;)
The Commentariat -- Nov. 3, 2015
Internal links & defunct video removed.
Afternoon Update:
Nick Gass of Politico: "Despite pouring millions of his vast personal fortune into politics, in an interview with MSNBC's 'Morning Joe' aired Tuesday, megadonor Charles Koch said he and his brother David are 'so far ... largely failures at buying up influence and changing the level of political rhetoric in the United States. 'But I'm kind of like Martin Luther when he was on trial and "He said, here I stand, I can do no other,'" Koch said in a taped conversation in Wichita, Kansas, with co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski." ...
... CW: Yeah, Martin Luther was a jerk, too, once he acquired some political power.
Ed Kilgore: "The whole debate debate is beginning to look like an effort spearheaded by the one candidate who probably has the most to lose from probing debate question..., Ben Carson. As HuffPost's Sam Stein reports, Team Carson would apparently prefer a 'debate' made up basically of opening and closing statements.... If you do the math with ten candidates, and assuming (as you should not) no 'leakage' via candidates exceeding their time [of 5 minutes each], you're looking at 100 minutes of non-interrupted candidate talking points. If you also, as Carson earlier demanded, a two-hour cap on the whole show, and work in commercials, yeah, there's not any time for 'debating.' This is, of course, a guy who thinks any criticism of his wacky world-view is an effort to repress him and take away his liberties...." ...
... Kevin Drum: "The whole Republican bedwetting exercise over their allegedly heinous treatment at the hands of CNBC is certainly entertaining for those of us who aren't Republicans. But Republicans themselves are now making it even more Survivor-like by splitting into two competing tribes...."
Mitch Smith & Monica Davey of the New York Times: "Federal education authorities, staking out their firmest position yet on an increasingly contentious issue, found Monday that an Illinois school district violated anti-discrimination laws when it did not allow a transgender student who identifies as a girl and participates on a girls' sports team to change and shower in the girls’ locker room without restrictions." (Missed this this morning.) ...
... MEANWHILE, in Houston, Texas, bathrooms are on the ballot today. Mark Warren of Esquire reports.
*****
President Obama signed the Budget Act of 2015 yesterday:
... Loophole Lopped. Jonelle Marte of the Washington Post: "... the budget deal that President Obama signed into law Monday gets rid of one of the key strategies that has increased lifetime Social Security benefits by up to roughly $60,000 for some high-earning couples." ...
... Kelsey Snell of the Washington Post: "The budget victory party is already over for Democrats in Congress and the focus now is on preventing a government shutdown in December. Democratic leaders are anticipating a weeks-long fight with Republicans who could attach controversial provisions, like defunding Planned Parenthood, to the spending legislation that is necessary to prevent a government shutdown later this year. Their plan is to stay unified and refuse to vote on bills that they don't like.... In the coming weeks the Appropriations Committees will begin crafting an omnibus spending bill that must be signed into law by Dec. 11 to keep the government open, and Republicans have a long list of policy proposals they would like to tuck into the legislation."
... Amber Phillips of the Washington Post: "... there is no shortage of political drama facing voters going to the polls in states from California to Pennsylvania. There are gubernatorial, state legislative and mayoral races whose outcomes are anyone's guess and ballot initiatives that could change the way we think about social movements like marijuana legalization and LGBT equality." Key race: Kentucky's close gubernatorial contest where Democrat Jack Conway holds a slight edge in the polls over Tea Party fave Matt Bevin who "is cruising around Kentucky in a gold Cadillac Escalade with a Donald Trump-like message that he's the man for the job because he can't be bought." Hanging in the balance: health insurance for thousands of Kentuckians. ...
... CW: If you live in a state or community that is holding elections today, get thee to the polls.
Gone, the Beloved Felon. Jake Sherman of Politico: The House has "disappeared" former Speaker Denny Hastert's portrait, which had hung outside the House floor. Somebody replaced it with a portrait of Frederick Gillett, who "was speaker between 1919 and 1925." CW: That was silly. If Republicans were going to stuff Speaker Hastert back in the closet, so to speak, they should have replaced his portrait with this one:
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. 2015 --
... CW: Now that's what I call classy.
Adam Liptak of the New York Times: During oral arguments before the Supreme Court Monday in a case on race discrimination in jury selection, the justices seemed to agree "that prosecutors in Georgia had crossed a constitutional line in 1987 in their efforts to exclude all blacks from a jury that would hear a capital case against a black man, Timothy T. Foster, who was accused of killing a white woman, Queen Madge White. Prosecutors used peremptory challenges -- ones that do not require giving a reason -- to exclude every potential black juror." ...
