Posts by Lindsay Beyerstein

Lindsay Beyerstein a New York writer blogging at Majikthise.

Mom Lets Cops Taze 10 Year-Old Daughter Who Refused to Take a Shower
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, Majikthise on November 20, 2009 at 7:50 AM.

This story should put the annoying "bad mommy" confessional genre out of its misery. Nothing can top this. Bad mommies have officially jumped the shark:

An Arkansas mom allegedly allowed a police office to taze (link fixed) her 10-year-old daughter because the girl was having a tantrum. The girl will face disorderly conduct charges. The head of the Arkansas State Police says he isn't sure if the officer made a mistake when he shocked an unarmed child who wouldn't take a shower.

Honduras Coup Regime: 'Break-Through Accord' Was Just a PR Ploy ... Zelaya Won't Return
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, Majikthise on November 2, 2009 at 6:53 AM.

Yesterday [Ed: Friday], I expressed skepticism that the so-called breakthrough agreement to end coup-induced constitutional crisis in Honduras would actually bring deposed President Mel Zelaya back to power. 

An adviser to the leader of the coup regime basically admitted to Bloomberg that the prospect of a power-sharing government is just a public relations ploy.

Oct. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya won’t be restored to office under an accord that leaves the decision on his return to lawmakers, a vice-president of the Congress said.

“Zelaya won’t be restored,” Marcia Facusse de Villeda, an adviser to acting President Roberto Micheletti, said in a phone interview today, “But just by signing this agreement we already have the recognition of the international community for the elections.” [Bloomberg]

Via Greg Grandin in the Nation.

Ross Douthat's Gay Marriage Moment of Truth: It's Embarrassing to be a Bigot
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, Majikthise on October 23, 2009 at 11:30 AM.

Self-styled social conservative columnist Ross Douthat admits that he's uncomfortable discussing gay marriage in public because he opposes it for no good reason:

The question came from Christopher Glazek, a fact-checker at The New Yorker, who wanted to know whether Mr. Douthat and Mr. Salam believed that former RNC chairman Ken Mehlman, who has apologized on behalf of his party for the Southern Strategy, should also apologize for the Republican party's gay politics.

At first Mr. Douthat seemed unable to get a sentence out without interrupting himself and starting over. Then he explained: "I am someone opposed to gay marriage who is deeply uncomfortable arguing the issue in public."

Mr. Douthat indicated that he opposes gay marriage because of his religious beliefs, but that he does not like debating the issue in those terms. At one point he said that, sometimes, he feels like he should either change his mind, or simply resolve never to address the question in public. [NY Obs]

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Pelosi Steps Up as Champion of the Public Option
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, The Media Consortium on October 21, 2009 at 1:00 PM.

A plan to reform health care that includes a robust public option would actually cut the deficit, according to preliminary estimates by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). For the purposes of this analysis, a robust public option was defined as one that reimburses doctors at Medicare rates plus five percent. The latest CBO estimate is critical for Democrats because President Barack Obama said he wouldn’t sign a health care bill that adds to the deficit. (There’s a double standard at work. Health care has to pay for itself or save money. But as Jo Comerford notes for Democracy Now!, the president has no compunction about bloating the budget with defense spending.)

As health care reform moves into the closed-door, intra-party negotiation phase, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi is emerging as a champion of a public option. Pelosi has always said that she can’t pass a bill without some kind of public plan, though she has wavered about how tough that plan should be on payouts to providers. But according to Brian Beutler of TPMDC, yesterday’s “favorable CBO report seems to have settled all that, and Pelosi’s decided to go all in for a public option.”

And why not?

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Whistleblower on Afghani Election: One in Three Votes for Karzai Were Fraudulent
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, Majikthise on October 8, 2009 at 12:38 PM.

The top U.S. envoy to the UN in Afghanistan was fired after he accused the head of the mission of covering up massive fraud in the presidential election. Peter Galbraith alleges that nearly one out of three votes for incumbent Karzai were fraudulent.

Streaming Video: Showdown on Public Option Today in Senate
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, The Media Consortium on September 29, 2009 at 9:44 AM.

SCROLL DOWN FOR LIVESTREAM VIDEO OF SENATE DEBATE
Today, the Senate Finance Committee will consider amendments that would add a public insurance plan to the committee's highly contested health-care reform bill. Committee members Jay Rockefeller, D-W.V., and Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., seek to force their colleagues into an up or down vote on the public option.

As Robert Reich explains in Salon, the Finance Committee vote is a crucial juncture for the public option. Other committees have already passed bills with strong public options, but the White House has signaled that the Finance Committee’s version will get disproportionate weight in shaping the final bill that both houses of Congress will ultimately vote on.

