Tuesday
Dec012015
The Commentariat -- December 2, 2015
Internal links removed.
Afternoon Update:
Nick Gass of Politico: "Rahm Emanuel said Wednesday that he would not resign, despite growing criticism for what some are calling his botched response to video footage showing a Chicago police officer last year firing 16 times at Laquan McDonald, who was walking away from officers." ...
... Contributor Citizen625 wrote in today's thread: "Rahm Emanuel is a Dick Cheney Democrat, expect him to never admit doubt or accept blame." CW: Sounds about right to me.
*****
Monica Davey & Richard Perez-Pena of the New York Times: "Mayor Rahm Emanuel ousted Chicago's police superintendent on Tuesday, responding to an uproar over a white officer shooting a black teenager 16 times and anger at the Police Department for resisting, for more than a year, release of a video of the fatal shooting. 'He has become an issue, rather than dealing with the issue, and a distraction,' Mr. Emanuel said of Superintendent Garry F. McCarthy. He said he had asked for, and received, Mr. McCarthy's resignation.... Last year, the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division found that the Newark[, New Jersey,] police had engaged in a pattern and practice of unconstitutional policing, including when Mr. McCarthy was chief. The Chicago Police Department has been accused of some of the same shortcomings, including almost never punishing officers for wrongdoing." ...
... The Chicago Sun-Times story, by Fran Spielman, is here. ...
... New York Times Editors: "Mayor Rahm Emanuel demonstrated a willful ignorance when he talked about the murder charges against the police officer who shot [Laquan] McDonald, seeking to depict the cop as a rogue officer. He showed a complete lack of comprehension on Tuesday when he explained that he had decided to fire his increasingly unpopular police superintendent, Garry McCarthy, not because he failed in his leadership role, but because he had become 'a distraction.'... All along, Mr. Emanuel's response, either by design or because of negligence, was to do as little as possible -- until the furor caused by the release of the video forced his hand."
Governor Moonbeam. Chris Megerian of the Los Angeles Times: "Four decades ago, [California Gov. Jerry Brown's] focus on the environment -- talking of 'Spaceship Earth' and exhortations that 'small is beautiful' -- was a curiosity. But as 50,000 people gather in Paris in an ongoing effort to stop global warming, it's clear that the world has caught up with Brown." ...
... Coral Davenport of the New York Times: "The Marshall Islands are disappearing.... Most of the 1,000 or so Marshall Islands, spread out over 29 narrow coral atolls in the South Pacific, are less than six feet above sea level -- and few are more than a mile wide. For the Marshallese, the destructive power of the rising seas is already an inescapable part of daily life. Changing global trade winds have raised sea levels in the South Pacific about a foot over the past 30 years, faster than elsewhere." Excellent photos by Josh Haner. ...
... So What? Our Irresponsible Congress. David Herszenhorn of the New York Times: "Hours after President Obama on Tuesday pledged in Paris that the United States would be in the vanguard of nations seeking a global response to climate change, Congress approved two measures aimed at undercutting him. In a provocative message to more than 100 leaders that the American president does not have the full support of his government on climate policy, the House passed resolutions, already approved by the Senate, to scuttle Environmental Protection Agency rules that would significantly cut heat-trapping carbon emissions from existing and future coal-fired power plants.... The legislation will be sent to the White House, where Mr. Obama has said he will veto them. The Senate approved each measure by the same margin, 52 to 46, signaling that Republican congressional leaders would not be able to muster the two-thirds majority needed for an override." ...
... The New Luddites. Ryan Cooper of the Week: "World elites, it turns out, are beginning to correctly grasp the implications of climate change -- that it is not some niggling environmental issue, but a serious threat to human society.... Most everyone was coming naturally to this understanding, but not in America. There are two large obstacles to the U.S. getting on board with the rest of humanity, but both are slowly cracking. The first is the awesome wealth and power of the carbon industry.... The second is the denialism of the Republican Party: Basically alone among major parties in the industrialized world, the GOP does not accept that climate change is happening." Emphasis added.
Our Irresponsible Congress, Ctd. Kelsey Snell of the Washington Post: "The Senate is expected to vote this week on an Obamacare repeal package designed to put them -- and President Obama -- on record rejecting the president's signature domestic achievement.... The bill also contains language to defund Planned Parenthood, despite the killings at a Colorado clinic last week."
In the Nick of Time. Maybe. Keith Laing of the Hill: "House and Senate negotiators struck an agreement Tuesday on a $305 billion highway bill that would extend federal transportation funding for five years, setting up an eleventh-hour dash to win approval in both chambers. The resulting 1,300-page bill, paid for with gas tax revenue and a package of $70 billion in offsets from other areas of the federal budget, comes just days before transportation spending is set to expire on Dec. 4.... If enacted, the package would reflect the first transportation funding legislation to last longer than two years since 2005."
