Category: Featured

Documentary crew arrested at Capitol Hill hearing

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

There’s really no good reason why the Capitol Hill police have to act as the political attack team for the Republicans, is there?

WASHINGTON — In a stunning break with First Amendment policy, House Republicans directed Capitol Hill police to detain a highly regarded documentary crew that was attempting to film a Wednesday hearing on a controversial natural gas procurement practice. Republicans also denied the entrance of a credentialed ABC News news team that was attempting to film the event.

Josh Fox, director of the Academy Award-nominated documentary “Gasland” was taken into custody by Capitol Hill police this morning, along with his crew, after Republicans objected to their presence, according to Democratic sources present at the hearing. The meeting of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment had been taking place in room 2318 of the Rayburn building.
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Pot, meet kettle

~ susie ~ 6 Comments

Now, I’m going to assume that you didn’t come in during the third act of Newt’s career, and therefore you can appreciate just how funny it is when, on This Week, he’s whining to Jake Tapper about how hard it is to pin someone down who will just lie about anything!

TAPPER: In many ways, you are where you are because of your debate performances. Last week, you had a couple that were not your strongest, to say the least.

GINGRICH: Yep.

TAPPER: Why do you think that was? What happened?

GINGRICH: I was amazed. I mean, I’m standing next to a guy who is the most blatantly dishonest answers I can remember in any presidential race in — in my lifetime. And I’ve seen, I think, every presidential debate — presidential campaign debate or virtually every one. And, you know, he would say things that were just plain not true.

Look, it’s a little bit like yesterday’s L.A. Times report. I mean, now it found 23 foreign accounts he never reported until he released his taxes. He would say — he would say thing after thing after thing that just plain wasn’t true.

And I had — I don’t know how you debate a person with civility if they’re prepared to say things that are just plain factually false. And that’s going to become a key part of this. I think the Republican establishment believes it’s OK to say and do virtually anything to stop a genuine insurgency from winning because they are very afraid of losing control of the old order.

We tried a moderate in 1996 for president. He lost. We tried a moderate in 2008 for president. He lost. It’s very hard to take Romneycare and Obamacare and have a debate and have the Republican win that debate. You need to have a conservative who is a very big distance away from Obama, because you’ve got to have the space so that, in fact, you can communicate with the American people.

TAPPER: I want to follow up on some of these comments you’re making about Mitt Romney. The race has taken something of a nasty turn. Here’s an ad that you are currently running in Florida.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(UNKNOWN): What kind of man would mislead, distort and deceive just to win an election? This man would, Mitt Romney. If we can’t trust what Mitt Romney says about his own record, how can we trust him on anything?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: It sounds as if you’re saying in that ad, and here this morning, that Mitt Romney is unfit and does not have the character to be president.

GINGRICH: I am saying that he would not be where he is today, the debates this week wouldn’t have been where they were, if he had told the truth. And I think that’s a very serious problem for somebody. I think that you look at — again, he’s supposedly a great manager, yet he can’t explain 23 different foreign accounts that weren’t reported. He’s a great manager. He can’t explain being on the board of directors of the company which got the largest Medicare fine in history for fraud?

Somehow, every time it’s bad, he didn’t know about it or he wasn’t aware about it. He didn’t really understand the Planned Parenthood by law, the largest abortion provider in the United States, is in Romneycare? Romneycare literally defines Planned Parenthood in a key — in a part of the bill. He didn’t seem to quite know it.

Every time you turn around, this great manager consistently doesn’t understand whatever it is that would have hurt him. And you just have to look back and say, why can’t you be candid with the American people? You cannot be president of the United States if you cannot be honest and candid with the American people. And that’s compounded, frankly, by a number of the ads he runs, which are just plain false.

TAPPER: So you’re saying that he does not have the character to be president of the United States, because he’s, in your view, not honest.

GINGRICH: I’m saying it is a very — it’s a — it is a very serious problem when you have somebody who on item after item after item — I mean, the clip you had just now, he knows what he said in that clip is not true. I did not resign in disgrace. I did not pay a fine. And, in fact, CNN ran an entire piece recently in which they pointed out that on every single substantive count in the ethics investigation, every single one, that I was vindicated, including vindication by a federal judge, vindication by the Internal Revenue Service, vindication by the Federal Elections Commission. Now, Romney knows that.

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: Well, the clip — the clip…

GINGRICH: So he’s run a campaign of vilification.

TAPPER: The clip I just played was actually one of your ads, but let’s get to that Romney ad that you’re talking about…

GINGRICH: No, no, but I’m talking about the earlier — I’m talking about — I’m talking about the clip you showed of him campaigning yesterday.

TAPPER: Oh, OK.

GINGRICH: What he said yesterday, this wasn’t true.

TAPPER: There…

GINGRICH: And so at some point, I don’t quite — I don’t quite — to be honest, Jake, I don’t quite know how you deal with an opponent, because you want to deal with them with civility, you want to deal with them in a positive way. I want to talk about big issues.

I talked about space this week, which I think is important for the country’s future. I talked about housing. I talked about creating jobs. I talked about the record I had working with Ronald Reagan to create jobs and the record I had working with Bill Clinton to create jobs. We talked about welfare reform as the first great entitlement reform.

There are all sorts of positive things. We have a proposal on Social Security which would allow every young American the option of having a personal Social Security account on the model of Galveston, Texas, and the country of Chile. So there are a lot of positive things.

And if you’ll notice, when you get outside the zone where Romney carpet-bombs with Wall Street money, and you look at what’s happening in the rest of the country, I’m ahead in all three national polls that were released this week. I’m ahead by a big margin, because when you come to positive ideas, I represent real change in Washington, I represent unleashing the spirit of the American people to get us back as a country, rebuilding the country we love. And when we get to a positive idea campaign, I consistently win.

It’s only when he can mass money to focus on carpet-bombing with negative ads that he gains any traction at all.

Oh dear

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

When you read this sort of thing, you might get the impression that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is little more than a corrupt political hack. Because really, the fact that his employees set up their own intranet to communicate on campaign work would indicate that someone higher up the food chain directed them to do so, and that a culture of corruption was pervasive on his staff. But since we all “know” Scott is really a God-fearing man, there must be some other explanation, right?

Two staffers who worked directly for Gov. Scott Walker while he was county executive were charged Thursday with illegally doing extensive political work while being paid by taxpayers to do county jobs.

One of the two, Darlene Wink, cut a deal with prosecutors under which she agreed to provide information in a related investigation about the destruction of digital evidence and to aid in further prosecutions. This is the first indication that the multifaceted John Doe investigation may be pursuing charges of evidence tampering.

Milwaukee County prosecutors also made the surprising disclosure that top Walker aides set up a private Internet network to allow them to communicate with one another by email about campaign as well as county government work without the public or co-workers’ knowledge.

The emails Walker officials traded via the shadow network could provide investigators with a trove of information as they pursue other angles in the case. Earlier this week, the Journal Sentinel reported that the probe was focusing on possible bid-rigging and other misconduct in the competition to house the county Department on Aging in private office space.

In a statement, Walker’s campaign said he had a policy against county employees using government resources to do campaign work.

“Scott Walker expected everyone to follow the law and made that clear publicly and privately,” the statement said.

There, you see? He had a “policy” against it, so I’m sure everything’s going to be just fine for Scott!

On Thursday, prosecutors charged Kelly Rindfleisch, deputy chief of staff to Walker in 2010, with four felony counts of misconduct in office for working for then-Rep. Brett Davis’ 2010 campaign for lieutenant governor while on the county clock. Davis, who lost in the Republican primary, is now Walker’s state Medicaid director.

The complaint says that Rindfleisch told a friend in an Internet chat shortly after taking the job with Walker that “half of what I’m doing is policy for the campaign.”

During work hours between February 2010 and early July 2010, it says, Rindfleisch sent more than 300 emails to Davis and 1,380 fundraising emails. The John Doe also turned up more than 1,000 emails between Rindfleisch and top staffers on Walker’s 2010 campaign during work hours over the same period.

Fun with fundraising

~ susie ~ 9 Comments

In case you haven’t noticed, I haven’t done a fund drive in a really long time. That’s because I’ve been able to hang on through what I earn at C&L, subsidized by what was left to me when my mother died.

Now I could really use your help. In addition to paying for the health insurance, I have a $5000 copay on the surgery and about $30,000 in assorted medical bills from when I was hospitalized previously. (See this woman’s story.) I don’t expect to pay all of that, but I will have to pay something.

Obviously, some of you are in the same leaky financial boat and the last thing I want is for my readers to donate to me when they’re in bad shape themselves. But for those of you who can spare a few bucks, and would like to support what I do, I’d really appreciate your help.

In addition to Paypal (see “donate” tab above), you can request my home address or use Wepay.com (widget just below this), which was recommended to me by people who hate Paypal.

Donate to Keep Susie healthy!

The Esquire interview

~ susie ~ 8 Comments

With Bill Clinton:

ESQUIRE: But it doesn’t seem like people in general think they can demand anything of government anymore. We’re divided between people who don’t think government can do anything and other people who think that we can’t demand anything. Do you think the outside-the-government fervor of the Occupy movement and other similar things is a good spur to change that?

CLINTON: Yes. Potentially it is, and that’s what I’ve been saying from the beginning. I’ve gotten some criticism on some of the more left-wing blogs about it, but the complaining about the abuses of the 1 percent or tenth of a percent of Americans who are in finance, who helped to cause this mess, that’s been very useful, because I’ve been talking about income inequality in America for twenty years, and when I was president, people didn’t pay much attention to it, probably because wages were going up. But I don’t think I’ve given a single solitary speech since I left office that I hadn’t talked about it. It’s a problem around the world and within the United States. So these people have put that on the agenda.

But what I’ve been trying to get them to do is to unite behind just one or two or three simple things that they can be for, and then mobilize people who won’t spend the night outside in November. And the infrastructure bank would be a very good thing to do, because it really would put people to work. If you wanted to create jobs in a way that has minimal effect on the deficit but has government action, the two best things you could do are the infrastructure bank and a simple SBA-like loan guarantee for all building retrofits, where the contractor or the energy-service company guarantees the savings. So that allows the bank to loan money to let a school or a college or a hospital or a museum or a commercial building unencumbered by debt to loan it on terms that are longer, so you can pay it back only from your utility savings. You could create a million jobs doing that because of the home models that are out there now.
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Who really killed MLK?

~ susie ~ 5 Comments

Did you know there was a civil trial to determine who killed Martin Luther King Jr.? Neither did I. Imagine that. I wonder why the same media that covers any sensational trial ad nauseum didn’t bother to cover this one:

Dr. Martin Luther King’s family and his personal friend and attorney, William F. Pepper, won a civil trial that found US government agencies guilty in the wrongful death of Martin Luther King. The 1999 trial, King Family versus Jowers and Other Unknown Co-Conspirators, [70] is the only trial ever conducted on the assassination of Dr. King.

The King family’s attempts for a criminal trial were denied, as suspect James Ray’s recant of what he claimed was a false confession was denied. Mr. Ray said that his government-appointed attorney told him to sign a confession in order to receive a trial. When Mr. Ray discovered that his signature meant no trial, his and the King family’s subsequent requests were denied.

The US government also denied the King family’s requests for independent investigation of the assassination.

Therefore, and importantly, the US government has never presented any evidence subject to challenge that substantiates their claim that Mr. Ray assassinated Dr. King.

US corporate media did not cover the trial, interview the King family, and textbooks omit this information. Journalist and author, James Douglass: [71]

“I can hardly believe the fact that, apart from the courtroom participants, only Memphis TV reporter Wendell Stacy and I attended from beginning to end this historic three-and-one-half week trial. Because of journalistic neglect scarcely anyone else in this land of ours even knows what went on in it. After critical testimony was given in the trial’s second week before an almost empty gallery, Barbara Reis, U.S. correspondent for the Lisbon daily Publico who was there several days, turned to me and said, “Everything in the U.S. is the trial of the century. O.J. Simpson’s trial was the trial of the century. Clinton’s trial was the trial of the century. But this is the trial of the century, and who’s here?” ”

[…] The overwhelming evidence of government complicity introduced and agreed as comprehensively valid by the jury includes the 111th Military Intelligence Group were sent to Dr. King’s location, and that the usual police protection was pulled away just before the assassination. Military Intelligence set-up photographers on a roof of a fire station with a clear view to Dr. King’s balcony. 20th Special Forces Group had an 8-man sniper team at the assassination location on that day. Memphis police ordered the scene where multiple witnesses reported as the source of shooting cut down of their bushes that would have hid a sniper team. Along with sanitizing a crime scene, police abandoned investigative procedure to interview witnesses who lived by the scene of the shooting.

Much more interesting information here. The site is from one of the two reporters who covered the trial.

Another hypocritical Republican gets arrested

~ susie ~ 7 Comments

http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1

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.

American thinking

~ susie ~ 6 Comments

Found this interesting essay, inspired by Vaclav Havel, over at Slactivist. It’s written by Katy Scrogin:

As the sociologist Robert N. Bellah points out, in thinking about collective self-governance, Americans suffer from a language problem; the country was founded upon and reared on self-sufficiency and personal independence. Consequently, our habits of thought and terms of discourse have caused us to become unaccustomed—even unable—to thinking about collective life in any way but as a group of individuals, a group in which each member strives for individual autonomy and leaves the others to do the same for themselves. Bellah notes that this disposition amounts to “ontological individualism. That is, the self is the only real thing in the world. I am real. All of you are more or less fictitious.” Living according to such an outlook, “limited to a language of radical individual autonomy,” people “cannot think of themselves or others except as arbitrary centers of volition. They cannot express the fullness of being that is actually there.”[11]

The way in which many Americans envision the good life, then, not only entails neglect of others’ needs and desires, but it also involves being constantly on guard against potential constraints that may be placed upon us. True autonomy, we believe, is equivalent to freedom from anything that would make claims upon the individual. Demands are feared as encroachments upon our ability to direct our life as we desire. If we cannot successfully avoid such intrusions, we are obviously not fully independent, and hence, we are not worthy to be called individuals. Additionally, if people dare to ask others for assistance, such requests are not only seen as proof of the petitioners’ weakness, but they are also often interpreted as attempts by the petitioners to achieve their desires by piggybacking on the hard work of others instead of doing that work themselves. Absent here is the understanding that humans cannot act in isolation from each other and that interdependence contributes to the health, strength, and richness of individuals and societies.
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Chris Christie, liar, liar

~ susie ~ 11 Comments

And this is always where Republicans have the advantage: They’re shameless. They will do or say anything in the service of their goals, and nobody’s better at it than Chris Christie. He knows what he’s saying is crap (does anyone really believe that Obama is happy about Occupy Wall Street?) and he certainly didn’t “create” 60,000 jobs in New Jersey (*see below), but that doesn’t stop him from spouting whatever works:

On Sunday night in Exeter, it was official: There just might be no politician in America better at shouting down protesters than Chris Christie.

Turning out a crowd of hundreds at Exeter High School for a Mitt Romney rally just two days before Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, the New Jersey governor drowned out a pack of Occupy Wall Street protesters who piped up at various points with chants of “Mitt kills jobs” and “Christie kills jobs.”

“Oh really,” Christie replied in acid tones when protesters began the chant. He pivoted to an attack on President Obama, accusing him of dividing the country and fueling the anger of young people like those being shouted down by Romney’s supporters.

“I have a message for you, Mr. President. This is the type of disoriented anger your cynicism and your division is causing in our country. Bring our country together — stop dividing it, Mr. President,” Christie shouted. “On second thought, Mr. President, if you’re up there in the family quarters of the White House, put your feet up and don’t worry about it. Mitt Romney is going to bring America together.”

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The lonely clang of Occupy New Hampshire

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

Charlie Pierce:

The encampment is like many others around the country. This one, however, is completely unique in that it is throwing itself directly into the implacable face of the party that is least likely to pay it any mind whatsoever. (Already, N. Leroy Gingrich and the departed clown Herman Cain have run the “Get A Job!” rap past appreciative audiences.) However, before dismissing entirely the effect of Occupy on the Republican party, consider whether we would have heard so much detailed faux-proletarian palaver from that Papist nutter Rick Santorum, or whether we’d have heard Willard Romney say the words “middle class” more in the last two months than in his entire public career, if people like Kathy Thorndike (and, yes, the people in the red robes with the cowbells) hadn’t dedicated themselves to yelling at the right buildings starting last fall. My guess is that we probably wouldn’t have heard much from them on the subject at all.

Thorndike and those like here aren’t exactly letting anyone off the hook, either. “I think it’s both parties,” she said. “I think it is very difficult for any politician to be heard at this time without raising a huge amount of money, and there’s only one place you can go to do that. Even if a politician wants to do something about the money, he has to raise the money to get elected. If the system is to be changed, we have to get the money out.”

It is the most obvious issue in the campaign, and the one least talked about. When it is discussed, it’s usually as a process story — who’s raised the most, whose super-PAC has the knives out for which other candidate. The corruption of the system has led to a corruption of the dialogue and, necessarily, a corruption of the debate. Most of the elite press is housed in a Radisson hotel across the street from the encampment. (George Will was stalking the lobby on Saturday, perhaps looking for briefing books to steal.)

Very few have been by to chat. “They’ve been trying to ignore the message,” Kathy said. “Or they’ll say there is no message. But people out there know something’s askew in our politics.”

Another car horn sounds. The people smile at her this time, and wave. She smiles and waves back. Meanwhile, two men in colonial garb on horseback ride by with a Gadsden flag and a Ron Paul banner. Something’s stirring on the fringes. Its direction is uncertain. Of course, you can say the same damn thing about the country.