TGIF Reads

Posted: January 28, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: commercial banking, Egypt, FBI raids, Foreign Affairs, morning reads, Voter Ignorance, We are so F'd | Tags: , , , , , | 10 Comments

Good Morning!

It’s finally Friday.

Rahm Emanuel was back on the ballot and part of a debate for candidates for the Mayor of Chicago last night.   The Illinois Supreme Court ruled unanimously in his favor. Evidently the case relied a lot on the ‘intent’ of Rahm whose lawyers argued that he had left books in the basement of his old house, rented the house out instead of selling it and other behaviors that showed that he was just away temporarily performing some kind of national service.   The city is now free to print its ballots.

The justices found that Emanuel never displayed an intent to permanently abandon his Chicago home, which they said would have been the trigger to render him ineligible. Instead, they said, it was clear that when he went to Washington, he always planned the move to be temporary and to return to Chicago one day.

The court said the appellate panel hung its decision on a misinterpretation of an 1867 Illinois Supreme Court case involving a judge who temporarily moved to Tennessee but always planned to come back. In essence, the Appellate Court concluded that the 19th century decision didn’t cover Emanuel and that residency should be defined as where one rests his head at night.

It seems unlikely that reform on the senate filibuster will have much of an impact.  It looks like it will be small if at all.

But Democrats never seemed able to reach an agreement on the scope or type of changes, and Reid announced a more modest set of changes on which the parties would vote Thursday afternoon.

The reforms include an end to secret holds, a reduction in the number of presidential nominations subject to the lengthy Senate confirmation process, an end to mandatory readings for amendments if they’ve been publicly available for at least three days, an agreement by Republicans to limit their filibusters of motions to begin debate, and an agreement by Democrats to limit instances in which they “fill the tree” — or limit the number of amendments Republicans can put to a given piece of legislation.

Perhaps the most significant agreement was that of changing the filibuster, the principal tool of the minority to stall or block legislation. Republicans used the tactic to great effect in the last Congress, though Democrats griped that the process had been abused at an unprecedented level.

Protests continue in Egypt as the scent of Jasmine spreads.  The Economist looks at what this could potentially mean to Arab leaders as the people in the era look for democracy.   The US is obviously nervous about any potential uptick for groups like The Muslim Brotherhood who could take the country in the opposite direction.

Mr Mubarak, like the rest of the Arab world’s autocrats, will be pondering the despot’s eternal dilemma. Is it better to loosen controls in order to satisfy their people with a whiff of freedom, or to tighten them in an effort to ensure their docility?

The fate of Tunisia’s strongman, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, suggests that an angry people will be satisfied with neither. If Mr Mubarak truly put his country’s interests first, he would immediately promise to retire before the next presidential election, due in September. At the very least he would ensure that the contest is a genuinely open one, not another farce.

The NYT looks at the possible role of religion in the Egyptian protests.

Heightening the tension, the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest organized opposition group in the country, announced Thursday that it would take part in the protest. The support of the Brotherhood could well change the calculus on the streets, tipping the numbers in favor of the protesters and away from the police, lending new strength to the demonstrations and further imperiling President Hosni Mubarak’s reign of nearly three decades.

“Tomorrow is going to be the day of the intifada,” said a spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood here in Egypt’s second largest city, who declined to give his name because he said he would be arrested if he did. The spokesman said that the group was encouraging members of its youth organization — roughly those 15 to 30 years old — to take part in protests.

But Islam is hardly homogeneous, and many religious leaders here said Thursday that they would not support the protests, for reasons including scriptural prohibitions on defying rulers and a belief that democratic change would not benefit them. “We Salafists are not going to participate in any of the demonstrations tomorrow,” said Sheik Yasir Burhami, a leading figure among the fundamentalist Salafists in Alexandria.

One troubling thing is that the Egyptian government has ‘shut down the internet‘. SMS messages have also been blocked.  The US government has called on the Egyptian authorities to stop the block.

While access directly to the Facebook and Twitter websites are inaccessible from within Egypt, protesters are circumventing the blocks in place by using mobile applications which still work. Proxy websites are also being used, as they mask the address of website, allowing those to access social networking sites.

