Daily Kos

Jon Swaine and Oliver Laughland at the Guardian report—Eric Garner and Tamir Rice among those missing from FBI record of police killings:

Killings by police that unleashed a new protest movement around the US in 2014, including those of Eric Garner, Tamir Rice and John Crawford, are missing from the federal government’s official record of homicides by officers because most departments refuse to submit data.

Only 224 of 18,000 law enforcement agencies around the US reported a fatal shooting by their officers to the FBI last year, according to previously unpublished data obtained by the Guardian, which sheds new light on flaws in official systems for counting the use of deadly force by police.

The Counted, an investigation by the Guardian to report all deaths caused by police in 2015, had already logged deadly shootings by officers from 224 different law enforcement agencies by 10 April this year. Crowd-sourced counts in 2014 recorded deaths at a similar higher rate.

Stephen Fischer, a spokesman for the FBI, said exclusions were inevitable because the program remained voluntary. “We have no way of knowing how many incidents may have been omitted,” Fischer said in an email. [...]

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Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2004—Bush nixes Muslim peacekeepers for Iraq:

Lovely.

President George W. Bush rebuffed a plan last month for a Muslim peacekeeping force that would have helped the United Nations organize elections in Iraq, according to Saudi and Iraqi officials.

As a result, the UN continues to have a skeletal presence in Iraq, with only four staff members working full time on preparing for elections set for the end of January. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has refused to establish a new UN headquarters in Baghdad unless countries commit troops for a special force to protect it.

Saudi leaders, including Crown Prince Abdullah, personally lobbied Bush in July to sign off on the plan to establish a contingent of several hundred troops from Arab and Muslim nations. Abdullah discussed the plan in a 10-minute phone conversation with Bush on July 28 after meeting with Secretary of State Colin Powell, according to Saudi officials familiar with the negotiations.

Diplomats said Annan accepted the plan. But the Bush administration objected because the special force would have been controlled by the UN instead of by U.S. military officers who run the Multi-National Force in Iraq. Muslim and Arab countries refused to work under U.S. command, and the initiative died in early September.

Yet another reason we need to get rid of Bush.

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The Week's High Impact Posts • High Impact Posts • Top Comments

There is Kepler data from afar. It comes from a distant, mysterious star, where light dips strangely only to rebound, drawing in everyone from SETI, and all around ...

Now let’s have a care here. The paper doesn’t mention aliens, and it doesn’t even imply aliens. Not directly, at least. But the astronomers found a star so odd, with behavior so difficult to explain, that it’s clear something weird is happening there. And some of the astronomers who did the work are now looking into the idea that what they’ve found might (might!) be due to aliens.

If you read science fiction there are often vast structures made by super aliens: Ringworlds, Dyson Spheres, a galactic-sized Kerr Metric fashioned out of primeval cosmic string by Xeelee. It's been a hallmark of hard sci-fi for decades. If you know what any of that means, join us below for some new data on a nonfictional, quite distant star in our own galaxy that has astronomers and dreamers alike quite intrigued.

Much was learned from the first Democratic presidential debate. The most obvious thing is that the cast of characters running on the Democratic side is a serious bunch, in sharp contrast to the clown car represented by the Republican cast of characters.

Also, any real progressive or liberal should have no problem voting for four out of the five candidates who appeared on that stage. And yes, Jim Webb may be in the wrong party, based on the visible discomfort he displayed toward more progressive topics.

Here are five big takeaways from the first Democratic debate for the 2016 presidential race:

• The American corporatocracy is scared of Bernie Sanders. By all empirical measures, Bernie Sanders won the debate. He won it on Twitter. He won it in polls on most of the TV websites and on blog sites. Immediately after the debate there were no scientific polls, but there were reactions from focus groups on Fox and CNN. Sanders won them both. So why was there a blanket acceptance by the national punditry that Sanders won? Why were they all talking in unison? They had to. Sanders held his own and immediately became plausible to millions who had no clue who he is or what he represents.
• The Democratic Party is no longer in the grip of the DLC. The Democratic Party on stage at the Democratic debate was not a centrist party. It was not a center-left party. It was a populist party. Even Hillary Clinton did her best to dispel her infatuation with pleading guilty to being a moderate, and boldly claimed she is a progressive.

