"On Thursday, I will be the first sitting president to visit a federal prison." —President Obama
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) July 14, 2015
Nixon came close. https://t.co/T1DwJBGStJ
— David Swanson (@davidcnswanson) July 14, 2015
This is, as Vice-President Biden would say, a BFD. Per the Washington Post:
… As part of a weeklong focus on inequities in the criminal justice system, Obama will meet separately Thursday with law enforcement officials and nonviolent drug offenders who are paying their debt to society at the El Reno Federal Correctional Institution, a medium-security prison for male offenders near Oklahoma City.
He’ll be the first sitting president to see the inside of a federal prison, the White House said…
From shortening the prison sentences of nearly four-dozen non-violent drug offenders to advocating the reduction, or outright elimination, of severe mandatory minimum sentences to visiting a federal prison, Obama has argued forcefully this week for an alternative to the continued lengthy incarceration of people convicted of crimes he said did not fit the punishment.
Fourteen of the convicts whose sentences he commuted this week had been serving life in prison.
“If you’re a low-level drug dealer, or you violate your parole, you owe some debt to society. You have to be held accountable and make amends,” Obama said in a speech at the NAACP’s annual convention this week. “But you don’t owe 20 years. You don’t owe a life sentence. That’s disproportionate to the price that should be paid.”…
Mr. Charles P. Pierce, at Esquire:
… I was stunned to learn that the current president would be the first person to visit a prison while in office when he stops by the El Reno facility in Oklahoma on Thursday. Considering that we’ve had 40-odd years of frenzied incarceration, at the largely bipartisan instigation of the various tenants of the White House, or at the largely bipartisan instigation of various people aspiring to live there, this strikes me as a considerable exercise of ensemble neglect or (more likely) ensemble cowardice on the part of his immediate predecessors.
Moreover, as has been his wont since he looked into the Great Shoebox of Fks and discovered that he had no more to give, the president is taking on all of criminal-justice reform at once. This week, he has gone after mandatory minimum sentences, and he’s chided various unfunny people about making prison-rape jokes, while suggesting at the same time that using the threat of sexual assault to coerce a confession or a plea is not what you call cricket…
As should be obvious, and regardless of the good faith of the people pushing a bipartisan movement toward reform, this is a completely thankless issue. I was briefly intrigued by Jim Webb when he first hit the Senate because he seized on prison reform as a signature issue. By 2011, after the country had elected the second-worst Congress in its history, Webb couldn’t even get the money to fund a commission to study the problem…
Jim Webb just issued a statement on the president's criminal justice push. The subject line: "IT’S ABOUT TIME, MISTER PRESIDENT!"
— Dan Merica (@danmericaCNN) July 15, 2015
Ingrate.
***********
Apart from that, what’s on the agenda for the day?
NotMax
Provides him an excellent opportunity to pick out nice cells for Bush and Cheney.
(One can dream, can’t one?)
NotMax
None one wanted to play with the concept on an earlier thread. Perhaps the morning crowd will be feeling more impish, so repeating here.
An open question:
If each of the GOP candidates for prez was a cartoon character (I know, I know), which cartoon character would they be? Animation, comic books, comic strips all fair game.
Anne Laurie
@NotMax: Wouldst that Walt Kelly were living at this hour!…
Randy P
@NotMax: Tough one even if I stick to the Bugs Bunny universe of my childhood. Ted Cruz as Wile E. Coyote I think. All the villains think they’re smarter than they are, but that’s the Coyote’s defining characteristic.
NotMax
@Anne Laurie
Even though Al Capp later moved so far to the right as to become mired in the fetid swamps of bile and ire, in his heyday Li’l Abner‘s General Bullmoose and Senator Jack S. Phogbound (“There’s no Jack S. like our Jack S.!”) were primo political skewering.
donnah
I’m glad the President is taking a look and making an issue about prison reform. It’s ridiculous that this country has such a huge problem with arrest, incarceration, and re-education. It’s time to provide drug rehab, education, and job training instead of throwing people into prison, knowing they’ll possibly become repeat offenders.
Our terrific governor John Kasich has made a push to privatize Ohio prisons. So now the inmates have seen a cutback in quality and quantity of their meals. Maggoty meat, anyone?
David Koch
Its a great article.
NotMax
@donnah
They only need to pass a law declaring maggots a vegetable.
Bingo, healthy organic meals!
Mustang Bobby
South Florida is losing its classical music station. This latest attempt was a repeater for Minnesota Public Radio’s Classical 24 format, but after eight years it’s switching to Jesus.
I can still get classical over the internet from Interlochen Public Radio out of Michigan, and in the car I’ll have the local serious jazz station, WDNA (both my cars are mired in 20th century technology, so they’re not Sirius), but it’s still a shame that a region this size can’t hold on to something that even small towns in the Midwest are able to support.
Baud
Awesome. He should sing a Johnny Cash song while he’s there.
Rand is strangely silent on this all of a sudden. I thought this was his issue.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mustang Bobby: I put a Bluetooth audio system in my 30 yo Jetta.
