Month: July 2014

My niece, singer and songwriter:

This is weird and not good.

Erin, a 25-year-old from St. Louis, Mo., who asked that her last name not be used to protect her privacy, said that before she heard the term through social media, she remembers feeling pride when she saw a space between her thighs. “My legs didn’t touch, and that was cool,” she says. “I used to be able to wrap my hands all the way around my legs. And that was kind of like a trophy for me that I could do that. I just wanted my legs to be as small as possible.”

Experts fear that the focus on thigh gap is driving a small number of women, especially teens, into behavior that could lead to eating disorders and other destructive habits. “We have seen an increased trend in which adolescent girls and young women are engaging in extreme dieting in pursuit of a so-called thigh gap,” says Tania Heller, medical director of the Washington Center for Eating Disorders and Adolescent Obesity in Bethesda.

Our bigger problem is that people are eating too much and exercising too little (I know this is my problem), but I had never heard of “thigh-gap.” We seem to make things as miserable as possible for young girls. I’m reminded every time I go to the public pool how few women can measure up to society’s ideal for female beauty. It’s even worse when girls think they need to go further than that and be able to wrap their hands around their thighs.

The House Republicans’ decision to not allow a vote on comprehensive immigration reform, even though they have the votes to pass it, is going to have political consequences. Because most House Republicans would have opposed the bill, the party would have received little credit for passing it, while it would have exposed fissures within the Republican base and caused outrage among the xenophobes.

In the end, from a strictly short-term political point of view, Speaker Boehner probably made the correct decision. But only in the short term. The divisions on the right can be papered over in the interest of winning the midterm elections, but they will come to the fore with a vengeance when the presidential primaries begin in earnest. Fifty years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Goldwater Party is gearing up for a repeat shellacking in 2016.

Nick Hanauer’s memo to his fellow zillionaires is great fun. His basic message is that the federal government needs to substantially raise the minimum wage or zillionaires are going to get guillotined. But he’s really making the case that wages so low that they must be supplemented with food stamps and rent assistance and medicaid are not good for capitalists because people don’t have any money to shop.

He makes a few good arguments and analogies. Here’s one, contra Mitt Romney:

Which is why the fundamental law of capitalism must be: If workers have more money, businesses have more customers. Which makes middle-class consumers, not rich businesspeople like us, the true job creators. Which means a thriving middle class is the source of American prosperity, not a consequence of it. The middle class creates us rich people, not the other way around.

Here he talks some smack about his hometown of Seattle:

Most of you probably think that the $15 minimum wage in Seattle is an insane departure from rational policy that puts our economy at great risk. But in Seattle, our current minimum wage of $9.32 is already nearly 30 percent higher than the federal minimum wage. And has it ruined our economy yet? Well, trickle-downers, look at the data here: The two cities in the nation with the highest rate of job growth by small businesses are San Francisco and Seattle. Guess which cities have the highest minimum wage? San Francisco and Seattle. The fastest-growing big city in America? Seattle. Fifteen dollars isn’t a risky untried policy for us. It’s doubling down on the strategy that’s already allowing our city to kick your city’s ass.

This next part is so fucking true, as I’ve mentioned in discussing my experiences in less exotic areas populated by poor black people, like North Philadelphia and St. Petersburg.

So forget all that rhetoric about how America is great because of people like you and me and Steve Jobs. You know the truth even if you won’t admit it: If any of us had been born in Somalia or the Congo, all we’d be is some guy standing barefoot next to a dirt road selling fruit. It’s not that Somalia and Congo don’t have good entrepreneurs. It’s just that the best ones are selling their wares off crates by the side of the road because that’s all their customers can afford.

And his bottom line:

Capitalism, when well managed, is the greatest social technology ever invented to create prosperity in human societies. But capitalism left unchecked tends toward concentration and collapse. It can be managed either to benefit the few in the near term or the many in the long term. The work of democracies is to bend it to the latter. That is why investments in the middle class work. And tax breaks for rich people like us don’t. Balancing the power of workers and billionaires by raising the minimum wage isn’t bad for capitalism. It’s an indispensable tool smart capitalists use to make capitalism stable and sustainable. And no one has a bigger stake in that than zillionaires like us.

