North Charleston PD: Another Ferguson?

April 10, 2015April 10, 2015 by Bitchy

Just like with Ferguson, we’re starting to see some systemic issues with North Charleston PD. We’re also learning that the racial makeup of the police force doesn’t much resemble the racial makeup of the community.

Let’s start with demographics and city data:

49% of North Charleston residents are black
39% of North Charleston residents are white
11% of North Charleston residents are Hispanic
The estimated median household income is $38,258, compared to $43,107 in South Carolina
The median house or condo value in North Charleston is 122,300 compared to $135, 500

So North Charleston is the poor part of town, just like Ferguson. The racial demographics in North Charleston PD are even more lopsided than they are in Ferguson, where 67% of the police are white. In N Charleston PD, 80% of the police are white. So N Charleston PD is worse than Ferguson is, in terms of hiring police officers that look like and come from the community they’re charged with policing. Let that sink in for a minute.

Now on to Michael Slager, the cop who murdered Walter Scott. Just like that piece of crap, Daniel Pantaleo who murdered Eric Garner, Slanger has a previous complaint against him. Pantaleo had three, two of which taxpayers of NYC paid settlements on (the third one is still going through the system). That number of course, does not include Eric Garner.

The previous complaint against Slanger was filed in 2013, has yet to go to court. Here’s what happened in that incident. Slanger and his partner showed up at the home where Mario Givens was living with his mother and brother at 4 am one morning in September 2013. Mario Givens answered the door. According to Givens, Slanger demanded to be let inside the house, but never gave a reason for what he was looking for or what he was doing there at all. Slanger then pushed the door and told Givens that if he didn’t come outside, he (Slanger) was going to tase him (seems like Slanger loves him some hot taser action). Givens complied because he didn’t want to be tased. Slanger tased him in the stomach anyway.

It turns out that they were there because a woman named Maleah Kiara Brown called the police to report that Mario’s brother, Matthew (her ex boyfriend) had shown up in her bedroom uninvited. She gave the police a description of Matthew, where she stated that Matthew is 5 foot 5 inches tall. Mario is over 6 feet tall. Slanger and his partner didn’t just have a description, they had Maleah and her friend with them when they pounded on the Givens’ door. She corroborates Marios story entirely. Right after Slanger tased Mario and pulled him out of the house and onto the porch, Maleah claims that she was yelling at the officers, telling them that they had the wrong man. Here’s what else she said,

"He [Slanger] was cocky. It looked like he wanted to hurt him [Mario]. There was no need to tase him. No reason. He was no threat – and we told him he had the wrong man."

There were other neighbors who witnessed the incident and corroborated Mario’s story. You won’t be surprised to learn that Slanger’s version of events don’t much resemble anyone else’s. From a HuffPo story about the incident:

Slager wrote that he could not see one of Givens’ hands and feared he might be holding a weapon. He wrote that he observed sweat on Givens’ shirt, which he perceived as evidence that he could have run from Brown’s home, and then ordered him to exit several times.

When Givens didn’t comply, Slager said he entered the home to prevent him from fleeing and was then forced to use his stun gun when Givens struggled with him. The officers’ report describes the Givens brothers as looking "just alike."

To be clear, no one else supports Sanger’s claim that Givens was struggling or resisting in any way. So an internal investigation ensued. Naturally, when there are several witnesses agreeing on one version of events and a cop telling another story, the cop should clearly be exonerated. Did I forget to mention that the investigation was conducted without contacting any of the witnesses?

I mentioned that Slanger and a partner knocked on the Givens’ door in that last incident. That partner’s name is Clarence Habersham. You should be familiar with that name by now, but you aren’t because of the systemic problems in this police department that I mentioned earlier. You should know his name because he’s the same partner who was present for the murder of Walter Scott. You should know his name because he’s the second cop you see in the video when Slanger comes back with the taser and plants it next to Scott. If the video was too fast for you to spot that, don’t worry. ABC news was kind enough to publish still frames of the video to help us see what happened.

Here’s the planting-of-the-taser frame:

We can safely assume that Clarence Habersham’s statement about the incident supported Slanger’s since the department originally spewed all that bullshit about Scott going for the taser, and that he ended up dying despite the attempts at CPR. You know, all that stuff that we categorically didn’t see in the video. Yet we haven’t heard a peep about any disciplinary action taken against Habersham. Well that’s weird. It almost seems like the department took the bare minimum action they could, in firing Slanger after the video came out.

The fact that Habersham hasn’t been sanctioned in any way is an indication of a major systemic problem with this police department, just like there is with Ferguson. And just like Ferguson, I promise you that we’re going to be hearing more incidents of corruption, police brutality, and inaction to correct problems within the department.

I just hope that the Department Of Justice goes into North Charleston PD just like they did in Ferguson.

Another Cop Wins Another Epic Battle

April 9, 2015 by Bitchy

So we had an ever elusive incident of a cop being charged with murder, for murdering a person who was unarmed. I literally can’t remember the last time this happened so I was stunned by disbelief for a couple of days. You know the story by now. The murdering cop, Michael Slager killed Walter Scott during an incident that started with a traffic stop for a broken tail light.

