The Commentariat -- July 3, 2014

Internal links, photos & related text removed.

That nice Dan Balz over at the Washington Post does his best not to scold President Obama: "From the Rose Garden to the Cabinet Room to near the Key Bridge in Georgetown, the president has signaled more than mere annoyance at the state of affairs at the halfway point of this year. His disdain for congressional Republicans has steadily increased; his disrespect for their tactics has hardened into contempt. With immigration reform dead for this year, if not for the remainder of Obama's presidency; with House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) threatening to sue him for alleged misuse of presidential power; and with other important legislation stalled in the House, the president has given voice to his frustrations with a series of partisan blasts. It culminated Tuesday with a mock dare to the speaker and his followers in the House: 'So sue me!' ... His public appearances, despite whatever comments he makes about his desire to work with Congress, have been designed to sharpen the partisan divisions, to belittle the Republicans and to say to middle-class families and especially unmarried women that he’s with them and the Republicans aren't."

Repeal That, Suckers. Alexandra Sifferlin of Time: "About 20 million Americans have gained health insurance or enrolled in new insurance under the health care reform law, according to a new report. The report from the Commonwealth Fund, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, credits President Barack Obama's health reform law with an estimated 20 million enrollments as of May 1."

Paloma Esquivel, et al., of the Los Angeles Times: "The dramatic standoff in Murrieta[, California, in which U.S. protesters blocked buses carrying immigrant mothers & children from Central America,] highlighted a current of angst over the influx and underscored the challenges the government may face as it moves to transfer immigrants away from border areas, where detention facilities are overcrowded. Many minors who arrive by themselves are being transferred to emergency shelters in Texas, Oklahoma and California, while some children accompanied by a guardian are being sent to processing stations in Laredo and El Paso, Texas, and Murrieta and El Centro, Calif. Most will be released with orders to appear in immigration court. Immigration officials have not said exactly how many people will be moved."

Ed Pilkington of the Guardian: "Target has joined the growing list of major commercial chains that have taken a stance against the gun lobby, announcing that customers carrying rifles will not be welcome in any of its stores even in states where 'open carry' of weapons is legal.... The announcement comes a month after Target found itself in the middle of a ferocious battle between pro-gun activists and their gun-safety opponents.... Target's capitulation brings it in line with several other of the largest retail corporations in America which have previously announced policies designed to keep guns out of their stores, including Starbucks, Jack in the Box, Chipotle, Sonic and Chili's."

Corporations are people, my friend. Women? Not so much. -- Erin Ryan of Jezebel

(I missed linking Ryan's column, published Monday, but you shouldn't miss reading it. It's a gem. -- Constant Weader)

Molly Ball of the Atlantic: The Hobby Lobby decision is already "beginning to reverberate: A group of faith leaders is urging the Obama administration to include a religious exemption in a forthcoming LGBT anti-discrimination action. Their call, in a letter sent to the White House Tuesday, attempts to capitalize on the Supreme Court case by arguing that it shows the administration must show more deference to the prerogatives of religion." ...

... ** Ian Millhiser of Think Progress on "the most partisan Supreme Court justice of all." Read Millhiser's take on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which is at odds with everything else I've read on the act. Millhiser extracts clauses that make it pretty clear the RFRA does not support Hobby Lobby; rather it specifically legislates against Hobby Lobby's religious exemption scheme.

... David Corn & Molly Redden of Mother Jones: "For a decade or so, Hobby Lobby and its owners, the Green family, have been generous benefactors of a Christian ministry that until recently was run by Bill Gothard, a controversial religious leader who has long promoted a strict and authoritarian version of Christianity. Gothard, a prominent champion of Christian home-schooling, has decried the evils of dating, rock music, and Cabbage Patch dolls; claimed public education teaches children 'how to commit suicide' and undermines spirituality; contended that mental illness is merely 'varying degrees of irresponsibility'; and urged wives to 'submit to the leadership' of their husbands.... In March, he was pressured to resign from his ministry, the Institute in Basic Life Principles, after being accused by more than 30 women of sexual harassment and molestation -- a charge Gothard denies." ...

