Just learned yesterday of the sad news that Peter Bergman, a founding member of Firesign Theater, died March 9 of leukemia.
I remember years ago when my wife, who never quite grasped the joys of Firesign Theater, realized that when my friend Craig and I were saying things to each other that seemed to her utterly baffling, that we were quoting from the albums.
So while he didn't win on "Beat the Reaper," perhaps Peter has reached the Antelope Freeway exit. RIP, guy. The world is a bit more linear without you. Unfortunately.
The Adventures of Nick Danger, Third Eye
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Left Side of the Aisle #48 - Part 5
Everything You Need to Know: The extreme danger to our freedoms in just three sentences.
A bit of introduction here. I recently spoke with a man who had seen some of the show. He told me he was concerned about Barack Obama "taking away our freedom." I remarked to my wife later that he was right, but not in the way he intended. He was referring to things like the new health insurance law and no, that is not taking away your freedom no matter how many times Sean Hannity tells you otherwise.
However, PHC* is threatening our freedom. So herewith, everything you need to know about the danger of the moment in just three sentences.
1. I spoke last week about a recent speech by Attorney General Eric Holder laying out a claimed legal rationale for the authority of the president to order the murder of a US citizen abroad without the need for any outside review of any sort.
2. On March 7, during his testimony before the House Appropriations Committee regarding his agency's budget, FBI Director Robert Mueller was asked if Holder's logic could also be applied to a citizen inside the US.
3. Mueller said he didn't know - that is, he didn't know if the president has the legal authority to order the extrajudicial murder of an American citizen on American soil.
And that is everything you need to know.
Footnote: This was not in the show due to lack of time, but it's surely worth including. Asked about Mueller's response, the DOJ said the answer is "pretty straightforward. ... The legal framework laid out applies to US citizens outside of the US."
Um, we know what Holder said. The question was is if that logic could apply elsewhere. It is more than a little disturbing that the DOJ did not answer that question.
*PHC = President Hopey-Changey
Sources:
http://jonathanturley.org/2012/03/08/mueller-i-am-not-sure-whether-i-now-can-kill-citizens-in-the-united-states-under-obamas-kill-doctrine/
http://rt.com/usa/news/fbi-mueller-assassination-holder-193/
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/03/07/mueller-have-to-check-with-holder-whether-targeted-killing-rule-is-outside-us/?test=latestnews
http://www.examiner.com/human-rights-in-national/ndaa-s-cia-military-targeted-killings-of-innocent-americans
A bit of introduction here. I recently spoke with a man who had seen some of the show. He told me he was concerned about Barack Obama "taking away our freedom." I remarked to my wife later that he was right, but not in the way he intended. He was referring to things like the new health insurance law and no, that is not taking away your freedom no matter how many times Sean Hannity tells you otherwise.
However, PHC* is threatening our freedom. So herewith, everything you need to know about the danger of the moment in just three sentences.
1. I spoke last week about a recent speech by Attorney General Eric Holder laying out a claimed legal rationale for the authority of the president to order the murder of a US citizen abroad without the need for any outside review of any sort.
2. On March 7, during his testimony before the House Appropriations Committee regarding his agency's budget, FBI Director Robert Mueller was asked if Holder's logic could also be applied to a citizen inside the US.
3. Mueller said he didn't know - that is, he didn't know if the president has the legal authority to order the extrajudicial murder of an American citizen on American soil.
And that is everything you need to know.
Footnote: This was not in the show due to lack of time, but it's surely worth including. Asked about Mueller's response, the DOJ said the answer is "pretty straightforward. ... The legal framework laid out applies to US citizens outside of the US."
Um, we know what Holder said. The question was is if that logic could apply elsewhere. It is more than a little disturbing that the DOJ did not answer that question.
*PHC = President Hopey-Changey
Sources:
http://jonathanturley.org/2012/03/08/mueller-i-am-not-sure-whether-i-now-can-kill-citizens-in-the-united-states-under-obamas-kill-doctrine/
http://rt.com/usa/news/fbi-mueller-assassination-holder-193/
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/03/07/mueller-have-to-check-with-holder-whether-targeted-killing-rule-is-outside-us/?test=latestnews
http://www.examiner.com/human-rights-in-national/ndaa-s-cia-military-targeted-killings-of-innocent-americans
Left Side of the Aisle #48 - Part 4
Afghanistan: Time to get out - now.I haven't talked much about Afghanistan; one reason is that it's hard, even emotionally painful, to think about it. But some recent events have brought it to a focus that can't be ignored.
This is our longest war: about ten and a-half years now, since October 2001. The longest war in our history. Some 90,000 US troops are there now, and by current plans we will have some there more than two and a-half years from now, until the end of 2014. And even that date comes with an asterisk: There are ongoing talks with the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai for a "strategic partnership agreement" that would involve keeping US troops - some reports I have seen say it could be up to 25,000 - in Afghanistan for another 10 years, until 2024. They just wouldn't be called "combat" troops, so I guess that makes it okay.
The war has cost over $500 billion. Over 1900 US troops have been killed; nearly 3000 NATO troops in total have died in the war.
But that raises the first thing that causes me that pain: Whenever you see media reports of casualty figures, that's it: US deaths and sometimes those of other NATO forces. What about the Afghans? Don't they have a military? Haven't their soldiers died? Why are they invisible?
You actually have to dig some to discover that according to the Congressional Research Service, as of the end of January, over 6,000 Afghan soldiers and police have been killed in the war - more than twice as many as NATO forces and more than three times as many as the US. Yet those deaths very rarely gets mentioned. They just don’t count.
And even then, something missing: civilians. How many Afghan civilians have been killed? Do you know? I can guarantee that whatever number is in your head, whatever you might be thinking, it's just a guess. You have no idea - because no one does. For the first six years after our invasion, from 2001 through 2006, no one kept track of civilian deaths. It was not until 2007 that anyone start trying to keep count. Those figures say that since 2007, 12,000 have been killed.
Again, you have to actively dig to find that number. And something else: I absolutely guarantee you that if you do search out that number, you will at that same time be told that most civilian deaths are caused by "the anti-government forces." As if it mattered to the dead who pulled the trigger - especially when it is our presence there that is causing the violence. It may surprise you to learn that we are seen not as saviors or liberators, but as invaders, as occupiers. And that's assuming the death figures are accurate: At a conference between military leaders of NATO forces and Afghan politicians and security experts that was held in Afghanistan on March 4, claims that insurgents caused 77% of civilian deaths were greeted with scorn and called laughable.
But wait - those figures must be right. After all, we said it. Besides, whenever we kill civilians, it's a "mistake," a "regrettable accident." One recent news article said the war had become "a series of US missteps and violent outbreaks." Note the passive voice on "violent outbreaks," which just sort of happen without any causative factor. Meanwhile, when we do something wrong, it's a "misstep." An "unfortunate incident." Like accidentally burning a Koran.
You know about this; I don't need to tell you about it. But there are a couple of things that you should understand. First, the riots were not about the burning of the Koran; that was just the proximate cause. It was, that is, the breaking point of built-up resentment and frustration.
As I believe it was Glenn Greenwald had it, we have occupied their country for more than a decade. We have killed what Gen. Stanley McChrystal himself called an “amazing number” of innocent Afghans in checkpoint shootings. We have repeatedly killed civilians in air strikes. We continue to imprison their citizens for years without charges amid credible reports of torture. Our soldiers, the pride of our nation, have shot Afghan civilians for fun, urinated on their corpses, and displayed them as trophies.
And we wonder why they don't like us.
Second is that to Muslims, the Koran is not just another holy book. Rather, as I have been given to understand it, the recited Koran invokes the “real presence" of God. It's suggested that rather than comparing it to the Bible, a better comparison would be to the consecrated host at the Catholic Mass, which believers regard as the body of the living Jesus Christ.
Which, by the way, raises something else for me. How did this happen? I can understand how it got burned: there's a pile of trash, you're soldiers, you're ordered to burn it, you burn it; you don't look at it to see what's in it. The question is, how did it get in trash? I supposed it may have been completely innocent, a pure accident, but it still seems to me that at some point someone had to have picked up this book - any book - and just decided to throw it in the trash. How do you do that? You don't even know what it is. It was probably in Pashto or one of the other languages of Afghanistan, so you can't read it. (At least I hope you can't read it, because if you can you know it's a Koran, which makes it worse.) How do you pick up a book and just decide to throw it in the trash? I just don't get that.
But maybe was entirely innocent. Maybe it was just another accident, another "unfortunate incident." Because they all are. Every "misstep" is an accident, a regrettable mistake. Either that, or it's some poor schmuck driven nuts by the pressures of war who guns down 16 civilians in cold blood in their own homes.
Again, you've heard about this; I don't need to tell you about it. But it does serve to bring up another thing about the war in Afghanistan that causes me pain.
A headline about this in the Boston "Globe" read "Shooting deaths of civilians complicate Afghanistan mission."
Yeah, because that's what's important about the murder of 16 people: It complicates "the mission." It's another "unwelcome challenge." Another article expressed concern that this could delay signing of the Strategic Partnership Agreement.
But don't worry, the Obama administration has vowed that the killings will not alter US plans for the war. Rather, they increase his determination to get us troops out of Afghanistan. Still, there must be no "rush to the exits" because the withdrawal must must be carried out in a responsible way even as the killing spree could be exploited by the Taliban to gain new recruits and anti-Americanism might deepen.
In other words, it's all about us. It's all about our plans, our intentions, our desires, and the plans, desires, and intentions of the people of Afghanistan don't even enter the picture except as a backdrop for our self-centered narrative, their lives little more than placeholders on our scorecard.
I don't care what you thought about the original invasion of Afghanistan; I know there are good people who supported it, people who wouldn’t and didn’t support any of other pointless wallows in blood of past few decades, and supported it because they believed the government of Afghanistan could be directly linked to 9/11 through its having allowed al-Qaeda to act freely within its borders. I'm not going to argue that. Because no matter what justification, stretched or otherwise, could have been offered in the fall of 2001 has long since been drowned out by the hum of the drones, the blasts of the mortars and the IEDs, and the shrieks of the wounded and the mourning. All there is left is the steady drip of blood and the slow grind of death amid the tatters and remnants of flesh. It is time - it is long, long past time - to just stop.
that's not even a radical position. A new ABC News/Washington Post poll says that 54% of the US say US troops should withdraw from Afghanistan on schedule no matter what. Some 60% say the war has not been worth fighting. Only 30% believe the Afghan public supports the US mission there. Even conservatives agree: George Will has been calling for withdrawal for nearly three years. A year ago, March 2011, 16 House Republicans joined a failed effort to require withdrawal in 60 days; 26 voted in favor of a narrowly-defeated a bill to scale back the war.
It's time to stop. And I don't mean in two and a-half years. I mean now.
Sources:
http://icasualties.org/oef/
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2012/03/12/shooting-deaths-civilians-complicate-afghanistan-mission/9tyWgD0NV4SHdHlEDdFEWO/story.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/20/afghan-war-casualties_n_1161127.html
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R41084.pdf
http://iwpr.net/report-news/afghans-dispute-nato-casualty-figures
http://news.yahoo.com/afghans-urge-exit-killings-u-says-timetable-unchanged-231844103.html
http://news.yahoo.com/massacre-makes-obama-more-determined-exit-afghanistan-001919619.html
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/obama-no-rush-exits-afghanistan-rampage-225448818.html
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/alleged-afghanistan-massacre-republicans-questioning-war-effort-153152684.html
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/03/six-in-10-criticize-war-in-afghanistan-most-favor-abandoning-training-mission/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/behind-the-numbers/post/poll-few-in-us-sense-afghan-support-for-war/2012/03/11/gIQAfj4S5R_blog.html
http://www.dir.salon.com/2012/02/26/the_causes_of_the_protests_in_afghanistan/singleton/
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2012/02/27/apologies-sound-empty/twkdPVnfmqRIyekGVwbfdJ/story.html
Left Side of the Aisle #48 - Part 3
Outrage of the Week: The continuing attack on choice and birth control.
We have seen another week of attacks on women, on women's ability to make choices, on women's autonomy. Attacks, more specifically here, not only on the choice to terminate a pregnancy but on the choice of pregnancy - attacks, that is, on birth control.
This last year, 2011, was a big year for the "keep 'em barefoot and pregnant" crowd. State legislators introduced over 1,000 anti-abortion laws, of which 135 passed. Seven states either defunded or made moves toward defunding Planned Parenthood and GOPpers used Planned Parenthood as a bargaining chip during budget negotiations. They also introduced mandatory ultrasound bills, tried to narrow the definition of rape to include only "forcible rape," whatever the hell that's supposed to mean, and barred the District of Columbia from using its own locally-raised funds to help low-income women pay for abortions.
More recently came the failed attempt to overturn the new mandate for full coverage of contraception under health insurance by way of amendment which would have allowed employers to deny any employee any kind of health coverage for vague "moral reasons." Despite the breathtaking reach of that language, no one on either side denied that the real target was birth control.
But this is the Outrage of the Week, so here are a few recent examples: On March 8, International Women's Day no less, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution held a hearing on bill that would make it illegal for anyone other than a parent to accompany a young woman across a state line to get an abortion - even if her parents are abusive, even if they are absent.
In Kansas, there is a bill making its way through the legislature that would bar women who obtained abortions from deducting the costs on their taxes as a medical expense and - get this - would levy a sales tax on the procedure. There is no exemption even for rape victims.
The sponsor of the bill is one Lance Kinzer. He did not return call for comment from the media. A staffer said he rarely speaks to the press; if this is kind of crap he normally produces I can see why.
But this is what really got me. I admit didn't know about this, I only learned it though reading the articles about the latest developments and I was truly shocked to discover that what I'm about to tell you is already true in nine states.
Last week the Arizona state Senate passed a bill that will prohibit medical malpractice lawsuits against doctors who withhold information from a woman if they think that information could cause her to have an abortion.
I'll say it again: Under this bill, a doctor could knowingly and willfully withhold information from a pregnant patient if that doctor thinks that information might move her to have an abortion - could knowingly and willfully withhold relevant medical information from a patient and be completely free from any possibility of a malpractice suit.
What's more, if as the result of that withholding of information a child is born with a disability, the doctor couldn't be sued on that basis, either. Put more bluntly, to keep you from seeking an abortion, doctors can lie through their teeth to you - and get away with it.
The Arizona legislator who sponsored the bill said it was because claimants shouldn't be able to blame a doctor for a baby born with disabilities. But best way to prevent that is not to hide information but to reveal it, to tell the women that child will be born with these sort of disabilities, so that she - hopefully together with her significant other is there is one - so she can decide whether or not to proceed with the pregnancy. So when the child is born with disabilities, she knew it going in and was prepared for it. This bill is not about sparing doctors frivolous suits. That's crap. It's a lie.
Shockingly, nine states - Pennsylvania, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Idaho, Indiana, Missouri, Minnesota, and North Carolina - already have such laws on the books. It is also a provision of the Kansas law just mentioned. The Pennsylvania law was upheld by a federal appeals court!
I can't get my head around the idea that it can be lawful, it can be proper, it can be legitimate, it can be decent, to empower doctors to actively lie to patients not to protect the patient but to enable doctors to force their sense of "morality" on their patients no matter what the patient might desire or believe.
So I know some of this not new, but it is still an outrage - this or any other week.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/08/kansas-abortion-bill-sales-tax_n_1327301.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/08/international-womens-day-congress-abortion_n_1332143.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/09/wrongful-birth-bill-arizona-senate-abortion-bill_n_1335117.html
We have seen another week of attacks on women, on women's ability to make choices, on women's autonomy. Attacks, more specifically here, not only on the choice to terminate a pregnancy but on the choice of pregnancy - attacks, that is, on birth control.
