Lundi Gras Reads
Posted: February 11, 2013 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: budget control act, mardi gras, religious idiots, The Black Keys, the sequester 71 Comments
Yes! It’s that time of year again! I was awakened by the familiar beat of drums and a brass band and the noises of a lot of people promptly at 7:30 am on Sunday. It was the Krewe of Eris which is a totally unauthorized and completely fun parade around the neighborhood and there were literally hundreds of people in costumes and bicycles. Eris is a krewe of young artists, actors, and performers here in the neighborhood and has been known to be bothered by the NOPD. It’s a bit of a circus parade. Literally. Many of the participants are puppeteers and performers of all kinds and sorts. Anyway, there are many parades and events that happen off the main streets and tourist areas. There are the Baby Dolls, the Skeletons, the Mardi Gras Indians, and many many other fine black street traditions too. I usually hang out in the neighborhood celebrations these days. They’re hard to miss unless you stay in your house. Check out NOLA DEFENDER for some great stories and pictures that you won’t see just anywhere.
So, here’s a few reads to keep you busy this morning while we get ready for the big day on Fat Tuesday.
Here’s a great read by Bill Keller on the “Conscience of a Corporation” about all those folks who claim religiousity as an excuse to deny women access to complete health care.
The Obama administration, in an unrequited search for compromise, has also proposed to excuse nonprofit organizations such as hospitals and universities if they are affiliated with religions that preach the evil of contraception. You might ask why a clerk at Notre Dame or an orderly at a Catholic hospital should be denied the same birth control coverage provided to employees of secular institutions. You might ask why institutions that insist they are like everyone else when it comes to applying for federal grants get away with being special when it comes to federal health law. Good questions. You will find the unsatisfying answers in the Obama handbook of political expediency.
But these concessions are not enough to satisfy the religious lobbies. Evangelicals and Catholics, cheered on by anti-abortion groups and conservative Obamacare-haters, now want the First Amendment freedom of religion to be stretched to cover an array of for-profit commercial ventures, Hobby Lobby being the largest litigant. They are suing to be exempted on the grounds that corporations sometimes embody the faith of the individuals who own them.
“The legal case” for the religious freedom of corporations “does not start with, ‘Does the corporation pray?’ or ‘Does the corporation go to heaven?’ ” said Kyle Duncan, general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing Hobby Lobby. “It starts with the owner.” For owners who have woven religious practice into their operations, he told me, “an exercise of religion in the context of a business” is still an exercise of religion, and thus constitutionally protected.
The issue is almost certain to end up in the Supreme Court, where the betting is made a little more interesting by a couple of factors: six of the nine justices are Catholic, and this court has already ruled, in the Citizens United case, that corporations are protected by the First Amendment, at least when it comes to freedom of speech. Also, we know that at least four members of the court don’t think much of Obamacare.
In lower courts, advocates of the corporate religious exemption have won a few and lost a few. (Hobby Lobby has lost so far, and could eventually face fines of more than $1 million a day for defying the law. The company’s case is now before the Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit.)
Meanwhile, it’s been determined that Cardinal Mahony will steal the pennies from your eyes to pay for his stable of pedophile priests.
The Archdiocese of L.A. took $115 million from its cemeteries’ maintenance fund in 2007, nearly depleting it. The move seems legal, but it was not announced, and relatives of the dead were not told.
Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison pointed out Republican lies and hypocrisy on the so-called sequester agreement on Sunday.
When Cole tried to pin the cuts on Obama, Ellison reminded him that Cole himself voted for the Budget Control Act that created the sequester:
COLE: I think it is inevitable. This was a presidential suggestion back in 2011, an idea. And yet the president himself hasn’t put out any alternatives. Republicans twice in the House have passed legislation to deal with it, once as early as last May and again after the election in December. Senate never picked up either of those bills, never offered their own thing. Now we’re three weeks out, and folks are worried. They ought to be worried. On the other hand, these cuts are going to occur. […]
ELLISON: Well, Tom, the problem with saying this is the president’s idea is that you voted for the Budget Control Act. I voted against it. We wouldn’t have ever been talking about the Budget Control Act but for your party refused to negotiate on the debt ceiling something that has been routinely increased as the country needed it. You used that occasion in 2011 August to basically say we are going to default on the country’s obligations or you’re going to give us dramatic spending cuts. That’s how we got to the Budget Control Act.
Ellison also pointed out that the new GOP kinder and gentler message is simply another shade of lipstick on the same old pig.
This morning on “This Week,” Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., dismissed recent gestures by prominent members of the GOP suggesting a softening of Republican positions as simply “lipstick on a pig.”
