers (1994). Like the main character in Peeping Tom, the psycho killer in Michael Mann’s Manhunter (Tom Noonan) also has a day job that involves film; in this case he works in a film processing lab, which gives him access to the private home movies from which he chooses his victims. John McNaughton’s Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer follows the killing spree of the eponymous character (Michael Rooker) and his partner (Tom Towles). In a particularly chilling scene, McNaughton switches to shaky handheld POV shots of a video gleefully shot by Henry’s partner as they torture and murder their hapless victims.


I feel like I need a shower. If you want a 7th inning stretch…here’s a nice soothing image:


















(Deep breath) Both Belgian directing trio Remy Belvaux, Andre Bonzel and Benoit Poelvoorde’s Man Bites Dog and Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers are sly sendups of the Spree Killer as Media Celebrity conflation. While I wouldn’t consider either film a “ha-ha funny” comedy, they both harbor a chewy nougat center of dark satire beneath a candy coating of Grand Guignol. Man Bites Dog (arguably the most upsetting viewing experience of all the films discussed in this essay) takes the mockumentary approach, with a film crew “documenting” the murderous exploits of the protagonist (played by co-director/writer Poelvoorde). Initially, the film crew is objective, but cross the line into becoming criminal accessories. Stone’s film, weirdly enough, actually features a “live on camera” killing of a journalist who has been tagging along with the murderous tag team (like Tatum in Ace in the Hole, he will use any means necessary to snag an “exclusive”).


There are several more satirical films of note containing over-the-top scenarios that reality has sadly caught up with, beginning with Woody Allen’s 1971 comedy Bananas (which cropped up just two weeks ago as one of my Top 10 Films about Cuba). The specific scene that comes to mind in the wake of the Virginia incident involves Howard Cosell (playing himself) doing live TV coverage of a political assassination, as if it were a sporting event (Tom Sullivan beat me to the punch making this connection). Then there is Paul Bartel’s 1975 cult classic, Death Race 2000, depicting a dystopian America where public murder literally has become a popular televised sporting event, in which competing race drivers earn points for each luckless pedestrian they can run over and kill.


The most recent film in this vein is from an artist who specializes in pushing people’s buttons, so be warned that many viewers will undoubtedly find standup comic-turned auteur Bob Goldthwait’s 2012 tragicomedy God Bless America incredibly offensive. His disenfranchised antihero Frank (Joel Murray) is like Ignatius J. Reilly, railing against all who offend his sense of taste and decency (but armed with an AK-47). Already stewing over his ex-wife’s impending marriage, his little daughter’s detachment, his inconsiderate neighbors and his observation that most of his co-workers are obsessed with reality TV, Frank is pushed over the edge when he loses his job and is diagnosed with a brain tumor. Frank’s first target is an obnoxious reality TV star, but his hit list expands to include wing nut pundits, Teabaggers, and the worst of the worst: people who yak on their cell phones in theaters and Yuppies who deliberately take up two parking spaces. On one level, it’s all quite appalling, but in light of recent events, it merely reflects our society.


This now brings us full circle to the most prescient film of them all, Sidney Lumet’s Network. In Lumet’s 1976 satire, written by the late great Paddy Chayefsky, respected news anchor Howard Beale (whose visage graces the banner of this very blog site) has a complete mental meltdown on air, announcing his plan to commit public suicide, on camera, in an upcoming newscast. When the following evening’s newscast attracts an unprecedented number of viewers, some of the more unscrupulous programmers and marketers at the network smell a potential cash cow, and decide to let Beale rant away in front of the cameras to his heart’s content, reinventing him as a “mad prophet of the airwaves” and giving him a nightly primetime slot. Eventually, some of the “truthiness” in his nightly “news sermons” hits a little too close to home regarding some secret business dealings that the network has with some Arab investors, and it is decided that his program needs to be cancelled (with extreme prejudice). And besides, his ratings are slipping. So the network hires a team of hit men to assassinate him, “live” on the air.


