Don’t disrespect our President, black lawmakers tell Netanyahu

By Edward-Isaac Dovere and Lauren French

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.

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BURGESS EVERETT

“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.

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KENDALL BREITMAN

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.”

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BEN SCHRECKINGER

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: What's Really In Those Supplements Sold By Major Retailers?

By karoli

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.

Yes, ISIS Burned A Man Alive. White Americans Did The Same Thing To Thousands Of Black People

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.

 

By Chauncey DeVega / Daily Kos

 

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 

Don Lemon tweets shirtless selfie of “measles shot scar” — and gets mercilessly mocked

Why does Don Lemon still have a job?

By Joanna Rothkopf

(Credit: CNN)

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:

My #measles shot scar from childhood. Do we still need it? Doctor answers on @CnnTonight 10pET. Use #VaccineQs pic.twitter.com/gjoXbRflFx
— Don Lemon (@donlemon) February 3, 2015

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.

@donlemon @CNNTonight it's small pox scar, not MMR. MMR doesn't scar.
— Laurie Kempton (@mcsmartypants) February 3, 2015

@donlemon MMR vaccine doesnt leave a scar but nice shirtless selfie op
— real don delillo (@peenerad) February 3, 2015

@donlemon cmon bruh, that's from the smallpox vaccine. Smh...
— Major K (@MajorKMusic) February 3, 2015

---

---

@mrobin032009 @donlemon @CNNTonight No, that's a smallpox scar. Nobody getting vaccines today will be scarred like that.
— SomeCallMeLaz (@SomeCallMeLaz) February 3, 2015

That's a smallpox scar. The disease is eradicated. MT: “@donlemon: My #measles shot scar. Do we still need it? pic.twitter.com/ahKSHT2Rnf”
— Rodney Finalle, MD (@thegrandfinalle) February 3, 2015

.@donlemon Don, that's a smallpox scar. MMR is a subQ injection that leaves NO scar. @CnnTonight
— prosediva (@prosediva) February 3, 2015

@DrJenGunter @Gus_802 @donlemon That is so obviously a smallpox vaccine scar to anyone with the slightest knowledge. #NotADoctor
— Barry Schwartz (@chemoelectric) February 3, 2015

The anchor later corrected his mistake, tweeting:

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.

Why the Right’s Free-Market Health Philosophy Is Ludicrous

 They claim that the SSDI program is rife with fraud and that far too many people just refuse to work.

 

By Heather Digby Parton / Salon

 

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.”

That’s a convenient story but it’s just not true:

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:

The severity of the disabilities of those who get benefits is underscored by the fact that one in five men and nearly one in six women die within five years of being approved.

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 Post last 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.

No, America Has Never Been a Christian Country - Why Does the Myth Persist?

A historian challenges conservative claims that the U.S. has a single religious heritage.

By Laura Miller, Salon

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.

It was Ralph Waldo Emerson’s brilliant, irascible Aunt Mary, a “prototypical American eccentric,” who first introduced her nephew and intellectual protégé to the concepts and iconography of Hindu mythology after she met “a Visitor here from India” in 1822. Their correspondence on these and other spiritual matters would inform Transcendentalism and in turn the Eastern-infused philosophies of generations to come. (Manseau provides a survey of Hindu beliefs and stories cropping up in the work of Thoreau and even Melville, as well as a persistent interest in Indian religion on the part of American feminists like Elizabeth Palmer Peabody and Margaret Fuller.)

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.”

Magna Carta originals reunited for 800th anniversary

By Saul Loeb

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.

Magna Carta Found In Council Archives, Valued At £10 Million
PA | [Press Association] Posted: 08/02/2015 02:04 GMT Updated: 08/02/2015 02:59 GM

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.

17 Year Old Kristiana Coignard Shot And Killed By 3 Police Officers After Brandishing Knife

  It's hard to imagine if she walked into a police department in nearly any other country in the world that she would've died in a barrage of bullets.

By Shaun King / Daily Kos

American police will kill you. Run from them, they'll kill you. Act nervous when they scream at you and they'll kill you. Do nothing at all and they'll kill you. Walk down the stairs and they'll kill you. Put your hands up and they'll kill you.

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.

It's not this way around the world, but in the good 'ol US of A, our officers are shooting and killing people at a record pace. So, when Kristiana Coignard walked into a Longview, Texas police department, and picked up the phone there to speak to someone, the fact that she would soon be shot to death by three police officers may have already occurred to her, but as details emerge about her shooting death, it's hard to imagine if she walked into a police department in nearly any other country in the world that she would've died in a barrage of bullets.

  
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.

In an article on Think Progress, it was revealed that Kristiana was struggling mightily with mental illness.

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 the United States, though, eight officers and a police dog, surrounded a mentally ill man with a knife, and, instead of subduing him, shot at him 46 times until he bled out and died there in the parking lot.

It's ridiculous.



A homeless man, James Boyd, was shot over and over again by New Mexico police in spite of not being a grave threat to them.



Kajieme Powell, in the midst of psychotic episode, was shot and killed by St. Louis police within seconds of pulling up next to him.



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.

Insiders aiding online, off-shore loan sharks

Posted by Jim Hightower

Listen to this Commentary

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.

Mitt Romney's Terrible Timing

For the third election cycle in a row, the former Massachusetts governor was in the right place at the wrong time.

By David A. Graham

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.

Scientology Cultists Will Hate This Movie, So Be Sure To Watch It

By Karoli



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’s Back And Dumber Than Ever

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.

Jon Stewart Skewers the GOP Geniuses Who Want to Be President

Ted Cruz, Rick Perry, Sarah Palin - the future is looking bright for the GOP.

By AlterNet

On last night's Daily Show, Jon Stewart mocked the aspiring GOP presidential candidates - a.k.a. the Fox News Correspondent Auditions - who showed up at the Iowa Freedom Summit. From Sen. Ted Cruz's forced folksiness to Fmr. Gov. Mike Huckabee's perplexing demand that Americans engage in more "pig killing," the Summit's speakers gave Stewart more than enough comedy fodder. And then Rick Perry came on. And then Donald Trump.

"How can it get less electable than that?" Stewart wondered.

Cue Sarah Palin. Watch Stewart skewer Palin's insane speech below.

The Daily Show
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Sarah Palin Had to Be Totally High

Iowa Republicans voiced scepticism on Monday over Sarah Palin’s claim to be contemplating a campaign for president in 2016, amid criticism of her unusual speech to a conservative rally in the state.

The former Alaska governor and vice-presidential nominee revived speculation about her future over the weekend by twice telling reporters that she was interested in running for the White House next year, before addressing the Freedom Summit in Des Moines.

However, her disjointed 33-minute speech – in which she described President Barack Obama as an “overgrown little boy who is acting kinda spoiled”, and declared “the man can only ride you when your back is bent” – received poor reviews even from some conservatives."* The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks it down.



Posted By Rude One

As the Rude Pundit awaits the Snowpocalyptic Blizzkrieg (aka "Weather Channel Orgasm"), he figures this is the best time to approach some low-hanging fruit and just slap it right off the tree. Thankfully, such an easy target appeared like a bottle-brunette beacon when Sarah Palin spoke this past weekend at stupidly-named Iowa Freedom Summit. That sounds like an event where you get liberated from wheat or something, but it's actually a day of speeches by conservatives who want to suckle some teabags and get a blessing from nutzoid immigrant hater Rep. Steve King. Every 2016 loser from Donald Trump to Chris Christie gave a speech to the slavering white hordes who beg to be told their hatred and ignorance are virtues.