“I think all of this stuff is just surface stuff. It’s like lipstick on a pig, ” Ellison said. “I mean, the bottom line is, the Republicans have a core values problem, not a ‘who knows who Tupac Shakur is’ problem.”
Ellison was responding to ABC News political analyst and contributor Nicolle Wallace, who praised Marco Rubio on the roundtable. The Florida senator is seen as a rising star in the GOP and a member of the party that could help Republicans win more Latino support. Rubio recently endorsed a bipartisan senate proposal aimed at reforming America’s immigration system.
“He’s everything we need and more. He’s modern. He knows who Tupac is. He is on social media,” Wallace said. “I mean, he’s got the policy. He’s in touch with, I think, the lives of ordinary people. And he’s a very accessible guy. He talks about being a working dad and juggling his own priorities.”
How stupid do Republicans think we are? There’s so many demographics moving against their ideas that they really seem clueless.
It is no secret that young voters tilt left on social issues like immigration and gay rights. But these students, and dozens of other young people interviewed here last week, give voice to a trend that is surprising pollsters and jangling the nerves of Republicans. On a central philosophical question of the day — the size and scope of the federal government — a clear majority of young people embraces President Obama’s notion that it can be a constructive force, a point he intends to make in his State of the Union address on Tuesday.
“Young people absolutely believe that there’s a role for government,” said Matt Singer, a founder of Forward Montana, a left-leaning though officially nonpartisan group that seeks to engage young people in politics. “At the same time, this is not a generation of socialists. They are highly entrepreneurial, and know that some of what it takes to create an environment where they can do their own exciting, creative things is having basic systems that work.”
Here in Montana, a state that backed John McCain in 2008 and Mr. Romney last year, voters under 30 have helped elect two
Democratic senators and a new Democratic governor. Nationally, young voters have since 2004 been casting their ballots for Democrats by far wider margins than previous young generations — a shift that could reshape American politics for decades.
China’s economy continues to eclipse that of the US. It will shortly have the largest annual GDP. As of now, it’s the largest Trading Country in the world.
China surpassed the U.S. to become the world’s biggest trading nation last year as measured by the sum of exports and imports of goods, official figures from both countries show.
U.S. exports and imports of goods last year totaled $3.82 trillion, the U.S. Commerce Department said last week. China’s customs administration reported last month that the country’s trade in goods in 2012 amounted to $3.87 trillion.
China’s growing influence in global commerce threatens to disrupt regional trading blocs as it becomes the most important commercial partner for some countries. Germany may export twice as much to China by the end of the decade as it does to France, estimated Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s Jim O’Neill.
“For so many countries around the world, China is becoming rapidly the most important bilateral trade partner,” O’Neill, chairman of Goldman Sachs’s asset management division and the economist who bound Brazil to Russia, India and China to form the BRIC investing strategy, said in a telephone interview. “At this kind of pace by the end of the decade many European countries will be doing more individual trade with China than with bilateral partners in Europe.”
One of my absolute favorite groups one big in the grammies last night. Here’s one of the great songs from the BLACK KEYS!!! The lead singer also brought some in for Dr. John so we’re all happy for the Keys tonight! (And no, the dude in the video is not one of the band!)
This is the band:
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Real Life Rambo or Public Enemy Number 1?
Posted: February 10, 2013 Filed under: Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Crime | Tags: broken police and criminal justice systems, Christopher Dorner, LAPD 37 Comments
The frantic hunt for an ex LAPD officer turned shooter has turned into a series of odd and frightening events. The manhunt started out as a search for what was thought to be a spree shooter with a manifesto. The manifesto is available on line and talks about Christopher Dorner’s beef with his former employer the LA police department. It seems the LAPD is now in a stranger-than-life manhunt that is providing more support for Dorner’s manifesto than for the hunt for the ex cop who shot and killed 3 people, including a police officer and the daughter of a former police chief.
It was revealed that Dorner has become the first human target for remotely-controlled airborne drones on US soil.
POLICE plan to use spy drones in the hunt for a Rambo-style ex-soldier and policeman who has murdered three people and vowed to kill again.
They believe burly, heavily-armed Christopher Dorner is holed-up in the wilderness of California’s snow-capped San Bernardino mountains 80 miles east of Los Angeles.
The burnt-out shell of his pick-up truck was discovered in the nearby resort of Big Bear, where residents and tourists have been warned to stay indoors as the search continues.
Yesterday, as a task force of 125 officers, some riding Snowcats in the rugged terrain, continued their search, it was revealed that Dorner has become the first human target for remotely-controlled airborne drones on US soil.
A senior police source said: “The thermal imaging cameras the drones use may be our only hope of finding him. On the ground, it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.”
Asked directly if drones have already been deployed, Riverside Police Chief Sergio Diaz, who is jointly leading the task force, said: “We are using all the tools at our disposal.”
