The Washington Post offers tips on how to keep your EV battery running in frigid temperatures. The link at the end of this graf is supposed to be a "gift link" (from me, Marie Burns, the giftor!), meaning that non-subscribers can read the article. Hope it works: https://wapo.st/3u8Z705
Tuesday
Feb112014
The Commentariat -- Feb. 12, 2014
David Sanger & Eric Schmitt of the New York Times: "The director of national intelligence acknowledged Tuesday that nearly a year after the contractor Edward J. Snowden 'scraped' highly classified documents from the National Security Agency's networks, the technology was not yet fully in place to prevent another insider from stealing top-secret data on a similarly large scale. The director, James R. Clapper Jr., testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Mr. Snowden had taken advantage of a 'perfect storm' of security lapses.... Mr. Clapper also said, for the first time, that some of the information Mr. Snowden is believed to possess could expose the identities of undercover American operatives as well as foreigners who have been recruited by United States spy agencies."
Robert Costa, et al., of the Washington Post: "The House passed a yearlong suspension of the Treasury's debt limit Tuesday in a vote that left Republicans once again ceding control to Democrats, following a collapse in support for an earlier proposal advanced by GOP leaders. In a narrow vote, 221-201, 28 Republicans voted with 193 Democrats to approve a 'clean' extension of the federal government's borrowing authority -- one without strings attached -- sending the legislation to the Senate for a possible final vote later this week. Two Democrats and 199 Republicans voted no." ...
... ** Costa's report of the House Republican caucus meeting Tuesday morning is a hoot. ...
... CW Note to David Brooks, who thinks today's leaders can't lead their parties: Nancy Pelosi was able to get all but two of her caucus to vote aye; Boehner couldn't even control his so-called leadership team. ...
... David Firestone of the New York Times: "Only 28 Republicans agreed to it, not including Paul Ryan and Cathy McMorris Rodgers, who gave up any pretense to responsible leadership by abandoning Mr. Boehner and running with the extremist pack. The matter now goes to the Senate, where the only mystery is whether it will pass over a Republican filibuster, or by a majority vote." Firestone's larger point is that the debt ceiling is pointless, & he explains why. Thanks to James S. for the link. ...
... Digby: "The bar is so low now that we consider it a big accomplishment to fund the government and raise the debt ceiling, things that up until recently were completely uncontroversial pro-forma votes. The lunatics seem to have calmed down enough to allow themselves to win without committing political suicide. It's a big step for them."
David Corn of Mother Jones looks at Monica-obsessed Rand Paul.'s record on women's issues. From kidnapping a female student as a college prank to defending Herman Cain against claims of sexual harassment to voting against reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, it's a history of horrors. CW: If there should be a President Paul, he will not be "president of all the people."
Beyond the Beltway
** Dahlia Lithwick of Slate attended the massive protest in Raleigh, North Carolina, against the Republican legislature & governor's recently-passed spate of ALEC-inspired laws against the state's "own workers, its own minorities, its own teachers, its own doctors, its poor, its women, and its prisoners." ...
... Ed Kilgore notes that this is a bad time for the North Carolina Democratic Party to be a mess. But it is.
Jennifer Sullivan of the Seattle Times: Washington State "Gov. Jay Inslee [D] is calling a moratorium on executions while he is governor. 'Equal justice under the law is the state's primary responsibility,' Inslee said during a news conference Tuesday morning. 'And in death penalty cases, I'm not convinced equal justice is being served.' Inslee said there was 'too much at stake' in death penalty cases in what he termed an 'imperfect system.' Inslee cited the high cost of trials and appeals, the apparent randomness in which death penalties are pursued and concerns that executions do not deter crime as reasons for his decision. Inslee said he is not asking the state Legislature to abolish the death penalty.... He said that if a death penalty case crosses his desk for action, he will issue a reprieve, which will potentially only be in effect while Inslee is governor. He said he does not intend to commute any death sentences."
Senate Race 2014
John Bresnahan of Politico: "Matt Bevin, who is challenging Sen. Mitch McConnell in a Republican primary, calls the 2008 federal bailout of banks and Wall Street giants 'irresponsible' and says he would have opposed it as a senator. Yet back in 2008, as an investment fund president, Bevin backed the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, as well as the government takeover of troubled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. McConnell supported TARP, and the Bevin campaign repeatedly reminds voters that the Senate minority leader calls that vote 'one of the finest moments in the history of the Senate."' Bevin also supported the Federal Reserve's decision to begin buying commercial paper issued by banks." ...
