Hullabaloo

Monday, March 26, 2012

 
The budget nobody will talk about

by digby

While everyone coos and drools over Paul Ryan's Very, Very Serious plan to cut the deficit, the progressive caucus can't even get progressives to pay attention to their budget. This is a budget that preserves all the things we care about, even raises benefits for the elderly and cuts the deficit more than Paul Ryan does.

The Budget for All increases funding for a variety of successful job creation programs, restores high earner’s marginal tax rates to Clinton-era levels, and preserves Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid without making benefit cuts. The plan builds on the successes of the CPC 2012 proposal, The People’s Budget, which garnered praise from notable economists such as Paul Krugman and Jeffrey Sachs and outlets such as The Economist.

The full budget materials can be read at Budget4all.org.

A one-page summary is available at http://1.usa.gov/H6u4lI and the executive summary is available at http://1.usa.gov/GQRcVC.

Evidently anything that doesn't demand pain from ordinary people just doesn't interest the Villagers or anyone else. Why is that?


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digby 3/26/2012 07:30:00 PM |

 
Birth control mean higher wages for women

by digby

Hmmm. Younger women not getting pregnant enhances their chances of having a successful career and making more money. Whodda thunk?

While women still earn 77 cents for every dollar that men make in the United States, the gender wage gap has closed significantly over the past several decades. Now, for the first time ever, a new study has connected the narrowing of that pay gap to increased access to birth control pills.

The University of Michigan study, which analyzed the careers of 4,300 women, shows that the earlier a woman can start taking birth control pills, the more likely she is to earn higher wages later in life.
[...]
"As the pill provided younger women the expectation of greater control over childbearing, women invested more in their human capital and careers," said Bailey. "Most affected were women with some college, who benefited from these investments through remarkable wage gains over their lifetimes."

Since members of virtually all species will have sex in any case, birth control allows women to plan their lives beyond their fecundity. It doesn't make sense to be educated, to travel to try out new jobs or start a business if your plans can be derailed at any moment by the very likely result of pregnancy and the raising of infants and small children. Women simply cannot have equal access to everything the world has to offer if they cannot control their reproduction.

Birth control doesn't just allow women to make more money, although it does. It allows them to make choices about their lives and fulfill their dreams. It allows them to be fully human. And that's really the problem isn't it?

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digby 3/26/2012 06:00:00 PM |

 
Solaris - The Definitive Edition

by tristero

I wish I could recommend Solaris - The Definitive Edition for science fiction fans... but that would be to artificially limit its audience. In this translation - which, because of rights issues, is only available as an audiobook or an ebook - Solaris is revealed as a work of literature, one that has more in common with Moby Dick (a comparison Lem himself makes) than with other sci-fi/fantasy/horror novels. For example, Lem is clearly influenced by the work of horror writer HP Lovecraft, but he is a much more versatile and profound writer. The Ocean descriptions were obviously intended as Lovecraftian parodies, but what Lem wrote is so exquisitely beautiful, bizarre, and horrific - all at the same time - that it transcends its source.

For fans of the original US edition - which was an English translation of a French translation of the original Polish - you will be in for a pleasant shock. Based on my skimming of it, the Solaris most Americans know truly was as bad a hatchet job as Lem always claimed it was.

After I finished listening to the novel, I rewatched Tarkovsky's Solaris and - Dennis Hartley will kill me for saying this - was very disappointed. It is an interesting film (and the music is fantastic), but Tarkovsky has different concerns - a human love story, the return of the prodigal son - while the novel is far more original and much stranger. It's about the incomprehensibility of the trans-human and how attempts to understand not only lead to failure and even catastrophe, but ultimately end up showing us merely our own reflection. Moby-Dick indeed! Tarkovsky's film relegates this extraordinary conception to mere backdrop and focuses on just part of the story, an entirely human, and reasonably predictable, drama - "Love in Space" as Lem cynically calls both Tarkovsky's and Soderbergh's films.

Is Solaris - the novel- a masterpiece? I don't want to scare you off, so let's just say that if not, it's awfully close. Please don't miss it.

tristero 3/26/2012 04:30:00 PM |

 
The Not-So-New Breed of Conservative

by David Atkins

Remember how the Tea Party was supposed to be different from your run-of-the-mill socially conservative, Bible-thumping crew? Remember how it presented a different, more rugged spirit of classic conservatism?

Yeah, me neither:

A lot of Republicans on the national stage would rather not rehash the battle over Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown Law student who galvanized the left last month when she was attacked by Rush Limbaugh after arguing in favor of contraception coverage.

Not so here outside the Supreme Court, where the justices heard the first day of arguments over health care reform. Fluke was a central topic among the several dozen tea party protesters who gathered outside the court Monday. As a much larger crowd of organized pro-reform activists from labor and other Dem-friendly groups marched in support of the law, one tea partier yelled, “Real women pay for their own birth control!” — a clear reference to Fluke and the fight over contraception access she embodies.

Others were more direct. One protester carried a sign that said, “Sandra Fluke I don’t want to pay for your birth control,” which drew criticism from the pro-reform crowd. “Do you agree with what Rush Limbaugh said?” A pro-reform demonstrator yelled into a small group of tea partiers gathered around the sign.

“Do *you* hold the liberal media to the same standard?” A tea partier shot back. A short, heated argument ensued.

Seattle Tea Party Patriot Kelli Carrender told me Fluke is a natural part of the debate as the HCR battle moves to the Court.

“She made herself relevant,” Carrender said. “She’s asking for free birth control.”

New conservatives, meet the old conservatives. Just as misogynistic, but now with tri-corner hats.


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thereisnospoon 3/26/2012 03:00:00 PM |

 
Common sense from Massachusetts

by digby

This seems so obvious to me that I can't even imagine why we have to litigate it, but we do:

For the past six months, the bishops have complained very publicly that the administration is anti-Catholic and biased against religious groups because it refused to renew a contract with the group to provide services to victims of human trafficking. The bishops had been administering virtually all the federal money allocated for such services, about $3 million a year, doling it out to subcontractors who served victims all over the country. The USCCB had prohibited the contractors from using the federal funds to pay for staff time to counsel victims on contraception or abortion, or to refer them for such services. (Federal money can't be used to pay for abortions except in the most extreme instances, but it can pay for contraception.)

In 2009, the ACLU sued HHS, arguing that such rules violated constitutional prohibitions on mixing church and state. Last fall, while the case was still pending, the Obama administration decided not to renew the bishops' contract, largely because the bishops refused to provide those key reproductive health services that are frequently needed by victims of trafficking. The decision set off a firestorm in Congress, where House Republicans accused the administration of bid-rigging and violating the bishops' religious freedom during a marathon oversight hearing in December.

