The NSA absolutely shredded our privacy and rights and here's the proof!

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Please read PBS Frontline tonight explains how NSA shredded our privacy and rights.  "... in 'United States of Secrets,' the first of a two-part look at how this country became such an out-of-control surveillance state, it calls out former National Security Agency Director Michael Hayden as a liar's liar. It really, truly, deeply calls him out. ... 'United States of Secrets' is simply the best and most important work of non-fiction television I have seen this year. ... be a citizen using TV to find out about your government -- instead of a consumer being pandered to and sold to cable news advertisers."
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Spying on millions of Americans in the 'United States of Secrets'

FRONTLINE documentary reveals U.S. domestic surveillance program's birth, evolution in secrecy

By Beau Brendler, May 13, 2014

You have to remember that the NSA was created after World War II to prevent another surprise attack. That was the whole raison d'etre for NSA: Pearl Harbor. We don't want another Pearl Harbor. — James Bamford, author

When al-Qaida terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, the staff at the world's most technologically sophisticated intelligence agency learned about it from a news broadcast on a $300 TV set. Shortly afterward, a transformation began at the NSA that would irrevocably alter the way the U.S. government regarded its citizens' privacy, just as Americans faced choices about what freedoms to sacrifice to prevent more attacks on home soil.

"You have an agency that was created to prevent something like 9/11 — they are not allowed to turn their eyes and ears on America. But of course, the attack came from al-Qaida operatives who had been living inside America," said Michael Kirk, producer, director and writer of a new FRONTLINE documentary, "United States of Secrets [available online]," premiering tonight on PBS at 9 p.m. (check local listings) and previewed exclusively on Yahoo News.

The remedy, as we now know, was to turn an agency with a strict legal mandate to look outward at the activities of foreign governments inward, toward its own. "So the government was faced with a question: What do they have to do to walk right up to the edge of what's legal and right to protect the rest of the country?," Kirk, whose other film credits include the Peabody award-winning "League of Denial" and "Bush's War," told Yahoo News in a telephone interview.

Part 1 of "United States of Secrets," a two-hour film, examines the beginnings of "The Program," or "Stellar Wind" as it was known internally: The effort to collect unprecedented amounts of information from emails, phone and cell conversations from millions of Americans — through its continuation today, surviving a change in presidents, threats of resignations by high-level government officials and exposure by Edward Snowden, who took a job at intelligence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton to specifically reveal it.

Though the film begins with Snowden's efforts to interest former Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, documentary film producer Laura Poitras and journalist Barton Gellman with what he found, Part 1 is less about Snowden and more about how many members of the NSA, the U.S. Justice Department and other government officials acted on their various beliefs in what was right, and wrong.

The film depicts how "The Program" started in then-Vice President Dick Cheney's office, in the form of a document authored by David Addington, Cheney's lawyer, and kept in Addington's safe. "To most people who know how things work inside the government, that the vice president's lawyer, who has no statutory authority, [would author] what would become the deepest, darkest secret the American government has" is not only unusual, but unique in the history of U.S. intelligence, said Kirk. Its heritage caused intense and acute legal debate from the beginning.

Still, the NSA, asked after the 9/11 attacks to create a list of exactly what it would take to prevent anything like them from happening again, was receptive to the challenge. Michael Hayden, a retired four-star U.S. Air Force general and head of the agency from 1999 to 2005, took it on.

Starting up "The Program" required compartmentalizing it from a substantial part of NSA staff, and, of course, Congress. All kinds of equipment began appearing in the agency's Fort Meade, Md., headquarters, to the surprise of many who worked there. In fact, though, the agency already had a program called "Thinthread" that could be configured to do the job, but its creators included safeguards that would render the data more or less anonymous, protecting the privacy of the newly monitored.

But when the NSA decided to remove those protections, the longtime agency code writers behind it — one of whom breaks into tears on camera at the thought that 9/11 might have been prevented had Thinthread been properly used — decided to quickly retire. Their supervisor, Thomas Drake, who had joined the agency on the day of the 9/11 attacks, first unearthed the internal "skunkworks" that created Thinthread. But NSA executives wound up rejecting it and rebuffing Drake when he questioned the legality of "The Program" to his superiors. They assured him "The Program" was legal, and told him, "Don't ask any more questions, Mr. Drake." He eventually lost his job and pension at the NSA after talking to a reporter about waste and fraud at the agency, and as of summer 2013 was selling equipment in an Apple store.

Other stories of would-be whistle-blowers emerge in the film, based, says FRONTLINE, on interviews with more than 60 elected officials, journalists, intelligence insiders and Cabinet officials. What also emerges is that despite revelations in 2005 and 2006 in The New York Times, USA Today and other media — years before the world heard of Edward Snowden — the story never got legs, and "the program continues to operate all over the world and has not been stopped or dramatically altered," Kirk said.

Not only that, it continued to thrive despite a change in presidents. President Barack Obama, who repeatedly remarked during his campaign on the importance of governance under the rule of law, did little to rein the NSA in until the Snowden revelations. "More whistle-blowers or leakers have been indicted under this president than all the other presidents put together, and that he would be that kind of president is surprising," Kirk said. Those who supported Obama hoping for change in how the government operates may now be wondering, "who is this guy in terms of what he promised once?" Kirk said.

The story, of course, doesn't yet have an ending. Snowden collected more than a million pages of documents, which likely contain many more revelations about NSA digital surveillance. "It's pretty clear that they have 'everything,'" Kirk said. "It's no longer six degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon, it's three steps, and then you have everybody."

Part 2 of "United States of Secrets" airs next Tuesday, May 20, on PBS.
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Typical GOP: instead of working on worthwhile activities, they're beating the Benghazi dead horse

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The Koch brothers truly believe "... that they are on a mission to save America from Saul Alinsky-inspired collectivism." I have news for them-- a bunch of us are on a mission to save the U.S. from them!

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Fake concern for the poor! Koch brothers’ expensive political epiphany

New memo teaches the right something it didn't know: Voters are compassionate. Here's their odd plan to act on it

By Simon Maloy, May 12, 2014

Last week, Politico’s Ken Vogel got his hands on a memo circulated among major donors to Americans For Prosperity, the conservative group that functions as Charles and David Koch’s primary outlet for political activism. It lays out the group’s strategy and budget heading into the 2014 midterms, which represent a key test for the Koch-funded network. After dumping hundreds of millions of dollars into the campaign to take down Barack Obama in 2012 only to see the president skate to reelection, the Koch brothers were left trying to figure out what went wrong.

The answer they came up with is actually kind of hilarious. “If the presidential election told us anything,” the memo reads, “it’s that Americans place a great importance on taking care of those in need and avoiding harm to the weak.”

I read that and I picture Charles or David Koch watching the Romney “47 percent” video for the 34th time and slapping his forehead in a eureka moment that could only happen to a billionaire libertarian whack-job. “Don’t treat the poor like garbage… Of course! It’s so simple!” Taken alongside Paul Ryan’s sudden concern for America’s impoverished, you get the sense that the right is finally starting to realize that perhaps they might have a problem when it comes to low-income voters.

Now, I should be clear that the Kochs view this is a messaging problem, not a problem rooted in policy. They’re still firmly wedded to their beliefs that government assistance programs engender laziness and that the federal government should be slashed down to just the army and the patent office. What they’re trying to do is find a way to convince the less fortunate that cutting taxes for billionaires and blocking minimum wage increases will lead to the sort of shared prosperity that will lift them out of economic hardship. “We consistently see that Americans in general are concerned that free-market policy — and its advocates — benefit the rich and powerful more than the most vulnerable of society,” the memo observes. “We must correct this misconception.”

It’s not clear what “misconception” they believe is at play here. The last three decades of American governance can hardly be described as a nightmare descent into socialism, and they’ve witnessed a dramatic increase in economic inequality. Charles and David Koch, however, choose not to see that reality. They truly believe down to their core that they are on a mission to save America from Saul Alinsky-inspired collectivism.

While they may sound slightly bonkers and have a mission statement that’s laughably out of touch, the resources they’re bringing to bear in pursuit of its fruition are the very definition of serious. According to the AFP memo, the group plans to spend $125 million this election cycle. And they consider that a conservative estimate.

To get a sense of just how significant a bundle of cash that is, take a look back at the totals the Democratic and Republican party committees spent in the last midterm election. AFP’s $125 million investment is nearly double the amount spent by the NRSC in 2010 ($68 million), and just shy of the cash outlays of the DSCC ($129 million) and the NRCC ($132 million).

That’s a lot of money for a group that is not technically affiliated with an established party.

Obviously this is not good news for Democrats. Vulnerable Democratic incumbents in districts and states across the country could find themselves up against two well-financed and well-organized political machines. “Democrats aren’t running against a rival party,” Steve Benen observed, “they’re running against two rival parties that happen to be ideologically aligned.” The combined spending might of the two operations means a barrage of ads and get-out-the-vote efforts that the Democrats – already defending a large and unfriendly map – may not able to match.

But the Koch spending also poses risks for the Republican Party. As Benen noted, right now the Koch machine and the Republican Party are relatively simpatico in terms of electoral goals and policy outcomes. Both want the Democrats out of power in the Senate, and both want Obamacare burned to the ground. If they succeed in giving control of the Senate to the GOP, suddenly the Koch machine would have the sort of political, ideological and financial clout that the official party committees currently enjoy.

There would be two centers of political gravity within the party competing for the same donors. And while the Kochs are free to be as ideologically rigid and activist as they please, the Republicans would be necessarily hemmed in by the realities of governing. Even if the Republicans take control of the Senate, the Democrats would still have filibuster power, and if the Republicans wanted to get any serious legislation passed they’d have to broker deals with the opposition. (Assuming they actually want to get serious legislation passed.) AFP doesn’t take well to compromises with Democrats, and there’s always a more conservative primary challenger waiting in the wings to take down a RINO in Congress.

Of course, all this assumes that the GOP does actually take the Senate from the Democrats in November. Right now the consensus is that their odds are better than even, and while a lot could happen between now and Election Day, having $125 million in Koch money on their side certainly doesn’t hurt their chances.
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YES! Do your civic duty and vote in the primary elections!!

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Do you want a faith-based textbook used for teaching about the "Bible" in your public schools? *I* don't, and I suspect that many of you don't either.

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Hobby Lobby Bible course objective? Column
By Stephen Prothero, May 11, 2014

I'm all for public school Bible classes, but I worry that faith could eclipse the facts.

On April 14, the school board in Mustang, Okla., voted to institute an elective Bible course. This is not news. More than a thousand U.S. public schools offer Bible as literature courses. But the curriculum for the Mustang course was developed by Steve Green, president of the Oklahoma-based Hobby Lobby craft store chain, which is committed, according to its website, to "honoring the Lord in all we do."

In March, Hobby Lobby argued before the Supreme Court for a religious liberty exemption to the Affordable Care Act. Now Green is promoting the Bible curriculum the Mustang school board just adopted — a curriculum he predicts will soon be adopted in hundreds, perhaps thousands, of American public schools.

In its decisions on religion in public education, the Supreme Court has distinguished sharply between preaching religion (which the First Amendment prohibits) and teaching about religion (which it allows). Courses that explore the Bible "objectively as a part of a secular program of education" are in its view constitutional.

But will the Green-funded Bible curriculum be secular and objective?

Casting doubt

Andrew Seidel, staff attorney for the Freedom From Religion Foundation, argued in a November letter that this partnership between Hobby Lobby and the Mustang school board "casts doubt on the objective nature of the class." In an April follow-up, he wrote that the draft textbook demonstrates "a clear Christian bias."

"It's not about teaching the Bible as literature," Seidel told me. "It's about teaching a particular religion that uses the Bible."

Timothy Dalrymple, editor at Patheos.com and one of many evangelicals consulting on this project, said he signed on only after hearing that Green was determined to produce a "fact-based and non-sectarian" textbook. Counseling patience, Dalrymple is confident that problems with the current draft will be fixed. "It's the best Bible curriculum for public schools that I've seen by a long shot," he said.

You cannot make sense of Western art or American literature without basic biblical literacy, and in a country in which Christianity so deeply informs political rhetoric, knowledge of the Bible is essential for citizenship. So I am an advocate of public school Bible courses. And there is much to praise in the 200+ pages of the April "working draft" of the textbook I reviewed. The writing is clear, catchy even. Its emphasis on the Bible's impact on music, literature and film is laudable.

Nonetheless, I have two key objections.

Green's belief

First is the tendency of the authors to view virtually every Bible story through a Christian lens. The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is presented here as a narrative of "The Fall" of humanity from innocence into sin. But that is a Christian interpretation. Jews, who do not typically believe in original sin and therefore do not seek salvation from it, do not read the story this way. Yet this is the sole interpretation offered.

My second objection concerns the inability of the textbook's authors to resist the temptation to assert the Bible's truth. This claim is asserted repeatedly, sometimes through leading questions ("How do we know that the Bible's narratives are reliable?"), sometimes through graphics that provide check marks in boxes regarding the text's "reliability" and "historical accuracy," and sometimes through maps that, by pinpointing where biblical events occurred, shut down all doubt about their historicity. In one "summary" box, this draft reads: "We can conclude that the Bible, especially when viewed alongside other historical information, is a reliable historical source."

I do not doubt that Green's team sincerely wants to produce a non-sectarian textbook. I am skeptical, however, that the scholars that Green has assembled for this job — a group that tilts like a listing ship toward evangelicals working at evangelical institutions — are capable of producing a textbook beholden to facts rather than faith.

In an April 2013 speech to the National Bible Association, Green described the Bible as "true" and "good." He has every right to this belief. But it is not a self-evident proposition, and there is no place under the Constitution for a textbook that requires public school students to pledge their allegiance to it.
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Priorities of political parties have changed over the years

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Fairness vs. Freedom: Is Politics Going Back to the 1970s?
By Nate Silver, May 11, 2014

Inequality is a hot topic these days — even on Fox News. This contrasts with most of the past decade, when the term was barely mentioned even on the liberal-leaning television network MSNBC.

The increasing focus on inequality is best thought of as a reemergence of an old theme rather than something new. Since the founding of the republic, frames focused around fairness and equality have competed against those centered around freedom and liberty in American political discourse.

I put together the following graphic (well, I put together the data; FiveThirtyEight visual journalist Ritchie King put together the graphic), based on a search for the terms equality, fairness, freedom and liberty* in the Democratic and Republican platforms dating to 1948. It tells us a lot about how the priorities of the parties have changed over the years. 



In the 1950s and 1960s, Democrats were about as likely to talk about fairness as freedom. Then there was a strong shift toward fairness and equality as rhetorical frames under George McGovern in 1972, Jimmy Carter in 1976 and 1980, and Walter Mondale in 1984. But Democrats reverted to being more even in their use of the terms under the platforms written for Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Al Gore and John Kerry. Barack Obama’s platforms emphasized fairness and equality more often, however, especially in 2012.

Republicans have almost always used freedom-related words more than fairness-related words (with modest exceptions in 1952 under Dwight Eisenhower and 1972 under Richard Nixon). But from the 1950s through the 1990s, the parties usually tracked with each other. That is to say, when Democrats shifted toward talking more about fairness and less about freedom, Republicans moved in the same direction.

However, the partisan split in these terms has widened considerably since 1996. In their 2012 party platform, Republicans used “freedom” and “liberty” 4.1 times more often than “fairness” and “equality.” Obama’s Democrats, by contrast, used “fairness” and “equality” 1.7 times more often than “freedom” and “liberty.”

The usage of the terms can also be thought of as a proxy for where the parties align on on the left-right spectrum. Like other measures of partisan activity, this one shows that Republicans have shifted somewhat further away from the center and have therefore been somewhat more responsible for the increasing divide between the parties. However, Democrats have also been moving to the left.

In general, I’m in agreement with Thomas E. Mann and Norman Ornstein, that political commentators and journalists have been too slow to talk about the Republican Party’s rightward shift. It also seems plausible to me, however, that we could see an increasingly sharp shift toward the left in the Democratic Party in the coming years, particularly if Hillary Clinton is not its nominee in 2016.