This last year, 2011, was a big year for the "keep 'em barefoot and pregnant" crowd. State legislators introduced over 1,000 anti-abortion laws, of which 135 passed. Seven states either defunded or made moves toward defunding Planned Parenthood and GOPpers used Planned Parenthood as a bargaining chip during budget negotiations. They also introduced mandatory ultrasound bills, tried to narrow the definition of rape to include only "forcible rape," whatever the hell that's supposed to mean, and barred the District of Columbia from using its own locally-raised funds to help low-income women pay for abortions.
More recently came the failed attempt to overturn the new mandate for full coverage of contraception under health insurance by way of amendment which would have allowed employers to deny any employee any kind of health coverage for vague "moral reasons." Despite the breathtaking reach of that language, no one on either side denied that the real target was birth control.
But this is the Outrage of the Week, so here are a few recent examples: On March 8, International Women's Day no less, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution held a hearing on bill that would make it illegal for anyone other than a parent to accompany a young woman across a state line to get an abortion - even if her parents are abusive, even if they are absent.
In Kansas, there is a bill making its way through the legislature that would bar women who obtained abortions from deducting the costs on their taxes as a medical expense and - get this - would levy a sales tax on the procedure. There is no exemption even for rape victims.
The sponsor of the bill is one Lance Kinzer. He did not return call for comment from the media. A staffer said he rarely speaks to the press; if this is kind of crap he normally produces I can see why.
But this is what really got me. I admit didn't know about this, I only learned it though reading the articles about the latest developments and I was truly shocked to discover that what I'm about to tell you is already true in nine states.
Last week the Arizona state Senate passed a bill that will prohibit medical malpractice lawsuits against doctors who withhold information from a woman if they think that information could cause her to have an abortion.
I'll say it again: Under this bill, a doctor could knowingly and willfully withhold information from a pregnant patient if that doctor thinks that information might move her to have an abortion - could knowingly and willfully withhold relevant medical information from a patient and be completely free from any possibility of a malpractice suit.
What's more, if as the result of that withholding of information a child is born with a disability, the doctor couldn't be sued on that basis, either. Put more bluntly, to keep you from seeking an abortion, doctors can lie through their teeth to you - and get away with it.
The Arizona legislator who sponsored the bill said it was because claimants shouldn't be able to blame a doctor for a baby born with disabilities. But best way to prevent that is not to hide information but to reveal it, to tell the women that child will be born with these sort of disabilities, so that she - hopefully together with her significant other is there is one - so she can decide whether or not to proceed with the pregnancy. So when the child is born with disabilities, she knew it going in and was prepared for it. This bill is not about sparing doctors frivolous suits. That's crap. It's a lie.
Shockingly, nine states - Pennsylvania, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Idaho, Indiana, Missouri, Minnesota, and North Carolina - already have such laws on the books. It is also a provision of the Kansas law just mentioned. The Pennsylvania law was upheld by a federal appeals court!
I can't get my head around the idea that it can be lawful, it can be proper, it can be legitimate, it can be decent, to empower doctors to actively lie to patients not to protect the patient but to enable doctors to force their sense of "morality" on their patients no matter what the patient might desire or believe.
So I know some of this not new, but it is still an outrage - this or any other week.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/08/kansas-abortion-bill-sales-tax_n_1327301.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/08/international-womens-day-congress-abortion_n_1332143.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/09/wrongful-birth-bill-arizona-senate-abortion-bill_n_1335117.html
Left Side of the Aisle #48 - Part 2
Good News #2: Voter photo ID laws in Texas and Indiana have been blocked, the first by the DOJ, the second by state courts.
The other good news is a two-fer. Two more states have joined South Carolina in seeing their reactionary attempts to interfere with the ability of poo and minority communities to vote blocked, at least temporarily.
First, on March 12 the Obama admin blocked implementation of the new law in Texas requiring voters to show photo identification before they can vote.
The Justice Department said data from Texas showed almost 11% of Hispanic voters, a rate more than twice that of non-Hispanic voters, don’t have the required photo ID and plans to mitigate those concerns by expanding the availability of such IDs are "incomplete."
Significantly, the DOJ also said that Texas did not submit any evidence of cases of voter impersonation which are not already addressed under existing state laws - that it, the state produced no evidence that the law would accomplish anything other than suppress the Hispanic vote.
Second, also on March 12, in Wisconsin, Circuit Judge Richard Niess issued a permanent injunction barring enforcement of that state’s new voter ID law, which required a government-issued photo ID in order to vote. Declaring that “Voter fraud is no more poisonous to our democracy than voter suppression,” Niess held that the Wisconsin law unconstitutionally burdens the rights of eligible citizens and thus could not stand.
The simple fact is, these laws are about one thing and one thing only: hindering ability of the poor and minorities to vote solely and precisely because the reactionaries know those populations more likely to vote for Democrats than Republicans. They are not about preventing fraud or protecting the integrity of the vote or any of rest of the bilge they spew out. They are about power. Period.
In as editorial, the Washington Post noted that Virginia might be in trouble on this same score: Like South Carolina and Texas, Virginia is among the states whose voting laws are subject to DOJ approval because of their past history of voter discrimination - and while it's new voter ID law, passed by the legislature but as of this moment not yet signed by the governor, is not as bad as these others, it has many of the same failings.
But for me, this was the real takeaway from that editorial:
Sources:
http://news.yahoo.com/obama-administration-objects-texas-voter-id-law-161037385.html
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-03-12/wisconsin-voter-identification-law-is-blocked-by-second-state-court-judge
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/voter-id-rules-a-solution-in-search-of-a-problem/2012/03/12/gIQA8m8D8R_story.html
The other good news is a two-fer. Two more states have joined South Carolina in seeing their reactionary attempts to interfere with the ability of poo and minority communities to vote blocked, at least temporarily.
First, on March 12 the Obama admin blocked implementation of the new law in Texas requiring voters to show photo identification before they can vote.
The Justice Department said data from Texas showed almost 11% of Hispanic voters, a rate more than twice that of non-Hispanic voters, don’t have the required photo ID and plans to mitigate those concerns by expanding the availability of such IDs are "incomplete."
Significantly, the DOJ also said that Texas did not submit any evidence of cases of voter impersonation which are not already addressed under existing state laws - that it, the state produced no evidence that the law would accomplish anything other than suppress the Hispanic vote.
Second, also on March 12, in Wisconsin, Circuit Judge Richard Niess issued a permanent injunction barring enforcement of that state’s new voter ID law, which required a government-issued photo ID in order to vote. Declaring that “Voter fraud is no more poisonous to our democracy than voter suppression,” Niess held that the Wisconsin law unconstitutionally burdens the rights of eligible citizens and thus could not stand.
The simple fact is, these laws are about one thing and one thing only: hindering ability of the poor and minorities to vote solely and precisely because the reactionaries know those populations more likely to vote for Democrats than Republicans. They are not about preventing fraud or protecting the integrity of the vote or any of rest of the bilge they spew out. They are about power. Period.
In as editorial, the Washington Post noted that Virginia might be in trouble on this same score: Like South Carolina and Texas, Virginia is among the states whose voting laws are subject to DOJ approval because of their past history of voter discrimination - and while it's new voter ID law, passed by the legislature but as of this moment not yet signed by the governor, is not as bad as these others, it has many of the same failings.
But for me, this was the real takeaway from that editorial:
In a conversation with senior Virginia GOP lawmakers recently, we asked if there was any evidence of a pattern of voting fraud in state elections that would justify more stringent voter ID rules. One state senator said he had “heard” of instances of fraud. We asked our question again: Was there a pattern of fraud that would raise systemic doubts about the integrity of Virginia elections? The senator said no. None of his fellow Republicans contradicted him.They're not even pretending any more that these laws are about preventing fraud.
Sources:
http://news.yahoo.com/obama-administration-objects-texas-voter-id-law-161037385.html
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-03-12/wisconsin-voter-identification-law-is-blocked-by-second-state-court-judge
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/voter-id-rules-a-solution-in-search-of-a-problem/2012/03/12/gIQA8m8D8R_story.html
Left Side of the Aisle #48 - Part 1
Good News #1: The Senate has refused to fast-track the Keystone XL pipeline.
Last Thursday, the Senate rejected a GOPper attempt to fast-track the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. The proposed amendment to a transportation bill would have stripped the State Department of its authority to approve the pipeline (which it has because the route crosses an interntional border), handing that power to Congress.
This pipeline would transport tar sands from Alberta, Canada to refineries in Texas. I've talked about this before. Tar sands are about the ugliest, messiest, dirtiest way to get oil there is; the stuff is so thick, gummy, and sludgy it has to be heated and mixed with water just to get it to flow though the pipes.
Supporters of the project prate on about two things: First, "It means jobs. I won't call that a lie exactly, but it is misleading: According to current independent estimates, it will create a small number, perhaps as few as 2500, jobs - and they will be temporary jobs. On second thought, bearing in mind that a good definition of a lie is a statement made with the intent to deceive, yeah, the talk about jobs is a lie.
The other claim, that the pipeline would "reduce our dependency on foreign oil," is a lie, no definition required. First, this is Canadian oil. It is foreign oil. I know there's that old Goldie Hawn movie where she says Canada is "kind of attached," but Canada is still a foreign country.
Second, oil is sold on a world market. The idea that "refined in Texas equals stays in the US" is inane. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying or has no clue what they are talking about. There is no third option here.
Bottom line is yeah, anything that hinders that pipeline is good news.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/08/keystone-xl-senate-defeats-bill_n_1333108.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2011/11/elect-this.html
Last Thursday, the Senate rejected a GOPper attempt to fast-track the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. The proposed amendment to a transportation bill would have stripped the State Department of its authority to approve the pipeline (which it has because the route crosses an interntional border), handing that power to Congress.
This pipeline would transport tar sands from Alberta, Canada to refineries in Texas. I've talked about this before. Tar sands are about the ugliest, messiest, dirtiest way to get oil there is; the stuff is so thick, gummy, and sludgy it has to be heated and mixed with water just to get it to flow though the pipes.
Supporters of the project prate on about two things: First, "It means jobs. I won't call that a lie exactly, but it is misleading: According to current independent estimates, it will create a small number, perhaps as few as 2500, jobs - and they will be temporary jobs. On second thought, bearing in mind that a good definition of a lie is a statement made with the intent to deceive, yeah, the talk about jobs is a lie.
The other claim, that the pipeline would "reduce our dependency on foreign oil," is a lie, no definition required. First, this is Canadian oil. It is foreign oil. I know there's that old Goldie Hawn movie where she says Canada is "kind of attached," but Canada is still a foreign country.
Second, oil is sold on a world market. The idea that "refined in Texas equals stays in the US" is inane. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying or has no clue what they are talking about. There is no third option here.
Bottom line is yeah, anything that hinders that pipeline is good news.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/08/keystone-xl-senate-defeats-bill_n_1333108.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2011/11/elect-this.html
Left Side of the Aisle #48
This week:
Good news #1: Senate refuses to fast-track Keystone XL pipeline.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/08/keystone-xl-senate-defeats-bill_n_1333108.html
Good News #2: Voter photo ID laws in Texas and Indiana have been blocked, the first by the DOJ, the second by state courts.
http://news.yahoo.com/obama-administration-objects-texas-voter-id-law-161037385.html
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-03-12/wisconsin-voter-identification-law-is-blocked-by-second-state-court-judge
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/voter-id-rules-a-solution-in-search-of-a-problem/2012/03/12/gIQA8m8D8R_story.html
Outrage of the Week: The continuing attack on choice and birth control.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/08/kansas-abortion-bill-sales-tax_n_1327301.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/08/international-womens-day-congress-abortion_n_1332143.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/09/wrongful-birth-bill-arizona-senate-abortion-bill_n_1335117.html
Afghanistan: Time to get out - now.
http://icasualties.org/oef/
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2012/03/12/shooting-deaths-civilians-complicate-afghanistan-mission/9tyWgD0NV4SHdHlEDdFEWO/story.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/20/afghan-war-casualties_n_1161127.html
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R41084.pdf
http://iwpr.net/report-news/afghans-dispute-nato-casualty-figures
http://news.yahoo.com/afghans-urge-exit-killings-u-says-timetable-unchanged-231844103.html
http://news.yahoo.com/massacre-makes-obama-more-determined-exit-afghanistan-001919619.html
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/obama-no-rush-exits-afghanistan-rampage-225448818.html
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/alleged-afghanistan-massacre-republicans-questioning-war-effort-153152684.html
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/03/six-in-10-criticize-war-in-afghanistan-most-favor-abandoning-training-mission/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/behind-the-numbers/post/poll-few-in-us-sense-afghan-support-for-war/2012/03/11/gIQAfj4S5R_blog.html
http://www.dir.salon.com/2012/02/26/the_causes_of_the_protests_in_afghanistan/singleton/
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2012/02/27/apologies-sound-empty/twkdPVnfmqRIyekGVwbfdJ/story.html
Everything You Need to Know: The extreme danger to our freedoms in just three sentences.
http://jonathanturley.org/2012/03/08/mueller-i-am-not-sure-whether-i-now-can-kill-citizens-in-the-united-states-under-obamas-kill-doctrine/
http://rt.com/usa/news/fbi-mueller-assassination-holder-193/
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/03/07/mueller-have-to-check-with-holder-whether-targeted-killing-rule-is-outside-us/
http://www.examiner.com/human-rights-in-national/ndaa-s-cia-military-targeted-killings-of-innocent-americans
Thursday, March 08, 2012
Left Side of the Aisle #47 - Part 5
RIP Scroogle
A brief item here to offer an RIP to a website. It was called Scroogle. The name came from the idea that it was a "Google scraper."
Google has been notorious for obtaining and maintaining information about the searches of people who use Google. Google always has been - and remains - an information vacuum cleaner, sucking up whatever it can. Those of us still trying to preserve what online privacy we can were loath to use it.
What Scroogle - which was a non-profit outfit - had done since 2003 was to take a search request entered on its site and send it to Google, "scrape" off the top results, and return them to the Scroogle user. Thus your search would appear to Google as if it had come from Scroogle, not you, so you remained invisible to Google.
Scroogle proudly proclaimed "We don't use cookies, we don't retain search terms, and logs are deleted within 48 hours."
Scroogle began to have more and more trouble with Google after 2010, as Google increasing did what is called throttling, with Google detecting the higher level of traffic coming from Scroogle and blocking its access for about 90 minutes. That is, Google essentially regarded Scroogle as some kind of spambot.
That was a hassle but it was perhaps survivable. What killed Scroogle was a series of DDOS's, or "Directed Denial of Service" attacks where someone, using an automated system, directs so many inquiries at a site so quickly that the attacked site grinds to a halt, drowning in a backlog of still-to-be-answered inquiries. The attacks went on for days on end until finally the owner of the site, Daniel Brandt, pulled the plug.
There are other sites that offer privacy-protecting searches; I've started using one called Duckduckgo.com. But Scroogle was a five-star player. It's passing deserves a bit of notice.
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scroogle
http://searchengineland.com/scroogles-gone-heres-who-still-offers-private-searching-112275
http://searchengineland.com/scroogle-org-is-gone-forever-says-site-owner-112245
A brief item here to offer an RIP to a website. It was called Scroogle. The name came from the idea that it was a "Google scraper."
Google has been notorious for obtaining and maintaining information about the searches of people who use Google. Google always has been - and remains - an information vacuum cleaner, sucking up whatever it can. Those of us still trying to preserve what online privacy we can were loath to use it.
What Scroogle - which was a non-profit outfit - had done since 2003 was to take a search request entered on its site and send it to Google, "scrape" off the top results, and return them to the Scroogle user. Thus your search would appear to Google as if it had come from Scroogle, not you, so you remained invisible to Google.
Scroogle proudly proclaimed "We don't use cookies, we don't retain search terms, and logs are deleted within 48 hours."
Scroogle began to have more and more trouble with Google after 2010, as Google increasing did what is called throttling, with Google detecting the higher level of traffic coming from Scroogle and blocking its access for about 90 minutes. That is, Google essentially regarded Scroogle as some kind of spambot.