More takeaways are below.

What's the point of elections? Seriously, think about it for a minute. In the most practical terms, elections are how we, the people select the leaders who—within the boundaries set by the Constitution—will make the laws and determine the policies by which we live. For better or worse, our system is designed to make it very difficult for one party to make significant policy changes unless it wins both the White House and majorities of both houses of Congress. This includes a very large majority in the Senate thanks to the way the filibuster operates now, which is radically different from only a generation or two ago (opponents of Medicare, for example, never seriously considered one).

Behind all the craziness going on in the House that John Boehner so desperately wants to leave is a faction of his party which fundamentally rejects our system of democracy. That system, in the words of Thomas Mann, rests on the "Madisonian constitution's imperative for bargaining and compromise." Mann and his collaborator Norman Ornstein—highly respected political journalists described by NPR as "renowned for their carefully nonpartisan positions"—wrote in their 2012 book It's Even Worse Than It Looks that the Republican party, in particular in Congress, had become "an insurgent outlier—ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition."

This past week, Mann and Ornstein revisited the matter of Republican extremism, specifically in light of the debacle that is the House of Representatives. Their interview with Francis Wilkinson is worth reading in its entirety, but here's one key excerpt, again from Mann:

There is no clear path out of our current distemper. The solution, like the diagnosis, must focus on the obvious but seldom acknowledged asymmetry between the parties. The Republican Party must become a conservative governing party once again and accept the assumptions and norms of our Madisonian system.

[snip] The burden is on the GOP because they are currently the major source of our political dysfunction. No happy talk about bipartisanship can obscure that reality. Unless other voices and movements arise within the Republican Party to change its character and course, our dysfunctional politics will continue.

There's more below.

Not since LeBron James announced "The Decision" to "take my talents to South Beach" have so many Americans waited with bated breath for one man to declare his intentions. Hoping for white smoke from the chimney of his Janesville, Wisconsin home, most Republicans and even some Democrats are hoping that Paul Ryan will decide to run for Speaker of the House of Representatives and thus save the GOP from itself.

While Mitt Romney's 2012 running mate and current House Ways and Means Committee chairman remains huddled with family in his Badger State conclave, politicians and pundits sing Paul Ryan's praises in almost hagiographic terms. Josh Marshall noted that "a defining principle of modern Republican ideology is that 'Paul Ryan is awesome.'" Jonathan Chait argued that Ryan "is already the president of Republican America" because "no other figure within the party combines Ryan's philosophical radicalism and tactical pragmatism." While Ryan begs off by describing himself as "a policy guy," his GOP colleagues describe him as "the only eligible candidate" because he is "super, super smart" and "uniquely gifted and qualified for that position." As one unnamed Republican who spoke to him on Friday explained to CNN, Paul Ryan is a like a modern mix of Cincinnatus, George Washington, and Jesus Christ:

"He's in a tough spot because he knows he's the only one who can do it."

But if the conventional wisdom is that Paul Ryan is selfless, brilliant and "the only one who can fix things" for his party, the reality is something altogether different. A quick glance back at his record reveals a self-promoting opportunist who has erected a 21st century Potemkin façade to mask his staggering intellectual dishonesty and political cowardice, a losing war against basic math, shocking condescension towards women and the poor, and a reactionary governing philosophy that would turn back the clock to the Gilded Age. And that means Paul Ryan is uniquely qualified not for GOP Speaker of the House, but Republican Turd Polisher-in-Chief.

Continue reading about the cult of Paul Ryan below.