... "Supreme Court Reveals Its Class Bias." E. J. Dionne: "It's not often that social and corporate conservatives come together, but the five right-of-center justices on the Supreme Court fashioned exactly this synthesis in their Hobby Lobby decision this week. In a religious freedom case related to birth control, the majority focused on the liberties of the company's owners, not of those who work for them. More than that, the justices continued to press their campaign to create an entirely new legal regime under which corporations enjoy rights never envisioned by our Founders or the generations who followed them. ...

... Ed Kilgore in TPM: "... the new conservative Christian gospel of 'religious liberty' ... would if given the power to do so impose their beliefs about zygotes on the rest of us.”

Why Sex Is Like Bowling & Stamp Collecting
(Except Sex Is "Horrifying")

... sexual relations are basically a voluntary activity.... Sex is only a human want (like bowling or stamp collecting), not an actual need. So sex is merely optional -- a sort of luxury good, especially when not making any babies.... If people like having carnal relations, perhaps they can pay for the consequences of it themselves, instead of making the unwilling, horrified employer pay. -- Attorney David Boyle, in an amicus brief supporting Hobby Lobby. Via Jessica Valenti of the Guardian

This is a pretty hilarious brief. Elsewhere in it Boyle wonders why the ACA doesn't mandate women's using a version of the rhythm method. No, really; see pp. 8 ff. Next year, we should write us some amicus briefs. -- Constant Weader

... David of Crooks & Liars: "CNN host Ashleigh Banfield on Wednesday highlighted the 'hypocrisy' of Hobby Lobby for investing in companies that made the same birth control products that it refused to provide to female employees." ...

     ... CW: Akhilleus mentioned the Greens' hypocrisy in yesterday's comments. Another way to look at it: the Greens' goal was to limit use of these emergency birth control methods, not just by Hobby Lobby but by other companies' insurance plans & of course by individual women. It was their goal, in other words, to reduce the sales of these products. The investment at issue is not in the Greens' personal portfolio (though they could be invested there, too) but in Hobby Lobby's 401(k) plan for its employees. So one must extrapolate that not only did the Greens want to reduce their employees' insurance coverage; they also hoped to reduce the value of the employees' retirement plans. Awfully Christian of them. ...

Ruth Bader Ginsburg Dissent, Musical Version (via BlueGal in Crooks & Liars):

... CW: It seems to me that the thrust of the Greens' belief may be based not so much on abortion as it is on opposition to extramarital sex. The kinds of contraception that will not cover are those that women use "after the act"; that is, when they've had unplanned sex. The Five Supreme High Priests, however, have made clear in their post-ruling clarification (see AP story linked yesterday) they're opposed to sexual relations entered into for purposes other than procreation. I've focused on this as a women's issue, but obviously it's also an issue for men & boys who have relations with women in their reproductive years. And it is very much, as E. J. Dionne implies, one that discriminates against women (& men) of limited means. The lucky duckies (like themselves) for whom birth control is an incidental expense -- or no expense at all because their insurance pays for it -- all win a get-out-of-childbirth-free pass. In their vast right-wing conspiracy to re-establish a stark contrast between haves & have-nots, I cannot think of a more personal, intrusive or damaging way of doing so.

Spencer Ackerman of the Guardian: "Civil libertarians saw their hopes for curtailing the National Security Agency's massive digital surveillance program dimmed in the wake of a report from a US government privacy board vindicating much of the international communications dragnet."

No Apologies. Manipulating People Is What We Do. Gail Sullivan of the Washington Post: "On Wednesday, Facebook's second-in-command, Sheryl Sandberg, expressed regret over how the company communicated its 2012 mood manipulation study of 700,000 unwitting users, but she did not apologize for conducting the controversial experiment. It's just what companies do, she said."

