The New Anti-Choice Claim In State Legislatures: ‘Abortion Isn't Healthcare’

"Keep abortion legal.
No exceptions.
No apologies."

Since the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade (1973), a woman's right to choose abortion in the first trimester of her pregnancy has been recognized as a constitutionally protected right. This explicit recognition by the nation's highest court has left abortion opponents to chip away at the edges of abortion: limiting its availability; imposing ridiculous building codes on abortion clinics and qualification restrictions on abortion doctors that do not apply to other kinds of clinics and doctors; and now, the most absurd of all: claiming that "abortion isn't healthcare" and therefore is not legally protected in the way most medical options are.

"Abortion isn't healthcare?" Try to tell that to the woman whose life has been saved by an abortion. The claim is, on its face, false.

That doesn't stop the nut-jobs from passing their nut-job laws in crazy state legislatures such as the one in Texas. Quoting Robin Marty at TPM in an article about the claim the crazies make repeatedly in North Carolina,

...

The logic behind North Carolina abortion clinics’ new regulations echo [National Right to Life's David] Andrusko, too. In 2013, anti-abortion legislators repeatedly inserted language that would allow the state board of health to write new medical standards for abortion clinics—and only abortion clinics—into multiple bills, finally getting it passed after inserting it into a proposal on motorcycle safety. Bill supporters said the new regulations would be written just to increase patient safety and not with an intention to shutter most of the abortion clinics in the state, as other similar regulation bills had done in other states that year.

...

"While the governor is trying to treat abortion like any other medical procedure, on one level that's a good thing, but he's really dismissing the important part," one abortion opponent told ABC 13 News.

That “important part” the governor apparently dismissed? That abortion is not supposed to be viewed as health care.

Even the allowable “exceptions” for obtaining termination when a ban is in place shows that every line of an abortion law is written with this express idea in mind. There are no mental health exceptions because an abortion can never be needed for mental health reasons. There is no medical exception because an abortion is never medically necessary. You can have one only if you will have “irreversible harm” or permanent damage to a “bodily function” because an abortion is never required to protect a pregnant person’s health.

Abortion is never healthcare. Once you recognize this assertion as the root of every piece of legislation, every bill suddenly makes complete sense.

Many anti-choice zealots see their opposition to all abortion as a matter of religion. It's impossible to argue with radical religious conservatives (and in this case I have to include most Catholics in that broad category): religion is itself not a matter for logic; any ordinary sane process of reasoning applied to problem-solving is readily tossed out the window in service of establishing the believer's "fact" for the greater good of his or her faith. Hence "abortion is not healthcare" ... a manifestly absurd claim... is accepted unquestioningly by the religious fanatics in conservative state legislatures for the explicit purpose of prohibiting abortion even in cases where abortion is indisputably healthcare, such as saving the pregnant woman's life.

O tempora, o mores!

Ain't We Got Funds?

There's nothing surer:
The rich get rich, and the poor get poorer.

- "Ain't we got fun," 1920, Whiting - Egan and Kahn
(wiki) (lyrics)

Yep, that's right, though some conservative singers rendered it "and the poor get children," which is IMO inhumanely inexcusable. But the canonical version, the one that rhymes properly, is the one that is to the point of this post.

Your bank account goes south

This post is about banks, and banksters, and how they're about to rob us all this time around. You know how they did it last time; they had to be bailed out by the government with our tax money, and then... and then, what? To all appearances, they didn't do a damned thing to correct the problems that got them in trouble in the first place, and they didn't do a damned thing to help people with their home loans; indeed, they... oh, you know, and this graf is getting out of hand.

So they're planning to get into trouble again. Yes, planning: it worked so well last time... for the banks and the banksters. But this time, things will be different. How? psychomax at Kos gives a good summary, citing Ellen Brown at The Web of Debt (the blog, not the book):

...

Since the financial crisis of 2008 central bankers and regulators have been busy drawing up plans for avoiding the next bank melt-down. Here in the US, banks considered by the government Too Big To Fail (TBTF) were bailed out six years ago with our tax money on the arguable rationale that if they were permitted to fail, they would take the entire economy down with them. The crisis led to a loud outcry from taxpayers and many savvy experts. ...

... the big banks, like Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, were not broken up, contrary to the public interest. In fact, they are far larger today than they were in 2008, making the TBTF threat worse than ever.

So what plan have the geniuses come up with that both pacifies taxpayers and still saves the TBTF banks? You will be appalled.  ... Theoretically. deposit accounts are insured by the FDIC for up to $250,000. The wrinkle is that the amount of money in the FDIC insurance fund is approximately $25 billion, while the total of deposits at US commercial banks is approximately $9,300 billion, yes that's $9.3 trillion The failure of just one mega-bank would easily wipe out that fund. Since the FDIC would be unable to keep failing huge banks solvent an alternative is required.

...

(Bolded sentence original. - SB)

So what is this mysterious alternative? It's no wonder they're not loudly broadcasting their plans, as you'll soon see.

The Financial Stability Board (FSB), an unofficial international organization whose recommendations for maintaining banking system stability almost always become law in the G20 nations, has made a recommendation regarding bailouts. Here's psychomax again:

At the G20 meeting last month in Australia, the FSB presented and received approval for their latest plan for conducting the "resolution proceeding", i.e. bankruptcy, for a troubled TBTF bank. Cutting to the chase, the pertinent part for my dear readers is that instead of their tax money going to bail out the banks, it will potentially be their bank deposit money! The FSB recommended that governments make statutory the confiscation of depositors' money (also known as unsecured debt) if the assets of the bank plus all secured debt is insufficient to keep them afloat. This has come to be known as a bail-in.

Jeebus! IOW, if the bank's assets and the secured debt it holds, taken together, are not enough to keep them solvent, they can confiscate the money in your bank accounts to solve their bankruptcy. (NOTE: it is not clear to me that this is the only meaning of bail-in; see FT's lexicon entry on it.)

