Rush Limbaugh devoted a segment of his show to what he said were the president’s insults to the “whole gamut of Christians” and Twitter’s right wing piled on. Guests on Megyn Kelly’s Fox News show spent 15 minutes airing objections to the president’s comments.
Lundi Gras Lazy Reads
Posted: February 16, 2015 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: lundi gras, mardi gras, mean people suck 9 Comments
Bonjour! C’est Lundi Gras ici!
Today is the day all good locals in New Orleans rest up for the big Mardi Gras Festivities tomorrow! I’ve been laying low and have to work tomorrow afternoon so I’m just enjoying watching every one else have fun. There was a spontaneous parade in front of my house about an hour ago. It was some nice people from Austin dressed like Bees with the bat symbol on their capes. Austin folks are generally the only Texans that behave around here so I’m always glad to see them. Oh, If you can explain the costumes, you’re doing better than me.
My sister and brother-in-law came for their first Mardi Gras and went back to Seattle today. He rode on a Bacchus float which is a first class and very expensive way to do your first Mardi Gras! His picture is down towards the middle of the post. My sister took it yesterday. I’ve picked up these pictures from my local friends. The first ones here on top come from Muriel’s NOLA’s instagram. The food at this French Quarter restaurant is wonderful and the family business is run by the nicest people. Thanks for the great photos Denise Bellknap Gratia! The last few pictures are from my friend Farrar Doc Hudkins who is a UNO student and one of my favorite WWNO radio station announcers. That’s the UNO NPR station here. I can’t claim ownership over any of the pictures! Only complete awe of some talented fingers and eyes!!!
I’ve actually been reading a lot about my friends uptown and all the grief they’ve been getting this year. There was a double shooting/murder one night. One of my friends got punched in the eye over a t-shirt. Another has had random people just walk into her house to use her bathroom and take food and beer. Where on earth did all this rudeness and such come from ? I tend to stay in my own little freaky corner of New Orleans where it used to be mostly working class locals but not much any more. Still, who can imagine being so drunk and obnoxious that you’ve got to punch a 47 year old woman in the eye over a t shirt? And this was a drunken local Garden District Lady! It’s not like it was some out of town drunk frat kid!
I think we are beginning to see the frustration play out of living in modern America where it’s difficult to get ahead, worse to try to get any kind of satisfaction from a job or even an experience as a customer, and the realization that we’re not as entitled and special as we’ve been told we are. I don’t remember have to struggle so much for so little prior to the the Dubya Bush years’ fruition in a full blown series of endless wars and financial crises where huge corporations got bailed out but so many people were and still are left to suffer. Then there’s the Grover Norquist and Koch Brother’s agenda played out in every state with a Republican Governor. The shameless raping of public assets for the rich is just over the top. Then, there’s a lot of sadness in the news recently showing how intolerant of others people are becoming. Here are two such examples.
First, up is a rather local and sad example of the way we treat religious minorities here in this country. This is from Houston where some one deliberately set fire to a mosque and a fire fighter tried to block the hydrant and shouted “let it burn to the ground”. There are so many hate crimes these days that it’s hard to see much else.
Arson police at the scene now say an accelerant was used in a fire that broke out at an Islamic community and education center in southeast Houston early Friday morning, and now a group is calling for an investigation into whether the fire was the result of a possible hate crime.
Houston fire officials say the fire at the Quba Islamic Institute started around 5am. The cause of the fire is under investigation, but we’ve learned HFD says the accelerant was used, which usually points to a purposeful act. Those same investigators met with leaders at another Islamic center just miles away, letting them know that this was an act of arson and to be on alert.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations is calling on state and federal authorities to investigate the fire as a possible hate crime.
That call comes as Ahsan Zahid, assistant Imam at the institute, says he spoke with the Houston arson investigator about their preliminary results.
Zahid said, “They said their dog went through and he hit on some substances inside the place, and he said, ‘From what I see right now at this point, I have to say it was an incendiary fire which means that it was started on purpose.’ That’s all we can go on at this point. I don’t want to speculate.”
Though we don’t know officially if the cause was accidental or deliberate, the FBI is now monitoring the situation.
You can see the hateful tweet from a then–but no longer–volunteer firefighter here at the orange place.
There are signs that anti-antisemitism is making a horrible come back in Europe. This is a story from France where a French Jewish cemetary was desecrated with swastikas. 
France’s interior minister said Sunday several hundred tombs had been defaced at a Jewish cemetery in the east of the country, in what he called “a despicable act.”
“The country will not tolerate this new injury which goes against the values that all French people share,” said Bernard Cazeneuve without giving further details of the incident in the town of Sarre-Union.
“Every effort will be made to identify, question and bring to justice the person or persons responsible for this ignominious act,” he added.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, writing on Twitter, also condemned the desecration, calling it “an anti-Semitic and ignoble act.”
It is not the first time that a Jewish cemetery in Sarre-Union has been targeted.
In 1988, around 60 Jewish steles, stone or wooden slabs often used for commemorative purposes, were knocked over while in 2001, 54 tombs were wrecked.
News of the latest incident comes just over a month after an Islamist gunman shot dead four Jews in a supermarket siege in Paris.
A lot of people have been enjoying the 40th anniversary special of SNL. I especially liked the part where Jane Curtain did the news with Amy Poehler and Tina Fey. Her funny line was how that she used to be the
only blonde reading fake news on TV at that time and now there’s an entire News channel dedicated to it. No kidding! I still maintain that that Fox News and the rise of Rush have a lot to do with the rise of the Asshole class. It’s like they give permission for people to hate on other people and take revenge for perceived damages to their exceptionalism. Here’s a link to a thought provoking essay on why most political satire comes from the left and never the right. Is it the differences in personalities that let one side laugh at irregularities in thinking while the other side takes offense? The Atlantic‘s article is titled “Why There’s No Conservative Jon Stewart” and it’s worth the read.
One explanation is simply that proportionately fewer people with broadly conservative sensibilities choose to become comedians. Just as liberals dominate academia, journalism, and other writing professions, there are nearly three times as many liberal- as conservative-minded people in the creative arts according to a recent study. Alison Dagnes, a professor of political science at Shippensburg University, argues that the same personality traits that shape political preferences also guide the choice of professions. These tendencies just get more pronounced in the case of comedy, which usually requires years of irregular income, late hours, and travel, as well as a certain tolerance for crudeness and heckling.
There are, of course, high-profile conservative comedians in America, such as the members of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour. But these performers, who include Jeff Foxworthy and Larry the Cable Guy, tend carefully to avoid politicized topics, mocking so-called “rednecks” in the same spirit as Borscht Belt acts mocked Jewish culture.