At AlterNet, Bill Scher of Campaign for America's Future reports that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said he won’t send a bill with a public option to the full Senate, even if the Finance Committee were to pass one. On the other hand, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has stated that the House won’t pass a bill without one. So, there’s clearly a lot of horsetrading left to do, even if the Finance Committee approves a public option.

No one knows for sure if the senators have the vote to pass the amendments, but the the debate will be heated. Stay tuned: The Uptake is broadcasting the hearing live today, starting at 10 a.m. EST. (See video after jump.)

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Economist: We Can Procreate Our Way Out of Climate Catastrophe
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, Majikthise on September 25, 2009 at 3:00 PM.

Economist Casey Mulligan argues that population control is overrated as a solution to global warming:

The director-general of Unicef has been quoted as saying, “Family planning could bring more benefits to more people at less cost than any other single technology now available to the human race.” And one of the benefits of reduced population, it is claimed, is reduced carbon emissions and therefore mitigation of climate change.

This statement takes technology for granted, yet technology itself depends on population. [NYT]

Mulligan's argument goes like this: i) only innovation can save us from climate change, and ii) more people equals more innovation, iii) population control would result in fewer people, therefore population control is bad for climate change.

Mulligan's first premise is dubious. The consensus at yesterday's UN Summit on Climate Change was that we already know how to prevent climate change but lack the political will to act. But let's grant Mulligan his first premise for the sake of argument.

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Tea Bagger Bus Company Sued Over Fire That Killed 23
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, Majikthise on September 8, 2009 at 4:45 PM.

One of the featured corporate sponsors of the Tea Party Express had to pay millions of dollars to settle lawsuits for its role in a bus fire that killed 23 seniors fleeing Hurricane Rita in 2005.

The BusBank, a Chicago-based charter company, a "Tour Sponsor" of the Tea Party Express, a rolling protest sponsored by the Our Country Deserves Better PAC under the supervision of former Republican state legislator Howard Kaloogian, now a PR exec for the GOP-linked firmRusso, Marsh & Rogers.

Bus Bank is also arranging to ferry Tea Baggers to their 9/12 march on Washington to voice their demands for unfettered capitalism.

In 2005, a bus carrying seniors fleeing Hurricane Rita burst into flame outside of Dallas, killing 23 nursing home residents. Investigators later found that the bus was: driven by an undocumented migrant without a valid U.S. driver's license, lacking adequate fire extinguishers, and not licensed to operate in Texas. When the bus had mechanical problems before the crash, the driver took it to an unqualified mechanic who failed to notice the critical fault--an unlubricated axle that eventually melted and burst into flame.

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Will the White House Cave on the Public Option?
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, The Media Consortium on September 4, 2009 at 7:50 AM.

Earlier this week, thousands of Americans attended vigils for healthcare reform sponsored by MoveOn.org. (Photos from the New York vigil here.) The president says that a public option isn't the most important part of health care reform, but it's a make-or-break issue for his liberal base.

The public option U.S. legislators are considering would be a government-administered health insurance plan, similar to the insurance currently available to federal employees. It could reduce health care costs in two main ways: i) competition with private insurance companies, ii) using the government’s massive purchasing power to negotiate better prices. Not everyone who supports competition is also in favor of driving a hard bargain on prices. A so-called "strong" public option might use both cost-cutting components.

An anonymous "senior official" told Politico that President Obama has no plans to insist on a public option when he outlines his vision for health care reform. Pundits reacted to the Politico piece as proof that the president had thrown the public option under the bus, but pundits have the short-term memories of goldfish.

We had this same discussion in the week of August 20th, and it wasn’t new then. Yesterday’s leak is in line with what the White House has been saying for weeks. "No plans to insist" means that the president likes the public option, but he won’t threaten to veto a bill that doesn’t include one. Obama has said repeatedly that he doesn’t consider the public option to be the most important component of health care reform.

Here’s what’s really new: On Tuesday, we learned that after months of hovering above the fray, President Obama will finally dive in to the specifics of the health care debate in a special address before Congress on Sept 9. This visit wasn’t necessarily supposed to happen. As Mike Lillis observes in the Washington Independent, Obama was initially regarded as a strategic genius for avoiding the Clinton-era "mistake" of getting bogged down in the details of the bill.

After a summer of trench warfare, four bills passed their respective committees and we're still waiting on a fifth. The fights have exposed a deep rift between the left and right wings of the Democratic Party and driven a wedge between Obama and his progressive base.

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Glenn Beck Piles on Some Crazy ... Claims Americorps Will Be Obama's SS
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, Majikthise on August 29, 2009 at 5:06 AM.

