Monday Morning Reads

Posted: June 18, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Egypt, Foreign Affairs, Greece, Middle East, Mitt Romney, morning reads | Tags: , , | 9 Comments

Good Morning!

Elections happened in Egypt and Greece.  Pro-Bailout Parties in Greece have taken the majority.  The Muslim Brotherhood candidate is ahead in the run off for the presidency in Egypt.

Greece’s largest pro-bailout parties, New Democracy and Pasok, won enough seats to forge a parliamentary majority, official projections showed, easing concern the country was headed toward an imminent exit from the euro. The currency rose on the result.

The election would give New Democracy and Pasok 163 seats if they agree to govern together in the 300-member parliament, according to the official projection by the Interior Ministry in Athens based on 63 percent of today’s vote.

“For markets, a majority for an ND-Pasok coalition would be a relief,” Holger Schmieding, London-based chief economist at Berenberg Bank, said in a note today. “It would very much reduce the risk of a Greek euro exit.”

The vote forced Greeks, in a fifth year of recession, to choose open-ended austerity to stay in the euro or reject the terms of a bailout and risk the turmoil of exiting the 17-nation currency. The election threatened to dominate a summit of world leaders that starts tomorrow in Mexico.

Krugman’s Op Ed today has a nice, succinct explanation of the Greek situation.

Fifteen years ago Greece was no paradise, but it wasn’t in crisis either. Unemployment was high but not catastrophic, and the nation more or less paid its way on world markets, earning enough from exports, tourism, shipping and other sources to more or less pay for its imports.

Then Greece joined the euro, and a terrible thing happened: people started believing that it was a safe place to invest. Foreign money poured into Greece, some but not all of it financing government deficits; the economy boomed; inflation rose; and Greece became increasingly uncompetitive. To be sure, the Greeks squandered much if not most of the money that came flooding in, but then so did everyone else who got caught up in the euro bubble.

And then the bubble burst, at which point the fundamental flaws in the whole euro system became all too apparent.

Ask yourself, why does the dollar area — also known as the United States of America — more or less work, without the kind of severe regional crises now afflicting Europe? The answer is that we have a strong central government, and the activities of this government in effect provide automatic bailouts to states that get in trouble.

Consider, for example, what would be happening to Florida right now, in the aftermath of its huge housing bubble, if the state had to come up with the money for Social Security and Medicare out of its own suddenly reduced revenues. Luckily for Florida, Washington rather than Tallahassee is picking up the tab, which means that Florida is in effect receiving a bailout on a scale no European nation could dream of.

Egypt continues to see stand offs between the judiciary, military rulers, and the electorate.  It appears that Egyptian elections may put a Muslim Brotherhood candidate into office just as the military rulers  disbanded parliament due to a ruling by courts.  Final election results are expected on Thursday.

In a final run-off election marked by relentless fear-mongering and negative campaigning on both sides of the contest, many polling stations remained near-empty for much of the two-day ballot – with potential voters seemingly put off by scorching temperatures, which reached 40C in the capital, and the increasingly oppressive political climate of military-led manipulation and national division that has gripped the country a year and a half after the start of its ongoing revolution.

As ballot counting began inside more than 13,000 schools nationwide, the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party insisted that its candidate, 60 year old engineer Mohamed Morsi, was on course for a clear victory unless state-sponsored electoral fraud dictated otherwise. But local media reports and anecdotal evidence suggested a far closer race, with millions turning out to back Ahmed Shafiq, Hosni Mubarak’s final prime minister and a polarising emblem of the old regime, in a last-ditch effort to prevent political Islamists from taking power.

Egypt continues on its course of political uncertainty.

The high court ruled that some provisions of the electoral law, which allowed political parties to compete with independent candidates for some seats, violated the constitution.

The ruling invalidated the 508-member People’s Assembly, chosen during a six-week election which began in November. It also voided the constitutional assembly which members of parliament agreed to last week and appointed on Tuesday.

SCAF said it will announce its own assembly next week.

The ruling was a blow to the entire transition process, but perhaps most of all to the Brotherhood, which controlled nearly half of the assembly.

Mohamed el-Beltagy, a senior FJP politician, called the rulings a “fully-fledged coup” on his Facebook page.

The Brotherhood issued a statement late on Thursday night warning that the court’s decision would undo the gains of the revolution and push Egypt into “dangerous days”.

The Economist has some interesting analysis on what might happen if the Roberts SCOTUS throws out portions of the Affordable Healthcare Act. You have to remember this is written in England where our health care system is considered something out of a dystopian science fiction horror novel.

Yet for all that, it is possible that the Supreme Court, by throwing a spanner into the works, may actually help Mr Obama as much as hurt him. For a start, the Republicans would suddenly find that they have a mess of their own making to sort out. If the Supreme Court does indeed strike down the Affordable Care Act, many popular provisions would fall with it: the one allowing parents to keep their children on their insurance policies until they are 26, for instance, and the abolition of lifetime ceilings on what the sick can claim. Both of those are already in force, and a ban on insurance companies refusing to insure the unwell is due to come in from 2014. Generous subsidies will help not just those who lack insurance, but also some of those who have it and find it hard to afford. And Mr Obama’s cost-control mechanisms, imperfect though they are, have a fiscally useful role to play in bringing down the costs of government-provided insurance for the poor and the elderly.

