Director Spike Lee is criticizing Quentin Tarantino's new film, "Django Unchained," an homage to spaghetti Westerns, set in the antebellum South. Lee has critiqued Tarantino's use of racial slurs before, and now believes this latest film is "disrespectful" to his ancestors. Michael Eric Dyson explains.
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Tagg Romney tells why Mitt lost the presidency
MSNBC contributor Jonathan Capehart and Republican strategist Susan Del Percio
discuss revelations – coming from eldest Romney son, Tagg – that their
candidate-dad may not have been that interested in the job.
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Sam Donaldson To Tea Partiers: “It’s Not Your Country Anymore”
By Alan Colmes
“It’s our country,” not yours, says former ABC star Sam Donaldson.
“It’s the Tea Party and thinking of the Tea Party and people like that that are driving the Republicans out of contention as a national party,” he said.
Donaldson said that he had a particular aversion to the campaign slogan “We want to take back our country.”
“Guys, it’s not your country anymore – it’s our country and you’re part of it, but that thinking is going to defeat Republicans nationally if they don’t get rid of it,” he said.
“It’s our country,” not yours, says former ABC star Sam Donaldson.
“It’s the Tea Party and thinking of the Tea Party and people like that that are driving the Republicans out of contention as a national party,” he said.
Donaldson said that he had a particular aversion to the campaign slogan “We want to take back our country.”
“Guys, it’s not your country anymore – it’s our country and you’re part of it, but that thinking is going to defeat Republicans nationally if they don’t get rid of it,” he said.
PlayStation Vita: the progress and the plan
Sorry that it’s been a while since I’ve said anything about the Vita. I was caught by surprise the last time of all the media attention from just a simple call for help. While I still don’t want to say too much right now, I do want to answer some common questions I’ve been getting and also go over what needs to be done.
If this is news to you, please read this interview I’ve done a while ago about it.
Did you hack the Vita? That’s a very vague question. What I have done, is run native code on the Vita with the same permissions as the game being exploited. This means I can load homebrews written and optimized for the Vita’s CPU and take full advantage of the CPU speed and RAM (unlike the PSP emulator or PSM, both impose artificial limits on resources and system functions). What has NOT been done (yet) is unlocking the system completely for tasks like USB interfacing, custom themes/system mods/plugins, and (fortunately) pirating games.
What’s UVLoader and how far along is it? The last I’ve spoken, I was beginning work on UVL and asked for any help I could get. Even though, I did not really get help, I did find people who were interested in what I was doing and we exchanged information. I also want to brag that I finished the main functionalities of UVL in a couple of weeks, and it has been “done” for about three months now. (Quotes around “done” because I decided to not worry about some features yet). That means, I can basically load most (most being the few that I manually built without an open sdk) compiled homebrews. You can run your standard hello worlds and spinning cubes and such, but in theory, it should load any homebrew built.
When’s the release? What’s taking so long? So as I’ve said, the loader was done three months ago. I have a couple of reasons for not releasing yet. The main reason is that currently, there is no open SDK for compiling and linking Vita homebrew like pspsdk did for the PSP. That means, even with the loader, it would be useless for users because there are no homebrew games, emulators, etc to run, and it would be useless for developers because they can’t build homebrews either. So what’s the progress on the open sdk? Zero, as I’m typing this right now. I have an idea of what it should look like and I spoke to a couple of people who are interested in helping, but so far, no code is written. Why is that? Because for me, I am very busy with lots of other unrelated things, and unfortunately, only me and a handful of other people know enough about the device and the executable format and etc to make the open sdk and none of us have the time currently.
The second reason is that having a Vita exploit at this stage (when it is really hard to find exploits) is very rare if not a once in a lifetime thing. Me and others I’ve talked to agree that right now it’s more important to use this exploit to gather more information about the system in order to find more exploits and such than it is to run homebrews right now. We have PSM for homebrew games and PSP emulator for homebrew emulators, so there really isn’t a huge demand for native PSVita homebrews yet. As I’ll expand on below, we’ve only scratched the surface of Vita hacking and there’s so much more to see.
Are you looking for testers/can I test UVLoader? There’s no need to “test” UVLoader right now because, as I’ve stated before, there isn’t any compiled homebrew and nothing to compile them anyways. Yes, UVL works with some of the custom still I’ve built manually, but it is unwise to write complex stuff without a working SDK.
Can I help? Depends who you are. If you’re an established reverse engineer, you know how to contact me. If you just want to “beta test,” read above. If you know any other way of helping me, don’t ask, just do it™, since UVL is open source. Even though I don’t accept monetary donations before I release anything, if you have access to broken Vitas, memory cards, games, etc, or any unused hardware reversing tools like logic analyzers; anything you wouldn’t mind parting with, one of the things me and others involved don’t have access to is funds for materials to test some of the more… risky ideas and if you could help with that respect, just use the contact link at the top of the page to get in touch with me.
What needs to be done to “hack” the Vita? Again, that term is very vague, but I know what you mean. This is the perfect time to describe (as far as I know) the Vita’s security structure and what needs to be done at each level.
