Seriously Perverted

Posted: February 18, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: abortion rights, birth control, black women's reproductive health, religion, religious extremists, Reproductive Health, Reproductive Rights, Republican politics, War on Women, Women's Healthcare, Women's Rights | Tags: | 50 Comments

You don’t really have to be a “birth control mom” to understand that the Republican and Red Beanie obsession with other people’s sex lives is just plain wrong.  Trying to turn the reproductive

with apologies to R Crumb

health of women into a moral and religious freedom issue is one of the worst perversions of our time.  I no longer require birth control but recognize the importance of birth control and abortion access as central to the recognition of women as a functioning adult capable of making moral decisions in a free and functioning democracy with constitutional rights.  Women’s Reproductive Health is not a fucking political football.

Just a few weeks ago, the notion would have seemed far-fetched. The country is deeply divided on abortion, but not on contraception; the vast majority of American women have used it, and access hasn’t been a front-burner political issue since the Supreme Court decided Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965.

But then Rick Santorum said states ought to have the right to outlaw the sale of contraception.

And Susan G. Komen for the Cure yanked its funding for Planned Parenthood.

And the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops teed off on President Barack Obama’s contraception policy.

And House Republicans invited a panel of five men — and no women — to debate the issue.

And a prominent Santorum supporter pined for the days when “the gals” put aspirin “between their knees” to ward off pregnancy.

Democratic strategist Celinda Lake says it’s enough to “really irritate” independent suburban moms and “re-engage” young, single women who haven’t tuned into the campaign so far.

And, she says, the stakes are high: Women backed Barack Obama in big numbers in 2008 but then swung right in 2010. If the president is to win reelection in 2012, he’ll need to win women back — and Lake and other Democrats see the GOP push on contraception as a gift that will make that easier.

“I feel like the world is spinning backwards,” said former Rep. Patricia Schroeder, who has often related the troubles she has as a young married law student getting her birth control prescriptions filled in the early 1960s. “If you had told me when I was in law school that this would be a debate in 2012, I would have thought you were nuts … And everyone I talk to thinks so, too.”

Jennifer Lawless, director of the Women and Politics Institute at American University, also sees the chance of a huge female backlash if the Republicans overreach.

There are so many things about this article in Politico–by a woman–that piss me off that I hardly know where to start.  The first is the bogus description of  “deep division” in the country about abortion.  The only deep division that I can see comes from the right wing continually pushing lies like the existence of abortion on demand hours before giving birth and bogus, nonexistent procedures like “partial birth abortion.” 

The frustration of the right wing over their inability to control access to Plan B, hormonal birth control and first trimester abortions is at the root of all this.  The push to force sonograms, invasive vaginal probes, and “life” begins at the moment of conception religous tropes is building to a crescendo. If only the red beanie set were this obsessed about ending world hunger or nuclear war or ensuring universal health care. The vast majority of women have basically had, are having, are using or will use all three of those things.  To characterize normal reproductive health measures as murder and anti-religious is ridiculous.  But I’d like to add this warning, if the political and punditry class on either side think they can turn us all into a new voting segment, I think they’re also going to learn the meaning of the word backlash.  Women’s reproductive health shouldn’t be trapped in the land of political gamesmanship. Just who the hell are they to score political points with women’s lives??

Read the rest of this entry »

Has the FBI Ever Foiled a Real Terrorist Plot?

Posted: February 18, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Crime, Media, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 13 Comments

Amine El Khalifi, the latest victim of an FBI sting

Yesterday, the FBI arrested another fake terrorist, just one in a long line of potential “terrorists” who have been given training and equipment by the government and then busted as they try to carry out their “plots”–plots that seem to have been designed by–or at least strongly encouraged by–FBI agents. From The Washington Post:

Federal authorities on Friday arrested a 29-year-old Moroccan man in an alleged plot to carry out a suicide bombing at the U.S. Capitol, the latest in a series of terrorism-related arrests resulting from undercover sting operations.

For more than a year, Amine El Khalifi, of Alexandria, considered attacking targets including a synagogue, an Alexandria building with military offices and a Washington restaurant frequented by military officials, authorities said. When arrested a few blocks from the Capitol around lunchtime on Friday, he was carrying what he believed to be a loaded automatic weapon and a suicide vest ready for detonation.

The gun and vest were provided not by al-Qaeda, as Khalifi had been told, but by undercover FBI agents who rendered them inoperable, authorities said.

They said Khalifi had been the subject of a lengthy investigation and never posed a threat to the public….

Khalifi “allegedly believed he was working with al-Qaeda,” said Neil H. MacBride, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Khalifi “devised the plot, the targets and the methods on his own.”

The Washington Post must think Americans are stupid. Emptywheel, who has done a great deal of research on these FBI sting operations, doesn’t seem to think Khalifi planned the “attack” by himself.

As is usual with most of FBI’s terrorist arrests of late, the FBI provided the suspect with the weapons he would have used to attack the target–in this case, the Capitol. As is usual, this appears to be an instance where the FBI found someone talking about violence–usually online–and then cultivated that violent desire over time.

So it seems like this is a now-familiar story.

Later in the post, she writes:

The FBI says his own plan was to be dropped off at the Capitol building.

But what happened instead is he did a Deep Throat in a parking garage to get his empty suicide vest.

So whose plan was he implementing, again?

I’m mentioning this arrest yesterday, because we’ve seen this repeated again and again. The FBI announces a big arrest and then later we learn that the whole plan was hatched by FBI agents who sucked in some angry kid and convinced him to commit some “terrorist act.”

On Thursday, just one day before the latest big FBI “terrorism” bust in DC, the so-called Underwear Bomber was sentenced to life in prison. ABC News (which also seems to think we’re stupid):

Umar Farouk Abulmatallab

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was the same remorseless man who four months ago pleaded guilty to all charges related to Northwest Airlines Flight 253. He seemed to relish the mandatory sentence and defended his actions as rooted in the Muslim holy book, the Quran.

“Mujahideen are proud to kill in the name of God,” he said. “Today is a day of victory.”

Had the bomb not fizzled, nearly 300 people aboard the flight would probably have been killed.

The case stirred renewed fears that terrorists could still bring down an American jetliner more than eight years after 9/11, and it accelerated installation of body scanners at the nation’s airports.

Please note that Abdulmutallab “was subdued by fellow passengers,” not anyone from law enforcement. Before the sentencing, four passengers and a member of the crew from Flight 253 were allowed to give victim impact statements. One of those statements came from Detroit attorney Kurt Haskell, whom the ABC “news” story characterizes as follows:

Because he was a passenger, Detroit-area lawyer Kurt Haskell was allowed to publicly repeat his wild claim that the U.S. government outfitted Abdulmutallab with a defective bomb partly to force the rollout of body-imaging machines at airports.

Kurt and Lori Haskell, who were on Flight 253

Is Haskell really making a “wild claim?” Here is his statement to the court:

I wish to thank the Court for allowing me these 5 minutes to make my statement. My references to the government in this statement refer to the Federal Government excluding this Court and the prosecution. On Christmas Day 2009, my wife and I were returning from an African safari and had a connecting flight through Amsterdam. As we waited for our flight, we sat on the floor next to the boarding gate. What I witnessed while sitting there and subsequent events have changed my life forever. While I sat there, I witnessed Umar dressed in jeans and a white t-shirt, being escorted around security by a man in a tan suit who spoke perfect American English and who aided Umar in boarding without a passport. The airline gate worker initially refused Umar boarding until the man in the tan suit intervened. The event meant nothing to me at the time. Little did I know that Umar would try to kill me a few hours later as our flight approached Detroit. The final 10 minutes of our flight after the attack were the worst minutes of my life. During those 10 minutes I sat paralyzed in fear. Unfortunately, what happened next has had an even greater impact on my life and has saddened me further.

When we landed, I was shocked that our plane taxied up to the gate. I was further shocked that we were forced to sit on the plane for 20 minutes with powder from the so called bomb all over the cabin. The officers that boarded the plane did nothing to ensure our safety and did not check for accomplices or other explosive devices. Several passengers trampled through parts of the bomb as they exited the plane. We were then taken into the terminal with our unchecked carry on bags. Again, there was no concern for our safety even though Umar told the officers that there was another bomb on board as he exited the plane. I wondered why nobody was concerned about our safety, accomplices or other bombs and the lack of concern worried me greatly. I immediately told the FBI my story in order to help catch the accomplice I had seen in Amsterdam. It soon became obvious that the FBI wasn’t interested in what I had to say, which upset me further. For one month the government refused to admit the existence of the man in the tan suit before changing course and admitting his existence in an ABC News article on January 22, 2010. That was the last time the government talked about this man. The video that would prove the truth of my account has never been released. I continue to be emotional upset that the video has not been released. The Dutch police, meanwhile, in this article (show article), also confirmed that Umar did not show his passport in Amsterdam which also meant that he didn’t go through security as both are in the same line in Amsterdam. It upsets me that the government refuses to admit this fact.

I became further saddened from this case, when Patrick Kennedy of the State Department during Congressional hearings, admitted that Umar was a known terrorist, was being followed, and the U.S. allowed him into the U.S. so that it could catch Umar’s accomplices. I was once again shocked and saddened when Michael Leiter of the National Counter terrorism Center admitted during these same hearings that intentionally letting terrorists into the U.S. was a frequent practice of the U.S. Government. I cannot fully explain my sadness, disappointment and fear when I realized that my government allowed an attack on me intentionally.

