Kennedy: ‘Everyone looked like a terrorist to me’

I long-since came to the conclusion that I simply can’t watch much Fox News because if I did, just because of the sheer volume of stupidity, I would spend my time writing about little else than Fox’s limitless potential for vomiting up heavy doses of sophistry, distortions and half-truths, served up drip-feed style to its loyal and dumb-downed viewed base.

Some media outlets latched on to the fact that Fox analyst Lt. Col. Ralph Peters and contributor Stacey Dash had some unflattering things to say about Obama — what a shock — as Peters called Obama a “total pussy,” and Dash said the president doesn’t “give a shit” about terrorism.

But I didn’t even think the latter barb from Dash was the most obnoxious part of the video below:

https://youtu.be/8MvFkc5Xdyk

I thought Kennedy’s — yes, that Kennedy — comments were actually the most repellent. She had this to say after contemplating Obama’s recent speech on the San Bernardino, Calif., shooting:

What I was watching for is I want to feel better. I want to feel better about my friends and neighbors, and this morning as I rode the subway to work, I was looking around — and you know, I feel kind of bad saying this — but everyone looked like a terrorist to me. And I don’t want to feel that way in my city and in my country, and I want the president — no matter what my party is — I want the president to make me feel better when something so horrific has just happened. I don’t think he gave it the proper context. I don’t he gave proper domestic strategy, and he certainly didn’t give me the peace of mind.

A privileged white female who gets to rant on television for a living just wants to “feel better” about herself and the people for whom she cares. Seriously? What about the families of the victims? What about peaceful believers of Islam whose lives get more difficult and complicated every time a fresh batch of terrorists cause chaos in the States or harm their fellow believers in Europe and the Middle East? What about the plight of closeted gays or nonbelievers living in the shadows in places like Saudi Arabia and Syria? What about oppressed women?

Even worse, Kennedy’s line, “everyone looked like a terrorist to me,” in true Fox fashion, needlessly stirs up anxiety among the network’s already panicky viewers, and Fox and its cronies then use that fear to prop up their shallow political message that stigmatizes nearly every outgroup except, of course, the privileged and affluent. Indeed, people like Donald Trump and Ben Carson are byproducts of this sinister strategy. You get what you pay for, but you also eventually wind up paying for what you get, and the American public is complicit in allowing this echo chamber of distortions and hysteria to fester and metastasize these last 20 years.

One has to wonder, then, what exactly could Obama have said to protect Kennedy’s precious feelings about the real or imagined threat of terrorism along her path to work on the subway? Since his name is Obama, after all, and since Fox analysts would find something for which to castigate him even if the government’s budget was perfectly balanced, health care and immigration were finally resolved, the world was a peaceful place and the sky rained down Skittles and unfiltered joy, I’m guessing the answer is nothing.

[Graphic credit: https://hipiseverything.wordpress.com]

Are we moving backward on race?

racism over in america

I’ve heard the term “post racial” tossed around a lot lately, especially in light of the 50th anniversary of the march through Selma, Ala., and the nation’s first black president — the symbolism of a confident black man driving with his entourage across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, which is named for a racist former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, was indeed a powerful image (video here) — but after Travon Marton, Eric Garner, the unrest in Ferguson, Mo., this and now this, I wonder if we aren’t regressing on race in America:

The coroner of Claiborne County, Miss., said a 54-year-old African American man, Otis Byrd, was found dead hanging from a tree on Thursday. The FBI and Mississippi Bureau of Investigation are reportedly on the scene and investigating, and the local chapter of the NAACP has asked the Justice Department to join the investigation. Byrd reportedly went missing 10 days ago when a friend dropped him off at Vicksburg’s Riverwalk Casino. Authorities discovered Byrd’s body “hanging about a half mile from his last known residence.” In 1980, Byrd was convicted of murdering a woman in the same county for $101. Byrd served 25 years in prison and was paroled in 2006.

We don’t know yet whether this apparent lynching was motivated by race or not, but unless he underwent some serious personal reforms in the last eight years, he doesn’t appear to have been an angel and could have had enemies. Or it could have been motivated by racism. In any case, it goes without saying that the work of civil rights doesn’t and shouldn’t stop just because the son of a white woman from Kansas and black man from Kenya inhabits the Oval Office or gives a moving speech in the New South that’s still struggling to exorcise the ghosts of a sordid past.

Although America really needs a figure like Martin Luther King Jr. to bravely lead the nation into a new era of modernity and get us closer to completing the work of people like Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, John Brown, William Lloyd Garrison, King and Malcolm X , what we got instead were pale imitations and liberal moralizing from the Howard Schultzs of the world. So, don’t despair, coffee lovers. Tweet: Just hop down to Planet Starbucks and strike up a high-minded conversation on race with your neighborhood college student.

UPDATE: According to a report from the Los Angeles Times, the preliminary autopsy indicates that the incident involving Otis Byrd was a suicide:

Claiborne County Sheriff Marvin Lucas told the Los Angeles Times that while a bedsheet was wrapped around the man’s neck, there were no other visible signs of distress on the body. The man’s hands and feet were not tied or bound, his mouth was not gagged, there were no other outward signs of injuries.