... Dahlia Lithwick of Slate: "Racism highlighted in a green marker." And one of these justices is not like the other ones: Justice Sotomayor gets personal about her wayward cousins.
Adam Liptak: "A case about false information on the Internet gave rise to a vivid and occasionally personal argument on Monday at the Supreme Court. The question in the case was whether companies that say false but seemingly benign things about consumers may be sued under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that many sorts of apparently harmless misinformation could cause damage."
Christianist Law. Michael Corkery & Jessica Silver-Greenberg of the New York Times continue their investigation of arbitration: "For generations, religious tribunals have been used in the United States to settle family disputes and spiritual debates. But through arbitration, religion is being used to sort out secular problems like claims of financial fraud and wrongful death. An investigation by The New York Times found that ... Americans are being forced out of court and into arbitration for everything from botched home renovations to medical malpractice. By adding a religious component, companies are taking the privatization of justice a step further.... Some religious organizations stand by the process until they lose, at which point they turn to the secular courts to overturn faith-based judgments, according to interviews and court records."
Sam Thielman of the Guardian: "The world's top tech companies are failing when it comes to privacy and freedom of expression, according to the most comprehensive assessment to date of their user agreement policies.... All of the firms failed to offer their users basic disclosures about privacy and censorship, according to the survey, which was conducted by the New America Foundation thinktank. One didn't even provide user agreements in the proper language. 'There are no "winners",' said the group in its executive summary. 'Even companies in the lead are falling short.'"
Lenny Bernstein & Joel Achenbach of the Washington Post: "A large segment of white middle-aged Americans has suffered a startling rise in its death rate since 1999, according to a review of statistics published Monday that shows a sharp reversal in decades of progress toward longer lives. The mortality rate for white men and women ages 45-54 with less than a college education increased markedly between 1999 and 2013, most likely because of problems with legal and illegal drugs, alcohol and suicide, the researchers concluded. Before then, death rates for that group dropped steadily, and at a faster pace." ...
... Ian Sample of the Guardian: "A sharp rise in death rates among white middle-aged Americans has claimed nearly as many lives in the past 15 years as the spread of Aids in the US, researchers have said. The alarming trend, overlooked until now, has hit less-educated 45- to 54-year-olds the hardest, with no other groups in the US as affected and no similar declines seen in other rich countries."
Bruce Wallace of Reuters: "The company battling to build the Keystone XL pipeline made a plea for a ceasefire on Monday, asking the Obama administration to suspend its review of the controversial infrastructure project that would bring heavy oil from Alberta to U.S. refineries. If granted by the U.S. State Department, the delay would almost certainly hand the decision for the $8 billion project to a future president rather than Barack Obama, a Democrat."
Annie Lowrey of New York: In a "fantastically sexist" Huffington Post opinion piece, "Ralph Nader mansplains monetary policy to Fed chair Janet Yellen." He tells the little lady that since she obviously can't comprehend the effects of low interest rates, she should ask her husband to explain it all to her. Also, "If you need further nudging on monetary and regulatory policies of the Fed..., why not invite Berkeley Professor Robert Reich, one of your long-time friends and admirers, to lunch on your next trip home?" to help out. (Never mind that both hubby George Akerlof & Reich would agree with the Fed's current policy.) CW: Not sure why Nader doesn't suggest Yellen put on a pretty apron & make a tuna salad for Reich, tho I suppose that's implicit. P.S. If you voted for Nader in 2000, therein is what you voted for.
Simon Bowers of the Guardian: "The US has overtaken Singapore, Luxembourg and the Cayman Islands as an attractive haven for super-rich individuals and businesses looking to shelter assets behind a veil of secrecy, according to a study by the Tax Justice Network (TJN). The US is ranked third, behind Switzerland and Hong Kong, in the financial secrecy index, produced every two years by TJN. But the study noted that if Britain and its affiliated tax havens such as Jersey were treated as one unit it would top the list.... The US states of Delaware, Wyoming and Nevada have for decades been operating as onshore secrecy havens, specialising in setting up shell companies catering to overseas individuals and companies seeking to hide assets.... So far the US appears not to be cooperating with the creation of a common standard for information sharing between countries, as drawn up by the OECD."
