Culture Break: Puccini's Turandot: "Nessun dorma"

With a soloist who may be somewhat of a surprise. The description at YouTube:

Following Luciano Pavarotti's last-minute cancellation due to illness, with barely 20 minutes' notice, Aretha Franklin stuns Grammy audience with soulful interpretation of Puccini's aria from "Turandot".

I don't know if I love her singing it in English, but in this case, I'll make allowances.

In Memoriam: Gene Wilder

I can't admit to being a Gene Wilder fan -- I'm not really a fan type -- but I did enjoy everything I ever saw him in. He really was an offbeat comic genius.

Here's the NYT obit.

And here's the "greatest moments" from Young Frankenstein:

Today's Must-Read

Because nobody does cranky like John Cole.

You may have run across this story, about 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick refusing to stand for the pledge of allegiance:

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has willingly immersed himself into controversy by refusing to stand for the playing of the national anthem in protest of what he deems are wrongdoings against African Americans and minorities in the United States.

His latest refusal to stand for the anthem -- he has done this in at least one other preseason game -- came before the 49ers' preseason loss to Green Bay at Levi's Stadium on Friday night.

"I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color," Kaepernick told NFL Media in an exclusive interview after the game. "To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder."

The reaction is as one might expect.

But Cole's reaction to the whole thing sums up my feelings perfectly. Here's his whole summation:

I’m not even going to get into whether or not his statement was right or appropriate, because whop fucking cares?

People don’t die every day defending our freedoms. The vast majority of our military exploits since World War II have been basically military adventurism and over-reactions, and/or attacking the wrong damned country. Our actual constitutional freedoms, with the exception of the 2nd amendment, have been under assault by lawmakers in the defense of the failed war on drugs and protecting Hollywood and software developers, but no foreign agent has been attacking them.
Soldiers and police do die every day defending the law and fighting the war on terror, but that hasn’t defended your freedoms. That’s kept you safe, maybe. The War on Terror itself has been used repeatedly to attack your actual Constitutional freedoms.

So if you want to thank someone for defending your freedoms, along with soldiers and police, thank the ALCU, the SPLC, the Innocence Project, and other folks who are waging a day to day unheralded battle to defend your freedoms.

And if soldiers were dying every day to defend your freedoms, they would be defending Kaepernick’s right to be a dickhead and not stand during the national anthem, for BLM to protest police, and for people and police union’s to say all live matters, and basically everything that someone says or does that pisses you off.

Because freedom means letting people do their own thing, and not sheltering you from things and get hurt feelings from things that offend you. And you know what? If the NFL and the 49ers want to do whatever they can to get rid of Kaepernick, so long as they honor their contractual obligations, fine.

That’s how things work when you are an adult.

Amen.

Mustang Bobby has a good commentary on this one at Bark Bark Woof Woof and pretty much nails it:

Tell me which is more of a threat to our country: the refusal of a man to stand up during the playing of a song, or the willingness of a lot of citizens to restrict the rights of others because they don’t like what they’re saying or believing?

Read his whole post.

Words Fail Me

Almost. This is one of the more appalling stories I've run across recently:

A Chicago-area woman who showed up at her doctor’s office in pain and bleeding from a dislodged IUD was told that nothing could be done because his practice was affiliated with a Catholic hospital network which opposes birth control.

According to Rewire, Melanie Jones, 28, slipped in her bathroom causing her copper IUD to shift and stab her internally. After getting an appointment to see her doctor, she was told that his “hands were tied” and he couldn’t help her due to restrictions placed upon him and other providers in the Mercy Hospital and Medical Center system.

“I think my first feeling was shock,” Jones said in an interview. “I thought that eventually they were going to recognize that my health was the top priority.”

Sorry Ms. Jones, but your health is not the priority for the Catholic Church -- institutional prerogatives are the priority. We all should have learned that after witnessing the Church's reaction to the child-molesting priests: deny, obstruct, and shuffle them off to greener pastures.

It gets worse:

What surprised Jones even more was when she was informed that no one in her health plan’s network would help because all of the providers were affiliated with the Catholic church which has strict policies when it comes to birth control.

The Church has been gobbling up hospitals in recent years -- I guess since the forced birthers haven't managed to overturn Roe v. Wade, this is their back-door approach to enforcing Church doctrine on the country.