PSP emulator
I’ll start with the PSP emulator just because that is what’s “hacked” right now. How much control do you have of the Vita when you use vHBL? Almost none. On the PSP itself, games are “sandboxed” (meaning some other process tells it what functions of the PSP can be used by the current game, main thing being that one game can’t load another game). Because the Vita emulates the PSP, it also emulates this structure.PSP kernel
One level up, we have “kernel exploits” on the PSP, which means that we are no longer limited to what functions of the PSP we can use. Any PSP function that is emulated by the Vita can be used, that’s why you see ISO loading as the main thing. However, all of this, the PSP emulator, sits in the Vita game sandbox. This sandbox is just like the PSP one, in that another Vita process tells the game (in this case, the PSP emulator running some PSP game) what Vita functions can be used in a similar fashion. For example, if a game doesn’t explicitly declare that it’s going to use the camera or bluetooth (and Sony approves), any code that tries to use these functions will crash.Vita userland
This is where UVLoader works; we exploited some game to run code inside it’s sandbox, meaning that if that game doesn’t have camera functions, no UVLoader Vita homebrew can use the camera either. This also means, of course, we can’t load pirated Vita games and so on. A fun fact here is that, in theory, if someone finds an exploit in Kermit, the system inside the PSP emulator that talks to the Vita through a virtual serial port, they can run UVLoader in the process hosting the emulator (one level higher than a PSP kernel exploit), meaning they may be able to modify the emulator to have more RAM or faster CPU or etc. Another advantage of running UVLoader here is that because the PSP emulator has access to more Vita hardware than most games (bluetooth, camera, etc), homebrews could have more access too.However, it’s easier said than done. It’s hard to appreciate how hard it is to get a Vita userland exploit. Let’s work backwards: we want to somehow run native ARM code, how? Well, the classic route is some stack smash. But wait, modern ARM processors have XN (eXecute Never), which is a feature that only allow code in memory to run at specific locations (these locations are determined by the kernel and are read only). Ok, we have some other choices here: heap overflows, ROP (google if you don’t know), and so on (assuming you even know you got a working exploit, which in itself is hard to know without additional information; most “crashes” are useless), but all of these choices require that you know enough about the system to create a payload fitted for the system. That means, you need either a memory sniffer or somehow dump the memory. Well, let’s rule out hardware memory sniffing since the Vita has the RAM on the same system-on-a-chip as the CPU. How do we dump the memory then? Usually, you need to run some code to dump the memory or do some kind of oracle attack on crashes or error messages or something. Option one only works if we hacked the system before, and the second one, AFAIK, won’t work because the Vita doesn’t give any information when it crashes. So how did I get the first userland exploit? I’ll leave that as an exercise to the reader…
Vita kernel (lv2?)
Vita userland is the most we have access right now and PSP kernel mode is the most that is public. What comes after? Remember all information at this point could be wrong and is based off of the little evidence I have currently. We are in the Vita sandbox right now, which means we can run homebrew, but we can’t use functions that the game doesn’t use (camera, bluetooth, USB, etc). We also can’t modify the system (run Linux, change the theme, add plugins, etc). For those to work, we need to go one level up: the Vita kernel, which might be called lv2. Even with complete userland access, we can’t even poke at the kernel. The kernel acts like a black box, providing functions to the system through syscalls. You pass input into these syscalls and it returns some output, without revealing how the output is created. The kernel’s memory is separate from userland obviously, and even guessing what syscalls do (there’s no names in the memory, only numbers) is a challenge. In order to hack the kernel, we have a problem that is very much like the one I’ve stated above about getting Vita userland, except with even more limitations. Again, there’s the circular problem of needing a kernel RAM dump to inspect for exploits and requiring a kernel exploit to dump the RAM. Now, there’s even less “places” to inspect (visually and programmatically). In order of likelihood, one of the following needs to happen before there’s even a CHANCE of a kernel exploit: 1) Sony does something stupid like the PS3 keys leak, 2) we get REALLY lucky and basically stumble upon an exploit by just testing one of the several hundreds of syscalls with one of an infinite amount of different inputs, 3) some information leaks out from Sony HQ.It’s still unknown how much control we would have if kernel mode is compromised, but me and some others think that we MAY at least be able to do something like a homebrew enabler (HEN) that patches signature checks temporarily until reboot, allowing for homebrews with no sandbox limitations (access to camera, BT, etc) and POSSIBILITY system plugins and themes. It is very unlikely at any keys will be found at this point or being able to create or run a CFW.
Hypervisor? (lv1?)
At this point, it is purely a thought experiment, as we literally have no information beyond what we THINK the kernel does. It is highly possible that there is a hypervisor that makes sure everything running is signed and the kernel isn’t acting up and such. Getting to this would be EVEN HARDER than getting kernel, which I already think is impossible. Even at kernel, it seems to be over my skill limit, but this would definitely be above me, and someone with real skills would have to attack this. I’m thinking at least, decaps will have to be attempted here. If somehow this gets hacked, we may be able to run CFWs, but like the PS3 before the lv0, newer firmwares would not be able to be CFW’d until…Bootloader? (lv0?)
Again, only conjecture at this point, but this is the holy grail, the final boss. Once this is compromised, the Vita would be “hacked” in every sense of the word. We may never get here (and by never, I mean maybe 5-10 years, but I would most likely not be working on the Vita at this point). Here’s is where I think the keys are stored. With this compromised, CFW of any past, present, or future firmwares could be created, and anything would be possible.Summary
I guess to summarize, the reason there’s no release in the foreseeable future isn’t just because I don’t have time to make an sdk so there won’t be homebrews to use even if UVL is released. Even if the SDK does get done, at this point, it would be more attractive to use the control we currently have, double down, and try to get more control. If the exploit is revealed prematurely, getting the game pulled, and the firmware patched, sure we may get a fast N64 emulator in a couple of months when somebody has the chance to write it (and at that point, most people might be enticed to upgrade anyways for new firmware features and PSN access), but we will have to start at square one (read above about finding userland exploits) before having another chance at exploring the full potential of the system. Deep down, I am a researcher, and would have more interest in reversing the system than I would at making a release for users just so I could be the “first”. Like all gambles, I may end up with nothing, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take.Monday, December 24, 2012
Lindsey Graham Continues His Hostage Taking Threats on the Debt Ceiling
By Heather
Here we go again with Lindsey Graham continuing to threaten to use the debt ceiling to inflict pain on the working class, or as he calls it, "saving Social Security and Medicare." Graham made this exact same threat almost a year ago where he was a little more specific about his plans for our social safety nets.
Lindsey Graham: Don't Allow Debt Ceiling to Be Raised Without Cuts and Means Testing for Social Security
Here he was on the same show, Meet the Press, again telling David Gregory that we should risk the full faith and credit of the United States of America if Democrats won't give him his pound of flesh from our senior citizens:
Chuck Schumer responded by reminding the viewers just how reckless Graham's remarks are and by reiterating that President Obama is not going to allow what happened the last time around to happen again. That apparently has had zero affect on Graham who is still going to go out there and stomp his feet and make ridiculous comparisons to Greece to try to scare the public, when the ones they ought to be afraid of are Graham and his fellow Republicans who are determined to continue to destroy what's left of the middle class in America and to shred every one of our social safety nets for the most vulnerable among us.
