Postcards from Ledge

Posted: September 1, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 elections, 2012 presidential campaign, just because, Mitt Romney, New Orleans | Tags: , , , , | 41 Comments

Isaac was not Katrina in many ways.  That is not to say that getting through the past and next few days has not and will not be challenging.  I did not evacuate so I was home when the ceiling started dripping in the bathroom and the hall. I was safe in a motel in Lake Charles during Katrina with Honey (who died 9 months after Katrina), Karma (as you know she died two mornings ago in the last of Isaac’s rain bands) and Miles (who is still hogging all the breeze from the crack in my bedroom window, undoubtedly).  I am sitting at Coop’s–once more–trying to charge up the phone and borrow the internet.  I did this a lot 7 years ago. There are no clean up workers eating here this time.  There are a bunch of weary New Orleanians and a lot of gay guys celebrating Southern Decadence that are completely oblivious to the shortage of electricity, food, gas, and patience outside these precious 12 blocks.

The National Guard has been trying to hand out MRES, ice, and water at the Navy station on my block that’s no longer federal property but state.  It was dark during the storm and there were no black berets staring me down.   I am tired and the noise is every where.  Post-Katrina, everything was deathly silent.  I go home to listen to endless generator noise.  I stay in the quarter and it’s just one big party that’s unaware of anything going on outside the bubble.  That kind’ve reminds me of the RNC and the statue that the Republicans have given the electorate this year.

I’m supposed to dial 211 and get help from the endless number of not yet open non profits.  Yup, that’s his idea of hurricane recovery help.  See if any of the nonprofits that were taken down right along with you can get their acts together fast enough and their volunteers back in the office to help any one else that’s also taking it on the chin right now.  I wish I had a second house to go to.  It would be nice if the biggest decision I had was chosing a Cadillac out of the car elevator to match my Guccis daily or stressing over my horse not doing well in its dancy showy thing at the Olympics.  The rest of us just have to rely on the scraps that are thrown us.  Oh, and my guess is that the Romneys don’t give to the Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity, the Salvation Army, etc. or any of the myriad of charities that do help with disasters. Probably yet one of the many reasons they won’t show us their taxes.  The “you people” just don’t need to know.  They should dial for charity dollars.

Did I mention that Romney wants to privatize FEMA?  The Federal Levees worked.  The City did much better this time out.  Every government agency learned from Katrina and functioned well this time.  (That includes the NOPD which is not high on my respect list as you recall.)  The only group of people that have been a complete screw up this time is our damned privatized electric company.  You can listen into call in shows and read the comments on the media outlets here to get the story.  That’s the response Romney wants to give us.  Call the charities and hope a for profit organization won’t cut costs and people so much that you won’t be without for weeks.

Embracing a radical anti-government ideology from the most extreme elements of the Tea Party, Romney said that the victims in Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Massachusetts, and other communities hit by tornadoes and flooding should not receive governmental assistance. He argued it is “simply immoral” for there to be deficit spending that could harm future generations:

Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better. […] We cannot — we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids. It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids, knowing full well that we’ll all be dead and gone before it’s paid off. It makes no sense at all.

I would like to argue that it is simply immoral to keep giving folks tax breaks to plant their money in the Caymans and to build the economy in other countries and to undermine the wages and earnings of US workers.  It is also immoral to hide your tax returns from the people you want to hire you to “lead” them.

I was thinking that I really have gone from disbelief at what Romney has said and done in the past to a stone cold dislike of the man.

The day Karma died I could not find the SPCA or any one to help me.  I tried to bury her and the water filled up the hole in the back yard as soon as I pushed the shovel in the ground.  I drove first to the police station who told me to call “animal control” or the SPCA.  I drove over there and left her in a blanket and bucket in front of their door.  My sweet companion of over 15 years was left on the SPCA doorstep with the hope they’d cremate her properly.  They are still not open.

Go home and dial 211 my ass.  The man should be sent to live in elsewhere, not elected President.

Lazy Sunday Open Thread: Talking Kat Head Edition

Posted: July 22, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: New Orleans, open thread | Tags: , , , , | 20 Comments

…because, frankly, I’m tired of the current news chatter ….

