Lily Salter's Blog, page 949

November 19, 2015

Rights groups “deeply disturbed” at “scapegoating of refugees” and U.S. clampdown

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Published on November 19, 2015 13:03

Republican viewers are tuning out Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show”

According to a new poll, Stephen Colbert's CBS viewers tend to more closely reflect his old Comedy Central viewers, as more Democrats, Atheists and men tune in to "Late Show," while Republicans have virtually tuned out the satirist in exodus. The Hollywood Reporter is out with its new survey of the broadcast late-night landscape and it finds that Colbert's near daily comedic takedowns of the 2016 GOP presidential slate may have helped to turn off Republican viewers. Only 17 percent of "Late Show" viewers identified themselves as Republican, the smallest margin of the big three. By contrast, ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" viewers are 33 percent Republican. That's a 16-point gap between the two comedians. In fact, among his own viewership, Colbert finds a 30-point gap between self-identified Republican viewers and self-identified Democrats. 47 percent of Colbert's viewers are Democrats, the highest margin of all three. In Kimmel’s case, the ideological split is virtually nonexistent -- 34 percent Democrats to 33 percent Republicans. In the case of NBC's "Tonight Show" host, Jimmy Fallon, the split is 36 Republicans to 31 Democrats. "Colbert Nation is filled with wealthy, socially liberal men who overwhelmingly support legalizing marijuana and want Bernie Sanders to be president," pollster Jon Penn explained. Penn flatly described Kimmel viewers as "conservative-leaning" and Colbert viewers as "liberal-leaning," describing Fallon's fan base as "swing." Interestingly, Fallon also draws in the most female viewers, 55 percent, while a full 30 percent of Colbert viewers describe themselves as atheist, the top "religion category" choice for "Late Show" viewers. In the poll overall, Fallon beats out both Colbert and Kimmel by a 2-to-1 margin when viewers were asked which of the hosts is a "unpredictable, cool dude you want to be friends with." But Colbert's liberal appeal may be limiting his wider audience growth. According to Mediaite, "over the first six weeks since launching, Colbert beat Kimmel by an impressive 40 percent in the demo," but by the first week of November, there was a dramatic 45 percent swing in Kimmel's favor. Read the full results of The Great Late-Night Poll: https://www.scribd.com/doc/290214492/... Jimmy Fallon Not Worried About Late Night Competition

Jimmy Fallon Not Worried About Late Night Competition

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Published on November 19, 2015 12:50

The gross Jared Fogle “footlong” prison rape jokes arrived right on schedule

Former-Subway spokesman Jared Fogle was sentenced today to 15.6 years in federal prison on child pornography and sex charges, despite a plea deal reached in August through which Fogle’s defense team bargained for 5-12 years.

Testifying for Fogle’s defense, forensic psychiatrist Dr. John Bradford diagnosed Fogle with “mild pedophilia” for his interest in 16- and 17-year-olds.

Bradford also claimed in his testimony that Fogle’s “hypersexuality” stemmed from a compulsive eating disorder that needed an outlet after losing however-many pant sizes on the Subway diet, Reuters reported.

Twitter’s affinity for low-hanging fruit is certainly no secret. And why should Fogle’s sentencing be any different? These are from the past hour:

Subway Spokesman Jared Fogle Sentenced to 15 Years in Prison

Testifying for Fogle’s defense, forensic psychiatrist Dr. John Bradford diagnosed Fogle with “mild pedophilia” for his interest in 16- and 17-year-olds.

Twitter’s affinity for low-hanging fruit is certainly no secret. And why should Fogle’s sentencing be any different? These are from the past hour:

Testifying for Fogle’s defense, forensic psychiatrist Dr. John Bradford diagnosed Fogle with “mild pedophilia” for his interest in 16- and 17-year-olds.

Twitter’s affinity for low-hanging fruit is certainly no secret. And why should Fogle’s sentencing be any different? These are from the past hour:

Testifying for Fogle’s defense, forensic psychiatrist Dr. John Bradford diagnosed Fogle with “mild pedophilia” for his interest in 16- and 17-year-olds.

