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Daily Archives: Friday, February 13, 2009
Today’s rabidly insane sheriff – “We’ll hunt that Phelps down like a dog!” category
So, just who is this Sheriff Leon Lott who is after Michael Phelps?
The Richland County, South Carolina Sheriff’s Department (that’s them above) just obtained an armored personnel carrier, complete with a belt-fed, .50-cal turreted machine gun. Sheriff Leon Lott has charmingly named the vehicle “The Peacemaker,” and insists that using a caliber of ammunition that even the U.S. military is reluctant to use against human targets (it’s generally reserved for use against armored vehicles) will “save lives.”
Can we call this overkill, yet? Is there any weapon people like Sheriff Lott would consider inappropriate for use against American citizens?
Like most of these military toys obtained by local police departments, the Peacemaker will inevitably be used on drug and gambling raids—that is, to enforce laws against consensual activities. Or, as we’re now seeing in Minnesota, perhaps on raids against leftist political activists.
Can’t be too careful, you know. Radley Balko at Reason
h/t Andrew Sullivan
Posted in Uncategorized
The War on Obama
This post, along with associated posts, is a must read.
Big pharma advance moves to discredit any alteration in the profitable status quo
Ezra Klein at The American Pospect notes the return of Betsy/Elizabeth McCaughey to do a reprise of her propaganda efforts to derail the Clinton medical bill: read Ezra’s piece
For futher information on that earlier propaganda effort (successful), read James Fallows’ A Triumph of Misinformation
Updatate: Steve Benen at The Washington Monthly notes a MSNBC segment on this lady last evening:
Elegant entymologists and Norman Mailer and a Canadian in New York
The lastest issue of The New York Review of Books contains, as always, wonderful treasures. There are a series of letters exchanged between Norman Mailer and William Styron and I’ll quote just a bit of one because I’m involved (ok…it’s a stretch, a big one).
Dear Bill,
First of all, a belated congratulations on your marriage. There’ve been times in my life when I could not see how possibly one could give an honest set of good wisehes for such an impossible institution, but at the moment, things with Adele being very good indeed, and this after two and a half years, I’m feeling optimistic about such matters as life, love and the relations between men and women.
One evening in that first week after I’d moved to Manhattan’s upper east side, I noticed an elderly woman walking in front of me quite overloaded with grocery bags. I asked if she needed some help and, it being Manhattan, she gave me a pretty close scrutiny before accepting the offer. We introduced ourselves as we headed towards her apartment and it turned out she was the Adele mentioned above. Of course, a lot of time had intervened between Norman’s period of domestic happiness and my arrival. At some later point, Adele had insulted Norman by calling him a ‘fag’ and he stabbed her with a pair of scissors.
Part deux… what do you, as an entymologist, do when you suspect that ants who explore far from the nest may measure distances (in order to find their way home) by counting their steps?
“…This remarkable ability was discovered by the researchers who lengthened the legs of ants by attaching stilts to them. The stilt-walking ants, they observed, became lost on their way home to the nest at a distance proportionate to the length of their stilts.”
That’s elegance.
Posted in Detritus
They are not, and will not be, credible partners
From Steve Benen Washington Monthly
After having asked to be considered for the cabinet, Judd Gregg withdrew from consideration. But note how the New Hampshire Republican chose to make his announcement: Gregg released a statement just as President Obama was poised to give a speech about the stimulus package. A Democratic Hill staffer told David Kurtz, “The classy exit would have been to wait til tomorrow afternoon to quietly bow out. Basically Gregg decided not just to politely decline, but rather to blow shit up and burn the bridge behind him.”
It’s hardly surprising, then, that White House aides believe “it is now clear that Obama has not been rewarded for reaching across the aisle.” You don’t say.
Paul Krugman noted today that congressional Republicans, instead of acting “chastened” after electoral and governmental failure, remain committed to “deep voodoo,” and arguments that have “bordered on the deranged.”
