The Commentariat -- April 2, 2013
John Markoff & James Gorman of the New York Times: "President Obama on Tuesday will announce a broad new research initiative, starting with $100 million in 2014, to invent and refine new technologies to understand the human brain."
Chris Hayes launches his MSNBC 8 pm show with a look at the Keystone XL pipeline:
... Charles Pierce: "This is the way we do things in America these days. Everything's working fine, until the catastrophe, which nobody could have foreseen, because everything's working just fine since the previous catastrophe. The pelicans must think we're all crazy."
Robert Pear of the New York Times: "Unable to meet tight deadlines in the new health care law, the Obama administration is delaying parts of a program intended to provide affordable health insurance to small businesses and their employees -- a major selling point for the health care legislation. The law calls for a new insurance marketplace specifically for small businesses, starting next year. But in most states, employers will not be able to get what Congress intended: the option to provide workers with a choice of health plans. They will instead be limited to a single plan." ...
Richard Kirsch of the Roosevelt Institute, in Salon: "Big flaws in the [Affordable Care Act] will mean that many low-wage workers will be forced to choose between paying huge chunks of their income on premiums or on a penalty that leaves them with no coverage at all.... The news is much worse for family coverage." ...
... Ian Millhiser of Think Progress explains why it's bad news for women that the full 10th Circuit Court of Appeals has agreed to hear Hobby Lobby's case against the Obama administration's requirement that health insurance include contraceptive coverage. ...
... Ed Kilgore: the ACA has myriad problems. "Supporters of Obamacare need to get out of the habit of thinking that Obamacare's a done deal that the president's re-election entrenched beyond serious challenge." ...
... ObamaCare to Turn Violent Criminals Out on the Streets. Well, okay, no, that's just something Ted Cruz said. Igor Volsky of Think Progress: "States that expand their Medicaid programs under a provision in the Affordable Care Act will be forced to open their prison doors and allow violent criminals to roam the streets, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) claimed during a radio interview on Monday, insisting that the cost of providing health care to lower-income residents would reduce state funding for priorities like incarceration or education." CW: For Ted Cruz, April Fools' Day never ends.
Jonathan Chait of New York: "I'm an advocate of the theory, first put forward a decade ago by Ruy Teixeira and John Judis, that the electorate is forming a natural Democratic majority.... The picture looks grim for the GOP." CW: let's hope Chait is right.
Andrew Rosenthal: Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell's relationship with Jonnie Williams, the head of Star Scientific, "is a clear and direct example of the improper use of government money, facilities and power for the personal enrichment of friends. If the speech and the party were not a quid pro quo for the help with the wedding feast, it's hard to imagine what a quid pro quo is. Mr. Williams, it goes without saying, is also a big campaign contributor to Mr. McDonnell."
What's the Matter with Marco? Joan Walsh: Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) "wants the stature bump that would come with being key to hammering out a[n immigration reform] deal, but he can't let it come about too quickly, lest he seem to have capitulated to [Sen. Chuck] Schumer [D-N.Y.].... For now, anyway, he's putting the Tea Party over Latinos." ...
... CW: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is a weasly waffler who is fond of dancing with Democrats till he brushes them off, & he may do so again. But he is running for re-election in Red State Heaven & he still has a lot more guts than Sen. Marco Slo-Mo Rubio (R-Fla.) on immigration reform -- an issue where even red-state voters would probably cut Marco some slack on accounta his heritage. A person who is demonstrably weaker-willed than Lindsey Graham just might not be of presidential timbre, Marco.
Mark Follman of Mother Jones: "Ever since the massacres in Aurora, Colorado, and Newtown, Connecticut, it's been repeated like some surreal requiem: The reason mass gun violence keeps happening is because the United States is full of places that ban guns.... Not only is there zero evidence to support [this theory], our in-depth investigation of America's mass shootings indicates they are just plain wrong.... [Also,] if more guns in more places is a solution to the bloodshed, then why did we just witness the worst year for mass shootings in recent history?" ...
... Jon Lender & Jenny Wilson of the Hartford Courant: "With the nation watching, Newtown parents still grieving and gun owners objecting, legislative leaders Monday said they had met the solemn challenge presented by the Sandy Hook school massacre with a bipartisan agreement for the nation's strongest gun control bill. Easy passage of the legislative response to the Dec. 14 killings is expected in House and Senate votes scheduled for Wednesday, leaders of both the Democratic majority and Republican minority said after completing weeks of negotiations on the bill."
