;)
The Commentariat -- August 4, 2015
Internal links & defunct videos removed.
Joby Warrick & Steve Mufson of the Washington Post: "Opponents of the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan prepared Monday for all-out war against the carbon-cutting regulation, blasting the measure publicly while accelerating behind-the-scenes efforts to stop its implementation. On the day of the rule's official adoption, key lawmakers and industry groups sharpened their rhetorical attacks and vowed to battle the measure in Congress and in the courts. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) stood before the Senate to declare his intention to 'do everything I can to fight' the regulation, which is chiefly designed to reduce reliance on coal to generate power." ...
... Coral Davenport & Julie Davis of the New York Times: "In the early months of 2014, a group of about 30 corporate lawyers, coal lobbyists and Republican political strategists began meeting regularly in the headquarters of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce ... to start devising a legal strategy for dismantling the climate change regulations they feared were coming from President Obama. The group [is] headed in part by Roger R. Martella Jr., a top environmental official in the George W. Bush administration, and Peter Glazer, a prominent Washington lobbyist...." ...
... Edward Rosenfeld of CNBC: "President Barack Obama unveiled his plan to tackle greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants on Monday, potentially kicking off a legal battle between regulators and coal industry supporters. Calling the plan 'the single most important step America has ever taken in the fight against global climate change,' Obama emphasized that the regulation was about the present -- not just the predictions of forward-looking models." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
... Adam Vaughn of the Guardian: "Hundreds of businesses including eBay, Nestle and General Mills have issued their support for Barack Obama's clean power plan, billed as the strongest action ever on climate change by a US president.... The rules are expected to trigger a 'tsunami' of legal opposition from states and utilities who oppose the plans, which will significantly boost wind and solar power generation and force a switch away from coal power. Republican presidential hopefuls moved quickly to voice their opposition, saying they would be economically damaging. But 365 businesses and investors wrote to 29 state governors to strongly support the rules, which they said would benefit the economy and create jobs." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Michael Grunwald of Politico: "If you're really ranking them, the Clean Power Plan is at best the fourth-strongest action that [President] Obama has taken to combat climate change, behind his much-maligned 2009 stimulus package, which poured $90 billion into clean energy and jump-started a green revolution; his dramatic increases in fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks, which should reduce our oil consumption by 2 million barrels per day; and his crackdown on mercury and other air pollutants, which has helped inspire utilities to retire 200 coal-fired power plants in just five years.... Nevertheless, the new plan is already being hailed by environmentalists, denounced by industry, and hyped by the media as a bombshell. It doesn't fit the narrative to suggest that the plan is really kind of eh. It only fits the available facts." ...
... Ron Brownstein of the National Journal: "The conservative Republican-dominated red states most ideologically resistant to federal regulation in general also tend to be the states most reliant on carbon-intensive fuels (particularly coal) for their electricity. They're also the most invested in the existing fossil-fuel economy. By contrast, the blue Democratic-leaning states most ideologically sympathetic to [President] Obama's efforts against climate change also tend to be less reliant on coal for their electricity and less integrated into the fossil-fuel economy.... All 10 of the states that emit the most carbon per megawatt-hour of electricity generated voted for Mitt Romney over Obama in 2012.... Obama by contrast, carried ... nine of the 10 states with the absolute lowest emissions.... Notwithstanding [deep] concessions [to fossil-fuel dependent states], several Republican governors have already signaled that they do not intend to submit plans for reducing their state's carbon emissions to the EPA, as the rule requires."
Mike DeBonis of the Washington Post: "GOP lawmakers in Congress will make their first explicit move Monday to strip federal funding from Planned Parenthood after a series of undercover videos raised questions about its practice of harvesting tissue for research from aborted fetuses. The Monday evening procedural vote on a Senate bill to immediately halt funding to the group is expected to fail. Democrats have vowed to filibuster the bill, and Republicans have thus far been unable to peel off enough support to counter it." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... ** New Lede: "Senate Democrats on Monday blocked a Republican-backed effort to strip federal funding from Planned Parenthood following the release of undercover videos raising questions about its practice of harvesting tissue for research from aborted fetuses. The 53-46 procedural tally fell short of the 60 votes needed to proceed with a bill that would immediately halt funding to the group." ...
