Hullabaloo

Friday, May 03, 2013

 
Let's talk backdrops, shall we?

by digby

So Sarah the huntress made a big splash at the NRA convention today slamming President Obama for "exploiting" the Newtown tragedy:

At the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting, Palin slammed Obama for flying the grieving parents of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Air Force One and then “making them backdrops” at rallies.

“That same media is now the reliable poodle-skirted cheerleader for the president that writes the book on exploiting tragedy,” she said, wearing a T-shirt that said “women hunt.”

“Now, emotion is a good and a necessary thing. But we have politicians exploiting emotion for their own agenda,” she said. “We have well-meaning Americans who are desperate to respond.”

She's right, you know. The one thing about Republicans is that they never used citizens as props or exploited tragedy.

It's just not who they are:

"These boys and girls are not spare parts." President GEORGE W. BUSH

announcing his veto of federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, surrounded by 18 families who "adopted" frozen embryos not used by other couples

digby 5/03/2013 07:00:00 PM

 

The constitutionally guaranteed right of habeas psych

by digby

Colbert took on the Guantanamo hunger strike and interviewed Charles Swift, who explained the problem very well:

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,Video Archive

In case you don't know who Swift is, here's a post of mine from 2006:

American Hero

by digby

Every once in a while you read about or get to meet someone who displays by his or her actions one of those wonderful fundamental lessons in personal integrity, intellectual consistency and common decency that makes you think this species might not be doomed after all. Here's one:

The U.S. Navy lawyer who challenged the Bush administration's efforts to try terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, walked a professional tightrope between fellow officers trying to gain speedy convictions and what he considered a moral imperative to buck the chain of command and vigorously defend his client.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift could have taken the easy route of arranging a plea bargain for Salim Ahmed Hamdan, the Yemeni alleged to have worked as a driver and bodyguard for Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

But fearful of the dangerous precedent that could be set by denying international standards of justice to those swept up in the war on terrorism, Swift battled to get the rights and protections of the Geneva Convention for his client.

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that President Bush had overstepped his war powers in sending Hamdan and nine others to face military tribunals, America's first since World War II.

"I feel like we all won, that the rule of law won, and that is essentially what we are all about," Swift said of the high court's validation of his three-year campaign on behalf of his 36-year-old client.

Swift was assigned to defend Hamdan by the Pentagon in November 2003 and initially was ordered by a superior officer to secure a plea bargain so there would be a timely conviction.

"I had the unenviable task of going down to this guy from Yemen in the uniform of people who had been treating him badly and saying, 'If you don't make a deal you may never see me again,' " Swift recalled of his first meeting at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo with Hamdan and his decision to fight a process stacked against the defendant.

Swift was allowed a rare phone call to the Guantanamo prison Thursday to give Hamdan the news of their legal victory. He described the prisoner as "humble, not jubilant, and very, very thankful."

"It was gratifying to hear the belief in his voice, the recognition that mighty people don't always get to do what they want," Swift said of Hamdan, who, he added, understands that his case is far from over.

After more than 100 meetings at the remote U.S. naval base in southeastern Cuba, Swift said, he and Hamdan have developed a trusting relationship, and he would gladly represent the Yemeni in any future trial, military or civilian.

Colleagues attributed the high court ruling to what they considered to be Swift's determination to protect the integrity of U.S. jurisprudence against a Pentagon bent on retribution for terrorism attacks on U.S. forces.

"It took exceptional courage. He had to risk himself being alienated from the larger military establishment," said David Scheffer, law professor and director of the Center for International Human Rights at Northwestern University. "He must have known when he took this on that he was risking his career, and sadly he may have done that within the U.S. Navy."

Though Swift's successful challenge of the tribunal's legitimacy will probably open doors in the private sector and academia for the Navy lawyer, Scheffer said, Swift has reportedly been passed over for promotion.

"It was a gutsy move, and he did it with complete dedication and devotion to the cause," Benjamin Sharp of the Washington office of Perkins Coie said of Swift, with whom the Seattle-based law firm collaborated in Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld.

Sharp speculated that Swift's military career was probably damaged by his defense of Hamdan, a possibility the naval lawyer also alluded to.

"I love the military. I love my career and I'm proud of it," Swift said, noting he would be eligible for early retirement in nine months and would leave the Navy unless he was promoted. "One thing that has been a great revelation for me is that you may love the military, but it doesn't necessarily love you."

The military has many men and women of great physical courage. That's the point, after all. But it takes a person of exceptional character to be willing to take on the military hierarchy from within in order to preserve our fundamental principles. I'm skeptical that the threat of Islamic terrorism can be properly categorized as a war but if it is, one of the big battles being fought is for the integrity of the American system, and the battle is internal, not external. In that battle, this guy is a hero.

Swift appeared briefly on Hardball yesterday and had to endure an unbearably puerile interview from Chris Matthews, but he said a couple of things that I think are so simple and yet so important that it always boggles my mind that they get lost in the argument:

MATTHEWS: What about the charge made recently, just a couple minutes ago by Kate O‘Beirne of the “National Review,” that people who fight us who are not in uniform, who do not represent countries who are party to the Geneva Convention shouldn‘t be free riders? They shouldn‘t get Geneva Convention treatment. They should be treated like thugs.

SWIFT: Well, you know, if you‘re looking at it from that way, we have a lot of criminals here in this country. And to prejudge anyone that we capture outside the country as a thug, why are we having a trial in the first place? We‘ve already decided they were guilty.

What the Supreme Court said is you have the trial first, you use the procedures that are set up under international law, and then you decide whether they‘re a thug. You don‘t make the thug determination going in.

Why is this so hard to understand? We already know they picked up a whole lot of innocent and low level nobodies in Afghanistan and shipped them off to Gitmo. In the early days, the US was paying the Northern Alliance $5,000 per head and the NA was handing over their tribal rivals and anybody else they wanted to get rid of. I'm sure Kato and her barely repressed racist allies on the right don't think it matters if some poor innocent wog gets tortured and locked up forever, but civilized people have come to recognise that show trials, kangaroo courts and lynching are immoral --- and counterproductive. If you want to stress liberal values, the rule of law and democracy as the way forward in these fundamentalist religious cultures, you can't behave this way. It doesn't make you look tough or strong; it makes you look like you don't believe in your own system --- and that makes you weak. 

More from Colbert on Gitmo:

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,Video Archive

digby 5/03/2013 06:00:00 PM

 
Justice, American style

by digby

Cuz' we just *know*:

Willie Manning is on death row in Mississippi, awaiting execution for the abduction and murder of two college students in 1992. He was convicted on circumstantial evidence, including the testimony of a jailhouse informant who had previously given a statement implicating another person. No physical evidence has ever linked Willie to the crime, and he has always maintained his innocence. He has been seeking DNA testing of crime scene evidence for years.

Incredibly, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that there is “overwhelming evidence of guilt,” so no DNA testing is needed. His execution has been set for May 7th. Eighteen men have been exonerated by DNA testing after being sentenced to death, including Kennedy Brewer of Mississippi.

Can you think of even one decent reason why we should not automatically test available DNA for all capital crimes? How can these people live with themselves?

But then our prison system is a nightmare generally and we are now openly exempting some people from even being tried because we just *know* they're dangerous but we don't have evidence to prove it. So it's fairly clear that our childhood teachings about justice and the American way have pretty much been shown to be vacuous bromides. Our justice system is a joke.

If you've a mind to try to help this man get a DNA test, you can click here to send a note to Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant to stay the execution and order one. It's incredible to me that he hasn't done it long ago.

.


digby 5/03/2013 04:30:00 PM

 
Who needs to count votes when you're a Republican?

by David Atkins

How little respect for democracy do Republicans have? Well, in North Carolina when a vote on energy policy didn't go their way, they simply decided to go to voice vote and pretend they won:

Yep — in its desperate attempts to get rid of North Carolina’s renewable energy program, the legislature has given up the radical, liberal, lamestream, obviously subjective “science” of, um, actually counting votes. You see, when the votes were actually counted, the bill that would have removed the renewables program (and said that wind, among other things, was not renewable) died in the state house, failing to emerge from committee by an 18-13 vote.

Okay, hmm … you’re Republican legislator Mike Hager, you hate the renewables program, and your bill has just been defeated by an indisputable margin of five votes. What to do … what to do? Easy. You reintroduce the bill. And when it next comes up in committee, this time in the state senate? You have a voice vote — and have your finance committee chair, Republican Bill Rabon, refuse to count the actual votes. In a voice vote so close that both sides claim they would have won if the votes had been counted, Rabon declares that the bill has passed and runs off.

No, I wish I were, but I am not making this up. We have given up counting votes in North Carolina. The Reign of Error rules supreme here.

It's not just that Republicans have no compunction about cheating to get their way. It's that fundamentally they don't respect democracy. They view most actual voters as parasites and squishes, they think they know what should really be done, and the process of democratic governance is mostly a painful roadblock.

As far as Republicans are concerned, government should only be in the business of protecting national borders and private property; corporations should run most day-to-day affairs, and the family and church should try to take care of whatever else people might need. That such a system works for no one but the very wealthy, some church leaders and a bunch of patriarchal male heads-of-household doesn't bother them. They know most people won't go along with that dystopian vision, so votes are superfluous to governance. Suppression and anti-democratic shenanigans are the right thing to do in the service of the greater cause.