David Voreacos of Bloomberg: "Salomon Melgen, the Florida political donor at the center of a criminal probe, said he and Senator Robert Menendez are 'like brothers' who spoke weekly, yet his companies never benefited and he broke no laws." CW: well, okay then, totally believable; that settles that.
Colby Itkowitz of the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, Morning Call: "Sen. Bob Casey told The Morning Call on Monday he now supports same-sex marriage. In an interview, the Pennsylvania Democrat said he had decided over time that the Defense of Marriage Act -- the federal law that defines marriage as one man and one woman -- should be repealed, and determined that such a belief could not be separate from the overall question of gay marriage." Via Greg Sargent. ...
... Dan Amira of New York chronicles Bill O'Reilly's evolution on gay marriage. ...
... Peter Beinert of Newsweek: "O'Reilly is a conservative populist, which is to say, he only champions those conservative viewpoints that he believes enjoy mass appeal." Beinert notes several hot-button issues where O'Reilly has "evolved" along with popular opinion. "If I were a GOP presidential aspirant, I'd watch O'Reilly closely over the next few years, because the Republican candidate who best articulates his brand of conservatism will be the candidate best able to regain the White House in 2016." Oh, you know who hasn't evolved? Why -- serial-husband Rush Limbaugh. ...
... In a letter to the New York Times, law professor & former Reagan solicitor general Charles Fried argues that President Obama should have defended DOMA or hired an outside advocate to do it. This would have eliminated the "standing" question. CW: he has a point.
Obama 2.0. Emily Heil of the Washington Post: "Caroline Kennedy is heading to Tokyo to be the U.S. ambassador." Jason Horowitz of the Post has more.
Andy Kroll of Mother Jones: "The Internal Revenue Service is taking a closer look at the finances of some 1,300 nonprofit organizations, including unions, trade associations, and the type of dark-money groups that controversially spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the 2012 elections. That includes Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS, the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity, the US Chamber of Commerce, and the pro-Obama outfit Priorities USA, all of which keep their donors secret." ...
... Peter Overby of NPR has more.
Andy Revkin of the New York Times: "After nearly half a century of research in planetary and climate science for NASA, James E. Hansen is retiring on Wednesday to pursue his passion for climate activism without the hindrances that come with government employment."
Where's the Beef Stroganoff? Margaret Sullivan, the New York Times public editor, agrees with critics of the obituary of rocket scientist Yvonne Brill: "The emphasis on her domesticity -- and, more important, the obituary's overall framing as a story about gender -- had the effect of undervaluing what really landed Mrs. Brill on the Times obituaries page: her groundbreaking scientific work." The obit department defended the writing. CW: I'll have to admit I am so accustomed to this sexist style of writing -- especially in the Times -- that when I read & linked the obit, I just skipped right over the beef stroganoff & good mother folderol & got to the science stuff. Whatever you think of the NYT, it is still a newspaper largely written by, for and about men. ...
... Amy Davidson of the New Yorker is brutal. P.S. Making beef stroganoff is not rocket science. "It is one notch above macaroni and cheese and Hamburger Helper, and has much in common with both." ...
... Megan Garber of the Atlantic has a well-nuanced critique: "An obituary that can't easily marry the professional and the personal is symptomatic of a society that has trouble marrying them, too." Also, she introduces what should become a new idiom: "getting stroganoffed."
Congressional Race
Harriet McLeod of the Reuters: "Voters in South Carolina's coastal first congressional district will choose on Tuesday between former Governor Mark Sanford and former Charleston County Council member Curtis Bostic as the Republican nominee for the open seat."
Local News
GOP Outreach, Ctd. Morgan Whitaker of NBC News: "Arkansas Republicans have officially overridden Democratic Governor Mike Beebe's veto of legislation that would require voters to show photo identification before casting a ballot. The Arkansas House voted 52-45 to override the veto Monday. Last week, the GOP-led Senate voted 21-12 to override it.... Only a simple majority is needed in each chamber in order to override a veto."
GOP Outreach, Ctd. AND Most Original Argument against Gay Marriage Yet. Tom Kludt of TPM: "Sue Everhart, chairwoman of the Georgia Republican Party, told the Marietta Daily Journal ... that once gay nuptials are legally permitted, there will be nothing to stop a straight person from exploiting the system in order to claim marital benefits." ...