... Tierney Sneed of TPM: "Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) announced he had ended the state's Medicaid contract with Planned Parenthood in response to an anti-abortion 'sting' video campaign against the reproductive health service.... The move comes despite the fact that the two Planned Parenthood clinics in Louisiana do not provide abortion....
... Times-Picayune: In his announcement, Jindal claimed, "'multiple videos have surfaced showing Planned Parenthood Federation of America senior personnel and other employees describing how they actively engage in illegal partial birth abortion procedures and conduct these abortions in a manner that leaves body parts intact so that they can later be sold on the open market.'... Planned Parenthood has 30 days to appeal. The administration said the contract gave either party the right to cancel the contract at will after providing written notice." CW: Jindal's assertion is a flat-out lie. So-called partial-birth abortions are illegal, & Planned Parenthood doesn't do them. ...
... Brian Beutler of the New Republic: "By attempting to capitalize on the videos in an unscrupulous way, conservatives have unleashed political forces Republicans can't control. Anti-abortion zealots are now demanding that Republicans in Congress refuse to appropriate money for government operations unless Planned Parenthood's funding is abolished -- a new test of Republican pro-life bona fides." ...
... Amanda Marcotte in Slate: "... this dog-and-pony show is less about defunding Planned Parenthood and more about giving Republican politicians a chance to reassure their base that they, too, hate the idea of low-income women obtaining affordable reproductive health care. If Republicans are smart, they'll move on -- at least until the next time the anti-sex police decide there's some new fake thing they're all outraged over.... We should all be alarmed that a bunch of charlatans can snap their fingers and get congressional Republicans to come crawling." ...
... CW: This might be a good place to remind everybody, including all boneheaded members of Congress, that Planned Parenthood gets no federal funding for abortions. Period. These bozos are not voting to defund abortions; they're voting to defunds mammograms, contraceptive aides & other healthcare services. Update: Elizabeth Warren made this point on the Senate floor yesterday. Listen to Warren's speech, & bear in mind that a short time later Joe Manchin & 52 Republicans voted against women anyway, including those who claim to support women's rights like Susan Collins, Kelly Ayotte & Lisa Murkowski. Shame on them.
Seung Min Kim of Politico: "Sen. Chuck Schumer is teaming up with another Schumer -- actress and comedian Amy -- on Monday to push for stricter gun-control laws. The two Schumers held a news conference in New York to unveil a new proposal drafted by the senator meant to prevent violent criminals, abusers and those with mental illnesses from obtaining guns. The push comes in the wake of the shooting in Lafayette, Louisiana, last month at a screening of Amy Schumer's new movie 'Trainwreck,' where two women were killed and at least nine other people were injured." Chuck Schumer & Amy Schumer are cousins. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Nahal Toosi of Politico: "More than 120 wealthy Democratic donors have written to the party's leadership in Congress to express support for the Iran nuclear deal, the latest move in a fierce battle for votes on the historic agreement. The letter, whose signatories include Hollywood producer Norman Lear, several retired ambassadors and members of the uber-wealthy Democracy Alliance donor network, warns lawmakers that scuttling the deal 'would put us back on a path to a nuclear-armed Iran, another costly military campaign -- or both.'" ...
... Michael Gordon of the New York Times: "Persian Gulf monarchies issued a cautious endorsement on Monday of the accord Secretary of State John Kerry negotiated last month to constrain Iran's nuclear program. 'This was the best option among other options,' said Khalid al-Attiyah, the foreign minister of Qatar, who hosted a meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council that Mr. Kerry attended." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Eric Segall: "With no cameras in their courtroom, secret votes on which cases to hear (and why), no rules on when or even if their taxpayer-funded papers become public, and no review of individual decisions whether or not serving on a case would be improper, we are worlds away from an open and transparent Supreme Court of the United States." Via Paul Waldman.