Seriously, folks. Glenn Beck and his cronies believe that Obama wants to enlarge Americorps to be his shock troops, his feyadeen. Beck and his guests convince themselves that Americorps will be the ones who will disarm the radical militias in South Texas if the military refuses to follow the president's orders.

In the clip, Beck claims that Americorps has "just received half a trillion dollars in funding." What the hell is he talking about? Half a trillion dollars is $500 billion. Half a trillion dollars would put Americorps in the same league as the Pentagon.

For FY 2010, the president requested less than two billion dollars for Americorps' parent agency, the Corporation for National and Community Service, and congress appropriated $90 million less than he asked for.

Half a trillion dollars for Americorps would the agency in the same league as the Pentagon. Is Beck talking about the $5.7 billion national service bill which, amongst many other things, would put Americorps on track to grow significantly between now and 2017.

Update: Commenters tell me that Beck corrected himself later in the show. A grownup must have realized the claim was too preposterous, or more too easily falsifiable, even for the Glenn Beck side show.

It's even funnier that Beck's guests played along with the half-trillion claim. Surely they knew it was false. This wasn't just an incidental mistake, it was the hook for Beck's crazy conspiracy theory.

Failure Squared: War on Drugs Meets the War on Terror
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, Majikthise on July 31, 2009 at 8:52 AM.

U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke is congratulating himself for ending the Bush administration's expensive and ineffective opium poppy eradication program. Trouble is, he's decided to replace eradication with interdiction.

He's only switching to the same failed strategy that the rest of the drug war is based on. Interdiction doesn't stop the billion dollar drug trade right here in the U.S., where the government actually controls all the territory. What makes Holbrooke think that interdiction will work in Afghanistan when the coalition doesn't even have a presence in, let alone control of, most of the territory.

Here's how Holbrooke described a successful interdiction at a press briefing yesterday:

On this trip, we saw the first indications that it might work. And those indications came from the British and American forces in Helmand, where they targeted interdiction and made interdiction their goal and they went after drug dealers. And using modern technologies, they located what they called drug bazaars, marketplaces which sold drug paraphernalia, precursor chemicals, laboratory equipment, poppy seeds and there were vast amounts of opium, nice fluffy poppy, to buy and sell, and they destroyed them. [The Cable]

He says they used "modern technology" to find drug bazaars. Does he really mean drone strikes on drug markets? If so, that's going to work until the narcos give up on their farmer's markets and go underground like normal traffickers. Of course, that will be an impetus for defense contractors and private security firms to sell the U.S. another costly round of "modern technology" to detect slightly better-hidden dope.

And how long before a drone or an satellite image analyst mistakes a real farmer's market for a drug market?

French Legionnaire Breaks Rules, Fires Tracer, Sets Chunk of Europe Ablaze
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, Majikthise on July 25, 2009 at 8:57 AM.

Since 1830, the French Foreign Legion has offered a face-saving refuge for screw-ups. If you've really blown it, professionally, romantically, or let's say, in the eyes of the criminal justice system, you can always become a Legionnaire--or so Frank Sinatra has led me to believe. But where do you go if you're already in the Foreign Legion when you make your colossal error? That's what happened to the Legionnaire who accidentally set fire to 1,300 hectares of scrub land with a tracer bullet he'd been ordered not to use. Dude nearly burned down Marseilles. The blaze was so huge that the Prime Minister flew in to call the fire a "clear and inexcusable professional blunder." The forty-something adjutant has been suspended. Maybe Blackwater's hiring?

Does the Surgeon General Need to Be a Scrawny Supermodel?
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, Majikthise on July 24, 2009 at 8:00 AM.

Did anyone ever suggest that C. Everett Koop was too portly to be Surgeon General?

Obama's nominee for Surgeon General, Dr. Regina Benjamin, is a distinguished physician and a noted humanitarian. But she's not skinny. Random people on the internet who have never met her guess that she's a size 18. 

It's hard to imagine a more qualified Surgeon General. She has been honored with a MacArthur "Genius" grant, a Nelson Mandela Award, a Kellogg Fellowship and a Rockefeller Next Generation Leader Award. She's an expert on hot topics like rural health and telemedicine.

Benjamin was the first black woman and the first person under 40 to lead the American Medical Association. She earned an MBA on the side. She treated destitute evacuees after Hurricane Katrina and founded her own rural health clinic that serves as a model for similar facilities nationwide. She did missionary work in Honduras. She's active in the United Way, the Girl Guides the Mobile Chamber of Commerce, and other community groups. She's served select committees and blue ribbon commissions too numerous to name. In her spare time, she enjoys adventure tourism.

