Hullabaloo

Monday, September 26, 2011

 

NYPD Pepper Spray procedure

by digby

James Fallows on the abusive cops spraying corralled protesters in the face with pepper spray:

[A]ccording to the NYT, the chief police spokesman, Paul Browne, said that the policeman used pepper spray "appropriately." Great. On the video we can't hear what either side is saying. But at face value, the casualness of the officer who saunters over, sprays right in the women's eyes, and then slinks away without a backward glance, as if he'd just put down an animal, does not match my sense of "appropriate" behavior by officers of the law in a free society.

Think about it: If this were part of some concerted, "appropriate" crowd-control plan, then presumably the pepper-spray officer would have talked with the other policemen trying to control the women. He would have stayed on the scene; he had done something dramatic to affect a situation, so -- again, if this were "appropriate" -- presumably he would have talked with the other officers about what to do next. But look at that video and see what seems "appropriate" to you.

Police officers make countless hard decisions every day, often at the risk of their own safety or lives. It's a harder job than I have. But everything about this scene suggests an officer who has forgotten about some of these hard choices. He just zaps 'em and walks away as they scream.

This is definitely not proper procedure and it isn't a close call. Here's an excerpt of an NYPD report on the use of pepper spray:

The spray is designed for use as less-than-lethal force, adequate for incapacitating dangerous or violently resisting suspects. Intended results of the use of pepper spray are inflammation and swelling of the mucous membranes of the eye, nose, and throat and involuntary closure of the eyes. Known side effects include coughing, gagging, and hyperventilation. The National Institute of Justice ranks the use of pepper spray “just above hands-on pain compliance and immediately below the use of impact weapons” on the use-of force continuum.

The NYPD’s Patrol Guide Procedure Number 212-95 governs the circumstances in which pepper spray can be used and the proper procedure for using the spray.

The purpose of Patrol Guide 212-95 is “to inform uniformed members of the service of circumstances under which pepper spray may be intentionally discharged and to record instances where pepper spray has been discharged, intentionally or accidentally.”

Patrol Guide 212-95 lists five situations in which an officer may use pepper spray. Pepper spray may be used when a police officer “reasonably believes” that it is necessary to: 1) protect himself, or another from unlawful use of force (e.g., assault); 2) effect an arrest, or establish physical control of a subject resisting arrest; 3) establish physical control of a subject attempting to flee from arrest or custody; 4) establish physical control of an emotionally disturbed person (EDP); and 5) control a dangerous animal by deterring an attack, to prevent injury to persons or animals present. The Patrol Guide states that officers should aim and discharge pepper spray into a subject’s eyes, nose, and/or mouth in two short one-second bursts at a minimum of three feet for maximum effectiveness.

The Patrol Guide prohibits the use of pepper spray against subjects who passively resist (e.g., going limp, offering no active physical resistance. It further cautions that if possible,pepper spray should not be used against persons who appear to be in frail health, young children, women believed to be pregnant, or persons with known respiratory conditions. In situations where pepper spray is used, the Patrol Guide stipulates several guidelines to ensure the safety of the subject. Officers are required to request the response of the EmergencyMedical Services (EMS) once the situation is under control. If tactically feasipble, according to the Patrol Guide, the subject should be removed from the contaminated area and exposed to freshair while awaiting the arrival of EMS or transportation to a hospital or station house. The PatrolGuide warns that the subject should be positioned on his/her side or in a sitting position to promote free breathing and that he/she should “never be maintained or transported in a face down position.”

Now look again at the video and tell me if that looks like procedure was followed:

Does it look like he felt threatened? Or that those women were resisting arrest or attempting to flee? No. They were corralled behind a net fence when he walked up and sprayed them and then he walked away. He obviously did simply to inflict pain. There is no other reasonable explanation.

I'm not surprised that the NYPD thinks this is appropriate. Most of the country seems to agree that police have the right to mete out physical punishment on the spot when citizens offend them. The cops are always right. Until it's you.

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digby 9/26/2011 04:30:00 PM |

 
Right to Work
by David Atkins ("thereisnospoon")

One of the favored conservative talking points during this prolonged recession (and yes, it is one long continuous downturn for most Americans, regardless of how GDP-obsessed economists cook the growth numbers) has been that unemployment in mostly Southern, so-called "right to work" states has been stronger, while unemployment in more progressive states has been higher. These talking points, of course, have totally ignored the myriad factors involved in creating those statistics, including that most of those jobs tend to be near minimum wage; that low real estate prices, not business-friendly and jobs-friendly policies, are often driving growth in those areas; that many of the gains in these states are due to energy-related booms rather than core economic successes; and that the comparative lack of social safety nets in many of those states often makes life more difficult even for those who have been lucky enough duckies to get one of those low-wage jobs.

But even with those advantages, it looks like the "economic miracle" in the right-to-work states won't be a conservative talking point much longer:

When the unemployment rate rose in most states last month, it underscored the extent to which the deep recession, the anemic recovery and the lingering crisis of joblessness are beginning to reshape the nation’s economic map.

The once-booming South, which entered the recession with the lowest unemployment rate in the nation, is now struggling with some of the highest rates, recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show.

Several Southern states — including South Carolina, whose 11.1 percent unemployment rate is the fourth highest in the nation — have higher unemployment rates than they did a year ago. Unemployment in the South is now higher than it is in the Northeast and the Midwest, which include Rust Belt states that were struggling even before the recession.

For decades, the nation’s economic landscape consisted of a prospering Sun Belt and a struggling Rust Belt. Since the recession hit, though, that is no longer the case. Unemployment remains high across much of the country — the national rate is 9.1 percent — but the regions have recovered at different speeds.