When it comes to actual political satire, one of the most well-known figures nationally is Dennis Miller, a former Saturday Night Live cast member who now has a weekly segment on Fox News’ O’Reilly Factor. On a recent show, O’Reilly brought up the Democrats’ election losses, and Miller took the bait. “I think liberalism is like a nude beach,” Miller said. “It’s better off in your mind than actually going there.” His jokes are sometimes amusing, but they tend to be grounded in vague ideologies, not the attentive criticism to the news of the day that has given liberal satires plenty of fodder five days a week. The real problem, Frank Rich wrote about Miller, “is that his tone has become preachy. He too often seems a pundit first and a comic second.”
It’s weird to me that conservative entertainers like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly take to the air in preachy, mean, screaming tones while The Daley Show folks tend to be poke holes in things with humor based in facts and logic and pointing out inconsistencies in thinking.
So, here’s another one of those hate things where the hater says “Huhn? I’m a nice guy”. This guy is an elected official too and of course, a Republican saying racist things isn’t uncommon at all these days. Why do people feel the need to express such hateful feelings and then act surprised when some one calls them out on it?
State Rep. Gene Alday, R-Walls, who came under fire after his racist comments appeared in a Clarion-Ledger article Sunday about public education, said today his remarks were out of context and that he’s a nice guy.
“I’m not a bad person, and that makes me look like an evil person,” Alday said Monday. “I didn’t do anything wrong. The guy made me look like a fool.”
The comments in question refer to African-Americans in his hometown of Walls, a small community in Desoto County. Alday, 57, said that he comes “from a town where all the blacks are getting food stamps and what I call ‘welfare crazy checks.’ They don’t work.”
He also said that when he went to the emergency room one time, “I liked to died. I laid in there for hours because they (blacks) were in there being treated for gunshots.”
Since then, people around the state have condemned the remarks with some calling for his resignation.
“Rep. Alday is solely responsible for his remarks,” said Gov. Phil Bryant. “I strongly reject his comments condemning any Mississippian because of their race. Those day are long past.”
But the former mayor, former police chief and current first-term legislator said he had no idea his remarks would appear in a story and, if he had, he wouldn’t have made them.
“It was late at night and he called me,” Alday said of his earlier interview with Clarion-Ledger investigative reporter Jerry Mitchell. “He asked me a question back to when I was in law enforcement … I have a way of talking and saying, ‘take this off the record.'”
Instead, Alday said, Mitchell used his casual, off-the-cuff comments as an official statement without providing the full context of his feelings on the matter.
Mitchell said he contacted Alday about education funding last week and that the legislator steered the discussion toward race. The comments appeared as they were given and within the context of the discussion, Mitchell said.
But Alday said the reporter failed to write about the numerous times Alday has helped people of all races in his community, whether that meant giving them rides to the doctor or providing credit on merchandise at the store run by his family.
“Yes, it’s true that most of the blacks in my hometown are on welfare,” Alday said. “But they’re good people. I don’t have anything against anybody. I’m a straight-up guy. In my little town they had little civil rights walks and I was with them. I’m with everybody.”
In spite of the prevailing stereotypes and assumptions about who uses SNAP Food Stamp benefits the most in the United States, the highest usage is not in Compton, Queens, nor the South Side of Chicago. Instead, a city that is 99.22% white and 95% Republican comes in the lead. Owsley County, Kentucky is a community of about 5,000, residents earning the lowest median household income in the country outside of Puerto Rico, according to the U.S. Census.
The decline in the profits from coal, tobacco and lumber industries led to a harsh toll being taken on the community.
Cale Turner, county executive of Owsley County told ABC back in 2010 that economic hardships have led to a high incidence of drug addiction.
“Those with drug addictions end up in prison without effective treatment. And it happens over and over in this community. The drug problem continues to get worse every year.”
Strangely enough, the residents of Owsley County are almost entirely Republican, in spite of the traditional opposition to the Food Stamp program by the GOP. In fact, just last November, residents of Owsley saw their SNAP benefits reduced drastically as a result of Republican opposition to funding the program.
This might rank among the greatest of ironies in history: the Food Stamp Capital of the U.S. is almost entirely white and Republican.
Look at this story and this guy was a judge!!
Nine months after a Madison County Justice Court judge was accused of striking and yelling a racial slur at a mentally challenged young man, a grand jury served an indictment for simple assault on a vulnerable adult.
Justice Court Judge Bill Weisenberger turned himself in to the Madison County sheriff Thursday, according to a spokeswoman with the Attorney General’s office. He was released on $10,000 bond.
According to witnesses, Weisenberger struck 20-year-old Eric Rivers, an African American, and yelled “Run, n—–, run” at the Canton Flea Market on May 8 of last year.
If convicted, the charge of simple assault against a vulnerable adult carries a fine of up to $1,000 or up to 5 years imprisonment, or both. The charge against him is a felony.
“From the beginning of this matter, Judge Weisenberger, has cooperated with each law enforcement and investigatory agency that wanted to know what actually occurred at the Canton Flea Market last spring,” an emailed statement from Weisenberger’s lawyer, Bill Kirksey, said. “Judge Weisenberger has denied and continues to deny any wrong doing or the commission of any crime against any person.”
Kirksey, along with Madison County officials, has taken issue with the slowness of the process. The incident in Canton occurred on May 8 of last year.
Kirksey said the AG’s office allowed four grand juries to come and go before presenting the case.
Madison County Supervisor Karl Banks said last month the slowness was costing taxpayers as Weisenberger is still being paid his annual salary of $45,700, though he voluntarily stepped down from the bench.
A judge may only be forced to step down if he or she has been convicted of a felony or if the Supreme Court removes the judge.
Those last two stories were from Mississippi where things still appear to be burning despite modernity and civil rights laws. It’s scary to think that we’re talking elected officials acting like it’s still Jim Crow days and they don’t appear to have a thought about how absolutely hateful their words and actions truly are.
So, how have so many people lost their “polite” and “nice” filter? Is it because we can troll people on the internet and hide behind monikers allowing us to be anonymous then forget we’re not in real life? Is it because work and life is beating us down so much we’re all angry? Is it because anger is the new right wing entertainment mode and it allows a lot of them to think they’re entitled to shit on any one that gets in their way? What do you think?
I’d just like to add a thanks to BB for what she did for me on Saturday and for my friends who helped. I was doing my taxes and year end look see on Friday and was completely shocked by what I found. I’ve just had so many expenses recently that my meager salary isn’t covering them all at all. I guess I’m really not alone in that any more. I’ve just got to try to figure out what I can do about it.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Friday Reads: He said WHAT? Tales of the GOP Cavemen
Posted: February 13, 2015 Filed under: morning reads 14 Comments
Good Morning!
Every day I wake up to another horrifying thing said about women, minorities, GLBT, nonchristian religions, and well, just about any one that doesn’t full under the asshattery the Republican Party fronts for these days. It seems none of them have any shame or brains for that matter. So, be sure to watch what you’re drinking and eating before reading these things. Many of them are doozies!
The League of the South is celebrating the assassination of Abraham Lincoln who they believe was a “tyrant” for being against “state’s rights”. There are so many code words and dog whistles here that I’m surprised Temple isn’t barking as I enter this. This is from Right Wing Watch.
