The Commentariat -- April 22, 2013
It's Earth Day. Meh. Emily Swanson of the Huffington Post: "Americans place less importance on environmental issues than they did in 1971, a year after Earth Day was established, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll. But the poll also finds that more Americans are taking some steps to protect the environment, such as cutting down on electricity use, eating organic foods and recycling." ...
... ** Charles Pierce: "Meanwhile, back in the rest of the world, we're still hell-bent on poisoning the planet before we burn it down." ...
... CW: But never fear. It's Science Fair Day at the White House! (See the White House schedule in the right-hand column.) Sad to say, many of those smart little kids making Amazing Science Projects today will be working for oil & gas companies & other corporate frackers when they get all growed up.
George Packer of the New Yorker: "Last week, when Bostonians were showing such courage, senators in Washington cowered before the gun lobby and blocked passage of the most basic provisions ... to diminish the gun violence to which more and more Americans, especially young men, are prone. This is a race that the federal government seems unable even to start. Meanwhile, owing to sequestration, the F.B.I.'s overwhelmed Boston office faces the possibility of manpower cuts of up to twenty per cent." ...
... The Chicken Caucus. E. J. Dionne: "Republicans who cultivate a reputation for reasonableness -- their ranks include, among others, Sens. Johnny Isakson, Lamar Alexander, Bob Corker, Kelly Ayotte, Saxby Chambliss, Lisa Murkowski and Rob Portman -- could not even vote for a watered-down [gun safety] proposal. This tells us that the GOP has become a coalition of the fearful. In a pinch, the party's extreme lobbies rule. This vote also made clear that the right wing is manipulating our system, notably by abusing the filibuster, to impose a political minority's will on the American majority. Since when is 90 percent of the nation not 'the Real America'?" ...
... Jonathan Chait of New York: "Red state Democrats were being asked to assume a large political risk for a small and quite likely nonexistent policy gain. If I were one of them, I'd have voted no, too." CW: this is a lovely argument, but it doesn't wash: as Bill Daley pointed out in a Washington Post op-ed that in North Dakota, whose PretendDem senator Heidi Heitkamp voted against the background checks amendment, public support for it was at 94 percent. These Democrats were not voting with Americans in mind; they were not even voting with their constituents in mind; they were voting with the NRA in mind. ...
... Chait gets it right here, though, in his condemnation of the New York Post's coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings, which stoked right-wing lunacy, which is of course always ripe for stoking: "The conservative disposition toward Muslims remains an amorphous cloud of paranoia waiting to attach itself to any fragment of information that drifts into view." ...
... CW: the wingers likely are baffled that one person who helped catch the Tsarnaev brothers -- as Fox "News" has told them -- was a store clerk named Tarek Ahmed. Of course I know nothing about Ahmed's religious beliefs, but I have an idea He Might Be Muslim.
... David Remnick of the New Yorker on "The Culprits." ...
... Wall Street Journal reporters have more on the lives of the Tsarnaevs. ...
... Michael Tomasky of Newsweek: "Conservatism, I fear (so to speak), can never be cleansed of this need to instill fear. Whether it's of black people or of street thugs or of immigrants or of terrorists or of jackbooted government agents, it's how the conservative mind works."
David Rogers of Politico: House Republicans are debating whether or not to attach work requirements to food stamp benefits.
Paul Krugman: "... while debt fears were and are misguided, there's a real danger we've ignored: the corrosive effect, social and economic, of persistent high unemployment. And even as the case for debt hysteria is collapsing, our worst fears about the damage from long-term unemployment are being confirmed.... We are indeed creating a permanent class of jobless Americans. And let's be clear: this is a policy decision.
Bill Keller on the sham trial of Alexsei Navalny, Vladimir Putin's most effective opponent, according to Keller.
David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times: in Egypt, the security forces -- the same guys who were in place during Mubarak's rule -- are still strongarming & killing "enemies of the state," while President Morsi seems content to let the brutality continue in exchange for his protection. The recent murder of activist Mohamed el-Gindy "is a mystery filled with accusations of police brutality, political retaliation, an official cover-up, and a collaboration between the new Islamist leaders and the same security forces that once jailed and beat them."
