Well, I was wrong about the final election results in NY-23, the “Democrat” won for the first time in about 130 years.
Unfortunately, the Hate Amendment passed in Maine.
Category: Civil Rights
So We Have a Bunch of Homophobe-Phobic Idiots in the White House
Barack Obama’s former campaign organization, Organizing for America, just sent out mass emails to Maine voters in preparation for the elections.
Well, with the best chance yet to defeat an anti-gay marriage plebiscite, in years, what to they have to say about the Maine’s hate amendment?
Why, nothing, of course.
Just go out and vote, because Barack Obama and His Stupid Minions™ all cut their political teeth on the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” fiasco in the early 1990s, and so they live in fear of bigots.
The degree to which the Obama administration has internalized the idea that civil rights for gays are simply a captive special interest group who can be thrown under the bus is appalling.
From: “Mitch Stewart, BarackObama.com” info@barackobama.com
Date: Mon, 2 Nov 2009 14:10:17 -0500
To: From: “Mitch Stewart, BarackObama.com” info@barackobama.com
Date: Mon, 2 Nov 2009 14:10:17 -0500
To: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Get out the vote in MaineMitch Stewart
Director
Organizing for America
Subject: Get out the vote in MaineXXXX —
One year ago, we made phone calls, went door to door, and proudly cast our ballots to elect Barack Obama and bring real change to this country.
Tomorrow is Election Day once again in Maine. It’s as important as ever for you to get out to vote. And just like you did last year, bring friends, family, and co-workers with you when you go to the polls.
(Click here to find your polling location. http://my.barackobama.com/page/m/55c1033d/507aca42/d7167d3d/118862ba/2515913445/VEsH/ )
http://my.barackobama.com/page/m/55c1033d/507aca42/d7167d3d/118862ba/2515913445/VEsE/
On Election Day last year, we knew that victory was just the beginning — that the hardest work was still ahead of us. We didn’t build this movement for a single election or issue.
And we know — now more than ever — that our voices and votes are critical to continuing this movement for change and in shaping the outcome of the issues that are most important to us like health insurance reform and creating jobs to turn around the economy.
So please remind friends and family to go vote and bring them with you to your polling location tomorrow.
Thanks,
Mitch
Mitch Stewart
Director
Organizing for AmericaPaid for by Organizing for America, a project of the Democratic National Committee — 430 South Capitol Street SE, Washington, D.C. 20003. This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.
Abdullah Abdullah Pulls out of Afghan Presidential Runoff
He says that he is doing so because the electoral commission and process is hopelessly corrupt, and that they have refused to do anything to correct the issue.
He is correct, the changes proposed for the runoff made fraud more, rather than less, likely:
Despite having fewer poll workers and a declining security situation, Afghanistan’s election commission announced Thursday it would increase the number of polling centers for the presidential runoff.
While some analysts suspect the goal is to achieve high-enough turnout for a credible result, the ambitious plan heightens concerns that fraud will once again mar the election
The experts are wrong. Fraud is the goal, not increased turnout.
Unsurprisingly, the electoral commission, which is packed with Karzai cronies, has declared him the elected president.
I hope that the statement from the US embassy is just pro forma:
“We congratulate President Karzai on his victory in this historic election,” said a statement from the United States Embassy in Kabul, “and look forward to working with him, his new administration, the Afghan people and our partners in the international community to support Afghanistan’s progress towards institutional reforms, security and prosperity.”
Because if they see a stolen election in the context of a civil war as legitimate, it’s Diem in Vietnam all over again.
Deal Reached in Honduras
It looks like the standoff has ended, and that Manuel Zelaya will be returning to serve the last 3 months of his term.
Of note is that neither Zelaya, who is constitutionally forbidden from running, nor Roberto Micheletti who took control following the coup, will be running.
The question is whether a free and fair election, and a free and fair campaign, can be run now.
The New Hate Crimes Bill is Now Law
It was attached to the defense appropriations bill, and Obama just signed that into law.
That’s not all, the bill also (finally) puts a stake through the heart of the unnecessary and gold plated F-22, and provides funding for the (IMNSHO essential) 2nd engine for the JSF.