Even if only the “mandate” requiring everyone to buy health insurance is struck down as unconstitutional, the consequences of that could cause other parts of the bill to unravel, and would certainly lead to big increases in insurance premiums. One big insurance company has already said it would endeavour to keep some of the popular provisions intact: but it might not be able to. The Republicans have long said that they want to “repeal and replace” Obamacare, but they have been remarkably coy about what they would replace it with. If you break it, as Colin Powell remarked in another context, you own it.

So the danger to the Republicans of a backlash should not be discounted. And there is another, greater threat to them. Should Obamacare be struck down or crippled, the Roberts court will be seen by many as politically slanted. Arguably that has happened already, thanks to its recision of gun control in Washington, DC and Chicago in 2008 and 2010, and to its decision in 2010 to scrap limits on corporate (and trade-union) donations to political-action groups. And judgments on other highly political cases, on positive discrimination and on immigration, are expected before the election. Like the gun-control and campaign-finance rulings, these are likely to be “partisan” 5-4 decisions. A poll on June 7th found that 76% of people think that Supreme Court justices are sometimes swayed by their political or personal views, and that only 44% approve of the court’s performance. It used to be by far the most popular branch of government.

Romney just told us all not to worry our pretty little heads about his economics policy yesterday on Face The Nation.  He doesn’t want to give us any specifics and we should just “trust him”.  Does this sound like the guy you dated once in high school that didn’t think of much anything but getting a blow job from you or what?

Romney repeatedly refused to say whether he’d repeal Obama’s order to halt deportations of DREAM-eligible youth. He confirmed that he would not agree to even one dollar in new revenues in exchange for 10 dollars in spending cuts. And he again reiterated that his response to the crisis would be to cut government, in order to “ignite growth,” even though economists say that more austerity now would make the crisis worse.

But I wanted to flag this exchange in particular, in which Romney seemed to confirm that he will not be detailing how he would pay for his proposed tax cuts for the duration of the campaign:

SCHIEFFER: You haven’t been bashful about telling us yo want to cut taxes. When are you going to tell us where you’re going to get the revenue? Which of the deductions are you going to be willing to eliminate? Which of the tax credits are you going to — when are you going to be able to tell us that?

ROMNEY: Well, we’ll go through that process with Congress as to which of all the different deductions and the exemptions —

SCHIEFFER: But do you have an ideas now, like the home mortgage interest deduction, you know, the various ones?

ROMNEY: Well Simpson Bowles went though a process of saying how they would be able to reach a setting where they had actually under their proposal even more revenue, with lower rates. So, mathematically it’s been proved to be possible: We can have lower rates, as I propose, that creates more growth, and we can limit deductions and exemptions.

Romney went on to pledge, as he has in the past, that under his plan, the wealthy would continue to pay the same share of the tax burden as they do now. “I’m not looking to reduce the burden paid by the wealthiest,” he said. In other words, the disproportionally larger tax cut the wealthy would get from the across-the-board cut in rates he’s proposing would be offset by closing deductions and loopholes the rich currently enjoy. But asked twice by Schieffer how exactly he would do this, Romney refused to say, beyond noting that this has been mathematically proven to be possible. And in his first reply above, he confirmed that the details would be worked out with Congress when he is president — which is to say, not during the campaign.

As you may recall, Romney made big news when he was overheard at a private fundraiser revealing to donors a few of the specific ways he’d pay for his massive tax cuts. Since then, details have been in short supply. And today, Romney seemed to confirm that he sees no need to reveal those details until he becomes president.

You know.  If we don’t give him what he wants his balls will turn blue and it will be all our fault.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Sunday Morning Reads………An Eclectic Mix

Posted: June 17, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: abortion rights, bees, Climate Change, Environment, morning reads, Nigeria, social media, toxic waste, U.S. Military, Violence against women | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 41 Comments

Good Morning, All. I am pinch hitting for JJ while she and her family are visiting our nation’s capital. I haven’t traveled much, but I have been to D.C. twice. What an amazing place. This will be an eclectic mix of links and stories, covering many different categories. I hope you will find at least some of them of interest to you.

This first group is about gardening. bb had mentioned to me that she likes to work in her garden, so I figured she would enjoy these. The first is a list of ideas on how to attract butterflies to your garden.

Planting your garden with plants that attract butterflies is only one step in making your garden butterfly-friendly. Once butterflies discover your garden the females will lay eggs on plants that become food for the hatching caterpillars.

The host plant selected, and the time of year the eggs are laid, depends on the species of butterfly. Different butterflies prefer different host plants.

