Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
This post is in: Music, Open Threads, Television, Rumormongering
I’m watching the rock and roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, and they just inducted Grohl and Nirvana, and I just cringed the entire time Courtney Love talked. I am not a fan of conspiracy theories, and I hate speculating on unconfirmed shit, but I have always thought she killed Cobain. I have no facts or anything at my disposal, but I just think they were all fucked up and something happened.
Grohl’s speech was predictably awesome.
This post is in: Open Threads, Readership Capture, Sports
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I assume there’s at least one televised sporting event in the rotation that people want to talk about?
This post is in: Assholes, Sociopaths
This dovetails nicely with Anne Laurie’s previous post. Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was released from captivity today in a swap for five Afghan detainees in Gitmo. It’s all around excellent news, and I am glad we finally got him home and reunited with his family.
Oh, the point of this post? Republicans are furious he is coming home. I’d really like, as someone in the OTB comments mentioned, to see these Republicans speak to Bergdahl’s family about how this sucked and was terrible. Or any other veteran or family of a veteran on the planet, for that matter.
This post is in: Military, Decline and Fall, Did You Know John McCain Was A POW?
McCain is right. Treatment of veterans in Arizona is disgraceful. If only there were a prominent veteran in Arizona who could have helped
— Donald J. Drumpf (@RealDonalDrumpf) May 30, 2014
I’d like to believe this scandal — this nationwide collection of scandals — will finally be treated with the seriousness it deserves, and remedied to the extent possible. We’ve got a lot of veterans who need the care we promised them, now and going forward for the next several decades. But I suspect Mr. Charles P. Pierce has the truth of it:
… The problem with the VA system right now is that, for an entire decade, we sent people into the meat grinder of a war the architects of which conducted completely off the books. They kept it off the books used to keep the federal budget, and they did all they could to keep it off the books of the nation’s moral conscience as well. They lied and they cooked their estimates on everything far worse than did the likely criminals who fudged the documentation at the hospital in Phoenix. The whole country was awash in the moral equivalent of a Ponzi scheme, all glistening and shiny and bedecked in bunting. Meanwhile, the physical, financial, and moral cost of it all built up and built up until the scheme got bigger and more complicated and, ultimately, it became untenable. And now, the people who launched it in the first place are tut-tutting about what happened when the whole thing finally collapsed. The one thing to remember about a Ponzi scheme is that the people who get in first get paid off. They got their war. They profited from the double-entry bookkeeping they kept on the national conscience and, now, there’s a Democratic president, and a whole lot of injured veterans, who end up holding the bag.
… Now, there will be a lot of stuff and nonsense about reforming the whole system — privatizing it, so that it more closely resembles the wonderful health-care system we had before the Kenyan Usurper cast his socialist spells upon the republic — and there will be a great deal of posturing from both sides about the “debt” we owe to our “wounded warriors.” But, as we all know, you can’t solve any problem by “just throwing money at it.” The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, which has been completely mad since before Reagan closed all those counseling centers, pointed that out to us just today. But, ultimately, Bernie Sanders is completely correct about it all. If you don’t want to pay all the real costs of taking the nation to war, then don’t take it to war at all. It is, after all, criminal naivete to be shocked by the inevitable.
by DougJ| 255 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Readership Capture, Blogospheric Navel-Gazing
The song I took the title for the last post from — “Poncho and Lefty” — is one of those songs that, when I google it, I find people various people calling it the greatest song ever. This also happens with “Wichita Lineman”, “Aguas de Marco”, and “My Funny Valentine” and “Got To Give It Up”.
How about a thread on songs that are described as the greatest ever? Doesn’t have to be your favorite, though it could be.
The words “stairway” and “heaven” will both trip the spam filter for the rest of the afternoon.
by DougJ| 43 Comments
This post is in: Clown Shoes
Nothing special against Phil Mickelson, but heh:
Golfer Phil Mickelson is under investigation for possible involvement in insider trading, according to reports in The Wall Street Journal andThe New York Times. I’m wondering how long it’s going to be before folks on the right start telling us that we’re hearing the heavy tread of the Obama jackboot –in early 2013, you may recall, Mickelson whined about the tax bill on his earnings of $60 million — a cry of freedom that was praised by Peggy Noonan (“it was unusual: Most people in his position are clever enough not to sound aggrieved”) and was deemed the start of an anti-Obama tax revolt in a FoxNews.com op-edby Obana conspiracy theorist Wayne Allyn Root. Last year, as Breitbart noted, Mickelson went on CNBC and told Maria Bartiromo that CEOs he golfed with were telling him they weren’t hiring because of Obamacare.
Mickelson has had some difficulties with money. Many reports over the years have said that Mickelson has had gambling problems —here’s a good roundup — and, well, the current story tells us that the insider trading allegedly involves a well-known Vegas gambler:
Here’s hoping it turns out he threw a couple tournaments. He’s sure missed enough short putts over the years.
by Kay| 106 Comments
This post is in: Election 2014, Election 2016, Post-racial America, Meth Laboratories of Democracy, Midnight Confessions, Our Awesome Meritocracy, Our Failed Political Establishment
Alabama has come up with a “vouching” proposal where voters who lack the newly required ID are supposed to get two (mostly white) election officials to “vouch” for them in order to vote a regular ballot. “Vouching” has a long and sordid history in this country so the NAACP is fighting the provision.