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Margaret Sullivan, the New York Times' public editor addresses the paper's "tortured history" of coverage of Hillary & Bill Clinton. Times executive editor Dean Baquet told her, "If you look at our body of work, I don't believe we have been unfair." Sullivan noted, "But the Times's 'screw-up,' as Mr. Baquet called it, reinforces the need for reporters and their editors to be 'doubly vigilant and doubly cautious.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Erik Wemple of the Washington Post is not impressed with Sullivan's "wishy-washy" column. He notes that the original Times story, 11 days old on Monday, still contains the error that two inspectors general sent the DOJ a security referral; only one of them sent a referral, according to Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.). Sullivan has not addressed this likely error. Since Times editors granted Sullivan access which they denied other media reporters, she should have (a) done a better job, & (b) been willing to talk to reporters. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Presidential Race
Paul Waldman: "... the spasm of speculation over a Biden run that happened in the last couple of days is absurdly overblown." Waldman credits the rumor to the grafs that followed "the ankle-deep river of bile directed at Bill and Hillary Clinton that is characteristic of most of what [Maureen] Dowd writes." Waldman likes the Onion's running gag about Biden. Here are links to recent stories (the sources possibly vetted by Michael Schmidt of the New York Times) which do kinda suggest Biden may not be presidential material. However, none of these Biden spoofs makes him out to be as big a nitwit as the idiot featured below are in reality.
Jeremy Peters & Michael Barbaro of the New York Times: "After weeks of preparing for a smash-mouth debate with Donald J. Trump, 14 Republican candidates found themselves instead Trump-less but sandwiched into a constricting format on Monday night, delivering strikingly uneven performances just days before the first big test of the presidential primary contest. Rather than making the other contenders look more presidential, however, the event, at St. Anselm College in Manchester, N.H., seemed to shrink the candidates." Jeb Bush proved particularly maladroit. ...
... The Union Leader report by Dan Tuohy, which is exceptionally boring, is here. Should you care to waste two hours plus, you can still watch Losers' Big Night Out here. OR save yourself the time & read P. D. Pepe's summary in today's Comments. ...
... Gabriel Sherman of New York: "[Tuesday] around 5 p.m., Fox News executives are scheduled to gather in Roger Ailes's second-floor conference room at the network's midtown headquarters to decide who will be the next president of the United States the lineup of candidates who will participate in the first Republican debate on Thursday in Cleveland.... Based on the five most recent polls that meet Fox's standards, [Donald] Trump will be center stage flanked by Jeb Bush and Scott Walker. On the bubble, it's looking like Ohio governor John Kasich will edge out Rick Perry for the final spot. If current numbers hold, the remaining prime-time participants will be: Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, Chris Christie, Ben Carson, and Rand Paul." ...
... Paul Singer of USA Today: "Former IRS commissioner Mark Everson, a candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, will file a complaint with the Federal Election Commission on Monday alleging that he is being unfairly excluded from the first debate, he told USA TODAY. Everson is arguing that election law requires debate organizers to set 'pre-established and objective standards' for inclusion, and that Fox News has not met that requirement for Thursday's debate in Cleveland." ...
... Joe Strupp of Media Matters: "Veteran presidential campaign correspondents and media experts are criticizing Fox News' unprecedented role as a gatekeeper in the Republican primary."
Dana Milbank: "The gap between those who vote in GOP primaries and the rest of the electorate is growing.... This Republican sliver of the electorate, growing isolated and angry, is inclined toward exotic views. Trump, rather than causing the insanity Paul speaks of, is exploiting it."
... Josh Marshall of TPM: "... the Huckabees and Cruzes simply cannot compete with Donald Trump..., [whose] "novelty and lack of normal political constraints is what is allowing him to run circles around his competitors who had hoped to play in the Crazy space. Showmanship, lack of touch with reality, and a palpable handle on the grievance and unrestrained self-assertion that is at the center of modern Republican base politics have made Trump, for now, almost impossible to outdo in a crowded field." (CW: Maybe Marshall will change his tune when he sees Ted's Second Amendment Bacon. See below.) ...
... OR, as David Brooks, America's Explainer, puts it: "Never before have we experienced a moment with so much public alienation and so much private, assertive and fragile self-esteem." CW: However did this happen? ...