Now, with the concentration of the highest unemployment rates in the South and the West, some economists and researchers wonder if it is an anomaly of the uneven recovery or a harbinger of things to come.

“Because the recovery is so painfully slow, people may begin to think of the trends established during the recovery as normal,” said Howard Wial, a fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program who recently co-wrote an economic analysis of the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas. “Will people think of Florida, California, Nevada and Arizona as more or less permanently depressed? Think of the Great Lakes as being a renaissance region? I don’t know. It’s possible.”

The West has the highest unemployment in the nation. The collapse of the housing bubble left Nevada with the highest jobless rate, 13.4 percent, followed by California with 12.1 percent. Michigan has the third-highest rate, 11.2 percent, as a result of the longstanding woes of the American auto industry.

Now, though, of the states with the 10 highest unemployment rates, six are in the South. The region, which relied heavily on manufacturing and construction, was hit hard by the downturn.

In a sense, this is what happens when societies try to give away the store to corporate interests in the hopes of driving massive growth. When times are good, times can be very very good. When things start to crash, the growth times during the boom can tend to buoy a society for a little while. But when things start to really go south, things go very, very badly--to say nothing of the fact that handing communities entirely over to the whims of the "free market" increases the likelihood and frequency of major downturns. And worst of all, when things do go sour, those societies have hollowed or nearly destroyed the social supports that allow their economies to weather the economic storm. As economist Richard Kaglic says in the same article:

So what happened in South Carolina? Richard Kaglic, a regional economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Va., said the state’s lingering troubles reflect what happened when its once-thriving construction and manufacturing industries were hit hard by the recession. Mr. Kaglic, who is also a pilot, used an aviation metaphor to explain what he meant.

“If your nose is high, if you’re climbing faster and your engine cuts out, you fall farther and it takes you a longer time to recover,” he said. “The conditions we experienced in late 2008, 2009, are as close as you come to an engine-out situation in the economy.”

It's a similar phenomenon to the storied Baltic Tiger and Celtic Tiger economies (to say nothing of the Icelandic Tiger) that the Right harped on so much throughout the aughts, but about which they are now eerily silent. Those nations used regressive tax policies and anti-regulation policies to artificially inflate themselves during the boom, and they're now suffering economic calamity.

The fact is that slow, steady, equitable, sustainable and broad-based growth outside the financial and housing sectors, with a good safety net to help the unemployed stay on their feet is far preferable economically (to say nothing of environmentally) to rapid growth in volatile industries followed by major economic shocks, with few social supports for the unemployed. The former helps almost everyone, while in the long run the latter is beneficial only to the top 1% and their friends.

It's an old story that proves once again just how bad for the economy conservative policies are. But it seems that humanity is destined to forget that lesson time and time again.


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thereisnospoon 9/26/2011 03:05:00 PM |

 
Elizabeth Warren: A voice of reason amid the madness

by digby

My latest effort for Al Jazeera is up:

"I hear all this, 'well, this is class warfare, this is whatever'. No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear:

You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did."

- Elizabeth Warren

With those words, Elizabeth Warren cemented her reputation as a person who knows how to speak to Americans about progressive values in a way that seems to have eluded almost every other public figure in America. There's just something about the way she talks in plain prairie English that makes people listen - and scares even the most hardened businessman and compromised politician into paying attention.

Now she's declared her candidacy in Massachusetts, hoping to parlay that ability into a seat in the most powerful big money club in America, the US Senate, and make them listen too.

Her pitch is a modern day populism, aimed at the struggling middle class, the people who are dazed and confused by 30 years of conservative cant and free market policy that hasn't worked for them as its been put into practice. She's refined a story line about how this happened that's both erudite and approachable, using her own history and scholarly work to weave a narrative about America's economic crisis that speaks to people's yearning to understand what happened - and feel some optimism that it can be turned around...

Read on. Please!

I don't know if she can pull it off, but I'm thrilled to see her make the race. She's got the shining when it comes to talking about the most important issue of the moment. Other candidates should follow her lead.

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digby 9/26/2011 01:17:00 PM |

 
Fairnbalanced

by digby

It's not that we didn't know it, but it's good to see Ailes admit it:

Fox News President Roger Ailes, a former Republican strategist who worked for the Nixon White House, sat down for an interview with media reporter Howard Kurtz, in which he seemed to admit that his network is consciously conservative. “Every other network has given all their shows to liberals. We are the balance,” Ailes said.

I don't think that's what they meant when they called themselves "fair and balanced" for the past 15 years, but whatever. Their audience doesn't care one little bit and everyone else already gets it. The only ones who have ever pretended otherwise are members of the news media who want to keep their options open for employment.(Speaking of which,I wonder how Ed Henry's going over with the 65+ white male wingnut crowd over there?)


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digby 9/26/2011 11:30:00 AM |

 
FEMA disaster

by digby

I so don't want to write about budget battles right now that I'm just going to farm this ridiculous FEMA fight out to people who have already done it. Here's dday:

This is about setting a precedent of offsetting disaster relief funding, and nothing else. Republicans want to design a system where, every time there’s a natural disaster, some unrelated program has to pay the price. Democrats what the system as it has worked for the history of the Republic: the federal government pays for the needs of those hit by a natural disaster without smacking unrelated budgets, because it’s the right thing to do. Republicans see this purely as a matter of spending more or spending less. Democrats see it as an issue of basic morality and fairness. Should the next Katrina be offset?

And it’s also about keeping promises. In fact, the debt limit deal allowed for disaster relief funding above the spending cap on discretionary spending. You can see this right on page 13 of the Budget Control Act. It’s in Congress-ese, but it basically says that Congress can go up to $11 billion beyond the spending cap on disaster relief funding.