Twitter’s affinity for low-hanging fruit is certainly no secret. And why should Fogle’s sentencing be any different? These are from the past hour:

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Published on November 19, 2015 12:32

Watch what a 7-year-old did when a mosque in his hometown was defaced with feces

[jwplayer file="http://media.salon.com/2015/11/JackSw..." image="http://media.salon.com/2015/11/Screen...] Muslim Woman Wears American Flag Hijab On Fox News

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Published on November 19, 2015 12:20

Ben Carson is cratering: New polls show controversies taking a toll on the wingnut favorite

Ben Carson has seen his fair share of fumbles, and after weeks of increased scrutiny and a turn in the spotlight under pressure, it is safe to say that the good doctor is no Teflon Don. A series of new polls out this week suggests that Carson's standing as a rising challenger to Donald Trump's long lasting dominance may be short-lived. "Carson Tops Trump in National Poll," the headlines read in late October, and again the next week. But then came West Point -- or was it the pyramid grain silos --- either way, Carson quickly found himself in all of the headlines for all of the wrong reasons shortly after catapulting to the top of the polls. And with the increased popularity in the polls came increased scrutiny in the media. Carson did his best to deflect the drip, drop of revelations that his personal narrative of a young thug redeemed by Jesus was full of discrepancies, lashing out at the media and hunkering down. But then came the third GOP presidential debate and Carson just faded away on stage, only to be brought back to memory by Jay Pharoah's brutal comedic takedown of his "Gifted Hands" memoir on SNL. In between, there were a number of terror attacks by ISIL, a bizarre claim by Carson that China is operating in Syria and a promise to provide his superior intelligence to prove it, and a disastrous Fox News interview where the political neophyte was unable to name even one specific allied partner in his plan to combat the terror group despite being asked three times by Chris Wallace. Then this week, two close Carson advisers even admitted to the New York Times that the candidate was in over his head on foreign policy and now, it appears as though some GOP voters may have caught on. There is the new national poll from Bloomberg that places Trump only four points ahead of Carson, but that is about as much good news as the good doctor can squeeze out of a slate of new polls showing his September surge slumping in the wake of damming allegations that he embellished his past personal narrative. A breakdown of the Bloomberg poll lays out Carson's troubles vis-a-vis Trump front-and-center. In a head-to-head match-up, voters chose Trump over Carson on the economy, illegal immigration, fighting “Islamic terrorism,” handling Russian President Vladimir Putin, knowing the most about how to get things done and finally, having the most appropriate life experience to be president. Poor Ben. For his part, Carson manages to grab the coveted candidate who “cares the most about people like you” top spot. And unsurprisingly, Republican voters still find Carson as the most honest and trustworthy of the entire bunch. Go figure. But unfortunately for Ben, the poll numbers only get worse after Bloomberg. Two new polls conducted entirely post-Paris attack show Carson losing ground in the first primary state in the nation. A Fox News poll out Wednesday evening found the retired neurosurgeon only grabbing 9 percent support from Republicans in New Hampshire, leaving him in fourth place in the crucial Granite State. In contrast, Trump bumps up to 27 percent in the Fox News poll. Another New Hampshire poll from WBUR found Carson losing ground in the state, dropping from 15 percent to 11 percent to tie for second with Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who saw his standing in the poll go up two points. Ben Carson Compares Refugees To Rabid Dogs

Ben Carson Compares Refugees To Rabid Dogs

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Published on November 19, 2015 12:15

November 18, 2015

America’s xenophobic rush: Elected official calls for refugee internment camps, majority of Americans now want to slam the door

