Prairie Weather

Who gets to be angry and who doesn't

It's a privilege thing -- like getting to sit and ride in the front of the bus.  Some people get it.  Others don't. 

All sorts of people are clucking about the violence, and I don’t condone violence, either. But as I wrote yesterday, something’s out of whack when citizens are told to control themselves while the government is allowed to be as violent as it wishes, with little to no accountability.

White “patriots” who want to secede or who are hankerin’ for an armed confrontation with the feds out at the Bundy Ranch = acceptable.  Tempers boiling over because of actual injustice = unacceptable.

Basically, the degree to which one is allowed to be angry, and at what, depends on how much power you have. The powerful can be as angry as they like, without criticism. But when those with less power are angry, they are condemned for it. ...Mahablog

I'm pissed off.  But then I'm pinko grey, so you're still pretty safe.

The $$$ cost of gun violence

Money-huggin', gun lovin' conservatives might want to think more carefully about their NRA membership and their politics.  Turns out the cost of support for unquestioned gun ownership is high -- very high.  We're not talking here about mere lives but about the more highly-regarded measure:  dollar costs.

Gun violence is costing America $229 billion... each year.

Skew-b-doo

While no one knows exactly how many Americans die in police custody each year, limited data gathered by the Bureau of Justice Statistics starts to give some sense of scale: At least 4,813 people died while in custody of local and state law enforcement between 2003 and 2009, according to the latest available report, published in 2011. Sixty-one percent of those deaths were classified as homicides.

As I reported last August in Mother Jones, the BJS collects data on what it calls "arrest-related deaths" that occur either during or shortly after police officers "engage in an arrest or restraint process." The agency reports that 41.7 percent of those who were deemed to have been killed by police while in custody were white, 31.7 percent were black, and 20.3 percent were Hispanic. (Others died from intoxication, suicide, or by accidental, natural, or unknown causes.)

But you could be forgiven for suspecting that's not the full picture ...MoJo

Skewing is an important skill for any bureaucrat or PR employee.  And "unknown causes" comes down to "stuff we'd get fired for admitting."  Skewed language is a key component.  How 'bout that "enhanced interrogation," for example?

Republicans worried about their ever-growing crowd of dodos

Let's face it:  if you blunder into Republican political territory, you'll find yourself tripping over third- and fourth-rate candidates.  As of today, The Hill reports, the crowd is growing to almost twenty. Oh, wait a minute... more!

“You’ve got to prevent it from becoming a ‘WWE SmackDown’ event on national television,” said GOP strategist Ford O’Connell. “You don’t want to bump everybody off the stage, but you have to realize your overarching goal is protecting the eventual nominee.”

“I would think that Reince Priebus has been thinking about exactly this issue, and also about how to ensure that the debates don’t turn into the ideological bloodfest that we saw in 2012, which pushed the whole ticket to the right,” said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University.

Already declared candidates — including Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas), Rand Paul (Ky.) and Marco Rubio (Fla.) — are sure bets to get slots, as are former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, both of whom are expected to get in shortly. All are polling well in early surveys. 

But with the GOP field still growing, where is the cutoff? By The Hill’s count there are around 22 candidates who have declared candidacies or may do so. ...TheHill

In a neighboring column, The Hill's A.B. Stoddard notes that Big Jeb Bush -- wasn't he a frontrunner? -- is taking a dive.

Four months into the 2016 presidential campaign, Jeb Bush has all the money and none of the mojo.

Despite the financial juggernaut the former Florida governor has built — Bush said this week he had raised more than anyone else has at this point in a presidential campaign in history — he is failing to excite crowds, dominate polls or scare away competitors.

Bush comes in second or third in most polls, and when he has ranked first it hasn’t been by much. There is considerable enthusiasm for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker as well as Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who many had believed would forgo the race if Bush were to make a White House bid. Bush has doubled down on his positions on education and immigration that are unpopular with conservatives, and as each young Republican contender labels Hillary Clinton “old news,” it only makes Bush seem more stale.With an official announcement expected soon, Bush’s performance thus far is worrying his supporters more than his rivals... Stoddard,TheHill

"Stale" seems to be the most apt description of the 2016 campaign.  The idea of a future with more Mitch McConnell, a resuscitation of (say) Mike Huckabee or anyone named "Bush" is a pretty appalling prospect. And the mere mention of Scott Walker is worse than stepping in dog-do.

American Psychological Association aided and abetted Bush/Cheney torture

The APA has spent years denying it.   But there it is, in research reported by James Risen in the New York Times today.  The group actively worked with the Bush administration to justify the use of torture in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and beyond. 

The involvement of health professionals in the Bush-era interrogation program was significant because it enabled the Justice Department to argue in secret opinions that the program was legal and did not constitute torture, since the interrogations were being monitored by health professionals to make sure they were safe. ...NYT

A small group of psychologists, who critics of the APA, have made public their findings about the collusion of the APA with the rogue administration.

The three lead authors of the report are longtime and outspoken critics of the association: Stephen Soldz, a clinical psychologist and professor at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis; Steven Reisner, a clinical psychologist and founding member of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology; and Nathaniel Raymond, the director of the Signal Program on Human Security and Technology at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, and the former director of the campaign against torture at Physicians for Human Rights.

“In 2004 and 2005 the C.I.A. torture program was threatened from within and outside the Bush administration,” Mr. Soldz said by email. “Like clockwork, the A.P.A. directly addressed legal threats at every critical juncture facing the senior intelligence officials at the heart of the program. In some cases the A.P.A. even allowed these same Bush officials to actually help write the association’s policies.”...NYT

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The long relationship between the American Psychological Association and government is an old story, and not always a dirty story. 

The relationship between the Department of Defense (DOD) and the APA goes back decades. During both world wars, the APA recruited psychologists into military service to evaluate new recruits, assist in treating soldiers with post-traumatic stress and provide guidance on interrogating captured enemy soldiers.

Over the last half century the DOD has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to psychologists for research and assistance. Today, the Veterans’ Administration is the single biggest provider of psychology internships in the country. And 7% percent of APA members work for or with the DOD. ...ScienceCodex

But when it got dirty, it got very, very dirty.

Amurrican values

I mean, let's get real here.  In the end, what matters more to most of us?  The life of one lousy skell?  Or profits?

Former Maryland Governor Bob Ehrlich this morning used a strikingly mild characterization of the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, calling it “a case where maybe somebody screwed up.” Ehrlich, speaking on WMAL radio, added that “you have to let the process play itself out.” By contrast, Ehrlich emotionally condemned city residents who engaged in looting or arson, saying, “The way you don’t react is to trash somebody’s business and place police lives in danger. It loses all sense of credibility, all sense, none, zero, no rationalizations here, no excuses, no defense.” ...Intercept

Baltimore, Maryland, USA.  Where somebody screwed up and endangered the police.

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The Hill posts a great Getty photo of robocop and Republican gov sharing a moment on Baltimore streets.  The police/NationalGuard appear to be ready to apply some bright white handcuffs. ...