And indeed, Ellen Brown's current newest post, December 1, is this: New G20 Rules: Cyprus-style Bail-ins to Hit Depositors AND Pensioners. So your pensions could go bye-bye, too.

What gives? Have I misunderstood? If not, why is this not front-page news around the country? or have I simply missed such news?

Missouri AG Confirms: Grand Jury In Michael Brown Killing Was Misled By DA Regarding MO Law On Police Use Of Deadly Force

Frank Vyan Walton at Kos has the details. Here is an excerpt of the basics:

...

The background of this situation is that Lawrence O'Donnell reported that after reviewing the transcripts of the Darren Wilson Grand Jury, his analyst discovered that Assistant District Attorney's working for Bob McCullough gave the Jurors an outdated copy of Missouri Law that all that was required for an Officer to use deadly force is their "reasonable belief" that there was a threat.

In 1985 the Supreme Court amended this law to include a "probable cause" requirement under Tennessee v Garner and the Jury wasn't informed of this until 3 months later just before their deliberations, nor even at that time was the difference and relevance of this explained to them clearly.

The misleading information was given to the Grand Jury directly before Darren Wilson's testimony giving the impression that all that was required under the law for Wilson to kill Michael Brown was his belief that he was in danger, without the additional requirement of probable cause for such a belief.

...

(Bolds mine. - SB)

This is far more than tragic: this is obscene. Will anything happen to that Assistant DA now, would s/he be indicted, or at least fired? I wouldn't bet on it...

US Constitution, Article II, Section 3

[Of the President:]

He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; ...

Bolds mine. Reproduced here for the benefit of the GOPer ratfucking bastards in the House of Representatives, who are thinking of blocking the State of the Union.

Look, muthafuckas, it doesn't matter if you reject it. It doesn't even matter if the President reads it in front of you; Washington himself sent a written document. It doesn't matter if the issues it addresses are of no interest to you; it's the President's baby entirely. It doesn't even have to be annually delivered; that's just tradition. It is a constitutional duty of the President to provide you with "Information of the State of the Union". If s/he does that, in a manner of his/her choosing, the presidential duty has been fulfilled, and you have no legitimate complaint against the President.

If you 'fuckas would spend a tenth the time on constructive legislation in cooperation with the President that you spend soiling yourselves and your constituents with the crap you spew in symbolic gestures, the nation might survive another century. But I'm not holding my breath waiting for you to do that... only to avoid smelling your crap.

Past(or) All Reason — Tempe, AZ Preacher Says AIDS‑Free Is Easy, Just Kill All Gays

Steven Payne at Kos:

Dear Lord, please kill Obama,
and kill all the Jews,
and kill all the faggots!

Faithful Word Baptist Church Pastor Steven Anderson of Tempe, Arizona is no stranger to spewing awful things in the name of the Lord. In 2009, Anderson made a media splash when he delivered a sermon during which he prayed for President Obama's death. Just this past March, he went on a tirade over women who so much as dared utter an amen in church, telling his lady-congregants that their place was subserviently in the home. He has also had some choice words for Jewish people, declaring that "Christ-rejecting jews are children of the devil".

...

Moved by the Christmas spirit, Anderson laid out his final solution for all those homos spreading the AIDS — execute them all, preferably before the day Christians celebrate the birth of that blessed little baby, Hallelujah!

...

Wow... assassination of the President, silencing all women, gay executions and murderous anti-Semitism too! What more could a RWNJ ask for! And G*d save you from this man if you're a gay Jew, and yes, I've known a few.

Coal Boss Donald Blankenship Indicted For Conspiracy To Violate Federal Reg's

This may be the only time in your life that you see a major player in the fossil fuel industry indicted for anything more than parking in a handicapped space (and that of course never happens either). Here's Dylan Scott of TPM:

...

Surface coal mine, Wyoming

Blankenship, who, as the New York Times reported this week, grew up poor in West Virginia before rising to become one of the most powerful coal bosses in the United States, came to typify all the worst caricatures of ruthless industrialists. He broke unions. He dismissed federal regulations and dared inspectors to catch him in the act. He described his industry in evolutionary terms.

"It's like a jungle, where a jungle is survival of the fittest. Unions, communities, people -- everybody's gonna have to learn to accept that in the United States you have a capitalist society, and that capitalism, from a business standpoint, is survival of the most productive," he said in the 1980s.

Coal miner, 1930s

But with the death of 29 miners in the April 5, 2010 explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine in southern West Virginia, Blankenship's long run may finally have come to an end. He was indicted last month on conspiracy to willfully violate federal mining regulations before the accident and to defraud the United States by making false statements to the Securities and Exchange Commission in its aftermath.

...

If Blankenship were anyone else than his smug, self-satisfied self, someone might feel sorry for him, but as things are, hey, "it's like a jungle..."

I predict these outcomes:

• Blankenship will be acquitted of all charges;
• Not one single dangerous practice will be discontinued at his mines;
• None of us will live to see him accused of any other violations or frauds;
• Other energy corporation CEOs will feel free to ignore federal regulations;
• No other energy CEO will be indicted in your or my lifetime.

Have a nice day!

The Antikythera Mechanism — Again

Antikythera Mechanism, fragment A, "front"

All of you are surely familiar by now with the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient Greek device for computing a variety of astronomical and calendar-related events, fragments of which were discovered in a shipwreck from Roman times about one to two centuries BCE, fragments found in modern times by sponge divers in 1901. For at least a century, scholars, scientists, mathematicians and inventors have X-rayed the device, speculated on its function and age, built physical conjectural models of the device (including a bit of whimsy made of Legos, to go with your Lego harpsichord I suppose), and built mathematical models of its operation.

By now the device is mostly understood, and the results are astonishing. If you have ever read anything about Archimedes (d. 212 BCE, killed as he worked, run through by a Roman soldier), you have some idea of the genius afoot in Greece in the era in which the Antikythera mechanism was built.

