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Month: February 2016

Culties gonna cult

Published by digby on February 21, 2016

Culties gonna cult

by digby

There’s a sucker born every minute:

According to its website, the pastor, Mark Driscoll, is a “Jesus-following, mission-leading, church-serving, people-loving, Bible-preaching pastor…grateful to be a nobody trying to tell everybody about Somebody.”

While he may wish he were less recognizable these days, compound adjective-loving Mark Driscoll could hardly be called a nobody. Though there’s no mention of it on The Trinity Church’s shiny new website, Driscoll built and presided over Seattle’s controversial Mars Hill Church, and he is one of the most famous and disruptive figures in the history of the evangelical mega-church movement.

Driscoll and two other pastors started Mars Hill in 1996. Before long, Driscoll was drawing crowds with a unique brand of hipster conservatism. He was a 25-year-old charismatic preacher with a Sam Kinison yell and a collection of ironic “Jesus is my homeboy” T-shirts, who talked freely about sex but offered a socially and theologically conservative message that introduced Seattle’s young unchurched to a macho, vengeful God. (He once described Jesus as “a prize fighter with a tattoo down His leg, a sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed.”) The first services outside of the Driscoll living room were held in a music venue—owned by church cofounder Lief Moi—in a space aptly named the Paradox.

“Do they call you pastor here…or dude?” a Nightline correspondent asked in 2008.

Mars Hill was slated to become the biggest church in the country. In its heydey, it was welcoming more than 12,000 visitors every week to one of its 15 satellite campuses in five states and reporting $30 million in yearly revenue.

But as Driscoll’s star rose, he was dogged by allegations from church members and pastors as well as from outsiders—of bullying and spiritual abuse, misogyny and homophobia, plagiarism, and misuse of church funds, just to name a few. In 2014, after being asked to submit to a reconciliation plan proposed by the church board he organized, Driscoll quit.

Now, barely a year later and 1,000 miles away, Driscoll is back. And though he may be fresh off an apology tour on the megachurch circuit and backed by a roster of celebrity pastors and online supporters, many of his original followers—a dozen of whom spoke to The Daily Beast, not counting at least 100 others who have shared their stories online—are still wondering if Pastor Mark will ever address the damage he allegedly wreaked on the people at Mars Hill or the church he left in ruins.

These Disco-evangelicals are something else. Read the whole amazing story for the details, but this will give you a flavor of the guy. He’s not a southern Baptist style holy roller:

The largest repository for his most offensive remarks comes from early 2001 in his church’s members-only forum, where he posted under the Braveheart pseudonym “William Wallace II.” In one particular thread, Driscoll rants (in part) that: We live in a “pussified nation” where men are “raised by bitter penis envying burned feministed single mothers,” homeosexuals are “Damn freaks,” and women, (unpoetically described as “homes” for a man’s penis), “will be ignored,” because Driscoll “[does] not answer to women.”

I think Trump may have found his running mate.

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Our sealed bubbles

Published by digby on February 21, 2016

Our sealed bubbles

by digby

Jeffrey Toobin’s scathing assessment of Antonin Scalia’s legacy is worth reading in its entirety. But I’ll just excerpt this one little observation to make a different point:

Scalia described himself as an advocate of judicial restraint, who believed that the courts should defer to the democratically elected branches of government. In reality, he lunged at opportunities to overrule the work of Presidents and of legislators, especially Democrats. Scalia helped gut the Voting Rights Act, overturn McCain-Feingold and other campaign-finance rules, and, in his last official act, block President Obama’s climate-change regulations. Scalia’s reputation, like the Supreme Court’s, is also stained by his role in the majority in Bush v. Gore. His oft-repeated advice to critics of the decision was “Get over it.”

Not long ago, Scalia told an interviewer that he had cancelled his subscription to the Washington Post and received his news from the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times (owned by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church), and conservative talk radio. In this, as in his jurisprudence, he showed that he lived within the sealed bubble of contemporary conservative thought.

This is important because it’s a problem not just as it pertains to Scalia and the court (although it’s deadly for a Supreme Court justice to be so narrowly influenced that he literally has no idea what’s going on in the world beyond his own little clique.) This is a problem for a lot of people these days although I’d guess it actually affects politicians less than the rest of us. They deal with actual humans in their districts and states and cannot just “block” them or “unfriend” them if they don’t like what they’re hearing.

In many ways they are a lot more in touch with the American public than those of us who throw so much shade on them all the time because they can’t simply pick and choose who they want to hear from among their constituents. I think we lose at least a little perspective by simply assuming every last person in the political system is so compromised they have nothing to say that might be of value. Or perhaps, more to the point, that if they say something that differs from the understanding in our own silos it can’t possibly be of value.

