Daniel Estrin writes:

An influential ultra-Orthodox Israeli rabbi ordered his followers this week to burn their iPhones, the latest move in a campaign by the insular community to encourage its members to keep the outside world — and specifically the Internet — at bay.

The decree by Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, 84, came ahead of Judaism’s holiest day, Yom Kippur, which begins Tuesday. It said that it was forbidden to own the smartphone, and those who already had one must burn theirs.

I’m not the only one who noticed a certain irony in Willard Mitt Romney choosing Boca Raton Rats Mouth, Florida for his now infamous speech. Any reasonable creature would have regurgitated the crap Romney fed to his adoring cash rodents, but rats are incapable of vomiting.

Mark Follman writes:

Here are some telling moments that you may not have seen yet from Romney’s unvarnished Q&A behind closed doors at the $50,000-per-plate fundraiser in Boca Raton on May 17:

Mocking immigration in the United States…
Pondering how he’d exploit a pre-election hostage crisis…
Falsely claiming that the Fed is buying “three-quarters” of America’s debt…
Predicting easy dividends from his anticipated election victory…
Cracking jokes about Latino voters and Elizabeth Warren…
Making enemies on the late-night talk show circuit…
Joking about media strategy and his reputation as a rich, rich guy…

Why doesn’t Boca Raton change its name?

This letter-to-the-editor from my hometown newspaper is more than a year old (yeah, yeah, yeah, how big is your backlog of reading material?) but re-reading the letter this morning I’m reminded of the adage that it is not what you don’t know that will hurt you, but rather what you think you know that just isn’t so that is the real threat.

I would like to take this opportunity to respond to a letter that appeared in your June 30 edition regarding HB 159 written by a retired judge (I assume since he didn’t actually state so) of the 6th Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals.

I, for one, was not aware that we were not already required to show identification when we vote since I have always been required to show ID every time that I have voted in the past. Why have I had to show ID if it is not already a requirement of the law?

The writer states, “Where is the evidence of voter impersonation that might warrant such a requirement?” Wow … one would think that a judge or member of a U.S. Court of Appeals would be better informed than that! Every election is fraught with stories of election fraud … most of which have to do with false indentifications or no identifications at all. Has the writer ever heard of ACORN?

What is more disturbing, however, is that same old fallback position that most liberals find to be their best … racism. He states, “This bill is simply an attempt to make it harder for certain citizens to vote. And many of those citizens are African-American.” Is it really more difficult for African-Americans, Latinos and the poor to get a state-issued identification? I understand that not everyone drives but the State of Ohio offers other valid forms of identification besides a driver’s license. I have to show identification every time I vote so why shouldn’t everyone? The fact that this gentleman thinks that this bill is designed to “… make it harder for certain citizens to vote”, is more racist, to me, than the bill itself.

Wake up, America! If any individual cannot or will not obtain a state-issued identification do we really want them to be voting for our leaders? I emphatically say, “no!”

God Bless America and those men and women who fight or have fought for our right to vote along with all our other inalienable rights!

John F. Amrine
Cutler

On 10 December 2010, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders rose on the floor of the Senate:

THE ECONOMY: Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, let me begin by thanking my friend from Virginia for doing what is very important. I think the essence of what he is saying is that today there are millions of Federal employees, people in the Armed Forces, who are doing the very best they can. In many instances, they are doing a great job to protect our country, to keep it safe. And very often, to be honest with you, these folks get dumped on. So it is important that people such as Senator WARNER come here and point out individuals who are doing a great job, people of whom we are very proud. So I thank Senator WARNER for that.

Mr. President, as I think everyone knows, President Obama and the Republican leadership have reached an agreement on a very significant tax bill. In my view, the agreement they reached is a bad deal for the American people. I think we can do better.

Eight-and-a-half hours later…

Let me conclude. It has been a long day. Let me simply say I believe the proposal that was developed by the President and the Republicans is nowhere near as good as we can achieve. I don’t know that we are able ourselves to get the handful of Republicans we need to say no to this agreement. I do believe that if the American people stand—by the way, it may not just be Republicans. There may be some Democrats as well. If the American people stand and say: We can do better than this; we don’t need to drive up the national debt by giving tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires, that if the American people are prepared to stand and we are prepared to follow them, I think we can defeat this proposal and come up with a better proposal which reflects the needs of working-class and middle-class families of our country and, to me, most importantly, the children of our country.

With that, I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Works for me…

Glenn Greenwald writes:

All the way back in 2004, the Rumsfeld Pentagon commissioned a study to determine the causes of anti-US terrorism, and even it concluded: “Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom,’ but rather, they hate our policies.” Running around the world beating your chest, bellowing “we’re at war!”, and bombing multiple Muslim countries does not keep one safe. It manifestly does the opposite, since it ensures that even the most rational people will calculate that targeting Americans with violence in response is just and necessary to deter further aggression.