The incident happened on Saturday, and unfolded in the usual way. The cop claims that he was in an epic battle for his life and had no choice but to shoot to kill. It’s fascinating how many epic battles cops get into. They seem to emerge victorious the in the vast majority of these incidents. Weird.

According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, a total of 127 cops were killed in the line of duty last year. I don’t have numbers from any other source from last year, but I can tell you that they had the highest number of cops killed for 2013. In other words, no other source had a higher number than they did. So 127 is the maximum number of cops who were killed in the line of duty last year. Of those, 50 were death by gun. So let’s assume that all 50 were of the epic battle nature. I don’t have the 2014 numbers on how many justifiable homicides by cop from the FBI, but I have the 2013 figures. The FBI recorded 461 justifiable homicides committed by cops. These must nearly all have been of the epic battle variety since they were justified, right?

That 50 to 461 ratio is unfathomably imbalanced. It simply defies explanation. We don’t know how many of those 461 were unarmed, and that’s by design. No one is counting. Speaking of counting, that 461 number seems to be off by at least a factor of 2. Some think that the number of people killed by cops is closer to 1,100 per year. You know how anal I am about data, and presenting credible data but I can’t in this case. I don’t know how many of the estimated 1,100 cop killings were of unarmed victims. But I know that it would have to be no more than 5% in order to create parity with the number of cops killed in the line of duty.

If you go back to that FBI link, you’ll see that the police are justifiably murdering more people every year, while the murders of police officers are trending downward every year. There’s something seriously wrong here.

I’m not prone to believe the account of the lone survivor in a struggle, particularly when the one who died wasn’t armed. I’m not prone to believe a cop who won an epic battle for his or her life against someone who wasn’t armed. I’m not inclined to believe any cop whose story includes the word "waistband". I’m sorry, but I have no benefit of the doubt left for them anymore. Especially when they all seem to be telling virtually the same story.

Unfortunately, forensics in the real world is nothing like CSI. It never tells us exactly what happened. Darren Wilson’s story was very similar to Slager’s story. The victim reached for the cop’s weapon…..epic struggle….shoot to kill. In the Michael Brown case, forensics told us that Brown did have contact with Wilson’s gun, but it can’t tell us the circumstances. Was the gun being pulled out when he instinctively grabbed at it before it was aimed at him? We don’t know. We know that all of the bullets except one entered Michael Brown’s body from the front. What about the one we’re not sure of? That was one that went through his raised arm, which could have come in from either the back or the front. We know that Wilson missed half of the shots he took. Were these the shots he fired when they were both running? That would seem to be the most likely circumstances under which to miss, but we don’t know.

But Wilson gets a pass because we don’t know, and he’s the only one left alive to tell a story. The Michael Slager situation was on course to play out the same way as Wilson’s. He told basically the same story, and his department was standing behind it. This autopsy is going to have the benefit of a video tape showing it what happened, but there’s no telling how murky the results would have been without the tape. Based on that horribly imbalanced ratio of shootings, I think it’s safe to assume that the results were going to be too unclear to put a murderer in prison.

The only good thing that happened here, is that the video didn’t come to light until after the murderer told his lies. He’s going to have an impossible time explaining the disparity between his version and the video.

I am not prone to believe any cop’s story that isn’t accompanied by video evidence. You think I’m biased? We’re doing exactly the opposite now. We believe everything the surviving cop says unless there’s a video to prove otherwise. That benefit of the doubt given to the cops is unfounded. My bias comes from the data. Where does the reverse bias come from?

Journalism By Way Of Comedian

April 8, 2015 by Bitchy

Anyone who is paying attention knows that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are far more informative than cable or network news. We have several polls and studies to prove it. I think it’s funny that they’re perceived as partisan liberals. They may be liberals, but they’re not partisan. They’re comedians, so neither of them has ever left a joke on the table because of loyalty to democrats. They’re perceived as partisan because republicans are batshit crazy, and therefore more funny. Democrats are not batshit crazy. They’re also not quite as corrupt as republicans (yet). So when Colbert said that "the facts have a well known liberal bias", he was being earnest.

Picking on republicans more isn’t partisanship. It’s sentience. The funny thing is that Jon Stewart, who owns both Daily Show and Colbert never set out to change the world. He never had an agenda, and never intended to play a partisan role in politics. In fact, he actively worked at staying in his comedian lane until he took the path of media watch dog.

I think Colbert is more inclined to use his influence to affect change. That whole thing he did with his PAC was genius. But by and large, Colbert also stayed in his comedian lane. Oh, except for that one time when he said everything that I’ve always wanted to say to George W Bush at the Correspondent’s Dinner. That was awesome. That was also (I’m not kidding) the first time republicans realized he wasn’t one of them.

Here comes John Oliver. He really does seem intent on changing the world. From dropping millions of people on the FCC to going after big tobacco, it’s clear that he doesn’t plan on just being funny. He’s an activist.

I felt that on Sunday, he went even beyond activist and became a journalist. He did an interview with Edward Snowden. Everyone is talking about the ‘dick pic’ part of the interview, where Oliver figured out that the only way to get Americans to give a shit about their privacy, was to frame the issue around their dick and said dick’s privacy. That was hysterical and clever, but that wasn’t the part of the interview that struck me.