Unfortunately, as has dogged me in previous such exercises, I come to the end of this study with no solid conclusion, no pat answers. Perhaps senseless is as senseless does. Some people are just bad machines. If we could just keep them away from the guns…that would be a good start. Otherwise, I’ve not nuthin’…except an urge to echo Andy Parker:


How many Alisons will it take?

Previous posts with related themes:



–Dennis Hartley

Does Trump play beyond the normal boundaries?

Published by digby on August 29, 2015

Does Trump play beyond the normal boundaries?

by digby

An interesting observation by Brian Beutler:

As much as Trump himself is an outgrowth of the reckless way conservatives have stoked the resentment of the Republican Party base, his durability is also an outgrowth of an electoral process conservatives have shaped aggressively. Even if Trump’s ceiling of support is around 30 percent, it’s enough to ride out the primary process—and retain the lead—in a fractured field where almost every candidate has a wealthy patron or two.

In a better-controlled environment, Trump would be a less potent force. As the frontrunner, though, he’s steering the policy debate in ways that have Republican donors and strategists deeply spooked. As Greg Sargent writes at the Washington Post, “his willingness to say what other Republicans won’t has forced out into the open genuine policy debates among Republicans that had previously been shrouded in vagueness or imprisoned within party orthodoxy.”

Right now, Trump has his hand on the third rail of Republican politics. He’s arguing that wealthy people shouldn’t get a pass on paying regular federal income taxes. “The middle class is getting clobbered in this country. You know the middle class built this country, not the hedge fund guys, but I know people in hedge funds that pay almost nothing, and it’s ridiculous, okay?”

For almost any candidate, promising to reduce taxes on rich people is the price of admission into the Republican primary. Trump, by contrast, is poised not only to survive this apostasy, but to singe any of the more orthodox rivals who challenge him.

I’m sure that does spook the elites. And at this point, I’d guess it confuses a lot of others.  Last night Sarah Palin looked as though she was talking to a space alien when Trump started going on about hedge funds.

Here’s something to ponder, however. If Trump keeps on this path of taxing the rich and defending social security, what are the chances that some white Democrats who are deeply distrustful of a woman in leadership and don’t care much for immigrants themselves start to look at Trump and think he’s talking some truths for them too. I don’t know how many of those there are, but I have to assume there are a few…

This combination of bashing elites and minorities alike is a very potent argument for some people. Very potent. And I don’t think they’re all tea partyers.

.

The true lesson of Katrina

Published by digby on August 29, 2015

The true lesson of Katrina

by digby

Yes, this was it:

This was the most traumatic thing that happened according to the right wing press. Go ahead and google it — the hysteria is overwhelming.  This article in the Daily Caller sums up their collective pain.

And in case you wondered whether or not you’ll be safe from right wing vigilantes wandering the streets during the next emergency,undoubtedly searching for “looters” well here you go:

NRA’s post-Katrina efforts did not stop at the Louisiana border. NRA prompted mayors and police chiefs across America to sign a pledge stating that they will, “never forcibly disarm the law-abiding citizens” of their city. Further, NRA worked to limit the power of state and local governments to regulate firearms in times of emergency, by advocating for emergency powers reform legislation throughout the country. Currently, over half of the states have some form of emergency powers provision protecting gun owners from government abuse during a crisis.

In 2006, moreover, President George W. Bush signed into law the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, which contained an NRA-backed amendment sponsored by Sen. David Vitter (R-La.). The amendment prohibits persons acting under color of federal law, receiving federal funds, or acting at the direction of a federal employee from seizing or authorizing the seizure of lawfully-possessed firearms or imposing or enforcing certain restrictions on firearms during a state of emergency.

Here’s a little reminder of the kind of loose talk that was coming from our “thought leaders” like Peggy Noonan:

As for the tragic piggism that is taking place on the streets of New Orleans, it is not unbelievable but it is unforgivable, and I hope the looters are shot. A hurricane cannot rob a great city of its spirit, but a vicious citizenry can. A bad time with Mother Nature can leave you digging out for a long time, but a bad turn in human behavior frays and tears all the ties that truly bind human beings–trust, confidence, mutual regard, belief in the essential goodness of one’s fellow citizens.