Bees are pollinaters, picking up pollen as they go from flower to flower to gather nectar. Obviously they are an important component for a successful garden. Besides nectar, bees also need water and this has ideas about how to make a watering hole for bees.

As the temperature rise in the garden it is important to remember the bees you’re attracting to your garden will also be searching for water. For bees, a supply of water is as important as pollen and nectar forage in the summer.

Besides the lovely green foliage of a garden, it is important to do what we can to use “green” products. Treehugger contributor Ramon Gonzalez provides a list of 10 sustainable garden products.

A garden that is kinder to the earth can be achieved through the selection of products and tools that are sustainably manufactured or given new life through recycling. It’s never been so easy to build a garden that’s green from the moment you plunge that spade into the soil.

Many commercial fertilizers used in both gardening and farming contain phosphates. Aasif Mandvi of The Daily Show covered a story about Simplot, a phosphate mining company in Idaho. Naturally, it is a satirical look at the dangers of phosphate mining and the damage being done by the by-product, selenium. Greater Yellowstone Coalition is an environmental organization working to get J.R. Simplot Co. to Clean Up Its Smoky Canyon Mine Superfund Site.

The New York Times featured a story and video today about the industrial damage done to Newtown Creek since the mid-1800s, and Mitch Waxman who has chronicled its history. The waterway was declared a Super Fund site in 2010.

If Mitch Waxman is your guide, he will identify it as the derelict smokestack of Peter Van Iderstine’s fat-rendering business, which first set up shop in 1855. But he won’t stop there.
He will expound on the archaic waste-disposal operations that once flourished on the creek, conjuring scenes of putrescent horse carcasses floating in on barges from Manhattan and docks piled with manure three stories high. The narrative will extend to Cord Meyer’s bone blackers and Conrad Wissel’s night soil wharf — the gothic names of these forgotten businesses rattled off in a distinct Brooklyn accent.
At some point, he will start in on the horrors of the M. Kalbfleisch Chemical Works, eventually making his way to the sins of Standard Oil.

Moving on to some stories about activism that caught my eye. The first story comes from Truth-Out about The Heritage Foundation’s conference to re-brand the Occupy Movement. Matt Dineen interviews Jason del Grandio, the author of Rhetoric for Radicals. Here’s a snippet of what Jason has to say about his perceived purpose of the conference.

The speakers make frequent reference to capitalism, free markets and free enterprise, and often mention traditional buzzwords like individual liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The Heritage Foundation is trying to understand the populist appeal of Occupy, and by doing so, trying to use that appeal to “win back” some of the Occupiers. Or, at the very least, to impede Occupy’s progress and win the hearts and minds of those who are still on the fence.

Brian Merchant interviews Tzeporah Berman, an environmental activist since was was 19, for Treehugger. This quote really hit home for me – you can’t un-know or un-see an injustice once your eyes, mind and heart have been opened to them.

Sometimes I wish I could open up a paper and not be immediately drawn to the story about mercury in fish or the dramatic increase in flooding in Sudan. But I can’t now.

Have you heard of Emem Okon, the Nigerian ecofeminist? I had not. She is a courageous woman, organizing other women of the Niger River Delta and taking on Chevron. The interview from Antonia Juhasz is reprinted from Ms magazine on Truth-Out.

One of the most prominent voices was Emem Okon, founder and executive director of Kebetkache Women Development & Resource Centre of Nigeria. A community organizer and women’s rights activist from the Niger Delta, Okon is leading a thriving Nigerian ecofeminist movement. She has coordinated several local women’s networks and coalitions, including Women Against Climate Change (WACC), International Network on Women and Environment, Niger Delta Women for Justice and Niger Delta Women’s Movement.

Speaking of women, the New York Times featured a story on the the Human Rights Film Festival at Lincoln Center. The review starts off with a profile of The Invisible War, which won the 2012 Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival.

It hardly needs to be said that any armed force has the potential for internal as well as external violence. But “The Invisible War,” Kirby Dick’s incendiary documentary about the epidemic of rape within the United States military, is a shocking and infuriating indictment of widespread sexual attacks on women. Such behavior, the film argues, is tacitly condoned and routinely covered up; the victims are often blamed and their reputations destroyed.

I found other links to discussions of the film, at the military publication, Stars and Stripes along with stories about Congress denying healthcare coverage for abortions for military women who have been raped. from Mother Jones.

The Rio+20 Summit begins on Monday, June 18th. President Obama and England’s David Cameron WON’T be attending, however Hillary Clinton will be representing the U.S. BBC News has more about Rio+20 and the awful state of the world’s oceans.

The researchers assessed the various pledges made at the landmark 1992 Earth Summit and 10 years later at the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development.

Governments vowed to establish an ecologically sound network of marine reserves by 2012, eliminate subsidies that contribute to illegal fishing, protect critical habitat, look after the needs of local fishermen and restore depleted stocks to healthy levels by 2015.

Subsidies have not been eliminated, and illegal fishing is still a major issue in some parts of the world.

