Friday Reads: A little bit of This and a little bit of That
Posted: May 30, 2014 Filed under: just because, morning reads 37 CommentsGood Morning!
Here’s some updates to some stories we’ve been following.
French Economist Thomas Piketty has responded to the FT attack on his data published in Capital in the 21st Century. Basically, he considers it all very nit picky and doesn’t think it changes his overall thesis and results.
In response to a request from The New York Times to further address the criticisms, which The Financial Times published on Friday, Mr. Piketty, a professor at the Paris School of Economics, wrote that his data were correct, and his conclusions stood: Wealth inequality in Europe and the United States was high in the years before World War I, fell for much of the 20th century, and has been rising sharply again in the past three decades.
He argued that many of the things that The Financial Times identified as sloppy or arbitrary were in fact considered choices, which he explained in footnotes. Reasonable people might disagree with some of his choices of how to handle the data, he says. But even where there’s room for debate, any reasonable changes to his methodology would be small and not alter the broad conclusions, he suggested.
The part of the newspaper’s critique that throws the most doubt on his overall conclusions is its argument that wealth inequality in Britain has risen much less than Mr. Piketty contends. For that, he has sharp words. He says the newspaper’s analysis rests on apples-to-oranges comparisons of past data from tax returns mixed with current data from surveys, which makes the conclusions they reach deeply flawed, and contrary to what a wide range of other studies have found.
“My problem with the FT criticisms is twofold,” he wrote, in a 4,400-word response on his website. “The FT suggests that I made mistakes and errors in my computations, which is simply wrong, as I show below. The corrections proposed by The FT to my series (and with which I disagree) are for the most part relatively minor, and do not affect the long run evolutions and my overall analysis, contrarily to what The FT suggests.”
And those arguments by the newspaper that are not so minor and do undermine his findings, he writes, “are based upon methodological choices that are quite debatable (to say the least).”
Whacko Republican “Conservative Scholar” Ken Blackwell thinks that marriage equality is the cause of the recent mass shootings in Santa Barbara. Yea, I can’t figure it out either. Ignore the war on women and basic misogyny it’s kicked up and blame “Teh GAY!!!!”
Family Research Council senior fellow Ken Blackwell yesterday linked the Isla Vista mass killings to marriage equality laws, which he claimed are destroying the culture. Speaking with FRC president Tony Perkins on “Washington Watch,” Blackwell blamed the shooting on “the crumbling of the moral foundation of the country” and “the attack on natural marriage and the family.”
“When these fundamental institutions are attacked and destroyed and weakened and abandoned, you get what we are now seeing,” Blackwell said, arguing that people who are “blaming the Second Amendment” are “avoiding talking about what is at the root cause of the problem.”
Blackwell has previously described marriage equality advocates as “opponents of natural marriage.”
You remember Joe the Plumber? It wasn’t sufficient he told a grieving father that father’s dead son meant less that Joe’s right to carry whatever 
weapon of death he chose, he topped it with a threat to all politicians.
Samuel Wurzelbacher — better known as Joe the Plumber — likes guns. And he wants everyone to know why.
“Guns are mostly for hunting down politicians who would actively seek to take your freedoms and liberty away from you,” Wurzelbacher wrote on Thursday in a blog post on his website. “Google ‘Hitler, Mao, Kim Jung Il, Castro, Stalin’ just for starters.”
The post was a kind of follow-up to the “open letter” Wurzelbacher published Tuesdayaddressing the parents of the victims of last week’s mass shooting near the University of California, Santa Barbara. Following the shooting, Richard Martinez, whose son Chris was among the victims, blamed “craven, irresponsible politicians” and the National Rifle Association for his son’s death. Wurzelbacher responded by writing that “[a]s harsh as this sounds – your dead kids don’t trump my Constitutional rights.”
In his latest post, Wurzelbacher said his pro-gun arguments also had something to do with Memorial Day.
“I wrote my ‘open letter’ on the eve of Memorial day – a day we honor the fallen heroes that defend and protect our rights,” he wrote. “These men and women that served and paid the ultimate price for our way of life were someone’s dad, mom, brother, sister, or daughter. They made that sacrifice, which guarantees our freedoms because they believe in America. So I’m asking the question: Why are the lives of these brave Americans less important than the victims of Elliot Rodger?”
Wurzelbacher again warned that “left-leaning” politicians and “Marxists” would use Friday’s shooting to “further chip away our rights.
The Oil Industry is doing a job on Louisiana again. I’m afraid there’s no hope for the important ecosystem here.
BP Plc on Wednesday asked Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia to allow the company to avoid making payments to businesses demanding compensation for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill while litigation continues.
The company acted after the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lifted an injunction earlier in the day that had prevented payments being made. Last week, the court had decided not to revisit a decision rejecting BP’s bid to block payments to businesses that could not trace their economic losses to the disaster.
Scalia, who has responsibility for emergency applications arising from the 5th Circuit, can either act on BP’s request himself or refer the matter to the nine-member court as a whole. There is no specific deadline by which the court must act.
In the new court filing, BP’s lawyers say that if the payments are not blocked, “countless awards totaling potentially hundreds of millions of dollars will be irreparably scattered to claimants that suffered no injury traceable to BP’s conduct.”
The appeals court in March voted 2-1 to authorize payments on so-called business economic loss claims, and said the injunction preventing payments should be lifted. BP already had said it would seek Supreme Court review of the ruling.
BP is trying to limit payments over the April 20, 2010, explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and rupture of BP’s Macondo oil well. The disaster killed 11
That’s not all. Our legislature just voted to nullify our popular vote of changes to the composition of Levee Boards because Jindal wants it and the Oil Industry wants it. Again, it’s over the ability of the state to sue these companies for the damage they’ve done and will do down here.
The Louisiana House voted with the oil and gas industry Thursday, supporting a bill that seeks to void a lawsuit filed by a New Orleans area levee board against 97 oil and gas companies.
With the 59-39 House vote, the proposal is one step from passage. The Senate-backed billmust return to the Senate for consideration of changes that solidify the bill’s intent to kill the lawsuit. Gov. Bobby Jindal supports the measure.
The Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East filed a lawsuit against 97 oil and gas companies, alleging their drilling activities damaged Louisiana’s coast and vulnerable wetlands.
Lawsuit supporters say the industry hasn’t sufficiently been held accountable for the damage done by dredging for canals and pipelines. Critics call it an attack on a valuable state industry, a boon for trial lawyers and a lawsuit that the levee board had no authority to file.
The bill by Sen. Bret Allain, R-Franklin, would define which governmental entities can bring legal claims about management of Louisiana’s coastal zones to entities designated in the Coastal Zone Management Act. Levee boards aren’t on the list.
That would offer a legal argument to have the levee board’s lawsuit thrown out. The bill specifies that its provisions “shall be applicable to all claims existing or actions pending.”
Rep. Joel Robideaux, R-Lafayette, who handled the proposal in the House, said it protects industry from “rogue agencies” that file lawsuits without standing to do so.
“They shouldn’t have even gone down this path,” Robideaux said of the levee board.
Rep. Eddie Lambert, R-Gonzales, said a court should decide whether the board had the legal authority to file a lawsuit. Robideaux replied that he wanted to give the courts more information.
“This isn’t about clarifying existing law,” said Rep. John Bel Edwards, D-Amite, who voted against the measure. “The courts know how to read a law and apply it.”
Edwards said if the lawsuit was frivolous and improperly filed, the oil and gas industry wouldn’t be fighting so hard to pass Allain’s bill. He and other opponents of the bill said it sought to immunize the industry from paying for damages they caused.
You can read General Russell Honore’s op ed on this in the NYT here. He was on Maddow last night too. He’s been a tireless advocate of the enviornment down here since he found out how so much damage done by hurricanes recently is due to what the oil and gas industry has done to us. That’s just the side issues compared to what they’ve done directly.
“A final effort to restrict the authority’s power to sue these industries is expected to come Thursday (May 29) before the State House of Representatives, where it has the support of the Republican governor, Bobby Jindal, and legislative allies of oil and gas. The bill has already passed the Senate. The House needs to defeat the bill,” he wrote.
“That won’t assure us that the oil and gas industries will fix the damage they’ve caused to our coast over decades. But it will give the citizens of Louisiana their day in court to stand up and say, ‘We’ve had enough.’ “
The president may be poised to do something about carbon emissions from coal burning plants without congress. It’s about time we take global warming seriously and the damage done to our planet by the extraction and burning of all these fossil fuels.
President Obama will use his executive authority to cut carbon emissions from the nation’s coal-fired power plants by up to 20 percent, according to people familiar with his plans, which will spur the creation of a state cap-and-trade program forcing industry to pay for the carbon pollution it creates.
Mr. Obama will unveil his plans in a new regulation, written by the Environmental Protection Agency, at the White House on Monday. It would be the strongest action ever taken by an American president to tackle climate change and could become one of the defining elements of Mr. Obama’s legacy.
Cutting carbon emissions by 20 percent — a substantial amount — would be the most important step in the administration’s pledged goal to reduce pollution over the next six years and could eventually shut down hundreds of coal-fired power plants across the country. The regulation would have far more impact on the environment than the Keystone pipeline, which many administration officials consider a political sideshow, and is certain to be met with opposition from Republicans who say that Mr. Obama will be using his executive authority as a back door to force through an inflammatory cap-and-trade policy he could not get through Congress.
People familiar with the rule say that it will set a national limit on carbon pollution from coal plants, but that it will allow each state to come up with its own plan to cut emissions based on a menu of options that include adding wind and solar power, energy-efficiency technology and creating or joining state cap-and-trade programs. Cap-and-trade programs are effectively carbon taxes that place a limit on carbon pollution and create markets for buying and selling government-issued pollution permits.
Coal plants are the nation’s largest source of the greenhouse gases that scientists say are the chief cause of global warming.
So that’s it for me today! What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
America has lost its Voice
Posted: January 28, 2014 Filed under: just because 28 CommentsI doubt I can actually count how many times I strummed my guitar and sang out “If I had a hammer”. The man was a National Treasure and definitely the voice of every hard working American. Then, there’s “This Land” which I swear should be this country’s national anthem.
Pete Seeger, Songwriter and Champion of Folk Music, Dies at 94
Pete Seeger, the singer, folk-song collector and songwriter who spearheaded an American folk revival and spent a long career championing folk music as both a vital heritage and a catalyst for social change, died Monday. He was 94 and lived in Beacon, N.Y.
His death was confirmed by his grandson, Kitama Cahill Jackson, who said he died of natural causes at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.
Mr. Seeger’s career carried him from singing at labor rallies to the Top 10 to college auditoriums to folk festivals, and from a
conviction for contempt of Congress (after defying the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s) to performing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at an inaugural concert for Barack Obama.
For Mr. Seeger, folk music and a sense of community were inseparable, and where he saw a community, he saw the possibility of political action.
Seeger gained fame as a member of The Weavers, the quartet formed in 1948 and had hits such as “Goodnight Irene.”
He continued performing and recording for six decades afterward and was still an activist as recently as October 2011 when he marched in New York City as part of the Occupy Wall Street protests.
He was onstage in January 2009 for a gala Washington concert two days before Barack Obama was inaugurated.
But in the 1950s, his leftist politics got him blacklisted and he was kept off commercial television for more than a decade.
I don’t know quite what to say about the passing of America’s Voice for Social Justice. I can’t even count how many times I’ve sung all his songs and strummed them out on my guitars. His PBS show inspired me in grade school. I think he’s more responsible for my intense activism and sense of social justice than anyone because he always framed with a tune you can sing too and a great sense of love and hope
Here’s a great tribute to the man from Mother Jones in a 2004 article.
Pete Seeger, who lives near Wappingers Falls, has been protesting the Bush administration’s actions in Iraq at these Saturday peace vigils, organized a few months before the invasion—and at dozens of other anti-war events of all sizes around the country—with the passion, if not the vigor, of a person one-fourth his age. Indeed, after an extended period of low-key concentration on local issues, during which Seeger was most visibly absorbed with cleaning up the Hudson River, the grand old lion of the American left has, in his 85th year, again taken to challenging the state of world affairs. This is the latest—and perhaps the last—of his great missions, a crusade with resonant echoes of his work in the eras of the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War.