... For some reason, Ed Kilgore finds all this so's-you-old-man intraparty sniping highly amusing. Also, good news for Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes.
Here's the Mike Wallace/Rod Serling interview which MAG highlights in the Comments:
... NPR has more on the "Noon on Doomsday" script that CBS & the sponsor censored. Serling's original script -- based loosely on the murder of Emmett Till -- finally received a table reading at Ithaca College in March 2008.... The "Lassie" show is here.
News Lede
New York Times: "Sid Caesar, a comedic force of nature who became one of television's first stars in the early 1950s and influenced generations of comedians and comedy writers, died on Wednesday at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 91."
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Reader Comments (12)
Check out this video (Mike Wallace) Anti-Censorship Interview (with Rod Serling) over at Upworthy.com, its message seems even more compelling now. Serling cites some striking examples...i.e., the one about Lassie and her offensive puppies makes your eyeballs roll! The letter-writing (Red states, mainly) protestors were evidently a prelude to maintaining a long, vocal, and narrow-minded tradition! The clip highlights advertiser/corporate influence or censorship—and how the telling or attempt to tell an honest story becomes muddled.
http://www.upworthy.com/why-does-this-anti-censorship-interview-from-1959-seem-terrifyingly-relevant-today-2
Driftglass is in fine form on Our Miss Brooks:
Http'://driftglass.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-american-prokaryote.html
Both the links are spectacular. Thanks MAG and Barbarossa.
Note though that linking to driftglass will be easier if you take out the apostrophe right after http
@CW: My sympathies for the computer glitches which can drive you crazy besides becoming exhausted. Glad to hear you are taking that drive to Best Buy to purchase a better buy than the one you have been shouting at for all those hours. On the way you may want to pick up some lozenges to soothe your throat. Once when my computer crashed I became mute for several days.
Ron Sterling––what a guy! Writers in the past got such bum deals, especially when they wrote for Hollywood films where directors/producers were the kingpins. The writer's script was slashed and burned to suit the producers. Nowadays we are in another golden age of streaming series where the writer controls his script, can also be the producer and sometimes director.
Looks like Bridgegate might indeed become a Watergate copy cat and instead of Halderman and Erlichman we have Kelly and Wildstein along with a slew of probable suspects. Following this story is like unraveling pieces in a mystery series, as one shoe drops another one is just about to.
@CW: Back some years ago, when I was a computer tech for a major corporation, the only solution to the problem you're having is to back up your data, completely erase the hard drive, and reinstall. The writers of these programs are very clever about hiding their stuff in the Windows Registry. That's the reason I switched to a Mac.
Great interview with Rod Serling, a writer far ahead of his time and one who believed that television, used the right way, could do something besides sell laundry detergent and cars.
His use of the medium to address questions of race, militarism, greed, hatred, and inhumanity (sounds like party platforms of the GOP, don't it?), put him way ahead of his time. In 1972 he even wrote a script about a black president. It took the rest of the country almost 40 years to catch up and even then plenty of people and an entire political party don't accept that a black man has the right to be president.
Serling's jiggering with the Emmet Till story, finally setting it in the 19th century and replacing an African-American with a young Mexican boy as the victim of the lynch mob, is the sort of dance that plenty of artists have had to perform to evade censorial crosshairs. Giuseppe Verdi, working off a play about a political assassination in Sweden, had to uproot this essentially European story and move it en masse to pre-Revolutionary Boston! (Always loved the idea of Italianate passion flaring up in puritan Massachusetts.) The theme of the opera, Un Ballo in Maschera, scared the crap out of authorities coming, as it did, less than ten years after the riots and revolutions of 1848.