Honduran Talks Still Up In Air
2 days ago, Ousted Honduran President ManuelZelaya was saying that the talks had broken down, but now he is saying that an agreement is imminent.
I think that there has likely been some movement on the part of the forces behind the Coup who currently hold power, and that the denial of entry visas into the United States for current Honduran office holders was a part of this change of heart.
It would have been nice if the US had gotten tough on the coup from day 1 though.
Congress Passes Hate Crimes Legislation
Obama is expected to sign it.
One surprise:
The 68-29 vote was a victory for civil rights groups that have long sought to expand the federal statute beyond attacks motivated by religion, race, color or national origin.
The bill, which President Obama is expected to sign, includes penalties for assaults based on a victim’s sexual orientation, gender, disability or gender identity.
(emphasis mine)
For some reason, I thought that disability was already a protected class.
In fact, Sharon,* who does special ed consulting and advocacy, thought that the disabled were already a protected class too.
*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.
Damn.
So, the House of Representatives by a vote of 307-114 has passed an amendment to the Freedom of Information Act which exempts torture, because, I guess, everyone in Washington wants them covered up, because with knowledge is the possibility of accountability, and accountability is an anathema to the Beltway Boyz.
What is most repulsive is that this is designed just to cover up Bushie malfeasance:
To follow up on my earlier post about Rep. Louis Slaughter (D-N.Y.) and her speech on her colleagues’ move to amend the Freedom of Information Act to prevent the release of photographs depicting abuse of detainees in U.S. custody, it’s worth looking at the conference report on the bill. The bill is called the “Protected National Security Documents Act of 2009,” but refers not to any “documents” per se, but only to any “photograph” taken between Sept. 11, 2001 and Jan. 22, 2009, that “relates to the treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained after September 11, 2001, by the Armed Forces of the United States in operations outside of the United States.”
(emphasis mine)
Big surprise, the guy supporting this the strongest is Joe Lieberman.
There is a Message to this Madness
OK, so we have some anonymous adviser to Barack Obama saying that people who want more substantive action on LGBT rights are a pajama clad left wing fringe:
For a sign of how seriously the White House does or doesn’t take this opposition, one adviser told me those bloggers need to take off the pajamas, get dressed, and realize that governing a closely divided country is complicated and difficult.
There are a lot of people out there who are claiming that this is not official White House policy, and it’s an anonymous source, and maybe John Harwood is flat out lying.
It’s clear from the discussions that Harwood is a turd: The idea that moving in a direction that a majority of the country supports is dangerous, and that Obama has to fear Letterman, Leno, and O’Brien is ludicrous. (see video)
That being said, he did not just make this up from thin air while on the air. Harwood is standing by his statement, but does now offer that perhaps it was more about the people who want us out of Afghanistan.
Barack Obama and his people have done a very good job at keeping some groups on the reservation, to the degree that Andrew Sullivan describes the Human Rights Campaign as having “Battered Wife Syndrome”, and Glenn Greenwald correctly describes the administrations dealings with liberal organizations, particularly in the case or Rahm Emanuel, as being liberal veal pen.
So, the question here is what is going on, and I think that Steve M at No More Mister Nice Blog nails it: this is a deliberate attempt to send out contradictory messages:
The deliberate muddying of the message was the message.
That’s what’s going on now. Obama reached out to the gay community — and yet he wants to be seen as not being tight with gays or the angrier lefties. So a friendly journalist leaked this remark — this deniable remark — which has since been, um, denied. And now the message is muddied. The mixed signals are meant, I think, to confuse supporters of gay rights and wavering but potentially Democratic-voting non-liberal voters (including non-white social conservatives) in, oh, say, New Jersey and Virginia.
What is going on here is that Obama’s staff is populated by old Clintonistas, and if there was a defining characteristic of the Clinton Administration, it can be summed up in three words, Sister Souljah Moment.
You see Republicans prove how macho they are they attack their opponents, but Democrats, particularly those who came to politics under Bill Clinton, prove how macho they are by attacking their allies. They make a fetish of it.