Well, if Maureen Dowd can't have her way with Obama, Charles Pierce has his way with MoDo: " Maureen Dowd came swanning around the op-ed pages of the New York Times again, swooping across the main parlor and sprawling across the staircases, and wondering why the president -- or any president -- just doesn't come sweeping in and carry her off to the land where pleasure knows no boundaries and rapture no frontiers. Or something.... He never calls. He never writes. He never rides in and throws her across his mighty steed. Life is full of disappointments."
News Ledes
New York Times: "Richie Havens, the folk singer and guitarist who was the first performer at Woodstock, died Monday at age 72."
ABC News: "Canadian authorities foiled a plot by two men they said were backed by al Qaeda to blow up and derail a Toronto passenger train, police said today. The pair received guidance and training from al Qaeda-related individuals in Iran and had begun surveilling passenger trains in the Toronto area to plan for the attack, according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police...."
New York Times: "Flights were delayed by up to two hours across the country on Monday, the first weekday that the nation's air traffic control system operated with 10 percent fewer controllers. Pilots, gate agents and others were quick to blame furloughs caused by mandatory across-the-board budget cuts, but the Federal Aviation Administration said it was too soon to assign blame."
Boston Globe: "Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was charged today with using a weapon of mass destruction in the April 15 attacks that ripped through a crowd at the finish line of the world-renowned race, killing three people and injuring scores of others Tsarnaev's initial court appearance was conducted today by a federal magistrate judge in his hospital room. Tsarnaev was able to respond to inquiries, nodding yes and at one point saying, 'No,' according to a transcript of the hearing. A person familiar with the proceeding said Tsarnaev had mouthed the word. Tsarnaev also faces a charge of malicious destruction of property resulting in death. The charges carry the possibility of the death penalty or life in prison...." A transcript of the hearing is here (pdf). ...
... Boston Globe: "In an affidavit filed in US District Court, FBI Special Agent Daniel R. Genck summarized some of the evidence collected by law enforcement since two explosions detonated last Monday at 2:50 p.m., killing three people and wounded more than 170." You can read the affidavit in this pdf. ...
... Boston Globe: "Waltham police have stepped up their investigation of a 2011 triple homicide where a friend of suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev was brutally murdered, according to a relative of one of the victims who was interviewed by the Globe. The relative said Sunday that police have renewed the investigation at the request of victims' relatives who believe Tamerlan, and perhaps his younger brother, Dzhokhar, played a role in the homicides. Authorities have said the victims all had their throats slit." ...
... Boston Globe: "Two foreign students arrested Saturday in New Bedford for allegedly violating their student visas are from Kazakhstan and may have known the brothers accused of bombing the Boston Marathon, according to a statement from the nation's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. FBI and Homeland Security agents wearing hazmat suits descended on the students' neighborhood on Monday and searched their apartment, according to media reports in New Bedford." ...
... Boston Globe: " At the Oak Grove Cemetery [in Medford, Massachusetts]..., the Rev. Chip Hines led a burial service for Krystle Campbell, the 29-year-old Medford native murdered during the terrorist bombings at the Boston Marathon.... The crowd in the graveyard was expansive, and mourners moved close to surround the family and the casket." ...
... AP: "... all of the more than 180 people injured in the Boston Marathon blasts who made it to a hospital alive now seem likely to survive."
AP: "Commercial airline flights moved smoothly throughout most of the country on Sunday, the first day air traffic controllers were subject to furloughs resulting from government spending cuts, though some delays appeared in the late evening in and around New York. And even though the nightmarish flight delays and cancellations that the airline industry predicted would result from the furloughs did not materialize yet, the real test will come Monday, when traffic ramps up."
New York Times: "New details about the [Boston Marathon bombing] suspects, their alleged plot and the widening inquiry emerged on Sunday, including the types of weapons that were used and the bomb design's link to a terrorist manual. Lawmakers also accused the F.B.I. of an intelligence failure, questioning whether the bureau had responded forcefully enough to Russia's warnings." ...
... Boston Globe: "In the days since the suspects were identified last week, a picture has emerged of 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev -- the elder of the two brothers, who was killed Friday in the battle with police -- as an increasingly militant immigrant, whom family members described as unhappy and mean."
AP: "Gunfire erupted at an apartment complex in a city south of Seattle and five people were shot to death, including a suspect who was shot by arriving officers, police said early Monday."
Reuters: "A U.S. soldier is expected to plead guilty on Monday to shooting dead five fellow servicemen at a military counseling center in Iraq, in a plea deal his defense attorneys reached with Army prosecutors to avoid capital punishment. Army Sergeant John Russell is accused of killing two medical staff officers and three soldiers at Camp Liberty, adjacent to the Baghdad airport, in a 2009 shooting spree the military said at the time could have been triggered by combat stress."
Reuters: "The Taliban have captured all aboard a helicopter that crashed in a volatile region of Afghanistan's east, a spokesman for the insurgency said on Monday. 'The helicopter was carrying eight Turks, the pilots were Russian and Afghan. We believe they are in good health and Turkish officials are in contact with Afghan officials over the issue,' Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Levent Gumrukcu said."
Swift-Boat Bob Is Dead. Texas Tribune: "Bob Perry, a wealthy homebuilder and philanthropist who was among the nation's largest political givers, has died at his home in Nassau Bay, near Houston. He was 80."
Share Article
Reader Comments (9)
Today's (IMHO) most significant NYTimes piece: http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2013/04/22/business/22reuters-eurozone-m in which Merkel suggests Europe has to find ways to act more like one nation/country/entity (no mention of under God) if it wishes to survive.
I see Merkel's sentiments as another take on the inevitable movement toward the Great Collective I've mentioned before. Our survival does demand that humanity find ways to work and live together, and if we wish that future to be something a little better than mere survival, we must find means of cooperation that do not rely on the autocratic, corporate, profit-at-any-cost model that animates the likes of the Koch brothers or giant corporate parasites like Exxon or General Electric.
Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom" is one of the Right's touchstones, warning as it does against a government collective that stifles individual freedom. Today it is the giants of finance, the entities that load entire nations with debt in the expectation of extraordinary profit that are creating the new feudalism.
I'd like to think Merkel's recent remarks hint at some understanding of that....and (I'm stretching here) some understanding, too, of how inevitably modern corporate serfdom cannot help but bring more anger, more social disruption, even acts of terrorism, in its wake.
Ken,
Excellent points.
It’s difficult, perhaps for most of us, to imagine the state of intellectual ferment during and immediately following the horrific events of WWII. For Friedrich Hayek, the answer seemed simple. Do not, under any circumstances, allow governments to engage in central planning, à la Soviet style communism and National Socialism. I don’t suppose there are many who would deny such dangers (especially when served up with the special side dishes of horror that accompanied those particular states).
The problem comes when moving from the particular to the general, and more insidiously, to other particulars that bear little resemblance to Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, and this is where "The Road to Serfdom", and the conclusions drawn from it by today’s conservatives, becomes a sort of all purpose cudgel for attacking government in any but the most pared down, night-watchmen form.
Modern right-wingers of the Glenn Beck variety are able to espy Hayek’s hated “collectivism” even in government support for the Constitution if it confronts their personal desires and ideology (eg, support for the first amendment by denying use of public land and money for religious displays at, say, Christmas, which becomes, in their eyes, an intolerable abuse of power bordering on Soviet or Nazi control--"Holy Shit! Collectivism at work!"). Never mind that the United States has never had anything vaguely resembling an industrial policy or Soviet style central planning (no Five Year plan in this country could last beyond five months).
But, as usual, facts are inconvenient things and Hayek’s apocalyptic pronouncements on the evils of (a certain form of) government are too useful to keep on the shelf, especially when they allow such as the Koch brothers to push their right-wing avatars towards further and further hatred of and diminishment of all forms of government.
But the Kochs and their ilk seek to use fear and hatred against governing entities simply to enhance their own economic advantage. Their goal is to reduce all government oversight and regulation past the point where their interests can be in any way impacted (see Charlie' Pierce's regular pieces on how the Koch's have made the state of Wisconsin a wholly owned subsidiary of Koch Industries).
And this roadmap leads directly to West, TX. Texas, as Marie and others have been pointing out, is the poster child for “KEEP OUT, MEDDLING GOVERNMENT. WE KNOW BEST” sort of thinking. The evaporation of half the town of West is further proof of the idiocy of that idea. There are excellent reasons for regulation and oversight which don’t always involve, nor should they, improvement of corporate bottom lines (although abiding by reasonable regulation can help immunize companies against massive lawsuits when the shit does hit the fan).
