Suburban Guerrilla

Old Kip-a-rooney is just one in a long, dishonorable line of Republican hypocrites who want to harass the poor for the crimes of which they themselves are guilty. Rep. Kip Smith is one of the sponsors of HB 464, which would require random welfare recipients in Georgia to be drug tested. (By the way, his father is DOT Commissioner and former state lawmaker Vance Smith, so you know he made it the hard way.)

It’s comical, how predictable this was, huh? From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Republican state Rep. Kip Smith was arrested early Friday morning in Buckhead and charged with DUI, according to an Atlanta police report obtained by Channel 2 Action News.

Smith, a 29-year-old lawmaker from Columbus, was pulled over after leaving Hal’s restaurant on Old Ivy Road and allegedly running a red light while traveling southbound on Peachtree Road, the police report said.

Efforts to contact Smith were unsuccessful Friday night.

Atlanta police Officer Z.A. Kramer, who was following the lawmaker’s 1998 gold four-door Jaguar XJ8, said the traffic light had just turned red when Smith went through the intersection at Pharr Road.

Kramer said he informed Smith, who was traveling alone, why he was stopped, and the lawmaker told him he didn’t realize the light was red.

“I observed the odor of an alcoholic beverage coming from Mr. Smith’s breath,” Kramer said in his report. “He advised me he was a state representative and gave the name ‘Kip Smith.’”

Smith, whose given name is John Andrew Smith, first told the officer he had not consumed any alcoholic beverages.

“I asked him again, and he stated he had consumed a single beer at Hal’s. I noticed also that Mr. Smith’s eyes were watery, and I asked him to exit the vehicle, which he did,” Kramer said in the report.

Smith told the officer he’d had the beer 45 minutes earlier, and the officer asked him to blow into a hand-held “intoximeter”. The officer said the lawmaker refused, stating he would prefer to go to a clinic or the hospital to get tested.

The officer told Smith that was done only after an arrest, and that Smith had not been placed under arrest, but Smith “seemed to be having a difficult time understanding what I was trying to explain to him,” the officer said in the report.

The officer said Smith finally agreed to blow into the device. The report stated that Smith blew a .091., which is above the legal limit of .08.

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Daily newspapers subscribe to the notion of objective reporting, and newspaper editors are always eager to defend this foggy notion. Which makes it all the more curious that New York Times Public Editor Arthur Brisbane recently asked readers whether “news reporters should challenge ‘facts’ that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.”

WTF! Brisbane, whether he knew it or not, was calling attention to the facade that the mainstream media constructed long ago to guard against the charge that their main function is to defend the status quo. In doing so, he chose a good example to illustrate what’s wrong with the mainstream mindset:

…On the campaign trail, Mitt Romney often says President Obama has made speeches “apologizing for America,” a phrase to which Paul Krugman objected in a December 23 column arguing that politics has advanced to the “post-truth” stage.

As an Op-Ed columnist, Mr. Krugman clearly has the freedom to call out what he thinks is a lie. My question for readers is: should news reporters do the same..?

Note that Brisbane quickly jumps back behind the facade, ignoring the question of whether Romney’s accusation against Obama is based on fact. He says reporters have been trained to not ask this question, even if evidence exists that could answer it. However, it’s OK for a columnist to ask and even answer the question, because columnists merely state opinions. As if opinions and facts necessarily dwell in different realms.

More here.

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Don’t believe Hillary Clinton or the New York Times, not when it comes to nuclear threats in the Middle East. Even Hillary doesn’t believe Hillary’s hype about Iran, as Juan Cole points out:

The announcement of the Iranian government that it will activate its Fordow nuclear enrichment site has predictably drawn forth a new round of war propaganda from the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In contrast, the Chinese media accurately report Iran’s affirmation that the new site will be subject to UN inspections and so is perfectly legal.

Ironically, what Clinton says is diametrically opposite from the repeated assurances given by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, that Iran is not trying to construct a nuclear warhead. True, he put it in a misleading way, saying that Iran “is not yet building a bomb,” as though it is only a matter of time. But in order to build a bomb, Iran would have to deny access to UN inspectors and, well, initiate a program to build a bomb. That it has not done so is covered up in mainstream US political and journalistic discourse, to the point where the NYT had to apologize for stating (contrary to Panetta) that Iran has a nuclear weapons program (it does not, as far as anyone can tell).