OzarkHillbilly
The jokes… They write themselves.
NotMax
@Mustang Bobby
Happy to report that both iterations of Hawaii Public Radio are healthy. One is primarily classical (with NPR and news thrown in to the mix). The other is info-oriented (as well as other stuff such as some NPR, BBC and blues and jazz shows). Both formats are freely streamed on the net.
OzarkHillbilly
@NotMax: Not a cartoon character but Lindsey Graham has to be Chicken Little. Donald Trump would be Foghorn Leghorn.
Randy P
@NotMax: I’m struggling with who to cast as perhaps my favorite Warner Brothers characters, Daffy Duck and Yosemite Sam. Whose lines work best with a lisp or firing a six-shooter?
David Koch
BillinGlendaleCA
@David Koch: That’s pretty much why they passed it.
NotMax
@OzarkHillbilly
Contemplated Foghorn Leghorn as well, but then decided Trump is more an amalgam of Commander McBragg (occasional segment on Tennesee Tuxedo and later, Underdog) and Baron Greenback (Danger Mouse).
NotMax
@Randy P
Instant reaction (subject to revision) is Rick Perry as Yosemite (obvious), and Huckabee as Daffy.
BillinGlendaleCA
@NotMax: Think you may have been out in that island sun a bit too much.
David Koch
He wouldn’t run for a 3rd term because strategically he wants Hillary to serve 2 terms to ensure at least 16 consecutive years of progress. But if he did, he’d win in a walk.
OzarkHillbilly
@Randy P:Maybe Christie for Yosemite Sam? He’s always going off half cocked.
OzarkHillbilly
@NotMax: Underdog… Haven’t thought of that show in years!
Kay
It is. Bravo. Good for him. I think it’s great.
It’s a quieter issue, but I think there’s support for it. This is a really conservative county but we’re getting a drug court. Drug courts are a special docket for non-violent offenders charged with drug-related crimes. They get treatment instead of incarceration or in addition to much reduced sentences. The woman who pushed it here and got the grant is a great probation officer who started out as a (also great) social worker and switched over to probation. I didn’t go to the public meeting because I was on vacation but I heard the only people who objected were the representatives from the Multi Area Narcotics team (the MAN Unit) but they’re so aggressive they’re headed towards “fringe” at this point. They don’t have a great reputation.
NotMax
@OzarkHillbilly
Speed of lightning, roar of thunder
Fighting all who rob or plunder
Underdog. Underdog!
:)
Baud
@Mustang Bobby:
I don’t know if classical can’t be supported. It sound like they were simply bought out by a religious broadcaster.
satby
I was disappointed with Jim Webb’s flame-out into nothing because prison reform was his issue and I thought he had the chops to make some progress on it. Sadly, Webb doesn’t actually have the chops to accomplish anything, it seems.
On the other hand, President Obama has chops to spare. Here’s hoping that he gets this issue moving in the right direction, it’s so long overdue.
Baud
@Kay:
Thanks for the WaPo link yesterday. I don’t understand all the wild swings in favorability ratings we’re seeing. Who’s really paying attention?
Was the DOL memo significant at all? I really didn’t read it.
Randy P
@NotMax: Just made my wife aware of Spencer’s Mountain. Wally Cox who played Underdog had a prominent role in it. In fact it’s the only Wally Cox movie I know. This movie was the precursor to The Waltons. So we’re probably going to watch it sometime soon if it’s on Netflix.
satby
@Baud: My area has a very good local classical music station that is run out of the local Seventh Day Adventist university, so it also turns into religious programming for a few hours each day starting Friday night and into Sunday. It’s a good combination, oddly, because it gathers support from classical music lovers and the local church community, but allows people like me who hate the religious stuff a regular schedule to avoid it. 95% of the programming is straight music.
David Koch
Baud
@satby:
Sounds like MSNBC, which is all prison shows on the weekends.
NotMax
@Randy P
Not recommended for any purpose other than curiosity value is the Wally Cox film Up Your Teddy Bear.
kindness
Shouldn’t Dubya & Darth have beaten Barack to the Federal Pen? Yes, they should have.
Kay
@Baud:
Lydia DePillis is the WaPo labor reporter I read and she thinks it’s important. She’s interesting because she’s one of a couple of “labor” reporters who have expanded “labor” coverage to what is really “low and middle worker coverage”. A lot of the younger reporters are doing it. I think it fills a need and obviously they can no longer just stick to contract talks or whatever. Bloomberg and Politico also have younger reporters who do the same thing. It’s interesting all by itself – I was amazed when Politico hired theirs because the last place he worked he unionized the media outlet he worked for The minute they hired him at Politico he started the same campaign there :)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/07/15/clinton-says-shed-crack-down-on-independent-contractor-abuse-obama-just-did/
As I have mentioned I really like Thomas Perez, the sec of labor. He was the person who took all the heat at the DOJ on voting rights (he was in the civil rights division). They did this ridiculous witch hunt on the New Black Panthers and he had to sit there for 4 weeks and get insulted at one of those fake hearings in 2009-10. I think he ends up running for something. His home state is Maryland but he’s from NY so I bet he ends running for something in one of those two states.