So much for civil discourse. The national debate on Syrian refugees following last Friday's attacks in Paris only took two days to completely devolve into a fact-free emotional mess of speculation and inflamed rhetoric. On Monday morning, the nation only had two governor's brazen enough to call for an outright ban on all refugees from the war torn nation in the aftermath of the devastating terror attacks, when initial reports indicated that one of the at least seven Paris attackers carried a Syrian passport. So far, officials have reported that the other attackers were Europeans. By day's end on Monday, however, 34 governors had rushed to join their compatriots in declaring America, land of the free, as inhospitable to war refugees. Republican presidential candidate and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie led the pack with his heartless declaration that his state wouldn't even accept “3-year-old orphans.” Rand Paul and Mike Huckabee have since called for a suspension of all visas from Middle Eastern countries. Ted Cruz, the son of a political refugee from Cuba, offered a religious exemption only for Christian Syrians. But every GOP presidential candidate has forcefully turned their backs on Syrian refugees, scapegoating victims of war as ISIS sympathizers and potential terrorists. "Paris should be a wake-up call for the Washington establishment and many in the GOP who support open borders and out-of-control amnesty," Huckabee warned. Today, the Democratic mayor of Roanoke, Virginia, invoked the ugly history of Japanese internment during World War II to defend his callous decision to ban Syrian refugees from resettling in his town. "I'm reminded that President Franklin D. Roosevelt felt compelled to sequester Japanese foreign nationals after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and it appears that the threat of harm to America from Isis [sic] now is just as real and serious as that from our enemies then," David A. Bowers wrote. One GOP lawmaker isn't just invoking past internment camps, he is seemingly calling for a return to such camps in 2015. According to the Kansas City Star, a Missouri lawmaker is in such a panic that he has called for a special legislative session to stop "the potential Islamization of Missouri." "Unless I'm mistaken, a practicing muslim can do whatever is necessary for the 'good' of the faith -- telling 'fibs' is a small part of what they might do," Republican state Rep. Mike Moon wrote to Republican Speaker of the House Todd Richardson. "Our preference, as a nation, should be to place the refugees in camps so that they can be properly cared for and returned safely home when the time is right." Indiana Governor Mike Pence directed his state's social services agency to issue a letter to a Syrian refugee family waiting for three years in Jordan, according to the New York Times, informing them that their relocation should be “suspended or redirected to another state that is willing to accept Syrian placements.” The family was set to arrive in Indianapolis today but has been diverted to Connecticut, where Syrian refugee have not yet been rejected. And it is not just politicians. Now, a new poll shows that the xenophobic fearmongering has worked -- most Americans want the U.S. to stop letting in Syrian refugees. According to a new Bloomberg poll out Wednesday, 53 percent of Americans say the U.S. should not accept any further Syrian refugees, while only 28 percent support the president's plan to resettle 10,000 over the next two years.

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Published on November 18, 2015 14:37

With “Cabs, Camels or ISIS,” Thomas Friedman officially becomes a parody of himself: Can’t a New York Times columnist do better than this?

Scientists toiling deep in a basement laboratory in Denmark have been working for months, and have finally found what they’ve been looking for. They have distilled the essence of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s output into one quintessential paragraph:

So, about 1,000 miles south of the Islamic State start-up in Iraq and Syria — where jihadists are using technology to spawn disruption on a massive scale — another group of Muslims (and non-Muslims) in another Arab country are disrupting the world of camels and cabs.

Okay, I’m kidding a little bit. This is not from a Scandinavian lab but from Friedman’s column today, “Cabs, Camels or ISIS.” Friedman is a smart guy whose heart is in the right place; he really, really wants peace and democracy in the Middle East, the region he’s been writing about for many years. But besides some anecdotal details – “The first calf to come from a cloned camel was born at a research center in Dubai and a local taxi start-up is taking on Uber in the Arab world” – some of the column reads like an Onion parody. If there is an award for consistency, Friedman should win it. If we’re trying to find news ways to think about this complex, changing region that has been back on the front page because of the Paris attacks waged by ISIL last week, this is not it. So what makes this one so yawn-inducing? First is the lazy, un-ironic use of “disruption,” the cheerleading Silicon Valley term that becomes harder and harder to use with a straight face as various “disrupting” influences tear up life in the developed world, putting people out of work and destroying entire industries. (Including, it’s worth noting, Friedman’s.) Friedman really, really likes the term. “Often in the middle of something momentous, we can't see its significance,” he wrote in a column seven years ago. “But for me there is no doubt: 2008 will be the marker — the year when 'The Great Disruption' began.” (The column, incidentally, was called “The Great Disruption.”) Alongside this are two awfully familiar Friedman ideas: That market capitalism can solve our problems -- in the Middle East and, often, everywhere else -- and that middle-class stability (sometimes known as “order”) can keep people in tumultuous places from getting radicalized. Here’s Friedman again:

Given that, I believe U.S. foreign policy out here should progress as follows: Where there is disorder, help create order, because without order nothing good can happen. I will take Sisi over the Muslim Brotherhood. But where there is order, we need to push for it to become more decent and forward-looking... And where there is constitutional order, as in Tunisia, protect it like a rare flower.

