NSA hiding Equation spy program on hard drives

By JOSEPH MENN

Equation infection: Kaspersky Labs says the highest number of machines infected with Equation programs were in Iran, Russia and Pakistan.

The US National Security Agency has figured out how to hide spying software deep within hard drives made by Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba and other top manufacturers, giving the agency the means to eavesdrop on the majority of the world's computers, according to cyber researchers and former operatives.

That long-sought and closely guarded ability was part of a cluster of spying programs discovered by Kaspersky Lab, the Moscow-based security software maker that has exposed a series of Western cyber-espionage operations.

Kaspersky said it found personal computers in 30 countries infected with one or more of the spying programs, with the most infections seen in Iran, followed by Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Mali, Syria, Yemen and Algeria. The targets included government and military institutions, telecommunication companies, banks, energy companies, nuclear researchers, media, and Islamic activists, Kaspersky said.

Kaspersky Labs - The areas of government Equation has been able to infect by nation.

The firm declined to publicly name the country behind the spying campaign, but said it was closely linked to Stuxnet, the NSA-led cyberweapon that was used to attack Iran's uranium enrichment facility. The NSA is the agency responsible for gathering electronic intelligence on behalf of the United States.

A former NSA employee told Reuters that Kaspersky's analysis was correct, and that people still in the intelligence agency valued these spying programs as highly as Stuxnet. Another former intelligence operative confirmed that the NSA had developed the prized technique of concealing spyware in hard drives, but said he did not know which spy efforts relied on it.

NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines declined to comment.

Kaspersky published the technical details of its research on Monday, which should help infected institutions detect the spying programs, some of which trace back as far as 2001.

The disclosure could further hurt the NSA's surveillance abilities, already damaged by massive leaks by former contractor Edward Snowden. Snowden's revelations have hurt the United States' relations with some allies and slowed the sales of US technology products abroad.

The exposure of these new spying tools could lead to greater backlash against Western technology, particularly in countries such as China, which is already drafting regulations that would require most bank technology suppliers to proffer copies of their software code for inspection.

TECHNOLOGICAL BREAKTHROUGH

According to Kaspersky, the spies made a technological breakthrough by figuring out how to lodge malicious software in the obscure code called firmware that launches every time a computer is turned on.

Disk drive firmware is viewed by spies and cybersecurity experts as the second-most valuable real estate on a PC for a hacker, second only to the BIOS code invoked automatically as a computer boots up.

"The hardware will be able to infect the computer over and over," lead Kaspersky researcher Costin Raiu said in an interview.

Though the leaders of the still-active espionage campaign could have taken control of thousands of PC's, giving them the ability to steal files or eavesdrop on anything they wanted, the spies were selective and only established full remote control over machines belonging to the most desirable foreign targets, according to Raiu. He said Kaspersky found only a few especially high-value computers with the hard-drive infections.

Kaspersky's reconstructions of the spying programs show that they could work in disk drives sold by more than a dozen companies, comprising essentially the entire market. They include Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba, IBM, Micron Technology and Samsung.

Western Digital, Seagate and Micron said they had no knowledge of these spying programs. Toshiba and Samsung declined to comment. IBM did not respond to requests for comment.

GETTING THE SOURCE CODE

Raiu said the authors of the spying programs must have had access to the proprietary source code that directs the actions of the hard drives. That code can serve as a road map to vulnerabilities, allowing those who study it to launch attacks much more easily.

"There is zero chance that someone could rewrite the [hard drive] operating system using public information," Raiu said.

Concerns about access to source code flared after a series of high-profile cyber attacks on Google Inc and other US companies in 2009 that were blamed on China. Investigators have said they found evidence that the hackers gained access to source code from several big US tech and defense companies.

It is not clear how the NSA may have obtained the hard drives' source code. Western Digital spokesman Steve Shattuck said the company "has not provided its source code to government agencies." The other hard drive makers would not say if they had shared their source code with the NSA.

Seagate spokesman Clive Over said it has "secure measures to prevent tampering or reverse engineering of its firmware and other technologies." Micron spokesman Daniel Francisco said the company took the security of its products seriously and "we are not aware of any instances of foreign code."