As we reported earlier today, Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore has close personal and financial ties with Michael Peroutka, the neo-Confederate activist and theocrat who has helped develop the view, espoused by Moore in recent interviews and statements, that states must defy federal court rulings in favor of marriage equality since they are in violation of divine law.
Peroutka is a “true Confederate” activist and a former leader of the League of the South , although he quit the neo-Confederate group last year during his successful campaign to win a seat as a Republican on Anne Arundel County, Maryland, county council.
Warren Throckmorton notes, just today announced that on April 14 it will host a celebration of the anniversary of the “execution of the tyrant Abraham Lincoln.”
League of the South President Michael Hill writes in a blog post titled “Honoring John Wilkes Booth” that the organization “thanks Mr. Booth for his service to the South and to humanity”:
The League of the South looks to the present and future. However, from time to time we do look back at our past.
This 14th of April will mark the 150th anniversary of John Wilkes Booth’s execution of the tyrant Abraham Lincoln. The League will, in some form or fashion, celebrate this event. We remember Booth’s diary entry: “Our country owed all her troubles to him, and God simply made me the instrument of his punishment.” A century and a half after the fact, The League of the South thanks Mr. Booth for his service to the South and to humanity.
Stay tuned . . .
Michael HillIt might be a good time to harken back to the League of the South’s 2012 convention, when Peroutka asked participants to stand for the “national anthem”… and then started singing “Dixie”:
Yes, he’s not just whistling Dixie folks!
Neither is Rush Limbaugh who stepped right back into the Rape Culture shit today with this one. Both Rush and Scott Walker basically flunked out of university. Here’s how Rush tells Walker to defend his 
failure.
“Just ram it right down their throats,” Limbaugh said. “They’re trying to create this rape culture on the campus – well, (he should say,) ‘I quit because I don’t want to be accused of rape down the road.’”
Walker has claimed for years that he left just short of graduation, after losing a bid for student body president, to pursue a job opportunity.
Limbaugh, who claims he dropped out of second year at the University of Southeast Missouri to avoid taking a ballroom dancing class taught by a “lesbian drill sergeant,” said Walker should try to make a sarcastic point about feminism and rape.
“It seems like any man that goes to college could randomly be accused of committing rape,” Limbaugh said.
He suggested reporters don’t care whether rape claims are true or not before publishing articles.
“’Well, we may not have gotten it right, but we know it happens,’” Limbaugh imagined reporters saying. “So (Walker should say,) ‘I wanted to remove myself from this culture that might have turned me into this very mean guy,’ and just see what they say. Cram what they believe right down their throats.”
No. No. This isn’t it. It get’s worse. There’s more. The sole woman Senator in the South Carolina Senate evidently is the target of perpetual harassment by an asshole that thinks women belong barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen and isn’t afraid to say it over and over and over.
A discussion over a pending criminal domestic violence (CDV) bill took a bizarre turn this week when S.C. Senator Thomas Corbin – a “Republican” from Travelers Rest, S.C. – offered some bizarrely sexist commentary on the role of women in the political process.
Corbin’s comments – made at a legislative dinner held in downtown Columbia, S.C. – were reportedly directed at S.C. Senator Katrina Shealy, the only female member of the 46-person State Senate.
According to multiple witnesses who attended the dinner – held at Cowboy Brazilian Steakhouse on Main Street (a few blocks from the S.C. State House) -Senate judiciary committee members were discussing the CDV issue, which has been a source of several previous headaches for the GOP.
That’s when Corbin – no stranger to making bizarre statements – is said to have begun needling his lone female colleague regarding her gender.
“I see it only took me two years to get you wearing shoes,” Corbin told Shealy, who was elected in 2012 as a petition candidate.
Wait … what?
By way of explanation, lawmakers and legislative staffers have previously told FITS about statements made by Corbin – statements reflecting his belief that women do not belong in the S.C. General Assembly and should instead be “at home baking cookies” or “barefoot and pregnant.”
“He makes comments like that all the time to everybody – including Senator Shealy,” one Senate staffer told FITS.
Corbin’s latest comments took his sexism to a whole new level, though.
At one point in the conversation – which quickly escalated into a confrontation – Shealy is said to have angrily asked Corbin where he “got off” attacking women.
His response – overheard by numerous lobbyists and fellow lawmakers – was one for the ages.
“Well, you know God created man first,” Corbin said, reportedly smirking at Shealy. “Then he took the rib out of man to make woman. And you know, a rib is a lesser cut of meat.”
Jeremy Todd Addaway, a self-styled reporter for “Redneck News,” tried and failed to find evidence that the legalization of same-sex marriage in Alabama had caused any damage to the state, Talking Points Memo reports.
“I read on the news today some information, that homosexuals will be getting married in Alabama today, so I wanted to give you a live report from Blount County,” he began.
Addaway then scoured his backyard for evidence of “homosexuals doin’ homosexual things” in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to allow state employees to officiate same-sex unions.
“This pile of brush is still here, and there are no homosexuals layin’ on top of it, doin’ homosexual things,” Addaway said.
“None in the shed either, but we need to check into this further,” he continued, delving ever deeper into his backyard.
“We’re back here by a pile of junk — and it’s still here — and there’s no homosexuals doin’ homosexual things here either, so it looks like we’re pretty safe here in Blount County, don’t think we’re gonna be subject to plagues of homosexuals fallin’ from the sky.”
“That’s the report here from Blount County,” he concluded. “Everything is pretty much still the same.”
Actually, just head to Right Wing Watch for a plethora of unbelievable right wing thoughts of the day. Headlines include Beck saying that anti-vaxxers are being prosecuted like Galileo. Then there’s John Haggee
who argues that God’s going to destroy American because of the way the President is treating Netanyahu with an emphasis on yahoo! But, the prize for embarrasing the country abroad this week was taken from Bobby Jindal and given to Scott Walker. Two Koch Sucking Republican Governors who are afraid to say anything to piss over their whacky christianist base. He dodged a question on evolution which really really confused the Brits.
The latest to emerge scathed from a trip across the Atlantic Ocean is Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who capped an appearance at the prestigious Chatham House think tank on Wednesday by avoiding a question about whether he believes in the theory of evolution.
“I’m going to punt on that one, as well,” Walker said at the end of a Q&A during which he also declined to answer questions about foreign policy. “That’s a question a politician shouldn’t be involved in one way or the other. So I’m going to leave that up to you.”
Huhn? Why is a perfectly accepted and acceptable Scientific theory so controversial that it’s off limits to questions. I’m sure he’d gladly discuss how he wants to limit anything having to do with women’s private parts.
Supporters and other conservatives rallied to Walker’s defense, suggesting that the question itself was out of bounds — or at least another example of the mainstream media ganging up on Republican candidates.
