Category: Politics

Corbyn Wins in UK, Hopefully, This Presages Bernie in US

1 Comment

So, Jeremy Corbyn has won the election to lead the Labour Party, which means that after about 25 years, Labour will be an actually supporter of (small “L”) labor, as opposed to the Blairite policies which favor the wealthy in general, and the City of London (their Wall Street) in particular.

What is particularly significant is that he absolutely crushed the opposition, and he did so with a voter turnout that puts Tony Blair’s wins to shame:

Jeremy Corbyn has been elected leader of the British Labour party, in a stunning first-round victory that dwarfed even the mandate for Tony Blair in 1994.

 He won with nearly 59.5% of first-preference votes, beating rivals Andy Burnham, who trailed on 19%, and Yvette Cooper who received 17%. The “Blairite” candidate Liz Kendall came last on 4.5%.

 Minutes after his victory, Corbyn said the message is that people are “fed up with the injustice and the inequality” of Britain.

 “The media and many of us, simply didn’t understand the views of young people in our country. They were turned off by the way politics was being conducted. We have to and must change that. The fightback gathers speed and gathers pace,” he said.

 The north London MP is one of the most unexpected winners of the party leadership in its history, after persuading Labour members and supporters that the party needed to draw a line under the New Labour era of Blair and Gordon Brown.

 Attention will now turn to who serves in Corbyn’s top team, with MPs such as John McDonnell, Angela Eagle, Sadiq Khan, Ken Livingstone and possibly leadership rival Burnham tipped for key roles. Liam Byrne, Mary Creagh and John Healey have also indicated they would be willing to serve on his frontbench.

 ………

 Corbyn’s campaign has also been helped by a surge in new members and supporters who paid £3 to take part in the vote, leading to a near-tripling of those eligible to about 550,000 people. Throughout the campaign, he addressed packed rallies and halls, where he had to give speeches outside the buildings to crowds gathered in the street.

 While his supporters will be jubilant about Labour taking a turn to the left, his triumph will be deeply disappointing to the parliamentary party, which overwhelmingly backed other candidates by 210 to 20.

………

 In the campaign, he promised to give Labour members a much greater say in the party’s policymaking process, in a move that could sideline MPs. His key proposals include renationalisation of the railways, apologising for Labour’s role in the Iraq war, quantitative easing to fund infrastructure, opposing austerity, controlling rents and creating a national education service.

 He is also likely to prove an obstacle to David Cameron’s ambition to launch airstrikes on Syria, although some Labour MPs could defy the whip to vote with the government.

I would expect that a significant portion of the Labour Party, particularly in Parliament, will be dedicated to undermining him. (Shades of McGovern in 1972)

Of course, if they do so by voting with the Tories, and against Labour on war, I think that they will be buying into a severe, and well deserved, sh%$storm at the next elections.

And of course on the donor side, we are already seeing the rich donors who were so courted by “New Labour” now throwing tantrums:

Labour’s biggest private individual donor has pledged to stop giving money to the party now Jeremy Corbyn is leader and instead fund a group of MPs dubbed ‘The Resistance’.

 John Mills, who gave £1.65 million under Ed Miliband, told The Telegraph that Labour would become a “protest” party under the hard-Left MP and warned his economic policies were unworkable.

 He stands ready to “funnel” cash into Labour for the Common Good – the group set up by Chuka Umunna and Tristram Hunt – and think tanks looking to reinvigorate centrist thinking in the party.

 It comes as with senior moderates due to go public with their concerns about the party’s direction at a string of policy seminars being organised between now and Christmas.

We also have a large number of Labour “front benchers” indicating, at least for now, that they are uninterested in leadership roles under Jeremy Corbyn.

Clearly, they hope that the party will suffer in their absence, but it suffered in their presence, so make of this what you will.

