Leaders within in the Bush Administration who lied America into the War
in Iraq voice their “expert” opinion about the current turmoil. Ed
Schultz, Senator Barbara Boxer, D-Ca., and Senator Jon Tester, D-Mt.,
discuss.
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Americans poorly served by media on Iraq, Benghazi
Rachel Maddow criticizes right-wing media for searching for bad news in
an arrest in the Benghazi attacks, and American media broadly for
re-engaging so-called experts on Iraq with terrible track records, and
Congress for not taking its role seriously.
Monday, June 16, 2014
Poll Shows Cantor’s Not The Only GOP Idiot In Trouble Nationally!
By Rika Christensen
Eric Cantor’s stunning primary loss may herald other GOP losses in November. A recent poll from HuffPost/YouGov show that Republicans aren’t sure about other sitting Congress members either, as the poll found Republicans feel that the current GOP leaders aren’t conservative enough.
One has to wonder what “not conservative enough” means for these people. Cantor was plenty conservative, but his district apparently wants a hard-core Tea Partier who’s even more likely to engage in obstruction and try to legislate people’s private lives than even Cantor was, to take office.
It’s very unlikely that Cantor’s district would vote for a Democrat.
McConnell, another face of GOP obstructionism, is having a tough time against Democrat Allison Lundergan Grimes right now. Because that’s a Senate seat, more people from more districts will vote in that election. You can gerrymander individual districts to death, but it’s much harder to guarantee the safety of the Senate seats for one party or the other.
Grimes is painting herself as a pro-coal Democrat, and some people in Kentucky are fed up enough with Mr. Our-Only-Goal-is-to-Make-Obama-A-One-Term-President McConnell to listen to her.
Grimes also has Senator Elizabeth Warren’s backing now.
John Boehner is a weak leader, unable to pull his party together on anything, and thus, unable to present Republican alternatives to Democratic plans. He often doesn’t put bills to the floor for a vote if he doesn’t have enough of his party behind him, even if, between Republicans and Democrats, he’d have the votes to pass it.
While he’s following the Hastert rule there, the Hastert rule isn’t actually a rule that the Speaker must follow, and when it comes to crucial votes (like whether to end a government shutdown and pass a clean resolution), all adhering to the Hastert rule does is, well, obstruct. Especially if the bill will pass with votes from both parties.
Unfortunately, it looks like Boehner only faces token Democratic opposition in Ohio. Of all three, Cantor’s already gone, McConnell is having trouble, but Boehner will probably stay, even though Tea Partiers are unhappy with his performance.
Nate Silver’s website, FiveThirtyEight.com, currently predicts
that Republicans will win the seats of retiring Democratic senators,
and that the Senate will end up 50-50, with the tie-breaking vote going
in favor of the Democrats because Vice President Biden is a Democrat.
The biggest reason for that may be that Republicans are doing a better job of recruiting electable candidates; something they had considerable trouble with in 2012, when they thought the Tea Party nuts were their ticket to everything. People are also unhappy with Obama’s foreign policy decisions, which is hurting the Democratic Party as a whole.
Unfortunately, the HuffPo/YouGov poll doesn’t actually spell doom for the Republicans, per se, but it could, and should, give cocky Republicans pause, even those that aren’t up for re-election this year.
Their positions are not quite as secure as they think; even Nate Silver’s predictions are shifting slightly back towards Democrats.
Eric Cantor’s stunning primary loss may herald other GOP losses in November. A recent poll from HuffPost/YouGov show that Republicans aren’t sure about other sitting Congress members either, as the poll found Republicans feel that the current GOP leaders aren’t conservative enough.
One has to wonder what “not conservative enough” means for these people. Cantor was plenty conservative, but his district apparently wants a hard-core Tea Partier who’s even more likely to engage in obstruction and try to legislate people’s private lives than even Cantor was, to take office.
It’s very unlikely that Cantor’s district would vote for a Democrat.
McConnell, another face of GOP obstructionism, is having a tough time against Democrat Allison Lundergan Grimes right now. Because that’s a Senate seat, more people from more districts will vote in that election. You can gerrymander individual districts to death, but it’s much harder to guarantee the safety of the Senate seats for one party or the other.
Grimes is painting herself as a pro-coal Democrat, and some people in Kentucky are fed up enough with Mr. Our-Only-Goal-is-to-Make-Obama-A-One-Term-President McConnell to listen to her.
Grimes also has Senator Elizabeth Warren’s backing now.
John Boehner is a weak leader, unable to pull his party together on anything, and thus, unable to present Republican alternatives to Democratic plans. He often doesn’t put bills to the floor for a vote if he doesn’t have enough of his party behind him, even if, between Republicans and Democrats, he’d have the votes to pass it.
While he’s following the Hastert rule there, the Hastert rule isn’t actually a rule that the Speaker must follow, and when it comes to crucial votes (like whether to end a government shutdown and pass a clean resolution), all adhering to the Hastert rule does is, well, obstruct. Especially if the bill will pass with votes from both parties.
Unfortunately, it looks like Boehner only faces token Democratic opposition in Ohio. Of all three, Cantor’s already gone, McConnell is having trouble, but Boehner will probably stay, even though Tea Partiers are unhappy with his performance.
The biggest reason for that may be that Republicans are doing a better job of recruiting electable candidates; something they had considerable trouble with in 2012, when they thought the Tea Party nuts were their ticket to everything. People are also unhappy with Obama’s foreign policy decisions, which is hurting the Democratic Party as a whole.
Unfortunately, the HuffPo/YouGov poll doesn’t actually spell doom for the Republicans, per se, but it could, and should, give cocky Republicans pause, even those that aren’t up for re-election this year.
Their positions are not quite as secure as they think; even Nate Silver’s predictions are shifting slightly back towards Democrats.
More from AATTP on the 2014 midterm elections:
- Allison Grimes Tops Turtle McConnell 49%-46% in New Shocking Poll!
- Eric Cantor Steps Down as House Majority Leader After Stunning Defeat (Video)
- The Daily Show: The Tea Party Sucks So Bad, Turtle McConnell EASILY Beat His Rival (Video)
- Weeping Cheeto John Boehner on Cantor’s Defeat: It’s All Obama’s Fault (Video)
Sunday, June 15, 2014
Eric Cantor's Loss Is Hillary Clinton's Gain
By Ronald Brownstein
The majority leader's loss means Republicans won't take up
immigration reform before November—and maybe not before 2016. That's
good news for Democrats
Andrew Kelly/Reuters
The best news for Hillary Rodham Clinton this week wasn't the mostly positive reviews for her memoir Hard Choices.
It was the hard fall taken by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor when he
was ousted by a Tea Party challenger who denounced him as
insufficiently conservative, particularly on immigration.
The Virginia Republican's defeat
virtually extinguishes the already flickering chances that House
Republicans will pass immigration reform before the 2014 election, and
even dims the odds that the chamber will take action before 2016. And
that significantly improves prospects in the next presidential election
for Clinton, or any other Democrat.
Cantor's defeat captures the divergence
of interests between congressional Republicans and the strategists,
donors, and activists in the GOP's presidential wing. After Mitt Romney
lost in 2012 by more than 5 million votes, despite winning 59 percent of
whites—a greater percentage than voted for Ronald Reagan during his
1980 landslide—many GOP thinkers concluded that the party was unlikely
to recapture the White House without gaining ground with minorities,
particularly Hispanics and Asian-Americans. Republicans in this camp
believe that passing immigration reform is the threshold the GOP must
cross before these growing communities will consider the party's
positions on anything else.
But those arguments have not
moved most congressional Republicans, especially those in the House.
The House GOP has essentially barricaded itself against the demographic
trends that have helped Democrats win the popular vote in five of the
past six presidential elections: 80 percent of House Republicans
represent districts in which the white share of the population exceeds
the national average. Cantor was one.
Polls consistently show that even most
Republican partisans believe that immigrants here illegally should be
allowed to stay—and either become citizens or, at least, work openly.
But many Republican legislators believe that, as with gun control, those
who oppose legalization vote on the issue more consistently than those
who support it, especially in the conservative districts they mostly
represent.
That conviction is certain to be cemented by Cantor's loss to
the underfunded Dave Brat, who lashed him for championing "amnesty,"
despite Cantor's support for only very limited reforms.
As in 2012—when Romney made a crippling
commitment to "self-deportation" for those in the country illegally— GOP
presidential candidates could be pulled to the right if immigration
reform isn't resolved legislatively before the 2016 primaries. Cantor's
loss may also prompt Obama to take more aggressive executive action to
provide relief for undocumented immigrants. Republican hopefuls will
feel enormous pressure to oppose that, as well.
Both of those developments would limit
the GOP's ability to improve its 2016 performance among minorities, who
have provided Democrats almost exactly four-fifths of their votes in all
but one presidential election since 1976. And that would mean the GOP
could recapture the White House only if it expands its margins among
whites or increases that group's share of the vote by raising turnout.
Neither would be easy. The white share of
the vote has decreased in every presidential election since 1980 except
one, and minority-population growth virtually ensures its continued
decline.
Disenchantment with Obama might offer the GOP a somewhat better
chance of increasing its margin with whites. Polls show that only about
one-fourth of whites or fewer believe they have benefited from either
Obama's economic agenda or his health care plan. And the stubbornly slow
economic recovery—plus a series of government missteps, including the
health care roll out—have moved white voters, in particular, from
receptivity toward greater federal activism after George W. Bush's
presidency toward a renewed skepticism. "Obama has a taken a majority
viewpoint that we need a more aggressive government … and gone 180
degrees in the other direction," says GOP pollster Glen Bolger.
Which returns us to Hillary Clinton. If
she runs, the resurfacing doubts about Washington, particularly among
whites, would present her with a problem similar to Bill Clinton's in
1992: formulating an agenda that convinces skeptical voters they will
benefit from more government activism, rather than less—as Republicans
will argue.
But even so, it's a stiff bet for Republicans to gamble 2016
on holding Clinton below the 39 percent of whites Obama carried in
2012.
In that meager showing, Obama lost white
women by 14 percentage points, the biggest deficit for any Democrat
since Reagan's second landslide in 1984. As the first female
presidential nominee, Clinton might easily do better, perhaps much
better. And because Obama already fell so far with white men, there
might not be much further for her to fall. Simultaneously, the power of
the Clinton name equips her to continue generating lopsided margins with
minority voters—unless Republicans find ways to reach them.
Even if most Americans remain skeptical
of activist government after Obama's presidency, Clinton in all these
ways would remain uniquely positioned to exploit the GOP's difficulties
with attracting voters beyond its older, white, nonurban base.