Kay
@Baud:
I don;t understand why they are allowed in juvenile hearings. I watched it once and I was horrified. Apparently Indiana consented and they must be getting the parents to consent, but the juveniles themselves have rights and that system is set up to protect their privacy. They get special treatment for a reason- they don’t know what they’re doing. When they are adults and have moved on (hopefully) is it fair to create this record? I mean, Jesus Christ. It’s appalling behavior from “the adults”. They should be ashamed. I’m ashamed of the defense lawyers who go along with it.
bemused
Scott Walker said the other day he supported the Boy Scout policy of ban on gay leaders because it protects children and advanced scout values. His “clarification” of his remark after LGBT backlash was that he did not mean a physical protection but meant protecting scouts from the political and media discussion about the policy when scouts should be doing camping stuff and learning scout values.
That’s the best walkback that Walker and staff could come up with? Scouts, gay and straight, shouldn’t have to hear about a policy debate that directly affects them?
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: Say WHAT???? !!!!!!!!
eric
Cartoon characters are easy: Dick Cheney would be Dick Cheney and W would be W.
Baud
@Kay:
I never watch those shows, so I didn’t know that. Very strange.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
I don’t know if they still have it but they were filming inside juvenile proceedings. They also filmed defendant’s sitting with their court-appointed counsel in what looks like a pretrial consult and I can’t imagine what that does to the juvenile’s ability to think and ask questions. They have them testifying, the whole works.
So, you know, ten years from now when they have a job and a family everyone can go back and see them on the worst day of their lives and hear all about how bad they were. I don’t even know why it’s legal, let alone done by a huge multinational company like whoever owns MSNBC. It was a female Indiana juvenile judge and she must have let them in. We have a lawsuit at least once a year in the rural counties (probably more often in urban counties) where media sue to attend juvenile hearings or get juvenile records. They MOSTLY lose. But they’re allowed to film proceedings for profit if the adults agree?
Baud
@Kay:
I read a lot of labor related stuff posted on LGM nowadays. It really is a perspective that the MSM has lost. (And maybe labor itself is partly to blame for its own PR, but in an ideal world, the media would not depend on others to do their reporting for them.)
SuperHrefna
@satby: My favorite local radio station has a similar deal – it’s run out of Fordham University and it has a great mix of interesting alternative music weekdays, and on weekends it runs speciality shows (Celtic, big band, oldies) and religious programs.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: That is absolutely morally bankrupt. Having guided my son thru the system (with the much needed and appreciated help of his Juvenile Officer) I can not imagine agreeing to such a thing. I would probably go ballistic. Just the thought has me infuriated. These are children at their most vulnerable.
aimai
@satby: I’m gratified to discover that when a basically shitty person has one good idea they are still a basically shitty person and, as it turns out, were never going to do anything with their good idea anyway. Webb is like the proverbial dog in the manger–he had one good idea and he resents anyone else trying to do it and get the “credit.”
Cckids
@kindness:
Yes, but they need more than a visit, they need an extended stay.
raven
Captain Pissgums.
gogol's wife
A friend of mine said he was going to vote for Jim Webb. I couldn’t believe it.
Baud
@gogol’s wife:
Webbmemtum!
JPL
I miss the good old days when one was shamed for criticizing the Commander in Chief while our troops were serving overseas. For Jim Webb nothing the President can do is good enough.
Major Garrett is doubling down and twisting himself in circles. It’s fun to watch.
Baud
@JPL:
Really? I don’t miss the W. years at all.
satby
@satby: I should emphasize that I only supported Webb when he was part of the “elect Dems” push over at Dkos and he was running against George Allen for Senate. I quickly regretted that support.
raven
@JPL: Troops serving overseas. Yea, that kept them from hammering FDR during WW2 didn’t it?
Baud
@satby: You shouldn’t regret it at all. It was great that Webb beat out Allen for the Senate seat. Frankly, if he were still in the Senate, he wouldn’t even be the worst Democratic senator right now (looking at you, Manchin). He just has no business running for president, and the tack he has taken in his campaign so far is confounding.
JPL
@raven: He was a democrat so it was okay. Lucky for him, though, he didn’t have 24/7 news. I wonder what would have happened, if there were a Fox news who quoted Lindbergh non stop.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
Which makes it a ratings grabber. I’d bet there are a fair number of parents who’d support filming just for the fame of it.
debbie
@JPL:
Has there been much reaction to Garrett’s question? I haven’t heard anything, but I can’t imagine Conservatives aren’t labeling him as heroic for asking it.
Another Holocene Human
Click on today’s Google Doodle. Better long read than anything 2016 campaign related, I promise.
boatboy_srq
@Mustang Bobby: time for the iPod, or the Bluetooth adapter and Spotify…
Another Holocene Human
@NotMax: Don’t they have some sort of min security facility on the East Coast with a country club lawn for upper class crooks like that, with special excuses and weekend passes like an Israeli or South American prison?
Maybe a halfway house like Dinesh D’Souza, with community service that can be fulfilled by grifting for your favorite “charity”.