Republicans might say that the deal allowed for FEMA funding above the cap, but it didn’t mandate it, and nothing says you CAN’T offset disaster relief, although the Act explicitly says you don’t have to. That’s pretty weak tea. Clearly the legislative intent was to allow a safety valve in the event of big natural disasters that required immediate relief. Republicans want to pretend that safety valve doesn’t exist.

This is a real cautionary tale. To my way of thinking it's clear that these jackasses have broken the Big Deal by doing this. FEMA was provided for in it and now they are insisting that there be offsets. I don't care what kind of slimy excuses they give, that's breaking the contract and that tells you everything you need to know about just how useful these idiotic grand bargains are going to be with these people. There has never been a bigger waste of time than signing agreements with people who have no intention of honoring them.

As Kevin Drum writes:

So while those offsets might be minor on their own merits, they're basically a bellwether: if tea partiers can force Democrats to cave in on that, they can force them to cave in on every other violation of normal procedure too. Agreements will become meaningless and the budgeting process will become almost literally a free-for-all. That's what this is all about.

Dday pointed out early on that the Democrats are aware of this and, in fact, dealt with it earlier in the FAA standoff. And they prevailed. It remains to be seen if they will this time. FEMA just announced this morning that they can scrape by for another couple of days before running out of money.


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digby 9/26/2011 10:00:00 AM |

 
Rewarding Good Rhetoric
by David Atkins ("thereisnospoon")

I've written before about the need for serious political activists to use reward-and-punishment models for the behavior of Democratic politicians: in the same way that right-wing groups such as the Club for Growth and the Christian Coalition have no compunction about attacking Republican politicians who fail to live up to their standards while richly rewarding those who do, so too must progressives do likewise. That means heaping praise, money and volunteer hours on politicians who do the right thing, and levying constructive criticism and primary battles if necessary on those who do not.

Putting this mode of behavioral politicking into practice is a little trickier than it may seem, however, especially for politicians who hold the majority or who are directly in power.

Behavioral rewards mechanisms are easy to calculate for the minority party. This is partly why Republicans, who have long toed the line on reward-and-punishment models from their base, find themselves much more comfortable in the obstructive minority than in the legislative majority. Usually, the majority is trying to do things the minority opposition vehemently opposes. In that case, behavioral politics requires that activists reward politicians who obstruct the majority's harmful agenda. When compromise is inevitably necessary for the functioning of the government, politicians should be rewarded who stick to their guns and ensure that their side wins more of what they want from the compromise than the other side does. The same dynamic applies in the case of divided government: if the President is trying to enact a deleterious set of policies, the legislative should be rewarded for trying to stop him or her--so long as the basic functioning of the government is not imperiled. And, of course, the same is true of the reverse situation.

The situation is more complex for politicians in power who are faced with a minority (or legislative opposition) that simply does not care if the government ceases to function. At that point, the calculus becomes fraught with peril: does one reward behavior that takes the nation to the brink of utter disaster in order to win an ideological battle, or does one reward behavior instead that resembles that of the real mother in the Judgment of Solomon, in deciding to give up the ideological baby rather than see the nation torn asunder?

Obviously, the so-called "Obama Wars" in the blogosphere are more complicated than this: the President could surely take a stronger negotiating position so that the final compromise position with Republicans to avert disaster would have a decidedly more left-leaning skew. Certainly, the President could always have been doing much more with executive decisions, bypassing the Legislature to achieve more progressive results. The President's rhetoric over the last couple of years could no doubt have been far more forceful. And it would be easier to give the President the benefit of the doubt were there not ample evidence that he actually believes conservative claims that Social Security and Medicare require cutting in order for the nation to solve its deficit problems. Changing all of these things would have helped dramatically, and the criticism the President has received from progressives on these fronts has been more than valid.

But in a very real sense, the cult that conservatism has become has made normal governance all but impossible for the President. Even that fateful decision to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, rightfully criticized by progressives for representing a crucial breach of a major campaign promise, was made under significant duress. Republicans were holding not one but two hostages in exchange for those tax cuts: the START Treaty, a crucial nuclear proliferation issue, and more importantly unemployment benefits for millions of Americans. I can honestly say I probably wouldn't have made that trade. I would have sought justice for the unemployed through alternate means, and dared the GOP to actually take the step of ending the START treaty. I would probably have played chicken with the GOP in that situation and dared them to blink.

But it's one thing to rail, demand accountability from the sidelines and play armchair quarterback. It's quite another to be the man who has to look into the eyes of the unemployed losing their benefits, and to walk into a high-stakes meeting with Medvedev, and tell them that you sacrificed their needs in a domestic chess match in order to win a temporary war over targeted tax cuts. The weight of that decision for a responsible adult making real life-and-death choices is immense, and it's anything but easy.

When the opposition is borderline psychotic and ready to set the world on fire to achieve ideological purity, actual decision making becomes much harder.

And that's true not just for the President, but for the activist base as well. Progressives are rightly furious with the President over what he has done--and perhaps more importantly, what he has not done over the past two years.

But the reality is that from now until November 2012, the President is not going to be able to accomplish much of anything in the legislative arena. The Republicans simply won't allow him to claim any sort of legislative victory, no matter how small.

Which means that all the President really has at his disposal is rhetoric. And thankfully, that rhetoric has been far more aggressive as of late.

Is that a political ploy to win back the progressive base? Probably. But what of it? First of all, rhetoric matters. When the President speaks, the people listen. And if the President is telling the progressive story in an aggressive way, that itself constitutes action in its own way.

But more importantly, at this point, rhetoric is almost all we have to judge the President by. When it comes to direct action, the Republican House is essentially tying his hands.

And given that for better or worse Mr. Obama will be the Democratic standardbearer in 2012, a progressive activist seeking to reward good behavior and punish bad behavior would be wise to praise this newfound aggressive rhetoric as not only a good first step, but truly the only real step possible at this point given the political dynamic at work.

Of course, once election season is over, there has to be follow through. As Georgia Logothetis says:

President Obama's new aggressive tone and his pledge to be a "warrior for the middle class" reflect a changed dynamic. Politicians are finally realizing that true populism yields better policy and better political results. Whether they take to the bully pulpit for more votes or for real action, at the very least, they've decided to step on to the battlefield.

The conflict between a segment of our society that desires to hoard our nation's wealth at the expense of the majority and a majority that seeks to breathe life again into the American Dream will not reach a conclusion in a single election cycle. No single president or single session of Congress can undue the injuries sustained by the middle class over the last decades.

But realizing that we're in a battle is a positive first step. The true test of our resolve will be holding our politicians accountable until their actions match their words. Because only when those we send to Washington begin acting like warriors for the middle class, only when the concept of "middle class warrior" becomes less a campaign slogan and more a commanding ethos, only then will we be able to see victory (and a second chance) for the middle class on the horizon.

But for now and for the next year, rhetoric will be 90% of what we have to judge this President on. It's fairly impossible to tell whether Mr. Obama has had a real change of heart regarding his negotiating strategy with Republicans or not.

But either way, when the President starts talking like this:

“Now, the Republicans, when I talked about this earlier in the week, they said, well, this is class warfare. You know what, if asking a billionaire to pay their fair share of taxes, to pay the same tax rate as a plumber or a teacher is class warfare, then you know what, I’m a warrior for the middle class. I’m happy to fight for the middle class. I’m happy to fight for working people. Because the only warfare I’ve seen is the battle against the middle class over the last 10, 15 years.”

It's important that this change of pace in his rhetoric be rewarded. We have little else to go on at this point, and little other leverage to use.


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thereisnospoon 9/26/2011 07:30:00 AM |

Sunday, September 25, 2011

 
Gerrymandering for sale

by digby

Every time I read another story about secret, corrupt corporate influence on our politics I get a little bit more depressed. This one by Pro-Publica about buying redistricting is a doozy. There is the usual Koch brothers front groups with which we are all familiar, but this is a new low:

Fair Districts Mass, which says it’s advocating better representation of minorities in and around Boston, is another window into how money can move through the system. The group describes itself as "citizen-funded." But it also sought permission from state election officials for unlimited corporate funding. Donations “can include corporate contributions,” the group’s website announces. “Better yet,” the site notes, “we are not required to file reports regarding donations or expenditures.”

The group says its proposed maps would lead to better representation of Latinos and African-Americans.

“Minorities are very underrepresented in Massachusetts politics,” said Kimball, the group’s executive director. “We’re here to change that.”

But minority groups say Fair Districts' proposed maps would not likely help them. (See our interactive feature showing the group’s maps and our analysis.)

“I don’t see a person of color getting elected in this district, if that’s the goal,” said Alejandra St. Guillen, executive director of Oiste, looking at one of the maps Fair Districts has touted as helping Latinos and African-Americans. Oiste has been fighting for increased Latino representation and civic participation in the state for more than a decade.

“Even though the numbers might look as if that might be favorable to communities of color,” St. Guillen said, “if you look at voting patterns, it actually wouldn’t be.”

Others from Massachusetts have said the proposals made by Fair Districts Mass wouldn’t help them at all. At a town hall meeting in Lynn, which would be cut out of its historic district along Boston’s North Shore by the proposal, labor unions, the city's chamber of commerce and politicians from both parties converged on the town hall, urging that the board not adopt a plan that would carve out Lynn.

Lynn's Latino business owners are "very proud to be a part of the North Shore," said Frances Martinez, executive director of the North Shore Latino Business Association. "Our business owners decided to come here because they know this is a place to stay and grow for their families. Please keep the district together."

What Fair Districts’ proposals would do is hurt the traditional pro-labor and Democratic incumbents in the area. For instance, Lynn’s notably pro-union congressman, John Tierney, would effectively be drawn out of a seat—a finding included in the group’s own research.

Fair Districts can raise unlimited, undisclosed cash for its efforts, thanks to an innovative argument it made to state election officials.

This strategy had its roots in a lesson learned 20 years ago by a Republican redistricting guru named Dan Winslow. During the 1990 redistricting cycle, Winslow twice sought permission from state election officials for a group called the Republican Redistricting Committee to accept unlimited corporate donations without having to disclose them.

At the time, Winslow argued that the group didn’t have specific political aims and would also provide redistricting resources to minority groups.

Each time, the board refused to exempt the organization from campaign finance laws on the grounds that a group with "Republican" in its name and Republican politicians as leaders could not credibly claim to be independent.

Last year, a lawyer in Winslow’s firm filed an almost identical request to accept unlimited corporate donations, but this time for a group that left "Republican" out of its name. The state agreed to his request. The group he was filing for? Fair Districts Mass.

He insists that he just wants to open up the political process. Sure he does.

And naturally, Democrats are implicated too. The story tells the tale of Florida's Corinne Brown joining up with corporations against the wishes of every minority group, including the NAACP, in Florida. And in California, Democrats worked with big money to protect their own districts from the fairer

It's yet another assault on the machinery of democracy by the big money interests. Yes, gerrymandering has always happened. But I'm not sure it's been bought outright before.