Tom Ashbrook, host of NPR’s On Point, interviewed Bill McKibben of 350.org on Friday’s show. McKibben’s name is probably best known for the protests against the Keystone XL Pipeline, held outside of the White House, along with his subsequent arrest for protesting. You can listen to the audio at the link above. Here’s a short introduction:

Environmental champion Bill McKibben wrote nearly a quarter century ago about what he called “the end of nature.” The untouched wild. He didn’t think he was writing about the end of the world. But the climate change path since then has been a scary one. Bad to worse.

And McKibben has gone from writerly philosopher to full-on environmentalist to activist in handcuffs. Political street fighter. He was at the heart of the campaign to stop the Keystone XL pipeline. Arrested at the gates of the White House.

The current campaign of McKibben and 350.org is ending fossil fuel subsidies. These companies are paid by governments in the neighborhood of 1 TRILLION DOLLARS a year to pollute our planet. 350.org is organizing a Twitterstorm for June 18th. Although I don’t have a cell phone (and refuse to get one), I plan to set up a Twitter account so that I can participate. I hope that you will go to the link and sign up to participate as well. This quote comes from Treehugger about the Twitterstorm:

If you’re itching to do some petition signing right now: End Fossil Fuel Subsidies, and check out how your representative (in the US) stands on ending subsidies: End Fossil Fuel Subsidies Scorecard

There’s also more info on the Facebook event page: Twitter Storm: #EndFossilFuelSubsidies

Since it’s Father’s Day, I thought I would end this with a trbute video to a very special Dad
from Discovery News.

Putting Corporations above People and their Governments and their Laws

Posted: June 16, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: corporate greed, corporatism, Foreign Affairs, globalization | Tags: , , , , , | 10 Comments

There is a leaked “trade” document that needs to be on every one’s reading list. I know it’s a big request to ask you to follow what seems like a fairly complex negotiation riddled with legalese.  However, we’re fortunate it was leaked.  No one knows what’s been going on in negotiations for ongoing US trade negotiations with eight Pacific nations.  This includes Senator Ron Wyden who is responsible for oversight who is trying to draft legislation to get access. 

U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, Chairman of the U.S. Senate Finance Subcommittee on International Trade Customs and Global Competitiveness, introduced legislation clarifying USTR’s obligation to share information on trade agreements with Members of Congress. Legislation is necessitated by administration’s refusal to share information with Congress broadly, and specifically with Wyden’s office.

So much for Obama’s pledge of transparency.

The document in question is part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). This document shows evidence that the agreement would “drastically undermine Obama’s proposed domestic agenda and give unprecedented political authority to multinational corporations”.

The TPP negotiations have gone on for two years between the Obama administration and several Pacific nations under conditions of ‘extreme secrecy’ without press, public or policymaker oversight, says Public Citizen who posted the leaked document on their website today.

“The top U.S. trade official effectively has said that the administration must keep TPP secret because otherwise it won’t be able to shove this deal past the public and Congress,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.

The leaked document, according to the Huffington Post, reveals ‘extreme provisions’ that have been agreed upon in secret negotiations that “bestow radical new political powers upon multinational corporations” in global trade and contradict key promises made to the US public about such deals.

According to Public Citizen, the leaked text now confirms that the terms of the TPP would:

  • Limit how U.S. federal and state officials could regulate foreign firms operating within U.S. boundaries, with requirements to provide them greater rights than domestic firms;
  • Extend the incentives for U.S. firms to offshore investment and jobs to lower-wage countries;
  • Establish a two-track legal system that gives foreign firms new rights to skirt U.S. courts and laws, directly sue the U.S. government before foreign tribunals and demand compensation for financial, health, environmental, land use and other laws they claim undermine their TPP privileges; and
  • Allow foreign firms to demand compensation for the costs of complying with U.S. financial or environmental regulations that apply equally to domestic and foreign firms.

“The airing of this one TPP chapter,” said Wallach, “which greatly favors foreign corporations over domestic businesses and the public interest and exposes us to significant financial liabilities, shows that the whole draft text must be released immediately so it can be reviewed and debated. Absent that, these negotiations must be ended now.”

I first learned the details of the leak document from listening to the daily podcast at Democracy Now. Juan Gonzalez interviewed Wallach who is running around with her hair on fire trying to explain the ramifications to our country and others should this pass.

There are so many items in just this one chapter of the leaked document to fear that it’s hard to cover it all in one short Saturday Post.  Basically, multinational corporations will be able to sue governments should they be hurt by labor laws, environmental laws, or any kind of regulation and seek damages. Their case will be heard by a tribunal made up of corporate lawyers.  So, laws that apply to us that get tried in our courts will not apply to these multinationals.  The tribunal panel gets to decide their fate.

Upon reading this latest document and the previously leaked document on intellectual property, and regarding what they mean for our access to life-saving medication, Judit Rius, the U.S. manager of Doctors Without Borders Access to Medicine Campaign said that “Bush was better than Obama on this. It’s pathetic, but it is what it is. The world’s upside-down.”

