Despite Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller’s best efforts to keep the public from knowing anything about him, documents pertaining to Miller’s time as a government attorney were released yesterday following an Alaskan court order. On the campaign trail Miller has increasingly faced — and avoided – questions about ethics infractions that may have led to his resignation from the post. (The controversy came to a head last week when Miller’s security detail handcuffed an Alaska Dispatch editor who tried to ask the candidate a question. The Dispatch and other outlets sued for the release of Miller’s personnel files).
In one incident detailed in the documents, Miller went on several co-workers’ computers to vote in an online poll on his site. Here’s how he cannily tried to cover his tracks:
Over the summer, the Tea Party Express’ Mark Williams got kicked out of the National Tea Party Federation after calling the NAACP slave-traders and then penning a bizarre, racist ’satire’ mocking slavery and emancipation. Fortunately for Tea Party groups trying to shore up support through divisive fear-mongering, it seems to still be totally OK to say wildly offensive things about Muslims.
On Saturday night Tea Party Nation sent an email in support of Lynne Torgerson, Keith Ellison’s GOP opponent in Minnesota’s 5th district. The letter, signed by the groups’ founder and leader Judson Phillips, doesn’t bother with the smarmy hedging and dog whistling that characterize most right-wing attacks against minorities — it straight-up says Ellison should be voted out because he is Muslim. Here’s that portion of the email, flagged by Jamil Smith at the Maddow blog:
A New York law introduced Tuesday would force Crisis Pregnancy Centers — religious, anti-choice organizations that counsel pregnant women against getting abortions — to stop posing as health clinics. The law requires CPCs to disclose that they do not provide abortion services, contraceptives or referrals for abortions.
CPCs, which receive federal funding, rarely indicate their anti-choice agenda. Most are indistinguishable from women’s health clinics, except that in place of health advice they proffer medical misinformation, Bible study and pictures of fetuses to dissuade women from choosing abortion. There are over 2,300 pregnancy centers across the country, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Democratic Council Member Jessica Lappin, who sponsored the bill, told the WSJ, “These are anti-choice centers masquerading as health clinics … Women who are scared and vulnerable and having a very tough decision to make have a right to factually accurate medical information, and the fact that these folks would purposely try to mislead them is not right.”
NARAL Pro-Choice New York has released a report detailing how CPCs mislead women. A review of CPC websites revealed that only 25% identify themselves as anti-choice organizations. On their websites, print materials and in counseling sessions, many say abortion is linked to a host of medical conditions, including higher risk of breast cancer, infertility, scarring, even death (in fact, abortion is one of the safest medical procedures in the US). At one clinic, an undercover volunteer was told to take her time, because she could “get an abortion up to 9 months.” CPCs also confront pregnant women with models and videos of fetal development.
The report concludes that women “deserve to know whether the “options counseling” and information they receive is based on medical fact or anti-choice ideology and whether the facility they are walking into is in fact a health care facility … ”
The NY law would require CPCs to put up disclosure statements at their facilities, and on their websites and advertisements.
More good news for Democrats and the people who make their campaign ads: In 1996, GOP Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell took part in a CNN debate on creationism and evolution. O’Donnell, who doesn’t appear to have much scientific training, reaches the conclusion that there is more evidence that God created the earth in 6 days than there is for the theory of natural selection.
New York Magazine dug up her thoughts on science, religion, and evolutionary biology, and also photo-shopped a picture of her riding a dinosaur:
CHRISTINE O’DONNELL: Now, he said that it’s based on fact. I just want to point out a couple things. First of all, they use carbon dating, as an example, to prove that something was millions of years old. Well, we have the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens and the carbon dating test that they used then would have to then prove that these were hundreds of millions of years younger, when what happened was they had the exact same results on the fossils and canyons that they did the tests on that were supposedly 100 millions of years old. And it’s the kind of inconsistent tests like this that they’re basing their ‘facts’ on.
***
CHRISTINE O’DONNELL: Well, creationism, in essence, is believing that the world began as the Bible in Genesis says, that God created the Earth in six days, six 24-hour periods. And there is just as much, if not more, evidence supporting that.
Oh, and here’s the video where O’Donnell lays out all the solid, scientific evidence against masturbation:
The Internet is a terrifying place filled with information, some of it incompatible with the Bible. Fortunately, SeekFind.org, a conservative Christian search engine, promises to protect right-wing believers from knowledge that clashes with their bizarre, anachronistic worldviews.
The site, highlighted in an NPR story about the growth of religious online portals, offers users only “God-honoring, Biblically-based, and theologically-sound Christian information in a highly accurate and well-organized format,” according to their mission statement. They are way more God-honoring than all those other Christian search engines, they say, “While these are good websites with some great tools – they are not as discerning as they should be in regards to what kind of content they allow in their listings.” Meanwhile, Google, et al, brings up “results from pages attacking the Christian faith and/or presenting unbiblical views. For example, a search for “Jesus Christ” at Google will result in page 1 listings from the Mormon church, a genealogical service, and a secular history of views about Jesus.”