And thanks to Hobby Lobby, they can probably get away with it. (Yes, I know that Alito's opinion stressed that the ruling was narrowly drawn. How long do you think that's going to hold up?)

What's New at Green Man Review

A couple of interesting groupings, and of course, lots of reviews of all sorts of stuff. Check it out.

They Don't Give Up

There's a new "study" out that purports to debunk the "liberal" narratives on sexual orientation and gender identity. David Hart, at the Slowly Boiled Frog, points out some of the problems:

 Ryan T. Anderson writes at Heritage Foundation's blog:

A major new report, published today in the journal The New Atlantis, challenges the leading narratives that the media has pushed regarding sexual orientation and gender identity.

Co-authored by two of the nation’s leading scholars on mental health and sexuality, the 143-page report discusses over 200 peer-reviewed studies in the biological, psychological, and social sciences, painstakingly documenting what scientific research shows and does not show about sexuality and gender.

Back the fuck up.

There is nothing new about this and it is not a major report. Major reports are published to peer reviewed scholarly journals. The New Atlantis is not peer reviewed and it is a project of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. EPPC is a conservative Catholic organization headed by Ed Whelan with an assist from  George Weigel. The authors did not engage in an independent investigation of anything. Rather, this is a cherry picking of existing research to suit a predetermined ideological conclusion.

Those two “leading scholars” are Lawrence S. Mayer (who is out of his depth on sexuality — he is a biostatistician-epidemiologist) and Paul R. McHugh. McHugh insists that transgender people do not exist. Everyone involved in this, … paper is a Defender of the Faith™, as is Ryan Anderson.

Hart's points, although rather vehemently stated, are valid: The New Atlantis is not a scholarly journal -- it doesn't seem to publish origina research, it is not peer reviewed, there seems to be no mechanism for vetting submissions other than ideology: It is an organ of the Catholic Church, ultimately, through several layers. Just skimming through on my own, it appears that the authors have followed the path so beloved of anti-gay "Christian" voices -- cherry-picking data and using it to support their predetermined conclusions, while ignoring any data that doesn't. I call it "Faith-Based Science." It's the sort of thing that got Paul Cameron (remember him? He's the guy whose work is still being cited by the likes of Tony Perkins, although they no longer mention him by name -- he's that radioactive) kicked out of every professional organization he belonged to.

Anne Hilt has a more detailed rebuttal. She concludes:

In the end, we must ask why McHugh and Mayer went to such lengths to produce such a long and deeply flawed paper for a journal that isn’t even peer reviewed. First and foremost, it provides a scientific veneer for the public policy goals of their church. Ultimately this paper is about using cherry-picked science to justify religious views rather than an actual review of what the research suggests should be best practice. This public policy work was put in to practice when much of this same paper was used in a deposition in support of HB2. They have somehow contorted themselves to twist the commonly accepted answer of , “it’s complex” into “there’s no evidence.”

In this they have gone against all current medical wisdom, standards of care, and practice. There does not appear to be any awareness or concern that such a contrarian position which could cause so much harm to so many people requires an extraordinary level of proof.

This paper does not suffice as such when it cuts so many corners, resorts to logical fallacies, and claims without either evidence or citation. A solution of “more reparative therapy” is far less supportable than their claims about the biological origins of gender identity. In the end, they have forgotten their vow to “do no harm,” while advocating against both civil and human rights for highly vulnerable minorities.

I have to confess, I simply don't understand the motivations of people who do things like this. I really can't find a point of entry on that. I can understand it better on the part of the Church: it's a matter of power and influence, and the Church has been losing ground steadily over the past few decades, as more and more people come to see that reality and Church doctrine have very little to do with each other. And the Church's behavior during the sexual abuse scandals did nothing to help: it's hard to take seriously as a moral arbiter an institution that is so obviously morally bankrupt.

I am, as it happens, deeply offended by anyone calling this sort of garbage "science." I big portion of my education has been in science, specifically psychology, and this kind of thing is one of the worst perversions there can be, in my book. Not to mention the complete lack of ethics involved.

At any rate, this "study" is now being touted everywhere by the right wing, and as Hilt notes, has already been used in an amicus brief. One only hopes that the opposing counsel can lay hands on someone who knows what they're talking about to rebut it.