The use of drones was later confirmed by Customs and Border Patrol spokesman Ralph DeSio, who revealed agents have been prepared for Dorner to make a dash for the Mexican border since his rampage began.
He said: “This agency has been at the forefront of domestic use of drones by law enforcement. That’s all I can say at the moment.”
Dorner, who was fired from the LAPD in 2008 for lying about a fellow officer he accused of misconduct, has vowed to wreak revenge by “killing officers and their families”.
The most bizarre and sad stories from this chase are the number of innocent people who have been shot and endangered by police who appear to be chasing down anything remotely resembling Dorner’s transportation. This included an elderly Hispanic woman and her daughter delivering newspapers and neighborhood homes surrounding their ambush.
Two women who were delivering newspapers in Torrance, Calif., early Thursday were shot by jittery Los Angeles police officers who mistakenly thought cop-hunting fugitive Christopher Dorner might be in their vehicle, NBCLosAngeles.com reported.
One was shot once and the other twice; both were were expected to survive. Police did not release their names.
Police detectives investigate a shooting scene involving a black Honda pickup truck in Torrance, Calif. Police opened fire on the vehicle in a case of mistaken identity while searching for former Los Angeles police officer Christopher Dorner.
The LAPD detectives were in the neighborhood to watch over a home they believed Dorner might target. Hours earlier, the fired cop had allegedly ambushed officers in two other cities, killing one of them.
Across the region, cops on high alert were on the lookout for Dorner’s dark-colored Nissan truck. In the predawn dark, they saw a blue pickup rolling through the streets with no headlights on.
It’s unclear what happened next, but LAPD Chief Charlie Beck confirmed the officers fired on the vehicle, hitting the two occupants. He said it was a tragic case of “mistaken identity.”
The second person was a young, skinny white man.
David Perdue was on his way to sneak in some surfing before work Thursday morning when police flagged him down. They asked who he was and where he was headed, then sent him on his way.
Seconds later, Perdue’s attorney said, a Torrance police cruiser slammed into his pickup and officers opened fire; none of the bullets struck Perdue.
His pickup, police later explained, matched the description of the one belonging to Christopher Jordan Dorner — the ex-cop who has evaded authorities after allegedly killing three and wounding two more. But the pickups were different makes and colors. And Perdue looks nothing like Dorner: He’s several inches shorter and about a hundred pounds lighter. And Perdue is white; Dorner is black.
“I don’t want to use the word buffoonery but it really is unbridled police lawlessness,” said Robert Sheahen, Perdue’s attorney. “These people need training and they need restraint.”
The women’s lawyer, Glen Jonas, told the Times LAPD not follow protocol or the rules of engagement before they decided to exercise deadly force.
‘With no warning, no command, or no instructions, LAPD opened fire on their vehicle,’ Jonas said.
‘This wasn’t even close,’ their attorney said.
‘This was two petite Latina women versus a large black man, with a different vehicle, different color. The police didn’t take the time to do the identification. They didn’t give the “suspect” the opportunity to surrender. So the whole thing was just mishandled, and we expect that the city will acknowledge that and go from there.’
The police have lost track of the suspect and are now offering a huge reward for information leading to the suspect’s arrest. Given the trigger happy police and the drone, I doubt arrest is what these folks have in mind. The most interesting thing is the shift of public opinion. The LAPD has a PR nightmare on their hands as well as the manhunt. This is from the Christian Science Monitor
The hunt for alleged cop killer Christopher Dorner has turned into a major public relations challenge for law enforcement officials, in particular the Los Angeles Police Department working its way back from a history of corruption and abuse.
Not only have hundreds of well-trained officers equipped with military-style vehicles – including helicopters with thermal imaging devices one pilot says can pick out a rabbit in a snowstorm – been unable to find the man charged with killing three people and wounding two others on a rampage aimed at police officers and their families.
The LAPD also has been forced to reexamine the reasons for Mr. Dorner’s dismissal as a police officer in 2009 – brought about, Dorner charges in the 11-page manifesto he posted on Facebook, by racism in the department. And the LAPD is having to make amends to the two people – a middle-aged Hispanic woman and her mother delivering newspapers – wounded when police riddled their truck with gunfire. (The women’s truck was neither the make nor the color of Dorner’s pickup later found abandoned.)
America’s history is sepia-soaked with outlaws who have engendered popular support. In keeping with this difficult-to-deconstruct
phenomenon, a number of social media corners are cheering on suspected murderer Christopher Dorner while authorities are still trying to track him down.
Frankly, I find it very disturbing that the police are using more and more military style tactics. There are now scads of articles where military tactics used in Iraq are being used in the streets of the US by police departments. BB pointed out a few of these to me and you may want to look a them.
