Pity The Poor Old War Criminals And Dirty Tricksters

If you’re a Twin Cities resident and you hang out on Facebook, you might on occasion see postings from Old Minneapolis, which features pictures of Minneapolis sites from long ago and the present day.

Recently, the proprietor, Jesse Jamison, posted a picture (which had previously appeared via local news outlet WCCO) of the Minneapolis residence of Michael Karkoc, who has been identified as the founder in 1943 of the Ukrainian Self Defense Legion, which took its orders directly from Hitler’s SS. That act drew enough complaints for Facebook to wipe out that post, temporarily suspend Old Minneapolis, and temporarily suspend the Facebook account of an Old Minneapolis reader, Dan Krislov, who had defended Old Minneapolis’ reposting of the WCCO photo.

Interestingly enough, some of the same people who have been leaping to the old war criminal’s defense, people who should know better and who consider themselves moral and right-thinking persons, have also been buddy-buddy with some of the Twin Cities’ most despicable sleazeballs, hanging around them waiting for juicy gossip to drop the way a pack of trained and broken hound dogs hangs servilely around their contemptuous master, waiting for him to show them some favor in the form of meaty bits of something or other.

How easily these men — and they are all men, and the sleazeballs they bromance are also men — sell themselves for dirt, licking the boots of dirtbags.

What Happens To Women Who Can’t Get Abortions? They Often Starve.

Here is the key passage of a New York Times story on a study of what happens to women known as “turnaways” — women who, for whatever reason, are turned away from getting abortions:

Foster saw that most abortion studies failed to acknowledge that women seeking abortions are likely to have mixed emotions — regret, anger, happiness, relief. They also often failed to separate the reaction to pregnancy from the reaction to the abortion. She has designed her study to do both, relying on a series of questions and periodic interviews, and initial results, to be published in the fall, show that the emotion that predominates right after an abortion is relief.

When she looked at more objective measures of mental health over time — rates of depression and anxiety — she also found no correlation between having an abortion and increased symptoms. In a working paper based on her study, Foster notes that “women’s depression and anxiety symptoms either remained steady or decreased over the two-year period after receiving an abortion,” and that in fact, “initial and subsequent levels of depressive symptoms were similar” between those who received an abortion and those who were turned away. Turnaways did, however, suffer from higher levels of anxiety, but six months out, there were no appreciable differences between the two groups.

Where the turnaways had more significant negative outcomes was in their physical health and economic stability. Because new mothers are eligible for government programs, Foster thought that they might have better health over time. But women in the turnaway group suffered more ill effects, including higher rates of hypertension and chronic pelvic pain (though Foster cannot say whether turnaways face greater risk from pregnancy than an average woman). Even “later abortions are significantly safer than childbirth,” she says, “and we see that through lower complications and low incidence of chronic conditions.” (In the National Right to Life’s five-part response to preliminary findings of Foster’s study, which were presented at the American Public Health Association conference last year, the group noted that the ill effects of abortion — future miscarriage, breast cancer, infertility — may become apparent only later. Reputable research does not support such claims.)

Economically, the results are even more striking. Adjusting for any previous differences between the two groups, women denied abortion were three times as likely to end up below the federal poverty line two years later. Having a child is expensive, and many mothers have trouble holding down a job while caring for an infant. Had the turnaways not had access to public assistance for women with newborns, Foster says, they would have experienced greater hardship.

And without any assistance, they — and their babies — die.

What was that about being “pro-life” again?

GOP-Run Wisconsin State Lege Wants To Kill Real Journalism

Why? Because reality has a well-known liberal bias.

From Nieman Journalism Lab:

This week, a legislative committee approved a measure that would not only evict the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism from its offices on the University of Wisconsin campus, but also bar any university staff from working with the center.

The center is like many nonprofit news outlets that have sprung up in recent years to help fill the vacuum left by downsizing at local newspapers. Created in 2009, it is staffed by four full-time journalists and a collection of student interns and focuses on investigative reporting, with a particular interest in the workings of state government. The nonprofit isn’t in immediate danger of being kicked out of their offices at Wisconsin’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication. The motion to extract the group from campus is part of a larger budget bill that will be voted on by the full legislature.

It’s unclear what may have motivated the proposal, but State Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, a Republican, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel “he didn’t want taxpayer support going to the investigative center, since he believed it had a bias.”

The center has had no shortage of scoops or analysis originating from the halls of government. In 2011, they were the first organization to report on a physical altercation between members of the state’s supreme court.

Sensenbrenner Hides His Role In Creating The Surveillance State

“Tex” Sensenbrenner’s been caught yet again — this time by Marcy Wheeler:

To hide his role in championing the use of Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act to collect of Americans’ phone data and other “tangible things”, one of the architects of that legislation, Wisconsin Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, edited a quote in a letter (pdf) to Attorney General Eric Holder Thursday to suggest he never knew how the FBI and NSA were using the authority his legislation had granted:

“Section 215 has been used to obtain driver’s license records, hotel records, car rental records, apartment leasing records, credit card records, and the like.”

