Friday Reads: With Liberty and Justice for All
Posted: February 21, 2014 Filed under: morning reads 42 Comments
Good Morning
I guess there’s something about “FOR ALL” that some people just don’t seem to understand.
I’m not sure where Arizona belongs in the category of states that really haven’t signed onto the Constitution yet, but it’s WAyyyyyy down there.
State senators voted Wednesday to let businesses refuse to serve gays based on owners’ “sincerely held” religious beliefs.
The 17-13 vote along party lines, with Republicans in the majority, came after supporters defeated an attempt to extend existing employment laws that bar discrimination based on religion and race to also include sexual orientation. Sen. Steve Yarbrough, R-Chandler, said that’s a separate issue from what he is trying to do.
But Sen. Steve Gallardo, D-Phoenix, said that’s precisely the issue.
“The bill opens the door for discrimination against gays and lesbians,” he said.
Yarbrough, however, said foes of SB 1062 are twisting what his legislation says.
“This bill is not about discrimination,” he said. “It’s about preventing discrimination against people who are clearly living out their faith.”
A similar measure is awaiting a vote in the House, probably later today.
Arizona already has laws which protect individuals and businesses from any state action which substantially interferes with their right to exercise their religion. This bill extends that protection to cover what essentially are private transactions.
The push follows a decision by the New Mexico Supreme Court which said a gay couple could sue a photographer who refused on religious grounds to take pictures of their nuptials. Yarbrough’s legislation would preclude such a ruling here.
But Gallardo said this legislation makes one person’s religious freedom an attack on others.
“We all have the right to our religious beliefs,” he said.
“But I do not agree that we have the right to discriminate because of our religious beliefs,” Gallardo continued. “I do not believe we have to throw our religious beliefs to others that don’t share our same beliefs.”
I had thought we’d gotten to the point where denying the rights of others was considered wrong. But, I guess I’m wrong. Jim Crow just keeps on raising his head. Now, it’s Jane Crow, Juan Crow, and Freddie Mercury Crow.
Republicans lawmakers and a network of conservative religious groups has been pushing similar bills in other states, essentially forging a national campaign that, critics say, would legalize discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Republicans in Idaho, Oregon, South Dakota, and Tennessee recently introduced provisions that mimic the Kansas legislation. And Arizona,Hawaii, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Mississippi have introduced broader “religious freedom” bills with a unique provision that would also allow people to deny services or employment to LGBT Americans, legal experts say.
“This is a concerted campaign that the religious Right has been hinting at for a couple of years now,” says Evan Hurst, associate director of Truth Wins Out, a Chicago-based nonprofit that promotes gay rights. “The fact that they’re doing it Jim Crow-style is remarkable, considering the fact that one would think the GOP would like to be electable among people under 50 sometime in the near future.”
Several of these measures have sprung up within a short period of time. The Kansas bill wasintroduced by Republican state Rep. Charles Macheers on January 16. On January 28, Idaho state Rep. Lynn Luker (R-Boise) introduced a bill that would prohibit the state from yanking the professional licenses of people who deny service or employment to anyone (including LGBT customers) on the basis of their religious beliefs. (There’s an exception for emergency responders.) Luker has since pulled that bill back into committee, to address concerns about the language being discriminatory.
On January 30, a coalition of Republican senators and representatives in South Dakotaintroduced a bill that would have allowed a business to refuse to serve or people due to their sexual orientation, or be compelled to hire someone because of their sexual orientation. Under this measure, a gay person who brought a lawsuit charging discrimination based on sexual orientation could have faced punitive damages of no less than $2,000. The bill also declared that it is protected speech to tell someone that his or her lifestyle is “wrong or a sin.” The bill was killed this week by the state Senate judiciary committee.
On February 5, Republicans introduced legislation in both chambers of the Tennessee Legislature allowing a person or company to refuse to provide services such as food, accommodation, counseling, adoption, or employment to people in civil unions or same-sex marriages, or transgender individuals, “if doing so would violate the sincerely held religious beliefs of the person.” (Government employees are excluded.) State Rep. Bill Dunn (R-Knoxville) tells Mother Jones that he sponsored the bill because “a person shouldn’t get sued for choosing not to participate in a person’s wedding.” But this week, the bill’s lead sponsor in the Senate, Sen. Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown), shelved the measure until next year after facing heavy criticism. And in Oregon, voters could have the opportunity this year to vote on a ballot initiative that would also allow people to refuse on religious grounds to support same-sex couples.
In addition to these bills, lawmakers in Arizona, Hawaii, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Mississippi have recently introduced Religious Freedom Restoration Acts with a provision that could also allow discrimination against LGBT Americans. These state-sponsored RFRAs, which aim to stop new laws from burdening religious exercise, are nothing new—29 states already have some kind of RFRA in place through legislation or court action. But legal experts say that these particular bills are unique in that they allow individuals—and in some states, businesses—to cite religion as a defense in a private lawsuit.
My latest “Republican Asshat of the Day” is McConnell’s primary challenger who thinks that gay marriage will lead to Parent/Child Marriage.
Seriously. I’m SERIOUSLY. WTF?
Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Matt Bevin suggested that legalizing same-sex marriage could lead to legalizing marriage between a parent and child.
The comments by Bevin, who is running in the Republican primary against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), were made on The Janet Mefferd Show on Wednesday and highlighted by Right Wing Watch.
“If it’s all right to have same-sex marriages, why not define a marriage — because at the end of the day a lot of this ends up being taxes and who can visit who in the hospital and there’s other repressions and things that come with it — so a person may want to define themselves as being married to one of their children so that they can then in fact pass on certain things to that child financially and otherwise,” Bevin said. “Where do you draw the line?”
There’s a number of Republicans that just can’t seem to grok the idea of the “FOR ALL” idea. Some of them sell out their own demographic for religion or money or stupidity. Michelle Bachmann may be leaving Congress, but, she is not going quietly into the night. I almost hate to link to this site, but it’s the original source.
Bachmann was the only female GOP candidate in the race when she ran for president in 2012. She says, “Two things that need to be done: Remind people (Clinton) is seeking to become commander in chief (and) how she has operated in the past with these types of responsibilities. She was in charge during the Benghazi debacle. If a person reads the Senate Intelligence (Committee) report and the House Foreign Affairs (Committee) report released (last) week, it is damning for Hillary Clinton.”
Bachmann says Clinton testified before Congress that she was “aware” of the deteriorating conditions in Benghazi but did nothing. “She has a real problem when it comes to Benghazi,” says Bachmann.
In addition, she says, Clinton is “the godmother of Obamacare,” trying “behind closed doors” to push through something similar when Bill Clinton was president.
Maybe such an approach will work, but would the lure of the “first female president” overcome these concerns in voters’ minds? Bachmann says: “Effectively she would be Obama’s third and fourth term in office.” That might scare enough people to vote for the Republican nominee.
Bachmann says a lot of people “aren’t ready” for a female president. “I think there was a cachet about having an African-American president because of guilt.” (Presumably she means because of slavery and the lengthy denial of civil rights to blacks.) “People don’t hold guilt for a woman,” she says, adding that while people vote for women for virtually every other office “I don’t think there is a pent-up desire” for a woman president.
She says while Obama was “new and different,” Hillary Clinton has been around a long time and is less likely to stir the juices as Obama did.
It’s difficult to imagine any one that’s in less touch with reality than Bachmann.
“I think there was a cachet about having an African-American president because of guilt,” she said. “People don’t hold guilt for a woman.”
She added that while voters elect women for virtually every other office, she doesn’t think there is “a pent-up desire” for a woman president.
Bachmann, who was the Republican Party’s only female candidate for president in 2012, did have some prescriptions for would-be Clinton challengers, should Clinton run.
“Two things that need to be done: Remind people [Clinton] is seeking to become Commander-in-Chief [and] how she has operated in the past with these types of responsibilities,” Bachmann said. “She was in charge during the Benghazi debacle. If a person reads the Senate Intelligence [Committee] report and the House Foreign Affairs [Committee] report released [last] week, it is damning for Hillary Clinton.”
Least we forget, racist dog whistles still define many folks and these folks have now found a home in the Republican Party. This sad news comes from the Wisconsin statehouse. Outright Racism isn’t just for Southerners any more.
According to documents released Wednesday related to a secret investigation of Walker and his staff, then-deputy chief of staff Kelly Rindfleisch received an email in April 2010 that contained a photo of four dogs and mocked welfare recipients.
“This morning I went to sign my Dogs up for welfare. At first the lady said, ‘Dogs are not eligible to draw welfare’,” the email, first reported by Buzzfeed, read. “So I expla ned [sic] to her that my Dogs are mixed in color, unemployed, lazy, can’t speak English and have no frigging clue who the r [sic] Daddys are. They expect me to feed them, provide them with housing and medical care, and feel guilty because they are dogs.”
“That is hilarious. And so true,” Rindfleisch replied.
Rindfleisch was convicted of misconduct in office in 2012 for doing campaign work for a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor on government time.
The Scott Walker documents also contained a questionable email forwarded by another former aide, then-chief of staff Thomas Nardelli, involving a nightmare about waking up as black, Jewish, disabled, and gay.
Nardelli also circulated an off-color email containing a photoshopped picture of President Barack Obama wearing an acorn top for a hat, a reference to the now-defunded Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).
It’s difficult for me to leave Republicans alone these days because they just. DONT. SEEM. To. GET. ANYTHING. There’s no convincing them that actual history, economic, psychology, and ever branch of science negates their delusions. It’s beginning to look like some kind of personality disorder.
Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) on Thursday reminded Americans who wrote the Constitution.
“I think we got off that track when we allowed our government to become a secular government, when we stopped realizing that God created this nation, that He wrote the constitution, that’s based on biblical principles,” DeLay said when asked when people stopped doing good for others in the name of God on “The Difference,” a talk show on Global Evangelical Television.
Delay said he was optimistic about the return of faith to America, noting that he encouraged House members to take up Bible studies when he was leader.
“I pray every day for an awakening in this country, and I think it’s coming,” he said.
Ya know, I’m the GGGG grandaughter and niece of a lot of signers of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and nearly every damned one of us at the family picnics are not religious people. I’ve heard many tales passed down from the greats, but a gawd writing The Constitution is not one of them. In fact, no gawd is even mentioned in it.
Anyway, I’m turning the post over to you for the day. What’s on your reading and blogging list?
Throwdown Thursday
Posted: February 20, 2014 Filed under: open thread 37 CommentsSo, I’ m thinking we need some kind of new thread. The morning one is getting rather full. Thought I’d share a few things I’ve been thinking about today and encourage you to do the same.
First, if you are in town, please come to my favorite Rap Star’s debut! Actually, she’s my neighbor too. This is 91 year old Laura Swinney, the sage of Poland Avenue. She is doing her thing at Siberia. One of the things that always amazes me about this city is the interesting people I meet. This is especially true of the local women. I have met a mistress of Humprey Bogart and one of the original Rockettes. Gives me some hope.
So, it’s an open thread with an open mind.
What’s on yours?
Thursday Reads: Empathic Elephants, Meaningful Lives, Hillary Harassment, and Miranda Decision
Posted: February 20, 2014 Filed under: morning reads, Republican politics, U.S. Politics | Tags: 2016 Democratic nomination, Bill Clinton, David Miranda, Edward Snowden files, elephants, emotional contagion, empathy, Glenn Greenwald, happiness and meaning, Hillary Clinton, Kate Hansen, Kathleen Willey, Lord Justice Laws, Louisiana, Ohio, polls, Roy Baumeister, Sochi Olympics, stress, Vince Foster 88 Comments
Good Morning!!
A fascinating new study found that Asian elephants comfort each other in times of stress by touching each other with their trunks and making consoling vocalizations. From National Geographic:
Asian elephants, like great apes, dogs, certain corvids (the bird group that includes ravens), and us, have now been shown to recognize when a herd mate is upset and to offer gentle caresses and chirps of sympathy, according to a study published February 18 in the online journal PeerJ.
Joshua Plotnik, a behavioral ecologist at Mahidol University in Kanchanaburi, Thailand, and primatologist Frans de Waal, director ofEmory University’s Living Links Center, have shown through a controlled study what those who work with elephants have always believed: The animals, in this case captive Asian elephants (Elephas maximus), offer something akin to humans’ sympathetic concern when observing distress in another, including their relatives and friends.
The scientists observed a group of 26 elephants in Thailand for a year. It was a naturalistic study–researchers waited until a stressful situation occurred and then noted the animals’ behavior toward each other. From The Christian Science Monitor:
A stress-inducing situation might be a dog walking by or a snake rustling the grass, or the roar or just the presence of a bull elephant. Sometimes the stressor was unknown. Regardless, scientists know elephant distress when they see it: erect tails and flared ears; vocalizations such as trumpeting, rumbling, or roaring; and sudden defecation and urination tell the story….the scientists witnessed bystander elephants—those not directly affected by a stressor—moving to and giving upset elephants physical caresses, mostly inside the mouth (which is kind of like a hug to elephants) and on the genitals.
Bystanders also rumbled and chirped with vocal offerings that suggested reassurance. Sometimes the empathetic animals formed a protective circle around the distressed one.
There was also evidence of “emotional contagion,” when herd mates matched the behavior and emotional state of the upset individual. In other words, seeing a “friend” in distress was distressing to the observers. Those animals also consoled one another.
It makes you wonder if the elephant is really the appropriate symbol for the Republican Party. Read more about elephant empathy at The Christian Science Monitor and Wired.
Here’s another interesting study at Scientific American–this time about humans: A Happy Life May not be a Meaningful Life. The results reminded me of all the super rich guys who are constantly complaining about how victimized they are by the rest of us peons.
Psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl once wrote, “Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.” For most people, feeling happy and finding life meaningful are both important and related goals. But do happiness and meaning always go together? It seems unlikely, given that many of the things that we regularly choose to do – from running marathons to raising children – are unlikely to increase our day-to-day happiness. Recent research suggests that while happiness and a sense of meaning often overlap, they also diverge in important and surprising ways.
Roy Baumeister and his colleagues recently published a study in the Journal of Positive Psychology that helps explain some of the key differences between a happy life and a meaningful one. They asked almost 400 American adults to fill out three surveys over a period of weeks. The surveys asked people to answer a series of questions their happiness levels, the degree to which they saw their lives as meaningful, and their general lifestyle and circumstances.
As one might expect, people’s happiness levels were positively correlated with whether they saw their lives as meaningful. However, the two measures were not identical – suggesting that what makes us happy may not always bring more meaning, and vice versa. To probe for differences between the two, the researchers examined the survey items that asked detailed questions about people’s feelings and moods, their relationships with others, and their day-to-day activities. Feeling happy was strongly correlated with seeing life as easy, pleasant, and free from difficult or troubling events. Happiness was also correlated with being in good health and generally feeling well most of the time. However, none of these things were correlated with a greater sense of meaning. Feeling good most of the time might help us feel happier, but it doesn’t necessarily bring a sense of purpose to our lives.
Interestingly, the researchers found that money can buy happiness, but it can’t guarantee a meaningful life. This is something I’ve come to believe through long and painful experience. I think a sense of meaning comes from working your way through problems and difficult times and coming out the other side stronger and wiser. Rich people are often able to shield themselves from life problems, but at the same time they miss out on opportunities for emotional growth.
Of course relationships are also important for both happiness and a sense of meaning.
In Baumeister’s study, feeling more connected to others improved both happiness and meaning. However, the role we adopt in our relationships makes an important difference. Participants in the study who were more likely to agree with the statement, “I am a giver,” reported less happiness than people who were more likely to agree with, “I am a taker.” However, the “givers” reported higher levels of meaning in their lives compared to the “takers.” In addition, spending more time with friends was related to greater happiness but not more meaning. In contrast, spending more time with people one loves was correlated with greater meaning but not with more happiness. The researchers suspect that spending time with loved ones is often more difficult, but ultimately more satisfying, than spending time with friends.
This is something else I can testify to. I spent about 18 years being a primary caregiver for my ex-mother-in-law. At times this was a thankless, frustrating task that certainly didn’t make me happy all the time–but in the end, I realized that the experience had been meaningful and I had grown a great deal from it.
It looks like Hillary is going to be in the news a great deal between now and the 2016 presidential primaries. We’ve seen the Republicans ramping up their campaign against her–so far by focusing on old gossip from the 1990s. Even the Vince Foster conspiracy theories are coming back to haunt us. Bob Cesca at The Daily Banter reported yesterday that Fox News was set to resurface not only Vince Foster myths, but also Kathleen Willey’s claims that Bill Clinton sexually harassed her.
One of the top shelf conspiracy theories about the Clintons had to do with the suicide of White House advisor Vince Foster, which topped a list of other suspected deaths at the hands of Bill and Hillary. Now, 13 years after the end of that administration and at the outset of the would-be presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton, everything from the ’90s appears to be back on the table.
We’ve already heard from Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) who was the first to invoke Monica Lewinsky. And now here comes Fox News Channel resurrecting the Vince Foster conspiracy theory.
On tonight’s The Kelly File, Megyn Kelly welcomes Kathleen Willey who famously accused President Clinton of sexual harassment. An independent counsel discredited the groping allegations. Nevertheless, Willey has gone on to accuse the Clintons of not only assassinating Vince Foster, but also of murdering her husband.
Sigh . . . I don’t know if anyone here watched that travesty–I wonder if Megyn explained why Hillary should be held responsible for things her husband did (or was accused of doing) decades ago.
As an antidote to that nonsense, here are a couple of very interesting polls:
Politico: Hillary Clinton sweeps GOP in Ohio
Hillary Clinton buries Gov. Chris Christie and other potential Republican presidential candidates in the crucial swing state of Ohio, according to a new poll on Thursday.
The former secretary of state, who led Christie 42 percent to 41 percent in November, now tops the New Jersey governor 49 percent to 36 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University poll.
Read the rest of the numbers at the link.
Now here’s a poll that will make Dakinikat smile: In a Stunning Turn Poll Shows Hillary Clinton Could Make Louisiana Blue in 2016 (Politicus USA)
A new Public Policy Polling survey of Louisana found that Hillary Clinton would be the strongest Democratic presidential candidate in the state since her husband Bill was on the ballot in the 1990s.
According to PPP, “All the Republican contenders for President lead Hillary Clinton in hypothetical contests, but the margins are closer than they’ve been in the state since her husband was on the ticket. Christie leads her by just a point at 44/43, Jindal’s up 2 at 47/45, Paul leads by 4 points at 47/43, Huckabee has a 5 point advantage at 49/44, and the strongest Republican with a 7 point edge at 50/43 is Jeb Bush.”
Hillary Clinton’s numbers represent the best showing for a Democratic presidential candidate in the state since her husband Bill Clinton won Louisiana by 5 points in 1992 and 12 points in 1996. George W. Bush won the state by 8 points in 2000, and 15 points in 2004. McCain beat Obama by 19 in 2008, and Mitt Romney defeated the president by a margin of 18 points in 2012.
Wow! It’s still very early, but that is exciting news.
You may recall that last August, Glenn Greenwald’s partner David Miranda was detained at Heathrow Airport in London and questioned about documents he was carrying–top secret documents that had been stolen by Edward Snowden from the U.S. and Great Britain. Miranda’s computers, flash drives and other electronic devices were also confiscated. Greenwald and Miranda sued, claiming that Great Britain charging him under their “anti-terrorism laws was unlawful and breached human rights.” Yesterday the court released its decision, saying that judges said it was a “proportionate measure in the circumstances” and in the interests of national security. From BBC News:
Steven Kovats QC, representing the UK home secretary, previously told the High Court that the secret material seized from Mr Miranda could have ended up in the hands of al-Qaeda.
But Mr Miranda’s lawyers argued the detention at Heathrow was illegal because it was carried out under the wrong law: Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000.
They said that in reality he was detained on the say-so of the security services so they could seize journalistic material.
Mr Miranda was carrying 58,000 highly classified Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) files, the judge said.
He added that Oliver Robbins, the UK’s deputy national security adviser at the Cabinet Office, had stated that “release or compromise of such data would be likely to cause very great damage to security interests and possible loss of life”.
But could Miranda be called a “journalist” just because he was carrying material that his partner had written about in a newspaper, The Guardian?
In his ruling, Lord Justice Laws said: “The claimant was not a journalist; the stolen GCHQ intelligence material he was carrying was not ‘journalistic material’, or if it was, only in the weakest sense.
“But he was acting in support of Mr Greenwald’s activities as a journalist. I accept that the Schedule 7 stop constituted an indirect interference with press freedom, though no such interference was asserted by the claimant at the time.
“In my judgement, however, it is shown by compelling evidence to have been justified.”
Here’s the full decision of the court. There is a subtle but emphatic slap-down of Glenn Greenwald’s arguments in points 54-56. The judged noted that Greenwald appeared to be lecturing the court when he discussed “responsible journalism,” and responded that the “evidence” Greenwald offered was “unhelpful,” because he took the position that British law enforcement officers deliberately acted in a way that they (officers) knew to be wrong; he ignored the fact that the material Miranda was carrying was stolen and could end up in the wrong hands; and that
Mr Greenwald’s account (paragraph 33) of the “many ingredients to the sensible reporting of very sensitive information” is insubstantial; or rather, mysterious – the reader is left in the dark as to how it is that “highly experienced journalists and
legal experts” (paragraph 33(1)) or “[e]xperienced editors and reporters” (33(2)) are able to know what may and what may not be published without endangering life or security.
Miranda and Greenwald hope to be granted the right to appeal the decision.
I’m just about out of space, so I’ll conclude with a quickie from Sochi: Olympian Films Wolf Stalking Her Hotel Hallway.
Olympian Kate Hansen tweeted out a video of what appears to be a wolf trotting down her hotel hallway with the message, “I’m pretty sure this is a wolf wandering my hall in Sochi.” via
Now it’s your turn. What stories are you following today? Please post your links in the comment thread, and have a great day!
Tuesday Reads: Winter Weather, No Hillary Alternatives, New Snowden Leaks, and More
Posted: February 18, 2014 Filed under: Barack Obama, morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: 2016 Democratic nomination, Bush administration, Edward Snowden, First Look, GCHQ, Glenn Greenwald, Google Maps, Gregor Weichbrodt, Hillary Clinton, Jack Kerouac, James Clapper, NSA, On The Road, Oymyakon Russia, Siberia, snow, Wikileaks 70 Comments
Good Morning!!