Here’s what’s up in New Orleans Today:

They brought down the House at Grand Palace Hotel today … you could really feel it

Trombone Shorty played at my big 5-0 party at Vaughn’s right after Katrina.  He’s doing really well, with that funky Nawlins, jazzy, brassy sound …

We’ve had epic rain and now we learn we’re coming back in population.  There goes the parking spot in front of the kathouse again!  You needed a pirogue to navigate the French Quarter two days ago. I stupidly went out to get groceries and got blocked at nearly every turn.

NBC says “New Orleans tops fastest growing cities in America list”.  Finally, we’re at number one for something other than our murder rate.  BTW, Ralph, Austin is .   …

1. New Orleans, Louisiana

  •  Change in population: 4.9 percent
  •  Population in July of 2011: 360,740
  •  Population in April 2010: 343,829
  •  Average annual city unemployment (2011): 8.8 percent
  •  Increase in jobs (2010 to 2011): 6,900 (1.3 percent)

Continuing to rebound from the effects of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans had the highest population growth in the country for any city over the size of 100,000. The city’s rate of population growth (4.9 percent) is more than six times the national average of 0.73 percent. The Big Easy’s MSA (New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner) had significant growth in information jobs and education and health services, at 7 percent and 3.6 percent respectively. Despite this growth, the city’s population is at just 80 percent of pre-Katrina levels.

Here’s something to cool you off for dinner tonight!  It’s the recipe for Brennan’s Bananas Foster.

Bananas Foster
(Serves 4)

  • 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/4 cup banana liqueur
  • 1/4 cup dark rum
  • 4 scoops vanilla ice cream
  • 4 bananas, cut in half, lengthwise, then halved

Combine the butter, sugar and cinnamon in a flambé pan or skillet. Place the pan over low heat on an alcohol burner or on top of the stove, and cook, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Stir in the banana liqueur, then place the bananas in the pan. When the banana sections soften and begin to brown, carefully add the rum. Continue to cook the sauce until the rum is hot, then tip the pan slightly to ignite the rum. When the flames subside, lift the bananas out of the pan and place four pieces over each portion of ice cream. Generously spoon warm sauce over the top of the ice cream and serve immediately.

Just in case you’re not feeling it yet, I’m going to plug a reality show that’s got me completely addicted right now: Cajun Justice.  I just grab a 6 pack of Abita, some boiled crawfish and corn, and watch our crazy neighbors go at it.  Where else but south of the I-10 cher, aieyyyyeee?

So, what’s up in your neck of the bayou woods?

Monday Reads

Posted: July 9, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 47 Comments

Good Morning!

There are so many ways that my city and state are being used as an incubator for unholy ideas that it’s not even funny.  I’ve got a series of rather depressing links this morning.  However, I think we should all think about the common thread here.  Didn’t many of our immigrant ancestors come here hoping that this new country would not fall prey to an aristocratic group of assholes who inherit stuff just because of the privilege of birth? Do these news items strike you as something you’d read about in a country founded on the idea of government by the people instead of government over the people? Let’s begin our search for the ways plutocracy is changing our lives.

Our public school system in New Orleans has been decimated and turned into one big charter school education experiment.  Part of the “detritus” that the state washed out with the Katrina waters were our teachers. They were just some of the folks that were thrown over when a natural disaster was turned into a way to turn a purple state red.   They’re getting their day in court.  Will they really get Justice? A recent court decision has given many fired teachers some back pay. But, justice runs deeper than a few dollars to teachers.  What about the children set adrift in libertarian, for profit incubators that cherry pick the best and leave the rest far behind?

But aside from recompense for “disaster leave,” New Orleans public schools will remain adrift in a flood of drastic reforms. After Katrina, the city became an incubator for non-unionized charter schoolsand “experimental” restructuring plans.

But rather than “saving” New Orleans schools from failure, the overhaul has aggravated divides between black and white, wealthy and poor, by pushing schools to operate more like corporations.

Maynard Sanders at the Bankstreet College of Education wrote last year about the New Orleans Recovery School District as a case study in de facto segregation between “selective schools” and those serving poor students of color. Often, he added, the charters that many have hailed as an emblem of progress “are run like private schools by self-appointed boards without any parent, community, or teacher representation… There is no transparency in charter school operations, finances or hiring while they receive public money and operate rent free in public school buildings.”

One major plank of the agenda for restructuring New Orleans schools–which reflects national reform trends promoted by the Obama administration–is “decentralization” of the system and the expansion of “choice” of schools across districts. But critics say a decentralized school system can become dangerously fractured, and choice is constrained by feudal social barriers.

Here’s proof that it’s just not enough to elect any woman to an office.  Jan Brewer—the throwback governor of Arizona–is at it again.  She’s asking SCOTUS to overturn a ruling allowing benefits for same sex partners.  Republicans are routinely asking courts to remove rights from citizens and assign them a lesser-than status.

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (R) has requested that the Supreme Court overturn a ruling that allows state employees to keep their same-sex partners on their benefits, including health insurance.

Brewer filed a petition for a writ of certiorari on July 2, requesting that the high court overturn the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit’s September 2011 ruling in Diaz vs. Brewer. The pushback comes three months after the Ninth Circuit denied a request by Arizona state lawyers to re-hear the case with an 11-judge panel.

Last September, the Ninth Circuit’s ruling prevented Arizona from implementing a law that would have barred state employees’ same-sex partners from remaining on their health plans. The ruling affirmed a lower court’s decision to place a preliminary injunction on the law.

Black Americans will likely suffer long term consequences for the financial damage caused by the subprime crisis. Think of all the billions of dollars spent on bailing out banks while huge numbers of families have lost the hope of ever owning their own home again.  Will property ownership once again be the province of the aristocrats?

For blacks, the picture since the recession has been particularly grim. They disproportionately held subprime mortgages during the housing boom and are facing foreclosure in outsize numbers. That is raising fears among consumer advocates, academics and federal regulators that the credit scores of black Americans have been systematically damaged, haunting their financial futures.

The private companies that calculate credit scores say they do not consider race in their formulas. Lenders also say it is not a factor when deciding who qualifies for a loan; federal laws prohibit the practice. Still, studies have shown a persistent gap between the credit scores of white and black Americans, and many worry that it is only getting wider.

The impact of strict voter ID laws pushed by ALEC and Republicans is having an impact and could block thousands from voting. It’s all about vote suppression and electing Romney. No better way to ensure your interests are enshrined in law than through disenfranchisement of minorities, the elderly, and the poor, is there?

The numbers suggest that the legitimate votes rejected by the laws are far more numerous than are the cases of fraud that advocates of the rules say they are trying to prevent. Thousands more votes could be in jeopardy for this November, when more states with larger populations are looking to have similar rules in place.

More than two dozen states have some form of ID requirement, and 11 of those passed new rules over the past two years largely at the urging of Republicans who say they want to prevent fraud.

Democrats and voting rights groups fear that ID laws could suppress votes among people who may not typically have a driver’s license, and disproportionately affect the elderly, poor and minorities. While the number of votes is a small percentage of the overall total, they have the potential to sway a close election. Remember that the 2000 presidential race was decided by a 537-vote margin in Florida.

A Republican leader in Pennsylvania said recently that the state’s new ID law would allow Romney to win the state over President Barack Obama.

Supporters of the laws cite anecdotal cases of fraud as a reason that states need to do more to secure elections, but fraud appears to be rare. As part of its effort to build support for voter ID laws, the Republican National Lawyers Association last year published a report that identified some 400 election fraud prosecutions over a decade across the entire country. That’s not even one per state per year.

ID laws would not have prevented many of those cases because they involved vote-buying schemes in local elections or people who falsified voter registrations.

Susie takes on George Will at C&L.  He evidently thinks all this heat is just typical balmy summer weather and wants us all to get over it.  Yes, we’re all just whining about the weather and it’s all in our little heads.  Read her classy zing!

This is how broken, distorted and hackish our public political dialogue has become: George Will, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist (his record for coasting on that one accomplishment continues), actually responds to concerns about the national’s killer heat wave with “it’s summer, get over it!”

Not only is this disingenuous, it’s an outright lie. Will knows better (for one thing, in his world, “summer” is a verb, not a noun) but just doesn’t care. His job is to rubber stamp whatever comes out of the right-wing noise machine, no matter how absurd, far-fetched, or (most importantly) harmful. George Will gets his money no matter what, and that’s all he cares about …

Meanwhile, Romney donors are proving as enlightened as ever.  Where else but in the Hamptons?

A money manager in a green Jeep said it was time for Romney to “up his game and be more reactive.” So far, said the donor (who would not give his name because he said it would hurt his business), Romney has had a “very timid offense.”