There are people in the Obama White House who are terrified at what might happen if people started to think that the administration supported civil rights, because that would likely mean that they would lose the white male vote in the south….Never mind, already lost…Lose the white evangelical vote….Never mind, the Republicans have that one locked down…Lose the white evangelical vote….Never mind, the Republicans have that one locked down…Lose the foaming at the mouth bigot vote….Never mind, the Republicans have that one locked down…Lose the voters who want to criminalize abortion….Never mind, the Republicans have that one locked down…
Gee, I’m beginning to sense a pattern, and I think that it means that there some really stupid folks playing politics in Obama’s white house.
Zimbabwe Update
Well, it’s been about a month, so it’s time to review again how screwed things up are in Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe.
On the bright side, we are seeing push-back from various institutions in Zimbabwe, which seem all to be tied to the knowledge that Robert Mugabe, who is 85, will not be around for much longer.
The most obvious sign is the struggle within the ZANU-PF over who the next Vice President should be. It’s clear that everyone out there feels that whoever has this post is likely to succeed Mugabe, particularly given the earlier reports of his ill health.
On a more significant note, we are now seeing that banks are no longer considering Mugabe’s land grab letters as sufficient collateral for loans:
Zanu (PF) officials, for long used to free agricultural implements and inputs from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe after taking over large-scale commercial farms, could be facing a gloomy year.
Not only is the government prioritising small-scale farmers this time around, but banks have resisted pressure to accept ‘offer letters’ and 99-year leases as collateral for loans.
President Robert Mugabe and Zanu (PF) have been lobbying banks to accept as collateral the ‘offer letters’, which purportedly authorise the holder to forcibly take over a farm.
However, at the weekend, the Bankers’ Association of Zimbabwe reiterated that banks required “asset-based security”.
Basically, the banks are seeing Mugabe as not being long for this earth, and so they don’t want to be left holding the bag.
The push back is getting severe enough that even the criminal courts are actually starting to apply the law in something resembling a non-corrupt manner, with the Zimbabwe Supreme Court dismissing terrorism charges against human rights Jestina Mukoko, and declaring that she was terrorized by the state security apparatus, and, perhaps more significantly, the Office of the Attorney General declining to represent government officials who have been sued by her.
These are little steps, however, and we are still seeing things like Roy Bennett, the MDC’s nominee for Deputy Agriculture Minister, being indicted and imprisoned on what are clearly trumped up charges of terrorism….Gee…there are a lot of terrorism charges flying about the Zim courts, huh?
In the economy, we are continuing to see improvements in the economy, with inflation continuing to moderate, but the looting by ZANU-PF apparatchiks continues.
Most notably, we have seen the seizure of Meikles Group, a hospitality and import/export firm, and has placed the firm under government control, which, if the earlier seizure of Shabanie Mashaba Mine Holdings, where looting has been so extensive that workers and utilities are not being paid.
We are also similar actions against Nestlé, where the firm has stopped buying its milk from Mugabe’s wife’s farm in order to comply with Swiss sanctions, and the government has frozen the firm’s bank accounts.
Finally, we have the fact that Central Bank governor Gideon Gono and Finance Minister Tendai Biti tusseling over the spending of the recent IMF loan, with Gono, a Mugabe Ally, basically wanting to shovel money to Mugabe cronies, and Biti wanting the money to things like roads, bridges, and healthcare. (here and here)
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
The guy taking point on repealing the military’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in the Senate is Joseph Lieberman?
We are living in strange times.
H/T AMERICAblog
Update on Fed/Bloomberg Case
The case, which the Federal Reserve appealed, is about whether or not the central bank should release the names of non-banks that have borrowed from it.
The Fed wants the names kept secret, and lost in the lower court, and now Bloomberg wants the names released pending appeal:
Details about the borrowers and their collateral are “central to understanding and assessing the government’s response to the most cataclysmic financial crisis in America since the Great Depression,” attorneys for Bloomberg said in the suit.
The Freedom of Information Act obliges federal agencies to make government documents available to the public. The Bloomberg suit didn’t seek money damages.