... Joanne Freeman, in a New York Times op-ed, explains to America's Explainer that the moment is not exactly as unprecedented as he asserts: "Politicians have always resorted to dumb claims, blatant insults, bold exaggerations and baldfaced lies to gain press coverage and win votes.... Such grandstanding was particularly blatant in the mid-19th century, an era with a political climate much like our own." Back in the day, such extremism resulted in the Civil War. ...
... Greg Sargent: "David Brooks argues this morning that Trump's 'allure' is rooted in how voters 'feel,' i.e., 'alienated,' 'frustrated,' and 'angry.'... But here's another possibility: what if a key source of his appeal is that a lot of Republican voters agree with what he's saying about the issues?"
Adam Gabbatt of the Guardian: "Food safety experts and gun experts have warned against cooking bacon on the barrel of a machine gun, after Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz released a video showing him doing just that." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Turns out Machine Gun Bacon is not an original recipe. (At the end of the linked video [at the end of Caitlin Cruz's story], chef Dustin Ellermann rubs his hands together & giggles, "Let's go kill some more pigs." Presumably with a machine gun. ...
... Steve M. has a lot more on Dustin Ellermann, Ted's inspirational mentor. Read it & vomit. Upset about rumors that officials were confiscating militia members' weapons during the Bundy Ranch confrontation, Ellermann asked "What happened to America?" Good question. Remember, this guy -- who also wrote in favor of Texas secession -- isn't just an evangelical gun nut (who runs a Christian children's camp where he teaches the kids to shoot up the countryside for Jesus), he's serving here as a model for a U.S. senator & presidential candidate.
Oh, Gawker is back. Sam Biddle: "Last month, American reality show entertainer turned American political system entertainer Donald Trump publicized presidential rival Sen. Lindsey Graham's cell number, urging his supporters to 'try it.' In the spirit of open and fair political debate, we now bring you Trump's number." A commenter writes, "He doesn't even have a (212) number? I thought he was rich. Poser." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
... Josh Feldman of Mediaite: "Trump.com, the official website for Donald Trump's organization, was hit by hackers [Monday] who posted a message to Jon Stewart praising him in his final week hosting The Daily Show. The Twitter account @TelecomixCanada is apparently responsible for the hacked message...."
... Punked. Neetzan Zimmerman of the Hill: "Harvard Lampoon tricks Trump with fake endorsement." The Crimson story, by Mariel Klein, is here. CW: That is, I think it's the Crimson story.
Punked. Sabrina Siddiqui of the Guardian: "Wisconsin governor Scott Walker encountered what looked like a group of young supporters during a campaign stop on Monday at a [Manchester, N.H.,] pizza shop, only to be presented with a fake check from the billionaire Koch brothers by a group of climate activists.... 'I'd like to present you with this check from the Koch brothers for climate denial,' [Tyler] McFarland, 23, told Walker." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Beyond the Beltway
Daniel Strauss of Politico: "Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton turned himself in to law enforcement officials on Monday in the face of felony charges on securities fraud." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Caroline Bankoff of New York: "In response to the uproar over the death of Cecil, Delta Airlines has announced that it will no longer ship hunting trophies that come from lions, leopards, elephants, rhinoceroses, and buffalo. Delta (the only American carrier that flies directly to Africa) joins Lufthansa, Emirates Airlines, and British Airways -- all of whom pledged to stop transporting various exotic-animal parts this spring, before it was cool. Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that Air France, KLM, Iberia, IAG Cargo, Singapore Airlines, and Qantas have 'signaled' a willingness to do the same."
CW: I didn't read Jake Halpern's profile/interview of Darren Wilson, Michael Brown's killer, but I read enough excerpts to know Wilson is a classic racist. Black lives matters? No so much.
Possibly Not the Best Application of Law Enforcement Tactics. ACLU: "A deputy sheriff shackled two elementary school children who have disabilities, causing them pain and trauma, according to a federal lawsuit filed today by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Children's Law Center, and Dinsmore & Shohl. The children, an 8-year-old boy and a 9-year-old girl, were so small that the school resource officer, Kenton County Deputy Sheriff Kevin Sumner in Covington, Kentucky, locked the handcuffs around the children's biceps and forced their hands behind their backs, the lawsuit charges."
News Ledes
New York: "The FBI arrested three North Carolina men on Saturday for allegedly planning to go to war with the United States when the government imposed martial law."
