Brett Guthrie Is a Lying Moron, Part 5

His latest attempt to moronify Kentucky's Second District lies about regulations.

The top priority in the 112th Congress has been to get our economy back on track and create jobs.

Right off the bat with one that's giving his ass third-degree burns. The top priority of repugs in the 112th Congress has been destroying the economy in order to defeat President Obama. That's why Brett and his fellow traitors have rejected the president's American Jobs Act, which every rational economist on the planet insists is the only way to create jobs and rescue the economy.

One key obstacle to restarting growth in our country has been the deluge of new and expensive regulations on businesses and communities coming from Washington, D.C. These regulations, written by unelected bureaucrats, often defy commonsense and bring enormous compliance costs with them for job creators, as well as state and local governments.

A three-alarm lie. There has been no "deluge" of regulations, and the few we have are neither "new" nor "expensive." Those "unelected bureaucrats" he sneers at are public servants who work for the public good - like cops, teachers, firefighters, social workers, sanitation workers and snow-plow drivers. Yes, Brett Guthrie hates you and all your 99-percenter neighbors.

Yesterday, the House took steps closer to putting a halt to the over-regulation coming from Washington by passing H.R. 10, Regulations From the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act.

Regulations that ensure the water coming out of our faucets is clean enough to drink, that our children's toys won't kill them, that the people who prepare our food wash their hands, that nursing homes have to treat our elders with care and dignity. Brett Guthrie wants to eliminate all that.

The legislation, which was introduced by Rep. Geoff Davis (KY-04), ensures congressional review and approval of any government regulation that has an impact on the economy of $100 million or more. America’s small businesses spend an estimated $10,500 per employee to comply with federal regulations. This means fewer resources are available to reinvest in their business and hire new employees.

Hmmm. Shortly after the House passed that legislation with virtually no Democratic votes, Geoff Davis announced he is not seeking re-election. To spend more time with his family, he claims. Only if he marries the monster corporations and Wall Streeters who are probably paying him back for the REINS Act with a no-show job for millions of dollars a year.

Responsible regulations are important to protecting public health, safety and a clean environment. However, for the last two and a half years, bureaucrats have overreached with new regulations while hiding their staggering costs. And with the new health care and financial services laws directing the executive branch and federal agencies to create even more new rules and regulations, the REINS Act is needed now more than ever.

That's not so much a lie as it is a monster blowjob to the giant corporations who steal trillions from the public purse while paying no taxes at all. It is exactly the regulations that protect public health, safety and the environment that giant corporations most hate and demand be eliminated.

McClatchy has the facts about regulations:

Politicians and business groups often blame excessive regulation and fear of higher taxes for tepid hiring in the economy. However, little evidence of that emerged when McClatchy canvassed a random sample of small business owners across the nation.

"Government regulations are not 'choking' our business, the hospitality business," Bernard Wolfson, the president of Hospitality Operations in Miami, told The Miami Herald. "In order to do business in today's environment, government regulations are necessary and we must deal with them. The health and safety of our guests depend on regulations. It is the government regulations that help keep things in order."

Guthrie again:

I look forward to continuing to support this and other bills that will restore regulatory certainty to America’s economy. By removing the layers of onerous, redundant and unnecessary regulation that government has heaped on American businesses, we can re-energize job creation and prosperity in America.

The REINS Act, if passed by the Senate and signed by the president, is a huge step forward in turning the United States into a unregulated libertarian paradise.

Like Somalia.

Still No Such Thing as Independent Voters

In 2008, Barack Obama won the presidency and Democrats won both houses of Congress because Democratic voters were inspired and enthused about voting for Democratic candidates.

In 2010, repugs took back the House and several Senate seats because Democratic voters were discouraged and sat home instead of voting.

Non-existent "independents" had nothing to do with either outcome. Any pundit, pollster, politician, consultant or idiot brother-in-law who tries to tell you otherwise is a liar and a moron.

David Atkins, thereisnospoon at Hullabaloo:

Pollsters looking to see how to "win back" so-called "independent" voters will often do focus groups with people who crossed party lines from one election to another--say, those who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 but then voted for Republicans in 2010. They then analyze the data they get from those people to tell Dem politicians like President Obama what they must do to "win back" those independents.

But this is the wrong way of going about it. Sure, those "switcher" voters are out there. But they're dwarfed in number by the people who hold an allegiance to the Democratic Party and progressive principles in general, and may have voted in the big presidential election of 2008, but failed to turn out to vote in 2010. That's a much bigger cohort--and not only is it bigger in size, it's more winnable and courting it doesn't create resentment and anger within the Party base.

Sure, pollsters want to go after the switchers, because winning a switcher is like winning two votes as opposed to the one apathetic vote. A switcher who votes consistently is also easier to get, theoretically, than the inconsistent voter who has to be brought to the polls through labor-intensive field operations.

But the "switcher" is likely to be a Fox News "Democrat," or simply a dramatically underinformed voter who may have had a good connection to Obama the candidate in 2008, but gets much their information from right-wing radio, from their pastor, or from Aunt Martha's crazy email blasts--or worse, a natural conservative Republican who had only "switched" to Obama out of distaste for Bush in the first place. A bias toward pleasing these "switchers" thereby leads to unnecessarily conservative policies that increase the likelihood of the truly tethered independents to stay home, as well as increase the likelihood of anger from the Party base.

Smart Democratic consultants would do well to do focus groups with Dem voters from 2008 who stayed home in the midterms, and aren't sure whether they're likely to come out in 2012. See what is driving their anger and apathy, and what they want in terms of policy and message. And then insofar as decisions are made based on focus groups and polls, tailor the message to those people. My suspicion? You'll find a lot of those very sorts of people at Occupy protests around the country.

Turnout matters. It's the only thing that matters.

"It is time to enlist our veterans and all our people in the work of rebuilding America."

Full transcript here.

Women Standing Up to ICE

There are few adults in this country more vulnerable to abuse and exploitation than immigrant women. Stripped of all rights, barely able to earn enough to feed their children, in constant terror of deportation.

But against an out-of-control Immigration and Customs Enforcement, it's those very women who are fighting back.

Laura Flanders at The Nation:

Alicia Arriaga arrived in the United States almost eight years ago from Honduras, settling in Atlanta. Four years later she had a daughter (also named Alicia). Soon after, the child began experiencing mysterious convulsions that, although not yet clearly diagnosed, can stop her breathing in her sleep. When the problem started, the Arriagas would drive the five minutes from their home to a nearby hospital, thankful that they lived close enough to arrive in time. But today they fear that the short trip could be catastrophic, not just to Alicia’s health but to her family’s future.