.
thereisnospoon 5/03/2013 02:52:00 PM

 
Did you know the White House invented marketing?

by digby

This piece by Brian Beutler is a fascinating analysis of Obama's "permission structure" and specifically how the White House sees itself reaching a Grand Bargain with the Republicans.  There are so many moving parts it's hard to keep it all straight which is also why I think it may be just a tad ambitious --- any political strategy that depends upon dozens of pieces falling exactly the way you want them to is better considered a pipe dream.

Anyway, the plan seems to revolve around getting a few Republicans that other Republicans trust to sign on and then let them sell the Grand Bargain to the troops. Ezra describes it this way:

The now-famous term comes, as far as I can tell, from a 2008 profile of David Axelrod in the New Republic, where Jason Zengerle quoted Ken Snyder, a Democratic consultant and Axelrod protege, on his mentor’s approach. “David felt there almost had to be a permission structure set up for certain white voters to consider a black candidate.” The “permission structure” relied heavily on “third-party authentication,” which is to say, endorsements from respected figures or institutions that the targeted voters admired.

If you think back to the 2008 campaign, you can see Axelrod slowly building this permission structure around Obama. Right before Super Tuesday, Axelrod rolled out the endorsements of Ted and Caroline Kennedy. Right before the election, he rolled out Colin Powell. The timing and nature of the endorsements were meant to make an African American candidate with an international upbringing and the name Barack Hussein Obama into someone that Ohio steelworkers could feel comfortable voting for. If Ted Kennedy and Colin Powell can back this guy, so can you.

At his news conference this week, President Obama trotted the idea out again, this time in reference to negotiating with congressional Republicans. “We’re going to try to do everything we can to create a permission structure for them to be able to do what’s going to be best for the country.”

I guess this is supposed to be some kind of original and exiting new concept, but the truth is a little bit more prosaic.  The "permission structure" is nothing more than a common sales technique called "influencer marketing" something that marketing majors learn in their first year of junior college:

Influencer marketing, (also Influence Marketing) is a form of marketing that has emerged from a variety of recent practices and studies, in which focus is placed on specific key individuals (or types of individual) rather than the target market as a whole. It identifies the individuals that have influence over potential buyers, and orients marketing activities around these influencers. 

Influencers may be potential buyers themselves, or they may be third parties. These third parties exist either in the supply chain (retailers, manufacturers, etc.) or may be so-called value-added influencers (such as journalists, academics, industry analysts, professional advisers, and so on).

The first approach to that theory comes from a communication's classic "The people´s choice", a Lazerfeld and Katz 1940 study on political communication that was also known as Multistep flow model, that claims that the majority of people are influenced by secondhand information and opinion leaders.

We used to call it "validator marketing" as well. But never let anything as prosaic as marketing 101 get in the way of Obama campaign hagiography. They invented the wheel, we all know that.

Anyway, the point of the article is that the White House is still determined to pursue their Grand Bargain and they've come up with a supposedly "new" plan to get Republicans on board (and apparently steamroll the Democrats into cutting their own throats.) But the legislative strategy is extremely complicated, as Beutler's post describes in dizzying detail, so even if they can get their "validators" to run with the Grand Bargain, getting it to a vote is a truly daunting task.

Good luck with all that. Maybe the Tea Partiers all listen to Tom Coburn and Lindsay Graham and will do whatever they say, but I doubt it. They just aren't as lemming-like as their rivals across the aisle.

The again, you never know ...


.
digby 5/03/2013 01:43:00 PM

 
The Nazis were very sharp dressers

by digby

Via Think Progress:

JEFFREY Roobin: “This country fought Adolf Hitler. And I don’t really believe that Osama bin Laden and his group are worse or more dangerous than Adolf Hitler...We managed to defeat Adolf Hitler by following the rule of law.”

ARI FLEISCHER: They [the Germans] followed the law of war. They wore uniforms and they fought us on battlefields. These people are fundamentally, totally by design different. And they need to be treated in a different extrajudicial system.

See, the Nazis weren't so bad after all. Sure, they committed genocide and other war crimes and atrocities of an unprecedented nature, but you have to admit they were very sharp dressers. Which made all the difference. Plus they were white, so there's that.

This is not unusual actually. The right has been pimping what I call "The War of the Worlds scenario" since 9/11 to justify their proclaimed intention to "take the gloves off." Not only did they create the illusion that we were fighting an epic war on the scale of WWII (as Chris Hayes memorably examined in this piece back in 2006) they took it one step farther and constructed an "enemy" with supernatural powers that presents an existential threat so grave that we must abandon all pretense of civilization to stop it. It is incredibly fatuous. And it exposes a cowardly side of the American character that will embarrass us forever. This is not the reaction of a strong and confident nation. It's the reaction of a bunch of pants-wetting panic artists.

.
digby 5/03/2013 12:00:00 PM

 
Paging Corey Robin

by digby

One of my favorite insights of Corey Robin's book The Reactionary Mind is this one:

Every great political blast—the storming of the Bastille, the taking of the Winter Palace, the March on Washington—is set off by a very private fuse: the contest for rights and standing in the family, the factory, and the field. Politicians and parties talk of constitution and amendment, natural rights and inherited privileges. But the real subject of their deliberations is the private life of power.

And here's this week's Weekly Standard (h/t David Atkins)

[A] case can be made that the welfare state has competed with the family for primacy from the beginning. It’s a point exquisitely if unintentionally illustrated by the Obama reelection campaign’s infamous “Julia” website, which showed the beneficent state stepping in to do at every stage of life what used to be done by competent families: babysitting, educating, influencing romantic decisions, caring for someone in old age.

Raw propaganda aside, some serious thinkers have also remarked over the years on the zero-sum game that is the power struggle between family and state. Plato, for one, understood that the only sure way to make children reliable instruments of his Republic was to separate them from their families at an early age. British author Ferdinand Mount argued in a 1992 book that the family “is a subversive organization. .  .  . Only the family has continued throughout history and still continues to undermine the ‘State.’ ” Tocqueville, Mount pointed out, also grasped this fundamental antagonism between family and state; witness the great Frenchman’s observation that “as long as family feeling is kept alive, the opponent of oppression is never alone.”

Looking away from theory and toward the public square, it’s also plainly true that the welfare state has interrupted the organic bonds of family in ways too numerous to count. As Milton Friedman once observed of Social Security, “The voluntary transfers [from young to old] strengthened the bonds of the family; the compulsory transfers weaken those bonds.” And certainly it’s the welfare state that has effectively bankrolled via many programs the expensive pan-Western fallout of the sexual revolution: the unprecedented levels of divorce, family breakup, out-of-wedlock births, and other trends that have turned the modern state into an inefficient but all-encompassing substitute for a man of the house.

In sum, statism has been an engine of family destruction—and vice versa. All of which leads to a contrarian thought: Might the dark ages of the welfare state end in a family renaissance?

If the welfare states of the West finally do implode, it’s hard to think of any institution but the family that could step into that vacuum. When politics forces the truth that taking care of one’s own is less ruinous than having the state do it, it’s just possible that personal choices could come to reflect that fact.

Can it be any plainer?

And this is also why conservatives have been a bit more, shall-we-say, flexible with marriage equality lately than one might have expected. The institution of marriage is the bedrock of their patriarchal belief system. Sure, they may wish it stayed more "traditional" but as long as the nuclear family remains sacrosanct, the workplace stays outside the purview of society at large (aka government) and the individual is not empowered beyond these institutions, they are winning.

All the pain and insecurity of these past few years of austerity are necessary. This experience will force us to submit to power in private relationships based upon our material needs --- in the family, the factory and the field. Survival, in other words will depend upon the good will of our family and our bosses. And as long as we obey their rules we should be ok.  Just as God intended.

It's ironic that these are the same people who extol the founders and proclaim their great love of freedom and liberty, but then the founders were a bunch of rich white guys who loved those things universally in the abstract but kept the privilege only for themselves in reality, so I guess it makes a sort of sense. The good news is that our modern freedom-lovers will allow obedient people of color to claim a small share of the patriarchy and some are even willing to support gay folk who agree to live by their prescribed bourgeois values. So, it's not as if they don't ever evolve at all. Progress!

.
digby 5/03/2013 10:30:00 AM

 
QOTD: Mittens channels the Duggars

by digby

Remember how he was all moderate and regular and not-like-that-crazy-Santorum? Well, not so much. Here's what Mitt told graduates at Southern Virginia University last weekend:

“If you meet someone you love, get married. Have a quiver-full of kids if you can"

I've written a bit about the Quiverfull movement over the years, which is just about as retrograde as you can get without going full-blown fundamentalist polygamy: instead of having 20 kids by several wives, just force one poor wife to do it. For all his modern money making cleverness, he's still a primitive patriarch.

But I'm fairly sure he is still jealous about this (who wouldn't be?):

.
digby 5/03/2013 09:00:00 AM

 
Elections are still about the broad middle class

by David Atkins

I'm not usually in the habit of highlighting articles written by conservatives in the Examiner--particularly ones designed to steel racist anti-Latino tendencies in the GOP--but Byron York nevertheless makes a point that is worth noting. Mitt Romney could have garnered 70% of the Latino vote in 2012 and still lost the election:

But what if Romney had been able to reach a mind-blowing 70 percent of the Hispanic vote? Surely that would have meant victory, right? No, it wouldn't. Romney still would have lost, although by the narrowest of electoral margins, 270 to 268. (Under that scenario, Romney would have won the popular vote but lost in the Electoral College; he could have racked up huge numbers of Hispanic votes in California, New York and Texas, for example, and not changed the results in those states.)