Thanks to ellroon, we have an article by George Dvorsky at io9 and in turn a NYT article by John Markoff, and finally a suite of YouTube videos, starting here with one about the Lego Antikythera model, followed immediately by a longish show (Nova??) about the device itself. The two videos (there are more, but I stopped after two) are well worth watching.

Enjoy!

Khalil Gibran Muhammad: Darren Wilson Is ‘America's Model Policeman’

Khalil Gibran Muhammad at The Nation argues persuasively that Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson is speaking both accurately and truthfully when he says he was just "doing [his] job" when he shot and killed Brown:

...

And yet, despite all the equivocations, the shooting death of the teenager on August 9 and Monday’s grand jury decision not to indict Wilson were entirely unsurprising. They are the predictable outcomes of a criminal justice system doing exactly what it was meant to do. For all the dissecting and debating of the veracity of Darren Wilson’s grand jury testimony this week, one thing seems crystal clear. He was in fact doing his job.

Indeed, by this standard, isn’t Darren Wilson actually a model police officer?

Wilson, Brown

He certainly thinks so. When asked by Stephanopoulos if he could make “something good” come of this experience, he said he would “love to teach people” and give them “more insight in uses of force.” That he may have logged more time on first-person shooters—emptying clip after clip to take down demonic super-villains who “run through shots”—than actual police work is beside the point. Darren Wilson has the kind of experience that many Americans value.

...

(Bolds mine. - SB)

What can we do to render the system and its White citizens less predisposed to regard Black men as criminals based solely on the color of their skin?

That's a hard question, if for no other reason than that 85-90 percent of our population has never given a thought to reforming that system, or even acknowledged to themselves that there is a problem.

This is not about overt racists; it's about a large percentage of White people who do not think of themselves as racist and who are not thought of as racist by other White people. That's far more insidious than racism out in the open.

One thing Americans could do, if we had the political will, is to de‑commercialize the penal system, to reduce any financial incentive to imprison people. That won't reduce the number of police murders of young Black men for no reason, but it will reduce the number of such men jailed prospectively, so to speak. I'll never forget a neighbor of mine when I was a kid who saw a Black man walking through our (overwhelmingly White) neighborhood and cursed him: I said, "He's probably just walking to the bus stop; that's not a crime." The neighbor replied, "I've never known a n***** who's not guilty of some crime!" That's a much more difficult problem to address, and I confess I don't have a clue how to fix it in general. I suspect most racists become racists in their childhood, and that by the time it manifests itself in a public context, it's too late.

Anybody have any good ideas? or is Muhammad right, that Wilson is, was and ever shall be just "doing [his] job"?

Mitch Admits It: GOPers Don't Have Votes To Repeal Obamacare, But Supremes Can ‘Take It Down’ For Them

Joan McCarter at Kos reports this admission by McConnell, unsurprising in substance but very surprising in the fact that he admits, unapologetically, that our Supreme Court now is a wholly partisan Republican body acting to the detriment of the American people. McConnell would be an asshole if he weren't already a turtle.

Censure Of The President, And An Even More Unusual Punishment

Reps. Steve King (R-Nutjob) and Raul Labrador (R-Who?) want Congress to issue a formal censure of President Obama for his executive-order immigration reforms, as a way around impeaching him:

"I think we should censure the president of the United States," Labrador said on CBS, days after Obama announced his actions. "I think it’s unfortunate that he did this, I think we need to lay out clearly why this is unlawful."

But there's a problem. An impeachment is a criminal indictment by the House of Representatives, subject to conviction or acquittal by the Senate. Thus sayeth the Constitution (Article II, Section 4). By contrast, a censure of the president would be in every meaningful way a "bill of attainder," i.e., an act of Congress declaring someone guilty of a crime, without any sort of trial. The Constitution explicitly prohibits bills of attainder (Article I, Section 9). Impeachment and removal from office are effectively the only way to punish a bad president, and the Constitution lays out the details of how it is to be done. Without this restriction, no president would have time for anything except defending herself/himself against a rampaging opposition party's bills of attainder.

So Reps. King and Labrador are proposing a bill of attainder inflicting unspecified punishments on a duly elected President. "I think it’s unfortunate that [they] did this."

And as for me, I think a toilet plunger should be shoved into the pie‑hole of each of these representatives, to protect the nation from the crap spewing forth therefrom... but the Constitution makes no mention of, indeed never even implies, a citizen's right to plug the mouths of spewing legislators, however urgent the need. I guess we'll have to tolerate the spewing.

Lordy, those wingnuts surely know their Constitution, don't they? [/sarcasm]

Not Black Rage But White Rage: What It Means To Be Black In America

Can we ever end the intimidation
and alleviate the fear?

Carol Anderson of Emory University, principal investigator in numerous projects focusing on race in America, gives us a superb op-ed about the repeated White erection of deliberate obstacles to Black equality, progress and independence in life and work. From the nominal end of slavery in 1863 to the present day, not less often than once every two decades, such obstacles have sprung up, usually embedded in the law itself, giving such obstacles a public respectability that is, at best, an obscene offense against any sentient being, let alone a whole race of H. sapiens. Please give Professor Anderson a chance to lead you through this extended and repeating tale of deliberately inflicted disadvantage against a people that did nothing to deserve it. If you are Black, I imagine (I can only imagine, not personally experience) you will grimace in exasperation and shake your head at what has been done to you and yours. If you are White, please allow yourself to fathom the deep, painful frustration of ongoing, engineered inequality of social and economic status.

Yes, it's great that an African American became president (my reservations about the individual aside). But were any minds changed? or did racism simply become respectable in our political institutions to a degree unsurpassed in my lifetime (i.e., since the late 1940s)? How has Obama's presidency mitigated the racist behavior of the worst racists our nation continues to foster?