That was a hassle but it was perhaps survivable. What killed Scroogle was a series of DDOS's, or "Directed Denial of Service" attacks where someone, using an automated system, directs so many inquiries at a site so quickly that the attacked site grinds to a halt, drowning in a backlog of still-to-be-answered inquiries. The attacks went on for days on end until finally the owner of the site, Daniel Brandt, pulled the plug.
There are other sites that offer privacy-protecting searches; I've started using one called Duckduckgo.com. But Scroogle was a five-star player. It's passing deserves a bit of notice.
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scroogle
http://searchengineland.com/scroogles-gone-heres-who-still-offers-private-searching-112275
http://searchengineland.com/scroogle-org-is-gone-forever-says-site-owner-112245
Left Side of the Aisle #47 - Part 4
Eric Holder says PHC* can order you to be killed
So last week Attorney General Eric Holder gave a speech at Northwestern University to explain why it is legal for the president to issue an order to have you killed.
This goes back, of course, to the case of Anwar al-Awlaki, a natural-born American citizen living in Yemen. He was assassinated in drone-attack this past September. He was killed amid US government accusations that he was involved with al-Qaeda and had been in contact with some 9/11 hijackers and the so-called "Underwear Bomber," Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab - but no proof or any sort, no evidence, was offered and there certainly was nothing that any normal person would regard as the due process that if nothing else would seem would be his due as an American citizen.
The administration still has not released the memo containing the claimed legal grounds justifying the attack, despite requests from members of Congress and FOIA requests from the ACLU and the New York Times. But Holder had a go at offering what might be called an unclassified version.
And what was the argument? In sum total, it was "It's legal because we say it is." Or, as Richard Nixon once said, "When the president does it, it's legal."
In fact, contrary to what you might have thought, according to the amazing Mr. H the idea of "due process" does not mean that anyone can offer a check on this executive power to execute executions, does not mean the White House has to show its evidence to anyone, does not mean that anyone outside the president's circle need be involved at any point.
“Due process and judicial process are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security,” Holder said. “The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process.” You could almost hear the echo effect being raised as he intoned the phrase "national security."
So what does constitute due process, according to Mr. H? When the Executive Branch, meaning the president - again alone - decides the accused is guilty.
In the case of national security, when the prosecution decides you are guilty, that is the end of the matter. No need to present evidence, no need for any sort of outside process, no need for any independent judgment, no need for anything that could in any way be called a trial, even a trial in the court of public opinion. There simply is nothing to restrain the president either in making that declaration of guilt or acting on it in the way he or she prefers. The president is the prosecutor, the judge, the jury, and the executioner all in one.
Oh, but surely I'm being unfair, because Holder insisted there is a system of “robust oversight” - which consists largely of telling some selected members of Congress what has been decided or done after it already has been decided or done. I'm reminded of the fact that there is another meaning to the word "oversight."
Still, you have to understaaaand, he pleaded. He quoted JFK's line about “defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger” and declared we are again in "an hour of danger." "We are a nation at war" and "Where national security operations are at stake, due process takes into account the realities of combat."
But the "war" here is one without a specific target - "terrorism" hardly constitutes a specific target - and without geographic limit, and with no way to determine what constitutes "victory." It is literally a war without end. It's a war in no particular place, it's everywhere all the time, a war then in which almost anything can be justified as "combat," as "acts of war," as occurring "on the battlefield" and thus beyond the reach of any law other than the so-called "law" of war.
More Holder: "We must also recognize that there are instances where our government has the clear authority - and, I would argue, the responsibility - to defend the United States through the appropriate and lawful use of lethal force.”
Now, I doubt any non-pacifist would disagree that the use of lethal force is sometimes necessary for legitimate national self-defense. The question is, who decides what is "appropriate" and when it's appropriate? Who decides and how do you decide who decides?
The point here is that by “government,” Holder means the president, alone, whoever that is. The president is, quite literally, the decider over life and death. As one commentator said, if the vice-president disagrees, tough. Shoulda been top of the ticket. If the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court thinks preaching against the United States is not a capital offense, again, tough. Shoulda taken up politics instead of the law. If the Congress objects that the president’s “surgical strikes” kill too many random men, women, and children, well, they can cry me a river. If the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings expresses concern, well, who cares about him, anyway?
In fact, it's not even desirable to get outside input because time is of the essence! We must act now! Because, according to Holder, this authority to order murder will only be used against someone who is an "imminent threat." Which could have been a little reassuring if it weren't for the fact that Holder also said that "the evaluation of whether an individual presents an 'imminent threat' incorporates considerations of the relevant window of opportunity to act."
Which if it means anything at all means that being an "imminent threat" does not require that you are about to launch an attack, it does not even require that you are planning anything, it requires only that a-we think you will be planning something sometime in the future and b-we have an opening to get you now.
In fact, Holder said as much: "The Constitution does not require the president to delay action until some theoretical end stage of planning when the precise time, place, and manner of an attack become clear."
When George Bush said stuff like that, we screamed about the dangers of pre-emptive war. In fact, Shrub's team did say stuff like that - remember I think it was Condoleeza Rice justifying the coming invasion of Iraq on the grounds that "we can't wait for the final proof to come in the form of a mushroom cloud?" Holder's language is more nuanced, but the meaning is the same: We don't need no stinking proof.
So that is the Obama administration's position: Not only do we not need to show proof, we don't even need to have proof. All we have to do is believe. And our belief is all the legal justification that we need to kill you.
But don't worry, if it turns out later we were wrong or that we killed a whole lot of innocent people along with you, we'll write a personal note of apology.
And speaking of apologies, I offer one to John Yoo.
Footnote: Here’s one more quote:
“As president, I will close Guantanamo, reject the Military Commissions Act, and adhere to the Geneva Conventions. Our Constitution and our Uniform Code of Military Justice provide a framework for dealing with the terrorists … Our Constitution works. We will again set an example for the world that the law is not subject to the whims of stubborn rulers, and that justice is not arbitrary.”
As I expect you guessed, those were the words of 2008 presidential candidate Barack Obama. Well, Guantanamo is still open, the military commissions are still going, and we have ignored the Geneva conventions. The stubborn rulers with their arbitrary justice are not so far distant in either space or time as we would like to tell ourselves.
*PHC = President Hopey-Changey
Sources:
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/03/holder_executive_branch_reviews_of_targeted_killings_count_as_due_process.php?ref=fpa
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/03/guest-post-attorney-general-holder-says-murder-is-legal.html
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2012/03/eric-holder-targeted-killing
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/eric-holder-drone-speech-7124146
So last week Attorney General Eric Holder gave a speech at Northwestern University to explain why it is legal for the president to issue an order to have you killed.
This goes back, of course, to the case of Anwar al-Awlaki, a natural-born American citizen living in Yemen. He was assassinated in drone-attack this past September. He was killed amid US government accusations that he was involved with al-Qaeda and had been in contact with some 9/11 hijackers and the so-called "Underwear Bomber," Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab - but no proof or any sort, no evidence, was offered and there certainly was nothing that any normal person would regard as the due process that if nothing else would seem would be his due as an American citizen.
The administration still has not released the memo containing the claimed legal grounds justifying the attack, despite requests from members of Congress and FOIA requests from the ACLU and the New York Times. But Holder had a go at offering what might be called an unclassified version.
And what was the argument? In sum total, it was "It's legal because we say it is." Or, as Richard Nixon once said, "When the president does it, it's legal."
In fact, contrary to what you might have thought, according to the amazing Mr. H the idea of "due process" does not mean that anyone can offer a check on this executive power to execute executions, does not mean the White House has to show its evidence to anyone, does not mean that anyone outside the president's circle need be involved at any point.
“Due process and judicial process are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security,” Holder said. “The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process.” You could almost hear the echo effect being raised as he intoned the phrase "national security."
So what does constitute due process, according to Mr. H? When the Executive Branch, meaning the president - again alone - decides the accused is guilty.
In the case of national security, when the prosecution decides you are guilty, that is the end of the matter. No need to present evidence, no need for any sort of outside process, no need for any independent judgment, no need for anything that could in any way be called a trial, even a trial in the court of public opinion. There simply is nothing to restrain the president either in making that declaration of guilt or acting on it in the way he or she prefers. The president is the prosecutor, the judge, the jury, and the executioner all in one.
Oh, but surely I'm being unfair, because Holder insisted there is a system of “robust oversight” - which consists largely of telling some selected members of Congress what has been decided or done after it already has been decided or done. I'm reminded of the fact that there is another meaning to the word "oversight."
Still, you have to understaaaand, he pleaded. He quoted JFK's line about “defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger” and declared we are again in "an hour of danger." "We are a nation at war" and "Where national security operations are at stake, due process takes into account the realities of combat."
But the "war" here is one without a specific target - "terrorism" hardly constitutes a specific target - and without geographic limit, and with no way to determine what constitutes "victory." It is literally a war without end. It's a war in no particular place, it's everywhere all the time, a war then in which almost anything can be justified as "combat," as "acts of war," as occurring "on the battlefield" and thus beyond the reach of any law other than the so-called "law" of war.
More Holder: "We must also recognize that there are instances where our government has the clear authority - and, I would argue, the responsibility - to defend the United States through the appropriate and lawful use of lethal force.”
Now, I doubt any non-pacifist would disagree that the use of lethal force is sometimes necessary for legitimate national self-defense. The question is, who decides what is "appropriate" and when it's appropriate? Who decides and how do you decide who decides?
The point here is that by “government,” Holder means the president, alone, whoever that is. The president is, quite literally, the decider over life and death. As one commentator said, if the vice-president disagrees, tough. Shoulda been top of the ticket. If the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court thinks preaching against the United States is not a capital offense, again, tough. Shoulda taken up politics instead of the law. If the Congress objects that the president’s “surgical strikes” kill too many random men, women, and children, well, they can cry me a river. If the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings expresses concern, well, who cares about him, anyway?
In fact, it's not even desirable to get outside input because time is of the essence! We must act now! Because, according to Holder, this authority to order murder will only be used against someone who is an "imminent threat." Which could have been a little reassuring if it weren't for the fact that Holder also said that "the evaluation of whether an individual presents an 'imminent threat' incorporates considerations of the relevant window of opportunity to act."
Which if it means anything at all means that being an "imminent threat" does not require that you are about to launch an attack, it does not even require that you are planning anything, it requires only that a-we think you will be planning something sometime in the future and b-we have an opening to get you now.
In fact, Holder said as much: "The Constitution does not require the president to delay action until some theoretical end stage of planning when the precise time, place, and manner of an attack become clear."
When George Bush said stuff like that, we screamed about the dangers of pre-emptive war. In fact, Shrub's team did say stuff like that - remember I think it was Condoleeza Rice justifying the coming invasion of Iraq on the grounds that "we can't wait for the final proof to come in the form of a mushroom cloud?" Holder's language is more nuanced, but the meaning is the same: We don't need no stinking proof.
So that is the Obama administration's position: Not only do we not need to show proof, we don't even need to have proof. All we have to do is believe. And our belief is all the legal justification that we need to kill you.
But don't worry, if it turns out later we were wrong or that we killed a whole lot of innocent people along with you, we'll write a personal note of apology.
And speaking of apologies, I offer one to John Yoo.
Footnote: Here’s one more quote:
“As president, I will close Guantanamo, reject the Military Commissions Act, and adhere to the Geneva Conventions. Our Constitution and our Uniform Code of Military Justice provide a framework for dealing with the terrorists … Our Constitution works. We will again set an example for the world that the law is not subject to the whims of stubborn rulers, and that justice is not arbitrary.”
As I expect you guessed, those were the words of 2008 presidential candidate Barack Obama. Well, Guantanamo is still open, the military commissions are still going, and we have ignored the Geneva conventions. The stubborn rulers with their arbitrary justice are not so far distant in either space or time as we would like to tell ourselves.
*PHC = President Hopey-Changey
Sources:
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/03/holder_executive_branch_reviews_of_targeted_killings_count_as_due_process.php?ref=fpa
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/03/guest-post-attorney-general-holder-says-murder-is-legal.html
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2012/03/eric-holder-targeted-killing
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/eric-holder-drone-speech-7124146
Left Side of the Aisle #47 - Part 3
Outrage of the Week: the travails of the rich
A very quick OOTW this week.
While we’ve been selfishly worrying about affording health care, pay the mortgage or our rent, feeding our kids, and all the rest, we’ve been failing to realize how much tougher the rich have it.
Last Wednesday, February 29, Bloomberg News spent nearly 1700 words giving the 1% room to grouse about how tough it is to make it on $350,000 or more a year and whine about how “People who don’t have money don’t understand the stress" involved in, for example, having to give up a $7500 a year country club membership because your bonus was only $125,000 this year.
I could go on but I think the point is already made. Not everyone who makes over $350,000 a year - which is what puts you in the richest 1% - is a grasping, out-of-touch, scumbag with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement, but enough are. And those people are the ones who define the term "the 1%." And they are an outrage this or any other week.
Sources:
http://www.care2.com/causes/is-it-time-to-take-pity-on-the-rich.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-29/wall-street-bonus-withdrawal-means-trading-aspen-for-cheap-chex.html
A very quick OOTW this week.
While we’ve been selfishly worrying about affording health care, pay the mortgage or our rent, feeding our kids, and all the rest, we’ve been failing to realize how much tougher the rich have it.
Last Wednesday, February 29, Bloomberg News spent nearly 1700 words giving the 1% room to grouse about how tough it is to make it on $350,000 or more a year and whine about how “People who don’t have money don’t understand the stress" involved in, for example, having to give up a $7500 a year country club membership because your bonus was only $125,000 this year.
I could go on but I think the point is already made. Not everyone who makes over $350,000 a year - which is what puts you in the richest 1% - is a grasping, out-of-touch, scumbag with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement, but enough are. And those people are the ones who define the term "the 1%." And they are an outrage this or any other week.
Sources:
http://www.care2.com/causes/is-it-time-to-take-pity-on-the-rich.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-29/wall-street-bonus-withdrawal-means-trading-aspen-for-cheap-chex.html
Left Side of the Aisle #47 - Part 2
The misogyny of Rush Limbaugh and the right
[Note: I posted most of this just a couple of posts down; this is a somewhat expanded version of that which is also closer to what was on the show - including, um, cleaning up some language.]
Okay, much as I would like to never have to even mention right-wing blowhard Lush Dimblah, I can hardly not be among those taking note of my delight at his having put his foot in it big time.
Sandra Fluke is a thirty year old law student at Georgetown. She was to testify at a hearing before a House committee about insurance coverage of birth control, but the GOPper majority refused to allow her to. So the Dimcratic minority had their own hearing at which she testified. And the right wing propaganda machine went nuts, with Dimblah taking the lead.
For three days he called her a slut, a prostitute, said she is "having so much sex, it's amazing she can still walk," labeled her an "immoral, baseless, no-purpose-to-her life woman," said her parents should "go into hiding." The outcry that came in response to this stream of misogyny, undoubtedly to his surprise, was so massive that even he couldn't stand up to it, especially when his advertisers started deserting him in droves.
So Rust (not a mispronunciation, a reference to the contents of his skull) offered what some folks unfamiliar with the concept of "dictionary" called an "apology." No matter, he is still in free-fall. At last count, the total of advertisers who have cancelled is well over 30 and at least two stations have dropped him. The likelihood is that he will survive, but two important and related things have come out of this: One, his brand has been permanently damaged and two people will be less fearful of crossing him.
Others have covered this more than adequately, but I had a few quick thoughts that I haven't noted elsewhere (although maybe I just haven't looked in the right places).
1. If nothing else, it's gratifying to see that the "I was joking! Jeez! Doncha have a sense of humor?" crap won't - or at least won't always - fly anymore. That line has served as a Get Out of Jail Free card for all sorts of racist and sexist crap for far too long.
2. "Thirty years old, a student at Georgetown Law, who admits to having so much sex that she can't afford it anymore," he said. "She's having sex so frequently that she can't afford all the birth-control pills that she needs."