Then he endorses Obama’s bombing. “But before we go beyond that, we need to face this fact: To sustainably defeat bad ISIS Sunnis you need good non-ISIS Sunnis to create an island of decency in their place,” he writes. “And right now, alas, finding and strengthening good non-ISIS Sunnis is the second priority of all the neighbors.” That may be a playful riff on the NRA’s “good guy with a gun” line. Either way, it doesn’t really tell us much we didn’t know. Order, moderation, flowers – what’s not to like? But if people haven’t tried these before, they haven’t been reading Friedman’s columns: He comes down this way a lot. (In the months after the September 11 attacks, he was a zealous supporter of George W. Bush’s invasions.) The problem with a column like this isn’t that Friedman is wrong, exactly. It’s that he’s not really moving things forward. A lot of people are looking for intelligence and wisdom on the situation in the Middle East right now. With three Pulitzers and some of the best journalistic real estate in the world, he can’t do better than this?Scientists toiling deep in a basement laboratory in Denmark have been working for months, and have finally found what they’ve been looking for. They have distilled the essence of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s output into one quintessential paragraph:

So, about 1,000 miles south of the Islamic State start-up in Iraq and Syria — where jihadists are using technology to spawn disruption on a massive scale — another group of Muslims (and non-Muslims) in another Arab country are disrupting the world of camels and cabs.

Given that, I believe U.S. foreign policy out here should progress as follows: Where there is disorder, help create order, because without order nothing good can happen. I will take Sisi over the Muslim Brotherhood. But where there is order, we need to push for it to become more decent and forward-looking... And where there is constitutional order, as in Tunisia, protect it like a rare flower.

So, about 1,000 miles south of the Islamic State start-up in Iraq and Syria — where jihadists are using technology to spawn disruption on a massive scale — another group of Muslims (and non-Muslims) in another Arab country are disrupting the world of camels and cabs.

Given that, I believe U.S. foreign policy out here should progress as follows: Where there is disorder, help create order, because without order nothing good can happen. I will take Sisi over the Muslim Brotherhood. But where there is order, we need to push for it to become more decent and forward-looking... And where there is constitutional order, as in Tunisia, protect it like a rare flower.

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Published on November 18, 2015 13:31