But there’s a reason reporters are curious to learn what Walker thinks about evolution. Some 90 years after the Scopes Trial, the theory of evolution and its place in the schools remain matters of public debate. Two states, Louisiana and Tennessee, now allow public schools to teach “alternatives” to evolution. Several others allow public funding to support such teaching through charter schools or vouchers. At least for the sake of politics, the issue isn’t really whether “faith & science are compatible,” as Scott put it; Pope Francishas said he believes in evolution, for example. Rather, the issue is whether discussions of divine intervention belong in the classroom. That raises fundamental questions about the boundaries between religion and science that Walker, as a president appointing federal judges, would have to consider.
Basic respect for, and appreciation of, science is another issue. Put a bunch of evolutionary biologists in a room and you’ll get a lively debate over the precise origins of some species, such as the bat, and the extent to which “random processes,” rather than the familiar power of natural selection, shaped populations over time. What you won’t get is denial or skepticism of the insights we now associate with Darwin — the idea that the species on Earth emerged over a very long time, through a process of hereditary, generation-to-generation change. The science on this is just not up for reasonable debate. “You have to be blinkered or ignorant not to know that,” says Jerry Coyne, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago and author of the bookWhy Evolution Is True.
Interrogating Democrats about whether they accept the expert consensus on evolution, or any other scientific issue, is absolutely fair game. But Republicans have given the press, and the public, more reason to ask questions. Walker’s silence turns out to be typical of the GOP presidential field, as Salon’s Luke Brinker noted this week. And Republicans have shown similar disregard for science on other issues — most critically, climate change. As with evolution, you can get a spirited, meaningful debate among the experts over precisely how quickly global warming will take place or exactly what consequences it will have. What you won’t find is a significant number of scientists questioning that the planet is warming because of human activity. And yetRepublicans routinely deny this, citing supposed uncertainty over the details as reason not to take action on reducing emissions or pursuing alternative energy more aggressively.
Republicans say the darndest things!
So, before I leave you with the impression that I can only find extremely stupid things from Republican men, let me reintroduce you to their latest Sarah Palin/Michelle Bachmann clone. Joni Ernst has all kinds of whack things to say. How about vaccines manipulate people’s brains to make them more liberal? Huhn?
Freshman United States Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) came to the defense of Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) on Tuesday, saying vaccines should be investigated and possibly prohibited by law, because she believes they adversely affect the human brain and cause a person to lean toward progressivism and liberalism.
Ernst, who became the first woman to represent Iowa on the Federal level after narrowly winning in the 2014 midterms, gave an interview Tuesday morning to Mike Shell, a conservative radio pundit in Des Moines, in which she defended Senator Rand Paul, who recently made headlines after saying he believes vaccinations can cause mental disorders.
Shell, citing Ernst’s bachelor’s degree in psychology, asked his guest if she believed Rand Paul’s assessment of vaccinations were accurate. “I’m not a scientist. I’m not a practicing doctor. But I haven’t seen any evidence that shows vaccines make us healthier, and I haven’t seen proof that they don’t make us less healthier, less healthy, either,” Ernst replied. “All I can base my opinion on is my own observations, and in my view, Senator Paul is correct. Vaccines are dangerous. They manipulate brains. And I think Congress should investigate vaccines and outlaw them, because they definitely, you know, they make people vote a certain way, and that’s voter intimidation.”
Shell asked Ernst to clarify her statement, to which the Senator offered a lengthy reply. “When I was a kid, I didn’t have vaccinations. My parents couldn’t afford them. But one of my neighbors, his parents got him vaccinated. Now, we grew up in the same town, went to the same schools, attended the same church, we even served in the military together. We’re practically the same, right? But he’s a liberal democrat. He voted for Obama both times and he has a Hillary Clinton sticker on his pickup truck. He supports welfare and the gays. I’m not saying the vaccinations made him more liberal, but the vaccinations made him more liberal, do you get what I’m saying?”
Okay, so that last story and the Red Neck News were satire, but who can tell them from the real thing these days because the rest are REAL. The only thing that’s more whacked than that is there are obviously people that vote for them.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Monday Reads: We Do Not Welcome our Corporate Overlords
Posted: February 9, 2015 Filed under: Bobby Jindal, morning reads, Republican politics, U.S. Politics, Voter Ignorance | Tags: Bobby Jindal, Citizen's United, fascism, Kansas, Koch Brothers, Louisiana, Sam Brownback, Scott Walker, University of Wisconsin 25 Comments
Good Morning!
The Krewe of Chewbacchus rolled through my neighborhood Saturday night. I decided to post some of the photos I took of the participants to liven up the thread today. The parade is a celebration of Fantasy and SF books, movies, games, and TV series. More professional pictures can be found here. See if you can recognize them! I only wish the celebration of fantasy was limited to movies and books. Unfortunately, it isn’t and the Koch Brothers fantasy economics plans are ruining states around the country.
I keep having conversations with people who are either politically active or politically knowledgeable about finding a way out of our current mess. There are several key problems that seem out of the hands of voters to solve. At least, those voters that actually vote.
Things have been on the down slope since the Reagan administration but have really picked up steam with the final fifth vote locked into the Supreme Court. The Citizen’s United Decision is throttling American Democracy which is why we really need to bring back the Fairness Doctrine among other things. It seems odd that Brian Williams can be hounded out of journalism for one mistaken memory when at least 60%–if not more–of what Fox broadcasts daily is an out and out lie. Is Facism on the rise in America and what can we do to stop it?
As the American Heritage Dictionary noted, fascism is: “A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.”
Well, it it may well on our doorstep. And the oligarchs are plotting their final takeover by using their economic dominance to capture governmental power – specifically, the governmental power which sets the rules for the very marketplace that provides the oligarchs with such massive wealth.
Once the American corporate barons own the institutions that are meant to regulate them, it’s game-over for both rational capitalism (including competition) and for democracy.
Last week, at David and Charles Koch’s annual winter meeting near Palm Springs, California, it was announced that the Koch Brothers’ political organization would spend close to $900 million on the 2016 election. If this goal is met, the group of corporate leaders will spend far more than the Republican Party and its congressional campaign committees spent, combined, in the 2012 campaign.
Once upon a time, it would have been illegal for the Koch Brothers and their fellow oligarchs to buy an election. Of course, that time was before the Citizens United Supreme Court decision.
In 2010, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, presented the best opportunity for the Roberts Court to use its five vote majority to totally re-write the face of politics in America, rolling us back to the pre-1907 era of the Robber Barons.
As Jeffrey Toobin wrote in The New Yorker (“No More Mr. Nice Guy”): “In every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff.
You can see the influence of the Koch Brothers money in the states that have Republican Governors. It is 
especially true of those Republican Governors with presidential aspirations who want the promised $1 billion the Kochs have pledged for the next campaign cycle. I want to cover Bobby Jindal, Louisiana, and the horrible budget problems that we have from Jindal’s campaign to please the Kochs. But first, I’d like to tell you what Scott Walker is doing to one of the nation’s premier public universities.
One of the major things the Kochs hate is people that aren’t miseducated or trained to be working zombies. This fits right in with their agenda.This is similar to what’s going on with the destruction of public education and universities in Louisiana and similar issues in Kansas, both of which have Koch sucking Governors.