... Steve Benen: "If the Georgia GOP chair's argument seems vaguely familiar, there's a reason for that: it was the basis for a 2007 movie called 'I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.' ... If this is an argument against same-sex marriage, isn't it also an argument against opposite-sex marriage? After all, what's to stop a man and a woman who are friends from pulling the same scam? ... If avoiding fraud is paramount, does the chairwoman of the Georgia Republican Party want to prohibit all marriages?"
Jack Norman of the Institute for Wisconsin's Future, in a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel op-ed: "... it's totally appropriate to blame the governor's policies for the slumbering condition of Wisconsin's economy.... Wisconsin slump[ed] to 44th among the states in private-sector job growth....[ An] accompanying chart shows the extraordinary picture that Wisconsin's job slump - relative to the national economy - coincides almost exactly with [Gov. Scott] Walker's time in office and deepened just when his policies went into effect.... My colleagues and I ... made exactly that prediction two years ago.... Wisconsin, unfortunately, has become a case study in the failure of austerity economics at the state level." ...
... Mike Ivey of the Madison Capital Times has more.
Just When You Think State Legislators Can't Come up with Any Worse Ideas ... Tom Humphrey of the Knoxville (Tennessee) News-Sentinel: "Legislation to cut welfare benefits of parents with children performing poorly in school has cleared committees of both the [Tennessee] House and Senate after being revised to give the parents several ways to avoid the reductions." ...
Okay, More Worser Ideas. Kate Brumback of the AP: "Backers of a newly adopted ordinance requiring gun ownership in a small north Georgia town acknowledge they were largely seeking to make a point about gun rights. The ordinance in the city of Nelson -- population 1,300 -- was approved Monday night and goes into effect in 10 days. However, it contains no penalties and exempts anyone who objects, convicted felons and those with certain mental and physical disabilities."
News Ledes
Washington Post: "The U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to create the first treaty regulating the international arms trade, a landmark decision that imposes new constraints on the sale of conventional arms to governments and armed groups that commit war crimes, genocide and other mass atrocities. The vote was hailed by arms-control advocates and scores of governments, including the United States...."
New York Times: "Confusion, anger and charges of racism played out at the Fulton County Jail [in Atlanta, Georgia] on Tuesday as the players on both sides of the nation's largest school-cheating scandal began the arduous process of jailing 35 educators."
AP: "North Korea said Tuesday it will escalate production of nuclear weapons material, including restarting a long-shuttered plutonium reactor, in what outsiders see as Pyongyang's latest attempt to extract U.S. concessions by raising fears of war."
AP: "Because of a paperwork error, the suspect in last month's killing of Colorado's corrections chief was freed from prison in January -- four years earlier than authorities intended. Judicial officials acknowledged Monday that Evan Spencer Ebel's previous felony conviction had been inaccurately recorded and his release was a mistake."
Reuters: "The euro zone jobless rate was stable at 12.0 percent in February, the European Union statistics office Eurostat said on Tuesday, which could add pressure for an interest rate cut by the European Central Bank."
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Reader Comments (10)
Regarding the Times’ obit for rocket scientist Yvonne Brill, I don’t see that there’s any way one can deem the charge of sexism unfounded or negligible. Foregrounding her skills in the kitchen and as a dutiful wife (all that husband following) places her true brilliance somewhere in the back rows. I mean, why was this obit written in the first place? Because of her cooking? The opening lines of her Wikipedia entry offer a much better reason:
“…a Canadian scientist best known for her development of rocket and jet propulsion technologies. During her career she was involved in a broad range of national space programs in the United States, including NASA and the International Maritime Satellite Organization”.
Note that it doesn’t say “best known for her ‘mean stroganoff’”.
Wikipedia goes on to review her doggedness in pursuing a career in science after being turned down at one university simply because of her gender. She holds a patent for her invention of a propulsion system that became the industry standard. See? It ain’t rocket science. She was a scientist, and a great one, by any measure. The other stuff is important largely to friends and family. If the writer wished to throw in the line about stroganoff at the end to flesh out the picture, fine, but to lead with it?
My standard test for this sort of thing is to flip things around. Would an obit for a famous male rocket scientist begin with a reference to his golf swing or what a great dad he was? Very likely not.
When wingnuts go into a lather about something attributed to President Obama, I check to see if they had anything to say about President Bush doing something similar or even worse.
The Brill obit does mention her accomplishments later in the piece but the original lede draws an outline around the entire story that sets it off to the side and colors the way readers view the subject: Mom and great cook; also worked with rockets when she wasn’t following her brilliant husband around the country. Wikipedia gives her private life all of four words, and those at the very bottom of the entry.