Last year, Seeger led thousands in song at the New York City arm of the Global March for Peace. The veteran protest songwriter has since rewritten and rerecorded his Vietnam-era broadside, “Bring Them Home,” with three of his musical acolytes, Billy Bragg, Ani DiFranco, and Steve Earle. (“Now we don’t want to fight for oil / Bring ’em home, bring ’em home / Underneath some foreign soil / Bring ’em home, bring ’em home.”) And in late June, as violence in Iraq erupted in anticipation of the formal transfer of authority to an interim Iraqi government, Seeger prepared to lead a performance of antiwar songs at the Clearwater Festival, the annual Hudson River event to raise social, political, and environmental consciousness (and funds) that he and his wife, Toshi, launched 35 years ago.
The effort strikes some of his critics as quixotic, the tragicomic vagary of a clinging, misguided anachronism. A lifelong Marxist blacklisted during the McCarthy era, Seeger has long been an easy target for conservatives. (Seeger’s early group, the Almanac Singers, released an album of songs against American involvement in World War II, but recalled it and replaced it with anti-Axis songs when Hitler attacked the Soviet Union.) Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, Seeger’s little-changed politics have proved vexing even to former fellow travelers, such as Ronald Radosh, a fellow at the Hudson Institute and author of Commies: A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left and the Leftover Left. A red-diaper baby who took banjo lessons from Seeger and organized his first concert at the University of Wisconsin, Radosh says, “I have known Pete for most of my life, and I think he is a national treasure for his contribution to American music culture, for acquainting America with its own indigenous music. But Pete doesn’t understand that this is not the ’60s, and Iraq and the war against terrorism are not the war in Vietnam. He looks at things through his old lens, and that’s more than unfortunate. It’s sort of sad and silly.”
To those he still rallies to dissent and activism, however, Seeger remains an inspiration, the unwavering embodiment of progressive idealism. After all, he has been using music to stand up for the disenfranchised and to mobilize their sympathizers since the days of the original American folk-music revival in the 1930s.
. . . Mr. TAVENNER: The Committee has information obtained in part from the Daily Worker indicating that, over a period of time, especially since December of 1945, you took part in numerous entertainment features. I have before me a photostatic copy of the June 20, 1947, issue of the Daily Worker. In a column entitled “What’s On” appears this advertisement: “Tonight—Bronx, hear Peter Seeger and his guitar, at Allerton Section housewarming.” May I ask you whether or not the Allerton Section was a section of the Communist Party?
Mr. SEEGER: Sir, I refuse to answer that question whether it was a quote from the New York Times or the Vegetarian Journal.
Mr. TAVENNER: I don’t believe there is any more authoritative document in regard to the Communist Party than its official organ, theDaily Worker.
Mr. SCHERER: He hasn’t answered the question, and he merely said he wouldn’t answer whether the article appeared in the New York Times or some other magazine. I ask you to direct the witness to answer the question.
Chairman WALTER: I direct you to answer.
Mr. SEEGER: Sir, the whole line of questioning—
Chairman WALTER: You have only been asked one question, so far.
Mr. SEEGER: I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs. I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked, especially under such compulsion as this. I would be very glad to tell you my life if you want to hear of it.
Mr. TAVENNER: Has the witness declined to answer this specific question?
Chairman WALTER: He said that he is not going to answer any questions, any names or things.
Mr. SCHERER: He was directed to answer the question.
Mr. TAVENNER: I have before me a photostatic copy of the April 30, 1948, issue of the Daily Worker which carries under the same title of “What’s On,” an advertisement of a “May Day Rally: For Peace, Security and Democracy.” The advertisement states: “Are you in a fighting mood? Then attend the May Day rally.” Expert speakers are stated to be slated for the program, and then follows a statement, “Entertainment by Pete Seeger.” At the bottom appears this: “Auspices Essex County Communist Party,” and at the top, “Tonight, Newark, N.J.” Did you lend your talent to the Essex County Communist Party on the occasion indicated by this article from the Daily Worker?
Mr. SEEGER: Mr. Walter, I believe I have already answered this question, and the same answer.
Chairman WALTER: The same answer. In other words, you mean that you decline to answer because of the reasons stated before?
Mr. SEEGER: I gave my answer, sir.
Chairman WALTER: What is your answer?
Mr. SEEGER: You see, sir, I feel—
Chairman WALTER: What is your answer?
Mr. SEEGER: I will tell you what my answer is.
I feel that in my whole life I have never done anything of any conspiratorial nature and I resent very much and very deeply the implication of being called before this Committee that in some way because my opinions may be different from yours, or yours, Mr. Willis, or yours, Mr. Scherer, that I am any less of an American than anybody else. I love my country very deeply, sir.
Chairman WALTER: Why don’t you make a little contribution toward preserving its institutions?
Mr. SEEGER: I feel that my whole life is a contribution. That is why I would like to tell you about it.
Chairman WALTER: I don’t want to hear about it.
Fortunately, we still have his recordings and his legacy to pass forward.
Friday Reads: Orbiting Planet Hillary
Posted: January 24, 2014 Filed under: just because | Tags: David Byrne, Ghost Ship, Hillary Clinton 52 Comments
Good Morning!
I thought I’d start very local with an interesting read by David Byrne who spent his New Year in my neighborhood.
Our neighbor here has a chicken coop in their backyard. The birds wander into our yard from time to time. A rooster crows every morning. There is a satsuma orange tree in the yard. As the man who told us about St. Roch related, his family observed Lent very strictly when he was young. No mid-day meals and no meat the whole time. He imagined that for some that would seem a privation, but for New Orlineans, they’d happily subsist on fish, shrimp, crabs, crawfish and oysters.
