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Alyssa

Tell All the Truth But Tell It Slant

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Jun 1, 2010 at 10:52 pm

So, over the weekend, I kind of decided that my initial reaction to Lynn Hirschberg’s M.I.A. profile had maybe been a little lazy. And so I wrote a column about it for The Atlantic, situating it in a larger argument about about celebrities as reliable narrators:

Some celebrity personae, of course, are so patently false that there’s nothing to do but enjoy them. No investigative journalists need to be dispatched to determine whether David Bowie is actually an alien manifesting as an apocalyptic rock star, or whether Sasha Fierce causes trouble in Jay-Z and Beyonce’s marriage. They’re just vehicles, and amusing, harmless ones at that. No one is deceived, but everyone enjoys the music.


Queasy but great entertainment—and great entertainment journalism—have often come out of the disjunction between established celebrity narratives (at least the ones that are meant to be taken seriously) and reality, or the breakdown of a once-true narrative. Vanessa Grigoriadis’s 2008 Rolling Stone profile of Britney Spears came as the former teen pop star was punishing her handlers, America, and herself for imposing a restrictive, virginal life story on her by going publicly, shockingly crazy. But the piece also exposed that story as false in the first place. Britney was sexually active before her breakout album, and she’d had breast implants. What was interesting was less that she and her management team lied about those events, but how she succeeded, and then failed, to live out the history that was retroactively created for her.


It goes from there. This whole thing has been an interesting exercise in a phenomenon I’ve been thinking and writing about a fair bit lately, the investment and ownership fans feel they have over celebrities they care about. I take pop culture really, really seriously, something I cop to in the piece and have never been shy about here. But there’s almost no creator of pop culture I care about so much that it would hurt me to see them behave badly, or make bad art, or that it would be difficult for me to acknowledge that they’d behaved badly or put out a rotten movie or whatever.

Health

Business Groups Reluctant To Join NFIB In Suing Federal Government Over Health Reform

By Igor Volsky on Jun 1, 2010 at 9:00 pm

Earlier last month, the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) — a conservative group aligned with Republican interests — surprised other business organizations when it joined a state-based lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of health care reform. Having successfully lobbied against the employer mandate and in favor of a so-called SHOP exchange that would allow small businesses to purchase coverage in large pools, the NFIB’s members — most of which employ six or fewer staff — stood to gain a lot for the new law. They would be exempt from the free-rider provisions (those only applied to employers with more than 50 employees) and could qualify for a small business tax credit.

Immediately after the announcement, business groups of various sizes and ideological persuasions distanced themselves from the lawsuit. “At this time, we have no plans to do so,” a representative of the National Association of Manufacturers told The Hill. The Chamber of Commerce also said it would not join the suit and would instead pursue an “aggressive strategy of battling the regulations” of reform.

The NFIB is having a hard time persuading smaller, state-based business groups to join their effort. As one article from New Jersey notes, small business groups seem are weary of the lawsuit:

“We’re not at a point in time where we are prepared to jump on board,” said Jim Kirkos, president/chief executive officer, “because so far, the reviews have been mixed” on the law. Two committees are debating whether to join, he added. Kirkos said about 78 percent of members employ 50 or fewer people and 60 percent have 10 or fewer. “So under those circumstances, those businesses may not necessarily be against the current health-reform legislation,” he said.

Because of that, the chamber will stick to providing seminars, such as the law’s impact on businesses, said Kirkos, and he will talk to more members before taking a position on the lawsuit. Kirkos said the health care issue is further down on his priority list after economic development, the workforce, education, transportation and tourism. [...]

The New Jersey Chamber of Commerce, which opposed the health care measure, serves 1,600 businesses. The chamber “is not involved in the suit,” said Scott Goldstein, manager of communications.

Small businesses may not be overly enthusiastic about the new law — given the misinformation about the law and the complexity of the measure, that’s not surprising — but they would be foolish to join a frivolous lawsuit that cuts them out of negotiations with HHS about any new regulations.

