Birtherism, the Track Back of Fact

Much ado about nothing has been made of the Clinton staffer who was fired for circulating an email questioning Obama's birthplace.

No one however has ever claimed that the staffer WROTE that email.  Here is a copy of that email, via Snopes, and their observations about the email origins and circulation.

“Barack Obama’s mother was living in Kenya with his Arab-African father late in her pregnancy. She was not allowed to travel by plane then, so Barack Obama was born there and his mother then took him to Hawaii to register his birth,” asserted one chain email that surfaced on the urban legend site Snopes.com in April 2008.

That Hillary Clinton supporters circulated such an e-mail isn't in question, but the claim that that's the moment the birther theory "first emerged" simply isn't true. The likeliest point of origin we've been able to find was a post on conservative message board FreeRepublic.com dated 1 March 2008 (which, according to a report in The Telegraph, was at least a month before Clinton supporters got on the e-mail bandwagon):

I was told today that Obama swore in on a Koran for his Senate seat. I do not believe he did. Can someone clarify this for me? I am under the impression only a Congressman has so far sworn in on a Koran.
Also that Obama’s mother gave birth to him overseas and then immediately flew into Hawaii and registered his birth as having taken place in Hawaii.
Again, any clarifications on this? Defintely disqualifies him for Prez. There must be some trace of an airticket. While small babies are not charged air fare they do have a ticket issued for them.
Long time ago but there may be some residual information somewhere. Good ammo (if available and true) BEST USED AFTER he becomes PREZ (if that occurs) and it’s too late for Dems - except accept the VP.

Only the right persisted in perpetuating the theory beyond 2008, notably Trump, well after the totally unnecessary release of the president's birth certificate - something done, imho, to humiliate the president as different (and therefore inferior in the minds of conservatives) to prior presidents, (like Chester Arthur rumored to have been born in Canada, with a foreign father). Not only is there some question as to the location of Chester Arthur's birth, but also a question of what year he was born. 
As with President Obama, the issue of school records were involved as well in the conspiracy theory. Chester Arthur's birther, by the way, really WAS a Democrat, a lawyer by the name of A. P. Hinman.

Politico did a great job tracking down who really DID originate birtherism in a recent article in 2008:

“As we reported, some of her supporters flirted with the idea in 2008 — but it has its origins in the fever swamps beginning in Illinois in 2004,” he said.
In fact, birtherism, as it’s been called, reportedly began with innuendo by serial Illinois political candidate Andy Martin, who painted Obama as a closet Muslim in 2004. That spiraled into a concerted effort by conspiracy theorists to raise doubts about Obama’s birthplace and religion — and essentially paint him as un-American.
Martin, who briefly launched a little-noticed presidential campaign last year, has disavowed the movement he’s often credited with starting, though he still foments similarly discredited doubts about Obama’s religion.
...On Friday, Clinton’s former senior aide Patti Solis Doyle acknowledged that a volunteer coordinator in Iowa forwarded a birther-related email. “Hillary made the decision immediately let that person go,” she said. “We let that person go. It was so beyond the pale of the campaign Hillary wanted to run and that we as a staff wanted to run that I called David Plouffe who was managing Barack Obama to apologize to say this is not coming from us, that this was rogue volunteer.”

And here is Mr. Martin, courtesy of internet video from 2008 -- see how easy it is for Trump and the GOP to fact check? That they don't is a choice for willful ignorance:





The New York Times, back in 2008, did a great job digging into this, elaborating on those in the right, from the 'Freeepers" aka the Free Republic crackpots and extremist conspiracy theorists, and via Fox Not-News, to rabidly Anti-Semite Andy Martin, to equally radical righties who are pro-Israel Jews.  Politics truly makes strange bedfellows.

But an appearance in a documentary-style program on the Fox News Channel watched by three million people last week thrust the man, Andy Martin, and his past into the foreground. The program allowed Mr. Martin to assert falsely and without challenge that Mr. Obama had once trained to overthrow the government.

An examination of legal documents and election filings, along with interviews with his acquaintances, revealed Mr. Martin, 62, to be a man with a history of scintillating if not always factual claims. He has left a trail of animosity — some of it provoked by anti-Jewish comments — among political leaders, lawyers and judges in three states over more than 30 years.

He is a law school graduate, but his admission to the Illinois bar was blocked in the 1970s after a psychiatric finding of “moderately severe character defect manifested by well-documented ideation with a paranoid flavor and a grandiose character.”

Though he is not a lawyer, Mr. Martin went on to become a prodigious filer of lawsuits, and he made unsuccessful attempts to win public office for both parties in three states, as well as for president at least twice, in 1988 and 2000. Based in Chicago, he now identifies himself as a writer who focuses on his anti-Obama Web site and press releases.

Mr. Martin, in a series of interviews, did not dispute his influence in Obama rumors.

“Everybody uses my research as a takeoff point,” Mr. Martin said, adding, however, that some take his writings “and exaggerate them to suit their own fantasies.”

As for his background, he said: “I’m a colorful person. There’s always somebody who has a legitimate cause in their mind to be angry with me.”

When questions were raised last week about Mr. Martin’s appearance and claims on “Hannity’s America” on Fox News, the program’s producer said Mr. Martin was clearly expressing his opinion and not necessarily fact.

It was not Mr. Martin's first turn on national television. The CBS News program "48 Hours" in 1993 devoted an hourlong program, "See You in Court; Civil War, Anthony Martin Clogs Legal System with Frivolous Lawsuits," to what it called his prolific filings. (Mr. Martin has also been known as Anthony Martin-Trigona.) He has filed so many lawsuits that a judge barred him from doing so in any federal court without preliminary approval.

He prepared to run as a Democrat for Congress in Connecticut, where paperwork for one of his campaign committees listed as one purpose “to exterminate Jew power.” He ran as a Republican for the Florida State Senate and the United States Senate in Illinois. When running for president in 1999, he aired a television advertisement in New Hampshire that accused George W. Bush of using cocaine.

It is worth noting that Andy Martin is running again for President, per Ballotpedia, as a Republican. Again.  Also according to Ballotpedia, Andy Martin a week ago lost a run for Congress as a Republican in New Hampshire.for the 2nd Congressional District.
 
So far as I can determine, while Martin attempted to run as a Dem, he got further and more often running as a Republican and he has always been a bigot and a conservative.

Also from the 2008 NYT article, some of the other players in the birtherism conspiracy theory are identified.   They are pertinent to include here, because so many tin-foil hat wearing right wing bigots are still repeating them:

Theories about Mr. Obama’s background have taken on a life of their own. But independent analysts seeking the origins of the cyberspace attacks wind up at Mr. Martin’s first press release, posted on the Free Republic Web site in August 2004.

Its general outlines have turned up in a host of works that have expounded falsely on Mr. Obama’s heritage or supposed attempts to conceal it, including “Obama Nation,” the widely discredited best seller about Mr. Obama by Jerome R. Corsi. Mr. Corsi opens the book with a quote from Mr. Martin.

“What he’s generating gets picked up in other places,” said Danielle Allen, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., who has investigated the e-mail campaign’s circulation and origins, “and it’s an example of how the Internet has given power to sources we would have never taken seriously at another point in time.”

Ms. Allen said Mr. Martin’s original work found amplification in 2006, when a man named Ted Sampley wrote an article painting Mr. Obama as a secret practitioner of Islam. Quoting liberally from Mr. Martin, the article circulated on the Internet, and its contents eventually found their way into various e-mail messages, particularly an added claim that Mr. Obama had attended “Jakarta’s Muslim Wahhabi schools. Wahhabism is the radical teaching that created the Muslim terrorists who are now waging jihad on the rest of the world.”

Mr. Obama for two years attended a Catholic school in Indonesia, where he was taught about the Bible, he wrote in “Dreams From My Father,” and for two years went to an Indonesian public school open to all religions, where he was taught about the Koran.