Emily Arrowood of US News: "... you're seven times more likely to be killed by a homegrown, anti-government extremist than a Muslim terrorist. Yet following the Islamic State group's attack in Paris, the U.S. was awash with calls to block the entry of Syrian refugees in the name of national security -- even though several of the Paris terrorists were French-born. In the wake of Friday's mass shooting at Planned Parenthood, there's been no similar national security outcry over a threat from white, Christian men, despite the fact that Dear was Caucasian and reportedly professed to be a Christian.... What's more, we'd rather not correct the record on the fact that Planned Parenthood was not in the business of harvesting baby parts.... Our collective denial allows white, anti-government extremists to slip under the radar with their arms full of guns and their heads full of lies." CW: Very nice, Emily. You might have mentioned that all the resistance to talking about anti-government extremists comes from confederate Republicans. But no. Because both sides do it, right? ...
... ** Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post: "Republican politicians who fueled the overwrought and unsupported controversy over selling baby parts bear some measure of responsibility [for the attack on the Colorado Spring Planned Parenthood clinic].... This is, literally, a manufactured issue, cobbled together from doctored videotapes and overheated accusations. The organization's activities have been so mischaracterized, and the practice of providing fetal tissue so overblown and so manipulated by lawmakers and politicians, that blame for the ensuing violence falls more heavily on them.... Extreme rhetoric combined with falsehoods tips the balance toward greater culpability.... Contrast the candidates' immediate outcry over the videos with their reticence on the shootings." ...
... CW: Good for Marcus. It's high time MOR Democrats & members of the press starting calling out Republicans for what they've do.
Mark Matthews of the Denver Post: "Pointing to Friday's shooting in Colorado Springs, congressional Democrats on Tuesday urged Republican leaders to disband a panel created just weeks ago to investigate Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers. In a press conference attended by the six U.S. House Democrats assigned to the Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives, the lawmakers drew a line between the rhetoric used by anti-abortion legislators and Friday's attack on a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, in which three people were killed and 12 injured. 'Since July, the phrase "baby parts" or similar phrases have been used by the eight (Republican) member of this committee -- just those eight members -- 33 times,' said Diana DeGette of Denver, one of the Democrats on the panel." ...
... Richard Fausset of the New York Times profiles Robert Dear, the (alleged) Planned Parenthood shooter. CW: I scanned it, & the gist seems to be that he is a weird Christianist fanatic long prone to violence & abuse. ...
... William Wan of the Washington Post: "Before his arrest for last week's shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Robert Lewis Dear had on several occasions been accused of erupting in bursts of violence, particularly toward women. At least two of his three ex-wives have accused him of physical abuse, according to court records. And in 1992, Dear was arrested and accused of sexual violence and rape." ...
... Alex Johnson & Vivian Glover of NBC News: "Dear appears to have been opposed to [Planned Parenthood] for decades. Barbara Mescher Michaux, who was married to Dear from 1985 to 1993, said Tuesday that Dear once put glue in the locks of a Planned Parenthood clinic near where they were living at the time -- and 'that was over 20 years ago when he did that,' she said." ...
... Lance Benzel of the Colorado Springs Gazette: "An El Paso County clerical error was apparently to blame for Planned Parenthood shooting suspect Robert Lewis Dear Jr. being listed as a woman on his [driver's license &] voter registration card - a detail that fueled national speculation over his gender identity.... Dear received the erroneous driver's license in the mail. Records show he traveled to a Department of Motor Vehicles office in Salida to report the error and request a corrected license, which he received, Parsell said." Dear also attempted to correct his voter registration card. "Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz recently downplayed reports that Dear said 'no more baby parts' by saying that he's also been reported to be a 'transgendered leftist activist,' a claim that appears to be limited to conservative blogs and news sites."
AP: "Former top national security officials from Republican and Democratic administrations urged Congress on Tuesday to continue allowing the resettlement of Syrian and Iraqi refugees in the United States. 'Refugees are victims, not perpetrators, of terrorism,' the 20 retired military, security experts and others wrote in a letter sent to all lawmakers. 'Categorically refusing to take them only feeds the narrative of ISIS that there is a war between Islam and the West....' Among those signing the letter are former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger, George Shultz and Madeleine Albright. Retired Gen. David Petraeus also signed the letter, as did former Homeland Secretary Michael Chertoff and onetime Defense Secretaries Leon Panetta, Chuck Hagel and William Cohen." The letter opposes a Republican-led bill to "erect high hurdles for Syrian and Iraqi refugees." Forty-seven House Democrats voted for the bill, which is pending in the Senate.
Missy Ryan of the Washington Post: "The Pentagon will send a new Special Operations force to Iraq to intensify U.S. and Iraqi operations against the Islamic State, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said Tuesday. Carter, providing the House Armed Services Committee an update on President Obama's plan for countering the extremist group, said the United States was sending 'a specialized expeditionary targeting force' to help Iraqi troops and to intensify direct action against the militants there."