David Morgan of Reuters: "Internet giant Alphabet Inc, the new holding company for Google, expects to begin delivering packages to consumers via drones sometime in 2017, the executive in charge of Google's drone effort said on Monday."
Jad Mouawad of the New York Times: "The Environmental Protection Agency said on Monday that it had discovered cheating software on more Volkswagen and Audi cars than previously disclosed and, for the first time, also found the illegal software in some of the carmaker's high-end Porsche models."
Ben Hubbard of the New York Times: "Weeks after the Obama administration canceled a failed Pentagon program to train and arm Syrian rebels to combat the Islamic State, American officials announced a new effort to equip ground forces in Syria to fight the jihadists. But 10 days of interviews and front-line visits across northern Syria with many of the forces in the alliance, called the Syrian Democratic Forces, made clear that so far it exists in name only, and that the political and logistical challenges it faces are daunting."
'Mr. Butterfield,' Fred Thompson asked, 'are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the president?'
'I was aware of listening devices," Butterfield said, 'yes, sir.'
That question led to Nixon's unraveling and ultimately his resignation, as various crimes and cover-ups were captured on those tapes -- tapes the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ruled the White House had to turn over to Congress.
"The Fred Thompson Watergate Myth." Jake Tapper (August 2007), on the murky facts behind Fred Thompson's youthful star turn on the Watergate committee. Via Charles Pierce.
Presidential Race
Nick Corasaniti of the New York Times: "Lawrence Lessig, the Harvard professor who began a late campaign for president, announced that he was ending his bid for the Democratic nomination, citing his exclusion from the debate stage."
, Ctd. Alex Isenstadt, et al., of Politico: "A day after roughly a dozen Republican presidential campaigns came together in a show of force Sunday night to protest the debate process, their fragile consensus collapsed on Monday, with a number of candidates refusing to sign on to a group letter intended to compel TV networks to bow to their demands. The defections threw the talks into disarray, and by late Monday some senior advisers to GOP candidates were beginning to doubt whether their pact would hold up at all. Just 24 hours after the Republican campaigns declared they were seizing debate negotiating power from the Republican National Committee -- and empower themselves to deal with networks -- the advisers said they were beginning to consider handing it back." CW: So. Not tough enough, after all, to stand up to -- Reince Priebus? ...
... Ashley Parker of the New York Times: "On Monday morning, the Republican presidential campaigns circulated a detailed letter they plan to send to the television networks, outlining their demands and questions before agreeing to any future debates -- everything from the temperature in the debate hall ('below 67 degrees') to no 'lightning round.' And on Monday afternoon, Corey Lewandowski, the campaign manager for Donald J. Trump ... said the Trump campaign planned to negotiate directly with the networks." ...
... Robert Costa, et al., of the Washington Post: "The move by Trump, coming just hours after his and other campaigns huddled in a Washington suburb to craft a three-page letter of possible demands, thwarts an effort to find consensus.... Politically, Trump's go-it-alone strategy continues his pattern of casting himself as a master negotiator and the one contender who can take charge of a party that has lost its way.... After Trump's decision, the campaigns of Gov. John Kasich (R-Ohio) and Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J) confirmed that they would not sign on to the group effort. 'Stop complaining,' Christie said in a 'Fox & Friends' interview Monday morning. 'Set up a stage, put podiums up there, and let's just go.'" ...
... Hadas Gold of Politico: "'As we have for the previous three debates, the Trump Campaign will continue to negotiate directly with the host network to establish debate criteria that will determine Mr. Trump's participation. This is no different than the process that occurred prior to the Fox, CNN, and CNBC debates,' [a] spokesperson [for Donald Trump's campaign] said in a statement." ...
David Nakamura of the Washington Post: "President Obama on Monday gleefully mocked the Republican presidential candidates [link fixed] who have called him weak on the world stage."
Kendall Breitman of Bloomberg: "Discussing the proposed changes to the party's presidential debates in a Monday interview with Bloomberg Politics..., Trump found a way to get in a dig at [Marco Rubio]..., saying he hoped the debate venues would be better air conditioned in the future. '[Rubio] is the one that sweats the most,' Trump said.... 'He's the youngest but I have never seen any human being sweat like that.'" With video, which is hilarious. ...