Today's Must-Read: The GOP vs. Obama Redux

Well, if Clinton wins (which I think will happen but I'm very superstitious about making predictions like that -- and I can't believe Trump is polling as high as he is), unless we flip the Senate and make inroads in the House, it's going to be more of the Republicans trying to make Obama a one-term president From Charles P. Pierce:

Not that anybody will remember this little thing from Tiger Beat On The Potomac in March of 2017, when everybody will be writing about how Hillary Rodham Clinton's strident rhetoric during the campaign has crippled her ability to govern effectively, or to "reach across the aisle," or to "create bipartisan solutions." But I thought it ought to be noted for the record that the Republican commitment to institutional vandalism will not be going anywhere any time soon, and that there are Republicans—and a few Democrats and faux independents—who see an inert executive to be a political opportunity.

That means the bipartisan show of support she has now—thanks to Donald Trump and the "alt-right," conspiracy-driven campaign Clinton attacked Thursday in Reno—is likely to evaporate as soon as the race is called. If she wins the presidency, Clinton would likely enjoy the shortest honeymoon period of any incoming commander-in-chief in recent history, according to Washington strategists, confronting major roadblocks to enacting her ambitious agenda, as well as Republican attacks that have been muted courtesy of the GOP nominee. "It will be the defining fact of her presidency," Jonathan Cowan, president of the moderate think tank Third Way, said of Clinton's problem of entering office with a divided Congress. "It's unprecedented."

 Good Lord, not these people again. They represent nobody. There is no viable constituency for anything they represent. The Republicans are going to be bad enough, but all HRC is going to need is to be heckled from the Joe Lieberman Memorial Peanut Gallery, especially with Zombie Evan Bayh on the verge of reappearing in the Senate, after his sabbatical during which he helped save representative democracy by being a lobbyist.

I sort of disagree with Pierce about one thing: they do represent somebody, but it ain't us. If you want to find out who, just look up the financial disclosures from their election campaigns to find out who their big donors are.

This is, I think, one of the real indications of what the Republican party has become -- aside from the isolationism, jingoism, racism, etc., etc., it's the absolute refusal to govern the country unless they get their way. I'm convinced that it's one of the effects of incorporating the "Christian" right into their base: these are people who have a hammerlock on what's right (in their own minds) and they are diametrically opposed to everything this country is about. It wouldn't matter who was president, if he or she were a Democrat we'd get the same reaction from the GOP.

Today in Disgusting People

Remember Phyllis Schlafly? Staunch opponent of equal rights for women, gays, or just about anyone who's not her? Well, she's showing off her credentials as a general, all-purpose bigot:

With only five months left in the White House, Obama is still hard at work “fundamentally transforming” our country into something much different from the nation we all grew up in. Here are recent examples of how he is determined to transform America by undermining our common culture and language. . . .

On August 16, five federal agencies issued an incredible 16-page, single-spaced “Guidance” warning relief agencies not to discriminate in the use of disaster funds. Agencies receiving funds must “post a statement of nondiscrimination” on all public notices and “should also identify a point of contact for the public to submit complaints of discrimination.”

The Guidance refers to “unlawful discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin” which is prohibited by the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but it doesn’t stop there. It also tries to ban discrimination on account of “limited English proficiency,” which Congress has never prohibited.

Mind you, this is in the wake of the disastrous flooding in Louisiana that's left something like 30,000 people homeless.

It occurs to me that some of the people I've run into with the most "limited English proficiency" are good old white-bread Americans. You know, the kind that don't believe in education. People who think like Phyllis Schlafly.

Oh, and of course, it's all Obama's fault.

Schlafly would probably consider Chicago beyond the Pale -- after all, this is a city where the county hospital posts notices in English, Spanish and Polish, and has translators available in any number of other languages, and the Board of Election Commissioners sends out notices in English, Spanish, Chinese and Hindi.

It's called dealing with reality. Of course, it's well known that reality has a liberal bias, which I guess is what has Schlafly so upset.

Another Reason Not to Shop at Walmart

I don't shop at Walmart. I never have, and won't until they start shouldering their share of their own costs -- like paying their employees a living wage and providing benefits like insurance and sick leave, rather than have us paying for their food stamps and Medicare.