Furthermore, it seems plausible that Republicans could gradually steer back toward the center; they’re talking more about inequality, too, both on cable television and in Congress. As inequality gains traction as a political concept, Republicans may frame their goal as wanting to ensure equality of opportunity, while they accuse Democrats of desiring equality of outcomes. The word, opportunity, is one that Republicans have gotten away from. From 1948 through 1988, the parties used “opportunity” or “opportunities” about as often as each other in their platforms, although with some fluctuations from year to year. Since 1992, however, Democrats have mentioned opportunity about 60 percent more often than Republicans as a proportion of all words in their platforms.



Both parties, then, might be inclined to rediscover some of their rhetoric from the 1970s and the 1980s. These weren’t glorious times for Democrats, who occupied the White House for only four years between 1968 and 1992. What’s different this time is that income inequality has risen steadily since then. It’s something you’ll almost certainly be hearing a lot about heading into 2016.

* More specifically, I searched for the text strings “equal,” “fair,” “free” and “libert-” in the party platforms. So, for example, words like “equalize” and “equal” will be counted along with “equality” and “inequality.” There may be a very small number of false positives — for example, the word “affair” (as in “foreign affairs”) contains the text string “fair” — but these cases are rare enough that they aren’t worth worrying about.
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In order to defeat the Koch brothers, Democrats have 125 million reasons to come out and vote this November

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The Koch Brothers Are Going to Try To Buy Congress By Spending $125 Million
By Jason Easley, May 9, 2014

The Koch brothers are going to try to buy Congress this year by outspending both the Republican and the Democratic parties combined.

Via Politico:

The Koch brothers’ main political arm intends to spend more than $125 million this year on an aggressive ground, air and data operation benefiting conservatives, according to a memo distributed to major donors and sources familiar with the group. 

The projected budget for Americans for Prosperity would be unprecedented for a private political group in a midterm, and would likely rival even the spending of the Republican and Democratic parties’ congressional campaign arms. 

The group has already spent more than $35 million on ads attacking vulnerable Democrats in key Senate and House races, according to sources, including Sens. Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Mark Pryor of Arkansas. The $125 million projection comes from a memo obtained by POLITICO labeled as a “Confidential Investor Update” provided to major donors in March, but a source familiar with AFP called the figure a “very conservative estimate. We’re on track for more than that.”

This is the problem that Supreme Court’s dismantling of campaign contribution has unleashed. The Koch brothers are now free to spend an unlimited amount of funds to try to buy the government. It is easy to see whom Republican candidates are going to be loyal to, when the Kochs are outspending the Republican Party.

The reason why the Republican controlled House is so dysfunctional is because there is no party loyalty. When talking heads talk about the “tea party” dividing the House, what they really mean is Koch owned candidates who no have no loyalty to anyone, but the Koch brothers are pursuing their own agenda.

The good news is that the Kochs have been spending money like mad since Citizens United, and their success has been limited to local/state level races and House seats. The Kochs can buy ads, but they can’t buy votes.

The power is still with the voters, and Democrats now have 125 million reasons to come out and vote this November.
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Guess what, Republicans? This is what happens when you jump the gun

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Another Obamacare Attack Goes Bust
Health insurers confirm that a House committee jumped the gun with incomplete enrollment data
By Sam Baker, May 7, 2014

Health insurance companies say the number of people who paid their Obamacare premiums will be higher than House Republicans implied.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee said last week that, based on information it received from insurers, only 67 percent of people who signed up for private coverage through Obamacare's exchanges had gone on to pay their first month's premium.

Conservatives have fixated on the number of unpaid premiums, arguing that the White House's statistics—8 million people have selected a plan—are meaningless. Consumers aren't truly enrolled until they pay their first premium, so the number of paid enrollments is indeed a more accurate picture of how many people the law's exchanges are covering.

But this week, in written testimony to the same committee, insurers say the 67 percent figure was premature—and that they warned the committee not to draw sweeping conclusions from the information it requested.

Energy and Commerce's figure included people who signed up for coverage but whose first premium hadn't come due at the time of the committee's inquiry. And that's a lot of people.

Wellpoint, the largest insurer in the Obamacare exchanges, said the payment rate is closer to 90 percent among people who reached their first payment deadline. The company has given investors the same estimate.

Health Care Service Corp., which administers Blue Cross Blue Shield plans in several states, told the committee the same thing: Of plans that have reached their payment deadlines, about 80 percent to 90 percent are paid enrollments.

Energy and Commerce asked insurers for their total number of sign-ups and the total number of paid enrollments as of April 15. And that number was indeed around 70 percent, insurers said. But nearly 1 million people chose plans in April. Their first bill wasn't due yet on April 15, but Energy and Commerce went ahead and counted them as unpaid sign-ups.

The committee's 67 percent figure will remain true only if none of those people make their first payment. And that seems unlikely: Insurers said their 80 percent to 90 percent payment rate was consistent across all six months of the open-enrollment period.

Insurers said they noted the limits of the information when the committee requested it.

"As outlined in our prior submissions to the Subcommittee, these are dynamic figures and do not reflect final enrollment numbers, as some enrollees have not yet reached their payment," Aetna said in written testimony for a Wednesday hearing on the health care law and the insurance industry.

Aetna also said the number of paid enrollments, among plans where payment has come due, averaged "in the low- to mid-80 percent range."

Energy and Commerce investigators have asked insurance companies to provide updated information later this month.

If 80 to 90 percent end up paying their first premium, true enrollment will be around 6.4 million to 7.2 million—still more than the Congressional Budget Office expected for the law's first year, and far more than most experts thought possible after the disastrous launch of HealthCare.gov.

The White House has criticized the Energy and Commerce report but has not released payment figures of its own, despite months of questions from the press. Officials say they won't have a reliable estimate until they finish building another part of the HealthCare.gov infrastructure.
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Typical of the GOP-- political money being raised from other people's tragedies

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Latest Partisan Flashpoint: GOP Benghazi Fundraising
By Frank James, May 8, 2014

The name "Benghazi" used to just inflame conservatives. Now it is demonstrating its power to outrage progressives as well, though for different reasons.

To be precise, Democrats are angered not just by the House GOP's creation of a special committee to probe the 2012 terrorist attacks in Libya that left four Americans dead but by Republican fundraising in connection with the Benghazi probe.

Raising money in the wake of tragedy certainly isn't new; both parties have engaged in it to greater or lesser degrees.

But the latest dust-up arrives during a 2014 midterm election year in which both parties are trying to energize their respective voter bases and control of Congress hangs in the balance.

It also comes with the 2016 presidential race fast approaching, with Republicans doing what they can to dent the Democratic front-runner, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Democrats trying to protect her.

Republican leaders understand that the idea of Benghazi-linked fundraising is distasteful to many voters.

For instance, Speaker John Boehner was asked several times at a news conference Thursday about the National Republican Congressional Committee using the probe to raise money. Three times he declined to answer directly, instead opting for: "Our focus is on getting the answers to those families who lost their loved ones, period," or a variation of that.

When It's All Politics asked an NRCC spokesman if the organization whose job is to increase Republican seats in the House intended to continue using the probe for fundraising, his emailed statement also failed to directly or even indirectly answer the question:

"The Obama administration has not been honest with the American people with regards to Benghazi, and if Nancy Pelosi becomes Speaker the American people will never know the truth. Our goal is to hold Democrats in Congress accountable who vote against creating the select committee on Benghazi and who continue to try to sweep this controversy under the rug."

Not exactly on point, but even after a follow-up question, that's as far as he would go.

Then he pointed to a Daily Caller story that argued Democrats were also fundraising off Benghazi.

The story points to a screen shot — similar to the one below — that shows a news release on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee website on the same page with a big red "Contribute Now" button in the right sidebar.



There's a significant difference, however, between what the Democrats and the Republicans are doing.

The Democratic site's contribution button was on a static sidebar that remains on the screen no matter which news release a visitor clicks on, Benghazi-related or not. (The DCCC changed the site sometime Thursday so you no longer see the contribution button when you read press releases.)

On the NRCC's BengaziWatchdogs.com site, however, a visitor is encouraged to provide an email address and other contact information.



When you click submit, you're guided to the fundraising page below.



Democrats have collected emails, ZIP codes and money after tragedies too.