In response to the widespread criticism of the leaded document, USTR spokesman Nkenge Harmon said “This administration is committed to ensuring strong environmental, public health, and safety laws. Nothing in our TPP investment proposal could impair our government’s ability to ensure legitimate non-discriminatory public interest regulation, including measures to protect public health, public safety and the environment.”

It would be up to the international tribunals, however, to interpret “legitimate,” and “non-discriminatory.”

“Our worst fears about the investment chapter have been confirmed by this leaked text … This investment chapter would severely undermine attempts to strengthen environmental law and policy,” said Margrete Strand Rangnes, director of Labor and Trade for the the environmental group the Sierra Club.

The impact of this would be incredible. I’m going to be watching this carefully and I’d like to suggest you watch it too.  Urge your Senators to support Wyden’s attempt to gain access to oversight of the trade negotiation process.

Lazy Caturday News and Open Thread

Posted: June 9, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Afghanistan, Barack Obama, corruption, Discrimination against women, Economy, Foreign Affairs, Health care reform, Iran, Mitt Romney, morning reads, PUMA, religion, Russia, the GOP, U.S. Politics, War on Women | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 29 Comments

Good Morning All!

The 40th anniversary of the Watergate break-in is coming up on June 17. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein published a piece about it in yesterday’s Washington Post.

Today, much more than when we first covered this story as young Washington Post reporters, an abundant record provides unambiguous answers and evidence about Watergate and its meaning. This record has expanded continuously over the decades with the transcription of hundreds of hours of Nixon’s secret tapes, adding detail and context to the hearings in the Senate and House of Representatives; the trials and guilty pleas of some 40 Nixon aides and associates who went to jail; and the memoirs of Nixon and his deputies. Such documentation makes it possible to trace the president’s personal dominance over a massive campaign of political espionage, sabotage and other illegal activities against his real or perceived opponents.

In the course of his five-and-a-half-year presidency, beginning in 1969, Nixon launched and managed five successive and overlapping wars — against the anti-Vietnam War movement, the news media, the Democrats, the justice system and, finally, against history itself. All reflected a mind-set and a pattern of behavior that were uniquely and pervasively Nixon’s: a willingness to disregard the law for political advantage, and a quest for dirt and secrets about his opponents as an organizing principle of his presidency.

Long before the Watergate break-in, gumshoeing, burglary, wiretapping and political sabotage had become a way of life in the Nixon White House.

What was Watergate? It was Nixon’s five wars.

The Post also provides links to it’s coverage of the Watergate Scandal back in the good old days when the press believed in exposing government corruption. Today, the Post admits that “investigative journalism is at risk.”

Remember this?

The sad thing about Watergate is that if it happened today there wouldn’t be any investigation or arrests. We’d be told to move along, look forward not backward.

To see how things work today, you can read the White House e-mails that detail President Obama’s sellout to the pharmaceutical industry on health care. Apparently this one was leaked by House Republicans. Down With Tyranny has some good commentary.

um…huh? Must have dropped off for a second there. Let’s see what else is happening.

At the San Francisco Chronicle, Jeff Brinkley, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, now a Professor of Journalism at Stanford University finds Mitt Romney’s foreign policy positions deeply disturbing. He thinks it’s highly problematic that Romney has no experience and seemingly no knowledge about foreign policy. Brinkley notes that Obama already had to learn on the job, and now the Republicans have nominated another foreign policy naif who may be even less prepared than Obama was.

Romney…declared a couple of months ago that “Russia is America’s No. 1 geopolitical foe.” What nonsense. The U.S.-Russia relationship is a bit strained, but what about Iran, North Korea, Pakistan? Every one of those states poses a strategic threat that Russia does not.

“Immediately, speculations surfaced that the former governor of Massachusetts continues to live in a Cold War world and has few, if any, insights about American foreign policy,” Klaus Larres, a German American academic, wrote for the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies. And former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told Romney to use his head and “check the time. It’s now 2012, not the mid-1970s.”

His advice on Afghanistan has been no better. Repeatedly he has called the plan to gradually withdraw forces “misguided” and “an extraordinary admission of failure.”

In the past, Romney has asserted that the United States and NATO need to defeat the Taliban before leaving. That has been the goal for nearly 11 years, and NATO is no closer today. The most recent National Intelligence Estimate asserts that the war is unwinnable as long as the Taliban maintains a safe haven in Pakistan and the Afghan government continues its corrupt, malevolent and counterproductive ways.

I wonder if Romney knows that one-third of the Western forces killed in Afghanistan so far this year died at the hands of Afghan soldiers they were training or leading.

There’s lots more at the link.