Sensenbrenner quoted from Acting Assistant Attorney General Todd Hinnen’s testimony (pdf) before the House Judiciary Committee in 2011:

“It has never been used against a library to obtain circulation records … On average, we seek and obtain section 215 orders less than 40 times per year.”

Sensenbrenner used this passage to claim DOJ had incorrectly told the committee it was using the provision “sparingly”.

The letter was a response to the Guardian’s report that FBI and NSA had used of Section 215 to collect data from all of Verizon’s customers for a three-month period starting in April. Senate intelligence committee chair Dianne Feinstein made it clear on Thursday that collection program has been used for seven years, presumably back to the first Patriot Act extension in 2006, suggesting the program has been used for years to collect the phone data on all Americans.

What Sensenbrenner didn’t reveal in his letter to the attorney general is that his ellipsis in that passage replaced a sentence from Hinnen’s testimony making clear that Section 215 authorized secret collection:

“Some orders have also been used to support important and highly sensitive intelligence collection operations, on which this committee and others have been separately briefed.”

So it happened that – as Sensenbrenner reminded Holder in the letter – the author of the Patriot Act tried to distance himself from the language he had pushed to retain in 2005 that has been used ever since to authorize dragnet collection of Americans’ call records – all the while denying that the DOJ has briefed Congress on this secret collection.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for anyone on the evening TV news to notice things like this.

Putin’s Useful Idiots: The Republican Congressional Caucus

How stupid do you have to be for Michele Bachmann to potentially be smarter than you?

As stupid as Dana Rohrabacher and Steve King, for starters:

Jim already described Dana Rohrabacher’s posturing with Steven Seagal while he attempted to replay his glory days palling around with the mujahadeen. Subsequent to that, Rohrabacher defended Putin’s abuse of power in fighting his former soulmates.

“If you are in the middle of an insurrection with Chechnya, and hundreds of people are being killed and there are terrorist actions taking place and kids are being blown up in schools, yeah, guess what, there are people who overstep the bounds of legality,” he said.

While the rule of law is important, Rohrabacher added, “We shouldn’t be describing people who are under this type of threat, we shouldn’t be describing them as if they are Adolf Hitler or they’re back to the old Communism days.”

Meanwhile, both Rohrabacher and Steve King bravely defended Putin’s prosecution of Pussy Riot.

“It’s hard to find sympathy for people who would do that to people’s faith,” King said.

But I’m most amused by the script William Keating (who represents parts of Boston and its southwest suburbs) is speaking from, parroting FSB’s assurances that the Marathon attack could have been prevented if only FBI had been more responsive to the tip they had provided the FBI and CIA.

[...]

But he appears not to have read all that’s available in the press. He ignores the multiple reports on reluctance with which Russians shared information.

He ignores this WSJ report appears to make it clear that the Russians withheld the basis for their concern — the actual text messages — in spite of multiple efforts from FBI to get more information.

There follows a whole bunch of documentation on other examples of Putin’s non-cooperation.

At the end, the question is asked: “Clearly, Putin continues to play Americans like a chess master. Does he consider Members of Congress mere pawns?”

Yes, especially Republican ones. And with good reason.

Conservative Tax-Exempt Nonprofits Outspent Liberal Ones by 34-to-1

If you’re wondering why the Koch-allied tax-exempt Astroturf groups are whining like stuck pigs about the IRS picking on them, it’s because they don’t want to lose their 34-to-1 advantage over liberal tax-exempt groups:

Open Secrets reported, “Conservative nonprofits that received tax-exempt status since the beginning of 2010 and also filed election spending reports with the Federal Election Commission overwhelmed liberal groups in terms of money spent on politics, an analysis of Internal Revenue Service and FEC records shows.”

Furthermore, their analysis showed, “Of the 21 organizations that received rulings from the IRS after January 1, 2010, and filed FEC reports in 2010 or 2012, 13 were conservative. They outspent the liberal groups in that category by a factor of nearly 34-to-1.”

They’ve got so used to having things totally in their favor that some of these groups don’t even bother to pretend they’re not allied with the Republican Party — and their arrogant sloppiness has got them into trouble:

It just may be that with all of this overspending, 34-1, conservative groups might have drawn attention to their activities all by themselves. It didn’t help that they are using True the Vote as their IRS Persecution Cause of the Week, when a judge ruled that True the Vote was not a nonprofit, but was actually operating as a PAC, and had illegally aided the GOP.

Pass it on.

Anti-Choice “Family Policy Institute” Distorts And Lies To Attack Rape Shield Laws

Laurel Ramseyer brings us this news about the sickening anti-family, anti-female actions of a self-styled “pro-family” group’s leader in Washington state:

In a blog post erroneously titled “WA Law Helps Conceal Rape of 12-Year Old”, Mr. Backholm wrote last week that:

In a story making news this week, last August a twelve-year old girl Washington girl was raped and impregnated by a thirty-one year-old man who took her to a Washington State Planned Parenthood and forced her to have an abortion.  According to reports, she told Planned Parenthood that the father was a fourteen-year old boy in an effort to protect the identity of her rapist; presumably at the recommendation of her rapist.

It wasn’t until six-weeks later that she told her parents what really happened, which led to an eventual guilty plea and prison sentence for the offender.
…
It is remarkable that Planned Parenthood is willing to turn a blind eye.  It is not intuitive to simply give a 12-year old an abortion and send her on her merry way by ignoring red flags the size of football fields.
…
Despite the obvious opportunities to intervene in situations like these, our laws and abortion clinics are aiding and abetting the victimization of girls…in the name of women’s rights no less.

Backholm was apparently hoping that nobody would actually click through to read the linked articles in his piece. Virtually every single claim he makes is either a lie or the truth stretched and bent so hard it might as be a lie. Here is the reality:

The rapist was the victim’s step-father.

The rapist step-father brought the victim to the clinic to have an abortion.

The victim didn’t “[tell] her parents what really happened” six weeks later, she told a detective who interviewed the her because Planned Parenthood alerted Child Protective Services that she had reportedly been impregnated by someone over 24 moths her age, a crime in Washington state.

Far from Planned Parenthood turning a “blind eye”, sending the victim on “her merry way” and “ignoring red flags the size of football fields”, Planned Parenthood followed the law and reported the possible rape of the child.

Since the rapist was the victim’s step-father, and since the victim’s mother refused to cooperate with the prosecution of the rapist, it is dubious at best that a parental notification law would have prevented the abortion.  In light of the facts, Mr. Backholm’s assertion that “our laws and abortion clinics are aiding and abetting the victimization of girls” is perplexing.  It was state law and the actions of Planned Parenthood staff that rescued the victim from a rapist father and rapist-shielding mother.

Truly, Backholm and his allies are what M. Scott Peck called “The People of the Lie”. Under the pretense of “protecting” a girl, they use lies and twisted truths to try to take away all young girls’ rights to be shielded.

A picture is worth a thousand words

ALEC, Asbestos, And Lung Disease

The late Bruce Vento, longtime congressman of Minnesota’s Fourth District, is a legend in Saint Paul, and for all the right reasons. He was a friend of the people and the environment, and the Vento Trail that accesses downtown Saint Paul is named for him.

So when Susan Vento, his wife, writes to me about an important cause, I pay attention:

My name is Susan Vento, and I am writing to you about a cause very close to my heart. My husband, Bruce, was a Democratic member of the US House of Representatives until October 10th, 2000 when he died of pleural mesothelioma––a rare disease caused by asbestos exposure. As of yesterday, asbestos companies began using their political influence to push a new bill into Congress, led by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). It is called the “Furthering Asbestos Claim Transparency (FACT) Act.” On top of mass privacy concerns, this bill would delay and, in some cases, deny justice to people suffering from asbestos-related diseases. The FACT Act marks the beginning of a state-by-state strategy to dismantle the rights of victims.

In the name of so-called “transparency,” the bill places burdensome reporting requirements on victims applying to the bankruptcy trusts. Yet, the companies who knowingly caused the asbestos exposure have no comparable requirements. The legislation is a one-sided and unfair effort designed to harm those who have already been injured. You can find more information on the bill here. This legislation is not an effort to make the legal system more responsive. Instead, it is merely the latest attempt by big companies and individuals like the Koch brothers to avoid responsibility for their heinous wrongdoings.

Yup, it’s ALEC again. The well-heeled promoters of pretty much every idea, person, or entity that attacks the common good.

So what can we do about it? Susan has some suggestions:

I am a spokesperson for the Asbestos Cancer Victims’ Rights Campaign. The ACVRC is a national campaign dedicated to protecting the rights and privacy of cancer victims and their families. I hope that you will join our fight to defeat this unfair legislation and the potential precedent it sets. Here are a couple simple steps you can take to make a difference:

1. Sign the petition to stop legislation that threatens cancer victims!

Go to www.CancerVictimsRights.org/take-action/sign-the-petition/ and follow the instructions to sign the petition at the bottom of the page.

2. Spread the word!

Done and Done, Susan. Go get ‘em!

Liveblogging The Apple Tax Dodge Hearings

The fine folk at Americans for Tax Fairness are on the case:

http://www.americansfortaxfairness.org/blog/2013/05/21/live-blogging-of-us-senate-hearing-on-apple/

OVERALL BACKGROUND: Today the Subcommittee is holdings its second hearing to examine how U.S.-based multinational corporations use loopholes in the tax code. Today’s hearing will focus on how Apple effectively shifts billions of dollars in profits offshore, profits that under one section of the tax code should nonetheless be subject to U.S. taxes.

NEW REPORT BY CTJ - An analysis of Apple Inc.’s financial reports makes clear that Apple has paid almost no income taxes to any country on its $102 billion in offshore cash holdings. That means that this cash hoard reflects profits that were shifted, on paper, out of countries where the profits were actually earned into foreign tax havens - http://bit.ly/17YqXd0

WORTH A READ - The New York Times today - http://nyti.ms/10ICjJi

Check out their fact sheet on Apple, too: http://www.americansfortaxfairness.org/badapple/