Author Archives: silownie_zewnetrzne_krone

Waller County Officials: Sandra Bland Autopsy Consistent With Suicide

by silownie_zewnetrzne_krone Posted on July 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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In a press conference on Thursday afternoon, the Waller County District Attorney revealed preliminary autopsy results in the death of Sandra Bland, the 28-year-old black woman who was found dead in her jail cell days after being arrested for a traffic stop, saying that examiners discovered no apparent injuries consistent with a violent homicide or struggle.

Assistant District Attorney Warren Diepraam told reporters that he was presenting physical rather than criminal findings, but said there was no evidence found in the autopsy of injuries to Bland’s hands or internal organs to suggest a violent struggle had taken place in the jail. Previously, a medical examiner called her death a suicide by hanging. Bland’s family disputes the finding.

There was no evidence the first autopsy performed on Bland was defective as was previously alleged by an attorney representing Bland’s family, Diepraam added.

According to the new autopsy findings, Bland’s injuries were consistent with having “a force against her back.”

A portion of the press conference focused on the presence of marijuana found in Bland’s system—confirmed by preliminary autopsy results. Many took to social media to question the relevance of the finding.

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Waller County Officials: Sandra Bland Autopsy Consistent With Suicide

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For Some, 13 Years Still Not Long Enough in Afghanistan

by silownie_zewnetrzne_krone Posted on May 27, 2014

Mother Jones

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President Obama has finally announced his plan to withdraw from Afghanistan:

Under the plan, outlined by Mr. Obama in the Rose Garden, the United States would leave 9,800 troops in Afghanistan after 2014, but cut that number by half in 2015. By the end of 2016, it would keep only a vestigial force to protect the embassy in Kabul and help the Afghans with military purchases and other security matters.

That’s fine. The part that’s going to be hard to take is the inevitable knee-jerk bellowing it provokes from the McCain/Kristol faction. What’s it going to be this time? America losing its standing in the world? A lack of guts from a weak-kneed president? Emboldening our enemies? Well, here’s Rip van McCain:

The President’s decision to set an arbitrary date for the full withdrawal of U.S. troops in Afghanistan is a monumental mistake and a triumph of politics over strategy…..Today’s announcement will embolden our enemies and discourage our partners in Afghanistan and the region. And regardless of anything the President says tomorrow at West Point, his decision on Afghanistan will fuel the growing perception worldwide that America is unreliable, distracted, and unwilling to lead.

Got it. How about Rip van Kristol? He doesn’t seem to have weighed in yet, but here’s Gary Schmitt subbing in for Kristol at the Weekly Standard:

The decision to halve and then zero out those forces by 2016 is a reminder not only of how seriously unserious this president on strategic matters can be but also how cynically partisan he is….I suppose if there is any positive thing that might come out of the president’s ploy it’s that conservatives will get to see pretty quickly which of the GOP contenders in 2016 has a strategic backbone.

There you have it: no cliche left unturned. We’re emboldening our enemies. America is unwilling to lead. Obama is unserious about national security. Conservatives need to stand up and show some backbone. It’s as if these guys jerked awake after ten years and started reciting whatever anti-liberal boilerplate happened to be most recently on their minds.

I guess it’s nice to know that some things never change, regardless of facts on the ground. After 13 years (!), we still haven’t stayed in Afghanistan long enough. I’m pretty sure that it could be 2114, and the McCain crowd would continue to insist that if we just gave it a few more years we could finally wipe out the Taliban once and for all.

UPDATE: I just caught a few minutes of Kristol on Crossfire. He usually keeps his cool pretty well, but not this time. He was hot, hot hot. From memory, a few of his comments were “unbelievably irresponsible,” “Obama has sent tens of thousand of troops there and now he’s making their sacrifice in vain,” and “what’s the lesson for anyone around the world who wants to stand with us?” It’s the cliche trifecta!

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For Some, 13 Years Still Not Long Enough in Afghanistan

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An Anti-Abortion Catfight Heats Up a GOP Senate Race

by silownie_zewnetrzne_krone Posted on March 28, 2014

Mother Jones

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A mysterious new anti-abortion group with ties to conservative pundit Erick Erickson has warned Georgia Right to Life, the state’s oldest pro-life group, that it aims to displace the older group as the National Right to Life Committee’s Georgia affiliate.

But the fight, ostensibly over which group is better-positioned to end abortion, looks as though it is calculated to influence Georgia’s competitive Republican Senate primary. “You can’t say what someone else’s motives are,” says Genevieve Wilson, a spokeswoman for Georgia Right to Life, the older group. “But it certainly looks like the new group has a political motivation behind it.”

Leaders of each anti-abortion organization have a preferred candidate in the volatile, five-way contest to replace the retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss. Georgia Right to Life has endorsed GOP Rep. Paul Broun, a congressman since 2007. The new group, Georgia Life Alliance, which was formed two weeks ago, does not mention any candidates on its sparse website. But the group is supported by conservative RedState editor Erick Erickson, who has been outspoken in his support of Senate candidate Karen Handel in this race and during her 2010 campaign for governor.

The stakes are high. Republicans likely need to hold the Georgia seat if they are to retake control of the Senate. And although Georgia’s electorate leans Republican, election analysts such as Nate Cohn of The New York Times have predicted that the Democratic candidate, Michelle Nunn, could score a surprise pickup for Democrats—provided she runs against a weak Republican opponent.