The part that I found fascinating (and awesome) was the ten minutes that preceded the dick pic bit. The interview starts at about the 15:00 mark;

At the 19:40 minute mark, Oliver starts to ask Snowden some seriously tough questions. He asks Snowden if he’s read all the documents before he turned them over to the press. Snowden replied by saying, "I have evaluated all the documents that are in the archive". Oliver comes back with, "You’ve read every single one?" Snowden replies with, "Well, I do understand what I’ve turned over." And then Oliver shoots back with, "There’s a difference between understanding what’s in the documents and reading the documents." And then he punches Snowden hard with a sarcastic, "Right cause when you’re handing over thousands of NSA documents, the last thing you want to do is read them."

This interview was outstanding, and it was conducted by a comedian. I’m going to let you watch it because it gets even better from where I left off in relaying it to you.

To be clear, my position is that Edward Snowden is an American hero. He is a patriot who did what true patriots do; tried to make the country better by exposing something the government was doing in total secrecy.

That said, John Oliver is the first person to ever hold his (Snowden’s) feet to the fire on how he did what he did. He held Snowden accountable for a New York Times fuck up (watch the interview) in improperly redacting something that was actually harmful to national security. I loved that. I loved watching Snowden consider his own culpability for the unintended consequences of his actions.

Why did I love that? Because I’m a supporter of Snowden and what he did, and watching him being challenged helps me to reassess my support with more information. I am so sick to death of the stenography that happens in our "news". When a journalist actually challenges a politician on something they said, that’s the news. Everyone was talking about how George Stephanopoulos challenged Mike Pence over his hateful attempt at legalizing discrimination. It’s like everyone wanted to give Stephanopoulos a cookie for doing his job.

Our media sucks at this, and some of them are proud of the poop they sling every day. Chuck Todd proclaimed that it’s not his job to correct falsehoods. He also said that if he challenges guests on his show, they won’t come back. I have news for you Chuckie; you’re an overpaid stenographer, and if you can’t do an entertaining and informative show without having guests on, you’re a shitty broadcaster with no talent. Remember when Lara Logan was outraged that Michael Hastings committed the crime of journalism by reporting on what he saw when he was embedded with General McChrystal? When she told me she was a hack, I believed her so when her entirely unbelievable Benghazi propaganda piece came out in 60 Minutes, I wasn’t at all surprised.

Since we clearly can’t have journalists that do journalism in America, I hope we get more political comedian-journalists. Here, watch everyone on freaking Morning Joe, completely in awe of Oliver’s journalism. No really, click on that link and watch it.

Yeah, that happened totally unironically.

Here’s the thing about John Oliver – he’s also a flaming liberal who doesn’t do his job through a partisan lens. When a right wing hackneyed douchebag like Scarborough heaps praise on Oliver, that’s proof that you can be strongly politically oriented without being a partisan hack.

Media Matters is a partisan website. That doesn’t mean they’re not reputable and that they lie. Lying means they lie and unless you can prove that a media outlet lies, you can’t dismiss them because they’re partisan. Fox News lies. It’s the lies that make them unreliable, not the partisanship. Wanna know how I know they lie? Cause Media Matters and Right Wing Watch post videos of them lying every day. The fact that I don’t like Fox doesn’t make them liars. The fact that I can demonstrate they lie, makes them liars. "Partisan" does not mean "unreliable.

I’m going to side track for a minute. You know that whole, "liberal media" crap we’ve been hearing about for twenty years? Well that was all started by Roger Ailes whose head exploded over the coverage of the civil rights movement and MLK in the 60s. He was pissed off that the media aired events like the brutal beatings on the Edmund Pettis bridge in Selma on Bloody Sunday. In Ailes’ twisted and bigoted mind, showing America what segregation and bigotry looked like was liberal. Reporting on the endless and pointlessness that was going on in Vietnam was liberal. Never mind the fact that it was endless and pointless. Never mind the fact that discrimination is abhorrent. Both of those "liberal" positions were the correct positions morally and historically. But they were liberal, and Ailes didn’t agree with either position. And that’s when the words "liberal media" were foisted on America for the purpose of making journalists afraid of presenting the facts. Facts don’t have two sides. They’re facts. Evolution and creationism are not two sides of an issue. One is science, and the other is purely faith. There is no "side" there. There are no "sides" to the issue of climate change. 99% of scientists are telling us what they’ve found, and Exxon has a handful of "scientists" they’ve paid to say that it’s all a fiction. Those are not two equally valid and compelling "sides". So now we have a media who creates false equivalencies so as not to seem like they’re too liberal when they’re on the right sides of issues like showing you what happened in Selma. But I digress.

John Oliver is the best journalist we’ve seen since Walter Cronkite. I say that as someone who wants to see my heroes challenged. How the fuck else am I supposed to know if they’re worthy of my respect if no one ever challenges them? Anyone who uses the phrase, "gotcha question" needs to stop talking. Seriously, shut up and stop talking now. There’s no such thing as a gotcha question, since there’s an easy way to avoid them; don’t get got. And if you’re a lemming who doesn’t want to see your government officials "gotchaed", I urge you to stop spending time on politics. Perhaps sports is more your speed?

