The Flint Water Crisis: It's All Obama's Fault

Jake May—The Flint Journal-MLive.com/AP

Nearly every day I'm hearing from people who are just now paying attention to what's been going on in Michigan  Their reactions to the latest and the worst insult--the water poisoning in Flint--are many and varied, but tend to follow the same theme:  WTF??

I'm not here to judge, but it's not as if our bleating protestations haven't been wafting through the air for years. (They have been--even before 2011, when the GOP gerrymandered their way into absolute power and Rick Snyder took the oath he pretended he didn't hear.)

It's not as if we haven't been begging Michigan voters not to give ALEC, The Mackinac Center, and the Koch brothers the toehold they so actively coveted.  (We saw them coming long before their hand-picked choice, former CEO Rick Snyder, suddenly appeared on the scene.)

It's not as if we didn't vote in a referendum against emergency managers by a solid margin.  (We did that. All legal and everything. Gov. Snyder appointed them, anyway.)

It's not as if we didn't warn everyone not to vote in Gov. Snyder when he ran for his second term.  (We did that, too.  We had an excellent candidate in Mark Schauer. But every major newspaper in Michigan except one gave their support to Snyder.  (The Traverse City Record Eagle decided not to endorse anyone.)  Kind of pissy that now many of them are screaming for his head--as if they knew nothing--nothing at all--and had nothing to do with his rise.)

We've done everything we could to stop the Snyder administration from destroying our state, only to run up against a political machine so powerful we knew going in it was likely we would fail.  And we did.  Miserably.  It's embarrassing how little impact the Dems in our state have made, considering the evidence we've piled up against the guys who so relentlessly tore our state apart.

Now we have a crisis in the already impoverished and beleaguered city of Flint, brought on solely, completely, and deliberately by the Snyder administration and the emergency manager he appointed, not to assist but to replace a sitting, duly elected city government.

The lead poisoning of the city water system is a crisis of such huge proportions, the shock waves are felt all over the country.  The mainstream media--that same media we've begged for so long to pay attention--is just now stirring.  The sleeping giant has awakened and they're shocked--shocked, I tell you!--at the magnitude of the corruption and neglect.

(I would say we told you so. . .  Okay, I'm saying it:  We told you so.  But thank you, Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz, and the pathetically few others who lent their voices to our call in an effort to stop this insanity before it lead to something like this.)

 The effects of the water poisoning in Flint are not going away.  Thousands of people, including and especially young children, have been harmed by it.  Action is needed NOW, but the Snyder administration and his GOP cronies are bobbing, weaving, fudging--anything to keep from having to take full responsibility for it.

Snyder made his "The buck stops here" speech, intended to be just the ticket to absolve him of wrong-doing.  "I take the blame.  You satisfied?  No, I won't quit!  I'm staying to fix this!" (Not an exact quote, but close enough.)  But even Snyder knows a few words at a press conference won't fix anything.  So he's moved on.  Now it's the blame game.

It's all Obama's fault.

No joke. The Michigan Republican Party put this out last week  (Thank you, Eclectablog):

 The Feds did delay their intervention.  It seems they were waiting to see what the state was going to do, while the state--namely Snyder--was waiting for an offer so it wouldn't look to his handlers like he was asking Obama for (OMIGAWD!) help.

A stupid stand-off on both sides.  It's an emergency!  Who waits for an invitation in an emergency?  But Snyder and his Boys aren't going to be let off the hook.  Nor are they going to be allowed to take the credit for any aid unless they get off their asses and start pulling those lead-lined pipes out of that system.

The rats are leaving the ship. The two Flint emergency managers involved in this scandal, Darnell Earley and Jerry Ambrose, are nowhere to be seen.  (Oh, wait. . .is that Darnell Earley over there in Detroit, emergency-managing their school system?  It is!  It was. He's gone from there, too.  His next phase is as reluctant witness in front of a House committee investigating the Flint crisis. Those cockroaches can run but they can't hide.)

In an amazing turn-around, Snyder has decided Flint no longer needs an emergency manager.  The patient is cured!  It's a miracle!

There is a new mayor in town and he has complete faith in her ability to let him off the hook.  The new mayor, Karen Weaver, will be testifying this week in front of a House Democratic Committee on the Flint Crisis. She has appeared on cable and network political shows, is becoming a regular on Rachel Maddow's show, has met with Hillary Clinton, who has promised to do her best to help, and is reaching out to anyone who will listen about where the blame lies and what needs to be done now.   If Snyder thought he had an ally in Mayor Weaver, he's as deluded as he was when he came up with that cockamamie emergency manager plan.

 News flash:  Bernie Sanders is setting up campaign headquarters in Flint.  And you've heard there's going to be a Democratic debate broadcast from Flint in March?

Now if those new-found friends could only drink the water.


NOTE: The water crisis time-line is here.  (One clarification. The MJ article says Snyder handed over his emails the next day after being pressured.  That's true.  But they were heavily redacted--some pages entirely redacted--and many pertinent emails are missing.  We're still waiting for those.) 

_________________________________

(Cross-posted at Dagblog and Crooks and Liars)

There's a Poison In Michigan And It's Not Just In The Water

You've probably heard that the water supply in Flint, Michigan is loaded with lead and has been poisoning the city's children, along with everyone else.  So far, there are 200 confirmed cases of lead poisoning among children under six, with some 9000 more believed to be at risk.  That's just the kids.

The water crisis began way back in April of 2014, when Flint's governor-appointed emergency manager (The sole dictator of municipal affairs after removing all duly elected officials from their bounden duties.) fired their water supplier, the city of Detroit, for charging too much.  He then decreed, despite numerous warnings from experts, that the water in the Flint River was good enough, and ordered the water department to begin running it through the old, lead-lined pipes.

It turned out that those old pipes were okay when Detroit water flowed through them but once the more corrosive Flint River water began running, it ate into the lead and leached it into the water supply going to the city's poorest neighborhoods.  (Something the folks at Flint's General Motors plant warned them would happen, since they had long ago discovered how hard that water was on their equipment and stopped using it.)

The water was murky and smelled bad but the water department assured the residents it was okay to bathe in, and, more importantly, to drink.  So the residents bathed in it and cooked with it and drank it, wanting to believe their government officials wouldn't be allowing them to use that nasty water if it wasn't safe.

Photo source:  Sam Owens/AP

But it wasn't safe.  It isn't safe. Not by a long shot. So after almost two years of going back and forth about this awful water and the dangers it held, Governor Rick Snyder was real sorry for how it turned out, and said so publicly.  "I apologize for the state's part in this," he said.  And says.  And no doubt will go on saying.  Because, words, you know, mean something.

To his credit, he shut down the Emergency Manager operation in Flint (that same emergency manager he put in place even after Michigan voters overwhelmingly passed a referendum against emergency managers) and he fired a few people in high offices.  So now--now something would be done!  Well, okay, not now as in NOW.  It's more like "Now that national attention is on us, we're going to be thinking seriously about doing something about this!"