Charles Pierce is talking about “PUMA-ism” again, but I’ll forgive him because of this description of Obama’s defensive behavior of late:

In many ways, this president reminds me of the truck drivers in The Wages of Fear, trying to get the nitroglycerine over the mountains with blowing themselves all to hell and gone. In so many ways, he is still outside of things. In so many ways, he is still the flyer the Democratic party took in 2008. In so many ways, the path he has to walk to re-election is similar to the path he has had to walk through his life. It was hard not to notice the subtext present in all those earnest warnings about hurting the fee-fees of our financial titans. The president was stepping out of his place. The president was being uppity again.
This is also the case with what is perhaps the most noxious idea out there: that Barack Obama “failed” in his promise to “bring the country together,” and that he is now — Glorioski! — campaigning like he wants to be president all over again. He is engaging in politics. Mother of mercy, I swear David Brooks is just going to break down and go all to pieces on PBS some evening over the president’s betrayal of his role as the country’s anodyne black man and, of course, his upcoming role as black martyr to incivility and discord. It is his duty, dammit, to be all the things that people like Brooks wanted him to be so that he could lose, nobly, and then the country could go back to its rightful owners.

The Wages of Fear: now that was a great movie!

At Time, Tim Pagett has an excellent piece called The Catholic Contraction.

If you want some perspective on just how benighted the Roman Catholic Church looks today on the subject of women, consider Hildegard of Bingen. Hildegard was a German Benedictine nun in the 12th century and a leading feminist writer of her time. But even though that time was the 1100s, the Vatican rarely hassled her for asserting that men and women are equal — that God’s true nature, in fact, is maternal — or that nonprocreative sexual pleasure is O.K.

In the 21st century, however, Hildegard would no doubt receive the same censure that Sister Margaret Farley is facing this week after the Vatican denounced her book Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics. Farley, a Sisters of Mercy nun, a retired Yale divinity professor and a past president of the Catholic Theological Society of America, condones practices that have been morally acceptable to most U.S. and European Catholics for quite a while, including divorce, homosexuality, nonprocreative intercourse and masturbation. But Rome’s doctrinal bulldogs are sternly reminding her that those acts are “disordered,” “deviant” and “depraved.”

Sadly, it’s the church that’s looking unhinged these days. The Vatican was apparently just warming up in 2010 when it declared, astonishingly, that ordaining females into the all-male Catholic priesthood would be a “grave sin” on par with even pedophilia. Since then, as if scapegoating women for the escalating dissent among Catholics toward its hoary dogma, the church seems to have embarked on a misogynist’s crusade. Its legal assault on the Obama Administration’s requirement that Catholic institutions like colleges and hospitals make contraception available to female employees as part of their health coverage is, ultimately, less about religious freedom than about women’s freedom. Then there’s the U.S. bishops’ absurd probe of whether the Girl Scouts are selling feminist theology as well as fattening thin mints — and Rome’s accusation of “radical feminism” within the Leadership Conference on Women Religious (LCWR), which represents most of the U.S. nuns doing genuinely Christ-inspired work with the poor and the sick.

In science news, 

NASA has discovered "a massive algae bloom under the slowly diminishing Arctic ice."

The same year that NASA researchers launched the Icescape expedition to the Arctic — the project that resulted in NASA’s astounding new discovery — there was a dire report on the world’s phytoplankton.

A Canadian team said in the journal Nature, as The Times reported in July 2010, that the world’s phytoplankton had been disappearing at a rate of about 1% a year for the previous 100 years.

“A global decline of this magnitude? It’s quite shocking,” Daniel Boyce, Dalhousie University marine scientist and lead author of the 2010 study, told The Times.

Phytoplankton — the basis of the marine food chain — “are key to the whole ecosystem,” he said. “In terms of climate changes, the effect on fisheries, we don’t know exactly what these effects will be.”

Could his latest discovery of a mass of phytoplankton in the Arctic signal a turnaround for this crucial organism?

The jury’s out. But it’s a question scientists will be pursuing, according to Paula Bontempi, NASA’s ocean biology and biogeochemistry program manager in Washington.

I think I need another little break.

Okay, back. Wouldn’t you know it? Addicting Info: Koch Brothers Linked To Florida Voter Purge

Former Secretary of State Kurt Browning worked with [Gov. Rick] Scott on the purge. Just before Scott selected Browning as Secretary in 2011, Browning led a group, Protect Your Vote Inc., which was created to oppose fair redistricting. One of the biggest checks that Browning’s organization received for $100,000 in 2010 was from the Center To Protect Patients’ Rights. At the time of the donation, the source of the money was cloaked in secrecy.

Last month, Republic Report exclusively reported that Center To Protect Patients’ Rights is part of a collection of front groups funded by David and Charles Koch as well as other billionaires as part of an election-influencing effort. The Koch Brothers plan to use these front groups to finance $400 million of a $1 billion campaign in outside money to defeat President Obama as well as defeating congressional Democrats. Mitt Romney’s Super Pac and many other nonprofits run by Karl Rove will supply the other $600 million needed to accomplish their goal.

Here’s Here’s something I missed this week: 

Pranksters ‘Jiggly Puff,’ ‘Weedlord Bonerhitler’ sign anti-’Obamacare’ petition.

When the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) set about thinking how to engage the Internet in new and unique ways, it probably did not occur to them that sometimes, the Internet tends to engage you right back.