Yet
Cantor's defeat demonstrates again how much of that base will fiercely
resist policies that might build a broader coalition. "Elections are a
combination of message and math," acknowledges Bolger. "The message is a
little more difficult for Clinton, and the math is a little bit
easier." That's especially true after the Virginia earthquake.
The Bottomless Iraq Sinkhole
Posted by Rude One
Do you feel it? Do you have that sense of vertigo and nausea, all the way from gut to your 'nads? As you hear the names chiming in the news like a roll call of shame - Mosul, Tikrit, Kirkuk - a chant of our national doom?
The breakdown of Iraq is something that anyone with any sense knew was inevitable once we removed Saddam Hussein, the bottom peg of the Jenga game that is that nation. We predicted civil war and, goddamnit, it was gonna happen. There was no policy that was going to maintain order in that fucked-beyond-fucked country except for eternal occupation by the United States - oh, sorry - coalition of the willing or whatever the fuck we called it.
Once more, Barack Obama's presidency is swallowed and squandered by the devastated landscape George W. Bush left behind.
Obama is already getting the blame for the uprisings, the Sunni on Shiite violence, the radical Kurds taking what they always wanted (aided by average, everyday Kurds). It's like blaming your current lover for the herpes you got from some dude ten years ago because he's there and why the fuck not direct your rage at someone who is convenient instead of yourself and your own stupid decisions.
Eventually, and you can bet on this, another talking point is going to come around. It's something the Rude Pundit wrote about a long time ago, so, hey, here it is, from February 27, 2006, a gentle reminder that those of us who opposed the war were smarter and more prescient thinking than anyone who supported it. It's titled "Pre-Emptive Blogging: Talking Points For a Coming Attack From the Right" and it goes like this:
"As Iraq spirals into a shitstorm of violence and vengeance, even as some Sunnis and some Shiites try desperately to avert a direct, overwhelming hit by said shitstorm, at some point soon, some right wing bag of douche is going to proclaim that liberals are 'happy' or 'thrilled' by a civil war in Iraq. Liberals can be accused of enabling terrorists by using the dwindling "freedom of speech" we're allowed, and it's a pretty small rhetorical leap from saying the left wants American soldiers to die (which the right has done) to saying the left loves us some civil war. Yes, liberals will be viciously insulted (defamed, even) by conservative commentators, bloggers, Freeper frothers, as if somewhere, in an oh-so-hip underground club, liberals are gathered in an orgy of celebration over the infinite bloodletting in Iraq, chanting gleefully, 'Told you so, told you so, told you so' as they toast with cosmos and down sushi...
"So let's just say it up front here: over here in Liberalburg, we weren't happy when Ronald Reagan was cozying up to Saddam Hussein back in the 1980's. We weren't happy that the United States was backing a brutal, murderous, raping thug, giving him weapons and such. We weren't happy with the first Persian Gulf War. We weren't happy with sanctions that decimated the poorest people in Iraq. We weren't happy that the President wouldn't allow weapons inspectors to finish their work.
"We weren't happy with this war to start with, saying, for instance, that a civil war was the inevitable outcome. We're not happy to be proven right. We're not happy, simply, when people are dying for no good cause, with no good outcome on the horizon, and no good way out. Frankly, oh, dear, sweet right wing, on the whole, we'd've rather been wrong and had tens of thousands of people not killed, tens of thousands of America soldiers not wounded. We'd've eaten the crow and, trust us, wonderful, fair right wing, you'd've shoved our faces in the plate of that black bird.
"But since we were right, maybe, just maybe, someone oughta pay a political price for being so goddamned wrong. Instead, though, the right's gonna try to turn it around and blame the left and those who 'didn't support the war' for its failure. Which would, for all intents and purposes, finally seal the deal on Vietnam redux.
"Somewhere, Saddam Hussein is shaking his head, the only one who, really, and for all the wrong reasons, has the right to say, 'Told you so.'"
There is no joy here, no schadenfreude. Just sorrow for the dead and displaced, just the pain that all Cassandras feel constantly.
Do you feel it? Do you have that sense of vertigo and nausea, all the way from gut to your 'nads? As you hear the names chiming in the news like a roll call of shame - Mosul, Tikrit, Kirkuk - a chant of our national doom?
The breakdown of Iraq is something that anyone with any sense knew was inevitable once we removed Saddam Hussein, the bottom peg of the Jenga game that is that nation. We predicted civil war and, goddamnit, it was gonna happen. There was no policy that was going to maintain order in that fucked-beyond-fucked country except for eternal occupation by the United States - oh, sorry - coalition of the willing or whatever the fuck we called it.
Once more, Barack Obama's presidency is swallowed and squandered by the devastated landscape George W. Bush left behind.
Obama is already getting the blame for the uprisings, the Sunni on Shiite violence, the radical Kurds taking what they always wanted (aided by average, everyday Kurds). It's like blaming your current lover for the herpes you got from some dude ten years ago because he's there and why the fuck not direct your rage at someone who is convenient instead of yourself and your own stupid decisions.
Eventually, and you can bet on this, another talking point is going to come around. It's something the Rude Pundit wrote about a long time ago, so, hey, here it is, from February 27, 2006, a gentle reminder that those of us who opposed the war were smarter and more prescient thinking than anyone who supported it. It's titled "Pre-Emptive Blogging: Talking Points For a Coming Attack From the Right" and it goes like this:
"As Iraq spirals into a shitstorm of violence and vengeance, even as some Sunnis and some Shiites try desperately to avert a direct, overwhelming hit by said shitstorm, at some point soon, some right wing bag of douche is going to proclaim that liberals are 'happy' or 'thrilled' by a civil war in Iraq. Liberals can be accused of enabling terrorists by using the dwindling "freedom of speech" we're allowed, and it's a pretty small rhetorical leap from saying the left wants American soldiers to die (which the right has done) to saying the left loves us some civil war. Yes, liberals will be viciously insulted (defamed, even) by conservative commentators, bloggers, Freeper frothers, as if somewhere, in an oh-so-hip underground club, liberals are gathered in an orgy of celebration over the infinite bloodletting in Iraq, chanting gleefully, 'Told you so, told you so, told you so' as they toast with cosmos and down sushi...
"So let's just say it up front here: over here in Liberalburg, we weren't happy when Ronald Reagan was cozying up to Saddam Hussein back in the 1980's. We weren't happy that the United States was backing a brutal, murderous, raping thug, giving him weapons and such. We weren't happy with the first Persian Gulf War. We weren't happy with sanctions that decimated the poorest people in Iraq. We weren't happy that the President wouldn't allow weapons inspectors to finish their work.
"We weren't happy with this war to start with, saying, for instance, that a civil war was the inevitable outcome. We're not happy to be proven right. We're not happy, simply, when people are dying for no good cause, with no good outcome on the horizon, and no good way out. Frankly, oh, dear, sweet right wing, on the whole, we'd've rather been wrong and had tens of thousands of people not killed, tens of thousands of America soldiers not wounded. We'd've eaten the crow and, trust us, wonderful, fair right wing, you'd've shoved our faces in the plate of that black bird.
"But since we were right, maybe, just maybe, someone oughta pay a political price for being so goddamned wrong. Instead, though, the right's gonna try to turn it around and blame the left and those who 'didn't support the war' for its failure. Which would, for all intents and purposes, finally seal the deal on Vietnam redux.
"Somewhere, Saddam Hussein is shaking his head, the only one who, really, and for all the wrong reasons, has the right to say, 'Told you so.'"
There is no joy here, no schadenfreude. Just sorrow for the dead and displaced, just the pain that all Cassandras feel constantly.
American Voters Need To Realize The Terrible Urgency Of 2014
By Yellow Dog Yankee
Every time I hear a pundit or a pollster discuss the certainty that Republicans will hold the House or the high probability they will gain control of the Senate I suspect I am having an out-of-body experience.
In what world, no matter how ill-informed, gerrymandered, Fox News saturated, or Koch Brother’s money-smothered could Democrats not win overwhelmingly this November?
Are Democratic candidates and especially Democratic leadership so incapable of connecting the dots that a sane and literate electorate will sit out this critical election?
Yeah, apparently.
We have leadership handpicking candidates who won’t galvanize the base and refusing to provide support to non-incumbents unless they are sure-fire winners. Our candidates pussyfoot through campaigns, terrified of offending Republicans who would never vote for them anyway. All in all we have a party which is unwilling or unable to bludgeon voters with the truth.
Democrats consistently campaign on the defensive; letting the
opposition frame the debate and choose the terms; Obamacare, Benghazi,
the “IRS scandal” the War on Coal. They wield the Second Amendment like a
mace and lie that liberals plan to eviscerate the First.
Complacent independents and Democrats may not be well informed or likely voters in off-year elections but they can understand actual facts and become angry enough to do something about them.
It is time we pick the battleground and infuse the field with urgency.
There isn’t a natural constituency the Republicans have not insulted, annoyed, or outright harmed in recent years yet many seem blissfully unaware of it.
How many veterans know Republicans killed $100 million in funding to improve access to care as opposed to those who only heard the President was to blame four months later when the VA scandal broke.
How many low income persons are aware their own governors are keeping health care from them but instead believe Obamacare is killing the country?
There are 89,727 career and 137,037 non-career employees of the U.S.
Postal Service. At least that many more adults probably depend on their
paychecks. They all have heard that their livelihood is in danger but do
they know why?
If it was made clear that a Republican law is forcing USPS to fund employee pensions for 75 years over a period of ten; that this is a badly disguised plan to kill the USPS to the benefit of UPS and FedEx, big donors to the GOP; and that Republicans are now angling to use that pension money to erase the deficit in the Highway Trust Fund, do you think they would sit at home on November 4?
Hell, they would probably drag their spouses, parents, and half the neighborhood to the polls with them.
So why is Ed Schultz the only one talking about this?
The conventional wisdom is that young people don’t vote in mid-terms. On Wednesday Senate Republicans filibustered a bill to lower the debt on student loans. Two years ago they refused to stop an automatic doubling of Stafford Loan interest rates. This information alone could fuel a monster get-out-the vote drive on campuses nationwide.
These examples don’t even scratch the surface. Progressives have long lamented that poor and middle-class people always vote against their own self-interest. Maybe they don’t know they are doing so.
Have we fully informed the near-elderly on Paul Ryan’s plan for Medicare?
Do young women understand the current threat to their sexual freedom and to family planning?
Do small farmers know they are being damaged by agribusiness and the support Republican’s give it?
Are non-Christians aware of current legislative advocacy for state endorsed religion?