But on Friday, a federal judge in Massachusetts essentially validated the Obama administration's position, ruling in favor of the ACLU in the lawsuit over the contract. Even though the bishops no longer have the contract, they had joined with the ACLU in asking the judge to rule in the case to settle the constitutional issues. US District Judge Richard Stearns explained why the bishops were in the wrong. He wrote:

To insist that the government respect the separation of church and state is not to discriminate against religion; indeed, it promotes a respect for religion by refusing to single out any creed for official favor at the expense of all others....This case is about the limits of the government's ability to delegate to a religious institution the right to use taxpayer money to impose its beliefs on others (who may or may not share them).

Stearns also cited an earlier Supreme Court ruling that found that the Framers "did not set up a system of government in which important, discretionary governmental powers would be delegated to or shared with religious institutions." The judge's ruling is potentially a big one: It calls into question the entire basis of the federal faith-based contracting initiative, implemented by George W. Bush, which gave tremendous power to groups like USCCB over taxpayer dollars. Stearns found, in fact, that it was USCCB that was making the decisions about how the federal anti-trafficking law should be administered—a job that properly rests with the government, not the church.

The church, unsurprisingly, is upset, believing as they do that taxpayers should pay for services which the church should be allowed to administer according to their religious beliefs. How they logically arrived at the conclusion that this is an exercise of religious liberty, I don't know. They don't pay taxes and they get taxpayer money from people of all faiths, but somehow it's a violation of the establishment clause to ask them to adhere to the government's regulations and the law of the land if they don't agree with them.

I've always thought these "faith-based" programs had the potential to cause this sort of problem and they have. The social conservatives want to take my money and your money and use it to proselytize for their religions. Nice for them, not so nice for us --- unless we happen to be members of that particular church.

There's a big reason why the constitution has the establishment clause in the First Amendment. It's a fundamental principle and anytime you have the government start doling out money to churches, it corrupts that principle. In America, Churches are supposed to operate in an entirely separate sphere from the government. They are given a huge dispensation by not being required to pay taxes to support the work the government does --- and the corollary is that taxes should not be used to pay for the work that churches do. Period.

(And I won't even go into the cruelty of church that would withhold this sort of information from human trafficking victims.)

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digby 3/26/2012 01:10:00 PM |

 
Ricky's nose is growing before our very eyes

by digby

I thought he was at least a little bit more professional than this if not more intelligent:

I wonder what all those very Christian ladies who love him so much think about that. Of course, many of them are married to guys like Rick so they probably don't think too much about it. It's how those men "run their households."

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digby 3/26/2012 11:30:00 AM |

 
Mad Men: the monumental revolution

by digby

I was late to the Mad Men phenomenon and haven't yet completely caught up so I missed last night's season premier on purpose. But even without seeing it --- maybe because I'm still watching the earlier seasons, I relate very much to what Amanda Marcotte observes in this piece for the American Prospect:

Feminist viewers take delight in watching Peggy and some of the other female characters endure and overcome sexist treatment in no small part because we don’t have to put up with that kind of overt misogyny anymore. We cringe when a male character tells Joan to her face that he thinks of her as a “madam from a Shanghai whorehouse” who is “walking around like you’re trying to get raped.” Then we get to revel when Peggy stands up to the offender, and feel gratitude for the real life women like her that gave name to sexual harassment and shifted the power balance so men couldn’t just say things like that anymore. We weep for Peggy’s loss in having to give birth and give a baby up for adoption in a pre-Roe era, but feel better knowing that sort of thing can’t happen to us anymore. We pity Betty for feeling trapped in her marriage because she’s had a series of pregnancies she couldn’t effectively prevent while knowing that bright young college women like her now have the pill.

Or, at least, it seemed that simple a year and a half ago, when Mad Men aired the final episode of season four. In the extended break caused by budget negotiations, the real world outside of fictionalized 1960s New York changed rapidly when it came to women’s rights. The last episode, “Tomorrowland”, aired in October 2010. Since then, we’ve seen a midterm election sweep Republicans into power in both Congress and across state governments, and their number one priority has been to return us to the social structures oppressing Joan, Betty, and Peggy. We’ve seen unprecedented attacks on abortion rights, some of which would, if successful, make abortion harder and more dangerous to get than it was in the 60s. Republicans have declared war on hormonal birth control, even trying to make it legal for your employer to fire you for using it as contraception. Even on Mad Men, Peggy was able to get a birth control prescription with only a lecture from the doctor, but not from her employer. While Rush Limbaugh doesn’t have the rhetorical chops to call a woman a Shanghai madam, it turns out that he does know his way around the word “slut” pretty well, and has widespread social support for using it to describe the 99 percent of American women who have used birth control.

This morning at the Supreme Court this was among the messages:

So, I've been watching the show unfold as this latest assault on women's freedom has gotten up to speed and I've had the feeling Amanda describes all the way along -- a growing feeling of dread.

And anyway, for me, that show doesn't feel like ancient history. After all, those women were my mother and her friends. It's the world in which I grew up, where women were very much a part of everything, but in a secondary position and most definitely not in charge, at least in any overt way. (Women made things happen through artful manipulation while always, always, ensuring that the man's superior position wasn't threatened.)

Most interestingly, Man Men shows the same strange relationship with sex that I'm seeing re-emerge now --- a constant undercurrent of sexual energy everywhere, but a mixed message so dissonant (saying that women had to be sexy but pure) that everybody seemed nearly dizzy with it. I've always thought of my parents boozy parties as the "ring-a-ding-ding" years: "did you see Harold making a pass at Martha in the kitchen? She's such a tease ..."

By the time I was an adult, I'd read "Our Bodies Ourselves" and "The Joy of Sex" and had participated in any number of youthful events where everyone was half naked and nobody shaved anything and it was all very, very different. The change seemed to be total and it felt to me as if it was a sociological earthquake so monumental that the world could never possibly go back to the way it had been for women in my mother's time.

And I assumed that for most of my adult life. It's only been in recent years, as I've gotten that weird sense of time you get as you age where you realize that everything you thought was permanent isn't permanent at all and that reality itself is elastic and ephemeral, that I understood how very possible it is that this time I've lived could turn out to be an historical anomaly. The sociological changes I witnessed, particularly the changes for women, were revolutionary on a scale I hadn't understood. And those sorts of revolutions rarely happen without backlash and at least some periods of backsliding.