You should want your position challenged as often as it can be. You should learn to address someone who opposes you directly with facts and citations to the facts you base your opinion on. You shouldn’t talk past people. Someone brings up a point, you should address that point before introducing one you like better. That’s how you form sound opinions; by testing your beliefs. Now that journalists aren’t doing that, we’ve all forgotten how legitimate disagreement and debate is done. Don’t point somewhere else in order to distract from something someone said. Address it head on. If you can’t do that, you need to reassess your position.

I’m hoping that John Oliver will bring back the antiquated notion of critically looking at issues. I’m hoping that more comedians take his lead and fill the void left by our media.

Rand Paul 2016

April 7, 2015 by Bitchy

Rand Paul has officially stepped into the republican primary clown car. Believe it or not, I think he’s the most viable candidate among those who have already announced or have made it clear they’re running.

He’s come a long way in his efforts to learn how not to sound like an idiot. I don’t think he’s said anything idiotic in the past (at least) six months. I think he’s going to appeal to millenials with republican parents since they’re predisposed to veer right. His father’s libertarian schtick will appeal to young white men (libertarians are 96% white and 68% men) who aren’t interested in more wars, but love the myth that more freedom will allow the free market to solve all the problems in the world.

I say his father’s schtick because Rand appears to literally have no mind of his own. There is not a single policy position he believes in that didn’t come directly from daddy. I’m always suspicious of people who entirely agree with a parent. It demonstrates a lack of independent thought and in the case of the Paul’s, also critical thinking. My father and I were not politically in agreement in a damned thing. He was an immigrant, blue collar Reagan republican. I thought he was out of his damned mind.

There’s a decent chance that he’s going to win the Koch primary he auditioned for. They haven’t announced a winner yet. But the fact that he auditioned should tell you all you need to know about his "libertarianism". He’s a corporatist, just like the rest of the republican party.

The only question is, how long can he maintain not sounding stupid for? In my opinion, it’s just a matter of time before he says or does something really, really stupid like plagiarize from an unreliable source like Wikipedia.

Rand Paul is a dimwit who has never had an independent thought in his life. That’s not going to change, no matter how many people have worked with him to de-dumb him. You can’t undo a lifetime’s worth of not using one’s brain.

He’s going to run into more racism because he’s a racist. But things like his Southern Avenger associations won’t hurt him with republicans who don’t much mind racists. Rand is racist because his father is racist and, as I pointed out earlier, Rand appears never to have had an independent thought in his life.

His entry into the race will definitely liven things up because he’s a shifty street fighter. We’ve seen him get into kerfuffles with Chris Christie, and Marco Rubio (who’s even dumber than little Rand) and he told us that he fights dirty. Rand Paul will definitely make things more interesting and depending on where the Kochs decide to put their money, he may make the republican primaries an actual race (unlike democrats, who seem to be fine with a coronation).

Ben Carson, Idiot Savant

April 5, 2015 by Bitchy

So GQ magazine did a profile on Ben Carson that they very aptly named, "What If Sarah Palin Were A Brain Surgeon?"

I say that it’s aptly titled because it’s hard not to notice that the brain surgeon is a complete idiot. I know what you’re thinking; "Come on Bitchy, the man is a brain surgeon so your political bias is clearly clouding your judgment in assessing his intelligence."

Let’s judge together, shall we?

So Carson made the (now) requisite fact finding trip to Israel, where he was provided with a guide to show him around and answer his questions.

From the article;

[His first question] "In the United States, we have Republicans, Democrats, and independents. What do you have?"

Ummmm. Don’t you think that he would have done some rudimentary internet searches to learn the basics? I mean, seriously. Who goes to a foreign country and expects someone to school them, starting at a 2nd grade level? But let’s continue with the article;

The woman answered Carson’s question about political parties, telling him that there were Labor and Likud and a host of other factions in the Knesset. "And what is the role of the Knesset?" he interjected.

"What is the Knesset?" Are you fucking kidding me? How clueless and uninformed are you? If you think I’m being harsh, let’s get back to the article;

This prompted a tutorial on Israel’s legislature….. As he tried to concentrate on his Hebrew Schoolhouse Rock primer, he seemed even more fatigued. "It sounds complex," he finally said. "Why don’t they just adopt the system we have?"’

"Why don’t they just adopt the system we have?"

So this is the first time Ben Carson has been exposed to the mechanics of a parliamentary system, which is far more common in the first world than our one-of-a-kind representative democracy? This goes beyond stupid and ignorant. This demonstrates the same disinterest in the world that George W Bush demonstrated when he was a primary candidate. Republicans didn’t think that level of ignorance was going to be a problem. Turns out that not knowing what "Sunni" and "Shia" are was a giant problem.

So at some point during Carson’s trip, he was given three IDF (Israeli defense force, but you knew that because you’re not freaking Ben Carson!) tutors. From the article;

"….. to discuss the nearby Syrian civil war. He [the IDF member] claimed that most of the Islamist fighters weren’t Syrian but came from Morocco and Europe. "It’s just like the troublemakers in Ferguson," Carson said, betraying a habit of wedging the unfamiliar into a context he understands.

The man is a child, trying to distill everything he hears down to information that he can fit (incorrectly) into buckets of situations he’s (or so he thinks) familiar with. No, Ben Carson, there is no possible way to correlate the Syrian revolution with Ferguson Missouri, you unmitigated dolt.