LGBT

Rep. Djou: Vote To Repeal DADT Came From ‘Personal Experience’ As Army Reservist, Saw Soldiers Game Policy

By Igor Volsky on Jun 1, 2010 at 8:00 pm

Rep. Charles Djou (R-HI), who won a special election to fill the seat vacated by Neil Abercrombie, was one of only 5 Republicans in the House to support an amendment establishing the process to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT). On Friday, Djou explained that his personal experiences as an army reservist convinced him that the policy was broken:

DJOU: On that particular issue, it comes from personal experience. I have served for nearly 10 years now in the United States Army Reserve. What concerned me about the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy is that it just simply doesn’t work. And I have seen too many instances as an army reservist, soldiers would sign up for a re-enlistment bonus. Get this gigantic sum from the American taxpayer. And then as soon as the unit gets called up to mobilize to Iraq and Afghanistan, they suddenly claim they are gay, with no prior indication of that whatsoever. Get the discharge and keep the bonus. That’s wrong, that’s unfair and that’s why this policy should be changed.

Watch it:

The Advocate points out that Djou has a mixed record on gay issues. Djou opposes opposing civil unions and marriage equality but allegedly “supports providing domestic-partner benefits to federal employees, supports domestic-partner tax equity, supports the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and opposes efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution with a discriminatory anti-gay-marriage provision.”

Yglesias

Endgame

By ThinkProgress on Jun 1, 2010 at 7:03 pm

By Matt Zeitlin

I’m fly as a falcon, soaring through the sky

- Alabama politics is pretty weird, and not just recently. Here’s Joshua Greene’s 2005 profile of Roy Moore of ten commandments fame.

- Crazy and incompetent is a bad combination for a small, widely despised state.

- Speaking of which, five years of misguided Gaza policy.

- How dare Jon Chait not blog on Memorial Day.

- How Tim Noah wrote this article (in 2005!) about how many times we’ve killed the number three man in Al Qaeda without referencing Spinal Tap is beyond me.

- Hipsters and college students still buying lots of beer. But everyone else isn’t.

Snoop Dogg – Gz and Hustlas.

Climate Progress

Holder: We Can Investigate BP While It Cleans Up The Crime Scene

By Brad Johnson on Jun 1, 2010 at 6:42 pm

Eric HolderThis afternoon, Attorney General Eric Holder announced “that the federal government has launched criminal and civil investigations into the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that is now the worst in U.S. history,” even as BP runs the disaster response. The Department of Justice investigation comes on top of the Minerals Management Service-Coast Guard investigation, the work of the independent Presidential commission, and several oversight investigations by Congress. Saying the criminal investigation had begun weeks ago, Holder told reporters that the federal government “will prosecute to the fullest extent of the law anyone who has violated the law“:

As we move forward we will be guided by some relatively simple principles. We will ensue that every cent, every cent of taxpayer money will be repaid and that damages to the environment and wildlife will be reimbursed. We will make certain that those responsible clean up the mess that they have made… And we will prosecute, to the fullest extent of the law, anyone who has violated the law.

A significant component of the investigation will involve the scope of the environmental damage caused by the unfolding disaster in the Gulf, using the relevant provisions of the the Clean Water Act, the Oil Solution Act and the Migratory Bird and Endangered Species Act.

This ongoing investigation will take place even as BP continues to exercise control over nearly every aspect of the disaster response. In addition to the efforts to stop the leaks, BP manages claims processing, thousands of environmental contractors on land and sea, volunteer assistance, phone lines, access to the disaster site, and data collection. Everyone from Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs to National Incident Commander Thad Allen have expressed that BP and its management are essential to the clean up. Holder told reporters he agrees, and believes that his criminal investigation won’t come into conflict with keeping BP involved in the crime scene:

It is in BP’s interest to keep doing what they’re doing, in fact even doubling [the effort].

As President Obama noted last week, there are many ways in which BP’s interests are not aligned with the public interest. If BP attempts to limit its liability by mitigating the environmental damage, it is serving the public interest. However, there are any number of ways that BP can serve its shareholder responsibilities and protect its management that do not serve the public, from limiting media access to the carnage it has wreaked on the people and environs of the Gulf Coast to the possible manipulation and destruction of physical evidence. The disaster response has been repeatedly tainted by the possibility that BP has been attempting to limit the visible damage to greater expense — has that affected the decision-making on dispersants? On the sinking of the rig?