You would think, after all the hoo-haw, the governor would at last have put in that all-important call to the Feds--to FEMA--asking for an issuance of a Federal state of emergency.  You would think.

Well, he's getting to it.  It's not time yet, he says.  First he had to put out a state state of emergency, the necessary precursor to getting the Feds involved, not to mention an almost magical procrastination tool for someone who wants desperately to go on believing there's no way, no how he'll EVER need the services of those folks in Washington.

To Snyder's mind, just issuing the SOM is going above and beyond the call of gubernatorial duty.  He held a press conference the other day to brag about this big step he took, seeming not to recognize, until members of the press started asking him about it, that the next step, calling the Federal Emergency Management Agency (which, for some, might have been the first step), would be a good thing, too.  His solution, instead, was to ask churches and charities to dig in and deliver truckloads of little water bottles.  (Please!  Don't make me go to them! Give!  Give!)

Update:  Gov. Snyder, in order to stall the Feds, is bringing in the National Guard.  They'll be delivering cases of little water bottles, filters, and testing kits.  State troopers will be delivering water door-to-door where needed.  No mention of the water buffaloes, the big military tank trucks carrying potable water, even though Rachel Maddow suggested it the other night.  Too bad they don't watch her.  It's hard to rinse shampooed hair with little water bottles, not to mention cleansing tushies.)

You might wonder how all of this could happen, given the government resources available to the Snyder administration, just in our state alone. You, my friends, are not alone.  But let me remind you that Michigan has been under a supreme, GOP-enforced dictatorship since New Year's Day, 2011.  There is a long, dirty laundry list of the slow takeover of an entire state, much of it outlined in this June, 2015 Mother Jones article.  Rachel Maddow has been resolute in her reporting of Michigan's plight since the early days of the takeover, when Chris Savage at Eclectablog, Michigan's foremost progressive blog, brought it to her attention.  It's not as if this is anything different from business as usual.  Except now people are being physically injured instead of just losing jobs or homes or going broke or hungry.

This is not a takeover in the truest sense, since two elections had to take place in order to get Snyder and his GOP-majority cohorts where they are today.  That means there were enough people willing to allow this to happen without regard to the rest of us--or even to themselves.  These "leaders" were elected mainly on the strength of their anti-Fed, pro-state's-rights promises.  Their campaigns were built on hatred, fear and mistrust of anyone in Washington or beyond.  Now they're in a fix:  How do they ask for federal assistance without looking like they actually (Oh, ew, gross!) need it?

So here might be a good place to remind voters that when a candidate for a publicly held taxpayer-paid office says he or she is "anti-government" what they really mean is they're anti-any-other-government-except-their-very-own.

Let Michigan be a lesson for you.

(One more thing in the "Adding Insult to Injury, Michigan Style" department:  Those people who were fooled into believing their poisoned water was safe?  They're still getting water bills.  No.  I'm not kidding.)



 For more on the water poisoning in Flint, see The Atlantic's What Did the Governor Know About Flint's Water and When Did He Know It?

For Michigan progressive resources, see my Michigan Under Siege page.

(Also posted at Dagblog and Crooks and Liars)

It's Been Fun. But Seriously, Folks, It's The Presidency.

Since at least the turn of the 21st Century it's been a time-honored tradition to bring in the clowns and have some fun with the quest for the highest job in the nation.  You would think the duties and obligations of the presidency of the United States would cause most people to turn and run and keep on running, but every four years the most unlikely characters come out of the woodwork, shouting, "Hey, I could be president!  Why not?  How hard could it be?"

Photo:  Richard Drew/Getty Images

It's like the first weeks of every new season of "American Idol".  Singers?  You want singers?  Be patient, we'll get to that. First we need to haul out the phonies and the almost-singers and pretend they're really auditioning because it's not just about finding the best singer in America, it's about the show, the whole show, and nothing but the show.

I would say the Republicans have outdone themselves this cycle, but I'm still quivering (could have been laughter; could have been dread) over the potential 2012 lineup:  Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Tim Pawlenty, Ron Paul, Thaddeus McCotter. etc.--remember?

Early on, Michelle Bachmann and Ron Paul won the Iowa straw poll, but not before some high hilarity at an Iowa fairground, where blow-up slides, corn-dog obscenities, and fights over the size of their tents took center stage.

Earlier still, pizza guy Herman Cain ran as a non-politician who was pretty sure there was a lot wrong with the government.  His qualifications for the presidency included a vast knowledge of pizza ingredients, a build-up of a chain of pizzerias, and an economic plan that included the numbers "999"--a plan so brilliantly obtuse it shot him to number one in the polls for what seemed like a really long time for a pizza guy wanting to be president.  (Sort of like Sanjaya on American Idol.  Some things are beyond understanding.)

The Democrats haven't been immune to the silly season, either. In January, 2012, just before the New Hampshire primaries, C-Span broadcast The Great Debate of the Lesser-Knowns, a two-hour show where both Republican and Democratic wannabees had a chance to present their credentials and give reasons why America should vote for them. Among them was a wizard named "Vermin", a guy who visited all 1712 US counties and found that "people aren't happy", and a guy who had been in Real Estate but was now out of a job so he figured what the hell?  (It may have been the most fun I've ever had writing a blog.)

So here it is, 2015, less than a year away from our next presidential election and the silly season is upon us.  The Republicans, as usual, are outshining the Democrats, who, to be fair, only have three candidates in the running, all bona fide politicians.  They're way too boring for the pundits, who, if they were honest, would admit what they really want is a burlesque show.  Show us some skin!  We want pratfalls! Where are the comics?

Contrast the Democrats with the Republicans who, as of this writing, have 10 candidates running in the main, three or four relegated to the debate night kid's table, and several, including Lindsey Graham--a real, honest-to-goodness long-time politician--on the outside looking in.

Knowing they have nothing to offer their followers, the GOP keeps coming up with irrelevant attention-getters, hoping nobody will notice.  Donald Trump is a snarly, puffed-up businessman hawking his celebrity in place of actual policy.  Ben Carson is a neurosurgeon whose utterances conjure up Peter Sellers as Chance the gardener in "Being There".  Day after day, they're polling as the front-runners.  Neither of them has any political experience--an obvious asset for a party hoping for another chance to stop the damn governing already!

So last week the two Republican front-runners made political news again.  Ben Carson, because some of his words ended up forming actual sentences, was forced to hold a news conference defending his veracity.  He was accused of lying about stabbing a friend and in order to maintain some semblance of credibility (because he's running for PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES), he had to insist that he was telling the truth.  Oh, yes I did!  I did stab him!  I swear!

And Donald Trump managed for yet another week to keep himself at the top of the pundit dance cards. (Thus never having to spend a dime of his own money promoting his candidacy.)  Much to the delight of the press, he took a break from the hard work of pretending to be a politician to become the first active presidential candidate ever to host NBC's "Saturday Night Live".  He was able to do this even after NBC had kinda sorta fired him from his own show, "The Apprentice" and showed at least outward signs of not being pleased when he insulted Mexicans and dissed Univision, the Hispanic network that refused to air Trump's own personal beauty contest.