Graham feigns concern over the budget deficit now, but he never has those same concerns back when Bush was blowing mile wide holes in it with tax cuts for the rich and invading a couple of countries which he refused to put on the books. Graham's solutions never seem to include any military spending, since that's apparently the only jobs program that Republicans like -- putting military contractors to work.
Here we go again with Lindsey Graham continuing to threaten to use the debt ceiling to inflict pain on the working class, or as he calls it, "saving Social Security and Medicare." Graham made this exact same threat almost a year ago where he was a little more specific about his plans for our social safety nets.
Lindsey Graham: Don't Allow Debt Ceiling to Be Raised Without Cuts and Means Testing for Social Security
Here he was on the same show, Meet the Press, again telling David Gregory that we should risk the full faith and credit of the United States of America if Democrats won't give him his pound of flesh from our senior citizens:
GREGORY: Sen. Graham, the question for you is could you vote for a bill that extended tax cuts for $250 thousand and below, extended unemployment insurance as the President wants to do and in some way delays some of these automatic spending cuts? Could you vote for that in the short term?
GRAHAM: No. If you want leaders, then you have to lead and the President's been a pathetic fiscal leader. He's produced three budgets and can't get one vote for any of his budgets. You know, Boehner will be Tip O'Neill. Obama needs to be Ronald Reagan and here's what I would vote for. I would vote for revenues, including tax rate hikes, even though I don't like them to get a... to save the country from becoming Greece.
But I'm not going to set aside the $1.2 trillion in cuts. Any hope of going over the fiscal cliff must start in the Senate. Not one Democrat would support the idea that we could protect 99 percent of Americans from a tax increase. Boehner's Plan B I thought made sense. To my Republican colleagues, the Ronald Reagan model is that if you get 80 percent of what you want, that's a pretty good day. We have the same objective of lowering taxes. I like Simpson-Bowles. Eliminate deductions, lower rates, put money on the debt. Tax rate hikes are a partisan solution driven by the President, but he's going to get tax rate hikes. […]
There will not be a big deal. The big chance for a big deal is with the debt ceiling. That's when we will have leverage to turn the country around, prevent it from becoming Greece and save Social Security and Medicare. And anybody listening to this program, I will raise the debt ceiling only if we save Medicare and Social Security from insolvency and prevent this country from becoming Greece. No more borrowing without addressing why we're in debt to begin with. That's where the real chance for change occurs, at the debt ceiling debate.
Chuck Schumer responded by reminding the viewers just how reckless Graham's remarks are and by reiterating that President Obama is not going to allow what happened the last time around to happen again. That apparently has had zero affect on Graham who is still going to go out there and stomp his feet and make ridiculous comparisons to Greece to try to scare the public, when the ones they ought to be afraid of are Graham and his fellow Republicans who are determined to continue to destroy what's left of the middle class in America and to shred every one of our social safety nets for the most vulnerable among us.
Graham feigns concern over the budget deficit now, but he never has those same concerns back when Bush was blowing mile wide holes in it with tax cuts for the rich and invading a couple of countries which he refused to put on the books. Graham's solutions never seem to include any military spending, since that's apparently the only jobs program that Republicans like -- putting military contractors to work.
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Two Republican Debacles in 12 Hours
By Taegan Goddard
John Dickerson notes Republicans had two major setbacks in rapid succession: Speaker John Boehner's failed "Plan B" to avert the fiscal cliff and the NRA's embarrassing press conference.
"The Republican Party is in a rebuilding mode after its 2012 election loss. These two events--a defiant NRA and an incompetent leadership--cannot be the face of confrontation the GOP wants to show the public on high-profile issues. Tea Party activists and gun owners are a key part of the party base. But these public acts are out of sync with the moment and completely at odds with party's need to widen its membership."
Joe Conason: What Americans should learn from the "Republican apocalypse."
John Dickerson notes Republicans had two major setbacks in rapid succession: Speaker John Boehner's failed "Plan B" to avert the fiscal cliff and the NRA's embarrassing press conference.
"The Republican Party is in a rebuilding mode after its 2012 election loss. These two events--a defiant NRA and an incompetent leadership--cannot be the face of confrontation the GOP wants to show the public on high-profile issues. Tea Party activists and gun owners are a key part of the party base. But these public acts are out of sync with the moment and completely at odds with party's need to widen its membership."
Joe Conason: What Americans should learn from the "Republican apocalypse."
Saturday, December 22, 2012
NRA's Wayne LaPierre Is A Desperate, Cornered Rat
One week after the deadly massacre at Sandy Hook
Elementary School, the head of the NRA spoke in Washington. His plan for more
school safety is more guns in schools. MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell offers his
take.When Gun Nuts Write Gun Laws, Nuts Have Guns
By Tom Scocca
Read more coverage about gun control in
Slate.
So this is what Wayne LaPierre came up with, with a week to reflect on the news that a law-abiding gun owner's legally purchased rifle, in the hands of her firearm-trained son, had been used to slaughter 20 kids: more guns, more law-abiding gun owners, more more more lead-spraying death machinery, more killing to stop the killers until all the killers have been killed. Only when we have eliminated the threat of "gun-free school zones," the danger and horror of children going through a school day unsurrounded by the implements of death, will we all feel safe.
People who live in the world of causes and effects and verifiable truths, the world the NRA has long since abandoned, had no trouble pointing out the flaws in LaPierre's analysis—the fact, for instance, that there had been an armed deputy sheriff on duty at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999.
Around the time LaPierre was speaking, someone in Pennsylvania was shooting another batch of people, including armed state troopers.
Guns kill people. More guns kill more people. What the NRA gets wrong—intentionally or delusionally or, in the psychologically and financially profitable zone where intention and delusion overlap—is its bedrock premise: that gun killings are the work of Bad Guys, predators whose drive to hurt and steal and kill cannot be stopped by anything but a brave Good Guy armed with a powerful firearm and, not at all incidentally, trained through an NRA-backed firearms-training program.
And the NRA insists that these people—"the monsters and the predators," as LaPierre put it—will not be thwarted by gun control, except in the funny T-shirt both-hands-on-my-weapon sense. The next Adam Lanza is already picking out his target, LaPierre said.
That's because the next Adam Lanza is almost certainly able to get his hands on a weapon to point at that target. The original Adam Lanza was apparently too confused and low-functioning to navigate Connecticut's simple waiting period and buy one for himself. But his mother, a gun enthusiast in good standing, had a stock of her own. She reportedly had wanted to feel safe.
So Wayne LaPierre wants to talk about "evil," because evil is elemental and intractable. Evil is part of the human condition. You cannot legislate away evil.
Let's leave the darkest recesses of the soul for a second. Two days before the Connecticut massacre, this happened:
This is not unknowable wickedness. It's banal teenage rage and stupidity, amplified by a gun. That's what everyday gun crime is—fleeting moments of thoughtless viciousness, made permanent with the wiggle of a finger. The Jovan Belcher murder-suicide was an ugly domestic argument; Belcher's gun collection turned it lethal. Maybe, as the gun enthusiasts argue, he might have resorted to using a knife or a club. But that's a less likely result. And even if it did happen, it would be less likely to be fatal.
In Australia, gun violence decreased markedly after the implementation of strict gun control measures. In Bogota, the number of deaths by firearm is reportedly down 58 percent, after the mayor banned public possession of guns. Take away instant, easy death-dealing, and the death rate drops.
LaPierre does not live in the realm of probabilities and harm reduction. He lives in a sick, paranoid universe where guns substitute for law, custom, and morality. Here he is, describing the country as he sees it, a place that teeters on the brink of collapse because of our national softness on crime: "Add another hurricane, terrorist attack, or some other natural or man-made disaster, and you’ve got a recipe for a national nightmare of violence and victimization."
Violence and victimization. Now is a good time to remember what really happened after Hurricane Katrina: brutal cops and bands of racist civilians went around shooting and killing unarmed people.
Why? Because they believed in the NRA message, that predators were waiting to attack law-abiding citizens. And they were right about that. They were just confused as to who the predators were.
The same confusion was apparently on George Zimmerman's mind. Another armed citizen, looking out for danger—and finding it in a teenager walking home with a bag of Skittles. This is what LaPierre wants to mobilize: "millions of qualified active and retired police; active, reserve, and retired military; security professionals; certified firefighters, security professionals, rescue personnel; an extraordinary corps of patriotic, trained, qualified citizens." With guns. Guns, guns, guns. Ready to use them.
And the police, too. "With all the foreign aid the United States does, with all the money in the federal budget, can’t we afford to put a police officer in every single school?" LaPierre said. Annie Lowrey of the New York Times quickly thumbnailed that proposal at $6.4 billion per year.
This is the most extraordinary thing about the NRA's ideology and the climate it's created. By the time you read this, there will almost certainly be someone who has jumped to the comments to denounce gun regulations as an infringement of fundamental liberties. It is only the presence of uncounted millions of guns, in the hands of uncounted millions of Americans—whether pointy-headed liberals recognize this as a "well-regulated militia" or not—that secures our freedom against the encroachment of a totalitarian police state.
Yet today, LaPierre got up and described the gun lobby's vision of our future: "A police officer in every single school." "Armed security ... building design ... access control ... information technology." "An active national database of the mentally ill."
This is the NRA’s idea of a free country. Kindergarteners on lockdown. Federal monitoring of everyone's mental-health status. Cops in every hallway.
The experts and counterexperts can and will keep arguing about the local and regional crime-rate effects under our ever-expanding concealed-carry and open-carry laws. One trend line, though, seems obvious: The Second Amendment and the Fourth Amendment have been moving in opposite directions. The NRA has racked up legislative triumph after legislative triumph, extending gun rights into airports, bars, churches, and schools. Yet rather than deferring to the armed public, the police have grown ever more militarized, ever less concerned with warrants, ever more willing to respond to disorderliness with overwhelming force. The government is collecting your email and tracking your phone. Drones are flying police missions in American skies. More than 2 million people are incarcerated.
None of that came up in LaPierre's discussion today, though he had time to denounce video games and the media. An ugly, violent, oppressive world is the world he wants. It's the world that gun culture thrives in. The only liberty that matters to these people is the liberty to kill.
So this is what Wayne LaPierre came up with, with a week to reflect on the news that a law-abiding gun owner's legally purchased rifle, in the hands of her firearm-trained son, had been used to slaughter 20 kids: more guns, more law-abiding gun owners, more more more lead-spraying death machinery, more killing to stop the killers until all the killers have been killed. Only when we have eliminated the threat of "gun-free school zones," the danger and horror of children going through a school day unsurrounded by the implements of death, will we all feel safe.
People who live in the world of causes and effects and verifiable truths, the world the NRA has long since abandoned, had no trouble pointing out the flaws in LaPierre's analysis—the fact, for instance, that there had been an armed deputy sheriff on duty at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999.
Around the time LaPierre was speaking, someone in Pennsylvania was shooting another batch of people, including armed state troopers.
Guns kill people. More guns kill more people. What the NRA gets wrong—intentionally or delusionally or, in the psychologically and financially profitable zone where intention and delusion overlap—is its bedrock premise: that gun killings are the work of Bad Guys, predators whose drive to hurt and steal and kill cannot be stopped by anything but a brave Good Guy armed with a powerful firearm and, not at all incidentally, trained through an NRA-backed firearms-training program.
And the NRA insists that these people—"the monsters and the predators," as LaPierre put it—will not be thwarted by gun control, except in the funny T-shirt both-hands-on-my-weapon sense. The next Adam Lanza is already picking out his target, LaPierre said.
That's because the next Adam Lanza is almost certainly able to get his hands on a weapon to point at that target. The original Adam Lanza was apparently too confused and low-functioning to navigate Connecticut's simple waiting period and buy one for himself. But his mother, a gun enthusiast in good standing, had a stock of her own. She reportedly had wanted to feel safe.
So Wayne LaPierre wants to talk about "evil," because evil is elemental and intractable. Evil is part of the human condition. You cannot legislate away evil.
Let's leave the darkest recesses of the soul for a second. Two days before the Connecticut massacre, this happened:
This is not unknowable wickedness. It's banal teenage rage and stupidity, amplified by a gun. That's what everyday gun crime is—fleeting moments of thoughtless viciousness, made permanent with the wiggle of a finger. The Jovan Belcher murder-suicide was an ugly domestic argument; Belcher's gun collection turned it lethal. Maybe, as the gun enthusiasts argue, he might have resorted to using a knife or a club. But that's a less likely result. And even if it did happen, it would be less likely to be fatal.
In Australia, gun violence decreased markedly after the implementation of strict gun control measures. In Bogota, the number of deaths by firearm is reportedly down 58 percent, after the mayor banned public possession of guns. Take away instant, easy death-dealing, and the death rate drops.
LaPierre does not live in the realm of probabilities and harm reduction. He lives in a sick, paranoid universe where guns substitute for law, custom, and morality. Here he is, describing the country as he sees it, a place that teeters on the brink of collapse because of our national softness on crime: "Add another hurricane, terrorist attack, or some other natural or man-made disaster, and you’ve got a recipe for a national nightmare of violence and victimization."
Violence and victimization. Now is a good time to remember what really happened after Hurricane Katrina: brutal cops and bands of racist civilians went around shooting and killing unarmed people.
Why? Because they believed in the NRA message, that predators were waiting to attack law-abiding citizens. And they were right about that. They were just confused as to who the predators were.
The same confusion was apparently on George Zimmerman's mind. Another armed citizen, looking out for danger—and finding it in a teenager walking home with a bag of Skittles. This is what LaPierre wants to mobilize: "millions of qualified active and retired police; active, reserve, and retired military; security professionals; certified firefighters, security professionals, rescue personnel; an extraordinary corps of patriotic, trained, qualified citizens." With guns. Guns, guns, guns. Ready to use them.
And the police, too. "With all the foreign aid the United States does, with all the money in the federal budget, can’t we afford to put a police officer in every single school?" LaPierre said. Annie Lowrey of the New York Times quickly thumbnailed that proposal at $6.4 billion per year.
This is the most extraordinary thing about the NRA's ideology and the climate it's created. By the time you read this, there will almost certainly be someone who has jumped to the comments to denounce gun regulations as an infringement of fundamental liberties. It is only the presence of uncounted millions of guns, in the hands of uncounted millions of Americans—whether pointy-headed liberals recognize this as a "well-regulated militia" or not—that secures our freedom against the encroachment of a totalitarian police state.
Yet today, LaPierre got up and described the gun lobby's vision of our future: "A police officer in every single school." "Armed security ... building design ... access control ... information technology." "An active national database of the mentally ill."
This is the NRA’s idea of a free country. Kindergarteners on lockdown. Federal monitoring of everyone's mental-health status. Cops in every hallway.
The experts and counterexperts can and will keep arguing about the local and regional crime-rate effects under our ever-expanding concealed-carry and open-carry laws. One trend line, though, seems obvious: The Second Amendment and the Fourth Amendment have been moving in opposite directions. The NRA has racked up legislative triumph after legislative triumph, extending gun rights into airports, bars, churches, and schools. Yet rather than deferring to the armed public, the police have grown ever more militarized, ever less concerned with warrants, ever more willing to respond to disorderliness with overwhelming force. The government is collecting your email and tracking your phone. Drones are flying police missions in American skies. More than 2 million people are incarcerated.
None of that came up in LaPierre's discussion today, though he had time to denounce video games and the media. An ugly, violent, oppressive world is the world he wants. It's the world that gun culture thrives in. The only liberty that matters to these people is the liberty to kill.
Friday, December 21, 2012
Only An Uprising Will Stop The Chained CPI Now
By Mike Lux
Us progressive insiders are failing. Only an uprising- a real uprising, like with the SOPA bill last year- will turn the tide and stop this bad deal that cuts Social Security.
Progressive insiders have been trying our best, doing what we do. We have reminded Democrats of all the promises they have made to not cut Social Security benefits. We have had the policy discussions about why this is a bad idea for poor and middle class seniors and seniors-to-be. There have been full page ads in the Washington Post, and coalition meetings aplenty to coordinate lobbying strategies. There have been discussions with Democrats about why this is bad for them politically, showing them all the polls that make that point. Appeals to morality and the Democratic legacy on Social Security have been made.
But as of now, it has all been for naught. The President is moving forward with his plan, Nancy Pelosi has jumped on board, and things are rolling. The way DC works, if the Republicans say yes (and they very well might, it has been their goal to cut Social Security benefits ever since it was created), this will happen. Unless the people speak out very, very loudly.
Here’s how DC works: when a Democratic President decides on a policy direction, most of the Democratic insiders tend to either go along, or are very low key in their opposition. In a town built on access and power, few want to directly confront the guy in charge. And you know what? Before everyone gets all worked up about that fact, they should understand that it is the nature of DC insider-ism. It’s not that all these good folks who have been working this issue are bad people or sell-outs, it is just the nature of the DC system. People’s jobs are built around access, and if you make the powers that be too unhappy, you tend to lose access. Everyone here has dozens of fights ahead of them next year and the years after that, crucial fights, and they don’t want to lose the influence they have. Is one fight, no matter how important, worth blowing up your relationships for the next battle, and the next, and the next? That is how folks here operate, and I don’t get angry about it: it is what it is, as natural as the winter following the fall.
So what happens when a President announces a policy direction is that most insiders, even those who have been loudly opposing that direction in all they had previously been doing, soften their tone. They still oppose the policy but they are more quiet, more deferential about that opposition. I've been in rooms, including when I was representing the White House on the other side of the divide, full of people who oppose what a President just announced where very little opposition is expressed- maybe a little bit of push back, maybe some technical questions, but nothing heavy. I've been on conference calls where senior people in institutions who oppose a President’s policy are rationalizing why a President did what he did and reminding people that we have other issues to fight on.
I’m not telling you this so you will get angry at the system: like I said, it is what it is. I’m telling you this so that everyone is very clear: if you want to save Social Security from serious benefit cuts that will cause seniors to go hungry and have their utilities shut off, you have to act. You have to rise up and raise hell, because otherwise this train is going down the tracks- it won’t be stopped unless a lot of people get in the way NOW.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121. The White House number is 202-456-1414. You can sign a petition here. But it is going to take people doing more. Make sure your parents, grandparents, and everyone else you know does something. Talk to people at work and at church and everywhere you go. Join up with groups that are fighting the battle like MoveOn and Working America. Show up at your congressperson’s office and let them know what you think. Organize a picket outside that congressional office. Do not hold anything back if you care about this issue.
And maybe, just maybe, if enough of us raise some hell, this train headed down the track to cutting Social Security benefits, to taking money out of the hands of vulnerable innocents who had nothing to do with the deficits, will be forced to stop.
Us progressive insiders are failing. Only an uprising- a real uprising, like with the SOPA bill last year- will turn the tide and stop this bad deal that cuts Social Security.
Progressive insiders have been trying our best, doing what we do. We have reminded Democrats of all the promises they have made to not cut Social Security benefits. We have had the policy discussions about why this is a bad idea for poor and middle class seniors and seniors-to-be. There have been full page ads in the Washington Post, and coalition meetings aplenty to coordinate lobbying strategies. There have been discussions with Democrats about why this is bad for them politically, showing them all the polls that make that point. Appeals to morality and the Democratic legacy on Social Security have been made.
But as of now, it has all been for naught. The President is moving forward with his plan, Nancy Pelosi has jumped on board, and things are rolling. The way DC works, if the Republicans say yes (and they very well might, it has been their goal to cut Social Security benefits ever since it was created), this will happen. Unless the people speak out very, very loudly.
Here’s how DC works: when a Democratic President decides on a policy direction, most of the Democratic insiders tend to either go along, or are very low key in their opposition. In a town built on access and power, few want to directly confront the guy in charge. And you know what? Before everyone gets all worked up about that fact, they should understand that it is the nature of DC insider-ism. It’s not that all these good folks who have been working this issue are bad people or sell-outs, it is just the nature of the DC system. People’s jobs are built around access, and if you make the powers that be too unhappy, you tend to lose access. Everyone here has dozens of fights ahead of them next year and the years after that, crucial fights, and they don’t want to lose the influence they have. Is one fight, no matter how important, worth blowing up your relationships for the next battle, and the next, and the next? That is how folks here operate, and I don’t get angry about it: it is what it is, as natural as the winter following the fall.
So what happens when a President announces a policy direction is that most insiders, even those who have been loudly opposing that direction in all they had previously been doing, soften their tone. They still oppose the policy but they are more quiet, more deferential about that opposition. I've been in rooms, including when I was representing the White House on the other side of the divide, full of people who oppose what a President just announced where very little opposition is expressed- maybe a little bit of push back, maybe some technical questions, but nothing heavy. I've been on conference calls where senior people in institutions who oppose a President’s policy are rationalizing why a President did what he did and reminding people that we have other issues to fight on.
I’m not telling you this so you will get angry at the system: like I said, it is what it is. I’m telling you this so that everyone is very clear: if you want to save Social Security from serious benefit cuts that will cause seniors to go hungry and have their utilities shut off, you have to act. You have to rise up and raise hell, because otherwise this train is going down the tracks- it won’t be stopped unless a lot of people get in the way NOW.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121. The White House number is 202-456-1414. You can sign a petition here. But it is going to take people doing more. Make sure your parents, grandparents, and everyone else you know does something. Talk to people at work and at church and everywhere you go. Join up with groups that are fighting the battle like MoveOn and Working America. Show up at your congressperson’s office and let them know what you think. Organize a picket outside that congressional office. Do not hold anything back if you care about this issue.
And maybe, just maybe, if enough of us raise some hell, this train headed down the track to cutting Social Security benefits, to taking money out of the hands of vulnerable innocents who had nothing to do with the deficits, will be forced to stop.
Howard Dean on fiscal cliff GOP fail
Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean joins Ed Schultz to talk about House Speaker
John Boehner's failure to get enough votes needed to pass his "Plan B" fiscal
cliff proposal.
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Rep. Steny Hoyer weighs in on ‘Plan B’ failure
House Speaker John Boehner has lost control of his caucus. He failed to get the
number of votes needed to pass his "Plan B" fiscal cliff proposal. Congressman
Steny Hoyer of Maryland weighs in on the GOP's failure.
Republicans try to blame Obama over fiscal cliff
House Speaker John fails to bring his "Plan B" up for a vote. Ed Schultz talks
to Steve Benen of the Maddow Blog and Michael Tomasky of the Daily Beast about
Thursday's breaking news.
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Boehner fails to get votes for ‘Plan B’
House Speaker John Boehner failed to get enough votes to pass his "Plan B" fiscal cliff proposal. Congressmen Elijah Cummings and John Garamendi weigh in on the breaking news.
Speaker Boehner's Plan B vote belly flops in the House
House Speaker John Boehner did not have the votes for his Plan B gimmick. Rep.
Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., joins Ed Schultz to explain what happened.
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Mr. President, I am Disappointed
Remember when the White House said Social Security was “off the table” in the deficit talks because it has a $2.7 trillion surplus and hasn’t contributed to deficits? Remember when President Obama pledged not to cut benefits for
retirees, widows and orphans?
The White House has now agreed to adopt a stingier formula for cost-of-living increases which would cut benefits.
In a Senate floor speech, Bernie Sanders said the White House had offered repeated assurances that would not happen “and that Social Security should be off the table in terms of deficit reduction. I heard that many, many times. So I wonder how Social Security suddenly has gotten back on the table, including a chained CPI with devastating cuts to seniors and disabled vets,” Sanders said. “Mr. President, I am disappointed.”
Listen to an NPR report »
Sign Bernie’s petition »
The White House has now agreed to adopt a stingier formula for cost-of-living increases which would cut benefits.
In a Senate floor speech, Bernie Sanders said the White House had offered repeated assurances that would not happen “and that Social Security should be off the table in terms of deficit reduction. I heard that many, many times. So I wonder how Social Security suddenly has gotten back on the table, including a chained CPI with devastating cuts to seniors and disabled vets,” Sanders said. “Mr. President, I am disappointed.”
Listen to an NPR report »
Sign Bernie’s petition »
Rep. Keith Ellison says many in Congress refuse to ‘throw Grandma under the bus’ to solve fiscal cliff problems
Congressman Keith Ellison, D-Minn., tells Cenk Uygur that despite reports that
Obama has offered to cut to Medicare and Social Security to solve fiscal
negotiations, many Democrats have already determined they won’t support any cuts
to entitlements. Ellison says, “I’m not one of those who sits back and
calculates odds, and then does what I think is the most probable outcome. We are
standing for what’s right, and throwing Grandma under the bus to solve these
budgetary problems is wrong.”
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Why Democrats Must Break With Obama on Social Security Cuts
By John Nichols
There are a lot of complicated ways in which to describe the schemes being floated by President Obama and congressional Republicans to abandon the traditional Consumer Price Index in favor of the so-called “chained-CPI” scheme. But there is nothing complicated about the reality that changing the calculations on which cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients are based has the potential to dramatically reduce the buying power of Americans who rely on this successful and stable federal program.
So the word for what is being proposed is “cut”—as in: President Obama and congressional Republicans are proposing to cut Social Security.
“This is a cut affecting every single beneficiary—widows, orphans, people with disabilities and many others. It is a cut which hurts the most those who are most vulnerable: the oldest of the old, those disabled at the youngest ages, and the poorest of the poor. Perhaps fittingly, this will be done during the holiday season, when the American people are distracted,” says Nancy Altman, the founding co-director of the advocacy group Social Security Works. “They will cut Social Security not openly but by stealth—through a cruel cut known colloquially as the chained CPI.”
This is what Democrats—and most Republicans—said during the recently finished campaign that they would never do.
If Obama cuts the deal, he will in the words of CREDO political director Becky Bond being engaging in a “massive betrayal” of his own campaign commitments, and of the voters who reelected him barely a month ago.
The question is whether the president’s backers will back the betrayal.
The only responsible response is to say “No!”
The American Association of Retired People has done just that, rejecting the “chained-CPI” scheme as a “dramatic benefit cut would push thousands more into poverty and result in increased economic hardship for those trying desperately to keep up with rising prices.”
In this case, AARP speaks not just for seniors but for the vast majority of voters. Sixty percent of voters say it is unacceptable to change the way Social Security benefits are calculated so that benefits increase with inflation at a slower rate than they do now, according to a new Washington Post/ABC News poll.
Needless to say, those numbers put congressional Democrats and progressive interest groups in a bind. They can look the other way as President Obama cuts a deal that cuts Social Security or they can do what the American people expect them to do: raise their voices in loud objection—so loud that the president has no choice except to keep his campaign promises. For congressional Democrats, the stakes are much higher than they are for Obama. The president is done with elections. But the Democratic Party must compete in elections to come, and the fight that is now playing out will define whether they do so as defenders of Social Security and a party that always on the watch for ways in which to compromise with House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan and other Republicans who salivate at the prospect of weakening and eventually privatizing Social Security.
No one will be surprised that Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont Independent who has been a stalwart defender of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid is objecting.
“I want him to keep that promise,” Sanders says of the president’s commitment on the campaign trail and in the early stages of the fiscal-cliff negotiations to keep Social Security “off the table.” Adds Sanders: “I hope the president stays strong.”
Nor will there be much surprise with labor’s opposition.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is calling on Congress “to reject any cuts to Social Security, Medicaid, or Medicare benefits, regardless of who proposes them.”
That “regardless-of-who-proposes-them” stance is spreading. Rapidly.
Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown calls Obama’s “chained-CPI” proposal “terrible.” Illinois Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, an Obama campaign co-chair, says: “I hope that offer… will be reconsidered.” A frustrated Schakowsky said what every Democrat must if the party is to retain its image as the defender of Social Security: “This should be off the table.”
A lot of Democrats, many with close ties to the president, are saying the same thing.
Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Keith Ellison, the Minnesota Democrat who was one of Obama’s earliest and most enthusiastic backers in 2008, did the math: “The current average earned benefit for a 65 year old on Social Security is $17,134. Using chained CPI will result in a $6,000 loss for retirees in the first fifteen years of retirement and adds up to a $16,000 loss over twenty-five years. This change would be devastating to beneficiaries, especially widowed women, more than a third of whom rely on the program for 90% of their income and use every single dollar of the Social Security checks they've earned. This would require the most vulnerable Americans to dig further into their savings to fill the hole left by unnecessary and irresponsible cuts to Social Security.”
Ellison’s bottom line: “I am committed to standing against any benefit cuts to programs Americans rely on and tying Social Security benefits to chained CPI is a benefit cut."
Joining Ellison in opposition were other House Democrats who played critical roles in getting Obama elected in 2008 and reelected in 2012, including Schakowsky, California Congresswoman Barbara Lee and Michigan Congressman John Conyers, who says: “Any debt deal that cuts Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits is unacceptable.”
For Obama, these voices are significant. He is losing the allies who should be in the forefront of the fight to seal any deal he reaches with House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. Without a solid base of Democratic votes in the House and Senate for it, this deal won’t be done.
And make no mistake: a fiscal-cliff compromise that compromises Social Security should not be done. Period.
That’s the message coming from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which as usual has moved rapidly - and effectively - to build mass opposition to a cut that will only happen if Americans are unaware of the threat.
Former U.S. Senator Russ Feingold's group Progressives United has partnered with MoveOn.org and leading progressive groups to develop a “whip count” that names the names of Senate Democrats who are "Weak-Kneed," who are "Part-way there, or Wavering," and who are "Champions" committed to opposing any deal that cuts Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security benefits.
The president has placed himself in the “Weak-Kneed” camp.
Congressional Democrats should not stumble with him.
As Senator Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon says, “We had an election, and the voters sent a message to Congress to focus on jobs and fairness—not cutting benefits for people who have worked all their lives and are now making ends meet on fixed incomes. The formula we use to adjust cost-of-living changes for seniors needs to reflect the real costs they face, not the budgetary fantasies of Washington.”
No matter WHO is peddling those fantasies.
Low-income, elderly women will be the hardest hit by benefit cuts. Check out Bryce Covert's coverage here.
There are a lot of complicated ways in which to describe the schemes being floated by President Obama and congressional Republicans to abandon the traditional Consumer Price Index in favor of the so-called “chained-CPI” scheme. But there is nothing complicated about the reality that changing the calculations on which cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients are based has the potential to dramatically reduce the buying power of Americans who rely on this successful and stable federal program.
So the word for what is being proposed is “cut”—as in: President Obama and congressional Republicans are proposing to cut Social Security.
“This is a cut affecting every single beneficiary—widows, orphans, people with disabilities and many others. It is a cut which hurts the most those who are most vulnerable: the oldest of the old, those disabled at the youngest ages, and the poorest of the poor. Perhaps fittingly, this will be done during the holiday season, when the American people are distracted,” says Nancy Altman, the founding co-director of the advocacy group Social Security Works. “They will cut Social Security not openly but by stealth—through a cruel cut known colloquially as the chained CPI.”
This is what Democrats—and most Republicans—said during the recently finished campaign that they would never do.
If Obama cuts the deal, he will in the words of CREDO political director Becky Bond being engaging in a “massive betrayal” of his own campaign commitments, and of the voters who reelected him barely a month ago.
The question is whether the president’s backers will back the betrayal.
The only responsible response is to say “No!”
The American Association of Retired People has done just that, rejecting the “chained-CPI” scheme as a “dramatic benefit cut would push thousands more into poverty and result in increased economic hardship for those trying desperately to keep up with rising prices.”
In this case, AARP speaks not just for seniors but for the vast majority of voters. Sixty percent of voters say it is unacceptable to change the way Social Security benefits are calculated so that benefits increase with inflation at a slower rate than they do now, according to a new Washington Post/ABC News poll.
Needless to say, those numbers put congressional Democrats and progressive interest groups in a bind. They can look the other way as President Obama cuts a deal that cuts Social Security or they can do what the American people expect them to do: raise their voices in loud objection—so loud that the president has no choice except to keep his campaign promises. For congressional Democrats, the stakes are much higher than they are for Obama. The president is done with elections. But the Democratic Party must compete in elections to come, and the fight that is now playing out will define whether they do so as defenders of Social Security and a party that always on the watch for ways in which to compromise with House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan and other Republicans who salivate at the prospect of weakening and eventually privatizing Social Security.
No one will be surprised that Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont Independent who has been a stalwart defender of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid is objecting.
“I want him to keep that promise,” Sanders says of the president’s commitment on the campaign trail and in the early stages of the fiscal-cliff negotiations to keep Social Security “off the table.” Adds Sanders: “I hope the president stays strong.”
Nor will there be much surprise with labor’s opposition.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is calling on Congress “to reject any cuts to Social Security, Medicaid, or Medicare benefits, regardless of who proposes them.”
That “regardless-of-who-proposes-them” stance is spreading. Rapidly.
Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown calls Obama’s “chained-CPI” proposal “terrible.” Illinois Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, an Obama campaign co-chair, says: “I hope that offer… will be reconsidered.” A frustrated Schakowsky said what every Democrat must if the party is to retain its image as the defender of Social Security: “This should be off the table.”
A lot of Democrats, many with close ties to the president, are saying the same thing.
Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Keith Ellison, the Minnesota Democrat who was one of Obama’s earliest and most enthusiastic backers in 2008, did the math: “The current average earned benefit for a 65 year old on Social Security is $17,134. Using chained CPI will result in a $6,000 loss for retirees in the first fifteen years of retirement and adds up to a $16,000 loss over twenty-five years. This change would be devastating to beneficiaries, especially widowed women, more than a third of whom rely on the program for 90% of their income and use every single dollar of the Social Security checks they've earned. This would require the most vulnerable Americans to dig further into their savings to fill the hole left by unnecessary and irresponsible cuts to Social Security.”
Ellison’s bottom line: “I am committed to standing against any benefit cuts to programs Americans rely on and tying Social Security benefits to chained CPI is a benefit cut."
Joining Ellison in opposition were other House Democrats who played critical roles in getting Obama elected in 2008 and reelected in 2012, including Schakowsky, California Congresswoman Barbara Lee and Michigan Congressman John Conyers, who says: “Any debt deal that cuts Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits is unacceptable.”
For Obama, these voices are significant. He is losing the allies who should be in the forefront of the fight to seal any deal he reaches with House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. Without a solid base of Democratic votes in the House and Senate for it, this deal won’t be done.
And make no mistake: a fiscal-cliff compromise that compromises Social Security should not be done. Period.
That’s the message coming from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which as usual has moved rapidly - and effectively - to build mass opposition to a cut that will only happen if Americans are unaware of the threat.
Former U.S. Senator Russ Feingold's group Progressives United has partnered with MoveOn.org and leading progressive groups to develop a “whip count” that names the names of Senate Democrats who are "Weak-Kneed," who are "Part-way there, or Wavering," and who are "Champions" committed to opposing any deal that cuts Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security benefits.
Congressional Democrats should not stumble with him.
As Senator Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon says, “We had an election, and the voters sent a message to Congress to focus on jobs and fairness—not cutting benefits for people who have worked all their lives and are now making ends meet on fixed incomes. The formula we use to adjust cost-of-living changes for seniors needs to reflect the real costs they face, not the budgetary fantasies of Washington.”
No matter WHO is peddling those fantasies.
Low-income, elderly women will be the hardest hit by benefit cuts. Check out Bryce Covert's coverage here.
White House offer includes recalculating Social Security
The latest offer in the fiscal cliff debate includes something called "chained
CPI". Ed Schultz explains what that means and gets the facts from Pulitzer Prize
winning journalist David Cay Johnston.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Ed Schultz's comments spark social media reaction
After Ed Schultz said Americans need to “stop hiding behind the 2nd Amendment,”
viewers responded on Twitter and Facebook.
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