I’m guilty of this myself. I have to force myself to read things that make me angry and watch the whole spectrum of the political system so that I know what everyone is saying. It’s not easy. In fact, it’s stressful. And I do fail at it, I’m sure. But if I were running for office I would have no choice but to listen to all these people with their different views and even if I disagreed with them, I’d at least be aware of them. Political candidates have to do that and it’s worth something.

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QOTD: Trump’s id

Published by digby on February 21, 2016

QOTD: Trump’s id

by digby

Last night he perfectly put into words the philosophy that’s brought him to this place in American political life:

It’s tough, it’s nasty, it’s mean, it’s vicious…. it’s beautiful. When you win, it’s beautiful.” 

Let’s be clear about what he’s really saying: the toughness, the nastiness, the meanness, the viciousness are what makes the win so beautiful.  Watching Jeb slink off last night was the real win for him. He didn’t just beat his rival, he humiliated him. (Just read some of his comments about how to “defeat” ISIS if you need any proof of this worldview.)

Trump and his followers are all about one thing: dominance.

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Trump’s disappearing country

Published by digby on February 21, 2016

Trump’s disappearing country

by digby

After listening to Trump go on about how he’s going to appeal to Latinos and African Americans all over TV this morning, I thought maybe it was a good day to reprise this piece I did for Salon a while back. Trump is the candidate of a dying white majority. But it’s not dead yet.  Democrats have to turn out all their voters in big numbers to beat him.