During this time, I questioned if my country intentionally put a known terrorist onto my flight with a live bomb. I had many sleepless nights over this issue. My answer came shortly thereafter. In late 2010, the FBI admitted to giving out intentionally defective bombs to the Portland Christmas Tree Bomber,the Wrigley Field Bomber and several others. Further, Mr. Chambers was quoted in the Free Press on January 11, 2011 when he indicated that the government’s own explosives experts had indicated that Umar’s bomb was impossibly defective. I wondered how that could be. Certainly, I thought, Al Qaeda wouldn’t go through all of the trouble to plan such an attack only to provide the terrorist with an impossibly defective bomb.

I attended nearly all of the pretrial hearings. At the hearing on January 28, 2011, I was greatly disappointed by the prosecution’s request to block evidence from Mr. Chambers “as it could then be able to be obtained by third parties, who could use it in a civil suit against the government”. It really bothered me that the government apparently was admitting to wrongdoing of some kind as it admitted that it was concerned it would be sued. It further upset me to know that the government was putting its own interests ahead of those of the passengers.

When I attended the jury selection hearings, I questioned why versions of the same two questions kept coming up, those being:

1. Do you think whether you’ll be able to tell whether something is actually a bomb? and
2. Do you realize that sometimes the media doesn’t always tell the truth?

I continued to be greatly saddened at this point as I felt the truth continued to be hidden.

When Umar listed me as his only witness, I was happy to testify, not on his behalf, but on behalf of the truth. I never expected to testify, as my eyewitness account would have been too damaging to the myth that the government and media are putting forward. A mere 5 days after I was announced as a witness, there was an inexplicable guilty plea which exasperated me as I no longer would be testifying.

In closing I will just say that regardless of how the media and government try to shape the public perception of this case, I am convinced that Umar was given an intentionally defective bomb by a U.S. Government agent and placed on our flight without showing a passport or going through security, to stage a false terrorist attack to be used to implement various government policies.

The effect this matter has had on my life has been astounding and due to this case, I will never trust the government in any matter, ever.

In regards to sentencing, nothing I’ve said excuses the fact that Umar tried to kill me. He has waived his valid claim to the entrapment defense. Umar, you are not a great Muslim martyr, you are merely a “Patsy”. I ask the court to impose the mandatory sentence.

Haskell’s wife Lori says that she was treated pretty badly by the judge in the case. No one really wanted her or her husband to tell about what they saw and experienced on Christmas Day 2009.

I imagine Joseph Cannon and/or Emptywheel will write about this case again soon. They are both much better at this kind of thing than I am, so I thought I would just lay the facts out for you as I see them. If you are interested in more information, you can read Cannon’s previous posts on the underwear bomber here and Emptywheel’s here.

What do you think? (Keeping in mind that former DHS head Michael Chertoff made big bucks from the naked body scanners now being used by the TSA.)

Who Exactly Is The Enemy On Our Doorstep?

Posted: February 18, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Department of Homeland Security, domestic military/police exercises, Domestic Policy, domestic surveillance drones, Domestic terrorism, Patriot Act, prison population, SWAT teams, U.S. Military | 39 Comments

It’s hard to keep up with the outrageous statements and positions of various 2012 presidential candidates.  One might reasonably ask: Who let the loons out?

As offensive as all these assaults, affronts and crazy talk have been, there’s been something else operating in the background, which begs the question:

What’s up with the joint military/police exercises being conducted in our cities?

The question lingers in the air, a thick mist of doubt laced with a pinch of paranoia.  We live in an era that breeds both with incredible ease.

On the heels of the National Defense Authorization Act [NDAA’s] passage, replete with an indefinite detention clause that President Obama signed onto, against the security advice of the FBI and NSA, it’s a question that leads even the level-headed to ponder the rhyme and reason of military/police training maneuvers inside American cities.

In late January, Los Angeles was an operational site.  In August of last year, Boston and earlier exercises were held in Miami and Little Rock.  The purpose?  According to official statements:

This will be routine training conducted by military personnel, designed to ensure the military’s ability to operate in urban environments, prepare forces for upcoming overseas deployments, and meet mandatory training certification requirements.

Hummm.  I thought that’s what military bases were for?  And forgive me, I don’t see anything ‘routine’ about this.  I grew up near Fort Dix and McGuire Air Force Base in NJ.  We had plenty of planes and helicopters in the sky and military equipment trucking down the highways.

But military exercises in our living space?  Never.