Update: And then there's this.
digby 9/25/2011 06:30:00 PM |

 
Falsely accused?

by digby


It's always a mistake to assume that few people reflect the ideas of many, but this horrifying string of racist comments about President Obama's address to the Black Caucus is startling if only because Breitbart is carving out a role as the great conservative defender of decent white folk who are falsely accused of racism. His readers certainly agree that that they are falsely accused. They just don't seem to realize what racism is:

From the Massa’s lips to the negro plantation worker’s hips. “Yowsuh, boss man, weze gonna march.”
Are blacks better off today than they were under Bush? Why do blacks vote for democrats and insure their poverty and second-class stature? Because the democrat plantation owners tell them to do so. Are these blacks that stupid??? Just askin’

Notice the Chimp is Wearing his Dark Shade Face make up, and he’s working his Best Buckwheat ‘Pork N Beans’ Semi Sambo Accent for the Moronic Mutants to eat up like a bowl of steaming chitlins and collar greens…..y-all god’s childrens loves chitlins…

That's just the tip of the iceberg.

And it isn't the first time ...

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digby 9/25/2011 04:30:00 PM |

 
Helping the protesters
By David Atkins

It's no secret that the protesters on Wall Street are actively being marginalized by the press. Of course, it's also no secret that the protesters themselves are doing an effective job of self-marginalization as well through a lack of focus on media management, goal orientation and message coordination. One of the challenges of the protest movement on the left is resistance to the forms of coordinated discipline that maximize the efficacy of group action.

But this also isn't exactly the fault of the protesters. The reality is that labor orgs, Democratic clubs and central committees and other left-leaning organizations should be putting the full weight of their money, messaging and organaizing capacity into a directly anti-wall street movement. In the absence of that, particularly in New York, the action is left to a ragtag bunch of college kids and disparate activists with little in the way of media skills and organizational experience. That makes it prime fodder for very marginal groups with their own agendas to glom onto the protests for their own ends.

What needs to happen is that whatever organizational capacity exists on the left in New York that hasn't already been bought out by the financial sector, needs make itself useful, get off the sidelines and step in to help these brave people out. Ultimately we get the movement we deserve, and if only the oddest ducks are willing to put themselves on the line for actions like this, it's hard to complain too much about the marginalization of the left.

You can follow the action, provide advice and assistance (including buying them food) through resources available through the #occupywallstreet and #takewallstreet hashtags on twitter.

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thereisnospoon 9/25/2011 03:00:00 PM |

 
Protesting in Real America

by digby

So the New York Times published a predictably snide, critical view of the Occupy Wall Street protests, taking particular exception to their garb and attitude:

“I’ve been waiting for this my whole life,” Ms. Tikka, 37, told me.

“This,” presumably was the opportunity to air societal grievances as carnival. Occupy Wall Street, a diffuse and leaderless convocation of activists against greed, corporate influence, gross social inequality and other nasty byproducts of wayward capitalism not easily extinguishable by street theater, had hoped to see many thousands join its protest and encampment, which began Sept. 17. According to the group, 2,000 marched on the first day; news outlets estimated that the number was closer to several hundred.

By Wednesday morning, 100 or so stalwarts were making the daily, peaceful trek through the financial district, where their movements were circumscribed by barricades and a heavy police presence. (By Saturday, scores of arrests were made.)

I can't help but recollect the slightly different coverage of our most recent protest movement when it first burst forth on "tax day" in 2009. Of course, it was corporate sponsored, so I guess that makes it much more serious:

The Web site TaxDayTeaParty.com listed its sponsors, including FreedomWorks, a group founded by Dick Armey, the former House majority leader; Top Conservatives on Twitter; and RFCRadio.com.

The idea for the demonstrations grew in part out of a blast from Rick Santelli, a CNBC commentator who on Feb. 19 at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange said that the Obama administration was promoting “bad behavior” in helping people who were at risk of losing their homes and that Americans should protest with a tea party in Chicago.

The main goal as a national organization, said Eric Odom, the administrator of the Tax Day Tea Party Web site, “is just to facilitate an environment where a new movement would be born.”

It was hard to determine from the moderate turnout just how effective the parties would be. In Philadelphia, a rally in Center City drew about 200 rain-soaked participants.

Several hundred people showed up in Lafayette Park opposite the White House, until the park and parts of Pennsylvania Avenue were cleared while a robot retrieved what the Secret Service confirmed was a box of tea bags.
[...]
In Austin, Tex., Gov. Rick Perry energized a crowd of about 1,000 by accusing the Obama administration of restricting states’ rights and vaguely suggesting that Texas might want to secede from the union.

In downtown Houston, there were some in the crowd of 2,000 that poured into the Jesse H. Jones Plaza who also wanted Texas to secede. They were joined by other conservative groups like anti-abortion activists, Libertarians and fiscally conservative Republicans. American flags abounded, along with hand-painted placards that bore messages like “Abolish the I.R.S.,” “Less Government More Free Enterprise,” “We Miss Reagan” and “Honk if You Are Upset About Your Tax Dollars Being Spent on Illegal Aliens.” [oh my goodness. You mean conservative protests mix up their causes too??? Somebody should organize them properly.]

In Boston, the birthplace of the original tea party, the protest was on Boston Common, near the State House. The crowd, initially about 500, grew throughout the day.

“I’m not happy with the way our government is managing our taxes,” said Jo Ouimete, 54, of Northampton, Mass., who was holding an umbrella with an American flag pattern, even though the sun was shining. The umbrella had a tea pot on top and Red Rose tea bags hanging from it.

“The American taxpayers are really getting pressed too hard,” Ms. Ouimete said. “We can’t live like this, and our kids can’t live like this.”