The NRCC pointed to a Boston Globe story, which reported that after the Boston Marathon bombings, the Democratic National Committee urged people to thank Boston's responders in a way that allowed the DNC to harvest names, email addresses and ZIP codes that could later be used for future campaign purposes.

Democrats, meanwhile, were just as helpful in pointing journalists to Republicans who have objected to GOP fundraising tied to the Benghazi tragedy. The September 2012 attacks organized by extremists killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens.

While there's no direct evidence yet of Democrats using Benghazi to raise campaign money, their outrage over GOP fundraising off the tragedy has produced the kind of emotion in Democrats that is often useful for fundraising.
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An Arizona voter wants "... a Republican candidate who wants to improve education, health care, our natural resources and environment and the safety of Arizona citizens for a change." Good luck with that!

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Looking for sane GOP politicians to vote for
Letter to the editor by Richard D. Manuel, May 10, 2014

I'm an independent voter who spent about 40 years as a registered Republican voter. I didn't leave the Republican Party; it left me. It put on jogging shoes and ran away from sane voters everywhere.

Having said that, I continue to seek out sane Republicans to vote for, but that's getting to be a tough task.

As I look at the field of Republican candidates for governor, I want them to know this:

• I am tired of taxpayers in this state having to foot legal bills of tens of millions of dollars to defend state lawmakers who continue to meddle in affairs meant for elected officials further up the food chain (federal officeholders).

• I'm tired of my tax dollars being spent to defend legislation designed to prevent people from voting, falling in love with whomever they choose (and then marrying them), and doing other things they have a constitutional right to do.

• I'm also tired of paying money to defend state lawmakers who use their public offices to force everyone else to follow their religious beliefs.

It appears most of the Republican candidates for governor are running against President Barack Obama and against the Constitution of the United States. It appears they are running for everything except the duties assigned to the office of governor of Arizona.

As Gov. Jan Brewer can attest, it's very expensive and a waste of time to continue to pound one's head against the wall, especially in light of the fact most of us footing the bill are fed up with it.

How about a Republican candidate who wants to improve education, health care, our natural resources and environment and the safety of Arizona citizens for a change?

— Richard D. Manuel
Green Valley, AZ
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The Koch brothers are bumping into walls of inconvenient truths

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Can the Kochs Hold Back History?
By Timothy Egan, May 8, 2014

For a time, the press lord William Randolph Hearst did everything in his vast powers to keep the film “Citizen Kane” from finding an audience. He intimidated theater owners, refused to let ads run in his newspapers, and even pressured studio sycophants to destroy the negative.

At first, the titan of San Simeon had his way: the film faded from view after a splashy initial release. But over the years, “Citizen Kane” came to be recognized for the masterpiece it is, and now regularly tops lists as the greatest film ever made.

The modern equivalent of Hearst is the Koch Brothers, David and Charles — known without affection as the Kochtopus. On certain days, depending on the stock market, their combined worth is more than any single American’s, somewhere around $80 billion.

They have used a big part of this fortune to attack the indisputable science on climate change, to buy junk scholars, to promote harmful legislation at the state level, to go after clean, renewable energy like solar, and to try to kill the greatest expansion of health care in decades. Money can’t buy love, but it certainly can cause a lot of havoc.

Yet, while these billionaire industrialists may win in the short term — the Republican Party, their toady, is likely to pick up seats in the House and may take control of the Senate as well — in the larger fight against progress and modernity the Kochs have already lost. Clean energy is here to stay, and no sane political party would try to take away the health care of eight million fellow Americans.

Check that — they’ll try in both instances. According to one study, the Kochs have already spent $61 million on various front groups dedicated to the flat-earth proposition that the globe is not warming. But so far, the only return on that investment is a cohort of people flopping around in the waters of stupidity. About 44 percent of Republicans and 70 percent of Tea Party-leaning voters believe there is no solid evidence that the earth is getting warmer, according to the Pew Research Center.

Now, this is not 70 percent who think Donald Duck is really a platypus, though in a way it is. This is 70 percent who have been convinced that the actual hard numbers, that 9 of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred in this century, are a hoax. It’s like saying, No, it was not 75 degrees in Atlanta yesterday — that’s just your view.

What this shows is that you can buy a lie, but you can’t make that lie the truth. Over the last nine months, three exhaustive studies have shown that climate change is happening now, and will continue to unfold in real time, with record droughts in the American West, rising seas along the Atlantic coast, and global megastorms so catastrophic they will divert CNN from the missing plane. The climate experts in these studies are the gold standard — from places like the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society. They are not political hacks looking to spin something.

So, the real Sisyphean struggle for the Kochs is against science itself. With the fight against solar — and other alternatives to the carbon-based source of the brothers’ wealth — the Kochs are up against market forces and the inevitability of an idea whose time has come. Across the nation, homeowners with solar have taken advantage of incentives that allow them to sell power they don’t need back to the grid. They get the citizen satisfaction of doing their own small part to reduce emissions, but they also get to tell a big corporate or government entity to stuff it. Once you’ve shown people they can be their own electrical utility, you’ve unleashed something that will be very hard to take away.

The Kochs, whose industries are among the nation’s biggest corporate polluters, are currently funding stealth campaigns to roll back incentives for clean energy. What they’re running up against are American do-it-yourselfers. The future of solar is now, with every homeowner tinkering on a roof, every company looking for tomorrow technology, every market improvement that brings the cost down and effectiveness up.

With their fight against health care, the Kochs are bumping into another wall of inconvenient truths. Not only has Obamacare exceeded expectations for sign-ups in the first year, but it’s projected now to cover more people over 10 years — 25 million — and cost $104 billion less than previously forecast, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

A study by the Annals of Internal Medicine found, in looking at the Massachusetts model for Obamacare, that expanding health insurance appeared to save many lives. Duh. But extrapolated from this report for the nation as a whole, you can make a case that the Affordable Care Act will prevent 24,000 deaths a year. Put another way, about 6,000 people a year will die in red states that refuse to expand Medicaid under Obamacare. There are your death panels.

The Kochs also had funding ties to a campaign to persuade young people not to sign up for health care, hoping to sabotage it with beer parties and scare ads of a creepy Uncle Sam looking at a woman in an examining room. No surprise, the kids saw through it. More than enough millennials got coverage — so many, that premiums may fall in the coming sign-up period.

Next year, the Kochs will have a Congress loaded with crackpots ready to serve their agenda. There will be show hearings, bills will be introduced, meaningless votes will be taken. In the end, health care and clean energy will march on. The Kochs, to close with another film reference, will be like Harold Lloyd in one of the great scenes from the silent movie era — hanging from the hands of a giant clock. It may cost them half a billion dollars to learn that they can’t stop time.
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Ahhhh, "amen"?

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"If you're a billionaire pushing policies that benefit billionaires, you have to convince yourself that your real intentions are altruistic." Pardon me if the Koch brothers haven't managed to convince ME!

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Koch Brothers Struggle Against Misconception That They Care About the Wealthy
By Paul Waldman, May 9, 2014

It's hard to convince voters your policies are all about helping the less fortunate if you're simultaneously heaping contempt on them.

Politico's Kenneth Vogel got hold of some internal strategy documents from Americans for Prosperity, the pass-through for much of the political spending by cartoon villains Charles and David Koch, and while apart from the eye-popping spending being planned ($125 million this year) there isn't too much that's shocking, there is this poignant passage about how misunderstood free-market ideology is among the voters:

"If the presidential election told us anything, it's that Americans place a great importance on taking care of those in need and avoiding harm to the weak," reads the AFP memo. 

Echoing Charles Koch's opposition to the minimum wage, it asserts that free market, low-regulation policies "create the greatest levels of prosperity and opportunity for all Americans, especially for society's poorest and most vulnerable." Yet, the memo says, "we consistently see that Americans in general are concerned that free-market policy — and its advocates — benefit the rich and powerful more than the most vulnerable of society. …We must correct this misconception."

If you read closely, you see that this is actually a different kind of claim than free marketeers usually make. They often argue that unfettered markets will provide better outcomes for poor people than free markets with the help of a safety net will. And they argue that free markets are good for everyone. But this goes farther. Maybe I'm not sufficiently steeped in their rhetoric and dogma, but I don't recall hearing too often that their policy agenda, which includes things like slashing environmental and worker safety regulations, cutting taxes for the wealthy, and eviscerating safety net programs, actually provides more benefits to the poor than to the rich.