This kind of sexism is so engrained in our culture that many barely notice it. They surely would if they read a bio of Wernher von Braun that began something like “…family man beloved by his wife and children, who mastered the art of the strudel as a young man and made a mean martini. He also worked with V2 rockets.” This sort of thing would be considered simply bizarre or some kind of weird practical joke. At least a number of readers bristled at the stroganoff thing. That’s progress.
I guess.
Georgia is really taking it on the ass these day--and deservedly so! I am debating whether to send the following article to my right-wing brother in Atlanta, but to what end? He'd think it is a terrific idea. Holy Jeebus. How do my fellow commenter(s) who live in Georgia put up with this crap? To wit:
Georgia Is Celebrating Confederate History Month
by John Avlon
<http://elink.thedailybeast.com/4e555bd0e018bee76c341cb4xijy.12ce/UVrVuSuohYEEIBTdD7639>
Practically every conservative initiative I read about confirms my longstanding belief that these people fuck up everything they touch.
So the Republican solution to children with poor grades in Tennessee? Go to bed hungry, wake up hungry, and stay hungry. No A's and B's, no food.
Is this the most insane thing you've ever heard of? But this is the brainchild of the same genius, Stacey Campfield (Idiot-Knoxville), who wrote a law that disallows children in the Volunteer state from saying the word "gay" while in class. I guess being too hungry to think about anything but food will help the cause.
This is also the guy who claims that AIDS came about from a gay man having sex with a monkey, the guy who tried to join the TN black legislative caucus and derided them as worse than the KKK. He lobbied for everyone on college campuses to go come onto school grounds packing heat.
And now, according to this compassionate conservative, a family on assistance with two kids who don't perform according to his standards will now have their benefits cut from a maximum of $185 a month to about $37 a week. Two Cheerios a day for you, kid. Now go do your homework.
You can bet that if he ever married and had kids of his own (hmmm, a Southern Christian family rights conservative in his forties with no wife or kids? What's up with that? I thought it that was a rule....unless.....), and the little dears brought home C's and D's, they wouldn't have to fight over that last stale Saltine cracker.
This is either sheer idiocy or pure fucking evil.
Probably both.
And shame on every TN legislator who is working to move this bill forward. Assholes. Every one.
@Kate: Those of us who live here put up with it, because that's the way it is, but it's slowly changing. Too slowly.
I would recommend the book "The New Mind of the South" by Tracy Thompson for a good perspective.
I celebrate April 9th (the day Lee surrendered), and my wife's favorite general is Sherman. I saw a bumper sticker "General Sherman where are you now that we need you?" One of my favorite songs is "Marching Through Georgia." It's a catchy tune.
I doubt that your brother lives in Atlanta proper, which is majority blah people and a haven for Libruls. The suburbs to the north of Atlanta are pretty red, though.
Ever wonder why there are no big Charlton Heston style miracles here in the good ol' US of Christian A? You know, burning bushes, parting of the waters, sticks turning into snakes, locusts, first borns being murdered by angels, dead men getting up to boogaloo down Broadway, that sort of thing?
Pat Robertson has the answer.
Ready?
It's a cuz 'a the Ivy League. Yup. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and all those smartie-pants kids and teachers who, when shown a picture of an elbow, don't say "hey, that's an asshole".
They know about Darwin too, which gives god a big sad, so he's decided to take his miracles off to Africa and third world countries where kids don't cotton to sci-unce.
Ignorance = miracles, so there.
On another subject, check this out: http://www.juancole.com/2013/04/carrey-colostomy-public.html
Apparently Fox Nuz has their knickers in a twist over Jim Carrey's parody of gun nuts. Carrey had this description of Faux Nuz: “a media colostomy bag that has begun to burst at the seams and should be emptied before it becomes a public health issue”
I wish I'd thought of that
Kate,
Interesting piece, the way a body on the side of the road is interesting.
The whole "states' rights, blah, blah, blah....canard" has been around forever. Oh sure, many of those who fought and died for the confederacy didn't own slaves themselves but the states' right they did die for was primarily the right to enslave other human beings. There's just no way of getting around that. It's like saying the war in Iraq is being fought to find WMD.
But revisionism is on the rise in conservative enclaves. A recent article in the National Review declares that it was Republicans, not Democrats, who embraced the Civil Rights movement and were largely responsible for its success. To offer another analogy, that's like saying that Republicans have always been for gay marriage "Whadaya talkin' about? Sure we're for gay marriage. Always have been. It was those bigoted liberals who hate gay people. Some of my best friends are gay..."