With its practical authority over all of the people of the Coast now reliant on BP to provide information and employment, the company can directly and indirectly intimidate witnesses, workers, and victims, hide damage, and stall outside investigators. BP’s executives are also safe in expecting that their positions are secure so long as BP is considered irreplaceable by the federal government, a reputation they have taken pains to build throughout this catastrophe.

It’s in BP’s interest to limit the physical damage caused by its negligence, but it’s also in BP’s interest to limit the political damage — as demonstrated by the hiring of Cheney spokeswoman Anne Womack-Kolton, not exactly a friend of accountability for the energy industry’s crimes against the planet and the American people.

Security

Pelosi: ‘I Don’t Want To Go Into A Discussion Of The Blockade Of Gaza’

By Amanda Terkel on Jun 1, 2010 at 6:30 pm

Pelosi and Netanyahu Today, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) held a conference call with bloggers, where she received questions — including from ThinkProgress — about Israel’s raid of the flotilla carrying humanitarian aid and activists bound for Gaza. Pelosi refused to speak directly about whether Israel’s blockade is causing a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, saying that the focus should instead be on solving Middle East peace through a two-state solution:

PELOSI: Well, first of all, this incident, as you mentioned, is very recent. There is very strong interest in getting the facts and a transparent and credible investigation is what people are calling for — that’s what the White House has mentioned, and that’s what I support as well. We have to have the facts on which to make a judgment about how we go forward. I don’t know — I appreciate what you’re saying that people are suffering from different physical challenges because of the blockade. I don’t know that. I know blockades have consequences. … But the fact is, this is a terribly regrettable situation. I regret the loss of life first and foremost, and again, call for a credible and transparent investigation about how this came to be. […]

TP QUESTION: Do you think the blockade of Gaza should be lifted because it’s causing undue suffering on the people in the region?

PELOSI: [...] I don’t want to go into a discussion of the blockade of Gaza. I hope that we can end that by having a resolution in terms of Middle East peace. That’s where we spend our time, not necessarily on one particular tactics of one country or the next, but on the bigger picture, which is we must have peace in the Middle East. It must respect both sides, it must have a two-state solution — and I emphasize the solution part of it, so that both sides feel respected and well-treated and safe as they go forward with the new peace agreement — and I hope that whatever actions are taken on both sides, it’s in furtherance of that peace.

Though Congress doesn’t seem to want to talk about it, Israel’s blockade of Gaza has received harsh condemnation from officials and organizations worldwide. Progressive pro-Israel organization J Street issued a statement strongly condemning the human toll of Israel’s blockade: “This shocking outcome of an effort to bring humanitarian relief to the people of Gaza is in part a consequence of the ongoing, counterproductive Israeli blockade of Gaza.” Both the EU and Russia called for the “immediate opening of crossings for the flow of humanitarian aid, commercial goods and people to and from Gaza.” U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said, “Had Israelis heeded to my call and to the call of the international community by lifting the blockade of Gaza, this tragic incident would not have happened.”

As Matt Duss noted in today’s Progress Report, “Though the ostensible reason for the Israeli and Egyptian-enforced siege on Gaza is to weaken the militant group Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since ejecting its Fatah rivals in 2007, it has actually had the reverse effect.” CAP Senior Fellow Brian Katulis pointed out in a 2009 report, co-written Marc Lynch and Robert Adler, that the blockade “has hurt the Palestinian people while not substantially inhibiting Hamas. And simultaneously it allows Hamas to blame persistent shortages on the Israeli blockade.”

Politics

Arizona ‘BUYcott’ organizer: ‘ID-ing everybody’ will make the ‘illegal criminals disappear like cockroaches.’

By Andrea Nill Sanchez on Jun 1, 2010 at 5:47 pm

This weekend, tea party activists gathered in Arizona to express support for the state’s new immigration law, SB-1070, by launching a “buycott” campaign to support state businesses. Tony Venuti, publisher of AZ Tourist News, has spearheaded the “Arizona Buycott” webpage which lists the businesses which want their support of SB-1070 to be documented. The front page of the website features a video in which Venuti lays out his own immigration views. Venuti states that the criminals, or “bad hombres,” need to get their “butts out of town.” According to Venuti, by “ID-ing” everyone, the “illegal criminals” will “disappear like cockroaches”:

Let me tell you something, there’s gonna be procession down into the border South when you see a lot of illegal criminals knowing they are going to be compelled to be ID’d or thrown in jail, you’re gonna see them disappear back south like a bunch of cockroaches. Trust me. The other ones that are here, we’re gonna have to deal with them and I don’t know how that’s going to be dealt with. We don’t need to worry about that now.

Watch it:

Today, the Arizona Republic reported that “the exodus of illegal and legal immigrants predicted by some as a result of Arizona’s tough new immigration law is expected to hurt a variety of businesses that directly and indirectly cater to immigrant populations.” If all of Arizona’s undocumented immigrants “disappeared,” the state could lose $26.4 billion in economic activity, $11.7 billion in gross state product, and approximately 140,324 jobs. Rather than worrying about the economic effects of the law itself, Tea Party Nation launched the separate “National Arizona BUYcott” campaign last month at the Winning Back America Conference, which was headlined by Liz Cheney, Fred Thompson, and Sarah Palin. Gina Loudon, the St. Louis tea party supporter who credits herself with coming up the buycott idea, has said “the goal is to render boycotts ineffective.” The personal financing website, mint.com, has estimated that Arizona’s fragile tourism industry has already lost $6-10 million in cancellations since the bill was signed into law.

More at Wonk Room.

Security

Denying The Gaza Humanitarian Crisis

By Matt Duss on Jun 1, 2010 at 5:40 pm

As I wrote yesterday, and as Ben Armbruster writes today, Israeli officials and their various American mouthpieces have been hard at work over the last couple weeks, and especially in the wake of yesterday’s disastrous attack on the Gaza aid flotilla, to deny that there is actually a humanitarian crisis going on in Gaza.

In a statement the day before the raid, Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said flatly “There is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza… We will not allow the flotilla to enter Gaza, as this is an infringement of Israel’s sovereignty.” (This was, of course, a tacit admission that Israel still occupies Gaza, but we’ll leave that aside for the moment.)

Echoing Ayalon Fox News yesterday, Charles Krauthammer asked “What exactly is the humanitarian crisis that the flotilla was actually addressing? There is none. No one is starving in Gaza. The Gazans have been supplied with food and social services by the U.N. for 60 years in part with American tax money.”

Speaking from remarkably similar talking points, Newt Gingrich told Politico “The U.S., through the United Nations relief organization, has been funding food and shelter for the people of Gaza for 60 years now. There was no humanitarian crisis; this was a deliberate political effort on the part of people who want to try to undermine the survival of Israel.”

On a conference call today arranged by the pro-settlement Israel Project, Netanyahu spokesman Mark Regev insisted that “The whole idea that there is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza is overstated.”

In 2008, a coalition of eight British-based human rights organizations on released a scathing report “claiming that the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip was at its worst point since Israel captured the territory in 1967″:

The report said that more than 1.1 million people, about 80 percent of Gaza’s residents, are now dependent on food aid, as opposed to 63 percent in 2006, unemployment is close to 40 percent and close to 70 percent of the 110,000 workers employed in the private sector have lost their jobs.

It also said that hospitals are suffering from power cuts of up to 12 hours a day, and the water and sewage systems were close to collapse, with 40-50 million liters of sewage pouring into the sea daily.

Al Jazeera’s Gregg Carlstrom recently wrote that “It’s true that Israel allows basic necessities — which Israeli officials often term ‘humanitarian aid’ — to enter the blockaded Gaza Strip. But it tightly controls both the type and quantity of goods allowed into the territory”:

Israel usually allows 81 items into Gaza, a list which is subject to revision on a near-daily basis. It is riddled with contradictions: Zaatar, a mix of dried spices, is allowed into the territory; coriander and cumin are not. Chick peas are allowed, while tahini was barred until March 2010.

“Luxury goods,” things like chocolate, are prohibited altogether. [...]

And those products allowed to enter Gaza are permitted only in modest quantities. In January 2007, Gaza received more than 10,000 truckloads of goods each month; by January 2009, that number was down to roughly 3,000.