Michelangelo's Last Judgment, attacked before it was even finished by priggish hangers-on at the Vatican, was desecrated when equally priggish prelates at the Council of Trent ordered that pants and loincloths be painted on the many nude figures. Because morality was so important to Renaissance popes. Michelangelo got a little of his own back when he added the face of his chief tormentor, Biagio da Cesena, to his mural. The censor was painted with donkey ears and, for good measure, a coiled snake wrapped around his legs biting him in the balls
Very likely plenty of artists in the 80s wanted to do that to Reagan, whose administration had nothing on Vatican prudes when he threatened to kill the NEA, and the usual suspects of right-wing demagoguery gathered round for the usual "they hate Christians because we're godly" pity party that allowed them to beat all artists over the head with the effigies of Robert Mapplethorpe.
The kerfuffle over the famous "wardrobe malfunction" at a Super Bowl halftime show still sends shivers up the backs of TV executives who recall that the FCC wanted to fine CBS half a million bucks for a quick peak at Janet Jackson's breast.
Censorship has been around as long as art. Can't you picture some priggish pedant working for the court at Knossos complaining loudly to the authorities about all the erotic pottery floating around, menacing public decency? And here we are, thousands of years later with a recent Attorney General waxing moralistic about a statue with a single bared breast (man, those things cause problems!). In a nice homage to da Cesena, John Ashcroft, boob number two, had curtains positioned in front of the statue to hide boob number one. The statue's name? The Spirit of Justice. Hah!
But it's one thing for kings and popes, and autocratic rulers, to try to enforce their pinched morals on everyone else. It's another thing when a few letters from the same old indignant fundamentalists, outraged over Lassie's puppies (!) can terrorize networks into kowtowing to their whims.
No wonder teabaggers think we should all bow down to them.
Oops...I meant peek.
A peek at the peak.
Sometimes 'artists' have a way of circumventing stuffy restrictions imposed on them. This came to mind after reading an obituary in yesterday's NYTimes about a Danish children's book illustrator.
"Mr. Blegvad’s puckish humor once got the better of him. At midcentury, supplying an illustration to Esquire, he drew, as requested, a naval scene. He also drew, far in the background, a ship with tiny semaphore flags spelling out an unprintable two-word phrase.
At least one reader was schooled in semaphore, and that spelled the end of Mr. Blegvad’s work for Esquire."
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/11/arts/design/erik-blegvad-childrens-book-artist-dies-at-90.html?ref=obituaries
In my own graphic past when I was called upon to illustrate something for a group, which would be published in the local paper...one of my bosses at the time, did call me out on spotting the one tiny figure in a group of characters, carrying a "Ban the Bomb" sign. He, fortunately wasn't an uptight guy and merely gave me a sardonic wink.
I'd really like to get that semaphore translation! Tho' I can imagine what it might have been!
From the Please Go Away Department:
So yesterday the Obama administration, trying to make some accommodation for a certain class of business owner, has moved back the deadline for full implementation of the ACA for those businesses, something the right has been demanding for months. The wingnut reaction?
Howls of laughter and ridiculously hyperbolic finger pointing at "Another Delay!!" Hey, idiots. This is what you were asking for. Remember?
Jennifer Rubin (surprise!) sniggers in the Post (can that rag get any more wretched?) that this is more evidence of the worst domestic debacle in history and, oh yeah, "Hillary"!
Fox ran with this theme for hour after hour yesterday. It's like watching pitiful addicts scraping their little baggies for every molecule of their drug of choice, in this case, Obama Hatred.
I say again, if Barack Obama dug up the secret to world peace, these posers would bury it like dogs with a bone.
Just pathetic.
@AK: your mention of Lassie and the puppy birthing business is pretty funny considering we just heard the news of the killing of that giraffe whose body was then dissected in front of school children who then watched a few lions eat the remains.
A word here about Andrew O'Hehir's excellent piece in Salon on the Woody Allen/Dylan debacle (the link is on right side bar). It is my first time reading him and find him most interesting, insightful and a really wonderful writer. He addresses the art versus the artist which corresponds to what Akhilleus was discussing in his first post.
Okay, this is actually pretty funny.
It's pretty close to the wingnut reaction to the ACA, shakes and screams and all:
Hitler discovers he can't keep his doctor under Obamacare.
In place of Hitler (Marie, I know, I know), think of Beck or Limbaugh, or Krauthammer, or....fill in your own unhinged dingbat.
I love the photo of the Frist Lady. She always looks lovely, but wow, she was stunning in that gown and she looked quite powerful. It really did look like those "guys" were merely providing an introduction for the real VIP. That look would have made a great official portrait.