Tom
The new oven gets delivered today (finally!).
In the meantime, I’m going to see if I can get some work done with the online course I’m writing for Udemy.
Also preparing for my trip to Minnesota next week to start work on a curriculum re-design project. I wish I could do this from home with teleconferencing but the initial meetings are always in person to set up the foundations then the rest of the work is via email and Adobe Connect.
Another Holocene Human
@donnah: that privatized food thing is one of the most shocking scams and the people holding the bag are the incarcerated
imagine the innocent person in there working on their appeal except they’re sick from the food
they’ve even been doing unlicensed human experimentation with raw soy* vegan diets that have high levels of estrogen-like compounds, something like 20% of prisoners get sick but they don’t care, that makes them easier to control
*-tofu is not raw, it’s fermented, and edamame are immature and a different cultivar anyway
ThresherK (GPad)
@SuperHrefna: After getting Fordham radio over the air while traveling, I can second your vote. The website is replete with good stuff.
Mr. Longform
@satby: I love that station. I’ve moved to the east coast in the past year, and I still listen to them on my computer. WAUS in Berrien Springs, MI
FlipYrWhig
@Baud:
Webb is prickly in every metaphorical and associative sense of the word, but you can still count on him to care about veterans and poor (white) people. Let’s remember that among the Democrats we currently have in the Senate are Bill Nelson, Bob Casey Jr., Heidi Heitkamp, Joe Donnelly, Claire McCaskill, and Jon Tester, as well as Manchin.
rikyrah
Why didn’t you all tell me that the President straight up clowned the WHPC yesterday?
Taking out his OWN LIST of questions he THOUGHT that they would ask….knowing damn well that they aren’t smart enough to even think of the questions.
That only added to the butt hurt….
He had NFTG and could care less…
BRAVO!!
Another Holocene Human
But let’s not romanticize the old days because food is a perpetual prison problem. When I briefly worked for Mass Dept of Health we got letters from prisoners … we also were in charge of food safety. One time they let some prisoners prepare chicken wings for a special meal, but the big galoots didn’t bring them all up evenly to the proper internal temperature and there was a massive salmonella outbreak. (Sorry, I don’t recall which facility this happened at, but it was one of the men’s prisons.) Some sort of skills/training/oversight disconnect there. (The equipment was cleared of all wrongdoing.)
Then there’s jail food. People pop in and out of jails so there’s more community pressure to be less vile, maybe? Plus there’s work release and lunch although when you’re getting min wage and paying restitution, I don’t know.
I don’t mind seeing the jailbirds out working for the day (in our county, it’s a voluntary detail to get the fuck out the jail). I can’t stand seeing the prisoners working. They are not being paid, so it drives wages down. Some of them are scary violent and really have no business being out of a cage. Plus it ratifies the state decision to incarcerate so many of the others and for so long because now they use these ‘well behaved’ prisoners (who should never have been imprisoned) as a free labor force for the highway department, thus “saving” them money. No way should the state be fucking profiting off slave labor and it is slave labor. It is coerced. Nothing is voluntary when you have a 20 year sentence in the slammer and scary roommates, okay?
There shouldn’t be as many people in jail either, actually. It’s a different form of economic exploitation. There are lots of fines and fees everywhere you turn, especially if you operate a car which you need to get a job in most of the rural area. Big ones, because Florida doesn’t have an income tax. So if you’re poor and you can’t pay, even though they are SUPPOSED to consider hardship, in reality they’re puritan asshats who only wave fines for community service if you are literally destitute, you ride a bicycle to not work because you ain’t got no job. So these guys get tossed in jail for a year or 18 months where they lose their good job post arrest or conviction and have to work for this panoply of minimum wage employers.
You following me?
It’s a markdown crew for the capitalist scum, the same people advocating every year to get Florida’s low min wage lowered even more.
Bobby Thomson
@NotMax: the Republican candidates don’t have the depth of cartoon characters.
Bobby B.
@NotMax: “Up Your Teddy Bear” is a Komedy Klassic! Wally Cox’s funniest role, VIctor Buono, Julie Newmar,music by Quincy Jones.. . So funny it helps me forget all the DEA murders under Obama’s watch.
Another Holocene Human
@rikyrah: They actually broadcast it live on multiple channels. It was epic!
I loved the part where he was all “I’m enjoying this.” Man I got a kick out of that.
JPL
@debbie: My assumption is that CBS got some feedback. This morning he said he might not have been articulate, duh, but he needs to ask the tough questions. Plus did you know, there are four Americans being held in Iran?
I assume he received some heckling from the rest of the White House correspondents.
Another Holocene Human
@debbie: Well, the usual slime on twitter is feting him for it.
Another Holocene Human
@aimai:
QFT
They don’t even have to be shitty, just too cowardly or inept to turn their fetid plans into action. We all know people like that.
debbie
@JPL:
Except that it wasn’t a tough question. It was phrased stupidly and offensively. He could have asked if there had been any thought of tying the hostages to the negotiations. To phrase it as Obama being “content” with the hostages not being released is an insult, not just to a president, but to another human being.