Some participants were dressed in colonial garb, including Paul Jehle, of the Plymouth Rock Foundation, who is also a professional Boston tour guide. Mr. Jehle offered his enthusiastic audience a history lesson about the 1773 Boston Tea Party.

I suppose the mainstream press could have colorfully described them as a bunch of cranks making fools of themselves. But they didn't. Apparently, it all about what costume you decide to wear. This is apparently evidence of seriousness:






They seem to have done pretty well for themselves.

The sentence I highlighted in the piece about the Tea Party is important: "facilitating and environment so a new movement can be born." Movements don't come nicely prepackaged, even when they're corporate sponsored. They need someone to create the political space for a spark to happen. That's what the Occupy Wall Street people are doing.

The truth is that protests always have an element of street theater to them and on the left, this happens to be the theater we produce. (There was plenty of drumming up in Wisconsin ...) The point is to raise consciousness, create reaction and see if something catches. It's not easy to get attention for this sort of thing, so early protesters tend to be people who are willing to take risks and make fools of themselves in ways that the rest of us aren't. It takes a village full of weirdos to start a protest movement.

So, the fact that these people don't have full power point presentation of their goals and are asking for all kinds of disparate things is not cause to shun them. It's an opportunity to use the moment to draw attention to the problem (even if there's no fully laid out solution) and bring more people to the cause.

If anyone else has a better idea, I'm all ears. But these are the only people doing it.

Meanwhile, the New York Times should be ashamed of themselves for that trashy piece of journalism. To say that smug reporter missed the story is an understatement:

In slow motion, and with annotation explaining what is happening, the video seems to show a high-ranking member of the New York Police Department spraying a substance — the video says it is Mace or pepper spray — toward several women who were standing behind a wall of orange netting. After the spraying, one woman can be seen dropping to the ground, screaming in apparent pain.

Those women, who were already corralled behind police netting and unable to leave, were sprayed right in the face with mace.

Weirdos maybe. But brave weirdos, indeed.


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digby 9/25/2011 01:23:00 PM |

 
Who Are These People?

by digby

Hey look. Chris Hayes features some people who haven't seen a gazillion times before, talking about politics in an interesting way on TV. On Sunday no less.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

As for whether politics can exist outside the normal channels, all I can say is that it needs to. But, it's not easy to mobilize people in our society. People are cynical and busy and still quite comfortable overall despite their building angst about the future.

I keep hearing complaining about the Wall Street protests as being "unfocused" and lacking an "end game." But protests movements don't always have an end game and being unfocused is often part of the package, particularly in the beginning. The point of many a protest is simply to protest, give voice to people's feelings and beliefs.It's a spontaneous rising up. I guess I don't understand why that bothers people.

And anyway, it's often the reaction it provokes that moves the conversation to the next phase.


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digby 9/25/2011 11:30:00 AM |

 
Debate Cliff Notes

by digby


In case you've missed the GOP debates, last night's SNL gives you a pretty fair facsimile of what they've been like:




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digby 9/25/2011 10:30:00 AM |

 
Passion Play
by David Atkins ("thereisnospoon")

This isn't good news:

They were once among President Obama’s most loyal supporters and a potent symbol of his political brand: voters of moderate means who dug deep for the candidate and his message of hope and change, sending him $10 or $25 or $50 every few weeks or months.

But in recent months, the frustration and disillusionment that have dragged down Mr. Obama’s approval ratings have crept into the ranks of his vaunted small-donor army, underscoring the challenges he faces as he seeks to rekindle grass-roots enthusiasm for his re-election bid.

In interviews with dozens of low-dollar contributors in the past two weeks, some said they were unhappy with what they viewed as Mr. Obama’s overly conciliatory approach to Congressional Republicans. Others cited what they saw as a lack of passion in the president, or said the sour economy had drained both their enthusiasm and their pocketbooks.

The Administration's defenders would like to have you believe that all of these dispirited donors are only unhappy because bloggers like me told them to be unhappy, and that if we all clapped a little louder, everything would be just fine.

Those people are also fools. But more importantly, they insult the intelligence of all the unhappy donors and activists who helped elect the President in 2008 in the first place. You don't need to be brainwashed by a blogger or journalist to think that the President has been too conciliatory and too dispassionate in his approach over the last two years. You just have to have been paying even a modicum of attention.

Hopefully the President's new aggressive tone will help lift activist spirits; I've already seen the positive effects locally among the Democratic base. As horrible as a Republican Presidency would be, that knowledge alone won't be enough to motivate the President's 2008 donors. The President has to convince them that he himself has finally become convinced of the uselessness of attempting to negotiate in good faith and reconcile differences with an opposition that simply cannot and will not be appeased except by his own destruction.


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thereisnospoon 9/25/2011 08:30:00 AM |

Saturday, September 24, 2011

 
Saturday Night At The Movies


Wheelmen don’t eat quiche

By Dennis Hartley

The Tao of Steve: Ryan Gosling in Drive

Even if it seems certain that you will lose, retaliate. Neither wisdom nor technique has a place in this. A real man does not think of victory or defeat. He plunges recklessly towards an irrational death. By doing this, you will awaken from your dreams.

-Tsunetomo Yamamoto, from the Hagakure

If there is one thing I’ve learned from the movies, it’s that a man…a real man…has gotta adhere to a Code. Preferably a “warrior” code of some sort. Not that I claim to lead any kind of Samurai-inspired lifestyle; if someone were to ask me what code I live by, my reflexive answer would likely be “206”. It used to be “907” when I lived in Alaska. Did you know that the biggest state in the union only has one area code? So technically, all Alaskans live by the same code. But I digress. What was I talking about? Oh yeah, “code”. Steve McQueen...now, there was a guy who specialized in playing characters who lived by a code; he also brought a sense of Zen cool to the screen. There were others, like Jean-Paul Belmondo, Lee Marvin, Paul Newman and Clint Eastwood (before he began co-starring with orangutans). But McQueen (pardon the vernacular) was “the shit”.