At another point on his trip, he asks, "Is this area right here protected by the Iron Dome?" I’m still shaking my head, and I’ve been digesting that morsel of stupid for a couple of hours now.

Here’s another part of the article I found interesting;

Even among Carson’s political team, though, there’s some recognition that he could benefit from a little more polish. The day of the president’s State of the Union, Carson had spent five hours getting briefed on domestic and foreign policy at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank; the next morning, he would travel to Texas for two days of media training. But on the night of Obama’s speech, the task of getting Carson ready for the White House fell to Williams alone. He’d arranged for Carson to appear on cable news to offer some post-speech commentary and was busily prepping the doctor.

The ‘Williams’ referenced there, is Armstrong Williams. Another know-nothing radio talk show host that Barack Obama annihilated in his campaign to win the Illinois senate seat he held before he became president.

As Sam Seder (majority.fm) put it, Ben Carson will forever change the implication of the statement, "well, he’s no brain surgeon".

Negotiating With Iran

April 3, 2015 by Bitchy

As you probably know, details of the penultimate deal with Iran were published yesterday. This deal is so unbelievable, that it’s almost a mugging of Iran. Seriously, it’s hard to imagine what more could have been gotten here. Here are the key points:

Iran will give up about 14,000 of its 20,000 centrifuges. This is slightly more than we were aiming for.
Iran will give up all but its first-generation IR-1 centrifuges, and they’re not allowed to build any new ones. These are 1970s era technology, meaning that if they decide to proceed in the future, they’re starting forty years behind where they are today.
Iran has agreed to not enrich uranium over 3.67% for at least 15 years. To put that in context, you need to enrich uranium at 90% to build a nuclear weapon. This also sets them back decades if they change their minds about this deal in the future.
Iran has agreed to reduce its current stockpile of about 10,000 kg of low-enriched uranium (LEU) to 300 kg of 3.67% LEU for 15 years. You don’t need my help with that one. A 97% reduction pretty clear.
All excess centrifuges and enrichment infrastructure will be placed in IAEA monitored storage and will be used only as replacements for operating centrifuges and equipment. This is going to happen immediately, so we won’t have to wait long to see if they’re earnest in their intentions to abide by this agreement.
Iran has agreed to not build any new facilities for the purpose of enriching uranium for 15 years.
The IAEA will have regular access to all of Iran’s nuclear facilities, including to Iran’s enrichment facility at Natanz and its former enrichment facility at Fordow, and including the use of the most up-to-date, modern monitoring technologies. There’s a whole lot more language giving the IAEA the power to inspect anything, at any time, and for any reason. The level of transparency that Iran agreed to is ridiculously thorough. If someone tries to tell you that Iran can still hide stuff, ask them to provide you with an example of the IAEA missing nuclear development anywhere in the world.

You can read all of the details here (don’t let someone tell you what’s in the deal, read it for yourself).

Here’s what Iran gets in exchange for everything they agreed to; the world (US and EU) lifts its sanctions after the IAEA has verified that Iran has taken all of its key nuclear-related steps. If at any time Iran fails to fulfill its commitments, these sanctions will snap back into place.

So to recap, President Obama increased the sanctions to the point where Iran cried, "UNCLE" and gave up much more than anyone ever thought they would in exchange for lifting those sanctions. He didn’t bomb them. He didn’t get a single American soldier (or civilian for that matter) killed. He negotiated like grown ups do.

Bush handled Iraq the republican way, and we got ISIS and tens of thousands of dead Americans and hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis. And this is just the beginning. So when republicans tell you that negotiating with Iran was stupid because we don’t know if they’re going to hold up their end of the bargain, ask them how fucking stupid and naive they think Reagan was when he negotiated with The Soviet Union. And ask them what Reagan got up front from Gorbachev before holding up his end of the deal.

It’s time for republicans to stop weighing in on foreign policy. They have a stupid view of the world, that brings terrible consequences. And they further their stupidity making up some stupid shit about (for example) how ISIS was formed because Obama pulled out of Iraq too soon. When you don’t know history, you sure as fuck don’t know how to proceed in the future. They compound their stupidity with ignorance. Not only did ISIS form in 2003, but we left Iraq when we did because we were bound by Bush’s status of forces agreement, which had an end date. Obama did his damndest to keep us there. The Iraqi government was having none of it. So even in their fairy tale version, where ISIS didn’t form until after we left Iraq, they’re still a product of Bush’s stupidity.

Republicans need to shut up now. Obama’s got this. That brings me to the other thought I had about this post I wrote four years ago (you’re going to want to read it). In it, I talk about the political theater that is being put on for us. It’s a show where we have every component of Star Wars, except that the "good guys" are hapless and can’t seem to deliver on what they really want to deliver on. Republicans are the bad guys, not even pretending to be serving anyone but their corporate masters anymore. Democrats are (we’re supposed to believe) the hapless good guys who are always being overpowered by republicans.

I’m more sure of that dynamic now than I’ve ever been. Obama can negotiate, and he can be tough. He can get more than we could have hoped for from Iran, but he couldn’t get us single payer health insurance (or even a medicare buy in provision). Obama’s kick ass performance here, in negotiating this deal, just highlights what I said in that piece four years ago.

