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Month: September 2015

The Village doesn’t like this one little bit

Published by digby on September 6, 2015

The Village doesn’t like this one little bit

by digby

It makes the Villagers feel all icky inside when the Republicans are acting like ill-mannered oafs and the Democrats are behaving with restraint and maturity. That’s not the way the world is organized. Republicans are grown-ups! Daddies and leaders! The Democrats are hysterical mommies and crazy teen-agers. Everybody knows that.

But so far, the presidential race is very confusing for them and they aren’t happy about it:

Hillary Rodham Clinton hit on a variety of subjects at her sun-splashed campaign rally here this weekend, but not once in her 30 minutes of speaking did she utter these words: Bernie Sanders.

Campaigning 1,200 miles away in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Sanders was interrupted for applause 77 times — but not a single line in the senator’s nearly hour-long stump speech referred to Clinton or any other Democratic primary opponent.

The Republican presidential campaign is being dictated by how the 17 candidates, led by Donald Trump, attack each other — from policy disagreements to nasty personal barbs.

The Democratic race stands in stark contrast. Despite tightening polls, the two leading candidates refuse to draw sharp contrasts, let alone criticize each other, leaving voters to discern the differences in their agendas and priorities largely on their own.

Former president Ronald Reagan famously pronounced an 11th commandment for the GOP: “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.” In the 2016 contest, however, it’s the Democrats who are heeding Reagan’s call — at least so far.

Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) poses for a photo with supporters following a town hall meeting on Sept. 3 in Grinnell, Iowa. (Charlie Neibergall/AP)
Sanders boasts that he never has run an attack ad in his four-decade-old career in politics and, in an interview Saturday in Iowa, explained his rationale for not going after his chief rival this time.

“You’re looking at a candidate who honestly believes that the discussion of the serious issues facing the American people is not only the right thing to do, it’s good politics,” Sanders said. “I know the media would like me to attack Hillary Clinton and say all kinds of terrible things and tell the world that I’m the greatest candidate in the history of the world and everybody else running against me is a jerk and terrible, awful people. Nobody believes that stuff.”

Sanders and his campaign strategists have calculated that to beat Clinton he must expand the electorate — and that going negative will turn off too many potentially new voters.

“We have to follow the formula that brings people into the process,” said Sanders adviser Tad Devine. “Otherwise we can’t win.” When pressed by reporters, however, Sanders is willing to explain his policy differences with Clinton.

A stately campaign of ideas. How novel.

Now you know why they are so determined to get Joe Biden into the race. And why they say ridiculous things like this:

That’s the Prince of the Village. The guy they have on MSNBC so much you’d think he was their logo rather than an anchor.

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Personal responsibility for thee, but not for me by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on September 6, 2015

Personal responsibility for thee, but not for me
by Tom Sullivan

Bob Cesca visits one of my favorite topics: conservative moralizing over “personal responsibility.” The exact phrase appears in the Republican Party platform “no fewer than four times,” and more times in variations:

If anyone mentions the social safety net, the Republican counterpoint invariably includes that particular phrase: If we talk about birth control, we’re lectured about personal responsibility. If anyone mentions healthcare: “personal responsibility.” Paying for retirement? Personal responsibility.

But talk about white privilege, for god-fearing white people such as Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis, personal responsibility is optional. Not only that, “religious freedom” is their get-out-of-jail-free card, as Cesca observes:

For now, it looks as if Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee and Fox News Channel agree that Davis, an elected government worker, should keep her job despite refusing to perform her professional obligations, and should face no legal repercussions for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples after being judicially compelled to do so. But Davis isn’t self-employed. She doesn’t get to revise her own job description on-the-fly. Only her employers retain that discretion, and her employers happen to be the people of Rowan County, Kentucky.

Huckabee and the others believe she shouldn’t be held personally responsible — accountable for her actions, as President Bush said in 2000 — for her actions in defiance of the Supreme Court; in defiance of her job description; and especially in defiance of a U.S. District Court judge who happened to have been appointed by the Texan in the video above. If the GOP was truly concerned with personal responsibility, they’d support Davis’s posture against same-sex marriage but accept the fact that she’s justifiably being held accountable for her actions. More than that, they’d encourage her to resign her post. Davis’ GOP supporters are doing exactly none of that.