We’ve seen the images from Greece, the Cradle of Democracy in flames, the populace pushed to extremes by financial/political deals that insist on further tightening of the economic thumbscrews.  These remedies never apply to those inflicting the misery.  But for the general population?  Pain is good.  Could these draconian prescriptions and subsequent reactions happen here?

Lest we forget, we’ve seen the prologue. Here:

I’ve written before about the creeping militarization of local police force units, where routine calls are turned into SWAT team events, complete with wartime accouterments—uniforms, weapons and vehicles.  And then there are the drones added to our airspace for additional surveillance and security, features that some would tell us are simply the next reasonable step in effective police work. The President has signed the FAA Reauthorization Bill, which among other things authorizes drone utilization in American airspace.  The Agency projects 30,000 drones in operation by 2020.

And now our cities are hosting military and police force exercises, presumably to prepare for overseas’ deployment.

The local CBS affiliate in Los Angeles started with this lead:

If you notice a heavy military presence around downtown Los Angeles this week, don’t be alarmed — it’s only a drill.

Whistling past the graveyard?  Color me suspicious but I find this whole concept disturbing.

Former Police Chief Norm Stamper, a 35-year police force veteran who oversaw the disastrous response to the 1999 WTO Battle in Seattle, has been vocal in his concern about militarizing our domestic police forces. He takes himself to task in going along with the brass in Seattle, where police took a hard-ass stand that resulted in injury and considerable property damage.  Instead of the cautionary tale that Seattle might have provided, the paramilitary mindset was further cemented into place after 9/11.  The Department of Homeland Security funded cities and small towns across America for ‘terrorist preparedness’ training and equipment. And those small, unlikely terrorist targets took those funds and armed their Police Departments to the teeth.

To the horror of many, we watched this equipment and personnel turn against Americans during the Occupy Wall St. protests, most spectacularly in Oakland, CA.

Stamper blames this on:

The paramilitary bureaucracy and the culture it engenders—a black-and-white world in which police unions serve above all to protect the brotherhood—is worse today than it was in the 1990s. Such agencies inevitably view protesters as the enemy. And young people, poor people and people of color will forever experience the institution as an abusive, militaristic force—not just during demonstrations but every day, in neighborhoods across the country.

He also cites the military model adopted by police bureaucrats, an archaic attitude that fosters a dedication to authoritative regulations rather than an officer’s behavior in the streets.  And the senseless ‘War on Drugs’ that adds an overblown righteousness to the mayhem, a policy that criminalizes non-violent drug use and imprisons more of our citizens, ratio to population, than anywhere else on the planet.  The US represents 5% of the world’s population, yet we have 25% of the world’s prisoners.

Let that sink in!

Five percent of the world’s population = Twenty-five percent of the world’s prison population.

What the hell are we doing?  To our own people.

Shortly before leaving for Christmas, I’d read the announcement about the exercise in Los Angeles, scheduled and carried out in late January.  Frankly, I had no idea that these other ‘exercises’ had ever taken place.

Here’s a description [after the fact] of the ‘training exercise’ in Boston:

Land chopper on roof

U.S. military commandos practiced raids in the shuttered Agassiz Elementary School last month, including a nighttime helicopter landing on the school’s roof, the Gazette has learned.

The elite special forces training was done without notice to nearby residents. No live ammo or explosives were involved and safety measures were taken, according to military spokesperson Kim Tiscione.

A vaguely worded July 25 press release from the Mayor’s Office announced citywide “military training exercises,” including helicopters, through Aug. 5. In fact, the exercises were top-secret training for the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), whose commandos recently killed terrorist Osama bin Laden, Tiscione told the Gazette.

“I know a lot of it can look really different when it’s in your own back yard,” Tiscione said of the training, which included the two-minute helicopter landing around 9 p.m. on July 28. “Safety is absolutely something we are concerned about.”

Safety is of prime concern?  One would think local residents would have been thoroughly informed and prepared before a helicopter was landed on the roof of an abandoned school.  Elsewhere the ‘helicopters’ were identified as a Black Hawks, buzzing among familiar business locations, always at night.

Brian O’Connell, a resident of Jamaica Plain had the following to say, following the Boston maneuvers:

Our great nation (which as you know, doesn’t tax the super rich or corporations) is currently engaged in a legislative battle royal over spending priorities. Meanwhile, the estimated price tag for our wars in the Middle East is $4 TRILLION. We close down schools in heavily populated urban areas and use the space for Special Forces raids while our unaccountable elected leaders pander behind close doors with the military industrial complex and use our communities as a commando training site. I find all of this obscene, and I know that there are many people who feel the same.

