DemocratsForProgress

DemocratsForProgress's Journal

December 29, 2014

Stormy Monday, 12/29/14

Jeff Rosenzweig: Stormy Monday, 12/29/14

If you blinked and missed the announcement, US combat operations in Afghanistan officially ended yesterday, which won’t be much comfort to the next casualties among the 10,800 troops remaining there into the new year. Despite the President’s pro forma assertion that Afghanistan is “not going to be a source of terrorist attacks again,” it will probably be exactly that, in no small part due to six years of escalated American military presence there on his watch.

Former President George “Not the Really, Really Bad One” Bush remains at Houston Methodist Hospital, where he has been under observation since Tuesday night for shortness of breath. Fans of mediocre ex-Presidents can breathe a sigh of relief; he’s expected to be discharged soon.

After being suspended due to inclement weather, the search for AirAsia Flight 8501 resumes Monday morning. The plane disappeared from radar screens Sunday morning, roughly halfway between its departure point, Surabaya, Indonesia, and its intended destination, Singapore. It was carrying 162 people. Expect a surfeit of fanciful speculation about the plane’s disappearance, but none will be as doltish as that of Fox News’ Anna Kooiman, who mused on air yesterday that the metric system might be at fault. Co-host Charles Payne came close, however, noting that foreign pilots, such as those on Flight 8501, lack an American-style “cowboy attitude.”

Bad weather has also impacted rescue efforts in the Adriatic, where the ferry Norman Atlantic continues to burn. 150 people had been removed from the ship by nightfall Sunday, leaving almost 330 still awaiting rescue by Greek and Italian teams. One death has been reported...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2014/12/28/stormy-monday-122914/

December 24, 2014

Jumping the Thin Blue Line: Police, Death and Justice

Walter Rhett: Jumping the Thin Blue Line: Police, Death and Justice

Ow—Rep. Charlie Rangel makes very good sense! The fault for the shooting of two New York City police officers lies with one person. A nut with a gun. Often, mentally ill people who engage in shootings have issues with family, intimate relationships or authority, and make them targets.

Rather making making the police targets, the demonstrations and protests have focused on the absence of justice and accountability. In Gabby Giffords’ case, a rush of politicians and spokespeople vehemently denied any connection between speech about violent revolution, images with target bullseyes superimposed on the faces of elected officials, rallies attended by people openly carrying a variety of guns. Many of those who denied a connection, calling the instance “isolated,” draw a line of cause and effect between protest and violence.

Protests aside, it is clear many New York City police have no respect for law and resist civilian control as they violate administrative rules and criminal codes at will. By abundant evidence: recall the $1,300 an officer in Brooklyn took in October from the shirt pocket of a person not in custody who was pepper-sprayed in the face. The person, in a park with several friends who are heard on camera demanding the police return the money, withdrew the money from his bank to celebrate his wife’s birthday later that evening. None of the other officers at the scene attempted to stop the illegal act, which was a deliberate theft (in New York, larceny). One pepper-sprayed his sister for protesting.

The same officer had been previously sued the year before for the use of excessive force. The suit claimed the officer beat a citizen and, after kicking him in the throat, fractured his larynx. The city settled the case for $25,000. With no evidence of accountability, the police department claimed the money taken (also improper as no arrests were made!) was properly vouched as $62...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2014/12/24/jumping-the-thin-blue-line-police-death-and-justice/

December 22, 2014

Stormy Monday, 12/22/14

Jeff Rosenzweig: Stormy Monday, 12/22/14

Funeral services for Lowell Steward, a Tuskegee Airman, will be held Monday morning in Los Angeles. Steward earned the Distinguished Flying Cross for his service in Italy in 1944. He died of pneumonia last Wednesday, aged 95.

The World Health Organization reported last week that western Africa’s death toll from Ebola is approaching 7,400. Nearly half the deaths have occurred in Sierra Leone, where there are an estimated 8,800 active cases (6,900 confirmed). As an anti-contagion measure, Sierra Leone and Guinea have imposed bans on New Year’s Eve celebrations. In related medical news, those politicians who went into a frothing-at-the-mouth frenzy over the supposed threat of Ebola to Fortress America have apparently all been struck miraculously mute, though, sadly, only on this particular topic.

Friday, the Obama family arrived in Hawaii for a winter vacation, or, as the President characterized it, a “quiet time-out” before the fourth quarter of his tenure in office. The President is scheduled to return to Washington on January 4, two short days before Republican Congressional majorities start trying to legislate and deregulate the nation back to the 19th century.

Vacation notwithstanding, the President is expected to announce tomorrow that Sally Yates, US Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, is his pick for next Deputy Attorney General, replacing James Cole...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2014/12/21/stormy-monday-122214/

December 17, 2014

Murder and Theft

Walter Rhett: Murder and Theft

Witness Thoreau’s idea of civil disobedience at its unimagined worst: a Congress in rebellion against itself and its oath, whose continual looting has brought inattention and cynicism to the treasures carefully hidden and being lifted out of its ruins. The powerful have long been known for the benefits that can be reclaimed from the trough of moral morass. Pull out freedom; its leverage becomes an element of theft.

Before any great political theft, the ground must be made ready. Money must be put in in order for money to be taken out. Politics must reach beyond logic and ignore facts and details to ignite passion, a passion tied to fear and prejudice that becomes push-pull factors that block and bend the attractions of voters and drive their preferences. A push-pull factor that combines fear and prejudice into a powerful package is death.

Death is a common bedfellow of politics. Death is the political spear of politicians. Its push-pull offers the satisfactions of blood lust to followers and offers a palate of fear that dismantles opponents. Other than martyrs, death defines losers.

Socrates’ sentence of suicide is a part of the politics of the ancient Greeks. Crowds in the 1800s gathered in festive moods outside of London’s Newgate Prison for hangings as vendors set up shop for food and sold relics of the hangman’s ropes. In Charleston, during this period, the heads of convicted slaves were mounted on wood columns at the foot of the city’s entry bridges as a warning and assurance to all who passed. These few examples are among the many ways civilizations dealt death as punishment and tried to prime the social environment for political theft...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2014/12/17/murder-and-theft/

December 16, 2014

Who’s Grumpy? Not Me!

Grumpy and Ms. Mouse: Who’s Grumpy? Not Me!

Grumpy: Mouse, I am trying so hard to be myself (you know, grumpy) these last weeks but the season keeps intruding. I’m sure that come January when the bills arrive and a new Congress takes over I’ll be back to my old self again, but for now my grump seems to have abandoned me!

Mouse: It’s impossible for me not to enjoy this time of year. How could you have the holiday without the mouse in the poem that doesn’t stir on Christmas Eve? Ya wanna know why it’s not stirring? ‘Cause it’s beat from running up and down the tree putting decorations on it and then wetting its whistle with some nice Cognac. Oh yeah… I looove this time of year!

Grumpy: Not the least of my less than grumpy mood comes from Congress going away for the rest of the year. Somehow I think, however, that their foolish ideas like a fake war on Christmas are sure to try to intrude on what should be a season of good wishes and joy to all.

Mouse: For a group that is supposed to admire Jesus, the man who preached peace, Republicans sure love war… any and all war, even if they have to make one up. It’s terribly sad...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2014/12/16/whos-grumpy-not-me/

December 8, 2014

Stormy Monday, 12/8/14

Jeff Rosenzweig: Stormy Monday, 12/8/14

The 113th Congress, having covered itself with neither dust nor glory, holds its last session Friday. Members have a whopping five days to try and figure out how to keep the government funded, along with all sorts of other pending measures that – darn the luck! – they were just too busy to get to sooner. Ironically, the only thing that might keep the 113th out of the history books as a singular national disgrace is the incoming 114th; with Republicans running the show in both chambers, nothing good can possibly come out of it.

MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, who recently made controversial remarks about the crafting of the Affordable Care Act (a process in which he participated as a consultant) will sit down with Darrell Issa and the rest of the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday. Committee Republicans are desperate to leverage Gruber’s remarks to prove that the White House used deception to win passage of the bill. And if that effort fails, they can just go back to squawking about Benghazi. To that end, the Select Committee on Benghazi holds its second hearing on Wednesday. Beats working, I guess.

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf will testify Wednesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on efforts to halt the Ebola epidemic. Just in time, too. Come January when Republicans become the majority in the chamber, the loftiest discussion will probably be restricted to topics like whether to reintroduce Freedom Fries in the Capitol cafeterias.

Rain in New York City over the weekend temporarily quieted ongoing protests over police violence in the aftermath of a grand jury failing to indict police officer Daniel Pantaleo for killing Eric Garner. In contrast, weekend demonstrations in Berkeley and Seattle, goaded by the response of law enforcement officers, turned violently confrontational...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2014/12/07/stormy-monday-12814/

December 6, 2014

Time Mismanagement

Jeff Rosenzweig: Time Mismanagement

Republicans, unconcerned with progress or sensible public policy, have plenty of free time to devote to other pursuits. Like feigning outrage. For that, and only for that, Barack Obama has been their ideal President. The apparent unflappability, exotic background, swift rise from obscurity, technocratic approach to governance and pigmentary uniqueness among Chief Executives are all ideally pitched to prompt sputtering Republican ire. It doesn’t even matter that it’s mostly as forced and insincere as a junior high production of a fifth-rate operetta; the GOP’s stenographic corps in the mainstream media reliably take it at face value.

Autobiographical revelations of madrassa attendance and youthful drug use, cherry-picked Jeremiah Wright sermons, the mythical “Whitey” tape, the remarks about “clinging to guns and religion,” the “57 states” gaffe, the “terrorist fist jab” with wife Michelle, the Middle Eastern and European “Apology Tour” and those faux-classical columns at the convention provided all the warm-up necessary.

Once the President took office, Republicans went on to being incensed by the Beer Summit (racism!), the auto bailout (socialism!), the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (big socialism!), Cash for Clunkers (socialism, sorta!), Obamacare and its attendant “death panels” (huge socialism!), vacations in Hawaii and Martha’s Vineyard (elitism!), withdrawal from Iraq (cowardice!), new CAFE standards (tyranny, tree-hugging!), IRS-gate (abuse of power!), Benghazi (treason, cowardice and abuse of power!), golfing (shiftlessness!), tan suits (um… gauche!) coffee cup salutes (arrogance, shiftlessness, with a soupçon of elitism!), and a host of other non-scandals so contrived and picayune most Republicans don’t even remember them.

Each of these tantrum-ticklers, it turns out, was mere prelude to Republican reaction to the President’s recent executive actions on immigration. Note to aspiring conservative naysayers out there: churlish and peevish are passé; this season, nothing but full-on hysteria will do...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2014/12/06/time-mismanagement/

December 1, 2014

Stormy Monday, 12/01/14

Jeff Rosenzweig: Stormy Monday, 12/01/14

The Wall Street Journal CEO Council convenes for its annual meeting today and tomorrow in Washington, giving people noteworthy for having been promoted beyond their level of competence an opportunity to hear and applaud people noteworthy for having fleeced a majority of their constituents. This year’s scintillating guests include Jeb Bush, Mitch McConnell, Rob Portman and Rand Paul. National Security Adviser Susan Rice will also be there; perhaps the organizers got her confused with Condoleezza.

An NAACP protest march from Ferguson to Jefferson City, Missouri got underway on the weekend and is expected to reach the Governor’s Mansion on Saturday. Whatever time of day marchers arrive, I’m sure they’ll find Jay Nixon seriously out to lunch. Demonstrations continue in cities across the nation, while things have taken a turn for the better back in Ferguson: Darren Wilson tendered his resignation over the weekend.

The White House will announce badly needed changes to the disbursal of military surplus equipment to law enforcement agencies today, along with $263 million in new funding for body cameras and officer training. The President and Vice President will spend the afternoon in meetings with the Cabinet, civil rights leaders, politicians, clerics and law enforcement officials to seek ways to improve cooperation and communication between police departments and communities.

Will the least productive Congress in history use its lame duck session to get anything accomplished? Of course not, but they’re already pretending very hard that they want to. Keeping the government funded past December 11 is a nominal priority, with House and Senate Appropriations Committees aiming at having a spending bill ready by December 8, leaving up to three days for so-called legislators to preen in front of TV cameras while dispensing empty platitudes. Business tax break extensions will also be debated, though the President has signaled he’ll veto them for lacking cost offsets and failing to include renewed tax credits for low-income Americans. Also on the agenda is renewal of the NDAA, a once-routine matter that became litigious as soon as the President wasn’t a white guy. Both parties are still happy to confer obscene amounts of money on the Pentagon, of course, the only difference being the preferred degree of obscenity...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2014/12/01/stormy-monday-120114/

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