According to the Times' calculator, Romney would have had to win 73 percent of the Hispanic vote to prevail in 2012. Which suggests that Romney, and Republicans, had bigger problems than Hispanic voters.

The most serious of those problems was that Romney was not able to connect with white voters who were so turned off by the campaign that they abandoned the GOP and in many cases stayed away from the polls altogether. Recent reports suggest as many as 5 million white voters simply stayed home on Election Day. If they had voted at the same rate they did in 2004, even with the demographic changes since then, Romney would have won.

York does concede the obvious point that as the Latino population grows, things will only become even more problematic for the GOP. But he also notes that Romney's problem wasn't so much weakness with minority groups as weakness with the broad spectrum of middle class households among all races:

But here is the real solution. Romney lost because he did not appeal to the millions of Americans who have seen their standard of living decline over the past decades. They're nervous about the future. When Romney did not address their concerns, they either voted for Obama or didn't vote at all. If the next Republican candidate can address their concerns effectively, he will win. And, amazingly enough, he'll win a lot more Hispanic votes in the process. A lot from other groups, too.

York is doing a little whistling past the graveyard here, of course, and in the service of a terrible and bigoted cause. If Republicans fail to move forward with immigration reform, there's no chance that Latino voters will be swayed to the Republican side by other policies and arguments. Perhaps more importantly, it's not as if the ever-rightward tilt of a Republican Party that is celebrating the death of the welfare state because families will have to take care of their own is about to make any serious inroads with persuadable middle-class voters.

That said, Democrats have to be careful not to count their demographic chickens before they're hatched. If Democrats don't start doing a better job of address middle-class economic concerns instead of the deficit hysterics of the wealthy, all it will take is one charismatic Republican to erase that demographic advantage and take the presidency in 2016 and beyond.


.

thereisnospoon 5/03/2013 07:30:00 AM

Thursday, May 02, 2013

 
Can we do a bake sale or something?

by digby

.... to help these poor souls out:

In a new article at the U.K. site eFinancialCareers, several bankers explain that they have legitimate reasons for needing more than one million British pounds (about $1.6 million) per year in pay -- more money than most non-banking types could ever figure out how to spend. In a nutshell, it's all about psychology. Abraham Maslow clearly should have added "crap-tons of money" when building his hierarchy of needs.

“It’s really not that unusual to find Wall Street bankers who are close to declaring themselves bankrupt,” Gary Goldstein, co-founder of U.S. search firm Whitney Partners, tells eFC's Sarah Butcher. “Some people are really struggling.”

The struggles of millionaire bankers (in Butcher's piece most of them are men) are an important factor for heartless regulators and shareholders to keep in mind as they consider putting limits on banker pay in the wake of a financial crisis that was fueled by bankers chasing higher pay. "One million" of anything -- pounds, dollars or Bitcoins, sounds like a lot to us rabble, but let bankers explain to you how it's pretty much the same as nothing, really.

For one thing, taxes will quickly whittle a seven-figure income right down to the mid-six figures, perilously close to being within sight of the middle class. Then, an ex-Goldman banker points out, with the mere $600,000 in take-home pay remaining, bankers still need to "pay the mortgages on, and maintain houses, in the Hamptons and Manhattan, to put three children through private schools costing $40k a year each, and to pay living costs."

The humanity.

Might I suggest a kickstarter campaign? I'm sure many people would be willing to contribute.

.
digby 5/02/2013 06:30:00 PM

 
A big silver lining for deficit hawks

by digby

Those expensive baby boomers are killing themselves in droves:

“It is the baby boomer group where we see the highest rates of suicide,” said the C.D.C.’s deputy director, Ileana Arias. “There may be something about that group, and how they think about life issues and their life choices that may make a difference.” 

The rise in suicide may also stem from the economic downturn over the past decade. Historically, suicide rates rise during times of financial stress and economic setbacks. “The increase does coincide with a decrease in financial standing for a lot of families over the same time period,” said Dr. Arias. 

Another factor may be the widespread availability of opioid drugs like OxyContin and oxycodone, which can be particularly deadly in large doses. 

Although most suicides are still by firearms, officials said there was a marked increase in poisoning deaths, which includes intentional overdoses of prescription drugs, and hangings. Poisoning deaths were up 24 percent overall during the 10-year period and hangings were up 81 percent. 

Dr. Arias noted that the higher suicide rates might be due to a series of life and financial circumstances that are unique to the baby boomer generation. Men and women in that age group are often coping with the stress of caring for aging parents while still providing financial and emotional support to adult children. 

“Their lives are configured a little differently than it has been in the past for that age group,” Dr. Arias said. “It may not be that they are more sensitive or that they have a predisposition to suicide, but that they may be dealing with more.”

But hey, look at the bright side: Social security and health care costs are very likely to come down if there are fewer old and sick people. Good news!

.
digby 5/02/2013 05:30:00 PM

 
Need to explain the urgency of climate change? Here's your elevator pitch

by David Atkins

Climate activism has a hard time gaining traction even in progressive circles in competition with other issues. This isn't surprising: when unemployment is high, the economy is slow, inequality is rampant and violence is ubiquitous, it's hard to become deeply emotionally engaged on a subject that won't likely directly impact one's life tomorrow or even ten years from now, even though it will certainly cause increasing weather-related disasters and global catastrophes as the years march on.

Most progressives take climate change seriously as an issue, but understanding that the issue isn't just a long-term problem but requires the fierce urgency of now can be a challenge. It isn't intuitive to our human brains to think that a long-term problem must require immediate solutions (except for the deficit fetishists, of course, but their motivation is killing the safety net, not solving the deficit per se).

To grasp why we need to act now on this crucial issue and why we cannot wait, Gaius Publius wrote a basic climate change elevator pitch a while back explaining the situation. Here's the key part:

Take a look at the chart below. It’s a version of the Michael Mann “hockey stick” diagram showing average global temperature from 500 AD to today, plus various predictions through 2100.



The black line near the right edge of the chart shows global warming measurements. This is global warming — starting from 1900 it never stops climbing.

Where are we headed?

Where are we headed?

All you need to know in four numbers:

■ We get 1½°C — 3°F — by 2100 regardless, even if we Stop Now. We’ve gotten half already (that’s where the black line stops). The rest is in the pipeline.

■ The political elites — G8, Copenhagen conference, etc. — want to stop 2°C — 3½°F. But no one wants to do anything.

■ At 3°C — 5½°F — we have James Hansen’s mass extinction scenario (“game over” he says). 20–50% of species will disappear.

■ What are we on track for? 6–7°C — a whopping 11–12½°F. This is Stop Never, the carbon industry plan.

Short form — We get 1½°C regardless and we’re only halfway there. 2°C is where elites want to stop, but won’t. 3°C is a mass extinction scenario. And we’re on track for 7°C by 2100.

How do we know we’re on track for 7°C?

Go back to the chart above and look at the projection labeled A1F1 (the red line). It takes us to 6°–7°C by 2100.

Now look at the chart below. It zooms in on the time 1980–2010. The projections start at 2000. The measurements keep going through summer 2008. See for yourself:


We’re doing what was predicted. Stop Never is taking us to 7°C by 2100. Our grandchildren will see the result. You and I will live through the early stages.

We can Stop Now or Stop Never; there’s no middle choice. Stop Later is the same as not stopping.

Stop Now means aggressively pursuing — as a action, not an aspiration — “zero new carbon into the air.” Permitting new carbon means not stopping.

We have to stop now. It's not a far-off distant problem. It's an immediate problem, and it has to be tackled now, not later.


.
thereisnospoon 5/02/2013 04:00:00 PM

 
So, you say that Americans *aren't* pants-wetting panic artists?  

by digby

You'd be wrong:

A teenage girl could face up to five years in prison for “discharging weapons or firerarms” on the grounds of Bartow High School in the town of Bartow, Florida. Kiera Wilmot, 16, was arrested by local police and taken into custody after causing a small explosion on campus.

There were no deaths, and no injuries. In fact, the only property damaged by the explosion was an eight ounce plastic water bottle. That’s because the “weapon” Wilmot detonated was a mixture of toilet bowl cleaner and aluminum foil, which she mixed together in the bottle as part of an apparent amateur science project.

Nonetheless, Wilmot—who has consistently good grades and no prior criminal record—is being brought up on felony charges, and will be tried as an adult.

For a typically excellent in-depth view of the context and big picture on this terrible case, watch this clip from last night's All In with Chris Hayes:

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

digby 5/02/2013 02:30:00 PM

 
QOTD: two lunatics on Fox

by digby

Coulter and Hannity:

Coulter: My point is: zero immigrants should be collecting government assistance. If you are collecting government assistance, it seems to me, can't we all agree that you are not the kind of immigrant we need in America here? We know we have our own native-born losers, murderers, welfare recipients -- fine we'll deal with them," she said.

Hannity: But we're importing more...

I know that everyone wants to believe that the only people who agree with these two are a couple of 72 year olds somewhere in Kansas, but I'm afraid that's way too optimistic.

