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
Sunday
May292016
The Commentariat -- May 30, 2016
"Martyrs of the Race Course," Charleston, South Carolina,1865, an early "Decoration Day." Art by Owen Freeman for the New York Times.AP: "Memorials to veterans in a Los Angeles neighborhood and a town in Kentucky, as well as a Civil War veterans cemetery in Virginia, were damaged as the nation prepares to mark Memorial Day, officials said." ...
... Juan Cole: "On Memorial Day, it is as well to remember that US troops are still at war. Afghanistan is our nation's longest such military engagement. But although there are only about 3,000 troops in Iraq and just a couple hundred in Syria, they are at the front lines in confronting the most dangerous terrorist groups...A former US military officerhas said that US troops are actively engaged in fighting at both major remaining fronts against Daesh, al-Raqqa an Mosul." --safari...
... "Era Endless War/Era of Chickenhawks." Ben Fountain of the Guardian: "Just two of this season's presidential candidates -- Bernie Sanders and Rand Paul -- seriously questioned the the hard-military tactics of the past 15 years. Everybody else seems to be running around in a 2002 time warp, back when deploying the world's most powerful military was supposed to bring peace and democracy to a maddeningly conflicted region. Gas on the fire. It failed, and a lot of people died. In this, the fourth presidential election of the Era of the AUMF [Authorization to Use Military Force], the debate hasn't been about war per se -- whether it's necessary, whether it's an effective means to an end -- but rather, a difference of degree: will we have more of the same, or much, much more of the same? The times are such that fantasy war-mongering is solidly mainstream." -- CW ...
... E.J. Dionne: President "Obama is constantly being criticized for 'apologizing' for the United States when he is in fact attempting to hold us to the very standards that make the United States the 'exceptional' nation his critics extol. Judging ourselves by our own standards is the best way to prove that our commitment to them is real." -- CW
David Savage of the Los Angeles Times: "The Supreme Court is being asked to take up a bankruptcy dispute involving the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City and to decide whether to restore the health and pension benefits of more than 1,000 casino workers. At issue is a conflict between labor laws that call for preserving collective bargaining agreements and bankruptcy laws that allow a judge to reorganize a business to keep it in operation. 'This is about how a bankruptcy was used to transfer value from working people to the super-rich,' said Richard G. McCracken, general counsel for Unite Here, the hotel and casino workers' union that appealed to the high court. Billionaire Carl Icahn stepped in to buy the casino – founded by Donald Trump -- after it filed for bankruptcy in 2014. As the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals said in January, Trump's 'plan of reorganization was contingent on the rejection of the collective bargaining agreement,'... with the union." The Court ruled for the Trump & Icahn. -- CW
Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court is trying hard to reach common ground in the wake of the vacancy created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February. But some justices are trying harder than others.... The recent run of rulings, accounting for more than a quarter of all decisions in argued cases so far this term, tells the story. The court's most conservative members -- Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. -- wrote eight concurrences or dissents. Its two most liberal members -- Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor -- wrote four." -- CW
Nicole Perlroth of the New York Times: "A number of companies in the United States are training foreign law enforcement and intelligence officials to code their own surveillance tools. In many cases these tools are able to circumvent security measures like encryption. Some countries are using them to watch dissidents. Others are using them to aggressively silence and punish their critics, inside and outside their borders." -- CW
Annals of Journalism, Ctd. Margaret Sullivan, now with the Washington Post: "... when a vindictive billionaire [Peter Thiel] can muscle his way into a lawsuit with the intention of putting a media company [Gawker] out of business, there's reason to worry.... Ken Paulson, director of the Newseum Institute's First Amendment Center, told me that congressional meddling in Facebook's editorial practices would be 'dangerous, frightening and wrong.' He sees this as a case of government trying to police ideas." -- CW
CW: Excellent discussion in yesterday's Comments thread.