Better late than never? How about better never? (for either of them)

That Trump is a con artist, deadbeat businessman, and now apparently made his money by mob connections is not new. It's been known in the business world for a long time. So Mitt -- good on you for calling out Trump, but WHY did you pal around with him as a prominent supporter LAST election cycle?

Right wing nuts promoting Islamophobia, part 2

We saw it last fall, when some dumb bunny conservative bigot parent in Florida didn't want her kids learning "Ay-rabic Numerals".  That would be the same set of numerals we use every day in the west, with a zero, as distinct from Roman numerals; the zero is essential to performing modern maths, and has been in use in Europe from the 14th and 15th centuries to present.  It is technically an Arab/northern African refinement on an Indian numeral concept, that we learned from the Muslim world centuries ago.  Dumb-bunny mom clearly is in serious need of not only Ay-rab math, but a good world history course.  Although like leading a horse to water while unable to force it to drink, one could educate but not get past the determined bigot prejudice.

And here is another example of hate-peddling Islamophobia from the right, from Rush Limbaugh, who is now facing his radio network going belly up out from under him.  This is an older example, dating back in 2010, which underlines how this bigotry pushing and revisionist history has gone on over time.

an Excerpt from Rush Limbaugh's own transcript:

RUSH intro: ...Now, remember what NASA has become under Obama. No longer about space exploration, we're going to ground the shuttle fleet, we're going to lease space for astronaut flight on Russian spacecraft. NASA has been told to focus on global warming, and now we have the NASA administrator on al-Jazeera last Wednesday who said this.

BOLDEN: Before I became the NASA administrator he charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math. He wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering.

RUSH: Now, a lot of people are saying, "Rush, the guy really didn't mean it, he's just out there, this is just a bunch of pap for the al-Jazeera audience, didn't really mean it." Of course he meant it, and of course Obama said it. There's no question. Why would he say it if he didn't mean it? He certainly meant it for the Muslim audience and al-Jazeera. And, by the way, would somebody show me any Nobel prizes for math or science from the Muslim world? I'm going to get in a lot of trouble for this, but that's what we do here, we make the complex understandable, we deal with the truth. Most of these claims about Muslim contributions to science and math are myths. Even, folks, the so-called Arabic numbers were actually invented by the Hindus in 500 AD. I looked this up this weekend. It was even before there was such a thing as Islam. The Hindus created the so-called Arabic numerals and you can find this in Wikipedia if you want to believe it. Charles Bolden, NASA administrator, he was asked, "Why are you here in the region?" "Well, I'm here to spread the Muslim outreach." He said it, he meant it. "He couldn't possibly have meant this." He did mean it.

First of all, why is reaching out to Muslim nations a problem? They are in many instances our allies, notably Turkey in NATO and in the Saudi Arabian peninsula where we have key military bases, and where those nations are important trading partners as well. India has a large Muslim population and is very important to the US. That is a legitimate outreach, for which Limbaugh offers no LOGICAL OR RATIONAL reason against doing so.

Secondly, the space shuttle fleet was retired because they were old and dilapidated and had exceeded their original term of service.  They were no longer safe to fly.  Further, the private sector is in the process of providing the replacements - which means those necessary replacements are not coming out of the NASA taxpayer budget.  If the Russians have space vehicles that do the job, where it the benefit to our duplicating that?

Thirdly, while ol Rushbo was over browsing Wikipedia, he should have looked up Muslim recipients of the Nobel prize, of which there are quite a few, including for science, such as Mohammad Abdus Salam of Pakistan in 1979 for physics, and Ahmed Zaweil for chemistry in 1999, and just last year Turkish scientist, Aziz Sancar.  Wikipedia has their own separate entry just for Muslim Nobel laureates, which underscores why one should never take at face value what purports to be conservative factual research.

Further, the Nobel prize has been awarded since 1895; to use that award to the exclusion of other scientific awards or other scientific recognition during the height of the Muslim world's accomplishments as the metric for establishing contributions is the worst kind of cherry picking.

Limbaugh is dismissive of the extremely well documented accomplishments of Muslim scientists and innovators across history, accomplishments not only in math, but in medicine, astronomy and any other fields.  These are NOT myths.  When Rush Limbaugh claims that Arab numbers were invented by Hindus, he is being dishonest and NOT accurately representing even the Wikipedia article content. (emphasis added is mine - DG)

The decimal Hindu-Arabic numeral system was developed in India by AD 700.^[7] The development was gradual, spanning several centuries, but the decisive step was probably provided by Brahmagupta's formulation of zero as a number in AD 628.

The numeral system came to be known to both the Persian mathematician Al-Khwarizmi, whose book On the Calculation with Hindu Numerals written about 825 in Arabic, and the Arab mathematician Al-Kindi, who wrote four volumes, On the Use of the Indian Numerals (Ketab fi Isti'mal al-'Adad al-Hindi) about 830. Their work was principally responsible for the diffusion of the Indian system of numeration in the Middle East and the West.^[9] In the 10th century, Middle-Eastern mathematicians extended the decimal numeral system to include fractions, as recorded in a treatise by Syrian mathematician Abu'l-Hasan al-Uqlidisi in 952–953. The decimal point notation was introduced by Sind ibn Ali, he also wrote the earliest treatise on Arabic numerals.
A distinctive West Arabic variant of the symbols begins to emerge around the 10th century in the Maghreb and Al-Andalus, called ghubar ("sand-table" or "dust-table") numerals, which are the direct ancestor of the modern Western Arabic numerals used throughout the world. Ghubar numerals themselves are probably of Roman origin.^[10]

We do NOT use Hindu numerals, which is evident from a comparison between those numeral systems, and our western Arabic numbers.  What we use is the ARAB / MUSLIM version they created from earlier Hindu figures and shapes.  It is profoundly dishonest to claim that Muslims did not devise what we now use as western Arabic Numbers.  It is stupid to reject learning those numbers or the history behind them.

To draw an analogy, what Limbaugh does here is similar to acknowledging that a cow provides the milk that goes into a bowl of ice cream, but then denying the company that turns that milk into ice cream deserves any credit for the ice cream, in spite of clearly having contributed a significant development and transformation of the raw material. It would be accurate to assert that an ice cream company MADE the ice cream, just the same as Muslims made our modern western numbers.

Join me in pushing back against conservative lies and hate.

Adios, Rubio! Another one bites the dust! Will Kasich be far behind? GOP candidates running on suckers money?

So far, Cruz carried Texas, his home state, and in spite of trailing is at least still in the race.  Kasich is still in the race after winning Ohio, but he can't win nationally.

Rubio is out; he couldn't win his home state of Florida.

Neither could the other Republicans who are out so far.  Not only Rubio couldn't carry Florida, where he was born and raised, but Jeb Bush couldn't carry it either. Ben Carson couldn't carry Florida  (he lives there) OR his native state of Michigan.  Chris Christie couldn't carry his home state of New Jersey, not after his handling of Hurricane Sandy, Bridge-gate, the pension fund fiasco, and the nine drops of the state credit rating.  Scott Walker couldn't carry his home state of Wisconsin, with his corrupt governance, notably his campaign manager getting millions of state $ for his sports facility; last election cycle, Paul Ryan lost Wisconsin, and is unlikely to be able to carry it this time if he is drafted in a brokered convention.  Bobby Jindal couldn't carry his home state of Louisiana - and was so unpopular, it is possible he ran for office only as a graceful out from his badly failed state office.  Rick Santorum has never been able to carry Pennsylvania in his runs for president. I doubt from the polls that Mike Huckster-bee could carry Arkansas either.  In the previous election cycle, neither Tim Pawlenty or Michele Bachmann could win Minnesota either.

And it looks as if Donald Trump, in spite of his winning elsewhere, can't win in New York.