The skeptic in me says that people will be very slow to guillotine the zillionaires because they have just enough to distract themselves with entertainment. The internet, smart phones, video games and good old-fashioned television are great sheepifiers. But, then I remind myself that Nick Hanauer became a zillionaire by seeing the potential for internet commerce and investing in Amazon.com. Maybe he can see the future better than I can.

The Hobby Lobby, etc. decision may look narrow but it’s not.  The decision seems to have borrowed heavily from another case, but for reasons that will become clear, accepting the Hobby Lobby, etc. case for review gave the Papist court more of what they wanted.

The case that were not talking about today is Gilardi v. United States Department of Health and Human Services.

Two Catholic brothers own a Subchapter S corporation and on religious grounds,  protected by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), objected to the entire contraception coverage mandate in the ACA.  They lost the suit at the federal district court level, but prevailed at the DC Court of Appeals.  US DH&HS appealed to SCOTUS and review denied.

The decision in the Gilardi Brothers case was broader than Hobby Lobby on the issue of forms of contraception under the ACA that can be denied choosing not to act on the government’s appeal allowed SCOTUS to get the desired outcome without the publicity of rendering a decision itself.  But the Gilardi brothers case was less attractive in another area near and dear to the SCOTUS corporatists.    

The DC Circuit had rejected standing for the Gilardi’s corporation.  It took the position that a Sub-Chapter-S corporation isn’t exactly like a corporation because for income tax purposes, individual tax rates for the owners apply.  Thus, as individuals, the Gilardi brothers had protections under RFRA.  

As I noted yesterday in a comment, the SCOTUS Hobby Lobby decision would have been less obnoxious if Hobby Lobber were a sole proprietorship or traditional small partnership because then there would be no legal separation between the owners and the business.  However, a Sub-Chapter-S corporation is a corporation.  Enjoys all the legal protections of a corporation and it’s hogwash that even the income tax liabilities are no different from that of a sole proprietorship.  Sub-Chapter-S corporations are legally “closely held corporations” but can have up to 100 shareholders.  For a Sup-S corp with a large number of shareholders to cite “Gilardi” as grounds for not complying with the PPACA contraception mandate,  all the shareholders would have to have hold the same religious objection.  That would be like a religious cult.

The Hobby Lobby case permitted SCOTUS to declare that any closely held corporation with majority ownership in five or fewer hands has religious rights under RFRA.  And it’s not an undue burden for the women they employ to purchase a separate health insurance policy for contraception coverages.  Presumably because women a) have the needed additional funds and b) don’t mind sorting out which policy covers what services.  (Am sure Scalia would appreciate being required to purchase a separate policy for health issues related to nutrition and excess weight.)  

If the number of “closely held” corporations that request exemption from the PPACA contraception mandate on religious grounds is large, it will become a rubber stamp approval.  Too resource intensive to fight the requests unless is clearly and unequivocally doesn’t meet the “Gilardi” or Hobby Lobby decisions or a combination of the two.  

We’re still fighting this shit fifty years on because the ERA wasn’t ratified.  (Some of us told ya – but too many younger women  didn’t want to be associated with feminism and took the gains for granted.)  The RFRA may have started out as an effort to fix the “War on Drugs” for the use of peyote in religious ceremonies by Native Americans – but that betrays unbelievable naivetee on the part of Democrats.  Or no good deed goes unpunished.  

So, exactly what are DC Democratic office-holders and those that hope to win in November going to do to fix this mess?  (Beyond praying for retirements of members of the SCOTUS Papists.)  And Citizens United.  Timid, half-baked, tiny modifications aren’t going to cut it.  Because full corporate citizenship and the end to “Roe” is on the horizon.
SCOTUS issues a clarification to “Hobby Lobby.”

The Supreme Court on Tuesday confirmed that its decision a day earlier extending religious rights to closely held corporations applies broadly to the contraceptive coverage requirement in the new health care law, not just the handful of methods the justices considered in their ruling.

Less sneaky but still sneaky.

Update #2

From the NYTimes: Supreme Court Order on Challenge to Contraceptive Rule

…
On Thursday, the court’s majority said all Wheaton [College in Illinois] had to do was notify the government in writing “that it is a nonprofit organization that holds itself out as religious and has religious objections to providing coverage for contraception services.”