But as the blocking measures are failing, it appears that Egypt has sanctioned measures to ’shut down’ web access, fearing the same reprisals as seen in Tunisia earlier this month where the government collapsed and the president was forced into exile.

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Late Night Drifts

Posted: January 27, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, Team Obama, the villagers, U.S. Politics, Wikileaks | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 12 Comments

Snowdrifts in a shopping center parking lot South of Boston

I thought I put up a little news for your late night reading pleasure.

I hope all you East Coast folks have finished shoveling your driveways and sidewalks. The drifts in my driveway are almost as high as my car roof, and my sidewalk is just a narrow strip cutting through waist-high snow. When will it end?

You’ve probably heard by now that President Obama has announced his choice for Press Secretary. Jay Carney, formerly of Time Magazine and for the past two years Joe Biden’s communications director, got the nod to replace Robert Gibbs. Frankly, I always thought Carney was a Republican. Oh wait–that makes him perfect for Obama. Also, Carney is married to ABC news correspondent Claire Shipman–isn’t that a bit of a conflict?

Jay Carney and Claire Shipman

Anyway, a few bloggers have been dishing about Carney’s past history.

At FDL, David Dayen reminisced about a Yearly Kos panel that Carney was on in 2007, and also linked to this anecdote by Jay Rosen

Jay Carney is Time magazine’s Washington bureau chief. Andrew Golis interviewed him too, on the sidewalk outside the party that Time threw on Friday night to promote its political blog, Swampland. (I read Swampland and I was there: good party.) “The blogosphere’s critique of the mainstream media has been overwhelmingly healthy and it’s made the mainstream media pay a lot of attention to details it should have been paying attention to,” he said, echoing Scherer and Fournier.

He then added something unintentionally revealing of how political journalists got themselves into the very trouble that’s forcing at least some of them to look inward. “Karen Tumulty and I— we’re not advocates, we’re not columnists.” (Tumulty, a contributor to Swampland, is Time’s national political correspondent.) “It’s our responsibility not to be labeled left or right.”

Is it now?

“That is just so wrong,” said a commenter (Lee) at Swampland, who had watched the interview. “Your job is to tell the truth.” (Regardless of how it gets you categorized.)

He sounds perfect for our post-partisan POTUS.

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Is the U.S. Government Interested in Right Wing Domestic Terrorism?

Posted: January 27, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, FBI raids, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 16 Comments

Leland Yee

California State Senator and San Francisco mayoral candidate Leland Yee has been receiving death threats from right-wing nuts for “more than six years.”

In the past couple of days, Yee’s office has received more than one copy of the following threatening fax, which also includes slurs directed at President Obama:

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Mayoral candidate and state Sen. Leland Yee said racist death threats were faxed to his San Francisco and Sacramento offices today. They appear linked to his recent criticism of right-wing commentator Rush Limbaugh.

The anonymous faxes, laced with racial epithets and misspellings, were addressed to “JoBama Rectum Sniffing Moron LEELAND LEE” and call Yee a “fish head,” according to a copy provided by Yee’s office.

The faxes include a drawing of a U.S. flag-adorned pickup truck towing a noose that is looped around what appears to be a caricature head of President Barack Obama. The document says: “Without exceptions, Marxists are enemies of the United States Constitution! Death to all Marxists! Foreign and Domestic!”

The threats apparently are in response to Yee’s criticism of Rush Limbaugh for ridiculing the Chinese President Hu Jintao’s speech at the White House last week. Watch the video:

Yesterday, Sen. Lee gave a press conference and called for a stop to the racist, violent threats has been receiving by fax, e-mail, and text message.

“I thought our country and our community were a lot better than this,” Yee, D-San Francisco, said at an afternoon news conference in the Hiram Johnson building at 455 Golden Gate Ave.

[….]

“To see, and to hear, and to receive these kinds of horrible statements and racist threats is truly angering.”

According to the article “detectives are investigating.” They previously “investigated” faxes that were sent after Sen. Yee criticized CSU Stanislaus for shredding documents regarding the amount of money paid to Sarah Palin for a speech.

What does it take to get the FBI and/or Department of Homeland Security involved in the “investigation?” We know that the NSA can and does track the communications of American citizens–without a warrant if they are characterized as “terrorists.” Yet the claim is that no one “knows where the messages are coming from.” Come on. Don’t tell me there is no way to trace the origin of these faxes and e-mails.

What is going on here? The FBI has no qualms about breaking down the doors of peace activists, but they won’t deal with racist death threats to a California public official?

Axelrod explains it all …

Posted: January 27, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Barack Obama, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, John Birch Society in Charge | Tags: , , , , , | 14 Comments

A tweet and facebook post from Digby alerted me to an Axelrod/Blogger “roundtable” where he explained the semantics game in the SOTU.  I just found the SOTU contradictory and rather schizophrenic.  Except for the fact he still appears to know nothing about economics, Obama was full of on the one hand on the other hand kinds of policies.  It was full of dichotomous metaphors along the lines of building up things while tearing them down and defunding things down while investing them up.

Chris Bowers has further coverage here at the Giant Talking Cheeto.  It appears the usual “neoliberal” apparatchiks were there.  Digby calls it a matter of semantics.  Digby also believes we’re about to see a campaign of  ‘strengthening Social Security’ argument by doing things that actually weaken it. She calls it “strength through weakness”. It’s that old Reagan game of labeling offensive, deadly missiles ‘peacekeepers’ to make them sound less offensive and deadly.  She’s got a really good list of examples where  the language mixes up the intent of the actions.  At least some one else is noticing the schizophrenic policy and language.

As far as I can tell from Axelrod’s conversation with the bloggers and everything we’ve seen and heard from the political establishment, the only real “principle” here is bipartisanship. Obama gets high marks from the Villagers and Democrats when he forges a bipartisan deal with the Republicans — no matter what the deal is. That he was praised and rewarded for cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans in a time of deficit fever tells you how far the American people have fallen down the rabbit hole. Don’t think he doesn’t get that.

Here’s the bottom line on Social Security from Chris Bowers who–at the moment–is less than enthusiastic.  Let’s see how long that lasts.

The answers that we received are not answers that will make anyone entirely happy. Here is what I took from them:

  • The Obama administration is not willing to repudiate the “crisis” narrative surrounding Social Security that dominates the national political media.
  • President Obama explicitly repudiated privatization of Social Security in his speech last night, and David Axelrod reaffirmed that repudiation today.
  • If there is going to be a “bi-partisan” agreement to alter Social Security, it will be brokered by President Obama himself. Congress is not going to pass a deal to which President Obama has not given his prior approval.
  • President Obama strikes generally strong notes in defense of Social Security when it comes to other possible ways to cut the program. However, other than privatization, both he and his administration are unwilling to get too specific about where the line is drawn.

At least now, there’s a general realization that this doublespeak means we’re going to clearly get the pro-business, highly Republican alternatives for the next two years.  Obama has gone full throttle on the Chamber of Commerce agenda and language.   At this point, however, I think there’s also a general recognition that that the access bloggers will eventually throw their hands up and throw in the towel behind Obama because of the usual deal.  That is the Republicans are clearly bug fuck nuts so we can do worse.  The Republicans seem hell bent at showing exactly how worse they can be right now.  Even Bohenerella couldn’t shut up Michelle Bachmann and her twisted sister audiovisuals and crazy delivery to some camera some where stage right.  Don’t even get me started on her revisionist history of slavery and the founding fathers.  She’s a good example of what you get when you dumb down education via religication.

All you had to do was listen to Paul Ryan and Michelle Bachmann to see that both have a less than firm grasp on reality and the facts.  They are deniers of history, economic theory, science, math, and facts. The more they speak, the more those independent voters flip the approval switch on the Presidential mumbo jumbo policy gumbo.   This just puts the president in the catbird seat to continue the Corporate Takeover of America and its institutions.

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Thursday Reads

Posted: January 27, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, fetus fetishists, Medicare, morning reads, Reproductive Rights, Social Security, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 42 Comments

Good Morning!!

The east coast is getting hit by another big snowstorm. It was snowing in New Jersey all day yesterday, according to Joanelle; and the storm had moved up to Connecticut by early evening, according to Zaladonis. It started outside my house around 8:30PM and it’s supposed to keep coming down until mid-morning. Thank goodness I don’t have to go anywhere till tomorrow.

So what’s happening in the news this morning?

The ACLU didn’t care for the joke President Obama made about TSA patdowns in his SOTU speech.

“Within 25 years, our goal is to give 80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail, which could allow you go places in half the time it takes to travel by car,” Obama said. “For some trips, it will be faster than flying – without the pat-down.”

Awkward laughter and a scattered applause followed as Obama smiled and chuckled.

Moments after the president made the remark, the American Civil Liberties Union fired out a Tweet that read: “President Obama makes funny about TSA pat-downs, but the violations of the Constitution are NO JOKE!”

It was accompanied by a link to a scathing report on the ACLU’s Web site, which noted complaints “from men, women and children who reported feeling humiliated and traumatized by these searches, and, in some cases, comparing their psychological impact to sexual assaults.”

I love the ACLU.

There may have been poison in the bomb that was planted along an MLK birthday parade route in Spokane, WA last week.

A bomb maker mixed chemicals with shrapnel in what law enforcement officials say was a weapon designed to inflict maximum injuries during last week’s Martin Luther King Jr. march in downtown Spokane.

Tests are being conducted to determine the type of chemical and whether it made the bomb potentially more deadly, Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich said Tuesday.

“I know the bomb had some kind of chemical material inside, but we are still trying to figure out what kind. All we know there is a substance,” Knezovich said. “If there was an added dimension, it added to the lethality of it.”

Knezovich said early talks indicated the chemical could have been a compound used in common rat poison. Rat poison has been added to bombs in the Middle East for the stated purpose of acting as an anti-coagulant – which inhibits the ability of bleeding wounds to clot.

A new Gallup poll shows that most Americans don’t want cuts in Social Security, Medicare, education, anti-poverty programs, or defense, but they still want Congress to deal with the deficit before raising the debt limit.

Hmmm….what do they want to cut then? When Gallup looked at the results based on political persuasion, they found that Democrats were more willing to cut defense while Republicans wanted cuts in funding for the arts. Figures….

Glenn Greenwald has a nice post on the bipartisan lack of empathy for whistleblower Bradley Manning. It’s a quiz based on this discussion from the Dylan Ratigan Show on MSNBC.

Go take the quiz. It seems Glenn has the flu. I feel for him, since I had a really bad case recently. Feel better soon, Glenn.

Remember the scam that was used to smear ACORN awhile back? From Alternet, Planned Parenthood may have been targeted with the similar smear campaign.

In what is perhaps one of the most craven actions of a deeply craven movement, anti-choice scam artists apparently affiliated with Live Action Films and Lila Rose of undercover “gotcha film-fame” appear to have attempted an “ACORN-like” hoax on Planned Parenthood Federation of America by sending people into Planned Parenthood health centers in six states posing as sex traffickers seeking health care for young girls who were “part” of their supposed sex trafficking rings.

In response, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder describing the visits and asking for an investigation.

In a statement, PPFA said:

Last week, Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) alerted federal authorities to a potential multistate sex trafficking ring. Over a five day period, visitors to Planned Parenthood health centers in six states said they were seeking information from Planned Parenthood about health services Planned Parenthood could provide to underage girls who were part of a sex trafficking ring. Subsequent to alerting U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Planned Parenthood learned the identify of one of those involved and believes these visits are likely a hoax by opponents of legal abortion seeking to discredit Planned Parenthood, which delivers preventive health care and abortion services to three million women each year.

PPFA reports that men, sometimes accompanied by a woman, “visited at least 11 Planned Parenthood health centers in six states within a one-week time frame.” The visits were made between January 11th and January 15th to health centers in Virginia, Indiana, New York, New Jersey, Washington, D.C., and Arizona. “Among them was a clinic in Tucson, Ariz., which Planned Parenthood said was visited on the 15th, a week after [emphasis added] the shooting rampage in that city that critically injured Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

Unbelievable!

Soooooo…. What are you reading this morning?

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