I hate having to agree with Fox Opinion Channel personality Megyn Kelly, but I can't dispute her point about the bizarre segment on the February 8 edition of MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry, in which Harris-Perry actually asked outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder to quack like a duck.
Granted, MSNBC's weekend programming hasn't been the same since Chris Hayes left Up in 2013 to host his weeknight broadcast All In,
but this segment was just too daffy. Holder, who answered graciously
nonetheless, seemed to know that something had gone off the rails; while
responding to Harris-Perry, he seemed to be second-guessing his
decision to participate in the interview.
Reportedly, there has been a lot of second-guessing at the network, and it's not hard to understand why. MSNBC has a credibility problem - though its not about ducks or even Brian Williams - but a segment on the February 9 edition of The Ed Show unintentionally highlighted its magnitude...
Schultz, Ring of Fire radio host and attorney Mike Papantonio,
League of Conservation Voters Senior VP for Government Affairs Tiernan
Sittenfeld and conservation biologist Reese Halter noted that the
mainstream media had indeed been negligent about covering the climate
crisis, with Papantonio specifically citing the role of the Fox Opinion Channel in warping the climate conversation.
The problem with the segment was that one could not watch it without remembering that MSNBC is:
the same network whose evening host, Lawrence O'Donnell, lavished praise on David Koch
for his donations to New York's Hospital for Special Surgery in a June
2014 broadcast, not acknowledging the reality that Koch puts people in
hospitals --- and morgues --- due to his carbon pollution and extensive
efforts to stop federal and state regulation of the same;
and, of course, the same network that horribly mistreated Phil Donahue and Ashleigh Banfield when they raised questions about that war for oil.
As great as MSNBC hosts Hayes, Schultz, Rachel Maddow and Alex Wagner
are on the climate issue, it's hard to deny that in many respects,
MSNBC has itself ducked its journalistic obligation to provide
comprehensive coverage of the most significant issue of our time,
presumably due to concerns about offending fossil-fuel advertisers. The
Fox Opinion Channel has certainly poisoned the waters of
scientific discussion, but MSNBC also deserves criticism for not giving
the climate crisis top billing.
After the Supreme Court's democracy-mugging decree that
corporations can dump unlimited amounts of their shareholders' money
into our election campaigns, a guy named Larry sent an email to me that
perfectly summed up what had just been done to us: "Big money has
plucked our eagle!"
Thanks to the court's freakish Citizens United ruling, the Koch
brothers have already amassed an unprecedented $900 million
electioneering fund, making them the Godfathers of tea-party
Republicanism.
Thus, such presidential wannabes as Ted Cruz, Rand Paul,
Marco Rubio, and Scott Walker are shamelessly scurrying to kiss the Koch
ring and pledge fealty to the brotherhood's extremist plutocratic
agenda.
But big money is not only corrupting candidates, but also
greatly diminishing voter participation in what has become a made-for-TV
farce. The biggest chunk of cash spent by Koch, Inc. will go right into
a mind-numbing squall of ads. They will not explain why we should vote
for so and so, but instead will be nauseatingly-negative attack ads,
trashing the candidates the Koch syndicate opposes.
Worse, voters will
not even be informed that the the Kochs paid for this garbage, since the
Supreme Court says they can run secret campaigns, laundering their
money through front groups to keep voters from knowing what special
interests are really behind the attacks.
We saw the impact of secret, unrestricted corporate money in
last year's midterm elections. It produced a blight of negativity, a
failure of the system to address the people's real needs, an upchuck
factor that kept nearly two-thirds of the people from voting, a rising
alienation of the many from the political process – and a Congress owned
by corporate elites.
The Koch machine spent about $400 million to get
those results. This time, they'll spend more than twice that.
"16 Koch Budget is $889 Million," The New York Times, January 27, 2015.
"Shine light on campaign 'dark money'," The Austin American Statesman, February 1, 2015.
"Koch Network Vows To Spend Nearly $900 Million To Buy Presidency And Congress," www.alternet.org, January 27, 2015.
A
Fox-affiliated news crew was attacked in Hayward early Wednesday, the
latest in a string of robberies targeting media in the Bay Area,
authorities said.
The
KTVU-Channel 2 crew was wrapping up filming for a Powerball segment at a
convenience store in Hayward when the attack occurred, said Sgt. Tasha
Decosta of the Hayward Police Department.
Authorities said a cameraman was loading his equipment into a news van when two men walked up and pushed him to the ground.
The
robbers - who never brandished a weapon - stole a camera, microphone
and other equipment, Decosta said. The equipment was valued at $50,000.
An ambulance was called after the cameraman complained of neck pain. The victim was not taken to a hospital, Decosta said.
This incident is the latest attack on media
representatives in the Bay Area. Last July, a KPIX-TV news team had a
laptop and personal belongings stolen from a TV van, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. A member of that same news crew was punched and robbed during a live broadcast in 2012, the newspaper reported.
The
Chronicle reported that some news stations have ordered security guards
to accompany reporters and news crews when covering stories.
The audience for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech
to Congress on March 3 is shaping up to be largely Republican—and almost
completely white.
Many members of the Congressional Black Caucus
say they’re planning to skip the speech, calling it a slight to
President Barack Obama that they can’t and won’t support.
Israeli officials have been caught by surprise by the CBC
backlash, kicked off by Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a civil rights leader
who said last week he wouldn’t attend, quickly followed by Rep. Jim
Clyburn (D-S.C.) and others. As a result, they’re working to set up a
meeting for CBC members with Ambassador Ron Dermer or even Netanyahu
himself when he’s in Washington.
“To me, it is somewhat of an insult to the president of the United
States,” said Rep. Greg Meeks (D-N.Y.), leaving the White House on
Tuesday after a long meeting with Obama and Vice President Joe Biden,
who’s skipping the speech himself. “Barack Obama is my president, he’s
the nation’s president, and it is clear therefore that I’m not going to
be there, as a result of that, not as a result of the good people of
Israel.”
Netanyahu’s speech to Congress, scheduled just two weeks
before Israeli national elections, is aimed at stopping a deal with
Iran over its nuclear weapons program — a diplomatic opening Obama
administration officials believe could reintegrate Iran into the
international community and enhance Israel’s security. Netanyahu,
however, feels the United States and its international partners are
being naive about Iran’s true intents.
“I’m determined to speak before Congress to stop Iran,” Netanyahu tweeted on Tuesday.
Democrats across Capitol Hill have been increasingly vocal about
their opposition to the speech, criticizing the prime minister and House
Speaker John Boehner for making them choose between their support for
their president and support for Israel. Announcements that Democrats
plan to sit out the speech have trickled in steadily for days.