Wanted to highlight one part of the NAACP lawyer-letter to the Secretary of State in Alabama, because for one thing it’s clever lawyering but perhaps more importantly it goes to the fact that in some states “Democrat” is just proxy for “black voters.” The NAACP wanted to bring out the racial animus behind this law. Here, they do that by quoting from a federal judge in an unrelated Alabama corruption case. Scroll down to # 5 in the NAACP letter if you want to see the cite.
It’s a crazy story. Briefly, several Alabama lawmakers were brought up on federal corruption charges. It was alleged that gambling lobbyists were buying the lawmakers because gambling lobbyists wanted a referendum on electronic bingo on the ballot in Alabama.
Some other Alabama lawmakers wore a wire for the FBI to record the corrupt pro-gambling lawmakers. However, the lawmakers who were wired to nail the corrupt lawmakers inadvertently captured their own conversations regarding how they needed to keep the AA vote down in the 2010 elections to retain a GOP majority.
The supposed anti-corruption lawmakers wore the wire not because they wanted to help the FBI catch corrupt lawmakers, but because they did not want the pro-gambling imitative on the ballot because they believed black people would come out for a referendum on electronic bingo, that would drive AA turnout in 2010, and those black voters might retain or elect more black lawmakers who also happen to be Democrats.
Here’s the section of the opinion on the corruption case.The judge is trying to determine whether the racist Alabama lawmakers are credible to act as witnesses against the corrupt Alabama lawmakers:
As a preliminary matter, the court finds that Beason and Lewis lack the credibility that the government sought to establish. The evidence introduced at trial contradicts the self-serving portrait of Beason and Lewis as untouchable opponents of corruption. In reality, Beason and Lewis had ulterior motives rooted in naked political ambition and pure racial bias.
The court finds that Beason and Lewis lack credibility for two reasons. First, their motive for cooperating with F.B.I. investigators was not to clean up corruption but to increase Republican political fortunes by reducing African-American voter turnout. Second, they lack credibility because the record establishes their purposeful, racist intent.
One of the government’s recordings captured Beason and Lewis discussing political strategy with other influential Republican legislative allies. A confederate warned: “Just keep in mind if [a pro-gambling] bill passes and we have a referendum in November, every black in this state will be bused to the polls. And that ain’t gonna help.” The participants predicted: “Every black, every illiterate” would be “bused on HUD financed buses.” Beason agreed: “That’s right. This will be busing extra. . . . Because you gotta have somebody to pay for those buses.” One participant replied that casinos would provide “free food” and gambling certificates to get black voters to the polls. In a separate conversation, during which Lewis asked whether the predominantly black residents of Greene County were “y’all’s Indians?,” Beason responded by derisively referring to blacks as “Aborigines.”
The court finds that Beason and Lewis cooperated with the F.B.I. in order to secure political advantage. The evidence at trial showed that black communities in Alabama tend to support electronic bingo. The evidence further demonstrated that black voters tend to be Democrats. Indeed, Beason’s and Lewis’s scheme was predicated on their belief that blacks supported electronic bingo and Democratic candidates.
By preventing SB380 from appearing on the 2010 ballot, Beason and Lewis believed that black voters would stay home on election day, thereby increasing Republican chances to take control of the state legislature.
The evidence indicates that Beason and Lewis sought to inculpate the defendants primarily to neutralize a potential political threat. Beason’s and Lewis’s political objective undercuts the anti-corruption motive they advanced at trial.
The racially discriminatory purpose expressed in the recordings further undermines Beason’s and Lewis’s credibility. It is, perhaps, unsurprising that politicians have political motives to disrupt and defeat legislation advanced by opponents. But Beason, Lewis, and other influential Republican politicians did not target Democrats generally in their opposition to SB380; they plainly singled out African-Americans for mockery and racist abuse.
Beason’s and Lewis’s statements demonstrate a deep-seated racial animus and a desire to suppress black votes by manipulating what issues appeared on the 2010 ballot
The Beason and Lewis recordings represent compelling evidence that political exclusion through racism remains a real and enduring problem in this State.
Furthermore, Beason’s and Lewis’s wrongful motivations are relevant to the political corruption at the heart of this trial. As detailed below, the government has proven the existence of an illegal vote-buying conspiracy by a preponderance of the evidence. The government rightly seeks to prosecute illicit bribery in the guise of campaign contributions.
At the same time, the discriminatory intent expressed by Beason, Lewis, and their influential legislative friends represents another form of corruption infecting the political system.
The purpose of their competing scheme was to maintain and strengthen white control of the political system. This form of race discrimination is as profoundly damaging to the fabric of democracy as is the bribery scheme the government seeks to punish.