On an unrelated tangent, does anyone here read Brad Thor?
Another Holocene Human
@Baud: The owners don’t want to hear from labor so you have to engage in “earned media” which is basically like “stir up trouble”. And even when that does happen they won’t really carry your point of view so much as the owners and maybe anybody you inconvenienced. Only MSNBC and mostly only Ed Show was consistently bringing on labor leaders for their perspective in the national MSM. The only people speaking for labor are people like Krugman and Reich who are economists and don’t understand all the legal and safety aspects of the labor movement’s work.
There’s a deep ignorance about how unions work and why they work that way (*cough* federal law *cough*) and it makes unions unpopular because people assume that they’re some sort of spontaneous uprising that exists to be hardasses and collect dues.
Plus you have a legal environment where people who want a union very badly cannot get one, a betrayal of the grand bargain of the 1930s that promised workers if they wanted to unionize, they could, as long as they followed the rules laid down by Congress.
Another Holocene Human
But sure, unions are to blame for some of their own bad press, for example in the 70s when the UAW agreed to two-tier wages. Fuck that noise.
OzarkHillbilly
@Another Holocene Human: During the ’80s a number of labor laws were passed (I call them Ronnie’s Rules) that had the deliberate effect of inhibiting unions from working together with the add on real world effect of pitting them against each other.
Another Holocene Human
@Baud: Classical is actually very inexpensive to operate. Much cheaper than running news or entertainment programs.
OTOH, that religious drivel may be even cheaper depending on the relationship between the operator and the content provider.
Kay
“I read a lot of labor related stuff posted on LGM nowadays”
It’s really good there but this is one area I’ll give national newspapers credit. They ARE covering “labor” now just not in the traditional sense of “this labor union does this or that”. It’s broader and I think there was a hole there that they are now filling. Most discussion of work was about white collar or degreed workers and that was presented as representative and it’s really not. 30% of the people in this country have a college degree, someone posted here yesterday. Obviously those are the people more likely to buy and read newspapers but not covering 70% of working people is just wrong. If they hire a “labor” reporter it’s a natural fit for that reporter to not just focus on union-related issues but to cover labor issues. No one else was doing it.
The “flexibility” issue is a good example. For 2 decades “flexibility” was presented as a win for working people because it was all around things like “job sharing” for lawyers or whatever. Voluntary. To fit lifestyles. But there was a huge group of people who get absolutely screwed with what turned into Just In Time schedules and those people have zero leverage in the workplace. Once the focus changed from white collar professionals to working class the analysis changed.
japa21
@JPL: The rest of the WHPC are kicking themselves for not coming up with the question. So they are not heckling Garrett.
If you watched it, the look on Obama’s face was priceless. I am sure he was fighting his internal devil to avoid coming out with something really scathing. And I loved the way he turned it around into a legitimate question as to why they didn’t tie the two together.
Another Holocene Human
I used to listen to this horrid white religious station here out of morbid curiosity until the day they did a highly anti-Semitic Jews for Jesus segment and I ragequit.
Yet to hear anything prejudiced on the black religious station, but I can still only take in small doses because ugh, church.
Gimlet
Amazon’s peak order rates during Wednesday’s Prime Day promotion have already eclipsed last year’s Black Friday order rates.
Bobby Thomson
@FlipYrWhig: Casey is actually good on everything but abortion.
rikyrah
Here’s the Maddow segment:
Obama eager to engage conservative critics on Iran deal
Rachel Maddow reviews past conservative freak-outs over U.S. diplomatic outreach to international rivals and notes that President Obama, at his press conference today, was so insistent on addressing critics that he brought up the questions himself
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/obama-eager-to-engage-critics-on-iran-deal-485140547613
Glidwrith
@OzarkHillbilly: Will you detail or link to those laws? I am utterly ignorant of them and I would like to pass them along to my congress critter.
Another Holocene Human
@OzarkHillbilly: Hm, interesting. I guess that might explain some things.
Although I think Teamsters would still be parasitic raiders. These poor paratransit operators who are not only paid shitty but face dangerous conditions at work (with the chairs and also really shitty unsafe equipment) went from a crummy catchall (not transportation) union to Teamsters. Teamsters showed up in force for the vote to turf their old union, and haven’t been seen since. I know manual laborers who are Teamsters and their union has been just fine (I think blue collars for Miami Dade or Broward County Schools or both are Teamsters?) but Teamsters are not democratic, and the transit workers they represent are getting FUCKING SCREWED in Central Florida. ATU, TWU, and the independent local in St Pete are doing better with public sector workers under Florida’s bullshitty labor laws than Teamsters and their SHITMUFFIN STEWARD are doing for their private-employed drivers. FUCK THEM right in the air intake.
/need a cigarette, lol
ps: Burlington, VT was represented by Teamsters who told them to just take a shitty contract. They called Teamsters for a Democratic Union, went on strike, got their CEO fired and a good contract. You know what US law doesn’t require? That unions actually operate in a democratic manner. Oh, we want to know all about your finances (for your employer’s sake) but we don’t give a shit if stewards are appointed and if stewards in your union have more power than God.