According to former intelligence operatives, the NSA has multiple ways of obtaining source code from tech companies, including asking directly and posing as a software developer. If a company wants to sell products to the Pentagon or another sensitive US agency, the government can request a security audit to make sure the source code is safe.

"They don't admit it, but they do say, 'We're going to do an evaluation, we need the source code,'" said Vincent Liu, a partner at security consulting firm Bishop Fox and former NSA analyst. "It's usually the NSA doing the evaluation, and it's a pretty small leap to say they're going to keep that source code."

Kaspersky called the authors of the spying program "the Equation group," named after their embrace of complex encryption formulas.

The group used a variety of means to spread other spying programs, such as by compromising jihadist websites, infecting USB sticks and CDs, and developing a self-spreading computer worm called Fanny, Kasperky said.

Fanny was like Stuxnet in that it exploited two of the same undisclosed software flaws, known as "zero days," which strongly suggested collaboration by the authors, Raiu said. He added that it was "quite possible" that the Equation group used Fanny to scout out targets for Stuxnet in Iran and spread the virus.

 - Reuters

4 Things You Should Know About Presidential Candidate Scott Walker Before It’s Too Late

This guy is a menace to the public good.

By wcmcoop

So … Scott Walker is all but officially running for president, and the country is getting a look at a man whom we residents of Wisconsin have been living with since before he became governor. While the national press has focused on the policies and conservative ideology that Walker has imposed on our state, these don’t define the man or explain the mayhem he has caused here.

The massive protests against Walker in 2011 began with “Act 10,” which stripped public employee unions of almost all of their rights and power. Walker loves to leave the story there and depicts ongoing opposition to him as a fight between him and the unions. It’s a narrative that sells well to his donors and to a national press eager for narrative simplicity.

But Act 10 was only a triggering event, not the sole or even primary motivation of Walker’s opponents. While much of the opposition to Walker centers around his policies, there is more to it than that. It is the way he implements these policies, the way he deals with opposition, and the way he rewards his allies that make Walker not just divisive, but frightening. Even conservatives who share Walker’s ideology should distrust him, and dread the prospect of him becoming president.

Why? Here is a brief primer on Scott Walker, drawn from what we have learned about him first-hand here in Wisconsin. These are things that the rest of the country should know in order to avoid learning the same lessons the hard way—on a national and international platform of the presidency.

1. Scott Walker is a liar.

“So what?” you say, “aren’t all politicians liars?” True, but Walker is in a league apart. He lies about so much, even inconsequential things, that it seems almost compulsive.

His recent lies explaining how “searching for truth” and other aspects of the “Wisconsin Idea” came to be stricken from his rewrite of the University of Wisconsin mission statement were astounding enough to draw rebuke from the New York Times editorial board, but such lies compose a large part of almost all of Walker’s public statements.

Like most politicians, Walker lies when it is politically convenient to do so; unlike most politicians, Walker lies when the truth is already firmly established, such as when he claims that Wisconsin has a budget surplus (it doesn’t), or that he never considered planting agents provocateurs among the demonstrators (he did). For Walker, deceit is not only a tool; it is an end in itself, his default mode.

Walker even lies about things that have no obvious political angle, like the date of the births of his sons and how he got his bald spot.

Walker’s lies often take the form of self-aggrandizing fantasy, a large helping of which he served up in his ironically titled [for someone who almost never appears in public] ghost-written political autobiography, Unintimidated: A Governor’s Story and a Nation’s Challenge. In it, for example, Walker recounts how during the peak of the 2011 protests, a mob surrounded his car and tried to tip it over. This incident never happened, at least not to Walker, though Walker’s story bears a remarkable similarity to a 1958 attack on Richard Nixon’s car in Venezuela.

2. Scott Walker is astoundingly corrupt, even by current political standards.

He is so corrupt the corruption itself gives him cover, because an objective description of it sounds like a hyperbolic screed, leading to an “Oh, come on, he can’t be as bad as all that” from people who don’t know his history.

He IS that bad. Here’s his tea party brag that shows he’s more extreme than conservative. During the past few years, the fact that he has not yet actually been indicted for a crime is the strongest defense of his character that his supporters have been able to mount.

Walker’s reputation for political cunning, reflected in the oft-repeated warnings to not underestimate him, derives from his lack of moral restraint and his willingness to do anything to get what he wants, rather than from any tactical brilliance or deep understanding of people. It’s “the ends justify the means” on steroids. This, combined with the ineptitude of the Wisconsin Democrats and the Wisconsin press, answers an obvious question about Walker: How could someone of such mediocre abilities be so successful?

Walker’s known political career began in 1988, when he ran for president of the Associated Students of Marquette University. He didn’t win, but he was found guilty of violating campaign rules. After trying to lie his way out of it, he was forced to admit the truth of the charges. The Marquette Tribune ran an editorial before the election declaring that Walker was “unfit for presidency.” Like much of Walker’s past, the details of why he left Marquette before graduating are secrets.

It may seem petty to bring up an incident from so long ago, but Walker has continued to show the pattern he revealed at Marquette in every job he has held since about which there is any public information. His lies about the “Wisconsin Idea” and getting caught in them prove he has not changed. In fact, past and ongoing criminal investigations into Walker’s administrations, both as Milwaukee County executive and as governor, have resulted in multiple felony convictions of close Walker associates, and charges ranging from misuse of county resources for political purposes, to embezzling funds raised to help wives and children of veterans, to child enticement.

Among the felons is Tim Russell, Walker’s political mentor from shortly after he left Marquette, and one of the very few people who can be identified as a personal friend of Walker. Walker himself so far has escaped indictment, but public records of the investigation, some accidentally released, leave little doubt that Walker knew about and used (and perhaps continues to use) an illegal in-house email system to illegally coordinate his public offices with his political campaigns, and to evade open records laws. The latest criminal probe has identified Walker as part of a “criminal scheme” to evade campaign finance laws by arranging to have donations to his recall election laundered through Koch-funded super PAC's.

But lies and corruption are not the end of the story. They merely set the stage for what is truly frightening about a possible Walker presidency.

3. Walker does not tolerate opposition.

This applies not only to opposition from other politicians (although it certainly applies to them, too—see the fate of Mike Ellis) but to everyone. Suppression of dissent through intimidation is one of the chief features of the Walker governorship, and a main source of the fear and discord Walker has inflicted on his state.

Walker uses the power of his office to punish opponents. His administration ordered unconstitutional mass arrests of peaceful political dissidents in the Wisconsin State Capitol. In the state legislature, which Walker controls, laws have been introduced to eliminate the ability of local governments to block industrial projects of Walker’s donors, to eliminate independent government oversight panels, to eliminate the office of Secretary of State (currently held by Douglas La Follette, a staunch opponent), to remove the Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court, who has sided against Walker in several cases.

But much of the dirty work of intimidation is carried out by a network of right-wing groups that operate with a wink and nod from the administration, allied with unscrupulous legislators, Koch-funded lobbyists, and new right-wing media outlets set up by out-of-state billionaires. The most obvious of these intimidation efforts is a digitized, searchable online database of the one million people who signed a petition demanding Walker’s recall. The barely unstated purpose of this list is to keep petition signers from being hired by pro-Walker businesses. Walker himself withdrew the student representative nominee for the Board of Regents because his name appeared on the list.

People who do not limit their dissent to petition signing can expect harsher treatment. Opponents of Walker’s mine deregulation legislation, crafted specifically to allow Florida billionaire Chris Cline to open an iron mine in northern Wisconsin (and Walker’s one and only “jobs initiative”) have been attacked openly in right-wing outlets like the Bradley-funded “Media Trackers,” and behind the scenes by state legislators. Mine opponents have had their jobs threatened, sometimes with success. Many have received death threats.

4. Under Walker, Wisconsin literally has become a lawless state.

The state has become a playground for the Walker regime and its supporters, and a dangerous place for the rest of us. State agencies, most notably the Departments of Justice, Administration, and Natural Resources are fully under the control of Walker and his minions. Scientists and professionals have been replaced by political cronies who know nothing about the jobs they are supposed to do.

Ultimately, corruption and intimidation are unchecked in Wisconsin for two reasons: the State Supreme Court and the Wisconsin press. The State Supreme Court is controlled by four ethically challenged Walker allies who barely even pretend to be honest, and who Walker and his friends can count on to make problems go away.