But
the CBC reaction has been particularly potent, striking at the
political alliance between Jews and African-Americans that dates to the
Civil Rights movement but has grown more fraught over the years.
Often
Obama’s strongest defenders against political attacks, black members
say they’re outraged that a foreign leader would try to intervene in the
U.S. political process.
“It’s not just about disrespect for the
president, it’s disrespect for the American people and our system of
government for a foreign leader to insert himself into a issue that our
policy makers are grappling with,” said Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.). “It’s
not simply about President Obama being a black man disrespected by a
foreign leader. It’s deeper than that.”
CBC chair Rep. G.K.
Butterfield (D-N.C.) told reporters that the speech didn’t come up as a
topic in the 90 minutes they spent with Obama in the Cabinet Room. But
he, like Meeks, Johnson and many of his members, is not planning to go
to Netanyahu’s speech.
Butterfield said the black caucus is in
“conversation” with Israeli officials to set up a meeting with either
Netanyahu or the ambassador, who has already met with several black
members of Congress as part of his efforts to calm the furor.
“CBC
members are willing certainty to meet with any representative of
Israel. We understand Israel’s plight and we support the state of
Israel,” Butterfield said.
The CBC leader said Boehner is as much or more responsible for the slight as the Israeli leader.
“I
don’t hold Netanyahu responsible,” Butterfield said. “I hold Speaker
Boehner responsible but I would hope that Mr. Netanyahu would not want
to get involved. I personally think it is disrespectful.”
That
was a word many members used: “It is very disrespectful to this
president, and what concerns me more is that I think it’s a pattern that
is starting to developing from this speaker that we’re getting more and
more disrespectful of the office of the presidency,” said Rep. Cedric
Richmond (D-La.). “I think it’s silly and petty.”
Asked if CBC members see the speech as an insult, Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) said, “I think they kind of think it is.”
Cory Booker (D-N.J.), the only CBC member in the Senate, hasn’t ruled out attending, but he won’t commit to going either.
“I’ve
been asked that a number of times — I’m not commenting,” he said before
slipping out the White House gates and onto a waiting bus to bring him
back to the Capitol.
A spokesman for the Israeli Embassy had no
comment about the breakdown with the CBC over the speech. but a
spokesman for Boehner defended the speaker’s decision to invite the
Israeli leader: “Prime Minister Netanyahu’s upcoming visit isn’t about
Speaker Boehner, and it’s not about President Obama,” spokesman Cory
Fisher said. “At this critical moment it’s important that the American
people hear from Israel about the grave threats posed by Iran and
Islamic radicalism.”
Though many CBC members are boycotting, for now they’ve decided not to make it an official caucus position.
“There
are a number of members who aren’t going to attend, but they don’t want
to make it sound like a group decision,” said Rep. John Conyers
(D-Mich.).
CBC members Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Keith
Ellison (D-Minn.) and Donna Edwards (D-Md.) have also announced they’re
skipping the speech. Fellow CBC member Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.)
co-signed a letter Tuesday to Boehner with Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.)
calling for the speech to be postponed.
“The timing of this
invitation and lack of coordination with the White House indicate that
this is not an ordinary diplomatic visit,” they wrote. “When the Israeli
prime minister visits us outside the specter of partisan politics, we
will be delighted and honored to greet him or her on the floor of the
House.”
The idea of meeting with Dermer or Netanyahu separately
doesn’t seem to be catching on with CBC members either. Noting that
Dermer once worked for Republican pollster Frank Luntz, Johnson called
the ambassador a “long-time, right-wing political hack” and said he was
uninterested in meeting with either him or Netanyahu.
“I don’t think I would be willing to come to such a meeting,” Johnson said. “Not at that time, and under this condition, no.”
Chris Hayes expanded on the story Susie posted earlier this week about the natural supplements which were devoid of that ingredient on the label they purported to contain.
Here's a little more specific information:
Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman and Executive
Deputy Attorney General Martin J. Mack issued cease-and-desist orders to
GNC Holdings, Inc., Target Corporation, Walgreens, Wal-Mart Stores,
Inc., regarding the marketing of up to seven herbal supplements: Gingko
[sic] biloba, St. John’s Wort, Ginseng, Garlic, Echinacea, Saw Palmetto,
and Valerian root. (Valerian was only tested from Target, in place of
Ginseng.)
The office states that products from three or four New York state
retail stores were tested up to five times each by a DNA barcoding
technique developed at the University of Guelph, Ontario and published
last year in the journal, BMC Medicine.
The actions have nothing to do with the clinical effectiveness of the
products, another issue entirely and one that is not required under the
1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA).
According the formal documents, an attorney general’s researcher,
Dr. James A. Schulte II of Clarkson University in Potsdam, NY,
determined that only 4 percent to 41 percent of products contained DNA
from the plant species indicated on the product label.
While some samples had absolutely no DNA in them, some had
DNA from other plants entirely. Some Ginkgo and saw palmetto products
contained garlic whereas some garlic products contained no garlic at
all.
Isn't this straight-up fraud? Whatever you might think about the
efficacy of supplements themselves, people are being told that a bottle
of "X" actually contains "X" when in fact, it contains little pieces of
"A, Z and Y". It seems to me that a cease-and-desist order is the very
least they should be doing here. How about an investigation?
Or better yet, how about some regulation of the supplement industry?
Oh, wait. As Hayes points out, Senator Orrin Hatch is the guy who made
sure supplements could escape regulation, since Utah is the "Silicon
Valley" of the supplement industry.
I wonder if there's a connection between the lunacy that is anti-vaxxers and the supplements they're taking.
ISIS burned Muadh al Kasasbeh, a captured Jordian fighter pilot, to
death. They doused him with an accelerant. His captors set him on fire.
Muadh al Kasasbeh desperately tried to put out the flames.
ISIS recorded
Muadh al Kasasbeh's immolation, produced a video designed to intimidate
their enemies, and then circulated it online.
ISIS's burning
alive of Muadh al Kasasbeh has been denounced as an act of savagery,
barbarism, and wanton cruelty--one from the "dark ages" and not of the
modern world.
American Exceptionalism blinds those who share its gaze to uncomfortable facts and truths about their own country.
For
almost a century, the United States practiced a unique cultural ritual
that was as least as gruesome as the "medieval" punishments meted out by
ISIS against its foes.
What is now known as "spectacular
lynching" involved the ceremonial torture, murder--and yes, burning
alive--of black Americans by whites. Like ISIS's use of digital media to
circulate images of the torturous death of Muadh al Kasasbeh by fire, the spectacular lynchings of the black body were shared via postcards and other media.
In fact, the burned to death images of the black body were a form of mass culture in 19th and 20th century America.
This
account of the horrific murder of Sam Hose by White Americans is an
even more grotesque and exaggerated version of the cruelty visited upon
Muadh al Kasasbeh by ISIS:
The white-owned newspapers of
the South had long gorged themselves with exaggerated or fabricated
accounts of such violence. In the papers' version, the fight between Sam
Hose and his boss became transformed into the most enraging crime of
all: the rape of the white man's wife.
White Georgians
tracked Hose down and prepared for his lynching. Two thousand people
gathered for the killing, some taking a special excursion train from
Atlanta for the purpose. The leaders of the lynching stripped Hose,
chained him to a tree, stacked wood around him, and soaked everything in
kerosene. The mob cut off Hose's ears, fingers and genitals; they
peeled the skin from his face. They watched, a newspaper reported,
''with unfeigning satisfaction'' as the man's veins ruptured from the
heat and his blood hissed in the flames.
''Oh, my God! Oh,
Jesus,'' were the only words Hose could manage. When he finally died,
the crowd cut his heart and liver from his body, sharing the pieces
among themselves, selling fragments of bone and tissue to those unable
to attend. No one wore a disguise, no one was punished.
The murder of Jessie Washington is a genius work in white on black violence, far worse than the wickedness of ISIS's acts against Muadh al Kasasbeh:
“Great
masses of humanity flew as swiftly as possible through the streets of
the city in order to be present at the bridge when the hanging took
place, but when it was learned that the Negro was being taken to the
City Hall law, crowds of men, women and children turned and hastened to
the lawn.”
“On the way to the scene of the burning people
on every hand took a hand in showing their feelings in the matter by
striking the Negro with anything obtainable, some struck him with
shovels, bricks, clubs, and others stabbed him and cut him until when he
was strung up his body was a solid color of red, the blood of the many
wounds inflicted covered him from head to foot.”
“Dry goods
boxes and all kinds of inflammable material were gathered, and it
required but an instant to convert this into seething flames. When the
Negro was first hoisted into the air his tongue protruded from his mouth
and his face was besmeared with blood.”
“Life was not extinct
within the Negro’s body, although nearly so, when another chain was
placed around his neck and thrown over the limb of a tree on the lawn,
everybody trying to get to the Negro and have some part in his death.
The infuriated mob then leaned the Negro, who was half alive and half
dead, against the tree, he having just strength enough within his limbs
to support him.
As rapidly as possible the Negro was then jerked
into the air at which a shout from thousands of throats went up on the
morning air and dry goods boxes, excelsior, wood and every other article
that would burn was then in evidence, appearing as if by magic. A huge
dry goods box was then produced and filled to the top with all of the
material that had been secured.
The Negro’s body was swaying in
the air, and all of the time a noise as of thousands was heard and the
Negro’s body was lowered into the box.” “No sooner had his body touched
the box than people pressed forward, each eager to be the first to light
the fire, matches were touched to the inflammable material and as smoke
rapidly rose in the air, such a demonstration as of people gone mad was
never heard before. Everybody pressed closer to get souvenirs of the
affair. When they had finished with the Negro his body was mutilated.”
“Fingers,
ears, pieces of clothing, toes and other parts of the Negro’s body were
cut off by members of the mob that had crowded to the scene as if by
magic when the word that the Negro had been taken in charge by the mob
was heralded over the city. As the smoke rose to the heavens, the mass
of people, numbering in the neighborhood of 10,000 crowding the City
Hall law and overflowing the square, hanging from the windows of
buildings, viewing the scene from the tops of buildings and trees, set
up a shout that was heard blocks away.”
Many thousands of black Americans were killed by white lynchers in the United States. The spectacular lynching was a ceremony
(it was not something random or spontaneous; the acts of a few out for
black blood possessed insane white people), with distinct practices,
that symbolically purged the black body from the white polity in an era
of formal white supremacy:
The actual process of lynching
was morbid and incredibly violent. Lynching does not necessarily mean
hanging. It often included humiliation, torture, burning, dismemberment
and castration. Victims were beaten and whipped, many times in front of
large crowds that sometimes numbered in the thousands. Coal tar was
frequently used to douse the unfortunate victim prior to setting him
afire.
Onlookers sometimes fired rifles and handguns
hundreds of times into the corpse while people cheered and children
played during the festivities. Pieces of the corpse were taken by
onlookers as souvenirs of the event . Such was the case when James
Irwin was lynched on January 31, 1930. Irwin was accused of the murder
of a white girl in the town of Ocilla, Georgia. Taken into custody by a
rampaging mob, his fingers and toes were cut off, his teeth pulled out
by pliers and finally he was castrated. It still wasn't enough. Irwin
was then burned alive in front of hundreds of onlookers (Brundage, p.
42).
No one was ever punished for this barbaric killing. Black
victims were hacked to death, dragged behind cars, burned, beaten,
whipped, sometimes shot thousands of times, mutilated; the savagery was
astonishing. How could ordinary people participate in such brutality?
The
rendering of spectacular violence against non-whites paid a
psychological wage to white people that helped to create a type of
social cement for White America, one that covered up its own intra-group
tensions of class, religion, and gender. This racial logic continues in
the present with a racially discriminatory criminal justice system, the
murder by police of black and brown people, and how white Americans support such unfair treatment.
American politicians and other opinion leaders have denounced ISIS and the death by fire meted out to Muadh al Kasasbeh.
Would
they apply the same standards to white Americans who committed mass
violence against African-Americans through lynchings, racial pogroms,
and other like deeds?
Would they support reparations as a material gesture of apology for such crimes?
Would white folks, on both sides of the ideological divide, condemn their ancestors who participated in such types of violence?
Will
White America ever be willing to fully own its historic ISIS-like
behavior against African-Americans and other people of color, and how
such violence created the present, where neighborhoods are
hyper-segregated, there exists a huge wage and income gap along the
color line, and by almost every measure, black and brown Americans have
significantly diminished life chances relative to white people?
Violence is a human trait. ISIS's burning alive of Muadh al Kasasbeh is an act of barbarism.
However,
we cannot overlook how the United States has conducted master classes
in violence and barbarism both before, during, and since its
founding...and yes, much of this violence was against people of color
whose labor, lives, land, and freedom were stolen to create American
empire.
Chauncey DeVega, a pseudonym, is editor and founder of the blog We Are Respectable Negroes. His essays on race, popular culture and politics have been published in various books and Web sites. He can be reached at chaunceydevega@gmail.com
The
latest public health scare is the recent measles outbreak, which
originated in Anaheim, Calif.’s Disneyland and has spread to 14 states
thanks to the un- and under-vaccinated. Now, pundits and politicians are all weighing in on the issue of mandatory vaccinations, with sane, educated adults rightly promoting their universal use.
CNN’s Don Lemon, the same man who asked if a plane could have been swallowed by a black hole or other supernatural force, couldn’t resist chiming in. On Monday evening, he posted the below tweet:
Thing
one: I do not, under any circumstances, need to see Don’s chest hair.
Thing two: Measles vaccinations don’t leave a scar, although the smallpox vaccine used to.
It's a smallpox scar but all given in the sane cluster. #VaccineQs
— Don Lemon (@donlemon) February 3, 2015
The only issue with that explanation is that the smallpox vaccination was stopped in 1972
when the disease was eradicated in the United States. Measles has
obviously not been eradicated.
Why is Don Lemon still talking at us?
Joanna Rothkopf is an assistant editor at Salon,
focusing on science, health and society. Follow @JoannaRothkopf or email
jrothkopf@salon.com.
It was startling to see physician and Senator Rand Paul claim the other day that
people on disability were faking bad backs and anxiety to get on the
dole and cheat the taxpayers. These are real ailments, sometimes totally
debilitating, as anyone who has suffered from either can tell you.
Severe back pain can make it impossible to work at any job, even those
which only require sitting. Anxiety disorder is a terrible condition
that can even make some people unable to even leave their house. What
kind of medical doctor would deny such a thing? (If you answered, “one
who will willingly trade his professional integrity for political
points” you’d be right.)
But this is actually part of the GOP’s
ongoing quest to degrade “entitlements” and make America’s health care
system the worst in the world for anyone who isn’t wealthy. Their
ongoing attack on The Affordable Health Care Act opened up a window to their underlying
philosophy about affordable health care. (They’re not for it.)
And now
they are taking legislative aim at the Supplemental Security Income
portion of the Social Security System. This is the program that makes it
possible for people with disabilities to live without begging on the
streets. Despite the fact that the congress has always routinely
pushed money back and forth between the retirement and disability
portions of the program as the need occurred, the Republicans in
congress have decided that they no longer support doing such a thing.
The result, if they have their way, would be to cut the meager stipends
of millions of disable Americans within the next year.
They claim
that the program is rife with fraud and that far too many people are
able bodied and just refuse to work. (They haven’t used the term
“disability queen” in public yet, but you can be sure they’ve thought
it.) Representative Tom Price,
another erstwhile medical professional committed to proving that
trusting a Republican doctor to treat you is like asking a convicted
robber to house sit, said:
“There are a number of
studies that demonstrate that a lot of people who are on the program are
no longer eligible. People get well, people do other things and other
opportunities become available from a medical standpoint to treating
whatever disability they have to make it so that they can contribute to a
greater degree.”
About
8.9 million people receive disability benefits from the fund and its
eligibility guidelines are stringent. Beneficiaries must have worked at
least one-quarter of their adult life and five of the last 10 years.
They must be unable to work because of a severe medical issue that has
lasted five months and is expected to last at least another year.
Roughly
a quarter of recipients have a mental impairment, some have muscular or
skeletal problems and others have diseases like diabetes, Lou Gehrig’s
disease, congestive heart failure and cancer. A majority of them are 55
or older and many die within a few years of first receiving the
insurance, according to CBPP.
Think Progress noted that the reports of disability fraud are actually extremely low and noted:
Once
on the rolls, payments are far from cushy: they average $1,130 a month,
just over the federal poverty line for a single person, and usually
replace less than half of someone’s previous earnings. Very few
beneficiaries are able to work and supplement that income: less than 17
percent worked at some point during the year in 2007, but less than 3
percent of those people made more than $10,000 annually.
Apparently,
even that’s too much. The government needs to crack down on these lazy
moochers and put them to work. Back in the day they used to sell pencils
and apples on street corners, amirite? And in third world countries you
see plenty of horrifically disabled people making a tidy living by
begging. They show the kind of gumption we are denying our paraplegics
and mentally ill by molly coddling them with a poverty level stipend.
These Republican officials are not alone in holding this philosophy. Recall this confrontation between a Tea Partyer and a disabled citizen during the health reform debate:
A
man with a sign saying he has Parkinson’s disease and needs help sat
down in front of the reform opponents. Several protesters mocked the
man, calling him a “communist,” with one derisively “throwing money at
him.” “If you’re looking for a handout you’re in the wrong end of town,”
another man said.
He added, “nothing for free, over
here you have to work for everything you get.” The lovely gentleman who
threw a dollar in his face put the begging principle in stark terms
yelling “I’ll decide when to give money!”
The immediate future of the health care reforms will be decided this June by the Supreme Court as they take up King vs Burwell (also
known as the “Typo Of Death” case.) In the meantime, as that argument
is on hold the right is moving against the safety net from this other
direction. Basically, they are challenging the the definition of modern medicine itself:
Fox
News Radio host Tom Sullivan told a caller who said she suffered from
bipolar disorder that her illness is “something made up by the mental
health business” and just “the latest fad.” When the caller told
Sullivan that she “would not be alive today” if she hadn’t received
mental health treatment, Sullivan wondered if “maybe somebody’s talked
you into feeling and thinking this way.”
Sullivan, who is also a
frequent Fox Business contributor and guest anchor, began his January 28
program by complaining that people with mental illness have figured how
to “game the system” by receiving disability benefits. “They’re mostly
government employees and they know how to do it,” he added. Sullivan
also defended Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-KY) controversial and false statement
that “Over half the people on disability are either anxious or their
back hurts.”
Obviously, that is nonsense. But it’s
becoming quite common on the right to suggest that illnesses are not
real, that people are faking them anyway and that those who are sick are
lazy parasites who should find some way to make a living. We have
Republicans, some of them medical doctors, publicly declaring that
fellow citizens who have been unlucky enough to have an accident or
contract a debilitating illness need to be harshly scrutinized by the
government to ensure they aren’t stealing that generous $1,000 a month.
I
think we probably need to consider the alarming idea that this is going
to be the right’s overall approach to dealing with health care. They
have no real ideas for how to deliver affordable health care to every
citizen and they have no methods for controlling the spiraling costs of
the former system. In order to maintain their “free-market” health care
philosophy they are going to have to make it clear that you must get
rich if you expect to live through catastrophic illness or accidents. If
you are sick, it’s up to you to figure out how to pay for your care and
shelter. That’s the only solution available to them.
As a libertarian theorist posited in the Washington Postlast week,”people could die and that’s ok”:
[It]
is an acceptable price to pay for certain goals — including more cash
for other programs, such as those that help the poor; less government
coercion and more individual liberty; more health-care choice for
consumers, allowing them to find plans that better fit their needs; more
money for taxpayers to spend themselves; and less federal health-care
spending.
I’m going to guess that more money to help
the poor is an unlikely “choice” that people who want less government
coercion and more individual liberty are going to make. But the rest of
that sounds like it’s right in the current Republican wheelhouse. If you
get sick and can’t make enough money by begging, well, you can console
yourself with the knowledge that other people have more freedom, less
government, and more money to spend on themselves. And that’s what life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness are all about. Well, maybe not
life. But two out of three ain’t bad.
As Peter Manseau, author of “One Nation, Under Gods: A New American History,”would
have it, nothing has done more damage to the ideal of American
religious pluralism than the “stubborn persistence of words spoken more
than a century before the United States was a nation at all.” Those
words are “a city upon a hill,” preached by the Puritan John Winthrop to
his fellow colonists as they prepared to leave their ship at
Massachusetts Bay in 1630.
Most strenuously invoked by Ronald Reagan,
the city on the hill, according to Manseau, has for the past 50 years
“dominated presidential rhetoric about the nation’s self-understanding,
causing an image borrowed from the Gospels to become a tenet of faith in
America’s civil religion.”
The incessant citation of Winthrop’s
metaphor — which envisioned the fledgling colony as a shining example
set up to inspire the world but also to invite its comprehensive moral
scrutiny — keeps reinforcing the assumption that the United States is
fundamentally Christian. There’s more behind that stubborn belief than
just rhetoric, of course, but when even ostensibly pluralistic
presidents like John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama conjure up Winthrop’s
biblical metaphor, it starts to take on the aura of an unquestioned
truth.
Well, Manseau certainly questions it with “One Nation, Under
Gods,” an unusual work of history meant to revive the idea that the U.S.
is a “land shaped and informed by internal religious diversity — some
of it obvious, some of it hidden.” Most key points in our national
narrative involve a non-Christian element if you look closely, he
maintains. “One Nation, Under Gods” is less a continuous narrative
itself than a series of isolated snapshots, each chapter telling the
story of a person considered a heretic, blasphemer, atheist or heathen,
who nevertheless helped in some way to shape the course of American
history.
A few of Manseau’s examples are familiar, particularly
Thomas Jefferson, the founding father often branded an atheist in his
own time and whose Deism today’s Christian conservatives strategically
overlook. In a deft move, Manseau captures Jefferson’s heterodox status
by relating how, as an old man, the third president offered to sell
6,000 volumes from his own personal library to the nation. (These books
remain the core collection of the Library of Congress.) It was a
controversial proposal, as some critics complained that Jefferson’s
library “abounded with productions of atheistical, irreligious and
immoral character,” and some were even “in the original French”! In
examining Jefferson’s own cataloging system, Manseau finds evidence of
the Sage of Monticello’s conviction that “religious systems inevitably
and necessarily interact with each other in ways at once contentious,
intimate and transformative.”
Some of the stories in “One Nation,
Under Gods” are more surprising. “It is perhaps the greatest of
forgotten influences on American life and culture,” Manseau writes, that
some 20 percent or more of Africans living in America around the time
of the Revolutionary War were Muslims, a quantity that “dwarfed the
number of Roman Catholics or Jews.” The majority of enslaved Africans
did practice such Western African religions as Yoruba and Obeah, all of
which contributed to the distinctive customs of African-American
Christianity. But we also have a handful of stories of African Muslims
abducted to the U.S., where, as in the case of one Omar ibn Said, they
astonished the natives by writing fluently in a strange alphabet
(Arabic) and impressed, if also bewildered, everyone with their
abstemious piety.
Tituba, a slave, was the first person accused in
the Salem Witch Trials, and although often depicted as African, she was
most likely an “Indian” from South America, by way of Barbados. She had
made a “witch cake” (a nasty concoction of rye flour and urine) for
divinatory purposes, and in doing so was probably tapping into multiple
folk traditions, including those of the colonists’ own native England.
Manseau believes such practices, though forbidden, were anything but
rare in the colonies and should be thought of as “a kind of spiritual
equalizer, providing religious authority outside social structures that
were inevitably defined at times by class and gender.” Tituba herself
quickly figured out that the best course of action when called up before
the court was to “confess” every lurid detail the magistrates wanted to
hear, including the visits she received from the devil, his commands
that she serve him, and the culpability of her two co-defendants
(unpopular village women) in casting spells on children. As a result,
Tituba was the only one of the three to escape execution. Long before
the advent of modern-day spin doctors, she grasped the advantage of
getting ahead of the story.
Then there is the network of Jewish
merchants extending from Pennsylvania to Amsterdam by way of the island
of St. Eustatius, in the Caribbean, a major conduit of supplies and
funds through the British blockade during the Revolutionary War. One
Polish Jew, Haym Solomon, gave so much money to the cause of
independence that he died penniless. He and his co-religionists, driven
from one European nation to another in a roundelay of persecution, hoped
and believed they could finally find refuge in the fledgling nation.
But perhaps the most
fascinating chapter in “One Nation, Under Gods” explores recent theories
about the influence of a syncretic Native American revival movement on
Joseph Smith and his Book of Mormon. The young half-brother of a Seneca
chief, Handsome Lake, was an aging, ne’er-do-well hunter who experienced
a revelation during a near-fatal illness. What was revealed to him
fused Iroquois mythology with Quaker-like morality into a re-imagined
creation story explaining how the Iroquois had fallen so low in their
own land. Handsome Lake died when Smith was 10, but a Mormon scholar has
pointed out that only weeks before Smith’s own visions commenced,
Handsome Lake’s nephew spoke at a public gathering in Smith’s town of
Palmyra, New York.
The Code of Handsome Lake, like the Mormon
story of the Native Americans as a lost tribe of Israel, is “a tale of
white and Indian unity interrupted by evils brought across the sea.”
Both creeds stressed sobriety and involved the manifestation of three
angelic presences charged with guiding the inhabitants of the New World
to a better future. Both were born during a period of intense,
innovative religious activity known as the Second Great Awakening and
arose in a region of Western New York state dubbed “the Burned-Over
District” for the fervor that seemed to consume everyone in the
vicinity. Shakers, utopian communities, millenarians and spiritualists
were just some of the unorthodox and fractious believers who flourished
there.
But even the idea that Winthrop’s little community
represented a unified city on a hill is an illusion, as the Puritan
dissidents Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson could
testify. The Pilgrims might have all called themselves Christians, but
some differences among them were seen by their theocratic leaders as
profound threats to the spiritual survival of the community. Both
Williams and Hutchinson were cast out and created communities of their
own. There was literally never a point in the history of the colonies or
the U.S. when all or most Americans genuinely shared the same faith.
“The true gospel of the American experience,” Manseau writes, “is not
religious agreement but dissent.”
Visitors look at the Lincoln Cathedral Magna Carta during the opening of an exhibition celebrating the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, November 6, 2014.
The four surviving original Magna Carta copies go on
display together for the first time from Monday as Britain kicks off
800th anniversary celebrations for a contract with global significance.
Considered
the cornerstone of liberty, modern democracy, justice and the rule of
law, the 1215 English charter forms the basis for legal systems around
the world, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the US
constitution.
A total of 1,215 people, drawn from a ballot, have
won the chance to see the unification at the British Library, which is
bringing together its two originals with those of Lincoln and Salisbury
cathedrals from Monday to Wednesday.
The four parchments will also
be on private show in parliament on Thursday, kicking off a year of
celebrations for a document that still has resonance eight centuries on.
"No
free man shall be taken or imprisoned or disseized or outlawed or
exiled or in any way ruined, nor will we go and send against him except
by the lawful judgement of his peers by the law of the land," it states
in Latin.
"To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice."
- Rebel barons challenged king -
In
June 1215, the wayward king John agreed to the demands of rebellious
barons to curb his powers and sealed the charter at Runnymede, a meadow
by the River Thames west of London.
Although nearly a third of the
text was dropped or substantially rewritten within 10 years and almost
all the 63 clauses have been repealed, Magna Carta's principles have
become "a potent, international rallying cry against the arbitrary use
of power", says the British Library.
Anthony Clarke, one of
Britain's Supreme Court judges, said it remains important as governments
seek a balance between issues of security, individual rights, the rule
of law and the "principles of justice that lie at the foundation of
society".
The principles that justice should be available to all,
the law applies to all equally and leaders can only exercise power in
accordance with the law continue to be fought for in many parts of the
world.
The Magna Carta Trust, which looks after the memorial site in Runnymede, believes the charter's importance is growing.
"800 years on, Magna Carta's best days lie ahead," it said.
"As an idea of freedom, democracy and the rule of law, it is lapping against the shores of despotism.
"The
principles set out in Magna Carta have driven the Arab Spring and the
continuing protests against despotism around the world."
- Charter linked to prosperity -
Magna
Carta's principles extend well beyond the world's common law
jurisdictions such as the United States, India and Australia which
inherited England's legal system.
Lawyer David Wootton, a former
lord mayor of London -- a role representing the city's business
heartland -- said English law was the "common currency" of global
business deals precisely due to the protections derived from Magna
Carta.
"Investors regard their money as safe here (in London) because of the protections in the legal system," he said.
"There is a close relationship between economic development, societal development and the quality of a country's legal system."
Events
are being staged across England throughout 2015 to mark the
anniversary, including a major international commemoration event at
Runnymede on June 15.
Exhibitions, debates, conferences, church
services, lectures, charity dinners, theater performances, tourist
trails, village fetes, and even a national peal of bells are being
staged.
There will also be a mock trial of the barons who forced
the creation of the charter in parliament's Westminster Hall to debate
whether they were guilty of treason.
An edition of the Magna Carta which could be worth up to £10 million has been found after it lay forgotten in a council's archives. The discovery of the version of the historical parchment which established the principle of the rule of law, in the files of the history department of Kent County Council, has been described as an important historical find by an expert.
The document was found in the archives kept in Maidstone but belonging to the town of Sandwich. Speaking from Paris, Professor Nicholas Vincent, of the University of East Anglia, who authenticated the document, said: "It is a fantastic discovery which comes in the week that the four other known versions were brought together at the Houses of Parliament. It is a fantastic piece of news for Sandwich which puts it in a small category of towns and institutions that own a 1300 issue."
Prof Vincent said the fact Sandwich had its own Magna Carta gives backing to the theory that it was issued more widely than previously thought to at least 50 cathedral towns and ports. And he added the discovery gives him hope that further copies will also turn up.
There are only 24 editions of the Magna Carta in known existence around the world.
Prof Vincent said: "It must have been much more widely distributed than previously thought because if Sandwich had one... the chances are it went out to a lot of other towns. And it is very likely that there are one or two out there somewhere that no one has spotted yet."
Prof Vincent, who specializes in medieval history, said the value of the Sandwich edition could be up to £10 million, but it was ripped with about a third missing. He said: "This would be an upper value as it has, like the town of Sandwich, suffered over time from French invasions and the like."
The discovery was made by archivist Dr Mark Bateson at the end of December just before the 800th anniversary year celebrations of King John's concession. The Sandwich Magna Carta was found when Prof Vincent asked Dr Bateson to look up a copy of the town's original Charter of the Forest.
It was found next to the charter in a Victorian scrapbook and its high value comes from the fact it also comprises the Forest Charter. There is only one other such pair in the world, owned by Oriel College, Oxford. It is understood that Sandwich does not intend to sell its Magna Carta but instead is hoping to benefit from its potential as a tourist attraction.
Paul Graeme, mayor of Sandwich Town Council, said: "On behalf of Sandwich Town Council, I would like to say that we are absolutely delighted to discover that an original Magna Carta and original Charter of the Forest, previously unknown, are in our ownership.
"To own one of these documents, let alone both, is an immense privilege given their international importance. Perhaps it is fitting that they belong to a town where Thomas Paine lived, who proposed in his pamphlet Common Sense a Continental Charter for what were then the American colonies, 'answering to what is called the Magna Carta of England... securing freedom and property to all men, and ... the free exercise of religion'."
He added: "Through the American Declaration of Independence, continuing in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Magna Carta still underpins individual liberties worldwide. To own such a document - and the Charter of the Forest - is an honor and a great responsibility."
The four known 1215 editions are from Salisbury Cathedral, Lincoln Cathedral and two held at the British Library. They were brought together for a one-day exhibition at Parliament for a crowd of 2,015 chosen by a public ballot.
Speaking of the exhibition, the Lord Speaker, Baroness D'Souza, said: "Magna Carta established the principle of the rule of law and equality before the law; for 800 years we have been influenced by its contents and it remains one of the most important political documents in the world, with countries such as the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Canada tracing constitutional influences back to Magna Carta.
The Speaker, Rt Hon John Bercow MP, said: "Over the past eight centuries the public and their Parliament have shaped society and changed the way we live our lives. The sealing of the Magna Carta in 1215 and the Montfort parliament of 1265 marked the start of the journey towards modern rights and representation, paving the way for the House of Commons and democracy as we know it today."
The parchment, which was issued by Edward I in 1300, is the final version of Magna Carta and three of its clauses remain on the statute books today. These include the defense of the church, the protection of the City of London and the right to trial by jury.
The first Magna Carta was drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury and agreed by King John on June 15, 1215 to make peace with a group of rebel barons. It was reissued and reaffirmed on many occasions in subsequent years.
Alastair Grant/AP
Members of the media film four of the original surviving Magna Carta manuscripts that have been brought together by the British Library for the first time, during a media preview in London, Monday, Feb. 2, 2015. The event marks the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, which established the timeless principle that no individual, even a monarch, is above the law. The original Magna Carta manuscripts were written and sealed in late June and early July 1215, and sent individually throughout the country.
Matt Dunham/AP
Lines of manuscript text are seen through a glass cabinet on the Salisbury Cathedral 1215 copy of the Magna Carta as it is displayed with the three other surviving original parchment engrossments of the Magna Carta to mark the 800th anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215, in the Queen's Robing Room at the Houses of Parliament in London, Thursday, Feb. 5, 2015.
Alastair Grant/AP
The seal of King John is seen on one of the four original surviving Magna Carta manuscripts that have been brought together by the British Library for the first time, during a media preview in London, Monday, Feb. 2, 2015. King John agreed the terms of the charter known originally as the Charter of Runnymede, now known as the Magna Carta, on June, 15, 1015, they were authenticated by John's great seal, not his signature, which established the timeless principle that no individual, even a monarch, is above the law.
Matt Dunham/PA Wire
The Salisbury Cathedral 1215 copy of the Magna Carta is installed in a cabinet by Chris Woods (right), the director of the National Conservation Service, to be displayed alongside the other three surviving original parchment engrossments of the Magna Carta to mark the 800th anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215, in the Queen's Robing Room at the Houses of Parliament in London.
Matt Dunham/PA Wire
People including Salisbury Cathedral archivist Emily Naish (left) look at the Salisbury Cathedral 1215 copy of the Magna Carta as it is displayed with the three other surviving original parchment engrossments of the Magna Carta to mark the 800th anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215, in the Queen's Robing Room at the Houses of Parliament in London.
Matt Dunham/PA Wire
People look at the four surviving original parchment engrossments of the 1215 Magna Carta as they are displayed to mark the 800th anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215, in the Queen's Robing Room at the Houses of Parliament in London.
Philip Toscano/PA Wire
Director of Information Services and Librarian at the House of Lords, Elizabeth Hallam Smith (second right) with Sir Tim Berners-Lee (right) with his family, looking at the Salisbury Cathedral 1215 copy of the Magna Carta as part of the Maqna Carta and Parliament exhibition in the Palace of Westminster, London.
Mental illness matters not to
American police if they imagine, sense, or perceive a threat of any
kind; They will shoot you over and over again until you die.
On
Friday, January 23, 17-year-old student Kristiana Coignard walked into
her local police department, picked up a telephone, and asked to speak
to an officer. Sometime after that she pulled "a weapon" and was shot
and killed by three police officers.
For three days, that's pretty much all the police have said. Refusing to say what type of weapon she brandished,
the inference was that it was so lethal a weapon that it must've been a
gun or a stick of dynamite or hand grenade, but Longview Mayor Jay Dean
just revealed that it wasn't a gun at all, but a knife.
Coignard
was living in Longview with her Aunt, Heather Robertson. In an
interview with ThinkProgress, Robertson raised questions about the
circumstances of Coignard’s death. “I think it was a cry for help. I
think they could have done something. They are grown men. I think there
is something they are not telling us.”
Robertson said that her niece
had been struggling with mental illness, including depression and
bipolar disorder, since her mother died when she was four. She had been
hospitalized twice in recent years after suicide attempts. One time, she
tried to hang herself. Another time, she drank toilet bowl cleaner.
Since arriving in Longview in December, Coignard had been taking
medication and regularly seeing a therapist. She had no criminal record
and “was only violent with herself, ” Robertson said.
It's
hard to believe, no matter what the circumstance, that the only option
available to the Longview police department was to shoot Kristiana over
and over again.
In London, a depressed man struggling with mental illness got
two large knives and pulled them out in front of Buckingham Palace, but
the police, trained on how to surround and subdue a man like him with
nonlethal force, did so in less than a minute.
In an Economist article entitled "Trigger Happy," the true story of just how quickly American police are willing to shoot and kill people is made frighteningly clear:
Last
year, in total, British police officers actually fired their weapons
three times. The number of people fatally shot was zero. In 2012 the
figure was just one. Even after adjusting for the smaller size of
Britain’s population, British citizens are around 100 times less likely
to be shot by a police officer than Americans. Between 2010 and 2014 the
police force of one small American city, Albuquerque in New Mexico,
shot and killed 23 civilians; seven times more than the number of Brits
killed by all of England and Wales’s 43 forces during the same period.
This
is a public safety crisis. While our nation may have more guns than
many others, it's disgustingly obvious that our police are shooting and
killing people who are unarmed and often mentally ill and it must stop.
When it comes to pursuing their prey, sharks are master maneuverers. Loan sharks, that is.
These days, this usurious species goes by the less threatening
name of "payday lenders." But they are no less voracious, targeting
folks in rough financial straits and luring them with easy-money
come-ons. With lethal interest rates of more than 700 percent, automatic
renewal clauses, and other razor-sharp gotchas, a $500 payday loan can
sink a hapless borrower thousands of dollars into debt. That's why
states have been restricting the sharks' interest-rate gouging and
entrapment techniques.
But, with a flip of their tails, many payday lenders are simply
swimming around state laws by operating online and offshore from such
regulatory safe-harbors as the Bahamas, the Isle of Man, and Malta. From
there, sharks can make loans, then begin devouring their borrowers'
bank accounts, even in states that ban such loans.
How can shady operators pull-off billions of dollars worth of
these devious – and maybe illegal – transactions each year? With inside
help from such pillars of the financial establishment as Bank of
America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo. Of course, these upstanding
corporate citizens don't dirty their hands (or reputations) by making
these predatory loans, but they willingly allow offshore sharks to tap
directly into the borrowers' checking accounts and withdraw
unconscionable interest payments electronically… and mercilessly.
There's a four-letter F-word for what the banks are doing to
their own depositors: Fees. Automatic withdrawals by the sharks can
cause a tsunami of overdrafts in a borrowers' bank account – and banks
happily collect fat fees for every overdraft.
To help stop this multibillion-dollar feeding frenzy on hard-up people go to www.responsiblelending.org
"Major Banks Aid in Payday Loans Banned by States," The New York Times,
February 24, 2013.
"Short-term loans meet real, immediate needs," Austin American Statesman, March 7, 2013.
Everyone's got a theory for why Mitt Romney never made it to the
White House. Too stiff. Too rich. Bad staff. Too many flip-flops.
Prejudice against Mormons. A failure to convey the real Mitt. But more
than anything, Romney's problem might have been bad timing.
During a call with staffers Friday morning, Romney told them he
wouldn't run for president in 2016, ending a period of intense
speculation, as the prospect of a third Romney campaign went from
improbable rumor to widely held expectation.
"After putting considerable thought into making another run for
president, I’ve decided it is best to give other leaders in the Party
the opportunity to become our next nominee," he said, according to a prepared statement obtained by Hugh Hewitt.
"I believe a Republican winning back the White House is essential for
our country, and I will do whatever I can to make that happen."
Once again, it seems Romney has ended up in the right place at the wrong time. As I noted a couple weeks ago,
when the Romney boomlet began, he ran in 2008 as a true conservative
candidate. But after the disappointments of the George W. Bush's second
term, a conservative former governor simply wasn't what his party
wanted. If Romney had beaten John McCain in the GOP primary, he might
have been perfectly poised to win the White House: With the economy
collapsing, a turnaround whiz from the private sector could have
appealed to many Americans. But it was too late for that. McCain
floundered, and Barack Obama won.
The best time for Romney to run for president was probably in
2011, when President Obama's standing was still battered by the
recession and the backlash to the Affordable Care Act. It was the right
moment for a guy who could sell himself as a business leader with a
track-record of fixing troubled enterprises. Unfortunately for him, the
economy improved enough over the course of the following year to help
Obama win reelection in November 2012 by a solid margin.
So why not 2016? Romney suggested in his statement that he believed
he could win the nomination, but worried that he would lose the general
election. "I am convinced that with the help of the people on this
call, we could win the nomination," he said. "Our finance calls made it
clear that we would have enough funding to be more than competitive.
With few exceptions, our field political leadership is ready and
enthusiastic about a new race. And the reaction of Republican voters
across the country was both surprising and heartening."
Nevertheless, he added, "I do not want to make it more difficult for someone else to emerge who may have a better chance of becoming that president."
One could argue he's got that backwards. The natural pattern of
presidential elections suggests that Democrats are the underdogs in the
2016 race—a party seldom holds on to the White House after two terms,
and Nate Cohn notes
that current economic models would suggest a Democratic popular vote of
48.5 percent. If Romney could have won the Republican nomination, he
might have been able to realize his dream of becoming commander in
chief.
But just as circumstances seemed to conspire to produce the perfect
moment for Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush pulled the rug out from under him. In
mid-December, Bush announced his decision to run,
assuming the mantle of moderate, establishment candidate from Romney.
Since then, some of the people who staffed Romney's campaign, and many
of those who helped fund it, have attached themselves to a Bush
campaign. On Thursday, operative David Kochel, who ran Romney's Iowa
strategy in both previous campaigns, went to work for Bush in a
presumptive campaign-manager role. NBC News even reports that some of the people invited to join Romney's Friday call were already committed to work for Bush.
Winning the nomination with Bush in the race would have been very
challenging for Romney, despite his sanguine statement. Romney holds a
commanding lead in RealClearPolitics' average for the Republican primaries, and a breathtaking 16-point edge on HuffPost Pollster's average. But as political watchers have noted, polling at this stage isn't a reliable gauge of very much.
Given Romney's name-recognition and the fact that most people aren't
tuned into the race—it's only January 2015, after all—it's only mildly
surprising that he rose to the top. Many leading Republicans, including
RNC Chair Reince Priebus, tried to throw cold water on the idea of third
Romney campaign.
Watching presidential dreams die is always bittersweet, and it must
feel especially poignant for Romney. He'd been effectively running for
president since he announced that he wouldn't run for reelection as Massachusetts governor in December 2005—a
nearly decade-long effort. In some ways, the roots of his candidacy
stretched much further, back to his father George Romney's own
unsuccessful 1968 campaign. And Romney's aides and family members truly
believed in the cause. What others derided as constant reinvention, Mark Halperin notes,
Romney's circle viewed as a single, consistent effort to show the
American public that Mitt was the right man for the job—a principled,
hardworking, competent, decent guy who would be great as president.
Romney's aides bridled at the idea that he was "rebranding": Each of these different motifs was just a different way to try to get people to see the Real Mitt, who hadn't changed.
Toward the end of his statement, Romney encouraged those on the call
to find a presidential campaign and work to restore Republican control
of the White House. With an enormous, crowded field,
they should have no trouble finding a spot to land. But for the true
believers who thought all Romney needed to win over the American people
was a stretch of good luck, that may be little consolation. Once again,
Mitt Romney's timing just wasn't quite right.
Mark your calendars for March 16th and tune into HBO. You don't have
to have a cable subscription to watch, now that HBO offers subscriptions
delivered to your tablet or phone. And you will want to tune in, to see
Alex Gibney's new film, Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief. Huffington Post:
Even if you've read Lawrence Wright's book, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief
on which the film is based, Gibney's adaptation is an eye-opening and
transformative experience. The difference between reading about
Scientology's bizarre principles and seeing them up on-screen, spelled
out in an easily digestible and visually exciting way is profound. The
film is eerily entertaining and even funny at times, that is, until you
catch yourself and remember how many lives have been ruined in the name
of these far-fetched science fiction concepts.
As you might imagine, the Elron devotees are lining up a veritable parade of PR attacks on Gibney and his film:
The Church of Scientology took out advertisements in The New York Times on Jan. 16 comparing the documentary to Rolling Stone’s
discredited story about campus rape—and now the Church is expanding its
efforts online. A special report has been published on the Church’s
Freedom website, and a new Twitter account, Freedom Media Ethics, is “taking a resolute stand against the broadcasting and publishing of false information.”
The Church claims
Gibney only spoke to disgruntled former members—who they attempt to
discredit one by one on the new site—and failed to allow itself to
respond to the allegations in the film.
I'll bet those guys are the same ones who handle Republicans' public
relations issues, too. I recognize that whole "attack the messenger"
trope they're so famous for.
Personally, I cannot wait to see this. Alex Gibney is a stellar
filmmaker, and it's about time this cult was shown for what it is -- a
malevolent money machine.
Sarah Palin recently gave a speech at the Freedom Summit in Des Moines,
Iowa. After her teleprompter feed went out, she inevitably entered an
unstoppable state of rambling which made even less sense than the
content of her ridiculous Internet channel.
Ring of Fire’s Mike Papantonio and Sam Seder discuss this.