The Democrats made it to the news cycle last week, too, for a few brief moments.  On Friday, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow hosted the "First in the South" Democratic Forum in South Carolina.  The two-hour program gave the top three candidates, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Martin O'Malley, a chance to answer questions without interruptions or attempts to one-up each other. They even had some fun--Bernie laughed out loud--but there was no doubt they are serious applicants for the job--repeat, the job--of President of the United States.

I don't see that yet in either Donald Trump or Ben Carson.  Trump is busy building his brand, so to him Situation Room angst is for losers. And Carson is--I don't know--selling a book?

Meanwhile, there are real Republican politicians like Lindsey Graham, and even Jeb Bush, who don't stand a chance against this need by the media to keep politics so highly entertaining there's no danger of the dreaded channel-surfing.

Photo:  Pete Souza/Wikimedia Commons

Someday soon we're going to have to stop looking for the fun part of politics and start cramming for the hard stuff.  We're going to have to be the grown-ups. We don't let children vote for a reason.  It's because they're not equipped to read, to study, to analyze, to decide.  We are.  They don't understand the difference between showmanship and statesmanship.  We do.  They feel no sense of obligation toward establishing a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. As the grown-ups in control, we do and we must.


(Also appearing at Dagblog and Crooks and Liars)

The GOP Fixation on Rape and Sex and Women's Bodies: There are Cures for That.

So I guess you heard what House Science Committee member Todd Akin (R-MO) said, when asked whether rape would be reason enough for abortion:

People always want to try and make that as one of those things, well, how do you, how do you slice this particularly tough sort of ethical question. It seems to me, first of all, from what I understand from doctors, that's really rare. If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let's assume that maybe that didn't work or something. You know, I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.   

 To which, even the most thoughtless of the thinking people have to be going, What in thee pluperfect HELL??

This is the Tea Party-backed guy who just newly won the Republican senate primary and will go against Democratic Senator Claire McKaskill in November.  Maybe.  McKaskill wasted no time jumping in, saying, in effect, Uh uh, morons, you chose him, now you better let him run--I hope, I hope, I hope. 

But her reaction was nothing compared to the scrambling, the fumbling, the hasty word salads coming out of the Republicans who, bless 'em, saw immediately how this could royally screw things up come November if people kept linking that idiot Akin to their almost-main guy, Paul Ryan. 

That same Paul Ryan who calls himself the most Pro-Life person in government.

That same Paul Ryan whose views on Personhood--the belief that the life of each human being begins with fertilization--meshed so thoroughly with Todd Akin's they co-sponsored a bill calling for the legitimization of that loony theory.

That same Paul Ryan who, along with Akin and a couple hundred GOP House members, actually tried to make laws about the degrees of rape, defining "forcible rape" as the only violation worth noting--as if, in fact, "forcible" could be defined; as if, in fact, there was any other kind.

So, because Akin reminds them too much of Ryan and all that's unholy about him, the rest of the Republicans would like nothing better than to see Akin just fall in a hole, his name erased from any future historical references to the Great Race of 2012. 

On Hardball, Cynthia Tucker told Chris Matthews that this notion about a woman's body protecting her from a rapist's sperm--in a 'legitimate' rape--is nothing new.  She said Georgia Representative Don Thomas, a physician, said much the same thing--in 2003.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Jim Galloway quotes Thomas as saying, “Relying on my personal experience in my home county of 90,000 people, we don’t have rape cases resulting in pregnancy."

Galloway found another instance of the same crazy theory, this time by a North Carolina legislator (Republican) in 1995:

"The facts show that people who are raped -- who are truly raped -- the juices don't flow, the body functions don't work and they don't get pregnant," said [Henry] Aldridge, a 71-year-old periodontist. "Medical authorities agree that this is a rarity, if ever. . .
. . .[t]o get pregnant, it takes a little cooperation. And there ain't much cooperation in a rape," he said.

Rachel Maddow found even more instances of Republican office-holders using the same loopy rape reasoning.  (They're always Republicans. I mean it. Always)

How long before Republicans finally have to admit that they've encouraged and nurtured this craziness long enough? If they get skunked in November, will they finally come to their senses?  I doubt it.  Their fixation on rape and sex and women's bodies is a powerful habit.  It won't go away overnight.

But what if the craziness continues and they don't get skunked?  What if Romney wins and the Republicans take both the House and the Senate, and Paul Ryan, entrenched as the second most powerful man in the country, comes out of his shell, no longer having to pretend that there are any circumstances where women have any rights over their own bodies? 

It's our job to keep reminding potential Romney/Ryan voters that Todd Akin is not an anomaly, he is a symptom.  Five minutes before he gave that interview his loony beliefs about women's bodies were right there with him, and five minutes afterward he was feeling no pain about what he said.  He is who he is, and Paul Ryan and his fellow sex-masters are right there in the peapod with him.

There is no cure for what ails them, but there is a cure for us.

We quit them, pronto.

Thank you, Cal Thomas. Mighty Big of You

I can't think of a time when I've ever agreed with Cal Thomas.  I confess I don't seek him out, but when I see him on an occasional Op-Ed page I'll read him just to see what he's going to say that's going to infuriate me.  I'm rarely disappointed.

So as he sat on a panel at this year's CPAC and said what he said about Rachel Maddow, I wasn't shocked.  He was at CPAC with his own peeps. It was cool.

From the Huffington Post:

During a panel at the conference, a clip of Maddow's appearance on Sunday's "Meet the Press" was played. In it, Maddow said that Republicans are "waging war on contraception."
"I'm really glad...that you played the Rachel Maddow clip," Thomas said after the audience booed a bit, "because I think that she is the best argument in favor of her parents using contraception." As the audience cheered, he continued, "I would be all for that and all the rest of the crowd at MSNBC too for that matter."

It did seem a little odd for a Pro-Life guy to be sort of wishing someone hadn't been born, but he was at CPAC, and it appears to be a whole different world in there.  But, as one might expect, it created a bit of a flap.  It didn't seem like such a much to me.  All kinds of goofy things came out of CPAC 2012 and were being reported hour by hour.  This was actually one of the milder ones.  But it took a new turn when fellow Conservative Greta van Susteren said publicly that Thomas owed Maddow an apology.  (Her commenters obviously didn't agree. Oy. And vey.)

Then last week Rachel announced that Cal Thomas had called her to apologize.  She told her audience, "I completely believe his apology.  I completely accept his apology."  Good.  Classy.

And that was that.  Until today, when I saw a column by Cal Thomas on the Op-Ed page with the headline, "Rachel Maddow and Civility".  I fully expected a diatribe against Rachel, even after his apology to her, but what I read may be the most sincere abject apology I've ever seen in my life.  That it came from a man who some people, including me, considered a tight-assed Right Wing hack, made it all the more amazing. [Note:  The full title of Thomas's piece is "Rachel maddow and my lesson in Civility" but our paper shortened the title to "Rachel Maddow and Civility" so that it could be read as something entirely different.]