AP: "The Vatican has formally recognised the International Association of Exorcists, a group of 250 priests in 30 countries who liberate the faithful from demons.... More than his predecessors, Pope Francis speaks frequently about the devil, and last year was seen placing his hands on the head of a man supposedly possessed by four demons in what exorcists said was a prayer of liberation from Satan." CW: Hey, why not? Exorcism isn't much crazier than a lot of other doctrine.

Gail Collins is running a quiz today. No mention of exorcists, but she did get in a fortuneteller.

President Obama promotes the collectivist, effeminate, elitist sport of soccer:

Beyond the Beltway

Expanding the mandatory waiting period [for an abortion] presupposes that women are unable to make up their own minds without further government intervention. This is insulting to women, particularly in light of what the law already requires. -- Gov. Jay Nixon (D-Mo.) ...

... Tara Culp-Ressler of Think Progress: "Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon (D) rejected a measure on Wednesday that would have required women to wait three full days before being allowed to have an abortion procedure. His veto prevents Missouri from joining Utah and South Dakota, which are the only two states in the nation that currently have a 72-hour abortion waiting period on the books.

Jack Healy of the New York Times: "... last week, after a federal appeals court struck down Utah's ban on same-sex unions, [Hillary] Hall[, the county clerk in Boulder, Colorado,] decided the time had come to start issuing same-sex marriage licenses in Colorado, where they are not allowed. The move drew 97 delighted couples to the clerk's offices, but it also put this liberal college town in the Rocky Mountain foothills on a collision course with the state's Republican attorney general, John Suthers. Mr. Suthers's office urged Ms. Hall to stop issuing licenses for same-sex marriages and warned of 'further action' if she did not. He warned that the unions were invalid under Colorado's Constitution...."

Danny Vinik of the New Republic explains why a Quinnipiac U. poll released yesterday that claimed Americans think Obama is the worst modern president is meaningless.

Gubernatorial Race

The "47 Percent." Joey Bunch & Kurtis Lee of the Denver Post: "On Wednesday, as Republican gubernatorial nominee Bob Beauprez toured Colorado to 'build unity,' a video surfaced that ... shows Beauprez in a speech to the Denver Rotary Club in 2010 making comments that echo those that hurt Mitt Romney's challenge to President Barack Obama two years later." ...

... Paul Waldman in the Washington Post: "... what's revealing about this factoid is that when it is offered, you almost never hear it followed by a particular policy argument about taxes.... That's because the 47 percent argument isn't really about tax policy. It's about aiming resentment downward, dividing Americans into the virtuous and the contemptible."

Senate Race

Alexis Levinson of Roll Call: "A conference call held by Sen. Thad Cochran's campaign quickly devolved into chaos and ended Wednesday after one of the participants repeatedly asked racially charged questions." So they arrange for an open conference call, yet they have no way to shut up crank callers? Just stupid.

News Ledes

Reuters: "U.S. employment growth jumped in June and the jobless rate closed in on a six-year low, decisive evidence the economy was moving forward at a brisk clip after a surprisingly big slump at the start of the year. Nonfarm payrolls increased by 288,000 jobs, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Data for April and May were revised to show a total of 29,000 more jobs created than previously reported."

New York Times: "Palestinian militants in Gaza fired 14 rockets into southern Israel early Thursday, hitting two houses in the border town of Sderot, after Israel carried out 15 airstrikes overnight against Hamas-related targets in Gaza in response to earlier rocket fire, the Israeli military said."

Comments

[PD Pepe]

Thanks, Kate for the Hobby Lobby lampoon cartoon––love it!

Here's something a friend of mine, who by the way lives in Texas and keeps me informed of the craziness, from Moyers when he was interviewing Stiglitz at the end of May. Marie might have posted this, but I missed it. It's a list of 10 Corporate Tax Dodgers with all the specifics. Digest and prepare to spit some more nails:

http://billmoyers.com/2014/05/29/10-companies-that-dodge-corporate-taxes/

[Akhilleus]

So Dan Balz is upset because the president has had it with Republicans. I suppose, if he he had just landed here from Mars, we might let ol' Dan slide in his amazement that the president's vexation at DC gridlock "...and the Republicans he blames for it" as if apportioning blame to the GOP were quite an astounding thing, has erupted into a series of castigating statements.