Of course I looked up stuff in the search engine. Though I only got a few terms in before it crashed, I still managed to learn (unlearn?) a lot: that Obama is the anti-Christ (duh); Nancy Pelosi is a homosexual and possibly a pedophile(?); premarital sex is wrong (duh); Lady Gaga doesn’t exist (?) and even Glenn Beck is up to no good — a search for Beck brought up paranoid sites about his Mormonism. The Adam Sandler vehicle, “Don’t Mess With Zohan”, is a very good guide to Mideast issues, coming in at 3 in a search for “Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
Some stills:
At an Ohio Town Hall last night, an African-American constituent asked GOP candidate Jim Renacci why people of color should support his candidacy. “I’m concerned about the civil rights and the diversity of your campaign in terms of why anybody of color should be in support of you as a congressman.”
Renacci’s adroit, politically savvy response? The Federal government should really stop infringing on the right of states and localities to treat blacks like second-class citizens:
RENACCI: [...] A lot of the problems you’re talking about are local issues. And I’m also a firm believer that the federal government and our Constitution was based on freedom, and was based on the freedoms that our number one goal of our military is freedom. We need to get our federal government out of the way and we need to allow our local governments to become more involved in many of the issues you’re talking about. I don’t believe these are federal issues to come down. I believe the federal government’s number one goal is to protect our freedoms. So the answer to your question is I believe a lot of things need to come back to the local level, and I believe things like you’re talking about do need to go back to the local level. And they need to be looked at in the cities. I was a mayor of my community. I think those are important ways of looking at all that. It’s not the federal government’s job.
In other words, Republicans plan to do a lot for black people, like let local governments decide if they deserve rights.
Here’s how some Indian doctors, lawyers and judges are going the extra mile to traumatize rape victims, according to a Human Rights Watch report:
… a doctor insert[s] fingers in a rape victim’s vagina to determine the presence or absence of the hymen and the so-called “laxity” of the vagina. These findings perpetuate false and damaging stereotypes of rape survivors as “loose” women. Defense attorneys use the findings to challenge the credibility, character, and the lack of consent of the survivors.
Though the Indian Supreme Court ruled that “evidence” from the finger test can’t be used against the victim, many doctors still perform the procedure: “The Indian government has yet to take steps to ensure that all states eliminate it. There are no nationwide guidelines or programs to standardize forensic examinations and to train and sensitize doctors, police, prosecutors, and judges to survivors’ rights.”
That leads to judgments like this one, by the Jharkhand High Court in 2006: “Though the girl was aged about 20 to 23 years and was unmarried but she was found to be “habituated to intercourse.” This makes her to be of doubtful character.”
And this one, “She was complaining pain and the vagina was admitting 1½ finger [sic] …. From the medical report it is clear that the prosecutrix was not a girl of lax moral and she was not “habituated to sexual intercourse” and most probably, that was her first experience as the doctor has observed reddishness on her vagina and blood secretion and pain on touching the vagina.”
One rape survivor described her experience this way: “I was so scared and nervous and praying all the time: ‘God, let this be over and let me get out of here fast.”
The report points out that doctors conduct the exam with little concern for the emotional or physical well-being of their patients. “Inserting fingers into the vaginal or anal orifice of an adult or child survivor of sexual violence during a forensic examination can cause additional trauma, as it not only mimics the abuse but can also be painful.”
In a sick twist, victims who don’t experience pain during the test may be deemed “habituated to sex.”
The report details the reasons the practice is mind-blowingly stupid in addition to being inhumane: namely, the state of someone’s vagina does not reveal much about their sexual experience, since “an “old tear” of the hymen or variation of the “size” of the hymenal orifice can be due to reasons unrelated to sex.” The time-honored tradition of smearing rape victims by exploiting their sexual history is not exactly scientifically sound either, as Tracy-Clark Flory points out on Salon.
Aruna Kashyap, researcher for Human Rights Watch:
Survivors of sexual violence have the right to legal recourse without being further traumatized in the process. The health and criminal justice systems should work together to ensure that they do not perpetuate damaging stereotypes of survivors.
Pursuing diplomatic engagement with rogue nations demonstrates hopeless weakness and naivite. Strengthening their tyrannical regimes just to make a profit, on the other hand, must somehow be good for America.
Bloomberg reports that a unit of News Corp. published mobile video games that were developed by North Korea’s General Federation of Science and Technology. Their work is part of a growing software industry cultivated by Kim Jong Il to pump money into the impoverished regime:
“From the government’s point of view, foreign currency is the main reason to nurture and support these activities,” said Andrei Lankov, an academic specializing in North Korea at Seoul- based Kookmin University.