Amid the great cacophony of political punditry these days, something that’s to be expected as we hurtle toward the first primary contests of the 2016 elections, Ronald Brownstein ofThe National Journal has been doing some of the most interesting analysis of the political landscape. Leaving aside all the interesting, and I suspect important, contributions of TV celebrity, financial incentives in the media, a long simmering feud between the party regulars and the Tea Party insurgents and more, Brownstein has been focusing on American demographics and how and why they’re breaking the way the are in this race.
He’s been interested in this for a while and wrote an important analysis of the stakes for the GOP going forward in the wake of the Romney defeat. In September of 2013 he wrote “Bad Bet: Why Republicans Can’t Win With Whites Alone.” In that piece he looked at the fact that President Obama had won reelection quite handily by getting the smallest share of white voters of any presidential candidate in history. He wrote:
Few de­cisions may carry great­er con­sequences for the Re­pub­lic­an Party in 2016 than how it in­ter­prets these facts. The key ques­tion fa­cing the GOP is wheth­er Obama’s 2012 per­form­ance rep­res­ents a struc­tur­al Demo­crat­ic de­cline among whites that could deep­en even fur­ther in the years ahead — or a floor from which the next Demo­crat­ic nom­in­ee is likely to im­prove.
In re­cent months, a chor­us of con­ser­vat­ive ana­lysts has bet on the first op­tion. They in­sist that Re­pub­lic­ans, by im­prov­ing both turnout and already-gap­ing mar­gins among whites, can re­cap­ture the White House in 2016 without re­for­mu­lat­ing their agenda to at­tract more minor­ity voters — most prom­in­ently by passing im­mig­ra­tion-re­form le­gis­la­tion that in­cludes a path­way to cit­izen­ship for those here il­leg­ally.
On the oth­er side is an ar­ray of Re­pub­lic­an strategists who view minor­ity out­reach and im­mig­ra­tion re­form as crit­ic­al to restor­ing the party’s com­pet­it­ive­ness — and con­sider it sui­cid­al for the GOP to bet its fu­ture on the pro­spect that it can squeeze even lar­ger ad­vant­ages out of the di­min­ish­ing pool of white voters. Karl Rove, the chief strategist for George W. Bush’s two pres­id­en­tial vic­tor­ies, has noted that re­ly­ing en­tirely on whites would soon re­quire Re­pub­lic­ans to reg­u­larly match the tower­ing ad­vant­age Re­agan re­cor­ded among them when he lost only a single state in his 1984 reelec­tion. “It’s un­reas­on­able to ex­pect Re­pub­lic­ans to routinely pull num­bers that last oc­curred in a 49-state sweep,” Rove said at the As­pen Ideas Fest­iv­al this sum­mer.
It appears that the party faithful made this decision for them. As much as the establishment may have wanted them to vote for a young Hispanic senator or an elder statesman married to a Mexican American in the hopes of boosting their share of the Latino vote, they are having none of it. In fact, the front-runner of the party for six months now is a man whose candidacy has made it abundantly clear that many Republicans loathe and despise foreigners and ethnic and racial minorities. They’re going with the 1984 strategy.
As this campaign has unfolded, Brownstein’s been looking at both parties’ coalitions to try to suss out what’s really driving the delusional impulse among the rank and file to circle the wagons. Looking through the crosstabs of various polls he has found that the Trump vote is a very specific sub-set of Republican voters: working class whites without a college education, even those who identify as evangelicals. He wrote:
Though Cruz led big among col­lege-edu­cated evan­gel­ic­als in the latest Quin­nipi­ac Iowa sur­vey, the poll placed Trump ahead of Cruz by 32 per­cent to 30 per­cent among evan­gel­ic­als without a col­lege de­gree. The NBC/WSJ/Mar­ist Poll in Iowa showed Cruz still lead­ing Trump among blue-col­lar evan­gel­ic­als, but with a much nar­row­er ad­vant­age (nine per­cent­age points) than among their col­lege-edu­cated coun­ter­parts (23 points).
Craig Robin­son, founder of The Iowa Re­pub­lic­an web­site and former polit­ic­al dir­ect­or for the state GOP, said Trump’s strength with these work­ing-class evan­gel­ic­als “doesn’t sur­prise me at all. He def­in­itely has this ap­peal to the hard-work­ing blue-col­lar little guy.” As for Cruz, Robin­son ad­ded, “I don’t think he’s a lock at all” for these voters.
It’s possible that a lot of these white conservative working class types identify as evangelical as much for tribal reasons as religious commitment. Studies indicate that church attendance among this cohort has fallen rather dramatically over the past four decades:
Monthly church attendance by moderately educated whites – defined as those with high school diplomas and maybe some college – has declined to 37 percent from 50 percent, according to the study co-authored by sociologists W. Bradford Wilcox of the University of Virginia and Andrew Cherlin of Johns Hopkins University.Church attendance by the least educated whites – defined as those lacking high school diplomas – fell to 23 percent from 38 percent.
“My assumption going into this research was that Middle America was more religious and conservative than more educated America,” said Wilcox, in an interview with MSNBC. “But what is surprising about this is that, when it comes to religion as well as marriage, we find that the college-educated are more conventional in their lifestyle than Middle Americans.”
This would explain why so many Trump voters don’t care about his “New York values.” And they agree wholeheartedly with The Donald about the root cause of the problem: immigrants, Muslims, racial minorities and elites who “don’t know what the hell they’re doing.”
Brownstein explains that the notion of making America great again literally refers to a lost paradise where conservative values and culture were dominant:
Today, the two parties rep­res­ent not only dif­fer­ent sec­tions of the coun­try, but also, in ef­fect, dif­fer­ent edi­tions of the coun­try. Along many key meas­ures, the Re­pub­lic­an co­ali­tion mir­rors what all of Amer­ic­an so­ci­ety looked like dec­ades ago. Across those same meas­ures, the Demo­crat­ic co­ali­tion rep­res­ents what Amer­ica might be­come in dec­ades ahead. The parties’ ever-es­cal­at­ing con­flict rep­res­ents not only an ideo­lo­gic­al and par­tis­an stale­mate. It also en­cap­su­lates our col­lect­ive fail­ure to find com­mon cause between what Amer­ica has been, and what it is be­com­ing.
The two dif­fer­ent Amer­icas em­bod­ied by the parties are out­lined by race.
Of course they are. He points out that in 2012 whites accounted for 90 percent of the GOP primary and general election vote and the last time whites were 90 percent of the country was in 1960. Those were good times for white men, for sure. For everyone else not so much. Today people of color equal just over 37 per­cent of Amer­ic­ans and are on track to be a majority in the next 15 years.
White Christians (whether sincere or not) make up 69 percent of Republicans. There haven’t been that many white Christians in America since 1984, the year they ran the table with 49 states and which Karl Rove pointed out they have to repeat if they fail to attract anything but white voters. They represent just 46 percent of the population these days.
They’d also like to go back to the 90s. Brownstein writes:
Sim­il­arly, data from Pew’s re­li­gious-land­scape study shows that nearly three-fifths of Re­pub­lic­ans are mar­ried—a level last reached in the over­all adult pop­u­la­tion in 1994. Today just un­der half of Amer­ic­an adults are mar­ried. Among Demo­crats, the num­ber is lower still: barely over two-in-five. Like­wise, the share of Re­pub­lic­ans who live in a house­hold with a gun (54 per­cent) equals the share in so­ci­ety over­all in 1993. Since then, gun own­er­ship among the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion has dropped to about 40 per­cent, while fall­ing even lower (around one-fourth) among Demo­crats.
That gun statistic is surprising. But it explains why it has become such a totem of right wing conservatism. In fact, all these issues are symbols of a white America that no longer exists — at least to the white people who feel threatened by the fact that their culture is changing.
Brownstein’s statistics boil down to this:
As I’ve writ­ten, Re­pub­lic­ans rep­res­ent a co­ali­tion of res­tor­a­tion centered on the groups most un­settled by the changes (primar­ily older, non­col­lege, rur­al, and re­li­giously de­vout whites). Demo­crats mo­bil­ize a co­ali­tion of trans­form­a­tion that re­volves around the heav­ily urb­an­ized groups (mil­len­ni­als, people of col­or, and col­lege-edu­cated, single, and sec­u­lar whites, es­pe­cially wo­men) most com­fort­able with these trends.
Nobody is telling these Republicans they can’t be married or Christian or own guns. But they are having to share the culture with people who don’t have those same values and they don’t like it. The ones who like it least are obviously the Trump voters, those non-college educated, less devout white people who are mad as hell about all this. They want action— deportations, walls, closed borders, law and order. They want to make American white again.
But that’s not going to happen. These demographic changes are irrevocable and the social progress that’s been made is not going backwards. We are not going back to 1960 or 1984 or 1997. But that does not mean that the cultural traditions and values that conservatives hold dear will disappear. As Brownstein says, “at its best, the U.S. has al­ways re­for­mu­lated both its pub­lic policies and so­cial mores to re­fresh its old­est tra­di­tions with its con­tem­por­ary real­it­ies.”
But it looks as though we’re in for a bumpy ride. The way the parties are divided means that for the moment, neither is able to build an enduring dominant governing faction and the Republicans are so lost in their nostalgia for the old days that they cannot compromise or cooperate. Until the diverse Democratic party achieves majority status or the Republicans accept the future and realize that tolerance for differences among their fellow citizens does not mean they must give up their own values, this battle is going to continue.