... Nick Gass of Politico: "Debbie Wasserman Schultz is a 'crazy,' 'highly neurotic woman' but the Democratic National Committee chairwoman 'negotiated a great deal' for Democratic debates, Donald Trump said Monday." ...
... Steve M. can't figure out what the new debate demands have to do with eliminating "liberal media bias": "So seated debate questioners are liberal, while True Patriot questioners are forced to stand? Or is it the other way around? Podiums are socialist, while constitutional conservatives insist on tables? Or vice versa?" And so forth. It is a puzzlement. ...
... Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post: "... while it's easy to mock some of these demands as petty and prima-donnish, many of them suggest a more insidious strategy: a concerted effort to extricate as much independent journalistic influence from the democratic process as possible and essentially turn the Fourth Estate into a bunch of stenographers.... Asked ... if candidates should be challenged by a free press, [Ben] Carson acknowledged, 'There's a place and time for that,' and indicated the debates were neither the place nor the time. Carson's camp has likewise proposed taking the debates out of the hands of journalistic organizations altogether and just streaming them over YouTube or Facebook. [If the candidates yet their way, they] won't have the media to kick around anymore. That's riskier than they may realize." ...
... Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker: "... the R.N.C. rejected the option of running these debates on its own. It is the media that is paying for the events, and it is over the media's airwaves that the events are broadcast.... What the candidates shouldn't be allowed to do is tell reporters what questions to ask or what graphics to show on the screen, or have any role whatsoever in the editorial judgments of a news organization. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan's famous quip, if the G.O.P. wants that much control, then it needs to pay for the microphone." ...
... Dana Milbank offers to serve as the debate moderator of Republican candidates' dreams. ...
... Bill Curry, in Salon on what's wrong with presidential "debates," in general. Specifically, he cites last week's "debate": "The candidates behaved like a high school class with a new substitute teacher -- shouting over one another, speaking without being called on. They'd beg for extra time to finish a point; a panelist would refuse, then cave, then sit mute as they took off on some other topic. The chaos reflected the panel's dearth of preparation and experience.... All night long: A candidate would lie; a moderator would thank him for it. Lack of preparation was part of the problem but not the only part. The larger culprit is the worldview of the network's top employees... If 'pay to play' politics and global finance capitalism are our real problem, you won't find out from a question posed by a network television employee. Few ever question the soundness of the economic system...."
Miles Johnson of Mother Jones: "On Monday morning, [Jeb] Bush delivered what was widely described as a 'reset' speech -- 'Our story is about action, doing, not just talking' he said -- and he debuted the new 'Jeb Can Fix It' motto. By Monday afternoon, #JebCanFixIt had gone viral, becoming a trending hashtag on Twitter. But not necessarily in the way the campaign wanted." ...
Memeographs @memeographs BREAKING! @JebBush quits #GOP race, signs deal with @hgtv for new reality show: #JebCanFixIt!
... As a former voice of Bob the Builder I say. Can Jeb fix it? Well, he fixed the 2000 election. #JebCanFixIt http://bit.ly/1P6r4ZT ...
... digby takes a look at the New Jeb!'s big speech & asks, "Do they ever stop whining?" ...
... Martin Longman of the Washington Monthly: "... Jeb Bush this morning complain[ed] about the tone of the campaign right after he told everyone that the international effort to block Iran's nuclear ambitions will do absolutely nothing ... and that it has for the first time created a situation in which the United States is responsible for creating Israel's greatest existential crisis. Here Jeb is utilizing the same fear-mongering tactics that have wrecked the collective brain of the right and sunk his campaign. And he's endeavoring to use them to build enough 'credentials' with the deluded.... If you want to get beyond name-calling and bogus talking points and have a substantive discussion, you can't continue to try to prove your conservative bona fides by amplifying their stupid fear-mongering about Iran.... Whether you're in on the game or not, you've become a victim of epistemic closure. If you want to break out of that bubble, you have to stand with both feet outside it." ...
This Month, GOP Voters Embrace the Crazy. Mark Murray of NBC News: "Ben Carson has surged into the lead of the Republican presidential race, getting support from 29 percent of GOP primary voters, according to a brand-new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. That's the highest percentage any GOP candidate has obtained so far in the survey." ...
Jonathan Swan of the Hill: "Sen. Marco Rubio's star turn in last Wednesday's GOP presidential debate is already paying off, with a new poll showing his numbers rocketing upward in New Hampshire. The Florida senator surged to third place, behind real estate mogul Donald Trump and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, in the Monmouth University poll of the state's likely Republican primary voters. While Rubio trails Trump by 13 points, he is within 3 percentage points of Carson."