What is nice here is that a food place can be considered great and be either a funky joint or a fancy place that demands that men wear suits. Fancy places have no perogative on quality and reputation. The humblest joint can have a citywide reputation for its specialty dish. The restaurant scene has, I read, rebounded and is growing since Katrina. Maybe the gentrification and white-ification of parts of NOLA account for that trend, as many of the new places seem to be along the Magazine Street strip, and they’re more uptown. There are some great Vietnamese places around as well, and folks seems to be developing a taste for pho.
Our group stayed local—we mainly hit the local spots here in Bywater
Meanwhile, on the Texas side of Louisiana, you’re not going to believe this story that’s caused the ACLU to file suit on behalf of a young 
buddhist child.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Louisiana on Wednesday filed a federal lawsuit against Negreet High School in Sabine Parish on behalf of two parents, Scott and Sharon Lane, and their son, “C.C.” The lawsuit claims the school has “a longstanding custom, policy, and practice of promoting and inculcating Christian beliefs,” including the teaching of creationism.
Sixth-grade teacher Rita Roark has told her students that the universe was created by God about 6,000 years ago, and taught that both the Big Bang theory and evolution are false, according to the lawsuit. She told her students that “if evolution was real, it would still be happening: Apes would be turning into humans today.”
One test she gave to students asked: “ISN’T IT AMAZING WHAT THE _____________ HAS MADE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” The correct answer was “Lord,” but C.C. wrote in something else. Roark responded by scolding the boy in front of the entire class.
When informed that C.C. was a Buddhist and therefore didn’t believe in God, Roark allegedly responded, “you’re stupid if you don’t believe in God.”
On another accusation, she allegedly described both Buddhism and Hinduism as “stupid.”
When the outraged parents confronted Sabine Parish Superintendent Sara Ebarb about the incidents, she allegedly told them “this is the Bible belt” and that they “shouldn’t be offended” to “see God here.” Ebarb advised that C.C. should either change his faith or be transferred to another District school where “there are more Asians.”
The parents, “hoping to save him from suffering additional psychological harm,” decided to transfer their son to another school, according to the lawsuit. The school is 25 miles away from their home.
Here’s a story from the Independent that sounds almost like an internet hoax. I’ll just post the title for full effect: Mystery of the Lyubov Orlova: Ghost ship full of cannibal rats ‘could be heading for Britain’. Should rats in the UK be very afraid?
The Lyubov Orlova cruise liner has been drifting across the north Atlantic for the better part of a year, and salvage hunters say there is a strong chance it is heading this way.
Built in Yugoslavia in 1976, the unlucky vessel was abandoned in a Canadian harbour after its owners were embroiled in a debt scandal and failed to pay the crew.
The authorities in Newfoundland tried to sell the hull for scrap – valued at £600,000 – to the Dominican Republic, but cut their losses when it came loose in a storm on the way.
Sending the ship off into international waters, Transport Canada said it was satisfied the Lyubov Orlova “no longer poses a threat to the safety of [Canadian] offshore oil installations, their personnel or the marine environment”.
Experts say the ship, which is likely to still contain hundreds of rats that have been eating each other to survive, must still be out there somewhere because not all of its lifeboat emergency beacons have been set off.
So, The New York Times’ cover of Planet Hillary is the basis of the art work in the post this morning. Here’s the background of that cover.
When we created the cover of this Sunday’s magazine to accompany Amy Chozick’s article — to be published online tomorrow — about Hillary Rodham Clinton’s influence on the various people within her political universe, the immediate idea that came to mind was Clinton’s face embedded on a planet. .
The issue is coming out on Sunday and will be online shortly. However, this article from the NYT on the Obama campaign finance machine 
and team towards Clinton’s potential campaign is quite interesting.
On Thursday, Priorities USA Action, a “super PAC” that played an important role in helping re-elect President Obama, announced that it was formally aligning itself with Mrs. Clinton and would begin raising money to fend off potential opponents for 2016. The group — the largest Democratic super PAC in the country — also named new directors to steer the organization, appointments that will both cement the group’s pro-Clinton tilt and also thrust veterans of Mr. Obama’s political and fund-raising operation into the center of the post-Obama Democratic Party.
The move marks perhaps the earliest start to big-dollar fund-raising in support of a nonincumbent presidential candidate, providing a fund-raising portal for wealthy Clinton supporters eager to help her White House prospects — and to the legions of others eager to ingratiate themselves with Mrs. Clinton and her inner circle.
Jim Messina, Mr. Obama’s campaign manager in 2012, who has forged close ties with many Democratic donors, will serve as co-chairman of the revamped super PAC and an affiliated nonprofit, along with Jennifer M. Granholm, the former governor of Michigan, who is among the most persistent voices calling for Mrs. Clinton to enter the 2016 race.
Mr. Messina joins a growing list of Obama veterans aligning themselves with Mrs. Clinton: Jeremy Bird and Mitch Stewart, for example, who led Mr. Obama’s field efforts in 2012, are working closely with Ready for Hillary, a pro-Clinton super PAC that is focused on recruiting small donors and building lists of grass-roots supporters.
Here’s a fun and righteous grand jur outcome. Creepy Dinesh D’Souza has been indicted on federal campaign fraud charges.
Conservative filmmaker and author Dinesh D’Souza was indicted in federal court on Thursday for allegedly arranging for $20,000 worth of campaign contributions — far above legal limits, Reuters reported.
The indictment did not name the candidate benefitting from the donations, but the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) accused D’Souza of reimbursing others in August 2012 for making the donations in his name, enabling for them to be falsely reported to the Federal Elections Commission (FEC). Taken together, the charges carry possible penalties of up to seven years in prison.
In 2012, D’Souza campaigned on behalf of Republican Wendy Long in her unsuccessful bid to unseat Sen. Kristen Gillibrand (D). Federal law prohibits individuals from donating more than $2,500 to a candidate in either a primary or general election campaign.
“Trying to influence elections through bogus campaign contributions is a serious crime,” Assistant Director-In-Charge George Venizelossaid in a statement. “Today, Mr. D’Souza finds himself on the wrong side of the law. The Federal Election Campaign Act was written to limit the influence of money in elections; the FBI is fiercely committed to enforcing those laws to maintain the integrity of our democratic process.”
And, for my Republican Asshat of the day … I chose Scott Walker who lauded a sex offender in his State of the State address on Wednesday as a sign of a great economy.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) blamed a lack of background research after it was revealed that one of the people he lauded as a symbol of his administration’s success is a registered sex offender with three drunk-driving convictions, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported.
“They did not do a full scale background check, which is why (he) slipped through,” Walker said of 32-year-old Christopher Barber, who was photographed being applauded by Walker during his State of the State address on Wednesday. “Obviously, we would never had this person up if that was the case.”
Barber, who currently has a seasonal welding job for the snowblower and mower manufacturer Ariens, has had his probation revoked for two separate convictions, including a 2005 conviction on third-degree sexual assault charges. He has also been convicted of forgery, battery and drunk driving. His last drunk-driving conviction was in 2011. On Wednesday he joined a group of people standing onstage near Walker as the governor praised them for being able to find work during his tenure as governor.
“Each of these people were looking for a job, or a better opportunity, over the past three years,” Walker said. “They represent the people and the families behind the numbers. These are the faces of an improving economy in our state. Wisconsin is going back to work.”
Yup, sex offenders for Walker. You heard it here first.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Thursday Reads: Snowden Saga Update
Posted: January 23, 2014 Filed under: just because 99 Comments
Good Morning!!
I woke up this morning to something I haven’t seen in a very long time–bright sunshine! I sure hope it lasts. It’s only 7 degrees outside, but the sun makes the cold a little more bearable. I see that those of you who live down South are getting more wintry weather–what a strange winter this has been!
There has been quite a bit of national security/spying news over the past week. Over the weekend, Republican Reps. Mike Rogers (MI) and Mike McCaul (TX) offered Snowden a golden opportunity for more publicity by suggesting that he might be some sort of Russian intelligence asset. Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and McCaul is Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security. From ABC News:
“I don’t think Mr. Snowden woke up one day and had the wherewithal to do this all by himself,” McCaul, R-Texas, said on the ABC News Sunday morning program. “I think he was helped by others.
“To say definitively I can’t answer that, but I personally believe that he was cultivated by a foreign power to do what he did. Again, I can’t give a definitive statement on that, but I think given all the evidence I know Mike Rogers has access to, that I’ve seen, that I don’t think he was acting alone,” he added.
McCaul’s comments were in response to a statement issued by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., in an earlier interview, who said, “I believe there’s a reason he ended up in the hands and the loving arms of an FSB [Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation] agent in Moscow. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.”
Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein tried to play down these suggestions by Rogers and McCaul. The WaPo reports:
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on Sunday downplayed suggestions that Russia may have prompted Edward Snowden to steal spy information but said a connection is possible.
Asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” whether the former National Security Agency contractor may have had help from the Russians, Feinstein said: “He may well have. We don’t know at this stage.”
Still she was attacked by the Greenworld cultists for even saying that much. Of course anything is possible, but as Eric Schitt and David Sanger wrote in the NYT on Sunday night,
…[T]here has been no public indication that the F.B.I.’s investigation of Mr. Snowden’s actions, bolstered by separate “damage assessment” investigations at the N.S.A. and the Pentagon, has uncovered evidence that Mr. Snowden received help from a foreign intelligence service. A senior F.B.I. official said on Sunday that it was still the bureau’s conclusion that Mr. Snowden acted alone.
I have to agree with the ACLU’s Ben Wizner (quoted in the NYT article) that the accusations from McCaul and Rogers are “silly.”
Even the eminent Jane Mayer of The New Yorker was trundled out to defend Snowden’s honor: Snowden Calls Russian Spy Story “Absurd” In Exclusive Interview. Oddly, Mayer did not ask Snowden if he stayed in the Russian Consulate in Hong Kong as was reported by Russian newspaper Kommersant. From the WaPo, Aug. 26, 2013:
Before American fugitive Edward Snowden arrived in Moscow in June — an arrival that Russian officials have said caught them by surprise — he spent several days living at the Russian Consulate in Hong Kong, a Moscow newspaper reported Monday.
The article in Kommersant, based on accounts from several unnamed sources, did not state clearly when Snowden decided to seek Russian help in leaving Hong Kong, where he was in hiding to evade arrest by U.S. authorities on charges that he leaked top-secret documents about U.S. surveillance programs….
Kommersant reported Monday that Snowden purchased a ticket June 21 to travel on Aeroflot, Russia’s national airline, from Hong Kong to Havana, through Moscow. He planned to fly from Havana to Ecuador or some other Latin American country.
That same day, he celebrated his 30th birthday at the Russian Consulate in Hong Kong, the paper said — although several days earlier he had had an anticipatory birthday pizza with his lawyers at a private house.
Although she noted the report in her article, she chose to ask Ben Wizner about it instead. But how would he know for sure? What Mayer apparently forgot or didn’t know is that Russian President Vladimir Putin himself admitted that Snowden had contacts with Russia while in Hong Kong. Isn’t it funny how the mainstream media just manages to forget events that distract from their chosen narratives? Simoom of Little Green Footballs tried to help Mayer by posting the video of Putin discussing Russia’s contacts with Snowden.
Here’s Simmoom’s transcription (begins at ~1:50):
PUTIN: “I’m going to honestly tell you something I never said before, though I’ve hinted, but I haven’t said it. Snowden first met with our diplomats while in Hong Kong. I was told about it and that he was an intelligence agency employee. ‘What does he want?’ I asked. The answer was that he fought for freedom of information. Fought with illegal activities in the US and violations of international law. I said, ‘tell him that if he wants to stay in Russia he has to stop any work that damages Russia / US relations. We are not an NGO, we have national interests, and we have no intention of damaging Russian / American relations’. And he said, ‘no, I’m a human rights activist and I urge you to join my cause.” I said, ‘no, we aren’t joining his cause. If he wants to fight, let him fight on his own.’ So he just walked out and that’s it.”
Isn’t it fascinating how the mainstream media just manages to forget events that distract from their chosen narratives?