Presidential Race
Julie Dolan, in a Washington Post interview by Janell Ross: Hillary "Clinton is the most experienced candidate in the field, but campaign rivals Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are leveling attacks against her that she's not qualified for the job. In doing so, they're playing into a long-standing narrative that women lack what it takes to succeed in the male-dominated world of politics. The fact that two less-experienced male candidates are leveling this attack against her is telling. Neither Trump nor Sanders feels compelled to shore up their own credentials or justify their own relative lack of experience because they don't need to; they benefit from a gendered double standard where men are automatically presumed qualified for public office and women are not.: -- CW
What about Bill? Amy Davidson of the New Yorker on Hillary Clinton's "Bill problem," which Donald Trump so enjoys raising & which actually concerns many voters. -- CW
Paul Krugman: "So far, election commentary has been even worse than I imagined it would be. It's not just the focus on the horse race at the expense of substance; much of the horse-race coverage has been bang-your-head-on-the-desk awful, too.... Mrs. Clinton is clearly ahead, both in general election polls and in Electoral College projections based on state polls." -- CW ...
... Jonathan Martin, et al., of the New York Times: "With Donald J. Trump pulling even or ahead of Hillary Clinton in a series of recent national polls, the once unthinkable has become at least plausible. But if he is to be elected the 45th president, he must compete on a political map that, for now, looks forbidding." -- CW
Biker Boy. Thomas Kaplan of the New York Times: "Donald Trump addressed "a gathering at the 29th annual Rolling Thunder motorcycle run, a vast event over Memorial Day weekend that is dedicated to accounting for military members taken as prisoners of war or listed as missing in action." -- CW ...
...Ben Jacobs of the Guardian: "Speaking to a crowd that spilled down the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, [Donald Trump] was received as a conquering hero...Trump repeatedly claimed -- falsely -- that hundreds of thousands were trying to attend the event, at one point claiming there were '600,000 people trying to get in'...'I thought this would be like -- Dr Martin Luther King,' he said, in a reference to the 1963 March on Washington, a key event in the civil rights movement." --safari
Whiner-in-Chief, Ctd. Jenna Johnson of the Washington Post: "Donald Trump could have taken a victory lap last week. Instead, he went on a grudge tour.... Trump went after an odd and seemingly random group of people -- Democrats and Republicans, famous and obscure. There seemed little to gain politically from the attacks, and his targets were linked by just one thing: Trump felt they had all done him wrong. So he blasted Republicans who have yet to endorse him, including Jeb Bush, New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez and Mitt Romney. He declared that Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton doesn't look presidential, and he went after her allies, especially Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), whom Trump continues to call 'Pocahontas' even after being told the nickname is offensive. He mocked those protesting him and slammed reporters covering his candidacy.... Trump also went after people who were probably unknown to his supporters until he brought them up: Barbara Res, a former employee quoted in an article about his treatment of women, and U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is assigned to hear a fraud case against now-defunct Trump University." -- CW
Ignoramus-in-Chief, Ctd. Washington Post Editors: "LAST WEEK'S Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows that voters think Donald Trump would handle the economy better than would Hillary Clinton. But from his destructive tax proposals to the illogical energy plan he detailed on Thursday, there is little basis for that belief.... Mr. Trump's plan is dangerous as well as incoherent. Mr. Trump's plan would lead to dirtier air and water -- and to a massive blow to the global fight against climate change." -- CW
Amy Rosenberg of the Philadelphia Inquirer in Politico Magazine: "As Trump and Christie forged an unlikely political alliance..., Atlantic City is the one place in America that has been most clearly shaped by the both of them." And, BTW, Atlantic City is a disaster. CW: It's fair to suggest that Trump-Christie policies would make every American city much like Atlantic City. First, they would bankrupt cities. Then they would take over control of them. "Great Again"? Think Flint, Michigan. But way worse.
Tommy Christopher of Mediaite: Marco Rubio revealed "on Sunday morning's State of the Union that he would be releasing his delegates to the Republican convention, casting his tepid support for Donald Trump as a lesser evil than voting for Hillary Clinton, and reflecting on his own failed campaign." Also, too, Marco is not too upset about Trump's overt racism. -- CW ...
... digby: "It's not a game and it isn't about ideology. It's about the fact that this loon is unfit. There are a few Republicans who are willing to say this out loud. But most are like Lil' Marco --- selling out whatever is left of their integrity for a favor from The Donald. This is the litmus test of litmus tests. Did you speak up when the party nominates someone who is manifestly unqualified or not?" -- CW...
...Tom Boggioni of RawStory: "Appearing on CNN, an opinion page editor from the Wall Street Journal [Bret Stevens] left no doubt how he feels about presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, saying not only will he not vote for him, but that Trump needs to be crushed in the November election as a lesson to Republicans." --safari...
...We could use some more of this on mainstream media: --safari
...Tim Wise, an antiracism educator, and journalist W. Kalau Bell on Trump and racism: --safari
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Brian Beutler of the New Republic: "What Trump and his allies really hope is that they can hoodwink first-time voters or people who weren't paying close attention back in the 1990s into believing known lies. Only the media can prevent this -- but with Trump as GOP nominee, and party leaders rallying behind him, the media suddenly faces fresh incentives not to intervene, and they will become harder to resist over time.... Unless a critical mass of media figures agrees to treat the things Trump exhumes from the fever swamps of the 1990s with the appropriate contempt, Trump will enjoy the benefit of the doubt most major-party nominees expect." -- CW
Martin Pengelly of the Guardian: "The Libertarian party on Sunday selected Gary Johnson as its nominee for president, on a second ballot.... The selection of a vice-presidential candidate, in which Johnson is hoping to be joined by the former Massachusetts governor William Weld, was not so swiftly concluded. Weld, seen by many Libertarians as 'Republican-lite', struggled for support before sealing the nomination early on Sunday evening." -- CW
Congressional Race
James Hohmann of the Washington Post: Tim Canova, "a little-known law professor" who is challenging Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) in the primary, "finds himself in the right place at the right time. Wasserman Schultz, 49, has become increasingly unpopular within the liberal base of the party -- and among [Sen. Bernie] Sanders's supporters in particular. Though she claims to be neutral in the presidential nominating contest, many Berniecrats believe that she has tipped the scales in Hillary Clinton's favor." Sanders has endorsed Canova. -- CW
Louis Gohmert (he's so special, sometimes he deserves his own section)
Judd Legum of ThinkProgress: "There have been a lot of justifications for continued discrimination against LGBT people.... But in a speech on the House floor this week, Congressman Louis Gohmert took things to the next level. Gohmert argued that we need to discriminate against LGBT people now or the future of humanity is in danger... At some point, a giant asteroid may start barreling toward earth, putting the future of humanity in doubt. We will then need to prepare a special spaceship and send a group of people to colonize Mars...If we can't discriminate against LGBT people, Gohmert reminds us, all of the people on the special spaceship might end up being same-sex couples." --safari
Way Beyond the Beltway
Jim Yardley & Gaia Pianigiani of the New York Times: "Three days and three sunken ships are again confronting Europe with the horrors of its refugee crisis, as desperate people trying to reach the Continent keep dying at sea. At least 700 people from the three boats are believed to have drowned, the United Nations refugee agency announced on Sunday, in one of the deadliest weeks in the Mediterranean in recent memory." -- CW
Emma Graham-Harrison of the Guardian: "Iraqi army-led units have started an operation to storm the Isis-held city of Falluja, the latest phase in the week-long operation to capture the militant's stronghold near Baghdad...A spokesman for Iraq's elite counter-terrorisn service said troops entered the city from three directions. Explosions and gunfire could be heard in the southern Naimiya district as a military unit advanced." --safari
News Ledes
USA Today: "Six people died and at least two others were missing Sunday after heavy rains in Texas and Kansas caused severe flooding. In one case near Austin, which received nine inches of rain this week, a vehicle with two people was swept off a flooded roadway. Threats of floods prompted authorities to evacuate thousands of prisoners near Houston, and inmates in another prison on Saturday fought with correctional officers after flooding caused a power outage." -- CW
AP: "Mexican police have rescued kidnapped soccer player Alan Pulido, who appeared with a bandaged hand at a brief press conference Monday to declare that he was fine. Police and other officials said Pulido, a 25-year-old forward with Greek soccer club Olympiakos, was freed in a security operation Sunday shortly before midnight in the northeast border state of Tamaulipas. Pulido had been seized by gunmen as he left a party Saturday night." -- CW
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Reader Comments (12)
Many thanks to safari for bringing us the Louie Gohmert News. You just have to hope that Gays in Space is keeping Louie up at night, worrying about this highly likely scenario.
Also, please, nobody tell Louie that people who aren't attracted to each other are quite capable of having sex together & making babies. I have a feeling that Gays in Space would make this particular sacrifice for the continuation of the human race.
If, indeed, we're worth saving. That would be true only if the Gays in Space don't share many of Louie's genes.
Marie
There are a couple of articles in this week's Economist magazine that I recommend but I'm struggling with links. Buttonwood on innumeracy and politics and one on compulsory voting, titled "Make Me". Another on line Buttonwood might cheer you up, offering ways in which trump might achieve his budgetary objectives. I've never seen in anything like it from decades of reading the Economist.
To use an expressive word from those "Happy Days" I want to tell you, safari, I thought those two videos you posted were dyn-a MITE! To ask directly––what does this "Make America Great" again actually mean? When was that? For all people––when?
And the issues of Republican hypocrisy: If you are, as Mickey Edwards, a former republican congressman, is , who values his principles more than party loyalty, and refuses to vote for Trump and gives the reasons why, then hats off to you. And there are some Republican members of Congress––six, I think, who say they will not vote for Trump but most will, I imagine, or say they will for fear of reprisal. How these failed candidates, like Marco, can do a flip over after exposing the Donald as a fool, a liar, a con artist, etc. is pathetic. The message is this: We will vote for someone we think will be disastrous for this country but it's more important we get a Republican president who will continue with our dandy way of dealing (which will be disastrous for our country) and put a slew of conservatives on the S.C. Where is the pride here? Where goeth thy sense of self?
@Gloria: Buttonhole's list of nifty ways to skin a cat was very amusing. I didn't understand, however, what you meant by you'd never seen anything like this from the Economist.
Memorial Day: Raining here which is appropriate for this kind of day. Thinking of all these wars, all these deaths, all these veterans who return mangled and hurt and damaged in so many ways. I wonder if there will ever be a time when man stops the carnage and learns to live together without these major conflicts. Oh, heck, I'll take a page from Reagan's "little green aliens" and Louie's space odyssey and envision a world where all humans cling together for fear of being taken over by those LGA's and relocate to a new planet to start over–-fresh as a daisy and optimistic as all get out. Wouldn't that be a kicker!
From the last paras of the NYT article on Trump at the Lincoln Memorial yesterday:
"Two retirees from New Jersey, Tom Gadosky and his companion, Marney Pratt, who are both 67, traveled to Rolling Thunder on their three-wheeled Harley-Davidson. Both plan to vote for Mr. Trump in November.
“A lot of the people, if you walk around, are baby boomers, like us,” Ms. Pratt said. “We’ve been through it all. We want to have it back again.”
Neither of them was bothered by what Mr. Trump had said about Mr. McCain. People, Mr. Gadosky said, “have very short memories.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/30/us/politics/donald-trump-and-bikers-share-affection-at-rolling-thunder-rally.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0
Right. They have short memories, and they want it all back again. Like they say, if you remember the 60s, you weren't there, man.
Maybe there is some narcissistic affinity between boomers and Trump, the ne plus ultra narcissist, but the idea of all (many) of those dress-up Harley riders overlooking Trump's chickenhawkness and REMFness just illustrates that most of those riders are all noise and no torque.
I particularly liked today's Gohmert series for this part...
"Gohmert reminds us, all of the people on the special spaceship might end up being same-sex couples."
Apparently he sees homosexuality and homosexuals in general as incredibly attractive, which I assume is the basis of his insecure, paranoid fantasy-nightmares.
This statements implies that even if we send up a group of half homosexuals/half heterosexuals, the heterosexuals just won't be able to resist the alluring charm and curiosity put off by the homosexual hormones flooding the ship. Next thing you now, the probably responsible individuals sent off on the Save Humanity mission will lose all inhibitions, break out the massaging oils and whips and jump on their same sex partners, never to return. Sounds to me like ol' Gohmert just doesn't have much faith in the "conservative" model of loving-making.
That conservative paranoia makes the "Make America Great Again!" slogan even more telling. For most, it's a question of restoring Whites to the top of the pyramid. For Gohmerts, humanity itself is at stake, and the heteros are at risk of extinction!
From the Atlantic: this is good. The Downside of Democracy:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/the-downside-of-democracy/484415/
And back in the early twentieth century Learned Hand, a superior judge who never sat on the S.C. but nevertheless was instrumental in making this country a more fair and balanced place albeit not without pulling teeth, foresaw the problems of our democracy. He feared, in an age of rapid communication, that society could fall under "the power of the conglomerate conscience of a mass of Babbitts, whose intelligence we do not approve and whose standards we may detest."