He talked about that day when he sat on the panel and watched a projection of a Rachel Maddow Show clip as she talked about the Catholic contraception controversy.  He did not and cannot deny that he said what he said: "I think she's the best argument in favor of her parents using contraception." 

In his column he wrote, "I was asked to be on a panel before what looked like a crowd of about 1,000 conservatives, hungry for "red meat."  He wrote that he "stupidly" said what he said "before thinking".

I'm reading between the lines here but what I'm getting is that a man like Cal Thomas, who began his column with, "When one writes about moral convictions, it's probably a good idea to consistently live up to them," could kick himself for ever getting involved with that CPAC crowd in the first place.  (It'll be interesting to see where he goes from here.)

He writes that since the flap he has watched a couple of Rachel's shows:

"Without engaging in any qualifiers, she is a strong and competent advocate for her position.  Why do so many of us only watch programs that reinforce what we already believe?  Where is the growth in that?  Whatever else she may or may not be, she is my fellow American.

I have many liberal friends acquired over the years.  They are impossible to avoid in the media, but I don't wish to avoid them.  They became my friends because I stopped seeing them as labels and began seeing them as persons with innate worth.  That is what I failed to do in my first response to Rachel Maddow. . .

. . .I expect to like Rachel Maddow because my instinct is to separate the value of a person from his or her political position.  For some strange reason (demon possession, perhaps) I failed to do that at CPAC."

Bravo, Mr. Thomas.  You will lose friends and followers over this, and it will probably be no comfort to you that I, as a liberal, completely believe your apology and appreciate what you've done here.  But none of that is important.  What is important is that the next morning you felt bad about what you had done and you "called Ms. Maddow to apologize. It wasn't one of those meaningless 'if I've offended anyone...' apologies; it was hearfelt."

And by doing that and writing about it publicly you've opened the doors for all of us to remember something we so easily forget when we're in the midst of doing battle with the people on "the other side":  Whatever else we may or may not be, we are fellow Americans.

FRIDAY FOLLIES: Huntsman's Debut Dud, New Bank Heist Health Care Plan, Pop-up Pianos, and Barbie killed Bratz

Rachel Maddow, dear-heart, I'm begging you--never, ever do beat poetry at the bongo drum AGAIN!  Gawd!  That was painful! I'm telling you, it was excruciating!  I love you truly but that was just gawdawful.  Really.

So if you were watching Rachel and you managed to get past the dimmed lights and the bongo and the terrible, horrible attempt at...whatever the hell that was, you might have seen what it was leading up to, which was a hilarious account of the disastrous roll-out day for newly announced GOP presidential candidate Jon Huntsman.  Oy, they shoulda stood in bed.  The lot of 'em.  Video here, but Rachel recaps it nicely like this:

“Getting the name of your candidate wrong, getting the state wrong where you launched your campaign in getting your address wrong, getting your phone number wrong, not getting the cameras pointed at the Statue of Liberty, and then the generator dies 12 minutes before the announcement, and then as soon as the whole thing is over and it time for whatever this guy’s name is to go to his next campaign event in New Hampshire, when it comes time to get all the press, all those dozens of press get them on board the plane to go with whatever his name is to go to New Hampshire for his first big campaign event. What happens? They try to accidentally board the press corps on to a plane that is not going to New Hampshire, but is instead going to Saudi Arabia.”

Okay, a lot of it wasn't Huntsman's fault (though that bizarre motorcycle ad might have been) and a lot of it was kind of nitpicky, but I laughed my head off as it went on and on...and on (the video is almost 19 minutes long!), and it's Friday, so there it is.

The first Barbie commercial.  Found this, the very first Barbie commercial at Paddy and Laffy's "The Political Carnival" and it took me back--not to my day but to my daughters'.  Oh, yes.  Fun but fraught with dangerous girl-to-woman signals, those Mad Men babes.  But Barbies were like peaches and cream compared to Bratz, the black-booted hussy dolls my granddaughter went nuts over.  (Their first commercial is here.) Interesting to note that Mattel won the battle over competition and forced Bratz out in order to keep Barbie strong.  I thought competition was a good thing for capitalists.  But then there is that whole values thing going on...

 This next story is funny and sad and poignant and ripe for movie-making if only George Carlin were still alive (or if Woody Allen hadn't done something similar in "Take the Money and Run").

 James Verone, age 59, robbed a Gastonia, NC bank using a demand note requesting only a dollar, apparently the lowest amount needed in order to get free housing and medical care in the local hoosegow.  Verone said he is hoping for a three-year sentence so he can ride it out until Social Security kicks in and he can go live at the beach.  He said he's never done a dishonest thing in his life before this. 

I could launch into a screed on the need for universal health care in this country and what the lack of same drives even the most honest men to do, but I'm picturing James Verone sitting on the floor of the bank holding a stolen dollar bill in his hand waiting for the police to arrive and take him away to safety.  A man at the end of his rope. With a plan. An absurd, ridiculous plan  And then I'm picturing millions of people at the end of their ropes, each demanding one dollar from banks all across the country and waiting for the police to come and take them away.  And from there I'm remembering honest black citizens breaking the law by sitting at all-white lunch counters or refusing to get to the back of the bus and I have to marvel at the purity of James Verone's plan.  He might well be this century's Rosa Parks.


A Moment Sublime:  Pop-up pianos in New York City (video).  Sing for Hope, a non-profit arts project, has set up 88 artist-decorated pianos in public places all over NYC and made them available to anyone who feels the need to tickle the ivories.  Artists include Izaac Mizrahi, Diane Von Furstenburg, Kate Spade, B.D. Wong, and others whose names New Yorkers will surely know.  They're asking people who have visited to come back to the website and tell their stories.  What a great project.  Wish I could be there to see some of them. (It runs through July 2.  Hope it doesn't rain...)

From newyorkology.com

Cartoon of the Week:

R.J Matson - St. Louis Post Dispatch

*
*

The Taking of Benton Harbor

It's been six months now since Rick Snyder tied himself to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy's purse strings, letting the largest right-wing think tank in the country aid him in becoming the puppet-governor of Michigan, my Michigan.  If my beautiful state has any claim to fame these days, it's in the streaming melodrama of a calculated, very public disintegration of the rights and liberties of its people.

  Michigan is under attack more relentlessly, more viciously than at any other time in our history and, hard as it is to imagine, the enemy invaders are all government officials.  It might well be called a dictatorship, but for the disturbing fact that the government leaders carrying out this coup were duly elected by a majority of voters last November.

These Republican "small government" devotees took office on January 1 and immediately began dismantling governmental policies and protections, many of which had been put in place long before the parents of these hoo-haws were even born.  As public officials, their not-so-hidden goal is to turn the power of the state over to private interests, and Big Bucks says now is the time.  They can and they will do it, or their name isn't Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

Just last week Eclectablog's Chris Savage wrote about another Emergency Financial Manager takeover, this time in Pontiac, in order to privatize the water-treatment services and hand them over to a company already in trouble with the DOJ for violations of the Clean Water Act.

Michael Stampfler is Pontiac, Michigan's EFM. He has the dubious distinction of being the first Michigan EFM to use new powers granted by Michigan Republicans to cancel a union contract. What went nearly unnoticed was that last week, he dissolved the Pontiac Planning Commission and replaced it with a smaller number of his own hand-picked, unelected members. But he also did another thing. He made a contract for water treatment services with United Water Services permanent, outsourcing the water treatment to them and laying off city water treatment officials.

Much has been written and broadcast nationwide about the plight of Michigan.   Big Right Wing money is behind it with resources not yet tapped.  They're a part of an entire astro-turf movement to control state government in order to bypass or weaken Federal constitutional authority.  There are movements across the state wholly dedicated to stopping the take-over before it gets completely out of hand, but the passion for justice is no match for the power of money.  (Thanks to early reporting by Rachel Maddow, the beleaguered city of Benton Harbor has become the focal point for watchdogs.)

Early Benton Harbor 

To Benton Harbor, this attack, while more ferocious and having sharper teeth, is nothing new.  The town has been a target for decades.  It's ripe for the taking.  It is a desperately poor black town that would probably have gone unnoticed except for its one valuable asset:  Frontage on Lake Michigan, complete with gorgeous sandy beaches and the crown jewel, Jean Klock Park, donated to the city in 1917 "for the children", in perpetuity and now under threat of takeover by the Snyder gang.   The revised Emergency Financial Manager Act might have been written with Benton Harbor in mind.  It now has the power to disband elected governments in poor cities and replace them with an absolute ruler --which happened there almost before the ink was dry.

Two weeks ago they latched onto another way to take over those precious assets. They've fired the current Brownfield Redevelopment Authority members and replaced them with their own people.  (The Brownfield Authority looks at former plant properties and makes recommendations for usage based on things like...oh...environmental concerns.  In Benton Harbor's case that would include former Whirlpool properties in the planned luxury resort and golf course area.  Everything will work out okay.  Count on it.)

But if that's not bad enough, in that same Eclectablog piece linked above there's this from local radio station WSJM:

Benton Harbor Emergency Manager Joseph Harris has issued a couple of orders, apparently designed to reign in actions by the city commission not permitted by Michigan's EFM legislation. First, an order from Harris on Friday states that  "no City official, employee or agent shall appear, in an official capacity for or on behalf of the City, at any meeting or hearing of the City Commission or any of [the city commission's] committees without the express written approval of the Emergency Manager, except the City Clerk [who] shall be permitted to attend any City Commission meeting....for the sole purpose of keeping the meeting minutes."  It appears as though this new rule is intended to prevent any department heads or others from reporting to the city commission in an official way, which effectively shuts the elected leadership out of any informational discussions regarding city operations. Additionally, the order from Harris goes on to state that the city clerk must attach language to the minutes of all Benton Harbor Commission meetings stating that any resolution passed by the body has no legal effect.

  Notice the language in these proclamations.  No explanations, no excuses, no wiggle room.  It will be done!  This is something new in our state, in our country.  I'm expecting brown shirts and jackboots any day now.  What I never expected was that I would be writing a piece like this without a chance in hell of calling it fiction.
*

Michigan under threat of Dictatorship. NOW can we panic?

Friends and neighbors,

The call has gone out and I'm asking everyone who can to take Wednesday [3/16/11] off and head to the State Capitol in Lansing to protest the cruel and downright frightening legislation currently being jammed down our throats.

What is most shocking to many is that the new governor, who ran against the Tea Party and defeated the right wing of his party in the primaries -- and then ran in the general election as "just a nerd from Ann Arbor" who was a moderate, not an ideologue -- has pulled off one of the biggest Jekyll and Hyde ruses I've ever seen in electoral politics.

Governor Snyder, once elected, yanked off his nice-guy mask to reveal that he is in fact a multi-millionaire hell-bent on destroying our state and turning it over to his buddies from Wall Street.


Michael Moore, Letter to my Fellow Michiganders - 3/14/11

Rick Snyder pulled a fast one, all right.  He even fooled trusting old Bill Milliken, the only Republican I ever voted for and one of the best governors Michigan ever had.  Gov. Milliken endorsed Snyder, thereby causing thousands of fence-sitters to get up off of their doubts and give the "millionaire nerd" their votes, along with the keys to the kingdom.

I'm a Michigander who voted against Rick Snyder by voting for Virg Bernero (sigh).  Instead of putting us on a path to order and sanity, which is where Virg would've taken us, the election gave us an entire state Republican majority who saw their win as a power-grabbing mandate.

Once safely ensconced in Lansing, Snyder figured out a way to take over the entire state, town by town, school by school, poor schnook by poor schnook.  With the upcoming vote on Wednesday  (pretty much a slam-dunk unless a few Republicans in the legislature decide they're not into state privatization), Michigan will officially become the only state in the union under threat of full dictatorship.

His big idea is to cut aid to Michigan cities and towns and when they get into trouble because they have no money he can then declare any municipality or school district a financial emergency and send in a financial emergency manager who will have the authority to take over the town or school district and dismiss all local officials.  They can disband unions and pretty much make the town or school district into anything they want.  A  take-over.

We should have know something smelly was brewing when his first order of business was to "balance the budget" by figuring out a way to squeeze 1.7 billion dollars out of seniors and the poor so that he can give back 1.8 billion dollars in the form of tax breaks to Big Business.

Even Forbes Magazine saw this power grab for what it was. Rick Ungar reported on it in his article, "Union Busting, Michigan Style".

I hope and pray (Did I just say that?) that Michiganders and their BFFS everywhere will listen to Michael Moore and Rachel Maddow and everyone else sending out the call to action tomorrow at noon on the steps of the Capitol Building in Lansing.  

More of Michael Moore's letter:

These actions are breathtaking when you realize they will drive our already battered state straight into the ground. What we needed right now was an inspiring leader to help us reinvent Michigan and to find creative ways to create new jobs and lift us out of our economic depression. The rest of the country may call what they're experiencing the "Great Recession," but few argue that Michigan is suffering a "one-state Depression."

I know many of you are filled with a great sense of despair and a justifiable loss of hope these days in Michigan. But you must not let things get even worse. You must stand up against these Draconian measures and this outrageous attempt to rip our democratic rights from us by turning our state over to well-paid hacks from Wall Street and corporate America. They see our state as one big fire sale -- and they are licking their chops to get their hands on what is still a state rich in natural resources and industrial infrastructure.

Please show up at noon on Wednesday for our first mega-rally against this insanity. Hundreds of groups are already organizing car pools and buses. You can right now just declare yourself an organizer and get your friends and neighbors committed to being in Lansing. If ever there were a day to call in sick, Wednesday is it (because this IS sick). Students, if ever there were a day to cut class and become a participant in your democracy, Wednesday is it. This event needs to be HUGE -- and I believe it will be if you will simply be there and take a stand.

Much attention has been paid to Wisconsin in recent weeks. Well, they got nothing on what's going on here in Michigan. Rick Snyder is Scott Walker on steroids. There's never been what even the AARP calls "an all-out attack" like this on us. Trust me, you will rue the day you sat home and did nothing while thieves posing as politicians stole your Great Lakes State from you.

Don't let it happen. Be at the capitol by noon on Wednesday for the largest demonstration the state has ever seen.

The AFL-CIO is looking for volunteers.  Go here.

The UAW is providing free transportation in five locations:

GET ON THE BUS FOR WEDNESDAY PROTEST:

UAW Region 1A in Taylor (313-291-2750)
UAW Region 1A in Flint (810-767-0910)
UAW Region 1D in Grand Rapids (616-949-4100)
UAW Local 699 in Saginaw (616-949-4100)
UAW Local 652 in Lansing (517-373-7581), shuttle
from 426 Clare St. at 10:00 AM

All are welcome, no charge – but you MUST
call to reserve a seat!

Note, too, that this is happening today:

 Tuesday, March 15th: Early Bird Special
Join the AARP, Michigan League for Human Services and others from
11:00 AM-1:00 PM to say NO to Republican attacks on Michigan's seniors.

 I'm a thousand miles away, and it's frustrating that I can't be there today and tomorrow, but I'm there in spirit and I'll keep spreading the word. 

If we ever needed solidarity, we need it now.  In every community, in every state.  We can't let this die.

*
*

Michigan is under siege. Is Anybody Watching?

Right now, [Michigan] Gov. [Rick] Snyder is pushing a bill that would give himself, Gov. Snyder and his administration, the power to declare any town or school district to be in a financial emergency. If a town was declared by the governor and his administration to be in a financial emergency they would get to put somebody in charge of that town, and they want to give that emergency manager that they just put in charge of the town the power to, “reject, modify, or terminate any contracts that the town may have entered in to, including any collective bargaining agreements.”
Rachel Maddow, 3/9/11

If I had been watching anyone but Rachel Maddow last night I never would have believed what I heard.  Rachel, so far, isn't given to exaggeration or hyperbole.  She does her homework.  Her staff has been working tirelessly to get things right.  But I heard what I heard, and what I heard is that Michigan's governor is on his way to one-upping Wisconsin's Governor big time.  He not only wants to kill the unions, he wants to take over whole villages and towns and give them to his own private Genghises of Nottingham.

Rachel:  “What year was your town founded? Does it say so like on the town border as you drive into your town? Does it say what year your town was founded? What did your town’s founding fathers and founding mothers have to go through to incorporate your town? Republicans in Michigan want to be able to unilaterally abolish your town and disincorporate it. Regardless of what you as resident of that town think about it. You don’t even have the right to express an opinion about it through your locally elected officials who represent you, because the Republicans in Michigan say they reserve the right to dismiss your measly elected officials and to do what they want instead because they know best.”

Rachel also had this to say about the proposed bill--the same bill that no one in Michigan seems to think is such a much: “This emergency person also gets the power under the bill to suspend or dismiss elected officials. Think about that for a second. Doesn’t matter who you voted for in Michigan. Doesn’t matter who you elected. Your elected local government can be dismissed at will. The emergency person sent in by the Rick Snyder administration could recommend that a school district be absorbed into another school district. That emergency person is also granted power specifically to disincorporate or dissolve entire city governments.”

And this:  “The version of this bill that passed the Republican controlled Michigan House said it was fine for this emergency power to declare a fiscal emergency invoking all of these extreme powers, it was fine for that power to be held by a corporation. So swaths of Michigan could at the governor’s disposal be handed over to the discretion of a company. You still want your town to exist? Take it up with this board of directors of this corporation that will be overseeing your future now, or rather don’t take it up with them. Frankly, they’re not interested.”
And then there was this from Rachel, who would not lie:  “The power to overrule and suspend elected government justified by a financial emergency. Oh, and how do you know you’re in a financial emergency, because the governor tells you, you’re in a financial emergency, or a company he hires to do so, does that instead. The Senate version of the bill in Michigan says it has to be humans declaring your fiscal emergency. The House bill says a firm can do that just as well.


This is about a lot of things. This is not about a budget. This is using or fabricating crisis to push for an agenda you’d never be able to sell under normal circumstances, and so you have to convince everyone that these are not normal circumstances. These are desperate circumstances and your desperate measures are there for somehow required. What this is has a name. It is called Shock Doctrine.”
 
My God. if it becomes as far-reaching as Rachel suggests (and as the Detroit newspapers sort of hint at, though without any real sense of  panic),  this is gigantic news on the battle front.  This is war, Genghis Khan style. (Sorry, Genghis)  Power-hungry hordes are coming to take over our towns and villages, not with cross-bows and sabers but with the mighty pen struck to the mighty bill.  Our home-grown Genghises came for us not by your typical marauding and force, but by convincing more than half of us dumb schleps that the solution to all our problems requires nothing more than a check-mark next to the R on your ballot.

My thanks to Sarah Jones at PoliticusUsa.com for a great post about Snyder and for the transcription of the most pertinent of Maddow's words about the Republican attack on Michigan.

We have to keep this stuff going.  We have to know our enemies and understand their strategies.  They are ruthless and conniving and laser-beamed on their goals to take over the states and then the entire country.  They bear watching every minute of every day.  We can only do that with millions of eyes upon them and with millions of voices shouting to my country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty--This is WRONG!

Pass it on.

ADDENDUM:  click here for HB-4214, passed by Michigan Senate 3/9/2011.

Shut your damned Enthusiasm Gap and get out there and DO something

We all know that certain people who make it a practice to depreciate the accomplishments of labor - who even attack labor as unpatriotic - they keep this up usually for three years and six months in a row. But then, for some strange reason they change their tune- every four years- just before election day. When votes are at stake, they suddenly discover that they really love labor and that they are anxious to protect labor from its old friends.
 
I got quite a laugh, for example - and I am sure that you did - when I read this plank in the Republican platform adopted at their National Convention in Chicago last July: "The Republican Party accepts the purposes of the National Labor Relations Act, the Wage and Hour Act, the Social Security Act and all other Federal statutes designed to promote and protect the welfare of American working men and women, and we promise a fair and just administration of these laws."
 
You know, many of the Republican leaders and Congressmen and candidates, who shouted enthusiastic approval of that plank in that Convention Hall would not even recognize these progressive laws if they met them in broad daylight. Indeed, they have personally spent years of effort and energy - and much money - in fighting every one of those laws in the Congress, and in the press, and in the courts, ever since this Administration began to advocate them and enact them into legislation. That is a fair example of their insincerity and of their inconsistency. 