A New York City donor a few cars back, who also would not give her name, said Romney needed to do a better job connecting. “I don’t think the common person is getting it,” she said from the passenger seat of a Range Rover stamped with East Hampton beach permits. “Nobody understands why Obama is hurting them.

“We’ve got the message,” she added. “But my college kid, the baby sitters, the nails ladies — everybody who’s got the right to vote — they don’t understand what’s going on. I just think if you’re lower income — one, you’re not as educated, two, they don’t understand how it works, they don’t understand how the systems work, they don’t understand the impact.”

Gee.  I wonder whose child got into the ivies because of legacy slots instead of brains this year?  Look Mavis!  It’s the Upper Class Twit of the Year show! Can they walk along the straight line without falling over? Don’t forget to kick the beggar!

Speaking of Louisiana, here’s Bobby Jindal’s plantation economy at work.

It is time to banish the idea that forced labor and sweatshop exploitation are problems of bygone eras or distant countries. These conditions exist within America’s borders. On June 29, Wal-Mart said it had suspended one of its seafood suppliers in Louisiana for violating its workplace standards. The action came as an advocacy group for foreign guest workers announced that it had uncovered appalling abuses at the company, C. J.’s Seafood, and at a dozen other Wal-Mart suppliers too.

The workers said the company forced them to work 16- to 24-hour days, and 80-hour weeks, at illegally low rates, sometimes locked in the plant, peeling crayfish until their hands felt dead. Some were threatened with beatings. Federal agencies and Wal-Mart are investigating the charges; C. J.’s Seafood did not respond to The Times’s request for comment.

These workers are not unauthorized immigrants toiling off the books. They came here legally under the H-2B program, which grants visas to low-skilled seasonal workers in industries that supposedly cannot find enough Americans to do the job. The program has been dogged by charges of wage abuses, fraud and involuntary servitude, including in investigations by the Government Accountability Office.

New rules protecting workers’ rights were supposed to have taken effect in April, but have been blocked after business owners sued the Department of Labor and a group of senators from both parties shamefully voted to deny the department funding to enforce them.

Under the rules, employers would be barred from confiscating immigration documents and blacklisting workers who complained about working conditions and consulted with unions. Employers would have to try harder to hire Americans and cover migrants’ transportation costs and visa fees. Though the new rules do not go far enough (they should allow workers to change jobs if employers abuse them), they are a crucial step forward.

So, those are my suggestions this morning.  I really didn’t set out to weave this story but rather noticed it evolve as I looked for things.  Doesn’t it look like we’re devolving into a lesser country? What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Monday Reads

Posted: March 19, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: , , , , , , , | 32 Comments

Good Morning!

Lots of things don’t surprise me these days.  That would include the news that Clinton and Obama were more fiscally conservative than either of the Bush presidents or Ronald Reagan or Nixon or Ford.  For that matter, Carter came in third. Once again, evidence shows that Republican memes are lies.  Here’s a list of possible excuses for the Republican binges.

Let me anticipate some of your objections before you make them. (1) Reagan was fighting a war, he jacked up defense spending instead of discretionary spending, and he inherited a recession with inflation that might, well, inflate his numbers. This is all true, but expanding defense was Reagan’s choice, and a dollar spent, on no matter what, is a dollar taxed or borrowed. (2) Bush was fighting a war and battling a recession, too. Yes, but he had neither inflation nor a Great Recession. (3) Don’t play relativity games with me…too much government spending is too much government spending, even if Obama’s predecessors were worse! There is a time for government cuts, but it’s not when you have 9 percent unemployment and your interest rates are below 2%. (4) The language of Obamacare and financial reform are better indicators of big government than federal spending. It’s fair to measure government size by its total involvement in people’s lives, but that deserves a longer post. (5) We should be more concerned about the taxes and spending to come than the spending that has past. But they haven’t happened yet, so they’re not part of the president’s record.

Economix shows us how the recession has decreased the number of people that have health insurance. Some have lost coverage due to job loss. Some have lost insurance because their employers have scaled down benefits.

The share of children and working-age adults who had insurance through an employer fell 10 percentage points during the last recession, according to a study released on Thursday by the Center for Studying Health System Change, a nonpartisan research group in Washington.

From 2007 to 2010, the share of children and working-age adults with employer-sponsored coverage fell  to 53.5 percent from 63.6 percent, according to the study.