Are coastal residents such climate deniers they will allow their cities to drown?
Do minorities see the comprehensive effort Republicans are making to take away their vote?
It is not fear mongering to tell postal employees they will see their jobs shrivel and die under a Republican majority nor is it unfair to tell minorities and the elderly that this may be their last chance to vote unless voter suppression efforts are halted and halted quickly. It may be noble for a candidate to run on a platform of what she will do but it often works better to explain what an opponent has done.
And while we are at it we need to gather together the entire GOP and tie them up with one big ugly bow. The dreadful remarks we keep hearing – such as “No one has the guts to let them (poor people) wither and die” (John Johnston, congressional candidate, Indiana), or “I never said I would author legislation to put homosexuals to death, but I didn’t have a problem with it” (Scott Esk, state house candidate Oklahoma) or suggestions that poor children should have to sweep floors in return for a free lunch (Rep Jack Kingston and former Speaker Newt Gingrich), that non-Christians would certainly go to hell (Rep. Louie Gohmert just yesterday) or any of dozens of nasty and misogynistic comments about rape (take your pick) – are not isolated remarks.
Let’s must pound home the truth that this is the way Republicans think and that only an election stands between thoughts and their reflection in real laws.
There is a Facebook meme to the effect that if Republicans stop lying about us we will stop telling the truth about them. The problem is they are still lying but we have never hit them with the unvarnished truth nor even attempted to arouse voters to the crises they are facing everywhere – with their jobs, their health, and their democracy.
It needs to be said over and over that we cannot wait until 2016 – there is a terrible urgency to now.
Every time I hear a pundit or a pollster discuss the certainty that Republicans will hold the House or the high probability they will gain control of the Senate I suspect I am having an out-of-body experience.
In what world, no matter how ill-informed, gerrymandered, Fox News saturated, or Koch Brother’s money-smothered could Democrats not win overwhelmingly this November?
Are Democratic candidates and especially Democratic leadership so incapable of connecting the dots that a sane and literate electorate will sit out this critical election?
Yeah, apparently.
We have leadership handpicking candidates who won’t galvanize the base and refusing to provide support to non-incumbents unless they are sure-fire winners. Our candidates pussyfoot through campaigns, terrified of offending Republicans who would never vote for them anyway. All in all we have a party which is unwilling or unable to bludgeon voters with the truth.
Complacent independents and Democrats may not be well informed or likely voters in off-year elections but they can understand actual facts and become angry enough to do something about them.
It is time we pick the battleground and infuse the field with urgency.
There isn’t a natural constituency the Republicans have not insulted, annoyed, or outright harmed in recent years yet many seem blissfully unaware of it.
How many veterans know Republicans killed $100 million in funding to improve access to care as opposed to those who only heard the President was to blame four months later when the VA scandal broke.
How many low income persons are aware their own governors are keeping health care from them but instead believe Obamacare is killing the country?
If it was made clear that a Republican law is forcing USPS to fund employee pensions for 75 years over a period of ten; that this is a badly disguised plan to kill the USPS to the benefit of UPS and FedEx, big donors to the GOP; and that Republicans are now angling to use that pension money to erase the deficit in the Highway Trust Fund, do you think they would sit at home on November 4?
Hell, they would probably drag their spouses, parents, and half the neighborhood to the polls with them.
So why is Ed Schultz the only one talking about this?
The conventional wisdom is that young people don’t vote in mid-terms. On Wednesday Senate Republicans filibustered a bill to lower the debt on student loans. Two years ago they refused to stop an automatic doubling of Stafford Loan interest rates. This information alone could fuel a monster get-out-the vote drive on campuses nationwide.
These examples don’t even scratch the surface. Progressives have long lamented that poor and middle-class people always vote against their own self-interest. Maybe they don’t know they are doing so.
Have we fully informed the near-elderly on Paul Ryan’s plan for Medicare?
Do young women understand the current threat to their sexual freedom and to family planning?
Do small farmers know they are being damaged by agribusiness and the support Republican’s give it?
Are non-Christians aware of current legislative advocacy for state endorsed religion?
Are coastal residents such climate deniers they will allow their cities to drown?
Do minorities see the comprehensive effort Republicans are making to take away their vote?
It is not fear mongering to tell postal employees they will see their jobs shrivel and die under a Republican majority nor is it unfair to tell minorities and the elderly that this may be their last chance to vote unless voter suppression efforts are halted and halted quickly. It may be noble for a candidate to run on a platform of what she will do but it often works better to explain what an opponent has done.
And while we are at it we need to gather together the entire GOP and tie them up with one big ugly bow. The dreadful remarks we keep hearing – such as “No one has the guts to let them (poor people) wither and die” (John Johnston, congressional candidate, Indiana), or “I never said I would author legislation to put homosexuals to death, but I didn’t have a problem with it” (Scott Esk, state house candidate Oklahoma) or suggestions that poor children should have to sweep floors in return for a free lunch (Rep Jack Kingston and former Speaker Newt Gingrich), that non-Christians would certainly go to hell (Rep. Louie Gohmert just yesterday) or any of dozens of nasty and misogynistic comments about rape (take your pick) – are not isolated remarks.
Let’s must pound home the truth that this is the way Republicans think and that only an election stands between thoughts and their reflection in real laws.
There is a Facebook meme to the effect that if Republicans stop lying about us we will stop telling the truth about them. The problem is they are still lying but we have never hit them with the unvarnished truth nor even attempted to arouse voters to the crises they are facing everywhere – with their jobs, their health, and their democracy.
It needs to be said over and over that we cannot wait until 2016 – there is a terrible urgency to now.
American Voters Need To Realize The Terrible Urgency Of 2014 was written by Yellow Dog Yankee for PoliticusUSA.
Friday, June 13, 2014
You've Been Drafted and You Don’t Even Know It
On the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings, Brian Williams led off NBC Nightly News this way:
“On our broadcast tonight, the salute to the warriors who stormed the
beaches here in Normandy...”
It’s such a commonplace of our American world, that word “warriors” for those in the U.S. military or, as is said time and again, our “wounded warriors” for those hurt in one of our many wars. This time, however, because it was applied to the vets of World War II, my father’s war, it stopped me in my tracks.
For just a moment, I couldn’t help imagining what my father would have said, had anyone called him -- or any of the air commandos in Burma for whom he was “operations officer” -- a warrior. Though he’s been dead now for three decades, I don’t have a moment’s doubt that he would have thought it ridiculous.
In World War I, America’s soldiers had been known as “doughboys.” In World War II, they were regularly (and proudly) called “dogfaces” or G.I. (for “government issue”) Joes, and their citizen-soldier likenesses were reflected in the tough but bedraggled figures of Willy and Joe, Bill Mauldin’s much beloved wartime cartoon foot soldiers on the long slog to Berlin.
And that was fitting for a civilian military, a draft military. It was down to earth. It was how you described people who had left civilian life with every intention of returning to it as soon as humanly possible, who thought the military a grim necessity of a terrible moment in history and that war, a terrible but necessary way to go. In those days, warriors would have been an alien term, the sort you associated with, say, Prussians.
My father volunteered just after the attack on Pearl Harbor and wasn’t demobilized until the war ended, but -- I remember it well in the years after -- while he took pride in his service, he maintained a typical and healthy American dislike (to put it politely) for what he called “the regular army” and George Washington would have called a “standing army.”
He would have been amazed by the present American way of war and the propaganda universe we now live in when it comes to praising and elevating the U.S. military above the rest of society. He would have found it inconceivable that a president’s wife would go on a popular TV show -- I’m talking about Michelle Obama on "Nashville" -- and mix it up with fictional characters to laud for the umpteenth time America’s warriors and their service to the nation.
In Vietnam, of course, the term still wasn’t warrior, it was “grunt.” The elevation of the American soldier to the heavens of praise and bombast came significantly after the end of the citizen army, particularly with what retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel and TomDispatch regular William Astore calls the new Fortress America mindset of the post-9/11 years and the ever more militarized world of constant war that went with it.
If only I could have picked up the phone, called my father, and heard the choice words he would have had for his newly elevated status as an American “warrior,” seven decades after Normandy. But not being able to, on that D-Day anniversary I did the next best thing and called a 90-year-old friend, who was on a ship off one of those blood-soaked beaches as the invasion began.
Thinking back those 70 years with a certain pride, he remembered that the thing the foot soldiers of World War II resented most was saluting or saying “sir” to officers. No warriors they -- and no love for an eternal wartime either.
Put another way, the farther we’ve come from our last great military victory, symbolized by the events of June 6, 1944, the more elevated the language for describing, or perhaps whitewashing, a new American way of war that, for pure failure, may have few matches. Tom
It’s such a commonplace of our American world, that word “warriors” for those in the U.S. military or, as is said time and again, our “wounded warriors” for those hurt in one of our many wars. This time, however, because it was applied to the vets of World War II, my father’s war, it stopped me in my tracks.
For just a moment, I couldn’t help imagining what my father would have said, had anyone called him -- or any of the air commandos in Burma for whom he was “operations officer” -- a warrior. Though he’s been dead now for three decades, I don’t have a moment’s doubt that he would have thought it ridiculous.
In World War I, America’s soldiers had been known as “doughboys.” In World War II, they were regularly (and proudly) called “dogfaces” or G.I. (for “government issue”) Joes, and their citizen-soldier likenesses were reflected in the tough but bedraggled figures of Willy and Joe, Bill Mauldin’s much beloved wartime cartoon foot soldiers on the long slog to Berlin.
And that was fitting for a civilian military, a draft military. It was down to earth. It was how you described people who had left civilian life with every intention of returning to it as soon as humanly possible, who thought the military a grim necessity of a terrible moment in history and that war, a terrible but necessary way to go. In those days, warriors would have been an alien term, the sort you associated with, say, Prussians.
My father volunteered just after the attack on Pearl Harbor and wasn’t demobilized until the war ended, but -- I remember it well in the years after -- while he took pride in his service, he maintained a typical and healthy American dislike (to put it politely) for what he called “the regular army” and George Washington would have called a “standing army.”
He would have been amazed by the present American way of war and the propaganda universe we now live in when it comes to praising and elevating the U.S. military above the rest of society. He would have found it inconceivable that a president’s wife would go on a popular TV show -- I’m talking about Michelle Obama on "Nashville" -- and mix it up with fictional characters to laud for the umpteenth time America’s warriors and their service to the nation.
In Vietnam, of course, the term still wasn’t warrior, it was “grunt.” The elevation of the American soldier to the heavens of praise and bombast came significantly after the end of the citizen army, particularly with what retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel and TomDispatch regular William Astore calls the new Fortress America mindset of the post-9/11 years and the ever more militarized world of constant war that went with it.
If only I could have picked up the phone, called my father, and heard the choice words he would have had for his newly elevated status as an American “warrior,” seven decades after Normandy. But not being able to, on that D-Day anniversary I did the next best thing and called a 90-year-old friend, who was on a ship off one of those blood-soaked beaches as the invasion began.
Thinking back those 70 years with a certain pride, he remembered that the thing the foot soldiers of World War II resented most was saluting or saying “sir” to officers. No warriors they -- and no love for an eternal wartime either.
Put another way, the farther we’ve come from our last great military victory, symbolized by the events of June 6, 1944, the more elevated the language for describing, or perhaps whitewashing, a new American way of war that, for pure failure, may have few matches. Tom
Uncle Sam Doesn’t Want You -- He Already Has You
The Militarized Realities of Fortress America
By William J. Astore
I spent four college years in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) and then served 20 years in the U.S. Air Force. In the military, especially in basic training, you have no privacy. The government owns you. You’re “government issue,” just another G.I., a number on a dogtag that has your blood type and religion in case you need a transfusion or last rites. You get used to it. That sacrifice of individual privacy and personal autonomy is the price you pay for joining the military. Heck, I got a good career and a pension out of it, so don’t cry for me, America.
But this country has changed a lot since I joined ROTC in 1981, was fingerprinted, typed for blood, and otherwise poked and prodded. (I needed a medical waiver for myopia.)
Nowadays, in Fortress America, every one of us is, in some sense, government issue in a surveillance state gone mad.
Unlike the recruiting poster of old, Uncle Sam doesn’t want you anymore -- he already has you. You’ve been drafted into the American national security state. That much is evident from Edward Snowden’s revelations. Your email? It can be read. Your phone calls? Metadata about them is being gathered. Your smartphone? It’s a perfect tracking device if the government needs to find you. Your computer? Hackable and trackable. Your server? It’s at their service, not yours.
Many of the college students I’ve taught recently take such a loss of privacy for granted. They have no idea what’s gone missing from their lives and so don’t value what they’ve lost or, if they fret about it at all, console themselves with magical thinking -- incantations like “I’ve done nothing wrong, so I’ve got nothing to hide.” They have little sense of how capricious governments can be about the definition of “wrong.”
Consider us all recruits, more or less, in the new version of Fortress America, of an ever more militarized, securitized country. Renting a movie? Why not opt for the first Captain America and watch him vanquish the Nazis yet again, a reminder of the last war we truly won? Did you head for a baseball park on Memorial Day? What could be more American or more innocent? So I hope you paid no attention to all those camouflaged caps and uniforms your favorite players were wearing in just another of an endless stream of tributes to our troops and veterans.
Let’s hear no whining about militarized uniforms on America’s playing fields. After all, don’t you know that America’s real pastime these last years has been war and lots of it?
Be a Good Trooper
Think of the irony. The Vietnam War generated an unruly citizen’s army that reflected an unruly and increasingly rebellious citizenry. That proved more than the U.S. military and our ruling elites could take. So President Nixon ended the draft in 1973 and made America’s citizen-soldier ideal, an ideal that had persisted for two centuries, a thing of the past. The “all-volunteer military,” the professionals, were recruited or otherwise enticed to do the job for us. No muss, no fuss, and it’s been that way ever since. Plenty of war, but no need to be a “warrior,” unless you sign on the dotted line. It’s the new American way.
But it turned out that there was a fair amount of fine print in the agreement that freed Americans from those involuntary military obligations. Part of the bargain was to “support the pros” (or rather “our troops”) unstintingly and the rest involved being pacified, keeping your peace, being a happy warrior in the new national security state that, particularly in the wake of 9/11, grew to enormous proportions on the taxpayer dollar. Whether you like it or not, you’ve been drafted into that role, so join the line of recruits and take your proper place in the garrison state.
If you’re bold, gaze out across the increasingly fortified and monitored borders we share with Canada and Mexico. (Remember when you could cross those borders with no hassle, not even a passport or ID card? I do.)
Watch for those drones, home from the wars and already hovering in or soon to arrive in your local skies -- ostensibly to fight crime. Pay due respect to your increasingly up-armored police forces with their automatic weapons, their special SWAT teams, and their converted MRAPs (mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles). These vintage Iraqi Freedom vehicles are now military surplus given away or sold on the cheap to local police departments. Be careful to observe their draconian orders for prison-like “lockdowns” of your neighborhood or city, essentially temporary declarations of martial law, all for your safety and security.
Be a good trooper and do what you’re told. Stay out of public areas when you’re ordered to do so. Learn to salute smartly. (It’s one of the first lessons I was taught as a military recruit.) No, not that middle-finger salute, you aging hippie. Render a proper one to those in authority. You had best learn how.
Or perhaps you don’t even have to, since so much that we now do automatically is structured to render that salute for us. Repeated singings of “God Bless America” at sporting events. Repeated viewings of movies that glorify the military. (Special Operations forces are a hot topic in American multiplexes these days from Act of Valor to Lone Survivor.) Why not answer the call of duty by playing militarized video games like Call of Duty? Indeed, when you do think of war, be sure to treat it as a sport, a movie, a game.
Surging in America
I’ve been out of the military for nearly a decade, and yet I feel more militarized today than when I wore a uniform. That feeling first came over me in 2007, during what was called the “Iraqi surge” -- the sending of another 30,000 U.S. troops into the quagmire that was our occupation of that country. It prompted my first article for TomDispatch. I was appalled by the way our civilian commander-in-chief, George W. Bush, hid behind the beribboned chest of his appointed surge commander, General David Petraeus, to justify his administration’s devolving war of choice in Iraq. It seemed like the eerie visual equivalent of turning traditional American military-civilian relationships upside down, of a president who had gone over to the military. And it worked. A cowed Congress meekly submitted to “King David” Petraeus and rushed to cheer his testimony in support of further American escalation in Iraq.
Since then, it’s become a sartorial necessity for our presidents to don military flight jackets whenever they address our “warfighters” as a sign both of their “support” and of the militarization of the imperial presidency. (For comparison, try to imagine Matthew Brady taking a photo of “honest Abe” in the Civil War equivalent of a flight jacket!) It is now de rigueur for presidents to praise American troops as “the finest military in world history” or, as President Obama typically said to NBC’s Brian Williams in an interview from Normandy last week, “the greatest military in the world.”
Even more hyperbolically, these same troops are celebrated across the country in the most vocal way possible as hardened “warriors” and benevolent freedom-bringers, simultaneously the goodest and the baddest of anyone on the planet -- and all without including any of the ugly, as in the ugliness of war and killing. Perhaps that explains why I’ve seen military recruitment vans (sporting video game consoles) at the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Given that military service is so beneficent, why not get the country’s 12-year-old prospects hopped up on the prospect of joining the ranks?
Too few Americans see any problems in any of this, which shouldn’t surprise us. After all, they’re already recruits themselves. And if the prospect of all this does appall you, you can’t even burn your draft card in protest, so better to salute smartly and obey. A good conduct medal will undoubtedly be coming your way soon.
It wasn’t always so. I remember walking the streets of Worcester, Massachusetts, in my freshly pressed ROTC uniform in 1981. It was just six years after the Vietnam War ended in defeat and antiwar movies like Coming Home, The Deer Hunter, and Apocalypse Now were still fresh in people’s minds. (First Blood and the Rambo “stab-in-the-back” myth wouldn’t come along for another year.) I was aware of people looking at me not with hostility, but with a certain indifference mixed occasionally with barely disguised disdain. It bothered me slightly, but even then I knew that a healthy distrust of large standing militaries was in the American grain.
No longer. Today, service members, when appearing in uniform, are universally applauded and repetitiously lauded as heroes.
I’m not saying we should treat our troops with disdain, but as our history has shown us, genuflecting before them is not a healthy sign of respect. Consider it a sign as well that we really are all government issue now.
Shedding a Militarized Mindset
If you think that’s an exaggeration, consider an old military officer’s manual I still have in my possession. It’s vintage 1950, approved by that great American, General George C. Marshall, Jr., the man most responsible for our country’s victory in World War II. It began with this reminder to the newly commissioned officer: “[O]n becoming an officer a man does not renounce any part of his fundamental character as an American citizen. He has simply signed on for the post-graduate course where one learns how to exercise authority in accordance with the spirit of liberty.” That may not be an easy thing to do, but the manual’s aim was to highlight the salutary tension between military authority and personal liberty that was the essence of the old citizen’s army.
It also reminded new officers that they were trustees of America’s liberty, quoting an unnamed admiral’s words on the subject: “The American philosophy places the individual above the state. It distrusts personal power and coercion. It denies the existence of indispensable men. It asserts the supremacy of principle.”
Those words were a sound antidote to government-issue authoritarianism and militarism -- and they still are. Together we all need to do our bit, not as G.I. Joes and Janes, but as Citizen Joes and Janes, to put personal liberty and constitutional principles first. In the spirit of Ronald Reagan, who told Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this [Berlin] wall,” isn’t it time to begin to tear down the walls of Fortress America and shed our militarized mindsets? Future generations of citizens will thank us, if we have the courage to do so.
William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and TomDispatch regular, edits the blog The Contrary Perspective.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook and Tumblr. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Rebecca Solnit's Men Explain Things to Me.
Copyright 2014 William J. Astore
Total_Noob is looking for Beta Testers for TN-V9
By wololo
Total_Noob is back to the scene, and he is bringing lots of good news with him. We’ve mentioned he is working on a plugin that will finally enable sound on PS1 games within his Vita’s popular eCFW: TNV.
But Total_Noob doesn’t stop at only solving the scene’s biggest pain point for the past 2 years. No, he’s also bringing a new version of TN-V to the masses. But he needs your help, to test for compatibility.
Now, don’t get overly excited, the beta test is not a “real” beta test, but just a compatibility test: Total_Noob needs people on all sorts of firmwares to test a specially crafted file that he made, to see if his ongoing project will work on all exploits, past and present.
As of now, his test has been run on several firmwares already, but TN is still looking for testers who own the following firmwares: 1.65, 1.66, 1.67, 1.69, 2.05, and 2.06.
If you can help, please head over to the TN-V9 thread on /talk.
Source: Total_Noob on /talk
The joy of Custom Firmware: FF Type 0, English
translation running on the PS Vita (thanks to @The_Zett)
Total_Noob is back to the scene, and he is bringing lots of good news with him. We’ve mentioned he is working on a plugin that will finally enable sound on PS1 games within his Vita’s popular eCFW: TNV.