Hillary Clinton would crush Donald Trump in a New York State general election matchup: poll

It is pretty much a given that a candidate, any serious candidate, has to be able to win their own home state.  And ALL of those candidates KNEW going into the race, that they were unlikely to change their popularity sufficiently to carry their home states.  Which raises the question, were they ever REALLY seriously candidates, or were they just in it to make money in some way, using election law?

Pretty much the situation is that NONE of the other candidates who were even nominally in the race on the right could have carried their own states, if you go down the entire list.  Which is a short way of saying that where they know you, REALLY know you, they don't like you.

The Week summed it up:

Is Ben Carson's campaign one big con?

Ben Carson's presidential campaign is many things. A curiosity, an oddity, a fascinating yet disturbing commentary on today's Republican Party? Absolutely. But there's also some reason to believe that it's a giant confidence game.
That isn't to say that Carson isn't genuinely trying to become president. He has even moved into the lead in a couple of recent national polls. But the inner workings of his campaign will look awfully familiar to those who understand how one right-wing movement has been bilking gullible conservatives over the last half-century.
...As conservative radio host Erick Erickson says, "Carson's actual expenditure list reads like a wealthy Republican getting played by consultants."

While Donald Trump keeps claiming he is funding his own campaign, the reality is that he is also seeking donors.  He isn't paying for his own campaign out of his pocket, he is LOANING his campaign funds, which are repaid out of donations.  Trump is running on suckers' money.  In different ways that might be the case for the majority of the rest of the GOP candidates, and has been for some time now, given the reality of their unfavorables.

Conservatives, with their opposition to campaign finance laws, such as their support for Citizens United, have made democracy into one big con game to fleece conservative donors and to sell out the country to special interests, all while patting themselves on the back for their piety and rectitude.

The Delusions of the MN GOP

gold-plated clown car

This morning I heard an interview on MPR with MN GOP chair Keith Downey waxing rhapsodic over the glorious candidates available to conservative voters, including Donald Trump.  Downey was enthused with the diverse attention that candidates like Trump have brought to the 2016 race, viewing it as favorable to his party.

I think Mr. Downey needs to have his head examined for his apparently deliberate confusing of the gawker attention given to train wrecks as distinct from genuine admiration and support.  While it is the lunatic fringe most frequently turning out for caucuses and primaries, it is NOT the lunatic fringe on the right who most often turns out for the general election - as demonstrated in this Pew analysis of the 2012 election voters.

This analysis is based on 1,575 Republican and Republican-leaning registered voters who are part of Pew Research Center’s nationally-representative American Trends Panel, and who could be matched to the national voter file. ¹
The GOP primary electorate represented a relatively small share of those who went on to vote in the general election. Of Republicans who were verified to have voted in the general election, only 25% are verified as having voted in Republican primaries or caucuses in 2012; while 75% do not have a record of having voted in the primaries or caucuses that year. ²

No one in their right mind would find anything wonderful in the 2016 cast of characters on the right, stuffed into what is now, at best, a gold-plated clown car (classy!)  I'm sure Mr. Downey is well aware, for example, of the recent Pew Poll from a week ago which examined how the candidates are regarded.

Hillary Clinton had the best result among those polled to be a great president, followed by Donald Trump; however Turmp far and away had the highest percentage of poll respondents who thought he would be a TERRIBLE president.

Fellow extremist Ted Cruz got far fewer views as a great president, but also fewer negatives, while Bernie Sanders came in ahead of Cruz (barely) as a great president.  Cruz, Sanders and Ben Carson all faced problems with respondents even knowing who they were, compared to either Trump or Clinton. 

Looking at the same time frame,  Pew Polling indicates Democrats hate Trump more than Republicans hate Clinton.

So while Clinton approval ratings may be declining, it is arguable that opposition to Trump is increasing far faster.  And even among Republicans, the opposition to the extremist crazies, like Trump, Cruz, and/or Carson is high.  Additionally, it's a pretty safe bet that Jeb hasn't a prayer of being the presidential candidate (now or ever, I would hazard).

From a Pew Poll the first week of January 2016:




While I expect Keith Downey to try to spin how crazy bad the candidates are on the right, the numbers are pretty clear.  Donald Trump is not electable, and I would argue neither is Ted Cruz, or Ben Carson who has largely disappeared from popular radar; while the enthusiasm is far lower for any of the other more sane establishment candidates, it is also less likely that any of them would bring out the voters either -- perhaps even less so than with the lack of enthusiasm for Mitt Romney last time around.

Perhaps it is unkind of me to be so skeptical of Downey and the conservative candidates - never more so than when the straw poll this time around will be for real.  Let me point out that the winner of the last presidential election straw poll was Santorum (who also won in the Iowa primary....eventually), while the convention winner for candidate later in the summer was Ron Paul.  Somehow all of that irrelevance escaped comment from Mr. Downey, at least in what I heard of his interview.

Given their past track record, I would NOT expect much of what passes for the MN GOP caucus to have any relationship to the actual election in November.

gold plated clown charm

Trump

Another Right Wing Domestic Terrorist Shooting in Quebec?

We've seen too often where the right wing fringies go off the rails, behaving violently.

One of their hot buttons is any language other than English being spoken, or any culture they identify as 'other', drawing a too narrow definition of "us" and "them".

Earlier at this year's CPAC, right wing extremist Peter Brimelaw, a dual citizen Brit/American who's first wife was Canadian, and who worked early in his career as a Canadian editor in the financial sector, delivered a rant against Canada and the Quebecois:

Brimelow stayed on message and warned that multiculturalism and bilingualism were “diseases” that could wreck American society as they empower minorities and suppress traditional American (read: white) groups. He claimed that Canada, which is officially bilingual, was a good example of how bilingualism becomes a tool of elites to help minorities (Quebecers) at the expense of the majority, and went on to call multiculturalism and bilingualism a “ferocious attack on the working class.”

Brimelow is the founder and funder of VDare, short for Virginia Dare, the first white child born in a New World  Roanoke colony which disappeared.  VDARE is considered a hate group, and both VDARE and Brimelow can fairly be considered white supremacists.  Brimelow was quoted in a 2009 CPAC related statement :

He called on the Republican Party to start focusing on becoming the party of white voters by attacking “ethnic lobbies,” affirmative action, bilingual education and “taxpayer subsidies to illegal aliens.

When I hear or read conservatives protesting that Republicans and Tea Partiers do not hold, as a group, racist views, I look at statements like these from guest speakers invited (and presumably paid) at the largest and most significant conservative gathering every year, and wonder how they either rationalize this as anything OTHER than racism, or how, alternatively they ignore or accept it. 

Look at Brimelow, look at the other speakers and groups represented, then look at this shooting.  They are very much the same.

These conservatives are racist, they are anti-feminist, they are anti-gay, they are anti-immigrant.  They hold religious animosities, including anti-semites and islamophobes, with a sprinkling of anti-mormons and anti-roman catholics for leavening. There are more right wing terrorists than there are other groups of terrorists.  While all extremists are prone to violence to try to get their own way, the right has a very large share of these violent people, and seems far to tolerant of them in mainstream right wing politics. CPAC has been a perfect example of precisely that integration with intolerance, bigotry, hatred and violence.

I would argue that all of our citizens are equally and fully American, regardless of their origins, or race/ethnicity or blending of them.  That includes having a facility in multiple languages.  If anything, in order not to be left out of world participation, we should be encouraging the learning of more languages spoken world wide, not less.  Everyone should be able to be proud, openly, of who they are and where they come from; we had second class citizens in this country for too long.  It was true of slaves, it was true of Asians on the west coast who were for a time barred from property ownership and other full civil rights. It has been true at times of hispanics and latinos in this country, and it has been true of other groups as well.