What the hell? Is Limburger really as abysmally ignorant as he comes on? Can any grown man be so uninformed, so totally out of the loop (and his mind), such a total twit as to think, as he apparently does, that the cost of birth control pills is directly related to how much sex you've having? The rational mind reels.
3. He also groused that his failing in his three days of vituperation - excuuuse me, "humor" - was that he "became like the people we oppose." That is, us. Now, it is true that those of us on the left can't claim we don't engage in name-calling - consider this post, for example - even though our name-calling in many cases would better be called mockery than name-calling.
No matter. The thing is, there is an important difference: When we go after people, it is all but exclusively the famous, the rich, the powerful, while all too often the right goes after people like Sandra Fluke: an ordinary private individual of no particular power or influence of who you would likely still be unaware if Darrell Issajerk had had the minimal brains required to allow her to testify in the first place. The language used by the opposing forces may often enough be similar - but the status of the targets is not.
4. This has been mentioned but I think not often or loud enough: How in blazes did requiring insurance companies to cover contraceptive care become "a new welfare program?" How did that become some kind of taxpayer subsidy for sex? This has become almost the fallback position of the right - I even got it in comments here. Bill O'Reilly took it up, making the same idiotic claim that having insurance cover birth control is somehow the government - that is, taxpayers - "paying for you to have sex." It makes no sense - not that what the right has to say often does.
5. Last but by no means least, an urgent message to the entire left half of the American political spectrum and most particularly to those who could actually be called progressive (rather than liberals re-branding themselves as "progressives" because they wanted to scuttle like the political cowards they are from the mean ol' righties going on about "the L-word"): Stop playing by the right wing's rules! Stop accepting their framing of the issue!
What raises this here is that much of the response on the left - I was going to say "defense of Sandra Fluke" but then I realized that there actually has been little of that because it was unnecessary because she did nothing requiring defending - but much of the response from the left has revolved around "Limbaugh doesn't understand that some medical conditions can require birth control for the woman's health." That's quite true, both parts: Some medical conditions are treated with birth control and Limbaugh doesn't understand that. But the argument has a flaw: It essentially concedes that wanting birth control in order to have sex without fear of pregnancy is something bad or shameful or in some way should not be addressed if not avoided entirely.
Screw that! (A particularly appropriate double entendre in this case.) So the right wing charge is that women are sexually active and get birth control to avoid getting pregnant? So freaking what? What, is this Armageddon? Are we going to see plagues of locusts? Are the mountains going to tremble, is the sky going to rip open, are the seas going to boil? Women want to have sex! Oh, the horror, the horror! Let there be wailing, gnashing of teeth, and rending of garments!
Yeah, we know the right has hang-ups about sex. No news there. Consider that the Republican Party of Laurens County, South Carolina wants you to sign a pledge with 28 principles before you can get on the primary ballot, principles that including swearing that you never had premarital sex and that from that day forward you will never look at pornography.
But for that very reason, we should not let them even implicitly, even by suggestion, set the grounds for debate such that we limit ourselves to "birth control can be medically necessary for some conditions." I said on my show a week ago and here a few days ago that part of the reason right wing ideas get mainstreamed is that the rightists often enough will say what they want without mouthing platitudes while too often we're too concerned with what sounds good but not too dramatic - which frequently means "nice" - right now.
So to any rightist who goes about birth control and "morality," I say - and we all should say - "Good! Because women have just as much right to sex and sexual pleasure as men do. And we're sick and tired of you trying to deny that. Bug off."
Sources:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/05/us/rush-limbaugh-controversy/?hpt=us_c2
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jFiPtzocCbofU5cdW6KdeLyNfYUQ?docId=ec713c2ef94740deb6bfbaa254e69d86
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/03/rush-limbaugh-apology-falling-on-deaf-ears.php
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/03/03/a_statement_from_rush
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/03/02/the_democrats_are_desperate_obama_calls_sandra_fluke_the_30_year_old_victim
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/03/05/why_i_apologized_to_sandra_fluke
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rush_Limbaugh%E2%80%93Sandra_Fluke_controversy
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/03/sc_county_gop_if_youve_had_pre-marital_sex_you_can.php?ref=fpb
[Note: I posted most of this just a couple of posts down; this is a somewhat expanded version of that which is also closer to what was on the show - including, um, cleaning up some language.]
Okay, much as I would like to never have to even mention right-wing blowhard Lush Dimblah, I can hardly not be among those taking note of my delight at his having put his foot in it big time.
Sandra Fluke is a thirty year old law student at Georgetown. She was to testify at a hearing before a House committee about insurance coverage of birth control, but the GOPper majority refused to allow her to. So the Dimcratic minority had their own hearing at which she testified. And the right wing propaganda machine went nuts, with Dimblah taking the lead.
For three days he called her a slut, a prostitute, said she is "having so much sex, it's amazing she can still walk," labeled her an "immoral, baseless, no-purpose-to-her life woman," said her parents should "go into hiding." The outcry that came in response to this stream of misogyny, undoubtedly to his surprise, was so massive that even he couldn't stand up to it, especially when his advertisers started deserting him in droves.
So Rust (not a mispronunciation, a reference to the contents of his skull) offered what some folks unfamiliar with the concept of "dictionary" called an "apology." No matter, he is still in free-fall. At last count, the total of advertisers who have cancelled is well over 30 and at least two stations have dropped him. The likelihood is that he will survive, but two important and related things have come out of this: One, his brand has been permanently damaged and two people will be less fearful of crossing him.
Others have covered this more than adequately, but I had a few quick thoughts that I haven't noted elsewhere (although maybe I just haven't looked in the right places).
1. If nothing else, it's gratifying to see that the "I was joking! Jeez! Doncha have a sense of humor?" crap won't - or at least won't always - fly anymore. That line has served as a Get Out of Jail Free card for all sorts of racist and sexist crap for far too long.
2. "Thirty years old, a student at Georgetown Law, who admits to having so much sex that she can't afford it anymore," he said. "She's having sex so frequently that she can't afford all the birth-control pills that she needs."
What the hell? Is Limburger really as abysmally ignorant as he comes on? Can any grown man be so uninformed, so totally out of the loop (and his mind), such a total twit as to think, as he apparently does, that the cost of birth control pills is directly related to how much sex you've having? The rational mind reels.
3. He also groused that his failing in his three days of vituperation - excuuuse me, "humor" - was that he "became like the people we oppose." That is, us. Now, it is true that those of us on the left can't claim we don't engage in name-calling - consider this post, for example - even though our name-calling in many cases would better be called mockery than name-calling.
No matter. The thing is, there is an important difference: When we go after people, it is all but exclusively the famous, the rich, the powerful, while all too often the right goes after people like Sandra Fluke: an ordinary private individual of no particular power or influence of who you would likely still be unaware if Darrell Issajerk had had the minimal brains required to allow her to testify in the first place. The language used by the opposing forces may often enough be similar - but the status of the targets is not.
4. This has been mentioned but I think not often or loud enough: How in blazes did requiring insurance companies to cover contraceptive care become "a new welfare program?" How did that become some kind of taxpayer subsidy for sex? This has become almost the fallback position of the right - I even got it in comments here. Bill O'Reilly took it up, making the same idiotic claim that having insurance cover birth control is somehow the government - that is, taxpayers - "paying for you to have sex." It makes no sense - not that what the right has to say often does.
5. Last but by no means least, an urgent message to the entire left half of the American political spectrum and most particularly to those who could actually be called progressive (rather than liberals re-branding themselves as "progressives" because they wanted to scuttle like the political cowards they are from the mean ol' righties going on about "the L-word"): Stop playing by the right wing's rules! Stop accepting their framing of the issue!
What raises this here is that much of the response on the left - I was going to say "defense of Sandra Fluke" but then I realized that there actually has been little of that because it was unnecessary because she did nothing requiring defending - but much of the response from the left has revolved around "Limbaugh doesn't understand that some medical conditions can require birth control for the woman's health." That's quite true, both parts: Some medical conditions are treated with birth control and Limbaugh doesn't understand that. But the argument has a flaw: It essentially concedes that wanting birth control in order to have sex without fear of pregnancy is something bad or shameful or in some way should not be addressed if not avoided entirely.
Screw that! (A particularly appropriate double entendre in this case.) So the right wing charge is that women are sexually active and get birth control to avoid getting pregnant? So freaking what? What, is this Armageddon? Are we going to see plagues of locusts? Are the mountains going to tremble, is the sky going to rip open, are the seas going to boil? Women want to have sex! Oh, the horror, the horror! Let there be wailing, gnashing of teeth, and rending of garments!
Yeah, we know the right has hang-ups about sex. No news there. Consider that the Republican Party of Laurens County, South Carolina wants you to sign a pledge with 28 principles before you can get on the primary ballot, principles that including swearing that you never had premarital sex and that from that day forward you will never look at pornography.
But for that very reason, we should not let them even implicitly, even by suggestion, set the grounds for debate such that we limit ourselves to "birth control can be medically necessary for some conditions." I said on my show a week ago and here a few days ago that part of the reason right wing ideas get mainstreamed is that the rightists often enough will say what they want without mouthing platitudes while too often we're too concerned with what sounds good but not too dramatic - which frequently means "nice" - right now.
So to any rightist who goes about birth control and "morality," I say - and we all should say - "Good! Because women have just as much right to sex and sexual pleasure as men do. And we're sick and tired of you trying to deny that. Bug off."
Sources:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/05/us/rush-limbaugh-controversy/?hpt=us_c2
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jFiPtzocCbofU5cdW6KdeLyNfYUQ?docId=ec713c2ef94740deb6bfbaa254e69d86
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/03/rush-limbaugh-apology-falling-on-deaf-ears.php
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/03/03/a_statement_from_rush
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/03/02/the_democrats_are_desperate_obama_calls_sandra_fluke_the_30_year_old_victim
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/03/05/why_i_apologized_to_sandra_fluke
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rush_Limbaugh%E2%80%93Sandra_Fluke_controversy
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/03/sc_county_gop_if_youve_had_pre-marital_sex_you_can.php?ref=fpb
Left Side of the Aisle #47 - Part 1
Successful labor sit-in with support of Occupy
This is old news as the Internet flies, but it's still worth noting.
Some of you may remember the case of Republic Windows and Doors. This was a company outside Chicago that in 2008 closed its factory without the legally-required notice to its 250 employees - which also meant denying them the severance, accrued vacation time, and temporary health benefits to which they were entitled.
Instead of passively accepting this like good little drones were supposed to, the workers, members of the United Electrical Workers, occupied the plant, refusing to leave. In one of those happy unusual occasions, the sit-in caught the attention of the media and the public, attention that got intensified when it was revealed that the reason the plant was closing was that Bank of America, which just a few days earlier had received $25 billion in bailout funds from the federal government, had cut off the company's credit line.
After six days, the workers won: BoA agreed to renew the credit line so the company could pay the workers what it owed them. What’s more, a new company, Serious Energy, bought the factory and pledged to rehire all of the fired workers. Serious began production with a fraction of the former workforce, hoping that business would soon pick up. But it didn't.
The union agreed the company wasn't doing well, but was still blindsided by the company's announcement on February 23 that the company wqs closing immediately. When the union said it wanted time to find a buyer for the factory so workers would not lose their jobs, the company refused.
So the plant is closing. Again. So what's the good news?
The good news is that "it's déjà vu all over again." There was another sit-in at the plant, this one aided by outside support from Occupy Chicago, which organized media coverage, food for occupiers of the plant, and a presence on the street outside that dissuaded - and I mean dissuaded, not blocked - the police from arresting the union members inside the plant. In less than 24 hours, an agreement had been reached for the plant to remain open an additional 90 days to give time to find a buyer or for the workers to buy it themselves.
By the way, members of the union credited the involvement of Occupy for the quick resolution, saying the corporation "panicked" when they heard Occupy Chicago was present and quickly came to an agreement.
Sources:
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/28/a_famous_chicago_factory_gets_occupied/singleton/
This is old news as the Internet flies, but it's still worth noting.
Some of you may remember the case of Republic Windows and Doors. This was a company outside Chicago that in 2008 closed its factory without the legally-required notice to its 250 employees - which also meant denying them the severance, accrued vacation time, and temporary health benefits to which they were entitled.
Instead of passively accepting this like good little drones were supposed to, the workers, members of the United Electrical Workers, occupied the plant, refusing to leave. In one of those happy unusual occasions, the sit-in caught the attention of the media and the public, attention that got intensified when it was revealed that the reason the plant was closing was that Bank of America, which just a few days earlier had received $25 billion in bailout funds from the federal government, had cut off the company's credit line.
After six days, the workers won: BoA agreed to renew the credit line so the company could pay the workers what it owed them. What’s more, a new company, Serious Energy, bought the factory and pledged to rehire all of the fired workers. Serious began production with a fraction of the former workforce, hoping that business would soon pick up. But it didn't.
The union agreed the company wasn't doing well, but was still blindsided by the company's announcement on February 23 that the company wqs closing immediately. When the union said it wanted time to find a buyer for the factory so workers would not lose their jobs, the company refused.
So the plant is closing. Again. So what's the good news?
The good news is that "it's déjà vu all over again." There was another sit-in at the plant, this one aided by outside support from Occupy Chicago, which organized media coverage, food for occupiers of the plant, and a presence on the street outside that dissuaded - and I mean dissuaded, not blocked - the police from arresting the union members inside the plant. In less than 24 hours, an agreement had been reached for the plant to remain open an additional 90 days to give time to find a buyer or for the workers to buy it themselves.
By the way, members of the union credited the involvement of Occupy for the quick resolution, saying the corporation "panicked" when they heard Occupy Chicago was present and quickly came to an agreement.
Sources:
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/28/a_famous_chicago_factory_gets_occupied/singleton/
Left Side of the Aisle #47
This week:
- Successful labor sit-in with support of Occupy
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/28/a_famous_chicago_factory_gets_occupied/singleton/
- The misogyny of Rush Limbaugh and the right
http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/05/us/rush-limbaugh-controversy/?hpt=us_c2
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jFiPtzocCbofU5cdW6KdeLyNfYUQ?docId=ec713c2ef94740deb6bfbaa254e69d86
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/03/rush-limbaugh-apology-falling-on-deaf-ears.php
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/03/03/a_statement_from_rush
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/03/02/the_democrats_are_desperate_obama_calls_sandra_fluke_the_30_year_old_victim
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/03/05/why_i_apologized_to_sandra_fluke
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rush_Limbaugh%E2%80%93Sandra_Fluke_controversy
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/03/sc_county_gop_if_youve_had_pre-marital_sex_you_can.php?ref=fpb
- Outrage of the Week: the travails of the rich
http://www.care2.com/causes/is-it-time-to-take-pity-on-the-rich.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-29/wall-street-bonus-withdrawal-means-trading-aspen-for-cheap-chex.html
- Eric Holder says PHC* can order you to be killed
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/03/holder_executive_branch_reviews_of_targeted_killings_count_as_due_process.php?ref=fpa
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/03/guest-post-attorney-general-holder-says-murder-is-legal.html
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2012/03/eric-holder-targeted-killing
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/eric-holder-drone-speech-7124146
- RIP Scroogle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scroogle
http://searchengineland.com/scroogles-gone-heres-who-still-offers-private-searching-112275
http://searchengineland.com/scroogle-org-is-gone-forever-says-site-owner-112245
Monday, March 05, 2012
On Lush Dimblah, who I never wanted to have to mention
This is going to be on the upcoming show but I figured I'd mention it here now.
So Rust (not a typo - a reference to the contents of his skull) has offered what some folks unfamiliar with the concept of "dictionary" are calling an "apology." Others have covered this more than adequately, but I had a few quick thoughts that I haven't noted elsewhere (although maybe I just haven't looked in the right places).
1. If nothing else, it's gratifying to see that the "I was joking! Jeez! Doncha have a sense of humor?" crap won't - or at least won't always - fly anymore. That line has served as a Get Out of Jail Free card for all sorts of racist and sexist crap for far too long.