But Total_Noob doesn’t stop at only solving the scene’s biggest pain point for the past 2 years. No, he’s also bringing a new version of TN-V to the masses. But he needs your help, to test for compatibility.
Now, don’t get overly excited, the beta test is not a “real” beta test, but just a compatibility test: Total_Noob needs people on all sorts of firmwares to test a specially crafted file that he made, to see if his ongoing project will work on all exploits, past and present.
As of now, his test has been run on several firmwares already, but TN is still looking for testers who own the following firmwares: 1.65, 1.66, 1.67, 1.69, 2.05, and 2.06.
If you can help, please head over to the TN-V9 thread on /talk.
Source: Total_Noob on /talk
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
All Hell Breaks Loose At Cantor HQ After Concession
By karoli
As if Virginia politics weren't bizarre enough, they got even weirder after Eric Cantor conceded the primary to virtual unknown Kochhead Dave Brat.
Washington Post:
As if Virginia politics weren't bizarre enough, they got even weirder after Eric Cantor conceded the primary to virtual unknown Kochhead Dave Brat.
Washington Post:
Cantor addressed his supporters for about four minutes at a suburban Richmond hotel ballroom, then boarded an SUV without taking questions from reporters scurrying after him.
Then it got really rambunctious. In the room of downcast Cantor allies, a new energy suddenly erupted — but not the kind they wanted on election night. A group of immigration activists stormed the ballroom, screaming and waving a flag. “What do we want? Immigration reform! When do we want it? Now!”
A few Cantor supporters tried to block the protesters’ entrance into the ballroom, and pushing and shoving ensued. And before they reached the microphone, one Cantor supporter threw his glass of wine at a female protester. She swore at him in return.
A hotel employee took the microphone Cantor had used and told the protesters in Spanish that the police were on their way.
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Eric Cantor Defeated In Republican Primary
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has been
defeated by a tea party-backed challenger in the Republican primary.
Economics professor Dave Brat won a stunning upset victory against Cantor on Tuesday in the 7th District Republican primary contest, which is in the Richmond area.
Cantor is the second-most powerful member of the U.S. House and was seen by some as a possible successor to the House speaker.
His loss to a political novice with little money marks a huge victory for the tea party movement, which supported Cantor just a few years ago.
Brat had been a thorn in Cantor's side on the campaign, casting the congressman as a Washington insider who isn't conservative enough. Last month, a feisty crowd of Brat supporters booed Cantor in front of his family at a local party convention.
His message apparently scored well with voters in the 7th District.
"There needs to be a change," said Joe Mullins, who voted in Chesterfield County Tuesday. The engineering company employee said he has friends who tried to arrange town hall meetings with Cantor, who declined their invitations.
Tiffs between the GOP's establishment and tea party factions have flared in Virginia since tea party favorite Ken Cuccinelli lost last year's gubernatorial race. Cantor supporters have met with stiff resistance in trying to wrest control of the state party away from tea party enthusiasts, including in the Cantor's home district.
Brat teaches at Randolph-Macon College, a small liberal arts school north of Richmond. He raised just more than $200,000 for his campaign, according to the most recent campaign finance reports.
Prominent national tea party groups did spend independently to help Brat.
Brat offset the the cash disadvantage with endorsements from conservative activists like radio host Laura Ingraham, and with help from local tea party activists angry at Cantor.
Much of the campaign centered on immigration, where critics on both sides have recently taken aim at Cantor.
Brat has accused the House majority leader of being a top cheerleader for "amnesty" for immigrants in the U.S. illegally. Cantor has responded forcefully by boasting in mailers of blocking Senate plans "to give illegal aliens amnesty."
It was a change in tone for Cantor, who has repeatedly voiced support for giving citizenship to certain immigrants brought illegally to the country as children. Cantor and House GOP leaders have advocated a step-by-step approach rather than the comprehensive bill backed by the Senate. They've made no move to bring legislation to a vote and appear increasingly unlikely to act this year.
Cantor, a former state legislator, was elected to Congress in 2000. He became majority leader in 2011.
Economics professor Dave Brat won a stunning upset victory against Cantor on Tuesday in the 7th District Republican primary contest, which is in the Richmond area.
Cantor is the second-most powerful member of the U.S. House and was seen by some as a possible successor to the House speaker.
His loss to a political novice with little money marks a huge victory for the tea party movement, which supported Cantor just a few years ago.
Brat had been a thorn in Cantor's side on the campaign, casting the congressman as a Washington insider who isn't conservative enough. Last month, a feisty crowd of Brat supporters booed Cantor in front of his family at a local party convention.
His message apparently scored well with voters in the 7th District.
"There needs to be a change," said Joe Mullins, who voted in Chesterfield County Tuesday. The engineering company employee said he has friends who tried to arrange town hall meetings with Cantor, who declined their invitations.
Tiffs between the GOP's establishment and tea party factions have flared in Virginia since tea party favorite Ken Cuccinelli lost last year's gubernatorial race. Cantor supporters have met with stiff resistance in trying to wrest control of the state party away from tea party enthusiasts, including in the Cantor's home district.
Brat teaches at Randolph-Macon College, a small liberal arts school north of Richmond. He raised just more than $200,000 for his campaign, according to the most recent campaign finance reports.
Prominent national tea party groups did spend independently to help Brat.
Brat offset the the cash disadvantage with endorsements from conservative activists like radio host Laura Ingraham, and with help from local tea party activists angry at Cantor.
Much of the campaign centered on immigration, where critics on both sides have recently taken aim at Cantor.
Brat has accused the House majority leader of being a top cheerleader for "amnesty" for immigrants in the U.S. illegally. Cantor has responded forcefully by boasting in mailers of blocking Senate plans "to give illegal aliens amnesty."
It was a change in tone for Cantor, who has repeatedly voiced support for giving citizenship to certain immigrants brought illegally to the country as children. Cantor and House GOP leaders have advocated a step-by-step approach rather than the comprehensive bill backed by the Senate. They've made no move to bring legislation to a vote and appear increasingly unlikely to act this year.
Cantor, a former state legislator, was elected to Congress in 2000. He became majority leader in 2011.
Sunday, June 8, 2014
How the Treatment of Bowe Bergdahl Will Destroy the Republican Party
By Trevor LaFauci
We are looking at an unprecedented time in our nation’s history.
With any nation that has a two-party system of government, it is inevitable that the party out of power will feel some kind of animosity toward the party in power. In fact, it is natural.
As the party not in power, it is your goal to convince your nation that the party in power is somehow and some way being detrimental to the country through their policy decisions. These decisions could be related to a nation’s safety and security, a nation’s economy, a nation’s immigration system, and a nation’s social issues just to name a few. As a new round of national elections approaches, it is the goal of the party not in power to convince the population at large that they can do better than the current political party in power.
For the Republican Party in the year 2014, they have taken this idea to levels not seen before at any time in American history.
The level of sheer vitriol spewed by the Republican Party this past
week in the wake of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl’s release from the Taliban
has proven that once and for all this is a political party that has
jumped the shark to levels never seen before in this country.
Republicans have now attacked their last bastion of support in order to attempt to smear President Barack Obama: The military.
The institution that was once the pinnacle of Republican policy, one that would be supported no matter what. However, this past week has shown that even the military is fair game for the Republican Party as long as it can be used to attack Barack Obama and to try and discredit him and his administration.
To attack a military POW and his family is the new low for the Republican Party and it could very well be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
Americans today are becoming more and more put off by the Republican Party. They did not agree with their decision to shut down the government in October of 2013. They do not agree with the Republican Party’s stance on gay marriage. They believe climate change is an issue worth addressing.
They believe in a woman’s right to choose. They believe that income inequality is an issue that needs to be addressed. They believe in raising the minimum wage. They believe in common sense gun control legislation.
And they sure as hell believe in respecting the men and women who wear the uniform.
For Republicans, this latest and greatest smear campaign is one that will leave a lasting impression. In their whipped up frenzy to produce a scandal and/or paint the president as someone who lacks foreign policy skill, Republicans have failed to realize the lasting repercussions of smearing an American soldier.
Despite the fact that there are concerns that Sergeant Bergdahl may have deserted his post, the fact remains he was an American soldier being held hostage by the Taliban. As proponents of the President have successfully argued, would you rather have an American soldier returned home to possibly face justice or would you rather have an American soldier being dealt justice by the Taliban?
For Republicans, that is a question they do not want to have to answer.
It also hasn’t helped Republicans that President Obama has been absolutely resolute in justifying his actions. For someone the right likes to portray as weak and indecisive, President Obama was extremely forceful and persuasive in his defense of everything he and his administration did to procure the release of Sergeant Bergdahl.
His powerful language and his unwavering commitment to returning an American soldier to be reunited with his family has been presidential and has shown those who opposed his decision to be weak and petty. As more and more Republicans flip-flop over their reasons for supporting then condemning the release of Sergeant Bergdahl, President Obama has continued to showcase himself as the only adult in the room by not playing politics with the life of an American soldier.
When all is said and done, we have to ask what do Republicans hope to accomplish with this smear campaign?
In the short run: Exactly that. A smear campaign to score cheap political points. However, just like the government shutdown, the Republican Party has used its blind hatred of our President to fail to see the forest through the trees. When the dust settles, history will look back on this time period and will absolutely rip apart the Republican Party for stooping so low as to attack an American soldier and his family.
The hypocrisy from the right has been staggering and people like John McCain and Lindsey Graham are being made to look like exactly what they are: Foolish, hypocritical, and unpatriotic.
In an effort to jump aboard this smear campaign, the Republican Party and their talking heads in the media have gone past the point of no return and have attacked an American serviceman and his family.
No matter what the outcome of this event is, there can be no denying the utter disrespect that the Republican Party has shown to a man in uniform. It is this watershed moment where the Republican Party’s utter hatred and disdain for our commander-in-chief finally reached a tipping point and led us to a conclusion we never thought possible six years ago:
The Republican Party has decided it will no longer be the party that unanimously supports the American military.
We are looking at an unprecedented time in our nation’s history.
With any nation that has a two-party system of government, it is inevitable that the party out of power will feel some kind of animosity toward the party in power. In fact, it is natural.
As the party not in power, it is your goal to convince your nation that the party in power is somehow and some way being detrimental to the country through their policy decisions. These decisions could be related to a nation’s safety and security, a nation’s economy, a nation’s immigration system, and a nation’s social issues just to name a few. As a new round of national elections approaches, it is the goal of the party not in power to convince the population at large that they can do better than the current political party in power.