Elizabelle
Morning all. Cool here in NoVA. Have a light sweater on, with coffee on the deck. Gorgeous.
DC meetup was excellent. SiubhanDuinne will be driving today, but when she arrives next destination we will share photos and get some to Anne Laurie to put up with a recap.
Did we ever hear from divF with any interest in meeting up next week? We had a few Juicers who were interested but the 14th did not work out for them … (Taylor Swift, among other reasons …)
ThresherK
@Another Holocene Human: I’m follwoing you.
Ive had an interest in this, as just some squeaky-clean guy in a suburb, since I read it in Mother Jones in the early 90s. The whole “they’re in prison, who cares what happens” mindset turns my stomach. (And that was before any number of studies about the race-based warping of who gets put in prison, the ascendancy of Rudy! plus his imitators, and a bunch of other crimes against the poor and downtrodden.)
So I’m not romanticizing the old days, whether it’s 35 years ago in Brubaker, or any Warner Bros movie from 80 years ago, say, I Am a Fugutive From a Chain Gang. Prison movies exist for a reason, says I.
Elizabelle
WaPost yesterday: The black president some worried about has arrived
By Jannell Ross. Lots of links. 1500 comments, too, but not harshing my mellow morning.
Felonius Monk
Day 2 of Jade Helm and the takeover of Texas continues:
Another Holocene Human
@David Koch: Fuck yeah, but we knew that!
Shit, all that time that Clinton was wanking to reporters about his “legacy” he had fucking Robert Rubin in his cabinet and he was having the state dep’t wrench the arms of little countries to accept US-made cig imports and allow advertising that he was busy banning in the United States.
Hell, in his first two years Clinton fucking squandered a Dem majority, failing to get his health reform or BTU tax passed. Whereas Obama….
Another Holocene Human
@David Koch: sooooooo true
bemused
@Tom:
I hope you will find time to enjoy some MN activities, etc.
Another Holocene Human
@Kay: They’ve had them in Texas for years, why not Ohio?
SFAW
@Anne Laurie:
To paraphrase Jack Gilford: This would kill him.
MazeDancer
Moving, illuminating, actually inspiring, article and Op-doc really worth watching, about the first day out of prison of ex-lifers released because of change in CA 3-strikes law.
NY Times: http://goo.gl/H41KNM
Emotional help and adjustment as essential as physical.
ruemara
When a black person does it, It’s always not fast enough and not quite correct. Fuck Jim Webb. My throat is so sore and my voice is gone. Looks like I’m struck from the set for the weekend. No sense in me getting people sick and half my job would be talking. Blergh.
Botsplainer
@Felonius Monk:
I’ve been eagerly awaiting the stories of forced gay marriage of 50 and 60 something Texas wingnuts to beret-clad New Black Panthers, but so far, nothing. I’m super disappointed.
Maybe I can be cheered up with tales of the rainbow-festooned mobile electric smelter being fed dozens of .22 rifles that loving Texas grandfathers took Texas wingnuts out plinking with when they were 7 years old…
Tommy
I miss NYC.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4tqij8zsOU
msdc
@FlipYrWhig:
Webb’s commitment to ending the war in Iraq, caring for veterans, and reforming prisons would have benefited a lot more than just poor white people. He could have been a fine senator (and yes, a prickly one) if he hadn’t decided he was too good to stay there.
What I don’t understand is how someone who clearly detested the business of campaigning in a single state thinks he’s cut out for the rigors of a national campaign. Either he’s running to promote a book or a speaking career or he’s living in denial.
gelfling545
@Mustang Bobby: I am happy to report that WNED FM, our local classical music station (24/7) is still afloat. They struggle with fundraising from year to year but we in WNY like our music. They have an iPhone app to get them via the internet. The programming is quite diverse so it’s not the same old, well known (& maybe over-performed?) pieces all the time & they make room in the schedule for longer works.
gelfling545
Jim Webb thinks the President should have moved sooner? Still, Webb couldn’t even get funding for a study. Why was that again, Mr. Webb?
And, Mr. Webb, you have as much chance of being elected president as I do (and thank gods for it). Just saying.
raven
@gelfling545: He’s an asshole, you heard it here first. Fuck him and John Barrow.
DissidentFish
@bemused: I think this is pretty illustrative of Walker’s head. He really doesn’t have core beliefs on this issue (or possibly any social issues). He just yaps whatever most conservative talking point that comes into his little head. Much like Reagan actually, whose anticommunism was his only core belief. Walker may have anti unionism and free markets as a core belief but who’s to say? He is, to my mind, a mindless drone for the Koch Bros. and the Club for Growth. It’ll show during primary season, but that doesn’t mean he might not win — see Reagan above.
Face
@NotMax: Senator PittyPat already talks like Foghorn Leghorn, so there’s that.
Lurking Canadian
I say this in true reverence for the President…
Holy shit, the fuckin’ BALLS on that guy. No-more-fucks Obama is a giant among pygmies.