My first language was English, my second, although not very proficient as a child was German, the next Spanish in elementary school, followed by the foreign language that came so easily I felt I was more remembering something forgotten than learning a new language - French.  After that came dabbling in a variety of languages, both old and modern, including medieval French and Chaucerian era English, and a little experimentation with a few synthetic languages.  That multi-lingualism or multi-culturalism should be frightening to someone, or signal any kind of diminishing rather than the enlargement of our national culture and identity is ludicrous.  Multi-lingual women must be nearly as upsetting to these old crabby narrow bigoted white men as a black president.

But that appears to be precisely what has happened here in Quebec, and not for the first time.  While I applaud Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper for condemning the action, his own conservative political party has dirty hands from election fraud, and has been, like American conservatives far too tolerant of this kind of right wing extremism.

Stephen Harper was a co-founder of the radical right wing group the Northern Foundation, which in turn acted as an apparent umbrella organization for neo-nazi and white supremacist groups like the Hertiage Front; some of the connections to Harper's earlier political allies also maintained links with the Hammerskins, a U.S. and Canadian neo-nazi group that started receiving broader public attention after the Sikh temple shooting.

Here is the coverage from the Toronto Star of the shooting; no surprise, it's another crabby, flabby, old white guy with an AK-47, and a handgun, who apparently owns a sporting goods store.  Apparently he believed that terrorist activity, like crusing the internet, could appropriately be conducted in one's bathrobe and underwear.  If this old goat was so concerned about standards of culture, you'd think he'd start with being better dressed himself; but so often those standards are what they apply to OTHER people, not to themseves.  (Anyone want to make a side-bet now that he will have a large amount of ammunition in connection with his actions - you know, like they do? )

From the Star: 

Suspect in Quebec shooting identified

Richard J. Brennan Staff Reporter

Quebec police are attempting to determine whether a gun-wielding man wearing a bathrobe and a balaclava was targeting Quebec premier-elect Pauline Marois.

The shooter has been identified as Richard Henry Bain, owner of a hunting and fishing shop in La Conception, by the Journal de Montreal. The suspect, who is 62 years old and heavy-set, was armed with an assault rifle and a handgun.
MORE: One person shot dead during Pauline Marois’ victory speech

The gunman only got as far as a vestibule outside the hall Tuesday where the Parti Québécois leader was speaking when he shot and killed one person and seriously injured a second before he was apprehended by police.
According to one witness, his AK-47 rifle jammed.
As he was being led away, the alleged lone gunman shouted: “the anglos are waking up” in French with an English accent. Alternating between English and French he added: “There’s going to be f---ing payback. It’s enough. Wanna make trouble.”
MORE:Questions swirl over how close shooter got to Pauline Marois
Lieut. Guy Lapointe of the Quebec Provincial Police said Wednesday investigators were trying to establish whether “Madame Marois was the suspect’s target.” Since that possibility exists, the provincial force is “taking charge of the investigation.”
The provincial police are also looking into a report that a PQ member had received threatening messages prior to the attack.

read more here


 

The Real Deal

The right wing has gone crazy with new conspiracy theories about Social Security.  They're paranoid about government, to the point of believing crazy stupid things that should be obviously implausible.

So here's the real story:

Why does Social Security need 174,000 bullets?

Despite Web conspiracies theories, it's standard request for agency's armed agents

By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER

updated 9/4/2012 2:15:17 PM ET

WASHINGTON — It didn't take long for the Internet to start buzzing with conspiracy theories after the Social Security Administration posted a notice that it was purchasing 174,000 hollow-point bullets.
Why is the agency that provides benefits to retirees, disabled workers, widows and children stockpiling ammunition? Whom are they going to use it on?
"It's not outlandish to suggest that the Social Security Administration is purchasing the bullets as part of preparations for civil unrest," the website Infowars.com said.
Another website, The Daily Caller, said the bullets must be for use against American citizens, "since the SSA has never been used overseas to help foreign countries maintain control of their citizens."
The clamor became such a distraction for the agency that it dedicated a website to explaining the purchase. The explanation, it turns out, isn't as tantalizing as an arms buildup to defend against unruly senior citizens.
The bullets are for Social Security's office of inspector general, which has about 295 agents who investigate Social Security fraud and other crimes, said Jonathan L. Lasher, the agency's assistant IG for external relations.
The agents carry guns and make arrests — 589 last year, Lasher said. They execute search warrants and respond to threats against Social Security offices, employees and customers.
Agents carry .357 caliber pistols, Lasher said. The bullets, which add up to about 590 per agent, are for the upcoming fiscal year. Most will be expended on the firing range.
Some bloggers have taken issue with the type of ammunition the agency is buying, questioning why agents need hollow-point bullets. Hollow-points are known for causing more tissue damage than other bullets when they hit a person because they expand when they enter the body.
The bullets, however, are standard issue for many law enforcement agencies, Lasher said, a fact confirmed by the directors of two law enforcement training centers.
"For practice ammunition, they do not have to be hollow-points, but hollow-points are the normal police round used for duty ammunition due to their ability to stop when they hit an object as opposed to going through it and striking more objects," said William J. Muldoon, president of the International Association of Directors of Law Enforcement Standards and Training.
The episode illustrates what can happen when a seemingly salacious tidbit gets amplified and embellished on the Internet.
A few weeks ago, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had a similar dustup when it solicited bids for 46,000 rounds of ammunition and shooting targets, seemingly to arm workers at the National Weather Service. It turns out the notice had a clerical error and the bullets were for NOAA's Fisheries Office of Law Enforcement, the agency said.
Social Security's turn in the pillory hit a crescendo when Jay Leno joked about it in a recent monologue on "The Tonight Show." "What senior citizens are they worried about?" Leno asked. "I mean, who's going to storm the building?"
Lasher said, "That's why we opened a blog post. We were getting a lot of inquiries and the blog gave us a vehicle to put all of the accurate information out there in one place, so that those who are interested or concerned can read what the real story is."

Labor Day Edition - Labor Compared to Management

The planter, the farmer, the mechanic, and the laborer... form the great body of the people of the United States, they are the bone and sinew of the country men who love liberty and desire nothing but equal rights and equal laws.
Andrew Jackson

Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society.
Karl Marx

When money is controlled by a few it gives that few an undue power and control over labor and the resources of the country. Labor will have its best return when the laborer can control its disposal.
Leland Stanford (legendary U.S. tycoon, and founder of Stanford University

The Laborer is worthy of his hire. 1 Timothy 5:18

I would assert that executives are overpaid.  I would contend that underpaying labor is contrary to the words of the Bible.  I would argue that the wage and income gap represents a very real failure for labor to have genuine equality of pay for work.  This is what the 99% is unhappy about in the Occupy movement.

They do NOT receive their compensation on merit; they do not receive their compensation packages at the discretion of the real owners of the business they work for - the stockholders.  They used to receive far less during earlier periods where they were arguably as important if not more important for fulfilling their roles as executives.  Now executives are handing each other excessive pay, bonuses and benefits, even when they make disastrous decisions that ruin companies.

That should be contrary to real, legitimate capitalism.

Any doubts - look at the bonuses paid to the executives at the companies receiving bail outs. It is true even when they do clearly dishonest and risky things - like altering the LIBOR rate or falsifying credit ratings.

From earlier this year at  the LA Times:

U.S. CEO's pay 231 times higher than that of average workers

May 02, 2012|Marla Dickerson

 

So much for the new austerity.

The average U.S. chief executive earned more than $11 million last year in salary, stock options and other compensation, according to a new analysis by the Economic Policy Institute. That’s about 231 times more, on average, than workers.

That ratio has shrunk a bit since the height of the dot.com bubble, when a ballooning stock market inflated CEO compensation to 411 times that of working stiffs.

And it’s smaller than the pay gap calculated recently by the AFL-CIO, the umbrella federation of unions representing about 12 million U.S. workers. Their analysis concluded that the typical CEO of an S&P 500 Index company made 380 times the average wages of U.S. workers in 2011.