Capitalism Is Awesome, Ctd. Carolyn Johnson & Brady Dennis of the Washington Post: "Gilead Sciences executives were acutely aware in 2013 that their plan to charge an exorbitantly high price for a powerful new hepatitis C drug would spark public outrage, but they pursued the profit-driven strategy anyway, according to a Senate Finance Committee investigation report released Tuesday." ...
... ** Donald McNeil of the New York Times: "Despite major medical advances and more than 30 years of effort, the United States is still in danger of losing the war on AIDS, according to the country's top disease-control official. In an essay in The New England Journal of Medicine published on Tuesday, World AIDS Day, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Dr. Jonathan Mermin, the agency's chief of AIDS prevention, paint a bleak picture of the fight. 'Hundreds of thousands of people with diagnosed H.I.V. infection are not receiving care or antiretroviral treatment,' they wrote. 'These people account for most new H.I.V. transmission.'... Risky behaviors -- including unprotected anal sex and needle-sharing -- appear to be increasing. Infection rates are rising among young gay men, especially blacks and Hispanics. The national averages are dragged down by states, mostly in the South, that have high H.I.V. rates but rejected the Affordable Care Act's expansion of Medicaid, which would have covered testing and treatment."
American "Justice," Ctd. David Smith of the Guardian: "A man who has spent 13 years in the US prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, was arrested partly in a case of mistaken identity, US officials conceded Tuesday. Officials admitted that Mustafa al-Aziz al-Shamiri, 37, was a low-level Islamist foot soldier and not an al-Qaida courier and trainer as previously thought, during a Guantanamo hearing."
Josh Gerstein of Politico: "A move by the Supreme Court Tuesday will keep a legal dispute over President Barack Obama's executive actions on immigration on track for the case to be resolved by June.... Texas and 25 other states had asked for a commonly granted 30-day extension of their deadline.... However, the Obama Administration opposed the 30-day delay.... A court spokeswoman said Tuesday that the court had granted only an eight-day delay for the states' filing.... The high court has still not decided whether it will actually hear the immigration-related executive power dispute, as Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. has asked. The votes of four justices are needed for the court to take the case." ...
... Anna Palmer of Politico: "The Mark Zuckerberg-backed group that spent tens of millions on a failed bid for immigration reform is reigniting its efforts for the 2016 election. Fwd.us is launching a multi-pronged campaign that could spend as much as $10 million over the next year on digital and TV ads, research and polling.... The initiative includes an expansion of its ground operation into 12 states, focusing on presidential battlegrounds and targeted House seats held by Republicans. Fwd.us is looking to counter the anti-immigration reform rhetoric in the GOP primary and lay the groundwork for an overhaul of the country's immigration laws in early 2017 once the next president takes office. Formed in 2013 by tech giants including Facebook's Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Reid Hoffman and Eric Schmidt, among others, the group accounted for 75 percent of all paid media spent in 2013 and 2014 to support immigration reform and had field operations in 29 states and 149 target House districts at the peak of the debate." ...
... Vendu Goel & Natasha Singer of the New York Times: "Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder and chief executive of Facebook, announced on Tuesday that he and his wife would give 99 percent of their Facebook shares 'during our lives' -- holdings currently worth $45 billion -- to charitable purposes. The pledge was made in an open letter to their newborn daughter, Max, who was born a week ago."
Presidential Race
Amy Chozick of the New York Times: "In the church [in Montgomery, Alabama,] where, 60 years ago, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. inspired residents to boycott the local bus network, Hillary Clinton on Tuesday called for overhauling the criminal justice system, saying there is something 'profoundly wrong' when black men are disproportionately stopped and searched by the police, arrested or killed.... Six decades have passed since [Rosa] Parks's arrest on Dec. 1, 1955, and yet as Mrs. Clinton addressed the crowd the country was reeling from another shooting of an unarmed black man by a white police officer in Chicago, and grappling with civil rights and racial justice issues that have become central to the 2016 presidential campaign." CW: Odd that Chozick doesn't mention Clinton's ties to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who was a senior advisor to President Bill Clinton. ...
... The Guardian story, by Matthew Teague, is here. ...
... James Hohmann of the Washington Post: "The State Department posted 7,800 pages of Hillary Clinton's e-mails yesterday afternoon, the latest batch of the 55,000 pages that she sent and received while in office." Hohmann provides some highlights.
Abby Phillip & Sean Sullivan of the Washington Post: "As the first primary contests rapidly approach, a rash of bickering has broken out among several Republican presidential candidates, marking the beginning of a new, more serious phase of the race.... The feuding is particularly notable among New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio...."
Dana Milbank: "Donald Trump is a bigot and a racist.... At some point you're not merely saying things that could be construed as bigoted: You are a bigot.... Trump's rivals for the nomination are slowly and haltingly finding the courage to call the man what he is." ...