It could happen. Mad Men wasn't that long ago in the great scheme of things.

And look how young these people are. Revolutions can go the other way too:

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digby 3/26/2012 09:30:00 AM |

 
Wearing Out of the Green

by David Atkins

The Times has a depressing human interest story out of Ireland:

As an emblem of the modern Irish condition, Frank Buckley is almost too apt. Dead broke, he lives in a house made of money.

Euros here, euros there. Euros in the fireplace. Euros on the floor, on the chairs, in the windows. Worthless euros, taken out of circulation and shredded by Ireland’s Central Bank, forming the interior walls of an apartment that Mr. Buckley does not own in a building left vacant by the country’s economic ruin.

Mr. Buckley, 50, calls the apartment — built from thousands of bricks of shredded, decommissioned cash (each brick contains, roughly, what used to be 50,000 euros) — the Billion Euro House. He reckons that about 1.4 billion euros actually went into it, but the joke, of course, is that it is worth simultaneously so much and so little.

“Everything is centered on the euro, but euros are only pieces of paper,” he said. “It’s what people do with the euros, the value we put on them, that changes their meaning.”

If there is any doubt about Mr. Buckley’s meaning, it dissipates as soon as you enter the apartment, on the ground floor of an empty building in a neighborhood ridden with them. A large gravestone announces that Irish sovereignty died in 2010, the year that the government accepted an international bailout so larded with onerous conditions that the Irish will be paying for it for years to come.

If there's an example par excellence of the myopic greed and stupidity of the Very Serious Economic Class, Ireland is it. Its low taxes and financial deregulation (it was once called the "Wild West of European Finance") earned it the praise of the Very Serious People, and won the Irish economy the moniker Celtic Tiger.

Then when that same house-of-cards economy predictably skidded to a halt, Ireland dutifully followed the lead of the Very Serious Economic Class, accepting strict austerity measures for their people in exchange for a bailout of their rotten zombie banks. Again, predictably, the Irish economy is still tanking.

Very Serious Economists should be asked time and time again: what happened to the Celtic Tiger? Why did it falter? And why isn't it recovering after austerity measures? Wasn't deregulation and austerity supposed to solve all of these economic problems?


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thereisnospoon 3/26/2012 07:30:00 AM |

Sunday, March 25, 2012

 

Godless heathens on your television

by digby

Here's something you don't see every day --- a long TV discussion of the great taboo: atheism. But Chris Hayes went there this morning. And it was fascinating:

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

This too, about the GOP, Ayn Rand and God:

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

Like I said --- not something you see every day. Which is too bad. But I'm grateful to see it on Sunday morning.

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digby 3/25/2012 05:00:00 PM |

 
Waiting for the test results

by digby

Gosh, this is awfully helpful:

Grilled about her support for the Affordable Care Act, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) told a home state radio interviewer that the law’s core structure is “exactly” like the House GOP Medicare privatization plan that conservatives support and liberals detest.

“The irony of this situation is that these are private insurance companies people will shop to buy their insurance. It’s not the government,” she told KMOX of St. Louis on Wednesday. “It’s exactly what Paul Ryan wants to do for Medicare.”

“It’s subsidized by the government — premium subsidies — which is exactly, this is the irony,” continued McCaskill, who faces a tough reelection battle this fall. “You think what Paul Ryan wants to do for seniors, you think it’s terrific. But when we want to provide private health insurance for people who don’t have insurance with subsidies from the government, you think it’s terrible.”

It will be an amazing irony if the ACA ends up being the logic behind privatizing Medicare. And McCaskill isn't alone in this analysis by any means. Here's Ezra yesterday:

Republicans’ long-term interests are probably best served by Democratic success. If the Affordable Care Act is repealed by the next president or rejected by the Supreme Court, Democrats will probably retrench, pursuing a strategy to expand Medicare and Medicaid on the way toward a single-payer system. That approach has, for them, two advantages that will loom quite large after the experience of the Affordable Care Act: It can be passed with 51 votes in the Senate through the budget reconciliation process, and it’s indisputably constitutional.

Conversely, if the Affordable Care Act not only survives but also succeeds, then Republicans have a good chance of exporting its private-insurers-and-exchanges model to Medicare and Medicaid, which would entrench the private health-insurance system in America.

That’s not the strategy Republicans are pursuing. Instead, they’re stuck fighting a war against a plan that they helped to conceive and, on a philosophical level, still believe in. No one has been more confounded by this turn of events than Alice Rivlin, the former White House budget director who supports the Affordable Care Act and helped Ryan design an early version of his Medicare premium-support proposal.

“I could never understand why Ryan didn’t support the exchanges in the Affordable Care Act,” Rivlin says. “In fact, I think he does, and he just doesn’t want to say so.”

Actually that's a very foolish assumption. What Ryan supports is an unregulated, private insurance market in which the old, the sick and the poor would buy sub-standard coverage because that's all they will be able to afford. And if they can't afford any at all, or are too expensive to cover, the insurance companies and the health care providers will be allowed to turn those irresponsible looters and moochers out into the street. As Ron Paul famously said about a sick, uninsured citizen,“What he should do is whatever he wants to do and assume responsibility for himself. That’s what freedom is all about, taking your own risk. This whole idea that you have to compare and take care of everybody…”

That's what the Ayn Rand acolyte Paul Ryan believes too. But until he can achieve total freedom for John Galt, he'll be glad to use Obamacare to degrade and destroy the guaranteed old age health care we currently have, however he can. And the good news is that Democrats are apparently going to help him.

Ezra's analysis yesterday was a dispassionate look at the political strategies of both Parties to explain where this argument would logically lead. And the upshot is that the GOP would be smart to get onboard with Obamacare if they want to destroy Medicare because otherwise the crazy liberals will somehow ram through single payer. (Why he thinks that's going to happen, I don't know. The last I heard from all the Very Serious People was that the ACA was the last chance for health care reform for a generation.) This is an expansion of an earlier post in which he argued that privatizing Medicare and medicaid along the lines of Obamacare is a win-win for everyone:

If Republicans can make their peace with the Affordable Care Act and help figure out how to make the Affordable Care Act's exchanges work to control costs and improve quality, it'd be natural to eventually migrate Medicaid and Medicare into the system. Liberals would like that because it'd mean better care for Medicaid beneficiaries and less fragmentation in the health-care system. Conservatives would like it because it'd break the two largest single-payer health-care systems in America and turn their beneficiaries into consumers. But the implementation and success of the Affordable Care Act is a necessary precondition to any compromise of this sort. You can't transform Medicaid and Medicare until you've proven that what you're transforming them into is better. Only the Affordable Care Act has the potential to do that.