Welcome to the Donald House.
Marie, thank you for the Guardian article on "fantasy war-mongering". P.D. Pepe and Patrick, thank you for your comments on the heights (Learned Hand) and depths (all noise and no torque) of American political thought.
On this Memorial Day 2016, I read most of a lengthy, humble and moving essay on citizenship by a young man, Phil Klay, who surely grew in wisdom from his military experience. The essay is a good reminder of the obligations of citizenship - not military service alone or simply voting, but rather "a commitment to the institutions of American civic life." The forum Marie and others now provide seems to me a fine private and yet civic institution for citizens seeking to stay informed.
Here are brief excerpts from the beginning and end of the essay:
"A decade after I joined the Marines, I’m left wondering what obligations I incurred as a result of that choice, and what obligations I share with the rest of my country toward our wars and to the men and women who fight them. ......
"I began this essay contemplating the oath I swore as a Marine to support and defend the Constitution. At the time I took the oath it felt like a special and precious burden I was taking on—sworn to defend not simply the physical security of my homeland but to defend something broader, our founding document, and thus the set of ideals embedded within it. Years later, looking through the section in the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ “Citizen’s Almanac” on citizens’ responsibilities, I was embarrassed to realize my obligations as a Marine were not so unique. The very first responsibility listed is to “support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” So I had already owed that to my country, by virtue of my birth and the privilege of being American.
"The divide between the civilian and the service member, then, need not feel so wide. Perhaps the way forward is merely through living up to those ideals, through action, and a greater commitment by the citizenry to the institutions of American civic life that so many veterans are working to rebuild. Teddy Roosevelt once claimed a healthy society would regard the man “who shirks his duty to the State in time of peace as being only one degree worse than the man who thus shirks it in time of war. A great many of our men … rather plume themselves upon being good citizens if they even vote; yet voting is the very least of their duties.” That seems right to me. The exact nature of those additional duties will depend on the individual’s principles. What is undeniable, though, is that there is always a way to serve, to help bend the power and potential of the United States toward the good.
"No civilian can assume the moral burdens felt at a gut level by participants in war, but all can show an equal commitment to their country, an equal assumption of the obligations inherent in citizenship, and an equal bias for action. Ideals are one thing—the messy business of putting them into practice is another. That means giving up on any claim to moral purity. That means getting your hands dirty."
The full essay can be found here: http://www.brookings.edu/research/essays/2016/the-citizen-soldier
His estimate was only off by 595,000! Close enuff for Trump to claim a " yuuge turnout " —naaah! not so much:
"Rolling Thunder spokeswoman Nancy Regg estimated Sunday's event drew about 5,000 people — smaller than the crowds Trump typically attracts. The large plaza between the Lincoln Memorial and the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall had large, empty pockets with no long lines for security, despite the thousands of bikers in town for the group's ride from the Pentagon and through the streets of Washington."
PD, I have never seen the Economist publish satire. Even simple humour is unusual and many commenters were "shocked". This ridicule emphasises that trump is outside any parameters of a candidate, as stretched as those parameters have been lately. He is aided by the innumeracy of the electorate, which gives not a whit for facts.
There is just something so perverse, so mephitic, so...wrong, about Herr Drumpf using the Lincoln Memorial as a backdrop for his campaign of hatred and ignorance and then comparing himself, a cynical, manipulative bigot who appeals to the most racist elements in American society, to Martin Luther King.
Even his having to invent an excuse for the sparsely attended ego fest, an event that was supposed to have something to do with veterans, not a sycophantic paean to the greatness of Donald, whining that hundreds of thousands would have been there chanting his name if only "they" (whoever that is) had allowed them to come in (whatever that means). Trump's appropriation and warping of American symbolism hits a new low point here, at a monument to the president who gave, in his own way, "that last full measure of devotion", as part of a campaign where Donaldo demands devotion but gives nothing in return.
Akhilleus,
Consciously or not (it's always hard to tell), Herr Drumpf is only following in Glenn Beck's (Drumpf's John the Baptist) footsteps.
Call it sacrilege if you will. I do.
Ken,
Wild analogy. It's either funny or appalling. Maybe both. But it does bring me up short on one particular: is the antichrist supposed to have a John the Baptist type advance man?