News Ledes
Unleash the Chaing! AP: "Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet this weekend with his Taiwanese counterpart Ma Ying-jeou in a historic first culminating nearly eight years of quickly improved relations between the two sides, their governments said Wednesday.... Presidents of the two sides have not met since Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists lost the Chinese civil war to Mao Zedong's Communists and the Nationalists rebased in Taiwan 160 kilometers (100 miles) away in 1949."
Washington Post: "Scraps of suggestive but inconclusive evidence surfaced Tuesday in the fourth day of a tense investigation into the Russian plane that flew apart over Egypt's troubled Sinai Peninsula on Saturday, killing all 224 aboard and scattering debris over seven square miles of desert."
New York Times: "Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi politician who from exile helped persuade the United States to invade Iraq in 2003, and then unsuccessfully tried to attain power as his country was nearly torn apart by sectarian violence, died at his home in Baghdad on Tuesday. He was 71."
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Reader Comments (21)
I would have thought that after handing the government to Bush, Nader would have crawled into a hole somewhere for good. Apparently I was mistaken.
Dear Lord.
The Dana Milbank was toooo wonderful! Barcaloungers! OMG. I'll go to bed smiling for the first time in months.
"Jeb can fix it"? No; Jeb can exit.
I continue to hold the belief that Carson's rise will be short-lived because of the color of his skin. As soon as things start approaching the finish line, he'll crater off the map. But not because he's a loon.
This seems to me to be an instance, in this case a nation-wide effort (impressive!), of Republican voters proving their not racist because of that one black friend they have. As soon as they mention, "I was fer Carson befer he dropped out", this statement immediately absolves them of their racist tendancies.
If Rubio takes the Plutocratic prize, who wants to bet Hillary plays the spoiler card and picks up Julian Castro, who then goes on a pro-Latino, pro-immigration nationwide bilingual blitz? Sounds like a Republican nightmare to me.
President Obama pointed out the silliness of the crybabies:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/11/02/obama-pleads-with-democrats-for-a-sense-of-urgency-in-2016/
A commenter in the Dana Milbank piece brought this to my attention, the google did the rest.
The NJ Star Ledger did a poll that proves what is really wrong with America. 76% of potential voters did not know that today's election included the entire NJ State Assembly.
Golly, do you suppose Bossier Parish, Louisiana will vote Republican?
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/11/christianity_forced_on_public_school_students_in_louisiana.html
"Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war..."
The New York Times piece on religious arbitration clauses is scary and eye-opening. Despite all of the religious right's complaints about "Sharia Law" it is often they who impose religious law via arbitration clauses requiring arbitration by a Christian arbitrator. One of the incidents described in the article was shocking: a young male drug addict was ordered to a faith based residential treatment facility as part of his sentence. Eventually he died under questionable circumstances, and his mother wanted answers from the facility. When they stone-walled her, she attempted to sue them for wrongful death. They claimed that her only recourse was Christian arbitration, as per the contract her son signed (but she did not). Eventually the facility's claim was upheld in Florida state court on grounds that Christian arbitration isn't measurably different from secular arbitration. (Interestingly, the mother had never signed a contract with the facility). The article points out that even retail companies sometimes impose the religious arbitration condition, and gives as an example a hardwood company in my own state of Washington. A cursory examination of their website revealed no mention of religion at all, it looks just like a typical business. And yet it can, theoretically, preclude a buyer not just from resource to the courts which our taxes pay for, but even from secular arbitration.
It was probably never a great idea to sign a contract without thoroughly reading it (something most of us have probably done). It is even less so now, as the courts are increasingly upholding adhesionary, unconscionable contracts.
As a side note, the article mentions that other faiths also may impose these clauses.
Victoria,
I hadn't heard much about Christian arbitration until I watched an episode of the "Good Wife" last year in which a Christian moderator was brought in to decide a case based on...on each side's command of Bible verses, apparently. My first reaction was "You're kidding, right?" But as the case progressed it appeared that winning in Christian arbitration means being able to play the Bible card, that is, picking the right verse at the right time to trump the other side's verse.