Mike Pence Will Never Be The Nominee

March 31, 2015 by Bitchy

So Mike Pence, governor if Indiana is thinking of running for president. This tells me that his political instincts spectacularly suck.

I’m sure everyone knows that he signed a ‘Religious Freedom Restoration Act’ (or RFRA) last week. We already have a federal RFRA, but that one doesn’t go far enough for Indiana republican legislators. It doesn’t allow business to discriminate against (for example) the LGBT community because of their religious beliefs. This law not only empowers businesses to refuse to serve, hire, rent to, and a whole slew of other things to a member of the LGBT community, but it also shields them from being sued if they do.

A little context: there was a law suit in New Mexico (who has its own RFRA) called Elane Photography v Willock. That was a case where a same sex couple sued a photography studio for refusing to photograph their wedding. The New Mexico RFRA protects a business from being sued by the government over their "free exercise" of their religion. The defendants tried to use the New Mexico RFRA as a defense, but New Mexico’s state supreme court ruled that RFRA didn’t apply since the government wasn’t a party in the suit. Indiana decided they weren’t going to make that mistake, so their RFRA includes language that bars someone who was discriminated against from suing the bigot that did the discriminating.

Why did I start this post off by saying that Mike Pence’s political instincts suck? Because a poll taken earlier this month has 40% of republicans supporting marriage equality. While that’s not a majority yet, the context is really important; two years that number was 27%. The tide is turning, and it’s turning fast. The republican presidential primaries don’t start for another eight months, and the general election is almost a year and a half away. What do you think the numbers are going to look like then?

Mike Pence is pandering to that charming republican base that the world is leaving behind. You don’t have to be a forward thinker to see that’s a bad idea. All you have to do is to look at the polls for today. But beyond that, the thing that really makes Pence a political idiot, is the fact that he hasn’t noticed that the only candidate who is officially in the race right now, is playing to the same base. So if no other republican comes into the primary by making a play for the dinosaur base, Pence is going to be splitting that vote with Cruz. That base represents roughly 24% of us. It’s that 24% that approved of Bush until the bitter end. The 24% that thought Sarah Palin was awesome even after it was clear that she didn’t know anything, and that English may well be her second language.

As if making a play for the base, when the only candidate in the race is going after those same people isn’t dumb enough, he hasn’t noticed something really relevant about recent history. No republican has successfully pivoted from the base to the middle for the general election. Mitt Romney certainly didn’t do it. His pivot turned into a spin, which turned into a face plant. McCain couldn’t pull it off either. He got a bigger ass kicking in the general than Romney got. That "bomb, bomb, bomb bomb Iran" idiocy wasn’t forgotten by the general electorate who were tired of war.

George W Bush didn’t run as a whackadoodle in the primary but then again, he didn’t have to. He had the Bush name. That’s something I will never understand either. Poppy is not a popular president among republicans. They never talk about his awesomeness. So why the hell would you vote for the idiot (it was clear he was an idiot in the primaries) son of a president you don’t hold in high esteem? And now they have to pretend like the son’s presidency didn’t happen either. W is persona non grata at the conventions and everywhere else. And now they’re thinking about voting for the brother and son of the two presidents they have to pretend never existed? How long do they think they can keep this up? I think that one hundred years from now, when republicans are still only acknowledging Ronald Reagan as their awesome president, someone is going to notice there’s something wrong with them.

But I digress. My point is that this mythological pivot from the whackadoodle right to the middle has never been pulled off. Anyone who thinks they can do it, isn’t playing the smart odds.

Signing RFRA was the dumbest thing he could have done at the very time he’s thinking about a presidential run. The legislature is going to have to go back to eliminate the really fucked up language in Indiana’s RFRA, and Pence is going to have to sign the amended version. Yes, they will try and save face by claiming that they basically changed some punctuation marks, but that won’t matter. The base will know.

Every move he made this week was a mistake. Running for president after this will be an eve bigger mistake. He royally screwed up because he has no political instincts to speak of.

My Wallet Is Anti Apartheid

March 19, 2015 by Bitchy

I’ve been boycotting Israeli products for a few years now, because I wasn’t confused about Bibi’s thoughts regarding a two state solution, or any solution that creates a Palestine. But now that he’s finally done everyone the courtesy of articulating his position that he will never support a Palestinian state, he’s made the situation far less ambiguous for everyone all around the world.

Europe is going to have to decide if they’re going to impose sanctions on Israel, or if they’re fine with the Palestinians remaining second class citizens in perpetuity. They’ve always said that they would support Israel as long as Israel was sitting at the negotiation table. Israel, of course hasn’t entered the building where the table is located for years, but Bibi has finally made it clear that as long as he’s the prime minister, it never will.

The US is going to have to decide what we’re going to do, especially by the time the next UN shindig takes place. Do we support Israel under any circumstances, and with no hope of peace ever happening in that region, or do we act in our own self interest? Remember when we were hearing the "they hate us for our freedom" bullshit? They never hated us for our freedom. That was a childish and simplistic thing to say. To the extent that "they" hate us, it’s probably much more about our incessant involvement in the region from installing The Shah in Iran to supporting and then killing Saddam, to enabling Israel in their efforts drive every single Palestinian out of their homes so that Israel can have the whole pie to themselves.