More than 35,000 public employees would be removed from state government rolls if Gov. Scott Walker’s budget proposal stays intact through the legislative process.
Walker’s 2015-17 budget proposal, which was introduced Tuesday, makes major changes to the operation of the state’s University of Wisconsin System. The second-term governor’s plan would split off the system into its own public entity.
By creating a separate authority for the University of Wisconsin System, it would no longer be under the direct management of the state.
According to Walker, University of Wisconsin System supporters have been asking for more autonomy for years, claiming it would help cut costs and better serve students. The Republican governor’s plan also includes a $150 million funding cut in each year of his biennial budget in exchange for the greater autonomy.
The annual reduction is equivalent to a 2.5 percent cut in total public funding. Opponents of Walker’s reform have claimed aid is being cut by 13 percent. That, however, only takes into consideration general fund spending from the state.
He also tried to actually change the mission of the University.
You might think that changing the mission of a flagship public university would be an issue put up for public discussion. Not in Wisconsin.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker submitted a budget proposal that included language that would have changed the century-old mission of the University of Wisconsin system — known as the Wisconsin Idea and embedded in the state code — by removing words that commanded the university to “search for truth” and “improve the human condition” and replacing them with “meet the state’s workforce needs.”
Walker, in a budget speech given earlier this week, didn’t bother to mention the change, which is more than a simple issue of semantics. There is a national debate about what the role of colleges and universities should be. One group, including Walker, see higher education in big part as a training ground for workers in the American workplace; another sees college education as a way to broaden the minds of young people and teach them how to be active, productive citizens of the country.
He earlier tried to tell University faculty and staff that they needed to work harder and not include “service” in their list of duties. This is all part of the privatization craze that attempts to put union workers and public servants into the parasite category. However, when privatized, the same workers suddenly are doing something valuable with lower compensation so that management and stockholders can skim profits from the actual work being done.
Governor Scott Walker–whom Charlie Pierce refers to as “the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to run their Midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin”–plans to unveil a budget on Tuesday evening that will reportedly “slash hundreds of millions of dollars from the state’s public universities over the next two years.” Alice Ollstein of ThinkProgress said that students, professors and state lawmakers “are already blasting the plan — the deepest cut in state history…” They told ThinkProgress that they are “organizing to block its passage.”
Even a Gannet owned newspaper complained about the cuts and the entire attitude towards faculty and higher education in general. Oh, and he’s calling for nearly $500 million tax dollars for a new stadium for the Milwaukee Bucks.
The Gannett Central Wisconsin Media Editorial Board thinks that Walker’s proposed cuts to the university go too deep. With regard to economics, the board wrote “the more educated our workforce, the higher our state’s overall standard of living will be. And in all sorts of intangible ways the university system improves our quality of life — injecting culture into communities, offering broad-based liberal education, helping define our sense of Badger identity.” The board added that “Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed Draconian cuts to the system will undermine those values and hobble future economic growth.”
Gannett Central Wisconsin Media Editorial Board:
Walker compounded the sense that cuts are driven by political animus when, on Wednesday, he told a conservative radio host that faculty and staff should simply increase their workload to make up the difference. It was a condescending, somewhat nasty thing to say, and it was not based in fact. UW-Madison professors, a February study showed, work on average 63 hours a week; we see no reason to assume profs on stretched-thin regional campuses work less…
Taking a chainsaw to the UW budget now is no way to make smart, lasting reforms. Insulting UW faculty is no way to demonstrate an interest in positive reform.
And $300 million in new cuts is too much to swallow.
In a commentary published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Friday, members of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Faculty Senate Executive Committee said that news reports had confirmed that the “UW System campuses are slated to take a combined $150 million base budget cut (over two years, so $300 million total) in his upcoming 2015-’17 biennial budget proposal.” The Journal Sentinel claimed that the numbers were “staggering.” This will reportedly be “the largest cut in the 45-year history of the system.
Well, Wisconson, welcome to the world of Governors owned by the Koch Brothers. Here’s our reality down here in Lousyana. We’re on our 8th of year the same kind of BS. We’re sending tax dollars to Chinese 
corporations, Arkansas Corporations, and Hollywood, but taking money away from every school but the religious madrassas and for-profits preferred by Jindal and the Kochs.
Widespread layoffs, hundreds of classes eliminated, academic programs jettisoned and a flagship university that can’t compete with its peers around the nation — those are among the grim scenarios LSU leaders outlined in internal documents as the threat of budget cuts loom.
Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration is considering deep budget slashing to higher education for the fiscal year that begins July 1 to help close a $1.6 billion shortfall.
LSU campuses from Shreveport to New Orleans were asked to explain how a reduction between 35 percent and 40 percent in state financing — about $141.5 million to the university system — would affect their operations. The documents, compiled for LSU System President F. King Alexander, were obtained by The Associated Press through a public records request.
The potential implications of such hefty cuts were summed up in stark terms: 1,433 faculty and staff jobs eliminated; 1,572 courses cut; 28 academic programs shut down across campuses; and 6 institutions declaring some form of financial emergency.
At the system’s flagship university in Baton Rouge, the documents say 27 percent of faculty positions would have to be cut, along with 1,400 classes, jeopardizing the accreditation of the engineering and business colleges. Some campus buildings would be closed.
“These severe cuts would change LSU’s mission as a public research and land-grant university. It will no longer be capable of competing with America’s significant public universities and will find itself dramatically behind the rest of the nation,” the documents say.
One of the first things these folks want to do is to dumb up the population and get rid of faculty and schools that won’t teach the crap they want to continue to force their economic fairy tale. No amount of peer review is ever going to make the trickle down economics crap do anything but float in septic tanks. But, they’re sure doing a great job of forcing it into things by owning politicians. Both Kansas and Louisiana are in freaking budget nightmares.
The country is full of examples illustrating the failure of Republican economic policies. Scott Walker’s Wisconsin and Sam Brownback’s Kansas have become poster children for the job killing, budget busting, folly of pursuing supply side economics. Were it not for the damage that right-wing policies inflict upon working families, the Laffer curve would be simply laughable.
Yet, Grover Norquist’s army of tax-hating Governors continues to run roughshod over red state budgets promising a fiscal utopia. The fact that the utopia never materializes apparently doesn’t matter. Red state voters re-elect them anyway. The words “tax cut”, like an elixir, cures their fears, even if the people whose taxes are being cut are not the ordinary voters, but rather the ultra wealthy.