Lucas added that no note was found on the body and authorities have not heard of any threats against the man.

The full report is expected to be released next week.

‘In theory but not in practice’

Those are two keys words in federal open records law, as Hillary Clinton was apparently using a personal email server while conducting the nation’s business as secretary of state. According to this story from the Associated Press, Clinton retains ownership of the emails that are on her personal account, even though they should be subject to the Freedom of Information Act:

In theory but not in practice, Clinton’s official emails would be accessible to anyone who requested copies under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. Under the law, citizens and foreigners can compel the government to turn over copies of federal records for zero or little cost. Since Clinton effectively retained control over emails in her private account even after she resigned in 2013, the government would have to negotiate with Clinton to turn over messages it can’t already retrieve from the inboxes of federal employees she emailed.

The AP has waited more than a year under the open records law for the State Department to turn over some emails covering Clinton’s tenure as the nation’s top diplomat, although the agency has never suggested that it didn’t possess all her emails.

As the AP report also mentions, President Barack Obama signed a bill into law last year that prohibited government officials from using private email accounts to conduct business “unless they retain copies of messages in their official account or forward copies to their government accounts within 20 days.” Although the measure didn’t actually become law until after Clinton left office, this seems to beg the question: Why were government officials allowed to use private email accounts for work in the first place? It shouldn’t matter if a government official claims to be forwarding all business emails to a public account from a private email address. This provides too many opportunities for abuse. Federal employees and officials should have been conducting public business with government email accounts the whole time. The Internet is not exactly a new thing. Where was this legislation 20 years ago?

President tunes out cable news

For all its tireless bluster, FOX News is, for all intent and purposes, wasting its time and energy trying to chastise the president or somehow influence policy. Why? Because President Barack Obama isn’t watching cable news, and that includes CNN and MSNBC. Any president worth his wait in salt wouldn’t be influenced by the media anyway, but for all of Obama’s inadequacies at this point, namely his hawkish drone program and his thus far failed promise to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, we can at least take heart in the fact that we have a president who still consumes publications like The New York Times and The Washington Post in written form, whether in newsprint or digital, which, I might add, is more preferable by several large degrees from a vice presidential nominee in 2008 — who would have been one heart beat away from assuming the highest office in the land — not being able to name a single publication that she reads on a daily basis.

Here is former press secretary Jay Carney talking about Obama’s media proclivities:

The fabric of the U.S.

Allen West reported to us on July 29 that he enjoys the chance he has to “educate, edify, and challenge us all to think beyond the obvious.” He then takes exception with a statement that President Barack Obama made about Muslims, namely, thanking Muslims for their 

achievements and contributions … to building the very fabric of our nation and strengthening the core of our democracy.

West invites us to “scour the annals of history” to look for instances in which Muslims have contributed to American history in this way. He picks up here:

I’d like some audience participation here. Please share what you think are the “achievements and contributions” for which we should all thank Muslim Americans in building the very fabric of our nation? Oh – and don’t forget “common values” — please share those as well.

I’ll go first. And I’ll go way back. I know Abraham was the father of all nations and he was Isaac and Ishmael’s dad. And in Genesis 16:11-12, (NIV) “The angel of the Lord also said to her (Hagar): You are now pregnant and you will give birth to a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard of your misery. He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.”

So to Muslims, I say thank you for being a part of the Judeo-Christian foundation that established this great nation. And I am thankful for this Bible verse so I understand God’s blessing upon what would ultimately lead to the growth of violent jihad.

The claim here, dubious at best, is that Ishmael was the ancestor of Arabs, and thus, a progenitor of Muslims, who will collectively and by extension “be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers,” as is the perception of radical Muslims.

In any case, Obama’s statement was obviously was not to be taken literally that Muslims were present and participated in the founding of the nation in 1787 — that’s absurd — just that they contributed to strengthening the modern democracy and cultural diversity that is the United States, which provides for the inclusion of people of all religions and all backgrounds, a doctrine which, as it happens, is the fabric of our nation.

Obama speaks candidly on climate change

Although he should have been talking about climate change five years ago, it’s good to see Obama siding with science and advocating for a price on carbon. Better late than never. Here’s a preview from Tom Friedman’s interview on Showtime:

I particularly liked Friedman’s example about climate change deniers in Congress consulting the 97 percent of doctors who may diagnose their children, but on climate change, they want to consult the other 3 percent minority. This, I have found also, applies to religion, but instead, the percentages are more like 99-to-1, as Christians and other believers, despite 99 percent of scientists being in agreement about evolution and the inadequacy of creationism to explain our world, they still trust the dissenting 1 percent, and without any evidence all the while.

Bogus legal challenges to Obamacare provision

In a case of Republicans wanting to have it both ways, after 36 states — many of them led by GOP governors — opted out of establishing their own health insurance exchanges, which ironically just defaulted to the federal government anyway, now various conservative groups have filed legal challenges claiming the tax credit provision of Obamacare doesn’t apply to the federal exchange, you know, the same federal marketplace in which Republican leaders wanted no part.