There’s a meme circulating Facebook at the moment questioning whether Muslims working at a department of motor vehicles can refuse to issue driver’s licenses to women. The obvious point being that the GOP appears to be getting behind the idea that both public and private sector workers can refuse to do their jobs with impunity as long as they can recite a biblical verse to back it up. It appear as if they do, but only when it comes to same-sex marriage or contraception….

This kind of cafeteria catechism has always been more about personal preferences and prejudices than Iron Age morality. Doing the job you’ve sworn a “so help me God” oath to do? (h/t to Charlie Pierce.)

When thou shalt vow a vow unto the LORD thy God, thou shalt not slack to pay it: for the LORD thy God will surely require it of thee; and it would be sin in thee. (Deuteronomy 23:21-23)

If a man vow a vow unto the LORD, or swear an oath to bind his soul with a bond; he shall not break his word, he shall do according to all that proceedeth out of his mouth. (Numbers 30:2)

From the New Testament as well:

Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. (Romans 13: 1-2)

Jacob Hacker outlines the “Personal Responsibility Crusade” in his 2006 “The Great Risk Shift” as an attempt by small-government conservatives to get government “out of the way and let people succeed or fail on their own.” Government insurance programs upset the natural order. Citing Charles Murray as a source of this idea, Hacker writes, “helping people just creates more people who need help — moral hazard with a vengeance.”

But there is more to personal responsibility that Cesca and Hacker do not address. A thought experiment. Without telegraphing it, ask your average T-partier (and yourself, too) to imagine the very first person’s face that pops into their mind’s eye when they hear the phrase “personal responsibility.” Is that person black? Oops. Personal responsibility has always been a dog whistle on the right. Personal responsibility has always been for “those people,” for thee but not for me.

David Atkins reinforces that this weekend at Political Animal, explaining that Donald Trump has been successful precisely because he’s threading the needle between attacking “those people” while reassuring his people:

That’s where Donald Trump’s brand of politics comes in. Reminiscent of European far right parties that meld anti-immigrant furor with a broader anti-elite sentiment and greater favor to the welfare state, Donald Trump does away with sops to diversity and polite niceties in the service of an unfaltering plutocratic agenda. He is openly bashing women and minorities in the sort of rude way that millions of Republican voters do behind closed doors but not in polite society, while also giving them hope that they can keep their healthcare and social security in the bargain.

It’s important to remember that hardcore conservative Republican voters of today are only a generation removed from the coalition that supported FDR. These are voters who, despite having been hardened against socialist appeals by decades of Fox News style propaganda, nevertheless supported FDR and other Democrats well into the Reagan era. These are voters who don’t actually hate the welfare state and social spending, so much as they hate the idea that their tax dollars are going to social spending for the wrong people. It’s not so much that they don’t like government healthcare: after all, in many poor Republican counties most conservative voters are being taken care of by Medicaid, Medicare and the VA. It’s that they don’t like the idea that poor minorities and “loose” women might be getting free healthcare “on their backs.”

As for Wall Street? Most Republican voters can’t stand them. The majority of the Republican base sees the financial sector as crony capitalist, corrupt liberal New Yorkers who got a bailout. Most GOP voters won’t shed a tear if Trump raises taxes on the hedge fund crowd.

The Irresponsibles have long been the lowest caste in a conservative firmament with a “kiss up, kick down” relfex. It’s just that after years of the RNC asking social conservatives to have a run at the social-issue football only to have it yanked away (and saved for the next election), and with the income spread so painfully obvious after decades of wage stagnation for the middle class, many are through kowtowing to the rich. Unless it is someone like Trump, a class traitor.

Cesca sums up the current conservative attitude towards their own special privilege:

The only personal responsibility the Republicans appear to be concerned with any more is divine responsibility. In this Davis matter, as well as with objections over contraception and other reproductive services, the GOP appears to be sanctioning the ideal that no one should be held accountable for refusing to live up to their earthy responsibilities — only their responsibilities to a 2,000-year-old book and an invisible man in the clouds who may or may not actually exist. As long as the latter is achieved, the former can be waived.

My hand is up. Do I get to decide what God’s will is next?

Ring-ring goes the bell: Top 10 back-to-school movies by Dennis Hartley

Published by digby on September 6, 2015

Saturday Night at the Movies


Ring-ring goes the bell: Top 10 back-to-school movies

By Dennis Hartley
























Those readers who are doomed once again to be awakened weekday mornings by the pitter-patter of little fists on their forehead don’t need reminding, but Labor Day signals that school days are imminent (where’d summer go?!). In preparation for Tuesday, I’ve packed you a nice sack lunch and assembled my top 10 picks for back-to-school movies:

Blackboard Jungle-I always like to refer to this searing 1955 drama (produced in an era when ADD-afflicted teenagers were referred to as “juvenile delinquents”) as the “anti-Happy Days”. An idealistic English teacher (Glenn Ford) takes on an inner-city classroom full of leather-jacketed malcontents who would much rather steal hubcaps and break windows than, say, study the construct of iambic pentameter. Considered a hard-hitting “social issue” film at the time, it still retains considerable power, despite some dated trappings. Vic Morrow and Sidney Poitier are appropriately surly and unpredictable as the alpha “toughs” in the classroom. The impressive supporting cast includes Richard Kiley, Anne Francis and Louis Calhern. Director Richard Brooks co-scripted with Evan Hunter, from Hunter’s novel (the author is best-known by nom de plume “Ed McBain”). The film also had a hand in making Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock” a monster hit.

The Boys of Baraka– Co-directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady offer a fresh take on a time-worn cause celebre: what to do about the sad, shameful state of America’s inner-city school system. Eschewing the usual hand-wringing about the under funded, over-crowded, glorified daycare centers that many of these institutions have become for poor and disenfranchised urban youth, the filmmakers showcase one program that strove to make a difference. The documentary tracks the journey of a group of 12-year-old boys from Baltimore who go to study at a boarding school in Kenya, staffed by American teachers and social workers. In addition to personalized tutoring, there is an emphasis on conflict resolution through communication, tempered with a “tough love” approach. Something amazing happens when these “at risk” kids find themselves in a new environment. As cliché as this sounds, they begin to find themselves, and it is wondrous to observe. Of course, all good things must come to an end; the boys return to Baltimore for summer vacation, which becomes a permanent break when Kenya’s political climate becomes too volatile. There is no pat denouement, yet the viewer is still left with a sense of hope as some of these boys are inspired to push forward and build on this momentum.


Dazed and Confused – I confess that my attachment to Richard Linklater’s vivid 1993 recreation of a “day in the life” high school milieu circa 1976 has a lot to do with the sentimental chord it touches within me (I graduated from high school in 1974). Such is the verisimilitude of the clothing, the hairstyles, the lingo, the social behaviors and the music that I went into a total-immersion sense memory the first time I saw the film (I’m guessing that the first wave of boomers born a decade before me had a similar reaction when they first saw American Graffiti). This is not a goofy teen comedy; while there are laughs (mostly of recognition), the sharply written screenplay is more about inspired moments of keen observation and genuine poignancy. Linklater would be hard pressed to reassemble this bright, energetic young cast at the same bargain rates nowadays: Matthew McConaughey, Parker Posey, Ben Affleck, Milla Jovovich, Adam Goldberg, Rory Cochrane, Joey Lauren Adams and Nicky Katt, to name but a few. I give it two bongs up!