... Thomas Edsall of the New York Times talks to psyciatrists & psychologists to explain Donald Trump's appeal. They don't say anything we haven't said here: Trump appeals to undereducated wingers who are angry & fearful of the big, wide world & their own places in the community. ...
This guy Kasich, he's like a lunatic. You watch him on the stage, he can't debate, he can't talk. -- Donald Trump, on Serius XM
... Eliza Collins of Politico: "Donald Trump went after the Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin on Tuesday, just after the conservative writer wrote a post titled, 'Is Donald Trump too chicken to debate?' 'Highly untalented Wash Post blogger, Jennifer Rubin, a real dummy, never writes fairly about me. Why does Wash Post have low IQ people?,' Trump tweeted." CW: Okay, sometimes I agree with Donald Trump, at least in part. ...
... Charles Pierce urges the national teevee media to stand up to Donald Trump's "new rules": "I know of no other candidate for any office anywhere who's gotten away with just being a voice on the telephone. It's one baby step away from Hal Philip Walker, the candidate in Robert Altman's Nashville who campaigned only as a voice on a sound truck. In your cowardice and your insecurity, you've allowed him to rewrite rules that you have every right and duty to enforce."
Our Irresponsible Presidential Candidate. Trip Gabriel of the New York Times: "Jeb Bush on Tuesday belittled President Obama's trip to Paris for the global climate conference, saying that if he were president, he most likely would have skipped the meeting, where officials from nearly 200 nations are seeking to avert potentially catastrophic damage to the environment." CW: No "potential" about it. Republicans can keep on belittling the President for trying to save the earth's environment; I see this as a losing issue for them. At least I hope it is. ...
... Jeb!'s Last Stand. Eli Stokols of Politico: "New Hampshire is beginning to look like Jeb Bush's final stand. Stuck in the middle of the GOP pack he was expected to dominate, Bush is accelerating the time frame for his campaign's next ad buy in the state. His campaign also announced Tuesday that it is opening four regional field offices in New Hampshire and upping its on-the-ground staff from 12 people to 20. That concentration of resources comes after his Right to Rise super PAC has already spent $12 million on TV ads and blanketed New Hampshire with four direct mail pieces. Bush himself has made 60 campaign appearances. Despite those efforts, polls show the former Florida governor remains mired in sixth place in the early state he most needs to win."
Here's the simple and undeniable fact: The overwhelming majority of violent criminals are Democrats. -- Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), interview on the Hugh Hewitt Show, Nov. 30, 2015
... Cruz is wildly off base when he claims that across the United States the 'overwhelming majority of violent criminals are Democrats.' The data that is [sic!] the source of his statement was based on the party registrations of mostly black and Hispanic prisoners in just three states -- and does not make a distinction between violent and nonviolent felons. -- Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post
Wow! Ben Carson thinks up a great excuse for committing non-Christian acts of violence. Sally Quinn of the Washington Post: "Does he ever ask himself what Jesus would do? Would Jesus say 'find them and kill them'? ["them" being members of the Islamic State] 'I seriously doubt he would put himself in that position.' Jesus, he says, would never run for president." ...
... CW: Many scholars point out that the Biblical story of Jesus's arrival in Jerusalem was a copy of earlier Jewish leaders' (David, the Maccabees) triumphant entries into Jerusalem, where they became heads of the Jewish state. So not president, but the country's top political (and religious) leaders. Some scholars assert the story of Jesus is true, & that he went to Jerusalem with the idea that a popular revolt would make him head of state; in this scenario, the reason for his trial & crucifixion was that the Jewish Sadducee leaders & the Romans both believed he aimed to effect a coup & were fearful he would be successful. In any case, "Jesus would never run for president" is pretty disingenuous. But it's still a super copout! ...
Ben Carson Says Whatever Pops into His Mind. The Family Research Council, according to some government
agencies, is a terrorist group. -- Ben Carson, November 29th, in a CNN interview
We could find no government agency that singled out the Family Research Council as a terrorist group, and experts told us they were unaware of any government lists that did. -- Louis Jacobson of Politifact
Alexander Burns of the New York Times: "Among some [New Jersey Muslim] community leaders, who saw [Chris] Christie as a rare Republican who rejected alarmist, broad-brush rhetoric about Islam, a sense of betrayal has set in. Most distressing ... has been Mr. Christie's rigid stance on refugees fleeing Syria: Citing his distrust of President Obama's administration to screen them for security risks, Mr. Christie has called for a full stop to the settling of refugees in the United States. That includes, he said on a radio show, 'orphans under 5.' Community leaders say Mr. Christie has also missed opportunities to speak out ... about what they see as flagrantly hateful remarks from other Republicans." ...
... Charles Pierce: The New Hampshire Union Leader's endorsement of Chris Christie, which ignores his actual governing record, has given the New Jersey governor a media bump.