And it turns out that Walmart has found yet another way to stick it to us:

Now the company has found another way to keep profits up: by externalizing the cost of theft prevention. As a result, in Tulsa, Oklahoma and other Walmarts across the country stores are experiencing a crime wave. Shannon Pettypiece and David Voreacos write at Bloomberg Businessweek: Walmart’s Out-of-Control Crime Problem Is Driving Police Crazy. Tulsa PD's Darrell Ross spends so much time there he's known as Officer Walmart:

It’s not unusual for the department to send a van to transport all the criminals Ross arrests at this Walmart. The call log on the store stretches 126 pages, documenting more than 5,000 trips over the past five years. Last year police were called to the store and three other Tulsa Walmarts just under 2,000 times. By comparison, they were called to the city’s four Target stores about 300 times.

The police should start charging them -- Chicago charges for ambulances, and it's not cheap.

There was a Walmart Express over on Broadway. (Chicago won't allow retailers like Walmart and Target to put in big-box stores; they have to occupy existing retail spaces or be part of a new development.) I'm happy to report that after a couple of years, it's closed. I'm sorry for the people who are out of work now, but Target is expanding in the city.

(Side note: I hadn't been to the Loop in a number of years until I started going to the Cultural Center on a regular basis. Carson Pirie & Scott on State Street, in the landmark Louis Sullivan building, is now a Target. Sheesh.)

Today's Must-Read: Privatize Everything, Redux

Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo examines the charter school movement, taking off from this segment of John Oliver's Last Week Tonight:

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight back-to-school segment on charter schools Sunday was a welcome window into the world of education "reform" grifters. (I just found time to watch it last night.) Griftopia, as Matt Taibbi defined it:

There really are two Americas, one for the grifter class and one for everybody else. In everybody-else land, the world of small businesses and wage-earning employees, the government is something to be avoided, an overwhelming, all-powerful entity whose attentions usually presage some kind of financial setback, if not complete ruin. In the grifter world, however, government is a slavish lapdog that the financial companies that will be the major players in this book use as a tool for making money.

Sullivan details a few of the abuses and scams. I found this particularly interesting:

Aside from the happy talk about experimentation and free-market competition (you may genuflect now), the smokescreen that obscures some of the worst results of lax oversight is the notion that these schools run as non-profits. But nonprofit doesn't mean no cash flow. Oliver points out (and this is not unique) how the president of the Richard Allen charter chain in Ohio contracted oversight of its schools to a nonprofit she founded and who contracted $1 million in management and consulting firms she also founded.

Even in non-profits, someone's making money.

And of course, the real victims here are the kids, who are not getting the education we're paying for.

Today in Disgusting People

Julian Assange.

I've been holding this a couple of days, because the latest news on this front has me totally outraged. CBS News has a good report:

WikiLeaks’ global crusade to expose government secrets is causing collateral damage to the privacy of hundreds of innocent people, including survivors of sexual abuse, sick children and the mentally ill, The Associated Press has found.

In the past year alone, the radical transparency group has published medical files belonging to scores of ordinary citizens while many hundreds more have had sensitive family, financial or identity records posted to the web. In two particularly egregious cases, WikiLeaks named teenage rape victims. In a third case, the site published the name of a Saudi citizen arrested for being gay, an extraordinary move given that homosexuality is punishable by death in the ultraconservative Muslim kingdom.

Jim Burroway leads off his post on this with the following:

WikiLeaks has always bragged that it was on a mission to expose government secrets in the quest for open government. It’s [sic] own operations and agendas aren’t nearly so transparent, especially with its recent cooperation with Russian hackers to influence the U.S. presidential elections in favor of Donald Trump. Now Wikileaks is releasing private medical and other files affecting ordinary citizens which have nothing to do with government secrecy[.]

Their record is pretty awful:

“We have a harm minimization policy,” the Australian told an audience in Oxford, England in July of 2010. “There are legitimate secrets. Your records with your doctor, that’s a legitimate secret.”

Assange initially leaned on cooperating journalists, who flagged sensitive material to WikiLeaks which then held them back for closer scrutiny. But Assange was impatient with the process, describing it as time-consuming and expensive.