It's one thing to say, sure, when we cut capital gains taxes the wealthy benefit, but in the end it helps the whole economy. It's another thing entirely to say that the greatest benefit from those tax cuts accrue to the poor.

Do they actually believe that? They probably do. Everyone thinks they're good people, and that their policy preferences are rooted in a moral worldview. If you're a billionaire pushing policies that benefit billionaires, you have to convince yourself that your real intentions are altruistic.

But this creates a tension with another facet of free market rhetoric, which is that the way conservatives often argue against policies that benefit the less fortunate is by heaping contempt on them, whether it's Mitt Romney talking about the 47 percent or North Carolina Senate candidate Thom Tillis saying that the best way to undermine social programs is to get disabled people on public assistance to "look down" on poor people as a way to "divide and conquer the people who are on assistance." It's awfully hard to convince anyone that you care deeply about the fate of the poor when you keep talking about how despicable they are. So when you then try to "correct the misconception" that the policies you're pushing won't actually be all that beneficial to the wealthy, there's going to be a good deal of skepticism.
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Right-winger Michelle Malkin's take on "Common Core" in which she says "... sunlight is the best disinfectant." If that's so, how about some sunlight disinfecting the conservatives?

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Good Riddance: Common Core Backlash Claims New Political Casualties
By Michelle Malkin, May 9, 2014

All politics is local. So Republican politicians with national ambitions better pay attention to what grassroots parents are saying and doing about the federal education racket known as Common Core. In bellwether Indiana this week, anti-Common Core activists won a pair of pivotal electoral victories against GOP Gov. Mike Pence.

Pence's attempt to mollify critics by rebranding and repackaging shoddy Common Core standards is fooling no one.

Tuesday's Republican primary elections in the Hoosier state resulted in the landslide defeat of two establishment incumbents running for statewide re-election. Pence had endorsed GOP State Rep. Kathy Heuer over challenger Christopher Judy. Pence's Lt. Gov. Sue Ellspermann had endorsed GOP State Rep. Rebecca Kubacki over challenger Curt Nisly. The incumbents enjoyed the support of the Common Core-promoting U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

These same Big Business elites backed Pence's ploy to stave off grassroots parental opposition by "withdrawing" from Common Core -- and then immediately adopting "new" standards that recycle the same old rotten ones. (See my April 30 column, "Big Government GOP's Common Core Rebrand Hustle.") As Hoosier mom Erin Tuttle put it, Pence's stunt "gave the appearance of voiding the Common Core, while the Indiana Department of Education and the Center for Education and Career Innovation walked it through the backdoor."

Challengers Judy and Nisly made their opponents' refusal to help end Common Core in the state a central issue. Hoosiers Against Common Core, led by moms Tuttle and Heather Crossin, endorsed the dark-horse challengers. With little money and scant press attention, they beat Pence's machine by astonishingly wide margins: Judy ousted Heuer 57-43; Nisly defeated Kubacki 65-35.

Well before the horrors of Common Core had penetrated cable TV and late-night comedy shows, Indiana parents led the lonely charge. They were at the vanguard of challenging the constitutionality, costs, substandard academic quality, privacy invasions and special interest lobbyists fueling Fed Ed. In 2012, Hoosiers Against Common Core spearheaded the stunning ouster of Tony Bennett -- the Indiana GOP's scandal-plagued former state education secretary who fled to Common Core-peddling former Gov. Jeb Bush's Florida for another educrat job. (See my August 2, 2013, column, "Rotten to the Core: Jeb Bush's Crony Republicans Against Higher Standards.")

The way Pence is going, his 2016 ambitions may soon face the same fate. Pence's hero Ronald Reagan advocated for abolishing the federal Department of Education. Yet, Pence is busy emulating the bureaucratic behemoth. In addition to embracing the expedient "cut and paste" rewrite of Indiana's academic standards overseen by D.C. Common Core operatives, Pence is now pursuing the construction of a statewide student database. It looks and sounds a lot like the federal data-tracking warehouse championed by Common Core advocates.

You'll remember that one of those national information collection schemes is inBloom. The idea was originally funded with Obama stimulus money and grants from the liberal Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. A division of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. built the database infrastructure. The nonprofit startup "inBloom Inc." evolved out of this strange alliance to operate the invasive database. The entity planned to compile everything from student and family health-care histories to income information, religious affiliations, voting status, blood types and homework completion.

Once again, grassroots parents revolted. Moms and dads on both sides of the political aisle rose up across the country to reject the latest tech boondoggle peddled by educrat nosybodies. Last fall, voters kicked out three school board members in Jefferson County, Colo., over their support of inBloom. Challengers Julie Williams, John Newkirk and Ken Witt won decisively over their incumbent opponents.

The new board cut ties with inBloom; the superintendent, Gates Foundation-supported Cindy Stevenson, was forced to resign. And a few weeks ago, inBloom announced it was dissolving. It undoubtedly will morph into a newly renamed and repackaged entity, just like the Common Core standards in Indiana.

In their new book, "Conform," on what ails education in America, Glenn Beck and Kyle Olson expose the "open contempt" educrats have for parents. It's a classic Saul Alinksy tactic: Demonize your political targets. True to form, the professional character assassins of the Southern Poverty Law Center are now attacking anti-Common Core activists as "extreme" and "far right."

That's nonsense. The principles that unite parents of all ideologies against Fed Ed are bedrock tenets of our constitutional republic: local control, parental sovereignty, privacy protections and fundamental skepticism about the actual educational benefits of massive government expenditures in the name of "reform." The Davids of the Stop Common Core movement are exercising their freedoms of speech and association to beat back the deep-pocketed Goliaths at their schoolhouse doors.

As always, sunlight is the best disinfectant. The ballot box is the ultimate sanitizer. Ideas have consequences. And Indiana is a harbinger. If the Common Core cheerleaders and rebranders in both parties think their bad ideas won't ever come back to haunt them at the polls, they are in for a very rude awakening.
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“'Last year, we gutted the Voting Rights Act, and today we did the First Amendment,' he said. 'We’ll just have to see what’s left.'”

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IN LANDMARK DECISION, SUPREME COURT STRIKES DOWN MAIN REASON COUNTRY WAS STARTED
By Andy Borowitz, May 6, 2014

In what legal experts are calling a landmark decision, on Monday the United States Supreme Court struck down what many believe to be the main reason the country was started.

By a five-to-four vote, the Court eliminated what grade-school children have traditionally been taught was one of the key rationales for founding the United States in the first place.

“The separation of church and state has been a cornerstone of American democracy for over two hundred years,” said Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority. “Getting rid of it was long overdue.”

Calling the decision “historic,” Justice Antonin Scalia was guarded in predicting what the Court might accomplish next.

“Last year, we gutted the Voting Rights Act, and today we did the First Amendment,” he said. “We’ll just have to see what’s left.”
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OK, just how many of you recognized this for what it is, satire?
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"... why does it seem to upset conservative members of the Court so much when anyone questions their side’s good will, and talks about discrimination as a present problem?"

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ELENA KAGAN AND THE POLITICS OF POLITENESS
By Amy Davidson, May 6, 2014

One thing that bothered Justice Elena Kagan, in the case of Town of Greece v. Galloway, was the direction preachers were facing. Since 1998, town-board meetings in Greece, which is near Rochester, in upstate New York, had opened with a prayer, offered by a rotating cast of clergymen. For a long time, every last one of them was Christian, and they often spoke in explicitly Christian terms. (“We acknowledge the saving sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross.”) They looked out, as they spoke, at the members of the public who had showed up for the meetings, rather than at the board members themselves, even as they said things like, “Let us pray.”

By a vote of 5-4, the Supreme Court’s justices found that this “prayer opportunity,” as Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, called it, was just fine. Greece v. Galloway is, most obviously, about the limits of what the Court has long said was a constitutionally acceptable practice: some sort of prayer or invocation when Congress, say, comes into session. (The immediate questions that the case raises are practical: When do the prayers become so monolithic (or, maybe, monotheistic) that they seem to endorse an official religion? When do they count as proselytizing? And what counts as “legislative prayer,” to borrow Kennedy’s phrase? Kennedy described prayers as something like mood music for politicians:

The principal audience for these invocations is not, indeed, the public but lawmakers themselves, who may find that a moment of prayer or quiet reflection sets the mind to a higher purpose and thereby eases the task of governing.