But since Balz has not just arrived from another planet entirely, I'm going to lay his amazement at one of three doors: door number one, stupidity. Door number two, willful ignorance. Door number three, a "both sides do it" mentality so deeply embedded that it has caused severe synaptic dysfunction.

In other words, just another asshole.

How 'bout this statement for a stellar example of ignorant tripe?

"His public appearances, despite whatever comments he makes about his desire to work with Congress, have been designed to sharpen the partisan divisions, to belittle the Republicans and to say to middle-class families and especially unmarried women that he’s with them and the Republicans aren’t."

Okay Dan, I'm guessing your take on this that Republicans don't deserve to be belittled, and haven't been especially hard on middle class families and unmarried women. Shit, maybe I'm the one who's been on another planet. The facts are all right there. The GOP over the last decade or more has done everything in its power to screw the middle class and turn women into second class citizens who must bow and scrape before patriarchal Republicans who believe there is such a thing as legitimate rape, if they want to be allowed to go out in public without a male member of their family.

But this is exactly the kind of bullshit that low information voters read and from which they conclude that it's Obama who's being unreasonable and nasty.

Every day I hear some Republican stooge or other (the other day it was Stooge in Chief, Boehner) complaining the president isn't playing nice with them. That he never tries to compromise or act in a non-partisan way. That he won't even talk to them.

It's hard to talk to someone who has cut his phone lines and instructed his flunkies not to take any calls from the White House. And if the president tried once more (that would be the 1,459th time) to be a nice guy and go the non-partisan route with these treasonous motherfuckers, I would have to personally begin a petition to have him committed. If he took a baseball bat to their skulls it wouldn't be near what they deserve.

So Little Danny Balz whining that the president is a big meanie and he shouldn't say such things about those nice Republicans is like someone in 1961 complaining that Bobby Kennedy had no good reason to go after Jimmy Hoffa because there was no such thing as the Mafia.

How does this guy even have a job??? Oh, wait. He works for the Retirement Home for Bush Lackies and Neo-Con Toadies.

Christ! These fucking people!

[PD Pepe]

Things I learned today: 1- who Betty Bower is (her video on "God's One man and one woman business is hilarious). 2––Erin Ryan writes well, is also hilarious and knows how to "stick it to em." 3–Sex is like bowling and stamp collecting––gosh, who knew? The only connection I can make here have to do with balls and licking? Maybe? 4––David Boyle is a big dummy.

[PD Pepe]

One more: 5––My previous assessment of Dan Baltz has been verified here: He is, indeed, "just another asshole."

[Ken Winkes]

Re: Akhilleus on Balz.

All true, but the most telling thing is your remark about his WAPO employment. He doesn't want to lose his cushy job. Like many, hell, the majority, in the MSM, Balz is scared. The both sides do it meme, while patently untrue, is a safe harbor for pundits. They can churn out column after column following the same on the one hand, on the other hand pattern; no thought necessary; no risk involved. As long as the MSM is dependent on wealthy owners and investors, not coincidentally those who benefit most directly from Republican action and inaction, we will see little else.

Of course, not all pundits are frightened; some are simply amoral or downright immoral, hacks. But anxiety and fright are powerful motivators, something the Right has long since made a career of exploiting. It comes naturally to them and they do it well. Scared of so many things themselves (minorities, women, anything "foreign," anything that might threaten their ill-gotten gains), they package, export, apply their own anxieties to the huddled, cowering masses.

And Balz is only one of those teeming, 'timrous creatures, who might discern the truth but is afraid to utter it.

Tho' the last few weeks suggest the nation has less to celebrate than we have since the close of the Bush II years, I wish you all a fine 4th.