Personally, I think it is much more likely that Snowden was encouraged to steal the files and later go to Russia by Wikileaks. As I wrote in a post last July. hacker Jacob Applebaum, of the Tor Project, who is closely associated with Julian Assange of Wikileaks and Laura Poitras, the only other person besides Glenn Greenwald who has the full cash of Snowden documents actually met with and interviewed Edward Snowden in Hawaii before he left for Hong Kong.
This is stunning news, because Applebaum’s name has never been mentioned in connection with the Snowden story until now, although he (Applebaum) has been very visible on Twitter defending Snowden and hyping Greenwald’s articles….
Shortly before he became a household name around the world as a whistleblower, Edward Snowden answered a comprehensive list of questions. They originated from Jacob Appelbaum, 30, a developer of encryption and security software. Appelbaum provides training to international human rights groups and journalists on how to use the Internet anonymously.
Appelbaum first became more broadly known to the public after he spoke on behalf of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at a hacker conference in New York in 2010. Together with Assange and other co-authors, Appelbaum recently released a compilation of interviews in book form under the title “Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet.”
Applebaum explains how he got involved.
“In mid-May, documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras contacted me,” Appelbaum said. “She told me she was in contact with a possible anonymous National Security Agency (NSA) source who had agreed to be interviewed by her.”
“She was in the process of putting questions together and thought that asking some specific technical questions was an important part of the source verification process. One of the goals was to determine whether we were really dealing with an NSA whistleblower. I had deep concerns of COINTELPRO-style entrapment. We sent our securely encrypted questions to our source. I had no knowledge of Edward Snowden’s identity before he was revealed to the world in Hong Kong. He also didn’t know who I was. I expected that when the anonymity was removed, we would find a man in his sixties.”
Please note the timeline: Poitras says Snowden contacted her in January, and Greenwald says he began working with Poitras and Snowden in February. Poitras also contacted Barton Gellman of the Washington Post in February–apparently without Greenwald’s knowlege. At some point Snowden was working for NSA as a Dell contractor, but he quit this job in order to get one at Booz Allen, where he would have access to more top secret information about U.S. spy facilities around the world. He took the job with Booz Allen sometime in March and went to a training course back in the U.S. that lasted a couple of months. According to Booz Allen, Snowden was employed by them for less than three months and was only on the job in Hawaii for about three weeks, during which time he stole four laptops full of classified documents.
There’s no doubt this operation was premeditated; Snowden admitted that in an interview with the South China Morning Post. The only real questions are whether it was initiated or aided by Julian Assange and Wikileaks and whether Jacob Applebaum aided Snowden in hacking into NSA computers.
I haven’t seen anything so far to change my mind about Wikileaks being involved in the Snowden operation from the beginning. I think it’s pretty clear that they are the ones who steered Snowden to Russia–after all, they paid for his travel and living expenses. Perhaps Snowden himself didn’t even know he would be stuck in Russia for the duration.
But this entire argument about how Snowden ended up in Russia is a huge distraction from another important question: Why haven’t there been any truly startling revelations in the material that has been released so far from the vast number of files that Snowden supposedly stole? So far we have been told very little that is new about domestic spying; the majority of the stories published from the Snowden material have focused on NSA foreign intelligence gathering, which–whether you approve of it or not–is the main function of NSA.
Since Greenwald signed on to form a brand new media operation with Ebay/Paypal billionaire Pierre Omidyar, more bloggers have begun to ask questions about why Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras are seemingly hoarding the Snowden Material. For example, Cryptome reported recently that only about 1% of the files reported to have been stolen has been published. They argue that once the files were liberated from the government, they are in the public domain and should be available to everyone. They say that neither the Greenwald team nor Snowden has the right to withhold this information.
Cryptome took to Twitter to accuse the “withholders” of hanging onto material that should be in the public domain in order to make money. They also suggested that Snowden is just a pawn in the Greenwald/Poitras/Omidyar game. I can’t link to any of this because Cryptome regularly deletes their tweets. However, I did post some of the tweets in the Tuesday comment thread:
bostonboomer
Cryptome is beginning to accuse Greenwald of stealing public docs and hoarding them for money.
Those holding the Snowden USG public domain documents are engaged in a conspiracy to steal and sell goods stolen from the public domain.
— Cryptome (@Cryptomeorg) January 21, 2014@OuchoSparks @KevinCarson1 Exactly. Snowden was duped by sleazes: all withholders are engaged in monetizing by theft of public domain goods.
— Cryptome (@Cryptomeorg) January 21, 2014
Twice Snowden USG public domain docs shared non-commercially: on ProPublica and @ioerror at 30c3. Latter, all others sold for media profit.
— Cryptome (@Cryptomeorg) January 21, 2014bostonboomer
January 21, 2014 at 6:03 pm (Edit)
Look at this:@ShrillBrigade Great exaggeration by all sides, a natsec compulsion. Little real information, mostly junk natsec powerpoint sales pitches.
— Cryptome (@Cryptomeorg) January 21, 2014The Snowden drip has not only stopped, it has become a dust bowl of lost dreams of rain.
— Cryptome (@Cryptomeorg) January 21, 2014Paltry Snowden releases are world’s greatest anti-disclosure of classified documents. ~1.7% of 58K files or ~.0057% of 1.7M files. ~0 harm.
— Cryptome (@Cryptomeorg) January 21, 2014
There is so much more I could write about the Snowden saga; but I don’t want to bore you and I’m running out of time space anyway. Sorry this post is going up so late–this spy stuff is difficult to write about!
Now what else is going on out there? Please post your recommended links in the comments, and have a great day!
Monday Reads: Resolved, to fight the Republican Reality Denial Machine
Posted: January 6, 2014 Filed under: just because | Tags: Climate change, global warming, unemployment benefits for the long term unemployed 117 Comments
Good Morning!
The temperatures will be dropping here in New Orleans much like the rest of the east coast. We’re actually going to get into temps that I’ve never experienced here. It may get into the lower 20s and close to the teens. Needless to say, my house was not built with this in mind. My furnace has really been working over time this month. Folks in Australia are experiencing record highs. It helps to think of the airport in Richmond, Australia which hit 110 F on Sunday.
The weather deniers all point to our winter as proof positive that there is no global warming. Well, Duh, folks! Look at Summer 2013 in Austrailia which just moved into summer 2014. The continent has had the hottest weather on record and they’ve experienced horrible wild fires. Their hottest days happen in January! Global warming is about extremes and how the warming shifts patterns around the globe and the poles.
In its annual climate statement report, the bureau highlighted the influence of carbon emissions upon the warming trend, stating: “The Australian region warming is very similar to that seen at the global scale and the past year emphasises that the warming trend continues.
“As summarised in the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report, recent warming trends have been dominated by the influence of increasing greenhouse gases and the enhanced greenhouse effect.”
The bureau said sea surface temperatures were “unusually warm” in 2013, with preliminary data placing the year at 0.51C above the long-term average. Warming oceans pose a serious threat to the Great Barrier Reef, with coral bleaching contributing to the ecosystem losing half of its coral cover in the past 30 years.
Nationally, rainfall was 37mm below the long-term average in 2013, ranking it as the 52nd driest year on record.
In fact, it’s been so hot in Australia they had to put a new color on the map.
As scorching temperatures persist across Australia, the country’s Bureau of Meteorologyadded a new color to its weather forecasting map, extending the range to 54ºC, or 129ºF, from the previous cap of 50ºC, or 122ºF.
The new, deeper purple “dome of heat” swirls above South Australia, indicating temperatures above 50ºC in some areas.
This goes hand-in-hand with increasing republican denial of evolution. Bill Nye the Science guy is headed to Kentucky to debate scientific fact vs magical thinking. He’ll never convince a young earth creationist that he’s wrong, but will the publicity perhaps knock some sense into a few school boards?
Science popularizer and TV personality Bill Nye is headed to Kentucky to advocate for the theory of evolution in a debate against Ken Ham, a Christian proponent of creationism and founder of the Creation Museum. The debate is scheduled for Feb. 4 at the museum in Petersburg, KY., according to an announcement Ham posted on Facebook Thursday and a subsequent press release on the event.
While Ham has declined debate requests from “mocking, strident evolutionists,” the statement from Ham’s creationism group Answers in Genesis describes Nye as “a serious advocate for his beliefs, [whose] opinions carry weight in society.”
I’ve always had problems with evolution and atheism being classified as a belief at all, let alone a strident one. Just because you insist folks believe in untrue things makes you strident? I guess it’s because if you’re into pushing your agenda and proselytizing, you think that’s the goal of every one. How is nonbelief a belief? How is showing people data and facts gleaned through nearly 100 years of scientists using the scientific method and just stating the theories some kind of advocacy?
The Senate is set to take up the extension of long term unemployment benefits. How willing will Republicans be to actually have a discussion on new extensions even though they are low cost compared to the impact on the economy. This shows that Republicans continue to live in a world of ideology that does not respect the actual data that shows they are truly wrong.
At the same time, a number of Republicans – including leaders on the House Ways and Means Committee – continue to question the need to extend the unemployment insurance (UI) benefits at all.
“Despite a dozen extensions, academic research suggests the program has actually hurt, rather than helped, the job creation that the unemployed need most,” Michelle Dimarob, spokesperson for Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.), said Friday in a statement.
“It is time to focus on policies that will actually lead to real economic opportunities for families who are trying to get back on their feet and back into the workplace.”
The comments came as President Obama and congressional Democrats are amplifying their pressure on Boehner to extend the benefits to the long-term unemployed who have exhausted their state help.
An estimated 1.3 million unemployed workers lost those benefits on Dec. 28, after GOP leaders rejected the Democrats’ efforts to extend the help as part of a bipartisan budget deal.
The debate will intensify next week, with Senate Democrats planning a vote on a three-month renewal.
Sponsored by Sens. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Dean Heller (R-Nev.), the proposal would not offset the estimated $6.4 billion in costs, setting the stage for a potential showdown with Boehner and the Republicans if the bill is sent to the House.
Rhode Island and Nevada have the highest unemployment rates in the country, at 9 percent in November, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
We lose money when we do not provide these benefits.
Unemployment benefits are one of the more effective forms of stimulus because the money is badly needed and thus spent right away. The Congressional Budget Office says 200,000 jobs will be lost this year if the benefits are not restored, and this week the damage began.
Big states were obviously the hardest hit, naturally: nearly $65 million came out of the California economy in one week alone, according to the analysis. And of course, states represented by Republicans who oppose the extension each suffered some economic harm. Senator John Cornyn twice blocked a vote on an unemployment insurance extension before the holiday recess, and his home state of Texas lost $21.8 million this week.
Here is a MoJo article about the folks whose unemployment benefits have ended. This quote sums up much of the problem:“When you 
apply for a job at 50 people laugh at you. When you apply for a job at 65 people just look at you like you are crazy.” Read the stories of people behind these statistics.
When Congress reconvenes next week, lawmakers will have to decide whether to extend federal unemployment benefits for about 1.3 million Americans. These emergency benefits—which Congress let expire shortly after Christmas—are part of a 2008 program that allows workers who have been out of the job for more than six months to receive an emergency extension on their payments up to 47 weeks. If Congress fails to renew these benefits, only a quarter of jobless Americans will be receiving any benefits at all, according to the Huffington Post.
As these charts show, the United States is looking at the worst long-term unemployment crisis since soup kitchen lines peaked during the Great Depression. Americans who have been unemployed for more than six months are often hit with major financial and personal hardship. Around 10 percent must file for bankruptcy, more than half report putting off medical care, and many say they have, “lost self-respect while jobless.” But who are these Americans who have lost their benefits?
The Republicans have peculiar notions about evolution, the unemployed, global warming and poor people among other things. What do poor people do all day? Do they really sit around collecting government money while watching their big screen TVS?
Dave Ramsey probably wasn’t expecting this much pushback when he shared a piece by Tim Corley contrasting the habits of the rich with those of the poor. In her response on CNN, Rachel Held Evans noted that Ramsey and Corley mistake correlation for causality when they suggest (without actually proving) that these habits are the cause of a person’s financial situation. (Did it never occur to them that it might be the other way around?)
Ramsey fired back, calling the pushback “immature and ignorant.” This from a guy who just made 20 sweeping assertions about 47 million poor people in the U.S. — all based on a survey of 361 individuals.
That’s right. To come up with his 20 habits, Corley talked to just 233 wealthy people and 128 poor people. Ramsey can talk all he wants about Corley’s research passing the “common-sense smell test,” but it doesn’t pass the “research methodology 101” test.
Included in 2013 Republican insanity is the continuing increase in abortion restrictions. Most fly in the face of science and common sense. They are headed to SCOTUS which is probably the plan of the majority of them.
Twenty-two states enacted 70 measures which sought to tighten abortion laws in 2013, according to Guttmacher’s data. The 70 laws accounted for about half of all (141) the provisions nationwide related to reproductive matters. Only 2011 outpaced 2013 in terms of new abortion restrictions.
Some of the legislative battles over abortion last year played out before the national stage. Most visible was a fight in Texas in which state Sen. Wendy Davis (D) launched amarathon filibuster in June to block a bill designed to implement strict new restrictions. The measure later passed as Republicans launched a renewed effort. Still, Davis’s resistance catapulted her onto the national radar. She’s now a candidate for governor.
In June, the U.S. House passed a 20-week abortion ban that went nowhere in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
The strangest things is all the information we actually have– a lot via the bible–which shows that contraception and abortifacients were pretty plentiful and widely accepted. We do have evidence of biblical birth control.
Let’s start with the hot sex! The Song of Songs is a long, sexy, romantic poem that many are surprised to find in the Bible. It is an unusual text in that it makes no mention of God or law, just a young, unmarried couple chasing, and lusting, after one another and eventually, as I and others believe, consummating their relationship. Over the centuries, religious scholars have argued that the poem is a metaphor for divine love. Still, it is pretty hard to ignore the poem’s graphic descriptions of the longings of the flesh.
For example, in chapter 7 the young man says to young woman: “Thy stature is like to a palm-tree, and thy breasts to clusters of
grapes. … ‘I will climb up into the palm-tree, I will take hold of the branches thereof; and let thy breasts be as clusters of the vine, and the smell of thy countenance like apples; And the roof of thy mouth like the best wine, that glideth down smoothly for my beloved, moving gently the lips of those that are asleep.”
As Athalya Brenner points out in her book “The Intercourse of Knowledge: On Gendering Desire and Sexuality in the Hebrew Bible,” a number of the plants mentioned in the Song of Songs were used by women in the ancient Mediterranean world as contraception and abortifacients. These include pomegranates, wine, myrrh, spikenard and cinnamon. Brenner goes on to argue that since the book makes no mention of procreation as the purpose of sex, the many metaphors comparing sex to “gardens” and “orchards” may also be read as a reference to the forms of birth control that those gardens provided. Indeed, the man in the poem seduces the woman by offering her many of the plants that would have allowed them to have sex without the risk of pregnancy.
Another place in the Bible where contraception may have played a role is in the Book of Esther. This one’s about a beautiful woman named Esther who disguises her Jewish identity to become the queen of the Persian King Ahasuerus. When her cousin discovers an inside plot to kill all Jewish people, Esther intervenes through seduction and eventually saves the Jews.
In an article in the scholarly journal Conservative Judaism, Rabbi Joseph Prouser points out that the King’s potential wives were all required to anoint themselves with myrrh oil and aromatic herbs for one full year – which is a pretty long time for what some read as just a beauty treatment. Myrrh was a known contraceptive at the time, cited in the writings of Soranus of Ephesus, a Greek physician who was an expert on gynecology and midwifery. He explained that when used in a pessary, myrrh oil would work as an abortifacient, preventing the implantation of fertilized eggs. The aromatic herbs may have also had contraceptive properties.
Oh, well, it really isn’t about anything but controlling and limiting every one that isn’t a rich white male, isn’t it?
Here’s one quick news update: Liz Cheney has dropped her bid to be Wyoming’s Senator.
Liz Cheney, whose upstart bid to unseat Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi sparked a round of warfare in the Republican Party and even within her own family, is dropping out of the Senate primary, sources told CNN late Sunday.
Cheney, the eldest daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, began telling associates of her decision over the weekend and could make an official announcement about the race as early as Monday.
Cheney’s surprising decision to jump into the race, an announcement made in a YouTube video last summer, roiled Republican politics in the Wyoming, a state Dick Cheney represented in Congress for five terms before moving up the Republican food chain in Washington.
Enzi was a low-key presence in Washington who was elected in 1996 and, with few blemishes, amassed a conservative voting record in the Senate. He expressed public annoyance at Cheney’s decision to mount a primary challenge. A number of his Senate colleagues quickly rallied to his side and pledged support for his re-election bid.
There was little public polling of the race, but two partisan polls released last year showed Enzi with a wide lead, an assessment mostly shared by GOP insiders watching the race.
There’s some interesting gossip involved that suggests it was more than bad poll numbers.
Two GOP sources said that a problematic recent incident involving a close member of Cheney’s family prompted her to reconsider the race, among other factors.
Maybe she decided screwing her sister and her sister’s family over wasn’t worth it. Who knows?
So, I thought it might be a good exercise to look at some New Year’s Resolutions of people that I admire very much. First, here’s the 1942 resolutions of Woody Guthrie.
You can see resolutions of Jonathan Swift, Susan Sontag, and Marilyn Monroe too. Here’s one of my favorites of Sontag from 1972.
Kindness, kindness, kindness.
I want to make a New Year’s prayer, not a resolution. I’m praying for courage.
This comes from Marilyn’s list made in 1955.
l — keep looking around me — only much more so —observing — but not only myself but others and everything — take things (it) for what they (it’s) are worth
y — must make strong effort to work on current problems and phobias that out of my past has arisen — making much much much more more more more more effort in my analisis. And be there always on time — no excuses for being ever late.
w — if possible — take at least one class at university — in literature –
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
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