Governing may not be an easy task. What is harder, though, is coming in front of a governing body as a citizen—petitioning, needing a variance, in trouble—which is what Kagan argued was going on at those town meetings in Greece. It also points to themes that have pervaded many recent judicial battles, and have played and will play a role in some of the most politicized cases before the Court. What deference do we owe to religious feeling? How inclusive are our politics, for those on the other side of the table, and to whom do we assume they ought to defer? And why does it seem to upset conservative members of the Court so much when anyone questions their side’s good will, and talks about discrimination as a present problem?

A telling internal dialogue in the decisions comes between Kagan and Alito, in which each suggests that the other doesn’t understand the impulse not to be rude. Alito, who concurred with the majority, mocked Kagan’s emphasis on the direction of the preachers: “I expect that the chaplain generally stands at the front of the room and faces the public. To do otherwise would probably be seen by many as rude.” Kagan, in contrast, imagined a Muslim citizen coming to the board to “request some permit,” who, “just before she gets to say her piece, a minister deputized by the Town asks her to pray ‘in the name of God’s only son Jesus Christ.’ ”

She does not wish to be rude to her neighbors, nor does she wish to aggravate the Board members whom she will soon be trying to persuade.

As a result, she is confronted with what Kagan calls an unacceptable choice between joining in the prayer or placing herself apart: “She must think—it is hardly paranoia, but only the truth—that Christian worship has become entwined with local governance.” Kagan imagined how the same principle might operate elsewhere:

It’s election day, and you head over to your local polling place to vote. As you and others wait to give your names and receive your ballots, an election official asks everyone there to join him in prayer. He says: “We pray this [day] for the guidance of the Holy Spirit as [we vote] …. Let’s just say the Our Father together. ‘Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven….’” And after he concludes, he makes the sign of the cross, and appears to wait expectantly for you and the other prospective voters to do so too.

There is an etiquette in political exchanges, which Kagan seems aware of: we make a gesture, we wait expectantly, and demand a certain grace—even when it might be more useful to disrupt it. What that politeness often ignores is need or inequality, which can mark the difference between connoisseurship, condescension, and vulnerability to coercion. As Kagan notes, when describing the pressures on the hypothetical person who comes before the government: “After all, she wants, very badly, what the judge or poll worker or immigration official has to offer.”

Both Kennedy and Alito felt that what they were permitting was more limited than in that hypothetical—what they allowed was just what was traditional. Kennedy noted that the requests to pray “came not from town leaders but from the guest ministers, who presumably are accustomed to directing their congregations in this way and might have done so thinking the action was inclusive, not coercive”; again, they were just trying to be nice. Those who objected, in contrast, were a bit immature: “Adults often encounter speech they find disagreeable.” Kennedy, in particular, appears to appreciate the aesthetics of the whole operation. He, like Alito, seems to think that the good will and good mood of all involved should dispel any worries.

How does this fit in with the larger mood of the Roberts Court? As Kelefa Sanneh wrote recently, claims that religious freedom must be respected have been showing up frequently and in odd places, such as in suits against Obamacare (notably in the Hobby Lobby case), and Greece v. Galloway may be a signal as to how they will be treated. One can also see echoes of the testy objection, in a whole series of cases, to the idea that any person with a respectable place in society might have racist, homophobic, or otherwise discriminatory views. One hears it, as Jeffrey Toobin has noted, in the opinions gutting the Voting Rights Act. In the oral arguments in Windsor v. United States, the case overturning the Defense of Marriage Act, Justice Roberts referred to gays as exquisitely powerful politically—hardly targets of bias. And, in his opinion in Schuette, upholding Michigan’s ban on racial preferences, Scalia said that it was “shameful” for the court to stand in the way of a supposedly race-blind culture, adding in a footnote that it was “doubly shameful” to see the legacy of Jim Crow in the opposition to affirmative action.

Whether the town-board meetings count as settings for participatory politics or as legislative meetings is, in some ways, a more technical objection than that to the overweening Christian tone that Greece’s prayers took on. The only exceptions to the streak of Christian visiting ministers came during what Kagan called “a brief spell surrounding the filing of this suit (when a Jewish layman, a Wiccan priestess, and a Baha’i minister appeared at meetings).” Both Alito and Kennedy suggest that it would have been more pleasant, all around, if there had been more variety, but are willing to call the lack of diversity, in Alito’s words, “an honest mistake,” with no “discriminatory intent.” Town officials apparently just didn’t realize that there were clergy members in the area who weren’t Christian. As Kennedy put it in a footnote, although “each lived in the Town more than thirty years, neither was personally familiar with any mosques, synagogues, temples, or other non-Christian places of worship within the Town.” What we see and notice, standing in the front of the room, can be ascribed to politeness, too—until people fade into invisibility.
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"Both the Democratic and Republican parties have become more ideologically extreme, but this has hurt the recruitment of Republican women more than Democratic ones"

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How Republican Women Are Losing Out in the Polarization of Politics
By Lisa Wade, May 8, 2014

As both of our political parties move to the ideological extremes, Republican women, who, unlike their Democratic counterparts, tend to be more moderate than the men in their party, are being left behind.

•

There are more women in political office than ever before, but the United States is not on the forefront of this change. In 2013, the U.S. Congress was 18 percent female, which, internationally, places us in the middle of the pack.

The Democrats can boast better numbers than the Republicans, but it wasn’t always this way. At the Scholars Strategy Network, sociologist Danielle Thomsen observes that the Democratic party (green and blue) has increased female representation much quicker than the Republicans (red and purple), but only since the 1980s or so.



Thomsen argues that part of the reason for this difference has to do with increasing polarization in politics. Both the Democratic and Republican parties have become more ideologically extreme, but this has hurt the recruitment of Republican women more than Democratic ones. This is because Republican women tend to be more moderate, on average, than Republican men. Since there is less room for moderation in the party, the selection process favors more conservative politicians. Among that group, there are very few women.

This hasn’t hurt the Democrats as much, since Democratic women are not more likely than Democratic men to hold moderate views. The opposite, in fact, may be true, increasing the rate at which women may be picked up and supported by the party.
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Reid says that the Koch brothers "... are in it to make money ..." but he says of Sheldon Adelson, “He’s in it because he has certain ideological views ..."

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Reid: Koch brothers are bad, Sheldon Adelson is not bad
By Steve Tetreault, May 8, 2014

In Sen. Harry Reid’s view, the Republican billionaire and politically active free-spending industrialist Koch brothers are evil. But he’s OK with Republican billionaire and politically active free-spending Las Vegas casino owner Sheldon Adelson.

Reid, the Senate majority leader from Nevada, drew a distinction between the moneyed GOPers during an interview recorded for airing Thursday and Friday.

“I know Sheldon Adelson. He’s not in this for the money,” Reid said on MSNBC’s “Daily Rundown” show when host Chuck Todd asked what makes the Kochs worse than Adelson, or politically active Democratic billionaires George Soros or Tom Steyer.

Adelson spent about $150 million in support of Republican candidates and causes during the 2012 elections. At present he is financing an extensive lobbying campaign in Washington and in various states seeking a ban on gambling over the Internet.

Adelson, chairman and chief executive of the Las Vegas Sands Corp., also is a leading and vocal supporter of Israel. He also has spent millions on health research and charitable causes in Las Vegas, including more than $25 million on the Adelson Educational Campus.

“He’s in it because he has certain ideological views,” Reid said, referring to Adelson. “Now, Sheldon Adelson’s social views are in keeping with the Democrats. On choice, on all kinds of things. So, Sheldon Adelson, don’t pick on him. He’s not in it to make money.”

In an October interview, Reid said he and Adelson were friends even though they differ politically.

“Some of my friends have spent a lot of money trying to defeat me, defeat my senators. Honestly I haven’t let it affect our friendship. Sheldon Adelson and I still meet and have conversations. He has a problem, I try to help him,” Reid told MSNBC host Rachel Maddow.