“We can’t sit on material like this for three years with one person to go through the whole lot, line-by-line, to redact,” he told London’s Frontline Club the month after his talk in Oxford. “We have to take the best road that we can.”

Assange’s attitude has hardened since. A brief experiment with automatic redactions was aborted. The journalist-led redactions were abandoned too after Assange’s relationship with the London press corps turned toxic. By 2013 WikiLeaks had written off the redaction efforts as a wrong move.

Withholding any data at all “legitimizes the false propaganda of ‘information is dangerous,’” the group argued on Twitter.

How about "Some information is nobody's damned business"?

Five years in the Ecuadoran embassy in London doesn't seem to have done Assange's mental state any good. It's obvious that his judgment is impaired.

And tonight he's due to be interviewed by Megyn Kelly. I wonder how far the powers that be will let her go -- I'd love to know more about his relationship with the Russians, considering that he's promising an "October Surprise" for our election. (I was looking for a link for that bit, but Google is showing almost all the stories originating on wingnut sites. We'll see.)

Culture Break: Qntal: Name der Rose

Qntal is another of those medieval pop groups that were taking the Berlin club scene by storm a few years ago. It's a group on the order of Eurhythmics or Dead Can Dance -- a knock-out singer and a guy -- or in this case, two guys -- who do everything else. This is one of my favorite cuts of theirs, from their 2004 album Qntal III: Tristan und Isolde. It starts off a little slow, but be patient. It's worth it.

Privatize Everything!

John Cole highlights this story about the new preferred medium of exchange in prisons -- ramen noodles:

The study paints a bleak picture of the state of food available at the prison. Gibson-Light found that black-market food became more valuable after control over food preparation switched from one private firm to another in the early 2000s.
US justice department announces it will end use of private prisons
Read more

“That change was part of a cost-cutting measure,” Gibson-Light said. “With that change that resulted in a reduction in the quantity of the food the inmates were receiving.”

Inmates at the prison Gibson-Light studied went from receiving three hot meals a day to two hot meals and one cold lunch during the week, and only two meals for the whole day on the weekend.

The phenomenon is described by Gibson-Light as “punitive frugality”. Spending on corrections has not kept pace with the number of inmates in prisons since 1982, the report found.

This is the logical outcome of the privatization trend I discussed a few days ago -- once things like prisons, schools, roads become subject to profit-taking, the profit-takers' first impulse is to cut costs. We all know what that means.

The little food that is available is usually of extremely poor quality. Correctional officers warned Gibson-Light not to eat it, as it might result in food poisoning. One corrections officer recalled that he once examined the food in the kitchen and found a box that contained “nasty looking full chickens” that was boldly marked several times with the words “not for human consumption”.

Cole has a couple of conclusions of his own:

1.) Instead of creating good jobs in cafeterias in prison for both civilians and give the prisoners an opportunity to learn a skill, we’re happier to heap profits on the investor class who have found prisons can be a gold mine with little oversight.

2.) Because most people, when told this, will shrug and basically say “fuck them, they’re prisoners.” These same people will then bitch about repeat offenders who, after being treated like an animal for ten years are released and commit another crime, because we didn’t spend any time or money educating them, dealing with their mental illnesses, teach them a trade, and generally just shit on them for a decade. So now they are worse than what they were when they went in.

There's a connection there with certain political and religious points of view, but I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

Today's Must-Read: The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy

Digby nails it again. Considering the stress on Hillary Clinton's "ill health" coming from the right, this is more than relevant:

Back in the 1990s the political establishment made fun of Hillary Clinton for her comment that the press was missing the real story of "the vast right wing conspiracy" that had been dogging her family throughout her husband's presidency. Any mention of it provoked eye-rolls and knowing smirks among the cognoscenti who were all absolutely sure that it was just more evidence of Clinton's guilty conscience over something.

But she was right. And there was some real reporting on it even at the time although as it was revealed, the Republicans would throw out another shiny object and the press pack would go running in the opposite direction like a herd of gazelles so it was very difficult to get a handle on the whole story.

One of the key players is Larry Klayman, whom you may know as "the dumbest lawyer in America no named Mat Staver" (with full credit to Ed Brayton). Klayman specializes in filing frivolous lawsuits, but to give him his due, he's not after winning -- he's after character assassination and causing major headaches for his targets. Digby goes into some detail on his tactics.