Meanwhile, the Wisconsin press has mostly been asleep. A few articles describe each new revelation of Walker’s deceit or corruption, with follow-up articles giving Walker’s explanation, and there the matter is left. Walker is almost never asked difficult questions or pressed to explain his often incoherent answers. Thus Walker’s friends can openly violate the law with little fear of either prosecution or sustained scrutiny. When Chris Cline, in clear violation of state law, sent heavily armed and unlicensed mercenaries to his proposed mining site in the Penokee Mountains, a publicity stunt designed to raise the specter of “eco-terrorism,” no charges were ever filed and press coverage of the story quickly vanished.

The mysterious late “discovery” of 14,000 votes in Waukesha County, which swung a State Supreme Court election to Walker ally David Prosser and thereby maintained Walker’s control over the court, has never been adequately investigated, despite hundreds of suspicious irregularities and serious evidence of ballot tampering discovered during the state-mandated recount. The Government Accountability Board, the state agency that should have investigated this evidence, did not even look at it before certifying the election results.

The press accepted the results without question and never reported on the evidence of fraud. Illegal campaign donations, physical attacks on Walker opponents circulating recall petitions, online threats by pro-Walker groups such as “Knot my Wisconsin” and “Operation Burn Notice” have all gone unpunished and largely unreported.

Scott Walker has damaged the legal and political system of Wisconsin so badly that it may never recover. His house of cards is collapsing and even the state GOP knows it. It is only because Wisconsin is just a state within a larger country, and not an independent country on its own, that it has not descended into totalitarian dictatorship. Scott Walker does not scorn moral constraints on his actions. Rather, he seems to not comprehend such constraints. Walker’s only limit is the limit of his power, and it is this limit that Walker wants to eliminate by becoming president.

wcmcoop stands for the Wisconsin Citizens Media Cooperative.

Black Mississippi judge opens a can of whoop ass on white murderers

By Scott Kaufman

Judge Carlton Reeves (CLEO)

The United States District judge tasked with sentencing the men responsible for murdering James Craig Anderson in Mississippi in 2011 asked them to sit down while he read a lengthy statement about the history of race relations in Mississippi, NPR’s Code Switch blog reports.

On June 26, 2011, Deryl Dedmon, Jr., John Aaron Rice, and Dylan Wade Butler drove into Jackson, Mississippi — which they referred to as “Jafrica” — to “go fuck with some niggers.” They came across Anderson, a 49-year-old auto plant worker, and assaulted him while yelling “white power.”

While Anderson was on the ground, Dedmon ran him over with his truck.

Two women who were involved in the altercation and who encouraged the trio to kill Anderson pleaded guilty to hate crimes charges in December for their role in the criminal conspiracy.

U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves, one of only two African-Americans to serve as a federal judge in Mississippi, spoke to Dedmon, Rice, and Butler before sentencing them for the hate crime charges related to Anderson’s death.

“Mississippi has expressed its savagery in a number of ways throughout its history — slavery being the cruelest example, but a close second being Mississippi’s infatuation with lynchings,” he said.

Reeves compared the number of blacks who died via lynchings to other statistics commonly associated with tragedy in American culture. The 4,742 African-Americans who were killed by lynch mobs “contrasts with the 1,401 prisoners who have been executed legally in the United States since 1976.

In modern terms, that number represents more than those killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom and more than twice the number of American casualties in Operation Enduring Freedom — the Afghanistan conflict. Turning to home, this number also represents 1,700 more than who were killed on Sept. 11.”

Quoting one Mississippi historian, Reeves noted that of “‘the 40 martyrs whose names are inscribed in the national Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, AL, 19 were killed in Mississippi.’”

“‘How was it,’ Walton asks, ‘that half who died did so in one state?’ My Mississippi, your Mississippi and our Mississippi.”

“Mississippi soil has been stained with the blood of folk whose names have become synonymous with the civil rights movement like Emmett Till, Willie McGee, James Cheney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, Vernon Dahmer, George W. Lee, Medgar Evers and Mack Charles Parker,” he said.

“On June 26, 2011, four days short of his 49th birthday, the blood of James Anderson was added to Mississippi’s soil.”

“The common denominator of the deaths of these individuals was not their race,” Reeves continued.