Justice Sotomayor is furious because this order does not conform to the decision issued in “Hobby Lobby.” IOW the mighty five continue to make shit up.

During the search for three Israel teens kidnapped near Hebron, the IDF shot and killed nine Palestinians, razed homes, performed intrusive searches and jailed over 400 Palestinians. Some bloggers saw the IDF action as one of vengeance towards Hamas for its proposed union with the Palestinian Authority of Abbas. Netanyahu and his ministers did all possible to undermine and sabotage Kerry’s effort in peace talks. President Obama refused to sanction Israel for its intransigence. The terror of the state of Israel continues.

Peace Talks and Zionist Optimism … Gush Etzion and Palestinian Land – April 14, 2014

(Haaretz) – With the stroke of a pen, Israel seized control of 984 dunams of territory in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc, as Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon declared the area “state land.” The terrain would be more aptly defined as contested territory, since it surrounds private Palestinian lands, which will now become enclaves that are inaccessible to the owners.

The area also includes the illegal outpost Netiv Ha’avot, home to Ze’ev Hever, secretary of Amana, an organization that primarily builds illegal outposts in the West Bank. It’s likely that this outpost will be “laundered” as well, and along with the settlements Neve Daniel, Elazar and Alon Shvut, Netiv Ha’avot will see significant expansion.

Ya’alon’s outstretched arm did not stop in Gush Etzion. On the eve of Passover, he allowed Hebron settlers to inhabit the so-called “House of Contention,” in the wake of the High Court of Justice’s rejection of the petition by the home’s former owners and ruling that the sale of the building to a Jewish investor was legal.

The Forward: Israel Grabs More Palestinian Land

In the Deaths of 3 Israeli Teens, Likud Policies are also Implicated

(Informed Comment) – If the Likud really wants an end to such incidents, then it should negotiate in good faith to bring about the kind of Palestinian state that could actually police Palestinian lives. Instead, Mr. Netanyahu, despite public denials, wants to make a Palestinian state forever impossible, because he sees it as a danger to his brand of Iron Wall Zionism, which is aggressive and expansionist and Jewish-supremacist. Netanyahu did everything he could to torpedo Secretary of State John Kerry’s peace process. One side-effect of statelessness is lawlessness. Netanyahu is actively choosing it.

Likewise, the Likud Party (and its coalition partners, some more barracuda-like than even the Likud itself) is dedicated to a vast project of stealing Palestinian land and resources on the West Bank. They are building beehives of colonies, which are solely Jewish and racist in character, excluding the native Palestinians from dwellings built on their own territory. The intended end game here of people like Avigdor Lieberman is likely that once a majority of the population in the West Bank is Israeli, an incident like the one that just took place will be used as a pretext to simply chase all the Palestinians out to Jordan or Egypt and then lock them out of their own country- i.e. a repeat of what was done in 1948.

It should be fairly obvious that if you take adolescents into the middle of the Palestinian West Bank and steal Palestinian land and build houses on it and shoot at Palestinians trying to harvest their crops nearby and bulldoze down their homes or dig tube wells so deep as to cause the Palestinian wells to run dry- if you engage in this settler-colonial enterprise, then you are exposing those adolescents you drag with you into it to danger.

Pappe’s discomfort with history of Zionism

… their bodies were found near the town of Halhul, just north of Hebron.

UPDATE: A 911 call was made by one of the teens but the border military did not react, assuming the call was a prank. Today the audio tape was released and the evidence indicates the teens were shot within minutes of their call, as gunshots rang out on the tape.

At 10:25pm on Thursday, June 12, Gil-Ad Shaer make a chilling call to the police’s 100 call center, saying “I’ve been kidnapped.” Then, yelling and gunfire, and a sigh of pain in the background.

The three victims were hastily buried under rocks near the spot they were last seen hitchhiking, within a 10 minutes drive. It became clear Israel has meant there should be collective punishment for these murders. A Dutch female journalist attempted to balance a discussion about the Palestinian deaths, she was heckled and accused of being an anti-semitic.