Election – Writer-director Alexander Payne and his longtime writing partner Jim Taylor (Sideways, About Schmidt) followed up their noteworthy 1995 feature film debut, Citizen Ruth, with this biting sociopolitical satire, thinly cloaked as a teen comedy (which it decidedly is not). Reese Witherspoon delivers a pitch-perfect performance as the psychotically perky, over-achieving Tracy Flick, who makes life a special hell for her brooding civics teacher, Mr. McAllister (Matthew Broderick). Payne’s film is very funny at times, yet never pulls its punches; there are some painful truths about the dark underbelly of suburbia bubbling beneath the veneer (quite similar to American Beauty, which came out the same year). Matthew Broderick finally purged the ghost of “Ferris Bueller” with this performance; proving he could play an unlikeable bastard for a change.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High -Amy Heckerling’s hit 1982 coming-of-age dramedy is another film that introduced a bevy of new talent to movie audiences: Forest Whitaker, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Judge Reinhold, Phoebe Cates, Eric Stoltz, Nicholas Cage, Anthony Edwards, and Sean Penn as quintessential stoned California surfer dude, Jeff Spicoli (“Learning about Cuba…and having some food!”). A marvelously droll Ray Walston plays Spicoli’s exasperated history teacher, Mr. Hand.  Heckerling later returned to the same California high school milieu (updated for the 90s) for her hit Clueless. Rolling Stone reporter (and soon-to-be film director) Cameron Crowe adapted the screenplay from his book, which was based on his experiences “embedded” at a San Diego high school (thanks to his youthful looks, Crowe passed himself off as a student).

The First Grader– Even though I knew from frame one that this was one of those “triumph of the human spirit over insurmountable socio-economic and/or political odds” tales engineered to tug mercilessly at the strings of my big ol’ pinko-commie, anti-imperialist, bleeding softie lib’rul heart, I nonetheless loved every minute of it. Beautifully directed by Justin Chadwick, the film dramatizes the true story of an illiterate 84 year-old Kikuyu tribesman (Oliver Litando) who had been a freedom fighter during the Mau-Mau uprising that took place in Kenya in the 1950s. Fired up by a 2002 Kenyan law that guaranteed free education for all citizens, he shows up at his local one-room schoolhouse one day, eager to hit the books and realize a long-time dream. The real story, however, lies in his past. The sacrifices he made are brought slowly and deliberately into focus; resulting in a denouement that packs a powerful, bittersweet emotional gut punch.


Gregory’s Girl– Scottish writer-director Bill Forsyth’s delightful examination of first love follows gawky teenager Gregory (John Gordon Sinclair) as he goes ga-ga over Dorothy (Dee Hepburn), a fellow soccer player on the school team. Gregory receives advice from an unlikely mentor, his little sister (Allison Forster). While his male classmates put on airs about having deep insights about the opposite sex, they are (of course) just as clueless as he. Forsyth gets a lot of mileage out of a basic truth about adolescence-the girls are usually light years ahead of the boys in getting a handle on the mysteries of love. Not as precious as you might think, as Forsyth is a master of low-key anarchy and understated irony. You may have trouble navigating those Scottish accents, but it’s worth the effort. Also with Clare Grogan, whom music fans may recall as the lead singer of 80s new wavers Altered Images, and Red Dwarf fans may recognize as “Kristine Kochanski”.

If…. . – In this startling and boldly anarchic 1968 class struggle allegory, director Lindsay Anderson uses his depiction of the British public school system as a microcosm of England’s sociopolitical upheaval at the time. It was also the star-making debut for a young Malcolm McDowall, who plays Mick Travis, one of the “lower sixth form” students (equivalent to the twelfth grade in the U.S.) at a boarding school (McDowall would return as the recurring character of Travis in Anderson’s loose “sequels” O Lucky Man! and Britannia Hospital). Travis forms the nucleus of a trio of lower sixth form mates who foment armed insurrection against the abusive upperclassmen and oppressive headmasters (i.e. the “System”).  Some critical reappraisals have drawn parallels with Columbine (and the spate of school shootings that sadly continue to this day), but the film really has very little to do with that and nearly everything to do with the revolutionary zeitgeist of 1968 (the uprisings in Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, etc.). That said, at face value, Anderson’s film could be read as a pre-cursor to the likes of Massacre at Central High, Rock’n’Roll High School, Heathers, (or tangentially) The Chocolate War and Rushmore. However you interpret it, overall the film still holds up remarkably well.