To counter gangs, Springfield adopts tactics from war zones
Police deployed military tactics to rescue hostage in Alabama bunker
So, there is a growing question about the usefulness of these insurgency tactics in Afghanistan, but apparently, it’s fine to use them in US cities. This first jumped into public awareness in 2008 as John McCain suggested it was a good thing during his campaign for POTUS.
Senator John McCain has suggested adopting tactics used in Iraq to combat urban crime here at home. McCain made the comment while he spoke before the National Urban League.
Sen. John McCain: “And some of those tactics, very frankly — you mention the war in Iraq — are somewhat like that we use in the military. You go into neighborhoods, you clamp down, you provide a secure environment for the people that live there, and you make sure that the known criminals are kept under control. And you provide them with a stable environment, and then they cooperate with law enforcement.”
We’ve had our own issues down here in New Orleans with our corrupt police, our broken criminal justice system, and out of control urban shootings. I believe this will continue to be an issue. Here’s a related thing I just learned today and it’s been on the ACLU’s radar since 2006. It’s just been expanded to something really frightening in a DHS Report which many lawyers believe is a direct violation of the 4th amendment.
The Department of Homeland Security’s civil rights watchdog has concluded that travelers along the nation’s borders may have their electronics seized and the contents of those devices examined for any reason whatsoever — all in the name of national security.
The DHS, which secures the nation’s border, in 2009 announced that it would conduct a “Civil Liberties Impact Assessment” of its suspicionless search-and-seizure policy pertaining to electronic devices “within 120 days.” More than three years later, the DHS office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties published a two-page executive summary of its findings.
“We also conclude that imposing a requirement that officers have reasonable suspicion in order to conduct a border search of an electronic device would be operationally harmful without concomitant civil rights/civil liberties benefits,” the executive summary said.
The memo highlights the friction between today’s reality that electronic devices have become virtual extensions of ourselves housing everything from e-mail to instant-message chats to photos and our papers and effects — juxtaposed against the government’s stated quest for national security.
The President George W. Bush administration first announced the suspicionless, electronics search rules in 2008. The President Barack Obama administration followed up with virtually the same rules a year later. Between 2008 and 2010, 6,500 persons had their electronic devices searched along the U.S. border, according to DHS data.
So, we should really be worried about our due process and the access of police departments–all ready out of control–to sophisticated military tactics, techniques, and equipment via Homeland Security. Meanwhile, keep your eyes on the Dorner case. It appears to be layered with morality plays and plots from movies.
Lazy Saturday Afternoon News Reads
Posted: February 9, 2013 Filed under: Barack Obama, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: assassination policy, Christopher Dorner, Climate change, Depression, drones, DSM V, extreme weather, sequester 34 Comments
Good Afternoon!!
It’s a perfect day to curl up with a great detective novel. As you can see, Michael Caine up there is deeply engrossed in Raymond Chandler’s Farewell My Lovely. Chandler is terrific for those of us who are connoisseurs of the hard-boiled school of mystery writers; I think his masterpiece was The Long Goodbye. I’ve read it multiple times. Here are a few great one-liners from the book:
“I was as hollow and empty as the spaces between stars.”
“The girl gave him a look which ought to have stuck at least four inches out of his back.”
“I belonged in Idle Valley like a pearl onion on a banana split.”
“A man who drinks too much on occasion is still the same man as he was sober. An alcoholic, a real alcoholic, is not the same man at all. You can’t predict anything about him for sure except that he will be someone you never met before.”
“The French have a phrase for it. The bastards have a phrase for everything and they are always right. To say goodbye is to die a little.”
Years later, another hard-boiled detective novelist, Ross MacDonald, wrote a kind of paeon to The Long Goodbye called The Goodbye Look, which I also enjoyed and have read more than once.
These days I tend to prefer female detectives and women writers, but I still prefer the hard-boiled types over the “cozy” ones.
There’s not a whole lot of exciting news out there, but I have a variety of recent reads for you to delve into today if you choose.
I wish John Boehner and Mitch McConnell would read this article in today’s New York Times, although it probably wouldn’t begin to melt their cold cold hearts: Restored Payroll Tax Pinches Those Who Earn the Least.
Jack Andrews and his wife no longer enjoy what they call date night, their once-a-month outing to the movies and a steak dinner at Logan’s Roadhouse in Augusta, Ga. In Harlem, Eddie Phillips’s life insurance payment will have to wait a few more weeks. And Jessica Price is buying cheaper food near her home in Orlando, Fla., even though she worries it may not be as healthy.
Like millions of other Americans, they are feeling the bite from the sharp increase in payroll taxes that took effect at the beginning of January. There are growing signs that the broader economy is suffering, too.