Joining Brownback and Walker on the list of Governor’s facing serious budget problems, is Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. On Friday, The New York Times reported that Louisiana is anticipating a 1.6 billion dollar budget shortfall for next year, and that the deficit will remain in that range for years to come. When Jindal took office in 2008, the state had a 900 million dollar surplus, and the unemployment rate was just 3.8 percent. Now, in addition to having a gaping budget shortfall, Louisiana’s unemployment rate is at 6.7 percent, above the national average.Despite the state’s budget woes, Jindal has continued to resist any tax increases. He has depleted the state’s reserve funds to fill budget holes and is still coming up short on the needed revenue. Louisiana has one of the lowest tax burdens in the nation, and as a consequence, the state ranks near dead last in quality of education and health care. Nevertheless, the supply side dogmatism of Governor Jindal virtually guarantees that the state will continue on its current path to economic perdition.
Jindal is often mentioned as a possible Republican candidate for President. However, Jindal’s fiscal mismanagement has made him deeply unpopular even in his own state. A November 2014 Public Policy Polling survey found that only a third of Louisiana voters approved of the Governor’s job performance while 56 percent disapproved. Supply side economics has been a nightmare to the residents of Louisiana.
Notice the similar policies? Kill the Universities or warp them into places to train the zombie drone workers of the future? Anyway, I really hope that the 2016 voters change some of this. I can’t wait for Hillary to tackle the Republican that tries to mainstream this crap.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Friday Reads: The Evil Men Do
Posted: February 6, 2015 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: President Obama 23 Comments
Good Afternoon!
I’m late today because I’ve been grading nonstop for a few days now and just slept the morning away. Let’s see what I’ve missed in my few days of being bubbled.
Y’all know I take any organized religion with about the same respect as I do any communicable disease. They’ve all created their share of wars and social problems. They all have impossibly evil zealots and a few impossibly good storybook characters. I’ve just yet to find one that’s consistently moral.
You have a right in this country to believe whatever you want to believe. I take The Constitution pretty seriously on that account. I also take it pretty seriously on the account that the Government shouldn’t be in the business of favoring any one religion no matter how many folks take it seriously. The President showed up at one of Congress’ Proof of Piety events and spoke truth to Evil and wow has the shit hit the fan. Violence, self-righteousness, and meanness spews from the religious. It always has it always will. Even Buddhists have their share of tormentors which is probably one of the few religions not responsible for violence on a huge scale. The pious ought to live the fuck up to it.
Earlier today President Obama spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast, where he discussed freedom of expression along with highlighting the many acts of barbarism that are happening now and have happened throughout the centuries which were justified under the guise of religion. He also explained in depth about how as Christians, we can overcome these perversions of religion. President Obama spoke for about thirty minutes and used almost three thousand words today, but the only part of the speech the right wing media is focusing on is when he brought up the Crusades.
Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history. And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ. Michelle and I returned from India — an incredible, beautiful country, full of magnificent diversity — but a place where, in past years, religious faiths of all types have, on occasion, been targeted by other peoples of faith, simply due to their heritage and their beliefs — acts of intolerance that would have shocked Gandhiji, the person who helped to liberate that nation.
How dare the president put into context the historical atrocities performed over centuries in the name of God! As usual the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue took front and center stage on Fox News and was fuming because Obama dared to mention Christ and demanded that he apologize. Neil Cavuto actually defended Obama for the most part which kind of surprised me, but Donohue, the pedophile priest apologist didn’t.
Cavuto: Bill Donohue called that an insult to all Christians and said the president needs to apologize, but I think what he said Bill, obviously you’re worked up over it, “look, what’s done in the name of religion has often caused some heinous acts,” you argue he hasn’t said this enough about Islam.
Donohue: I’m saying this, had he said just said that, that people have killed in the name of their God and it’s not unique to one religion, who could argue with that? But he didn’t do that, did he? He spoke with specificity. he singled out the Crusades and the Inquisition. There’s so many myths about
Yes. The Crusades were a gay old time and are totally misunderstood. So was The Spanish Inquisition and the Salem Witch Trials. No historian truly gets it. 
The President’s full remarks are posted at the White House site. I was glad to see him welcome His Holiness the Dali Lama because this is one Buddhist who does represent the peaceful part of a major religion and doing anything for him pisses off the Chinese. The Chinese are one of the countries who don’t let people freely believe and actively persecute believers.
I want to offer a special welcome to a good friend, His Holiness the Dalai Lama — who is a powerful example of what it means to practice compassion, who inspires us to speak up for the freedom and dignity of all human beings. (Applause.) I’ve been pleased to welcome him to the White House on many occasions, and we’re grateful that he’s able to join us here today. (Applause.)
There aren’t that many occasions that bring His Holiness under the same roof as NASCAR. (Laughter.) This may be the first. (Laughter.) But God works in mysterious ways. (Laughter.) And so I want to thank Darrell for that wonderful presentation. Darrell knows that when you’re going 200 miles an hour, a little prayer cannot hurt. (Laughter.) I suspect that more than once, Darrell has had the same thought as many of us have in our own lives — Jesus, take the wheel. (Laughter.) Although I hope that you kept your hands on the wheel when you were thinking that. (Laughter.)
The President is right. Slavery, Jim Crow, and the burning of women at the stake were all American Traditions defended by the pious of the many branches of one of the major religions. The pious need to own that too and not confabulate more myths than already exist in the religion itself.
At a time of global anxiety over Islamist terrorism, Obama noted pointedly that his fellow Christians, who make up a vast majority of Americans, should perhaps not be the ones who cast the first stone.
“Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history,” he told the group, speaking of the tension between the compassionate and murderous acts religion can inspire. “And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”
Some Republicans were outraged. “The president’s comments this morning at the prayer breakfast are the most offensive I’ve ever heard a president make in my lifetime,” said former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore (R). “He has offended every believing Christian in the United States. This goes further to the point that Mr. Obama does not believe in America or the values we all share.”
Obama’s remarks spoke to his unsparing, sometimes controversial, view of the United States — where triumphalism is often overshadowed by a harsh assessment of where Americans must try harder to live up to their own self-image. Only by admitting these shortcomings, he has argued, can we fix problems and move beyond them.
“There is a tendency in us, a sinful tendency, that can pervert and distort our faith,” he said at the breakfast.
We can grapple with the evil that ISIS is doing but we also need to grapple with the evil that happens when any religion gets on full display in a government. One only needs to look at Saudi Arabia and its treatment of women or Israel and its treatment of people of Palestinian descent to see exactly how persecution plays out. Persecution by the Christian majority is playing out in this country today. It’s not just a historical artifact. Women’s health is being held hostage by mistake beliefs about fetuses and sexuality. The intellectual development of children is being held hostage by science denial as is any major action we could take to save animals, people, and our environment from Climate Change. The persecution of GLBT minorities and the denial of their rights plays out daily in states all over the country as does serious prejudice when legislators demand judicial candidates pledge allegiance to their personal make believe friend.
A South Carolina lawmaker is fielding accusations of violating the U.S. Constitution after sending judicial candidates a questionnaire asking their legal opinions on controversial topics and the nature of their relationship to God.
According to The State, Republican state representative Jonathon Hill issued a 30-question survey last week to candidates currently campaigning to become judges in South Carolina. Judges are elected by legislators in the Palmetto State, and while the survey itself was enough to raise eyebrows, Hill has garnered staunch criticism for the nature of his questions: among other controversial inquiries, the survey asked candidates how they would approach a case where a woman sued for equal pay, whether or not they would perform a same-sex marriage, and whether they have a “personal relationship” to God.