Kathleen
@NotMax: Also, too, protein.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Ought to be required for every elected official who deals in any way with the criminal justice system. I took a class in psychology and the law, and part of the class was a visit to Soledad here in California, back in the early 1990s.
It changed my life. I think it would change anyone’s. How we deal with crime and criminals in this country is not OK. You will also feel, as Richard Pryor expressed so well in his immortal comedy routine, “thank God for prisons”, because there are a lot of people in there that you really wouldn’t even want to envision being out in regular society. How we deal with those folks, I do not know, but the way we have chosen to deal with them is obviously the very worst way possible.
Also, you’ll be instantly tossed out of any jury pool you’re being considered for once you tell them you’ve been in a prison. It’s almost like they know that what goes on in there is really wrong.
So good on Obama. It’s going to be a life changing experience, even though it’s a reasonably sanitized visit to Club Fed.
OzarkHillbilly
@Another Holocene Human:
You don’t have to tell me. In all my years as a union carpenter I never once got to vote on a contract (something the Teamsters in STL do at least) The business rep holds all the power at the Local level (my local had a good rep) and at the Council level the president does. And open dissent with in the ranks is not tolerated. (meetings are a different story to some extant anyway) If you don’t toe the line, you get fined.
My local built a new hall (the old one was a rathole) paid for out of our dues and our Rep paid off the note early thru judicious fiscal management. A really nice place for a small s. central MO local. Made a lot of money renting it to various organizations. Than one day the Prez of the CDC pushes thru a change at that level and takes it, and all our bank accounts.
@Glidwrith: I wish I was more knowledgeable of them but I’m not. The one that was particularly egregious to me was the allowance for 2 gates on a jobsite, one for union contractors and one for nonunion. If a union put up an informational picket about nonunion contractors, they have to put it at the nonunion gate. This has the effect of allowing other union tradespeople to continue to work without crossing a picket line, which we would never do. There is the additional clause that says if we honor a picket line not on our gate, our union can get sued for not fulfilling it’s contractual obligations.
In my younger days I got in minor trouble over this a time or 2. The day came when I just got tired of tilting at windmills and put my head down and just went to work.
There are other things that are more complicated and where the law ends and union rules begin I am not well enough versed to say. There is a shrinking pie of Union work and the big honchos are more concerned with securing as much of it as they can then they are with making the pie bigger. In the process they do really stupid things that serve only to make their members mortal enemies.
There was always tension between the trades but nowadays it is almost open warfare.
shell
@OzarkHillbilly:
Foghorn has too much dignity.
Amir Khalid
Tomorrow is Eid al-Fitri. Tomorrow is my birthday. Tomorrow is the first anniversary of MH17 getting shot down. Tomorrow is the 19th anniversary of TWA 800 exploding in the air 12 minutes after takeoff.
Kathleen
@Kay: Clermont County has done the same thing:
http://www.clermontcountyohio.gov/Clermont_County_CASC_announcement_Final.aspx
A judge was instrumental in moving this forward.
Another Holocene Human
@ruemara: Get some rest. It’s how your body kills viruses.
Kerry Reid
@NotMax: I remember that Jon Stewart always used Droopy Dog’s voice for Joe Lieberman.
Kathleen
@Baud: Agreed. Reading Erik Loomis’ posts is like a mini online labor history seminar.
shell
Garrett congratulated himself with :I must have hit a nerve…:
Yeah, you can also hit a nerve by kicking someone in the shin but thats not very mature communication..
gelfling545
@OzarkHillbilly: No, no. Trump is Yosemite Sam. Why if he grew a moustache (or his hair slipped) he’d look the part perfectly.
Kathleen
@Bobby Thomson: Win!
Another Holocene Human
@OzarkHillbilly:
WHAT THE FUCKITY FUCK.
In my union THANK FUCK the international can’t do that (maybe it helps that our industry has a couple of competing unions, a local can always quit one and run to the other?) but a few dirty union presidents have run off with union property. One in Texas sold a nearly 100 year old hall out from under the local. When a local president steals property it is theft and the authorities get involved, however, the building was now owned by another party. Never heard how that got resolved. It was a small and weak local so they were probably screwed.
ruemara
@Amir Khalid: Happy Birthday. Celebrate like you mean it.
And may the honored dead rest well.
Kathleen
@JPL: I loved the way PBO reframed the exchange by rephrasing the question, which he acknowledged was an appropriate question, while calling out Garrett for how he crafted it. His performance during the entire press conference was masterful. He was not about to trust those jackals to nicke/dime him with stupid questions. He wanted to make sure we the great unwashed understood the agreement.
Another Holocene Human
@Amir Khalid: Truly, a momentous date. Happy birthday.
aimai
@Lurking Canadian: I agree. I am just bursting with joy at what he is doing, and admiration for the way he is doing it.
gelfling545
@Baud: Quite confounding. It sounds like he’s trying to run as the Democratic candidate for president of the Confederacy at some points.
aimai
@ruemara: Hot Chicken soup with tons of sliced garlic, ginger, lime juice, sliced chilis and cilantro (if you swing that way) plus hot lemonade with black pepper, ginger, and honey. I realize its not a sore throat but you never know what bacteria are lurking in your throat and this stuff kills everything.