Chain-store sales have weakened over the course of the month. And two surveys released last week suggested that consumer confidence was eroding, especially among lower-income Americans.
While these data points are preliminary — more detailed statistics on retail sales and other trends will not be available until later this month — at street level, the pain from the expiration of a two-percentage-point break in Social Security taxes in 2011 and 2012 is plain to see.
“You got to stretch what you got,” said Mr. Phillips, 51, a front-desk clerk and maintenance man for a nonprofit housing group who earned $22,000 last year. “That little $20 or $30 affects you, especially if you’re just making enough money to stay above water.” So he has taken to juggling bills, skipping a payment on one this month and another next month.
Don’t I know it!
President Obama used his Saturday radio address to once again poke Congress to deal with the upcoming “sequester” cuts.
“If the sequester is allowed to go forward, thousands of Americans who work in fields like national security, education or energy are likely to be laid off,” he said. “All our economic progress could be put at risk.”
Mr. Obama’s remarks echoed a statement issued by the White House Friday that warned the sequester would “threaten thousands of jobs and the economic security of the middle class.”
But, as usual, Republicans are blaming Obama for the problem.
“We know the President’s sequester will have consequences,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in a statement this week. “What we don’t know is when the President will propose a plan to replace the sequester with smarter spending cuts and reforms.”
Sigh…
I hope President Obama reads this op-ed in The Washington Post by Georgetown constitutional law professor David Cole. Cole is the author of the recent book The Torture Memos: Rationalizing the Unthinkable.
There are plenty of problems with President Obama’s targeted killings in the war against terrorism: The policy remains secret in most aspects, involves no judicial review, has resulted in the deaths of innocent civilians, has been employed far from any battlefield and has sparked deep anti-American resentment in countries where we can ill afford it.
But when it comes to the particular legal issue raised in a recently leaked “white paper” from the Justice Department — namely, whether it is legal to kill Americans with drones — one problem looms largest: The policy permits the government to kill its citizens in secret while refusing to acknowledge, even after the fact, that it has done so.
There may be extraordinary occasions when killing a citizen is permissible, but it should never be acceptable for the government to refuse to acknowledge the act. How can we be free if our government has the power to kill us in secret? And how can a sovereign authority be accountable to the people if the sovereign can refuse to own up to its actions?
Cole likens Obama’s assassination policy to the “disappearances” in Argentina in the 1970s.
When Argentina’s military junta secretly abducted and killed its citizens during that country’s “dirty war” in the 1970s, the world labeled these acts “disappearances” and condemned them as violations of human rights. A disappearance is not just an abduction or killing, but an unacknowledged abduction or killing. To “disappear” citizens not only deprives them of their liberty or life without fair process but is deeply corrosive of democratic politics, casting a shadow of fear over all.
Please read the whole thing if you can.
I liked this piece by Gary Gutting at The New York Times, despite my initial hesitation to read anything by a professor at Notre Dame. I finally decided I shouldn’t condemn him by association over the ND football team scandals. Headlined “Depression and the Limits of Psychiatry,” it’s a philosophical discussion of the upcoming changes in the definition of depression in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Read the rest of this entry »
Saturday Morning Reads: The Aftermath of the Blizzard of 2013
Posted: February 9, 2013 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: Blizzard of 2013, Northeast snowstorm 32 Comments
Globe front page, blizzard ’78 vs ’13. Photog David L. Ryan — shared on Moby Picture by Maria Sacchetti
Beacon Hill, Boston, morning of Feb. 9, 2013.
Good Morning!!
I awakened with a sense of unreality today, went right to the window and looked out onto a billowing ocean of snow. I had drifted off last night listening to weather updates on the radio and the sound of wind whistling and crackling through the trees outside my house. I suppose it’s understandable that I didn’t sleep very well. I finally fell sound asleep around 4:00 in the morning and slept past 9:00–so I’m getting a very late start today, and feeling somewhat stunned by the awesome power of nature.
I read at the Boston Globe Weather Wisdom blog that Belmont, which is the next town over from mine (Arlington) and is very close to where I live got 27 inches of snow. I live at the top of a huge hill, os I probably got a bit more than that. I can’t take any photos from where I am yet, because I can’t get the storm door open. The snow is piled so high on the front porch that it will probably take me awhile to work my way out, but here’s a shot taken in my town in metro-northwest last night as the storm was building in our area. The good news for me is that I’m one of the lucky ones who didn’t lose power last night.
Capitol Square on Friday night. Credit: Mary Beth Wilkes, @mbwilkes on Twitter
The Boston Globe reports: Travel ban remains in effect, eyes turn to coast as blizzard continues
Hundreds of thousands of Massachusetts residents have lost power because of the mammoth blizzard that lashed Massachusetts with hurricane-force winds and dumped more than two feet of snow in some areas overnight.