To Sir, With Love-A decade after he co-starred in The Blackboard Jungle, Sidney Poitier traded his switchblade for a lesson plan; it was his turn to play the mentor. This well-acted 1967 drama offered a bold twist on the prevalent narrative of its time period. Movie audiences were accustomed to watching an idealistic white teacher struggling to bond with a classroom chockablock with unruly (and usually “ethnic”) inner city students; in this case, you had an idealistic black teacher struggling to bond with a classroom chockablock with unruly, white British working class students. It’s a tour de force for director James Clavell, who also wrote and produced. Culture clash is a dominant theme in Clavell’s novels and films (most famously in Shogun). The film is also a real “swinging 60s” time capsule-thanks to a spunky onscreen performance of the theme song by Lulu, and an appearance by the Mindbenders (don’t blink or you’ll miss future 10cc co-founder Eric Stewart). Also with Judy Geeson (in a poignant performance) and future rock star Michael Des Barres (lead singer for Silverhead, Detective, and Power Station).

Twenty-Four Eyes-This naturalistic, tremendously moving drama from Keisuke Kinoshita could very well be the ultimate “inspirational teacher” movie. Set in an isolated, sparsely populated village on the ruggedly beautiful coast of Japan’s Shodoshima Island, the story begins in 1928 and ends just after WW 2. This is a deceptively simple yet deeply resonant tale about a long term mentorship that develops between a compassionate, nurturing teacher (Hideko Takamine) and her 12 students, from grade school through adulthood. Many of the cast members are non-actors, but you would never guess it from the uniformly wonderful performances. Kinoshita enlisted sets of siblings to portray the students as they “age”, giving the story a heightened sense of realism. The film, originally released in 1954, was hugely popular in Japan; a revival years later enabled it to be discovered by Western audiences, who warmed to its humanist stance and undercurrent of anti-war sentiments. You may want to keep Kleenex nearby.


And now to play us out of study hall, here’s Rockpile:

Class dismissed!

–Dennis Hartley

From the ugly American files

Published by digby on September 5, 2015

From the ugly American files

by digby

What in the hell is happening here?

For generations, freshmen cadets at the United States Military Academy have marked the end of a grueling summer of training with a huge nighttime pillow fight that is billed as a harmless way to blow off steam and build class spirit.

But this year the fight on the West Point, N.Y., campus turned bloody as some cadets swung pillowcases packed with hard objects, thought to be helmets, that split lips, broke at least one bone, dislocated shoulders and knocked cadets unconscious. The brawl at the publicly funded academy, where many of the Army’s top leaders are trained, left 30 cadets injured, including 24 with concussions, according to West Point.

In interviews, cadets who asked that their names not be used for fear of repercussions in West Point’s strictly controlled culture, said the fight had left one cadet with a broken leg and dislocated shoulders in others. One cadet was knocked unconscious and taken away in an ambulance and had not returned to school, they said. But a spokesman for the academy, Lt. Col. Christopher Kasker, said all cadets had returned to duty.

Though talk about the brawl on Aug. 20 had circulated on social media, West Point did not confirm it to The New York Times until Thursday.

Colonel Kasker said the annual fight is organized by first-year students as a way to build camaraderie after the summer program that prepares them for the rigors of plebe year.

Upperclassmen overseeing freshmen “allowed the spirit activity to occur out of the desire to enhance the spirit of the class,” Colonel Kasker said, adding that those upperclassmen took “mitigating measures” to prevent injury, including requiring cadets to wear helmets.

But video shows that many of the cadets did not wear helmets. Cadets said that in at least a few cases helmets became weapons stuffed into pillowcases.
[…]
Video of the fight posted online showed crowds of cadets, some wearing body armor as well as helmets, surging together in a central quad, their yells echoing off the stone walls of the surrounding barracks.

As the first-year cadets collided into a boil of white pillows, pummeling one another in the fading light, Army-issued glow sticks flew through the air and an impromptu cavalry of riders in laundry carts dashed in, cushions swinging. At one point, a smoke grenade appeared to go off.