Healthy is as healthy does. Dr. Benjamin obviously has a lot of energy. If she's unhealthy, I want to know her secret.

But sanctimonious twerps in the news say it would "send the wrong message" to have a Surgeon General who looks like Benjamin (read: female, black, and curvy). That's really all they're going on. Benjamin's critics have no idea whether she's healthy or what her lifestyle is like.

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Jeffrey Goldberg Defends Israeli Actions by Smearing Human Rights Watch
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, Majikthise on July 17, 2009 at 12:33 PM.

Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic is accusing Human Rights Watch of "fundraising corruption" for allowing some of its officers to discuss the group's work in Gaza at a fundraiser in Saudi Arabia. The corruption charge is specious. Assuming Goldberg believes what he's saying, he got punk'd by an Israel-based group called NGO Monitor with ties to the Israeli government. The whole pseudo-controversy seems calculated to distract from HRW's latest revelations about Israel's use of white phosphorus in Gaza. 

It all began with a May 26 story in Arab News about the rising stature of Human Rights Watch in Saudi Arabia and the Muslim world. AN reported that prominent Saudi businessman and intellectual hosted a welcoming dinner for HRW officials during their recent visit to the kingdom. The host, who also happens to be a managing director at Morgan Stanley in London, reportedly praised group for its work in Gaza.

HRW attracted worldwide attention for its work on Israel and the Gaza Strip including its reportage on Israel's use of white phosphorous in Gaza.

A non-profit calling itself NGO Monitor picked up on the story nearly two months ago in a post entitled, "HRW Raises Funds in Saudia Arabia by Demonizing Israel." The author was incensed by the following passage in the Arab News story:

Human Rights Watch provided the international community with evidence of Israel using white phosphorus and launching systematic destructive attacks on civilian targets. Pro-Israel pressure groups in the US, the European Union and the United Nations have strongly resisted the report and tried to discredit it," said Sarah Leah Whitson, director of HRW's Middle East and North Africa Division. [AN]

That's exactly what happened. HRW presented evidence that Israel was exploding white phosphorous shells in heavily populated areas of Gaza and inflicting hideous burns on civilians. Pro-Israel pressure groups absolutely freaked out about the HRW report and did their best to discredit it. HRW defended its work.

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Is Sotomayor an Enigma on Abortion?
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium on May 27, 2009 at 12:45 PM.

Yesterday, Sonia Sotomayor became the first Latina and the third woman ever nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court. She is currently a federal judge on New York’s 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. Born to Puerto Rican immigrant parents and raised by her mother in the housing projects of the South Bronx, Sotomayor went on to attend college at Princeton and law school at Yale. George H.W. Bush appointed her to the U.S. District Court in 1991 and Bill Clinton “promoted” her to the 2nd Circuit in 1998.

Political Scientist Scott Lemieux writes for TAPPED that, in light of her distinguished resume and inspiring biography, Sotomayor’s confirmation is all but assured:

[...] Obama cited three criteria in choosing Sotomayor: 1) her intellectual capacity (as demonstrated in her sterling academic record, her success as an assistant district attorney, and her distinguished service as a federal judge); 2) her approach to judging based on her opinions, which represent a high level of craftsmanship and attention to detail; and 3) her compelling personal story, rising from poverty in the Bronx to Princeton to being an editor at the Yale Law Journal. This combination of factors will, I think, make her confirmation inevitable.

In the Nation, John Nichols says that the Sotomayor pick “reflects America”. Within hours of the announcement of Souter’s resignation, conventional wisdom had pegged Sotomayor as the odds-on favorite for the nomination. There were a few bumps along the way, though. Brian Beutler of TPM reports on the anatomy of a preemptive whispering capaign starring anonymous law clerks quoted in the New Republic questioning Sotomayor’s intelligence and temperament.

While Sotomayor has a reputation for being a liberal jurist, her record contains few hints about her views on abortion. Attorney and feminist writer Jill Filipovic reviews Sotomayor’s record on abortion for RH Reality Check. Sotomayor has only ruled on one major abortion-related case in her time as a judge, Center for Reproductive Law and Policy v. Bush, and as Filipovic says, Sotomayor’s conclusion “isn’t going to warm the hearts of reproductive rights activists.”

But, as Filipovic explains, abortion wasn’t the issue at stake in this case. Rather, the question was whether the Bush administration’s Global Gag Rule was violating the constitutional rights of American NGOs. The gag rule threatened to revoke their federal funding for working with foreign NGOs that discussed abortion. For various technical reasons, Sotomayor concluded that the rule was constitutional after all. Filipovic continues:

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