The state is at a standstill, with residents hunkering down at home under a rare travel ban imposed by the governor on Friday, and the MBTA saying it will not be able to restore service today. Snowplows are out in force struggling to clear the roads, but the storm is expected to continue dumping snow into midday.
National Guard troops are heading to coastal communities to assist in possible evacuations due to giant waves whipped up by the storm that are expected to batter the beaches at high tide at 10 a.m., potentially devouring beaches and homes.
State emergency management officials said there were no reports of major injuries due to the storm, even though there were two truck rollovers and about 30 stranded motorists had to be rescued from the roads.
A few more national stories on the storm:
More storm photos at ABC News: Blizzard 2013: Northeast Hit by Snowstorm
CNN: 650,000 without power as blizzard heads out to sea
A massive blizzard that dumped as much as 3 feet of snow in some parts of the Northeast is heading out to sea, as workers across New York and New England struggle to get airports, trains and highways back online.
The snowstorm, a product of two converging weather systems, knocked out power for more than 650,000 customers and prompted the U.S. Postal Service to suspend deliveries in seven states.Mandatory evacuations were issued Saturday morning for Massachusetts coastal regions near Hull because of flooding concerns, and high winds whipped throughout the region. Authorities also advised residents to leave shoreline areas in Marshfield and Scituate.
Forecasters say the storm is expected to continue swirling across New England with gusts up to 40 mph in cities including Providence, Rhode Island, Hartford, Connecticut and Boston. Most of the heavy snow will taper off later in the afternoon, they said.
Three of New York’s busiest airports resumed limited service Saturday morning. Logan International Airport in Boston and Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks, Connecticut, remained closed.
This one from the LA Times is for Janicen: Forget the Blizzard of 1978; Buffalo remembers Blizzard of 1977
If you hail from the nation’s snow country, wintry blizzards are like some bully you endured back in grade school: You never forget them, and their long-ago tortures grow in size and scope with each retelling.
As a storm of possibly historic magnitude slams the East Coast this weekend, my thoughts are blown back to the worst winter tempest of my life, in upstate New York, with the strange, tragic and even funny memories it left behind for those who endured it. The recollections haven’t become overblown with time. The storm really was that bad.
So here’s a yarn about one hopeless battle with Old Man Winter at his angriest. Light a hearth fire and grab a blanket — and by all means feel free to share your own snowbound stories. Consider it our little therapy group.
The weekend’s storm has prompted many comparisons to the Blizzard of 1978. But in working-class Buffalo, nobody talks about 1978. For them, the Mother of All…
Read more at the link.
AP: Huge storm blankets Northeast with 2 feet of snow
Philly.com: Region gets fallout from huge Blizzard of 2013
ABC News: Sandy in Back of Easterners’ Minds as Snow Falls
That should be enough blizzard news to get you started. I’m going to see if I can get my storm door open, and later on I plan post some general news reads. This is an open thread, so post anything you wish in the comments.
Friday Reads: Decline of the American Empire Edition
Posted: February 8, 2013 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: Breastaurants, Brennan hearing, decline of the American Empire, Evil Catholic Bishops, Karl Rove v Steven King, Panetta hearing 60 Comments
Good Morning!!
I don’t know why Catholic Bishops have been given some kind of veto power over US women’s health in national law just because they’ve got some weird ideas on birth control, but evidently they do. I’d just like to say I really object to this and I think the entire bunch of them should be shipped over to the Vatican and out of our damned country. If we can drone a few Taliban, why can’t we drone a few other religious whackos intent on ruining the American way of life?
The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops on Thursday rejected the latest White House proposal on health insurance coverage of contraceptives, saying it did not offer enough safeguards for religious hospitals, colleges and charities that objected to providing such coverage for their employees.
The bishops said they would continue fighting the federal mandate in court.
The administration said the proposal, issued last Friday, would guarantee free employee coverage of birth control “while respecting religious concerns” of organizations that objected to paying or providing for it.
The bishops said the proposal seemed to address part of their concern about the definition of religious employers who could be exempted from the requirement to offer contraceptive coverage at no charge to employees. But they said it did not go far enough and failed to answer many questions, like who would pay for birth control coverage provided to employees of certain nonprofit religious organizations.
“The administration’s proposal maintains its inaccurate distinction among religious ministries,” said Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. “It appears to offer second-class status to our first-class institutions in Catholic health care, Catholic education and Catholic charities. The Department of Health and Human Services offers what it calls an ‘accommodation,’ rather than accepting the fact that these ministries are integral to our church and worthy of the same exemption as our Catholic churches.”