As I age, as I observe the perniciousness of the diversifying ways in which racism manifests itself, I despair of seeing its end within my lifetime. But I do know this: America can address the problem promptly and concretely, or America can go to ground in a conflict that will make the French Revolution look like a bedtime story. There's no middle ground on this one: it's do or die. At present I wouldn't place money on "do," however much I cajole myself to hope.

"Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on..."

‘Hands Up, Don't Shoot!’ — St. Louis Rams

Yes, they really did: the St. Louis Rams came out on the field, each raising both arms, palms outward, in the "hands up, don't shoot" gesture used by many of the protesters of Michael Brown's killing by Darren Wilson. (Daily Kos, Huffington Post)

According to the Kos article, many Rams fans were not amused. And now the St. Louis Police Officer's Association is "condemning the display." Did they get their lil' fee-fees hurt? Awwww, that's too bad... at least no one shot them dead in cold blood when they were unarmed and mouthing off.

But y'know what? A great many of the Rams players are African American. In their place, I'd probably make a similar statement. If the league punishes them, the league board should be taken to court for a First Amendment violation. Yeah, I know; that would never happen...

‘It Doesn't Add Up’: Nancy Grace On CNN

Watch Nancy Grace on CNN as she explains how she, as a typically pro-cop, anti-marijuana former prosecutor, is unconvinced by Darren Wilson's testimony about how he was afraid for his life enough to fire all those shots. Look at the photos of Darren Wilson after the incident: there's barely a mark on him. Why, Ms. Grace asks, did he not simply put the pedal down and get the hell out of there, since it was obvious to him that Michael Brown did not have a gun?

I am increasingly persuaded that justice was not served in the Ferguson grand jury's no‑true‑bill.

(H/T Bryan, whose thoughts as a former law enforcement officer are well worth your time to read.)

WTF Is The Matter With America Today?

masaccio at FDL tells us what the religious RWNJs and other nutjobs truly believe:

...

It’s a mirror image of the US. The “Other” is the problem. It isn’t the unjust distribution of wealth, it isn’t the exploitation of the worker by the filthy rich, it isn’t unequal schools, it isn’t poverty or any other structural condition. It’s witches. It’s demons. It’s unholiness. It’s impurity. It’s smoke.

It isn’t fixable. The most you can hope for is bottling up that rage and fear in fewer and fewer people. Instead the media stokes those fires. Self-ordained ministers tell people that it’s sin that cause fires and floods and earthquakes and eclipses. Rage freaks like O’Reilly and Limbaugh and the incomparably stupid Hannity tell their listeners that the end times are coming. Politicians like Lindsey Graham shriek that terrorists are coming to kill them while they sleep. These pre-moderns are now in control of both the House and Senate, and the Supreme Court.

...

No fxxking kidding! These people may or may not hearken back to the actual Dark Ages, but as masaccio said, they damned surely missed the Enlightenment altogether. Yet they have every intention of taking it away from those of us who didn't miss it, and they have the money backing them to do the taking. Welcome to today's America... where the medieval get medieval on your buttocks.

Police Use Of Weapons In The US, The UK And Japan

A pair of Think Progress articles, one by Judd Legum and one by Nicole Flatow, examine many different aspects of the use of guns and tasers by police in several nations: the laws, the circumstances allowing deadly force, the frequency with which police officers kill civilians (you will be surprised unless you've studied the subject), and the frequency with which American police are killed with their own firearms (you will probably be amazed). Follow the links from these articles to learn still more.

Bones To Pick

Stella loves Kathy Reichs's Bones novels and especially the TV show. To me it's just another Fox police show. When I'm home and reading in the TV room, Stella kindly uses headphones. When I'm not home, she sets the volume as high as she wants.

Then there are the times when I'm home alone and run across Bones reruns by accident. What do I do? Well, of course, I... wait for it... I...

Change Deschanel.

<grin_duck_run />

Headline Of The Day

From TPM:

Masturbating Passenger Causes
Premature Landing
For Virgin Flight

 

UNCAT: US Army Field Manual Appendix M Encourages Sleep Deprivation, Sensory Deprivation

Jeff Kaye at FDL's The Dissenter reports:

The United Nations Committee Against Torture (UNCAT) has released their “Concluding observations on the third to fifth periodic reports of United States of America” in regards to US adherence to the prohibitions against torture and cruel, inhumane, and degrading forms of treatment of prisoners.

Within the context of the world of diplomacy, the UNCAT findings belie the US insistence that it abides by the Convention Against Torture treaty (CAT), or that it is an adequate model for humane treatment of prisoners.

In particular, the committee took aim at the presence of ill-treatment and torture within the Army Field Manual’s Appendix M, which purports to describe a “restricted interrogation technique” called “Separation.” In a victory for those who oppose government-sanctioned torture and abuse of prisoners, the UNCAT called for the US “to review Appendix M of the Army Field Manual (AFM) in light of its obligations under the Convention.”

More specifically, UNCAT identified the “minimal” sleep regulations in the manual as actually a form of sleep deprivation — “a form of ill-treatment” — and called for adherence to humane norms. In addition, the committee called for the elimination of sensory deprivation in the “field expedient” section of Appendix M, as such sensory deprivation can “create a state of psychosis with the detainee.”

[bolds mine - SB]
...

(NOTE: the "Army Field Manual" above apparently refers to Human Intelligence Collector Operations, FM 2-22.3 (FM 34-52) (.pdf), one of more than 500 things called "Army Field Manual.")

The nation which, during and immediately after W.W. II, protected the world from egregious torture is now itself the world's primary purveyor of techniques that are effectively torture. I grieve for my country: America is no longer the America I grew up loving and admiring.

DC Judge Orders Woman To Have Cesarean — Woman Dies; Fetus Dies

... and four other horrors inflicted on women by the law. American women live in parlous times if judges feel free to compel them to bear a fetus when doing so imperils their very life.