Quick—what do you know about the War of 1812, other than the fact it was fought in 1812? Test your knowledge, true or false:

1. The Battle of New Orleans, which led to Andrew Jackson’s status as a war hero and his eventual election as president in 1828, was fought after the war had ended.
2. Dolley Madison saved the Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington from the Redcoats who were busy burning our nation’s capital.
3. The 1812 Overture was written by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovskyto to commemorate the war.  
4. Francis Scott Key watched the battle of Fort McHenry and was moved to write the poem that would eventually become our national anthem.
5. The War of 1812 led to what would be the greatest emancipation of slaves prior to the Civil War.

One of the problems with the way American history was taught when I was a student is how well separated it was from world history. Had the two fields of study been taught together, we might have been able to see that while we consider it a major war and many people liken it to a second war of independence, the British considered it a minor annoyance at best. Great Britain was far more concerned with Napoleon, and it was the Napoleonic war on the high seas that created the need for sailors, leading to impressment. And impressment, we were taught, was one of the main factors that led to the War of 1812.

And if our Euro-centric American history lessons had been expanded to include viewpoints other than our own, we might have learned more about the other nations involved—both the Canadian and the Native American Nations—and what the War of 1812 meant to them. And if textbooks weren't published to please Texas school boards, we would have been taught about the slaves/agricultural workers of Virginia who managed to find freedom by fighting against their home state.

Fortunately, Alan Taylor has written a Pulitzer Prize-winning history that focuses on that last aspect of the war in Virginia. It's as engrossing a read as it is an important one.

Last week I wrote an essay titled, "Nobody is going to take your precious guns!" It was meant to be a takedown of the National Rifle Association talking point that President Obama and those of us on the left want to take guns away from law-abiding citizens.

I watched carefully as the comments rolled in, and read every single one. Some were thoughtful. Others, well—let's just say I am disappointed by both those on the right and the left on this issue. There was a lot of talk about taking guns by those on the gun control side, further stoking the fears of the those in the gun rights camp that the end goal is to take the guns away.

Meanwhile, those in the gun rights camp said "No" to any idea proposed by the gun control side, in some cases getting lost in the semantics of firearm terminology to sidetrack any real discussion. What I learned from reading the comments was that each side in the debate was talking past the other side, and everyone bounced off the walls to end up back in the same place they started.

In the previous essay I wrote that there were, as of 2007, an estimated 270 million privately owned guns in America. That number seemed low, so I did some additional research and found some newer numbers from 2012. Keep in mind this is only an estimate, and we will likely never know just how many privately owned firearms exist in this country. That being said, as of 2012 it is estimated that there are 347 million privately owned firearms in America today. That represents roughly one gun for every man, woman, and child in America.

We are, whether we like it or not, a well-armed populace. Which brings me to the point I tried making last Sunday: No one is going to come and take anyone's guns away from them. With the number of firearms in this country and the diverse population that owns them, it's simply not possible for the U.S. government to come around and take weapons away from citizens. The only way it could happen is if the Army started kicking down doors and taking them away. No matter how you feel about guns, I think you have to agree that you do not want to see the Army kicking doors down in this country.

We have a problem with gun violence in this country. The numbers don't lie. See them below.

Historically, black Americans tend to be overlooked when it comes to achievements in science, math, and medicine. So it was with great pride that we embraced the acclaim garnered by Dr. Ben Carson, neurosurgeon, who inspired many of our youngsters to go on to college and to follow his career in medicine. His autobiography, Gifted Hands, is a present that has been given to many young people in black households across America.

Hence, many of us are beyond appalled that this man has morphed into an anti-science reactionary who touts creationism, intelligent design, and anti-evolutionism. What makes it even worse is that he is now the poster child for the right-wing tea party attacks against Barack Obama, the Democratic Party, and Democrats running for the 2016 nomination. He has become the antithesis of the civil rights struggle, directly attacking the gains we have made and are fighting to hold onto. He embodies a "great black hope" agenda for white tea partiers, and racists who are willing to forgo their racism as long as the black person they control is steeped in their brand of tea.

Join me below for more on this failed ploy.