Like all undocumented immigrants in Georgia, the Arriagas must drive without a valid license. The state has long forbidden licenses for undocumented residents, and lawmakers have repeatedly tightened penalties for driving without one. In 2009 the first communities in Georgia enrolled in the federal Secure Communities Program, which deputizes local police to act for federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Earlier this year Georgia passed HB 87, its own version of Arizona’s infamous “stop and check” law, most of which went into effect in July. Taken together, these steps have turned a routine traffic stop into a potential disaster for undocumented Georgians. The new law permits police to check the status of anyone they stop on suspicion of any crime or minor traffic violation. If arrested, detainees can be turned over to ICE and held while their fingerprints and papers are checked against a federal registry. Even if all charges are dropped, getting pulled over can lead to deportation.

SNIP

Less visible than the boarded-up businesses is the devastating effect Georgia’s new law is having on women like Arriaga, who fears deportation as much for her daughter’s sake as her own. It’s tough enough to be poor, nonwhite and female in today’s crisis-struck USA, but without legal status a woman is stripped of even those rights and resources that equal-rights and labor fights have secured. The Wild West quality of law enforcement when it comes to such new immigration laws—amid myriad state, federal and, frankly, ad hoc regulations—makes it virtually impossible to use existing protections against harassment, violence or exploitation. And abuse thrives in the chaos. Migrant women face particular threats at the border, in the workplace, even at home—and stiff odds stacked against them as they try to keep, and raise, their kids. This is what inspired women from around the country to travel to Atlanta in September under the banner We Belong Together for a conference organized by the National Domestic Workers Alliance and the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum. A similar delegation met in Arizona in May.

“We believe that when you see the world through the eyes of women you see an up-close, clearer picture of the full impact of what’s going on,” says Ai-jen Poo, director of the NDWA.

SNIP

There are some who are working to offset the human damage caused by harsh immigration laws. In June Senators Al Franken and Herb Kohl introduced the Humane Enforcement and Legal Protections (HELP) for Separated Children Act to improve coordination between child welfare agencies, NGOs and ICE. Lynn Woolsey has introduced a companion bill in the House. Others are raising questions about the conditions of imprisonment for designated deportees. The ACLU recently launched a campaign to protect women held in immigration detention from rape. State attorneys general are raising an alarm about sex trafficking of undocumented women.

But perhaps most significant, undocumented women are putting aside their fears and speaking up. Today Alicia Arriaga works with the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, a statewide group with members in fifteen communities. GLAHR’s meetings are teaching her how to deal with authorities. At the hospital and at her daughter’s school, she talks to other mothers. In July, after HB 87 went into effect, the group held a “women’s march” in protest. GLAHR member Maria Guadelupe Crespo told We Belong Together delegates that she had worried about how many women would show up. “My community has been paralyzed.” But on the day of the rally, more than 1,000 women came out.

With Christmas approaching, We Belong Together is soliciting letters from children asking Obama to stop deportations and keep families together for the holidays. As the president and his party hit the campaign trail seeking women’s votes, an alliance between women’s and children’s advocates, immigrant groups and undocumented women could amplify calls for federal immigration reform. “I’m here for the people who are scared,” says Arriaga, “who need to speak out.”

But don't think being a citizen protects you.

Marie Diamond at Think Progress:

In their zeal to crack down on undocumented immigrants, federal immigration officials have accidentally arrested and tried to deport thousands of U.S. citizens in the past year alone. Americans who find themselves in this nightmarish situation say their protests to the police fall on deaf ears, and they are denied any opportunity to communicate with immigration agents to clarify the situation.

Some citizens are held for a few days while the situation is resolved, but others have been locked in prison for months. Take the case of Anthony A. Clarke, a Minneapolis man who was arrested and illegally detained for 43 days while federal agents tried to deport him:

Clarke’s case is the apparent fallout of an aggressive ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] campaign to deport illegal immigrants who also have criminal records that show up during cross-checks of federal databases.

While those efforts have resulted in the deportation of hundreds of thousands of dangerous criminals, thousands of U.S. citizens have been snagged along the way, in part because agents operate in a secretive judicial environment where detention hearings are held out of public view.

After a detailed examination of federal immigration records, Prof. Jacqueline Stevens of Northwestern University estimated this year that about 4,000 American citizens were illegally detained or deported as aliens in 2010. In a study published last summer, she found that as many as 20,000 citizens may have been wrongly held or deported since 2003.

FBI records show that immigration agents were aware of Clarke’s legal status at the time he was arrested, and detained him anyway. The New York Times notes that “Any case where an American is held, even briefly, for immigration investigation is a potential wrongful arrest because immigration agents lack legal authority to detain citizens.” Clarke has filed a lawsuit in federal court.

In another horrifying case, a mentally-disabled citizen was actually deported and sent to prisons in Honduras and Guatemala before he was finally able to convince authorities there that he was an American.

The reason for the rising number of mistaken arrests appears to be ICE’s rapid expansion of Secure Communities, a deportation program, which has ballooned under President Obama and is widely criticized for eroding the trust between local police and immigrant communities and making it less likely that people will report crimes. Under the program, the fingerprints of every person booked at local jails are checked against Department of Homeland Security immigration databases. But the database is riddled with errors and routinely flags citizens as undocumented immigrants.

The administration’s harsh enforcement practices have resulted in 1.1 million deportations since the beginning of President Obama’s term, the highest numbers in six decades.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune observes that these stories “raise disturbing questions about the tactics of immigration agents and the adequacy of checks and balances in a parallel court system overseeing the…ICE agency.”

The way we treat immigrants in this country is shameful. There is no excuse for it, and we're going to pay even more heavily than we already are.

Shop Union: Your Holiday Gift Guide

This is some of the best stuff around, and you can't go wrong with America's Best.

Kenneth Quinnell at Crooks and Liars:

Labor organization American Rights at Work released its holiday gift buying guide this week, spotlighting gifts and holiday supplies from union companies who manufacture products made in America. A printable version of the guide can be found online.

These days, as more and more jobs get shipped overseas, it’s not easy to know what’s made in America, let alone by union members. With our guide, you can rest easy knowing that your holiday shopping will support good, family-supporting jobs here at home. And that’s a gift every American can enjoy.

Companies highlighted in the guide include: Wilson, Louisville Slugger, Snap-On, Electrolux, Jackson & Perkins, Wendell August, Omaha Steaks, Usinger's, All-Clad, Regal Ware, Cutco, Powell's, Costco, American Greetings, AirTran, Alaska Airlines, American, Continental, United, Frontier, Southwest, Spirit Airlines, and U.S. Airways, Amtrak, Libbey, Corelle, Gallo, the makers of games like Scrabble, Monopoly and Life, Disneyland, Disney World, teams in the NFL, MLB, NBA, WNBA, NHL and MLS.