2. "Thirty years old, a student at Georgetown Law, who admits to having so much sex that she can't afford it anymore," he said. "She's having sex so frequently that she can't afford all the birth-control pills that she needs." What the hell? Is Limburger really as abysmally ignorant as he comes on? Can any grown man be so uninformed, so totally out of the loop (and his mind), such a total twit as to think, as he apparently does, that the cost of birth control pills is directly related to how much sex you've having? The rational mind reels.
3. He also groused that his failing in his three days of vituperation - excuuuse me, "humor" - was that he "became like the people we oppose." That is, us. Now, it is true that those of us on the left can't claim we don't engage in name-calling - consider this post, for example - even though our name-calling in many cases would better be called mockery than name-calling.
No matter. The thing is, there is an important difference: When we go after people, it is all but exclusively the famous, the rich, the powerful, while all too often the right goes after people like Sandra Fluke: an ordinary private individual of no particular power or influence of who you would likely still be unaware if Darrell Issajerk had had the minimal brains required to allow her to testify in the first place. The language used by the opposing forces may often enough be similar - but the status of the targets is not.
4. This has been mentioned but I think not often or loud enough: How in blazes did requiring insurance companies to cover contraceptive care become "a new welfare program?" How did that become some kind of taxpayer subsidy for sex?
5. Last but by no means least, an urgent message to the entire left half of the American political spectrum and most particularly to those who could actually be called progressive (rather than liberals re-branding themselves as "progressives" because they wanted to scuttle like the political cowards they are from the mean ol' righties going on about "the L-word"): Stop playing by the right wing's rules! Stop accepting their framing of the issue!
What raises this here is that much of the response on the left - I was going to say "defense of Sandra Fluke" but then I realized that there actually has been little of that because she did nothing requiring defending - but much of the response from the left has revolved around "Limbaugh doesn't understand that some medical conditions can require birth control for the woman's health." That's quite true, but it has a flaw: It essentially concedes that wanting birth control in order to have sex without fear of pregnancy is something bad or shameful or in some way should not be addressed if not avoided entirely.
Screw that! (A particularly appropriate epithet in this case.) So the right wing charge is that women are sexually active and get birth control to avoid getting pregnant? So freaking what? What, is this Armageddon? Are we going to see plagues of locusts? Are the mountains going to tremble, is the sky going to rip open, are the seas going to boil? Women want to have sex! Oh, the horror, the horror! Let there be wailing, gnashing of teeth, and rending of garments!
Yeah, we know the right has hang-ups about sex. No news there. But for that very reason, we should not let them even implicitly set the grounds for debate such that we limit ourselves to "birth control can be medically necessary for some conditions." I said here just two days ago that part of the reason right wing ideas get mainstreamed is that the rightists often enough will say what they want without mouthing platitudes while too often we're too concerned with what sounds good but not too dramatic - which frequently means "nice" - right now.
So to any rightist who goes about birth control and "morality," I say - and we all should say - "fuckin' A! Because fuckin' women got just as much fuckin' right to fuckin' as fuckin' men do. And it's a fuckin' disgrace that you fuckin' fuckers are still trying to fuck with that. Fuck off."
So Rust (not a typo - a reference to the contents of his skull) has offered what some folks unfamiliar with the concept of "dictionary" are calling an "apology." Others have covered this more than adequately, but I had a few quick thoughts that I haven't noted elsewhere (although maybe I just haven't looked in the right places).
1. If nothing else, it's gratifying to see that the "I was joking! Jeez! Doncha have a sense of humor?" crap won't - or at least won't always - fly anymore. That line has served as a Get Out of Jail Free card for all sorts of racist and sexist crap for far too long.
2. "Thirty years old, a student at Georgetown Law, who admits to having so much sex that she can't afford it anymore," he said. "She's having sex so frequently that she can't afford all the birth-control pills that she needs." What the hell? Is Limburger really as abysmally ignorant as he comes on? Can any grown man be so uninformed, so totally out of the loop (and his mind), such a total twit as to think, as he apparently does, that the cost of birth control pills is directly related to how much sex you've having? The rational mind reels.
3. He also groused that his failing in his three days of vituperation - excuuuse me, "humor" - was that he "became like the people we oppose." That is, us. Now, it is true that those of us on the left can't claim we don't engage in name-calling - consider this post, for example - even though our name-calling in many cases would better be called mockery than name-calling.
No matter. The thing is, there is an important difference: When we go after people, it is all but exclusively the famous, the rich, the powerful, while all too often the right goes after people like Sandra Fluke: an ordinary private individual of no particular power or influence of who you would likely still be unaware if Darrell Issajerk had had the minimal brains required to allow her to testify in the first place. The language used by the opposing forces may often enough be similar - but the status of the targets is not.
4. This has been mentioned but I think not often or loud enough: How in blazes did requiring insurance companies to cover contraceptive care become "a new welfare program?" How did that become some kind of taxpayer subsidy for sex?
5. Last but by no means least, an urgent message to the entire left half of the American political spectrum and most particularly to those who could actually be called progressive (rather than liberals re-branding themselves as "progressives" because they wanted to scuttle like the political cowards they are from the mean ol' righties going on about "the L-word"): Stop playing by the right wing's rules! Stop accepting their framing of the issue!
What raises this here is that much of the response on the left - I was going to say "defense of Sandra Fluke" but then I realized that there actually has been little of that because she did nothing requiring defending - but much of the response from the left has revolved around "Limbaugh doesn't understand that some medical conditions can require birth control for the woman's health." That's quite true, but it has a flaw: It essentially concedes that wanting birth control in order to have sex without fear of pregnancy is something bad or shameful or in some way should not be addressed if not avoided entirely.
Screw that! (A particularly appropriate epithet in this case.) So the right wing charge is that women are sexually active and get birth control to avoid getting pregnant? So freaking what? What, is this Armageddon? Are we going to see plagues of locusts? Are the mountains going to tremble, is the sky going to rip open, are the seas going to boil? Women want to have sex! Oh, the horror, the horror! Let there be wailing, gnashing of teeth, and rending of garments!
Yeah, we know the right has hang-ups about sex. No news there. But for that very reason, we should not let them even implicitly set the grounds for debate such that we limit ourselves to "birth control can be medically necessary for some conditions." I said here just two days ago that part of the reason right wing ideas get mainstreamed is that the rightists often enough will say what they want without mouthing platitudes while too often we're too concerned with what sounds good but not too dramatic - which frequently means "nice" - right now.
So to any rightist who goes about birth control and "morality," I say - and we all should say - "fuckin' A! Because fuckin' women got just as much fuckin' right to fuckin' as fuckin' men do. And it's a fuckin' disgrace that you fuckin' fuckers are still trying to fuck with that. Fuck off."
Saturday, March 03, 2012
Left Side of the Aisle #46 - Part 5
Outrage of the Week: The Supreme Court appears ready to rule that corporations can't be held responsible for the role crimes against humanity in other countries because they are not "individuals."
On Tuesday, February 28, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a lawsuit accusing the multinational oil corporation Royal Dutch Shell of involvement in gross abuses of human rights.
In the 1990s, Shell and some other firms wanted to do oil exploration in the Niger River delta. People in the region, fearing the inevitable environmental damage, resisted. Shell and others apparently enlisted the Nigerian military dictatorship in suppressing that resistance. The plaintiffs are relatives of seven Nigerians who were killed in the resulting violence.
The suit was filed under the Alien Tort Statute, a US law dating back to 1789 which in essence says that a foreign national can sue you here for violations of international law. In a way, it resembles the legal principle in criminal law of "universal jurisdiction," where certain crimes under international law are considered an affront to all and everywhere, not just to those within the country where the crime occurred.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs say the charges of torture, prolonged arbitrary detention, extrajudicial executions, and other crimes against humanity clearly fit the purpose of the Alien Tort law - a tort being a civil, as opposed to a criminal, wrong.
During the oral arguments, the conservatives on the Court seemed to be looking for ways to dismiss the suit without considering the merits. For example, Sam Alito asked what this has to do with the US - even though the law does not require such a connection.
Anthony Kennedy, for his part, groused that "No other nation in the world permits" lawsuits charging corporations with complicity in crimes against humanity - even though, if memory serves, in death penalty cases Kennedy has said that he doesn't care what courts in other countries say.
Revealingly, he also said in the opening moments of the oral arguments that nothing in international law "recognizes corporate responsibility" for human rights abuses, echoing the argument of the lawyer for the Shell Oil that it couldn't be held responsible because treaties refer to “individual liability” and, well, corporations are not "individuals," are they, and in fact echoing the argument before it was made.
The other right wingers on the Court appeared inclined to agree with that claim.
So what does this mean? It means that when in the case of Citizens United it was of benefit to corporations to be "persons," with first amendment rights that enable them to drown the political process in unlimited amounts of cash, then the Supreme Court finds they are persons. But in this case, when it's of benefit to corporations to not be persons so they can avoid responsibility for their greedy and bloody participation in crimes against humanity, then the court finds that they are not persons.
And despite legalistic nit-picking and parsing about how "if you really understood the law you would see the two are completely different," blah blah etc., etc., the fact remains that's exactly what this means.
That is our Supreme Court - and it is the Outrage of the Week.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/27/corporate-personhood-supreme-court-alien-tort-statute_n_1305226.html
http://www.vanguardngr.com/2012/02/us-supreme-court-tackles-shell-on-human-rights-abuses/
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-court-torture-20120229,0,1578783.story
On Tuesday, February 28, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a lawsuit accusing the multinational oil corporation Royal Dutch Shell of involvement in gross abuses of human rights.
In the 1990s, Shell and some other firms wanted to do oil exploration in the Niger River delta. People in the region, fearing the inevitable environmental damage, resisted. Shell and others apparently enlisted the Nigerian military dictatorship in suppressing that resistance. The plaintiffs are relatives of seven Nigerians who were killed in the resulting violence.
The suit was filed under the Alien Tort Statute, a US law dating back to 1789 which in essence says that a foreign national can sue you here for violations of international law. In a way, it resembles the legal principle in criminal law of "universal jurisdiction," where certain crimes under international law are considered an affront to all and everywhere, not just to those within the country where the crime occurred.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs say the charges of torture, prolonged arbitrary detention, extrajudicial executions, and other crimes against humanity clearly fit the purpose of the Alien Tort law - a tort being a civil, as opposed to a criminal, wrong.
During the oral arguments, the conservatives on the Court seemed to be looking for ways to dismiss the suit without considering the merits. For example, Sam Alito asked what this has to do with the US - even though the law does not require such a connection.
Anthony Kennedy, for his part, groused that "No other nation in the world permits" lawsuits charging corporations with complicity in crimes against humanity - even though, if memory serves, in death penalty cases Kennedy has said that he doesn't care what courts in other countries say.
Revealingly, he also said in the opening moments of the oral arguments that nothing in international law "recognizes corporate responsibility" for human rights abuses, echoing the argument of the lawyer for the Shell Oil that it couldn't be held responsible because treaties refer to “individual liability” and, well, corporations are not "individuals," are they, and in fact echoing the argument before it was made.
The other right wingers on the Court appeared inclined to agree with that claim.
So what does this mean? It means that when in the case of Citizens United it was of benefit to corporations to be "persons," with first amendment rights that enable them to drown the political process in unlimited amounts of cash, then the Supreme Court finds they are persons. But in this case, when it's of benefit to corporations to not be persons so they can avoid responsibility for their greedy and bloody participation in crimes against humanity, then the court finds that they are not persons.
And despite legalistic nit-picking and parsing about how "if you really understood the law you would see the two are completely different," blah blah etc., etc., the fact remains that's exactly what this means.
That is our Supreme Court - and it is the Outrage of the Week.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/27/corporate-personhood-supreme-court-alien-tort-statute_n_1305226.html
http://www.vanguardngr.com/2012/02/us-supreme-court-tackles-shell-on-human-rights-abuses/
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-court-torture-20120229,0,1578783.story
Left Side of the Aisle #46 - Part 4
Bradley Manning has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Bradley Manning, the US Army Private accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, appeared before a military judge at Fort Meade near Baltimore on February 24 to hear the formal reading of the charges against him. If convicted at his coming court-martial on all 22 counts, he could face life in prison.
He chose to defer his plea and a decision for trial by judge or jury until the case is continued in a couple of weeks.
The idea that the whole thing is a sham, a kangaroo court, was given credence by the insistence of the judge that she had no prior knowledge of the case whatsoever beyond Manning's name and that the case involved classified material.
On the other hand, someone not so reticent about their knowledge of the case is Barack Obama, who declared last April that Manning was guilty, that he "broke the law." So much for innocent until proven guilty for our Constitutional lawyer prez.
However, I really said all that to give me the excuse to say this: Bradley Manning is among this year's nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize. I really doubt he'll win - for one thing, there are 230 other nominees - but frankly I really hope he does.
Sources:
http://www.inthesetimes.com/ittlist/entry/12788/bradley_manning_arraignment/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/feb/24/bradley-manning-quest-for-justice
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/27/nobel-peace-prize-2012-nominees_n_1303614.html
http://rt.com/news/manning-nobel-peace-prize-631/
Bradley Manning, the US Army Private accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, appeared before a military judge at Fort Meade near Baltimore on February 24 to hear the formal reading of the charges against him. If convicted at his coming court-martial on all 22 counts, he could face life in prison.
He chose to defer his plea and a decision for trial by judge or jury until the case is continued in a couple of weeks.
The idea that the whole thing is a sham, a kangaroo court, was given credence by the insistence of the judge that she had no prior knowledge of the case whatsoever beyond Manning's name and that the case involved classified material.
On the other hand, someone not so reticent about their knowledge of the case is Barack Obama, who declared last April that Manning was guilty, that he "broke the law." So much for innocent until proven guilty for our Constitutional lawyer prez.
However, I really said all that to give me the excuse to say this: Bradley Manning is among this year's nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize. I really doubt he'll win - for one thing, there are 230 other nominees - but frankly I really hope he does.
Sources:
http://www.inthesetimes.com/ittlist/entry/12788/bradley_manning_arraignment/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/feb/24/bradley-manning-quest-for-justice
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/27/nobel-peace-prize-2012-nominees_n_1303614.html
http://rt.com/news/manning-nobel-peace-prize-631/
Left Side of the Aisle #46 - Part 3
Everything You Need to Know: What's wrong with our national discussion of gun violence in just three sentences.
Everything you need to know in three sentences about what's wrong with our attitudes about the roots of violence:
1. A teenager shot up a school cafeteria in suburban Cleveland this past Monday, killing two and wounding three others.
2. I read a number of mainstream media accounts of that tragedy, including from USA Today, the Associated Press, the New York Times, CNN, Reuters, CBS, the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, and even one from the Seattle Times on several other school-related gun incidents this year.
3. Not one of those accounts included the phrase, or anything even related to the phrase, "gun control."
And that is everything you need to know.
Sources:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-02-27/ohio-school-shooting/53267688/1?csp=34news
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hztXIBuN1ZWUvDZBE7Pq41lejdLw?docId=2c15575fa3a34a4a91bd90b0dc0eaf44
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/28/us/fatal-school-shooting-in-chardon-ohio-suspect-is-arrested.html
http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/27/us/ohio-school-shooting-witness/
http://www.cleveland.com/chardon-shooting/index.ssf/2012/02/parents_of_teen_accused_of_sho.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/28/us-shooting-ohio-urgent-idUSTRE81Q1AD20120228
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57386080/suspect-in-deadly-ohio-school-shooting-idd/
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2017613184_ohio28.html
Everything you need to know in three sentences about what's wrong with our attitudes about the roots of violence:
1. A teenager shot up a school cafeteria in suburban Cleveland this past Monday, killing two and wounding three others.
2. I read a number of mainstream media accounts of that tragedy, including from USA Today, the Associated Press, the New York Times, CNN, Reuters, CBS, the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, and even one from the Seattle Times on several other school-related gun incidents this year.
3. Not one of those accounts included the phrase, or anything even related to the phrase, "gun control."
And that is everything you need to know.
Sources:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-02-27/ohio-school-shooting/53267688/1?csp=34news
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hztXIBuN1ZWUvDZBE7Pq41lejdLw?docId=2c15575fa3a34a4a91bd90b0dc0eaf44
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/28/us/fatal-school-shooting-in-chardon-ohio-suspect-is-arrested.html
http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/27/us/ohio-school-shooting-witness/
http://www.cleveland.com/chardon-shooting/index.ssf/2012/02/parents_of_teen_accused_of_sho.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/28/us-shooting-ohio-urgent-idUSTRE81Q1AD20120228
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57386080/suspect-in-deadly-ohio-school-shooting-idd/
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2017613184_ohio28.html
Left Side of the Aisle #46 - Part 2
The Virginia state Senate killed the "personhood" bill and passed the bill forcing women to have an ultrasound before they can terminate their pregnancy. How the right wing mainstreams extremism.
Last week, in an unexpected move, the Virginia state Senate killed the state's "personhood" bill.
That bill would have conferred the status of "personhood" on what the right wing keeps calling and for some reason the media keeps parroting "unborn children," including not only fetuses but embryos and even zygotes.
Let's get something straight: There is no such thing as an "unborn child." If it's not born, it's not a child. Calling a fetus an unborn child makes precisely as much sense as calling a caterpillar an unborn butterfly, a tadpole an unborn frog, or an acorn an unborn oak tree.
I can understand a pregnant woman and her partner thinking of her fetus as an "unborn child," establishing the emotional connection to what will be, if all goes as hoped, their child. But we can't let that emotional tie be the basis for a legal meaning and we can't let it cloud the scientific reality. There is no such thing as an unborn child.
The bill had already passed the House of Delegates and was expected to pass the Senate on a tie-breaking vote, but to the surprise of many, the Senate agreed to a motion to put the whole thing off until next year.
While clearly a victory, this doesn't mean the idea is dead - it could drag its zombie butt out of the grave next year. But it is a victory.
At the same time, it's rather a bitter victory, because the Virginia legislature has passed that bill you heard about that would require women seeking to terminate their pregnancy to have an ultrasound - apparently because the thinking was that pregnant women, the poor ignorant dears, need to have what it means to be pregnant explained to them.
Amendments that would have made the procedure optional, forced insurers to cover it or the state to pay for it, and would have exempted women who had no insurance coverage all were defeated. So not only does the woman have to undergo an additional and unnecessary medical procedure, she has to pay for it entirely out of pocket.
This is also the bill that in its original form required an intravaginal ultrasound - and that's exactly what you think it is - in cases where the fetus was too undeveloped for a regular ultrasound to be revealing.
In the face of understandable outrage, the bill's sponsor supposedly amended the bill to remove the state mandate for the intravaginal ultrasound - but left in the requirement for the information it would yield, leaving doctors in the position of either forcing women to undergo the procedure, forcing them to wait until later in the pregnancy, not getting the information, thus violating the law and risking prosecution and loss of their licence, or simply refusing to perform the procedure altogether. That is, the mandate to force women to submit or else had simply been shifted from the state to the doctor. For the women, it was no change at all.
Still, the failure of the wingnuts to force through yet another restriction on women's choices - the "personhood" bill - is a victory and should be embraced as such. And it has some significance because of the fact that it comes amid a flurry of state-level proposals on reproductive rights, where we find ourselves having to re-argue issues that rational people thought had been settled long ago.
So bear in mind that when I talk here about reproductive rights, I'm not just talking about abortion, I'm talking about birth control.
I mentioned this two weeks ago, noting that advocates of choice have long insisted that abortion was only the opening salvo in an assault on women's rights and that increasing restrictions on abortion would be followed by attacks on contraception. A lot of folks laughed at them for that, but that's exactly what we're seeing now. The religious fanatics have never forgotten the not-so-long-ago good old days when contraception was illegal even for married couples - and the right wing fanatics eager to exploit them for their own ends have happily joined in the effort to roll back time.
Just consider the response to that federal mandate that employees of religious-affiliated employers must have access to contraception coverage in their health insurance even as those employers do not have to pay for it. That move - of course - generated howls of phony, carefully orchestrated, ginned-up outrage that this is an attack on religious freedom, indeed on the very concept of religion. Because it is an attack on religion to say that a Catholic school can't interfere with the ability of a Jewish employee to obtain birth control by forcing them to pay for it entirely out of pocket.
And it's not just the Catholic bishops who continue to pompously bloviate about their "deep moral concerns" about contraception - as if they had any standing to have moral concerns about anything after enabling pedophiles for decades. Nor is it just the most obviously loopy groups like the American Family Association or the most obviously wacko politicians like Rick IShouldBeInASanitarium and Newt Grinch who blather, froth, and rant about a non-existent "war on Christianity" - it's also ones like our own Senator Scat Brown, who has a radio ad going on about how that federal insurance mandate is an assault on religious freedom.
In some cases, such as Scat Brown's, the driving force at least appears to be blatant political opportunism, the old tradition of abandoning any trace of self-respect in order to suck up to a potential voting block. But for others it is quite literally a matter of conviction - they literally believe that church law should inform if not outright determine public law.
For the obvious example we go back to Rick IShouldBeInASanitarium, who first attacked President Hopey-Changey a couple of weeks ago on the grounds that the legendary Mr. O did not address world problems through the lens of a Biblical theology and then followed that up a week later by declaring that the separation of church and state is not absolute because while religion is to be free of the government, the government is not to be free of religion - or, to use Ricky boy's revealing term, the government is not to be free of "the church."
To make sure that no one could misunderstand him, he doubled down on his declaration from last fall. He said he had read John Kennedy's 1960 speech where JFK went before an audience of I think if was Baptists to assure them that he would not take orders from the Pope - which was a real concern for some at the time, they really thought that having a Catholic as president would mean the Pope would be determining US government policy - and that he did believe in separation of church and state. Rickyboy said that made him "want to throw up."
What's important here is to realize that even though he tried to walk back the "throw up" comment, he means it. This is not pandering. In fact, the walk back was more pandering than the original statement.
And this guy has been winning elections. Even after more attention has been paid to his extremism, he nearly won Michigan and is ahead in some states for "Super Tuesday." Now, I don't think he has any real chance of winning the GOPper nomination and even if he did, he has no chance in hell of winning the general election. And frankly, I don't think he thinks he has a chance, either, for reasons I'll get to. The important point is that he has shown that there is a real constituency, in the US, today, for this kind of religious extremism.
Several days ago, columnist David Sirota had a piece referring to progressives who think that the longer the dragged-out GOPper primaries continue, the better for progressives because it shows people how nuts the right wing is. Hang on, he suggested, not so fast.
The problem, as he sees it - and I agree or I wouldn't be bringing this up - is that the longer the primaries go on, the longer that very extremism is on display, the longer the wildly reactionary nitwit ideas are bandied about, the longer the jaw-dropping inanities get spewed, then by that very same token the longer that very same inane, reactionary, extremism is given a mainstream platform, is treated as a collection of serious positions that deserve serious response from other candidates, and so the more it becomes part of normal political discourse in the country and society.
On some TV show or another, I saw a couple of progressives asked about this and they both dismissed it out of hand, embracing precisely the sort of "everyone will see the GOPpers are nuts" happy-talk group-think that Sirota questioned. But their failing was that they were thinking strictly in terms of Republican prospects in the 2012 presidential election. Sirota was looking beyond that: In his conclusion, he said this may help in the short term, but what about the long haul.
We've seen this over and over - this is how reactionary ideas get mainstreamed: Some flake like Rick IShouldBeInASanitarium spouts off and just keeps spouting off until what he's saying just doesn't sound so weird anymore, if only because it's familiar. After a while, some not-quite-as-flaky wingnuts pick up on the ideas and amplify them and eventually instead of being dismissed as they deserve, they wind up getting treated as legitimate positions deserving of reasoned discussion.
Sirota refers to the Goldwater Principle, which for those of you too young to remember, refers to the GOPper presidential campaign of right-winger Barry Goldwater in 1964. He lost so badly to Lyndon Johnson that there was a question if the Republican party itself could survive. The Goldwater principle suggests that while he lost that election, the attention given to his ideas helped permanently shift what constitutes the “center” of our public debate to the right.
For my part, I've been talking about this literally for three decades. I call such races "successful losses" - I can cite several - and I have talked about them here before.
The thing is, everyone would agree that the political debate is this country has moved way over to the right over the past decades. And this is how it works - this is how it's done. This is how right-wing ideas move from the margin to the center, from mocked to mainstream, from spooky to serious, from ridiculed to reasonable. Birth control is just the latest example.
Go back to Goldwater - in 1964 he lost so badly people wondered if the GOP could survive as an institution. Four years later, Richard Nixon was elected. Richard Nixon, who now would be regarded as too liberal to get the GOPper nomination. And twelve years after that, Ronald Reagan was elected and GOPpers got control of the Senate for the first time in nearly 30 years.
Our political debate has moved far enough to the right that, as Sirota notes, Witless Romney can call Rick IShouldBeInASanitarium "Big Labor’s favorite senator" without being laughed off the political stage.
And it happens because the right wing has the confidence and the patience to say what it really means, what it really wants, for the sake of long-term victory. This is why I don't think Rick IShouldBeInASanitarium actually thinks he can win the presidency. Maybe he dreams of it, I'm sure he does, but I doubt he honestly believes he can win - he may be a flake but he's not a dope: He can read the numbers.
The thing is, he's not thinking 2012. He's thinking 2016. He's thinking 2020. He's thinking about how he can move the debate while what passes for most of the left in this country can't seem to think past the inaugural parade in January 2013. The fact is, the right wing thinks strategically, something at which we have failed miserably - and we ignore that reality at our peril.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/23/virginia-personhood-bill-defeated-senate_n_1297463.html
http://ideas.time.com/2012/01/30/birth-control-could-it-be-illegal-again/
http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/afa-obama-war-on-christians-a-battle-between-freedom-and-tyranny-equal-to-1776-revolution/politics/2012/02/28/35471
http://www.necn.com/02/28/12/Va-Senate-panel-kills-Medicaid-abortion-/landing_politics.html?&apID=fdd68d8674c54e57b05ed7ff69ef33fb
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57386357-503544/santorum-argues-for-religion-in-government/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/26/santorum-church-and-state_n_1302246.html?ref=mostpopular
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3460_162-57381029/santorum-obamas-worldview-upside-down/
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/22/the_danger_of_an_endless_gop_primary/singleton/
http://uspolitics.about.com/od/usgovernment/l/bl_party_division_2.htm
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2007/06/electioneering-chapter-three.html
Last week, in an unexpected move, the Virginia state Senate killed the state's "personhood" bill.
That bill would have conferred the status of "personhood" on what the right wing keeps calling and for some reason the media keeps parroting "unborn children," including not only fetuses but embryos and even zygotes.
Let's get something straight: There is no such thing as an "unborn child." If it's not born, it's not a child. Calling a fetus an unborn child makes precisely as much sense as calling a caterpillar an unborn butterfly, a tadpole an unborn frog, or an acorn an unborn oak tree.
I can understand a pregnant woman and her partner thinking of her fetus as an "unborn child," establishing the emotional connection to what will be, if all goes as hoped, their child. But we can't let that emotional tie be the basis for a legal meaning and we can't let it cloud the scientific reality. There is no such thing as an unborn child.
The bill had already passed the House of Delegates and was expected to pass the Senate on a tie-breaking vote, but to the surprise of many, the Senate agreed to a motion to put the whole thing off until next year.
While clearly a victory, this doesn't mean the idea is dead - it could drag its zombie butt out of the grave next year. But it is a victory.
At the same time, it's rather a bitter victory, because the Virginia legislature has passed that bill you heard about that would require women seeking to terminate their pregnancy to have an ultrasound - apparently because the thinking was that pregnant women, the poor ignorant dears, need to have what it means to be pregnant explained to them.
Amendments that would have made the procedure optional, forced insurers to cover it or the state to pay for it, and would have exempted women who had no insurance coverage all were defeated. So not only does the woman have to undergo an additional and unnecessary medical procedure, she has to pay for it entirely out of pocket.
This is also the bill that in its original form required an intravaginal ultrasound - and that's exactly what you think it is - in cases where the fetus was too undeveloped for a regular ultrasound to be revealing.
In the face of understandable outrage, the bill's sponsor supposedly amended the bill to remove the state mandate for the intravaginal ultrasound - but left in the requirement for the information it would yield, leaving doctors in the position of either forcing women to undergo the procedure, forcing them to wait until later in the pregnancy, not getting the information, thus violating the law and risking prosecution and loss of their licence, or simply refusing to perform the procedure altogether. That is, the mandate to force women to submit or else had simply been shifted from the state to the doctor. For the women, it was no change at all.
Still, the failure of the wingnuts to force through yet another restriction on women's choices - the "personhood" bill - is a victory and should be embraced as such. And it has some significance because of the fact that it comes amid a flurry of state-level proposals on reproductive rights, where we find ourselves having to re-argue issues that rational people thought had been settled long ago.
So bear in mind that when I talk here about reproductive rights, I'm not just talking about abortion, I'm talking about birth control.
I mentioned this two weeks ago, noting that advocates of choice have long insisted that abortion was only the opening salvo in an assault on women's rights and that increasing restrictions on abortion would be followed by attacks on contraception. A lot of folks laughed at them for that, but that's exactly what we're seeing now. The religious fanatics have never forgotten the not-so-long-ago good old days when contraception was illegal even for married couples - and the right wing fanatics eager to exploit them for their own ends have happily joined in the effort to roll back time.
Just consider the response to that federal mandate that employees of religious-affiliated employers must have access to contraception coverage in their health insurance even as those employers do not have to pay for it. That move - of course - generated howls of phony, carefully orchestrated, ginned-up outrage that this is an attack on religious freedom, indeed on the very concept of religion. Because it is an attack on religion to say that a Catholic school can't interfere with the ability of a Jewish employee to obtain birth control by forcing them to pay for it entirely out of pocket.
And it's not just the Catholic bishops who continue to pompously bloviate about their "deep moral concerns" about contraception - as if they had any standing to have moral concerns about anything after enabling pedophiles for decades. Nor is it just the most obviously loopy groups like the American Family Association or the most obviously wacko politicians like Rick IShouldBeInASanitarium and Newt Grinch who blather, froth, and rant about a non-existent "war on Christianity" - it's also ones like our own Senator Scat Brown, who has a radio ad going on about how that federal insurance mandate is an assault on religious freedom.
In some cases, such as Scat Brown's, the driving force at least appears to be blatant political opportunism, the old tradition of abandoning any trace of self-respect in order to suck up to a potential voting block. But for others it is quite literally a matter of conviction - they literally believe that church law should inform if not outright determine public law.
For the obvious example we go back to Rick IShouldBeInASanitarium, who first attacked President Hopey-Changey a couple of weeks ago on the grounds that the legendary Mr. O did not address world problems through the lens of a Biblical theology and then followed that up a week later by declaring that the separation of church and state is not absolute because while religion is to be free of the government, the government is not to be free of religion - or, to use Ricky boy's revealing term, the government is not to be free of "the church."
To make sure that no one could misunderstand him, he doubled down on his declaration from last fall. He said he had read John Kennedy's 1960 speech where JFK went before an audience of I think if was Baptists to assure them that he would not take orders from the Pope - which was a real concern for some at the time, they really thought that having a Catholic as president would mean the Pope would be determining US government policy - and that he did believe in separation of church and state. Rickyboy said that made him "want to throw up."
What's important here is to realize that even though he tried to walk back the "throw up" comment, he means it. This is not pandering. In fact, the walk back was more pandering than the original statement.
And this guy has been winning elections. Even after more attention has been paid to his extremism, he nearly won Michigan and is ahead in some states for "Super Tuesday." Now, I don't think he has any real chance of winning the GOPper nomination and even if he did, he has no chance in hell of winning the general election. And frankly, I don't think he thinks he has a chance, either, for reasons I'll get to. The important point is that he has shown that there is a real constituency, in the US, today, for this kind of religious extremism.
Several days ago, columnist David Sirota had a piece referring to progressives who think that the longer the dragged-out GOPper primaries continue, the better for progressives because it shows people how nuts the right wing is. Hang on, he suggested, not so fast.
The problem, as he sees it - and I agree or I wouldn't be bringing this up - is that the longer the primaries go on, the longer that very extremism is on display, the longer the wildly reactionary nitwit ideas are bandied about, the longer the jaw-dropping inanities get spewed, then by that very same token the longer that very same inane, reactionary, extremism is given a mainstream platform, is treated as a collection of serious positions that deserve serious response from other candidates, and so the more it becomes part of normal political discourse in the country and society.
On some TV show or another, I saw a couple of progressives asked about this and they both dismissed it out of hand, embracing precisely the sort of "everyone will see the GOPpers are nuts" happy-talk group-think that Sirota questioned. But their failing was that they were thinking strictly in terms of Republican prospects in the 2012 presidential election. Sirota was looking beyond that: In his conclusion, he said this may help in the short term, but what about the long haul.
We've seen this over and over - this is how reactionary ideas get mainstreamed: Some flake like Rick IShouldBeInASanitarium spouts off and just keeps spouting off until what he's saying just doesn't sound so weird anymore, if only because it's familiar. After a while, some not-quite-as-flaky wingnuts pick up on the ideas and amplify them and eventually instead of being dismissed as they deserve, they wind up getting treated as legitimate positions deserving of reasoned discussion.
Sirota refers to the Goldwater Principle, which for those of you too young to remember, refers to the GOPper presidential campaign of right-winger Barry Goldwater in 1964. He lost so badly to Lyndon Johnson that there was a question if the Republican party itself could survive. The Goldwater principle suggests that while he lost that election, the attention given to his ideas helped permanently shift what constitutes the “center” of our public debate to the right.
For my part, I've been talking about this literally for three decades. I call such races "successful losses" - I can cite several - and I have talked about them here before.
The thing is, everyone would agree that the political debate is this country has moved way over to the right over the past decades. And this is how it works - this is how it's done. This is how right-wing ideas move from the margin to the center, from mocked to mainstream, from spooky to serious, from ridiculed to reasonable. Birth control is just the latest example.
Go back to Goldwater - in 1964 he lost so badly people wondered if the GOP could survive as an institution. Four years later, Richard Nixon was elected. Richard Nixon, who now would be regarded as too liberal to get the GOPper nomination. And twelve years after that, Ronald Reagan was elected and GOPpers got control of the Senate for the first time in nearly 30 years.
Our political debate has moved far enough to the right that, as Sirota notes, Witless Romney can call Rick IShouldBeInASanitarium "Big Labor’s favorite senator" without being laughed off the political stage.
And it happens because the right wing has the confidence and the patience to say what it really means, what it really wants, for the sake of long-term victory. This is why I don't think Rick IShouldBeInASanitarium actually thinks he can win the presidency. Maybe he dreams of it, I'm sure he does, but I doubt he honestly believes he can win - he may be a flake but he's not a dope: He can read the numbers.
The thing is, he's not thinking 2012. He's thinking 2016. He's thinking 2020. He's thinking about how he can move the debate while what passes for most of the left in this country can't seem to think past the inaugural parade in January 2013. The fact is, the right wing thinks strategically, something at which we have failed miserably - and we ignore that reality at our peril.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/23/virginia-personhood-bill-defeated-senate_n_1297463.html
http://ideas.time.com/2012/01/30/birth-control-could-it-be-illegal-again/
http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/afa-obama-war-on-christians-a-battle-between-freedom-and-tyranny-equal-to-1776-revolution/politics/2012/02/28/35471
http://www.necn.com/02/28/12/Va-Senate-panel-kills-Medicaid-abortion-/landing_politics.html?&apID=fdd68d8674c54e57b05ed7ff69ef33fb
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57386357-503544/santorum-argues-for-religion-in-government/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/26/santorum-church-and-state_n_1302246.html?ref=mostpopular
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3460_162-57381029/santorum-obamas-worldview-upside-down/
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/22/the_danger_of_an_endless_gop_primary/singleton/
http://uspolitics.about.com/od/usgovernment/l/bl_party_division_2.htm
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2007/06/electioneering-chapter-three.html
Left Side of the Aisle #46 - Part 1
The DOJ will no longer defend laws banning veterans' benefits to spouses in same-sex couples.
Earlier this month, the Obama Administration took another step toward acceptance of same-sex marriage. The Department of Justice announced it will no longer defend legislation in court banning same-sex couples from receiving military and veterans benefits.
Attorney General Eric Holder said that the legislative record of the infamous Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, contains no rationale for providing veterans' benefits to opposite-sex veteran couples while denying them to legally married same-sex spouses of veterans.
Holder further argued that DOMA and other provisions of US law that deny federal benefits to both civilian and veteran same-sex couples are unconstitutional when applied to same-sex couples who are legally married.
The statement comes in response to a lawsuit filed in Massachusetts by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. It comes a year after Holder said the DOJ would no longer defend the main section of DOMA because it was unconstitutional when subjected to the standard of heightened judicial scrutiny applied to laws discriminating on the basis of race and gender; "heightened judicial scrutiny" being a legal term meaning such laws must have must stronger justification than other laws if they are to survive legal challenge.
While this well might give courts some encouragement in finding that laws discriminating against same sex couples fail the test of constitutionality, it of course sparked spluttering, frothing outrage from the denizens of the dark side, a place impervious to fact, logic, and simple human decency.
As an example of a denizen of the dark side, we can go to Republican presidential candidate Rick IShouldBeInASanitarium, who recently invoked Rule #10 on my list of tactics right-wingers use to avoid responsibility and actual debate. Rule #10 is "Accuse the accuser."
He told a bunch of fellow mouth-breathers at a campaign stop in Michigan that liberals are the real bigots in the debate over same-sex marriage. As proof, he quoted the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision upholding a lower-court ruling that California's PropHate banning same-sex marriage in the state is unconstitutional. He said that ruling was tantamount to the court saying, "If you believe marriage is between a man and a woman, it is either because you are a hater or a bigot."
Um, yes - that's exactly what it means.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/17/military-benefits-same-sex-couples_n_1285382.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57386357-503544/santorum-argues-for-religion-in-government/
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2011/01/rules-all-of-them-so-far.html
Earlier this month, the Obama Administration took another step toward acceptance of same-sex marriage. The Department of Justice announced it will no longer defend legislation in court banning same-sex couples from receiving military and veterans benefits.
Attorney General Eric Holder said that the legislative record of the infamous Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, contains no rationale for providing veterans' benefits to opposite-sex veteran couples while denying them to legally married same-sex spouses of veterans.
Holder further argued that DOMA and other provisions of US law that deny federal benefits to both civilian and veteran same-sex couples are unconstitutional when applied to same-sex couples who are legally married.
The statement comes in response to a lawsuit filed in Massachusetts by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. It comes a year after Holder said the DOJ would no longer defend the main section of DOMA because it was unconstitutional when subjected to the standard of heightened judicial scrutiny applied to laws discriminating on the basis of race and gender; "heightened judicial scrutiny" being a legal term meaning such laws must have must stronger justification than other laws if they are to survive legal challenge.
While this well might give courts some encouragement in finding that laws discriminating against same sex couples fail the test of constitutionality, it of course sparked spluttering, frothing outrage from the denizens of the dark side, a place impervious to fact, logic, and simple human decency.
As an example of a denizen of the dark side, we can go to Republican presidential candidate Rick IShouldBeInASanitarium, who recently invoked Rule #10 on my list of tactics right-wingers use to avoid responsibility and actual debate. Rule #10 is "Accuse the accuser."
He told a bunch of fellow mouth-breathers at a campaign stop in Michigan that liberals are the real bigots in the debate over same-sex marriage. As proof, he quoted the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision upholding a lower-court ruling that California's PropHate banning same-sex marriage in the state is unconstitutional. He said that ruling was tantamount to the court saying, "If you believe marriage is between a man and a woman, it is either because you are a hater or a bigot."
Um, yes - that's exactly what it means.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/17/military-benefits-same-sex-couples_n_1285382.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57386357-503544/santorum-argues-for-religion-in-government/
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2011/01/rules-all-of-them-so-far.html
Left Side of the Aisle #46
This week:
- The DOJ will no longer defend laws banning veterans' benefits to spouses in same-sex couples.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/17/military-benefits-same-sex-couples_n_1285382.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57386357-503544/santorum-argues-for-religion-in-government/
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2011/01/rules-all-of-them-so-far.html
- The Virginia state Senate killed the "personhood" bill and passed the bill forcing women to have an ultrasound before they can terminate their pregnancy. How the right wing mainstreams extremism.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/23/virginia-personhood-bill-defeated-senate_n_1297463.html
http://ideas.time.com/2012/01/30/birth-control-could-it-be-illegal-again/
http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/afa-obama-war-on-christians-a-battle-between-freedom-and-tyranny-equal-to-1776-revolution/politics/2012/02/28/35471
http://www.necn.com/02/28/12/Va-Senate-panel-kills-Medicaid-abortion-/landing_politics.html?&apID=fdd68d8674c54e57b05ed7ff69ef33fb
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57386357-503544/santorum-argues-for-religion-in-government/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/26/santorum-church-and-state_n_1302246.html?ref=mostpopular
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3460_162-57381029/santorum-obamas-worldview-upside-down/
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/22/the_danger_of_an_endless_gop_primary/singleton/
http://uspolitics.about.com/od/usgovernment/l/bl_party_division_2.htm
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2007/06/electioneering-chapter-three.html
- Everything You Need to Know: What's wrong with our national discussion of gun violence in just three sentences.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-02-27/ohio-school-shooting/53267688/1?csp=34news
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hztXIBuN1ZWUvDZBE7Pq41lejdLw?docId=2c15575fa3a34a4a91bd90b0dc0eaf44
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/28/us/fatal-school-shooting-in-chardon-ohio-suspect-is-arrested.html
http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/27/us/ohio-school-shooting-witness/ -- cnn
http://www.cleveland.com/chardon-shooting/index.ssf/2012/02/parents_of_teen_accused_of_sho.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/28/us-shooting-ohio-urgent-idUSTRE81Q1AD20120228
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57386080/suspect-in-deadly-ohio-school-shooting-idd/
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2017613184_ohio28.html
- Bradley Manning has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
http://www.inthesetimes.com/ittlist/entry/12788/bradley_manning_arraignment/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/feb/24/bradley-manning-quest-for-justice
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/27/nobel-peace-prize-2012-nominees_n_1303614.html
http://rt.com/news/manning-nobel-peace-prize-631/
- Outrage of the Week: The Supreme Court appears ready to rule that corporations can't be held responsible for the role crimes against humanity in other countries because they are not "individuals."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/27/corporate-personhood-supreme-court-alien-tort-statute_n_1305226.html
http://www.vanguardngr.com/2012/02/us-supreme-court-tackles-shell-on-human-rights-abuses/
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-court-torture-20120229,0,1578783.story
Monday, February 27, 2012
Left Side of the Aisle #45 - Part 6
And Another Thing: Seeds of past livesLook at this picture.
It's a plant. Its scientific name is Silene Stenophylla. It's a live plant, fertile, with lacy white flowers and viable seeds. It was grown from seeds from immature fruit found in a squirrel's burrow containing various fruit and seeds. What makes this burrow and these particular seeds and this particular plant special is that burrow had been frozen in the Siberian permafrost for over 30,000 years.
This is the oldest plant ever to be regenerated by more than an order of magnitude: The previous oldest seeds to produce a viable plant were - by comparison in this context - "only" 2000 years old. These seeds are 15 times older.
This is not only major cool, no pun intended, it shows that ancient life forms, ancient DNA, can survive intact in the ice for thousands, even tens of thousands, of years - shades of the X-Files - which in turn opens up the possibility of resurrecting other life forms.
The fact that these seeds were found in the same strata as bones of large mammals, not only including such as bison, horse, and deer, but also mammoth and wooly rhinoceros, has got some people dreaming of the possibility of resurrecting - that is, having actual, live, walking around, eating, drinking - wooly mammoths.
That's not possible now - the necessary cloning technology is still iffy and we lack the intact DNA - so no, there's no Jurassic Park on the horizon, even the dim horizon, even if you ignore the slight time differential between mammoths and dinosaurs of about, oh, 60 million years. But is it in the foreseeable future to have a live mammoth walking around? Depending on the breaks - and finding a big enough sample of intact DNA may be the biggest hurdle - but depending on the breaks? Yes, it is possible. And that - again no pun intended - is really cool.
Oh, and one other quick thing, another anniversary which I missed: Monday, February 20, was the 50th anniversary of the day John Glenn took off to become the first American to orbit the Earth.
It's sometimes hard to think that only 7-1/2 years later, July 20, 1969, the first human walked on the Moon.
Sources:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j6vshXWgZSUj3pLD2sLNWJlHSFnQ?docId=CNG.8e6d7b5da9fa2c8e49617bdada3627df.251
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/02/21/russians-resurrect-30000-year-old-frozen-flower/
http://www.foxnews.com/topics/science/national-academy-of-sciences.htm#r_src=ramp
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jJp_vTdRhyEZc6s084rTPSA4z5AA
Left Side of the Aisle #45 - Part 5
Occupy
I have not talked about Occupy for some time now - I did get in that one quick mention last week, which I will get back to, but I did want to spend a little more time on the subject of the movement.
Because contrary to what you would probably gather from our major media, the Occupy movement is not dead, not by a long shot. It's just no longer concentrated in encampments in big and medium-sized cities. Which means its not as media-friendly, there are fewer convenient shots of a mass of tents or clouds of tear gas, so much of the media lost interest.
Bu there are still encampments out there, and cities and towns continue to look for ways to make them go away and shut up. For example, the city of Boise, Idaho has had an encampment for the past couple of months. It turns out that camping on public grounds was not illegal - so what did the city just do? It passed a new emergency law to ban camping on public grounds in order to shut down that city's encampment. You don't like the encampment? Throw it out. It's not illegal? Change the law.
So yes, it's true there are a lot fewer high-profile encampments. But an important part of the reason is that Occupy has diffused through those cities, it has spread to the suburbs and even to rural areas. The people are still out there, still demonstrating, still on the streets, still sitting-in, still lobbying, still petitioning, still calling legislators, still carrying it on in whatever way they as individuals feel they can.
Firedoglake has a program of which you likely know, called Occupy Supply. People donate money to supply various occupations with needed equipment, which included not only for example electronic gear but even more often things like gloves and boots and insulated tents to deal with the winter. The point here is that they had a big tent that they were going to donate to one Occupy chosen from among those nominated by visitors to the website, that is, from people interested in Occupy Supply. A base requirement was that the Occupy group either had to have an on-going encampment or at least recent activity - that is, it had to be a live group. The initial list of Occupy groups with such on-going activities was posted on January 31 - and it contained over 150 locations.
Just this past week, in what shows the variety of approaches being taken,
- hundreds of occupy folks and prison reform activists joined forces outside the gates of San Quentin State Prison, rallying around a charge that state sentencing laws are too strict and calling for an end to solitary confinement, the death penalty, and to children being tried as adults;
- some Occupy Oakland protesters were arrested for disrupting a foreclosure sale and later tht same day some others forced a branch of a bank to close early in the face of a protest of a different foreclosure, this one of an woman who had been trying without success to get a loan modification;
- and a group calling itself Occupy the SEC sent a 325-page letter with detailed public comments about the proposed Volcker rule regulating certain bank transactions.