Certainly this sort of thing happens in secular courts all the time with citations of legal precedents used to push a decision in one direction or another, but using this sort of one-upmanship seems counter to the professed goal of religious based arbitration which appears as if it should be more concerned with a moral and ethically based outcome rather than legalistic tit for tat. Instead, at least in this episode, and, according to the Times' piece, apparently, in real world cases, the goal is for religion to be the winner, not morality or justice or ethics, and most definitely not for the side aligned against the Christianists.
Was this not the goal of the Hobby Lobby case before the Supreme Court? There was no moral objective there. If there really was a moral issue around contraception for the owners, the Greens, they wouldn't be investing in companies that manufacture contraceptive devices. No. Hobby Lobby, and their allies on the court wanted to demonstrate the muscle of Christianity, to be able to say to the secular world, "Fuck every single one of you. We can do whatever we want, because Jesus. So go suck on it."
And the fact that religious arbitration is only good as long as religion, or religion-based institutions win is clear from the Times article as well.
In the Christian sector of Right Wing World, which means the entire demesne, religion wins, right or wrong. That's the intent. And their further goal is to extend that concept across the face of the nation.
They're already making headway.
Oh, and one other funny (not funny "ha-ha"--the other kind) thing mentioned in the Times article about Christian arbitration was this quote from George W. Bush, citing the Christian business, Teen Challenge, the group under whose "care" a young man died mysteriously and who was stonewalling his family.
"Teen Challenge was highlighted by President George W. Bush as a successful faith-based program that deserved federal funding. 'Government can pass law and it can hand out money,' Mr. Bush said in a 2006 speech. 'But it cannot love.'"
So The Decider decided to give taxpayer money to a Christian group that will never appear in any kind of secular court if they do something wrong. Also, funny part II, is his declaration of the importance of love. Because his administration, with its criminality, illegality, killings, torture, war, death, and destruction, and the economic devastation visited on millions of Americans, was all about....love.
These fucking people kill me.
Wait. I'm confused.
Is it "Jeb! can fix it" or just "Jeb can fix it"? How about Jeb! Can! Fix! It! !!! ? No?
Hmmm....maybe a little switching up of words will help. "Fix It Jeb Can!" Ahh...I dunno, sounds like Yoda ("Help you, I can") and Jeb doesn't have those big pointy ears, although he does look a little green around the gills.
Okay, okay....how 'bout this: "Can Jeb! Fix It? Yes he Can!" Nahh...now he sounds like Bob the Builder. And Republicans don't build anything (especially Bushes). They just tear things down or blow them up.
I know...."It Can Fix Jeb!" well....only if the "it" is a couple of pints of laudanum, but seems like there's been too much of that already. Never mind.
Maybe different punctuation marks. That might give the whole thing new life. Okay...how's this? "Jeb? Can* Fix; It? Maybe not...Jeb,.:;" Fix&*%& Can It.*#!
Can it? Yeah. Can it.
I guess that would be best.
This morning's comment on Money, Power, Freedom and the inevitable Balkanization that ensues when money equals power and greater power renders organizations and people more free than those with less.
Why is the Republican Party organization in tatters? Not just because its national face is the face of a twerp...but because since Citizens United the effective money is now elsewhere, in the hands of the billionaires who can fund their own candidates' PACs directly, serving their own agendas and stroking their own egos simultaneously while bypassing the party. Note the Orwellian irony here. The effect of CU is to dis-unite the Republican Party, the same folks who crafted supported the decision's rationale (freeeedom!), rendering it less and less relevant on the national stage.
And Hobby Lobby and now Christian arbitration? Again more money--I own the business so I call the shots--means more freedom to set the rules even if I vastly restrict the freedom of others in the process.
In each case and others like them, (the privileged deliberately restricting voting rights of those less so fits the same pattern) the effect is the opposite of bringing people together to find common ground. Instead, we see more naked power plays that divide us further.
Am having an impish thought though. Can a business owned by Muslims set up Sharia Law arbitration scheme? That would go over well, I'd guess. Can't wait to find out.
Time to play Tom Lehrer's "National Brotherhood Week" again.
Even more scary religious lunacy:
Last night, the PBS Newshour featured an interview with William McCants, author of “The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State.”
McCants thesis is: "The Islamic State believes that the end of the world is approaching and it believes that it has also reestablished God’s kingdom on Earth. And that kingdom is going to wage an epic battle against the infidels before it all comes tumbling down."
This eerily echoes the WingNut apocalyptic vision of the End Times. Sanity is surrounded by a Perfect Storm of Unreason.
Full interview, video and transcript here:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/islamic-state-group-justifies-brutality-apocalyptic-vision/
One other grave note, gravity being the opposite of uplift on this election day:
Here in Washington State, where all you have to do to vote is mark and mail in a ballot and where our legislature has not yet yanked the franchise from minorities and the poor, as of yesterday only 17% of the ballots mailed out had been returned statewide.
I hope voters in other states are taking today's election more seriously.
D.C.,
The longing for a fiery end of the world in which unbelievers get it in the neck is a common thread for the Abrahamic religions. Right Wing fantasies of abortion doctors hanging from street lamps and blacks and free thinking women savagely dispatched by Christian warriors of Jesus don't seem to be that far off from the ISIS eschatology. Evangelicals would be appalled by this analogy, no doubt, but if you believe that gays and anyone else who doesn't hold with what your religion preaches will spend eternity burning in hell, there's not much comfort for them there.
I think part of the attraction of end times fantasies is the longing to be proved right. To show all those heathens that you were right all along and how dare they ever not take your warnings about repenting and being saved seriously. Some religions see end times as a new beginning and dispense with the hatred towards the other. Some see it as a never ending cycle. But the belief that you and a very few (relatively speaking) fellow travelers are the only ones worthy of everlasting life has a great appeal for some. Your victimhood is rewarded as you and all the other martyrs sit in heaven while everyone else (all of us) boil in hellish pits. This thinking also allows its more extreme believers the freedom to impose their belief system on others with no qualms. The pain of death and everlasting fires of hell, they believe, can be usefully employed to force everyone else to abide by the commands of whatever authority they believe to be in charge of it all.
It also, as we see in the conjunction of Evangelical Christianity and Confederate ideology, allows True Believers to do whatever they have to do to achieve power and keep it. Luckily for us, Evangelicals are not murdering people in the streets. Instead, they seize power through stolen elections, lies, and using their allies on the Supreme Court to slowly but surely usurp control.
Although, one of their number, The Decider, certainly provided his own End Times scenario for plenty of Iraqis and not a few Americans. Anyone can be sacrificed for power and the pleasure of being proved right, at least in one's own mind. Small wonder that the Bush Debacle, a sort of Evangelical end times fantasy come to life, was the primary trigger for ISIS and their own end times fantasies.
Speaking of Right Wing lying, I was reminded today after Fred Thompson's death, that after a while, he, like so many other Confederate luminaries, traded in whatever ethical standing he might have once had, by shilling for reverse mortgage scams, something Forbes considers dangerous and potentially crippling for elderly marks targeted by such schemes. Did he just need the money? Or is it something else? I'm guessing it's just the money.
The number of big name wingers getting rich by fleecing other wingnuts, especially gullible and elderly Confederates, is appalling. Mike Huckabee has used his reputation as a preacher and wingnut superstar to hawk "miracle" cancer cures "hidden in the Bible", "health" supplements, and cures for diabetes (the cinnamon roll cure!) to scared and credulous Confederates. Get famous and cash in.
But if you think it's reprehensible to take the last dime from a little old lady's piggy bank, you won't find any shame in Right Wing World for such loathsome behavior. There, this sort of disgusting activity is a sign that you've made it. Gingrich does it. Herman Cain does it. Eric Erickson does it. Palin does it (surprised?), Scott Brown and Glen Beck do it, and of course, Ben Carson. They either hawk various products, get rich schemes, miracle cures, or promises to put Jesus on the throne and cast down his liberal enemies if only you'll send them a few thousand dollars or $20 a month for the next ten years. It's one thing to peddle a bankrupt and spurious ideology, but another to scam your supporters and to bilk them for every penny you can squeeze out of them. But this is SOP for many 'bagger PACs as well.
Amanda Marcotte in TPM, reports that an investigation done by John Hawkins for Right Wing News (even wingers are disgusted by these frauds, well, at least a few of them) discovered that "Ten of the 17 PACs examined...took in more than $50 million and only spent about $3.6 million of it on campaigns. SarahPAC, run by Sarah Palin, was a typical offender, spending only $205,000 of their $3 million, or about 7 percent of the funds."
No wonder Palin and her family take limos to crash parties where there are plenty of guests waiting to be beaten up.
If you haven't read "The Long Con", by historian Rick Perlstein, a piece linked here on RC a few days ago, do so. He outlines the history of this kind of scheme, and it goes back a loooong way. Confederates not only lie to the American public, they lie to their own supporters. And even worse, they do it not for power or to increase support for something they believe in, but to line their own pockets.
And a presidential campaign run is the perfect place to acquire a huge mailing list of suckers for you, or another con artist, to fleece. This is likely one reason Ben Carson is so incensed at being asked about his own cons. It's not good business to wake the marks. Not good at all. When he drops out, the next con he runs will doubtless make him a fortune.
But such disgraceful behavior is par of the course in Right Wing World where, as Perlstein contends, you're not one of the stars until you learn to lie. And lie big.
Presidential candidates, Confederate billionaires, wingnut think tanks and media outlets, they're all in on it; all scamming us for whatever they can get.
So Fred Thompson won't be conning any more elderly wingnuts, but there are plenty more con artists carrying Bibles in one hand and picking pockets with the other and lying out both sides of their mouths. All for M.O.N.E.Y.
Today in Confederate Criminality.
In Tupelo, MS, a real wingnut, incensed that Walmart no longer sells Confederate flags, bombed one of their stores. Isn't this whatchamacallit, civil disobedience? Like what them nigras did when they thought they was as good as white people?
No. It's a criminal act. Luckily no one was hurt.
The perpetrator, one Marshall E. Leonard, a vocal and well known proponent of the Old South down in Tupelo, was picked up almost right away. How did they catch this nuclear physicist?
His getaway car was "...covered with Confederate flag stickers and flying a four-foot-long Mississippi state flag, which prominently features the “rebel” flag."
After running a red light trying to escape being caught and punished for his deed, Leonard was pulled over. A quick check determined that this was the car that had pulled out of the parking lot of a Walmart that had just been bombed.
Duh.
There might be some smart Confederates around, somewhere. Must be keeping them hidden for when the South rises again.
Akhilleus,
Hey! Some of my best friends are nuclear physicists! Change that to comparison to brain surgeon please.
D.C.,
Ha! I chose nuclear physicists because I have a couple of friends who are brain surgeons and they would not be pleased.
Rocket scientists wouldn't work for you either. Hmmmm....maybe we'll make it swarm and evolutionary computational scientists. I thought of exo-meteorologists, but they might not be any more accurate than earth based meteorologists (not that accuracy matters to wingers).
Okay, how 'bout neuroparasitologists?
After all, winger thought processes often appear hopelessly obstructed by parasitic invasions. Just look at Rushbo. Or Ted Cruz.
Doncha just love Confederates who compare themselves to brave and vital historical figures?
So the Koch brothers compare themselves to Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms, at which Luther was being judged as worthy or not, by the Emperor Charles V. This is funnier than it first appears since the Kochs are far closer to Charles, the decider of fates and of who gets what, than they are to the German theologian. The Kochs are the ones who give thumbs up or down to beseechers like Little Scotty Walker. Unless they're the ones who nailed the 99 feces on the door of the Supreme Court.
Functionally illiterate harpy Sarah Palin once compared herself to William Shakespeare after triggering howls of derisive laughter with her blubbering use of the idiot term "refudiate". "Shakespeare made up words just like me." Maybe. But he did it on purpose, not because he didn't know any better.
Or George W. (Douchebag) Bush, who once compared himself to Democratic president Harry Truman, a true mensch who served in the trenches during WWI, unlike The Decider, who spent the Vietnam war snorting coke in Houston discos after deserting. Truman, not a favored or fortunate son, as Bush was, made his name by going after war profiteers. Bush made his name by helping war profiteers. Not the best analogy, Georgie, you scumbag.
There are plenty more, but these sorts of things are pure epicac to me.
I next expect the Kochs to double down on their analogy and compare themselves to Martin Luther King. Maybe they can produce their "Letter from a Witchita jail".
Pardon while I puke.
Akhilleus,
Re Luther, Charles V, Kochs, money, power and influence: an excellent read is "The Richest Man Who Ever Lived: The Life and Times of Jacob Fugger" by Greg Steinmetz
Re scientists and surgeons: I have only one friend who is a surgeon -- a GastroEnterologist, or as she calls it "Guts and Butts". I wonder if NeuroEnterology might be a coming thing -- in demand for performing certain extractions. I like the NeuroParasitologist idea. It calls to mind "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." Could be true, you know. Would go a hell of a long way toward explaining a number of things.