Read the full guide for tips on how to support these pro-union companies that create jobs in the United States.

Ramparts Lives: LA Police Torture Occupiers

LA cops didn't suddenly start mistreating protesters out of the blue; obviously this is long-standing standard procedure for anyone who is not instantly obedient.

Ernest A. Canning at the Brad Blog:

Many of the individuals who were swept up by last week's LAPD raid on the Occupy LA encampment at Los Angeles City Hall were arrested even as they attempted to disperse in accordance with police directives, according to testimonials from some who were detained in the early morning hours of November 30th and held on misdemeanor charges for days after.

Their videotaped testimonials [some of which are posted below] both corroborate and reinforce the excessive force and post-arrest abuse charges detailed in our previous article on the Occupy LA raid, in which detainees charged that they were hand-cuffed behind their backs and left to languish inside L.A. County Sheriff's Department (LASD) buses for eight to nine hours without access to food, water, medicine, or toilets as they were left to urinate on themselves in their seats.

The details also suggest that these conditions were imposed upon innocent demonstrators who were the victims of indiscriminate, false arrests by law enforcement officials. Worse, one written account suggests the LAPD's misconduct included not only pillaging the encampment and police brutality, but even torture...

Read the whole horrifying, sickening thing.

Confederacy and Secession: Treason in Defense of Slavery

As Molly Ivins wrote, every white Southern liberal comes to liberal from the same place: race. Our childhoods are defined by lies about race.

And the biggest lie of all is the one that erases race from the Civil War. The lie that turns treason into a family squabble, slavery into a footnote and post-war appeasement into heroism.

Ta-Nehisi Coates in The Atlantic:

For the portion of the country that still honors, or traces its ancestry to, the men who fired on Fort Sumter, and thus brought war, the truthful story of the Civil War tells of a defeat richly deserved, garnered in a pursuit now condemned. For the blameless North, it throws up the failed legacy of appeasement of slaveholders, the craven willingness to bargain on the backs of black people, and the unwillingness, in the Reconstruction years, to finish what the war started.

For realists, the true story of the Civil War illuminates the problem of ostensibly sober-minded compromise with powerful, and intractable, evil. For radicals, the wave of white terrorism that followed the war offers lessons on the price of revolutionary change. White Americans finding easy comfort in nonviolence and the radical love of the civil-rights movement must reckon with the unsettling fact that black people in this country achieved the rudi­ments of their freedom through the killing of whites.

And for black people, there is this—the burden of taking ownership of the Civil War as Our War. During my trips to battlefields, the near-total absence of African American visitors has been striking. Confronted with the realization that the Civil War is the genesis of modern America, in general, and of modern black America, in particular, we cannot just implore the Park Service and the custodians of history to do more outreach—we have to become custodians ourselves.

Read the whole terrific thing.

h/t Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money.

Some People Need a Metaphorical Two-by-Four to the Head

Like national Democrats who can't - or won't - do the very simplest and most obvious things to help themselves.

Steve M:

DR. DEMOCRAT'S (UNUSED) MAGIC BULLET

I saw a tweet from Talking Points Memo about a half hour ago:

Dem cave in 3, 2, ...

The link that follows goes to this story:

Dems Consider Dropping Demands As Republicans Risk A Shutdown

If it weren't for the filibuster, Democrats would have the GOP neatly over a barrel. But Republicans believe they've regained the upper hand....

Senate Democrats are now considering dropping their demand that a payroll tax holiday for workers be offset by imposing a small surtax on millionaires, according to Democratic aides -- resigning themselves to the fact that Republicans won't lift their filibuster if the surtax stands....

You know, I was told that the battle had really, really been engaged when President Obama delivered a fiery populist speech in Kansas last week. But do you know what Obama didn't do in that speech? Do you know what he never does? What no Democrat ever does? No Democrat ever explains the filibuster to the American public, with the goal of urging voters to demand that Republicans back down from their abuse of the practice, particularly on overwhelmingly popular measures like raising taxes on the wealthy.

I know, I know: it's hard to fire people up with a civics lesson. But it's the only way Democrats will ever win a vote on anything, ever. It doesn't matter if it's difficult -- the party has to try.

I thought there were no more ways to describe Democratic self-destruction and defeatism, but Steve came up with a new one:

Dealing with the American people on this is analogous to practicing modern medicine while working in a less developed society and knowing that a devastating epidemic affecting that society can be stopped, or at least greatly slowed, by means of universal hand-washing, or cooking all food to a certain temperature, or using condoms during sex. The American people are like members of this less developed culture who may think the real solution is, say, an animal sacrifice to the gods -- yes, it's very difficult to communicate to them that their assessment of the problem is inaccurate, and that the real solution, which they regard as bizarre, is, in fact, what will work. But you have no choice. You have to figure out a way to communicate the truth to them. You have to get it across to them in a way they can understand, or things will just go on as they are forever.

The treatment exists. The Democrats just won't work at communicating its urgency to the public. And so the epidemic rages on.

No, don't give up. Just stop assuming that Congressional Democrats and the White House will take even the tiniest, easiest steps toward victory on their own. Pressure the fuckers. Call, write, visit, protest. But don't let them off the hook.

Now That's Free Market Capitalism at Work

Here's your Christmas shopping solution: books for everyone, ordered from a stupendous independent bookseller in Los Angeles. Skylight Books manages to combine concrete support for Occupy LA with a brilliant marketing ploy Adam Smith would love.

Diane Sweet at Crooks and Liars:

Any of you Occupiers out there who were arrested the night the LAPD evicted Occupy LA - November 30th - still have holiday shopping to do, or want to read up on civil rights? Good news from your local independent book store, Skylight Books:

Following this week's events at OccupyLA, Skylight would like to introduce an "Unlawful Assemblers' Discount": Did you stand up for your right to publicly assemble, and to challenge economic inequality through the Occupy movement? The police may not give you a break, but we'd like to. For the next month, bring in a booking slip or proof of your 409.PC charge from the night of the eviction and get 15% off your entire purchase.

I spoke with Megan Wade of Skylight earlier today, whose arrest during the raid on Occupy LA inspired the "Unlawful Assembler's Discount." "I believe it's really important to stand up when there are situations like those we're facing today with our economy and other issues," Megan explained. "We need to have a national dialogue that will help solve the problems faced by the majority of people in the country...protests and books are both great mediums to stimulate conversation."

Happy reading, all you brave outlaws.

You can find Skylight Books here:

1818 North Vermont Avenue
Los Angeles, California 90027
Phone: (323) 660-1175
Website: http://www.skylightbooks.com
Email: info@skylightbooks.com

Open 10am to 10pm daily.

A Decision Everyone Can Hate

The really ridiculous thing about the Obama administration's cowardly retreat on Plan B is that there are so many different reasons to hate it.

For those of us appalled by the White House's tendency to combine bad policy with worse politics, it's yet more proof of incompetence.

Zandar:

I support the Obama administration when they make policy decisions I agree with. This is not one of them, and I'm calling them out on it.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius overruled the Food and Drug Administration’s decision Wednesday that emergency contraceptives be sold freely over the counter, including to teenagers 16 years old and younger.

The pill, called Plan B One-Step, has been available without a prescription to women 17 and older, but those 16 and younger have needed a prescription — and still will because of Ms. Sibelius’s decision. In some states, pharmacists can write the prescription on the spot for teenagers. But the restrictions have meant the pills were only dispensed from behind the counter — making them more difficult for everyone to get. The pill, if taken after unprotected sex, halves the risk of a pregnancy.

Under the law, Ms. Sebelius has the authority to overrule the agency, but no health secretary has ever done so, according to an F.D.A. spokeswoman. Her decision on an emotional issue that touches on parental involvement in birth control for teenaged children is likely to have powerful political reverberations in a presidential election season.

If this was a political decision (and there's zero doubt about that, frankly, because the science supported making this medication available) then it's a completely moronic one. There's no benefit politically for doing this. It overrules the available science. It's frankly a stupid move you would expect from a red state governor. The FDA said: "Hey, we see no scientific reason this should be done." Kathleen Sebelius and President Obama disagreed.

In a statement, Ms. Sebelius said that the drug’s manufacturer had failed to study whether girls as young as 11 years old could use Plan B safely. And since about 10 percent of girls are capable of bearing children as early as 11, those girls need to be studied as well, she wrote.

“After careful consideration of the F.D.A. summary review, I have concluded that the data submitted by Teva do not conclusively establish that Plan B One-Step should be made available over the counter for all girls of reproductive age,” Ms. Sebelius wrote.

It's an election-year punt, period. It's insulting, it's wrong, and it's cowardly.

Bad, bad call.

Steve M. calls bullshit on those who are surprised, and says it's not the bad decision it seems:

But this is at least acknowledging the real issue: Americans are uncomfortable with loosening restrictions on teen sex. If you don't even see that, then I guess this decision is incomprehensible, even as an act of political cynicism (or, if you want to put it more charitably, as a way for a vulnerable president to avoid expending political capital he doesn't have with an election coming up). But I say if you hate this decision, you have to be clear-eyed about how Americans think, and start working on changing their thinking. You can't just assume that most of the country sees things the way you do, or that voters in the middle are immune to the right-wing demagoguery that inevitably would have followed a different decision.

Digby sees the losers clearly:

I consider the decision to be cruel. Many, many teenagers are going to needlessly become pregnant and either have abortions or children before they should because of this.

Teenagers have always had sex and they always will. The only question for any government is whether or not to stand in the way of scientific advances that will prevent unplanned pregnancies. This government has chosen to do just that by proclaiming, in the most Orwellian fashion, that "common sense" should trump scientific evidence.

There's a reason why no administration has never overturned an FDA ruling. (Even Republicans were afraid to evoke a "common sense says the science is wrong" exception, although I doubt they will be after this ...) It pretty much pushes the door wide open for the government to overturn any scientific finding that doesn't comport with their political needs. I think we can see the dark implications of that, can't we?

And as you can see by that story above, everyone agrees that this is a political calculation. Sadly, it's one with real life implications for actual human beings. The status quo is that a lot of young teenagers face unwanted pregnancies. They always have. And that will continue despite the fact that there is a safe alternative for many of them that doesn't require that they go through hoops that make it nearly impossible to use. (Time is of the essence with this one.)More children of children, more abortions, more heartache for young women who have done nothing more than what young people have always done. It didn't have to happen.

Update: Oh, and the pro-choice Democratic women who are saying that they're keeping their powder dry for the "bigger fight" are fooling themselves. The opponents of women's freedom will not stop until they get everything they want. They know that every little victory like this is another advance in their long term agenda. There will always be another fight. If the pro-choice officials keep retreating they will wake up one morning and find that there's nothing left to fight for.

Those who think this decision affects only the "11-year-olds" the president seems so concerned about fail to see that this decision treats all women like children, as Katha Pollit explains in The Nation:

Who died and made Barack Obama daddy in charge of teenage girls? Would he really rather that Sasha and Malia get pregnant rather than buy Plan B One-Step at CVS? And excuse me, Mr. President, thanks to your HHS, acquiring Plan B is prescription-only not just for 11-year-olds but for the 30 percent of teenage girls between 15 and 17 who are sexually active, and is a cumbersome process for all women, who have to ask a pharmacist for it and, as many news stories have reported, be subjected to fundamentalist harangues and objections. Apparently, it’s okay with you if Michelle is treated like a sixth-grader. I’m trying to think if there are any laws or regulations affecting only men in which unfounded fears about middle-school boys deny all men normal adult privileges. Needless to say, no one suggests that underage boys get a prescription if they want to use condoms, or that grown men have to ask the pharmacist for them and maybe get a lecture about the evils of birth control and promiscuity.

This is politics. Pure politics. The Obama administration values the Catholic bishops, the Family Research Council, Rush Limbaugh and the swing voters of Ohio more than the pro-choice Democratic women who make up way more than their share of his base—women who campaigned for him, donated to him, knocked on doors for him, left Hillary Clinton for him. He must be assuming that we are captive voters—we have no place to go. That may be true, but there’s trudging to the polls and there’s passion. Obama is never going to get passion from anti-choicers and swing voters. And it looks increasingly likely that he won’t get it from pro-choice women either.

President Obama needs to just admit that once again, he's gone after repug votes he'll never get, and he's done it by once again throwing women under the bus.

Kevin Drum:

A group of Democratic senators has written a letter to HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius asking for the "specific rationale and the scientific data" she relied on when she overturned last week's FDA recommendation to make the Plan B contraceptive available over the counter. Greg Sargent posts a copy of the letter at his site and then comments:

This letter — which is signed by Patty Murray, Barbara Boxer, Kirsten Gillibrand, Maria Cantwell and 10 male senators — is strongly worded stuff, particularly when directed at a Democratic president. It stops just short of accusing the Obama administration of deliberately ignoring science in making this decision. It also puts the administration in an awkward spot. Either it produces a scientific rationale that’s acceptable to these Senators, which will will be extremely difficult at best, or it will face more criticism for failing to justify its policy, reinforcing the sense that this Democratic administration abandoned science and put politics first.

The first best option obviously would have been to follow the FDA recommendation and simply allow OTC sales of Plan B. However, the second best option would have been to fess up. This is what happened in 1998 when the Clinton administration decided not to endorse needle-exchange programs.

SNIP

In this case, the Bush administration deliberately tried to mislead the Post about the scientific evidence on needle-exchange programs. The Clinton administration simply admitted that it was making a policy decision.

The Obama administration ought to do the same here. There's a perfectly reasonable case to be made that even if Plan B is safe, the Obama administration doesn't believe it's appropriate to make it available to young children without their parents' knowledge. That's a policy decision, and everyone accepts that policy doesn't have to be dictated solely by science.

Sebelius would be well advised to give up on trying to twist the science and simply admit that there were other considerations at work. It might not make Plan B fans any happier, but at least it would be more honest.

Ya gotta admit that finding a way to make everybody on every side of the reproductive freedom culture war hate your decision takes a kind of political genius.

The Republican Brain

via Down with Tyranny.

And Poor Kids Get Rat Poison

This is the corporate funder and organizer behind the Republican Party.

Marie Diamond and Scott Keyes at Think Progress:

As ThinkProgress has been reporting for some time, the corporate front group American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has been colluding with the billionaire Koch brothers to privatize government and eliminate environmental regulations that interfere with profits.

GOP legislators in many states have given ALEC free reign to write anti-health care reform and anti-environment legislation. Now, ALEC is fighting to kill Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules limiting the sale of rat poisons that pose a serious health threat to children and the ecosystem.

A top representative for the ultra-conservative group said kids eating rat poison is an “acceptable risk” that does not justify government intervention:

“There are certain levels of acceptable risk in society,” says Todd M. Wynn, director of the ALEC Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Task Force, in an interview about the EPA rules with the Heartland Institute’s Heartlander website. “And parents play an important role by weighing the potential risks and benefits of using a product.”

“Unfortunately, EPA expands its reach into the American economy more and more each and every year,” Wynn said. “This year it will be d-Con, but next year another useful product will be burdened by additional regulations or banned outright from the market.” [...]

Aaron Colangelo, an attorney for the NRDC…told the Center for Media and Democracy that “there is not an undue economic burden associated with reformulating these products,” pointing out that the rest of the industry had complied with the new rules without adverse economic impact. Additionally, he said, “the health care costs for treating these kids certainly outweigh the economic costs of reformulation.”

Wynn’s startling admission illustrates the extent to which ALEC is willing to sacrifice the health of Americans to advance their radical agenda. For decades, at least 12,000-15,000 children a year have become ill after accidentally touching or ingesting rat poison that’s spread in pellet form. Poisoned children experience internal bleeding, bloody urine, bleeding gums, and blood coming from their ears. Poor and minority children are disproportionately affected.

Exposure often occurs in settings outside parents’ control, and giving companies the option of voluntary adopting changes has done nothing to help. After thirteen years of studies, hearings, reports and legal battles, “the EPA announced in 2008 rodenticide manufacturers would have three years to adopt limits on the sale of the products.”

For years, ALEC has successfully killed these kind of regulations on environmental toxins and pollutants on behalf of corporations. At their annual conference in New Orleans this year, ALEC distributed a pamphlet titled “The Many Benefits Of Atmospheric CO2 Enrichment,” complete with pictures depicting happy wildlife and a healthy environment. Companies like Koch Industries, BP, WalMart, and others join forces to fund this little-known organization that works behind the scenes to fight the dirty battles that no corporation would want to be publicly associated with.

Regulations only help the non-rich; that's the real reason repugs want to get rid of them.

The White Privilege Iceberg

Zandar at his best on this one. It needs the best from all of us, because it is unacceptable.

Dafna Linzer's year-long ProPublica investigation into the factors surrounding supposedly color-blind presidential pardons from 1998 to 2008 is certainly one of the more important articles of the year. The bottom line is that white pardon seekers were four times more likely to be granted a pardon than blacks.

ProPublica's review examined what happened after President George W. Bush decided at the beginning of his first term to rely almost entirely on the recommendations made by career lawyers in the Office of the Pardon Attorney.

The office was given wide latitude to apply subjective standards, including judgments about the "attitude" and the marital and financial stability of applicants. No two pardon cases match up perfectly, but records reveal repeated instances in which white applicants won pardons with transgressions on their records similar to those of blacks and other minorities who were denied.

Senior aides in the Bush White House say the president had hoped to take politics out of the process and avoid a repetition of the Marc Rich scandal, in which the fugitive financier won an eleventh-hour pardon tainted by his ex-wife's donations to Democratic causes and the Clinton Presidential Library.

Justice Department officials said in a statement Friday that the pardon process takes into account many factors that cannot be statistically measured, such as an applicant's candor and level of remorse.

"Nonetheless, we take the concerns seriously," the statement said. "We will continue to evaluate the statistical analysis and, of course, are always working to improve the clemency process and ensure that every applicant gets a fair, merit-based evaluation."

And given the extreme partisan politicization of the Justice Department under Bush 43, it's no wonder that "wide latitude" was used to trash black applicants and give white collar whites a pass. Linzer explains this on Rachel Maddow's show from Monday night:

"You know, they're looking for the perfect person. They're looking for this incredibly stable person, this ideal person who will not present a risk to the president. Who will not be some person who goes out and commits a crime again. That's their sense of what they're looking for. Again, as you said, in each of these cases, we looked at bankruptcies, we looked at liens, tax liens against people. Did they own their own home? All kinds of things.

Each case we found minorities who were struck out who had bankruptcies or other issues. We found african-american applicants who wanted a pardon in order to improve their employment stability and were denied for employment instability. Or seeking a pardon because they want, you know, they want a better job. They want financial stability and denied for financial instability. At the same time we found successful white applicants pardoned by President Bush who had bankruptcies who filed for bankruptcy more than once.

Who were divorced multiple times, who had -- for me one of the striking things was language that was used to describe African-Americans who had children outside of a marriage, where those children were described in denial recommendations as illegitimate or born out of wedlock. White successful applicants who had children outside of a marriage, those children were described as having been born from a previous or non-marital relationship, completely different language."

It very much looks like the language used by these career Justice Department lawyers to describe minority pardon applicants, particularly African-Americans, was filled with negative racial dog whistle terms: "illegitimate children", etc. It was staggering the fact that this happened time and time again. The protestations that the process was color-blind is what really eats at me, because it clearly was not.

Linzer's investigation cites more examples:

In multiple cases, white and black pardon applicants who committed similar offenses and had comparable post-conviction records experienced opposite outcomes.

An African American woman from Little Rock, fined $3,000 for underreporting her income in 1989, was denied a pardon; a white woman from the same city who faked multiple tax returns to collect more than $25,000 in refunds got one. A black, first-time drug offender -- a Vietnam veteran who got probation in South Carolina for possessing 1.1 grams of crack - was turned down. A white, fourth-time drug offender who did prison time for selling 1,050 grams of methamphetamine was pardoned.

All of the drug offenders forgiven during the Bush administration at the pardon attorney's recommendation - 34 of them - were white.

SNIP

But in the end, white privilege was the name of the game.

The most striking disparity involved African Americans, who make up 38 percent of the federal prison population and have historically suffered from greater financial and marital instability. Of the nearly 500 cases in ProPublica's sample, 12 percent of whites were pardoned, as were 10 percent of Hispanics.

None of the 62 African Americans in the random sample received a pardon. To assess the chances of black applicants, ProPublica used the sample to extrapolate the total number of black applicants and compare it with the seven blacks whom Bush pardoned. Allowing for a margin of error, this yielded a pardon rate of between 2 percent and 4 percent.

Everything the Bush administration did was political. Everything. And everything they did involving the lives of African-Americans turned to complete shit. Every. Single. Time. Just another line item on the long, long bill of goods that "compassionate conservatism" represents to the black community since the 80's, I guess. I'm not surprised at this, just moderately depressed that the only thing this accomplished was sweeping yet another massive white privilege iceberg under the rug until somebody with enough tenacity actually asked questions. 38% of the prison population, 2-4% of the pardons. It's enough weight on my soul to even make me miss a step trying to carry it.

At the very least I'd like to see a truly transparent pardon process come out of this disaster. That needs to happen regardless of this investigation, and the people to do it are President Obama and AG Eric Holder.

Here's hoping we get an announcement on that new process soon, and thanks to Dafna Linzer and ProPublica for bringing this to light.

Outrage does not even begin to describe.

"Leaderless," "Goal-less" Occupy Keeps Notching Victories

Funny how that works.

Lisa Derrick at Firedoglake last week:

Hey, all you naysayers who claim Occupy did nada–yeah Limbaugh, you lima bean, I mean you–check this out:

At a packed City Council meeting that included remarks from a man in a top hat with fake money tucked in the pocket of his suit, Los Angeles lawmakers Tuesday called for more regulations on how much corporations can spend on political campaigns…

The council resolution includes support for a constitutional amendment that would assert that corporations are not entitled to constitutional rights, and that spending money is not a form of free speech.

City Council President Eric Garcetti, the resolution’s sponsor, said such actions are necessary because “big special interest money” is behind much of the gridlock in Washington….

“The flood of money since Citizens United is literally drowning out our voices,” said Garcetti, who is running for mayor in 2013. “If we’re going to be moving forward in this country, we need less special interest money in the political process.”

Councilman Richard Alarcon, who also supported the resolution, said corporations are “trying to take over every aspect of our lives.”

Occupy LA’s 60 days on the City Hall lawn made an impact. Occupy’s 292 arrests for failure to disperse made an impact. This is the beginning. Let’s take it to the end: End Citizens United and let the citizens unite for democracy.

We run this! And all your bases are belong to us.

It's not just LA.

Zaid Jilani at Think Progress last week:

The 99 Percent scored a huge victory in Cleveland, as the city council voted 18-1 last night to endorse the “occupy movement” and called on Congress to prosecute the big banks for financial fraud and related crimes. Access the full resolution as passed here.

Got an Occupation in your town? Attend the next General Assembly with a copy of the Cleveland resolution, and suggest taking it to your own city council.

Setting Up Schools to Fail So Corporations Can Profit

Remember that what corporations want is not educated citizens - those are the troublemakers who prevent corporations from killing people and taking over the world.

Corporations want ignorant, obedient drones incapable of thinking for themselves or doing anything but following orders.

So now those oh-so-benevolent corporate sponsors of "education reform" are gaming the system to make sure schools fail to meet phony standards, thus forcing them to become corporate-owned-and-operated charter - well, you can't really call them "schools." "Drone factories" is more accurate.

Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars:

This really goes to the heart of the morally bankrupt education "reform" movement. Pushed more by corporate interests and right-wing foundations than the needs of the students, standardized tests set impossibly high standards that relatively few students -- or teachers -- can reach. That's why Marion Brady, a teacher, administrator, curriculum designer and author, forwarded this shockingly informative piece to the education page of the Washington Post:

A longtime friend on the school board of one of the largest school systems in America did something that few public servants are willing to do. He took versions of his state’s high-stakes standardized math and reading tests for 10th graders, and said he’d make his scores public.

By any reasonable measure, my friend is a success. His now-grown kids are well-educated. He has a big house in a good part of town. Paid-for condo in the Caribbean. Influential friends. Lots of frequent flyer miles. Enough time of his own to give serious attention to his school board responsibilities. The margins of his electoral wins and his good relationships with administrators and teachers testify to his openness to dialogue and willingness to listen.

He called me the morning he took the test to say he was sure he hadn’t done well, but had to wait for the results. A couple of days ago, realizing that local school board members don’t seem to be playing much of a role in the current “reform” brouhaha, I asked him what he now thought about the tests he’d taken.

“I won’t beat around the bush,” he wrote in an email. “The math section had 60 questions. I knew the answers to none of them, but managed to guess ten out of the 60 correctly. On the reading test, I got 62% . In our system, that’s a “D”, and would get me a mandatory assignment to a double block of reading instruction.

He continued, “It seems to me something is seriously wrong. I have a bachelor of science degree, two masters degrees, and 15 credit hours toward a doctorate.

“I help oversee an organization with 22,000 employees and a $3 billion operations and capital budget, and am able to make sense of complex data related to those responsibilities.

“I have a wide circle of friends in various professions. Since taking the test, I’ve detailed its contents as best I can to many of them, particularly the math section, which does more than its share of shoving students in our system out of school and on to the street. Not a single one of them said that the math I described was necessary in their profession.

“It might be argued that I’ve been out of school too long, that if I’d actually been in the 10th grade prior to taking the test, the material would have been fresh. But doesn’t that miss the point? A test that can determine a student’s future life chances should surely relate in some practical way to the requirements of life. I can’t see how that could possibly be true of the test I took.”

Here’s the clincher in what he wrote:

“If I’d been required to take those two tests when I was a 10th grader, my life would almost certainly have been very different. I’d have been told I wasn’t ‘college material,’ would probably have believed it, and looked for work appropriate for the level of ability that the test said I had.

“It makes no sense to me that a test with the potential for shaping a student’s entire future has so little apparent relevance to adult, real-world functioning. Who decided the kind of questions and their level of difficulty? Using what criteria? To whom did they have to defend their decisions? As subject-matter specialists, how qualified were they to make general judgments about the needs of this state’s children in a future they can’t possibly predict? Who set the pass-fail “cut score”? How?”

“I can’t escape the conclusion that decisions about the [state test] in particular and standardized tests in general are being made by individuals who lack perspective and aren’t really accountable.”

Go read the rest, it's quite eye-opening.

As I've written before, public education is just that - public education. Performed by public servants paid with public taxpayer dollars for the benefit of the public. Any education "reform" that inserts a profit-seeking corporation into the mix is by definition not public education.

Copy Iceland, Not Italy

Iceland took one look at the extortion-by-austerity plan international banksters were demanding and told them to fuck off and die.

Italy just got the same ransom note but has chosen to surrender.

Guess which economy is dying and which is recovering.

Down with Tyranny:

(Last week) we talk about the option Europeans ensnared by banksters to go the Icelandic route. Rounding these banksters up and shooting the lot of them would be the most just thing to do. Iceland, however, decided to put them on trial instead.

Most of the E.U., bizarrely, is following conflicted and corrupted political elites who are urging surrender to the banksters instead. The bankster shill Germany installed as the Italian prime minister, Mario Monti, is pushing a mindless, hardcore Austerity regime on his country, one demanded by Germany, the banksters and the international 1%-- and one that will drive the Italian people into destitution and suffering. I had to get John Amato to translate the video (just below) for me.

It's Elsa Fornero, Italy's Labor Minister, and as you can see, she's unable to complete her announcement and breaks down in tears. That's because on Sunday night Monti's government announced the Austerity agenda that, among other things, raises the age of retirement and freezes pensions against inflation, which the 1% will now use to drive the rest of us into penury. She started crying when she tried to say the word sacrifici (sacrifices). And, yes, that's Monti looking embarrassed next to her. There was some heckling as he spoke to Parliament.



Monti's (or Germany's) "Plan to Save Italy" calls for plenty of sacrifce -- and guess who's hide they're coming out of. Hint: not the elites who caused the worldwide financial collapse. In fact, the plan to raise income taxes of the wealthy somehow didn't make it into the announcement-- although Monti and his German patrons are demanding higher taxes on second homes, yachts, private jets and fancy cars-- taxes that the Italian elites have long figured out how to avoid entirely. The tax that will make a difference is an increasing VAT (sales tax)-- possibly to as high as 23%. That's about the most regressive tax there is and it falls squarely on the shoulders of the working poor and middle class. And Monti is foregoing a salary. That's supposed to make it sound fair and palatable. There were no announcements about growth (like stimulus projects), but Monti claims to stay tuned; he's got them up another sleeve for another day.

Over the past decade the standard of living for the average Italian worker has actually decreased. More than a million Italians have emigrated. But that was nothing compared to what's about to happen. Monti warned Italy that there are no alternatives, hoping none of them are aware of what Iceland did to solve a similar problem that came to its shores a little sooner. But the German, French (and British and American) banksters don't give a rat's ass about Iceland and can live with them escaping debt-slavery... as long as no one else tries it.

SNIP

Monti warned his critics, much the way you hear Republicans doing here (and you will hera much more of that in coming months) that if Italy doesn't adopt all these Austerity measures they're going to turn into Greece. "Without this package, we believe Italy would collapse, Italy would go into a situation like that of Greece, a country we admire but we don't want to imitate." He'll be going after labor unions next.

SNIP

Maybe working people need a new political party that represents the 99% and doesn't include corrupt politicians. They should do it fast, since Merkel and Sarkozy have some unification plans that will foreclose on political rights for Europeans.

From DWT's previous post on Iceland:

Smith urges the Eurozone to look to Iceland for their salvation-- Iceland, which didn't actually get rid of serfdom until 1894, long after Tsar Alexander II was assassinated. Unwilling to let the banksters get away with it-- the way corrupt and conflicted politicians in the U.S. and Europe are doing-- Iceland opted for "sanity and growth... They renounced their unpayable debts and debt-serfdom, and let the market reprice their currency, debt and risk. The nightmare is past for them; they chose wisely."

No, there is no spending crisis - unless you call failing to spend enough to reduce unemployment a crisis. No, there is no deficit crisis - we've got no inflation and near-zero interest rates. No, we do not have to murder the middle class to please the banksters.

Let's follow the lead of Iceland, which after refusing austerity and charging banksters with fraud, now has one of the few healthy economies on the planet.

Kentucky School Superintendant Denies Gravity

Actually, the moron repeats the scientifically illiterate claim that evolution is a theory, not a fact.

Ever hear of the Theory of Gravity, you brain-dead goat-fucker?

From the Herald:

Hart County's school superintendent is arguing that a new test that Kentucky high school students will take for the first time next spring will treat evolution as fact, not theory, and will require schools to teach that way.

Superintendent Ricky D. Line raised the issue in recent letters and email messages to state Education Commissioner Terry Holliday and Kentucky Board of Education members. Line wants them to reconsider the "Blueprint" for Kentucky's new end-of-course test in biology.

"I have a deep concern about the increased emphasis on the evolution content required," Line wrote. "After carefully reviewing the Blueprint, I find the increase is substantial and alarming."

Line contends that the Blueprint essentially would "require students to believe that humans ... evolved from primates such as apes and ... were not created by God."

"I have a very difficult time believing that we have come to a point ... that we are teaching evolution ... as a factual occurrence, while totally omitting the creation story by a God who is bigger than all of us," he wrote. "My feeling is if the Commonwealth's site-based councils, school board members, superintendents and parents were questioned ... one would find this teaching contradictory to the majority's belief systems."

Holliday insisted Monday that Kentucky will not be teaching evolution as fact. Currently, teachers can discuss theories of creation other than evolution but they are not required to teach them.

In an earlier response to Line, Holliday wrote that end-of-course tests are intended to reflect college and career readiness and "promote more rigor and depth in traditional courses." Educators would be doing Kentucky students a disservice by "denying them the opportunity to learn science concepts required to obtain that goal," Holliday wrote.

Line is a mouth-breathing freakazoid who shouldn't be permitted within five miles of a student, but the real culprit here is Holliday and the state Department of Education for not banning freakazoid idiocy from science classes and standing foursquare in defense of the scientific fact of evolution.

Shame on you, Terry Holliday. Shame on you, Kentucky Department of Education. Shame on you, Governor Steve Beshear for contributing to the moronification of Kentucky by supporting brain-melting idiocy like the Flintstones Truther Park.

Save the Economy By Saving the Climate

It's not just far worse than you think. It's getting increasingly worse increasingly faster.

David Atkins "thereisnospoon" at Hullabaloo:

Most of the political discourse in the country is focused on economics, taxes and spending. With so many people unemployed and the social safety under assault, that's mostly appropriate. But it's also worth remembering that the biggest legacy we have to leave to future generations isn't about money. It's about the planet.

About that? The news isn't good, per David Roberts at Grist:

SNIP

It might seem that, given the extraordinary difficulty of hitting 2 degrees C, we ought to lower our sights a bit and accept that we're going to hit 4 degrees C. It won't be ideal, but hitting anything lower than that is just too difficult and expensive.

It's seductive logic. After all, to hit 4 degrees C we would "only" have to peak global emissions in 2020 and decline thereafter at the relatively leisurely rate (ha ha) of around 3.5 percent per year.

Sadly, even that cold comfort is not available to us. The thing is, if 2 degrees C is extremely dangerous, 4 degrees C is absolutely catastrophic. In fact, according to the latest science, says Anderson, "a 4 degrees C future is incompatible with an organized global community, is likely to be beyond 'adaptation', is devastating to the majority of ecosystems, and has a high probability of not being stable."

Yeeeah. You'll want to read that sentence again. Then you'll probably want to pour yourself a stiff drink.

Obviously, "incompatible with an organized global community" is what jumps out, but the last bit, "high probability of not being stable," is equally if not more important. One of the most uncertain areas of climate science today has to do with feedbacks -- processes caused by climate change that in turn accelerate (or decelerate) climate change. For instance, heat can melt the Arctic permafrost, which releases methane, which accelerates climate change, which melts more permafrost, etc.

Based on current scientific understanding, positive climate feedbacks -- the ones that accelerate the process -- considerably outweigh negative feedbacks. At some level of temperature rise, some of those positive feedbacks are likely to become self-reinforcing and effectively unstoppable, no matter how much emissions are cut. These are the "tipping points" you hear so much about.

It is a revolting commentary on the shortsightedness of human nature that this issue is not the #1 subject of debate around the world every single day among responsible policy makers.

But what is doubly depressing is that this issue could and should be a perfect rationale for the sort of stimulus spending that is exactly what would be needed to pull the world out of a global recession. One of the two supposed benefits of the capitalist model beyond consumer freedom of choice is supposed to be systemic efficiency. But if the world's economic system were anything approaching efficient, all that money that is locked away uselessly and indeed counterproductively in the accounts of companies that play casino games in capital markets and crash economies, would be repurposed to invest in the sorts of jobs and research that would provide energy conservation yields and innovative breakthroughs to mitigate the climate crisis.

It should be a no brainer. Instead, the world is obsessed with austerity measures to please the already overfed bond market gods, in order to reignite a consumer economy dependent on fossil fuel manufacturing that is already killing the planet.

It's so depressing that sometimes I wonder why smart people even bother with public policy instead of waiting out the inevitable generational destruction with a solid community of friends and family. One has to at least try, right?

Breakthroughs, both political and technological, are within our reach. But only if we keep the pressure on.

And as winter arrives, keep reminding the doubters: climate change doesn't mean warmer weather; climate change means fucked up weather.

Radical Reactionaries Using Nullification to Destroy the Union

How very appropriate during the sesquicentennial of the Civil War that congressional repugs should revive the strategy used by their philosophical predecessors to defend the plutocracy of slavery - but this time to protect the plutocracy of Wall Street.

Steve Benen:

Which leads us to the larger problem: what Republicans are embracing in this case is, in effect, nullification.

Congress passed a bill that was signed into law by the president. Last week, a Senate minority — not a majority, a minority — decided it simply won’t allow that law that’s already on the books to be executed.

In case this isn’t obvious, the American system of government isn’t supposed to work this way. Indeed, it’s pretty much the antithesis of our constitutional process.

Republicans may not care about this, but you should.

The GOP minority isn’t even questioning Cordray’s qualifications. Rather, Republicans are saying they refuse to allow existing law to function until Democrats meet the GOP’s demands and does Wall Street’s bidding. When the Senate minority is satisfied, they’ll consider allowing the law to function — if they feel like it.

As a matter of legal and institutional principles, Americans haven’t seen tactics like these since the Civil War. It led James Fallows to explain yesterday, “This strategy depends absolutely for its success on its not being called what it is: Constitutional radicalism, or nullification.” Jonathan Cohn made the same point last week, and Thomas Mann referenced a “modern-day form of nullification” in July.

Political tactics and schemes come and go, as politicians and parties win and lose. But what Republicans are doing now does real damage to the American system of government. It is, by any meaningful definition, a serious and important political scandal.

It's the same tactic, for the same reasons, and it's likely to lead to the same conclusion: a victory for the president and the federal government, but at a huge, almost unbearable cost to the nation.

You Make Your Own Dream

I missed this anniversary on Friday, but in honor of the man's apparent influence on Occupy - and of course Billo's delusion that a citizen asking him questions was trying to turn the overgrown pervert into "the next John Lennon," here is RJ Eskow at Crooks and Liars:

It speaks to John's gifts as a communicator that "Imagine," which is so clearly hostile to God and religion, is so popular in our heavily theocratic society. I'm not an atheist, but atheists who are looking for an anthem should track down a bootleg copy of "Serve Yourself," his answer song to Dylan's Christian hymn "Gotta Serve Somebody." It's hilarious, profane, and cuttingly anti-religious.

(Other atheist anthems include Bad Religion's "American Jesus" and Motorhead's "No Voices in the Sky.")

Lefties should check out the 1971 interview he and Yoko did with Tariq Ali and Robin Blackburn, where Lennon mixed a hostility toward what he called "God shit" with some die-hard Marxist terminology - although he and Yoko retain some of their unique stylistic flourishes as they chat with Robin and Tariq. He also gives us a glimpse into his polemical brilliance when he talks about the use of simplicity.

Would John have supported the Occupy movement? Last July 4th, when I was hoping more people would "declare independence" from corporate politicians and charismatic corporate politicians, I quoted him:

"You make your own dream ... If you want to save Peru, go save Peru ... Don't expect Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan or John Lennon or Yoko Ono or Bob Dylan or Jesus Christ to come and do it for you. You have to do it yourself."