Beyond the Beltway
Washington Post: "Opening statements began Wednesday in the trial of Baltimore police officer William G. Porter, 26, who is charged with involuntary manslaughter, second-degree assault, misconduct in office and reckless endangerment in the death of Freddie Gray. Gray, 25, suffered a severe spinal injury after his April 12 arrest and died a week later. The trial is expected to run until at least mid-December." The Post is liveblogging developments at the linked page.
Oliver Laughland & Jon Swaine of the Guardian: Timothy Loehmann, "the officer who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Ohio, has delivered his first public account of the killing..., arguing his actions were justified as he was engaged in an 'active shooter situation' and believed Tamir was 18 years old.... 'The suspect had a gun, had been threatening others with the weapon and had not obeyed our command to show us his hands,' he said. Loehmann fatally shot Tamir, who was black, within two seconds of arriving at a local park on 22 November last year, after a 911 caller reported that there was a juvenile in the area with a weapon that was 'probably fake'. The full details of the call were not passed on to the officers, according to other accounts.... Loehmann said he told Tamir to raise his hands repeatedly as the boy was 'reaching into his waistband' before the officer opened fire.... On Tuesday, Rice family lawyers described the prosecutor's decision to allow the officer's unsworn statements before the grand jury as 'a stunning irregularity'."
News Ledes
New York Times: "Samuel R. Berger, a political confidant of President Bill Clinton who became his national security adviser, died early Wednesday in Washington. He was 70. His death was announced by Tara Sonenshine, his longtime aide and friend. Mr. Berger, known as 'Sandy,' was given a cancer diagnosis more than a year ago. On Tuesday, he wrote to his colleagues at the Albright Stonebridge Group, an international consulting firm he ran with former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, that his condition had worsened and that 'time is not on my side.'" ...
... NEW: Berger's Washington Post obituary is here.
New York Times: "NATO announced plans on Wednesday to enlarge its membership, a move that brought an angry response from Moscow, as Secretary of State John Kerry sought support from the alliance as he reaffirmed Washington's desire to remove President Bashar al-Assad of Syria from power.... The decision to invite Montenegro to join the military alliance adds another layer of complication to efforts to resolve the crisis in Syria."
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Reader Comments (19)
AirAsia 8501
My friend and neighbor, Ross, is a lifetime career aviator: 20 years US Air Force pilot, and another 20 in commercial aviation, retired as chief of pilot training for a major American carrier. He has told me that he will never again fly on a commercial airliner, that he considers them unsafe, because: “they’re too much ‘fly by wire’ and the pilots aren’t trained what to do if the wire breaks.” He adds that it may not even be possible for any pilot to control the aircraft if the wire breaks.
Ross’ fears are echoed, almost eerily, by the newly released investigation into AirAsia 8501.
"The crash of an AirAsia passenger jet off Indonesia last year was caused by a technical fault and a failed attempt by the crew to deal with it…” ~ http://nyti.ms/1IlIMq2
Ross attributes this state of affairs to cost cutting. BTW, Ross is a rock ribbed Republican.
So we have the Repugnant House and Senate doing all they can--which thanks to the promised veto they likely can't override won't be much more than another political neener-neener) to distance the U.S. from any promises our President might make in Paris to reduce carbon emissions.
What children! Once again, rampant infantilism (with JEB adding his whiny voice to the chorus of crazy) at work for all to see.
An hour or so ago, I heard House Speaker Ryan on the radio saying the Repugnant's efforts to spew more CO2 into the atmosphere has the public's support. I checked the polls, and he's wrong about that, too, (48% of R's believe climate change is a serious issue that needs to be dealt with) math challenged or just plain lyin' Ryanin' again, I don't know. These days it's hard to tell
I said the other day, we don't commit our politics on a playground, but the R's think we do. So here's the picture. We have an earth-sized ball and when the Koch-Confederates don't get their way, no matter how wacky, mean or uninformed their way is, they want to leave and take the whole ball with them when they go, or destroy the ball altogether. If they can't have it the way they want it, no one can have it.
Problem is, the R's don't own the ball.
When we're talking about the Earth, we all do.
It take a very narrow mind to miss that obvious fact.
"The overwhelming majority of violent criminals are Democrats."
~ Sen. Ted Cruz
"100% of racists are Republicans." ~ Me
Sorry, I am starting to lose it. So this is America:
Top Republican Candidates for POTUS:
1. Fascist, racist liar
2. Delusional liar
3. Hated by everyone who he ever met liar
1-12. The only people on earth who know the truth about climate change are people who take bribes from the fossil fuel industry.
All of a sudden Gov. Pissey is starting to look relatively good.
And a quote from Frank Bruni's column about Sen.Ooze:
His freshman roommate, Craig Mazin, told Patricia Murphy of The Daily Beast: “I would rather have anybody else be the president of the United States. Anyone. I would rather pick somebody from the phone book.”
Marie, on another matter, I am sure your view on medical treatment and sex of patient is accurate. (I have a wife and three daughters). However, from my experience I think a part of treatment decisions includes age. You know old folks contribute more money the the doctor's pocket.