In the case mentioned in the subject, the judge was aware that the cesarean might kill the woman: he ordered the cesarean anyway, saying he felt the fetus deserved a chance to live.

It's worse than women's obvious second-class citizenship: it is an outright immorality, inflicted by the very people sworn to protect a citizen's rights.

Anti-choice zealots, including those on the bench, set themselves up as gods, lording it over people who disagree with their single repeated theme, that a fetus is equivalent to a born human being. It's too bad: I deny them their right to play God.

(H/T ellroon.)

The Creepy IoT (Internet Of Things)

Sue Halpern at The New York Review of Books dives from her review of four books (by Jeremy Rifkin, David Rose, Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, and Jim Dwyer) into the deep and murky waters of the IoT (Internet of Things), the world of daily living enabled by the use of the Internet to interconnect various kinds of new devices with each other and occasionally with mere humans to accomplish results that are indeed nearly miraculous, as well as utterly destructive of anything that can reasonably be called privacy.

Everything from the much-debated and sophisticated Google Glass to simple pills you swallow that keep your doctor informed of your basic physical state and whether and/or when you take your meds, Internet-enabled light bulbs that turn on when your car signals by Internet that you are almost home, Internet-enabled sensors that locate every member of your household within the city in which you all live, truly automated purchases and other transactions, Internet-monitored status of your car's engine/brakes/etc., and other scary data collections about your person and your world... it's all there.

What happens to privacy? (Obsolete, say some sages; humans never had it in the genuinely old days anyway.)

What happens to the livelihoods of people who make their living providing some of these goods and services now, and hence what happens to capitalism? (Gone, say the sages.)

What happens when a person or group succeeds in hacking these systems? (Power outages that make Hurricane Sandy and 9/11 look like minor blips, say the wizards.)

The general message is that such changes are inevitable in our future, and I tend to believe that is true. But I admit it makes me glad I don't have all that much longer to live... I doubt it will be a world I can adapt to. Leave it to the kids who don't care about the things I care about!

(H/T neighbors George and Barbara [NOT Bush!], who loaned me the dead-tree edition of NY Review.)

Emptywheel On Ferguson/Wilson/Brown/McCulloch

Emptywheel, as is often the case, expresses some of my thoughts on the whole matter better than I could do myself, so I commend to you her article on a couple of aspects of this insanely painful episode.

CORRECTION: as Bryan of Why Now? notes, the article linked is by bmaz, not emptywheel. My apologies.

Where Does Republican Anti-Environmentalism Ultimately Come From? Economic Inequality, Says Krugman

This is one of Krugman's best, and that's saying something. He explores both the decline of environmental quality in America from the bipartisan days... Nixon was a committed environmentalist, and his presidency was a heyday of environmental protection legislation (not to mention some unrelated very unsavory things)... to the present day, in which exceedingly wealthy individuals and corporations can literally buy whatever legislation they want, legislation that allows them to pollute our air, water and land almost without limit. Krugman ties it all together in his usual lucid prose; please read the article.

A Noun, A Verb, And 9/11 A Racial Slur:Giuliani Holds Forth On Race

Dylan Scott at TPM tells us about the former mayor, no stranger to racial rhetoric even in the old days. It seems the Ferguson murder has made him crank it up a notch...

Civil Liberties Posts From Juan Cole

Cole, a source of many good things, is turning his attention more and more to civil liberties. Here are two recent posts that caught my eye:

• Can the Police Phone-Track you without a Warrant?
• NSA Spying: Now It’s Personal

Happy T-Day!

Whether 'T' is "Tofu" or "Turkey," I hope yours as a good one, a (ahem) fulfilling experience!

---

(OT (Off Turkey?): I haven't forgotten about Ferguson; it's just that my reaction is complicated. I do plan to write about it.)

Another Attempt At An Unconstitutional Abortion Ban, This One In Ohio

Robin Marty at TPM has the particulars. At least three similar bans in other states have already been ruled unconstitutional, so this one is unlikely to survive a costly court challenge. Why do they do it? Hey, 2016 is already on the radar; the evil woman-hating assholes have to appeal to the base...

Utah: Police Killings Exceed All Other Categories Of Killings

Ahiza Garcia at TPM:

There have been more deaths caused by police shootings than by gang members, drug dealers or from child abuse in the past five years in Utah, according to The Salt Lake Tribune.

This year alone, the Tribune reported, police shootings have claimed more lives than violence between spouses or partners, for a total of 13 deaths. A toll, which includes 22-year-old Darrien Hunt who was fatally shot by police in September.

"The numbers reflect that there could be an issue, and it's going to take a deeper understanding of these shootings," Chris Gebhardt told the Tribune.
Gebhardt, a former police lieutenant and sergeant who served in Utah, continued by noting that the situation "definitely can’t be written off as citizen groups being upset with law enforcement."

...

Utahns have been on the violent side since before the state was admitted to the union, a fact noted by Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame (see A Study in Scarlet, 1886). And I have known enough Utahns to state unequivocally that there is considerable manifest bigotry against people who are not Mormon.

But when combined with increasing police violence nationwide, apparently those facts yield outright murder in Utah by the very people whose job it is to prevent murder. Salt Lake City, Utah is a place I visited in my youth on a high school choir tour; not only will I never visit the place again, I will try hard not even to cross it in an auto. New slogan: Utah... the Scary State. Or perhaps Utah: Worse than Texas.

NYPD Commissioner Bratton Re Man Shot Dead In Stairwell By Rookie Cop: Dead Man Was Doing — Nothing Wrong

Specifically, Bratton wrote: "He was not engaged in any activity other than trying to walk down the stairway." The rookie cop was nervous and employed a practice newly approved by NYPD of patrolling a housing project's stairwell with his gun drawn.

Think twice before you enter a stairwell in a public building in NYC: it may be your last walk...

But that's not all:

[The man's girlfriend] said the officers never came down to check on the mortally wounded man, and medical help was only sent after she banged on a neighbor’s door for help.

And that's still not all:

Both officers were taken to Jamaica Hospital and treated for tinnitus.

Any bets on whether the rookie continues employment until he's a veteran cop?

(ASIDE: I do not mean to make light of the incident by using a cartoon cop, but I do not want to use a picture of a real police officer with his gun drawn, for fear he will be misidentified as Gurley's actual killer.)

Cell Phone Spy-In-The-Sky Watches Americans For DoJ

Devlin Barrett at MarketWatch (and WSJ at greater length, if you have a subscription, which I don't):

The Justice Department is scooping up data from thousands of cellphones through fake communications towers deployed on airplanes, a high-tech hunt for criminal suspects that is snagging a large number of innocent Americans, according to people familiar with the operations.

The U.S. Marshals Service program, which became fully functional around 2007, operates Cessna aircraft from at least five metropolitan-area airports, with a flying range covering most of the U.S. population, according to people familiar with the program.

Planes are equipped with devices--some known as “dirtboxes” to law-enforcement officials because of the initials of the Boeing Co. ... unit that produces them--which mimic cell towers of large telecommunications firms and trick cellphones into reporting their unique registration information.

...

... Justice Department agencies comply with federal law, including by seeking court approval, the official said.   [Q: What do they do if they don't get court approval? Yeah, right; that's what I think, too. - SB]

Just in case tapping your landline wasn't invasive enough of your privacy...

Henry Purcell: Chaconne 3 Parts Upon A Ground — Ensemble La Fenice

This work is indeed a chaconne and consists of only two parts: a ground (i.e., repeating bass) and a single upper part played by three melody instruments as a round: Each melody instrument (in this case, recorder) enters at a different time, so that all the harmony comes from the interaction of the one upper part with itself, much like Frère Jacques or another child's round. Given Purcell's idiosyncratic ear, though, the harmonic results here are certainly far from child's play.

Purcell: Chaconne 3 Parts Upon A Ground

I remember performing this work with two other recorder players, a gambist and a theorbist sometime in the early 1980s at Oberlin College's annual Baroque Performance Institute. All of us were at an age to be at our performing peak; ah, those were the days...

Ignore the less-than-optimal recording here and enjoy this truly odd but ingenious music, splendidly performed performed in a gorgeous cathedral!

Republicans Won, Now They Must Show They Can Govern? Like (BLEEP!) They Do, Says Jay Rosen

Rosen:

NPR’s Congressional reporter, Ailsa Chang, did it Wednesday morning. About Mitch McConnell, soon to be Senate leader, she said:

If he wants to see the Republicans retain the majority beyond 2016, he has to be able to prove that his party can be more than just the party of no. That means reasonable legislation that they can realistically expect the president to sign.

... [2 more commentators' statements of similar ilk]

These are false statements. I don’t know how they got past the editors. You can’t simply assert, like it’s some sort of natural fact, that Republicans “must show they can govern” when an alternative course is available. ...

The alternative to “show you can govern” is to keep President Obama from governing. Right? Keep him from accomplishing what he wants to get done in his final two years and then “go to the country,” as Karl Rove used to say, with a simple message: time for a change!

...

Rosen is absolutely right. Republicans have not done anything toward governance in the years since Obama became president, and there is no reason whatsoever to assume they will do so now or at any time while he is still president.

Obama must, as much as I regret the fact, govern by fiat, by executive order, to the full extent allowed by the Constitution, and that's quite an extent. His doing so should please rank-and-file Republicans, right? They liked it when GeeDubya did exactly that, and... what? oh, right... IOKIYAR.

Obama's declaration yesterday on immigration reform, while less than perfect, is a good start toward resuming his actual participation in government. His recent statement on net neutrality sounded as if he might have grown a pair; he even impressed Lawrence Lessig. I am willing to see Obama grab a sword and lay about him for his last two years in office; yes, it's a risk to do so, but considering who may succeed him in office, consequences are probably better than two years of doing nothing while Boner and Turtle eat his lunch every day and do Dog-knows-what to the nation on their way to a GOP presidency that may quite literally never end.

Damn, I hate being put in a position in which President Obama is our nation's last, best hope for establishment of a sane government. I think that sound was Jefferson turning in his grave...

The W.W.I Christmas Truce As Sainsbury's Ad: Moving Or Offensive?

You are probably already familiar with the Christmas Truce in W.W.I, one or more events (historians are uncertain) along the Western Front in which British and German soldiers somehow arranged a brief cease-fire to exchange Christmas greetings, gifts and songs before returning to the trenches and resuming killing each other.

It can scarcely be debated that the event itself is deeply moving; what could possibly emphasize the contrast of war and peace more vividly than a holy if brief cessation of hostilities in the Great War. But when the Sainsbury's grocery chain released a TV ad depicting the best-known Christmas Truce event... sanitized to remove all references to violence, though otherwise conscientiously authenticated with The Royal British Legion, a veterans' group... all hell broke loose among those who disapproved of using their nation's history to sell confections and trinkets. You might say it caused as much of a stir as the exposure of a woman's breast in a Super Bowl ad.

I was moved by the ad, but then again, I was moved many years ago the first time I read of the event(s). The British reaction today is almost enough to make me believe there are two kinds of people, those who cannot live with war and those who cannot live without it. I suppose that is simplistic. But what else are we to think? It seems that for some people, war is sacred, and not to be tampered with in any way. [/shudder]

Back To The ‘Darkie’ Ages: The New Undisguised Face Of Racism In America

If you believe nakedly racist behavior has been eliminated in government services, read here and wonder what happens the next time an African American calls Southeast Bullitt, Kentucky's fire department in an emergency.

If you believe major national news agencies unlikely to misrepresent the fundamental facts in a case in which a White man kills a Black man, read this story about CNN's reporting on the Ferguson, MO incident.