Helpless against the might of the state: Rabbi Ascherman replies to a friend of Carmel

March 14, 2014 – The Bedouin village of Umm el-Kheir is just a stone’s throw away from the Carmel settlement in the South Hebron Hills. Its residents live in huts and tents in abject poverty, without water hook-ups or electricity, while the residents of Carmel enjoy an existence resembling life in the suburbs of any Western country.

For a number of years, the shepherds of Umm el-Kheir have struggled against the settlers of Carmel who claim that part of Umm el-Kheir sits on the Jewish settlement. Recently, tensions came to the surface again as settlers planted trees on a ridge- a tactic used in the past to “claim”  their land. The trees were uprooted and as a result, the village shepherds were collectively punished by blocked access to their pastures. Additionally, Carmel settlers physically attempted to prevent the flocks from passing.

RHR has advocated for the rights of Bedouin at Umm el Kheir for years; recently, Rabbi Ascherman received an email from a friend of the Carmel settlement inquiring into the uprooting of the trees planted by the settlers on Tu B’Shevat. Their correspondence appears below …

Reply in letter dated January 31, 2014:

“You must, however, forgive me for the blunt way in which I am going to write. As much as I oppose the uprooting of trees, I am aware of a full and long history of events in which the residents of Carmel and their supporters have abused the residents of Umm el-Kheir, who are helpless against the might of the State, including last Friday (January 17 2014).

I must say clearly and unequivocally that Carmel uses trees as soldiers against Umm el-Kheir. The residents of Carmel filed a development plan for the settlement according to which the ridge where the trees were planted is designated to become a site for massive building. Not one of these trees was intended to grow to maturity so that it could provide shade or yield fruit. They are there only to prevent the residents of Umm el-Kheir from accessing the area until the bulldozers arrive to level the hill so that Carmel can build a new neighborhood.

I believe that it is wrong to plant seedlings there, and all the more so when there is still a legal dispute in court about the ownership of this ridge.”

West Bank settlement is outdoing its neighboring Bedouin village

           

(Haaretz) Nov. 11, 2011 – Dozens of people in Umm al-Khayr live in grinding poverty, next to a few hundred people to whom Israel has generously supplied, in the heart of the desert, the amenities for leading a comfortable modern life.

“Do you live here?” I asked. “Yes,” she replied. “And what’s it like, do you feel good here?” Another stupid question. She gave me a quizzical look and said nothing. “Where do you go to school?” I asked her, trying to find a thread that would connect us across the garden and yard between us. “In Susya,” she said – the neighboring settlement. Her reply reminded me where I was and snapped me out of the vacant state of mind I had fallen into after the electric gate of the settlement of Carmel, the little girl’s home, let me in a little while before. “Shalom,” I said, then went back to the car and hightailed it out of there, first along the access road leading from the house, then onto the street and out of the settlement.

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Bedouin residents near the settlement of Carmel. (Photo: Ilana Hammerman)

I didn’t know anyone yet in Carmel, a gated community south of Hebron in the West Bank. I had entered alone, and after driving once and then twice through its three streets, or maybe four or five, I lapsed into a kind of reverie brought on by my increasingly surrealistic surroundings. No living creature – neither man, woman, nor child, neither dog nor even a stray cat – could be seen on the clean, tidy streets and tiled sidewalks that curve into convenient parking bays. The garbage bins, too, stand implacably in their appointed places, and on both sides are handsome homes with red-tile roofs, most of them nestling amid lush green lawns, trees and bushes.

The streets end at a no-man’s-land that circles the settlement, demarcated by a barbed-wire fence. On the other, eastern side of one section of the fence, and almost abutting it, are large tents, tin shacks, lean-tos and makeshift goat pens. Between them, walking or running, were boys, girls, women and teenagers. They are from the Hadaleen Bedouin tribe, next to whose meager dwellings Carmel was established some 30 years ago.

Israel mourns the loss of three bright teens, students at a Yeshiva school whose lives were cut short. When will violence stop and will the Israëli cabinet members have the courage to meet PA president Abbas for peace talks. As Haaretz wrote today:

“There are a lot of loose ends, but one thing is clear: When Israel refuses to
pay the price of peace, it can’t avoid paying the price of no peace.”

Continued below the fold …

Israeli security forces kill three armed Palestinians suspected of planning terror attack

KFAR YATTA, Southern Hebron Hills (Haaretz) Nov. 26, 2013 – Israeli security forces killed three ‘armed’ Palestinians suspected of planning a terrorist attack against Israel in the coming days. The three were killed in a joint raid by troops from the special police unit and the Shin Bet in the South Hebron Hills village of Kafr Yatta.

The suspects were members of a Salafist group operating in the Hebron area, the Shin Bet said in a statement, adding that pistols and explosive devices were found in their vehicle during the raid.

A senior Israeli officer said that a manhunt had been out after this particular group for the last week. He said the Israeli forces had opened fired in the direction of a vehicle carrying two of the passengers during the raid, and that an exchange of fire subsequently erupted. “This is a local organization of a cell with an extreme religious orientation,” said the officer.

“The rise in popularity of the Salafis in the West Bank is apparently the result of disappointment with the PA and the difficulties that Hamas, which is being pressured by both the PA and Israel, is having in presenting a viable, stable alternative.

Last year, saw a rise in their organized operations, most of which are not political and do not involve terror activity. Still, there have recently been large assemblies of Salafist groups at several locations in the West Bank, including in the Hebron area. Suddenly, from nowhere, you hear that 30,000 people are attending a gathering at the stadium in the South Hebron Hills.”

Witnesses told Haaretz that large forces surrounded several houses in the eastern edge of the village and declared the area a closed military site, preventing the residents from leaving their homes for hours on end, and that many youths clashed with the soldiers, hurling stones at them, and being repelled by gas grenades and rubber bullets.

Yatta residents identified the dead as Moussa Pansha, 22, Mohammed Nairuh, 23, and Mahmoud Anjar, also in his twenties, adding that all three were members of the Salafist movement of the village. There were contradictory reports as to whether the three were killed after exchanges of fire or were ambushed by an Israeli unit.

Palestinian city Halhul is built atop Mount Nabi Yunis, the highest peak in the West Bank at 1,030 meters above sea level. The city has a land area of 37,335 dunams, lies 5 km north of Hebron in Area A of the Palestinian Authority, under its jurisdiction. During the Second Intifada, Israel confiscated some 1,500 dunams of land from the Halhul municipality.

○ March 1979, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) enforced a curfew in Halhul lasting sixteen days [Source UN Report Nov. 1979] . Two youths, one a young girl, were shot and killed by Jewish settlers while protesting during the curfew.
○ 30 September 2000, 21 year-old Halhul resident, Muhammad Yunes Mahmoud ‘Ayash a-Z’amreh, was injured by Israeli forces while in Beit Ummar and died of his wounds four days later on 03 October 2000.
○ 22 October 2000, 25 year-old Halhul resident Na’el ‘Ali Zama’arah was shot dead by Israeli security forces during a clash that took place after a funeral service.
○ 12 February 2002, Israeli combat helicopters shelled the house of Lieutenant Ahmed ‘Abdul ‘Aziz Zama’ra in Halhul. The IDF operation also destroyed a police station, several houses, and a machine shop suspected of manufacturing weapons for Palestinian militants. A 22 year old Palestinian from Gaza, Tareq al-Hindawi, was shot dead during the operation.
○ 11 February 2002, a Palestinian Security Guards member was killed, and two other Palestinians wounded, during an IDF operation that penetrated into Halhul to arrest Islamic Jihad leader Jneid Murad, together with Khaled Zabarah, suspected of involvement in smuggling and shooting incidents.
○ 14 May 2002, a special Israeli unit entered Halhul and beseiged the Palestinian General Intelligence Service offices, shooting dead two security officers on their wanted list, Lieutenant Colonel Khaled Abu al-Khiran and Lieutenant Ahmed ‘Abdul ‘Aziz Zama’ra, as they attempted to escape. An IDF spokesman said the two were wanted for attacks on Israelis in the Hebron area, and had been shot for refusing to halt. According to Palestinian sources, both had been targeted by previous Israeli attempts to kill them, one involving a missile attack on their office. The IDF also arrested Jamal Hasan Abu Ra’sbeh, a member of Force 17, and Yasser Arafat’s personal guard.
○ August 2003, Israeli police uncovered a large workhouse for fabricating forged drivers license and Israeli ID cards.
○ June 2005, according to a Tel Aviv University report, a four man Jewish terrorist cell (who allegedly killed over 10 Palestinians) lead by a former Jewish Defense League senior member, had burnt down the mayor of Halhul’s house. No one was injured in that incident.
○ 24 March 2007, Israeli authorities demolished a house built without an Israeli permit. The case was fought in an appeal, reaching the Israeli Supreme Court, which confirmed the verdict. Demonstrations ensued.
○ 22 June 2007, Halhul resident Shadi Rajeh ‘Abdallah al-Mtur was shot dead while walking to a grocery store contiguous to an Israeli checkpoint, after failing to obey an order to stop. He did not have an ID card.
○ 6 October 2011, two men from Halhul were arrested on charges of having murdered Asher and Yonatan Palmer as a result of a stone-throwing incident near the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba on 23 September 2011.
○ December 2011, the UNDP decided to assist in establishing a mental health center in Halhul.
○ 20 November 2012, a Halhul resident, Hamdi Muhammad Jawad Musa al-Fallah, was shot by IDF soldiers after aiming a laser pen at them during a clash between the soldiers and local Palestinians near the Halhul-Hebron bridge on Route 35.

