Twisted Sister City

It's an ill wind that blows no good.

Joplin, MO was hit by a tornado yesterday.  The hospital is destroyed, the school has been damaged, and hundreds of homes were erased by the tornado.  A whopper even by tornado alley standards, the full extent of the damage has not been examined because dark soon followed.  What I saw looked like a bomb had leveled the town.  Cars were sat on other cars.  Bark was stripped from trees.  Precious memories and heirlooms were lost forever.  Joplin will never be quite the same, and this will go down in regional history.

I was at work when it hit, and watched a chain of ambulances and volunteers race to help.  Some dear friends and their newborn child were safe.  Their pets were not so lucky, and their entire apartment building is gone.  Clothing and food will be in short supply, as will hope and luck.  The hardest part of getting a body count (at least 24 but surely higher) is that night fell before rescuers could begin to dig through for injured.

It's been a hell of a year so far.  Any donations to the tip jar this week will be hand delivered by yours truly to some folks who really could use the help.

(Ed's Note:  Zandar here.  As of this morning the death toll in Joplin is up to 89.   Both Bon and myself have friends in Joplin, and we're hoping they are all okay, but the destruction there is pretty awful.  2011 has been an ugly year for weather-related disasters in the US, and it's only May.  And yes, do drop what you can in the Tip Jar over on the side if you can help out.)

Zandar's Thought Of The Day

It's notable that when Glenn Greenwald is absolutely capable of penning a perfectly rational, well-argued, and fact-supported piece involving Barack Obama's policies, in this case dealing with something as complex and subtle as the President's foreign policy involving Israel...when it suits Double G, that is.  But as you can see, even when Greenwald agrees with the President's actions, they are never quite good enough to satisfy his critics on the left.

What made this last week significant is that it underscores how politically difficult such an undertaking is for any American President: precisely because of the obsessive, relentless Israel Lobby that Walt and Mearsheimer invented in their conspiratorial, bigoted heads.  If even the tiniest step provokes the backlash that we saw this week, imagine the domestic political upheaval which a true effort would engender.  The New Yorker's Hendrick Hertzberg put it this way:

The President wants to make peace and presumably knows that it won't happen without a huge and politically brutal American effort. Such an effort would probably provoke the Israel lobby (a better name for which would be the Likud lobby) into an all-out fight against his reëlection. 

Andrew Sullivan added:  "To achieve this, he has to face down the apocalyptic Christianist right, the entire FNC-RNC media machine, a sizable chunk of his party's financial base, and the US Congress."

And once again, Greenwald is correct here.  I've said as much myself since the President's Middle East speech last week.  Any US President is going to have a hell of a time making any changes at all to our Israel policy, period...and he bemoans the difficulty and near epic futility of such a Sisyphean task.  Which makes the very next line in the article filled with irony of such density that it threatens to become a black hole:

It's far from clear that Obama's commitment to this outcome is genuine.

And people wonder why Obama has such a hard time with Israel, when this is largely the level of "support" he gets on actually speaking truth to power on the subject from his own side.  And Greenwald is ironically light-years ahead of some members of the President's own party, which is the far larger issue.

Last Call

With Laurent Gbagbo gone from his position as Ivory Coast's strongman, Alassane Ouattara was finally inaugurated President of the struggling African country.

In his speech, Ouattara recognized the 20 heads of state who were present at the ceremony in the capital, Yamoussoukro, mentioning French President Nicholas Sarkozy first. He then called for a moment of silence to remember compatriots killed in the bloodshed that followed the disputed November election.

Ouattara's predecessor Laurent Gbagbo refused to acknowledge defeat at the polls and cede power. Ouattara finally became president after Gbagbo's capture last month.

Ouattara had already been sworn in but Saturday's event was a formal start to a presidency challenged by myriad issues plaguing Ivory Coast. Ouattara's administration faces a huge task of reuniting a divided country, human rights groups have said.

In the months after the November vote, spiraling violence between forces loyal to both sides left hundreds dead, and cases of enforced disappearances and sexual violence were reported.

Human rights investigators said this month that they have found a total of 10 mass graves near the commercial capital of Abidjan.

The country is still greatly fractured along ethnic and tribal lines.   Vicious atrocities were perpetrated against thousands. Many of the worst crimes will go unpunished because there were so many.  And by no means is the country out of the dark times yet.  Ouattara and his government still have a long way to go before reaching anything that looks recognizable as a stable entity.

But today's inauguration is a start, at least.