Whatever. What's clear is that the pay gap between U.S. CEOs and rank-and-file workers is higher than anywhere else in the developed world. And it has been accelerating over the last few decades. In 1965, the U.S. CEO-to-worker compensation ratio was roughly 20 to 1.

Here are some additional stats to put the oh! in CEO:

-- 725%: That's how much average CEO compensation increased between 1978 and 2011, according to EPI.
-- 5.7%: That’s how much the average worker’s compensation increased over the same period.

Bottom line: It pays to be CEO.
********************

And yet at the same time, we have some of the highest productivity.  In the list of GDP/per hour worked, we were 4th, after Norway, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, and just ahead of Belgium, France, Ireland, Germany, Austria and Australia.  You know - those mostly European countries that Romney and Ryan don't want us to be like.

Perhaps a better visual of what has happened to labor and wages, in spite of strong, steady increases in productivity, in contrast to that spike of 725% of executive compensation since 1978 is this:

Just to put this all in a visual perspective, here are some graphs from the Mother Jones article, Overworked Americans.

In the past 20 years, the US economy has grown nearly 60 percent. This huge increase in productivity is partly due to automation, the internet, and other improvements in efficiency. But it's also the result of Americans working harder—often without a big boost to their bottom lines. Oh, and meanwhile, corporate profits are up 20 percent.

You have nothing to lose but your gains

Productivity has surged, but income and wages have stagnated for most Americans. If the median household income had kept pace with the economy since 1970, it would now be nearly $92,000, not $50,000.

And for those of you who buy into the false notion that union workers are overpaid.......compared to management, and especially CEOs and other C-class (CFO, etc.), look at this:

Median yearly earnings of:

Union workers: $47,684
Non-union workers: $37,284

This reflects the growing gap in wealth and income between the 1% and the 99%. 

from POGO, the Project On Government Oversight

There are excellent arguments that Romney and Ryan are the step'n fetchits for CEOs and corporate interests, big money, the 1%. Those claism about not cutting the military expenditures, which are already impoverishing this country, taking money away from more necessary expenditures like infrastructure, where we have tens of thousands of bridges and roads in bad repair - in the case of numerous bridges, ready to fall down like the I-35 bridge five years ago. It is enormously cheaper to repair than to replace, but we haven't done the necessary maintenance and repair. Former 5 star general and world war II leader, Dwight D. Eisenhower, a well-regarded REPUBLICAN president famously described the military industrial complex grasp for wealth and power. It extends even to the extent of paying Congress to buy things the Pentagon DOESN'T WANT OR NEED, to keep those corporate military industrial CEOs fat and happy. THIS is what Romney and Ryan are really talking about doing, NOT keeping this country safe.

Romney has surrounded himself with militant re-cycled Bush White House militant neo-cons who want to use military spending to rip us off.  If you have any doubts, read my prior posts, and the news coverage, both U.S. and foreign, on the F-35 or the F-22.

From POGO:

Weapons makers have been claiming for months that cutting the Pentagon budget will result in big losses of American jobs.

But the truth is that weapons companies make billions in profits, and pay their CEOs millions of dollars a year — none of which makes us more safe.

 

 

A Conspicuous Absence: Sarah Palin is so over

Sarah Palin helped sink any chance at the presidency that John McCain had in 2008; she was a liability from shortly after her debut as the VP choice, and became a larger and larger albatross around Senator McCain's neck every time she opened her mouth.

She has been dumped by her reality show; her books are remaindered. She was not included AT ALL at the 2012 convention, and Fox shut her down from saying anything that would embarass them.

The woman is stupid, it shows, and most people recognize that she was never presidential material, and couldn't even manage to govern a state with money and a small population successfully.  Except for a few die hards, she is over as a political influence, and never should have been one.

Sadly, the Conservatives don't seem to have learned from their mistakes.  While Ryan has more substance than Palin, although I would dispute he is the brainiac the GOP claims he is, Romney has arguably far less qualifications than McCain did.  As the GOP and Tea Party move further and further to the right, they appear to be making the same mistakes that Godlwater did in 1964, of going to extreme, instead of mainstream.  Certainly the GOP platform makes that error.

When Goldwater stated that Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, he was wrong on both counts.  Extremism IS a vice, and conservative extremism has little in common with defending liberty, but rather has demonstrated that is is corrosive and destructive of it.

Good thing Palin cashed in on the gullibility of the right while she had the chance.

From the HuffPo:
Sarah Palin's Fox News Contract May Not Be Renewed: NY Mag

The Huffington Post | By Jack Mirkinson

Sarah Palin's outburst at Fox News on Wednesday is part of a protracted set of contract negotiations that could see the former vice-presidential nominee end her association with the network, New York's Gabriel Sherman reported Thursday.
Palin set the media world aflutter on Wednesday, when she wrote a Facebook post pointedly noting that Fox News had canceled all of her scheduled interviews for the day. Since both her former running mate, John McCain, and her sucessor as nominee, Paul Ryan, were speaking at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night, it seemed like an odd choice.
She has been a Fox News contributor since 2010, reportedly earning a cool $1 million a year. But Sherman wrote that this may be coming to an end shortly, due to Palin's sinking ratings power.
"Palin's contract is up in January, and according to sources, Fox News executives are now weighing what kind of deal they would sign, if they sign one at all," he reported.
If Palin and Fox News were to divorce, it would not come as a total shock. Reports about the souring of Palin's relationship with Fox News CEO Roger Ailes have been in the media for a long time.
Sometimes the two have jabbed at each other in public, as when Ailes said that he only hired Palin because she was "hot and got ratings," or when he told an audience that she "had no chance to be president."
More often, though, stories of bitter feuding have leaked out — usually in the form of a story by Sherman, the preeminent peeker behind closed Fox News doors. He has reported, for instance, that Ailes privately called Palin "stupid," and that he was infuriated by her decision to announce she would not be running for president on a radio show instead of Fox News.

Moreover, Palin is simply not the political powerhouse she once was, making her steep price tag harder to justify. Though she was the star of the 2008 Republican convention, she did not even attend the 2012 forum.

 

Fisking Katherine Kersten, STrib Village Idiot, Again, part 1 A labor and pay topic for Labor Day weekend

a graphic from Bloomberg news on the economic disparity between men and women

On August 26th, Katherine Kersten wrote another one of her factually vague and disconnected op ed pieces that represent the worst of the talking points chanting on the right.  The woman writes drivel, or maybe dribble would be a better word; she must be drooling at the keyboard.  Surely there must be better conservatives who could author right wing op ed pieces. This feeble attempts to garner support for the right wing was entitle "Weaponizing the well-being of women". I suppose, given the topic, we should be grateful it wasn't an even more anti-woman article by arch anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafley.

Her first paragraph is a shot at the media for being Obama 'enablers', as she blithely and dishonestly performs her apparent sole function at the paper of being a rightwingnut 'media enabler'. Another example of that projection my co-blogger Pen recently described.

This feeble attempts to garner support for the right wing was entitle Weaponizing the well-being of women. In her second para, we have this:

A first reconnaissance might suggest that men, not women, are under assault and in full-scale retreat. For example, women now earn almost 60 percent of college degrees, and a majority of master's and doctoral degrees. Education is the best predictor of future earnings in our information economy.

And yet,  we have women still earning 70 cents on the dollar for the same work as men, including working college students, jeopardizing achieving those degrees. We have cuts to education spending, and specifically to education grants and loan assistance which allows women to earn those college degrees. We have right wing efforts to make it more costly and more difficult for women to obtain contraception, which is part of how women are able to control their reproductive choices while going to school and working. (Some righties, like Santorum, just don't want women to have sex at all. Because he feels it is appropriate for the government to police and dictate other people's moral choices about relationships and physical intimacy... in other words, to be the most intrusive kind of big government.) And we have Republican cutting programs like WIC which supplied nutritional supplemental support to pregnant women, and women with small children, including female students who are attempting to get out of a life of poverty by getting degrees.  That funding allowed those women to continue to be students, not have to choose between food or tuition and books.

Yes, the right is waging funding wars on women AND children.  You know - that party that is so pro-life, they are cut aid to pregnant women below the poverty line, who will effectively be malnourished during pregnancy.  The GOP and Tea Party are the party not of values, they are the party that wishes to see American women and children looking like the starving orphans featured on late nite television commercials for charities.  But according to Katherine Kersten, that is NOT war on women! It sure sounds like culture war on women to me.

She goes on in para 3

Women now hold 51 percent of white-collar management and professional jobs. Traditional male sectors like manufacturing are in decline, while women dominate 13 of the 15 job categories projected to grow most in the next decade. In 2010, the Atlantic magazine documented the shift in an article titled "The End of Men."

But what she leaves OUT is more important. For example, the trend in female heads of households in poverty, compared to male heads of households in poverty, went up from 17% in 1990, to 21.6% in 2010.  And this, from Consumer Action in  2008:

"The 26 percent  of all households headed only by a woman earn, save, and have accumulated far less wealth than have other American households, according to a Consumer Federation of America (CFA) analysis of the most recent data collected by the Federal Reserve Board's authoritative Survey of Consumer Finances. "

And according to an article at Feministing, 60% of women are the primary breadwinners, but still do most of the housework, based on a study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.   According to the site Free by50,  as of January 2011, the number of families which were single income, with the husband working (the kind I grew up in ) was 22%, the number with the wife only working was 7%, the number with neither working was 17%, and the number where both work was 54%, based on 2010 census data. (You know - the kind of census data Michele Bachmann doesn't want collected, because Republicans don't like or need facts.)  That sure doesn't look to me like 'the end of men'. It does look to me like women are working harder, and facing more of an economic squeeze than previously.

What else Kersten leaves out is that according to this website on U.S. women in management, while women have made progress, despite being more than 50% of the population, women still only account for 16% of Fortune 500 board seats.  This is paralleled in other statistics reflecting women in the 'C' class of management - CEOs CFOs etc. - the top or Chief executives. 

There is still a glass ceiling for women in the workplace, and still unfair pay practices for all those women who are working as either a contributing breadwinner or the primary breadwinner, cited in those statistics above.  Even with women going into professional level jobs, they make considerably less money than their male counterparts, contrary to the assertion by Kersten about women's progress.

From the website On Careers, just last month, (emphasis added is mine - DG)

Are Women Still Paid Less Than Men?

By Lindsay Olson

CEOs and entrepreneurs, is that still the case?
A recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association states that female doctors in the United States make on average $12,000 a year less than their male counterparts. We're talking six figures here, but still, it's a trend we see in just about every industry. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, women would need a 65 percent pay increase, on average, to catch up to men.
Who is at Fault?
Is it a woman's fault that she doesn't get paid more? In the study of doctors' salaries, researchers found that men tend to be more aggressive in asking for more pay. Others point to the fact that women tend to take time off from their careers to raise their families, which may deter them from climbing the corporate ladder as quickly. Or that women often take lower-paying, more flexible jobs so that they can spend more time with their families. Neither are strong arguments, with more men now doing the same in their households.
Where the Government Stands
President Obama has shown his stance on the issue. He's been working to get the Paycheck Fairness Act approved by Congress to help those discriminated against fight back. Congress has not yet passed it.
Obama also declared April 20, 2010 the first National Equal Pay Day as a way to draw attention to the issue. Each year, Equal Pay Day falls symbolically on the date through which women must work to match what men earned the previous year.

What has the right done? Opposed equal pay legislation for equal work. It also allowed for law suits due to discrimination on the basis of age, race, sexual orientation and disability.  Of course, Conservatives hate those groups.  In Wisconsin we had one of their right wing free-dumbers, Glenn Grothman inaccurately claim women weren't discriminated against that not-an-expert extremist right wing media harpy Ann Coulter had persuaded him that women didn't want equal pay for equal work, that money wasn't as important to women as to men, to justify repealing legislation so they could sue for wage discrimination.  (Logically, if women weren't going to want more money, why would it be necessary to repeal the right for them to sue then?) A similar Republican effort attempted to do the same in Minnesota.  At the federal level the right has opposed legislation like the Lily Ledbetter act.

Here is what Kersten glosses over when she talks about education as a "predicter of future earnings".  From Bloomberg Businessweek:

The gender pay gap, around 40¢ to the dollar in the early 1960s, shrank rapidly in the 1980s and early ’90s. It has narrowed by only 4¢ since 1994 and less than 1¢ since 2005, even though younger women have caught up to and surpassed men in education. What’s more, pay difference actually grows as a woman’s career progresses, adding up to hundreds of thousands of dollars on average over a lifetime. Catherine Hill, head of research at the American Association of University Women, found that among college graduates, the pay gap grew from 20¢ on the dollar one year after graduation to 31¢ by the 10th reunion.

 and from the same article:

In a 2007 article for the Academy of Management’s journal Perspectives, Cornell University labor economists Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn wrote that even after adjusting for education, experience, race, industry, and occupation, women brought home just 91 percent of what men did. And they said that figure may understate the pay gap due to sex discrimination if women have been excluded from higher-paying opportunities. “There is evidence that although discrimination against women in the labor market has declined, some discrimination does still continue to exist,” they wrote.

The disparity of women at the 'C' class level, or top executive level clearly shows that fewer women proportionate to population achieve that level, indicating clearly there is a very real glass ceiling.  At all levels, despite education, women make less money than men, and have less advancement.

It has been consistently the Republicans and Tea Partiers, extolling the stay at home Ann Romney world that never really existed even in the 'good ol' days', that have fought not only to prevent further progress towards equality, but to UNDO those gains toward making women more fully equal made in the past 50 years. 

The right claims they do these things to be 'business friendly'.  Do we really want to befriend businesses by encouraging and allowing them to treat women unfairly????????? Are their female constituents LESS important to them,as  real people, than corporations-as-people? Any business that would seek that kind of accommodation, not being sued for paying women less, is NOT a good corporate citizen, not a good public citizen. They would hurt the state's economy, not help it.

Concluding from the Bloomberg article on just how Republican obstruction and opposition has worked to undo and impair equality for women in the workplace:

Lilly Ledbetter didn’t need dueling statistical analyses to tell her she was underpaid once she saw how much male managers at the tire plant were getting. Winning a judgment was the problem. A jury found it was “more likely than not” that she suffered pay discrimination, but the Supreme Court turned her down on appeal because she didn’t complain within 180 days of when she was first underpaid. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act, the first law President Obama signed upon taking office in 2009, fixed that for future plaintiffs by treating each undersized paycheck as a fresh, punishable offense.
The bigger problem remains: If there’s no tipster stuffing notes in their mailboxes, women don’t know they’re underpaid. The Paycheck Fairness Act, which passed in the House in 2009, would fix that deficiency by preventing companies from retaliating against workers who inquire about pay gaps. It would also allow for punitive damages; close some loopholes that employers have used to justify pay gaps; and require employers to submit salary data that would make it easier to detect violations. The Senate GOP’s June 5 filibuster of the bill played into the hands of Democrats seeking women’s votes, as did defensive quotes from Republican senators. Marco Rubio of Florida said he didn’t think the bill would accomplish its purpose, and “reads more to me like some sort of welfare plan for trial lawyers.” (Wisconsin passed a similar law in 2009 and saw no boom in litigation, according to its Department of Workforce Development.)
A lack of good data impedes progress on fair pay. Nationwide statistics can’t prove that any particular woman has been treated unfairly, while individual cases are too idiosyncratic—an employer can usually cite some justification for why she got less than the guy in the next cubicle. For potential plaintiffs, the ideal would be to have reams of detailed data about every company’s pay by gender, job title, and so on. But that would be a paperwork nightmare, and few companies would willingly expose themselves that way.
By grouping employees in different ways, expert witnesses in lawsuits brought against Boeing (BA), Wal-Mart, and Novartis (NVS) have drawn opposite conclusions about whether discrimination exists. In 2006 the Bush administration discontinued a program started by the Clinton administration to collect data from federal contractors (who account for 25 percent of the civilian workforce) on the grounds that the data weren’t useful. The Obama administration is looking into restarting data collection for contractors to detect patterns of discrimination but still faces opposition from employer groups. “Will the usefulness justify the burden?” asks Rebecca Springer, an attorney at Crowell & Moring, a law firm that represents defendants in Equal Pay Act lawsuits.
Fair question. And yet solutions exist. Labor economist Marc Bendick Jr. argues that fears about excessive paperwork are overblown: Just a small amount of easy-to-supply data would be enough, he says, to flag companies that bear further investigation. Employers’ attorney William Doyle Jr. of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius would encourage employers to investigate their own practices by promising that their findings could not be used against them in court. Both ideas have merit. Doing nothing amounts to preserving a code of silence that continues to hurt women. Just ask Ledbetter, now 74, who never got a settlement from Goodyear and recently had to scrape money together to replace a busted air conditioner. “Trust me,” she says, “I have learned how behind women and their families are, and it’s getting this nation dragged down.”

 

Coy is Bloomberg Businessweek's economics editor. Dwoskin is a staff writer for Bloomberg Businessweek in Washington.

Herman Cain is Wrong, Factually WRONG

I tried looking for the examples of any - ANY - proposal anywhere that would support the claims by Herman Cain in this interview with Jon Stewart that there was ever a chance that work requirements for welfare would be less stringent rather than more stringent.  I'm posting part 3 here, of an interview which began on air, and which continued in 2 additional parts on the internet due to time constraints.  I would encourage readers to view all 3, which can be found through this same link above.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Herman Cain Extended Interview Pt. 3
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

I can't find any, and I suspect Herman Cain here is talking through his hat, as he frequently does.  I am confident that he cannot produce ANY such example, and that if he DOES have something like this, that Jon Stewart will give it fair and prominent coverage.

That there were so many Republican governors, INCLUDING MITT ROMNEY, INCLUDING MIKE HUCKABEE, HALEY BARBOUR, ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER, our own TIM PAWLENTY , RICK PERRY, JOHN HUNTSMAN and JEB BUSH who sought and received such waivers is an argument AGAINST the claims made by Herman Cain ------- unless he is asserting that all those REPUBLICAN / ULTRA-CONSERVATIVE governors were the ones trying to weaken that work requirement in welfare.

Here is what a New York Times article had to say about the stringent requirements for a waiver:

Reacting to these kinds of requests, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a memo last month granting states some flexibility. If states can find better ways to get welfare recipients into jobs, they can extend training periods or grant certain kinds of exceptions. The department “is only interested in approving waivers if the state can explain in a compelling fashion why the proposed approach may be a more efficient or effective means to promote employment entry, retention, advancement, or access to jobs,” according to the memo. Kathleen Sebelius, the health secretary, said all waivers would have to move 20 percent more people from welfare to work.

As talking point memo noted here:

States have long sought relief from the 1996 measure’s strict workforce participation requirements and time limits for welfare recipients. In 2005, Romney was one of 29 Republican governors wrote a letter to Congress seeking even more leniency in waiver authority from the welfare law than the Obama administration granted last month.

Here are the names on that letter, which you can see also here below, the text of that letter making it quite clear that there is NO weakening of work requirements being sought by a waiver.  The letter is written on Republican Governors Association letterhead, and notes that it is paid for by the Republican Governor's Association:

Kenny C. Guinn, Governor of Nevada              Mitt Romney, Governor of Massachusetts

Jeb Bush, Governor of Florida                          Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California

Mike Huckabee, Governor of Arkansas            Haley Barbour, Governor of Mississippi

George E. Pataki, Governor of New York         Linda Lingle, Governor of Hawaii

Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr, Governor of Maryland    Dirk Kempthorne, Governor of Idaho

Donald L. Carcieri, Governor of Rhode Island  Sonny Perdue, Governor of Georgia

Tim Pawlenty, Governor of Minnesota              Dave Heineman, Governor of Nebraska

John Hoeven, Governor of North Dakota          M. Michael Rounds, Governor of South Dakota

John Huntsman, Jr., Governor of Utah              James Douglas, Governor of Vermont

Ernie Fletcher, Governor of Kentucky              Mark Sanford, Governor of South Carolina

Frank H. Murkowski, Governor of Alaska        Bob Taft, Governor of Ohio

M. Jodi Rell, Governor of Connecticut              Bill Owens, Governor of Colorado

Bob Riley, Governor of Alabama                      the Governor of the Commonwealth of the Northern
                                                                                  Mariana Islands, (whose signature I cannot read)
Mitch Daniels, Governor of Indiana                  Matt Blunt, Governor of Missouri

Rick Perry, Governor of Texas

I haven't found ANY requests from Democratic or Independent Governors seeking significantly different or more lenient work requirements for welfare than this.  If any readers find such a request or inquiry, please bring it to my attention.  I am thorough in my research, but I don't claim to be infallible. However, I'm pretty confident that there is no such weakening request ANYWHERE, by ANYONE, granted by ANY president, and certainly NOT BY OBAMA.

However, the Republicans are just wrong, in some cases, like Cain here, who comes off as a goofy, sometimes charming, sometimes obnoxious, (and often generally just very ver strange), but sincere man in this interview.  But there are others who are clearly, calculatingly, deliberately simply LYING on the right in this election -- and more so than ususal.  I have to applaud Stewart for his exceptionally deft and skillful interviewing technique. He knows how to keep a light touch while still being meticulously fair and factual.
 

More Right Wing Crazies Stockpiling Arsenals of Weapons for Insurrection

I don't claim by any stretch that all conservatives are racist. What I'm asserting below, connecting the dots, is that racism among a significant, and surprisingly large segment of the base, is embraced and exploited by the right for money, votes, and power. It is more than tolerated, it is encouraged to be part of their politics and to set part of their political agenda. For some, it is because they dislike having to share the traditional position of political power and social and economic privilege among white christian(more or less) males with women and with people of color or alternatively, who do not originate from Europe, preferably western Europe. For others, it is sufficient that people of color - and with the recent policies and legislation, increasingly women - are voting not only for democratic candidates, but actively AGAINST conservatives.

At right is a 2008 Reuters photo with the caption: “Republican National Convention page Isaac Aguigui watches from the edge of the floor at the start of the first session of the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota September 1, 2008.”

photo above from Pandith News; left photo appears to be Aguigui's mug shot
From Business Insider:
Anarchist Leader In Assassination Plot Was Apparently A Page At The 2008 GOP Convention

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Shortly after the media frenzy over these "anarchist" militant revolutionaries and their alleged aspirations to overthrow the government (with $87,000 of weapons and multiple members with loose lips), Gawker revealed that their leader, Isaac Aguigui was apparently a page at the Republican National Convention in 2008.

Gawker reports that they found a photo of what appears to be Aguigui, or maybe just a guy who looks incredibly like him and also has the name "Isaac Aguigui."
The caption of the photograph says "Republican National Convention page Isaac Aguigui watches from the edge of the floor at the start of the first session of the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota September 1, 2008."