That misunderstanding apparently led to an NRCC petition drive this week seeking to trump up the number of people who want to see “Obamacare” repealed. Unfortunately for them, it all went horribly, hilariously awry on Thursday night after they hooked an office printer up to the Twitter hashtag #IWantRepeal, then turned on a live video stream.

It was not long before NRCC staff completely lost control and were forced to pull the plug.

In almost no time at all, their printer was spitting out pages of petitions signed by “Weedlord Bonerhitler,” “Jiggly Puff,” “Boner Junkmonkey,” “Pointless Empty Gesture,” “Turd Sniffer,” “Like 20 more boners” and “HelpI’mStuckInThisPrinter,” among many, many others. Screen shots of this Twitter debacle and links to the live video began circulating almost immediately.

Okay, I’ll sign off with this:

“How we behave toward cats here below determines our status in heaven.” – Robert A. Heinlein

Thursday Reads

Posted: June 7, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, court rulings, Crime, Foreign Affairs, Mitt Romney, morning reads, religion, Republican presidential politics, Syria, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 24 Comments

Good Morning!!

Last night I wrote about Mitt Romney’s claim that he “longed” to serve in Vietnam, but instead sacrificed his fondest dream by living in France for the war years. But he wasn’t always averse to wearing a uniform. When he was in prep school at Cranbrook, he once played a “prank” in which he impersonated a police officer and stopped a car in which four of his “friends” were out on a double date.

But until I read this piece by Joe Conason, I had no idea that Romney had repeatedly dressed as a Michigan state trooper even when he was a student at Stanford.

According to Robin Madden, one of Romney’s Stanford classmates, Romney once showed him a state trooper’s uniform and said he’d gotten it from his father George Romney, who was then Governor of Michigan. Madden told Conason:

“He told us that he had gotten the uniform from his father,” George Romney, then the Governor of Michigan, whose security detail was staffed by uniformed troopers. “He told us that he was using it to pull over drivers on the road. He also had a red flashing light that he would attach to the top of his white Rambler.”

In Madden’s recollection, confirmed by his wife Susan, who also attended Stanford during those years, “we thought it was all pretty weird. We all thought, ‘Wow, that’s pretty creepy.’ And after that, we didn’t have much interaction with him,” although both Madden and Romney were prep school boys living in the same dorm, called Rinconada.

Is there no end to this man’s weirdness? Just one more Romney story and then I’ll move on to something else. The New York Times has a front page story today on Romney’s neighbors in La Jolla and how annoyed they are by him.

ON Dunemere Drive, it seems as if just about everyone has a gripe against the owners of No. 311.

The elderly woman next door complains that her car is constantly boxed into her driveway. A few houses over, a gay couple grumbles that their beloved ocean views are in jeopardy. And down the street, a widow grouses that her children’s favorite dog-walking route has been disrupted.

Bellyaching over the arrival of an irritating new neighbor is a suburban cliché, as elemental to the life on America’s Wisteria Lanes as fastidiously edged lawns and Sunday afternoon barbecues.

But here in La Jolla, a wealthy coast-hugging enclave of San Diego, the ordinary resident at the end of the block is no ordinary neighbor.

He is Mitt Romney.

The biggest complaints seem to be about the Romney’s plans to turn their beachfront home into a giant “McMansion. The article says that the Romneys haven’t asked any of the neighbors over to their house, but Ann and Mitt do take walks and interact people they see along the way.

Mr. Romney and his wife take regular walks around La Jolla, exchanging pleasantries with fellow strollers and occasionally enforcing the law. A young man in town recalled that Mr. Romney confronted him as he smoked marijuana and drank on the beach last summer, demanding that he stop.

The issue appears to be a recurring nuisance for the Romneys. Mr. Quint, who lives on the waterfront near Mr. Romney, said that a police officer had asked him, on a weekend when the candidate was in town, to report any pot smoking on the beach. The officer explained to him that “your neighbors have complained,” Mr. Quint recalled. “He was pretty clear that it was the Romneys.”

I hope our libertarian readers are paying attention.

The Washington Post reports that there has been another massacre in Syria.

Two activists in Hama said Wednesday that at least 30 people, and possibly many more, had been killed in Qubair, northwest of Hama, after the militias known as the shabiha raided the village. Government forces had blocked roads leading to the village and prevented activists from gathering evidence of the killings, they said.

But one of the activists, Asem Abu Mohammed, said he had received frantic calls for help from people in the village starting in the late afternoon.

Another activist, Mousab al-Hamadi, said people in the village told him that many women and children were among those hacked to death with knives by the militiamen.

Also at the WaPo, there is an interesting graphic piece: Ray Bradbury: 10 of his most prescient predictions. Bradbury apparently foresaw earbuds, Facebook, ATM’s, and E-books!

This story is a couple of days old, but did you hear about the hundreds of mormons and ex-mormons who participated in Salt Lake City’s gay pride march?

They came in suits and skirts, and they drew tears and cheers.