AP: "Two people were killed and more than 20 injured when a circus tent collapsed in a storm during a performance in New Hampshire. Authorities said about 100 people were inside the tent at the Lancaster Fairground, about 90 miles north of the state capital in Concord, when it fell down on Monday."
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Notes from the GOP Q&A in N.H. (last night)
Format: One by one the candidates marched onto the stage, they set their seats in a high chair (which proved difficult for some) and had one minute to answer questions delivered by the interviewer seated on a lower chair. Absent from this array was Huckabee–-don't know why; also absent on stage, but seen via satellite were Cruz, Rand and Rubio who stayed in Washington to vote against the funding of Planned Parenthood. Of course.
Bush: Appeared somewhat clumsy––lower taxes, balanced budget–-lookee-see how well I did as governor in Fl. "The fact that Paul Krugman disagrees with me warms my heart."
Carly: when asked what was the least popular action you have taken––asked twice because she refused to make it personal–- lots about howHillary lies–- Carly extolled her time at H.Packard–-she knows how to run a country cuz she ran a company (into the ground) plus she's buddies with all those kings and sultans––Ironically she ended with a spiel about taking care of people who need our help cuz that's a moral issue, and no, she would NOT fund planned Parenthood.
Bobby J. Wow! this guy talks as if he's high on somethin. All them democrats are Socialists–-at least Bernie calls himself one–-shrink the size of government–-"Israel hates the Iran nuclear deal–-that's all we need to know." And of course a lookee-see how well our state is doing––amazing grace heard in the background.
Scott Walker: Take a buzz saw to our economy–-reform bloody everything--bla, bla, bla. And lookee-see how well Wisconsin is faring.
Pataki: REFORM Obamacare!! He shouts it. Lower taxes on manufacturers–-Planned parenthood's disregard for basic human life. And Lookee-see how well I did as governor.
Perry: Now here's a happy man. He just smiled and grinned and talked about the border and a balanced budget and man oh man could he have fun in the W.H.
Santorum: Flat tax––dredged up the S.C.'s Dred Scott decision comparing it to the gay marriage decision. That's all one has to know about a man that wants to be president.
Lindsey: this man is a nervous Nellie–-when the camera catches him in the audience he's rolling his eyes, moving about, making faces–-and when pontificating he's so forceful I thought he was going to jump out of that high chair. China bad! Cheats, steals–-"I'd govern with a clinched fist and an open hand"––under Obama foreign policy is the pits–-"hit them (bad people) before they come here." How a man like this thinks he could handle the presidency ...he'd have a nervous breakdown after a few months on the job.
Christi: The most subdued. Just talked about the need to improve incarceration.
Carson: Talking flapdoodle about healthcare–-fetal tissue controversy–-"a new level of depravity." He appears to have trouble breathing at times–-there's an air of detachment or perhaps of arrogance.
Randy: Blamed Obama for collecting all those American people's phone records–-he is NOT to be trusted. War, however, is something he'd avoid at all costs unless...
Cruz: Catastrophic!!! that Iran deal–-millions of dollars are going to Iran that they will use to arm the other bad guys that are going to get us in the end if we don't put someone like him in the W.H. "When you stand against the Washington cartel (like I have) it's not easy to be the one who stands up." [now excuse me while I fire up another bacon on a bun].
Rubio: Immigration must be based on merit. "We need leaders who know how to restore America."
When they were given a second round we heard from most of them their meagre beginnings, their parent's suffering, that boot strap stories. Bugs bunny came out at the end and said.."Thhhattss all folks!"
I really appreciated the clip of Elizabeth Warren eloquently and passionately standing up for Planned Parenthood. I hope everyone takes the several minutes to watch it in its entirety.
The undercover group that is responsible for the videos has been orchestrating their attack for years. During these years they set up at least two fake corporations, got fake IDs, and used it all to gain the trust of some PP staff members who ultimately let their guards down in discussing the very important topic of tissue transfer. And now there is a completely different but devastating threat in the form of computer hacking which has caused PP to darken its server until they can assure it is safe. This interferes with women getting vital information and making online appointments. As Warren says, one in 5 women alive today has used the vital services of PP. They know the high level of care provided. I hope they - and their friends and families - stand strong against these vicious assaults.
We all can help by attending PP events if available in their community (I just went to one last night) and of course by sending donations. The cost of legal battles and additional computer security is enormous.
PD,
Thanks for the rehash. You saved me from a number of neuron straining outbursts.
I especially like that Jeb! is thrilled that his approach to economics is in direct contravention to a Nobel Prize winning economist. It's a little like a 9 year old saying that he's so happy Albert Einstein doesn't agree with his take on physics. The Smart One. Duh.
But my favorite was this:
"Christi: The most subdued. Just talked about the need to improve incarceration."
Wow. Was he talking about cleaner prison cells or more of them?
I was reading an article a while back about America's prison problem. During the Days of Hatred and Vengeance (aka the Reagan years), Republicans demanded more prisons and more prisoners. Non-violent offenders were socked away for years for minor offenses while white collar criminals from Reagan's own administration walked free or got tiny slaps on the wrist. But the Republican Way means cutting the safety net, pushing people into the hole, shoveling shit on top of them and when they climb out, telling them they can't vote anymore and oh, yeah, Paul Ryan ended most of those programs we used to have that assisted former prisoners trying to re-enter society because the Kochs (and Jesus) told him to, so forget about any help.
So recidivism is ridiculously high in a prison system that is an embarrassment compared to other civilized nations. And it costs a lot of money to keep people in prison, which is not such a big deal if you're friends with someone like Marco Rubio who cleans up off corporations that build and run for-profit prisons. This is also nice for judges who get kickbacks for harsh sentencing. They keep juvenile and non-violent prisoners locked up for years while taxpayers foot the bill. Most of those who get out are back in again in a few years; Klang! Ka-Ching! Slam the prison door, collect your money, courtesy of John and Mary Taxpayer. Oh, and glad-handing pols like Marco Rubio.
Because spending money to help make sure people don't go to prison in the first place (good education and job opportunities) or to help them when they get out, if they do spend time in prison, to make sure they stay out and contribute to society, takes a back seat to corporate profits and the Confederacy's need for vengeance and punishment. Especially if you can lock up blah people.
Which brings us to Planned Parenthood and the ACA. Please take a few minutes to listen to Elizabeth Warren's rant about GOP perfidy and attacks on women. Because Planned Parenthood does a lot more than abortion procedures. It offers preventive and reproductive healthcare. If women, especially young women, and their babies are not given adequate care, they stand a good chance of having a bad beginning. Many never recover. Do Confederates care? Certainly not. Like blah people, poor people are the least of their concerns. And if some of those women end up in prison and their kids make a wrong turn and end up there too, so much the better for Marco's pals.
These people are despicable human beings in so many ways, and they find more ways to scrape the bottom of the barrel every day.
Yesterday Marie and I had a little back and forth about approaches to winning the peace after armed conflicts. Some plans work much better than others (see Iraq). One example I brought up was post-war Japan. And it strikes me, after listening to John Oliver's piece about the way congress stomps on the District of Columbia, that the post-war Japanese, under OCCUPATION forces, had more self government and autonomy than American citizens living in the nation's capitol.
Make of that what you will. My guess is that blah people have something to with it.
The video of that little boy being handcuffed in a classroom is more disturbing than I can even say.
Is this what we've come to? A nation at the mercy of authoritarian, knuckle-dragging law enforcement thugs who will shoot you for no good reason at a traffic stop or torture small children at a whim?
This guy was clearly trained in the same manner as so many other cops who come upon a minor problem and turn it into something terrible. Mentally disturbed people end up shot down like dogs because idiots are not trained in how to deal with such a situation and use violence as their first resort.
If anyone wants proof of the idea that cops are not hired for their brainpower, watch this video. A child with special needs is handcuffed?? And not just handcuffed, this is one of the preferred stress positions encouraged by "Dick Cheney's Enhanced Interrogation Method" ™. I mean, try it. Try pushing your arms together behind your back like that and keeping them there. This. is. torture.
This is torture. No other way to describe it. In the full video you can see this asshole lecturing a small boy who is obviously traumatized and in pain. He's squirming around in pain and the guy orders him to cut it out.