Photos posted later on Twitter show plebes, as freshmen are called, with bloody faces and bloody pillows, and at least one person being loaded into an ambulance.

“My plebe was knocked unconscious and immediately began fighting when he came to,” an unnamed upperclassman, who was apparently observing from the sidelines, wrote on the social media forum Yik Yak. “I was so proud I could cry.”

As the battle continued, cadets clustered around at least two classmates who had fallen, apparently unable to get up. Others stumbled to a medical area set up beside the fracas.

“4 concussions, 1 broken leg, 2 broken arms, 1 dislocated shoulder, and several broken ribs. That’s one hell of a pillow fight. #USMA19,” one freshman posted on Twitter, echoing many who seemed to see the injuries as a point of pride.

As the scope of injuries became clear, cadets said in interviews, West Point staff members went door to door in the barracks giving quick concussion checks.

In interviews, cadets said they saw the fight as a chance to have fun after seven weeks of basic training in which they were not supposed to speak to one another. It was also a chance to show grit.

“If you don’t come back with a bloody nose,” a male first-year cadet said his upperclassman commander told him, “you didn’t try hard enough.”

West Point pillow fights have existed since at least 1897, according to testimony in a 1901 congressional inquiry on hazing at the school, but there have been no other reports over the decades of injury until recently.

In 2012, a cadet put a lockbox in a pillowcase, injuring others, and in response, the 2013 fight was canceled, cadets said.

Similar violence has occurred at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs during ceremonial warfare traditions in recent years.

During the first winter storm of the year, Air Force freshmen try to throw their cadet leaders into the snow. But in 2012 the snowball fight turned into a brawl, and 27 cadets were treated for concussions, cuts, broken bones and a bite wound.

The Air Force did not punish any cadets at the time, choosing to treat the episode as what a spokesman called “a teachable moment.”

West Point cadets had mixed reactions to the injuries this year. Some saw them as a rite of passage in a school known for being tough; others saw a lack of judgment and restraint.

“At first the body count, people were joking about it,” a female first-year cadet said. “My friends were really excited. And right after, when we learned how many people had gotten hurt, everyone felt totally hard-core. I know it looks weird from the outside, but it really bonds us.”

But when she saw a male cadet being loaded into an ambulance outside her dorm room, she began to have second thoughts.

“If you are an officer, you are supposed to make good decisions and follow the rules. You are supposed to mediate when everyone wants to go out and kill everyone,” she said. “The goal was to have fun, and it ended up some guys just chose to hurt people.”

No kidding. This is new, apparently, although they always used to have some kind of creepy hazing ritual. In fact, one might say that the entire freshman year in the military academies are creepy hazing rituals. But this seems just nuts. Forget the “good decisions and follow the rules” like an officer and gentleman (or gentlewoman.) They could have killed somebody. What in the hell has happened to simple common sense?

Our elite warrior leaders are being trained to be thugs.

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Following in her mother’s snowshoes

Published by digby on September 5, 2015

Following in her mother’s snowshoes

by digby

Via Wonkette, I see thatBristol Palin is the new official Alaskan wingnut spokesmodel:

By the way, no one is buying the “Denali is what the Alaskans have called it for years” line. I’ve never called the mountain Denali .. and neither does anyone I know …

It’s Mt. Mckinley … It always has been and always will be to most of us…

What a waste..

Well, not everyone she knows:

Go to 1:25 to hear the Queen of the Arctic say: “Denali, The Great One, soaring under the midnight sun”

Bristol is lying. Alaskans call it Denali:

I’m sure they’ll all make a point of calling it McKinley now. But maybe they should just rename it Mt Cheney.

The Donald’s con

Published by digby on September 5, 2015

The Donald’s con

by digby

I have no idea what will eventually burst Donald Trump’s hot air balloon, but it strikes me that it might be something like this, if it happens on a bigger scale:

Marlon Bateman is Hewitt’s producer.