Leonard Pitts reviews the candidate currently running second in most Republican polls and the return of that greatest Republican theme for solving all problems: blame the victim.

Granted, the Nazis swept aside the armies of Poland and France like dandruff, and it took six years for Great Britain — later joined by Russia and the United States — to grind them down. But surely Jewish civilians with revolvers and hunting rifles would have made all the difference.

Much as I’d love to take credit for that insight, I can’t. No, it comes from presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson in a recent interview with CNN. “I think the likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed,” Carson said.

This has become a recurrent theme on the political right, the idea that unarmed victims of violence are to blame for their own troubles. And not just in the Holocaust. Rush Limbaugh said two years ago that if African Americans had been armed, they wouldn’t have needed a Civil Rights Movement. The founder of so-called “Gun Appreciation Day” said, also two years ago, that had the Africans been armed, there could have been no slavery.

Get taken by fiscal trickery? Why, you should have known better. You shouldn't sue that doctor who carried out unnecessary surgery or that pharmaceutical firm that gave you bad pills—you should have done your research. If women don't want to get raped, they shouldn't A) dress like they're asking for it and / or B) go out alone when they know that men are tempted.

And if you get shot, it's your own fault for not shooting someone else first.

Hey, what if Jesus had been armed?

“Thou wisheth to nail me to what? I think not. Come on, punks. Maketh my day!”

That bit will come up again.

So come on in. Let's get punditing.

On Tuesday night, all (more or Lessig) of the Democratic candidates for president gathered in Las Vegas for their first, highly anticipated debate.

After the two-plus hours of nuanced discussion, the pundits and know-it-alls wasted little time in anointing Hillary Clinton the debate's "winner."

This was hardly surprising, given that the mainstream (liberal) media—the New York Times, in particular—has been carrying Hillary's water for the better part of a year (or twenty-odd).

Meanwhile, in focus groups, and on social media and teh Google, Bernie Sanders was named as the "winner."

This, too, was unsurprising, given that people—especially the Millennials—tend to like Bernie (#FeelTheBern, in
the parlance of our times).

Elsewhere, Martin O'Malley was called a "DILF."

Post-debate polling about who really "won" offered something for everyone—but a lot of it lacked any sort of "scientific" value and/or validity.

Now, all that being said ...

I think there's at least one thing that we can all agree on: any of our five (or maybe six???) candidates—even Jim Webb, who literally killed a guy—would make a far better president than any of those fucking clowns in the Republican party.

Feel free to disagree.

What's coming up on Sunday Kos ...

• Wish upon a star, by DarkSyde
• Let's listen to each other on the topic of guns, by Mark E Andersen
• A black perspective on Ben Carson; the Teapublican's "anti-Obama," by Denise Oliver Velez
• The comical cult of Paul Ryan, by Jon Perr
• The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772–1832, by Susan Grigsby
• If the party that loses can impose its will, why bother having elections, by Ian Reifowitz
• What did we learn from the Democratic Debate, by Egberto Willies

Every article on climate change must be prefaced and preconditioned on the tired old refrain: All things in science are tentative, individual weather events are unpredictable and cannot be conclusively tied to a single cause, etc. But it's admittedly early on in our new, warmer climate paradigm, and if anything the scientists' warnings have turned out in retrospect to underestimate the environmental impact:

"For every one degree Celsius of warming, the scientists estimate that we should expect 2.3 meters of long-term, eventual sea-level rise, playing out over millennia. That calculation is based on much research and represents the “state of the art,” said Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute, who was not involved in the study but has published previously with Levermann. “It is the best estimates we can make with the understanding that we have today about the processes leading to sea-level rise.” ... The authors do not say how fast the sea-level rise could occur — the basic assumption is that the estimate of 2.3 meters plays out over 2,000 years, as the planet’s huge masses of ice slowly adjust to a change in its temperature. But much of the sea-level rise could happen a lot faster than that. Its precise timing is a key question for scientific inquiry right now ...