In either case, it does appear that Corbyn has managed to populate his shadow cabinet:

Jeremy Corbyn, the new Labour leader, is facing the first test of his ability to lead the parliamentary party after appointing his closest political ally, John McDonnell, as shadow chancellor. [of the Exchequer]


 The decision means that the five most senior positions will be filled by men, including Andy Burnham as shadow home secretary, Hilary Benn as shadow foreign secretary, and Tom Watson as elected deputy as well as Corbyn and McDonnell.

 Corbyn’s biggest problem may now be the fierce resistance within the parliamentary party and even among some union leaders to the appointment of McDonnell, with some asking Corbyn to appoint Angela Eagle as shadow chancellor, to balance the shadow cabinet politically and by gender. Eagle was instead given the business portfolio and will also become shadow first secretary of state, deputising for Corbyn in the Commons.

 McDonnell was Corbyn’s leadership campaign manager and has advocated nationalisation without compensation in the past as well as 60p tax rates. Among MPs, his appointment was seen as a disavowal of Corbyn’s commitment to create a political consensus.

Seeing as how the most recent “stand” by the Labour establishment was to abstain, as opposed to opposing, draconian cuts to the social safety net, because there were a few items in the bill that might have engendered mild support from some potential Labor voters.

For anyone who thinks that the political policies of the “New Labor”, are wrong, I would point them to Ian Welsh’s advice on this matter:

So, you voted for Corbyn. You’re a Labour party member, old or new. What MUST you do to have Corbyn’s back?

Because, be clear, he will fail without you. He will lose. He and a few allies within the Labour party cannot win this fight alone. He will be destroyed by lack of cooperation, scandals, and engineered crises. The vast majority of all media coverage will be negative, etc.

You must take over the locals—the branches and constituencies. Flood them. If the officers don’t act how you think they should, let them know. And by “let them know,” I mean, get in their faces.

Make sure your local MP, who probably doesn’t like Corbyn or support him, know that if he doesn’t get onside, he won’t be the nominee in the next election. Make his/her life personally unpleasant. If s/he votes against Corbyn, picket him. Mock her. Make sure there is a cost. Because on the other side, that MP will know that if they oppose Corbyn, they will be taken care of by the City and the other usual suspects.

You must prove there is a cost for opposing the democratic will of the majority of Labour party members. MPs and officials must know that if they try to sabotage Corbyn, their days in the party are numbered and will be extremely unpleasant.

The carrot is that if they get onside, they’re gold. They can keep their positions, they can feel like they’re part of a swelling horde.

This statement would be a good blue print for supporters of the “Democratic Wing” of the Democratic Party.

Pass the Popcorn

No Comments

Please Implicate Rupert ……… Pretty Please?

Mark Hanna, who used to work security for Rebecka Brooks, the former (and current) head of Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper publishing in the UK, has promised to blow the whistle on her:

The former head of security for Rebekah Brooks has said he will blow the whistle on Rupert Murdoch’s UK newspapers, the day after it was confirmed she had been re-hired as chief executive of News UK.

 In a video uploaded to YouTube, Mark Hanna, who was acquitted last year along with Brooks and her husband, Charlie, of plotting to pervert the course of justice, claims he was “extremely close” and trusted by executives at News International and he now wanted to show how “underhanded” they had been.

Hanna was the director of security at the company, now known as News UK. Unlike Brooks, who received a payout of more than £16m after resigning from News Corp in 2011 and has been reinstated, Hanna was made redundant after the trial and received £30,000 from the company.

 “I am now standing up against those that sit back and treat us all with contempt – the Murdochs and Brooks of the world,” Hanna said in a two-minute video released on Friday.

 Hanna, who is unemployed and living on benefits, said the decision by Murdoch to reinstate Brooks four years after the phone-hacking allegations and the closure of News of the World had infuriated him and many others.

………

He claims that during the trial at the Old Bailey he sat with Brooks, Andy Coulson, Ian Edmondson, Clive Goodman, Charlie Brooks, Cheryl Carter and Stuart Kuttner and witnessed what went on behind the scenes.
“To me, her previous director of group security, this is Murdoch’s middle finger being shoved right in my face after standing trial with her, and others, in what was classed as the trial of the century during which it was widely accepted that I should never have been involved.”