“It was not that they all were engaged in freedom fighting. It was not that they had been engaged in criminal activity, trumped up or otherwise.

“No, the common denominator was that the last thing that each of these individuals saw was the inhumanity of racism. The last thing that each felt was the audacity and agony of hate, senseless hate: crippling, maiming them and finally taking away their lives.”

“Like the marauders of ages past,” he said, addressing the defendants, “these young folk conspired, planned, and coordinated a plan of attack on certain neighborhoods in the city of Jackson for the sole purpose of harassing, terrorizing, physically assaulting and causing bodily injury to black folk. They punched and kicked them about their bodies — their heads, their faces. They prowled. They came ready to hurt. They used dangerous weapons; they targeted the weak; they recruited and encouraged others to join in the coordinated chaos; and they boasted about their shameful activity.”

“This was a 2011 version of the nigger hunts.”

“What is so disturbing … so shocking … so numbing … is that these nigger hunts were perpetrated by our children … students who live among us … educated in our public schools … in our private academies … students who played football lined up on the same side of scrimmage line with black teammates … average students and honor students. Kids who worked during school and in the summers; kids who now had full-time jobs and some of whom were even unemployed.”

“I asked the question earlier,” Reeves said, “but what could transform these young adults into the violent creatures their victims saw?”

“It was nothing the victims did … they were not championing any cause … political … social … economic … nothing they did … not a wolf whistle … not a supposed crime … nothing they did.

There is absolutely no doubt that in the view of the court the victims were targeted because of their race.”

“The simple fact,” Reeves said, “is that what turned these children into criminal defendants was their joint decision to act on racial hatred.”

“Today we take another step away from Mississippi’s tortured past,” Reeves concluded. “We move farther away from the abyss. Indeed, Mississippi is a place and a state of mind. And those who think they know about her people and her past will also understand that her story has not been completely written.”

“Mississippi has a present and a future. That present and future has promise. As demonstrated by the work of the officers within these state and federal agencies — black and white, male and female, in this Mississippi they work together to advance the rule of law. Having learned from Mississippi’s inglorious past, these officials know that in advancing the rule of law, the criminal justice system must operate without regard to race, creed or color.”

“This is the strongest way Mississippi can reject those notions,” he said, before sentencing Dedmon to 50 years, Rice to 18 years, and Butler to 7 years — all without the possibility of parole — for their roles in the commission of a hate crime. Dedmon already faces 2 life sentences after pleading guilty to capital murder in 2012.

Scott Walker dodges key questions in London

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker takes his shadow campaign for president to London but dodges questions on evolution and foreign policy. Ed Schultz and David Corn discuss.

Philadelphia chosen for 2016 U.S. Democratic national convention

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) speaks at the dedication ceremony for the Congressional Anne Frank Memorial Tree on Capitol Hill, on April 30, 2014 (AFP)

 

The U.S. Democratic Party has chosen Philadelphia as the site of its 2016 national convention to nominate a presidential candidate, the Democratic National Committee said on Thursday.

The Democratic convention will be held the week of July 25, 2016. The Republican gathering is scheduled to be held in Cleveland the week before Democrats meet.

“In addition to their commitment to a seamless and safe convention, Philadelphia’s deep rooted place in American history provides a perfect setting for this special gathering,” DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz said in a statement.

Party nominating conventions are held after a long and sometimes grueling string of state primaries.

The political parties formally christen their presidential candidates at the gatherings, but the contest is usually decided well before.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is seen as the front-runner for the Democratic nomination but has not formally launched a campaign. Vice President Joe Biden, senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley also are often mentioned as possible candidates.

Former Senator Jim Webb of Virginia was the first to take serious steps toward running when he formed an exploratory committee in November.

Democrats held their 2012 convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. The national committee said it considered hotel capacity, transportation options, security and other logistics in choosing Philadelphia for the 2016 event.

“We’re all delighted to make history again, here in the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection,” Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter said in a statement released by the DNC.

(Reporting by Emily Stephenson; Editing by Susan Heavey)

How to Get Fired Before You Even Start a Job

By Chris Matyszczyk

Here at Technically Incorrect, we dispense advice in bite-sized morsels.

Who are we to know what people should do? However, we have a fair inkling that the night before you start a new job, it's probably best not to tweet that it's a "F*** A** job."