The major contributor to the decline was the loss of employment during the downturn, with almost a third of the people younger than 65 living in a family where no one was working, according to the study. The study is based on the center’s 2007 and 2010 Health Tracking Household Surveys.

The surge in unemployment, coupled with the steady deterioration of the number of employers offering coverage and the number of workers signing up for insurance, is causing a “steady erosion” in employer-based coverage, said Chapin White, a senior researcher at the center who is an author of the study.

I wrote a post on Saturday on how  the Obama administration seems to have back pedaled on its birth control coverage mandate for all but strict religious organizations.  It appears that by providing self-insurance, organizations can avoid having private insurers providing the benefit for them.  This would mean many schools, universities and hospitals–large employers of women–could avoid the mandate to provide women’s preventative health care.

Taking a conciliatory tone and asking for a wide range of public comment, the Obama administration announced this afternoon new accommodations on a controversial mandate requiring contraceptive coverage in health care plans.

Coming after a month of continued opposition from the U.S. bishops to the mandate, which was first revised in early February to exempt certain religious organizations, today’s announced changes from the Department of Health and Human Services make a number of concessions, including allowing religious organizations that self-insure to be made exempt.

It appears that the Administration has no problem with religious institutions discriminating against women or persons that don’t hold their specific views.

Romney’s won the Puerto Rican primaries.  While the delegates are apportioned, Romney’s margin of victory will still give him the entire delegation.

Mitt Romney will win Sunday’s Republican presidential primary in Puerto Rico, CNN projects, based on vote results obtained from local party and election officials.

At 8:35 p.m. ET, with about 23% of total ballots accounted for, the former Massachusetts governor had a substantial lead with more than 25,000 votes — or 83% of the vote.

Rick Santorum was a distant second, at 8% with slightly more than 2,500 votes.

The other two candidates, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Rep. Ron Paul, were further behind with 2% and 1% of the vote, respectively.

Speaking at a rally Sunday night in Vernon Hills, Illinois, Romney said that Puerto Rican voters were clear about which of the four candidates “most represent their feelings” — and especially their desire to nominate someone who can bring about a stronger economy and smaller government. He said his party can appeal to Latinos, and win the presidency, with a low-tax, pro-business message.

I’ve been watching this story unfold with absolute horror.  This one has the feel of something that will make the wind change.  Seventeen year old Trayvon Martin was killed by a neighborhood watch “captain” with a police fantasy and a racist mindset.  The more you hear about his killer, the more it will make you wonder about who lives in your neighborhood.

On February 26, 2012, a 17-year-old African-American named Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in Sanford, Florida. The shooter was George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old white man. Zimmerman admits killing Martin, but claims he was acting in self-defense. Three weeks after Martin’s death, no arrests have been made and Zimmerman remains free.

Here is what everyone should know about the case:

1. Zimmerman called the police to report Martin’s “suspicious” behavior, which he described as “just walking around looking about.” Zimmerman was in his car when he saw Martin walking on the street. He called the police and said: “There’s a real suspicious guy. This guy looks like he’s up to no good, on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around looking about… These a**holes always get away” [Orlando Sentinel]

2. Zimmerman pursued Martin against the explicit instructions of the police dispatcher:

Dispatcher: “Are you following him?”
Zimmerman: “Yeah”
Dispatcher: “OK, we don’t need you to do that.”

[Orlando Sentinel]

3. Prior to the release of the 911 tapes, Zimmerman’s father released a statement claiming “[a]t no time did George follow or confront Mr. Martin.” [Sun Sentinel]

4. Zimmerman was carrying a a 9 millimeter handgun. Martin was carrying a bag of Skittles and a can of iced tea. [ABC News]

5. Martin weighed 140 pounds. Zimmerman weighs 250 pounds. [Orlando Sentinel; WDBO]

6. Martin’s English teacher described him as “as an A and B student who majored in cheerfulness.” [Orlando Sentinel]

7. Martin had no criminal record. [New York Times]

8. Zimmerman “was charged in July 2005 with resisting arrest with violence and battery on an officer. The charges appear to have been dropped.” [Huffington Post]

9. Zimmerman called the police 46 times since Jan. 1, 2011. [Miami Herald]

10. According to neighbors, Zimmerman was “fixated on crime and focused on young, black males.” [Miami Herald]

11. Zimmerman “had been the subject of complaints by neighbors in his gated community for aggressive tactics” [Huffington Post]