I really don’t expect anything to happen to any of the people at News UK, at least not while the Tories are running the government. They are too close to Murdoch, as evidenced by the fact that Andy Coulson, who was deputy editor of the News of the World during the phone hacking, went on to be Tories Communication Director, and then Cameron’s Director of Communications after he won election.

If Coulson becomes a disgruntled ex employee whistle blower, it could get ……… inconvenient ……… for Prime Minister Cameron.

34

No Comments

34 Democrats have now said that they will oppose any Republican attempt to override the nuclear deal with Iran, which means that they cannot override a promised veto:

Just before the Senate left town for its August break, a dozen or so undecided Democrats met in the Capitol with senior diplomats from Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia who delivered a blunt, joint message: Their nuclear agreement with Iran was the best they could expect. The five world powers had no intention of returning to the negotiating table.

“They basically said unanimously this is as good a deal as you could get and we are moving ahead with it,” recalled Senator Chris Coons, the Delaware Democrat who lent crucial support to the deal this week despite some reservations. “They were clear and strong that we will not join you in re-imposing sanctions.”

For many if not most Democrats, it was that message that ultimately solidified their decisions, leading to President Obama on Wednesday securing enough votes to put the agreement in place over fierce and united Republican opposition. One after another, lawmakers pointed to the warnings from foreign leaders that their own sanctions against Iran would be lifted regardless of what the United States did.

It is the proverbial, “Big f%$#ing deal.”

The reality is that this is as good a deal as can be expected, and if it gets reversed, our allies will not return to the sanctions regime, so it is basically a done deal, but I still expect a Terri Schiavo type political clusterf%$# for the organization formally known as “The Party of Lincoln.”

James O’Keefe Jumps the Shark

2 Comments

I am referring to the evil James O’Keefe, of ACORN infamy, and not my friend who spends a lot of time at the Massachusetts Pirate Party herding cats.

In his latest “sting” he had one of His Evil Minions™ buy a T-Shirt for a Canadian tourist:

………

The re­port­ers (in­clud­ing me) ap­peared con­fused about how they got to the press con­fer­ence hos­ted at the Na­tion­al Press Club. Present at the press con­fer­ence were five to 10 video cam­er­as, along with a room of 30 or so re­port­ers, all ob­li­vi­ous to the fact that we had been snookered in­to an­oth­er sup­posedly sa­la­cious re­lease from O’Keefe’s or­gan­iz­a­tion.

Clin­ton staffers have already been put on alert for hijinks from O’Keefe’s con­ser­vat­ive group, which gained no­tori­ety around the ACORN scan­dal, and put out a video last week show­ing a Clin­ton cam­paign staffer en­cour­aging a “vo­lun­teer” to ask Iow­ans if they are Clin­ton sup­port­ers be­fore re­gis­ter­ing them to vote.

“We have journ­al­ists across the coun­try in­vest­ig­at­ing in­side the cam­paign. Not just this cam­paign,” O’Keefe said on Tues­day.

On Tues­day, the group teased its second re­lease as “a power­ful new un­der­cov­er video con­firm­ing that cor­rup­tion has per­meated Hil­lary Clin­ton’s cam­paign at the highest levels.” The video pur­ports to show Molly Bark­er, the dir­ect­or of mar­ket­ing for Clin­ton’s cam­paign, ac­cept­ing a cam­paign dona­tion from a for­eign na­tion­al. Sounds pretty bad, right?

Then you find out that the “for­eign na­tion­al” is a Ca­na­dian wo­man who was simply try­ing to buy a T-shirt at Clin­ton’s kick­off rally, and that Pro­ject Ver­itas Ac­tion’s own “journ­al­ist” ac­ted as an in­ter­me­di­ary straw buy­er to make the trans­ac­tion, tak­ing the Ca­na­dian wo­man’s money to pur­chase the shirt for her.