She did say it was ok to take food and water to survive, so that was nice. But clearly we’re going to need a lot of vigilantes out there next time, strip searching the refugees from the storm to determine what they have in their possession so we can see which ones deserve to be summarily executed and which ones don’t. It’s a dirty job but the NRA is signing on.

The press lost its mind during those early days after the flooding. They were incredibly irresponsible in spreading lies about rampant violence when it turned out it just wasn’t true. If anything, it was police and armed vigilantes who were the problem.

And consider this: the right wing hero, Chris Kyle of American Sniper fame said that he was called into New Orleans and was perched on top of the Superdome from which vantage point he killed 30 “criminals.” That wasn’t true either, but there are millions of people in this country who love that story and believe it.

.

.

Good morning!

Published by digby on August 29, 2015

Good morning!

by digby

For your reading pleasure:

Three top Jeb Bush fundraisers abruptly parted ways with his presidential campaign on Friday, amid internal personality conflicts and questions about the strength of his candidacy, POLITICO has learned.

To be fair, this is one of those really crappy Politico articles that doesn’t deliver what the headline promises. The problem seems to be that he’s spending vast sums on a very big operation and there are some growing pains. Or something.

Campaign coverage sucks. But hey, at least we can enjoy the fact that Jeb! is suffering the same bad press as the Democrats. For now.

.

Ten years ago today

Published by digby on August 29, 2015

Ten years ago today

by digby

This was how it unfolded:







Ten years ago today:


7AM CDT — KATRINA MAKES LANDFALL AS A CATEGORY 4 HURRICANE [CNN]

7:30 AM CDT — BUSH ADMINISTRATION NOTIFIED OF THE LEVEE BREACH: The administration finds out that a levee in New Orleans was breached. On this day, 28 “government agencies, from local Louisiana parishes to the White House, [reported that] that New Orleans levees” were breached. [AP]
8AM CDT — MAYOR NAGIN REPORTS THAT WATER IS FLOWING OVER LEVEE: “I’ve gotten reports this morning that there is already water coming over some of the levee systems. In the lower ninth ward, we’ve had one of our pumping stations to stop operating, so we will have significant flooding, it is just a matter of how much.” [NBC’s “Today Show”]
11:13 AM CDT – WHITE HOUSE CIRCULATES INTERNAL MEMO ABOUT LEVEE BREACH: “Flooding is significant throughout the region and a levee in New Orleans has reportedly been breached sending 6-8 feet of water throughout the 9th ward area of the city.” [AP]
MORNING — BROWN WARNS BUSH ABOUT THE POTENTIAL DEVASTATION OF KATRINA: In a briefing, Brown warned Bush, “This is, to put it mildly, the big one, I think.” He also voiced concerns that the government may not have the capacity to “respond to a catastrophe within a catastrophe” and that the Superdome was ill-equipped to be a refuge of last resort. [AP]
MORNING — MAYFIELD WARNS BUSH ABOUT THE TOPPING OF THE LEVEES: In the same briefing, Max Mayfield, National Hurricane Center Director, warns, “This is a category 5 hurricane, very similar to Hurricane Andrew in the maximum intensity, but there’s a big big difference. This hurricane is much larger than Andrew ever was. I also want to make absolutely clear to everyone that the greatest potential for large loss of lives is still in the coastal areas from the storm surge. … I don’t think anyone can tell you with any confidence right now whether the levees will be topped or not, but there’s obviously a very very grave concern.” [AP]
MORNING — BUSH CALLS SECRETARY CHERTOFF TO DISCUSS IMMIGRATION: “I spoke to Mike Chertoff today — he’s the head of the Department of Homeland Security. I knew people would want me to discuss this issue [immigration], so we got us an airplane on — a telephone on Air Force One, so I called him. I said, are you working with the governor? He said, you bet we are.” [White House]
MORNING — BUSH SHARES BIRTHDAY CAKE PHOTO-OP WITH SEN. JOHN MCCAIN [White House]
11AM CDT — MICHAEL BROWN FINALLY REQUESTS THAT DHS DISPATCH 1,000 EMPLOYEES TO REGION, GIVES THEM TWO DAYS TO ARRIVE: “Brown’s memo to Chertoff described Katrina as ‘this near catastrophic event’ but otherwise lacked any urgent language. The memo politely ended, ‘Thank you for your consideration in helping us to meet our responsibilities.’” [AP]
LATE MORNING — LEVEE BREACHED: “A large section of the vital 17th Street Canal levee, where it connects to the brand new ‘hurricane proof’ Old Hammond Highway bridge, gave way late Monday morning in Bucktown after Katrina’s fiercest winds were well north.” [Times-Picayune]
11AM CDT — BUSH VISITS ARIZONA RESORT TO PROMOTE MEDICARE DRUG BENEFIT: “This new bill I signed says, if you’re a senior and you like the way things are today, you’re in good shape, don’t change. But, by the way, there’s a lot of different options for you. And we’re here to talk about what that means to our seniors.” [White House]
4:30PM CDT — BUSH TRAVELS TO CALIFORNIA SENIOR CENTER TO DISCUSS MEDICARE DRUG BENEFIT: “We’ve got some folks up here who are concerned about their Social Security or Medicare. Joan Geist is with us. … I could tell — she was looking at me when I first walked in the room to meet her, she was wondering whether or not old George W. is going to take away her Social Security check.” [White House]
8PM CDT — RUMSFELD ATTENDS SAN DIEGO PADRES BASEBALL GAME: Rumsfeld “joined Padres President John Moores in the owner’s box…at Petco Park.” [Editor & Publisher]
8PM CDT — GOV. BLANCO AGAIN REQUESTS ASSISTANCE FROM BUSH: “Mr. President, we need your help. We need everything you’ve got.” [Newsweek]
LATE PM — BUSH GOES TO BED WITHOUT ACTING ON BLANCO’S REQUESTS [Newsweek]