“Do you believe in the ‘Supreme Being’ (SC Constitution, Article VI, Section 2)?” one of the questions read. “What is the nature of this being? What is your personal relationship to this being? What relevance does this being have on the position of judge? Please be specific.”
Another question asked candidates how they would respond to attacks on LGBT people in South Carolina, where there are currently no hate crimes laws on the books.
“In a case where someone was assaulted because he was gay, would you consider it a ‘hate crime’ and increase the penalty?” the question read.
None of the candidates responded to the survey, and representatives from the Judicial Merit Selection Commission, which oversees the election that will be held this Wednesday, reportedly contacted Hill to tell him that the Code of Judicial Conduct bans judges from answering several of his questions. This is primarily because doing so would functionally amount to a promise to decide future cases a certain way, as opposed to taking each case on its merits.
Also, since the would-be judges are candidates in an election, asking them specific questions about their faith and spiritual affiliations effectively amounts to a “religious test.” Such tests are explicitly forbidden in Article VI, paragraph 3 of the U.S. Constitution, which reads “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”
Religious ignorance and bigotry is on display any time some one hands Mike Huckabee a microphone. Recently, it’s been on display when any one hands the microphone to the Governor of Louisiana. But, wingnuts will be wingnuts and the gamut of wingnuttery is on full display today if you hit any of the right wing blogs.
Meanwhile, we’re gearing up for Mardi Gras down here. The piety patrol is already out harassing people in the streets. I frankly cling to the sentiment of one of my favorite songs ” Imagine … no religion too”.
Have a great day!!! This is an open thread.
Monday Reads: Who Exactly Votes for all these Tacky People?
Posted: February 2, 2015 Filed under: morning reads 16 CommentsGood Morning!
My mother had a saying for everything. They are hardwired into my brain with the exact same voice and tone from the very first time I heard them. I think one of the first ones that I learned was “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” Evidently, there are quite a few politicians whose mothers either never said that or who completely ignored it. There’s an astounding number of people out there that just don’t seem to be able to show some class when in the public eye. First up, officer and no gentleman, John McCain who called protesters “low life scum” in a senate hearing. Code Pink is not exactly known for its demure demeanor, but people still have a right to voice their opinions and a senator should be used to it at McCain’s age.
Sen. John McCain says the Code Pink protesters he called “low-life scum” at a hearing last week deserved it.
The Arizona Republican made the remark after protesters rushed a Senate Armed Services Committee witness table where 91-year-old Henry Kissinger, the secretary of state under President Richard Nixon, was testifying. McCain, the committee’s chairman, ordered them escorted from the room by Capitol police.
“These people were physically threatening Henry Kissinger,” McCain told CNN’s Dana Bash Sunday on “State of the Union” as he defended his comments.
“I’m used to people popping up at these hearings and yelling, and then they’re escorted out — that’s at least some version of free speech,” he said. “These people rushed up. They were right next to Henry Kissinger, waving handcuffs at him. He’s a 91-year-old man with a broken shoulder who was willing to come down and testify before Congress, to give us the benefit of his many years of wisdom. Of course I was outraged, and I’m still outraged.”
I’m not exactly sure why Senate Republicans felt the need to roll out Kissinger. He certainly has done some terrible things in his day, so bringing him back as an authority on anything is dicey at best. I seriously doubt any of them were going to manhandle Kissinger. They’re pretty well-known for being loud and for interrupting things. What’s wrong with banging on the desk and watching the Capitol police do their jobs? Hasn’t that generally worked before for these things?
Mike Huckabee has begun bottom feeding for the Republican Presidential nomination. He’s said some pretty outrageous and mean things in his life as a preacher. This is pretty ugly.
Possible Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee on Sunday argued that Christians could have “gay friends,” while still opposing marriage equality because it was a biblical principle.
During an interview on CNN, Huckabee refused to say whether he thought homosexuality was a choice because he said that the bigger issue was how the law was being changed to legalize same-sex marriage.
“We don’t change law because some people in a black robe decided the fact that they don’t like the fact that 70 and in some cases 80 percent of a state’s population have affirmed natural law marriage,” the former Arkansas governor opined.
But Huckabee said that gay people could “be his friend” even if he disagreed with their sexuality.
“I don’t drink alcohol, but, gosh, a lot of my friends — maybe most of them — do,” he explained. “You know, I don’t use profanity, but believe me, I’ve got a lot of friends who do. Some people really like classical music and ballet and opera, it’s not my cup of tea. I would like think there’s room in America for people to have different points of view without screaming, shouting, wanting to shut their business down.”
Huckabee encouraged Republicans to invite LGBT people “in the tent” as long as the party did not change it’s position on equal marriage rights.
“For me as it was for President Obama in 2008, this is not just a political issue, this is a biblical issue,” he insisted. “And as a biblical issue, unless I get a new version of the scriptures, it’s really not my place to say, ‘Okay, I’m just going to evolve.'”
“It’s like asking somebody who’s Jewish to start serving bacon-wrapped shrimp in their deli. We don’t want to do that,” Huckabee continued. “Or asking a Muslim to serve up something that is offensive to him or to have dogs in his backyard.”
“We’re so sensitive to make sure we don’t offend certain religions, but then we act like Christians can’t have the convictions they’ve had for over 2,000 years.”
It certainly would be nice if some one would rapture him out of our lives, wouldn’t it? Can you even imagine what kind of mind could compare the civil rights of american citizens to keeping a dog in the backyard?
Every time I think Louisiana has been turned into a third world hell hole by current Republican regimes, I come across the story of a real third world hell hole. This is some information about Honduras, which has
been pogrommed into a senseless and horrid crime state since being turned into another one of those libertarian experiments. When do we get to have enough of these failed states to say that the crap the Koch Brothers actively push basically leads to state chaos? Honduras–much like Louisiana–has been privatized into a pirate state. They’ve got militarized and private police forces … gee who does that sound like?
Since the 2009 coup against President José Manuel Zelaya and subsequent election of Porfirio “Pepe Lobo” Sosa and his favored successor Juan Orlando Hernandez, Honduras has embarked on a devastating neoliberal economic program that has contributed to its status as one of the poorest and most unequal countries in the region. The privatization of Honduran society has been accompanied by a militarization of public security efforts in the country, both of which have been fueled by a network of U.S.-supported policies and programs.
Despite the country’s crackdown on crime, violence in Honduras hasskyrocketed in recent years. Honduras now has the world’s second-highestnational murder rate and is home to two of the world’s five most violent cities. Unchecked gang activity has contributed to widespread corruption and impunity within police and government institutions.
This weekend, a coalition of leftist opposition parties came together temporarilyto defeat a proposed amendment to the Honduran constitution that would have given permanent status to the country’s militarized police force, known as the Policía Militar de Orden Público, or PMOP.