The whole purpose of Republican oratory these days seems to be to switch labels. The object is to persuade the American people that the Democratic Party was responsible for the 1929 crash and the depression, and that the Republican Party was responsible for all social progress under the New Deal.

Now, imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery - but I am afraid that in this case it is the most obvious common or garden variety of fraud.

FDR, September 23, 1944

Okay, I feel like the mother hen here--the dotty old mother hen who keeps repeating herself, even when it's clear that nobody wants to listen.  We mother hens do this, not because we're so keen on being royal pains-in-the-ass, but because we're keen on looking at the big picture and keeping it real. 

So, yes, I've said this before and I'll say it again:  We Dems/Libs/Progs need to do everything we can to keep the Democrats in control.  If we don't, the Republicans win and their gloating will take the form of locking us in towers and throwing away the keys.  They haven't even won yet, but on the strength of polls and pundits telling them they will, they're already planning ways to kill the few puny safety nets we've been able to jimmy into place.

So along with the satisfaction you get from gunning for the Democrats who in your view are either clueless or cowardly or in bed with the corporates, you might want to give a thought to how all that griping is fueling the other side.  They're loving these little internecine battles, because while all that spitting and hissing is going on, they can move on down that low road with nary a care in the world. 

I'm not going to rehash the horrors that will be unleashed if the Republicans take over congress, because there are others who have done it much more thoroughly already.  It will be bad.  You know that.  It will be so bad, we'll wonder how we could have let it happen again.  We'll pretend we didn't have anything to do with it--that the Big Money/Tea Party juggernaut was just too much for us.  But we'll be lying to ourselves, won't we?  All of this energy going toward attacking our own should be going toward attacking them. They are the enemy of the people, the destroyers of the universe (given half a chance), and we have an obligation to heal the wounds, not make them deeper.

The One Nation rally should be enough to convince us that we have the power if we'll only just use it.  It's a lie that we are a right-leaning country.  We couldn't have accomplished as much as we did if we had historically followed the dictates of the right.  We would never have had a healthy labor movement, a vibrant middle class, a claim to the title of greatest power on earth, without liberal pressure and sweat.  We built this country; they tore it down.  Now we're trying to rebuild and they're on the fast-track to tearing it down again. 

 The press is profiting from the looniness of the Right Wing and spends almost all of their time mooning over them.  Meanwhile, the good folks with mountains of practical, beneficent ideas but no talent for hawking them sit around and wait their turn.  Still, I'm seeing encouraging signs of a momentum building.  The Huffington Post, for example, has a new page called "Third World America", where real people talk about real problems and real solutions.  Elizabeth Warren finally has the president's ear, and someone is actually quoting the irrepressibly sensible Bernie Sanders.   Al Franken's heart is a hit on the senate floor.  Rachel Maddow has become an unlikely and refreshingly brilliant star.  Lawrence O'Donnell--smart guy in his own right--has his own show.  Michael Moore gives the Dems five steps to a win and in his follow-up he sees some progress.  And President Obama is beginning to sound like his old self.

It's a start.

So what's it going to be?  The Republicans taking over congress and making sure none of our programs ever see the light of day?  Or the Democrats winning a clear majority, sending a message to the entire country about where our priorities must lie? 

I'm declaring a moratorium on Democrat-bashing until the elections are over.  If you're not willing to get on board, I'm blaming you for everything that happens from here on out.

Have a nice day.

Ramona 

Fear and Loathing - Part 2 - Rachel Maddow takes them on

This is important enough to add an addendum to yesterday's post.  Rachel has once again done her homework and takes a scathing look at the fear-mongering tactics on the right.  It's chilling.  Here is the segment from Rachel's program last night, in case you didn't see it:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

This is the link.  Share it with everyone you've ever cared about.  

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/vp/36010598#36010598

Ramona

Breaking News! A People Person Discovered in Congress!

It's the morning of the Day After Weiner Socks it to Congress, calling the Republicans a "wholly-owned subsidiary of the insurance industry", and the video is going viral--I can only hope.  I'm going to do my part today to pester everybody in America about it, and I'd better not be the only one.  I'm asking--no, begging--everyone who cares about putting an end to the corporate takeover of our once-great country to join forces with the good congressman from New York.  (Okay, it's New York.  I know, I know. . .we here in the hinterlands don't CARE how they do it in New York.  But this guy gets us.  He cares about us.  He actually is--dare I say?--one of us.)

Rep. Anthony Weiner (Big D-NY) has been one of my heroes for a long time now.   His passion, his outrage over corporate excesses and governmental indifference is inspiring and always entertaining.


He is smart and funny and absolutely sure of his positions on everything.  He wants Single Payer and he makes no bones about it.  Medicare for All.  But he's open to a Public Option, if that's what they're going to settle for.  As long as it leads to Single Payer.  What he's totally, rabidly against is Business as Usual.  Oh,  how he's railed against it.  Sometimes he gets close to looking like Jimmy Stewart at the end of that long filibuster scene in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", and I suffer with him.  Life can be hard for defenders of the people these days.

But my man Anthony rose above even himself yesterday, and today I celebrate and revel in his outrageously over-the-top outrage.  It's about time.  I love that man!

So in this clip are my two favorite people's people:  Anthony Weiner and Rachel Maddow.  The very nature of this video ensures hate mobs going after it with a vengeance.  Who cares?   This is for US:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

*
*

Rachel Maddow on the "Stimulus" hypocrites --Now THERE'S a Stimulus Package!

This may just be the most incredible piece of responsible journalism I've seen in a long, long, LONG time.  Rachel Maddow is the Edward R. Murrow of our age.  The Republicans can have their Sarah Palin.  We have Rachel Maddow.   Let me repeat:  We have RACHEL MADDOW.

Democratic "leadership", listen up:   The great Rachel Maddow may be wood-shedding the Republican hypocrites, but she is talking to YOU. 

(I'm dancing here. . . .)



Cherish this woman; honor her; let her know how very appreciated she is:  rachel@msnbc.com

I'm doing my part to send this into the viralsphere.  I hope you'll do your part, too.  What Rachel just did for us here is pretty remarkable.  And if you'll notice, she didn't have to look at her hand once.

Ramona

Cross-posted at Talking Points Memo here

Bill Moyers shines light on the health insurance mess - a Journalistic Best

There are so few mainstream investigative journalists in this country anymore, I have to wonder in whose pockets the MSM has cozily slipped--and why.

When one of our best investigative newspapers has slipped to such depths that it's publisher invites health insurance execs hellbent on killing any hint of public options to hobnob with, and thus lobby, top-level White House officials at a private soiree in her own home (but only if they fork over $25,000), and when nobody else seems to notice or care, we can give up any remaining quaint notion of a watchdog press.

We're on our own, folks, and if not for the precious few like Bill Moyers and Rachel Maddow, we would be dead in the water. They are the mainstream media remnants of a once-proud profession and we need to treat them like the treasures they really are.