This is why I'm afraid to say that #IlikeObamacare. Ezra's arguing that if Obamacare works great everyone will want to extend it to Medicare. My feeling is that in this political environment it's far more likely that everyone will just extend Obamacare to Medicare, regardless of whether it works well. Indeed, if it doesn't work well, it may even make it more likely. After all, if the costs come down because the Medicaid expansion is whittled away, I could quite easily see Democrats strutting around and counting that as a great success. (At least that's what they usually do when they agree to massive, painful spending cuts.)

Sorry -- I don't trust anyone on this issue. If Obamacare is upheld and gets implemented and it eventually results in universal, affordable health care in this country I will consider it a success. Until then, I don't even want to hear a whisper about rolling the sickest and most vulnerable members of the population -- the elderly -- into it. I just have a sneaking suspicion that Paul Ryan isn't quite as dumb about this as everyone seems to think he is.

Update: Howie writes:

Blue America has endorsed two doctors running for the House, Lee Rogers (CA) and David Gill (IL)-- and neither is ecstatic about Obamacare, although they both think it's a step in the right direction. Here's Lee Rogers, who's running against anti-healthcare fanatic Buck McKeon in a newly redrawn swing district that covers Simi Valley, Santa Clarita, Porter Ranch and the Antelope Valley northeast of Los Angeles:

It's understandable why congressional leaders wanted to reform our health care system after President Obama took office. But the Affordable Care Act is far from an ideal system like a single payer plan or "Medicare-for-all," as some have put it. Certainly there are good parts of Obamacare, like forcing insurance companies to spend 85 cents of every dollar on actual health care, eliminating pre-existing conditions as a determinant for coverage, and allowing adult children to stay on their parent's insurance until age 26.

But there are sections that are not good for patients or providers. Accountable Care Organizations (ACO) will function like HMOs for Medicare patients, potentially limiting access to providers and services. The Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) is an executive branch appointed group that will legislate reimbursement rates for Medicare, but to be overruled, it will take a 3/5th majority of Congress. While pre-existing conditions can't be used to deny you coverage, there are no caps on what insurance companies can charge you. So you could be effectively priced out of the market. Overall, Obamacare was a step in the right direction, but there are many areas that need to be refined and reformed until we have a law that promotes affordable, quality care. We still have a long way to go and that's why we need elected officials who understand the system of health delivery to help shape the future of health care.

Dr. David Gill won his primary in Illinois Tuesday and we just moved him over to the mail Blue America page today. He's a longtime single payer advocate and last night he explained his feelings about the Affordable Care Act:

"The ACA was but a first little baby step toward meaningful health care financing reform here in America. There are some good provisions within the bill, but it leaves intact the basic paradigm of reliance on a private health insurance industry whose primary goal is the maximizing of profit.

"What we must do, instead, is to expand and improve Medicare. Uncle Sam runs Medicare at an overhead of 2-4%, while the private health insurance companies run up overhead and profit-taking of 10 times that amount. Uncle Sam is not in the Medicare business to make money, which is the fundamental difference between Medicare and the private carriers.

"We currently throw away up to 40% of our "health care" budget-- nearly $1 trillion per year-- on a health insurance industry whose primary goal is not the well-being of people. We can do so much better. It is a moral failure to stand by while an American citizen dies every 12 minutes just because they lack health insurance-- we are a better people than that. We will be far healthier and far wealthier as well, when we finally abandon the private health insurance industry and put in place a single-payer system."

Dr. Gill and Dr. Rogers both know how to make meaningful healthcare reform work for their patients and for the system. Blue America is backing them both for winnable congressional seats. And now they're both on the same page.

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digby 3/25/2012 03:30:00 PM |

 
Arizona sanity?

by digby

Politically tuned-in friends from Arizona are telling me this fellow has a good chance to win the open Senate seat:

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

To me this sounds like what used to be thought of as mainstream, common sense thinking. Now, it's "leftist". This race will be an interesting test of the strength of the latest culture war battles to shape the vote in a place like Arizona, which used to be a very independent state but has recently become among the most doctrinaire wingnut the nation.

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digby 3/25/2012 01:00:00 PM |

 

Too young to be protected

by digby

Following up on my post about the odd fact that the gun lobby isn't arguing as they usually do that the tragedy wouldn't have happened if Trayvon Martin had been carrying a gun, I received numerous explanations from gun rights supporters saying that this is because Trayvon was too young to have a gun. Yes, there is a bit of a tautology there, since my argument was that normally they would have been saying that the laws needed to be changed so that a victim of gun violence could have protected himself. After all, there's a whole movement to allow people to carry guns on college campuses, so the idea that young people should be legally armed for self-protection is not exactly novel.

Still, it's true that in Florida, the legal age to buy a gun is 18 and Trayvon was about 8 months too young. So, too bad for him, apparently. However, it's not entirely clear that he couldn't have been carrying if he'd had his father's permission:

The minimum legal age requirement in Florida is 18 years old to purchase and possess any firearm.

Florida Statute 790.17 says: Furnishing weapons to minors under 18 years of age or persons of unsound mind and furnishing firearms to minors under 18 years of age prohibited.-
(1) A person who sells, hires, barters, lends, transfers, or gives any minor under 18 years of age any dirk, electric weapon or device, or other weapon, other than an ordinary pocketknife, without permission of the minor's parent or guardian, or sells, hires, barters, lends, transfers, or gives to any person of unsound mind an electric weapon or device or any dangerous weapon, other than an ordinary pocketknife, commits a misdemeanor of the first degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082 or s. 775.083.

(2)(a) A person may not knowingly or willfully sell or transfer a firearm to a minor under 18 years of age, except that a person may transfer ownership of a firearm to a minor with permission of the parent or guardian. A person who violates this paragraph commits a felony of the third degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084.

Florida law does not prohibit an 18 year old from purchasing a handgun, however, many FFL dealers will not sell a handgun to an 18 yr. old for a variety of reasons.

I don't know if it would have been legal for Trayvon to carry a gun to the 7-11 down the street with his father's permission. But it is clear that he could have legally owned one. So, once again, does the gun lobby think that Trayvon should be allowed to own a gun with his father's permission but not be allowed to carry it to use in self-defense? Or is there some other reason they aren't arguing that this particular crime victim should have been allowed to defend himself with his own gun --- the argument they have used after every other famous case of gun violence of the past few years?

Maybe they do believe that 17 year olds shouldn't carry guns, even to defend themselves from stalkers who attack them. That makes sense to me. But then I think people generally shouldn't carry deadly weapons around in public, no matter what their age. And we all know very well that if Trayvon had been armed, there would be no controversy today about whether or not Zimmerman was within his rights to stalk him and attack him. Indeed, Zimmerman would be hailed a a hero for killing him, regardless of whether or not Trayvon was minding his own business on his way home. So this is an academic argument.

But if those who always argue that more guns not fewer are the answer to gun violence don't believe that 17 year olds should carry guns, how can they be protected from self-appointed neighborhood "watchmen" like George Zimmerman who are legally carrying a gun and decide to attack them? The only answer the gun lobby has ever had for problems like this has been for more people to carry guns. But that won't work here. So, what will?

Update: On the other hand, you have Larry Pratt, president of Gun Owners of America with this:

I don't honestly know if this country can survive this Po-Mo conservatism. That argument turns everything we know about the law and the circumstances upside down and inside out --- and I'm sure vast numbers of people are happy to believe it.

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digby 3/25/2012 11:30:00 AM |

 
Voices of Light In Berkeley

by tristero

I like to keep the different parts of my public life separate - my music, my political writing, and my advocacy for hearing loss - but seeing as how Voices of Light was mentioned in a very nice article on Huffington Post, which many of you read, I thought I'd mention it here.

I'll be at the performance - Zellerbach Hall, March 31 at 8pm with the very great combination of Baltimore Symphony and Marin Alsop. If you're in the Bay Area, I hope to see you there!

tristero 3/25/2012 09:00:00 AM |

 
"Go Back To Your Country, You Terrorist"

by David Atkins

Revolting:

Shaima Alawadi, an Iraqi woman living in Southern California who was found severely beaten next to a threatening note saying "go back to your country," died on Saturday.

Hanif Mohebi, the director of the San Diego chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said he met with Shaima Alawadi's family members in the morning and was told that she was taken off life support around 3 p.m.

"The family is in shock at the moment. They're still trying to deal with what happened," Mohebi said.

Alawadi, a 32-year-old mother of five, had been hospitalized since her 17-year-old daughter found her unconscious Wednesday in the family's house in El Cajon, police Lt. Steve Shakowski said.

The daughter, Fatima Al Himidi, told KUSI-TV her mother had been beaten on the head repeatedly with a tire iron, and that the note said "go back to your country, you terrorist."

Addressing the camera, the tearful daughter asked: "You took my mother away from me. You took my best friend away from me. Why? Why did you do it?"

I'm sure the murderer considers him or herself to be a God-fearing conservative upset with this invasion of foreign-looking people and foreign values into their sacred country. Based on that definition, might be tempted to call the murderer an "insurgent."

As with the Trayvon Martin case, let's hope that justice is done in this case as soon as possible. We're seeing the violent result of conservative paranoid ideology, one pointless murder at a time.


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thereisnospoon 3/25/2012 07:30:00 AM |

Saturday, March 24, 2012

 
Saturday Night At The Movies

Love soufflé

By Dennis Hartley

Midnight in Paris: Delicacy

“I could go on holiday in your hair,” moons a love struck Swede named Markus (Francois Damiens) to his co-worker, a beautiful French widow named Nathalie. If that sounds like an inappropriate comment to make at the office (to your boss, no less), you’re right. Then again, it’s not every day that your boss (bearing a remarkable likeness to Audrey Tautou) calls you into her office, springs from her chair without warning, plants a lingering, passionate smooch, then goes back to her desk as if nothing just happened. It’s an anomaly that a slovenly nebbish like Markus is going to require a few days to process.

Whether or not you believe that a beautiful young widow who bears a remarkable likeness to Audrey Tautou would even consider throwing herself at a slovenly nebbish who bears a remarkable likeness to a French Chris Elliot is probably a good litmus test for whether or not you will be willing to sit through a romantic dramedy called Delicacy, directed by siblings David and Stephane Foenkinos (adapted from David’s novel). In an opening montage that vibes the films of Eric Rohmer, we get a recap of Nathalie’s relationship with her late husband, the suavely continental Francois (Pio Marmai), from their initial Meet Cute at a quaint café, to his untimely demise while out for a jog one fateful morning. The heartbroken Nathalie deals with her pain by becoming a workaholic.

For three years, Nathalie focuses on her career at a Paris-based Swedish firm (it’s never made quite clear what the company “does”, exactly; we just observe a lot of paper getting pushed around). Despite frequent urging by friends and co-workers, she refuses to jump back into the dating game, pretty much keeping herself to herself while maintaining her inscrutable countenance. She also has to keep one wary eye on her married boss (Bruno Todeshini), who has been creepily flirting with her since her husband’s death (“It’s terrible, but tragedy makes her even more beautiful,” we “hear” him musing to himself).

And so it is that Nathalie registers just as much shock at her impulsive amorous advance on her own underling, as does Markus himself (who leaves her office dazed and confused). When he later screws up the courage to ask her if she truly wants to go down this road, Nathalie tries to backpedal. She doesn’t know what possessed her. Her mind was elsewhere, etc. etc. “You sound like an American. That’s a bad sign,” Markus deadpans, in the film’s funniest line. This gets a chuckle out of Nathalie, breaking the ice.

Will this odd couple find true love? You’ll have to watch to find out. You will have to be willing to suspend your disbelief, of course. Your willingness to go along with this fluffy but diverting affair also hinges on which camp you happen to be in regarding Ms. Tautou’s saucer-eyed, Gallic pixie allure (which some are apparently immune to). There is some unevenness in tone, particularly stemming from an over-reliance on the gimmick of “listening in” to each character’s Deep Thoughts (which aim for poetic heights but tend to crash-land just this side of a Hallmark greeting card), but it’s not enough to sink the proceedings. The film is saved by Tautou and Damiens’ onscreen chemistry; they both bring an endearing charm to their roles. Damiens imbues his shambling ugly duckling with a gentle humanity that helps us grok what Nathalie finds so appealing. Think of this film as a soufflé, which, depending on what you bring to the table, can be an entree or a dessert. If you’re the type who could bypass the entree and go straight to dessert, I think you will enjoy. Those without a sweet tooth will probably want to skip it.

Seriously? - No Such Thing, Gainsbourg: a Heroic Life, Sunday, Swept Away, Arthur, Bagdad Café, My Fair Lady, Harold and Maude, Annie Hall, Manhattan, The Night Porter, Baby it’s You, Muriel’s Wedding, Knocked Up, As Good as it Gets, Atlantic City, Something Wild, Georgy Girl, Moonstruck, Ghost World, The Taming of the Shrew, The Graduate, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, She’s Gotta Have It, Lost in Translation.

Previous posts with related themes:

Beauty and the Beast

Whatever Works

Dennis Hartley 3/24/2012 06:00:00 PM |

 
Subliminal Froth

by digby

No more Mr Nice Guy:

He's supposed to be a lovely guy with traditional values and a love for children and animals. But he's a nasty piece of work. Despite their sanctimonious protestations to the contrary, that quick cut in the ad that juxtaposes Ahmadinejad and Obama is a very creepy, underhanded trick.

The Republicans love to do this. ( Recall the famous RATS ad.) But this one is especially low because it's obviously aimed at the none-too-bright right wingers who believe that Obama is a Muslim usurper --- which is just another racist dog-whistle with a little xenophobia and religious intolerance thrown in for good measure. Newtie must be very jealous --- this is his stock and trade.

Santorum may wear sweater vests and break into tears at a moments notice, but don't believe it. Like most patriarchal throwbacks he is one mean bastard.

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digby 3/24/2012 04:30:00 PM |

 
Non-partisan articles of faith

by David Atkins

Readers may recall my post about High Broderist independent Linda Parks running for Congress in California's 26th district.

Well, the League of Women Voters just held a CA26 candidate forum, which you can view here. Republican Tony Strickland was a no show, leaving the field to Linda Parks and three Democrats, including the superb and progressive Julia Brownley.



Video streaming by Ustream

Notice how Ms. Parks speaks incessantly of a lack of bipartisanship and problem-solving--and yet refuses to answer any questions about how she would actually solve problems. This is a hallmark of the High Broderist ethic: refuse to mention specific policy answers, but give a lot of lip service to centrist "solutions"--which are usually unpopular and highly damaging to the middle class. The only "problems" she was able to mention were 1) the deficit; and 2) Social Security supposedly "going bankrupt."

The Ventura County Star has an article about the forum which gives a gist of it:

This audience, it seems, really wanted Linda Parks to answer the question: Who would she vote for to be speaker of the House?

Parks, who is running as an independent in the 26th Congressional District U.S. House race, would have none of it.

She repeated what she's been saying since dropping her GOP affiliation last month and re-registered as having no party preference: She rejects the emphasis on party domination; partisanship is keeping the country from dealing with real issues; it's what's wrong with the country.

David Maron, a League of Women Voters of Ventura County member who moderated a forum Friday afternoon for candidates for the House seat, tried again. Seven question cards had been submitted by audience members with some variation of the question, he told her.

"I am going without the baggage of a party label," Parks said, and began to elaborate again.

Maron interrupted her midsentence, saying he needed to move on.

"I just wanted to give you one more chance," he said.

The forum for candidates in the closely watched race drew an attentive crowd of about 125 to the Camarillo City Hall. It was the first such event, since the field was set earlier this month, that all candidates were invited to.

Note again the maddening lack of specifics and contempt for the questions from the audience. As I commented in the article:

It's not just about whom Parks would vote for as Speaker, though that's a very big deal. What matters is whether Linda Parks has any principles beyond getting herself elected. She has steadfastly refused to answer any direct questions about what sort of policies she would advocate, choosing instead to answer only in platitudes.

She talks a lot about bipartisanship and compromise. But those are *tactics*, not principles.

For instance, Parks says that Social Security is going bankrupt. That's not true--it's funded for decades. But even if it were true, how would she fix it? Raising the age limit, reducing benefits, raising the payroll tax cap? What would she do?

Parks says her priority is closing the deficit. Well, what does she think Democrats should have done more to compromise on? The deficit is directly caused by the recession, the Bush tax cuts and foreign wars. Bring back Clinton-era tax rates and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the deficit almost disappears. How would Linda Parks close the deficit? Would she raise taxes on the wealthy? Cut services to the needy? What would she cut?

Parks claims to be an environmentalist. What would she do about climate change, which really is an impending disaster unlike the deficit which is much more easily managed? Would she support the Keystone Pipeline? What about a carbon tax?

She says we should be "stronger allies of Israel." Would she support massive spending on a hot war with Iran, even while cutting social services to "tackle the deficit?"

Parks steadfastly refuses to answer any of these questions, spouting platitudes about compromise and bipartisanship instead.

She doesn't have to answer to any political party. But she does owe the voters of the district to inform them what her principles are, and how she would be likely to vote on the major issues of the day.

And as I continued when challenged by a "moderate" on the immediate need to tackle Social Security, of all things:

Of all the problems in this country, a fund that might run out in 25 years isn't at the top of the list--to say nothing of the fact that if the country can find money for three wars, it can find it for social security. I didn't notice Republicans demanding that the Iraq War pay for itself.

But beyond that, neither you nor Linda Parks have given any details for how you would solve the social security "problem." Cut benefits, raise the retirement age, or raise the payroll tax cap? Raise the cap to $200,000, and the "problem" is instantly solved.

My problem with Linda Parks isn't that she's not a Democrat. It's that I have no idea how she would vote on the issues. And that in turn means that she wouldn't be a representative of the people.

By contrast, I know exactly how Julia Brownley on most of the major issues of the day, and I know that she shares my values.

And that, by the way, is the value of the political parties. When all else fails, they're a fairly good guide to a candidate's moral values and budget priorities, especially when paired the endorsements of individuals paying close attention to the races.

Linda Parks doesn't have to answer to a political party. But that makes it *all the more important* that voters know exactly how she would vote on the issues. She has steadfastly refused to any of these questions with any specificity.

As the Republicans continue to make actual governance impossible, the voters will become increasingly open to arguments like Parks'. The only antidote is to force candidates like Parks to move away from platitudes and toward real answers on the issues. Because if they're forced to do so, it will become very obvious just how unpopular are the positions that fall "in the middle" between the two parties.

Blind fealty to bipartisanship is an article of faith, not of fact. It's more damaging, in fact, than blind allegiance to a political party, because at least political parties have a minimum set of the principles that they allegedly stand for.


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thereisnospoon 3/24/2012 03:00:00 PM |

 

Desperate for a rationale

by digby

Via Little Green Footballs, I see that the forensic wingnuts are on the case:

Riehl has uncovered another media plot to drum up sympathy for Trayvon Martin — the photo of Trayvon being shown in the mainstream media has been ALTERED! BOMBSHELL!

Some people are so lacking in self-awareness it's hard to even know where to start. Dana Loesch is right there too ...

Charles Johnson explains that the "dark" picture was taken from a poster and isn't the original. But that really isn't the point. The point is that these people all obviously believe that Trayvon was actually a dark skinned African American and therefore dangerous looking young black male --- and the liberal media is covering that up. The fact that liberals don't assume that dark skin equals danger seems to have escaped their logic, but perhaps Reihl and Loesch believe the media's just worried about offending Americans who are as racist as they are.

In any case, the only reason this could possibly be relevant is that they believe if Trayvon had dark black skin along with his sinister hoodie, the Florida vigilante would have had good cause to be frightened and shoot him.

Clearly, this case has the right wing discombobulated. They desperately want to defend the shooter. He's one of them. But they just can't get a handle on how to do it. You've got a dead, unarmed 17 year old kid and a shooter on tape looking for trouble. The only defense they can come up with is that the 250 lb armed man was so frightened by the 140 lb teenager that he had to shoot him. I'm going to guess that for many of these right wing gun nuts, the kid being dark would be an exigent circumstance that explains it. It's all they've got.

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digby 3/24/2012 01:30:00 PM |

 
Quiverfull of Santorum

by digby

This article about Rick Santorum in today's New York Times discusses one of the more interesting aspects of this year's presidential campaign --- his popularity among women. Well, not among all women but rather the most conservative religious women. And this is their theme song:

GAME ON! Join the Fight
We've finally got a Man who will Stand for what is Right

GAME ON! Victory's in Sight
We've got a Man who Understands that God Gave the Bill of Rights

CH:
Oh, there is Hope for our Nation again
Maybe the First time Since we Had Ronald Reagan
There will be Justice for the Unborn
Factories back on our Shores
Where the Constitution rules our land
Yes, I Believe... Rick Santorum is our Man!

Vs 2:
GAME ON! He's got the Plan
To Lower Taxes, Raise Morale, To Put the Power in our Hands

GAME ON! Change is at hand
Faithful to his Wife and Seven Kids - He'll be Loyal to our land

BR:
Oh It's crazy, What's been slipping through our hands
When we the People are still supposed to rule this Land
Rick Understands

It's awfully tempting for a latte sipping, west coat elitist like me to make fun of that. After all, the idea that God "gave us" the Bill of Rights is just plain ridiculous. And this seems to be one of those huge Christian celebrity families like the Duggars who wish to enforce traditional values I find to be narrow minded and backward. But I'm not going to make fun of them. These are sincere people participating in the political process just as Will.I.Am did when he made his paean to Obama with the "Yes We Can" video in 2008. Obviously, it's a very different style, but the earnest intent is the same.

What's interesting is how this song has apparently become the theme song for the socially conservative women who form the passionate core of Santorum's support:

Rick Santorum was running late, and about 250 people were growing restless at a rally sponsored by the Tea Party. So the Harris sisters, a country singing duo, took the stage.They harmonized on “Game On,” a sprightly campaign anthem that concluded, “Yes, I believe/Rick Santorum is our man.”

What happened next was more like a revival meeting than a political event.

The performers asked each other and the crowd what they liked best about the presidential candidate. Camille Harris, 20, exclaimed into the microphone, “Seven kids! Seven kids!” Turning her attention to Mr. Santorum’s youngest, Isabella, born with a genetic disorder, the singer added, “Didn’t abort the last one, which is amazing.”

Then several women in the crowd called out that Mr. Santorum was a Christian and a “man of faith,” and that he was “honest and honorable.” Bursting with enthusiasm, one woman said, “He’s for life!”

There is no mistaking the bond that Mr. Santorum has with conservative women — particularly married women — a group that has formed a core of his support since the primaries began in January. He has handily carried the votes of women in primaries that he has won, including those in Mississippi and Alabama. And where he has lost, in Arizona, South Carolina and Illinois, he has enjoyed a higher level of support among women than men.

"Didn’t abort the last one, which is amazing."

Let's just say that this illustrates once again, the danger of speaking for all women. These women couldn't be more different than I am. And yet when I watch that video I can't help but like them on a certain level, the same way I always smile a little bit when I watch those adorable Duggar kids. They too have been appearing at Santorum events all over the country and have also done a slick endorsement video:

It's very cute. And notice that this is a full embrace of the Republican agenda, not just the social conservatism. (Well, not the entire agenda --- but then none of the candidates except Mitt are advertising their corrupt relationship with the wealthy.)These are conservative Republicans, in the most hardcore, true believer definition of the word.

However, there's more to this that isn't so cute. The Harris sisters and the Duggars are part of the Quiverfull movement which basically makes women slaves to their wombs.

Quiverfull is a movement among some conservative evangelical Christian couples chiefly in the United States, but with some adherents in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Britain and elsewhere. It promotes procreation, and sees children as a blessing from God, eschewing all forms of birth control, including natural family planning and sterilization. Adherents are known as "quiver full", "full quiver", "quiverfull-minded", or simply "QF" Christians. Some refer to the Quiverfull position as Providentialism, while other sources have referred to it as a manifestation of natalism.

And while it's possible that every one of those lovely young girls in the videos are completely happy to follow their family's religious traditions when they grow up you have to worry about the girl who isn't. The unhappy one who doesn't get educated and who doesn't know that she might have a different role in the world. You can see it when you watch the Duggars reality show 19 Kids and Counting. I wrote a little bit about this a few years back:

[A]s I watched, it became clear that there was something more odd about them than just their unusual numbers. And after a while I realized that it was the oppressiveness of their insularity, particularly for the older girls, who seem to be emotionally underdeveloped and nearly obsessed with childbearing. It's the entire focus of the females, as you might imagine, who are basically raising children from the time they are able to pick one up. Their world is so small and they have no agency at all even when they are in their late teens.

They all seem quite happy, with good humor and a lot of affection among them so maybe this is just my own cultural bias kicking in. (And this is a TV show in which they are evangelizing for a certain way of life, so who knows what goes on beneath the surface?) But regardless of their good cheer, it's quite clear that by the time these kids get to adolescence they have been so isolated that they aren't prepared for any life but the odd one in which they've grown up --- which in patriarchal social arrangements is the point. The girls are raised to see themselves as solely designed to serve men and give birth. And that's what they do.

Eventually I started to avoid the show after watching an episode that featured them socializing with another like-minded extra-large family from Tennessee. Mom said they had to keep a strong eye on the teens because they might get "feelings" if they spend time with one another. It was clear to me then that they were basically keeping their kids in prison until they entered a church sanctioned marriage. All that good cheer suddenly seemed brittle and sad. And more than a little bit scary.

Oh, and by the way, the Christian Reconstructionists/Quiverfull people really do believe in Christian fundamentalist Theocracy. If they were ever to achieve real political power, they would legislate this way of life. Indeed, their allies are working hard to outlaw abortion and birth control by any means necessary, which would be an excellent practical step toward their goal.

Jim Bob Duggar is a former elected politician who served in the Arkansas house of representatives. He has not ruled out running for office again.

Rick Santorum is running and these people clearly believe that he is one of them. And it's the female side of this movement that loves him the most. But then I've always observed that the emotional part of religion -- the ecstatic part --- always manifests more in the women. And why not? Where else can they get that feeling? Even the most fertile of them can only give birth once a year.

The men go out in the world and they have agency and freedom. The women have Jesus and their children. And now they have Rick Santorum.

And to those of you who think that this is all a fringe movement with no real political clout beyond a sad, half-baked presidential campaign, think again:

Even as a national debate rages over contraception insurance, tens of thousands of low-income women and teenagers across the United States have lost access to subsidized birth control as states slash and restructure family planning funds.

Montana and New Jersey have eliminated altogether their state family planning programs. New Hampshire cut its funding by 57 percent and five other states made more modest program trims.

But the biggest impact, by far, has been in Texas.

State lawmakers last fall cut family-planning funds by two-thirds, or nearly $74 million over two years. Within months, half the state-supported family planning clinics in Texas had closed.

Where do you suppose all this anti-birth control energy came from?

Update: Elias Isquith riffed on the same article today and makes this important observation:

[T]here was one quote in particular in the piece that caught my eye. It reminded me of Corey Robin’s oft-repeated claim that conservatism has historically been about power struggles in the private rather than public sphere, and it’s opposition to the loss of dominion in the former rather than the latter that truly animates — defines, even — the Anglo-American Right. Check out how one of the two songstresses above describes Santorum’s manifest superiority:

When the Harris sisters’ song, “Game On,” got wide attention on the Internet this month, it made them minor celebrities in conservative circles. People sing along to the words, “We’ve finally got a man who will stand for what is right.”

“If he can run his household, he can run the country. Amen!” Haley Harris, 18, told the Mandeville crowd.

Robin wrote about John Adams' famous exchange with his wife, who asked that he "remember the ladies":

He leavened his response with playful banter—he prayed that George Washington would shield him from the “despotism of the petticoat” Adams was clearly rattled by this appearance of democracy in the private sphere. In a letter to James Sullivan, he worried that the Revolution would “confound and destroy all distinctions,” unleashing throughout society a spirit of insubordination so intense that all order would be dissolved. “There will be no end of it.” No matter how democratic the state, it was imperative that society remain a federation of private dominions, where husbands ruled over wives, masters governed apprentices, and each “should know his place and be made to keep it.”

This is where the religious fundamentalist and the ideological conservative make their common cause.


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digby 3/24/2012 12:00:00 PM |

 
Blame

by digby

This is from 2010 but it might as well have been made yesterday.


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digby 3/24/2012 10:30:00 AM |

 
Why buy the politician if you can get the votes for free?

by digby

Fascinating chart via Pinterest and Nick Bauman:



Sooo, what this means is that if the Democrats continue to support the criminality and corruption of this sector, it won't be because of the money. It will be because they really and truly believe in it.


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digby 3/24/2012 09:00:00 AM |

 
Pity the poor victimized union-busting drunk driver

by David Atkins

lulz:

Remember Randy Hopper, the Republican state senator in Wisconsin who was recalled and defeated in 2011 — and later in the year was arrested and charged with drunk-driving? He and his lawyer are now presenting their defense in the trial: It’s all a political conspiracy by the unions.

The Appleton Post Crescent reports, Hopper and his attorney Dennis Melowski are presenting a case that public employee union members in Fond du Lac County, the place he formerly represented and where he was arrested for alleged DUI, have been out to get him for his support of Gov. Scott Walker’s legislation that eliminated most collective bargaining rights for public employees. (Police and firefighters were exempted.)

Interestingly, though, Melowski did still say in court that Hopper drank as many as three and a half beers at a Green Bay Packers game on October 16, 2011, before driving home to Fond du Lac with his girlfriend, Valerie Cass...

Hopper explained that he refused to take a breathalyzer test at the county jail, because county employees had threatened him in the past. A preliminary test that jail staffers were able to take showed a blood alcohol content of 0.13%, above the 0.08% limit, but this is not admissible as evidence in the trial.

“The day everything broke loose in Madison, I had members of the union in my office who said, ‘If you don’t support us, we are going to destroy your life,’” Hopper said. “We’re going to picket your kids’ schools, we’re going to tear apart your reputation, we’re going to have you recalled.”

Also, according to the Fond du Lac Reporter, Hopper and Melowski targeted the arresting officer, Deputy Nick Venne, for having earlier in the year signed one of the petitions to recall Hopper, and also for having not administered a full blood test to Hopper at the police station.

For his own part, Venne confirmed that he signed the petition, but said this played no role in the arrest — that Hopper smelled of alcohol, and gave other suspicious signs in a field sobriety test.

Was there ever a whinier bunch of supposed tough guys than Republican elected officials? They seem to have a hard time taking personal responsibility for their actions.


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thereisnospoon 3/24/2012 07:30:00 AM |

Friday, March 23, 2012

 
"I could have used you that night"

by digby




Sadly, she isn't really using poetic license. It's quite literal:

Tucson resident Adena Bank Lees confirmed that she sent state Rep. Terri Proud (R-Tucson) an email in early March asking Proud to oppose a bill outlawing abortions in the state after 20 weeks. The email was prompted by an email blast from the pro-choice organization NARAL asking members to lobby Arizona legislators to vote against the bill...

Proud's email to Bank Lees, dated March 5 and sent from her state email account read:

Personally I'd like to make a law that mandates a woman watch an abortion being performed prior to having a "surgical procedure". If it's not a life it shouldn't matter, if it doesn't harm a woman then she shouldn't care, and don't we want more transparency and education in the medical profession anyway? We demand it everywhere else. Until the dead child can tell me that she/he does not feel any pain - I have no intentions of clearing the conscience of the living - I will be voting YES.

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digby 3/23/2012 08:00:00 PM |