Another Holocene Human
@aimai: On that note you can also buy fresh tumeric and ginger root, and boil large chunks for hours, then strain into a cup and flavor with lemon and plenty of honey. This concoction is amazing and will open your sinuses up. It even works with seasonal allergies. Old hippy lady taught it to me. You really have to boil those roots for a while, though, 20 minutes won’t do the trick.
Kathleen
@ruemara: Hope you feel better soon.
bemused
@shell:
Garrett is a punk…a fifty year old James O’Keefe.
Kay
@Kathleen:
It’s exciting because it’s not just some siloed “issue” anymore. It’s cooperative. They really want to solve it.
I don’t do any adult criminal defense but my husband does and it just wears on you. It’s overwhelming how many people they are incarcerating and the damage it does- to their families, to the community, it just ripples out further and further the more people they pick up.
They need to try something else.
Kathleen
@Kay: I agree. That this approach is being taken in a very “red” Clermont County (Butler County as well) is telling. As a side note (but related) it strikes me how when it comes to local issues like this, as well as community development (my neighborhood in the city has received numerous Federal grants for projects to develop the community) party loyalty is not an issue. Most of the people in my high rise are conservative Republicans, yet they all welcome the Federal money and development it’s bringing and realize the value of maintaining good schools and city services.
Kay
@Kathleen:
A comparable thing happened about 20 years ago with abuse neglect and dependency; child removals. It was out of control. They were pullling kids from families with these no-discretion standards that lost all connection to reality. The “safety” side had so overwhelmed the “parents should probably raise their own children” side that it was nuts. Conservatives objected to it based on their ideas about the primacy of parental rights and liberals objected to it because was partly motivated by race and/or class- the social workers and the judges were looking for “best interests” based on this kind of middle class idea of what an “acceptable” family is, and these parents were never going to meet that (and foster care doesn’t meet it anyway). There was a compromise between “best interests” and “good enough” homes where a lot more kids stay with their families (with intervention services and monitoring). It’s better. It works better. Sanity prevailed.
Tree With Water
What the president is doing today is highly commendable, will be remembered, and will almost certainly to lead to some good*. But when all is said and done, I’ll be interested to know why he chose this late in his second administration to advance this agenda, being there’s no doubt he was as cognizant of the need for prison reform six years ago. I suppose it boils down to the number of hours in the day, and the need to prioritize.
*I seem to recall a biblical admonition to remember the imprisoned and extend them care. Obama should incorporate the sentiment into his speeches. “It’s our Bible too”, you know, and not the private property of the republican party. It would go a long way to further a good cause by striking a chord to those who hold the book near and dear.
Joel
@Gimlet: That’s funny because so much of that stuff was garbage (true for Black Friday, too).
Omnes Omnibus
@Tree With Water:
FFS.
ruemara
@aimai: that sounds delicious just in general.
@Omnes Omnibus: Armchair presidentin’ means always being critical.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Omnes Omnibus: This is Major Garrett level of derpitude here, no question. FFS indeed.
Matt McIrvin
I don’t actually know that it’s a completely thankless issue. I think Obama is doing it now partly because he has no need to preserve political capital any more and can take risks, but partly because the times are changing. Support for anything and everything “tough on crime”, no matter how counterproductive or inhumane, is not the automatic thing that it was even a few years ago.
Now we did have a spate of articles arguing that it was all going to come roaring back because of the Baltimore riots, but I think most people know what the Baltimore riots were about.
PIGL
What debt exactly does a “low-level drug user” owe to society? “Make amends” for what? I guess I am supposed to be excited that he’s on record as considering 20yrs excessive, but excuse if I am less thrilled than some by Mr. Lawn Order here.
Tree With Water
@Omnes Omnibus: Look, I don’t know what your problem is with the always snotty remarks. I will ask everyone to read my comment, and judge for themselves whether your straw man quote and cutesy acronym holds water. You don’t like me, I get it. If I gave you any thought, I wouldn’t like you either. What I’m good at is ignoring you. Why not reciprocate? Either that, or grow the fuck up.
JPL
@Amir Khalid: Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday to you.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tree With Water: If you stop posting stupid shit, I’ll stop pointing it out. Okay?
Kathleen
@Kay: I’m way late with this response and you may not see this, Kay, but Hamilton County has one of the worst infant mortality rates in the country:
http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2015/03/11/hamilton-county-infant-mortality-drops-spreads/70171690/
From the linked article:
The county routinely ranked among the worst in the country. The 2014 rate still puts Hamilton County in the bottom 10 percent of counties in the United States.
Per statistics in 2013, half of Cincinnati’s children live in poverty:
http://www.city-data.com/poverty/poverty-Cincinnati-Ohio.html
I’ve thought about taking a leaf from PBO’s community organizing approach to see what support Right to Life could provide (they may already be engaged and I’m ashamed to say I don’t know much about all of the programs/efforts in place to combat these problems.) It’s just something I think about.