Respect mah accountabilitah! by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on August 29, 2015

Respect mah accountabilitah!
by Tom Sullivan

Accountability. It’s not just for teachers anymore. Media Matters caught this yesterday morning. So did I:

Fox’s Tucker Carlson declared that a new mandate requiring New York City police officers to provide written justification for stop-and-frisk encounters is “an attack on police practices that have worked.”

NYPD officers will soon be “required to inform some suspects why they’re being stopped and frisked” after a federal judge approved a mandate proposed by the federal monitor tasked with addressing the department’s stop-and-frisk tactics. “The form would explain that officers are authorized to make stops in some circumstances and spell out what might have prompted the stop, including suspicion of concealing or possessing a weapon, engaging in a drug transaction or acting as a lookout,” The Wall Street Journal explained, noting how the move comes after a federal judge found “the NYPD’s use of stop-and-frisk unconstitutional and ordered an overhaul of the department’s procedures.”

Countering Carlson’s assertion that this is just “another layer of bureaucracy” impeding police from protecting the public from criminals, Neill Franklin, a former Baltimore cop was on message in defense of the new regulation:

“It’s a ‘best practice.’ Many police departments are already doing this across the nation. This is a very important issue regarding the Constitution and the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights, where we should be free from unreasonable search and seizure. We should be secure among our persons, our places, and effects. Something this serious warrants documentation.”

John Rafferty, a retired NYPD lieutenant who runs a private security service, called it a “tactical nightmare,” explaining:

“You have minutes to search for people who have committed crimes, many times. And if you stop the wrong person, you’re going to spend time to have this officer fill out a form rather than continuing to look for the actual perpetrators. It’s ridiculous.”