What about women’s rights to be free from random jerks who hide behind their religious beanies? Again, they have the Vatican City as their little Popedom, ship them back to their little theocracy and out of our secular democracy/republic.
Karl Rove is locking horns with whacko congressman Steven King from Iowa who is the leader in the Iowa Senate race for the replacement for Senator Tom Harkin. Good Luck Karl! Can’t put that Rovenstein Right Wingmonster back in the grave now, can you?
In an interview with Iowa’s KMEG-TV, King denied ever hearing about anyone getting pregnant from statutory rape or incest, saying: “Well I just haven’t heard of that being a circumstance that’s been brought to me in any personal way, and I’d be open to discussion about that subject matter.” King is one of Akin’s very few remaining defenders as Republican politicians try to distance themselves from the controversy. Just a few weeks ago, King claimed that it’s perfectly legal to rape and kidnap a young girl and then transport her across state lines to force her to get an abortion to “eradicate the evidence of his crime.”
Be sure to watch that you tube if you really can’t believe he said that. King is milking those tea party, john bircher cows for all they are worth. Poor Poor Pitiful King!!!
But on Thursday the Iowa Republican sent a plea to supporters charging veteran GOP strategist Karl Rove was marshalling forces against him in a preemptive effort to push him out of the race.
“Karl Rove and his army have launched a crusade against me,” he wrote in an email published online by the Des Moines Register.
King’s email brings to the fore intra-party GOP bickering. On one end, the GOP establishment represented in this instance by Rove. On the other, the tea party, represented here by King.
The congressman is known as a staunch conservative and was identified as a target of the Conservative Victory Project – a name at which some conservatives scoff – in a recent New York Times interview with the group’s leader, Steven Law. The project is an offshoot of Rove’s super PAC American Crossroads, which backed various Republican bids for federal office in the 2012 election.
American women really need to get verbal about the way we’re treated. Here’s another headline that makes you really shake your head and think about moving to a civilized country. South Florida is going to be home to “Breastaurants” Tilted Kilt and Twin Peaks .
Next month, the Tilted Kilt Pub & Eatery will open in Hallandale Beach with Tilted Kilt Girls sporting mini-kilts, midriff-baring white tops, and stockings.
And a group of Weston restaurateurs have signed an agreement to open 10 Twin Peaks in Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade. The main attraction at the mountain sports lodge-themed restaurants are the “Lumber Jills,” serving in khaki shorts and red plaid tops. They bare their midriffs, too.
Owners of the specialty themed restaurants say their servers are entertainers. Breastaurants don’t hire their employees, they audition and cast them, said Joe Sloboda, a restaurateur behind the upcoming Twin Peaks South Florida franchise.
The Tilted Kilt will be interviewing propsective hires this weekend. But the restaurants have more to offer than attractive, skimpily clad servers, the owners say.
The Tilted Kilt pays homage to the old public houses of England, Scotland, Ireland and America, said Mark Hanby, Tilted Kilt’s vice president of development. Customers can even expect “humorous and slightly bawdy limericks,” he said.
“Initially, customers are drawn in for the girls,” Hanby said. “But what keeps them coming back is the great food, the selection of drinks and the unbeatable atmosphere.” he said.
Yesterday in the latest installment of A day in the life of our Dysfunctional Government saw two legislative hearings filled with things that make you wonder how much long we will be able to keep our republic. The first was Leon Panetta testifying about Benghazi. The second one was the confirmation hearing of John Brennan. Both were just amazing displays of in-the-beltway insanity.
Panetta inkled a few things that will undoubtedly twist the knickers of the Birchers. Actually, it already has but a refuse to link to the Weekly 
Standard or William Kristol. John McCain also proved he has seriously lost it. Since when do CIA stations get surrounded by military installments and get to dial some army version of 911?
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Thursday gave a forceful defense of the Pentagon’s response to the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, arguing the government “spared no effort to save American lives.”
Panetta, who testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee along with Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey, said a surveillance drone was directed to reposition over the consulate within 17 minutes of the attack.
But Panetta also acknowledged the limits to American military force and the intelligence that supports it. In his opening remarks, he pointed out that there were no “specific indications of an imminent attack” on Sept. 11.
“Without adequate warning, there was not enough time given the speed of the attack for armed military assets to respond,” Panetta told the committee.
Dempsey added that the attacks in Benghazi needed to be viewed in the broader context of threats faced that day.
“Although today we are focused on Benghazi, we must not forget that it was 9/11 everywhere,” Dempsey said in prepared remarks. “On that day, we were postured to respond to a wide array of general threats around the globe.”
The attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were actually two short attacks — one on the consulate and the other on an annex — that took place six hours apart, Panetta said. “This was not a prolonged assault which could have been brought to an end by a U.S. military response,” he added.
On the day of attacks, Panetta said he alerted Marine platoons and special operations forces and participated in coordinating the evacuation of all remaining U.S. government personnel from Benghazi within 12 hours of the initial attack.
Panetta and Dempsey asserted that steps had been taken to work on security for U.S. facilities and on enhancing American intelligence capabilities.
“The United States military is not, and should not, be a global 911 service, capable of arriving on the scene within minutes to every possible contingency around the world,” Panetta said, adding that responses depend on actionable intelligence.
Brennan’s hearing was a little more interesting. It included intense protests by Code Pink.
In recent days, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) has expressed his suspicion about the Obama administration’s policy of legally justifying drone strikes on Americans who are deemed to have joined Al Qaeda. During the Senate confirmation hearings for Central Intelligence Agency director nominee, John Brennan, Wyden asked repeatedly if President Barack Obama’s administration would allow Americans targeted for a drone strike to surrender prior to killing them.
“Do you believe that the president should provide an individual American with the opportunity to surrender before killing them?” Wyden asked.
Brennan began to defer to the administration when Wyden pressed him to respond with just his initial impression of the concept of a surrender.
Brennan said, in the case of Al Qaeda operatives targeted for killings, that the administration’s policy is clear: “Any American that joins Al Qaeda will know full well that they have joined an organization that is at war with the United States.”
“Any American who did that should know well that they, in fact, are part of an enemy against us, and that the United States will do everything possible to destroy that enemy to save American lives,” Brennan responded.
Senator Di Fi had difficult time keeping the circus in check.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) called Thursday’s hearing to recess barely a few minutes after it had started, as protesters one-by-one interrupted CIA Director-nominee John Brennan during his opening statement.
“The next time, we’re going to clear the chamber and bring people back in one by one,” Feinstein said after a third protester interrupted Brennan. “This witness is entitled to be heard, ladies and gentlemen, so please give him that opportunity.”
After a fourth protester stood up, Feinstein made good on her promise.
The demonstrators appeared to be members of the activist group Code Pink. One held a sign reading, “Brennan = Drone Killing.” Another yelled out that she was protesting on behalf of mothers in countries including Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia.
So much of the idea that the left, progressives, and liberals don’t hold the Obama administration’s feet to the fire.
Here’s some pretty good indications of what Banana Republicans have done to the USA along with their enablers, The Democratic Party. American is far from #1 and keeps falling into the ranks of developing nations in many indicators.
“The Global Competitiveness Report 2012-2013,” by the World Economic Forum, is t he latest annual ranking of 144 countries, on a wide range of factors related to global economic competitiveness .
On each of their many rankings, #1 represents the best nation, and #144 represents the worst nation.
Gross Domestic Product is the only factor where the U.S. ranks as #1, which we do both on “GDP” and on “GDP as a Share of World GDP.”
Health Care has the U.S. ranking #34 on “Life Expectancy,” and #41 on “Infant Mortality.”
Education in the U.S. is also mediocre. On “Quality of Primary Education,” we are #38. On “Primary Education Enrollment Rate,” we are #58. On “Quality of the Educational System,” we are #28. On “Quality of Math and Science Education,” we are #47. On “Quality of Scientific Research Institutions,” we are #6. On “PCT [Patent Cooperation Treaty] Patent Applications [per-capita],” we are #12. On “Firm-Level Technology Absorption” (which is an indicator of business-acceptance of inventions), we are #14.
Trust is likewise only moderately high in the U.S. We rank #10 on “Willingness to Delegate Authority,” #42 on “Cooperation in Labor-Management Relations,” and #18 in “Degree of Customer Orientation” of firms.
Corruption is apparently a rather pervasive problem in the U.S.
On “Diversion of Public Funds [due to corruption],” the U.S. ranks #34. On “Public Trust in Politicians,” we are #54. On “Irregular Payments and Bribes,” we are #42. On “Judicial Independence,” we are #38. On “Favoritism in Decisions of Government Officials” (otherwise known as governmental cronyism), we are #59.
On “Organized Crime,” we are #87. On “Ethical Behavior of Firms,” we are #29. On “Reliability of Police Services,” we are #30. On “Transparency of Governmental Policymaking,” we are #56. On “Efficiency of Legal Framework in Challenging Regulations,” we are #37. On “Efficiency of Legal Framework in Settling Disputes,” we are #35. On “Burden of Government Regulation,” we are #76. On “Wastefulness of Government Spending,” we are also #76. On “Property Rights” protection (the basic law-and-order measure), we are #42.
Go and check out the list of other things. We’ve really been on a downward spiral since 2000.
So, there’s a few things to put a little heat into that breakfast. What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
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Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
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