The Epitome Of Ultimate Superlative Hyperbole

No subject in American politics in 2011 brings out the flammable straw men being engulfed in the fires of rhetoric, the over-the-top references to doom and destruction, the cries of helpless victimization and the utter nonsense of warnings of evil quite like the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.  Combine Obama Derangement Syndrome with this subject and the odiously mendacious Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post, and you have a recipe for one of the all-time classics of truly terrible "journalism" as the President addressed the annual AIPAC conference this weekend, elaborating on what he meant by "1967 borders" for Israel, and Rubin wastes no time in letting the blood fly.

Obama must be very certain that liberal Jews will enthusiastically support him no matter what. And there is evidence he is right. Josh Block, senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute and a former AIPAC spokesman, e-mailed: “It [the speech] was a strong reaffirmation of the US-Israel relationship, and was an important and positive change from his remarks on Thursday. It reflected an important continuity of US policy going back to President Johnson.”

This is the sort of spin that pro-Israel Democrats use to justify voting for Obama. But there is a reality that can’t be avoided. This president once again has proved an apt negotiator on behalf of the Palestinians and a thorn in Israel’s side. Now is a time of choosing for the American Jewish community, for Israel and for Congress. And if Obama should be reelected in 2012 one can only imagine how hostile he will become toward the Jewish state.

So not only does Rubin stop about a micron short of accusing first African-American president of being an anti-Semite and an enemy of Israel, she stops maybe two microns short of accusing anyone of Jewish faith in America who supports Obama of being the same, calling on the American Jewish community to choose between their faith and Obama.

That's outrageous, the kind of spittle-flecked invective one expects to find from Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post.  But the insinuation here is that the biggest single threat to the Jewish homeland is not the intransigence of Israel's righteous indignation, nor the continued justifications for the treatment of the Palestinians, nor the international community becoming bone-weary of a country that has flouted international law time and time again, but that the American President is saying these things in public. This alone makes him an enemy of all Judaism.

By no means are the Palestinians angels in this bloody idiocy.  They have killed with suicide bombers and gone after civilians for the sheer shock value and fired rockets indiscriminately and taken pound after pound of flesh from their neighbors.  They too are part of the problem, not the solution.

The issue is that the Palestinians aren't getting billions in military equipment, training, and cutting-edge technology from the United States, and that they aren't rounding up Israelis and putting them in armed camps, either.  Jewish right-wing neo-cons say that they could never understand supporting Obama.  I say given the tragic history of the Jewish people in the last century, I can't fathom anyone of the Jewish faith wanting to inter any group of people to single them out for collective punishment.

Imagine if the 12% of the nation's population that is African-American took over an American state, or if the nation's Native American population gathered together to do the same, or the nation's Latino or Japanese-American or any group took over an area of the country, declared it their new ancestral homeland, and then herded the people not of that ethnicity into separated, armed camps.  The new state created demanded its own independence and UN recognition, while the basic civil rights of those who were not of the proper background were curtailed severely in the name of public safety.  Trade of basic foodstuffs, livestock, building supplies, even information, would be arbitrarily monitored and controlled by the ethnic group in charge.  Bad movie plots and "Second Amendment remedies" aside, this is the reality of the Israeli-Palestinian "conflict" right now, it's pretty one-sided.

But to even mention this unfortunate truth at AIPAC, well apparently this makes Obama and anyone who supports him an enemy of Israel and the Jewish people.  And yet people like Jennifer Rubin wonder why no progress has been made on this front.

I can't imagine why.

Lesson Learned

University of Phoenix is being investigated for unethical practices, including misrepresenting regarding financial aid, accreditation and recruitment violations.  The investigation covers from 2002 to present, and the school has been asked to report a wide variety of information.

"Apollo Group is committed to being a leader in higher education and setting the gold standard in transparency, accountability and robust student protections," the company said in a statement. "We are currently reviewing the letter from the Massachusetts Attorney General. We are proud of the quality education that we have provided to Massachusetts students for over a decade."
The Massachusetts' law-enforcement agency is likely part of a "coalition" of several state agencies across the country, which are also weighing investigations into for-profit schools, according to the Apollo document.

Last year, Florida's attorney general confirmed that the agency had launched a probe into several for-profit colleges, including University of Phoenix.

The civil investigation will explore allegations that schools made misrepresentations about financial aid and engaged in "alleged unfair/deceptive practices regarding recruitment, enrollment, accreditation, placement, graduation rates, etc.," according to the agency's website.