Sunday funnies

Published by digby on February 21, 2016

Sunday funnies

by digby

And this from MacLeans on the Republican debates:

Let’s get you up to date. Remember Ted Cruz? He’s the one with the voice of Marvin the Martian and the world view of Yosemite Sam. During a recent debate, Marco Rubio called Cruz a liar. Then Donald Trump called Cruz “the single biggest liar”—because to Trump, everything is always the single biggest anything. Cruz later called Rubio and Trump whiners. Meanwhile, Jeb Bush called his mom and asked if he could stop trying to be president now.

Things have been tough for Rubio since Iowa, where he gave a memorable victory speech (it was memorable primarily because he finished third). A political algorithm in a suit, Rubio has been assailed for repeating his talking points, word for word, time after time, without care as to whether the message fits the context. Here’s a typical exchange:

Marco: “Let’s dispel this notion that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing.”

Speaker box: “Um, I just asked if you want fries with that.”

To his credit, Mr. Robot got through the last debate without falling into a programming loop, which is good news for his campaign and terrible news for humanity. This means it’s learning. Soon it will become self-aware and then there’s no stopping the Rubio-Skynet ticket.

Anyway, all that stuff about who’s the lyingest liar? Turns out that was the classy part of the debate. Later on, Trump defended having referred to Cruz as a “pussy”—saying it wasn’t so bad because, FYI, Bush had publicly threatened to “take off his pants and moon everybody.” It was around this time that the moderator interjected: “We’re in danger of driving this into the dirt.” In danger? The Republican race is a tire fire wrapped in a train wreck inside The Adventures of Pluto Nash. We’re watching as one of the world’s most successful political parties goes Dumpster diving for a leader.

The news networks are struggling to adapt. They still cover the race as though it’s a normal campaign. It’s not. We’ve passed into some next-level Narnia-talking-animal strangeness. Still, every night you can find on CNN a pundit confidently predicting Donald Trump’s demise. But Trump never demises! Everything that should kill him politically only makes him stronger. And, weirdly, oranger.

Let’s engage in a brief thought experiment: How would Donald Trump describe his immigration plan if he were eight years old? He’d probably say something like, “I am the strongest on the borders and I will build a wall, and it will be a real wall.” That sounds like the boast of an eight-year-old, right? It also happens to be the exact words Trump used. Let us savour the fact a presidential candidate felt the need to emphasize his wall would be neither metaphorical nor imaginary. It’s a savvy move: Many Americans still feel burned by the failed promises of President Pink Floyd.