And if you believe (in your inexplicable credulity) that racism in America has no partisan component, read about the incoming GOP speaker of the Nevada Assembly, who believes Democrats have, in his words, a "master-slave relationship" with "simple‑minded darkies."

Got the picture? Racism, especially in the Deep South but distressingly often in the rest of the country as well, may have abated for a while, but it's back, quite literally with a vengeance. I grieve for my country as I contemplate what might have been, in place of this gratuitous cruelty.

ADDENDUM: Oh, and I didn't even mention NYPD beating the crap out of Black people...

Robert Reich: The Wealthiest 0.01% Have Bought Out America's Democracy

... lock, stock and barrel, including the Democratic Party as surely as the Republican. Read the details he offers... and weep.

AFTERTHOUGHT: I remember the first time — I believe it was near the 2012 elections, though it may have been earlier — that I realized that total contributions to the Democratic Party and its candidates slightly surpassed those to the Republican Party and its candidates. I knew none of the details which Reich examines in his article, but I knew that the Democratic Party was finished as the party of the working people. I can't say I've had a lot of hope for America since then, at least not as a descendant of the country our founders created. Today, we do what we can — for the sake of women's rights, that usually includes voting straight Democratic, or nearly so — but the country no longer really belongs to its people. Damned shame, if you ask me.

Voiceprints: Significant Threat To Privacy, Already Fully Implemented

... but we don't know all the agencies, police departments and private corp's that use them at this point. Peter Van Buren at FDL's The Dissenter has a sketch.

Economic ‘Recovery’? Who Recovers And Who Does Not

Via Robert Reich, here's information from The Levy Institute of Bard College (.pdf):

For the vast majority of people in the United States, economic growth has become little more than a statistical sideshow, largely disconnected from their paychecks. This is starkly illustrated in the figure below, which shows how income growth has become more inequitably distributed with virtually every subsequent economic expansion during the postwar period.

In the 1949–53 expansion, the overwhelming majority of the income growth went to the overwhelming majority of the people—the bottom 90 percent of the income distribution. After that, the bottom 90 percent’s share of income gains gradually shrunk, decade by decade. This trend accelerated in the 1980s, to the point that the richest 10 percent began receiving the majority of the income growth. And from 2009 through 2012, while the economy was recovering from one of the biggest economic downturns in recent memory, 116 percent of the income growth went to the top 10 percent (with the top 1 percent alone taking home 95 percent of the income gains); this absurd result is possible because the bottom 90 percent actually saw their incomes fall, on average, during this growth period.

...

(See linked article for the figure referred to above.)

This trend and its consequences in people's lives are utterly unjust. Worse, action by a government in facilitating such outright robbery of the poor and the middle class by the very rich is the stuff of which revolutions are made... read America's Declaration of Independence, and note how many of the reasons given for revolt are economic in character. The 1% has basically one choice in its own self-interest: revise the rules to reinstitute a prosperous middle class and substantially reduce poverty. Not that those people listen to me...

DC Circuit: ACA Contraceptive Mandate Does Not Impose Burden On Religious Groups

Via Richard Lyon at Kos, we get the word from CBS-DC:

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Friday rejected a challenge to Obamacare that would have enabled non-profit religious organizations to avoid government-approved contraception programs.

In a 3-0 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit concluded that the challenged regulations do not impose a substantial burden on religious groups.

...

Now it only remains for the Supremes to reverse... [/sigh]

GOP Threats Of Impeachment And Allegations Of The Criminalization Of Politics

Jon Perr at Kos gives us a thorough if rambling examination of two of Republicans' favorite whines in his article Criminalizing liberalism. (I'm still looking, mostly in vain, for the liberalism in today's Democratic Party.)

‘Politicians In Robes’

Adam Liptak at NYT examines several studies on the degree to which Supreme Court justices and other federal judges decide cases in ways representative of the politics (specifically, the party) of the president who appointed them. The short answer: the federal judiciary is thoroughly politicized, especially recently in the tendency of Republican-appointed justices to support the (extreme) conservative side in politically charged decisions.

(The title of the post is a fragment of a quotation from the conclusion of Epstein, Landes and Posner's book, The Behavior of Federal Judges, as quoted by Liptak: “... federal judges are not just politicians in robes, though that is part of what they are.”)

Stella And I Are Home

... thank goodness. It was a good hospital with a good staff, as such things go, but even the best of such matters is necessarily unpleasant, and while we are nowhere near the end of the problem, at least we are at the end of Stella's hospital stay. She has considerable pain and is not as mobile as she had expected to be at this point.

I'll tell you more later. Right now, I have to run to the pharmacy...

Stella OK; more later.

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Good news: I just spoke with Stella's surgeon; the operation went just fine. She's recovering for the next hour before

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Stella's Surgery Is Today...

Dawn's crack, at which we get up

 

... so both of us must get up at dawn's crack, as someone I knew who was not named "Dawn" used to say. Notwithstanding the early surgery, Stella will not go home until Wednesday. I'll post a very brief message when I know the results. I don't know when that will be; I think the surgery is a few hours long.

Cell Phone Owners Should Prefer Passcode To Fingerprint Protection

In America, you can't legally be forced to testify against yourself, or forced to reveal a cell phone passcode. But according to a judge in Virginia, a cop can commandeer your finger to accomplish the same thing. Here's Megan Geuss at Ars Technica:

A Virginia Circuit Court judge ruled on Thursday that a person does not need to provide a passcode to unlock their phone for the police. The court also ruled that demanding a suspect to provide a fingerprint to unlock a phone would be constitutional.

More than just the phone can be bent

The ruling calls into question the privacy of some iPhone 5S, 6, and 6 Plus users who have models equipped with TouchID, the fingerprint sensor that allows the user—and ideally only the user—to unlock the phone. It is possible for users to turn TouchID unlocking off and simply use a passcode, and Apple has provided certain extra protections to prevent TouchID privacy issues—requiring the entry of a passcode if the phone hasn't been used in 48 hours, for example. But if a suspect simply uses TouchID to open their phone, police could have a window to take advantage of that when apprehending them.