Mustering whatever strained, desperate and pedantic argument they could find, critics argue the law is bunk because it stipulates people can receive the tax credits “through an exchange established by the state,” and the law doesn’t specifically link the credits to the federal exchange.

Of course, conservative types are tripping over themselves to throw some modicum of legitimacy behind this argument and highlighting even the smallest “victory.” Judge Paul Friedman of the D.C. District Court recently rejected a claim by the U.S. Justice Department that one lawsuit should be dismissed, but denied the plaintiff’s request to suspend implementation of the law. Friedman was expected to hear arguments this afternoon.

An article from right-wing The Daily Caller couldn’t have been more jubilant that Friedman was at least going to hear the case.

According to a Daily Caller story from earlier today:

According to the text of the Affordable Care Act, the IRS may issue tax-credit subsidies for premium assistance only to an exchange “established by the state.”

Those filing the lawsuit contend that this wording doesn’t apply to those on the federal exchange that serves 36 states.

The Justice Department has claimed for months that not only are they empowered to authorize the subsidies, but that opposition groups don’t even have the standing to challenge them in court.

“All along, the IRS’ supporters have said, ‘We should do this and there’s nobody that can stop us, because nobody has standing to challenge us,’” Michael Cannon, the director of health policy at the Cato Institute, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “[Tuesday’s] ruling is a defeat for the IRS, victory for the plaintiffs, taxpayers and democracy.”

Friedman’s decision not to dismiss the lawsuit per the Justice Department’s request solidifies individuals’ right to stand up to the IRS and strengthens a Virginia lawsuit also proceeding against Obamacare in a federal court in Richmond, Cannon told TheDCNF.

Simon Lazarus, an attorney with the left-ring Constitutional Accountability Center, dubbed the challenged “preposterous” because, according to a Los Angeles Times report, they ask judges to give the law a “nonsensical” interpretation.

No one, not even the Supreme Court justices, were under any delusions when they upheld the individual mandate that the Affordable Care Act was to be applied nationally to address a national concern. Even if the clause in question was amended to read, “through an exchange established by the state and federal government,” the federal exchange was designed as a catch-all for people living in states opting out of the federal marketplace. The tax credits at least implicitly — and I would argue explicitly — apply to the federal exchange for this reason.

Much to Cannon and the Cato Institute’s chagrin, no federal judge has actually ruled on the IRS’s determination that the tax credits apply to the federal exchange. Even if they ruled in the GOP’s favor, the matter would still have to be considered — again — by the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court already upheld one of the more contentious parts of the legislation by a 5-4 vote. Is it really conceivable to think that the court would then reverse course on what appears to be less controversial and more or less about semantics?

Tea Party post Obama

I wonder what will happen with the Tea Party when Obama leaves office and none of the over the top alarmist warnings come to fruition about impending doom and an American socialist state.

Will they just latch on to some other wild conspiracies or will they disappear into oblivion? I hope for the latter but will bet on the former.

Health care status quo

The rollout, especially the website, has been a boondoggle for sure, but people are being dropped from coverage because their old health insurance policies don’t measure up to the standards of Obamacare, which means the people that were dropped had bad policies to begin with, whether they realized it or not.

Obama should be embarrassed that he said time and again, “If you like your coverage you can keep it,” but the fact is, the folks who were dropped had shit policies from the start. America either joins the scores of nations (Canada, Britain, Germany, France, Japan, Sweden, Australia, Denmark, Portugal, Greece, South Korea, Taiwan, the Netherlands and Switzerland) that have instituted some form of universal health care or we become satisfied with the status quo.

On health care debate, GOP desperation has set in

This whole GOP-led debate about the evils of Obamacare reminds me of Christian apologists. Opponents are desperate to point to any possible deficiency in the law to support a repeal. When all of Christian believers’ stock arguments have long-since been debunked, apologists like Sye Ten Bruggencate, William Lane Craig and scores of others are just relegated to playing word games and rote sophism.

Similarly, the Obamacare legislation was passed by a democratically elected Congress, subsequently vetted and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. While the roll out of the health care bill’s website allowing people to register for the exchanges has been somewhat of a train wreck, people like Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., aren’t just satisfied in pointing out legitimate concerns about the site; they have to make up arguments too in order to continue railing against it.

Blackburn recently claimed that the website will jeopardize people’s medical record privacy, and thus, be in violation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. This argument suffers from two unavoidable problems: First, the only health question on the form is, “Do you smoke?” The rest is just basic information that any insurance company would necessarily gather when signing up a new member. So, essentially, if Blackburn wants to take issue with the information the Obamacare website is gathering, she must also be prepared to take issue with the information nearly every insurance company in this nation requests from potential customers.

Second, and more importantly, HIPPA doesn’t even apply to insurance programs in which customers willingly enter their information. It only applies to health care providers and in some cases, business associates (human resource agents, etc.).

So, whatever personal information Blackburn is attempting to protect regarding the health care website might also apply to hundreds if not thousands of health insurance websites and, indeed, even retail sites across the nation.

Here is the full exchange from CNN, in which Blackburn could not name one question on the site that violates HIPPA: