Sunday Reads: Fox News “Wish I was in the Land of Cossacks”

Good Morning

Actually the title of this post is referring to a couple of news items from the past week. You may have missed this little nugget of love that was spread about on Fox News…it is a whooper when you think about it. See what the Daily Banter had to say about it: Fox News Channel Host Wishes Vladimir Putin Could Be “Head of the United States”

For the longest time, Fox News hosts throughout the broadcast day were crushing badly for Pooty-Poot and his hairless man-rack. But when protests in Ukraine disintegrated into a not-so-subtle Russian incursion and attempted annexation of the country, Fox News kept its unrequited passion to itself — not knowing whether its audience would regard Putin as a hero or a throwback Soviet-era invader.

And then a Malaysia Airlines flight was blown out of the sky, most likely using a Russian-made Buk surface-to-air launcher. If, in the aftermath of that tragedy, Fox News hosts were still carrying a torch for Putin, you’d have to read very carefully to find any signs of love. Mostly, the network was unwilling to directly blame Putin, referring to the missile launch as coming from pro-Russia rebels inside Ukraine.

That was July — just over a month ago. A lifetime in modern news media time, and even longer in internet time.

But on Wednesday, Fox News reignited its affection for Putin — and, incongruously, on the same day when the Pentagon appears to have confirmed Russian forces and a Russian missile launch inside Ukraine. On “The Five,” and following a monologue about ISIS by talking troll Greg Gutfeld, panelist Kimberly Guilfoyle suggested that Putin take over the United States for 48 hours.

“Can I just make a special request in the magic lamp? Can we get like Netanyahu, or like Putin in for 48 hours, you know, head of the United States?”

Can I make a quick observation? What the fuck is wrong with these people. Bob Cesca continues,

There’s no gray area there. Putin for (Temporary) President. Guilfoyle’s 48 hour term is more than enough time for Putin to shoot down a few more passenger airliners; invite the Russian military into one or more states; imprison at least several thousand gay people; seize control of the internet; censor journalism; dissolve PBS and replace it with RT.

Vladimir Putin, a foreign-born former KGB agent operating under the pre-1990 communist Soviet regime, is Fox News Channel’s magic bullet for solving America’s problems. The same network that literally branded patriotism told us that Putin should take over the country for a while. The network that’s encouraging Speaker Boehner’s lawsuit against President Obama for his alleged abuse of executive power thinks despotic Putin would be a better alternative. Wrap your head around that one. Executive overreach is impeachable, but let’s bring in Vladimir Putin to fix things. I’m sure he’d totally get congressional permission for everything.

Nyet.

By the way, Fox News wouldn’t have mentioned such an idea without knowing full well that Fox News loyalists would suck it down like water — viewers who only know that Putin is “tough,” without knowing what treachery is associated with that toughness. Oh, and they also know he hates the gays. I suppose that alone is enough to sell them on Putin.

The myth that seems to have permeated the far-right is that being a badass is the end-all of leadership, irrespective of who or what is on the receiving end of that badassery. But they can count on one thing: Putin will spend his two days as President of the United States doing a hell of a lot more than signing a stack of executive orders. One of his actions would surely be to indefinitely extend his 48 hour term. And that’d be the least objectionable thing.

Wow, the shit these people say is unfuckingbelievable! What gets me confused is how these right-wing politicians that go on Fox News…who are so anti-communist, can promote these statements.

Although, anything is possible. Ben Carson: No, I’m Not Sorry I Compared U.S. To Nazi Germany

Conservative Ben Carson isn’t backing down from his previous statements likening progressives and Obama supporters to Nazi sympathizers.

The topic was broached and reported on in a profile of Carson in The Washington Post.

“You can’t dance around it,” Carson told The Washington Post’s Ben Terris. “If people look at what I said and were not political about it, they’d have to agree. Most people in Germany didn’t agree with what Hitler was doing…Exactly the same thing can happen in this country if we are not willing to stand up for what we believe in.”

In February Carson suggested that liberals could turn the country into Nazi Germany.

“There comes a time when people with values simply have to stand up,” he said according to The Huffington Post. “Think about Nazi Germany. Most of those people did not believe in what Hitler was doing. But what did they speak up? Did they stand up for what they believe in/ They did not, and you saw what happened.”

A month later, Carson went there again, saying that American society today is very similar to Nazi Germany.

“I mean, [our society is] very much like Nazi Germany,” the retired neurosurgeon said in an interview with Breitbart News. “And I know you’re not supposed to say ‘Nazi Germany,’ but I don’t care about political correctness. You know, you had a government using its tools to intimidate the population. We now live in a society where people are afraid to say what they actually believe.”

He went on to list the “PC police” politicians and news that, together, “stifle people’s conversation.”

“The reason that is so horrible is because the only way that you have harmon and reach consensus is by talking. But if, in fact, people are afraid to talk, you never reach consensus,” Carson said. “And instead you grow further and further apart. And that’s exactly what’s happening, creating a horrible schism that will destroy our nation if we don’t fix it.”

I will say this, Russia is no putting on one hell of a show: Participants perform during the Spasskaya Tower international… News Photo 454386736 | Getty Images

Participants perform during the Spasskaya Tower international military and music Festival on Red Square in Moscow on August 30, 2014. The festival itself will be held from August 30, to September 7. AFP PHOTO/KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV (Photo credit should read KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP/Getty Images)

Not all countries are participating however, 3 Countries Boycott Kremlin Music Fest Over Ukraine | News | The Moscow Times

More pretty pictures here: ‘Spasskaya Tower’ International Military Orchestra Music Festival – ‘Spasskaya Tower’ International Military Orchestra Music Festival | The Economic Times

Next up, this link should be read to the tune of “Dixie.” Cushing and Gettysburg  : Lawyers, Guns & Money

President Obama is granting Lt. Alonzo Cushing, who played a critical role in repelling Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg, the Medal of Honor. It’s pretty amazing he didn’t already have it since had Pickett taken the hill, it’s possible at least the war would have ended differently. Personally, I tend to not believe the world changes that much with an individual event, but I’ll grant the possibility. Certainly defeating the Confederates at Gettysburg did kill their chance of moving the war into the North and forcing a peace, something that would have kept millions of people in slavery for who knows how long. Decades at a minimum. Possibly until the present, who can tell.

Speaking of such things, I happened to visit Gettysburg last week. I had a great time. It was super cool to visit the key spots of the battle, try to imagine all the dead on the huge field that the location of Pickett’s Charge, below Little Round Top, and around the battlefield. Much credit goes to the National Park Service for not only emphasizing slavery as the core reason of the war but for enforcing that interpretation. What do I mean by that? For a very long time, the main attraction at the Gettysburg Visitor Center was the cyclorama of Pickett’s Charge. A cyclorama was a Gilded Age entertainment that tried to bring a scene to life through a 360-degree painting. These were a huge hit in France and were imported to the U.S. A cyclorama painter was hired to do one of Pickett’s Charge and people love it. It was a huge reason why people went to the site. You can still see it today and it’s OK. It’s cool as a Gilded Age relic. As something of value outside of that, it’s pretty silly, what with the sound and light show that goes along with it.

[…]

Now in order to see the cyclorama, you have to sit through the 15 minute film intrepreting the battle for you. Morgan Freeman narrates the video and it says in no uncertain terms that slavery was the cause of the war, which is great. I’m sure there’s a lot of people who hate that (one of the first people I saw there was a guy wearing a Stonewall Jackson t-shirt, which in my world is like wearing a Himmler t-shirt), but it was very well done, really expressing the complexity of the situation too. I also discovered that I find discussion of military maneuvers so incredibly boring that even Morgan Freeman can’t make me care. Anyway, the exhibits in the Visitor Center are good throughout, combining the old guns that are crack for American white men who like to wear camo as casual wear with real historical interpretation.

I don’t think I would compare Stonewall Jackson to Himmler, read the comments on the LG&M post to get more thoughts on that,  but the obvious use of the shirt to prove that the wearer was a redneck asshole…that I could agree with wholeheartedly.

On Friday we had to drive down to Atlanta, and I thought about the Civil War…like I usually do while on the roads around Georgia.

Let me explain. When you drive South from Banjoville to Atlanta and pass each exit along I75, exits with names that you remember from key battles in the Atlanta Campaign. As you pass these battlefields of a war that took place one hundred and fifty years ago it makes you think about what that war was all about….and just how far we have come.

Foggy Memories Obscure Forebears of Ferguson Unrest | WhoWhatWhy

Life magazine cover about the Newark Riots.

Collective amnesia about past eruptions of racial conflict has left Americans with a false sense that what happened in Ferguson is somehow new. But the only thing new is the technology. The attitudes on display are sadly familiar.Forty-seven years ago, the African-American population of New Jersey’s largest city took to the streets after a violent encounter between white police officers and an unarmed black man. While the body count in Newark—26 people dead and 1,500 injured—was far greater than in the recent disturbances in Ferguson, Missouri, the parallels between the two tragedies are too clear to be ignored.

It is a long read…go to the link.

At the Black Agenda Report: Justice Dept Refuses For 20 Years To Comply With Federal Law Requiring It To Gather National Police Brutality Stats | Black Agenda Report

A BA Radio Commentary by Bruce A. Dixon

We’re all supposed to be impressed with the fact that Attorney General Eric Holder parachuted into Ferguson MO the other day to wrap his arms around the local top black cop and get briefed on the pending federal investigation into the police killing of Michael Brown. But we shouldn’t be.

For the last 20 years, since 1994, Violent Crime Control & Law Enforcement Act obligates the Department of Justice to collect statistics on the extent of brutality and excessive force used by police officers, and to make those findings available to the public. 20 years down the road no such stats exist, because the Justice Departments of the Clinton, the Bush and the Obama administrations have all simply ignored the law and refuse even to try to gather the information. Let me say this again: the Clinton Justice Department defied the law and refused to gather national stats on police misconduct. The Bush Justice Department thumbed its nose at the law and also refused to gather national stats on police misconduct, and now the first black attorney general, who sometimes even utters the phrase “mass incarceration”, which he recently discovered, selected by the first black president who says if he had a son, his son could be Trayvon Martin – Eric Holder and Barack Obama have likewise shown no interest whatsoever in fulfilling their legal duty when it comes to assembling a national database of police misconduct.

This should not surprise the president’s apologists, who will surely counsel us that he has to be president of all the people, including the police. Everybody knows black and brown people are the disproportionate targets of police violence, so enforcing laws which particularly benefit black and brown communities are something we must not expect. Perhaps after the president leaves office, they’ll tell us, he’ll speak out more forcefully on this. Maybe the “My Brothers Keeper” initiative can get some charitable dollars to organizations like , or PUSH or the Urban League to help more of our young boys to pull their pants up so they won’t get beat down.

Let’s get real. The Republicans haven’t stopped Obama and Holder from doing this, they stopped themselves. Like every cop on the beat, the Obama administration chooses which laws to enforce, which ones to bend and in what direction, and which ones to ignore. Obama’s DOJ has resurrected the century old Espionage Act, not to prosecute spies, but to threaten and to imprison whistleblowers who tell the truth to reporters, and to journalists themselves if they do not reveal their sources with decades in prison, like Chelsea Manning, and on so-called “secret evidence.” So when you think about it, it’s entirely logical that a president and attorney general who place such a high priority on protecting their torturers, their bankster friends, and the official wrongdoers of past and future administrations should want to protect the police from scrutiny as well.

It’s time to shed some illusions, not just about this president but about the whole political class that claims he or any president can be “held accountable.” Barack Obama and his Justice Department are no more interested in justice than the administrations of ten presidents before him, and uncritical black and brown support has made this president less accountable to black and brown people than any in living memory.

I had to quote that op/ed in full because it seemed so powerful, and so telling of the point I was trying to make. One hundred and fifty years, even with a black president, where have we come to? Those Newark riots where almost fifty years ago…Civil Rights Act…fifty years ago too. And still the question I keep repeating, where have we come to…progress? Perhaps, compared to slavery. But from my view, living in a redneck Southern town, the hate is thick and packs a powerful punch in the gut to hear it practiced out-loud, so nonchalant…

Anyway, I am rambling. It is 4:13 am and I will move on.

At least 5 current Ferguson officers apart from Brown shooter figure in lawsuits – The Washington Post

Federal investigators are focused on one Ferguson, Mo., police officer who fatally shot an unarmed black teenager, but at least five other police officers and one former officer in the town’s 53-member department have been named in civil rights lawsuits alleging the use of excessive force.

In four federal lawsuits, including one that is on appeal, and more than a half-dozen investigations over the past decade, colleagues of Darren Wilson’s have separately contested a variety of allegations, including killing a mentally ill man with a Taser, pistol-whipping a child, choking and hog-tying a child and beating a man who was later charged with destroying city property because his blood spilled on officers’ clothes.

One officer has faced three internal affairs probes and two lawsuits over claims he violated civil rights and used excessive force while working at a previous police department in the mid-2000s. That department demoted him after finding credible evidence to support one of the complaints, and he subsequently was hired by the Ferguson force.

Police officials from outside Ferguson and plaintiffs’ lawyers say the nature of such cases suggests there is a systemic problem within the Ferguson police force. Department of Justice officials said they are considering a broader probe into whether there is a pattern of using excessive force that routinely violates people’s civil rights.

[…]

In all but one of the cases, the victims were black. Among the officers involved in the cases, one is African American.

Damn.

More at the link.

With all the abusive news stories about cops (Oklahoma Police Daniel Holtzclaw Rape Sexual Abuse Arrest | Mediaite)

Oklahoma City police officer Daniel Holtzclaw has been arrested for raping or sexually abusing eight different women, all of whom are African-American, under the threat that he would arrest them if they did not comply.

…you would think this cop would get off easy: Cleveland Cop Under Fire for Helping Browns Fan with His Beer Bong | Mediaite

A Cleveland police officer got in trouble this week; not for shooting anyone, not for any shocking assault video, but for actually being a bro. This cop was caught on camera holding up a beer bong so a Browns tailgater could use it properly.

Here’s the picture in question:

Seriously, that looks more like a PR photo to me.

This post is getting long, so quickly…here are the rest of today’s links:

Russian Poster Design by Vladimir and Georgii Stenberg

From a fuckwad Former Judge: Rape is All the Woman’s Fault for Drinking So Much | Care2 Causes

And according to the dipshits at the NFL: Is The NFL’s New Policy On Domestic Violence A Publicity Stunt? | Care2 Causes

Wide receiver Josh Gordon’s offense?

Smoking marijuana.

Let me get this straight. Violently assaulting a woman equates to a two game suspension, but failing a drug test amounts to an entire year on the bench?

No matter where your moral compass stands on smoking pot, I think we can all agree that beating your girlfriend up so badly she is hospitalized with 18 broken bones in the face, a broken nose, a cracked rib and a ruptured liver is a far worse crime.

Perhaps not too surprisingly, just a few days after the fallout of this decision, which was stacked on top of the prior controversy regarding Rice’s lenient suspension, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has come out with a lengthy statement on how the NFL can do better.

We allowed our standards to fall below where they should be and lost an important opportunity to emphasize our strong stance on a critical issue and the effective programs we have in place. My disciplinary decision led the public to question our sincerity, our commitment, and whether we understood the toll that domestic violence inflicts on so many families. I take responsibility both for the decision and for ensuring that our actions in the future properly reflect our values. I didn’t get it right. Simply put, we have to do better. And we will.

Russian Poster Design by Vladimir and Georgii Stenberg

In addition to admitting fault, Goodell has, effective immediately, instituted a revamped domestic violence policy which punishes first time offenders with a six game suspension and second time offenders with a ban from the NFL for at least a year, after which an individual can petition for reinstatement.

Assholes.

Here is a post about teachers….Happy Labor Day, Mom | The Nation

And one about us bombing Iraq: US jets target IS positions in Iraq – Middle East – Al Jazeera English

We will end with a feel good story: Little League Win Lifts District Marred by Violence – NYTimes.com

People showed up and plopped down lawn chairs, sitting there just so they could feel like a part of the event, even if they could not see anything. The neighborhood’s residents were glad for their team, for their boys and for themselves. They brought cakes. They rode bikes. They hugged.

This was a homey neighborhood celebration on the city’s South Side, a departure for an area known for gun violence.

Chicago finally had its chance on Wednesday to welcome home the Jackie Robinson West Little League team that won the United States championship on Saturday. The rolling celebration started with a rally at the team’s home park and worked its way into the city center. Residents lined up for 70 blocks along Halsted Street, waiting for their heroes.

It was the kind of celebration you would expect in small-town America. As politicians lined up to talk with a few thousand fans at a rally on the team’s field, the parade route already had a classroom of day care students standing in yellow shirts on 95th and Halsted. A half-dozen women in wheelchairs waited at 81st Street in front of the Naomi and Sylvester Smith Senior Living Center. Hundreds of students packed in at 79th Street near St. Sabina Academy. On 76th, there were more children in front of a learning center.

Photo

Terrence J. Lavin, an Illinois appeals court justice, grew up in the area playing Little League. Now, he said, he deals daily with “guns, gangs and drugs.” On Wednesday, he was not delivering speeches, but instead was at 87th Street in what he considers his neighborhood.

“There aren’t many parades down Halsted Street,” he said. “None in my memory. Remember when President Obama said that Trayvon Martin could be his son? There are thousands of Chicagoans, white and black, thinking that about these amazing kids.”

“They are medicine for a municipality dulled into a sort of crime stupor because of all the shootings,” he said. “We are better than that. And these kids are a living, breathing symbol of that.”

Oh, and on that note…hope you have a good day.