I’m awaiting what I hope is the last snowstorm to hit the Boston area for a week or so. This one won’t be a big deal compared to what we’ve been hit by over the past few weeks. It will snow most of the day and we’ll end up with another five inches of snow on top of the giant pile of white stuff that is already on the ground.
The good news is that beginning tomorrow and going through the weekend, we are expecting temperatures in the 40s and 50s, along with rain. That should help wash some of the snow away. The Weather Channel has live updates on how this storm is affecting other parts of the country.
While I was perusing the Weather Channel page this morning, I came across this article–with amazing photos–of the coldest city in the world.
Think we’re having a brutal winter? Winter temperatures in Oymyakon, Russia, average minus 50 C (minus 58 F). The remote village is generally considered the coldest inhabited area on Earth. Oymyakon is a two-day drive from Yakutsk, the regional capital which has the lowest winter temperatures of any city in the world.
How do the locals deal with the cold? “Russki chai, literally Russian tea, which is their word for vodka,” photographer Amos Chapple told weather.com after his visit to the coldest city.
Oymyakon ironically means “unfrozen water.” This is due to the thermal spring located nearby. Originally the location was used by reindeer herders who would water their flock in the warm springs.
Oymyakon’s lowest recorded temperature was a frigid minus 71.2 C (minus 96.16 F) back in 1924. According to The Independent, wearing glasses outdoors can cause them to stick to the wearer’s face. This is just one of the more menial problems of the extremely cold weather
After reading that, I suddenly felt very comfy in my cozy house with the temperature outside a mild 18 degrees F.
Whether we like it or not–and I absolutely hate it–the 2016 presidential race has already begun, and along with it the endless Hillary-bashing that we’ll have to put up with not only from Republicans but also from a subset of Democrats. Republicans will need to be reminded that Hillary is running, not “the Clintons”; and Democrats will have to learn that if they don’t want Jeb Bush as president, Hillary is the best alternative.
It’s a little unnerving that Bob Shrum agrees with me, since he’s rarely backed a winner; but honestly in this case he’s right. From The Daily Beast: Yes, Pundits, Hillary Has the 2016 Nomination in the Bag.
Handicappers in the presidential race abhor the opposite of a vacuum—a campaign two years out where one candidate seems to blot out the entire field. Thus a mini-chorus now rises, and may swell, questioning Hillary Clinton’s apparent lock on the 2016 Democratic nomination. It’s a predictable reflex, but in cold, hard reality, logic suggests that the lock is authentic, not just apparent. And in modern history, or virtually all American history, Hillary’s inevitability is unprecedented for a non-incumbent.
Yes, there are pundits like Matt Bai and Krystal Ball who claim that Hillary is vulnerable to a “grass roots” challenge, but they’re in fantasy land. In response to Ball’s suggestion that Elizabeth Warren should be the candidate, because she is “clearly passionate, living and breathing and feeling … the plight of the worker, the middle class,” Shrum writes:
Hillary, Ball asserts, can’t do that because she was once on the board of Walmart and recently accepted speaking fees from Goldman Sachs. That attack, if an opponent advanced it, could and would be swiftly confounded by the Hillary who, in the penultimate primaries of 2008, in places like Pennsylvania and Ohio, emerged as a powerful, persuasive tribune of blue-collar and middle-class Americans.
Of course, there is another slight problem with the Warren option: She’s joined all the other Democratic women senators in signing a letter urging Hillary to run.Warren will probably be out there all right—stumping for Hillary, not against her.
There’s much more at the link about other possible candidates like Andrew Cuomo and Martin O’Malley.
Let me add, btw, for Warren fans who claim that Hillary is “too old,” Warren will be 67 in 2016–just two years younger than Clinton. That’s leaving aside the fact that she has far less political experience than Barack Obama did in 2008 and zero foreign policy experience.
Over at that bastion of Hillary-hatred, DailyKos, Markos broke the news to his followers yesterday: The real primary fight of 2016 (and it’s not an alternative to Hillary.”
Some people have to come to terms. And I’m looking at you, people desperate to find an alternative to Hillary Clinton in 2016.
If Hillary runs, she’s the nominee. I know it’s in vogue to talk about how “inevitable” Hillary was in 2008. But it was a different world. I remember it because I was in the midst of that battle. People wanted an alternative, and alternatives existed. At her best, Hillary’s poll numbers were in the 40s with Obama in the strong 20s. Look for yourself. Yes, she was the frontrunner, but there was a strong primary field within striking distance.
There is no alternative to Hillary this cycle. The last time anyone polled the Democratic primary field, Clinton had 73 percent of the vote, Biden 11, and Elizabeth Warren nine. That tells us a couple of things. One, 73 percent is A WHOLE LOT OF PEOPLE. She is the consensus nominee, and if you disagree, you are objectively in the deep minority. Second of all, there is no one to provide even nominal challenge. Clinton (again, assuming she runs) will have some “challengers”, but it’ll be a bunch of people auditioning for her VP slot.
To reiterate, leads like 45-25 in 2007 didn’t make Hillary “inevitable”. Numbers like 73-11 in 2014 absolutely do. And you know what? Those are not irrational numbers. Hillary will be a great president.
Elizabeth Warren isn’t running. I get why people persist with this fantasy, but it’s nothing more than a fantasy. Warren had to be dragged in kicking and screaming into the Massachusetts Senate race, a geographically small state in which she could sleep in her own bed every night. If you barely have the fire to run for Senate, then you absolutely don’t have the fire to mount a brutal presidential campaign. And even if she did, all she’d have to do is look at the polling (73-9!) to realize she’d have a million better things to do with her time and her donors’ money. SHE. AIN’T. RUNNING.
So, I guess we’ll have to wait and see if some Democrats are willing to try to sabotage the party’s chances of continuing to control the White House and very likely Congress as well. It could end up being similar to what the Republicans did to Mitt Romney in 2012. But this time, there won’t be real competition on the Republican side. Who are they going to run? Mitt Romney again? Paul Ryan? My guess is Jeb Bush would be afraid to run against Hillary.
There’s a new article up at Glenn Greenwald’s new site, The Intercept: Snowden Documents Reveal Covert Surveillance and Pressure Tactics Aimed at WikiLeaks and Its Supporters. I haven’t had time to read the whole thing yet, because I want to get this post up soon. I’ll read it carefully once I’ve done that. But here’s the introduction:
Top-secret documents from the National Security Agency and its British counterpart reveal for the first time how the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom targeted WikiLeaks and other activist groups with tactics ranging from covert surveillance to prosecution.
The efforts – detailed in documents provided previously by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden – included a broad campaign of international pressure aimed not only at WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, but at what the U.S. government calls “the human network that supports WikiLeaks.” The documents also contain internal discussions about targeting the file-sharing site Pirate Bay and hacktivist collectives such as Anonymous.
One classified document from Government Communications Headquarters, Britain’s top spy agency, shows that GCHQ used its surveillance system to secretly monitor visitors to a WikiLeaks site. By exploiting its ability to tap into the fiber-optic cables that make up the backbone of the Internet, the agency confided to allies in 2012, it was able to collect the IP addresses of visitors in real time, as well as the search terms that visitors used to reach the site from search engines like Google.
Another classified document from the U.S. intelligence community, dated August 2010, recounts how the Obama administration urged foreign allies to file criminal charges against Assange over the group’s publication of the Afghanistan war logs.
A third document, from July 2011, contains a summary of an internal discussion in which officials from two NSA offices – including the agency’s general counsel and an arm of its Threat Operations Center – considered designating WikiLeaks as “a ‘malicious foreign actor’ for the purpose of targeting.” Such a designation would have allowed the group to be targeted with extensive electronic surveillance – without the need to exclude U.S. persons from the surveillance searches.
My immediate reaction is that if NSA were not monitoring Wikileaks, they would not be doing their job. As for the claims that individual visitors to the website were actually targeted, I’ll have to reserve judgment until I read the whole piece and it has been fact-checked by people who understand the technology involved better than the authors. I’ve learned from months of experience that Glenn Greenwald’s articles tend to be filled with errors as well as over-the-top melodrama.
In other NSA news, James Clapper admitted in an interview with Eli Lake of The Daily Beast that “We Should’ve Told You We Track Your Calls.”
Ya think? Here’s an excerpt:
Clapper said the problems facing the U.S. intelligence community over its collection of phone records could have been avoided. “I probably shouldn’t say this, but I will. Had we been transparent about this from the outset right after 9/11—which is the genesis of the 215 program—and said both to the American people and to their elected representatives, we need to cover this gap, we need to make sure this never happens to us again, so here is what we are going to set up, here is how it’s going to work, and why we have to do it, and here are the safeguards… We wouldn’t have had the problem we had,” Clapper said.
“What did us in here, what worked against us was this shocking revelation,” he said, referring to the first disclosures from Snowden. If the program had been publicly introduced in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, most Americans would probably have supported it. “I don’t think it would be of any greater concern to most Americans than fingerprints. Well people kind of accept that because they know about it. But had we been transparent about it and say here’s one more thing we have to do as citizens for the common good, just like we have to go to airports two hours early and take our shoes off, all the other things we do for the common good, this is one more thing.”
Since the first Snowden revelations in June, Clapper has declassified reams of material relating to the 215 program, including opinions and warrants signed by the top secret court that approves domestic snooping. But he has not publicly acknowledged until now his thoughts that the initial secrecy surrounding the program was ill-considered.
No shit Sherlock! Americans most likely would have supported the program if the Bush administration had been up front about it. Of course, then Congress would have regulated it more–as is happening under Obama–and that wouldn’t have pleased President Cheney. Even now, if Obama and NSA officials would come out and explain exactly what the program is, the fear-mongering by Greenwald and the gang would be far less effective.
Basically, the “metadata” that is collected is just the same information that we used to get on our phone bills: time call was initiated, how long it lasted, and the number that was called. The phone company kept all this “metadata” on file, and law enforcement could access the phone records of a suspect by getting a warrant from a judge–which is the same thing the NSA does. I have way fewer problems with this kind of data collection than what corporations are doing on a daily basis with my internet browsing and purchases.
I’ll end with a couple of fun items.
First, I hope you’ll check out these awesome photos of Russians with their cats at Buzzfeed.
Second, from The Guardian: Kerouac’s On the Road followed on the road via Google Maps:
“The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great, that I thought I was in a dream,” wrote Jack Kerouac, famously, in On the Road. “Head northwest on W 47th St toward 7th Ave. Take the 1st left onto 7th Ave. Turn right onto W 39th St,” writes Gregor Weichbrodt, less poetically but more accurately, in On the Road for 17527 Miles, a new book tracing the Beat writer’s famous journey across America – with the aid of Google Maps.
Going through On the Road with a fine-toothed comb, Weichbrodt took the “exact and approximate” spots to which the author – via his alter ego Sal Paradise – travelled, and entered them into Google’s Direction Service. “The result is a huge direction instruction of 55 pages,” says the German student. “All in all, as Google shows, the journey takes 272.26 hours (for 17,527 miles).”
Weichbrodt’s chapters match those of Kerouac’s original. He has now self-published the book, which is also part of the current exhibition Poetry Will Be Made By All! in Zurich, and has, he says, sold six copies so far.
You can read the book at at Open Culture. The site has also published a photo of Jack Kerouac’s Hand-Drawn Map of the Hitchhiking Trip Narrated in On the Road. Very cool.
Now what are you reading and blogging about today? Please post your links on any topic in the comment thread, and have a tremendous Tuesday!
Monday Reads: People are strange
Posted: February 17, 2014 Filed under: morning reads 49 Comments
Well, Good Morning!
I’ve been doing this thing on my facebook every day this year where I thought I could select just one Republican Asshat of the Day. I figured it might be a bit of a stretch to come up with just one. It turned out that I’ve found multiples of them every single day. This has put me in a strange frame of mind. I’ve been sitting here questioning the nature of mind again; mine AND theirs. So, here’s a weirdish set of morning reads for you.
First up, the death of a snake handler that at one point had his own reality show. Yea. A snake bit and killed him. Are any of us really surprised? Oh, he’s from Kentucky and not to be confused with my governor as folks are want to do these days.
Snake-handling preacher Jamie Coots, who never backed away from his beliefs despite derision, criminal charges and excruciating bites, died Saturday night after being bitten by a rattlesnake during a church service.
Family members of Coots, 42, refused medical treatment for him. He was pronounced dead about two hours after the rattler sank its fangs into his right hand.
His son think he died some time before that, however.
“It was the quickest snakebite (death) I ever seen in my life,” Cody Coots said Sunday.
Jamie Coots’ death appears to be the first from a snakebite in a Kentucky church service since November 2006, when a woman died after being bitten while worshipping at a Laurel County church.
Coots, a third-generation snake handler, was the pastor of a small church in Middlesboro, Full Gospel Tabernacle in Jesus Name.
He had long been prominent among the small, close-knit circle of snake-handling Pentecostal churches in Appalachia, but he gained wider notice last fall though a National Geographic Channel program called Snake Salvation, which profiled him and other snake handlers. The show was not renewed for a second season.
Coots and 35 to 40 others were at a service at his church between 8 and 8:30 p.m. Saturday when a 21/2-foot-long timber rattler snake bit him near the base of his right thumb.
Cody Coots said his father was handling three rattlesnakes at the time.
Some of us are waiting for the verdict of the latest angry white man enabled by Florida Law to shoot and murder an unarmed teenage because he was very very scared. The jury appears to be hung up on the murder charge because of the weirdness of the laws in Florida . So, here’s a little bit on the poor frightened white man who is trodding in George Zimmerman’s psychopathic footsteps via a neighbor who knows him well. This little item was found by Susie Madrak. This appears to be another dude just out there looking for a confrontation where he can shoot and kills some one.
Charles Hendrix, Michael Dunn’s former next-door neighbor, describes violent behavior, lies, insurance fraud, cocaine use, bragging about putting a hit out on someone, and a first wife who said he’d held a gun to her head and threatened to kill her. He says Dunn bragged that he was smarter than everyone else and could outthink them.
Watch the video interview. I’ve lived next to a violent, angry, white man before. Thankfully, he moved to Florida last year. I’m just waiting for him to be the subject of the next stand your ground trial but I believe he will shoot a woman. However, it could possibly be his wife so they will probably ignore the whole thing and call it just simple destruction of unwanted property there.
Russian children will no longer be placed for adoption in countries that recognize same sex marriage. Perhaps Russia thinks Uganda is a hunky dory place to live and the UK is a hell hole?
Citizens of the countries that permit same-sex marriages are no longer able to adopt orphans from Russia. A decree to that effect was signed by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.
The Russian government has changed the rules for the transfer of orphans for adoption, having introduced an additional ban on foreign adoptions by same-sex couples. The decree published today on the government website contains a paragraph, according to which children can be adopted by adult citizens of both sexes, except for “persons of the same sex in alliance recognized and registered as marriage in accordance with the laws of the State in which such marriage is allowed, as well as persons who are not married, but are citizens of such state.”
Thus, the prohibition applies not only to adoption by same-sex couples (a law to that effect was signed by President Vladimir Putin in July 2013), but also to all citizens of the countries that recognize such marriages. “Implementation of this decree will ensure more streamlined arrangements for transfer of children without parental care to families of citizens of the Russian Federation and foreign citizens and will protect the rights and interests of these children,” believes the government.
Paul Ryan appears to be serious about trying to impeach President Obama over Executive Orders. Since when are executive orders a “high crime or misdemeanor”?
During an interview on CNN, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) laid the groundwork for impeaching President Obama by claiming that the president is abusing his powers and violating the Constitution with executive orders.
Ryan said,
There’s a difference between effectively using the bully pulpit to encourage good things in America and doing an end run around Congress. Look, everytime a president or a member of congress is sworn in, they swear an oath to protect and uphold the Consitution.
It sounds like to me the president looks like he is willing to circumvent the Constitution. The presidents do not write laws. That’s what Congress does. That’s Congress’ job, and if presidents try to circumvent congress by writing their own laws, then he is circumventing the Constitution. That is not our form of government.
I thought I’d give you some perspective on this. Executive Orders have been used by Presidents since George Washington who used them 8 times. Ronald Reagan used them a total of 381 times. Dubya Bush used them 291 times. Obama has used them 168 times.
Gov. Bobby Jindal‘s administration is on its way to completely draining a trust fund for elderly care that lawmakers had expected to last for decades.
Louisiana’s Legislative Fiscal Office reportsthat the Medicaid Trust Fund for the Elderly, once flush with more than $800 million in cash, will be “almost entirely depleted” if Jindal’s budget for the next fiscal year goes through as proposed. By the middle of 2015, it will be completely wiped out, according to the analysis.
The governor, with approval from the Legislature, has been drawing money out of the fund for years to backstop health care budget gaps. Critics says the elderly trust fund was not initially created to be used in that way, though the Jindal administration and lawmakers are allowed to withdraw as much money as they need.
The $800 million was essentially supposed to stay intact, with only the interest and investment revenue being withdrawn every year to pay for state services. The idea was that the $800 million principal would continue to provide a steady stream of funding for the state government through its interest and investment earnings each year.
Yet during the next budget cycle, the Jindal administration has proposed effectively to take what’s left of the fund’s money, around $232 million, and use it to pay for nursing home payments for Medicaid patients.
The Department of Health and Hospitals said it needs the funding to make sure critical services aren’t interrupted for some of the state’s most vulnerable residents. The federal government recently passed a Medicaid reduction that slashed the program’s funding in Louisiana to its lowest rate in 25 years, according to the agency.
“Ultimately, the trust fund has helped to prevent steep reductions in provider reimbursement rates that would have impacted access to care,” said Jerry Phillips, undersecretary of the Department of Health and Hospitals.
This may leave the next governor and future Legislatures in a financial pickle, according the Legislative Fiscal Office’s report, particularly if the voters approve a constitutional amendment on the ballot in November that ensures nursing home payments cannot be cut.
Jindal has been balancing the budget on the backs of higher education and public health for some time now.
I got a really weird phone call the other day from a pollster whose questions were so loaded that I could hardly answer them. I think this explains it all. I was being tested to see if these Koch ads had any impact on me as well as ads by outstate republican congressmen who may run against Landrieu. I basically told them I was an independent with a brain and they were barking up the wrong tree.
A new political attack ad from the Koch brothers-funded group Americans for Prosperity calls on Louisianans to tell Sen. Mary Landrieu that Obamacare is hurting their families.
The ad shows a number of people, who appear to be Louisianans, opening their mail to find a letter stating that their health care policy has been cancelled because of the Affordable Care Act.
“Due to the Affordable Care Act, your monthly premium has increased,” a voice-over says in the ad as a man in a rural neighborhood opens a cancellation letter and looks at his young daughter standing next to him. “No longer covered, due to the Affordable Care Act.”
But the people in the emotion-evoking ad are not Louisianans at all; they are paid actors
Landrieu’s support for the Affordable Care Act is a major sticking point in what promises to be a tough reelection campaign for the three-term senator. And her campaign is taking issue with the ad, characterizing its use of actors as “misleading” and “low.”
“Hiring professional actors to impersonate Louisiana families is low even for the billionaire Koch brothers,” Friends of Mary Landrieu Campaign Manager Adam Sullivan told ABC News. “If the Koch brothers had even a shred of credibility before launching their latest misleading ad campaign against Sen. Landrieu, they’ve surely lost it now.”
Americans for Prosperity is not backing down from the ad, with spokesman Levi Russell telling ABC News that it’s no secret that the people in the ad are actors.
“I think the viewing public is savvy enough to distinguish between someone giving a personal story and something that is emblematic,” Russell said when reached on the phone. “And we make it very clear when someone is giving a personal testimonial.”
Russell said the ad, in contrast to a “personal testimonial ad” that would use the story of a real voter, is “cinematic” and meant to be a “representative of Americans from all walks of life.”
My premiums have increased slightly but I am on a significantly better plan as a result of the Affordable Health Care Act. That’s just for the record from this Louisianan.
But, I’m still not a person from Kansas or Mississippi. Kansas still gives Texas a run for the money on outrageously horrible things to do to people. Maybe we should offer the people there up to Russia and turn the entire place into a Buffalo wildlife preserve.
The state’s wealthy governor, a moderate Republican, was hobnobbing with the attorneys at a prestigious Kansas City law firm one day in 1998; the mood was one of pleasant professional joviality, till one person worked up her nerve and chastised the governor to his face. Who among them dared? A secretary at the law firm, who faulted this celebrated Republican for insufficient conservatism.
What I found was that the descendents of the Populists were in rebellion; they were furious at “elites” and their social betters; it’s just that the politics of the situation had been inverted. (“Like a French Revolution in reverse — one in which the sans-culottes pour down the streets demanding more power for the aristocracy,” I wrote.) This was the dark secret of the whole nasty business: The right had developed an entire ersatz proletarian movement, a full-blown astrology of class discontent in which the hard-working average citizen was invited to feel himself imposed upon by upper-class liberals. Class animus was — is — central to who they are and how they think about the world. And it has caught on. In a place like Wichita, Kansas, you encounter it on every street corner. Hating “elites,” hating Hollywood, hating government, hating scientists — these are all part of everyday life. Yes, the reasoning behind this philosophy may be faulty; its origins may be suspicious; but it is powerful stuff, and in lots of heartland locales these days, it is just about the only form of social grievance being offered.
I say “secret,” but in truth the thing was obvious. It is everywhere — bestseller lists, cable news, AM radio, the floor of Congress. Polls have steadily tracked the migration of the white working-class vote to the GOP, and the disastrous results of this shift are plain to anyone with access to a Web browser. It is “secret” only because looking deeply into this situation was and is something that few are really interested in doing.
Why not? Well, for conservatives, the whole thing is mentally off-limits thanks to the blatant contradictions between their populist rhetoric and their rich-enriching policy deeds. They may talk proletarian righteousness constantly, but always in an evasive, sentimental way, more Norman Rockwell than John L. Lewis. If you want something more than rhetoric from them — something more solid than anger-stirring culture-war clichés — you basically have to be the Koch Brothers.
I should mention something in passing about that prestigious law firm and my cousins’ presence. Don’t disown me. I’m considered the strange one in my family.
Since I ripped off the song title today, I thought I’d share the actual song.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
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