The interesting bit here is that the Fed is appealing on the basis of damage, which means that they appear to be ceding their prior claim that they aren’t really a part of the government, and hence are subject to FOIA requests.
So, We Have Another Paleocon* Moron Wishing for Another 911
We have Gregory Rodriguez penning a paean to the unity following 911, and suggesting very strongly what we need is to be very frightened about al Qaeda when he asks, “Where is Osama bin Laden when we need him?”
You see, he thinks that we need some of that good old post-911 unity, you know that wonderful stuff that Republicans used to :
- Pass the PATRIOT Act.
- Invade Iraq.
- Illegally wiretap ordinary Americans.
- Become torturer to the world.
- To use the post 911 unity almost exclusively for Republican partisan political advantage.
His conclusion:
In the meantime, we all but ignored Bin Laden’s most recent tape, and attention to the arrest and indictment of Afghan Denverite Najibullah Zazi on WMD conspiracy charges has been surprisingly low-key. Such blase responses to our true enemies set us up for self-destruction, until we once again find out the hard way that we’re all Americans.
The reason that this is low key is because it should be low key, because Bush and His Evil Minions™ are no longer juicing every half baked tyro with half a terrorism plan and multicolored terror alerts.
The reason that this is low key is because it is Barack Obama, for all the complaints about him, is not Karl Rove, and does not see terrorizing the American public into supporting him as a legitimate goal of anti-terror policy.
It’s no wonder that quotes Samuel P. Huntington glowingly when suggesting that there is a need for an external enemy in order to create unity in society.
This is the same Samuel Huntington, whose entire career, and perhaps his entire life, to finding people to hate, whether it was the Arab Muslim (Clash of Civilizations), the brown mestizo Mexican (Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity), a suggesting that civilian (small d) democratic government is undesirable when maintaining a standing military (The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations), that democratic change is generally a bad thing(Political Order in Changing Societies), and advocated the near-genocidal “hamletization” policy in Vietnam.
Seriously, can this man is a moral pygmy.
*I read some of his other articles, and it appears that his guiding principles are stupidity, not Neoconservatism.
Potential Good News on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
The Joint Forces Quarterly, an official military publication reviewed prior to publication by the office of the JCS, has published an article calling for the repeal of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell anti-Gay policy:
The article, which appears in Joint Force Quarterly and was reviewed before publication by the office of Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says that “after a careful examination, there is no scientific evidence to support the claim that unit cohesion will be negatively affected if homosexuals serve openly.”
Although the article, by an Air Force colonel, Om Prakash, carries no weight as a matter of policy, it may well signal a shift in the official winds. It won the 2009 Secretary of Defense National Security Essay competition.
(emphasis mine)
Someone is sending a clear message, and I am not sure whether this is non-bigoted members of the military sending a message to the Obama administration to get the policy repealed, or it’s a message to the minority of officers in the military who use DADT as an excuse to engage in bigoted witch hunts to stop from either the JCS or the SecDef, or it’s a message to Congress to fix this.
In any case, this is a welcome development.
Oopsie!
Well, it looks like Republican Jihad against Acorn may have uninended consequences.
You see, in order to avoid an unconstitutional bill of attainder in their quest to punish Acorn for registering black people to vote being taken in by a right Gonzo videographer, the bill was drafted broadly.
“How broadly,” you ask?
The congressional legislation intended to defund ACORN, passed with broad bipartisan support, is written so broadly that it applies to “any organization” that has been charged with breaking federal or state election laws, lobbying disclosure laws, campaign finance laws or filing fraudulent paperwork with any federal or state agency. It also applies to any of the employees, contractors or other folks affiliated with a group charged with any of those things.
In other words, the bill could plausibly defund the entire military-industrial complex. Whoops.
Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) picked up on the legislative overreach and asked the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) to sift through its database to find which contractors might be caught in the ACORN net.
Lockheed Martin and Northrop Gumman both popped up quickly, with 20 fraud cases between them, and the longer list is a Who’s Who of weapons manufacturers and defense contractors.