12. A police officer “corrected” a key witness. “The officer told the witness, a long-time teacher, it was Zimmerman who cried for help, said the witness. ABC News has spoken to the teacher and she confirmed that the officer corrected her when she said she heard the teenager shout for help.” [ABC News]

13. Three witnesses say they heard a boy cry for help before a shot was fired. “Three witnesses contacted by The Miami Herald say they saw or heard the moments before and after the Miami Gardens teenager’s killing. All three said they heard the last howl for help from a despondent boy.” [Miami Herald]

14. The officer in charge of the crime scene also received criticism in 2010 when he initially failed to arrest a lieutenant’s son who was videotaped attacking a homeless black man. [New York Times]

15. The police did not test Zimmerman for drugs or alcohol. A law enforcement expert told ABC that Zimmerman sounds intoxicated on the 911 tapes. Drug and alcohol testing is “standard procedure in most homicide investigations.” [ABC News]

The police down here in New Orleans are considered to be so out of control that the DOJ may be taking over operations shortly.  We also have had several suspicious shootings down here recently. 

New Orleans police officials confirmed Thursday that the 20-year-old man who was fatally shot by a plain-clothed narcotics officer during a drug raid at a Gentilly house a day earlier was unarmed. New Orleans police officer Joshua Colclough, 28, fired a single shot Wednesday evening that killed Wendell Allen, 20. Police officials were guarded in their comments about the shooting Thursday, citing the ongoing investigation.

“We have not been able to yet completely understand what exactly occurred,” Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas said Thursday.

The shooting took place inside a red-brick, two-story home at 2651 Prentiss Ave. in Gentilly. Officers were executing a search warrant at the home following a days-old probe of marijuana dealing. Serpas said officers later found drug paraphernalia and 138 grams of marijuana — about four and a half ounces — inside the residence.

It was the second fatal shooting of a suspect by police within a week in the NOPD’s 3rd District, a relatively sleepy swath of residential neighborhoods that stretch from Lakeview through Gentilly. In last week’s incident, in Mid-City, two officers were badly injured in a gunfight before the alleged gunman, 20-year-old Justin Sipp, was killed by police gunfire.

Here’s another horrifying story from NY.

A trans woman says that when she was arrested for a minor subway violation, NYPD officers belittled her, called her names, asked about her genitals — and kept her chained to a fence for 28 hours. Now she’s suing. And it turns out she’s far from alone.

In her lawsuit, Temmie Breslauer says she was arrested on January 12 in a subway station for illegally using her dad’s discount fare card (only seniors and people with disabilities can get these). She says the arresting officers — the suit names one, Officer Shah — laughed at her. When they took her to the station, a desk sergeant asked her “whether she had a penis or a vagina.” Breslauer explained that she was in transition. Then, instead of putting her with female inmates or in her own room, the department allegedly chose this course of action:

[S]he was fingerprinted, seated on a bench, then painfully chained to a fence wherein, for no apparent reason, her arm was lifted over her head and attached to the fence to make it appear that she was raising her hand in the classroom. She sat there in that position for 28 hours.

She also says officers not only refused to call her “she,” they instead referred to her as “He-She”, “Faggot,” and “Lady GaGa,” and asked her “So you like to suck dick? Or what?” Meanwhile, people arrested for the same minor crime (misdemeanor “theft of services”) she was were calmly processed and allowed to leave. Finally, she was able to go before a judge, who gave her two days of community service. She says the whole ordeal aggravated her existing PTSD and left her sleepless and suicidal.

Makes you wonder what ever happened to honest, decent people, doesn’t it?

So, what’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Monday Reads

Posted: December 12, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: China, Drone Warfare, Foreign Affairs, Iran, morning reads, Pakistan, Russia, Sky Dancing Blog, U.S. Economy, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 24 Comments

Good Morning!

We’ve had some cold gloomy weather down here in New Orleans.  I hope all those bowl game tourists brought their coats. It’s made for a depressing weekend.  It seems like most of the news I’ve been finding matches the weather too.  Another presidential election year is upon us and we’re looking at the Grinch getting the Republican nomination. Soon, all poor children will be required to mine the coal so the Grinch can place them in every one’s stockings. Well, that’s the east coast poor children.  Those poor children in the middle of the country will be fattening up turkeys for the 1 percent to eat.  I’ll bet Mitch can make a $10,000 bet on which of the kids will have it worse!