This past year I had two events which tells much. I had a prostate infection. Saw a urologist who also wanted to me to get a PSA test. I said excuse me but doesn't the American College of Urology say no testing for people my age? Oh well, you know, still better for me to have an opportunity to make money on a meaningless diagnosis.
Then I had my last routine colonoscopy and the doctor says everything is fine I will see you again in five years. Never mind that the American College of Gastroenterology says every 10 years for people with no family history and never for anyone over 75 (next year). So money, money, money especially for us old folks.
Let's look on the bright side this morning on what is, in my neck of the woods, a dismal, rainy day. The Republican Party, trembling in their red booties, are finally waking up to the fact that the Donald could possibly become the winner. They know that if that happens they would be handing the easiest victory ever to Hillary (or maybe Bernie, but I doubt it). So let's cheer on the Don––come on, buster, give us more of your bluster, your demented messages that smack of the bad, the ugly, and made-up shit. And finally Michael Cohen of the Boston Globe headlined his column with "Trump is a Liar!"
JEB! has spent 30 mm on ads ––133 to 1 compared with all the other Republican candidates. Think about that: 30 million dollars on ADS? This turns my stomach. And where has it gotten him? He's the nowhere man in his own nowhere world where evidently no one is paying attention.
Ashton Carter spend hours at a hearing laying out the military strategies and possible implementations re: the Isis crisis. One House Republican asked Carter, "Are we winning?" in a strident tone, to which Carter replied, "We will win." Guy came back with, " then we aren't winning, are we?" Carter repeated his positive and guy quipped, "We aren't winning then,are we?" Later others said. "They–-(meaning the Obama administration) have no strategies, no plans–-we have no idea what is going on." And those "they" had just come out of the hours long meeting where all that was being explained to them. I never lose my amazement at the ignorance––no, wait, they can't be that ignorant––it must be pure unadulterated hatred for "anything Obama". The fact that they are trying to put the kibosh on the Climate agreements is so egregious that it defies any understanding––you don't want your country to be front and center on this? You want other countries to know a large part of the U.S. Congress isn't FOR this?
Sorry–-turns out the lousy weather corresponds here.
Rahm Emanuel is a Dick Cheney Democrat, expect him to never admit doubt or accept blame.
Just read Marvin's comments here and I'd like to add a few of my own on this subject. I came to the conclusion some years ago that I had to take care of my own body and stop having these expensive tests that simply were no longer necessary. I also stopped taking vitamins, low dose aspirin, estrogen, and Fosamax. No more colonoscopies, mammograms, or bone density tests. My husband had a bout with kidney stones--was treated by a specialist who wanted him to come back for a checkup which he did. The doc felt my husband's genitals, inquired as to any more flair ups–-no––and the rest of the time they talked bread making and trips to Italy; the bill–-$500. Months later a letter came reminding Joe to come for another check-up. He ignored it.
So good for Marvin who READS and is aware of new findings re: our bodies that many doctors and big pharma want to squeeze the beejezus out of. I do understand that a doctor wants to cover his tracks, but it's up to us to lay down our own.
I watched the ABC evening news last night. I don't have cable and haven't been able to find a link to the segment, but at one point David Muir said something along the lines of "These numbers may surprise you, but of all the air strikes and missions against ISIS, the US has carried out [this very large number and high percentage] of them" and something about US negotiators in Paris may also be working to get our allies to step up to the plate on some of this.
The numbers and percentage looked about right to me, given the reality-based information sources I have followed.
Perhaps we will now see Republicans switching their complaints from Obama doing nothing to Obama doing too much.
Read this article from today's WaPo to get a feeling of just how bizarre it is for the U.S. trying to pursue ISIS from an Iraqi support base. We think we're trying to help them, and a non-trivial set of Iraqis think we're really the ones behind ISIS.
If you've never lived in the Middle East, you don't know how truly crazy conspiracy theories can get. Our local nutjobs can't hold a candle to any paranoid between Rabat and Kathmandu.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/iraqis-think-the-us-is-in-cahoots-with-isis-and-it-is-hurting-the-war/2015/12/01/d00968ec-9243-11e5-befa-99ceebcbb272_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_iraqhostility-920pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
“Living in the Crosshairs: The Untold Stories of Anti-Abortion Terrorism,” by David Cohen and Krysten Connon (May 2015). Interviewed by Nina Martin, Pro Publica published this morning.
Surprised to find out: "The Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic where last week’s shootings occurred had cameras everywhere, bulletproof glass and a safe room."
https://www.propublica.org/article/for-abortion-providers-a-constant-barrage-of-personalized-harassment
Descent into the Maelström
As reason and critical thought recede, beaten back by the poisonous Red Tide from the right, the mad and the liars have taken over.
Ted Cruz, one of the Confederacy's creepiest liars (and that's saying a lot), tosses out invented statistics with no worry that anyone will call upon him to back up claims such as "a majority of violent criminals are Democrats", this to rebut the truth that the Planned Parenthood (alleged) murderer is one of his own. It's a truth too politically inconvenient to acknowledge, but inventing fantasy scenarios that blame typical targets of right-wing hatred (he's a transgendered leftist) and the opposing political party (violent, criminal Democrats) offers him and and his acolytes a comfortable perch, however ill gotten, from which to cast blame on everyone but those actually responsible for the violence: Confederates, their vicious rhetoric and lies, and unstable, brutal, misogynistic religious fanatics (sound like a guy who would register as a Democrat?). More about that later.
P.D. wonders about the possibility of a Victoria per Trumpius. It's certainly possible, although plenty of winger voters have yet to make up their minds. But should he be the last one standing, they'll close ranks and vote for him (see Romney, Mittens). Will he win in the general? Unlikely, but not impossible, especially given all the free publicity he gets from the press which either refuses to call him on his lies, or if they do, like Jake Tapper, give him and his apparatchiks a platform from which to gain even more screen time even if it's just to say "no he didn't" or "you're absolutely wrong" or "but Donald loves the blacks!" Why even bother?
Trump could be the new Goldwater, dragging the party deeper into the maelstrom of hatred, paranoia, and tribalism. Jeet Heer in the New Republic, makes the case that, should Trump capture the nomination, even though it's more than possible (but no lead pipe cinch) he would lose in the general, and perhaps lose big, like Goldwater, his candidacy would, also like Goldwater's, drag the party, and by extension the country, into a morass of seedy, irrational, fascistic, racist demands for action along those lines. Goldwater, after all, was the trigger that fired off the "Reagan Revolution" and led to our present state of enraged insanity on the right.
(But here we must pause to point out that Goldwater, as crazy and scary a motherfucker as he seemed in 1964, wouldn't even make the cut with today's cast of dangerous lunatics.)
Heer suggests the even more likely scenario that, just as Goldwater set the stage for Nixon who, unlike the Eisenhower Republicans, cleaved to Goldwater's worst qualities and was able to reframe and repackage those hard edges making them palatable to voters in a general election, a Trump loss could set the stage for a smoother, slicker kind of far-right candidate, possibly making Cruz or Rubio the next Nixon.
But here's another hitch: Nixon, as much of a malicious rat bastard as he was, was a skilled politician and, outside his more paranoid episodes, was not insane. He actually knew how to get things done, legislatively and diplomatically. Can we say the same about Cruz?
To return momentarily to Cruz's claim that vicious criminals are mostly registered Democrats (we'll leave aside the silliness that vicious, violent criminals make sure they all register to vote). He made this assertion during a discussion with far, far-right Confederate talk show screamer Hugh Hewitt. "'I have never met — not once' said Hewitt, 'a single pro-life activist who is in favor of violence of any sort.' Cruz responded that he hadn't either."
As compared, of course, to all the rapists, murderers, and violent criminals registered as Democrats.
So that's the story from Right-Wing World. Now here are the facts, either unknown to these giant intellects, or simply dismissed as, ya know, facts, schmacts.
The National Abortion Federation which tracks violence (by those who support Cruz and Hewitt) against women and healthcare clinics, recorded nine murders and 17 attempted murders by violent anti-abortion criminals between 1977 and 2014.
"Since 1995, there have been a total of 5,147 violent incidents recorded at US abortion clinics, not including 2015. They include 922 reported incidents of vandalism, 663 anthrax or bioterrorism threats, 354 stalking incidents and 204 reported death threats."
Guess none of those counts as violent in Cruz's estimation (don't even bother trying to say he's never met any of these people or people like them).
The most common tactic employed by the haters Hewitt and Cruz claim they've never even heard of is disruption of clinics and patient-doctor interaction in the form of picketing which can be, at its mildest, highly threatening and at its worst, extremely stressful and violent, with anti-choice bigots and misogynists lining the sidewalks and walkways leading to clinics where they harass and scream at and spit on women and staff members entering the facility.
Know how many of these there've been since 1995? 168,344. That averages out to about 8,500 a year.
But Cruz has never heard of these exercises in intimidation, violence, and harassment of Americans exercising their right to a legal and safe medical procedure, all because of religion and the insane ideology of the Confederacy.
Should Trump win the nomination and lose in the general, expect to see a lot more of this kind of Cruz control in the future. He may be a future president.
Should Trump win the general....well, let's not even go there yet. But suffice it to say that we'll be in for at least four dangerous lost years of bigotry, violence, hatred and stupidity on a grand scale.
Poe's narrator escaped the maelstrom. We may not.
NiskyGuy,
You can be 100% sure that if American actions in the middle east created some kind of conflict with Putin (because that could never happen) that put us behind the eight ball, congressional Confederates would be screaming about Obama the War Monger.
from the widgets:
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/rahm-emanuel-angry-mike-allen-politico-reporter-cuba-216351
"Emanuel gets heated when Cuba travel plans revealed."