A one-day attack on US soil eleven years ago unleashed a never-ending campaign of violence around the world from the target and its allies. Is it really a challenge to understand that continuous bombings and civilian-killing assaults over many years, in many Muslim countries, will generate the same desire for aggression and vengeance against the US?

David Randall writes:

Typically, mention of our ever increasing sleeplessness is followed by calls for earlier bedtimes and a longer night’s sleep. But this directive may be part of the problem. Rather than helping us to get more rest, the tyranny of the eight-hour block reinforces a narrow conception of sleep and how we should approach it. Some of the time we spend tossing and turning may even result from misconceptions about sleep and our bodily needs: in fact neither our bodies nor our brains are built for the roughly one-third of our lives that we spend in bed.

The idea that we should sleep in eight-hour chunks is relatively recent. The world’s population sleeps in various and surprising ways.

I’ve been playing with this for a couple of years now and really appreciate the whole concept of first sleep, second sleep. You should try it.

Previously…

From The Guardian:

Clashes between police and protestors erupted after tens of thousands of people took part in protests in Madrid. The demonstrations, organised by the Spanish indignados group, were called to protest at the country’s austerity measures and to call for new elections in Spain.

After a peaceful start (see 17.13), there were clashes between riot police and some demonstrators, which included officers using batons on the crowds (see 19.15, 18.30) and then plastic bullets (20.01)

The live stream…

From WCPN:

The United Way of Cleveland says it will stop direct funding to the Boy Scouts of America’s Cleveland chapter. As ideastream’s Brian Bull reports, the decision stems from the BSA’s national policy on sexual orientation.

Good on United Way, but it did take a bit of time…

Previously…

Matt Taibbi writes:

The mere fact that Mitt Romney is even within striking distance of winning this election is an incredible testament to two things: a) the rank incompetence of the Democratic Party, which would have this and every other election for the next half century sewn up if they were a little less money-hungry and just tried a little harder to represent their ostensible constituents, and b) the power of our propaganda machine, which has conditioned the entire population to accept the idea that the American population, ideologically speaking, is naturally split down the middle, whereas the real fault lines are a lot closer to the 99-1 ratio the Occupy movement [emphasis mine, JH] has been talking about since last year.

Elect Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala…

1621: Great moments in marketing

Via Mano Singham:

*ie. a clueless, ignorant, self-absorbed twit?

Glenn Greenwald elucidates:

Lesson One: There is a separate justice system in the US for Muslim Americans.
Lesson Two: The US government is not opposed to terrorism; it favors it.
Lesson Three: “Terrorism” remains the most meaningless… term in political discourse.
Lesson Four: Legalized influence-peddling within both parties is what drives DC.
Lesson Five: there is aggression between the US and Iran, but it’s generally not from Iran.

You’re soaking in it…

From my dad, of course…

From The Huffington Post:

Since July, when the Boy Scouts of America reaffirmed its policy of excluding gays, the Scouts — and organizations that give to it — have come under steady pressure from gay rights organizations that are outraged over the policy. Some of that pressure is beginning to show results.

This week, Intel, which was recently identified as the Scouts’ largest corporate funder, announced that it is no longer giving to the youth organization. In 2010, Intel reportedly gave more than $700,000 to local troops and councils.

Previously…

Tim Russo writes:

Occupy often seems like a distant memory now. A moment. To Mitt Romney, Mr. 1%, Occupy is an acute cancer, eating him alive, before our eyes, in living real time proof of every single argument Occupy ever made. Quite literally, we are seeing Zuccotti’s Revenge. Incredible.

Before Zuccotti was evicted, while the park was still occupied, in early November 2011, RedState blogger and CNN blowhard Erick Erickson, perhaps the most stereotypically perfect pasty white obese buzzcut whore of the 1%, began the 47% meme that is now destroying Mitt Romney, as an effort to mock Occupy Wall Street. Here’s the blow by blow, including a link to Erickson’s 53% Tumblr.

At the time, Erickson was mocked incessantly for precisely mimicking a line of attack that was working and true (we are the 99%) with a cheap imitation that wouldn’t work and wasn’t true. Almost instantly, people forgot about this 47% nonsense, and then, the roundups of the Occupy encampments really began, with Zuccotti being evicted November 17. Occupy seemed over, even as most occupiers carried on through a long winter and spring 2012, into summer, and now, to today.

Recall how quiet Occupy was in May 2012, when the infamous Romney fundraiser tape was recorded, but how loudly Occupy rang through that fundraiser. Occupy had long been considered dead, in fact, in Cleveland, Occupy had just endured the FBI entrapment bridge plot arrests. Other than that horrible media coverage, no one in media really was giving Occupy a passing glance. But in that fundraiser, Mitt Romney, and every single mega rich 1%er in the room, was obsessing about Occupy Continue Reading »