I don’t mean to suggest this entire race is without upside. For instance, Ben Carson’s achievements as a neurosurgeon seem even more impressive now that we know he spends 40 per cent of his waking hours with his eyes closed. (My favourite line from the campaign remains the following declaration from Carson, a man who is trying to become president: “I’m not a politician, and I’m never going to become a politician.” Uh, yeah, that’s probably a safe bet now, Ben.)

Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who is also running for president (I believe that’s his slogan: “I am also running for president!”), called on Barack Obama to name a Supreme Court nominee who could win the support of all Americans. Who is this magical person? Does Betty White have a law degree?

Kasich, who seems like a reasonable man and therefore doesn’t have a chance, pleaded to voters: “The world is desperate for leadership. The world needs us.” John, on behalf of everyone in the world who’s seen what the Republicans have to offer, let me assure you: We’re good.

Wild card by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on February 21, 2016

Wild card
by Tom Sullivan

Donald Trump won the South Carolina Republican primary handily as expected. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz promise to Make America Second Again. Jeb Bush? Jeb! has left the building. In Nevada’s Democratic caucuses, Hillary Clinton bested Bernie Sanders by five points.

McClatchy reports:

The outcome could also have serious implications for more establishment-friendly candidates who are hoping for strong finishes to stave off questions about their viability.

Exit polls showed 4 in 10 voters angry about how Washington is working, and more than half saying they felt betrayed by politicians in the Republican Party.

“I don’t like politicians,” said Jim Jaruszewicz, a 37-year-old radiology technician who voted for Trump. “I don’t trust politicians.”

It’s that kind of electorate. Turnout could be a real wild card.

So some of the post-game, online chatter has focused on turnout. As Rachel Maddow observed last night, turnout has been down for Democrats in the last three contests, while Republican turnout is up. The South Carolina State Election Commission reports nearly twice the number of absentee ballots returned in either the Republican or Democratic primaries of 2008. Final numbers are hard to come by this morning.

NBC played up a story about “lost voters” coming back to the polls and breaking 27 percent for Trump. But those numbers appear to be speculative and based on Reuters-Ipsos polling from last year, not on actual turnout.

Still, the trend could prove a problem for Democrats should Hillary Clinton win nomination. So far, the momentum in grassroots activism seems to be for Sanders. He won in Nevada overwhelmingly with voters under 45, while Clinton won with older, more reliable voters:

A battle between hearts and heads was apparent, with Clinton trouncing Sanders among voters focused on experience and electability, while Sanders whomped Clinton among those looking chiefly for a candidate who’s honest and trustworthy or who “cares about people like me.”

Among caucus goers under age 45, 76 supported Sanders in the ABC News entrance poll. Sanders’ support soared to 84 percent of those younger than 30, continuing his absolute dominance in this group. That said, Clinton won by more than 2-1 among voters age 45 and older – and they accounted for nearly two-thirds of the caucus turnout.

A remarkable seven in 10 caucus goers described themselves as liberals, including a third “very” liberal – far higher than their share in the 2008 Nevada caucuses, 45 and 18 percent, respectively. Liberals, however, did not break as strongly for Sanders as they did in New Hampshire. Here they backed him by 51-46 percent, while Clinton countered with 59 percent support among moderates, 13 points better than her result in this group in Nevada in ‘08. (PHIL4)

Notably, half of caucus goers said the next president should generally continue Obama’s policies, and this was a very strong group for Clinton – she won 75 percent of their votes. Sanders got 77 percent of those who prefer more liberal policies, but there were fewer of them.

You can read the results either way (and partisans will). But getting overall turnout up by November will be key for Democrats if the enthusiasm for Trump holds, he wins the GOP nomination, and “lost voters” become a real thing for Republicans. On the other hand (anecdotally), we have older voters here in traditionally conservative areas for whom the knock that Sanders is “soft on guns” actually plays well. They like him. It’s an anti-establishment election, and those who find Trump too extreme actually find Sanders more to their liking. Especially for Democrats and Republicans who would never vote for Hillary Clinton.

But the focus on turning out younger, less reliable voters is intriguing. Perhaps it is because they represent the demographic future for Democrats. Perhaps they represent the Democrats’ “lost voters” between presidential elections. Their energy and availability for grassroots organizing is invaluable, and when they fall in love with white-knight candidates such as Obama or Sanders, their effect can win elections. I don’t mean to minimize issues and policies, but believe most people really do vote with their guts. The rest is motivated reasoning. But how that functions changes with age.

It is not for nothing that we call these things campaigns. They are not wars. Winning wars take longer-term commitments. And perhaps that is why older voters are more reliable voters, rather than that they just have more stuff or skin in the game. They know something about longer-term commitments. Younger voters are still tentative about theirs. Hence the heads vs. hearts problem. Many younger voters want candidates who are soul mates, as many are still searching for theirs. In this way, attractive candidates can be surrogates.

What got me to this reverie on aging is an interview with recently naturalized Craig Ferguson. His new show, “Join or Die,” premiered Thursday night on the History Channel. In an interview with Salon, Ferguson was asked about his evolving relationship with America:

Your American citizenship was a big deal at the time: You went to great lengths to get it. What does it mean to you now, in 2016?

It’s an evolving thing, much like America itself. It’s a very kind of rah-rah, Fourth of July feeling when you become a citizen. It goes from being a very simple thing to something more complicated. I’m no less patriotic… But like any good and faithful belief, it questions itself. That’s good. So I hold it up to scrutiny – and in an election year that’s more prevalent. For everybody – not just for immigrants.

I want to get into the show in a second, but since you’ve mentioned the election: Has that done anything to weaken your patriotism?

Oh, absolutely not! My love of America isn’t like that. It’s not a romantic love, it’s what I am. It’s more like you’re a family member – it’s not my  girlfriend.

Maybe it takes an immigrant’s perspective.

America’s gone to pot: “Where to Invade Next” & “Rolling Papers” by Dennis Hartley

Published by digby on February 21, 2016
America’s gone to pot: Where to Invade Next ***½ & Rolling Papers **


By Dennis Hartley



The phrase “American exceptionalism” gets bandied about quite a bit these days, and with such polarized political intent that it seems to have become devoid of any one particular meaning. I think this is because, while the idea has been around for eons, its semantic malleability allows it to be handily co-opted by conservatives and liberals alike. In other words, it depends on who you ask. Does it mean America is exceptionally awesome and the world should follow our awesomely exceptional example? Or does it mean America sports an awesomely long history of making exceptionally bad decisions?


In his new documentary, cheekily entitled Where to Invade Next, Michael Moore takes a noble stab at breaking that stalemate by implementing a clever bit of reverse engineering. That is to say, he embarks on an earnest search and recovery mission for America’s most commendable ideals and founding principles…scouring anywhere in the world but here.


Armed only with an American flag and his highly developed sense of irony, Moore sets off to “invade” countries throughout Europe and North Africa. His goal is not to acquire land or resources, but rather to cull ideas; ideas that could be put to good use here in the U S of A. Yes, I know…ideas can be dangerous. And undoubtedly, at this point his usual detractors would assume that these “ideas” were communistic; or at best “un-American”.


However, as them furreners say…au contraire, bon ami.


For starters, take Italy, where workers are given two-hour lunches, paid maternity leave, innumerable paid vacation days, an additional “13th month” of full salary every December, and (oh, what is that word again?) respect…all as a matter of course. Now, this wasn’t handed to the Italian people on a silver platter; it took years of struggle (as Moore is careful to point out), but hey folks, welcome to the 21st century (well, in Italy).


Moore shifts from employment to education, taking a peek at countries like Finland (no standardized tests, little to no emphasis on homework) France (freshly prepared, nutritionally balanced school lunches that would be strictly 4-star restaurant fare in the U.S.) and Slovenia, with free college for any and all who apply (including non-citizens). And guess what? None of the aforementioned countries’ education systems suffer for it.


That’s all fine and dandy, some may interject this point, but isn’t Moore cherry-picking? And hasn’t he used this device before in his previous films, making idealized “A-B” comparisons between the U.S. and countries that seem to have a much better handle on very specific sociopolitical maladies? Yes, and yes. So what? Is there a law against that?


Speaking of the law, Moore’s most fascinating and illuminating pit stop is in Norway, where the concept of “incarceration” is quite different from ours. If you are not familiar with it (I wasn’t), it will blow your fucking mind. In a nutshell, their prison system is based on rehabilitation, not retribution (no matter how unfathomably horrendous the crime). And as counterintuitive as it seems, Norway’s recidivism rate is shockingly low.


Initially, Moore not only seems to be literally “all over the map”, but figuratively as well; an uncharacteristic lack of focused advocacy. However, there is a method to his madness, and it is genius. As I watched the film, I gleaned a common thread, key words that kept popping up. Words like “dignity”, “respect”, “freedom”, and (wait for it) “happiness”. It’s almost as if these folks, be they French, Italian, Tunisian, Norwegian, Slovenian, believe that these are, I don’t know, the “inalienable rights” of all humans, or something. I mean, someone should collate these types of ideas into some kind of “declaration”, or maybe draw up a “constitution” of some sort…and then actually, like…implement them.