Correct me if I’m wrong but where are these ‘future deployments’ envisioned when the Iraq war has been officially ended and Afghanistan will be drawing down next year?  I’m all for defending the country but who or what are these combined forces defending it from?  Are these training exercises for a possible Iran invasion?  The drumbeat for war has been incessant, while most Americans have little appetite for another round of senseless, endless conflict.  Or are these staging operations preparing for something else?

Chris Hedges, never reluctant to criticize a system he considers thoroughly corrupt and acting against the public’s interest [not to mention Constitutional law] had this to say:

And I think, without question, the corporate elites understand that things, certainly economically, are about to get much worse. I think they’re worried about the Occupy movement expanding. And I think that, in the end–and this is a supposition–they don’t trust the police to protect them, and they want to be able to call in the Army.

I sincerely hope the man is wrong.  Unfortunately, Hedges’ has been a modern day prophet, predicting the corporate takeover of the United States that we, citizens-at-large are beginning to recognize everywhere we look.

Which begs two questions:

  • What’s up with the military/police exercises being conducted in our cities?
  • And would we be prepared for the truth, whatever that might be?

I stumbled across several quotes the other day, two of which had me rear back for a second.  So, I’ll leave you with the following:

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. [Goethe]

And,

Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world. [Henry Kissinger]

And here’s one of my own:

Better to vigorously question any official statement than to merely nod and fall back to sleep.

Saturday: Whitney is Every Woman

Posted: February 18, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: | 26 Comments

Morning news junkies.

Today is Whitney Houston’s funeral, so I thought I’d devote my Saturday rant+reads to her. To the right, a little sign I made in Whitney’s honor, based on an interview quote of hers. (h/t to paperdoll for introducing me to the church sign generator.)

Here’s a little list of names that I’d like to run by you…

Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Janet Jackson, MC Hammer, Paula Abdul’s “Shut Up and Dance ,” and the Wayne’s World soundtrack (just for Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody alone).

What do they have in common you ask? Well in this self-centered little corner of the universe, all of the above were a wee Wonk’s very first music purchases with her very own pocket money. (Oh, yes I did just use the third person with my pseudonym. I really couldn’t give less of a frig about obeying those kind of blogger Do’s and Don’ts.)

Anyhow, these artists–along with a complimentary audio cassette that came with my Dad’s ’86 Oldsmobile–made up the bulk of my earliest music collection. (That Oldsmobile freebie was a damn good compilation, too, btw. Everything from Fur Elise to Cyndi Lauper.)

I’m clearly a child of the eighties. And, I still have the tapes I bought of Whitney, Michael, Madge, and Janet to prove it. Also the Oldsmobile tape… though it is nearly entirely defunct (B-side and A-side) from so much overplay on my ridiculously pink walkman back in the day.

Point of all that nostalgia being, I literally grew up with Whitney et al.

Madonna’s still kicking it, and Janet’s doing her thing, too. But, what the hell happened to the other half of my childhood?

When I was entering junior high, the Bodyguard came out…and of course I bought the soundtrack and crooned “I Will Always Love You” in front of the mirror, bathroom singer-style. But, the other song I remember singing almost as much?

Whitney’s cover of Chaka Khan’s “I’m Every Woman.”

That was the Aretha Franklin “R-E-S-P-E-C-T”/”Natural Woman” anthem of my preadolescence–not to mention the choir girl way of singing Meredith Brook’s “I’m a bitch, I’m a lover, I’m a child, I’m a mother…” as well as a lot easier for a twelve year old to grasp than a Tori Amos album (goddess love Tori–I do! but her lyrics are up there in the clouds…)

Whitney’s “I’m Every Woman” was also just a smidge before I would be a freshman in high school and the Riot grrrl bands, Liz Phair’s Exile Out of Guyville, etc. would explode in the mainstream.

I’m Every Woman was the song a little girly-Wonk-in-the-making *needed* to hear and sing right at that moment in time. And, yes, it’s all about the girl being like I Dream of Jeannie in a bottle, making her master’s wishes come true. That’s not really the part I listened to when Whitney sang it though… Here’s what I heard her sing/emphasize–the refrain that played through my mind:

I’m every woman,
It’s all in me.

Those lyrics were a burst of girl power. A woman-of-color girl power!

I was a shy nerdy Indian girl who went through the worst of bullying during those junior high years. But, whenever I turned on my walkman at home and started belting out “I’m every woman, it’s all in me…,” I felt a little stronger.

I’ve also seen the human costs of anxiety, depression, and addiction, up close and personal. Every nook and cranny of my immediate and extended family has been affected by one and/or the other. Chances are at least a nook or cranny somewhere in yours has been affected, too.

Mental health care is a right.

Mental health equity is not just about money or access, as we’ve seen, even the uber-wealthy are hardly immune.