By contrast, Reid for several months has launched full-throated attacks on Charles and David Koch, industrialists whose contributions have propelled Americans For Prosperity, a conservative political organization that spent $122 million in 2012 and has spent more than $30 million on advertising against Democratic Senate candidates so far this year.

This week, Reid said the Koch brothers are “one of the main causes” of climate change.

“They are in it to make money,” Reid said of the Kochs, who head the Kansas-based Koch Industries, a multinational corporation involved in a broad range of industries including refining, chemicals, fertilizers, forestry and consumer products.

“That’s their whole goal here, is to add zeros to their billions,” Reid said. “On climate change, for example, University of Massachusetts determined they’re one of the worst polluters in America. In fact, they pollute more than — Exxon — General Electric, Dow Chemical, and on and on.”

Reid’s comments drew a response from Michael Steele, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee. He said the Nevadan’s comments on Adelson were “a disingenuous load of crap.”

“The fact that you’ve got Harry Reid, who all of a sudden now doesn’t seem to have a problem with Sheldon Adelson but before was screaming holy hell about the guy, along with the Koch brothers, is just such a disingenuous load of crap,” Steele said on “Morning Joe.”

[snipped]
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"A truly effective political apology succeeds on two levels: ethically, by admitting moral wrongdoing and expressing regret, and socially, by making amends with the offended party."

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The Art of the Political Apology
From Bill to Monica and everyone in between, a guide to saying sorry

By Edwin Baattistella, May 7, 2014

Monica Lewinsky’s new tell-all article for Vanity Fair promises plenty of fodder for Clinton watchers, 90s nostalgics and all-around gossips. But what I find most remarkable is Lewinsky’s apology—or not-quite apology—for her liaison with Bill Clinton.“I, myself, deeply regret what happened between me and President Clinton,” she writes, according to excerpts from the article, which will be released in full on Thursday. “Let me say it again: I. Myself. Deeply. Regret. What. Happened.”

Of course, Lewinsky isn’t exactly apologizing. Setting aside for the moment whether, as a consenting adult, she has something to apologize for at all, it’s clear that in the snippets of her essay that are available so far, she regrets merely “what happened.” Her words in these lines are a classic example of the art of the political apology: often evasive, sometimes vague, truly remorseful just on occasion. So how can you tell the language of honest remorse from political lip service?

A truly effective political apology succeeds on two levels: ethically, by admitting moral wrongdoing and expressing regret, and socially, by making amends with the offended party. Apologies can fail on either count too, and key to the outcome is the language the apologizer uses. By this point, the passive-voice “mistakes were made” has become a parody of the political non-apology. But there’s a whole number of ways politicians can blunt their apologies by distancing themselves from an offense.

One is by using the conditional—an “if” clause. This short-circuits the apology process by placing the onus on the offended party to confirm that an offense actually took place. Think of Virginia Sen. George Allen’s apology to a young Indian-American videographer, S.R. Sidarth, during the 2006 Senate campaign. After referring to Sidarth, a volunteer for Allen’s opponent, Jim Webb, as “macaca,” Allen opted for a conditional apology, claiming that he did not consider the word derogatory. “I do apologize if he’s offended by that,” Allen said. It’s not a full apology; it’s verbal judo, with a passive-aggressive spin, subtly implicating Sidarth for taking offense. Allen’s apology did not satisfy his critics, including the Webb campaign, and the issue helped to derail Allen’s bid for reelection, which he narrowly lost.

Closely related to the conditional apology is the reliance on indefinite pronouns like “anyone” and “anything” to avoid naming the offense. In the 2008 presidential Democratic primary, after Sen. Joe Biden famously referred to Sen. Barack Obama as “the first sort of mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” Biden quickly apologized for the comment: “I deeply regret any offense my remark in the New York Observer might have caused anyone.” Despite his “deep” regret, Biden notably removed himself from the second half of his sentence, ascribing blame to his “remark” and the unspecified harm it mighthave caused toany number of unnamed offended people. Obama accepted the apology, apparently not wanting to explore the issue of race further at the time, but Biden’s comment and anything-but-specific apology surely made for an awkward start for the Obama-Biden joint ticket.

Carried to the extreme, reliance on indefinites ends up like this: “I’m apologizing for the conduct that it was alleged that I did, and I say I am sorry.” Those were actually the words of Sen. Bob Packwood responding in 1992 to accusations of sexual harassment. Even as he claimed he was taking responsibility for his behavior and he was sorry for it, Packwood refused to describe it or to acknowledge it had taken place. His embarrassingly vague apology was the first step in a long decline that led to his eventual resignation in the face of certain expulsion from the Senate.

Another evasive, yet in some ways opposite, strategy is hairsplitting—when someone apologizes for small part of an offense but leaves other, larger aspects unmentioned. In 1950, President Harry Truman wrote a private letter to a congressman saying the Marine Corps “propaganda machine”—its public relations efforts to gain a seat on the Joint Chiefs of Staff—was “almost equal to Stalin’s.” After the letter found its way into the Congressional record, Truman apologized to the Marine commandant at the time, writing, “I sincerely regret the unfortunate choice of language which I used in my letter of August 29 to Congressman [Gordon] McDonough concerning the Marine Corps.” Truman apologized for his metaphor but not for his position that the Marine Corps should continue to report to the Navy secretary. He made amends only by making a surprise visit to the Marine Corps League a few days later, when he reiterated, “When I make a mistake, I try to correct it. I try to make as few as possible.” He received a standing ovation.

In 2007 Jimmy Carter similarly issued a hairsplitting apology, for a sentence in one of his books suggesting that suicide bombing are a legitimate tactic in certain circumstances. (“It is imperative that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Roadmap for Peace are accepted by Israel,” he wrote.) “The sentence was worded in a completely improper and stupid way,” Carter later said in a speech at Brandeis University. “I apologize to you personally, to everyone here. … It was a mistake on my part.” But while Carter acknowledged the sentence’s faults, he stood by the book’s controversial description of Israeli policy as “apartheid,” saying he had used the word in his title “knowing that it would be provocative.” Carter’s narrow apology at Brandeis was not enough to appease many of his critics, who continued to regard his book as biased, and it was not until 2009 that he offered a broader (though indefinite-laced) apology for “any words or deeds of mine” that had stigmatized Israel.

Predicate choice is also a factor when politicians apologize. Do they say “apologize,”“regret” or “sorry”? Conveniently, the verb “apologize” literally performs the act of apologizing. In 1992, after the Marine color guard flew the Canadian flag upside down during the World Series between Atlanta and Toronto, President George H. W. Bush told a town hall meeting in Atlanta, “On behalf of all Americans, I simply wanted to apologize to the people of Canada.” Bush’s direct and honest language succeeded in conveying appropriate regrets to the direct targets of the offense, even if it was accidental. The words“regret” and “sorry,” however, are less direct, merely implying an apology by expressing a mental state (regret) or an emotional one (being sorry)—but without accepting responsibility. After John F. Kennedy sent federalized Mississippi National Guard troops to oversee the integration of the University of Mississippi, he said, “I deeply regret the fact that any action by the executive branch was necessary in this case.” Kennedy was not apologizing. He was explaining that, in his opinion, the circumstances made federal action necessary; he was actually reinforcing the merits of his decision. In 2001, after a Chinese fighter pilot collided with an American reconnaissance plane and was killed, Secretary of State Colin Powell explicitly distinguished the sentiment of being sorry from an acceptance of responsibility. “We’re sorry that that happened,” he said of the incident. “But it can’t be seen as an apology—accepting responsibility.”

Because they only imply apology, offering regrets or saying you are only sorry that something happened can be ways of not-quite apologizing. During the Monica Lewinsky scandal, President Bill Clinton offered vague regrets in his initial television apology (which actually didn’t use the word “apology” at all), conceding, “I misled people, including even my wife. I deeply regret that.” Although Clinton said he took “complete responsibility” for his actions, his lawyerly and impersonal style, insisting the scandal was a private matter, was criticized as “cavalier” and “cursory.” In time, Clinton came to use stronger languge. Speaking at a White House prayer breakfast in September 1998, he went as far as to say he had “sinned,” and he both asked forgiveness and personally named those he had hurt: “my family, also my friends, my staff, my Cabinet, Monica Lewinsky and her family, and the American people.” It was in this moment that Clinton took full responsibility for his actions. The clergy members at the prayer breakfast gave Clinton a standing ovation, and he was praised for his heartfelt contrition.