This “elite” police unit, which serves under the direct command of the presidency, is intended to support President Hernandez’s heavy-handed crime reduction efforts. President Hernandez created the PMOP shortly after coming to office in 2014, with support from a legislature dominated by his conservative National Party. The Hernandez administration’s police militarization efforts also had the backing of the country’s business sector.
According to one study, in 2013, only 27 percentof Hondurans expressed confidence in the civilian police while 73 percent thought the military should be involved in policing efforts. Nevertheless, both the military and the police have a long history of corruption and criminality as well as abuses committed against civilians in Honduras.
The violence is terrible there. Meanwhile, where do you suppose they got all these troubles from?
As Mackey reported, “The ZEDE’s central government is stacked with libertarian foreigners,” including a former speechwriter for presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr., conservative political operative Grover Norquist, a senior member of the Cato Institute think tank, and Ronald Reagan’s son Michael, as well as “a Danish banker, a Peruvian economist, and an Austrian general secretary of the Friedrich Hayek Institute.”
According to the official ZEDE website, the zones place a heavy emphasis on security, offering “a 21st century, business-efficient, non-politicized, transparent, stable, system of administration, plus a special police and institutional security to overcome regional issues and meet world standards.” A new bill introduced by Hernandez minutes after losing the vote this weekend would allow municipalities and ZEDEs to request that the PMOP or other branches of the Armed Forces provide them with security services.
Honduras’ continuing militarization of security efforts appears to have the backing of the United States, which has provided more than $65 million in security aid to Honduras since 2008. President Hernandez has also met frequently with high-level U.S. officials for talks on security and migration issues. As the U.S. amassador’s Twitter account wrote on Friday, “U.S. cooperation with Honduras’ fight against narcotrafficking and crime is strong and continuing.”
So Grover Norquist et al are the folks that are terrorizing my state too through their stooge Bobby Jindal. The budget here is now in utter disrepair due to tax giveaways to businesses and tax cuts to rich people. There’s just no money coming in to support anything. Here are two disturbing stories. First, our historical and natural parks are having to shut down.
Nearly two centuries ago, American officials were worried about Louisiana’s coastline. But their concern wasn’t erosion of the marshes or walls of water driven by a storm devastating the region. It was foreign navies.
Fresh off of stinging naval defeats to the British in the War of 1812, President James Monroe and the Congress of the fledgling United States settled on coastal defense as a priority.
To address that concern, they commissioned a series of forts to be built along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. These forts, known as the Third System of coastal defenses, included Fort Monroe in Virginia, Fort Sumter in South Carolina, Fort Pickens in Pensacola Bay and Fort Pike in Louisiana, as well as more than three dozen others.
Today, those forts are historical relics, reminders of the way wars were fought before aircraft, smart bombs and ballistic missiles.
Fort Pike is no exception. The isolated spot along U.S. 90 at the eastern extremity of Orleans Parish has for years been host to children scampering over its earthen battlements and sitting astride the old cannons, and history buffs wandering slowly through the fort, eyes peering back through time.
But as of Friday, even that has ceased as Fort Pike succumbs to a modern foe: state budget woes. A $1.5 million midyear budget cut for the Office of State Parks means that Fort Pike’s last visitors toured the site Friday, officials said.
The closure is indefinite, said Jacques Berry, a spokesman for Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne, who oversees the state park system.
Those of you that saw the closing episode of True Detective got to see the inside of one of its sister forts as the hideout for the mass murderer. They are extremely interesting building and deserve preservation.
Our Governor has proposed a 35% cut to Higher Education budgets this year since basically there are no other ways to fund the budget except through devastating a few items or raising taxes. He’s basically cut over 65% in his 7 years of ruining errr running the state. This is an incredible move because this level of cuts would mean that every single public college and university campus in Louisiana would have to file for financial exigency next year. Exigency is the public entity’s version of bankruptcy. We’re talking two medical centers, a law school, and a number of universities from LSU on down. Think on that. EVERY SINGLE public university in a state will be basically bankrupt and will have to institute massive lay offs.
The Revenue Estimating Committee, a state panel that determines how much money Louisiana government has to spend, declared Monday what nearly everyone knew was coming — the budget hole is larger than originally estimated.
New midyear budget cuts will total $103.5 million, and the state budget hole for the next financial cycle has grown $203.8 million, bringing next year’s projected financial shortfall to some $1.6 billion overall.
The drop in revenue is largely due to a weak oil market. Albrecht predicted that oil prices will remain low not only for this year and next year, but for the next three-to-four years, until 2019. The price of oil per barrel was around $100 per barrel last year, and will be a little over $50 per barrel next year, he said.
For every dollar the price of oil per barrel drops, Louisiana loses about $11 million in state revenue, according to Albrecht. The collection of Louisiana’s severance taxes — which are related to extracting oil from the ground — will drop $80.4 million in the current fiscal year and $222.7 for next year, Albrecht predicted.
This means that state agencies — notably higher education and state health care — will likely have to absorb more midyear cuts, while also preparing for drastic funding reductions during the next fiscal year. Gov. Bobby Jindal already reduced state spending last month by $180 million, in part because of falling oil prices.
Even before the budget situation worsened, Louisiana’s higher education institutions had already been told to brace for more than $300 million in funding reductions, a cut equal to the entire public operating budget for Louisiana’s community and technical colleges.
Health care services had been told they would have to absorb a $250 million hit, which could balloon to more than twice that size because Louisiana would no longer be able to put up the dollars required to attract certain types of federal funding.
Senate President John Alario, who has served in the Louisiana Legislature for 40 years, called the proposed cuts to higher education and health care “devastating” a few weeks ago — and that was before the state government officially recognized just how bad the problem was during the Monday meeting.
Meanwhile, it seems Jindal is going to have to live without the Duck Dynasty nod since that’s going to Mike Huckabee’s run at the presidency. I’d just like to know when we can roll out the guillotines and just be 
done with them all. And with that, I have nothing nice to say about them, so I shall end it here.
On, a lighter note, Happy Ground Hog’s Day! Here’s a link that discusses the roots of the celebration.
The obsession with weather forecasting at this time of year is completely understandable -after all, winter weather is tiresome, and for many, downright dangerous. Will the supplies you stocked in the autumn last until spring? Finding out didn’t make the supplies last any longer, but signs of spring could soothe a worried mind. One omen Europeans looked for was the emergence of hibernating animals. The snake mentioned in the old Imbolc verses was rarely ever seen, but hibernating mammals were. In some parts of Eastern Europe, Candlemas is also known as the Day of the Bear, and the weather forecasting tradition varies. In some communities, good weather on the day of the bear will cause the animal to stay outside, meaning spring will come soon. In other places that observe the Day of the Bear, the “contrary” rule applies– if the weather is nice, the bear will see his shadow and be frightened back into his den for more winter weather. So one should hope for a cloudy or stormy day at Candlemas.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
jjlo
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
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