They study the issues, they bring on guests who can discuss them intelligently, they ask the right questions, they give their guests time to answer thoughtfully, they continue the conversation with smart follow-ups, and best of all, they don't give up their precious air time to raucous, spitting catfights between notoriously biased opponents.

Last week, Bill Moyers brought to our attention two important stories. (See above for the first one)

On "Bill Moyers Journal" on PBS Friday night, Bill talked with Wendell Potter, a former Cigna exec turned whistleblower. In Potter's own startling words (startling not because we didn't know, but because a former insider, someone who, less than two years before, was a practicing purveyor of these professed sleazy tactics, said them):

“The industry has always tried to make Americans think that government-run systems are the worst thing that could possibly happen to them, that if you even consider that you're heading down the slippery slope towards socialism... I think that people who are strong advocates of our health care system remaining as it is, very much a free market health care system, fail to realize that we're really talking about human beings here, and it doesn't work as well as they would like it to... They are trying to make you worry and fear a government bureaucrat being between you and your doctor. What you have now is a corporate bureaucrat between you and your doctor... The public plan would do a lot to keep [health insurance companies] honest, because it would have to offer a standard benefit plan. It would have to operate more efficiently, as does the Medicare program. It would be structured, I’m certain, on a level playing field so that it wouldn’t [have an] unfair advantage [over] the private insurance companies. Because it could be administered more efficiently, the private insurers would have to operate more efficiently.”

The interview is a half-hour long. Later into it he outlines the insurance industry's efforts to discredit Michael Moore's documentary, "Sicko", when they saw the truth in it and were afraid the American people might believe it, too. This to me was a stunning admission, the entire interview an astonishing piece of journalism--again, not entirely surprising, but I saw a door opening, enough for us to wedge our foot in. Wan rays of sunshine about to turn dazzling, if only we can keep the momentum going.

I beg everyone who reads this and clicks onto the link to send it on to everyone you know. Send it to your congressmen, your governors, your legislatures, the White House. Get an email chain going--put the link up on yard signs or billboards. Put it on bumper stickers. Stencil it on tee-shirts or tattoo it onto your forehead. Whatever it takes.

This is a television event too important to let die. Please. Keep it alive. Keep it going. It's up to us now.

(Cross-posted on Talking Points Memo here)

Ramona

Sometimes a Picture isn't Worth a Thousand Words

On the issue of the latest torture pictures, many, if not most of the people whose opinions I normally value are going against me on this one. (Joan Walsh, Jonathan Turley, Rachel Maddow, Sen. Russ Feingold. . .)

But I believe Obama is doing exactly the right thing in withholding those pictures from public scrutiny. It's hardly "hiding evidence", as so many are suggesting. It's simply keeping them from being broadcast al over the world. The people who need to see those pictures have either already seen them or will see them. That's where "transparency" comes in. Because you and I and the other guy haven't seen them doesn't mean there's anything nefarious or even dishonest going on. Nor does it mean that Obama is going back on a promise.

There are thousands if not millions of items that we may never see because they're classified. As I see it, this is entirely a security issue. I do believe our military will be compromised if they're made public. The clamoring for viewing baffles me. What would it gain? What is it any of us needs to see? Isn't it enough that we know they're out there? Do we really need to see them over and over again, day after day, night after night, for weeks or months on end--knowing that the whole world is seeing them, too--including our enemies?

Jonathan Turley called Obama's decision not to release the new photos "Positively Orwellian".

Joan Walsh said Obama sounded "positively Rumsfeldian" when he announced that he would recommend not releasing the photos.

Janis Karpinski, the retired brigadier general formerly in charge of Abu Ghraib prison, told CNN today, "It is sad and tragic. The reversal will absolutely stir up more controversy than release of the photographs, causing an outpouring of rampant speculation -- What is the government hiding? Who are the people in the photographs? How awful can these new photos be? And worse."

She may be right concerning the speculation. We live in an age of information overload, where "news" is broadcast 24 hours a day, with the chance that the day's stories might be repeated 30 or more times. We could spend mountains of time speculating about what is in those photos, or we can spend days poring over the photos themselves. Or--here's a thought--we could get over the fact that we may not see the actual pictures any time soon and move on to the fact that it was Obama himself who released the OLC torture memos in what some might call a refreshing display of. . .transparency.

The fact that we know that thousands of these photos exist is sickening enough. People have been torturing in our name and have been obscenely, absurdly, photographing the acts. That is horrifying--but it's out there. President Obama hasn't swept that fact under the carpet.

There are many who say that we can't possibly get the same gut feelings--and thus the appropriate rage--from a written account of incidences of torture as we can from actual photographs or film. That's assuming that gut feelings and rage are the bottom line here. They're not. It's justice we're after, not a balm for our anger.

But the larger point is that, whether or not the public has a chance to view the new torture photographs, nothing is going to change.

Obama either will or will not pursue the prosecution of American war criminals. (Something I'm all for.)

His administration either will or will not actually change policy concerning confinement, interrogation and torture. (A necessary step if we're ever to hold our heads up again.)

And culpable members of the Bush Administration may or may not get their comeuppance.

Sam Stein wrote a piece yesterday in The Huffington Post quoting an ACLU lawyer who spoke on Fox News (Really? ACLU? Fox News? Together??) about the president's decision to stop the release of the photos. Jameel Jaffer said, "These photographs are critical to the historical record so it is very disappointing... that the administration is going to try and suppress them."

I haven't heard from anyone that the pictures will never be made available. To use the "historical record" argument as a reason to release such inflammatory pictures during a time of war is disingenuous.

Stein also quotes an "anonymous White House aide":

"The President would be the last to excuse the actions depicted in these photos. That is why the Department of Defense investigated these cases, and why individuals have been punished through prison sentences, discharges, and a range of other punitive measures. But the President strongly believes that the release of these photos, particularly at this time, would only serve the purpose of inflaming the theaters of war, jeopardizing US forces, and making our job more difficult in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. "

There is no real indication that Obama is going to sweep the wartime abuses of the Bush Administration under the carpet. There is no evidence that any of that information, including the photos, will be destroyed. We've already begun to have congressional hearings concerning the use of torture in American military prisons. (What Went Wrong: Torture and the Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush Administration)

Matthew Alexander, leader of the Zarqawi interrogation team in 2006 and author of "How to Break a Terrorist", gave written testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, explaining how useless torture really is. Ali Soufan, a former FBI special agent involved in interrogations, spoke behind a screen at that same hearing, saying basically the same thing.

Get some perspective, please. And be honest. We don't need to see those actual photographs in order to get a good picture of prisoner abuses perpetrated in our name. The evidence is surfacing daily and the word is getting out. New witnesses keep coming forward, new memos keep popping up. So how is that happening? It's happening because we finally have a government in place that understands the need for honesty and transparency.

But there are still responsibilities associated with the release of information regarding our actions. Those photos won't tell us anything we don't already know.

Ramona

(Cross-posted at Talking Points Memo)