This brings us back to Monica Lewinsky’s “I, myself, deeply regret what happened between me and President Clinton.” Lewinsky’s choice of words conveys regret, but not apology or being sorry. The emphatic opening words—“I, myself, deeply”—also convey determination and reflection. But the phrase “what happened between me and President Clinton” is indefinite rather than specific. And the vagueness of her regret becomes even more apparent when the phrase is repeated: “Let me say it again: I. Myself. Deeply. Regret. What. Happened.” Lewinsky might be the subject of “what happened,” or the object, and it will be interesting to see which direction the rest of her essay goes.

Done well, the moral and social functions of apologies come through even for the unlikeliest of apologizers. In 1988, for instance, hard-edged Republican campaign manager Lee Atwater said of Democratic presidential hopeful Michael Dukakis that he “would strip the bark off the little bastard” and “make [paroled murderer] Willie Horton his running mate.” Three years later, dying of brain cancer, Atwater wrote a plain and honest public apology in Life magazine, saying, “I am sorry for both statements. The first for its naked cruelty and the second because it makes me sound racist, which I am not. … Mostly I am sorry for the way I thought of other people.” The apology was succinct, but Atwater named his offenses specifically and explained plainly why he regretted each. Dukakis accepted the apology.
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So tell us something new! Anybody who deals locally with Comcast knows that they offer to provide faster service for extra money....

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Your Broadband Company May Be Holding Your Internet Access Hostage
By Haley Sweetland Edwards, May 7, 2014

One of the biggest Internet backbone companies in the world, Level 3, claimed this week that five of the major American consumer broadband providers have been abusing their near-monopoly access to American homes and offices to pad their profits, raise consumer costs and delay enhancements to the high speed lines.

The charge comes just as Congress, the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission are considering a merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable that would make the new company the largest broadband provider in the country.

The big broadband providers “are deliberately harming the service they deliver to their paying customers,” writes Mark Taylor, Level 3's VP of Content and Media, in a blog post on Monday, who argued that their near-monopoly in local markets was the main factor allowing them to get away with it. “They are not allowing us to fulfill the requests their customers make for content.”

While Taylor did not name the Internet Service Providers at issue in his post, he dropped some hints. “Five of those congested peers are in the United States and one is in Europe,” he writes. “There are none in any other part of the world. All six are large Broadband consumer networks with a dominant or exclusive market share in their local market. In countries or markets where consumers have multiple Broadband choices (like the UK) there are no congested peers.”

All five of the U.S. ISPs in question also “happen to rank dead last in customer satisfaction across all industries in the U.S,” Taylor writes, citing the American Consumer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). The 2013 ACSI report lists those companies with the worst customer satisfaction, in descending order, as AT&T, Charter, CenturyLink, Time Warner Cable, and Comcast.

Comcast senior vice president of corporate and digital communications Jennifer Khoury said in a statement that “there’s no congestion between Comcast and Level 3 connections,” and that the two companies are “working collaboratively.” “Given these facts, we have no reason to believe that Comcast is on [Level 3's] list,” she wrote.

At issue is a high-stakes debate over the type of financial model that should be used to build the next generation of Internet connections, which, thanks to increased use and high speed video, demand ever higher levels of data to move through America’s broadband wires.

In recent months, Taylor says that the big American commercial broadband providers have refused to share the cost of widening the important choke points that connect them to the global internet network. Those so-called peering connections have become congested as more and more people use the Internet for things like streaming HD video.

In the past, ISPs have been willing to share the cost of expanding the capacity of these connections, Taylor writes, but now they say they shouldn’t have to pay. Instead, they want the companies that are producing all that content, like Netflix, Amazon, and Google, to pony up. Broadband companies have compared this kind of arrangement to a postage stamp, where costs are assessed based on what is sent through the system.

But that argument is “unreasonable on its face,” writes another Level 3 executive, Michael Mooney, in a blog post in March and “entirely inconsistent” with the fact those broadband providers already make a lot of money from consumers who pay them to deliver content at certain speeds. The ISPs’ refusal to help maintain the peering connections that they rely on is simply creating a global game of chicken, he writes. Who blinks first is less the point than who is suffering is mean time: everyday internet users, whose YouTube video won’t stop “buffering,” whose NBA playoff games won’t stream, and whose web pages, at a peak hours, sometimes simply won’t load.

Here’s Level 3's basic argument: Level 3 and other so-called “transit” or “Tier 1” companies, like Cogent, XO, and GTT spend lots of money maintaining large, sprawling networks of fiber and cables stretched across the world in trenches and sea beds. Consumer-facing ISPs, like Comcast and Time Warner Cable, who pay to maintain their own regional fiber and cable networks then “hook up” to those global transit companies to allow their customers to access the whole internet. Broadband customers, who never interact with middlemen like Level 3, pay our regional broadband providers to deliver the internet to us at acceptable speeds.

A company like Level Three, which has 51 “peering connections” in 45 cities, has traditionally paid to maintain its global network, but split the cost of maintaining its connections with whomever it’s connecting to—its “peers”–depending on how much traffic is passing between the two, and in which direction. Almost all the transit companies have two types of peers: other transit companies—Level 3 connects with Cogent, for example—and consumer-facing ISPs, like Comcast and Time Warner Cable.

While all the major consumer-facing ISPs have always negotiated hard with transit companies over who pays for what–Verizon’s battle with Cogent made headlines last year–Taylor says that the power dynamic has changed recently.

In the past, consumer-facing ISPs have been willing to share the cost of maintaining those peering connections in order to keep their customers satisfied. If the Internet started streaming more slowly, customers would complain or simply find a new broadband provider. But in recent years, as ISPs have consolidated, more and more of them have begun to enjoy “a dominant or exclusive market share in their local market.” As a result, keeping customers satisfied no longer matters as much, Taylor writes. And that, he says, is the crux of the problem.

Check out the stats: Level 3 currently has 51 peers. It has congested connections with 12 of them. It’s sharing the cost of fixing six of those. Of the remaining six congested connections where the peer is refusing to share the cost of maintenance, five of them are in the U.S. and one is in Europe, and all of them operate as near- or total local monopolies.

As Mooney wrote in March, this problem isn’t new. This game of chicken between five large U.S. ISPs and Level 3 has been happening for more than a year. Level 3’s choice to go public with lengthy, albeit diplomatic, blog posts is an indication that they’re done with the back room standoff. As Washington begins to debate further consolidation in the industry, this issue is now squarely on the table.
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“While the Koch brothers admit to not being experts on the matter, these billionaire oil tycoons are certainly experts at contributing to climate change...."

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Reid: Kochs ‘main causes’ of climate change
By Burgess Everett, May 7, 2014

Charles and David Koch are one of the “main causes” of climate change, charged Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on the Senate floor.

“While the Koch brothers admit to not being experts on the matter, these billionaire oil tycoons are certainly experts at contributing to climate change. That’s what they do very well. They are one of the main causes of this. Not a cause, one of the main causes,” Reid said.

Now in his fifth month of flogging the billionaire conservative benefactors on the Senate floor, Reid dubbed them “multizillionaires” on Wednesday and mockingly applauded their spokeswoman for saying the Kochs and the energy conglomerate that they run aren’t experts on climate science. Wealthy liberal investor Tom Steyer challenged the Kochs to a debate on climate change last week in a full-page newspaper advertisement, but they declined to take him up on it.

It wasn’t just climate change: Reid also blamed the Kochs for imperiling an energy efficiency bill currently on the Senate floor, an accusation that comes not long after the Democratic leader blamed the Kochs for stalling Ukrainian aid.

“Charles and David Koch are waging a war against anything that protects the environment. I know that sounds absurd, but it’s true,” Reid said. “In the Senate now we are considering an energy efficiency bill. Who’s working against that more than anyone else? The Koch brothers.”

For the record, Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Republicans simply want votes on amendments to the energy bill— and didn’t mention the Kochs at all in his morning speech.

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