Personally, I’ve always been opposed to apartheid so my Jewiness isn’t really a factor in my human rights stance. I’m still against apartheid. Bibi’s admission makes things far less nuanced and confusing for anyone wasn’t sure who the "bad guys" are in this situation. Under Netanyahu’s leadership, Israel will always be an apartheid state. It’s pretty straight forward. Either you believe that Palestinians deserve to be second class citizens, getting everything they deserve and Israel is nothing but awesome sauce, or you’re against the oppression of anyone, regardless of who the oppressors are.

So if your wallet wants to join my wallet in not supporting apartheid, you should join me in boycotting Israeli products. Here are some major ones;

SodaStream – Cuisinart makes a soda machine that costs less and doesn’t require those pesky proprietary cartridges.
Sabra hummus – avoiding this should be easy. Trader Joe’s has great hummus that costs less and doesn’t drive anyone out of their homeland.
Tribe hummas – see above solution.
Ahava beauty products.
Hewlett Packard
Motorola
Moroccan oil – sorry ladies, but look into Euphora.

That’s obviously just a partial list. To ensure that you don’t inadvertently support Israeli apartheid, you can download an app called Buycott. It’s available for both iPhone and Android. All you have to do is use the app to scan the barcode of any product you’re thinking about buying. The app will help you to avoid supporting a myriad of different things so it’s not just limited to identifying products that support Israeli apartheid. It will identify Koch industries products, environmentally disastrous products, and a whole slew of other causes that are important to you.

I know what you’re thinking; but Bibi took it all back today and said that he would consider a two state solution. That is, in fact, what he said. That’s when you include a couple of data points in determining whether he was being honest two days ago, or if he’s being honest today. For example, there was that video he put out on election day when he was pooping his pants over the possibility of losing the election. You know, the one where he said,

"Arab voters are heading to the polling stations in droves!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!",

and urged his supporters to come out and vote. Was he excited because Israeli citizens who are Arab were voting, so turnout was going to be awesome? Or was he sounding alarm bells because Israeli second class citizens who are Arab were voting and that would be bad?

You decide.

Has he reached out anytime in your memory to open talks with Abbas? Or do his actions line up with his statement about never allowing a two state solution?

You decide.

I have and surprisingly, trusting my lying eyes is ultimately the direction that made more sense to me.

So until I see evidence of an earnest attempt on Israel’s part to reach an agreement, my wallet and I will be sure not to support Israeli apartheid.

Did Obama Threaten Germany? Really?

March 19, 2015 by Bitchy

I came across a seriously disturbing story by Glenn Greenwald on The Intercept today. In it, he says that the Vice Chancellor of Germany (Sigmar Gabriel) told him that the Obama administration threatened to stop sharing intelligence with Germany if they decided to give Edward Snowden asylum. From the article;

Afterward, however, when I pressed the vice chancellor (who is also head of the Social Democratic Party, as well as the country’s economy and energy minister) as to why the German government could not and would not offer Snowden asylum — which, under international law, negates the asylee’s status as a fugitive — he told me that the U.S. government had aggressively threatened the Germans that if they did so, they would be “cut off” from all intelligence sharing. That would mean, if the threat were carried out, that the Americans would literally allow the German population to remain vulnerable to a brewing attack discovered by the Americans by withholding that information from their government.

We’re threatening our allies now?

More importantly, we’re threatening our allies over one person now? I thought that charging Snowden with the espionage act was outrageous and completely inapplicable. Edward Snowden did not steal classified information and hand it off to our enemies. Nor did his information injure the United States in any way that they’ve been able to demonstrate. So far, in every single court case where mass surveillance has been challenged, the government has provided precisely no evidence of injury. In fact, when the president came out and announced that the program was going to undergo significant review and reform, he made Snowden a whistleblower. If what Snowden revealed caused the program to be reviewed and modified, he is the very definition of a whistleblower.

But I digress. I generally believe that Obama has been good on foreign policy. He intensified the sanctions against Iran enough to the point where they agreed to negotiate. He’s doing some serious damage to Russia’s economy as well, making it less likely that Putin will have the ability to take Ukraine. He played Putin like a fiddle over the Syria situation by making him deal with Assad’s biological weapons. He made a completely correct calculation when he decided to fly into our frenemies’ airspace to get Bin Laden, who they had been protecting for years. He’s done some things I disagree with like creating future terrorists with the widespread use of drones in Pakistan, and not doing a damned thing to reign in Israel’s massive land grabs but hey, who agrees with anyone all the time?

But this threatening Germany over Snowden thing is inexplicable. I literally can’t see the rationale behind it. What’s the upside? You finally get Snowden and put him in prison? And for that, you’re willing to threaten a powerful ally? This makes no sense to me.

If we’re going to threaten to withhold intelligence from an ally, how about we look at Ireland or Switzerland, where giant piles of money are being stashed by US corporations and rich asshats. I mean, if they weren’t our allies, they may not be able to afford to shelter all that money, since they would have to put more money into their own defense. So why not threaten an ally over trillions of dollars instead of over one whistleblower? If we got that money, we could finally pay for Bush’s wars or fund job creation and education programs. If we got Edward Snowden we could……..stop future whistleblowers from letting us know what our government is doing to us?

I want to find this story hard to believe, despite this administration’s vicious crackdown on whistleblowers because the endgame doesn’t make sense to me. Greenwald doesn’t seem to entirely believe it’s true either. He ends the piece by saying;

Nonetheless, one of two things is true: 1) the U.S. actually threatened Germany that it would refrain from notifying them of terrorist plots against German citizens and thus deliberately leave them vulnerable to violent attacks, or 2) some combination of high officials from the U.S. and/or German governments are invoking such fictitious threats in order to manipulate and scare the German public into believing that asylum for Snowden will endanger their lives. Both are obviously noteworthy, though it’s hard to say which is worse.

I agree. This is really disturbing, and a great cause for concern since this would make the Obama administration bigger international bullies than the Bush administration were.

Tom Cotton, YOU Don’t Understand Our Constitutional System

March 13, 2015 by Bitchy

So I learned something new yesterday that I thought I’d share with you. Remember the stupid Tom Cotton letter? You know, the condescending one he addressed to The Islamic Public Of Iran? You know, the one that started with,

"It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system…".

The one that then goes on to say,

"Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement. The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.”

Well, in a delicious twist of irony, it appears that nothing Tom Cotton said in his dumbass letter is true. Nothing, except maybe the spelling of his name in his signature. The president can negotiate and bind this deal without a single member of congress weighing in, and it cannot be undone by the next president. So if you’re keeping score, that would be the trifecta of wrong on the part of the whackadoodle freshman senator from Arkansas.

I learned that there are three kinds of international agreements. From the article;

"…..these forms of international agreements include: “treaties,” which receive the approval of two-thirds or more of the Senate; “congressional-executive agreements,” which receive the authorization or approval of a majority of both houses of Congress; and “sole executive agreements,” which are concluded by the President on his own constitutional authority without formal congressional or senatorial participation."

Naturally, I did some more research since one source is never going to cut it for me. I found some background information on FindLaw. The constitution doesn’t exactly make a distinction between treaties and agreements (of either flavor), but Thomas Jefferson did broach the subject in a report he prepared for George Washington while he (Jefferson) was Secretary Of State. Here are his words;

"Considering the value of the interests we have at stake and considering the smallness of difference between foreign and native tonnage on French vessels alone, it might perhaps be thought advisable to make the sacrifice asked, and especially if it can be so done as to give no title to other the most favored nations to claim it. If the act should put French vessels on the footing of those of natives, and declare it to be in consideration of the favors granted us by the arrets of December 1787, and December 7, 1788 (and perhaps this would satisfy them), no nation could then demand the same favor without offering an equivalent compensation. It might strengthen, too, the tenure by which those arrets are held, which must be precarious so long as they are gratuitous.

It is desirable in many instances to exchange mutual advantages by legislative acts rather than by treaty, because the former, though understood to be in consideration of each other, and therefore greatly respected, yet when they become too inconvenient can be dropped at the will of either party; whereas stipulations by treaty are forever irrevocable but by joint consent, let a change of circumstances render them ever so burdensome."

In the first fifty years of the US’s independence, sixty treaties were made compared to twenty-seven executive agreements. When WWII started, the count was at eight hundred treaties and twelve hundred executive agreements. For the period between 1940 and 1989, there were seven hundred and fifty-nine treaties and thirteen thousand and sixteen executive agreements. In 1989, the US was party to eight hundred and ninety treaties and five thousand one hundred and seventeen executive agreements made by Saint Ronny of Republican Mythology.

I know what you’re thinking at this point; those are just numbers so what kind of executive agreements are we talking about? Good question. The peace agreement with Vietnam in 1973 was an executive agreement. The "Destroyers for Bases Agreement of 1940" was an executive agreement that FDR signed. He gave the UK fifty overage destroyers in exchange for 99-year leases on certain British naval bases in the Atlantic. The Status Of Forces Agreement with Iraq that George W Bush made didn’t require a congressional vote, so that was an executive agreement. So these aren’t insignificant agreements.

I found a myriad of court cases that uphold the authority of executive agreements. You can find those pretty easily if you’re interested in doing some more research. The Supreme Court has upheld the validity of executive agreements several times, starting with United States v Belmont in 1937. There’s Dames & Moore v. Regan, and Weinberger v. Rossi, and several more similar SCOTUS decisions. Those are just a few of many, but you get the point.

So to recap:

Executive agreements have been made without the approval of congress, starting with our first president.
These executive agreements have been pretty substantial agreements to do everything from establishing peace, to trading arms, to defining the length of a US occupation.
The Supreme Court has been upholding the authority of these agreements over and over again for decades.
Tom Cotton and his forty-six republican peers in congress are complete idiots, who should avail themselves of the large staff they each possess to do the type of research I managed to do with just me, my computer, and my tired eyes.

This stupid letter of Tim Cotton’s is going to do the opposite of what he intended for it to do. Instead of derailing these talks with Iran and humiliating President Obama, he has strengthened the resolve of both our president and the Iranians who have been publicly mocking Cotton. And he is once and for all going to prove the "three dimensional chess" credit that Obama has been getting getting for six years now.