Now, when one thinks of film directors whose canons abound with such characters, Jean-Pierre Melville springs to mind. Insular and taciturn, the typical Melville protagonist may be a criminal, but he is a decidedly disciplined and principled one. In Melville’s universe, honor among thieves is not an oxymoron. One prime example is Jef the hit man, a cool customer played with steely detachment by Alain Delon, in Melville’s 1967 film, Le Samourai. Although it is a relatively static affair by today’s “action thriller” standards, it has influenced a great number of other films over the last 40 years (John Woo and Quentin Tarantino being recent examples of those who have worshipped at its altar). One descendent is Walter Hill’s The Driver (1978), a spare and hard-boiled neo-noir about a professional getaway driver (Ryan O’Neal) who plays cat-and-mouse with an obsessed cop out to nail him (Bruce Dern) and a dissatisfied customer who is now out to kill him. “Spare” would also be a good word to describe O’Neal’s character (billed in the credits simply as: The Driver), who famously utters but 350 words of dialog in the whole movie.

And now, in 2011, Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn (channeling Melville by way of Hill’s aforementioned film) and leading man Ryan Gosling (channeling Delon’s character by way of McQueen) have teamed up on a noirish action thriller called Drive. Gosling (“Driver”) is a Hollywood stuntman by day, a wheelman-for-hire by night. Not unlike O’Neal’s Driver, he is a bit picky regarding who he will work with, and has a Set of Rules that must be strictly adhered to. “I give you a five-minute window,” he tells his clients, “anything happens in those five minutes and I’m yours, no matter what.” Outside of that time window, the customer is forewarned (in no uncertain terms) that he is on his own. “I don’t sit in while you’re running it down. I don’t carry a gun. I drive.” As for those who are tardy? There’s no ride home. Get in, get out, or you’re left holding the bag.

Yes, he’s very strict. But it’s a display of good business acumen (particularly in a “business” where a slight misstep can cost you years of your life, rotting in a prison cell). So far, by sticking with his “code” of professional discipline, Driver has managed to keep his moonlighting gig off the radar and maintain his double life with relative ease. However, the Fickle Finger of Fate is about to dip into both his personal and professional life. On the professional side, his friend Shannon (Bryan Cranston), a retired stuntman and mechanic who throws Driver a little work on the side at his auto repair shop, has approached a shady acquaintance, an ex-film producer turned loan shark (Albert Brooks) and his mobster partner (Ron Perlman) to invest in a customized race car. Shannon envisions Driver, with his formidable skills, as a potential money-making champ on the track. Not a bad idea, but these are not the kind of guys who are likely to just write off a bad investment. To grossly understate, these are not nice men, period. On the personal side, Driver is developing a strong attraction to a pretty neighbor (Carey Mulligan), a prison widow with a young son. The feeling is mutual, but news arrives that hubby (Oscar Isaac) has earned an early release. While he is disappointed, Driver still continues to be a good neighbor and spend quality time with her son (you know, the code). When the safety of mother and son is threatened by her husband’s prison “creditors” after his release, Driver offers to help him pull off a debt-settling job (against his better judgment).

What his film may lack in original plot ideas (Hossein Amin adapted the screenplay from a book by James Sallis) is more than amply compensated by Refn’s stylish execution and his leading man’s charismatic performance. Paradoxically (in true McQueen fashion) it is technically more of a non-performance; Gosling is not quite all there, yet he remains wholly present (in radio, we refer to this art of maintaining the sweet spot between “performing” and “being natural” as “relaxed attention”). Perhaps the biggest surprise in the film is Albert Brooks, whose quietly menacing turn as a mean, spiteful, razor-toting viper goes completely against type (in other words, don’t expect Albert to be the “ ha-ha” kind of clown in this outing; this is more like the, erm, John Wayne Gacy kind of clown).

This is the most richly atmospheric L.A. noir I’ve seen since Michael Mann’s Collateral (which now that I think about it, is another film that has direct lineage back to Le Samourai). In purely cinematic terms, I think Refn proves himself here to be on a par with masters of modern noir like Mann, David Lynch and Christopher Nolan. He was smart to enlist cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel, who is no stranger to the genre (The Usual Suspects, Blood and Wine, Apt Pupil, and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind). The action sequences (yes, there’s a car chase or two) are slickly done and quite exciting (although it turns out Gosling didn’t go 100% “McQueen” on us; stunt driver Jeremy Fry is credited as his double). The pulsing synth-poppy score (by Cliff Martinez) is very retro-80s (the Fairlight lives!). One caveat: while this film is artfully made, it does contain several viscerally shocking scenes of brutal violence, which could be potentially off-putting for the squeamish. That being said, if you fancy yourself a connoisseur of fine noirs and pure cinema, I would recommend that you plunge recklessly into this film. And do not think about victory or defeat. By doing this…you could awaken from your dreams.

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Dennis Hartley 9/24/2011 05:30:00 PM |

 
Dick Morris' Wet Dream

by digby


Dick Morris says:

As bad news piles up for the Democrats, I asked a top Democratic strategist if it were possible that President Obama might “pull a Lyndon Johnson” and soberly face the cameras, telling America that he has decided that the demands of partisan politics are interfering with his efforts to right our economy and that he has decided to withdraw to devote full time to our recovery. His answer: “Yes. It’s possible. If things continue as they are and have not turned around by January, it is certainly possible.”