You see this in Bobby Jindal's support for the idea that the KKK were the good guys, were heroes, in fact. Those uppity blahs are always making up shit about the Klan.
We hear about how easy those slaves had it. Lying around on hammocks, drinking wine, singing songs, eating watermelon. Boy, that was the life. Those massas sure took care of their slaves. Why, most of them would never have left the plantation if those meddling Yankees hadn't butted in.
Next we'll be reading that it was Jeff Davis who wanted to free the slaves, but the dog ate his emancipation proclamation.
So yeah, let's all celebrate the great Confederacy. All they wanted was the right to be left alone. To chain up human beings, buy and sell them, and treat them like animals.
Is that so bad?
When Marie posted the Brill obit and subsequent re-working, I was curious about Mr. Brill, who had attended a Linus Pauling lecture once. I did a bit of looking about and found only a single reference to Mr. Brill's demise,
"William was born on February 16, 1923 and passed away on Thursday, September 30, 2010.
William was a resident of Skillman, New Jersey."
http://www.tributes.com/show/William-Franklin-Brill-89550574
I'm sure he was a perfectly fine fellow. Now that we know a bit more, we could add to his obit. "Mr.Brill enjoyed beef stroganoff, fathered 3 children and moved for work several times. He cleverly selected locales where his wife could flourish and exercise her brilliance. He was well loved by his wife, who, in case I didn't mention it, was brilliant. She received a buttload of awards in her life for ground breaking work in the field of rocket science. Mr. Brill was a chemist and probably did chemistry stuff."
I think I've got a shot at the Obit desk at the NYT.
Devil's advocate here: I tend to go in defense of NYTimes obits. They're gotten much more interesting over the years. Agree the beef stroganoff tale may not have been the best way to begin, but who know who submitted the original obit history so that the Times even 'knew' about her culinary skills. Was it the family? Maybe it was part of family lore they chuckled about...'Yeah, mom's brilliant...but,boy, she sure makes a hell of a great stew!" At any rate, that's often how a detail like gets out.
Here are excerpts from two recent NYT obits, that caught my fancy, first Faye Kanin. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/29/arts/fay-kanin-95-writer-for-movies-and-tv.html
"In a speech in 2003 Ms. Kanin recalled her start as a playwright. Her brother-in-law Garson Kanin had brought the script of “Goodbye, My Fancy” to a major producer, Max Gordon, who said he loved it, but lamented that he could produce only one more play that season and had on his desk a comedy by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber, who had written the classic comedies “Dinner at 8” and “Stage Door.” “Now, if you were Max Gordon, which play would you do?” he asked Ms. Kanin, who reluctantly gave him the answer he wanted."
"The Kaufman-Ferber comedy disappeared almost immediately, while “Goodbye, My Fancy” became a hit. The next time she met Mr. Gordon, Ms. Kanin said, he looked at her sadly."
(The 'punch line is perfect.:
“Why did you give me such lousy advice?” he asked.
This story emerged in actor Charles Durning's obit that was quite stunning about his combat experience in World War II.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/26/movies/charles-durning-prolific-character-actor-dies-at-89.html?pagewanted=all
"In the Parade interview, he recalled the hand-to-hand combat. “I was crossing a field somewhere in Belgium,” he said. “A German soldier ran toward me carrying a bayonet. He couldn’t have been more than 14 or 15. I didn’t see a soldier. I saw a boy. Even though he was coming at me, I couldn’t shoot.”
They grappled, he recounted later — he was stabbed seven or eight times — until finally he grasped a rock and made it a weapon. After killing the youth, he said, he held him in his arms and wept.
Mr. Durning said the memories never left him, even when performing, even when he became, however briefly, someone else. "
Sometimes, we learn much more about people—sadly, after their demise And the unexpected often lends
@CW If these details go beyond your 'copyright' concerns...I'll understand if you chop away!
Wis Gov. Scott Walker is two turds of a million dollar man,
According to a Good Friday afternoon press dump related in the Saturday Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Walker has spent $665,000.00 of campaign donation money on a battery of lawyers to keep him from being connected to various scandals in the Milwaukee Co. board directors office during his term.
Scandals that sent several of his employees to jail for, among other things, embezzlement from a veterans organization of $30,000.00 some of which was used in his latest campaign.
However, not enough evidence could be brought forward to prove Walker knew any thing about it.
Not released was which campaign donors gave permission to use their donations for Walkers defense fund.