For the Republican Party in the year 2014, they have taken this idea to levels not seen before at any time in American history.
Republicans have now attacked their last bastion of support in order to attempt to smear President Barack Obama: The military.
The institution that was once the pinnacle of Republican policy, one that would be supported no matter what. However, this past week has shown that even the military is fair game for the Republican Party as long as it can be used to attack Barack Obama and to try and discredit him and his administration.
To attack a military POW and his family is the new low for the Republican Party and it could very well be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
Americans today are becoming more and more put off by the Republican Party. They did not agree with their decision to shut down the government in October of 2013. They do not agree with the Republican Party’s stance on gay marriage. They believe climate change is an issue worth addressing.
They believe in a woman’s right to choose. They believe that income inequality is an issue that needs to be addressed. They believe in raising the minimum wage. They believe in common sense gun control legislation.
For Republicans, this latest and greatest smear campaign is one that will leave a lasting impression. In their whipped up frenzy to produce a scandal and/or paint the president as someone who lacks foreign policy skill, Republicans have failed to realize the lasting repercussions of smearing an American soldier.
Despite the fact that there are concerns that Sergeant Bergdahl may have deserted his post, the fact remains he was an American soldier being held hostage by the Taliban. As proponents of the President have successfully argued, would you rather have an American soldier returned home to possibly face justice or would you rather have an American soldier being dealt justice by the Taliban?
For Republicans, that is a question they do not want to have to answer.
It also hasn’t helped Republicans that President Obama has been absolutely resolute in justifying his actions. For someone the right likes to portray as weak and indecisive, President Obama was extremely forceful and persuasive in his defense of everything he and his administration did to procure the release of Sergeant Bergdahl.
His powerful language and his unwavering commitment to returning an American soldier to be reunited with his family has been presidential and has shown those who opposed his decision to be weak and petty. As more and more Republicans flip-flop over their reasons for supporting then condemning the release of Sergeant Bergdahl, President Obama has continued to showcase himself as the only adult in the room by not playing politics with the life of an American soldier.
When all is said and done, we have to ask what do Republicans hope to accomplish with this smear campaign?
In the short run: Exactly that. A smear campaign to score cheap political points. However, just like the government shutdown, the Republican Party has used its blind hatred of our President to fail to see the forest through the trees. When the dust settles, history will look back on this time period and will absolutely rip apart the Republican Party for stooping so low as to attack an American soldier and his family.
The hypocrisy from the right has been staggering and people like John McCain and Lindsey Graham are being made to look like exactly what they are: Foolish, hypocritical, and unpatriotic.
In an effort to jump aboard this smear campaign, the Republican Party and their talking heads in the media have gone past the point of no return and have attacked an American serviceman and his family.
No matter what the outcome of this event is, there can be no denying the utter disrespect that the Republican Party has shown to a man in uniform. It is this watershed moment where the Republican Party’s utter hatred and disdain for our commander-in-chief finally reached a tipping point and led us to a conclusion we never thought possible six years ago:
The Republican Party has decided it will no longer be the party that unanimously supports the American military.
Saturday, June 7, 2014
Demanding information easier than receiving for some GOP lawmakers
Rachel Maddow reviews recent examples of Republican politicians
complaining about a lack of information on issues they claim to care
about and then not going to the briefings where the information they’re
complaining about is being presented.
Thursday, June 5, 2014
A Few Questions to Those Questioning the Prisoner Exchange for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl
The Rude Pundit's gotta be honest: he can't wrap his head around this one. Oh, sure, sure, he can figure out why conservatives would go bugfuck insane over things like Benghazi (dead Americans), Obamacare (living poor Americans), and abortion (freedom for women).
They're dead damn wrong on them and they're wasting everyone's time and money, but there seems to be at least a tincture of logic. Fuck, he can even figure out the brain-damaged logic behind yahoos open-carrying their weapons (in a time of extreme disempowerment of the average person, that person attempts to cling to the accoutrements of power in any way he/she can).
But the idea that something is wrong with negotiating the release of an American soldier held prisoner by the Taliban is just utterly bizarre. Like "Stop beating your head with that fish, Skeeter" weird. It's left the Rude Pundit with a few questions for anyone who thinks there was something hinky about the exchange of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for a quintet of bearded losers.
1. Were we supposed to just leave him there, even with a deal on the table? That's the not-so-subtle implication from so many of the Bergdahl truthers, who believe he deserted and may have worked with his captors. The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol said, "It's one thing to trade terrorists for a real POW, someone who was taken on the battlefield fighting honorably for our country. It's another thing to trade away 5 high-ranking terrorists to someone who walked away." Considering Kristol's record for being wrong about every fucking thing, it more than likely means that Bergdahl ought to be awarded a medal for bravery.
2. Isn't Bergdahl entitled to a trial for any charges of desertion or collaboration? Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey said of the allegations against Bergdahl, "Like any American, he is innocent until proven guilty," but, he asserted, "the questions about this particular soldier’s conduct are separate from our effort to recover ANY U.S. service member in enemy captivity." Yes, it would have been easier just to drone murder the shit out of Bergdahl, but, hey, he's white, and so far that has been a decent way to avoid missile death. But Bergdahl can still be courtmartialed.
You need look no further than another shitty war for proof: Marine Pfc. Robert Garwood was held in Vietnam until 1979. When he was released, he was charged with desertion and aiding the enemy, and he was convicted, despite an insanity plea. (Side note: Garwood's guilt being questioned by a TV-movie caused a certain senator from Arizona to go apeshit on the Senate floor in 1993.)
3. So if we left Bergdahl in Afghanistan because some people are absolutely convinced of his guilt, doesn't that mean he's being sentenced without trial? The Rude Pundit can't figure out this mania on the right to convict people without ever even charging them with a crime. Leaving Bergdahl behind would have set the precedent that we judge, without knowing the truth, who is worthy of being released. How reassuring that would be to soldiers.
4. Isn't it a huge bowlful of hypocrisy stew for Republicans to become whiny titty babies over President Obama finessing the law when the Bush administration fucking redefined things like "torture" and "duties as commander-in-chief" to get around niceties like congressional approval and oversight? Breitbart.com has gone full nutzoid on the Bergdahl release, questioning Obama's actions, quoting Queen Dink herself, Sarah Palin, on the matter.
5. And what's with the Wag-the-Dog shit about the VA scandal? This is another game the right plays with Democratic presidents: every action is done only to distract from what they see as worse shit.
Clinton bombed a place where he thought Osama bin Laden was. The GOP said it was just meant to distract from the Blow Job That Coated the World. Now, Obama is supposed to have started a whole new controversy to divert attention from the problems at the VA. Obviously, Republicans are used to leaders who can't walk and chew gum at the same time. Or, you know, watch TV and eat a pretzel.
At some point, doesn't it get exhausting, Republicans?
Doesn't it get tiresome to have to attack everything, no matter how seemingly goddamn positive?
Is there nothing you have to talk about that isn't merely saying "No" to every "Yes"?
Are you that devoid of purpose?
Because that'd be some hang-yourself-existential-crisis shit right there.
By all means, go ahead - and here's a rope.
Bowe Bergdahl and the Resurgence of Conservative Islamophobia
The debate over the prisoner-swap deal spotlights how anti-Muslim sentiment on the right has actually grown in the last decade.
By
I have some sympathy for critics of President Obama’s decision to trade five Guantanamo prisoners for Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl. At the very least, the White House should have informed Congress beforehand, as required by law. And the administration’s effort to justify that failure by citing a presidential signing statement altering the law’s meaning sounds positively Cheneyesque.
Still, it's disheartening to see that some prominent conservatives are unable to critique the Bergdahl deal without resorting to anti-Muslim bigotry. Bergdahl’s father, an outraged Bill O’Reilly said earlier this week, “looks like a Muslim. He is also somewhat sympathetic to Islam.” Actually, Bob Bergdahl’s untrimmed beard would fit in well in Amish and ultra-Orthodox Jewish circles as well.
But it’s revealing that for O’Reilly, sympathy for “Islam,”—not “Taliban-style Islam” or “radical Islam” but merely “Islam”—is a character flaw.
It’s remarkable, when you think about it. In recent decades, the stigma associated with offensive comments about African Americans has clearly grown. Donald Sterling is banned for the NBA for life for racist comments made in a private conversation.
When it comes to homophobia, the shift has been even more dramatic. The term “faggot”—which was omnipresent and largely uncontroversial in my youth—is becoming as unacceptable as the term “kike.” (The actor Jonah Hill apologized profusely for using “faggot” earlier this week.) Feminists are enjoying success in their “ban bossy” campaign, an effort that would have been unthinkable a decade or two ago.
Attacking someone for “looking like a Muslim,” on the other hand, arouses barely any controversy.
Some liberal blogs condemned O’Reilly’s comments, but it’s unlikely that he will apologize and unthinkable that he’ll resign.
In conservative circles today, in fact, high-profile expressions of anti-Muslim bigotry are as routine as anti-black or anti-Jewish slurs were a half-century ago. In 2011, Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain vowed not to appoint a Muslim to his cabinet. Far from crippling his candidacy, the comment preceded his meteoric (if short-lived) ascent into the lead in national polls. Newt Gingrich traveled the country warning, “I believe Shariah is a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States.”
At its 2012 national convention, the GOP featured a Catholic priest, a rabbi, an evangelical minister, a Sikh, a Greek Orthodox archbishop, and two Mormon leaders but, conspicuously failed to invite an imam.
It’s not just conservative elites. A 2012 poll for the Arab American Institute found that while 29 percent of Democrats hold an “unfavorable” view of Muslims, among Republicans it's 57 percent. In 2013, two researchers at Carnegie Mellon sent out the resumes of a fictitious Christian and Muslim job applicant with the same credentials. In the 10 states where Barack Obama recorded his highest vote percentage, the two applicants received interview requests at the same rate. In the 10 states where Romney did best, by contrast, the Christian applicant was more than eight times more likely to be asked for an interview.
It would be comforting to believe this is merely a holdover from 9/11, and anti-Muslim bigotry will fade as we move further from that trauma. But according to the Arab American Institute poll, Republicans are 17 points more likely to dislike Muslims than they were in 2003 (although the numbers were even higher in 2010). Between 2002 and 2013, according to the Pew Research Center, the percentage of Republicans who said Islam is more likely than other religions to encourage violence rose 29 points.