Mental health equity is about breaking down the stigma so that people who are self-destructing can get help without having to feel like it’s a personal failing. The mind isn’t outside of the body. Mental health problems are not personal human failings anymore than pneumonia is.

Whitney’s personal successes and personal struggles are all of ours. Her premature death is our premature death. We as a society need to check ourselves before we wreck ourselves and all our national treasures along with.

Okay I’m gonna get off my soapbox, and leave you with a few musical+political links and snippets to chew on…

“I prefer to stay on the sidelines. I genuinely believe an artist [is] supposed to be the canary in the coal mine, and you’re better off with a certain distance from the seat of power.”

Springsteen said he still supports Obama but expressed disappointment in his handling of the job market and home foreclosures and disapproved of the attention Obama paid to corporations rather than the middle class.

“I would like to have seen more activism in job creation sooner than it came. I would like to have seen people helped out, seen some of these [home] foreclosures stopped somehow,” Springsteen said.

Springsteen said Obama was “more friendly to corporations than I thought he would be, [and] there’s not as many middle-class or working-class voices heard in the administration as I thought there would be.”

But Springsteen did send a little praise Obama’s way, saying, “He kept GM alive, which was incredibly important to Detroit and Michigan, and he got the health care law passed, although I wish there had been a public option and didn’t leave the citizens victims of the insurance companies. He killed Osama bin Laden, which was extremely important. He brought some sanity to the top level of government.”

Obama was joined by the soul singer at a Democratic fundraiser on Thursday, a month after the president launched into a brief, impromptu version of Green’s “Let’s Stay Together” at New York’s Apollo Theater.

Obama thanked Green, prompting a member of the audience to shout, “Give us a verse!” The president declined to sing this time, telling about 70 campaign donors that he “took a chance at the Apollo and I’m not going to take a chance again.”

“After re-election I might go on tour with the good reverend — be his opening act,” Obama said.

But he warned, “I don’t want to lose any further votes because of my singing voice.”

During his performance, Cornell also performed Bob Marley’s Redemption Song: a couple of numbers from his ex-band Audioslave, Ground Zero and Wide Awake; John Lennon’s Imagine; and Nick Lowe’s (What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding.

But it was with his finale that Cornell truly floored the audience, belting out the Dolly Parton-penned song that Houston turned into a classic when she sang it in the 1992 film The Bodyguard.

Voters of America, President Obama has made you a mix.

The president shared a Spotify playlist on his Facebook page Thursday: 29 tunes that he’ll be pumping on the campaign trail between now and Nov. 6. There are songs from artists you’d expect (Bruce Springsteen), artists you wouldn’t (Ricky Martin) and artists that are actually from Canada (Arcade Fire.)

And while candidates have been playing music on the stump since the days when doing so required a brass band, this feels different. We’re being invited into a courtship ritual as old as cassette technology. This is a collection of songs designed to make the recipient fall in love with the sender.

Only, Obama has a vast and varied electorate to woo — and that means his playlist does a lot of herky-jerky genre jumping. The results are not all swoon-worthy. Florence + the Machine’s melodramatic pop bristles up against country duo Montgomery Gentry. The beatific falsetto of Curtis Mayfield reminds us how awful Ray LaMontagne is. And for some reason, there’s an Electric Light Orchestra song. In speeches, the president has cited the plight of American farmers and factory workers. Now he feels the pain of America’s wedding DJs.

And so does his staff. On Spotify, the mix is subtitled like so: “The official 2012 playlist includes picks by the campaign staff — including a few of President Obama’s favorites.” A spokesperson for the Obama campaign clarified in an e-mail that the president didn’t choose the songs; they were suggested by staff members and volunteers.

As the obituaries roll in and the tributes pour out about Whitney Houston’s ability to hit those celebrated and “magical” high notes, surely the most overlooked of her many achievements as an artist is that she is perhaps the first black female artist to take the technical virtuosity of her skills culled in the church and successfully transpose them onto Arista-industry driven, market-tested Top 40 pop arrangements. Whereas even the Supremes worked their way up through a Motor City black-owned business that willed them to global stardom against the odds, and whereas a whole slew of “niche” artists (Natalie Cole on the R&B charts, Donna Summer on the Giorgio Moroder Euro-disco circuit) made the leap to the center, it was Whitney who emerged at the very center of ’80s pop and then subtly and yet fundamentally changed its landscape forever. She made the aesthetics of black female vocalizing once and for all not only mainstream (as Aretha Franklin had done in the late ’60s by way of her uncompromising Muscle Shoals soul) but also accessible to the masses, across age groups (the very young and the old who maybe didn’t groove to “Bad Girls” at Studio 54; the teens and 20-somethings who saw a Seventeen magazine model girlfriend in the singer), and across racial groups, by delivering the good news of the gospel melisma in shiny pop music deemed “universal” rather than “distinctly African-American.”

[…]

Drawn as some may be to the tales told by gossip folk coming out in droves, the more compelling story of Whitney Houston resides in a voice that raises above the din of US magazine and E! network chatter and holds for us the history of post–civil rights era womanhood as it defiantly, regally and audaciously weaves its way through a world of both legislated racial equality and lingering systemic discrimination. Even in that most iconic of moments, the 1991 Superbowl “Star-Spangled Banner” performance, the woman with the imposing three-octave range would complicate the fraught symbolic meaning of that patriotic ritual by virtue of her sheer vocal power.

Go read the rest. It’s divine.

That’s it for me. Your turn, Sky Dancers! What’s on your rant ‘n’ read list this weekend?

The Myth in the Machine

Posted: February 17, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Economy, Environment, Environmental Protection | Tags: | 15 Comments

Bostonboomer and I were perusing information on the Issa panel and committee on religious freedom and birth control yesterday. Their expert witness panel appeared to be a mix between the Salem Witch Trials and the Spanish Inquisition.  Where were the women on this panel?  Is this really our government?  What’s going on in Torquemada’s–errr Issa’s–realm of influence these days?  BB has already regaled us on the crooked career and life of Issa whose business and career seems built on insurance fraud, car theft, and arson, so I won’t go there.  We have a whole tag dedicated to him that’s infinitely googleable. However I will express my utter surprise and contempt that a committee of the US House of Representatives and its web page seem to be more of a propaganda tool of right wing tropes than anything remotely informative or helpful. Issa appears to be the Republican Party’s budding little combination of Goebbels and Himmler.

Go there and you’ll see a youtube with a nice white lady saying her “choice” was taken away by the SEIU.   You’ll also see the Orwellian job creators DOT com that wants to know what kind of things are holding up your business.  I don’t suppose any answer pointing to a lack of customers with well-paying jobs gets much attention.  It also has a link to the Fast and Furious Witch Hunt. (No mention that this program had roots in the previous Republican administration, of course.) I had no idea that so much propaganda had crept into tax payer paid websites of congressional committees.  I expect propaganda on their Facebook pages.  But congressional committee pages with federal government addresses?  Please!!

In honor of Issa’s hunt for “experts” that agree with him, I thought I’d point out a Bloomberg Business article that shows how many jobs new government regulations can create in the economy.   The subtitle is “Vilified on the campaign trail, government rules often create as many jobs as they kill”. Nothing like a little truth and empirical research to shine the light on the Issa/Gingrich/Romney propaganda machine. It’s true that regulations on businesses can shift resources away from the regulated business.  That includes jobs, profits, capital, and executive perks.  However, that’s a one-sided notion.  Those resources don’t disappear into thin air.  They simply shift away from the business that’s regulated–most likely because it’s creating a social cost–to other businesses that can better use the resources or employ folks cleaning up and measuring the messes in the case of regulation of dirty industries like Coal and Oil.

“This rule is the most extensive intervention into the power market and job market that EPA has ever attempted to implement,” says Scott Segal, a lobbyist at Bracewell & Giuliani, which represents the utility Southern Co. (SO) He argues the regulation will “undermine job creation in the United States.”

Tell that to Cal Lockert, the vice-president of Breen Energy Solutions, a Pittsburgh manufacturer of equipment that absorbs acid gases to keep them from spilling out of smokestacks. Lockert spends his days persuading power companies that he can help them bring some of their oldest, dirtiest plants in line with the federal requirements. There’s been “a frenzy of engineering firms and utilities” calling him for demonstrations of his products, he says. He’s hired a dozen people in the past month and says he’s just getting started.

Nol-Tec Systems in Lino Lakes, Minn., also expects a boom in sales of its equipment, which uses baking soda to pull pollutants out of plant exhaust. Meanwhile, Thermo Fisher Scientific (TMO) in Waltham, Mass., is building emission monitors that power plants will need to measure toxins under the new rules. The regulations “could easily add $50 million to $100 million dollars in revenue in a year or two years,” says Chief Executive Officer Marc Casper, “which is significant for a company like ours.” The Institute of Clean Air Companies, a trade association representing businesses that make products to reduce industrial emissions, forecasts the industry will add 300,000 jobs a year through 2017 as a result of the EPA rules.

This is the side of the story that rarely gets mentioned in Washington or on the campaign trail. In an election year that hinges on the economy, government rules have become politically toxic. President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul, the massive Dodd-Frank financial reform law, and EPA clean air and water mandates come under frequent attack from Republicans who say burdensome regulations are stalling the nation’s recovery. In the GOP debates, the R-word is now habitually preceded by “job-killing,” as in Mitt Romney’s promise to put an end to “job-killing regulations.” Newt Gingrich refers to the EPA as a “job-killing regulatory engine.”

Romney and Gingrich aren’t wrong. Government regulations do kill jobs, often by the thousands. Although it’s too early to tell how many layoffs may result from health-care and Wall Street reforms, there is a body of research going back decades detailing what has happened time and time again when Washington handed down sweeping environmental regulations: Costs increased, prices went up, and workers were fired. Supporters and opponents of the EPA’s new power plant rules agree that they will almost certainly result in dozens of coal plants shutting down and hundreds of workers being laid off.

But that’s not the whole picture. Government employment figures also show that those same regulations usually wind up creating about as many jobs as they kill. “We find there is no net impact,” says Richard Morgenstern, the EPA’s director of policy analysis in the Reagan and Clinton Administrations and now a researcher with Resources for the Future, a nonpartisan energy think tank in Washington. “The job creation and the job destruction roughly cancel each other out.”

Businesses targeted for regulation create huge social costs that taxpayers are forced to pick up.  There are public health and safety costs, pollution and clean up costs, and many other costs.  Dirty industries do these because they can force their costs onto the back of the public.  They over produce their products and gobble up scare capital and productive resources because of they don’t realize the full costs of doing business.  Regulation pushes these costs back onto their businesses.  It also leads to “creative destruction” which is the Schumpeter idea that old, outdated technology must be replaced with better things to improve the long term performance of the economy.  Some times the discipline in key industries has to come from the government because of the monopoly power of the industry.  The energy industry is a prime example with its oligopoly over resource and product markets and the price inelastic nature of its demand.  This enables the industry to via for political power as well as allows it fight to maintain dominance.  In most of these cases, only technological developments break the monopoly/oligopoly.  When Carter deregulated the telecommunications industry it wasn’t really all that effective.  What really broke the back of the AT&T monopoly was the advances in communications technology.  Frequently, regulations allow access to the heart of the monopoly’s business so that more facile, advanced businesses can break apart this destructive market type. It transfers resources away from the inefficient market that pushes high social costs on to taxpayers and neighboring communities.

Here’s a study that you never hear coming from the Issa propaganda/witch hunt arm of the US House of Representatives.

In 2002, Morgenstern and his colleagues published a landmark study detailing the effects of regulations on jobs in four polluting industries: paper, plastics, petroleum, and iron and steel. Drawing on more than 10 years’ worth of U.S. Census data, the study found new regulations led to higher production costs that pushed up prices, resulting in lost sales and layoffs. Yet those job losses were offset by new jobs in pollution abatement. “There’s always someone who is helped and someone who is hurt,” says Roger Noll, director of the Program on Regulatory Policy at Stanford University. “Which is why you have to look at the net effect on the economy.”

The loss in the polluting industry is actually a good thing in terms of market economy’s because it’s usually related to market inefficiency and transferred costs of doing business.  BTW, this Stanford University think tank is not a hot bed of raging liberalism.  This is one of this policy areas where there are trade-offs.  This means changes create winners and losers.  The deal is that in most cases the job loss is minimal but overall market efficiency improves.  The true cost of the product is passed on to consumers which removes the subsidy to the consumers and producers of the product.  Again, the resources just go elsewhere and are employed more efficiently in newer businesses.  Oddly enough, this is what Romney frequently says he did in his corporate raider days.

The critique of regulations fits into a broader conservative narrative about government overreach. But it also comes after a string of disasters in recent years that were tied to government regulators falling short, including the financial crisis of 2008, the BP oil spill and the West Virginia mining accident last year.

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that very few layoffs are caused principally by tougher rules.

Whenever a firm lays off workers, the bureau asks executives the biggest reason for the job cuts.

In 2010, 0.3 percent of the people who lost their jobs in layoffs were let go because of “government regulations/intervention.” By comparison, 25 percent were laid off because of a drop in business demand.

I’m really not sure how we can create responses and discussions to one-sided political narratives that are based more on ideological memes than facts.  It certainly doesn’t help when that one-sided narrative comes from our own government sites and servants.  Obviously, the inefficient, lop-sided markets create monopoly profits for the stakeholders and we see K street filled with lobbyists aimed at protecting the inefficient markets.  The stories from younger, inventive, upstart businesses without lobbyists and pet pundits and politicians have worthwhile narratives.  Too bad their lost in a fight for ideological purity instead of empirical truth. Perhaps this is one of the reasons we keep fighting the culture wars.  Voodoo economics narratives don’t hold up to inspection.

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