The sad part is, it doesn't matter whether any of it is true or not. Digby cites "Cokie's Law" in another article that's worth a look:

Cokie's Law is "it doesn't matter if it's true or not --- it's out there."

The press, of course, eats it up, because it hasn't been about journalism for a long time -- it's all click bait.

What's New at Green Man Review

It's Sunday, and you know what that means. I had hoped to have a couple of new music reviews ready, but the heat, the over-cooled working space, and other distractions just wouldn't allow it.

However, there is some music, and a couple more graphic novels -- and of course, a bunch of other reviews on books, music, film, even ale, so dig in.

Relief

The daytime temperatures in Chicago have dropped down to more or less nofmal levels, which is to say upper 70s to low 80s -- at least for the next week or so.

July was the hottest month on record, world-wide.

In 136 years of modern record-keeping, July 2016 was the warmest July according to a monthly analysis of global temperatures by scientists at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS).

Because the seasonal temperature cycle peaks in July, that means July 2016 also was warmer than any other month on record. July 2016 was a statistically small 0.1 degrees Celsius warmer than the previous record Julys in 2015, 2011, and 2009.

“It wasn’t by the widest of margins, but July 2016 was the warmest month since modern record-keeping began in 1880,” said GISS Director Gavin Schmidt. “It appears almost a certainty that 2016 also will be the warmest year on record.”

The map above depicts global temperature anomalies for July 2016. It does not represent absolute temperatures; instead it shows how much warmer or cooler the Earth was compared to the baseline average from 1951 to 1980. Note that the strongest reds are as much as 7 degrees Celsius (13 degrees Fahrenheit) above the monthly mean.

Just remember -- climate change is a hoax perpetrated by liberals/Obama/the Chinese, or something.

Today in Disgusting People

In this case, a "charity" that has never really been one of my favorite organizations, especially after reports started surfacing of them trying to wangle a free pass on anti-discrimination laws from the Dubyah administration. (At the time, I also happened to have an online friend who was involved in an employment discrimination lawsuit against them.) This organization being the Salvation Army, which embodies all the worst aspects of evangelical Protestantism and seem to have no limit on how low it can sink:

Normally when we hear about people who use drugs being sent to forced labor camps as so-called “addiction treatment,” we think of places like Vietnam, China or the former Soviet Union. Surely nothing like this could happen in America?

But the civil rights of people who use drugs are not protected in this country. They are often unconstitutionally sentenced to religious programs like Alcoholics Anonymous. Many others, as Influence columnist Maia Szalavitz has documented, may be incarcerated indefinitely in so-called “tough love” programs.

Another sinister example is the unpaid “work therapy” which constitutes addiction treatment at the Salvation Army’s drug rehabilitation centers, known as the Adult Rehabilitation Centers (ARC) programs.

The programs are pretty much fit the typical "Christian" therapy programs we've run across in, say, the "ex-gay" movement, but even more exploitive:

What does therapy in ARC consist of? The primary form is “work therapy.” In exchange for three hots and a cot, the Salvation Army’s rehab clients are expected to labor for 40 hours a week, without pay, for the profit of the Salvation Army stores.

“Work is used as a therapy to assist persons in learning how to be of service to GOD and others…” Coombs wrote. “[clients] receive no financial wage or other compensation.”

Sorry, but people who have addictions don't need to learn to be of service to "GOD and others." They need professional counseling to help them overcome their addiction.

The article goes into some detail on what the clients receive for their unpaid labor, which is pretty much nothing of any value. It's indicative that 1) the Salvation Army does not keep records of success rates, and 2) has a completion rate of 17%, which by any standard is pathetic.

And of course, since legally the Salvation Army is a church, we're already subsidizing them, and they're not required to report on much of anything.

What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is forced labor for the greater glory of the Salvation Army.

Today's Must-Read: Swiftboating Clinton

Digny has a good, thoughtful post on the Trump campaign's efforts (with the willing cooperation of the GOP establishment and the usual suspects in the media) to get the whole "brain damage" mantra out there:

I wrote about the latest smear that Hillary Clinton has brain damage for Salon today

How do we know it's the dog days of August in a presidential election year? Swimmers and swiftboats, that's how. Actually until August of 2004, we used to call swiftboating by other names: whisper campaigns and smear jobs. But after the success of the slick, pre-packaged set of lies about Senator John Kerry's war record this tactic will always be known for the boat that first made Kerry a hero and later destroyed his reputation.