His lawyer describes him as a nice guy and one of the most highly trained school enforcement officers in the state of Kentucky. If this guy is the best, I'm guessing the others went off to work for Dick Cheney.
To a hammer, everything looks like a nail. But should small children be hammered like this? But the kid had something else going against him in addition to having ADHD and special needs. He's not white. Another girl handcuffed as well was not white either. And they were the only ones treated this way.
This isn't where were headed.
This is where we are.
@Akhilleus: Yes, because you don't need a magnifying glass to read between the lines of Congressman Combover's rationale (from the Oliver report) to discover that blah people need supervision because they behave like children. This is an argument right out of slavery society. This isn't a coincidence; it's a straight-line, uninterrupted belief system that is also evincing itself in all the attacks on the Voting Rights Act. One translation of "voter fraud" is "black people are not mature enough to make responsible, informed decisions to vote Republican." Still longing for the old plantation.
Marie
Ted Cruz, culinary expert, demonstrates the finer points of cooking bacon wrapped around the business end of a semi-automatic rifle.
American presidential politics truly has become a cheap carny sideshow. Can you imagine Dwight Eisenhower doing something this stupid? Or FDR? Or Lincoln? I am in no way suggesting that Cruz comes up to the standards or gravitas of any of these men (just look at that creepy leer! Enough with that, already), only to point out what a blithering, brainless imbecile he is. These people, Cruz, Trump, Li'l Randy, Jindal, Christie, Bush, are all about show, spectacle, smoke and mirrors, bread and circus. The lot of them couldn't formulate a single cogent thought.
They're performing monkeys.
Wait until ringmaster Ailes starts them hopping at the Fox controlled show (it's not a debate) later on this week. At this point, I might wonder why a TV network is calling the shots for an extravaganza featuring candidates for the presidency. Why doesn't the RNC have anything to do with it? Then I'd watch a video like this or one showing manly man Li'l Randy taking a chainsaw to a stack of papers and I'd have my answer.
They're just monkeys. Clowns and monkeys. And Ailes knows it. But he wants to be the one who helps decide which monkey wins.
Marie,
Quit right about the slavery mentality. In fact, for pretty much the entire Republican Party (even for those who think Ben Carson is this year's acceptable nee-groe), black people voting IS voter fraud.
I happened, recently, to be reading the confession of J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, the Confederate monsters who murdered 16 year old Emmett Till and beat him so badly his body was nearly unrecognizable.
Florida congressman John Mica's take (in Oliver's piece) on the proper Confederate handling of the negro is not much better than a cleaned up version of J.W. Milam's:
"I like niggers -- in their place -- I know how to work 'em...As long as I live and can do anything about it, niggers are gonna stay in their place. Niggers ain't gonna vote where I live. If they did, they'd control the government."
And he called up the exact same excuse Confederates today trot out to exonerate themselves from the most onerous actions: " Me and my folks fought for this country, and we got some rights."
This was one of Emmett Till's murderers, in 1955. Several generations later, Republicans STILL feel this way. Their language is a little different--at least in public. That's all.
@AK: Yes, and it was the killing of Emmett Till that roused the nation (some good press reporting happened)
and even though the all white jury was corrupt in their verdict the black community began boycotting the stores some of the juror's ran.
And then we had Medgar Evans the civil right's advocate shot dead in his driveway. Afterwards Mississippi started to burn and it's flames shot over to some of the other Southern states. And "Niggers ain't gonna vote where I live" began its long, tenuous, awful slog toward "Oh, yes, they bloody well can!"
We are still at it, aren't we?
P.D.,
We surely are.
One difference between the 1950's and today is that the Supreme Court back then, saw it as their duty to support the rights of human beings who don't happen to be white, and vote against the hateful desires of the Confederates who murdered a boy. Today's court supports taking away those rights and votes with the descendants of Emmett Till's killers.
That's a big difference.
A personal thank you, Marie, for posting the Kentucky elementary school "shackling".
Such "teaching moments" are wide-spread & (imo) epitomize what is so wrong with so much in our society . . . and our world:
The New York Times' video features the forced "marriage" (trafficking) of females - many, and most desirable, are mere children.
Weep-worthy.