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An Anti-Abortion Catfight Heats Up a GOP Senate Race

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Right-Wing Media Finally Free to Obsess About Obamacare Website

by silownie_zewnetrzne_krone Posted on October 18, 2013

Mother Jones

Rep. Mark Meadows (R–NC) was the author of a House pledge to vote against any Continuing Resolution that didn’t defund Obamacare. Dave Weigel caught up to him and asked if he planned to write another letter when the current CR runs out:

“We’re not going to need to because the president has said he’s willing to negotiate when there’s not a gun to his head,” said Meadows. “We’ll fix all the problems between now and then. I’m gonna hold him to his word—his word was that he was willing to negotiate now, and that’s what we all expect.” Obviously Meadows could change his mind in a few months, but I was struck how pragmatic he wanted to sound.

Hmmm. I’m pretty sure that Obama didn’t mean he was willing to negotiate about defunding his signature health care bill once the gun was lowered, so I wouldn’t count on anything along those lines. I’d say that ordinary budget negotiations are more along the lines of what he had in mind.

Which is too bad. There are actually details of Obamacare that I suspect Obama and his allies really would like to fix, and they might be able to give Republicans a few things they want in return. But I’m pretty sure that Republicans are still salivating over Obamacare’s imminent collapse once it gets up and running, and are entirely unwilling to do anything that might actually make it function more smoothly. So that’s probably out.

And on a related subject, remember how we all figured that once the budget shutdown was over, conservative sites would finally be freed to start banging away on the problems with the Obamacare website? Well, over at The Corner, seven of the top dozen posts right now are about exactly that. It’s the top story on Drudge. It’s at the top of the blog feed at the Weekly Standard. I count seven Obamacare stories on the front page at Fox News. Red State has two. Etc. This is what it would have been like 24/7 for the past two weeks if Ted Cruz and his merry band of own-goalers hadn’t hijacked the national conversation and made people actually start to feel kind of sorry for Obamacare.

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Right-Wing Media Finally Free to Obsess About Obamacare Website

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College Students Compete to Create Best Solar-Powered Home

by silownie_zewnetrzne_krone Posted on October 10, 2013

Phil Horton of the Arizona State University and University of New Mexico team gives a tour of the SHADE house at the Solar Decathlon 2013, held at the Orange County Great Park in Irvine, Calif. Photo: Stefano Paltera/U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon

They may not sprint, throw a javelin or pole vault, but an accomplished group of students is showing that they’re decathletes ready to go the distance — in the sport of creating solar-powered homes, that is.

They’re currently in the midst of the 2013 Solar Decathlon, organized by the U.S. Department of Energy biennially since 2002. The competition challenges teams from colleges across the U.S. — and a few from abroad — to design and build a solar-powered home that’s affordable, energy efficient, marketable and attractive.

The 20 entries this year include features like edible walls, a walkway that heats your home, digital art, siding that converts smog to nitric acid and even movable units to create a private backyard. Like a traditional decathlon, there are 10 contests that make up the Solar Decathlon — the houses are judged on everything from architecture and market appeal to affordability and how well the designs accommodate the pleasures of living, such as sharing meals with friends and family, watching movies in a home theater and surfing the Web. In other words, it’s about style and substance — who can create the most innovative overall package.

Next page: Preparing for the competition

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College Students Compete to Create Best Solar-Powered Home

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Wall Street Tycoons Are Very, Very Hurt by All the Criticism They’ve Gotten

by silownie_zewnetrzne_krone Posted on September 24, 2013

Mother Jones

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AIG CEO Robert Benmosche is in trouble for telling the Wall Street Journal that the fight to cut AIG bonuses after the company was bailed out by the federal government was basically the work of a lynch mob, “sort of like what we did in the Deep South decades ago.” Ezra Klein reviews other similar statements by Wall Street honchos and then explains where it comes from:

I was in an off-the-record meeting with top Wall Street folks where similar comparisons to Nazi Germany were tossed around. It really was a meme on Wall Street that the singling out of the wealthy for criticism — and, more to the point, taxation — had a direct historical precedent in Nazi Germany, where the Jews were first demonized, then taxed, and then, well, you know. The sense was that the rich in general, and Wall Street in particular, weren’t just being criticized, but that they were being turned into a dangerously despised minority.

That’s the context of Benmosche’s comment. I would bet he’s made the same point a number of times in private rooms to appreciative nods. When you say and hear that kind of thing often enough, however, you forget how insane and offensive it is — and then you say it to the Wall Street Journal.

Even Mitt Romney was smart enough to keep this kind of talk private. He was just unlucky that a worker at one of his fundraisers was offended by what he said and decided to release a video of it. Nonetheless, it was pretty obvious that this really was the kind of thing Romney said in private, and the kind of thing that Romney voters ate up.

Likewise here. Wall Street tycoons really do feel put upon. They simply don’t feel any collective responsibility for either the housing bubble or the Wall Street fraud and financial manipulation that made it worse. Nor do they feel any responsibility to support government action that helps ordinary workers who were hurt by the massive recession that followed. Nor do they believe that any further regulation of their activities is warranted in any way. They are the engines of the economy, not rent-seeking mooches, and they’re just damn tired of all the pipsqueaks who think otherwise.

It is truly mind-boggling.

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Wall Street Tycoons Are Very, Very Hurt by All the Criticism They’ve Gotten

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