First up is an interesting read from the Business Insider that once again shoots down the meme that the rich create jobs.  There are so many economic fairy tales around these days it’s hard to know which one to shoot down next. The bottom line is pretty much something we’ve talked about for some time.  If you build it and no one comes, you don’t create anything but one more bankruptcy.  It’s the consumer demand that creates economic growth.

The most important reason the theory that “rich people create the jobs” is absurd, argues Nick Hanauer, the founder of online advertising company aQuantive, which Microsoft bought for $6.4 billion, is that rich people do not create jobs, even if they found and build companies that eventually employ thousands of people.

What creates the jobs, Hanauer astutely observes, is the company’s customers.

The company’s customers create demand for the company’s products, which, in turn, creates the need for the employees to produce, sell, and service those products. If those customers go broke, the demand for the company’s products will collapse. And the jobs will disappear, regardless of what the entrepreneur does.

That’s actually some good common sense but it’s backed up by economic theory.  Supply without demand just rots in the fields and molds in the warehouse.  Which brings me to Paul Krugman who says it’s time to call this economic situation a depression.  That’s also something we’ve bandied about here.  I’d say skydancers are pretty prescient, wouldn’t you?

It’s time to start calling the current situation what it is: a depression. True, it’s not a full replay of the Great Depression, but that’s cold comfort. Unemployment in both America and Europe remains disastrously high. Leaders and institutions are increasingly discredited. And democratic values are under siege.

On that last point, I am not being alarmist. On the political as on the economic front it’s important not to fall into the “not as bad as” trap. High unemployment isn’t O.K. just because it hasn’t hit 1933 levels; ominous political trends shouldn’t be dismissed just because there’s no Hitler in sight.

Krugman takes the rest of the column outlining some of the abysmal politics and economics in Europe.  I just keep checking the calendar to see if we some how time tripped back to the 1930s and some how forget what we learned the last time out.  Looking at things from a war build-up point a view, there’s this link to “Obama Raises the Military Stakes: Confrontation on the Borders with China and Russia” from Global Research. This is how some leftwing thinkers see the latest in US outreach in Asia.

November 2011 is a moment of great historical import: Obama declared two major policy positions, both having tremendous strategic consequences affecting competing world powers.

Obama pronounced a policy of military encirclement of China based on stationing a maritime and aerial armada facing the Chinese coast – an overt policy designed to weaken and disrupt China ’s access to raw materials and commercial and financial ties in Asia . Obama’s declaration that Asia is the priority region for US military expansion, base-building and economic alliances was directed against China , challenging Beijing in its own backyard. Obama’s iron fist policy statement, addressed to the Australian Parliament, was crystal clear in defining US imperial goals.

“Our enduring interests in the region [Asia Pacific] demands our enduring presence in this region … The United States is a Pacific power and we are here to stay … As we end today’s wars [i.e. the defeats and retreats from Iraq and Afghanistan]… I have directed my national security team to make our presence and missions in the Asia Pacific a top priority … As a result, reduction in US defense spending will not … come at the expense of the Asia Pacific” (CNN.com, Nov. 16, 2011).

The precise nature of what Obama called our “presence and mission” was underlined by the new military agreement with Australia to dispatch warships, warplanes and 2500 marines to the northern most city of Australia ( Darwin ) directed at China . Secretary of State Clinton has spent the better part of 2011 making highly provocative overtures to Asian countries that have maritime border conflicts with China . Clinton has forcibly injected the US into these disputes, encouraging and exacerbating the demands of Vietnam , Philippines , and Brunei in the South China Sea . Even more seriously, Washington is bolstering its military ties and sales with Japan , Taiwan , Singapore and South Korea , as well as increasing the presence of battleships, nuclear submarines and over flights of war planes along China ’s coastal waters. In line with the policy of military encirclement and provocation, the Obama-Clinton regime is promoting Asian multi-lateral trade agreements that exclude China and privilege US multi-national corporations, bankers and exporters, dubbed the “Trans-Pacific Partnership”. It currently includes mostly smaller countries, but Obama has hopes of enticing Japan and Canada to join …

Obama’s presence at the APEC meeting of East Asian leader and his visit to Indonesia in November 2011 all revolve around efforts to secure US hegemony. Obama-Clinton hope to counter the relative decline of US economic links in the face of the geometrical growth of trade and investment ties between East Asia and China .

Pakistan is threatening to shoot down all US drones. Tis the season to be jolly!!!

According to the new Pakistani defense policy, “Any object entering into our air space, including U.S. drones, will be treated as hostile and be shot down,” a senior Pakistani military official told NBC News.

The policy change comes just weeks after a deadly NATO attack on Pakistani military checkpoints accidentally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, prompting Pakistani officials to order all U.S. personnel out of a remote airfield in Pakistan

I wonder if people in North Dakota have the same option?  Here’s the Daily Mail headline on your Daily Moment of Orwell: Local cops using Predator drones to spy on Americans in their own backyards.

One of the only confirmed uses of predator drones by local law enforcement came in June when a sheriff near Grand Forks, North Dakota, went looking for six stolen cattle.

When he arrived at the farm of Rodney Brossart, he was threatened by three men with guns and forced to retreat.

The Brossarts were known for being armed, anti-government separatists. So Sheriff Kelly Janke, who patrols a county of just 3,000 people, called in a Predator drone to look out over the 3,000-acre farm where the family was armed with rifles and shotguns.

With the help of a drone, summoned from nearby Grand Forks Air Force Base where it was patrolling the US-Candida border, the sheriff was able to watch the movements of everyone on the farm from a handheld device that picked up the aircraft’s video footage.

He and his deputies waited until they could see the Brossarts put down their weapons. Then they stormed the compound and arrested Rodney Brossart, his daughter and his three sons on a total of 11 felony charges. No shots were fired.

And he recovered the cattle, valued at $6,000.

The sheriff says that might not have been possible without the intelligence from the Predators.

‘We don’t have to go in guns blazing. We can take our time and methodically plan out what our approach should be,’ Sheriff Janke told the Times.

All of the surveillance occurred without a search warrant because the Supreme Court has long ruled that anything visible from the air, even if it’s on private property, can be subject to police spying.

Back to the Grinch that’s stealing Willard’s inevitability.

The NBC News-Marist polls showed Gingrich leading Romney in South Carolina by 42 percent to 23 percent. An October poll by the same organizations showed Gingrich at 7 percent in the Palmetto State. In Florida, Gingrich leads Romney 44 percent to 29 percent. There Gingrich has gained 38 percentage points since October.

The rapid movement highlights the remarkable rise of Gingrich as the caucuses and primaries near. Republican voters have shifted allegiances repeatedly this year and a number of state polls have shown that they are not firmly locked in behind any candidate at this point.

In New Hampshire on Sunday, Romney picked up the endorsement of Manchester Mayor Ted Gastas. But he was the target of a scathing editorial in the Union Leader, which earlier endorsed Gingrich. The headline read “Romney’s desperate hours.”

January’s coming and sooner or later, some of these folks are going to run out of money.  There seems to be quite a few irrelevant candidates in the race right now.  Maybe super Jeb is waiting in the wings? So here’s a good way we now MIttens is tres desperate.  Here’s the TPM headline: Romney Presses Ann Coulter Into Surrogate Duty.

Turn on the radio here and you’re going to get a taste of how hard Mitt Romney is working to stamp out Newt Gingrich’s support with conservatives.

In a new radio ad launched by the Romney campaign in Iowa last week, Romney turns to conservative fire-breather Ann Coulter to make the case that he’s the most electable candidate in the Republican race. Having made a living off saying things that no politician would likely wish to be closely associated with, it’s an interesting choice — and a sign that Romney is going all out to cast himself as the more pure conservative choice to Gingrich.

Coulter endorsed Romney a month ago (after dissing him before that) and the Romney ad grabs a clip of her talking up her candidate on Fox and Friends in November.

Here’s a ghost of nightmares past.  Noriega has been extradited to Panama for trial. The link goes to a BBC TV report.

The former leader of Panama, General Manuel Noriega, has returned to his home country 22 years after being forcibly removed from power by the US.

The 77-year-old was extradited from France, where he had been in prison on money laundering charges.

He is likely to spend the rest of his life in jail after being convicted in absentia for murder, corruption and embezzlement while he was in power.

OOOH, baby it’s cold outside.


What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →