The the current political environment, along with the truly repulsive behavior of the NRA recently, present an opportunity to change its image to something more accurate than “I am the NRA.”
Year: 2013
The NRA are Contemptible Slime
Yes, I know, and the sky is blue, but the just took out an ad going after Obama’s kids. I (for once) agree with WH spokesman Jay Carney:
Most Americans agree that a president’s children should not be used as pawns in a political fight. But to go so far as to make the safety of the President’s children the subject of an attack ad is repugnant and cowardly.
The NRA may be the most repulsive lobby in Washington.
If You Haven’t igned the Swartz Petition………
You know, the Petition to Remove United States District Attorney Carmen Ortiz from office for overreach in the case of Aaron Swartz, you might want to sign it, even though it broke the 25,000 requirement, because the White House is raising the signature threshold to 100,000.
Currently, it’s at at about 39,000.
Obama Makes Gun Control Proposal
It is pretty much what I expected, with the high point for me, being the directive to the CDC to resume studies on the public health effects of gun violence:
The 23 executive actions Mr. Obama signed on Wednesday were largely modest initiatives to toughen enforcement of existing laws and to encourage federal agencies and state governments to share more information. Mr. Obama lifted a ban on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from conducting research on gun violence and directed that a letter be sent to health care providers saying doctors may ask patients about guns in their homes.
This, along with legislative proposals proposing closing the gun show loophole on background checks, and expanding the ability of federal agencies to track guns, are probably going to be the most significant.
By virtue of legislation (literally) written by the NRA over the past few decades, federal agencies have been prohibited from collecting date to examine the problem, or to determine which dealers are knowingly selling to criminals.
It was more than I expected.
Why the Half Measure on the Filibuster?
Over at TPM, Josh Marshall wonders why, even though there appear to be the votes for requiring a full talking filibuster, that Harry Reid seems to be pushing for something weaker.
My take on this is that Reid, and other Senators of long tenure, are doing this because they have drunk the Koolaid* about the Senate being the, “World’s Greatest Deliberative Body.”
They want to protect what they see as the “unique character” of the Senate, and so they are leery of making more sweeping changes.
So, to paraphrase Alexei Sayle, they say “Worlds Greatest Deliberative Body”, and we say “Petri Dish for Narcissistic Sociopaths.”
The Senate ran for decades on tacit agreements that were never a formal part of the rules, and the social contract within the body has broken down, and so the formal rules need to change.
Word now is that the vote on the Senate Rules will be on the 22nd, and I am not optimistic.
*It was actually either Wyler’s or Flavor Aid at Jonestown, reports differ, not Koolaid.
Why Are We Supplying Arms to Bahrain?
If anything, the crackdown on dissent in Bahrain is worse than in Syria, because of the overtones of ethnic cleansing against the Shia (At least the Syrians oppress everyone equally), and we are arming them:
Despite Bahrain’s bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, the U.S. has continued to provide weapons and maintenance to the small Mideast nation.
Defense Department documents released to ProPublica give the fullest picture yet of the arms sales: The list includes ammunition, combat vehicle parts, communications equipment, Blackhawk helicopters, and an unidentified missile system. (Read the documents.)
The documents, which were provided in response to a Freedom of Information Act request and cover a yearlong period ending in February 2012, still leave many questions unanswered. It’s not clear whether in each case the arms listed have been delivered. And some entries that only cite the names of weapons may in fact refer to maintenance or spare parts.
For all the evil that the rulers in Syria have done, they have not arrested doctors for treating protestors that came into their emergency rooms, and they haven’t demolished mosques of other sects, as the the Al Khalifa monarchy has done in Bahrain.
Both regimes should be replaced by something that better serves the needs of their citizens, but we are letting the House of Saud dictate our priorities, and surprisingly, they oppose a secular regime run largely by non-Sunnis, and they support a Sunni monarchy like themselves.
The real problem here is that the Arab monarchies will eventually fall, either violently in the manner of the Romanoffs of Russia, or peacefully, in the manner of the House of Windsor in the UK, and the more that we prop them up, the bigger the backlash when they fall.
Iran’s transition from US ally to foe, which derived directly from our unqualified support of a despot, would not suit our interests, nor the interests of the people in that part of the world.
My rule of thumb here is that if the House of Saud is for it, I’m against it.
The Fed’s Beige Book is Out
The U.S. economy picked up across much of the country last month, boosted by auto and home sales, even as the outlook for unemployment showed few signs of improvement, the Federal Reserve said.
“Economic activity has expanded since the previous Beige Book report, with all 12 districts characterizing the pace of growth as either modest or moderate,” the central bank said today in its Beige Book business survey, which is based on reports from the Fed’s district banks.
Just So You Know
The Petition to Remove United States District Attorney Carmen Ortiz from office for overreach in the case of Aaron Swartz passed the 25,000 signature threshold.
I expect to see a non-response response from the White House in the next week or so.
They Want Us Gone, Let’s Leave
The Afghans want us gone:
Days after Afghan President Hamid Karzai and President Obama seemed to agree on the future role of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, a division has emerged over one of the American military’s most prized defense programs.
Top Afghan officials said Obama’s pledge last week to remove U.S. troops from Afghan villages should apply to Special Operations forces charged with training the Afghan Local Police. But U.S. officials said they assumed that the policy would apply only to traditional military operations and would include an exemption for the police trainers, whose mission they see as critical to security throughout Afghanistan.
The dispute underscored just how difficult negotiations over a long-term security partnership could be during the next year. The disagreement, like others before it, centers on the fundamental question of what will keep Afghans safe: U.S. officials say the local police program thwarts insurgents, but Karzai insists that it invites attacks.
The broader Afghan interpretation of the troop withdrawal, which Afghan officials said they believed would happen within weeks, would derail much of the Special Operations forces’ mission in Afghanistan and halt the expansion of the fastest-
growing Afghan security force, one that has cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
We’ve lost the war. Our allies don’t want want us there any more. It’s just time to go.
What a Surprise
Another Obama administration foreclosure mitigation program has descended into a morass of corruption and self-dealing:
No wonder the Fed and the OCC snubbed a request by Darryl Issa and Elijah Cummings to review the foreclosure fraud settlement before it was finalized early last week. What had leaked out while the Potemkin borrower reviews were underway showed them to be a sham, as we detailed at length in an earlier post. But even so, what actually took place was even worse than hardened cynics had imagined.
………
There are some issues that are highlighted in the piece, others that are implication that get somewhat lost in the considerable detail. The first, as stressed by Sheila Bair and other observers, is that the reviews were never designed to succeed. This is something we and others pointed out; this was all an exercise in show. The OCC had entered into these consent orders in the first place with the aim of derailing the 50 state attorney general settlement negotiations. This was all intended to be diversionary, but to make it look like it had some teeth, borrowers who were foreclosed on in 2009 and 2010 who thought they were harmed were allowed to request a review. If hard was found, they could get as much as $15,000 plus their home back if they had suffered a wrongful foreclosure, or if they home had already been sold, $125,000 plus any equity in the home. Needless to say, the forms were written at the second grade college level, making them hard to answer. A whistleblower for Wells Fargo reported that of 10,000 letters, harm was found in none because the responses were interpreted in such a way as to deny harm (for instance, if the borrower did not provide dates of certain incidents, those details were omitted from the assessment).
Read the whole thing.
Republicans: Personal Responsibility for Thee, But Not for Mew
A Republican Maryland Delegate Don Dwyer got drunk, and crashed his boat, fracturing the skull of a 5-year old girl.
His excuse was that gay marriage made him do it:
It is not funny that Maryland Delegate Don Dwyer drunkenly crashed his boat last year, fracturing the skull of a five-year-old girl. But it is funny that he is blaming gay marriage for the alcoholism that made him drunkenly crash his boat last year, fracturing the skull of a five-year-old girl! Oh, did we say “funny”? Well, seems like everything is funny to us! First, congratulations to Del. Dwyer for sitting down with the Capitol Gazette and making a searching and fearless moral inventory of himself. Second, the opposite of congratulations to Del. Dwyer for coming up with the positively Gingrichian “I was working too hard to protect the sanctity of marriage and that’s why I
f%$#ed my aidedrunkenly crashed a boat, fracturing the skull of a five-year-old girl.”
(%$# mine)
Seriously, do you have to be a self-involved psychopath to be a Republicans these days? Because I don’t see any Republicans out there who don’t appear to have something missing in their basic humanity.
h/t Atrios.
OK, This Might Be Some Obama Eleventy Dimensional Chess
As a result of Obama suggesting that he might issue some executive orders on the enforcement of federal gun control laws, a number of Republicans, including former Reagan Attorney General Edwin Meese, are suggesting that Congress might impeach him for this:
Former Reagan Attorney General Edwin Meese, now a prominent emeritus official at the Heritage Foundation, became the latest conservative to warn that President Obama could risk impeachment if he takes executive action on reducing gun violence in an interview Monday night.
Speaking with Newsmax, Meese said Congress may have to consider impeaching Obama if he were “to try to override the Second Amendment in any way” with an executive order. He did allow that there are some executive actions related to guns that Obama could take wouldn’t be impeachable.
I’m beginning to think that this is a response that Obama is encouraging, because, absent finding him in bed with a live boy or a dead girl, there is no way that the Republicans don’t end up with egg on their face if they pursue this.
Impeachment? Over tighter enforcement of gun laws? After some deranged lunatic murdered 29 people, including 20 children?
This is a level of stupid that simply boggles the mind.
Obama must be busy trying to stifle an evil overlord laugh.
Not Something I Did Not Expect From Time Magazine
they just did an article about the advantages of state owned banks:
The American Great Plains are known for their expansive farm lands, endless horizons, and — in recent history — staunchly conservative politics. So it may come as a surprise that only state-owned bank in the U.S. (an institution more widely associated with communist China than the Republican Party) can be found in ruby-red, rural North Dakota.
That’s right, The Bank of North Dakota (BND) — the largest bank in the state by deposits — was founded by legislative mandate in 1919, and has been a mainstay of the North Dakotan economy since that time, mostly through partnering with community banks to provide loans for local businesses. And advocates of public banking are holding up the BND as an example of what government-owned banks can do for an economy.
………
Sure, there are many obstacles to launching publicly-owned financial institutions. Pulling state capital out of commercial institutions could prove to be disruptive to the current financial system. And proper controls need to be set up to avoid political considerations overwhelming proper analysis of lending opportunities. But North Dakota has avoided these pitfalls, and the NBD is an institution that has proven its ability to work alongside the private banking industry to help the state’s economy — one of the most successful in the nation in recent times — develop and grow.
The idea that this idea has gained enough currency to appear on the pages of Time Magazine is pretty remarkable.
Generally, the MSM will view something like North Dakota’s as an anachronism, or some sort of upper Midwest peculiarity, like something from the movie Fargo.
They are actually taking this seriously, and that’s a change.
What the Hell Is Cameron Doing With the EU?
He is due to give a speech in Brussels demanding that some powers be returned to Britain, most notably those dealing with criminal justice, immigration, and foreign workers.
Truth be told, I think that he is trying to walk a tight rope. A large majority of the Tories, and (if polls are correct) most of the rest of the country, are inclined to favor an exit from the EU, so he’s attempting a number of things:
- He wants to take the wind out of the sails the right wing nativist UK Independence Party, which is on a path to reduce the Tories’ Liberal Democrat coalition partners to 4th place and irrelevance.
- He wants to pacify his own right wing.
- He wants to put Labor leader Millibrand in the position of supporting the EU which is an unpopular position.
Truth be told, with what Merkel is looking to do, I would be a Euroskeptic myself:
It is understood that Merkel, the only EU leader who has been calling for a revision of the Lisbon treaty to underpin new governance arrangements for the eurozone, has given up on the idea of a major treaty revision for the moment.
The German chancellor is said to have decided it is fruitless to push for a treaty revision in the face of strong opposition from France and elsewhere. Instead she has decided to try to stabilise the eurozone by setting up what are described as “work streams” in three areas. These cover banking union, the subject of the last EU summit where Cameron won guarantees for Britain; greater fiscal co-ordination among eurozone members; and labour market reform across the EU.
(emphasis mine)
If I lived in the EU, the idea that the Germans, who have no statutory minimum wage,, and a long history of dubious treatment of immigrants, would be driving “labor market reforms” it would fill me with dread. It translates into f%$#ing the ordinary working bloke.
Of course, David Cameron is a member of the Conservative party, so “f%$#ing the ordinary working bloke”, is kind of an article of faith for him.
I still maintain that the real problem with the EU is German hegemony in the EU, because they have much like the Bourbon Kings, “They had learned nothing and forgotten nothing.”
In the lame poodle category, Cameron is saying that the US has given its permission for him to ask for this.
Britain’s “special relationship” with the US looks increasingly like a relationship between a prostitute and a pimp.
When Gun Nuts Mention Switzerland, Cite This
Yes, the Swiss do have common posession of military weapons as a part of their armed forces, but the regulatory regime is a gun control advocates wet dream. They literally count the bullets that their citizen soldiers carry (rolling the Wiki):
The Montpelier Exempted Village Schools Board of Education has approved the carrying of handguns by its custodial staff.
The 5-0 vote of the board Wednesday night to allow handgun training for four custodians to be able to tote weapons at the K-12 campus at the Williams County school came after last month’s deadly shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.
School officials say that having armed personnel – believed to be the first for any school system in Ohio – is designed to thwart incidents of violence and prevent what happened in Newtown, Conn., from occurring here.
“Sitting back and doing nothing and hoping it doesn’t happen to you is just not good policy anymore. There is a need for schools to beef up their security measures,” Supertendent Jamie Grime told The Blade today. “Having guns in the hands of the right people are not a hindrance. They are a means to protect.”
Nothing that is proposed even comes close to this.
Welcome To CrazyTown USA: Arming School Janitors | Crooks and Liars
Wasn’t Groundskeeper Willie Armed in an Episode of the Simpsons?
Speaking of the stupid burning, how about that Montpelier Ohio School Board?
They have decided to arm their janitors:
The Montpelier Exempted Village Schools Board of Education has approved the carrying of handguns by its custodial staff.
The 5-0 vote of the board Wednesday night to allow handgun training for four custodians to be able to tote weapons at the K-12 campus at the Williams County school came after last month’s deadly shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.
School officials say that having armed personnel – believed to be the first for any school system in Ohio – is designed to thwart incidents of violence and prevent what happened in Newtown, Conn., from occurring here.
“Sitting back and doing nothing and hoping it doesn’t happen to you is just not good policy anymore. There is a need for schools to beef up their security measures,” Supertendent Jamie Grime told The Blade today. “Having guns in the hands of the right people are not a hindrance. They are a means to protect.”
Seriously, this is so stupid that it beggars belief.
The only people who will benefit from this decisions are the gag writers for Letterman, Leno, and the Daily Show, along, of course with the writing crew of The Simpsons.
If they don’t do a show on arming Groundskeeper Willie now, they need to find a new job.
H/t Crooks and Liars
This is One Way to Deal with Proprietorial Overreach
A petition at the White House has Called for the firing of United States Attorney Carmen Ortiz for her wildly disproportionate prosecution of Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide while facing decades in prison for downloading public documents.
It is now about 80% of the way to reaching the 25,000 signatures to require a response from the Obama administration.
Needless to say, the administration response will be either to do nothing, or to promote her, because they see “tough on crime” as a political winner.
I called it “Murder by Prosecutor” last night, which is (of course) rhetorical excess, but this was proprietorial excess.
Of course, we don’t know why he committed suicide, he did have a history of depression, but it’s fairly certain that this did not help.
On the bright side, I think that this is driving a discussion of overzealous prosecutors, and even if Ms. Ortiz keeps her job, her political career beyond this, she is/was seen as a rising star in the Massachusetts Democratic Party Establishment, has been detoured if not ended, which should hopefully make prosecutors think twice when they decide to destroy someone just to make an example.
Over the past 30 years, US laws have been changed to grant enormous power to prosecutors.
Based on how they file, and what they choose to present at sentencing, they now have the ability to dictate sentences to an unprecedented degree.
This has been corrupting the operation of the federal justice system for decades.
Tell That to the People of Nagasaki
Seen on Facebook.
Murder by Prosecutor
Aaron Swartz, age 26, suicide.
We cannot know all the reasons behind this, but his harassment by prosecutors was likely a contributing factor.
He was probably targeted because of his high profile opposition to SOPA (see vid). (To its shame, the New York Times does not mention this in the obit)
We have developed a regime where anyone can be harassed, and likely convicted, basically for being “troublesome.”
The term I used a while back, “Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen,” describes this phenomenon.
Self Entitled, Self Deluded Assholes
Robert Bork, at least later in his life, was a classic example of how the modern Republican Party has deliberately become a manufacturer of narcissistic fantasists:
Even before Robert Bork died last month, he had achieved something close to martyrdom. In the quarter-century since the Senate rejected his Supreme Court nomination, successive generations of conservative lawyers and activists have carried the torch, depicting his defeat as an injustice of historic proportion. Following his death at the age of 85, liberals mostly maintained a respectful silence while conservatives dusted off old complaints about the conduct of the confirmation hearing and the unfairness, in their view, of the “borking” the nominee received. Clearly, the Bork Battle survives Bork.
………
Some time after the Senate vote, I was invited to a conversation with Judge Bork at the offices of The New Republic magazine. He was hurting and angry. When my turn came to ask a question, I asked him whether, at any time during the hearing, he had felt that a member of the Judiciary Committee had met him on his own level in serious constitutional conversation.
“No,” he answered.
“Not even Arlen Specter?” I asked.
“Specter had his mind made up from the beginning,” he snapped.
I knew that wasn’t true, although Judge Bork clearly believed it. Senator Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, had in fact agonized over his vote, as I knew from having talked with him almost daily. A Yale Law School graduate and former prosecutor, the senator went head to head with the nominee through several rounds of questioning, hours of mesmerizing constitutional debate in which he probed for any sign of flexibility in Judge Bork’s view that the entire course of modern constitutional law was profoundly mistaken. Finding none, Senator Specter, who had assumed at the start of the hearing that he would vote for confirmation, decided to vote No, fully recognizing the price he would pay within his own party. Five other Republicans followed. (Judge Bork and Senator Specter, whose paths crossed at such a significant moment in their lives, died within months of each other; Arlen Specter, who eventually became a Democrat, died in October at 82.)
………
I should explain this column’s title, “Robert Bork’s Tragedy.” I see him as a tragic figure: not because he was dealt an unjust hand – he wasn’t – but because of his inability to understand what happened. He spent his final decades surrounded by acolytes who stoked his sense of victimhood, and there seemed to be no one around him to provide a reality check as his rants about the Supreme Court’s depredations and the collapse of Western civilization (he portrayed the two as inextricably linked) became ever more extravagant. (In a symbolic gesture aimed at the Republican base, Mitt Romney named him co-chair of his campaign advisory committee on law.)
What is interesting here is not Robert Bork, but rather how the production and support of this sort of (for lack of a better term) insanity has increasingly become the primary product of the right wing noise machine.
I’m not entirely sure how to fix this rather poisonous and self-reinforcing dynamic.
Truth be told, I’m not sure that would I want to fix this dynamic.
Maybe I’m an optimist, but seems to me that this dynamic has gotten to the point they are choking on their own bile, and I see that as a good thing.
H/t Brad Delong.