Given all of this, Andrew Sullivan argues that the Republican Party has “declared war” on the president.
Their clear and open intent is to do all they can, however they can, to sabotage the new administration (and the economy to boot). They want failure. Even now. Even after the last eight years. Even in a recession as steeply dangerous as this one. There are legitimate debates to be had; and then there is the cynicism and surrealism of total political war. We now should have even less doubt about what kind of people they are.
Tough stuff, to be sure. The question, I suppose, is what the White House — and a president who’s repeatedly committed to trying to find common ground with the failed minority party — is going to do about it. If Sullivan is right, and the Republican Party is driven by a combination of partisan schemes and a desire to see Obama fail, how will the administration respond?
Joe Klein argues, persuasively, that the president “should have no illusions about the good faith of his opponents.”
Obama should now understand that the Republicans are not reliable partners — at least, not for the moment. Most are stuck in the contentious past, rutted in Reaganism, intent on taking a Hooverist course on the economy (although there remains cause for optimism on foreign policy). The President’s default position, after the stimulus fight and the Gregg fiasco, should be to appoint Democrats to significant domestic policy positions — the notion of making a public show of bipartisanship, by reaching across the aisle to someone like Senator Gregg, gives the opposition too much credibility and leverage.
Which doesn’t mean that Obama shouldn’t remain as conciliatory, and open to constructive Republican ideas, as he has been. There are potential long-term benefits from such openness (and short-term benefit as well, since the public clearly believes that Obama has been more reasonable than the Republicans).
It may seem callous somehow for the White House to assume bad faith from his opponents. Maybe Republicans are sincere in their ridiculous arguments, perhaps they don’t realize their policies are destructive; maybe it only seems like they’d put partisan considerations above the interests of the country.
Can we drop the charade now?
It is unpatriotic, even treasonous, to criticize the CIC Obama during a time of war
That sentiment, if were to be voiced (I’ve never seen nor heard it, mind you) would be completely assinine and undemocratic for all those reasons too obvious to detail.
Thus, conservatives ought to be invited to do so provided only that those criticisms are relevant and carefully considered. All I would ask of such conservatives is that those who held to a different standard under the last President merely apologize for being such incredible totalitarian arses at that time.
This seems fair.
Posted in Detritus
Headline of the day – “we are unshaken by this revelation” category
Crist’s support of stimulus plan displeases GOP
The following doesn’t surprise us either:
“I don’t think he’s helped any national Republican ambitions he may have by stepping up to the plate and batting for the other team. . . . There’s a difference between working in a bipartisan way for the common good and switching sides and putting on the other team’s jersey,” said veteran Republican consultant Alex Castellanos. “At the one moment when we’ve finally found our voice and remember who we are as Republicans, Charlie Crist forgets. It’s stunning.”
Crist’s full-throated support evoked a rare rebuke from one of his closest political allies, Florida Sen. Mel Martinez, who said on the Senate floor that Crist doesn’t get it.
“I don’t know that my governor understands all the details in this package – that there will be nothing here to help with Florida’s housing economy,” Martinez said, noting the package is light on stemming the tide of foreclosures. McClatchy story
Quote of the day
We’re wearing short sleeves because we have to roll up our sleeves and clean up the mess that we inherited. David Axelrod in response to Andy Card’s criticism of the Obama WH’s dress code
h/t TPM & Think Progress
Posted in Today's quote
Tagged Andrew Card, David Axelrod, dress code, white house
How to procede on the question of investigating Bush administration possible crimes?
Joe Conason at Salon, noting the recent polling favoring criminal sanctions along with certain political realities, offers up what I think is a practical proposal:
…To establish an American truth commission, the Obama administration would have to proceed under assumptions very different from those that governed the process in South Africa, which embodied the peaceful settlement of a popular revolution. The consensus in Johannesburg was that social reconstruction could not begin without due attention to the crimes of the old system or without granting amnesty to the perpetrators (and in a sense to white South Africans as a group). That amnesty was conditioned on the willingness of apartheid’s former enforcers to testify candidly about their past acts, with or without avowals of remorse, which were not required in applying for amnesty.
Here we have no such consensus and no revolutionary government with the power to mete out retribution to vanquished foes. What we have instead are the unrepentant officials of the Bush era, who continue to justify their misconduct as critical to the nation’s survival. We have a new administration, immured in a world economic crisis, that recognizes conflicting imperatives of accountability and cooperation. And we have a responsibility to explore how the nation embarked on “a dangerous and disastrous diversion from American values,” as Leahy put it.
Is there a way for President Obama to pursue that responsibility without inflicting vengeance or humiliation? Perhaps he ought to consider the creation of a presidential commission whose aims would be purely investigative — and encourage the participation of those implicated in the abuses of the past by promising a complete pardon to anyone who testifies fully, honestly and publicly.
With that gesture, he would acknowledge the importance of uncovering the facts, no matter how ugly, while magnanimously binding up the nation’s wounds. He could leave the issue of criminal prosecution to international authorities that can act without any partisan taint. And he could seek truth without vengeance. Pardon the Bush miscreants/
There is another important dynamic here which leads me to believe that even this modest proposal may not be achievable. That is, the emotional and cognitive assault on the American psyche which such an honest investigation would likely entail.
America is a deeply nationalistic country with a set of mythologies that define the nation in very particular ways. A primary element that runs through these mythologies is that America is exceptional – exceptional in its basic goodness and its beneficent role in the world. But there is much which demonstrates that this myth-based ‘perception’ is deeply delusional. Whether America in toto might be capable of a thorough and clear-sighted appraisal of real states of affairs is not at all clear. I think it quite unlikely.
Now this is cool
DNA research has proven to be immensely helpful for anthropologists in their studies of early human history (patterns of migration, etc). An old question, now pretty much answered, involved the relationship between ourselves and Neanderthalensis.
Their lives may have been nasty, brutish and short but their DNA has survived long enough to be almost fully decoded in a pioneering study that has revealed just how closely related were the Neanderthals to modern humans.
For the first time, scientists have deciphered the genetic sequence of the Neanderthal genome. It is the first genetic blueprint of an extinct human species and a tour de force in terms of the scientific techniques used to recover tiny strands of ancient DNA from fragments of fossilised bones tens of thousand of years old.
…”What we have looked at from the point of view of variation today, is the contribution from Neanderthals into the human gene pool. That was very little, if anything. Our data shows that, if there was a contribution, it was very small,” Professor Paabo said. “But the cool thing is that interbreeding was a two-way street. For the first time we can look at whether there was a contribution from human ancestors into Neanderthals because, for the first time, we have a Neanderthal genome,” he said. more on Neanderthal DNA
Posted in Uncategorized
Yikes
Paul Krugman is, this morning, sobering.
Failure to Rise
By any normal political standards, this week’s Congressional agreement on an economic stimulus package was a great victory for President Obama. He got more or less what he asked for: almost $800 billion to rescue the economy, with most of the money allocated to spending rather than tax cuts. Break out the Champagne!
Or maybe not. These aren’t normal times, so normal political standards don’t apply: Mr. Obama’s victory feels more than a bit like defeat. The stimulus bill looks helpful but inadequate, especially when combined with a disappointing plan for rescuing the banks. And the politics of the stimulus fight have made nonsense of Mr. Obama’s postpartisan dreams.
Noting one passage of importance from above:
And the rhetorical response of conservatives to the stimulus plan — which will, it’s worth bearing in mind, cost substantially less than either the Bush administration’s $2 trillion in tax cuts or the $1 trillion and counting spent in Iraq — has bordered on the deranged.
Update: Greenwald has much to add here as regards the political equations read Glenn
Posted in Economic stuff, Obama, Politics and the economy
Tagged bank rescue, economics, Glenn Greenwald, Krugman, Obama, stimulus bill