And what then? Will the Democrats just declare the election forfeited and give it to the Republicans? Sure. That'll happen.

One very simple rule of thumb in American politics is that if Dick Morris says something will happen, it most definitely won't. You can make book on it.

(And how much do you want to bet that the "Democratic Strategist" he spoke with was Pat Caddell?)

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digby 9/24/2011 04:30:00 PM |

 
The next conservative idol
by David Atkins ("thereisnospoon")

Demonstrating the intellectual maturity of their voting base, conservative Republicans have been cycling through crush after crush like a hormonal teenager. First it was Donald Trump. Then it was Michele Bachmann. After Bachmann, Rick Perry was "the one". Perry was supposed to be marriage material, in fact.

But after Rick Perry's horrible debate performance, Republicans are shopping around again in an effort to avoid the boring man they will likely actually marry, Mitt Willard Romney. Today's flavor of the week is New Jersey governor and noted jerk Chris Christie:

The Republican primary race was marked by fake candidates (Donald Trump), non-candidates (Mitch Daniels), and fringe candidates (Gary Johnson, Ron Paul) before Rick Perry got into the race. Conservatives were excited after his announcement in August; the conservative blog Hot Air declared he was the "real deal" who could forcefully attack President Obama. The American Spectator said he was "far better positioned than Romney to debate the President." They must not have ever seen Perry debate. After his Texas swag could not carry him through Thursday's event, some conservatives are back to pining for their fantasy candidates. Chief among them: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
Perry's halting, stumbling performance, National Review editor Rich Lowry writes at Fox News, "will stoke more speculation about... Christie possibly entering the race." It sure did.

The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin writes, "I thought there was some possibility that if the stars aligned that [Christie] might get in.... In the wake of last night's debate, that possibility increased by a factor of 10. (Yeah, yeah, 10 times zero is zero, but it was never zero.)" The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol, too, was inspired by the Orlando debate to think again about Christie. Kristol says he got an email from a "bright young conservative" saying, "I'm watching my first GOP debate...and WE SOUND LIKE CRAZY PEOPLE!!!!" Kristol says he's left asking "with a month left before filing deadlines: Is that all there is?"

Yes, you sound like crazy people. You are crazy people. The only difference, my dear Republicans, is that the candidates you seriously fall in love with are finally a reflection of the true character of your voters. These are the suitors the Tea Party heart desires (for a month at a time, anyway), and they're the suitors the Tea Party heart deserves.

As for Chris Christie? His state's finances are out of whack, he's corrupt, most decent people don't like him, and he's a bully. A man cut from true Tea Party cloth, and a man the conservative establishment will respect for at least a few weeks until they realize he can't really bring home the bacon.

At which point their wandering hearts will dutifully stroll down the aisle with Mr. Dependable Mitt Romney, and spend the rest of their electoral lives wondering what might have been. And when Mitt Romney is defeated in 2012, the same conservatives fretting over the inadequacy of their alternatives will blame boring old Mitt for the ruin of their electoral lives, wistfully sighing "if only I'd married Michele, or Rick, or Chris..."

The conservative soul, inconstant as it may be, will always flirt with and pine for its bad boy heart throbs on the far right before making the staid choice. That's why Chris Christie will likely jump into the race. And that's why, when all is said and done, Mitt Romney will be accept the GOP nomination in 2012.


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thereisnospoon 9/24/2011 03:00:00 PM |

 
The Perry primary

by digby


Michael Tomasky makes a convincing case that far from being road kill, Rick Perry is actually the likely winner of the Republican nomination.

Redstate.com, the house organ of Wingnutistan, where the headline says it all: “Perry Loses the Debate; Romney Wins but Remains Unacceptable for Conservatives.” That still strikes me as the bottom line here. Perry will study his briefing books and refrain from accusing, however accurately, his core constituents of heartlessness. But Romney can’t undo his evil socialistic Massachusetts history. The Redstate blogger wrote: “I don’t care if Perry is soft on immigration and tried to mandate a vaccination through executive order. Romney is the father of socialized medicine in America!”

The conventional counterargument, of course, is that the establishment will circle the wagons around Romney. This might happen. Even Washington conventional wisdom ends up being correct every once in a while. But I can mount a highly plausible counter-counterargument for why it may not. Nothing has happened in these past two and a half years to suggest that this Republican establishment will buck or stand up to the hard right in any way. All we’ve seen these past two years is establishment Republicans accepting one extreme demand after another.

Read the whole thing. His reasoning is sound.

I also think that Romney is a major problem among the faithful, not because of he's the "father of socialized medicine" in America (a tribute that should actually go to Lyndon Johnson who signed Medicare into law)but because he is a Mormon and evangelicals don't care for them. The polling, in fact, shows that Tea Partiers (who are also the Christian Right --- duh) are particularly hostile to Mormons. If you add in the Romney east coast elite "Kerry factor" I think Perry can slide through, even though my personal feeling is that it's the fact that he sounds like George W. Bush that has people freaked out. (Better Bush than Kerry?)

Either way, I'm kind of hoping for a knock down drag out primary season because it's kind of fun watching the Republicans tear each other to pieces for a change. I only hope Palin jumps in to turn it into a real circus.


Update: Also read this piece that explains why the Republicans are going to continue to go batshit insane for a while.

This is why it's very bad for them to win. In this state, they really are at their zenith of lunacy and when that happens in a time of crisis, very bad things can result. Yes, even worse things than those that are happening now.


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digby 9/24/2011 01:30:00 PM |