Needless to say, I don’t expect anyone to enforce it against anyone but Acorn, but this does sound a bit unfortunate.
Coup Conspirators in Honduras Up Pressure
In addition to the police shooting a man dead, state security forces have surrounded the embassy where Honduran President Manuel Zelaya has taken refuge after slipping back into the country.
While Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has been out front in all this, all we’ve heard from Obama is crickets.
With one simple step, a freeze on money transfers back to Honduras from expats, we’d have Zelaya back in office for the 2½ months remaining in his term.
US inaction has the effect of legitimizing coups against leaders who are unfriendly to Wall Street, and I’m wondering if that is a feature, rather than a bug.
Sotomayor Challenges the Idea that Corporations are People
One day, I want to have a WSJ type picture of me publishedWhen Obama nominated her, I figured that she would be a standard Democratic weasel choice, like Ruth Bader Ginsberg, in rock ribbed support of Roe v. Wade, but otherwise, not inclined to rock the boat.
Well, Jess Bravin saw some indications that she may be rather more inclined to change things than I had anticipated:
But Justice Sotomayor suggested the majority might have it all wrong — and that instead the court should reconsider the 19th century rulings that first afforded corporations the same rights flesh-and-blood people have.
Judges “created corporations as persons, gave birth to corporations as persons,” she said. “There could be an argument made that that was the court’s error to start with…[imbuing] a creature of state law with human characteristics.”
In challenging the opinion, or more accurate clerks notes, in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, the corporations are legal persons with constitutional rights, she is making a big statement on her position on corporate law, and it is significantly to the left of the court, and IMHO, the right position.
It could be that she feels that extending the idea of corporate civil rights to unlimited political donations crosses a line, but hopefully, it means more than that.
It’s a Start
One of the well known facts out there is that defamation law in the UK is positively insane and tilted in favor of the plaintiff that the phrase”Libel Tourism,” has been coined.
It places the burden on the defendant to prove that the statement is true, and in the case of web publications, every web page served is treated as a separate publication for the determination of damages.
Well, as one of the few growth industries in the UK, what with investment banking in the toilet, and the fact that this is a useful way for politicians to browbeat the press, there has been little, if any, movement to change these laws.
That being said, it looks like someone has gotten a bit of a clue, and decided that each hit on a web page is like each newspaper delivered, so , but it now appears that some common sense in terms of the internet, where the government is proposing to change the law so that each web page hit is not another incident of defamation:
The Government proposes changing the law so that a ‘single publication’ rule applies. “A possible alternative to the multiple publication rule would be to adopt a single publication rule,” said the consultation. “This would mean that instead of the limitation period running from the time of each publication of the defamatory material, it would run from the date of the first publication, even if copies of the material continued to be made and re-published years later.”
“A single publication rule would provide clarity and prevent the possibility of open-ended liability. It would also remove some of the potential obstacles presented to defendants by the multiple publication rule, such as the possibility of having to mount a defence against an old claim,” it said.
BTW, if you want to know just how f$#@ed up British defamation law is, note the precedent cited in the article, “
The Times newspaper took a case to the European Court of Human Rights arguing that the multiple publication rule was so onerous a burden for newspapers in the internet age that it had a ‘chilling effect’ on their right to free speech, as guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights, which the Court enforces.
The Court, though, ruled that a precedent from the 19th century involving a servant of the Duke of Brunswick looking up an article in a library forming the basis of a defamation suit meant that UK law did not breach the Times‘s rights.
Looking up an article in the library is defamation? This is truly whack.
Muntazer al-Zaidi to be Released on Monday
I never expected the shoe throwing journalist to survive his imprisonment.
Needless to say, he is currently the most popular man in Iraq, and my guess is that politicians will be scrambling for his endorsement.
The Mask Falls
Because the Abortion Criminalization crowd is not about opposing, it’s about making sure that women have no reproductive freedom at all, as in their attempt to make all forms of birth-control illegal in Florida.
Let’s be clear, this is why Democrats in general, and Barack Obama in particular, should eschew any common ground with these folks.