[Source: Wikipedia: Conflict under the Israeli occupation]

American and Belgium are ready to kick-off. Go USA!!!

Why do people who hate soccer seem to feel compelled to tell everyone else about it?

Do they think anyone enjoys listening to them?

My brother offers harsh words for the administration’s direction with Veteran’s hospitals and their nominee to run the Department of Veteran’s Affairs . I don’t know enough about Robert McDonnell to dismiss him as a “Republican soap and toothpaste salesman,” but I generally do defer to Phil when it comes to anything having to do with America’s health care systems.

Maine’s governor is certifiably insane and probably should be arrested.

I don’t think he has any chance of being reelected.

Welcome the newest Democrat to the party. Evan Alvarez, the chairman of the Mississippi Federation of College Republicans, has resigned his position and decided to switch parties. His father came to America in 1959 after Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba. For the next 55 years, Cuban-Americans would serve as one of the Republican Party’s most loyal constituencies, particularly in the Deep South. But, that has changed:

Cubans in the U.S. have long identified with or leaned toward the Republican Party, even as Hispanics overall have tilted Democrat. But the party affiliation of Cubans has undergone a shift over the past decade, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of survey data.

Less than half (47%) of Cuban registered voters nationwide now say they identify with or lean toward the Republican Party—down from the 64% who said the same about the GOP a decade ago, according to 2013 survey data. Meanwhile, the share of Cubans who identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party has doubled from 22% to 44% over the same time period, according to the survey of Hispanics.

It has particularly changed among people Evan Alvarez’s age. According to Pew, “Over half (56%) of Cubans ages 18 to 49 identified with or leaned toward the Democratic Party compared with 39% of those 50 years and older.”

You can imagine what this means for the fortunes of Republican candidates in Florida. It means that a contemporary candidate would have to do much better than George W. Bush did with non-Cubans in 2000 and 2004 to have any shot at winning Florida.

Florida’s Latino population is unique because it is made up primarily of Cubans and Puerto Ricans, neither of whom have the immigration status concerns of many Mexicans and Central Americans. Still, the Puerto Ricans don’t share the Cubans’ Cold War affinity for the GOP, and their population has been growing. You can see why that matters:

In 2008, Obama won 57 percent of Florida’s Hispanic vote; Republican nominee John McCain, 42 percent. However, Cubans supported McCain 53 percent to 47 percent. Non-Cuban Hispanics backed Obama by 65 percent to 33 percent.

Obviously, Barack Obama won Florida in 2008, and then again in 2012. I think we should expect any likely Republican presidential candidate to do worse in 2016, both among Cuban-Americans and Puerto Ricans. That means that they will have to do a lot better than McCain and Romney did with whites. How do you think they will go about doing that?

Evan Alvarez is quitting the party because of the influence of the Tea Party in Mississippi, which is basically a way of politely saying that the party is too racist for this young Cuban-American.

This is a canary in a coal mine.

Without winning Florida, a Republican’s path to the White House is all but blocked.