Even as public tolerance for most other forms of bigotry declines, hostility to Muslims has actually grown, despite the winding down of America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, the rise may be partially due to the end of those wars. After 9/11, George W. Bush told Americans that although we were fighting “bad Muslims” (al-Qaeda) “good Muslims”—who constituted the large majority—would embrace our invasions.
It hasn’t worked out that way. My hunch is that faced with the realization that many Iraqis and Afghans hated America’s occupation of their countries, Democrats have been more likely to blame the U.S. for starting those wars in the first place. According to polls, large majorities of Democrats now see both Iraq and Afghanistan as mistakes. Republicans don’t. For Republicans, I suspect, America’s problems in Iraq and Afghanistan say less about us than about them. They prove that Bush was wrong: Most Muslims really are our enemy. Otherwise, why would they oppose our efforts to make them free?
In 2006, when O’Reilly called for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, he said “the essential problem” is that “there are so many nuts in the country—so many crazies—that we can’t control them.” In other words, America’s problem in Iraq is Iraqis. And virtually the only thing most Americans know about Iraqis, and Afghans, is that they’re Muslim.
Perhaps this explains some of the right-wing venom towards the Bergdahls. Sergeant Bergdahl may have done ill-advised and even reprehensible things. But it appears that he and his father reacted to America’s wartime troubles in Afghanistan not by blaming Afghans but blaming America’s war.
That’s exactly what most conservatives—in their zeal to defend America’s righteousness—have refused to do. And in Bill O’Reilly’s eyes, this willingness to side with America’s enemies casts doubt on the Bergdahl’s character. It makes them almost like Muslims themselves.
By
Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
I have some sympathy for critics of President Obama’s decision to trade five Guantanamo prisoners for Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl. At the very least, the White House should have informed Congress beforehand, as required by law. And the administration’s effort to justify that failure by citing a presidential signing statement altering the law’s meaning sounds positively Cheneyesque.
Still, it's disheartening to see that some prominent conservatives are unable to critique the Bergdahl deal without resorting to anti-Muslim bigotry. Bergdahl’s father, an outraged Bill O’Reilly said earlier this week, “looks like a Muslim. He is also somewhat sympathetic to Islam.” Actually, Bob Bergdahl’s untrimmed beard would fit in well in Amish and ultra-Orthodox Jewish circles as well.
But it’s revealing that for O’Reilly, sympathy for “Islam,”—not “Taliban-style Islam” or “radical Islam” but merely “Islam”—is a character flaw.
It’s remarkable, when you think about it. In recent decades, the stigma associated with offensive comments about African Americans has clearly grown. Donald Sterling is banned for the NBA for life for racist comments made in a private conversation.
When it comes to homophobia, the shift has been even more dramatic. The term “faggot”—which was omnipresent and largely uncontroversial in my youth—is becoming as unacceptable as the term “kike.” (The actor Jonah Hill apologized profusely for using “faggot” earlier this week.) Feminists are enjoying success in their “ban bossy” campaign, an effort that would have been unthinkable a decade or two ago.
Attacking someone for “looking like a Muslim,” on the other hand, arouses barely any controversy.
Some liberal blogs condemned O’Reilly’s comments, but it’s unlikely that he will apologize and unthinkable that he’ll resign.
In conservative circles today, in fact, high-profile expressions of anti-Muslim bigotry are as routine as anti-black or anti-Jewish slurs were a half-century ago. In 2011, Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain vowed not to appoint a Muslim to his cabinet. Far from crippling his candidacy, the comment preceded his meteoric (if short-lived) ascent into the lead in national polls. Newt Gingrich traveled the country warning, “I believe Shariah is a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States.”
At its 2012 national convention, the GOP featured a Catholic priest, a rabbi, an evangelical minister, a Sikh, a Greek Orthodox archbishop, and two Mormon leaders but, conspicuously failed to invite an imam.
It’s not just conservative elites. A 2012 poll for the Arab American Institute found that while 29 percent of Democrats hold an “unfavorable” view of Muslims, among Republicans it's 57 percent. In 2013, two researchers at Carnegie Mellon sent out the resumes of a fictitious Christian and Muslim job applicant with the same credentials. In the 10 states where Barack Obama recorded his highest vote percentage, the two applicants received interview requests at the same rate. In the 10 states where Romney did best, by contrast, the Christian applicant was more than eight times more likely to be asked for an interview.
It would be comforting to believe this is merely a holdover from 9/11, and anti-Muslim bigotry will fade as we move further from that trauma. But according to the Arab American Institute poll, Republicans are 17 points more likely to dislike Muslims than they were in 2003 (although the numbers were even higher in 2010). Between 2002 and 2013, according to the Pew Research Center, the percentage of Republicans who said Islam is more likely than other religions to encourage violence rose 29 points.
Even as public tolerance for most other forms of bigotry declines, hostility to Muslims has actually grown, despite the winding down of America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, the rise may be partially due to the end of those wars. After 9/11, George W. Bush told Americans that although we were fighting “bad Muslims” (al-Qaeda) “good Muslims”—who constituted the large majority—would embrace our invasions.
It hasn’t worked out that way. My hunch is that faced with the realization that many Iraqis and Afghans hated America’s occupation of their countries, Democrats have been more likely to blame the U.S. for starting those wars in the first place. According to polls, large majorities of Democrats now see both Iraq and Afghanistan as mistakes. Republicans don’t. For Republicans, I suspect, America’s problems in Iraq and Afghanistan say less about us than about them. They prove that Bush was wrong: Most Muslims really are our enemy. Otherwise, why would they oppose our efforts to make them free?
In 2006, when O’Reilly called for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, he said “the essential problem” is that “there are so many nuts in the country—so many crazies—that we can’t control them.” In other words, America’s problem in Iraq is Iraqis. And virtually the only thing most Americans know about Iraqis, and Afghans, is that they’re Muslim.
Perhaps this explains some of the right-wing venom towards the Bergdahls. Sergeant Bergdahl may have done ill-advised and even reprehensible things. But it appears that he and his father reacted to America’s wartime troubles in Afghanistan not by blaming Afghans but blaming America’s war.
That’s exactly what most conservatives—in their zeal to defend America’s righteousness—have refused to do. And in Bill O’Reilly’s eyes, this willingness to side with America’s enemies casts doubt on the Bergdahl’s character. It makes them almost like Muslims themselves.
GOP fast-track sending jobs overseas through TPP
Republican leaders have made it clear that they support fast-tracking
the Trans-Pacific Partnership, sending U.S. jobs overseas. Ed Schultz,
Larry Cohen and Rep. Peter DeFazio discuss.
Tuesday, June 3, 2014
Panera Removing All Additives from Menu
By
Panera announced Tuesday that it will remove all artificial additives
from its menu by 2016 as restaurant chains race to lure customers with
the promise of more natural products. Panera has made conscientious food
choices central to its brand in recent years.
The restaurant-café chain will remove all artificial additives from
its menu by 2016, the company announced Tuesday. That means no dyes, no
preservatives, and no artificial sweeteners in any Panera
restaurant-café offerings.
“We believe simpler is better,” Scott Davis, chief concept officer, said in the statement announcing the changes. “Panera is on a mission to help fix a broken food system. We have a long journey ahead, but we’re working closely with the nutrition community, industry experts, farmers, suppliers and others to make a difference.”
Panera also released a list of menu items that will have additives removed, including:
Panera has made being at the forefront of food industry changes central to its brand in recent years, perhaps sensing an increased public awareness and concern about what goes into a meal. It was among the first restaurants to post calorie counts on its menus, well before doing so became mandatory for large, national chains.
Today’s additives announcement was part of a larger “food policy” released by the chain, which outlines its commitment to an array of causes that food activists and conscientious eaters hold dear, including meat raised without antibiotics and sustainable fishing and farming.
Panera’s additive purge is just the latest move in an arms race among food companies, especially quick-service restaurants, to convince an ingredient-conscious public that they have their best interests at heart.
Subway recently removed a controversial preservative from its sandwich bread, a move it broadcast loudly in national TV commercials. Chick-fil-A made a series of highly publicized menu tweaks early this year, removing artificial dyes from some of its dipping sauces and committing to a switch to antibiotic-free chicken within the next five years.
Panera going whole hog in the additive issue and combining it with an overarching menu philosophy makes those smaller moves look, well, small. “We’ve never been about one-off reactionary changes,” Ms. Antonacci writes. “Rather, for decades, we have worked to provide our customers with food they can trust and transparency that allows them to make choices.”
It puts Panera more in line with Chipotle, which advertises its use of “naturally raised” pork, and a commitment to have its menu free of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) “to the fullest extent possible," in CEO Steve Ells’s words.
Panera will remove all additives from its menu by 2016. Take that, Subway.
Panera announced Tuesday that it will remove all artificial additives
from its menu by 2016 as restaurant chains race to lure customers with
the promise of more natural products. Panera has made conscientious food
choices central to its brand in recent years.
Krista
Johnson passes an order to a customer at a Panera store in Brookline,
Mass. Panera on Tuesday, June 3, 2014 announced it will remove
artificial colors, flavors, sweeteners, and preservatives from its food
by 2016, a reflection of the growing distaste people are showing for
such ingredients. Charles Krupa/AP/File
Until now, the food industry’s response to growing public clamor over
unnatural chemicals in its food has been incremental: A bread additive
removed here, a dye in a sports drink replaced there. Panera, on the
other hand, is going big where others have gone small.
“We believe simpler is better,” Scott Davis, chief concept officer, said in the statement announcing the changes. “Panera is on a mission to help fix a broken food system. We have a long journey ahead, but we’re working closely with the nutrition community, industry experts, farmers, suppliers and others to make a difference.”
Panera also released a list of menu items that will have additives removed, including:
Deli smoked turkey: potassium lactate, sodium phosphate, sodium erythorbate, sodium nitrite, and sodium diacetate.
Horseradish: calcium disodium EDTA
Citrus Pepper Chicken: maltodextrin, potassium lactate
Cilantro Jalapeño Hummus: ascorbic acid and tocopherol, tara gum, carrageenan, potassium sorbate, and sodium benzoate
Summer corn chowder: tapioca Dextrin, modified corn starch, autolyzed yeast extract, maltodextrin, coconut oil derived from triglycerides, artificial flavors
Roast beef: caramel color“Some items may disappear, but what is more likely to happen is for items to be reformulated,” Kate Antonacci, Panera’s director of societal impact initiatives, writes the Monitor via e-mail.
Panera has made being at the forefront of food industry changes central to its brand in recent years, perhaps sensing an increased public awareness and concern about what goes into a meal. It was among the first restaurants to post calorie counts on its menus, well before doing so became mandatory for large, national chains.
Today’s additives announcement was part of a larger “food policy” released by the chain, which outlines its commitment to an array of causes that food activists and conscientious eaters hold dear, including meat raised without antibiotics and sustainable fishing and farming.
Panera’s additive purge is just the latest move in an arms race among food companies, especially quick-service restaurants, to convince an ingredient-conscious public that they have their best interests at heart.
Subway recently removed a controversial preservative from its sandwich bread, a move it broadcast loudly in national TV commercials. Chick-fil-A made a series of highly publicized menu tweaks early this year, removing artificial dyes from some of its dipping sauces and committing to a switch to antibiotic-free chicken within the next five years.
Panera going whole hog in the additive issue and combining it with an overarching menu philosophy makes those smaller moves look, well, small. “We’ve never been about one-off reactionary changes,” Ms. Antonacci writes. “Rather, for decades, we have worked to provide our customers with food they can trust and transparency that allows them to make choices.”
It puts Panera more in line with Chipotle, which advertises its use of “naturally raised” pork, and a commitment to have its menu free of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) “to the fullest extent possible," in CEO Steve Ells’s words.
Monday, June 2, 2014
The Science of Knowing Who We Really Are
More ancestry testing leads people to discover a mixed bag of racial roots.
By Julie Walker
“I think we probably are cousins, just somebody someplace wasn’t so truthful about it,” Carpenter says.
Welcome to the new world of sophisticated DNA testing, where anyone with motivation, money and some free time can take part. This week, Carpenter and about 300 other people interested in genealogy came out for a panel discussion at the New-York Historical Society as part of the World Science Festival.
“It’s All Relatives: The Science of Your Family Tree,” was inspired by the PBS series Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Of the desire to find ancestral roots, Gates says: “I think it’s because people feel so insecure with all the changes of post modernity, including the economic crisis, the crisis of cultures and of religions. I think people take comfort in identifying their own roots ... and I think that makes you more secure in the world.”
There is a case to be made for connecting with our past and our ancestors, which is how panelist CeCe Moore became involved. She calls herself a “citizen scientist” and also appears in Finding Your Roots.
The big discovery for her family was that her brother-in-law, who thought his ancestry was Native American, is actually descended from Sally Hemings, the slave with whom President Thomas Jefferson had six children. It was a pivotal moment not only for her, but also for her blond-haired, blue-eyed niece, “who was excited to find out she was ‘black’,” says Moore. She sees a trend in the field of more “citizen scientists” getting involved and helping to expand the research.
Panelists were able to participate in an on-site genealogy study called ADAPT. It is the brainchild of geneticist Mark D. Shriver of Pennsylvania State University. He uses high-tech imaging to extrapolate genetic inheritance information based on facial features, skin color and hair texture.
Shriver says the line of inquiry is important “because we need a better idea of how genes and the environment affect these traits.” While his study will help predict the faces of our ancestors, it also has practical applications such as helping in forensic investigations.
Panel moderator and broadcast journalist Randall Pinkston was tested using ADAPT. “I’m looking forward to the results of my face,” said Pinkston. Beyond that, he said, it is important for more African Americans to discover their family trees, especially now that so much of the information is available online.
“I think these kinds of events and this kind of knowledge is important so that we can become more concerned about our history,” he told The Root. “I have been concerned for decades about the failure of people to carry on family names. Not only that, but to make up names that may be meaningful to the parent at the time but that have no connection to anything in that family’s history. So, 100 years from now, you can’t figure out who was this child’s grandparents.”
Doris Withers was one of the few blacks in the audience. The 70-year-old said her mother began chronicling their family tree at least 30 years ago through the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Now, Withers is expanding on that research by incorporating genetic testing. She said she has used several DNA companies including Ancestry.com, 23andMe and African Ancestry, and found they all gave her similar results.
Cathy Ball, lead geneticist for Ancestry.com says differences in results among consumer companies that offer genetic predicting “are all about the algorithms and the underlying reference data used to make the predictions.” That is because the science is so advanced that “there is no true litmus test” that can pinpoint an exact percentage.
For many such as Withers and Carpenter, today's costs are money well spent.
“The more we know that we’re not who we think we are, the better off we are,” Carpenter says. “The more we understand that this is one pretty small world in the global scheme of things, the more we’re related, I think that’s fabulous.”
By Julie Walker
For nearly all of her life, Kathleen Carpenter had thought of herself
as white, specifically, one-quarter German and three-quarters from the
British Isles. But, after doing an Ancestry.com DNA test, the
70-year-old New Yorker now has an entirely new history that includes
some North African DNA.
In addition, her brother’s test showed a small percentage of West African DNA. Then came the Ancestry.com message from a black woman who also was using the website to search her roots: They were most likely cousins.
In addition, her brother’s test showed a small percentage of West African DNA. Then came the Ancestry.com message from a black woman who also was using the website to search her roots: They were most likely cousins.
“I think we probably are cousins, just somebody someplace wasn’t so truthful about it,” Carpenter says.
Welcome to the new world of sophisticated DNA testing, where anyone with motivation, money and some free time can take part. This week, Carpenter and about 300 other people interested in genealogy came out for a panel discussion at the New-York Historical Society as part of the World Science Festival.
“It’s All Relatives: The Science of Your Family Tree,” was inspired by the PBS series Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Of the desire to find ancestral roots, Gates says: “I think it’s because people feel so insecure with all the changes of post modernity, including the economic crisis, the crisis of cultures and of religions. I think people take comfort in identifying their own roots ... and I think that makes you more secure in the world.”
There is a case to be made for connecting with our past and our ancestors, which is how panelist CeCe Moore became involved. She calls herself a “citizen scientist” and also appears in Finding Your Roots.
The big discovery for her family was that her brother-in-law, who thought his ancestry was Native American, is actually descended from Sally Hemings, the slave with whom President Thomas Jefferson had six children. It was a pivotal moment not only for her, but also for her blond-haired, blue-eyed niece, “who was excited to find out she was ‘black’,” says Moore. She sees a trend in the field of more “citizen scientists” getting involved and helping to expand the research.
Panelists Mark D. Shriver, Brenna Henn, CeCe Moore, Catherine Ball,
and Randall Pinkston at the World Science Festival in NYC, May 29, 2014.
Christopher Farber for World Science Festival
Christopher Farber for World Science Festival
Panelists were able to participate in an on-site genealogy study called ADAPT. It is the brainchild of geneticist Mark D. Shriver of Pennsylvania State University. He uses high-tech imaging to extrapolate genetic inheritance information based on facial features, skin color and hair texture.
Shriver says the line of inquiry is important “because we need a better idea of how genes and the environment affect these traits.” While his study will help predict the faces of our ancestors, it also has practical applications such as helping in forensic investigations.
Panel moderator and broadcast journalist Randall Pinkston was tested using ADAPT. “I’m looking forward to the results of my face,” said Pinkston. Beyond that, he said, it is important for more African Americans to discover their family trees, especially now that so much of the information is available online.
“I think these kinds of events and this kind of knowledge is important so that we can become more concerned about our history,” he told The Root. “I have been concerned for decades about the failure of people to carry on family names. Not only that, but to make up names that may be meaningful to the parent at the time but that have no connection to anything in that family’s history. So, 100 years from now, you can’t figure out who was this child’s grandparents.”
Doris Withers was one of the few blacks in the audience. The 70-year-old said her mother began chronicling their family tree at least 30 years ago through the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Now, Withers is expanding on that research by incorporating genetic testing. She said she has used several DNA companies including Ancestry.com, 23andMe and African Ancestry, and found they all gave her similar results.
Cathy Ball, lead geneticist for Ancestry.com says differences in results among consumer companies that offer genetic predicting “are all about the algorithms and the underlying reference data used to make the predictions.” That is because the science is so advanced that “there is no true litmus test” that can pinpoint an exact percentage.
Ball adds that while technology has vastly improved over the years,
she believes that even more significant advances will be achieved in the
not-too-distant-future. There is also a hope that the cost of genetic
testing will continue to decrease; today, a basic genealogy test costs
about $100. Fifteen years ago, the price was thousands of dollars.
For many such as Withers and Carpenter, today's costs are money well spent.
“The more we know that we’re not who we think we are, the better off we are,” Carpenter says. “The more we understand that this is one pretty small world in the global scheme of things, the more we’re related, I think that’s fabulous.”
Thursday, May 29, 2014
Mitch McConnell’s ACA problem
The Affordable Care Act is working in Kentucky, but Mitch McConell is vehemently opposed to it. So, how to campaign on a losing battle?
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Joe Scarborough Finally Appears On Fox Where He Belongs
By Heather
When I saw that Joe Scarborough was appearing on Fox's The Kelly File, my first thoughts were please lord someone tell me he's found a new home there. Sadly he was just there to push his new book and talk over Megyn Kelly, since his regular co-host Mika Brzezinski wasn't around to put up with his abuse as she does every morning.
Apparently Scarborough isn't quite "conservative" enough to suit the right because he hasn't fully embraced every wingnut talking head on Faux "news" and right-wing hate talker and he's dared to occasionally go against some of the talking points they're all repeating day in and day out.
From Fox's blog: Megyn Kelly to Joe Scarborough: How Can You Be a Conservative If You’re At War With GOP Icons?:
MSNBC host Joe Scarborough looked right at home on
Fox's The Kelly File, where he was pushing his new book this Tuesday
night.
When I saw that Joe Scarborough was appearing on Fox's The Kelly File, my first thoughts were please lord someone tell me he's found a new home there. Sadly he was just there to push his new book and talk over Megyn Kelly, since his regular co-host Mika Brzezinski wasn't around to put up with his abuse as she does every morning.
Apparently Scarborough isn't quite "conservative" enough to suit the right because he hasn't fully embraced every wingnut talking head on Faux "news" and right-wing hate talker and he's dared to occasionally go against some of the talking points they're all repeating day in and day out.
From Fox's blog: Megyn Kelly to Joe Scarborough: How Can You Be a Conservative If You’re At War With GOP Icons?:
Megyn Kelly tonight took on MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, asking him how he would react to Republicans that think he’s a “faux conservative.”
“We had 10 years of big government Republicanism, and what people found out was after the Bush years that big government Republicanism was as bad as big government liberalism, and I was always critical of the Republican establishment,” Scarborough said.
“How can you be a true conservative if […] you’re at war with so many of the conservative icons?” Kelly asked, citing Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh.
Scarborough said he’s not at war with them, and that he has consistently been a small government conservative.
“I’m conservative when Republicans are in the White House. I’m conservative when Democrats are in the White House,” he said.
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