Immigration reform may very well happen this year or next simply because there is a political incentive among Republicans to do it. (The business community has always wanted it, and they do tend to get their way eventually.) But I hope nobody believes that xenophobia of the type Coulter and Hannity exude there has been extinguished.
digby 5/02/2013 01:00:00 PM

 
If only we could just lock them all up indefinitely, then we would never die 

by digby

What could possibly go wrong?

While the detainees have been trying to protest being held indefinitely without charges, the military is trying to keep Guantanamo guards focused on the idea that the detainees are terrorists who need to be locked up.

Some of the military personnel now at Guantanamo are as young as 18, and were just children when the Sept. 11 attacks took place. To bring them up to speed, and to give those deployed to Guantanamo a better sense of why they’re there, FBI counterterrorism officials hold periodic unclassified briefings open to members of the military. A recent April briefing, which helped explain the role allegedly played by five detainees on trial in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks, featured recordings of 911 calls from victims in the World Trade Center, which attendees said left many participants in tears.

Additionally, guards at Guantanamo -- like all other members of the military -- are barred from doing their own research on Wikileaks, and in theory any news websites that present information from Wikileaks. Such research may tell them more about the detainees. The consequence of accepting the government's side of the story and excluding everything else is a strict us vs. them mentality.

“Many of the guards are not informed about the details of the situation at Guantanamo or the legal process of it, that there are some people who are cleared for release. They’re kept away from all that,” said Omar Deghayes, a former Guantanamo detainee who was released in 2007 after a five-year incarceration. “They tell them these are the worst of the worst. All they know is ‘Oh, these people are connected to Sept. 11.’ That’s the mindframe.”

"We have the keys at the end of the day, they are on the other side of the cell,” states a sign hanging in the Camp Six observation room, where guards monitor detainees via cameras.

That is an excerpt of a fascinating report from Guanatanamo by Ryan Reilly. He quotes one of the guards kvetching that these prisoners had it a lot better than the Louisiana prisons he worked in as a civilian.Considering that Louisiana prisons are notorious hellholes, that's hardly a useful comparison. But then this fellow (an officer...) apparently doesn't know that many of these prisoners are innocent of any crimes and are being held indefinitely because Americans are a bunch of pants-wetting, panic artists who have convinced themselves that if they just try hard enough they can kill or imprison everyone who hates us and then we will all be safe forever. It's obscenely absurd.

And, by the way, the torture continues:

Fayiz al Kandari, one of the detainees being force-feed, complained through his lawyer, Carlos Warner, that medical officials were using a feeding tube that was too large, and that he was not able to breathe. He said that his request for the doctors to use a smaller tube was denied.

Roughly two-thirds of those being force-fed “accept their nutritional supplement voluntarily,” according to House, meaning the emaciated men don’t actively fight the inevitable. Even those detainees who cooperate are strapped down into a chair with built-in restraints for the arms, legs and torso. Those who refuse to go to the medical facility are strapped to their beds and force-fed inside their cells.

“It’s not a violent resistance,” one medical staffer in Camp Six said the day reporters visited. Nevertheless, medical personnel are accompanied at all times by guards in riot gear...

While there are potential health risks to force-feeding -- collapsed lungs, infections, pneumonia -- the military in theory may continue the practice for years. One detainee at Guantanamo has been force-fed daily since 2005.

(And yes, that is torture, with ramifications for medical personnel, guards and prisoners.)

Read the whole thing if you can stand it. The administration defenses for all this are lame and unconvincing.

Well, to everyone who isn't a complete dope, that is:

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

Let me finish tonight with this, Gitmo must go, but where? That's the scare. Move the prisoners where you can put on trial to the states. Okay. But the republicans won't agree with that. not in my backyard, they say. Or send the prisoners we can't put on trial to other countries. But what country is willing to take them or I should say, what country do we trust to keep an eye on them? This is a real problem. In the old days we released prisoners of war when the war was over. They go home. When is this war going to be over? This war on terrorism? If they were simply criminals, we could incarcerate them and then let them go. When are we able to release people that are determined to go to war the day they get out. I'm open to new ideas.

I have a new idea, Chris. Why don't you stop talking for a couple of minutes and think about what you are saying.  It makes no sense.  Is it really acceptable that we have a bunch of prisoners we cannot charge, try or convict but who nonetheless can be assumed to be determined to go to war with us the day they get out of prison? How the hell do you know that?

So, while we might not have any evidence but we just "know" they are guilty and therefore we can never let them go until the War on Terrorism is over. Chris would like to know when that will be. Me too. But I'm going to guess never. This would be darkly funny if it wasn't the official policy of the US Government. They have declared that certain prisoners are just going to have to indefinitely stay in prison without trial somewhere.  Sure, we'd like to be able to imprison them indefinitely in a prison that isn't Guantanamo because well ... I don't know why.  What the hell difference does that make?  But we just do. The only question is where they're going to molder for the rest of their lives --- or until we can all celebrate VGWOT-Day, which is never.

And hey, it's not like there aren't other prisoners we'd really, really love to set free, it's just that we can't trust them not to be mad about destroying their lives based on lies so we need to make sure they either rot in some foreign prison or are "watched" carefully for the rest of their lives and we can't find anyone that's willing to do that dirty work for us. Bummer.

For a more in-depth look at the rigid inability to grasp what's going on here, check out his interview with two experts earlier in the show.

In case you are unaware of the official 2011 Obama administration executive order on this:

President Obama signed an executive order Monday that will create a formal system of indefinite detention for those held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who continue to pose a significant threat to national security. The administration also said it will start new military commission trials for detainees there. The announcements, coming more than two years after Obama vowed in another executive order to close the detention center, all but cements Guantanamo Bay's continuing role in U.S. counterterrorism policy. 

Administration officials said the president is still committed to closing the prison, although he made no mention of that goal in a short statement Monday. The administration's original plans to create a detention center in the United States and prosecute some detainees in federal court have all but collapsed in the face of bipartisan congressional opposition. The executive order recognizes the reality that some Guantanamo Bay detainees will remain in U.S. custody for many years, if not for life. 

The new system allows them the prospect of successfully arguing in the future that they should be released because they do not pose a threat. "Today, I am announcing several steps that broaden our ability to bring terrorists to justice, provide oversight for our actions and ensure the humane treatment of detainees," Obama said in statement. "I strongly believe that the American system of justice is a key part of our arsenal in the war against al-Qaeda and its affiliates, and we will continue to draw on all aspects of our justice system - including [federal] Article III Courts - to ensure that our security and our values are strengthened." 

But activists on either end of the debate over closing the prison cast the announcement as a reversal. "It is virtually impossible to imagine how one closes Guantanamo in light of this executive order," said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. "In a little over two years, the Obama administration has done a complete about-face." Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said the order vindicated Obama's predecessor. "I commend the Obama Administration for issuing this Executive Order," he said in a statement. "The bottom line is that it affirms the Bush Administration policy that our government has the right to detain dangerous terrorists until the cessation of hostilities."

Chris Matthews just accepts the underlying logic of this lunacy but that doesn't mean anyone else should. When the government says it just "knows" someone is dangerous but they can't prove it --- so they're going to lock them up indefinitely anyway --- the constitution has become a piece of toilet paper.


.




digby 5/02/2013 11:30:00 AM

 
Put a worker on the board

by digby

President Obama's nomination of Hyatt heiress Penny Pritzker to be Commerce secretary gives me the perfect excuse to write about a fascinating conversation I had recently with Cathy Youngblood, a union activist and Hyatt employee who is on a campaign to get her employer to put one worker on its board of directors. She's written a compelling blog post over at Huffpost today about the conditions of her job and her attempts to get Hyatt to listen to her proposal and I urge you to read it, particularly this part:

My problem is one that workers everywhere face daily. I know you've probably had the thought, "What was my boss thinking when he set up the work this way? I could do this better!" We have common sense solutions and ideas to help our respective businesses run better. But something is amiss. My voice needs to be heard in the boardroom, as well as in the hotel room. Unfortunately, the business owners, those captains of finance, are the last to listen. Our physical strength is required, our wisdom... not so much. But thousands of people like me want something in return for our services. We want their respect, to share in the decision making process of how we do our work. We know what is needed to run a hotel: proper tools and equipment, as well as procedures to ensure safer working environments.

What if a worker, someone like me, were allowed to sit on the board of directors of these companies? Think about it. If you were running a business wouldn't you want to hear from the people who know your business best? Knowledge is power, but only if one knows how to use it properly. This is why we launched the Someone Like Me campaign. There are currently 12 members on Hyatt Hotels' Board of Directors, from companies like Walmart, Goldman Sachs, and plenty of private equity. But not one member of the Board works in a hotel. I am calling on Hyatt to add a 13th member to the Board of Directors, and reserve that seat for a hotel worker. If I were on Hyatt's Board of Directors, I would ensure that all workers at Hyatt are paid a living wage, have safe working conditions, and the ability to speak out about those conditions without fear.

But this campaign isn't just about Hyatt Hotels, or Walmart, or the big banks, it's about all companies. The idea that a rank-and-file worker should have a seat on a corporate board may be a novel idea in the United States, but it is very common in the European Union. In some of the world's best known companies such as BMW, workers have a seat at the table.

When Youngblood first told me about this idea, it was like a bolt of lightning to me. I'm far from a labor expert and it sounded to me like something that should be obvious --- in fact, it should be a requirement. I had no idea that this was commonplace in large European companies. And somehow they've managed to survive while mingling with the riff-raff.

She is going to try to get into the next Hyatt shareholder meeting in June. The last time she tried, they barred her from the room (and she's a shareholder!) But she's going to keep trying until she gets in there and can officially make the proposal to the other shareholders. And we'll be watching.

Meanwhile, Penny Pritzker is presumable going to have some confirmation hearings. Maybe we could get one of our allies in the Senate to ask her about whether or not she would support this. A commerce secretary in an allegedly liberal, union backed, Democratic administration will certainly be in favor. Right?


.
digby 5/02/2013 10:00:00 AM

 
Oh goodie, the poor can't be helped so now we can fuggedaboudit

by digby

TNR's Jonathan Cohn reports on a new study about Medicaid which concludes that it rather dramatically improves both the financial security and mental health of those it covers. Unfortunately, the right wing has seized upon the result showing that having Medicaid coverage did not show significant physical health in the first two years (so might as well throw in the towel.) This is what the report concluded:

This randomized, controlled study showed that Medicaid coverage generated no significant improvements in measured physical health outcomes in the first 2 years, but it did increase use of health care services, raise rates of diabetes detection and management, lower rates of depression, and reduce financial strain.

So naturally, the whole damned thing is a waste of money:

There is no way to spin these results as anything but a rebuke to those who are pushing states to expand Medicaid. The Obama administration has been trying to convince states to throw more than a trillion additional taxpayer dollars at Medicaid by participating in the expansion, when the best-designed research available cannot find any evidence that it improves the physical health of enrollees. The OHIE even studied the most vulnerable part of the Medicaid-expansion population – those below 100 percent of the federal poverty level – yet still found no improvements in physical health.

Yeah! Nothing we can do folks! These people are just going to die. In fact, if we really want to save money we could put the poor animals out of their misery and save the cost of those inevitable hospitalizations when these diseases go completely untreated.

Cohn lays out all the reasons why this report actually proves we should expand Medicaid, and he wonders why conservatives and libertarians are so eager to dismiss it. I'll tell him why: conservatives think these poor people are lazy and deserve what they get and the libertarians just don't care about them at all. That's all there is to it. After all, it's not as if any of them have any answers. They simply assume that there will always be lots of poor, sick people around for whom they have no responsibility. For conservatives the only question for society is how to punish them for their lack of initiative and for libertarians they're simply of no concern at all. Either way, the end result is that nobody should have to give up even one nickel to help pay for the poor --- and if something happens and you find yourself among them, you're on your own.

These people believe that's just the way life is. The only way to get decent medical care and fully protect yourself from financial calamity is to get rich. Really rich. It's the catch-all answer for everything that ails you. Anyone who doesn't has only herself to blame.


.
digby 5/02/2013 09:00:00 AM

 
A tale of two Armaggedons

by David Atkins

Welcome to America, land of enough delusional end times nuts that it actually affects public policy:

The United States has failed to take action to mitigate climate change thanks in part to the large number of religious Americans who believe the world has a set expiration date.

Research by David C. Barker of the University of Pittsburgh and David H. Bearce of the University of Colorado uncovered that belief in the biblical end-times was a motivating factor behind resistance to curbing climate change.

“[T]he fact that such an overwhelming percentage of Republican citizens profess a belief in the Second Coming (76 percent in 2006, according to our sample) suggests that governmental attempts to curb greenhouse emissions would encounter stiff resistance even if every Democrat in the country wanted to curb them,” Barker and Bearce wrote in their study, which will be published in the June issue of Political Science Quarterly.

The study, based on data from the 2007 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, uncovered that belief in the “Second Coming” of Jesus reduced the probability of strongly supporting government action on climate change by 12 percent when controlling for a number of demographic and cultural factors. When the effects of party affiliation, political ideology, and media distrust were removed from the analysis, the belief in the “Second Coming” increased this effect by almost 20 percent.

“[I]t stands to reason that most nonbelievers would support preserving the Earth for future generations, but that end-times believers would rationally perceive such efforts to be ultimately futile, and hence ill-advised,” Barker and Bearce explained.

There are enough places in the country where enough people believe this garbage that action on climate change will be stopped by any one of: a House Republican majority; or 40 fossil fuel loving Senators; or a conservative president. Changing the minds of these people will be impossible. We have to kill the filibuster and take back the House, or watch the planet go down in flames because of a bunch of morons who believe that God will putting the world to the sword anyway.


.
thereisnospoon 5/02/2013 07:30:00 AM

Wednesday, May 01, 2013

 
Blind partisanship

by digby

The latest New York Times poll analysis says that the country largely agrees on what to do about guns and immigration but they retreat to their political corners when asked what should be done. And they quote some people from their poll to show just how blindly partisan we Americans all are:

Here are the Republicans:

“I’m for stricter gun laws, but the reason I favor the Republicans over the Democrats and the liberals on gun laws is because they have always been against the Second Amendment and the right to own guns,” said Jim Hensley, 69, a Republican from Grandville, Mich., in an interview after the poll was conducted.

“Yes, I believe the Republicans should have voted for background checks, and they should not legalize automatic weapons,” Mr. Hensley added. “I was against the repeal of the ban on automatic weapons, and I don’t support the N.R.A. But it’s like marriage. You stick with your wife no matter what, and you don’t just ditch your political party on one issue.”

Rick Buckman, 52, a Republican and an electrical engineer from Dallas, Pa., said that while he supported stricter gun legislation, he did not necessarily approve of the president’s approach.

“I was really ticked off that the law didn’t pass,” Mr. Buckman said. “But I thought it was wrong of President Obama to get in front of the public and use people who had been damaged by gun violence as props.”

They quoted one Independent:

“Stricter gun laws might help with some of the out of control people who randomly go around shooting others or killing themselves,” said Debby Warnock, 44, an independent from Pueblo West, Colo., who is unemployed. “I do favor background checks, though some of the people who have killed others had clean backgrounds.”

She added: “I personally don’t care whether Republicans or Democrats make the decisions as long as it’s in the best interest of our country.”

And they quoted one Democrat:

Mike Brady, 68, a Democrat and semiretired lawyer in Farmington Hills, Mich., viewed the Republicans’ opposition to the gun control legislation as self-serving. “Well, Obama’s trying his best to do the obvious right thing for the country, but he’s been roadblocked extensively for political reasons by people who even among themselves would take a different position,” he said. “So it’s cynical, unprincipled obstructionism.”

Is everyone there being blindly partisan? Really?

The Independent says that she favors gun legislation and doesn't care whether Republicans or Democrats do it.

The Democrat supports legislation and points out that Republicans support them too but says, reasonably, that they opposed the legislation for political purposes.

The two Republicans support background checks but support the GOP anyway out of tribal loyalty or because President Obama gave a speech after the vote with the Newtown families present.

Therefore, they all agree that the gun legislation should have passed. But it's only the Republicans
who are supporting their political leaders even though they didn't do what they wanted them to do. This simply does not demonstrate than "everyone" has retreated into their partisan corners at all. It demonstrates that Republicans have retreated into their partisan corner. Period.

If you read through the rest of the poll on immigration and deficit reduction, the pattern is just as clear. Is it any wonder that Republicans in congress behave as they do? It's a very simple political calculation for them: all that matters to their voters is that they oppose the Democrats. And although you can't extrapolate this from that poll alone, my life observing Republicans tells me that there's a simple reason for it: they are motivated by their loathing of liberals, not their belief in conservatism. I don't think there's much more to it than that.

.


digby 5/01/2013 06:00:00 PM

 
Danger Will Robinson

by digby

Politico reports today that the House is in disarray, although there is no leadership challenge so far. They also reveal that the Republicans haven't settled on a debt ceiling strategy just yet:

The original plan was to spend the early part of the summer crafting a solution since it seemed that the nation would hit its borrowing limit in September. The nearly monthlong August recess would have provided a perfect backstop.
Now, the whole timeline is thrown into flux. First, House Republicans want to pass a bill next week that prioritizes debt payments in the case of default.

Several options are being eyed to ride alongside the debt ceiling. One is tax reform — a strategy vocally supported by Ryan, sources say. This method would include passing a framework for tax reform, which would allow Congress to lift the debt ceiling, alongside a plan to allow tax-writing committees to figure out how to write the difficult details of reform.

Another option under discussion, according to aides, is moving a package including some spending cuts, elements of entitlement reforms and piecemeal tax-reform measures.

That last is a recipe for disaster -- not a Grand Bargain, just a plain old bad deal. One can easily imagine another ohmyGodit'sArmageddonandwe'reallgoingtodie debt ceiling scare with the end result being a Democratic agreement to cut entitlements for fake "tax reform" under the threat of being blamed for taking down the economy. The groundwork has been laid --- one could easily call this a "balanced approach" after all. It just might be a little less ambitious in the amount of deficit reduction they achieve.

Hopefully the Republicans are still too dumb to make any deal that requires Democrats to do their dirty work for them. But you never know when they might wake up...

I'm going to root for Ryan's plan on this one.  A "framework" for "tax reform" sounds very good to me.


.



digby 5/01/2013 04:00:00 PM

 

Happy Codpiece Day Everyone

by digby

It's hard to believe that it 10 years ago today that the whole country sat slack jawed in front of ther TVs at the sight of their president prancing around the deck of an aircraft carrier in his sexy flightsuit. Women were swooning, manly GOP men were commenting enviously on his package. 

But there were none so awestruck by the sheer, testosterone glory of Bush's codpiece as Tweety.  I reprise this every year in his honor:

MATTHEWS: Let's go to this sub--what happened to this week, which was to me was astounding as a student of politics, like all of us. Lights, camera, action. This week the president landed the best photo op in a very long time. Other great visuals: Ronald Reagan at the D-Day cemetery in Normandy, Bill Clinton on horseback in Wyoming. Nothing compared to this, I've got to say.

Katty, for visual, the president of the United States arriving in an F-18, looking like he flew it in himself. The GIs, the women on--onboard that ship loved this guy.

Ms. KAY: He looked great. Look, I'm not a Bush man. I mean, he doesn't do it for me personally, especially not when he's in a suit, but he arrived there...

MATTHEWS: No one would call you a Bush man, by the way.

Ms. KAY: ...he arrived there in his flight suit, in a jumpsuit. He should wear that all the time. Why doesn't he do all his campaign speeches in that jumpsuit? He just looks so great.

MATTHEWS: I want him to wa--I want to see him debate somebody like John Kerry or Lieberman or somebody wearing that jumpsuit.

Mr. DOBBS: Well, it was just--I can't think of any, any stunt by the White House--and I'll call it a stunt--that has come close. I mean, this is not only a home run; the ball is still flying out beyond the park.

MATTHEWS: Well, you know what, it was like throwing that strike in Yankee Stadium a while back after 9/11. It's not a stunt if it works and it's real. And I felt the faces of those guys--I thought most of our guys were looking up like they were looking at Bob Hope and John Wayne combined on that ship.

Mr. GIGOT: The reason it works is because of--the reason it works is because Bush looks authentic and he felt that he--you could feel the connection with the troops. He looked like he was sincere. People trust him. That's what he has going for him.

MATTHEWS: Fareed, you're watching that from--say you were over in the Middle East watching the president of the United States on this humongous aircraft carrier. It looks like it could take down Syria just one boat, right, and the president of the United States is pointing a finger and saying, `You people with the weapons of mass destruction, you people backing terrorism, look out. We're coming.' Do you think that picture mattered over there?

Mr. ZAKARIA: Oh yeah. Look, this is a part of the war where we have not--we've allowed a lot of states to do some very nasty stuff, traffic with nasty people and nasty material, and I think it's time to tell them, you know what, `You're going to be held accountable for this.'

MATTHEWS: Well, it was a powerful statement and picture as well.

Yes, that was the level of "analysis" we endured during that time.  It makes John King and Wolf Blitzer screwing up the Boston bombing arrest story look pretty tame don't you think?

A Cod-piece can fool them all
Make them think you're large
Even if you're small
Just be sure you don't fool yourself
For it's still just imagination
And to be sure it works like a lure
And will raise a wench's expectations
But have a care you have something there
Or the night will end in frustration

.

digby 5/01/2013 02:30:00 PM

 
The greatest deliberative body in the world? Really?

by digby

I thought the old Dan Burton shooting watermelons in the backyard stuff was about as crazy as it could get in the US Congress. I was wrong:

Republican lawmakers are pushing legislation aimed at combating a threat to gun rights that even the National Rifle Association has described as pure fiction.

A bill introduced late last week by Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) and Rep. Frank Lucas (R-OK) would ban federal agencies, excluding the Pentagon, from buying more ammunition during a six-month period if it currently possesses more than its monthly averages during the Bush administration.

The conspiracy theory that incubated the bill is that the Obama administration is trying to buy up bullets so ordinary Americans have less access to them in the marketplace.

“President Obama has been adamant about curbing law-abiding Americans’ access and opportunities to exercise their Second Amendment rights,” Inhofe said in a statement. “One way the Obama Administration is able to do this is by limiting what’s available in the market with federal agencies purchasing unnecessary stockpiles of ammunition.”

Only it’s false — as no less a pro-gun organization than the NRA declared last year.

Not that I care much about federal agencies having more bullets than they need. It's hardly a big priority. But this is just batshit crazy, illuminati-style nonsense that has no place in an advanced democracy.

I will say this for it: it makes the case for abolishing the Senate very obvious. I've always been told that the Senate is a congenial club filled with serious leaders soberly deliberating about the issues of the day, a necessity to temper the more radical nature of the House. I think this sort of thing handily dispenses with that little trope don't you?

.
digby 5/01/2013 01:30:00 PM

 
What's really going on with this Benghazi obsession?

by digby

I was going to write about the reunion tour of the Captain and Tenille of the Republican noise machine, Victoria Toensing Joe DeGenova, but I see that Charlie Pierce has already admirably done the honors (after taking everyone on an extremely entertaining trip down memory lane to Iran-Contra and Whitewater-Lewinsky land.)

He writes:

...they have not lost their touch for fact-free slander.

"I'm not talking generally, I'm talking specifically about Benghazi - that people have been threatened," Toensing said in an interview Monday. "And not just the State Department. People have been threatened at the CIA." Toensing declined to name her client. She also refused to say whether the individual was on the ground in Benghazi on the night of Sept. 11, 2012, when terrorist attacks on two U.S. installations in the Libyan city killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens.

She's not talking generally, She just declines to get into the relevant specifics. And, in case you were wondering if The Puke Funnel was still operational, the president got asked about Toensing's allegations at his press conference yesterday by Ed Henry, of Fox News. Apparently, bells went off at Media Matters, too. If you're wondering what the plans outside the Congress are to stymie the president's second term. (Which is not to say there aren't willing congresscritters lining up, too.) I think we have a pretty good idea already. We learn nothing. We truly do not. I expect any day now, we'll be hearing about cattle futures and who moved Vince Foster's body to Tripoli.

Charlie Pierce knows his wingnut scandals better than anyone. But I think he's missed something here: they didn't drag out Toensing and DeGenova by accident. And that's because this is only marginally about Obama's second term.

I've got one word that explains it: Hillary.

These people are Clinton character assassination specialists. And the right sees Benghazi as a Clinton scandal. Just watch Fox news for any half hour slot in a 24 hour period and it will come up. It's already become a punchline --- and a mantra.

.



digby 5/01/2013 12:00:00 PM

 
Statistic 'o the day: CEO edition

by digby

But they're so worth it:

Former fashion jewelry saleswoman Rebecca Gonzales and former Chief Executive Officer Ron Johnson have one thing in common: J.C. Penney Co. (JCP) no longer employs either.

The similarity ends there. Johnson, 54, got a compensation package worth 1,795 times the average wage and benefits of a U.S. department store worker when he was hired in November 2011, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Gonzales’s hourly wage was $8.30 that year.

Across the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index of companies, the average multiple of CEO compensation to that of rank-and-file workers is 204, up 20 percent since 2009, the data show. The numbers are based on industry-specific estimates for worker compensation.

.
digby 5/01/2013 11:00:00 AM

 
Where do people get these crazy ideas?

by digby

In case you wonder how right wing tropes become conventional wisdom shared by the masses, here's a good illustration:

President Obama held a press conference earlier today, and he said he still wants to close the Guantanamo Bay prison facility, but he doesn't know how to do it. He should do what he always does: declare it a small business and tax it out of existence.It will be gone in a minute. Be gone in a minute! One month! Be out of there!

That's especially rich coming from a multi-millionaire entertainer, don't you think? I'd imagine he too sees himself as a "small businessman" --- after all,  he employs a bunch of servants.

.
digby 5/01/2013 10:00:00 AM

 
401k follies: Bad timing and bad advice

by digby

Yglesias has a useful post up this morning about the crisis in 401ks:

I like the metaphor in Tom Friedman's latest column, arguing that we now live in a 401(k) world. But I wish he'd spelled it out in greater detail, because the problem with living in a 401(k) world is that Planet 401(k) is a pretty sucky planet. Here's the essential shape of 401(k) as a backbone of the retirement system:

— Poor people get absolutely nothing.

— Wealthy people who would have had large savings anyway get a nice tax cut that offers no meaningful incentive effect.

— For people in the middle, the quantity of subsidy you receive is linked to the marginal tax rate you pay—in other words it's inverse to need.

— A small minority of middle class people manage to file the paperwork to save an adequate amount and then select a prudent low-fee broadly diversified fund as their savings vehicle.

— Most middle class savers end up either undersaving, overtrading, investing in excessively high-fee vehicles or some combination of the three.

— A small number of highly compensated folks now have lucrative careers offering bad investment products to a middle class mass market based on their ability to swindle people.

He's right. But I have to defend at least some people in the industry (one of my closest friends is a financial planner) who charge on a fee basis and do a good job for middle class workers who have accumulated enough assets that they need professional advice from someone with integrity. But it's true that most people who have 401ks are not educated enough about their own retirement future to even know they need something like that or, more commonly, have enough assets to make it worthwhile. And there are definitely charlatans everywhere in the financial sector. What else is new?

Still, it's quite clear that the 401k experiment has turned out to be, for the most part, a bonanza for Wall Street and the wealthy while the people it was designed to help are worse off than ever. For much of the second half of the baby boom, people currently in their 50s, many of whom who were hit hard by the recession, the loss of real estate and 401k value, retirement looks bleak. Some lost their jobs as well, which is devastating at that point in your life, because they're very hard to replace at the same level. Aging parents and kids in college create even more of a squeeze.  Many of these people had no choice but to tap into their retirement savings at a huge loss and they are facing a very ugly financial future as a consequence. (Of course, it's the same ugly financial future that poor people always face ...)

But it turns out that it isn't just 401ks. It's hit the guaranteed benefit plans as well. This story in the New York Times last week-end was just hair-raising:

To retirees, the offers can sound like the answer to every money worry: convert tomorrow’s pension checks into today’s hard cash.

But these offers, known as pension advances, are having devastating financial consequences for a growing number of older Americans, threatening their retirement savings and plunging them further into debt. The advances, federal and state authorities say, are not advances at all, but carefully disguised loans that require borrowers to sign over all or part of their monthly pension checks. They carry interest rates that are often many times higher than those on credit cards.

In lean economic times, people with public pensions — military veterans, teachers, firefighters, police officers and others — are being courted particularly aggressively by pension-advance companies, which operate largely outside of state and federal banking regulations, but are now drawing scrutiny from Congress and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The pitches come mostly via the Web or ads in local circulars.

“Convert your pension into CASH,” LumpSum Pension Advance, of Irvine, Calif., says on its Web site. “Banks are hiding,” says Pension Funding L.L.C., of Huntington Beach, Calif., on its Web site, signaling the paucity of credit. “But you do have your pension benefits.”

Another ad on that Web site is directed at military veterans: “You’ve put your life on the line for Americans to protect our way of life. You deserve to do something important for yourself.”

A review by The New York Times of more than two dozen contracts for pension-based loans found that after factoring in various fees, the effective interest rates ranged from 27 percent to 106 percent — information not disclosed in the ads or in the contracts themselves. Furthermore, to qualify for one of the loans, borrowers are sometimes required to take out a life insurance policy that names the lender as the sole beneficiary.

Obviously, these are predatory operations. But the people who are taking these loans out aren't morons --- they're desperate. And that's the real problem here. This crappy economy is destroying people's lives and they are eating through their savings until they have nothing left. Solve that problem and you've solved a big chunk of the retirement savings problem as well.

And if there's ever been a time to expand Social Security benefits it's now. Cutting them is insanity.


.
digby 5/01/2013 09:00:00 AM

 
Happy International Workers' Day

by David Atkins

Today is May Day, ancient celebration of the return of spring and the bounty of life. It's also International Workers' Day throughout most of the rest of the civilized world. But the United States doesn't celebrate "International Workers' Day." We instead have the much more anodyne-sounding Labor Day, which we celebrate in the fall.

Why, you ask? Is it because International Workers' Day is some commie celebration started elsewhere to commemorate some European event in keeping with pagan rituals?

Nope. In fact, the inspiration for International Worker's Day was an event that happened right here in the United States: the 1886 Haymarket Massacre in Chicago. Workers were striking in support of the 8-hour workday when the police moved in to disperse the crowd. Someone tossed a bomb in retaliation, killing seven officers. The police responded by firing on the crowd. Whether any in the crowd fired back, and how many protesters were killed by gunfire remains in dispute.

What is beyond dispute, however, is that a joke of a trial took place in the aftermath, leading to death sentences (a few later commuted) for seven of the so-called conspirators. Public outcry here and across the world was swift, leading to the first major International Workers' Day demonstrations in 1890:

Popular pressure continued for the establishment of the 8-hour day. At the convention of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1888, the union decided to campaign for the shorter workday again. May 1, 1890, was agreed upon as the date on which workers would strike for an eight-hour work day.

In 1889, AFL president Samuel Gompers wrote to the first congress of the Second International, which was meeting in Paris. He informed the world's socialists of the AFL's plans and proposed an international fight for a universal eight-hour work day.[87] In response to Gompers's letter, the Second International adopted a resolution calling for "a great international demonstration" on a single date so workers everywhere could demand the eight-hour work day. In light of the Americans' plan, the International adopted May 1, 1890 as the date for this demonstration.

A secondary purpose behind the adoption of the resolution by the Second International was to honor the memory of the Haymarket martyrs and other workers who had been killed in association with the strikes on May 1, 1886. Historian Philip Foner writes "[t]here is little doubt that everyone associated with the resolution passed by the Paris Congress knew of the May 1 demonstrations and strikes for the eight-hour day in 1886 in the United States ... and the events associated with the Haymarket tragedy."

The first international May Day was a spectacular success. The front page of the New York World on May 2, 1890, was devoted to coverage of the event. Two of its headlines were "Parade of Jubilant Workingmen in All the Trade Centers of the Civilized World" and "Everywhere the Workmen Join in Demands for a Normal Day." The Times of London listed two dozen European cities in which demonstrations had taken place, noting there had been rallies in Cuba, Peru and Chile. Commemoration of May Day became an annual event the following year.

The United States Congress knew that the U.S. had to follow suit with a day to celebrate workers, but was terrified of what might happen if they did the right thing by placing it on the anniversary date of the massacre. So they bowed to the wishes of the robber barons and set "Labor Day" far on the opposite end of the calendar.

Congress notwithstanding, remember to stand in solidarity today with the labor movement that has delivered so many protections to workers across the globe, and remember also our own fight to retake power from our modern robber barons who are constantly attempting to strip those protections away. It's always the same fight; it's only the superficial details that change.


.
thereisnospoon 5/01/2013 07:30:00 AM

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

 
The torture memoir

by digby

Please take the time to read this long and harrowing first person account of a prisoner's torture and captivity at Guantanamo over the course of the last decade. He is innocent. And he is still there.

Here is a short excerpt. (The question marks are government redactions):

The Marine guy asked questions and answered himself. When the man failed to impress me with all the talk and humiliation and the threat to arrest my family (since the [ ? ? ? ?] “was an obedient servant of the U.S.”), he started to hurt me more. He brought ice-cold water and soaked me all over my body. My clothes stuck on me. It was so awful, I kept shaking like a Parkinson’s patient. Technically I wasn’t able to talk anymore. The guy was stupid, he was literally executing me but in a slow way. [ ? ? ? ?] gestured to him to stop pouring water on me. I refused to eat anything; I couldn’t open my mouth anyway.

The guy was very hot, when [ ? ? ? ? ?] stopped him because he was afraid of the paperwork which would [result] in case of my death. He found another technique; namely, he brought a CD-player with booster and started to play some rap music. I didn’t really mind the music because it made me forget my pain; actually, the music was a blessing in disguise, I was trying to make sense of the words. All I understood was that the music was about love, can you believe it? Love! All I had experienced lately was hatred or the consequences thereof. “Listen to that, motherfucker!” said the guest, while closing the door violently behind him. “You’re gonna get the same shit day after day, and guess what? It’s getting worse. What you’re seeing is only the beginning,” said [ ? ? ? ? ?]. I kept praying and ignoring what they were doing.

“Oh, ALLAH, help me. … Oh, Allah, have mercy on me,” [ ? ? ? ? ?] kept mimicking my prayers, “ALLAH … ALLAH … There is no Allah. He let you down!” I smiled at how ignorant [ ? ? ? ? ?] was by talking about the Lord like that.

Between 10 and 11 p.m. [ ? ? ? ? ?] handed me over to [ ? ? ? ? ?] and gave an order to the guards to move me to his specially prepared room. It was so cold and full of pictures showing the glories of the U.S.: weapons arsenal, planes, pictures of G. Bush. “Don’t pray, you insult my country if you pray during my national hymn. We are the greatest country in the free world, and we have the smartest president of the world,” said [ ? ? ? ? ?]. For the whole night I had to listen to the U.S. hymn. I hate hymns anyway. All I can remember was the beginning, “Oh say can you see …” over and over.

Between 4 and 5 a.m. [ ? ? ? ? ?] released me just to be taken a couple of hours later by [ ? ? ? ? ?] to start the same routine over and over. The hardest step is the first, the hardest days were the first days; with every day going by I grew stronger. Meanwhile, I was the main subject of talk in the camp, although many other detainees were suffering a similar fate; I was “Criminal No. 1,” and I was appropriately treated. Sometimes, when I was in the rec yard, detainees shouted, “Be patient. Remember Allah tries the people he loves the most.” Comments like that were my only solace beside my faith in the Lord.

[Then] [ ? ? ? ? ?] crawled from behind the scene and appeared in the picture: [ ? ? ? ? ?] had told me a couple of times before [ ? ? ? ? ?] visit about a very high level government person who was going to visit me and talk to me about my family. I personally didn’t take the information negatively; I thought he was going to bring me some messages from my family, but I was wrong. It was about hurting my family. [ ? ? ? ? ?] was escalating the situation relentlessly with me.

[ ? ? ? ? ?] came around 11 a.m., escorted by [ ? ? ? ? ?] and the new [ ? ? ? ? ?]. He was brief and direct.

“My name is [ ? ? ? ? ?]. I work for [ ? ? ? ? ?]. My government is desperate to get information out of you. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Can you read English?”

“Yes.”

[ ? ? ? ? ?] handed me a letter he obviously forged. The letter was from DoD and it said, basically, “Ould Slahi was involved in the Millennium attack and recruited three of the September 11 hijackers. Since Slahi has refused to cooperate, the U.S. government is going to arrest his mother and put her in a special facility.”

I read the letter. “Is that not harsh and unfair?” I said.

“I am not here to maintain justice. I am here to stop people from crashing planes into buildings in my country.”

“Then go and stop them. I have done nothing to your country,” I said.

“You have two options, either being a defendant or a witness.”

“I want neither.”