In the video, the Ca­na­dian vis­it­or (who, O’Keefe says, Pro­ject Ver­itas Ac­tion did not find the name for) says, “Can I give her the money? She’s Amer­ic­an. Can she buy it for me?”

“She could make a dona­tion,” Bark­er says.

“Can you buy it for me?” the Ca­na­dian wo­man asks the Pro­ject Ver­itas Ac­tion op­er­at­ive.

“Sure, I’ll buy it,” the Pro­ject Ver­itas Ac­tion op­er­at­ive says. “So Ca­na­dians can’t buy them, but Amer­ic­ans can buy it for them?”

………

Pro­ject Ver­itas Ac­tion is com­fort­able con­duct­ing its op­er­a­tions un­der eth­ic­ally du­bi­ous cir­cum­stances. The Wash­ing­ton Post’s Dana Mil­bank got at that in an ex­change dur­ing the press con­fer­ence with the group’s leg­al ex­pert, Ben­jamin Barr.

Mil­bank: “I’m no ex­pert on cam­paign fin­ance law, but was that leg­al for your per­son to take that cash?”

Barr: “It’s a tech­nic­al vi­ol­a­tion of the law. It’s akin to jay­walk­ing for cam­paign fin­ance. This is a low-dol­lar threshold con­tri­bu­tion. There’s no re­port­ing is­sues at play. It’s less than $200. So at most it would be a small civil pen­alty that’s a few hun­dred dol­lars. But what we’re really wor­ried about is the Hil­lary cam­paign that has taken in a wide ar­ray of con­tri­bu­tions. Once you ag­greg­ate bey­ond $2,000, then you’re with­in the crim­in­al sanc­tions.”

Mil­bank: So you vi­ol­ated the law as well?

Barr: Yes.


………

“Is this a joke?” The Daily Beast’s Olivia Nuzzi asked later in the Q&A. “This feels like a prank.”

“Is this a joke,” O’Keefe re­peated. “Well, the Clin­ton cam­paign doesn’t think it’s a joke, be­cause they’re talk­ing to The Wash­ing­ton Post about it. And we sent the let­ter to the Clin­ton cam­paign, so no, this is not a joke.”

Not only does O’Keefe have the gump­tion to of­fer to en­trap a polit­ic­al cam­paign to the tune of $40, his group is now seek­ing re­dress for its own straw pur­chase.

“The Clin­ton cam­paign should re­turn their il­leg­al con­tri­bu­tion. I don’t see oth­er rem­ed­ies. That’s the only rem­edy that we’re seek­ing,” O’Keefe said at the press con­fer­ence.

………

To quote Charles Baudelaire, “The dev­il’s finest trick is to per­suade you that he does not ex­ist.” O’Keefe has the op­pos­ite in­ten­tions. His finest trick is to per­suade you that he does still ex­ist, and is worth listen­ing to.

Even the Washington Post, which has never found a Clinton scandal that it would not eagerly pimp, has determined that there is no “there” there.

A Canadian tourist wanted a t-shirt, and a member of O’Keefe’s “Wretched hive of scum and villainy” took pity on her and bought it for her, and somehow it’s a big Clinton scandal?

Dude, you have had your 15 minutes of fame.

Get a real job, and stop living in your parents basement.

More of This

No Comments

Hillary Clinton just compared the Talibaptist wing of the Republican to the Taliban, and she used the T-Word (Terrorist), and the whiny bitches in the Republican Party are having a sad:

Hillary Rodham Clinton likened Republican presidential candidates to fundamentalist terrorists with brutal or repressive views about women on Thursday, a significant escalation of her rhetoric about GOP positions on abortion that her campaign sees as a major vulnerability in the general election.

“Extreme views about women? We expect that from some of the terrorist groups. We expect that from people who don’t want to live in the modern world,” Clinton said. “But it’s a little hard to take coming from Republicans who want to be the president of the United States.”

Clinton did not say which terrorist or militant groups she meant as a comparison. Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria have held women as sex slaves and chattel, while the Taliban in Afghanistan refused to allow girls to attend school.

“They espouse out of date and out of touch policies,” Clinton said of the current Republican field. “They are dead wrong for 21st Century America. We’re going forward. We’re not going back.”

Republicans have spent the past 50 years describing Democrats as fellow travelers of Communists, terrorists, feminists, etc., who are determined to destroy America.

Now that a major Democratic Party justifiably observes that Republicans want to turn the United States into Saudi Arabia on social issues, they are lamenting the loss of civility in politics.

They need to go Cheney themselves.

Least Surprising News of the Day

No Comments
There has been a study of the now infamous Planned Parenthood vids cobbled together by right wing activists, and has determined that the videos were deliberately deceptively edited:

Planned Parenthood on Thursday gave congressional leaders and a committee that is investigating allegations of criminality at its clinics an analysis it commissioned concluding that “manipulation” of undercover videos by abortion opponents make those recordings unreliable for any official inquiry.

“A thorough review of these videos in consultation with qualified experts found that they do not present a complete or accurate record of the events they purport to depict,” the analysis of a private research company said.

………

Planned Parenthood denies the charges and says that the videos were deceptively and misleadingly edited.

The analysis was by Fusion GPS, a Washington-based research and corporate intelligence company, and its co-founder Glenn Simpson, a former investigative reporter for The Wall Street Journal.

………

A transcription service was hired to transcribe the videos, without being told that Planned Parenthood was the client, to compare with transcripts publicized by the anti-abortion group. That comparison, the analysis said, showed “substantive omissions” in the group’s version. Mr. Simpson was assisted in the analysis by several others, including a video forensics expert, Grant Fredericks, and a television producer, Scott Goldie.

According to the investigation, the reviewers could not determine “the extent to which C.M.P.’s undisclosed edits and cuts distort the meaning of the encounters the videos purport to document.”

But, it said, “the manipulation of the videos does mean they have no evidentiary value in a legal context and cannot be relied upon for any official inquiries” unless C.M.P. provides investigators with its original material, and that material is independently authenticated as unaltered.

This is exactly the same thing that happened with James O’Keefe and Acorn.

The ‘Phants are threatening to shut down the government to defund Planned Parenthood.

The response to this threat should be 3 words, “Bring it on.”

Never stop your enemy from stepping on their own dick:  Planned Parenthood is one of the most popular organizations in America, and the shutdown crap has never worked.

Lazy Wankers! They Can Work, I Don’t Care If They Are Dead!

1 Comment

The Tories Must Be Channeling Monty Python and the Holy Grail

A study by the Department for Work and Pensions in the UK has revealed that over 2,000 people died almost immediately after being declared being fit for work.

The Tories have stopped even trying to pretend that they aren’t evil motherf%$#ers who glory in causing pain to the less fortunate:


Nearly 90 people a month are dying after being declared fit for work, according to new data that has prompted campaigners and Labour leadership contenders to call for an overhaul of the government’s welfare regime.

Statistics released by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) revealed that during the period December 2011 and February 2014 2,380 people died after their claim for employment and support allowance (ESA) ended because a work capability assessment (WCA) found they were found fit for work.

Ministers insisted that the data could not be used to link claimant deaths to its welfare reforms, but the figures focused attention on the government’s fit-for-work assessment process, which has been dogged by controversy in recent years.

Anita Bellows, researcher with campaign group Disabled People Against the Cuts, said it would take time to fully analyse the figures, but added the group was “very worried by the number of people who died within two weeks of being found fit for work” [see footnote].

Letters: If I can’t decide which biscuits to buy, would you want me making decisions about how much morphine to give your mother?

The mortality data was compiled in response to freedom of information requests, and was released by the department only following a ruling by the Information Commissioner’s Office in April.

 But it gets even better:

The WCA, currently administered by private outsourcing firm Maximus, having for most of the last government been run by Atos, has been widely criticised as error-prone and mechanistic, often causing harm to the sick and disabled claimants who are obliged to undergo it. It has been dogged by administrative delays, which have often left claimants stressed and penniless, and there have been hundreds of thousands of appeals against fit-for-work decisions in recent years, about four in 10 of which have succeeded.

So, not only are they killing people, they are allowing their buddies in business to make a profit out of public money doing it.

At the rate this is going, Dick Cheney is going to have to up his game, or people will begin to think that he is a bleeding heart liberal.

The Best Case of, “Our Work is Done Here,” this Presidential Campaign

No Comments

The “Stop Chris Christie” PAC has closed its doors.

It appears that they believe that, through the efforts of Chris Christie, they have been rendered redundant:

A super PAC opposing Chris Christie’s (R) presidential bid said Tuesday that it planned to shut down, citing the New Jersey governor’s poor performance in the polls.

The treasurer of the Stop Chris Christie PAC, Thomas Bjorkland, made the announcement in response to a letter from the Federal Election Commission that warned the super PAC must change its name or else clarify the nature of the committee. Bjorkland wrote in a letter to the FEC that “based on recent polling and the miserable showing of the candidate in question,” the committee decided to instead wind down its operations.

That’s some sweet Schadenfreude.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

No Comments

Even as his campaign has shown remarkable staying power, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is dogged by the perception that there isn’t much to him beneath the bluster and the glitz. But he may have inadvertently steered the race into important territory, at least when it comes to Wall Street and taxes.

In interviews over the last several days, Trump made blistering comments about inhabitants of a corner of the financial industry who have grown accustomed to criticism. “I know a lot of bad people in this country that are making a hell of a lot of money and not paying taxes,” Trump said in an interview with Time, in apparent reference to hedge fund and private equity fund managers. “The tax law is totally screwed up.”

“They’re paying nothing and it’s ridiculous,” he added on CBS a few days later. “The hedge fund guys didn’t build this country. These are guys that shift paper around and they get lucky.” He went on: “They’re energetic, they’re very smart. But a lot of them, it’s like they’re paper pushers. They make a fortune, they pay no tax…The hedge funds guys are getting away with murder.”

“The hedge fund guys didn’t build this country. These are guys that shift paper around and they get lucky.”

Donald Trump is in agreement with me, and with Bernie Sanders, and Barack Obama that the carried interest loophole is bullsh%$, and it needs to be repealed immediately.

Let me be clear about this, Donald Trump is a bigoted nativist, or at least he does a remarkable job of playing on on TV, but a lot of Trumps positions, whether about welfare for hedge funds, social security, or healthcare (see my earlier previous post) he is literally the best Republican in the race right now.

As I’ve said before, Trump is not a political outlier.  This is the Dixicrat politics of Strom Thurmond, George Wallace, and Theodore Bilbo.

I Wish that Heath Ledger Were Alive and Playing Donald Trump in a Biopic

No Comments

It would be glorious.

I’m not sure whether Heath Ledger channeled Donald Trump in his glorious performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight, of if Donald Trump is channeling Ledger’s Academy Award winning performance, but I definitely see the Joker in Trump’s eyes.

I didn’t realize this until I saw the Joker meme image on the Internet.

It is “The Donald”.

H/t DC at Stellar Parthenon for the image.

A Very Thought Provoking Essay………

No Comments

Over at the Archdruid’s crib, there is a must read post on the requirements for overturning an existing order. You want to read the whole thing, but here is a sample:

The first and most essential step in the transformation of any society is the delegitimization of the existing order. That doesn’t involve violence, and in fact violence at this first stage of the process is catastrophically counterproductive—a lesson, by the way, that the US military has never been able to learn, which is why its attempts to delegitimize its enemies (usually phrased in such language as “winning minds and hearts”) have always been so embarrassingly inept and ineffective. The struggle to delegitimize the existing order has to be fought on cultural, intellectual, and ideological battlefields, not physical ones, and its targets are not people or institutions but the aura of legitimacy and inevitability that surrounds any established political and economic order.

He also quotes what may be Isaac Asimov’s most enduring bit of prose, “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”

It is an very interesting essay why’s and wherefores of violence and non-violence for any revolutionary movement.

Damn! Genuine Emotions………

No Comments

One of the criticism of Hillary Clinton is that she is, or comes across as artificial and emotionally detached.

She was talking about the shootings today, and as this clip from CSPAN shows, she appears to be genuine and emotionally attached to the issue of sane gun laws.

If she wants the win the nomination, she needs to can the “Ice Queen” bullsh%$ and show more of this.

Today in IP Insanity

No Comments
The city of Inglewood, California attempted to use copyright to prevent people from posting videos of their city council meetings.

Thankfully, thee judge called bullsh%$ on the town’s arguments:

Joseph Teixeira doesn’t like Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts, so he makes Youtube videos featuring City Council meeting footage.

The Mayor and Council decided to silence their critic by paying to register the videos of their city meetings with the US Copyright Office, then spending $50,000 in taxpayer money to retain a lawyer to sue Teixeira for copyright infringement.

The court was unimpressed with Inglewood’s leaders: it ruled that the council meetings weren’t copyrightable; that councils can’t make money from public records; and that the videos — in the event that they used anything copyrighted — were fair use. Now they face the possibility that Teixeira will recover fees for his pro bono counsel — more tax dollars flushed away in an illegal bid to prevent a critic from speaking.

Then there’s the Streisand Effect: in bringing this action, the City of Inglewood increased traffic to Teixeira’s videos by five hundred percent.

(emphasis original)

It’s nice that the judge slapped them down firmly.

Increasingly, IP is used to censor criticism and to privatize the public space, and it is a bad thing.

Another Reason to Support Bernie Sanders

No Comments

In a rally a few days ago, the distinguished gentleman from Vermont has said that he will be introducing legislation to ban private for profit prisons:

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is taking his criminal justice reform platform from the campaign trail to the Senate with a plan to introduce legislation outlawing private prisons when Congress returns from August recess.

Daily Kos first noted that at his Reno, Nevada, rally on Tuesday night, the Independent senator told a gathered crowd of 4,500 supporters that “when Congress reconvenes in September, I will be introducing legislation, which takes corporations out of profiteering from running jails.”

Sanders, who is opposed to building any new prisons, has long advocated against draconian sentencing laws, voting in favor of investments in alternative sentencing and telling the Nevada crowd that he also plans to tackle mandatory minimums for certain crimes:

We want to deal with minimum sentencing. Too many lives have been destroyed for non-violent issues. People that are sent to jail have police records. We have got to change that. Our job is to keep people out of jail, not in jail.

Our system of private gulags is deeply and ineluctably evil.

They serve to create a system where taxpayer money goes to increased incarceration by private companies, who then use political contributions to secure their rents.

It is thoroughly corrupt, and it needs to end now.

Get a F%$#ing Grip

3 Comments

I was reading Talking Points Memo, and came across a very overwrought article titled, “Christie And Cruz Hammer Cancer-Stricken Jimmy Carter On The Trail.”

Seriously. This is a bit much.

Cancer or no cancer, it is OK to criticize a former President’s policies.

There is nothing wrong, for example, with my saying that I was stunned to discover that Jeb Bush was the stupid Bush brother, and it is fine to say this regardless of the health status Jeb, or George W., or George H.W. or any of the Bush Crime Family™.

They disagree with the foreign policies of the Carter administration, I do too, but on the opposite side of the issue: They felt that Carter was too unwilling to use military force, while I consider Jimmy Carter to be a war criminal for the evil that he inflicted on Afghanistan.

The validity of these viewpoints has nothing to do with his health.

If they were making jokes about his cancer, I could see a cause for outrage, but this is a different kettle of fish.

Yep, We are Getting Sick of Erdoğan

No Comments

In addition to pulling Patriots out of Turkey, we now have our Secretary of Defense calling out the Turkish disinterest in fighting ISIS:

The Pentagon’s top official said Thursday that Turkey must “do more” to help in the fight against the Islamic State militant group, commonly known as ISIL or ISIS.

US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter called Turkey’s participation in anti-ISIL operations “overdue.” And while the decision by Turkey to help with the air campaign against the militant group is welcome, Carter specifically called out the need for Turkish forces to secure the border with Syria in order to stop the flow of supplies and ISIL operatives.

“We need them — also, as a neighbor to this conflict zone, as longtime NATO ally and a responsible member of the anti-ISIL coalition — to control the border, the long border that they have with both Syria and Iraq, more than it has been controlled over the last year,” Carter said. “It is a border over which logistics for ISIL and fighters cross, and so we’re looking for them to do more in that regard as well, and we’re in active discussions with them in that regard.”

For the last year, Turkey avoided large-scale engagement with the militant group. However, after an ISIS suicide bomber killed 32 people on a Turkish town bordering Syria on July 20, the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan decided to clear US airstrikes from inside its territory.

I think that the Turkish government’s priorities, basically promoting Sunni Islamism and bombing the crap out of the Kurds, are clearly not serving the interests of their NATO allies.

I’m wondering if we are going to engineer a coup to remove Erdoğan.

Certainly, military takeovers have been a regular feature of Turkish politics, so if there were a coup, it would not be unprecedented.

Merkel Got What She Wanted

No Comments
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has resigned and called snap elections:

Greece’s Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has announced he is resigning and has called an early election.

 Mr Tsipras, who was only elected in January, said he had a moral duty to go to the polls now a third bailout had been secured with European creditors.

 The election date is yet to be set but earlier reports suggested 20 September.

 Mr Tsipras will lead his leftist Syriza party into the polls, but he has faced a rebellion by some members angry at the bailout’s austerity measures.

 He had to agree to painful state sector cuts, including far-reaching pension reforms, in exchange for the bailout – and keeping Greece in the eurozone.

A portion of Syriza has responded by splitting off into a new party:

Hardline rebels have confirmed an irreparable split in Greece’s ruling Syriza movement and broken away to form a new anti-austerity party as the country heads towards its fifth general election in six years.

The long-awaited move by up to 29 dissident Syriza MPs on Friday followed the resignation of the prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, who stepped down on Thursday to pave the way for a snap poll widely forecast to strengthen his hold on power.

The new Popular Unity party, headed by the former energy minister Panagiotis Lafazanis, said it would fight the promises of further austerity and far-reaching reform that Tsipras made to Greece’s international lenders to secure a new €86bn (£62bn) bailout package.

Lafazanis told a press conference the party would offer a realistic alternative to the deal. He said: “A new power is coming to the fore. We aim for government … and we will not fall victim to blackmail. We want to become a great movement that will sweep the bailouts aside.”

The veteran former Communist party member listed Popular Unity’s key objectives as cancelling Greece’s three bailouts, writing down its mountain of debt and leaving the eurozone “if necessary” to help the country recover.

This is significant, because we will now have a non-fascist party in the election that saying that there are worse things than leaving the Euro zone.

I don’t think that the Greek populace is willing to leave the Euro ……… yet, but Euro skeptic parties appear to be on the upswing.

When there is no politically alternative to a poorly conceived, and insanely managed common currency, those feelings have to go somewhere.

Now that Merkel, who said that Tsipras resigning was, “Part of the solution, not of the problem,” it’s clear that the replacement of social democratic parties with the, “We don’t suck quite as much,” policies of Tony Blair and their ilk has left a large political vacuum.

I just hope that Fascist parties don’t fill this vacuum, but I fear that they will.

Well, Duh!

No Comments

Over at The New Republic, Andrea Flynn states the obvious, that “Carly Fiorina Is a Trojan Horse in the GOP’s War on Women.”

Her record in politics is one of failure, and her record in business is one of fraud and failure, so the only reason that she would be a more credible candidate than, for example, Limberbutt McCubins, a Tabby cat from Kentucky is that her double-x chromosome gives the Republicans some (not particularly) plausible deniability against accusations of engaging in a war on women.