[/sigh] It's always something, and seldom something good. The assertion of courts is that knowledge from testimony (e.g., telling police a passcode) reveals the suspect's mind and thus cannot be compelled under the 5^th Amendment... but a fingerprint is just a biometric, traditionally collected in police investigations. Once again, the law uses a quirk of technological change to enforce a distinction without a difference. Self‑incrimination, here we come.

(H/T Charles Kuffner.)

‘Greece: A Grave Situation’

Michael Nevradakis at Truth Out concludes his eight-part series on the gravity of Greece's situation and the corruption of their media.

As most of the columns Nevradakis writes are about Greece and the series parts are not numbered in their subjects, the best way to read the series is to visit Nevradakis's page on Truth Out. and read your way through his entire opus. I am working my way backward starting with the conclusion of the series, Greece: A Grave Situation With Very Real Consequences.

Krugman's Conclusion

"Prima facie, cutting [government] spending depresses economies." See Krugman's graphic; it doesn't take a rocket scientist... or a world-class economist... to understand it.

An Unpleasant Example Of Why I Say This Is No Longer A Political Blog

If this were a political blog, I would be obligated to try to debate wingnuts on the effectively indisputable fact that the current Supreme Court acts in a primarily partisan political mode on many issues of greatest import to ordinary American citizens... such as this one.

The Five...
and I don't mean Russian composers!

But it's not a political blog, so instead I'll have a glass of wine and a snack, watch YouTube videos or bad broadcast TV, and let the ACA die an unnatural death at the hands of that all-too-political Supreme Court. Hey, what I propose to do... actually not to do... is the American way, right?

FBI Agent Impersonates AP Reporter

Chris Grygiel of AP via TPM:

...

In a letter Thursday to The New York Times, [FBI director James] Comey said the agent "portrayed himself as an employee of The Associated Press" to help catch a 15-year-old suspect accused of making bomb threats at a high school near Olympia, Washington. It was publicized last week that the FBI forged an AP story during its investigation, but Comey's letter revealed the agency went further and had an agent actually pretend to be a reporter for the wire service.

Comey said the agent posing as an AP reporter asked the suspect to review a fake AP article about threats and cyberattacks directed at the school, "to be sure that the anonymous suspect was portrayed fairly."

The bogus article contained a software tool that could verify Internet addresses. The suspect clicked on a link, revealing his computer's location and Internet address, which helped agents confirm his identity.

...

The AP of course responded by deeming the FBI's action in this case "unacceptable." Indeed it was, and is. Paraphrasing AP's executive editor Kathleen Carroll, not only must the government and the press be in fact distinct, but  the public must have confidence in the enforcement of that distinction for the press to fulfill its essential role as watchdog. We simply can't have secret government agents masquerading as members of the press, not if we want to keep whatever vestige we have of checks and balances.

Remember, in Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, in reference to Sherlock's brilliant but reclusive brother Mycroft, who was a high official in the British government, it is said that Mycroft was the British government? Well, in today's America, our three-letter agencies (FBI, NSA, DHS etc.) are far less benign than Mycroft, but it has reached the point at which they are the American government. As certifiable motherlover Ari Fleischer said, Americans need to "watch what they say, watch what they do..."

(I know it has an ampersand in it and names a corporation, but can we lump AT&T in with the three-letter agencies?)

(Texted From My Ancient Cell Phone)

Well, OK, the date of that Constitution edition in the previous post is NOT 1976; sorry... try 1989.

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And Here I Always Thought It Was A Quirk Of 18th-Century Capitalization

But noooo...

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government...

— US Constitution, Art. IV Sec. 4, edited for publication by the Commission on the Bicentennial of the United States Constitution, 1976.

Damned if it doesn't describe the current state of affairs perfectly. [/sigh]

Hey, We At The Chron Don't Know What Happened, But We Have Great Pics Of This Car Crash...

... into my favorite restaurant, Dimassi's Mediterranean Buffet. Leave it to the Comical to get exactly none of the facts one would want to know. The loss of Dimassi's for an undetermined period of time is just insult to injury atop the election. [/sigh]

Somebody on one TV channel (11 Houston CBS?) had someone's amateur video of the crash itself. If I find it, I'll link to it from here. (Yes, some people were hurt, apparently none seriously [but see the update].)

UPDATE: here is the Channel 11 Houston video. 11 News did a great deal better at obtaining the facts: it was an SUV; 9 people were injured, several taken to the hospital; the driver, a first-time customer, accidentally hit the accelerator instead of the brake. Many a time I've sat in that window or near it; Stella likes window seats. I think it may be a while before Dimassi's hosts us again. (Aside: despite the anchorman's pronunciation, the African/Middle Eastern students I knew at UTSPH years ago said "Dimahssi's," not "Dimessy's." I concede it's pretty Dimessy at the moment...)

Today Is The First Day Of The Rest Of This Blog

 
Beethoven String Quartet in F Major, Op. 59, No. 1 - American String Quartet (Live)

(Barf. Poop. Green Doggerel-Doo.)

"Don't Tempt Me..."

I'm not sure I've ever seen an election result suck worse than this one does, or at least seems to be, certainly not in a midterm election.

Voters are very, very angry and disappointed with their government (are they? well, aren't they? you don't think unlimited, easily funded campaign lies might have affected their reaction, do you?), so their reasoned, practical response is to take their pistols and shoot every family member who might help them out, or rather, take their fingers and vote out most of the decent politicians who remained in office.

Get your election returns somewhere else; I'm not writing up this dog-awful shit-pile.

If I were a young American woman, between now and 2016 I would scout out a country where one might apply for political refugee status and still have some hope of finding a job. Just in case America is not "Ready for Hillary" ... in fact, I may keep my own eyes open for such a place.

VOTE TODAY!

With Republicans like the ones we have today, it may be your last chance.