And now, it turns out, the Obama administration is even willing to admit the truth. The sanctions regime on Iran is not even primarily about the civilian nuclear enrichment program (to which Iran has a right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty), but about causing the regime to collapse. (Apparently the appearance in print with its admission of illegal motives provoked a sharp set of phone calls and a revision of the statement to merely a collapse of the nuclear program. I believe WaPo got it right the first time.)

I think blockading a civilian population for the purpose of instituting regime change in a state toward which no authorization of force has been issued by the UN Security Council may well be a war crime. Even advocating a war crime can under some circumstances be punishable, as happened at the Nuremberg trials.

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Very useful:

The Science of Self-Compassion, Dr. Kristin Neff from Emiliana Simon-Thomas on Vimeo.

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You think maybe PepsiCo picked the wrong expert to discredit the man who claims he almost swallowed a dead mouse while drinking from a can of Mountain Dew?

Mountain Dew drinkers know their distinctively yellow beverage of choice is packed with caffeine, but a new lawsuit might get them thinking about what else is in there.

PepsiCo, the drink’s manufacturer, is being sued by Ronald Ball of Wisconsin, who claims in a 2009 lawsuit that he opened a can from a vending machine, tasted something foul, and spat out a dead mouse, acccording to MadisonRecord.com.

Ball, who is seeking damages in excess of $50,000, claims he then sent the mouse to Pepsi, which destroyed the mouse’s body.

However, Pepsi is now moving to dismiss the case, citing testimony from an expert who claims that acid used when the drink is bottled would have caused the rodent to transform into a “‘jelly-like’ substance,” according to LegalNewsline.com.

Mountain Dew’s mouse-dissolving capabilities may also be helped by another ingredient in the bubbly beverage: brominated vegetable oil (BVO), a chemical that Gizmodo points out is banned in Europe and Japan, but is allowed in limited quantities in sodas like Mountain Dew, Squirt and Fanta Orange.

BVO is added to soda for the purpose of giving it more consistent flavoring.

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Oh, and he was a Disney “Teacher of the Year,” too. This one’s in Somerville, NJ:

Winning coach. Beloved school administrator. Politician. Civil Air Patrol veteran. A father of two stepsons and a daughter.

These are accomplishments and accolades on Patrick Lott’s resume.

So it came as a shock to those who knew him that Lott — who for so many years had been entrusted with students and athletes — had been arrested and charged with videotaping naked teenage boys showering at Immaculata High School in Somerville.

“Oh, my God,” said Dennis Sullivan, a Democratic Somerville borough councilman who knew Lott, a Republican, through their involvement in politics and local government.

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Any corporation running a venue that prompts you to “like” something is looking to violate your privacy, probably in order to make money but possibly for more sinister reasons. Only the truly naive will be shocked by Facebook’s latest transgression:

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I can’t stand what we’ve done to these soldiers.

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Who happens to be black? If you’ve read Malcolm X, you already know the answer. Chauncy Devega at We Are Respectable Negroes writes a compelling essay on racism, and how it permeates the national discussion on Obama. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, because the things that racists say to other white people are so shocking, not only for the content of their fevered insanity, but for their assumption that every other white person agrees with them. Still. In America.

I do believe that most overt racists are unaware of the workings of their own psyche. Why else would they go to so much trouble to fabricate lies to justify their hatred of a black president? I have my issues with President Obama, but they’re based on policy, not skin color. Since he’s been elected, I’ve had people say things to me that are so vile, I can only shake my head — after I point out that they’re clearly more upset about his skin color than anything else.

It sickens me. Not that we don’t all have unconscious biases (and yes, belief in white supremacy is a hard one to shake. After all, how else would you explain the American habit of doing whatever needs to be done to suck up the world’s resources while everyone else suffers?), but we try. We keep talking. I don’t know how we’ll ever heal this festering sore of racism, but we have to keep trying.

The personal is political. The rage machine that presumes the worst of Barack Obama, precisely because he is not white, is old hat. Black folks have known that game for centuries. We did not need to read Thomas Jefferson’s racist tract, Notes on the State of Virginia, in order to grasp the deep wells of anti-black sentiment which are the beating heart of America’s political culture.

My surprise at the claim that President Obama shares anything in common with a “skinny, ghetto, crackhead” is rooted in its absurdity. Obama is human. He is imperfect. I often disagree with his politics. Obama is a man. He is nothing more, nothing less. But a crackhead? Impulsive drug user? A hype? Nope. Not ever. Obama’s personhood and habitus, his relaxed and effortless black cool pose (even if some do not possess the cultural framework and lens necessary to perceive it) is obvious–and unapologetic.

The inability by some on the Right to see Obama’s full and dignified black humanity, as opposed to a default of black drug use, criminality, and omnipresent, irrepressible “niggerdom,” is the source of my hurt. I must ask: If the white conservative imagination can frame a man of Obama’s abilities, poise, intelligence, genius, life accomplishments, and talent as a skinny, ghetto, crackhead, how do they see the rest of us?
[...]

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OK, but it’s still unclear what effect this will have on the law regarding detention of American civilians:

Attorney General Eric Holder confirmed speculation Wednesday that President Barack Obama would issue a signing statement when he makes the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and its controversial detention provisions law.

“We made really substantial progress in moving from something that was really unacceptable to the administration to something with which we still have problems,” Holder said in response to a question from the Wall Street Journal’s Evan Perez. “But I think through these procedures, with these regulations we will be crafting, we can minimize the problems that will actually affect us in an operational way.”

Holder said the language of the NDAA had been moved in a “substantial way” from some of the original language which led the president to issue a veto threat.

“So we are in a better place, I think the regulations, procedures that will help, and we’ll also have a signing statement from the president” which will help clarify how they view the law, Holder said.

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Boy, that one’s a shocker, huh?

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U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, the Ayn Rand fanatic, never tires of trying to shred the government safety net. His latest scheme involves reaching across the aisle — all the way to the Senate, actually — to a so-called Democrat who shares Ryan’s passion for privatization:

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) is teaming up with Paul Ryan, the House’s top budget guy and the author of the GOP’s controversial budget which proposes phasing out traditional Medicare and replacing it with a private plan… The move makes Wyden the first elected Democrat to endorse creating a premium-support system to compete with traditional fee-for-service Medicare…

The policy… allows insurers to compete with traditional Medicare turning Medicare essentially into a public option on a private insurance exchange. Wyden and Ryan would give patients subsidies that could be applied to either private insurance or fee for service Medicare…

Unlike previous plans, those subsidies would rise and fall with the cost of the plans themselves — not at a fixed rate below the explosive rate of health care inflation… This plan relies mostly on the theory that competition among insurers could hold down costs — a proposition with little evidence behind it — and would therefore save the government much less, if any, money at all.

The talking points for selling the Wyden-Ryan plan sound a lot like Mitt Romney’s plans for Medicare, so don’t be surprised if Ryan endorses Romney for president. Let’s hope voters can see past the smoke and mirrors of these cold-blooded frauds.

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Why do you suppose that weasel Andrew Breitbart is so very, very opposed to outing?

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Reading this story about Herman Cain’s kept woman made me feel bad for her. I can tell you what it feels like as a struggling single mom with two young kids to have your landlord offer to “forget about the rent” if you’d just be “nice” to him. Maybe if he hadn’t been such a disgusting pig, I might have been tempted. But probably not.

That sort of thing was never an option for me. I wouldn’t dream of it. I dated guys with money, too, men who wanted to help; I didn’t let them. I didn’t want anyone to have something to hold over me.

I suppose it helped that I never felt the same pressure to give my kids status symbols that many women do. I kept a roof over their heads, food on the table and plenty of books in the house. I did the best I could, and that had to be enough.

I also dealt with a couple of evictions and bankruptcy. (I wasn’t very good with money when I struck out on my own. I wasn’t even aware that bills arrived on the same day each month, so you could plan.) It wasn’t easy, but I kept my sense of humor and eventually pulled my financial act together.

Luckily for me, I had a couple of good friends who loaned me money at critical junctures, but they were never men. Again: Unthinkable to me.

But reading this, I can understand how trapped she felt, an intelligent and hard-working person who never seemed to be able to keep herself afloat for very long.

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It was a nice surprise to see a smidgeon of actual history in a newspaper — an explanation in the NYT for Iran’s deep hostility toward Britain, providing context for the story of the storming of the British Embassy earlier this week. More here.

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