More locally, Occupy Providence, which voluntarily shut down after the city met its demand for a homeless day center, has re-emerged as Occupy URI, with a teach-in and a tent on the campus quad planned for later in the month along with plans for actions as part of Occupy Rhode Island Campuses, a new coalition of five colleges and universities in the state. And there has apparently been some discussion among a number of occupy groups about moving physical occupations onto colleges - the idea being, more or less, if you can't settle in the streets, camp on the campus.
Oh, and Occupy Maine now has a TV show. Welcome to Public Access TV, Occupy Maine.
What's more, on Wednesday, February 29, 60 cities across the country will see nonviolent actions with an overall target of at ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the right-wing outfit that brings corporations and other right-wing interests together with state legislators to provide model legislation the latter can bring home to push in order to advance the reactionary agenda.
But leave all that aside: If you really want to know about the impact of a movement, don't look at its supporters - look at its enemies.
I mentioned this last week but it bears repeating: On January 30, Just before the Florida primary, Newt Grinch accused Witless Romney of being a tool of Wall Street and said that big banking firms like Goldman Sachs are “rigging the game.” He even claimed that the negative ads run against him were financed by Wall Street outfits, including Goldman Sachs. Just think of what it means for the impact of Occupy when Newt Grinch thinks it's to his benefit to call a fellow GOPper a tool of Wall Street.
Not enough? How about the fact that Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan-Chase who has made a career of late out of hyperbolic, hyperventilating attacks on any attempts to regulate the banks, recently said we absolutely should raise taxes on the rich, adding "I don't think people should be able to pass unlimited amounts on to their kids." So much for the "death tax."
Still not enough? How about the fact that a week ago last Friday, February 17, the Wall Street Journal said in an editorial that the only real way to prevent a repeat of the wild irresponsible financial speculation and wrongful behavior that resulted in the meltdown that produced the particular mess we are currently in is for, quoting here, "a Congressional plan either for allowing large banks to fail or for breaking them up."
You got that right: The Wall Street Journal wants to break up the banks.
But if you're still not convinced, this should be the clincher. Consider a recent column by one Judith Samuelson. She is the Executive Director of the Aspen Institute's Business and Society Program, and this is one example among many from a variety of people. In that column, Samuelson said that Occupy should "help give visibility to ideas that move beyond vilifying 'corporations' and 'capitalism' and begin to focus on the incentives and policies that create sub-optimal results from business and capital markets." In other words, she thinks Occupy should focus on smoothing off a couple of the rough edges of capitalism.
That is a way to measure impact: When you have a movement that has come to the point where so many people from across the political spectrum feel entitled and even obliged to offer their sage advice on what that movement should do now, especially when that advice mostly involves how to "tone down" your message and become "serious," you know you have something with power.
Sources:
http://articles.boston.com/2012-02-05/yourtown/31027801_1_corporate-influence-political-reform-sign
http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2012/01/31/a-list-for-journalists-who-think-that-occupy-is-dead/
http://www.ktvb.com/home/Occupy-Boise-has-until-Monday-to-pack-up-camp-139885993.html
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/02/21/occupy-protesters-rally-against-prison-conditions/
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_20014051
http://business.time.com/2012/02/20/occupy-the-sec-moving-from-the-campsite-to-the-weeds-of-regulatory-reform/?iid=biz-main-lede
http://www.scribd.com/doc/81484886/Occupy-the-SEC-Comment-Letter-on-the-Volcker-Rule
http://www.wgme.com/template/inews_wire/wires.regional.me/2d40a6b6-www.wgme.com.shtml
http://www.occupymetv.org/
http://www.wpri.com/dpp/news/local_news/south_county/south-kingstown-students-faculty-establish-occupy-uri
http://articles.boston.com/2012-02-20/news/31080426_1_homeless-day-center-students-campus-quad
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/20/occupy-movement-targets-corporate-interest-group
http://www.browndailyherald.com/campuses-collaborate-in-r-i-occupy-movement-1.2700276#.T0SmNfUZcnc
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-30/gingrich-dubs-romney-wall-street-elite-before-florida-vote.html
http://therealnews.com/t2/component/hwdvideoshare/?task=viewvideo&video_id=73058
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-abrams/wall-street-tax-_b_1275348.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-paul/volcker-rule_b_1287957.html?ref=business
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/judith-samuelson/in-phase-2-occupy-movement_b_1283195.html?ref=business
I have not talked about Occupy for some time now - I did get in that one quick mention last week, which I will get back to, but I did want to spend a little more time on the subject of the movement.
Because contrary to what you would probably gather from our major media, the Occupy movement is not dead, not by a long shot. It's just no longer concentrated in encampments in big and medium-sized cities. Which means its not as media-friendly, there are fewer convenient shots of a mass of tents or clouds of tear gas, so much of the media lost interest.
Bu there are still encampments out there, and cities and towns continue to look for ways to make them go away and shut up. For example, the city of Boise, Idaho has had an encampment for the past couple of months. It turns out that camping on public grounds was not illegal - so what did the city just do? It passed a new emergency law to ban camping on public grounds in order to shut down that city's encampment. You don't like the encampment? Throw it out. It's not illegal? Change the law.
So yes, it's true there are a lot fewer high-profile encampments. But an important part of the reason is that Occupy has diffused through those cities, it has spread to the suburbs and even to rural areas. The people are still out there, still demonstrating, still on the streets, still sitting-in, still lobbying, still petitioning, still calling legislators, still carrying it on in whatever way they as individuals feel they can.
Firedoglake has a program of which you likely know, called Occupy Supply. People donate money to supply various occupations with needed equipment, which included not only for example electronic gear but even more often things like gloves and boots and insulated tents to deal with the winter. The point here is that they had a big tent that they were going to donate to one Occupy chosen from among those nominated by visitors to the website, that is, from people interested in Occupy Supply. A base requirement was that the Occupy group either had to have an on-going encampment or at least recent activity - that is, it had to be a live group. The initial list of Occupy groups with such on-going activities was posted on January 31 - and it contained over 150 locations.
Just this past week, in what shows the variety of approaches being taken,
- hundreds of occupy folks and prison reform activists joined forces outside the gates of San Quentin State Prison, rallying around a charge that state sentencing laws are too strict and calling for an end to solitary confinement, the death penalty, and to children being tried as adults;
- some Occupy Oakland protesters were arrested for disrupting a foreclosure sale and later tht same day some others forced a branch of a bank to close early in the face of a protest of a different foreclosure, this one of an woman who had been trying without success to get a loan modification;
- and a group calling itself Occupy the SEC sent a 325-page letter with detailed public comments about the proposed Volcker rule regulating certain bank transactions.
More locally, Occupy Providence, which voluntarily shut down after the city met its demand for a homeless day center, has re-emerged as Occupy URI, with a teach-in and a tent on the campus quad planned for later in the month along with plans for actions as part of Occupy Rhode Island Campuses, a new coalition of five colleges and universities in the state. And there has apparently been some discussion among a number of occupy groups about moving physical occupations onto colleges - the idea being, more or less, if you can't settle in the streets, camp on the campus.
Oh, and Occupy Maine now has a TV show. Welcome to Public Access TV, Occupy Maine.
What's more, on Wednesday, February 29, 60 cities across the country will see nonviolent actions with an overall target of at ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the right-wing outfit that brings corporations and other right-wing interests together with state legislators to provide model legislation the latter can bring home to push in order to advance the reactionary agenda.
But leave all that aside: If you really want to know about the impact of a movement, don't look at its supporters - look at its enemies.
I mentioned this last week but it bears repeating: On January 30, Just before the Florida primary, Newt Grinch accused Witless Romney of being a tool of Wall Street and said that big banking firms like Goldman Sachs are “rigging the game.” He even claimed that the negative ads run against him were financed by Wall Street outfits, including Goldman Sachs. Just think of what it means for the impact of Occupy when Newt Grinch thinks it's to his benefit to call a fellow GOPper a tool of Wall Street.
Not enough? How about the fact that Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan-Chase who has made a career of late out of hyperbolic, hyperventilating attacks on any attempts to regulate the banks, recently said we absolutely should raise taxes on the rich, adding "I don't think people should be able to pass unlimited amounts on to their kids." So much for the "death tax."
Still not enough? How about the fact that a week ago last Friday, February 17, the Wall Street Journal said in an editorial that the only real way to prevent a repeat of the wild irresponsible financial speculation and wrongful behavior that resulted in the meltdown that produced the particular mess we are currently in is for, quoting here, "a Congressional plan either for allowing large banks to fail or for breaking them up."
You got that right: The Wall Street Journal wants to break up the banks.
But if you're still not convinced, this should be the clincher. Consider a recent column by one Judith Samuelson. She is the Executive Director of the Aspen Institute's Business and Society Program, and this is one example among many from a variety of people. In that column, Samuelson said that Occupy should "help give visibility to ideas that move beyond vilifying 'corporations' and 'capitalism' and begin to focus on the incentives and policies that create sub-optimal results from business and capital markets." In other words, she thinks Occupy should focus on smoothing off a couple of the rough edges of capitalism.
That is a way to measure impact: When you have a movement that has come to the point where so many people from across the political spectrum feel entitled and even obliged to offer their sage advice on what that movement should do now, especially when that advice mostly involves how to "tone down" your message and become "serious," you know you have something with power.
Sources:
http://articles.boston.com/2012-02-05/yourtown/31027801_1_corporate-influence-political-reform-sign
http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2012/01/31/a-list-for-journalists-who-think-that-occupy-is-dead/
http://www.ktvb.com/home/Occupy-Boise-has-until-Monday-to-pack-up-camp-139885993.html
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/02/21/occupy-protesters-rally-against-prison-conditions/
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_20014051
http://business.time.com/2012/02/20/occupy-the-sec-moving-from-the-campsite-to-the-weeds-of-regulatory-reform/?iid=biz-main-lede
http://www.scribd.com/doc/81484886/Occupy-the-SEC-Comment-Letter-on-the-Volcker-Rule
http://www.wgme.com/template/inews_wire/wires.regional.me/2d40a6b6-www.wgme.com.shtml
http://www.occupymetv.org/
http://www.wpri.com/dpp/news/local_news/south_county/south-kingstown-students-faculty-establish-occupy-uri
http://articles.boston.com/2012-02-20/news/31080426_1_homeless-day-center-students-campus-quad
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/20/occupy-movement-targets-corporate-interest-group
http://www.browndailyherald.com/campuses-collaborate-in-r-i-occupy-movement-1.2700276#.T0SmNfUZcnc
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-30/gingrich-dubs-romney-wall-street-elite-before-florida-vote.html
http://therealnews.com/t2/component/hwdvideoshare/?task=viewvideo&video_id=73058
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-abrams/wall-street-tax-_b_1275348.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-paul/volcker-rule_b_1287957.html?ref=business
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/judith-samuelson/in-phase-2-occupy-movement_b_1283195.html?ref=business
Left Side of the Aisle #45 - Part 4
Outrage of the Week: attacking Miranda
You know the famous Miranda warning, the "you have the right to remain silent and so on" warning. It grew out of a 1966 SCOTUS decision that involved police questioning of a man named Ernesto Miranda. Despite claims it would "tie the hands" of police and lead to mountains of crime and crooks getting off on technicalities if cops couldn't beat a supposed "confession" out of someone, the fact is most all police forces now live quite comfortably with it and in fact crime has gone down in the years since.
Even so, there have been a number of attempts to cut down the scope or the requirements of the warning, and those have met with some success in the courts. The big issue is that you don't need to be read your rights until you are "in custody," which has come to be understood in a legal sense as the point at which a reasonable person would think they cannot end the questioning and leave.
Okay. There is this guy named Randall Lee Fields. He was in prison on a 45-day sentence for disturbing the peace. During that time, a jail guard and some sheriff's deputies took him from his cell to a conference room. Deputies told him - supposedly several times - that he was free to leave at any time.
They then questioned him for seven hours about a charge he had sexually assaulted a minor. Fields eventually confessed and was charged and convicted of criminal sexual assault. He was sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison.
He appealed the use of his confession on the grounds he was never given his Miranda rights on the sexual assault charge. The district court and then the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati both agreed, throwing out confession and conviction, ruling it is required that police read inmates their Miranda rights anytime they are isolated from the rest of the inmates in situations where they would be likely to incriminate themselves.
(This does not mean he couldn't be re-tried, the prosecution just couldn't use his confession.)
On February 21, the Supreme Court, by a 6-3 vote, overturned that decision and reinstated the conviction. The Court ruled that despite being in prison, Fields was not in "custody" as defined by Miranda and therefore there was no need to tell him his rights.
Writing for majority, Justice Sam Alito said that "Imprisonment alone is not enough to create a custodial situation within the meaning of Miranda." He argued that questioning an inmate doesn't bring the "shock" of arrest that free people experience, that there is also no hope for a quick release if the inmate talks to police, like there would be for a free person, and there is also no chance of a lighter sentence or any type of reprisal for not talking because the person is already in prison.
So what Alito argued - and five of these great legal minds, supposedly the best legal minds of our nation, agreed with him - is if you're in jail for disturbing the peace, there is no "shock" involved in being presented with a charge of sexual assault of a minor, that there is no essential difference between 45 days and 15 years, and that a prisoner, alone in a room with a prison guard and a couple of cops, feels completely free to leave that room, go back to their prison cell at any time with no fear whatsoever of any sort of reprisal.
These people are idiots! And their decision is the Outrage of the Week.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/21/supreme-court-miranda-rights-interrogations_n_1291232.html
The case is Howes v. Fields, 10-680
You know the famous Miranda warning, the "you have the right to remain silent and so on" warning. It grew out of a 1966 SCOTUS decision that involved police questioning of a man named Ernesto Miranda. Despite claims it would "tie the hands" of police and lead to mountains of crime and crooks getting off on technicalities if cops couldn't beat a supposed "confession" out of someone, the fact is most all police forces now live quite comfortably with it and in fact crime has gone down in the years since.
Even so, there have been a number of attempts to cut down the scope or the requirements of the warning, and those have met with some success in the courts. The big issue is that you don't need to be read your rights until you are "in custody," which has come to be understood in a legal sense as the point at which a reasonable person would think they cannot end the questioning and leave.
Okay. There is this guy named Randall Lee Fields. He was in prison on a 45-day sentence for disturbing the peace. During that time, a jail guard and some sheriff's deputies took him from his cell to a conference room. Deputies told him - supposedly several times - that he was free to leave at any time.
They then questioned him for seven hours about a charge he had sexually assaulted a minor. Fields eventually confessed and was charged and convicted of criminal sexual assault. He was sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison.
He appealed the use of his confession on the grounds he was never given his Miranda rights on the sexual assault charge. The district court and then the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati both agreed, throwing out confession and conviction, ruling it is required that police read inmates their Miranda rights anytime they are isolated from the rest of the inmates in situations where they would be likely to incriminate themselves.
(This does not mean he couldn't be re-tried, the prosecution just couldn't use his confession.)
On February 21, the Supreme Court, by a 6-3 vote, overturned that decision and reinstated the conviction. The Court ruled that despite being in prison, Fields was not in "custody" as defined by Miranda and therefore there was no need to tell him his rights.
Writing for majority, Justice Sam Alito said that "Imprisonment alone is not enough to create a custodial situation within the meaning of Miranda." He argued that questioning an inmate doesn't bring the "shock" of arrest that free people experience, that there is also no hope for a quick release if the inmate talks to police, like there would be for a free person, and there is also no chance of a lighter sentence or any type of reprisal for not talking because the person is already in prison.
So what Alito argued - and five of these great legal minds, supposedly the best legal minds of our nation, agreed with him - is if you're in jail for disturbing the peace, there is no "shock" involved in being presented with a charge of sexual assault of a minor, that there is no essential difference between 45 days and 15 years, and that a prisoner, alone in a room with a prison guard and a couple of cops, feels completely free to leave that room, go back to their prison cell at any time with no fear whatsoever of any sort of reprisal.
These people are idiots! And their decision is the Outrage of the Week.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/21/supreme-court-miranda-rights-interrogations_n_1291232.html
The case is Howes v. Fields, 10-680
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