More than 300 current and former members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints participated in the Utah Gay Pride Parade on Sunday as part of a group called Mormons Building Bridges.

“I haven’t recognized them as equals,” one marcher, Emily Vandyke, 50, told the Salt Lake Tribune. “They have been invisible to me.”

She carried a sign with words from a Mormon children’s song: “I’ll walk with you, I’ll talk with you. That’s how I’ll show my love for you.”

It’s a start, anyway.

Another judge has ruled the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional.

The law was challenged by 83-year-old Edith “Edie” Windsor after the federal government failed to recognize her marriage to her partner Thea Spyer, after Spyer’s death in 2009. Her marriage was recognized by the state of New York.

The Defense of Marriage Act was enacted in 1996 and Section 3 of the law, which the case challenged, defined marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman. It prohibited legally married same sex couples from receiving federal benefits.

“Thea and I shared our lives together for 44 years, and I miss her each and every day,” said Windsor. “It’s thrilling to have a court finally recognize how unfair it is for the government to have treated us as though we were strangers.”

U.S. District Court Judge Barbara S. Jones of the Southern District of New York ruled the statue violated the constitution’s guarantee of equal protection because it discriminated against married same sex couples.

This next one is pretty funny: Senator Asks DOJ to Investigate SWAT-ting Attacks on Conservative Bloggers

A number of conservative bloggers allege they have been targeted through the use of harassment tactics such as SWAT-ting (fooling 911 operators into sending emergency teams to their homes), in retaliation for posts they have written, and now Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., has stepped into the matter. He has sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder urging him to investigate the SWAT-ting cases to see if federal laws have been violated.

Who are these bloggers and when were that “SWAT-ted?” Are there videos? Inquiring minds want to see them.

ABC News spoke with two prominent conservative bloggers who were victims of SWAT-ting, a hoax tactic used by some hackers to infiltrate a victim’s phone system, often through voice over IP (VOIP) technology to make calls appear as if they are coming from a residence. The perpetrators call police to report a violent crime at that home to which the police respond, sometimes with SWAT teams.

And ABC names names! Victim 1: Patrick Frey AKA Patterico. Victim 2: Erick Erickson of Red State and CNN fame. Victim 3: Robert Stacy McCain of “The Other McCain.” Victim 4: Ali Akbar, whoever that is. Other victims are referred to but not named. And the culprit? The mysterious Brett Kimberlin, whom the wingers think is a prominent “progressive.”

Brett Kimberlin, a man who was convicted of a series of bombings in Speedway, Indiana in the 1980s and made headlines in 1988 when he claimed to have once sold marijuana to then-vice presidential candidate Dan Quayle….

Kimberlin, who is now the director of a non-profit organization called Justice Through Music, told ABC News that he did not commit or ask anyone to conduct the SWAT-ting hoaxes that were perpetrated against Erickson and Frey.

“Of course not, it’s ridiculous. It’s totally irresponsible for them to even say this,” Kimberlin told ABC News. “There is no truth to anything about the SWAT-ting.”

This is so bizarre. I read all about it at Cannonfire ages ago. I can’t believe ABC News bought into this nonsense.

In crime news, someone mailed body parts to two schools in Vancouver. Naturally, the prime suspect is Luka Rocco Magnotta.

St. George’s senior school student Trevor Leung was working on his computer Tuesday afternoon when he saw the Yahoo news alert: a package of human remains had been discovered in the mail room at the nearby St. George’s junior school.

Leung didn’t know then that it was a human foot. Or that earlier, at about

1 p.m., a package containing a hand had been opened by a staff member at another Vancouver school, False Creek elementary.

By then, investigators in Montreal and Vancouver were on the phone, trying to establish whether the body parts were linked to the murder case involving former Canadian porn actor Luka Rocco Magnotta.

Ugh! Thank goodness that monster is behind bars for now.

George Zimmerman won’t have a second bail hearing until June 29, so he’ll be behind bars for awhile also. The article says that Attorney Mark O’Mara claims that Zimmerman “has learned his lesson.” I guess that will be up to the judge to determine.

Finally, a bit of provincial sports news: The aging Boston Celtics have LeBron James and the Miami Heat on the ropes in the NBA Playoffs.

Boston is the first road team in the series to win just as the Oklahoma City Thunder did in taking a 3-2 Western series lead. Both are trying to to rally from 2-0 deficits, never done in the same conference finals round.

No two teams have ever come back from 2-0 deficits in the same year in the conference finals. The only time it has happened twice during the same stage was 2005, when the Washington Wizards and Dallas Mavericks topped the Chicago Bulls and Houston Rockets in the first round.

“We’re just hanging in there and I tell (them), ‘Hang in, hang in there, don’t overreact,’ ” Celtics coach Doc Rivers said.

Game 6 in the East finals is Thursday in Boston (8:30 p.m. ET, ESPN).

Le Bron is such a choker. He’s loaded with talent but just doesn’t have the necessary fire in the belly.

Now what are you reading and blogging about today?

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