---

Cella retweeted this tweet, the one that she says ended her pizza career. Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET

 I only mention this because of a new Internet celebrity called Cella. True, she's likely to be an old Internet celebrity in a few hours. Currently, though, she's receiving quite a bit of support on her Twitter feed, after she was fired from her job.

As the Irish Daily Mirror reported, Cella was offered that job by Robert Waple. He's the boss at Jet's Pizza in Mansfield, Tx.

The night before she was to start, February 6, she emitted a tweet that read: "Ew, I start this f*** a** job tomorrow." This plaintive cry from the wilderness of reality was accompanied by seven thumbs-down emoji.

Some might wonder whether this job wasn't the most wonderful. However, Twitter is unerringly public. Who can be surprised that one of her future co-workers spotted her bons-mots and passed them on to her future employer? Who immediately became her non-employer.

Waple took to his own Twitter account -- one he'd barely used since 2009 -- and replied: "And...no you don't start that FA job today! I just fired you! Good luck with your no money, no job life!"

Both Waple's and Cella's tweets have since been deleted. However, Cella, reportedly a teen, has retweeted messages with Waple's original tweet in them. Moreover, she also tweeted that she got fired over Twitter.

On her Twitter feed, people aren't merely sympathizing, but suggesting that she hire a lawyer because, in their view, this was an unfair dismissal.

I have contacted both Waple and Cella to hear their slices of the story and will update, should I hear.

Clearly, some emotions coursed through this tale. I'm not sure that getting fired from a pizza shop will necessarily result in a "no money, no job life."

There again, making a little food, taking orders and eating free pizza would have been the rudiments of her job. As Waple himself, according to the New York Daily News, tweeted: "How hard would that have been?"

And so another day goes by when social media turns up a vivid exchange that, in a world that used to be private, would have been solely among friends.

Still, as quite a few posters to Cella's Twitter feed have excitedly pointed out: she's now famous.

MSNBC's Duck Dynasty

By D.R. Tucker

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...

In that segment, host Ed Schultz discussed President Obama's remarks in a recent interview with Matthew Yglesias of Vox, in which Obama observed that the press tends to give the climate issue short shrift, while obsessing over issues such as terrorism.

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 that gives former Rep. Joe Scarborough (R-FL) and his colleagues fifteen hours a week to praise the Koch Brothers as noble players on the American political stage, and spew disinformation about climate science;
• the same network that provided little, if any, coverage of the critically important 2014 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Lima, Peru (despite doing an adequate job of covering earlier conferences, such as the 2009 UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark and the 2011 UN Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa);
• the same network that openly acknowledges receiving sponsorship from ExxonMobil for its online sibling, Shift by MSNBC, sponsorship that raises obvious questions about the climate-related topics that are not covered on Shift;
• 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;
• the same network that aired a special, hosted by Hayes, about the machinations of the climate-denier cabal in August 2013...and then kept the special in hiding for weeks, before finally making it available online in a format of questionable convenience;
• the same network that, along with it's sister network NBC, played a "key role" in disinforming Americans about Iraq during the run-up to our disastrous war for oil there;
• 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.
* * * D.R. Tucker is a Massachusetts-based freelance writer and a former contributor to the conservative website Human Events Online. He has also written for the Washington Monthly, Huffington Post, the Boston Herald, the Boston Globe Magazine, ClimateCrocks.com and FrumForum.com, among others. In addition, he hosted a Blog Talk Radio program, The Notes, from August 2009 to June, 2010, and served as a co-host of On the Green Front with Betsy Rosenberg on the Progressive Radio Network from August 2011 to March 2014. Currently, he is a contributor to the Climate Minute and Climate Notes podcasts for the Massachusetts Climate Action Network. You can follow him on Twitter here: @DRTucker.

Welcome to what the Supreme Court wrought

Posted by Jim Hightower

Listen to this Commentary

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.

Fox Crew Robbed While Filming Powerball News Segment

A Fox-affiliated news crew was robbed after filming a Powerball segment in Hayward. (Los Angeles Times)

By Angel Jennings

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.

KTVU did not return a call for comment.

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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Netanyahu: I'm still planning to address Congress

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.”