It’s possible that some of Trump’s supporters may start to balk at evidence that he’s yanking their chains with this confrontational behavior when in private he’s one of the boys.

I don’t know that, of course. It seems as though nothing is shaking their affection for him. But it’s possible that if it they begin to think he’s cynically playing them for fools — in Village parlance is “inauthentic” — it might make them move over to Carson or Cruz. Which isn’t a good thing either …

Hating us for our freedom

Published by digby on September 5, 2015

Hating us for our freedom

by digby

The Nation takes on this notion that because of protests, the crime rate is rising in some cities. It’s called ‘The Ferguson Effect” which says that because police have had their hands tied they can’t stop citizens from killing each other any more and that many of them are holding back out of fear of being held accountable for over-zealous tactics. It’s a thorough piece but I thought this got to the heart of the problem:

What those who declare a “Ferguson effect” want us to believe is that police need a “free hand” to control crime. Any attempts to end abusive, racist, or illegal police activity is problematic because it interferes with unfettered police power. This is a misunderstanding of the nature of effective policing. Decades of research shows that policing works best when communities support the police, feel respected by them, and accept their actions as legitimate.

Second, it throws the Constitution under the bus. Practices like shooting fleeing suspects and stopping and frisking people without reasonable suspicion have been found unconstitutional. To defend these practices as not only necessary but appropriate flies in the face of our legal system and should call into question the loyalties of those who mimic them. Finally, the social costs of racist overpolicing are too high, regardless of effectiveness or legality. No society should be asked to accept the levels of arrest and incarceration being meted out against young people of color in the United States. It tears at the basic social fabric, and is one of the main drivers of increasing social and economic inequality.

Whether there is an uptick in homicides or not, we should all be concerned about the concentrations of extreme violence in very poor communities of color in the US. In order to reduce this violence, we must embrace non-punitive solutions that maximize the well-being of as many people as possible—that is the definition of justice.

There is a lively debate among liberals as to whether or not we should be hitting the panic button over this slight spike in murder in some cities (others are not experiencing one) and start agitating for some kind of dramatic intervention lest we derail the tentative consensus that’s forming around criminal justice reform. Others say that his is not such a dramatic uptick and getting panicked over it is playing into the Donald Trump worldview which says the country is under siege from people of color and we need to bring the hammer down, thus short-circuiting that same tentative consensus. I tend toward the latter view simply because I know the wingnuts are looking for any excuse and playing into it has never accrued to the benefit of people of color. Ever.

We’ll see whether this spike in murder rates in a few of cities is spreading and growing soon enough. In the meantime, I can’t help but be reminded of the arguments the CIA makes over holding them accountable for torture when I read that rationale laid out above. “If you criticize us or hold us accountable for illegal acts we’ll be too afraid to protect you and then where will you be?”

That is blackmail and it should not be tolerated in a free society. But it is. Which means we don not have a free society. If we allow law enforcement and national security agencies to basically say, “nice little country you have here, be a shame if anything happens to it” we are already so far down the road to authoritarianism it’s hard to see how we turn back.

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“Intolerance is a beautiful thing”

Published by digby on September 5, 2015

“Intolerance is a beautiful thing”

by digby

At least they admit it’s intolerance. Baby steps …

Where is the U.S. response? by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on September 5, 2015

Where is the U.S. response?
by Tom Sullivan

By Friday night, about 1,000 Syrian refugees and migrants, many of them small children, had left Budapest’s Keleti train station to walk over 100 miles to the Austrian border. Hungarian locals both encouraged the marchers with food, water and tears, while at least one other shouted in Hungarian from a passing car, “Go home already.” Hungarian authorities last night provided a fleet of buses to carry 4,000 to Austria, and perhaps to Germany. Austria joined Germany in agreeing to take them, at least for now.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán earlier in the week called that irresponsible, a failure to defend Europe’s Christian culture:

“We shouldn’t forget that the people who are coming here grew up in a different religion and represent a completely different culture. Most are not Christian, but Muslim,” he said. “Or is it not worrying that Europe’s Christian culture is already barely able to maintain its own set of Christian values?”

Orbán blamed the crisis on what he said were the EU’s “failed immigration policies” as well as those in Europe who have said they would welcome the refugees.

“It is irresponsible for any European politician to give migrants hope of a better life and encourage to leave everything behind and risk their lives en route to Europe,” he said.

That refrain should sound vaguely familiar.

In a statement, the prime ministers of Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland rejected “any proposal leading to introduction of mandatory and permanent quota for solidarity measures”. The Washington Post reports this morning:

NICKELSDORF, Austria — Thousands of Syrian asylum-seekers who had been stuck in Hungary for days reached Austria on Saturday, as Hungary’s hard-line authorities backed down from a confrontation with the refugees that they said were overrunning Europe.

Packed city buses ferried men, women and children from the center of Budapest, where people fleeing war in Syria and Iraq had set up a tent city after Hungarian authorities blocked their passage to Western Europe earlier this week. The squalor highlighted Europe’s inability to come up with a plan to deal with the growing wave of asylum-seekers, with Germany and Sweden opening their doors but many other countries barring them.

After trying to round up the asylum-seekers into camps, Hungarian authorities gave up late Friday after thousands of people departed Budapest on foot to try to make the 100-mile trek to the border. Instead, officials had dozens of blue buses pick them up in the night to transport them to Austria. They reached the main border crossing by early morning, and people — many of them bleary-eyed or limping — walked across the frontier, where Red Cross workers waited with blankets and tea.

Nicholas Kristof writes “If you don’t see yourself or your family members in those images of today’s refugees, you need an empathy transplant.” He recalls how after World War II his father swam the Danube River to escape Romania and made his way eventually to Portland, Oregon. But the United States, he reminds readers, had failed such refugees prior to the war, as it has after its war in Iraq. He praises Iceland for its efforts. Others, not so much:

Then there are the Persian Gulf countries. Amnesty International reports that Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates haven’t accepted a single Syrian refugee (although they have allowed Syrians to stay without formal refugee status). Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia’s bombings of Yemen have only added to the global refugee crisis.

We Americans may be tempted to pat ourselves on the back. But the U.S. has accepted only about 1,500 Syrian refugees since the war began, and the Obama administration has dropped the ball on Syria — whether doing something hard like using the threat of missiles to create a safe zone, or something easy like supporting more schools for Syrian refugee children in neighboring countries.

But we are too absorbed with presidential politics to pay attention to a crisis that is, for the most part, out of sight and out of mind. In the wake of the worldwide reaction to the photograph of 3 year-old drowning victim, Aylan Kurdi, Amanda Taub takes the United States to task at Vox for its refusal to look squarely at the crisis it helped create:

And make no mistake: We did know. As the refugee boats have crossed the Mediterranean, photograph after photograph has showed rescue workers cradling tiny babies and toddlers rescued from the water. We knew desperate families were bringing children on these journeys. We knew they would keep coming, because what could drive a parent to bring a child on such a dangerous crossing except fear that staying behind would be worse? And we knew that if we didn’t do more to help them, many of those children would die — and so would their families.

But apparently those children weren’t dead enough to hold our attention. An infant saved from a boat wasn’t good enough for us: We needed to see one dead on a beach, lying alone, face down, in the surf.

And so the world has treated the refugee crisis as a sort of bureaucratic inconvenience, a problem that someone else really ought to be handling. But the truth is that those are just excuses we tell ourselves to feel better about the fact that we’re not doing the right thing. Because make no mistake: This is a situation where there is a right thing to do. And we are not doing it.

Xenophobia and demagogy, Kristof writes, have led some in Europe “to stigmatize refugees and hamper their journeys.” Here in the U.S. individual, candidates and entire political parties have built careers and campaigns based on fear of Otherness and immigrants. If Hungarians had more guns, perhaps they would be forming border militias to keep out Syrian and Afghan Muslims, just like patriotic, god-fearing Americans. If so, we would spend more time focusing on supportive politicians and their antics than on the humanitarian crisis because of the entertainment value.

Are you not entertained?