The piece also points out that the development of North Korea’s programming capacities — aided by a growing industry in part funded by companies like News Corp. — may not be great news for the U.S.:
Better trained programmers may also bolster the regime’s cyberwarfare capabilities, said Kim Heung Kwang, who taught computer science at universities in the north for 19 years before defecting to South Korea in 2004. South Korea’s presidential office said July 28 the nation had received intelligence that North Korea may plan an Internet-based attack.
Won Sei Hoon, director of South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, told lawmakers last October that North Korea’s postal ministry was responsible for cyber attacks in July 2009 on dozens of websites in South Korea and the U.S.
President Barack Obama widened U.S. financial sanctions on North Korea on Aug. 30, freezing assets of North Korean officials, companies and government agencies suspected of “illicit and deceptive activities” that support the regime’s weapons industry.
On a related note, Media Matters has a run down of some choice words lobbed at North Korea by the foreign relations experts at Fox News:
Consider: (From Nexis)
Glenn Beck, on the September 1, 2010, edition of his Fox News show:
I have news for you. There are a lot of universities that are just as dangerous with indoctrination of our children as these terror groups are in Iran or in North Korea. With the poll numbers continuing to slide for the new health care bill, our Health and Human Services Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, just said and I quote, “We need a reeducation process on healthcare.
Bill Kristol, on the July 23, 2010 edition of Special Report:
What I think North Korea is a horrible regime that kills people and has gotten away with things in the past. Secretary Clinton and Gates have been strong. This is a situation the Obama administration came into office disliking what the Bush administration had done vis-a-vis North Korea, and announcing a new relationship with China, strategic reassurance. Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg giving a speech on this.
They were mugged by reality. The problem wasn’t Bush, it was North Korea. And the big underlying story is China has not helped us make North Korea a responsible state.
Neil Cavuto, on the May 25, 2010 edition of Your World:
CAVUTO: But I guess what I would curious, do you think that it compromises our national security? I mean, I wonder if it`s just an accident that the nut in North Korea isn`t showboating the way he is precisely because he knows the world is kind of distracted.
(CROSSTALK)
EAGLEBURGER: Good for you. Neil, again, you will remember, I think, one time some time ago when we were talking about this and I said to you that I was afraid that people like the North Koreans were going to take a look at the wimpishness of this administration and decide it was a very opportune time to do some tough things.
I think what — what the people in Pyongyang are now seeing is a president of the United States who largely has lost out in terms of anything in the way of some sensible approaches to foreign policy issues, to defense and to anything else in this budget.
And, yes, I think it`s made a difference, and it`s not just with the North Koreans, by the way. I think it has affected the Russians. I think it has affected the Chinese. And every single time this goes on like this, we end up with a foreign policy problem, which is going to be more and more difficult to solve, because everybody has judged us as no longer ready to do the things that, for a very long time, they all knew that we Americans would do if we were tread on.
In last night’s Arizona gubernatorial debate, right-wing Governor Jan Brewer tried to list her accomplishments. It went poorly:
Later, in an exchange about the economy, her opponent, Attorney General Terry Goddard, pointed out that Brewer’s fearmongering about violence in Arizona did not do great things for the state’s financial prospects. He then called on Brewer to recant her totally made-up claim that illegal immigrants were running around beheading people in the Arizona desert. Naturally, Brewer evaded the question.
Afterwards some reporters had the gall to continue the line of questioning, asking Brewer if she still stood by her completely made up story. She was clearly too flustered to dissemble or lie, so she just ran away.
Watch:
Like almost everyone else, Alaskans don’t want Sarah Palin to run for President. From Public Policy Polling:
If Sarah Palin runs for President in 2012 she can’t count on a whole lot of support back home. 62% of Alaska Republicans are opposed to her making a White House bid and she gets only 17% in a hypothetical 2012 primary in the state tying for her second with Mike Huckabee behind Mitt Romney.
Among voters who say they support the goals of the Tea Party only 31% want Palin to run and even with ones who consider themselves to be active members of the Tea Party there are still only 42% who think she should make the leap.
The findings generally mirror polling results in the rest of the country. Even a majority of self-identified Conservatives who hold favorable views of Palin don’t want her to run for President.
Not shocking. And a presidential run seems like an unlikely jump for the half-term governor to take anyway, given that it’s harder and less lucrative than hosting TV shows. But the very large gap between conservatives’ thoughts on Palin (positive) and their thoughts on Palin’s fitness for national office (decidedly not) does show a nice chink in the epistemic closure that characterizes the conservative media universe: namely, Palin has gone through amazing lengths to manage her image. Yet even people who really, really like her have gotten the message that she lacks gravitas.
Yeah, “Sarah Palin lacks gravitas” is not exactly a revelation. But think about all the other things that should be totally obvious (e.g., Obama’s not a Muslim) that polls show elude many self-identified conservatives.
On a related note, a new Vanity Fair profile of Palin reveals that she has a potentially shady relationship with several conservative PACs and is a sucky tipper. Check it out.