“You have no choice, and your life is going to change decidedly,” he said.

“Just do it, the sooner, the better!” I said.

That's not the worst incident, it's just a typical one. Oh, and be sure to read the next chapter: "When Slahi wouldn’t tell them what they wanted to hear, his captors took him on a torture cruise. They would make him disappear."

And here I've been told by both Presidents Bush and Obama that "the United States does not torture."

As I read that horrifying piece, I couldn't help but be reminded of this piece from a few years back:

Torture Nation
by digby

In keeping with tristero's advice to keep talking about the immorality of torture, I thought I would reprise some of my earlier posts on the subject. There are, sadly, many of them.

The following post was written back in June of 2004, when we had recently been informed of the DOJ's definition of torture and news had begun to filter out about the extent of the program. But as appalled and horrified as I was at the time, I'll admit that I never dreamed that Condi Rice, Dick Cheney, George Tenent, Colin Powell, John Ashcroft and others personally and unanimouslysigned off a regime that filtered all the way down to troops on the ground in Guantanamo, Afghanistan and Abu Ghraib. I certainly couldn't have imagined they sat around the white house choreographing the torture techniques for the "high value" prisoners.

Monday, June 14, 2004

Testimony

"Torture must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death."

In case anyone's wondering about the specific torture methods that are considered legal in the various gulags we now have around the world, there has been some work done on this by Human Rights Watch, even before Abu Ghraib. They found that at the "detention centers" in Afghanistan, torture as it was defined under the Geneva Convention was used routinely, often against innocent civilians.

According to the two men, bright lights were set up outside their cells, shining in, and U.S. military personnel took shifts, keeping the detainees awake by banging on the metal walls of their cells with batons. The detainees said they were terrified and disoriented by sleep deprivation, which they saidlasted for several weeks. During interrogations, they said, they were made to stand upright for lengthy periods of time with a bright spotlight shining directly into their eyes. They were told that they would not be questioned until they remained motionless for one hour, and that they were not entitled even to turn their heads. If they did move, the interrogators said the "clock was reset." U.S. personnel, through interpreters, yelled at the detainees from behind the light, asking questions.

Two more detainees held at Bagram in late 2002 told a New York Times reporter of being painfully shackled in standing positions, naked, for weeks at a time, forcibly deprived of sleep and occasionally beaten.

A reporter with the Associated Press interviewed two detainees who were held in Bagram in late 2002 and early 2003: Saif-ur Rahman and Abdul Qayyum.86 Qayyum was arrested in August 2002; Rahman in December 2002. Both were held for more than two months. Interviewed separately, they described similar experiences in detention: sleep deprivation, being forced to stand for long periods of time, and humiliating taunts from women soldiers. Rahman said that on his first night of detention he was kept in afreezing cell for part of his detention, stripped naked, and doused with cold water. He believes he was at a military base in Jalalabad at this point. Later, at Bagram, he said U.S. troops made him lie on the ground at one point, naked, and pinned him down with a chair. He also said he was shackled continuously, even when sleeping, and forbidden from talking with other detainees. Qayyum and Rahman were linked with a local commander in Kunar province, Rohullah Wakil, a local and national leader who was elected to the 2002 loya jirga in Kabul, and who was arrested in August 2002 and remains in custody.

According to detainees who have been released, U.S. personnel punish detainees at Bagram when they break rules for instance, talking to another prisoner or yelling at guards. Detainees are taken, in shackles, and made to hold their arms over their heads; their shackles are then draped over the top of a door, so that they can not lower their arms. They are ordered to stand with their hands up, in this manner, for two-hour intervals. According to one detainee interviewed who was punished in this manner, the punishment caused pain in the arms.

In March 2003, Roger King, a U.S. military spokesman at Bagram, denied that mistreatment had occurred, but admitted the following:

"We do force people to stand for an extended period of time. . . . Disruption of sleep has been reported as an effective way of reducing people’s inhibition about talking or their resistance to questioning. . . . They are not allowed to speak to each other. If they do, they can plan together or rely on the comfort of one another. If they’re caught speaking out of turn, they can be forced to do things, like stand for a period of time -- as payment for speaking out."

King also said that a "common technique" for disrupting sleep was to keep the lights on constantly or to wake detainees every fifteen minutes to disorient them.

Several U.S. officials, speaking anonymously to the media, have admitted that U.S. military and CIA interrogators use sleep deprivation as a technique, and that detainees are sometimes kept standing or kneeling for hours in black hoods or spray-painted goggles, and held in awkward, painful positions.

Here is some direct testimony of men who have been interrogated under rules that allow torture short of the pain accompanying "organ failure or death"

"stress positions"

Many men were handcuffed or tied to a stool as a means of slow torture. The [detainee] sat in one position, day and night. Each time he would fall over, the guards would sit him upright. He was not allowed to sleep or rest. Exhaustion and pain take their toll. When the [detainee] agreed to cooperate with his captors and acquiesced to their demands, he would be removed. Here, I have pictured a guard named "Mouse," who liked to throw buckets of cold water on a man on cold winter nights.

You're always sitting either on the floor or on a stool or concrete block or something low. The interrogator is always behind a table that's covered with cloth of some kind, white or blue or something. And he sits above you and he's always looking down at you asking you questions and they want to know what the targets are for tomorrow, next week, next month. You don't know. You really don't know. But he doesn't -- he's going to have to have an answer of some kind. Now the back of the room comes the -- the torture. And he's a -- he's a big guy that knows what he's doing. And he starts locking your elbows up with ropes and tying your wrists together and bending you.

"dietary manipulation"

Our normal diet consisted of either rice or bread and a bowl of soup. The soup was usually made from a boiled seasonal vegetable such as cabbage, kohlrabi, pumpkin, turnips, or greens, which we very appropriately called, "sewer greens, swamp grass and weeds.

"sleep deprivation"

Some men were tied to their beds, sometimes for weeks at a time. Here, I have drawn a picture showing the handcuffs being worn in front, but the usual position was with the wrists handcuffed behind the back. A man would live this way day and night, without sleep or rest.

The guards come around the middle of the night just rattling the lock on your door. That's a terrifying thing because they may be taking you out for a torture session. You don't know.

"... obviously this is an emotional thing to me, was listening to the screams of other ... prisoners while they were being tortured. And being locked in a cell myself sometimes uh, in handcuffs or tied up and not able to do anything about it. And that's the way I've got to spend the night."

"isolation"

The ten months that I spent in the blacked out cell I went into panic. The only thing I could do was exercise. As long as I could move, I felt like I was going to -- well, it was so bad I would put a rag in my mouth and hold another one over it so I could scream. That seemed to help. It's not that I was scared, more scared than another other time or anything. It was happening to my nerves and my mind. And uh, I had to move or die. I'd wake up at two o'clock in the morning or midnight or three or whatever and I would jump up immediately and start running in place. Side straddle hops. Maybe four hours of sit ups. But I had to exercise. And of course I prayed a lot

Oh, sorry. My mistake. Those illustrations and some of the comments are by former POW Mike Mcgrath about his time in the Hanoi Hilton. Other comments are from the transcript of Return With Honor, a documentary about the POW's during the Vietnam War. How silly of me to compare the US torture scheme with North Vietnam's.

It's very interesting that all these guys survived, in their estimation, mostly because of their own code of honor requiring them to say as little as possible, fight back as they could and cling to the idea that they were not helping this heartless enemy any more than they had to.

As I read the vivid descriptions of these interrogation techniques of sleep deprivation, sensory manipulation, isolation, stress positions and dietary manipulation I had to wonder whether they would be any more likely to work on committed Islamic jihadists than they were on committed American patriots.

The American POWs admitted that they broke under torture and told the interrogators what they knew. And they told a lot of them what they didn't know. And over time, they told them things they couldn't possibly know. The torture continued. Many of them, just like the reports from Gitmo, attempted suicide. They remained imprisoned never knowing when or if they would ever be set free.

"unlimited detention"

We began to talk about the war. How long are we going to be there and everything and I -- I was thinking well I'm only going to be there about six months or so. And then uh, Charlie says oh, we're probably going to be here about two years. Two years? And when I -- I finally came to that realization, my God, that's going to be a long time. And when I - it just kind of hit me all at once. And I just took my blanket and kind of balled it up and I just buried my head uh, in this -- in this blanket and just literally screamed with -- with this anguish that it's going to be that long. Two years. And then when I was finished, I felt oh, okay. I -- I -- I can do that. I can do two years. Of course, as it turned out, it was two years, and it was two years after that, and two years after that. Uh, until it was about seven years in my case. You know? But who was to know at that time.

I would imagine that our torture regime is much more hygienic than the North Vietnamese. Surely it is more bureaucratic with lots of reports and directives and findings and "exit interrogations." We are, after all, a first-world torturer. But at the end of the day it's not much different.

"bad apples"

And he announced to me, a major policy statement. Some officers and some guards had become so angry at what the Americans were doing to their country that they had far exceeded the limits which the government had wished they would uh, observe in treatment of prisoners. That they had um, brutally tortured us. That was the first time they ever acknowledged that it was torture not punishment.

Same excuses, too.

"When word of torture and mistreatment began to slip out to the American press in the summer of 1969, our public-relations-minded captors began to treat us better. I'm certain we would have been a lot worse off if there had not been the Geneva Conventions around." John McCain

.
digby 4/30/2013 06:00:00 PM