This year, we're treated to an especially ugly form of swiftboating.  The right wing smear machine is working at warp speed to convince the nation that Hillary Clinton has brain damage. That is not hyperbole or some kind of a joke. They are literally claiming that she is hiding a physical and mental disability that renders her unfit for office. And they are, as usual, being helped by members of the mainstream media who are simply unable to resist "reporting" such a juicy tale even knowing that it is absurd. And so it becomes part of the narrative, true or not, that will color the rest of the campaign and Clinton's presidency should she win. 

It's really hard to fathom how much the right hates the Clintons. Probably because, first, they were "outsiders" in the White House; second, because try as hard as they might, they weren't able to bring them down.

The sad thing is, it's going to have an effect. We've seen it work again and again, going all the way back to Willie Horton.

I guess the only appropriate response, if someone should bring this up in your hearing, is "Says who?"

Some Good News

And long overdue, as far as I'm concerned: the feds are easing out of contracting with private prisons. From WaPo:

The Justice Department plans to end its use of private prisons after officials concluded the facilities are both less safe and less effective at providing correctional services than those run by the government.

Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates announced the decision on Thursday in a memo that instructs officials to either decline to renew the contracts for private prison operators when they expire or “substantially reduce” the contracts’ scope. The goal, Yates wrote, is “reducing — and ultimately ending — our use of privately operated prisons.”

“They simply do not provide the same level of correctional services, programs, and resources; they do not save substantially on costs; and as noted in a recent report by the Department’s Office of Inspector General, they do not maintain the same level of safety and security,” Yates wrote.

The article links to this report, which is worth reading: it details a lack of oversight on the part of the Bureau of Prisons and a lack of attention to procedures (not to mention basic common sense) on the part of contract prisons,

Sadly, the shift doesn't really affect all that many prisons or inmates:

While experts said the directive is significant, privately run federal prisons house only a fraction of the overall population of inmates. The vast majority of the incarcerated in America are housed in state prisons — rather than federal ones — and Yates’ memo does not apply to any of those, even the ones that are privately run. Nor does it apply to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Marshals Service detainees, who are technically in the federal system but not under the purview of the federal Bureau of Prisons.

The directive is instead limited to the 13 privately run facilities, housing a little more than 22,000 inmates, in the federal Bureau of Prisons system.

I think one of the most damaging things that the conservative movement has inserted into the public perception is the idea that private businesses are, by definition, more efficient and better run that any government agency. Sounds good on its face, except that it's not true. Private companies are slaves to the profit motive, which means they will cut corners and slide past rules in order to increase the bottom line. I've never understood the rationale for inserting an additional layer of administration into what is properly a function of government, particularly if that extra layer is all about making money.

And there are just some things that shouldn't be subject to profit-taking -- like schools, roads and bridges, and, yes, prisons. We already know that school privatization -- in which school districts contract out to private companies to run schools -- is, while not a disaster, not all that great a solution. And there's no reason to think that privatizing prisons is working out any better.

At any rate, one hopes that state prison systems, which house most of our glut of inmates, will get the hint. I'm not going to hold my breath, though.

Karma's a Bitch

Via Joe.My.God.:

As we are repeatedly instructed, God uses hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, and lethal diseases to punish people for sinning. This week the Lord Almighty aimed his Holy Wrath at Louisiana, where among the thousands of people made homeless by flooding is hate group leader Tony Perkins, who reports that he had to escape his destroyed home by canoe.

Perkins is on vacation this month, but today he called into his own radio show to lament the “biblical proportion” disaster that will allegedly force his family to live in a camper for the six months it will take to rebuild his home.

So, can we assume that Perkins will get the message?

Nah.

Maybe they can find a nice double-wide for rent nearby.


The photo was posted to Facebook by Perkins. Via New Civil Rights Movement. There's also this little tidbit:

Perkins, who was on vacation when the flood hit, is currently serving as interim pastor at Greenwell Springs Baptist Church. He said the flood damaged the church and has affected 80 percent of its members.

There's a lesson there.