From Business Insider:
Military Anarchists Were Busted Trying To Overthrow The Government And Assassinate Obama



Nomadic Lass via Flickr

There was a recent revelation in a relatively well-covered murder trial involving four US Army soldiers facing murder charges for the shooting death of another soldier and his 17 year-old girlfriend.The revelatory pieces of information are contained herein, released by the AP:

Prosecutor Isabel Pauley says the group bought $87,000 worth of guns and bomb-making materials and plotted to take over Fort Stewart, bomb targets in nearby Savannah and Washington state, as well as assassinate the president.

 

Remember when the conservatives had a meltdown because the Obama administration recognized the threat from violent right wing extremists, which is factually a greater threat than Islamoterrorism to this country?  All extremists are legitimately suspect because they lean towards any means necessary to achieve their purpose; all terrorists are genuinely dangerous because they embrace violence to do so.

It is not a coincidence that the Sikh mass shooter in Wisconsin first discovered and then embraced white supremacy and neo-nazi groups in the military.  Clearly, while not an indictment of the military overall, there is an apparent niche for that kind of politics there.

The militia white supremacists are just a bit more overt about it, and a good bit more honest in their violence and hatred as right wing authoritarians and fascists. The right can't win in a fair, honest and legal election; so they claim voter fraud where none exists.  The right can only take power to try to move this country backwards into the worst abuses that disgrace our principles, to the shameful days of our past.  The only difference with the white supremacists and militias and the other members of the GOP who go along with the voter suppression and disenfranchisement is they get down to the violence inherent in that a lot quicker.

Apparently the leader of this group was a page at the 2008 Republican Convention.

As author and professor Juan Cole noted, this guy is a bigoted White militia leader.  I've heard too many of the right wing supporting white supremacists, taking their money, courting their racism, and trying to return to the bad old days of yesteryear when we had a very real group of people who were second class citizens, people of color.

If anyone doubts that a segment of the right is extremely racist, you have only to look at this year's incident where two delegates through nuts at a black CNN camerawoman, telling her this was how they fed the animals.  If you have any doubt about the role of white supremacists in the conservative movement you have only to look at the groups welcomed to participate in CPAC during recent years that have been notoriously and historically racist, like the John Birch Society (one of the founders was the father of our current political corrupters, the Koch brothers) and two prominent white supremacists were speakers, alongside our current crop of radical right wing candidates for office at the GOP convention.

From News One:

Two white supremacists are set to speak at panels at CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference that will also feature speeches by Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum.
The first white supremacist is Peter Brimelow the owner of the website VDare, which is labeled by the SPLC as an anti-immigration hate website. VDare has featured the works of noted white supremacists, Jared Taylor, Sam Francis, Virginia Abernethy, Kevin MacDonald as well as conservative pundits, Michelle Malkin and Pat Buchanan.
Brimelow has been a featured guest on the white supremacist talk show “The Political Cesspool” and is a prominent anti-immigration activist despite the fact he was born in England. Brimelow will speak on a panel called “The Failure of Multiculturalism: How the pursuit of diversity is weakening the American Identity.”
The other white supremacist is Robert “Bob” Vandervoort who spoke on a panel called “High Fences, Wide Gates: States vs. the Feds, the Rule of Law & American Identity.” Vandervoort works for the site ProEnglish.com and also was the organizer for Chicagoland Friends of American Renaissance which met regularly with the Chicago Chapter of Council Of Conservative Citizens.
American Renaissance is white supremacist organization run by notorious racist Jared Taylor that organizes a conference of racists including neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan including David Duke and Stormfront owner, Don Black. The Council Of Conservative Citizens is another white supremacist organization. 

This is of course in the larger context of the two prong strategy that began in the Nixon administration, and continued long after Nixon resigned, and continued beyond his death.  The 'Southern Strategy' and the less well-known 'Northern Strategy' devised by racists like former Republican candidate, Pat Buchanan.  I was particularly struck by a statement made, on air, by former MSNBC host Cenk Uygur about a conversation off air that he had with former MSNBC host Pat Buchanan before Buchanan was fired for his blatant white supremacist racism from that network.  Uygur indicated that when he spoke with Buchanan about the intentional racism of the southern strategy, and how it had benefited the GOP in the early years but was now in fact working against the GOP, as people of color become a larger demographic in the U.S., he indicated Buchanan's claimed the Southern Strategy had kept whites in power, despite the voting rights act and other civil liberties legislation in the 60's, for 40 years, so it "had a good run", and was therefore apparently worthwhile for the GOP.

So while Karl Rove whines that the Democratic party is 'playing the race card', it is in fact the Republican party and the Tea Party that pander to people like these white supremacist militants who want to overthrow the country and commit further presidential assassinations.  Ron Paul has taken money from white supremacists like Stormfront, Mitt Romney cynically and deliberately uses surrogates like birther Donald Trump to raise money from racists conservatives, and won with that white demographic strongly in southern campaigning.  Prominent Republicans like former governor Haley Barbour are supporting both Romney and Ryan as a surrogate and campaigner:

Most of the uproar over Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour’s comment, “I just don’t remember it as being that bad,” misses the point entirely. When the potential 2012 Republican presidential candidate made the remark to Andrew Ferguson in an interview for The Weekly Standard, speaking in defense of racist Citizens Councils that ruled the South before and during the civil rights era, it was no mere slip of the tongue. Barbour was simply playing the “Southern Strategy” card. 

Even a cursory study of Barbour’s past reveals the recent remark was not out of character. In the past he’s recalled that turbulent time when Ole Miss was violently forced to integrate as “a very pleasant experience.”

In his office he’s been known to show interviewers his prized possession: The last handwritten note of Ronald Reagan, dated Nov. 14, 1994, mere days after the president had announced that he was suffering from Alzheimer's and was retreating from public life. It was addressed to Barbour, who at the time was the chairman of the Republican Party.

Dear Haley, 

Congratulations on a great job for the Republican Party. I couldn't be happier with the results. And please don't count me out! I'll be putting in my licks for Republicans as long as I'm able.

This is the same Ronald Reagan that, immediately after being nominated by Republicans as their presidential candidate, played the Southern Strategy to the hilt by giving his first speech on August 3, 1980, at the Neshoba County Fair, just a few miles from Philadelphia, Mississippi, the town widely associated with the 1964 murder of three civil rights workers. In it, he repeatedly used what had by then become the coded racist buzzwords: “states’ rights”—the notion that each state has the right under the Constitution to perpetuate its traditions any way citizens deem fit, even if those traditions were racist.

Such subtly coded racist rhetoric resonated with voters then, just as Barbour’s revisionist version of history of the South he came of age in resonates with his base now.

It is not an accident that despite Tampa being in an area likely to be threatened by hurricanes, and which is notoriously untenable due to heat and humidity in August even when there are no actual storms raging, Florida was a southern state that like the rest of the deep south was a part of the confederacy that has a long history of racism in this country.  It is no accident that the state of Florida is trying, despite laws to prevent purging the voting rolls of ELIGIBLE LEGAL VOTERS within 90 days of an election, and that they did so in a manner calculated to disenfranchise this time around 100,000 legitimate, legal, valid voters.  Now Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Texas are trying to one-up Florida's dirty politics directed against people of color. But all that will do besides trying to re-institutionalize racism in government, which is both UnAmerican and contrary to the fundamental premise of representative government in the Constitution, is guarantee that when history is written, the Republicans of the early decades of this millenium will have disgraced themselves and their politics as bigots who are corrupt, unethical and morally bankrupt. That's why they have to put so much money and effort into characterizing themselves as religious and the 'values' party, and call themselves patriots.  It is because they are none of those things they 'doth protest too much' to the contrary.

I don't want to go back to this; apparently the GOP and Tea Partiers and their militia friends DO.






Either you think these were the good old days where the good ol' white boys were in charge the way God intended, not women, not minorities; or you think these were the bad old days that we have genuinely moved beyond.  Apparently the old white male GOP is waxing nostalgic, and not in a good way.  And the new militants want the old days back too.