19 cops descend upon black woman suspected of breaking into her own apartment

Fay Wells, a vice president of a strategy company in Santa Monica, California recounted, in her own words, what it's like to have one's neighbor summon the police because he suspects you're breaking in to what's actually your own apartment. Included in the piece is the 911 call of her white neighbor, in which he identifies her as one of two Hispanic women who are accompanied by a Hispanic male with a bag full of "tools." The magnitude of his misreading of the basic situation is responsible, in part, for the Santa Monica Police Department's overreaction -- the man with the bag of "tools" is the locksmith, and Wells is one of the women, though it's unclear who the other one identified by the caller is. "It...didn’t matter that I didn’t match the description of the person they were looking for -- my neighbor described me as Hispanic when he called 911," Wells wrote. "What mattered was that I was a woman of color trying to get into her apartment -- in an almost entirely white apartment complex in a mostly white city -- and a white man who lived in another building called the cops because he’d never seen me before." Wells also points out that not only was the SMPD's response inept in and of itself, but the manner in which it internally accounted for it apparently is too. She acquired the cards of two officers at the scene, but when a list of responding officers she'd requested arrived, neither of their names were on it. When the Washington Post requested that same list, it was told that 16 officers responded, but received a list with 17 names on it. Nor did that list match the one provided to Wells. But Wells is more concerned with the basic incompetence demonstrated on the scene. "The SMPD sent 19 armed police officers who refused to answer my questions while violating my rights, privacy and sense of well-being," she wrote. "A wrong move, and I could have been shot." Read her entire account at the Washington Post... [image error]Fay Wells, a vice president of a strategy company in Santa Monica, California recounted, in her own words, what it's like to have one's neighbor summon the police because he suspects you're breaking in to what's actually your own apartment. Included in the piece is the 911 call of her white neighbor, in which he identifies her as one of two Hispanic women who are accompanied by a Hispanic male with a bag full of "tools." The magnitude of his misreading of the basic situation is responsible, in part, for the Santa Monica Police Department's overreaction -- the man with the bag of "tools" is the locksmith, and Wells is one of the women, though it's unclear who the other one identified by the caller is. "It...didn’t matter that I didn’t match the description of the person they were looking for -- my neighbor described me as Hispanic when he called 911," Wells wrote. "What mattered was that I was a woman of color trying to get into her apartment -- in an almost entirely white apartment complex in a mostly white city -- and a white man who lived in another building called the cops because he’d never seen me before." Wells also points out that not only was the SMPD's response inept in and of itself, but the manner in which it internally accounted for it apparently is too. She acquired the cards of two officers at the scene, but when a list of responding officers she'd requested arrived, neither of their names were on it. When the Washington Post requested that same list, it was told that 16 officers responded, but received a list with 17 names on it. Nor did that list match the one provided to Wells. But Wells is more concerned with the basic incompetence demonstrated on the scene. "The SMPD sent 19 armed police officers who refused to answer my questions while violating my rights, privacy and sense of well-being," she wrote. "A wrong move, and I could have been shot." Read her entire account at the Washington Post... [image error]

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Published on November 18, 2015 13:30

#JeSuisChien, the latest sign racist westerners care more about dead dogs than dead humans

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Published on November 18, 2015 13:28

Bernie Sanders puts Wall Street on notice: “On day one, I am appointing a special committee to investigate the crimes on Wall Street”

Bernie Sanders has long described himself as a democratic socialist and has found himself fending off mischaracterizations of his political ideology quite often on the campaign trail, so much so that he plans to hold a major address on Thursday explicitly detailing what it means to be a democratic socialist. Ahead of Sanders' big speech, Rolling Stone is out with its new cover feature on his political revolution and as an interview with the candidate while he was on the campaign trail back in May reveals, the populist seems just as committed to major reform as ever -- starting with Wall Street. The Vermont senator told Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson that his first course of action upon entering the White House would be to go after the Wall Street executives responsible for the 2008 global financial collapse. Not one Wall Street executive has ever been held criminally liable for the rampant financial malfeasance that dove the world markets into a tailspin. Sanders described to Rolling Stone exactly how such inaction came about and why he thinks President Obama "blew it" on holding Wall Street executives accountable:

About a half-dozen of us went to visit the president, I'm guessing six months into his [first] term. And we went into the White House, and Larry Summers was there and [Tim] Geithner was there. We had all their money people, all their financial people. That was the issue. I like the president very much, and I have supported him. We've worked together. But these are some of the disagreements we have. The American people were crushed by the greed and illegal behavior on Wall Street, right? And the American people wanted justice. And we said to the president – I wasn't alone on this – we said, "Mr. President, you gotta do something. You gotta be tough on this issue." The end result was seven years have come and gone and there are still no high-ranking CEOs who are in jail. There are kids who smoke marijuana who have criminal records, but not CEOs of large corporations. No matter what kind of crimes and illegal activity, these guys [Wall Street CEOs] are too big to jail? That is one of the reasons why people become alienated from the political process. They just don't see justice. From a public-policy point of view, in terms of holding people accountable for serious crimes, the Obama administration blew it. From a political point of view, in giving people confidence that we have a criminal-justice system that works for all, regardless of their wealth or power, it blew it.

"Now what do you think a president should have done," Sanders offered, "on day one, I am appointing a special committee to investigate the crimes on Wall Street." "We're gonna move this quickly," Sanders promised. "And if these people are found guilty, they will be in jail. Nobody in America is above the law," Sanders declared, arguing that many Wall Street executives had "committed some very serious crimes." "Is that what Barack Obama said?" the candidate asked. Read Bernie's full interview with Rolling Stone here.