So, of course, the event climaxed with a speech from former Vice Presidential candidate and one-time demi-governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin. And it was a beautiful thing because, while the speech was a barely coherent blurble of half-assed aphorisms and self-aggrandizement early on, it became something akin to a Klonopin-induced stream of consciousness ramble once her teleprompter stopped working. It was postmodern poetry at its most experimental, and, frankly, it wouldn't have been surprising if Palin had just stood there and cawed like a crow for ten minutes.

Check out some of this:

About posting a photo of her son, Trig, standing on their family dog: "These pictures, it was just scandalous that I would show our big, strapping Lab letting my little boy use her as a stepping stool to get to reach the kitchen sink. I took a picture and said, 'This is what turning a stumbling block into a stepping stone is about.' Who would have thought it would have become a scandal? They just went loco. They went absolutely crazy. This rest of the tinderbox of the world, everything that is going on in it, this was the most outrageous thing that had happened. Barking their tired old death threats against us. Get in line, weasels."

She went on (no, really, and at this point, Palin has gotten more mileage out of exploiting the photo than PETA, the Humane Society, and dog fetishists combined), "Yeah, they are howling to the press, 'Cruelty to animals, Sarah Palin.' Which surprised me, considering what it does, what Joni Ernst does to the those hogs. Not to mention what the President admitted doing to those innocent puppies...The media crucified us." She's like Jesus, that Sarah.

The speech was filled with self-pitying fuckery. Palin gets her picture taken at a gun show with a sign that says, "Fuck Michael Moore," but "we have taken a lot of heat over the last two days" for the image. Look, if you're gonna be a media whore, it shouldn't be surprising when someone says you'd suck Hannity's cock dry if it meant five more minutes of airtime.

But that was actually in the realm of understandable. Then shit got weird. Talking about the 2016 campaign, Palin babbled, "It is war. It is war for the future of our country, for the sovereignty and solvency of the United States of America. The other side, the far left, they see a need for change. It is by offering real change, again. Coronation, rinse, replay. Clinton, rinse, repeat. These leftists promoting these 'Ready for' campaigns. Ready for Hillary. Well, these hopey-changey DC businesses disguised as grassroots, don't you wonder what the White House thinks of them out there, prancing around, squealing they are ready for someone else? They have to admit it even."

You think that was nonsense? You think that was incomprehensible? Oh, wait. As the gears in her tiny, fucked-up mind started to break down, Palin's synapses misfired and she lost the ability to complete a thought. On the national debt (maybe? who can tell?), she rambled on, "From debt, when you are in a hole, you don't want to be in the first thing they stop digging. I don't know what is wrong with the leaders in this country who understand we are in a hole we don't want to be in and they keep digging. From debt to energy, proving the inherent links between American-made energy and prosperity, and energy insecurity to solutions like the tax that we need, to stop this unhealthy obsession that we are hearing about, even on our side of the aisle, the subjective income gap we are supposed to be obsessed with. We don't have to be obsessed with it." Seriously, was Palin high? 'Cause if she wasn't totally high and fucked up, then she has brain damage or her mind has been pickled by too much beer and bear meat.

The most hilarious part of this is that conservatives are saying that the speech wasn't "serious" and that watching it was "painful." Joe Scarborough called it a "tragedy" that she had fallen so far, apparently not understanding the difference between tragedy and comedy.

Really, motherfuckers? This was the speech that made you decide Palin was not going to be president one day? 'Cause, see, the rest of us knew she was a fraud and a puffed-up idiot, a wannabe player, and a power-mad gorgon from the start. We didn't need this babbling cartoon character, this monster with a gaping maw, gorging on fame and attention like a snake on a rat, to blither through one more parade of faux folksiness, like Hee-Haw was her Critique of Pure Reason.

If this is truly the nadir of her bottomed out career, the point where even the rubes turn on her (and don't be so sure, rubes being rubes), then her political tombstone should be filled with all the times she mocked President Obama for his use of a teleprompter, like he wasn't capable of off-the-cuff speaking. You could say she should apologize, but that presumes she feels shame.