<Interesting how chummy politico is with the mayor.
Notice I do not say reporter.>
mae finch
Heil Trump!
Trumpy's many forays into authoritarian and fascistic rhetoric, with promises for more of the same, prompts a serious consideration of Trump's bona fides as a true fascist.
A slew of recent articles have asked the question about Trump's status as a fascist. Most answer in the affirmative, but rather than go full Godwin here, I think a more measured approach would give us a clearer picture of what we're dealing with here, one which is no less disturbing.
Eric Levitz on the New York magazine site draws on a list of defining qualities taken from Robert Paxton's book "The Anatomy of Fascism". His conclusion is that although Trump hits a plurality of these qualities (hypernationlist, alarmist, nativist, promotion of victimization at the hands of "others", messianic descriptions of himself), it would be hard to characterize him completely as a fascist:
"Perhaps the most accurate term for Trump’s politics is simply dangerous. But to the extent that fascist alerts us to the unique dangers of his brand of demagoguery, it may be worth excusing its imprecision."
David Neiwart, on Crooks and Liars, comes to a similar conclusion using a different set of criteria taken from other works on fascist ideology, and concludes:
"Trump may not be fascist, but he is empowering their existing elements in American society; even more dangerously, his Tea Party brand of right-wing populism is helping them grow their ranks, along with their potential to recruit, by leaps and bounds. Not only that, he is making all this thuggery and ugliness seem normal. And that IS a serious problem."
(Sounds a bit like a sort of American Taliban, don't it?)
So it seems that most of the time he walks like a duck and quacks like a duck but he may not be an actual duck.
Yet.
Nonetheless, divesting him of full fascist status doesn't mean he and his candidacy aren't highly alarming. He's not goosestepping yet but he's got some pretty shiny boots.
I just got back from a visit to my mother-in-law's apartment at an assisted living community. She has been complaining that there is no heat in the living room for some time now. I looked into it and, sure enough, the electric radiator thermostat on the wall wasn't talking to the radiator, and the other thermostat for the forced-air AC wasn't doing anything even though she had it set correctly for the desired effect. I went to the circuit breakers, but everything was good there.
My wife, who was with me, went down to the front desk to complain armed with the knowledge that someone who understands these systems said there was a problem. Two guys showed up five minutes later, and twenty minutes later the new thermostat was telling the living room radiator to heat the place up.
So being ignored by well-paid professionals is hard to comprehend but seems to be common even in places that are supposed to be good at it. I suppose I should enjoy the son-in-law points that I earn, but I would much rather they listened to her in the first place.
NiskyGuy,
You're lucky the administrators of the facility are not Ted Cruz and Carly Liarina types. They'd have blamed your mother-in-law for the lack of heat, called her an anti-heatist, gone on the local Fox station to rip her as a trouble maker telling lies about them and employing divisive rhetoric, and had her thrown out so as to protect the "real assisted living residents".
Great Day!
Ring the bells gun lovers! A new batch of bodies felled by your favorite fetishized objects! Hoo-ray!
Wayne La Pierre will be feverishly jerking off tonight (Christ, he'll have to change hands) as he watches the footage of bullet ridden bodies being carted out of a facility to help the disabled in California.
But the best orgasm will come when he finds out the exact kind of weapons used to murder 14 innocent people and wound 14 more (count as of 4:51 central). "Oh man, that's my favorite for taking out multiple losers. I love these guys!"
Of course the Fox bots already have their scripts written: "Mental Illness Causes Thing in San Bernardino. Nothing to Worry About. Liberals to Blame!" And Ted Cruz and Li'l Randy and Ben Carson will be all about "So sad, but 2nd AMENDMENT! So sorry, losers. You should have all been packing heat!"
Shit, this is SO great. Mass murders almost every day now!
Send another million dollars to our lackeys in Congress as a BIG THANK YOU for making sure murderers have access to all the weapons they need to destroy more American lives!
But the answer to today's mass murder is the same as it was yesterday: MORE GUNS. Guns for EVERYONE!!! Guns up the ass!
HOO-fucking-RAY!!
Okay, one more thing then I'm done because I'm so fucking frustrated by this never ending gun bullshit.
According to NBC news "Republicans [are] sending "thoughts and prayers" to the victims."
Oh, well thank you all to hell, Republicans. "Thoughts and prayers, huh?" Oh sure. That does wonders.
You know what "thoughts and prayers" do for anything?
Bupkis. That's what.
This is another one of those mendacious winger tropes that sounds like it's worth more than bubble gum stuck to the soles of your shoes, but it's not even worth that. At least bubble gum is real.
"Thoughts and prayers." Well, isn't that special? How about some actual legislative action? No?
Okay, we'll go with "thoughts and prayers" then. Those are about as useful as a drain hole on a lifeboat, but hey, you mean well, right?
Tomorrow, they'll all be lining up to blow Wayne La Pierre.
Again.
Next!