Now that is an exceptional idea.



It must have looked great on paper. A timely documentary about the legal pot boom in Colorado, parsed via a cinema verite “ride along” with Ricardo Baca, the country’s first journalist to be hired by a major media outlet (The Denver Post) as a “marijuana editor” (with a nod, one hopes, to the stalwart pioneers at High Times). The filmmakers saw an opportunity to not only see how this burgeoning industry is shaping up, but to get an insider’s view of the alarmingly ever-shrinking universe of traditional print journalism.


Unfortunately, however, Mitch Dickman’s Rolling Papers falls somewhat flat on both fronts. The day-to-day workings of a daily rag have been done to death, and we get little more here than the standard by-the-numbers travails; deadlines, staff meetings, etc. While Baca has a unique gig, and appears to be a dedicated professional, as a film subject he lacks the charisma of say, (for the sake of argument) a David Carr, whose colorful personality helped bolster the 2011 documentary Page One: Inside the New York Times.


The film manages to generate a tad more interest on the weed milieu (if not necessarily offering anything new and/or revelatory-especially to anyone who has already cared enough to follow the issue over the years). It’s kind of fun (at first) following a couple of Baca’s “reviewers at large” around as they visit shops, sample the wares and then make valiant attempts to attack the keyboard while still under the influence (it quickly becomes apparent as to why Baca himself does not partake…someone has to stay straight and be the managing editor, if you know what I’m saying). It was a nice try, but only half-baked.


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More reviews at Den of Cinema
–Dennis Hartley—

She’s not ready for a new president!

Published by digby on February 21, 2016

She’s not ready for a new president!

by digby

This is adorable:

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On Saturday morning just before Gymnastics, My Dranbaby found out that our President Barack Obama was no longer going to…
Posted by Caprina D Harris on Monday, February 15, 2016

Even more adorable, look who replied:

I have a feeling that she’s expressing the feelings of quite a few Democrats …

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The ebay gap

Published by digby on February 20, 2016

The ebay gap

by digby

A very strange little bit of data:

Women in the United States are paid only 79 cents on the dollar compared with men doing the same job. But at least gender melts away in the digital economy of the Internet, right? Nope. A study of more than 1 million auctions on the online commerce site eBay finds that women receive consistently less money than men for selling the very same products.

Getting the data to prove this gap is no easy task. Luckily eBay, which is based in San Jose, California, opened its doors to researchers 2 years ago. Among the first to gain access were two from Israel—Tamar Kricheli-Katz, a sociologist and legal scholar from Tel Aviv University, and Tali Regev, an economist from the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya—who together study inequality. They wanted to know whether the perceived value of a product depends on the gender of the seller. eBay represented the perfect natural experiment: Millions of identical products are sold by men and women through auctions where the buyers determine the final price.

But is the gender of a seller even apparent to buyers on eBay? Sellers can declare personal information when they register, including gender, so Kricheli-Katz and Regev knew who identified as male or female in their data. To see whether gender was apparent in an eBay auction, they challenged 400 people to guess the gender of 100 randomly chosen sellers. Just using clues like the names of the sellers and what other items they tended to sell, participants correctly guessed the gender of 56%, declared 35% unguessable, and got less than 9% wrong. So gender can come through if buyers are paying attention. But does that matter to the final sale price?

Kricheli-Katz and Regev narrowed their focus to the 420 most popular products auctioned on eBay between 2009 and 2012, amounting to 1.1 million transactions. For example, thousands of iPods, both used and brand new in the original wrapping, were auctioned off by men and women. If the men got more money from the same product, then that could stem from an unconscious gender bias on the part of the buyers.

Researchers found that when the seller of these popular items was self-identified as female, the auction got fewer bids and a lower final price. For used items, the gender gap was small, with female sellers getting 3% less money on average. But for new products, women received only 80 cents for every dollar that men got for auctioning a similar product on eBay, the team reports today in Science Advances. The reputation scores of the sellers could not account for that difference, nor could any of the auction options such as the “buy it now” or initial prices. The most striking example was gift cards—vouchers for a fixed amount of money that can be spent at certain stores—for which the gender gap persisted, even though the value is obviously the same no matter the seller.

One possible explanation for the smaller gap for used products, say the researchers, is that potential buyers—subconsciously or not—trust women to describe the quality of used products more accurately than men. But what about the much larger gap for new products?

Kricheli-Katz and Regev suspected that it might come down to the way men and women describe their wares. Perhaps men used more flattering terms on the whole than women. So they performed a computer analysis on the titles and subtitles of the advertisements, scoring them for words that reflected positive or negative sentiment. “The sentiment analysis showed that women and men sellers do, indeed, resort to different sentiments,” Kricheli-Katz says, but “the difference we found is relatively small.” Controlling for sentiment, there was still a gender gap of 3% for used products and 19% for new.

The study is “a new addition to the growing body of evidence that gender inequality doesn’t end when people go online,” says Benjamin Mako Hill, an Internet and communication scholar at the University of Washington, Seattle. “The fact that gender seems to lead to such a gap in eBay, where gender is such a relatively tiny signal, is striking.” And how to close the gap? “One approach that is sometimes suggested is making gender less visible in exactly the way that eBay does,” he says. “These results provide little support for the idea that type of approach will be effective in practice.”

That time where I actually defend Ted Cruz

Published by digby on February 20, 2016

That time where I actually defend Ted Cruz

by digby

I have to say that I don’t blame Ted Cruz for being irked that Ben Carson is sanctimoniously slamming him for a dirty trick that made absolutely no difference in the race just to give that sick piece of work Donald Trump a talking point and fund raise for his con-job of a campaign. Obviously, I find Cruz’s policies to be reprehensible in every way, and I don’t support his ugly politics,  but Carson is just milking the situation for his own purposes and if I were Cruz I would find Carson’s endless hand-wringing about this alleged fraud that happened in the final half hour in Iowa to be intensely frustrating. It’s not as if Cruz stole the election from him.  Carson got 9% of the vote!

Anyway, I hate defending Ted Cruz for anything but this is just gratuitous grifting for Carson’s “campaign”, a campaign which doesn’t really exist:

Two grown men running for president met in a storage closet last night.

The meeting, called by Ted Cruz in an attempt to mend fences with Ben Carson ahead of the South Carolina primary, was held on Thursday night before the Conservative Review convention. The two huddled in the unusual venue for nearly 20 to 25 minutes, as Carson’s Secret Service detail stood outside, according to a Republican operative who witnessed the strange scene.

Carson, whose campaign has spent the weeks after Iowa blasting Cruz for lying to voters in the Hawkeye State, agreed to meet him for five minutes, according to a source close to Carson’s campaign, to try to put to bed the issue of his dirty campaign tricks in Iowa, during which Cruz’s campaign told caucus-goers that Carson had dropped out of the race.

Carson’s campaign confirmed the meeting—which was was supposed to be short and off-the-record—and blamed the Cruz campaign for leaking the fact that it occurred in an attempt to rectify his public image.

Given previous opportunities to accept responsibility for his actions, Cruz blamed a report from CNN, alleging that it misled his campaign into thinking that the former neurosurgeon was no longer in the presidential contest. In the weeks after the Iowa caucus, the 2016 Committee, a PAC affiliated with Carson, has spent a great deal of time fundraising off of Cruz’s lie.

Cruz has been under fire since Iowa from Donald Trump, Carson, and now Marco Rubio for what they call dirty campaign tricks. Most recently the Rubio campaign slammed Cruz for a ridiculous photoshopped image that depicted Marco Rubio shaking (left) hands with President Obama.

“We weren’t going to comment to the press on it, but it seems pretty clear that the other party involved had a different agenda,” Jason Osborne, senior communications strategist for Carson’s campaign, told The Daily Beast. “How else could we perceive that to be?”

He said that he was informed late about the meeting and didn’t have time to prepare Carson at all. It “did not go well.”

The meeting, which took place in a storage closet across from a bathroom at the convention center on Thursday, ended with Carson saying “we agree to disagree.”

“We disagree on accountability and culpability,” is how Carson put it, according to Osborne.

A Republican operative told The Daily Beast that the Cruz campaign wanted to have the conversation on “neutral ground,” so they would not allow for it to take place in Carson’s green room, which was right next to Cruz’s.

Reporters were allegedly already calling the Carson campaign as the meeting was going on, with the two full-grown men in a closet that allegedly had no chairs, which indicates that someone leaked details in advance of The Daily Beast being informed about the meeting.

Secret Service members were guarding the door and simply said to a Republican operative in the hallway: “Yeah, they’re in that closet.”

It is unclear if there were lights inside of it.

The Secret Service is still guarding Carson for no good reason. I don’t know if Cruz has similar protection but I was unable to find any reporting that he does.

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