In Which Zandar Answers Your Burning Questions

Digby reviews Garrett Epps's piece in the Atlantic on the Tea Party's more rabid Constitutional views, and boils the legal nonsense down to a paragraph.  She asks:

When I looked over all of these and thought about how they all seem to revolve around the idea that the States are primary and the nation as a whole is just a loose framework meaning almost nothing, I realized that these people are the real America haters. They literally loathe the fundamental concept of the United States of America as a nation, preferring to think of themselves as Mississipians or Minnesotans than Americans. Do you think they know that?

They do indeed.  Because to these meatballs, "America" is a land where it's perfectly reasonable to deny basic civil rights to the people you don't like, and that the individual states should have the power to do what they want, all while taking billions of dollars in federal tax revenue handouts and complaining about the far smaller amount of money that they put in.  They figure if they can drive "them" out to the other 49 states, they can then afford to go Galt and get off the federal gravy train for good, and do whatever they want to.

That's the point, to make states into giant gated communities where "we" can live in peace and "they" can literally go to hell with the rest of the country as it becomes more Asian and Latino and Black and gay and secular and science-based and equal and classically liberal.  But Digby's right:  the right has seen the future of America and they want no part of it.

They want out of the American experiment and want to get while they think the getting is good.

Update: Jeff Conaway Critical

Sources now say Jeff Conaway did not overdose, but is suffering from a serious infection and pneumonia.  He is now in a medically induced coma to prevent further damage.  Drew Pinsky visited Conaway and tweeted a short update on how he is doing.  Conaway is only 60, but suffering from multiple conditions that are aggravating each other, and the article above indicates that his chronic drug abuse masked his symptoms and made him slow to respond.  Maybe too slow.  The next three days will be critical for Conaway.  However, because I originally reported that he had overdosed, I wanted to correct that.

Rearranging Deck Chairs On The Clowntanic

The seating arrangements for the 2012 GOP clown car are firming up.  Herman Cain is all in...

Using an urban phrase used to convey a sense of excitement, radio host and businessman Herman Cain emerged to throngs of supporters on Saturday and formally announced his presidential bid.


"Awww shucky ducky," the conservative Republican joked with the crowd in Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park as he stepped out to applause and adoring chants.

Moments later, he turned to the more serious announcement.

"Right here, this day, this hour and this moment, I have looked inside of me. I came here to declare my candidacy for the Republican nomination for president of the United States of America," Cain said.

"And just to be clear, in case you accidentally listen to a skeptic, let me say it again, I'm running for president of the United States. And I'm not running for second," he added.

He's telling the truth.  He's not running for second.  He's running for dead last.  That may or may not be easier with yet another Republican too scared of Obama to throw his hat into the ring:  Indiana's GOP Gov. Mitch Daniels is taking a pass.

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, a former top aide to George W. Bush, ended his very public flirtation with running for president early Sunday with an e-mail to supporters that narrowed the field of plausible 2012 Republican challengers to President Barack Obama.


"The counsel and encouragement I received from important citizens like you caused me to think very deeply about becoming a national candidate," Daniels said in the message distributed through the Indiana Republican Party.

"In the end, I was able to resolve every competing consideration but one, but that, the interests and wishes of my family, is the most important consideration of all."

Once again, if President Obama is so vulnerable on the economy that he's easy pickings, and the Republican plan to unravel the social safety net of Medicare and Social Security to give more tax breaks to the "job creating" wealthy is so great, and Republican governors are so respected as serious political chief executives who have tamed their state's economic issues, then why are the serious candidates who are in Governor's mansions already refusing to take on Obama? 

Indiana's Mitch Daniels is now out.  New Jersey's Chris Christie doesn't want to go anywhere near the 2012 presidential race.  Texas's Rick Perry?  No thank you, he says.  Former Governors Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin?  No way and who cares?  The only "young gun" who seems to want to run is former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (who is expected to announce tomorrow), and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is just a glutton for punishment.

If Obama is so weak on economic issues and the GOP is so strong, and the Republicans have such a deep bench at the state level, then shouldn't these high profile governors be flocking to Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina right now?

Or are they in reality so unpopular in their own states already that a major backlash is underway even after a few short months past the 2010 elections that supposedly gave the GOP such a huge mandate at the state level?

Think about it.  If Obama's so toast in 2012, shouldn't these social program destroying Republicans be lining up to take him on?

But they're not.  And that's because the Republicans have already blown their 2010 lead.

We Still Alive? Check.

Yet another failed end of the world prediction.  You would think by now that folks would tire from having to do this yet again... but natural disaster isn't likely to do in the planet.  We are.

From oil spills, nuclear leaks, chemicals leaching into groundwater and factories pumping poison directly into our breathing air, we are rapidly approaching a tipping point of no return.  We cannot continue to abuse the planet on this scale and expect to survive another thousand years.  The issue of global warming has led to debates, to the point where it seems people are overlooking the obvious while the planet falls apart around us.  

A record year for tornadoes, floods, earthquakes and storms should tell us enough.  

The Rabbit Versus Double G

Matt Osborne takes on Glenn Greenwald on the subject of our "illegal" war in Libya.  Now I personally think that for us to be in Libya is stupid, but I wouldn't go so far as to say we're doing it illegally. The points Matt raises are in rebuttal to Double G, who argued earlier this week that the War Powers Act of 1973 simply doesn't apply to Libya because it's not US territory, and US forces were not involved nor attacked, ergo without an actual congressional declaration of war, we're past the 60 days clause of the War Powers Act anyway and that it's illegal all around.  Matt picks it up from there:

The problem with this argument is twofold. (1) The United States has ratified, and is treaty to, international laws requiring our participation in collective security. (2) The Constitution of the United States specifically names the President as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and the Constitution is not a technicality. 

Let’s start with number two. Greenwald would like to see Congress declare war before the first Tomahawk missile is launched, but the exigencies of modern war eclipsed that process with the attack on Pearl Harbor. By the time Roosevelt had a chance to ask Congress for a formal declaration of war, American forces had already received orders to fight — indeed, were already engaged in pitched battle.

These issues are why the Supreme Court has generally given presidents wide discretion to make decisions about the use of force (see Campbell v. Clinton, cert. denied, 531 U.S.815 Oct. 2, 2000). Far from “clinging to a fiction” that the WPR authorizes operations in Libya, as Greenwald and his sources declare, this president — like every president since 1973 — sees the law as constitutionally problematic, not to mention potentially disastrous when applied to the letter.

And that's problem number one with Greenwald...he's arguing the War Powers Act exists solely in a vacuum, and that there's not judicial precedent involving the enforcement and interpretation of enforcement of it...something you'd expect a former constitutional lawyer to at least acknowledge.

Nor can Greenwald realistically argue that Congressional deliberations produce a better outcome, as Congress gave President Bush an authorization to use force in Iraq. To his credit, Greenwald doesn’t try to make this argument; instead, to his discredit, he tries to establish that America’s role in Libya is just like Iraq. That is ridiculous. Iraq was governed by a despotic dictatorship and its citizens speak Arabic — that is as far as the similarity goes. There was no popular armed uprising in Iraq begging for international assistance. If Greenwald thinks that makes no difference, he can ask the Libyans what they think, since they’re the ones doing all the dying.

There's that vacuum again, with Glenn narrowly tailoring the argument to one facet rather than the holistic approach.  As many times that Greenwald has argued that the Bush administration and their neo-con supporters failed to grasp nuance when dealing with the Middle East, Greenwald himself does a spectacular job of failing to grasp nuance and instead resorts to the lazy "Iraq = Libya, neeners" comparison.  Problem number two.

It is their war, after all. This is an inconvenient fact for Greenwald, for like many detractors of the NATO mission he seems to think Obama decided to use the big stick on a lark, unilaterally. In fact, Moammar Ghadafi declared war on Libyans first, Libyans declared war right back, Libya’s already-unstable neighbors brought the Arab League to a vote, the United Nations Security Council took a vote, and NATO took on the Libyan mission before the first American missile flew. Obama had to be lobbied by Sarkozy and Cameron — a historical irony, as Reagan could have only wished for such allies.

G.W. Bush wanted a UN resolution as cover, but went to war in Iraq with only Congress on his side. The Bushies didn’t have NATO, much less the Arab League. They flouted international law; Obama is responding to it. 

And here is problem number three with Greenwald's argument as Matt points out:  Obama did not in any way act unilaterally.  The international community and particularly our NATO allies Britain and France begged us to help them undertake this mission.  You can absolutely make the case that NATO is more trouble than it's worth in 2011, but Greenwald doesn't do this.  Our NATO treaties, which Congress ratified, are the authorization we needed to undertake the mission.  The Arab League and UN signed onto it.  It really is that simple.  I don't agree with it, but it's not illegal, and it's silly to say it is.

Matt Osborne ends with this notion:

Collective security is the progressive idea at the heart of our liberal international order. You would think more people on the left would get this; Greenwald simply doesn’t care, because taking old posts about Bush and using find/replace is easier than admitting you are less relevant than you were in 2003.

It's a harsh judgement, but a fair and decent one.  Well played, Rabbit.

Zandar's Thought Of The Day

If you're reading this post, then there's A) going to be a lot of really annoyed Christian fundies out there about right now and you should go easy on them, or B) you're stuck here with me and the world's about the end.

Either way, I'll have a good laugh today.  And speaking of good laughs:

Pirates Lacking Booty

According to early reviews, the new Pirates release is not wowing the audience.  Johnny Depp gets some good laughs in regardless of the plot, but even he can't salvage this shipwreck of a film.  The problem seems to be mostly with the plot, and the lack of motivation.  Who needs a fountain of youth when you can return from death at any time?

It looks like there will be no sequel.  That ship has sailed.

Your Civics Lesson For Today

Last week when New Jersey high school sophomore Amy Myers challenged Michele Bachmann to a debate over the US Constitution, I thought "Well, Bachmann's in trouble if she takes her up on the offer...and in trouble if she doesn't."  Granted, it's a bit of a gotcha moment there, like Stephen Colbert's "Better Know A District" interviews but I figured Bachmann would send the young woman a signed copy of the Constitution from the Capitol gift store or something and move on.

What I didn't count on, and should have, was the reaction of Bachmann's unhinged followers.

A New Jersey teenager says she's received threats since challenging U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann to a debate over the Constitution.

Ann Myers challenged the tea party favorite in a letter dated April 29. After it started getting media attention last weekend, commenters on tea party websites have threatened to publish her home address and some have threatened violence.

The 16-year-old from Cherry Hill says several commenters have called her a "whore."

Her father, Wayne, says he's concerned for his daughter's safety. 

Hey, stay classy, internet conservative trolls picking fights with 16-year old girls and giving them the granite countertops treatment.  Threatening to release her address?  Yeesh.

Are we that terrified of exposing Bachmann's ignorance?  She does that on a weekly basis by herself.  There's no excuse for this kind of nonsense, but somebody called Bush "Hitler" once so it's justified.

And Speaking Of World-Ending Stupidity...

Here in the NKY, state tourism officials have voted unanimously to give my state tax dollars to the Yabba Dabba D'oh.

Plans for the construction of a "creationist theme park" in Kentucky are moving right along, with the state's tourism board on Thursday granting the project $43.1 million in tax incentives.

The theme park -- dubbed Ark Encounter -- is backed by both Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear (D) and Answers is Genesis, a Christian organization that also built a similar attraction, the Creation Museum.

"This was the last real hurdle for us as far as I'm concerned," Mike Zovath, co-founder of Answers in Genesis, told the Associated Press.

The tax incentives could subsidize up to 25 percent of the project. As part of the incentives, the state would return the sales tax on costs such as food, admission and gift sales. In order to qualify for tax incentives, the park must meet certain attendance requirements. 

That's great.  The problem is we're giving tax dollars to giant boats and dinosaurs when actual humans in the state are suffering through yet another round of education and social service cuts.

Beyond constitutional issues, the tax breaks for an amusement park come at a time when state leaders are asking residents to sacrifice as they cut important social programs. “The state has gone through eight rounds of budget cuts over the past three years,” including cuts to “education at all levels” and a pay freeze for all teachers and state workers. Meanwhile, the state cut funding for Medicaid by shifting enrollees to managed care plans, which often make it more difficult for enrollees to access care while increasing administrative costs by up to 20 percent by adding a new “layer of bureaucracy between the Medicaid Department and providers.”

And while developers say the economic benefits of the Ark park will make up for the cost of the tax breaks — pointing to Kentucky’s recently opened Creation Museum — not all are convinced. Indeed, after lengthy consideration, Tennessee declined to give tax breaks to a similar proposed project, Bible Park USA, concerned that it was not a sound investment of taxpayer dollars. 

Kentucky:  we can afford to invest in giant boats, but not education.  And these are the state's Democrats behind this project, like Gov. Dinosaur Steve.

Christ, indeed.  Joe Sonka, as always, has much more on this idiocy.

StupidiNews, It's The End Of The World As We Know It Edition!

• World's still here, folks.
• You can live blog the world still being here if you like.
• Tim Pawlenty still plans on running for President, so I'm pretty sure he's still here too.
• Also still here:  tiny Dairy Queen Blizzards for the calorie and cash conscious.
• Gizmodo has some fun activities and reading suggestions in case the world ending is just a bit late.