Ridiculous, that is, if arresting dangerous criminals is what you actually spend most of your time doing. There is some debate about that. Right now, “one in seven New Yorkers have a warrant out for their arrest.” That’s 1.2 million people:

Commissioner Bratton and NYPD officials insist they are merely enforcing the law in areas with the highest rates of crime, which happen to be predominantly minority communities in the outer boroughs. Still, the sheer scale of the effort is remarkable: In stark contrast to the annual rate of only a few thousand criminal cases a year, the NYPD issued 458,000 quality of life summons in 2014. The list of summonsable offenses is staggering. You can be fined for walking between subway cars, putting a backpack on a subway seat, or using a friend’s MetroCard to enter the subway. Loitering (even in front of your own building), being in a park after 1 a.m., and jaywalking can all result in court summons, depending on the officer’s discretion.

By misusing their discretion, a handful of officers might account for a high percentage of a department’s annual arrests, and those discretionary arrests across the country seem to include disproportionately high numbers of minority citizens, and not just in New York City. This report is from last October:

The report, released Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota, said that blacks are 11.5 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession, even though advocates say that white and black people use the drug at similar rates.

The research also showed that blacks are nearly nine times more likely to be arrested for disorderly conduct in Minneapolis than whites. The racial disparities for the rates of arrest for vagrancy (7.54 times more likely) and for minors violating curfew or loitering (16.39) are equally stark, according to the report that was based on arrest data from the Minneapolis Police Department.

“What might be viewed as a noisy argument between two white people, might become disorderly conduct when it’s between two black people,” said Teresa Nelson, legal director for the ACLU’s local chapter.

And we mustn’t forget Ferguson, where the U.S. Department of Justice found:

* African Americans account for 95 percent of Manner of Walking charges; 94 percent of all Fail to Comply charges; 92 percent of all Resisting Arrest charges; 92 percent of all Peace Disturbance charges; and 89 percent of all Failure to Obey charges.

* African Americans are 68 percent less likely than others to have their cases dismissed by the Municipal Judge, and in 2013 African Americans accounted for 92 percent of cases in which an arrest warrant was issued.

* African Americans account for 96 percent of known arrests made exclusively because of an outstanding municipal warrant.

Getting back to New York:

Amid the debate over increasingly dangerous, and in some cases lethal, police tactics, a recent report by WNYC has discovered a disturbing reality about the way that New York’s police officers operate.

According to their findings, just 15% of New York Police Department arresting officers generate over 50% of all “resisting arrest” charges, while an even smaller group of just 5% accounted for over 40% of those incidents.

Those incidents, by the way, can result in injuries and costly lawsuits. Once more, back to the Twin Cities:

But more people in the community are calling for greater accountability for police officers, saying they’d like to see the money the city spends on settlements used for other needs.

“There’s got to be a way of holding an officer accountable for what they do and not put their misdeeds on the backs of taxpayers of St. Paul,” said Jeff Martin, president of the St. Paul NAACP. “There’s got to be some equity in the system — if you’re an officer who cost the city some money, you should be held to a higher standard, whether that’s losing your job or maybe some of your pension.”

How do we keep track of whether a certain subset of officers has a proclivity for stopping people at random, for seeing disorderly conduct where others see merely a noisy argument, whether suspects seem to get injured resisting arrest more by certain officers than by others, or whether certain officers spend a ridiculous amount of time (Rafferty’s word) filing paperwork — “another layer of bureaucracy” (Carlson’s words) — for arrests they’ve made on “manner of walking” or open container charges while dangerous criminals make their getaways?

Accountability is all the rage for other subsets of government employees. If we tracked and evaluated the performance of police departments the way we do the performance of schools, do you think we might find “innovative solutions,” cost savings, and improved performance there, too?

Increased oversight might explain why your typical authoritarian would oppose accountability measures for the police. Teachers? We expect to hold them accountable. Government bureaucrats? We expect to hold them accountable. But police? Heaven forfend!

Because, you see, the authority-authorities are special. If we hold them to the standards of accountability we are so free with when it comes to common public employees, where will it end? Next thing, people will want to hold the High Priests of Wall Street accountable for committing trillions of dollars worth of fraud on a global scale. And we can’t have that.