A 2008 report from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) found that 70 per cent of Gaza’s population suffered from “food insecurity.” As Al Jazeera’s Sherine Tadros reported last week, the Israeli authorities allow little meat and fresh produce into Gaza, leading to widespread malnutrition in the territory.

Medical goods, too, are in short supply. The World Health Organisation says dozens of basic medicines are unavailable in Gaza because of the blockade.

Carlstrom also notes that “Navi Pillay, the United Nations’ human rights chief, called the blockade devastating in an August 2009 report. Pillay said it constituted collective punishment, illegal under international law.”

Peter Beinart writes in the Daily Beast today that the Israeli officials in charge of the blockade “adhere to what they call a policy of ‘no prosperity, no development, no humanitarian crisis.’”

In other words, the embargo must be tight enough to keep the people of Gaza miserable, but not so tight that they starve.

…and not so tight that Israeli flacks can’t continue to deny that Gaza is experiencing a humanitarian crisis.

Climate Progress

After a blow-out U.S. April, a record-busting May

By Joe Romm on Jun 1, 2010 at 4:56 pm

“Hellish heatwave” in Pakistan sets hottest temperature in Asia’s history, 53.5°C (128.3°F); in India, hundreds die, death toll expected to rise as record temperatures soar up to 122°F

UPDATE:  Brutal heatwave in India and Asia discussed at the end.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_oy2DMM6iwUU/TAU9l3dcMPI/AAAAAAAABj0/BKYujUuX7KQ/s1600/temp.records.053110.jpg

Sure it was easily the hottest April “” and hottest Jan-April “” in NASA’s temperature record.  And we set a new record 12-month global temperature, as predicted.

But you can’t expect Americans to believe in global warming if America isn’t setting records, can you?  (see “One more reason that recent U.S. polling on global warming is down slightly“).

Well, we are setting records — as Steve Scolnik of CapitalClimate explains in his post, “All-Time May Monthly Heat Records Set in Massachusetts, Rhode Island.”  The figure above, by Scolnik based on National Climatic Data Center data, might remind you of this must-have figure from a 2009 National Center for Atmospheric Research study:

Read more

Justice

Roberts Court Thumbs Its Nose At Precedent Yet Again

By Ian Millhiser on Jun 1, 2010 at 4:50 pm

roberts-hearingDuring his confirmation hearing, Chief Justice Roberts famously promised “to have the humility to recognize that [judges] operate within a system of precedent” and to accept his own “modest role” within this system.  Then he got confirmed.  The result has been a string of cases thumbing their nose at precedent, and today’s decision in Berghuis v. Thompkins is no different.

Thompkins involved a criminal defendant who was read his Miranda rights, and then sat unresponsively through two hours and forty-five minutes of interogation before confessing to his involvement in a shooting.  Today’s 5-4 decision effectively holds that such defendants waive their right to remain silent unless they expressly invoke it–a decision that it all well and good, except that it unambiguously conflicts with the Miranda decision itself:

An express statement that the individual is willing to make a statement and does not want an attorney followed closely by a statement could constitute a waiver. But a valid waiver will not be presumed simply from the silence of the accused after warnings are given or simply from the fact that a confession was in fact eventually obtained.

Indeed, as Justice Sotomayor notes in dissent, the Court in Miranda considered nearly identical facts to those presented by the Thompkins case, but it reached the opposite conclusion:

[T]he fact of lengthy interrogation or incommunicado incarceration before a statement is made is strong evidence that the accused did not validly waive his rights. In these circumstances the fact that the individual eventually made a statement is consistent with the conclusion that the compelling influence of the interrogation finally forced him to do so. It is inconsistent with any notion of a voluntary relinquishment of the privilege.

In Sotomayor’s words, “[r]arely do this Court’s precedents provide clearly established law so closely on point with the facts of a particular case.”

Thompkins joins a long line of Roberts Court decisions that replaced well-established precedents with conservative ideology.  These cases include:

So today’s decision is a disappointment, but it is also part of a pattern.  Apparently, Roberts is no longer required to show humility now that he’s been confirmed.

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