[Akhilleus]

PD,

I'm a little concerned about Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Although she has just given the dwarfs a good smack upside their patriarchal heads, she needs to consider what might happen if, Flying Spaghetti Monster forbid, the Party of No Sex Outside Marriage were to win the White House AND the senate (or even just the senate), Betty Bowers, or someone very much like her, might be our next Supreme Court Justice. Without control of the senate, even if a Democrat wins the next election, Republicans won't allow anyone but a rosary bead clutching Savonarola don the black robe.

This morning I was halfway listening to a news program that was reviewing the week's events. They mentioned Hobby Lobby and followed that with ISIS. When the announcer began his intro he mentioned something about a caliphate and for a second I conflated the two stories. This is how bad it is now. I actually thought that he, perhaps a bit sarcastically, was referring to the fact that the Supremes have raised religion to such a place of dominance in American society, that we were in danger of becoming a caliphate.

It's pretty clear that John Roberts and the other high priests on the court are setting the stage for more theocracy to come.

And here's another thought. Don't ask me why, but I was running through the Bill of Rights last night (they may be gone soon), and it struck me that the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment could be used by a sneaky ass corporation to demand the same treatment Goddy Lobby received in sidestepping laws they don't like, by using Alito's logic to their own ends. Here's the deal. Why should it be only religious beliefs that allow someone to opt out on obeying the law? Why aren't personal moral beliefs (real or simply declared) as good as religious beliefs? After all, for most of us who are not very religious (or not at all religious), our own personal moral code is something we have arrived at after personal consideration and thought. It's not something handed to us in a book which we are then obliged, whether we agree or not, to abide by. The former seems far more authentic--and rational--than the latter.

Okay, so then what if some corporation or entity went to the court and said, "Hey, my personal belief system is even better than religion and I don't think I should have to pay taxes" (after all Citigroup pays no taxes).

My guess is such a claim would not make it to the high priests' court. But why? Because they're all about RELIGION. A personal moral code arrived at based on rational thought and real world experience could never compare, in their eyes, with fealty to, as Amanda Marcotte suggests, an invisible being in the sky invented to explain where the rain comes from.

Jefferson would be pulling his hair out.

Betty Bowers, here we come.

[Akhilleus]

Ken,

Right on the money about the GOP and fear.

They revel in it, thrive on it, foster it, nurture it, mass produce it, extrapolate it, broadcast it, use it, abuse it, hate it, and love it.

They are past masters of fear and all its dark irrationality. To paraphrase Nietzsche, the Republican soul has its passageways and inter-passageways; there are caves, hideouts, and dungeons in it; its disorder has a good deal of attraction of the mysterious; the Republican is an expert on the secret path to chaos.

(From "Beyond Good and Evil" if you're interested.)

Republicans have also become expert at using fear for purposes of control and intimidation. Not unlike their use of the filibuster when just the threat of its use was enough to kill a bill. Just the threat of conservative vilification via one of their many media outlets is enough to silence many or to bludgeon them into a mindset mired in both sides are to blame pablum.

But that aside, regarding the fourth, right back at ya, brother. And a happy fourth to everyone else out here in RC land, aka the Duchy of Marie of Armenia.

[Marie Burns]

@Akhilleus. Excuse me. When he became president, "The best governor ever," actually nominated Betty Bowers to the Supreme Court. (His nickname for her was Harriet Miers.) The trouble is, Betty wasn't conservative enough for GOP Senators, so Dubya reluctantly traded in Betty for the most partisan prick on the Supreme Court.

Marie

[Patrick]

Akhilleus, your concept of moral values being equivalent to religious belief, for exemption purposes, is not even necessary. Since established precedent does not allow justices to question the merits of religious belief, and since personal religious beliefs do not have to be tied to any recognized religion, all you have to do is say that your beliefs (moral or otherwise) are your religion. Now that a closehold company is a person, all it needs do is state it's beliefs to have standing.

These folks (Alito et al) have really opened up a free for all, and unless they slam a lid on it really soon it will cause more mischief than the casuistry associated with defending slavery prior to the war.

Kate, thanks for sharing Betty Bowers, whose repertoire I found by googling after seeing your contribution. Very funny stuff, and well done

[Akhilleus]

Marie,

Speaking of that particular partisan prick, I read the Millhiser article you linked outlining how that particular prick (there are four more on the court), Slammin' Sammy, is unhappy that the country is so liberal and wants to be so happy nice time to women and nee-groes and dirty smelly people who aren't rich and white and sooooo religious, like he is.

Yesterday I linked (what I thought was) a pretty startling piece by 73 year old Wingnut Boy Genius, George Will, who was shaking his head at how namby-pamby the current Supreme Court is. In Georgie's considered opinion, the conservative justices are TOO happy nice time and not nearly extreme enough to beat back the forces of progress and enlightenment. They're too "restrained". Kind of like calling Al Capone a creampuff.

Today, Ian Millhiser informs us that Alito sees only darkness and "sterility" and forces of evil that must be attacked at every front. Many more lessons in Life Under the Conservative Boot to come from Prick No.1.

Winning is not enough for these people. Control is not enough. Stolen elections are not enough. Hypocritical activism that overturns generations of precedence in favor of rank, foul-smelling partisanship is not enough. A large percentage of the country's voters turned into brain-dead wingnut imbeciles is not enough. Dangerous lunatics brandishing loaded weapons in coffee shops and at schools is not enough. Gutting of the Voting Rights Act is not enough.

They want it all.

What they want is a sort of Carthaginian Peace. And they're getting close. To recall how effective that might be, I have to remind myself that no one has heard much from Carthage in over 2,000 years.

To paraphrase Cato the Elder (it's my day for paraphrasing), the Five SCOTUS Pricks, led by Alito, are adopting a new motto:

Civitates Consociatae Americae dalenda est.

May have to start referring to Sammy as Scipio Aemilianus.

[Barbarossa]

Re: the Green's hypocrisy: Making money trumps spending it on things you don't like.

[Akhilleus]

Loved the Erin Ryan column on Jezebel. Especially liked the question "If corporations are people, why can't I punch one in the fucking face?"

Waaaaaay across the aisle from Ryan's well done and entirely rational response, and out of some scary rabbit hole, comes the gelastic David Boyle amicus brief in support of Hobby Lobby's Bible banging bigotry. "Carnal relations"? What are we, in the middle ages? Did he crib that from some Victorian underground novel? I'm pretty sure teh writer of "Fanny Hill" never resorted to such puritanical phraseology. And a "horrified" employer? How old are these people, seven?

I'm surprised Boyle didn't pull out the old "aspirin between the knees" technique for deterring those nasty old carnal impulses, although I'm pretty sure Hobby Lobby would petition the court for relief against having to pay for the aspirins. Those sluts want everything!

Too bad corporations don't ever have to curtail any of their seamier impulses. But that's what the Supreme Court is for, making sure they never have to pay for the consequences of their own actions.

But I am very much digging Marie's suggestion that next year we all take a crack at working up our own amicus briefs.

Mine won't be so brief.

[PD Pepe]

@AK: Since we are going back to Cato, the elder, let me remind you of one from Demosthenes, (his love of spicy olives and mulled wine is well noted):

"You cannot have a proud and chivalrous spirit if your conduct is mean and paltry: for whatever a man's actions are, such must be his spirit."

And speaking of Sam the MAN, a few days ago Marie mentioned the number of children these five Supreme males had fostered, but didn't note whom had what number. When I looked it up discovered Alito was the one who had zero, which then we can conclude he never has sex; he has sex but they use birth control; one or both are sterile; they became sterile because they never wanted children. Oh, my, the possibilities are endless. But certainly something to wonder about given his decision.

And finally–-would love for you to take a crack at an amicus brief––you bet your bippy it wouldn't be brief––not for a long shot!!