Biologist Robert Wright, in his book “Non-Zero” argues that a more collective approach (not collectivist, but an approach that includes all members of society) can benefit everyone—non-zero sum gains. But this also means that Koch-style oligarchs must get on board with the idea that they cannot change the rules to suit themselves at the expense of everyone else, which, of course, seems to be exactly what the Modern GOP is aiming for, and why the Kochs and Murdoch seek control of media outlets, in order to stifle pesky voices that won’t get with their program of marketplace domination.
Another thing Wright argues for is the understanding of the complexity of human life and society. Greater complexity requires greater cooperation if everyone is to benefit, not just the one percent. This is another idea anathema to most conservatives, because cooperation means oligarchs can’t simply do whatever they want, therefore, difficult situations MUST be reduced to simplistic, childish black and white understanding which is something the Glenn Becks and Teabaggers and congressional Republicans are very good at.
I’m not sure if this is what Merkel has in mind, but we’ve tried the other way and it ain’t working so well, at least not for the vast majority of human beings.
I was shocked, as no doubt you all were, to hear Fluffy (of the tiny rented testicles) Greggers come out to warn us all of the dangers of evil immigrants and to offer his unalloyed foot and ball washing of GOP fear mongers who are ready to turn immigration reform talks into a three ring circus.
The gentleman from South Carolina, for instance, has decided, in his great and glorious wisdom, that it's time to start investigating ALL immigrants in this country to see how of them want to MURDER DECENT AMERICANS!!
But he sure doesn't want to scare anyone.
JUST WATCH YOUR ASSES because BROWN PEOPLE WANT TO KIIIILLLLLL YOU!
I just knew this would be a sensible and intellectually serious debate on the merits of the issues before us, without resort to shoddy, slimy, opportunistic invocations of the events in Boston to deep-six immigration reform, no sirree bob!
Akhilleus and All: My older son responded with a Mencken quotation to the somewhat inconclusive things I had to say yesterday about how we should treat the surviving Boston bomber. It applies equally well, I think, to today's discussion (and likely to the next two weeks' as well when I will be out of web range):
"There is always an easy solution to every human problem--neat,
plausible, and wrong."
Mencken has warts, but some of them were flat beautiful.
So quiet, you can't hear a bird sing; Happy Earth Day, tenants. Frack this; monkey boys and girls.
The joke is on you. You have given up your rights because of your fear of a Jihid warrior with a suitcase bomb.
You shoot members of your family with your home protection firearms.
You hide in the basement with your survival food packets and copies of the Bible and the Constitution. Waiting on god to save your asses from the masses.
Apocalypse is coming or that's what's been foretold.
But Mother Earth is a bitch; life isn't to end with bang or a bomb; it's going to be the hiss of "Round-up" being sprayed on your lawn.
We are all suicide bombers with our death vests destroying our Earth without thought to what's next.
Happy Birthday Earth. (and many more?)
I distinctly remember my high school's celebration of that first Earth Day in 1971. Trash was finally disappearing from highways thanks to Lady Bird and Iron Eyes Cody (and public works people and just plain citizens who started thinking more about the environment).
Little did I suspect back then, as we all applauded all the general consciousness raising and enjoyed that moment in the sun sitting on the bleachers on our playing field, with nothing but hope for the future and seeing idiocy and selfishness disappear in our rearview mirrors, that decades later, that idiocy and selfishness (morphed to warping greed) would make a comeback, led by climate change deniers and science skeptics in congress, of all places, and that people would be questioning evolution and environmental concerns. I would never have believed it back then.
I do now, sadly.
Too bad Sanford didn't have that Kismet moment with Dowd on the trail instead of the younger Argentinian squeeze. Dowd could have ridden off into the pampas with Sandford and just given herself over to the bodice ripping genre once and for all. Would have been a blessing for everyone. Now she's stuck with her ballerina music box and her dreams.
@Diane; Funny; but not in a mean way; well; I mean.... By the by are bodices all that easy to shuck? Cowgirl shirts with fake mother of pearl buttons can come off with wink and a nod; I have little or no experiences with the romantic bodice.
Something to view that is light and enchanting, a step back from all the horror that has happened this past week when you view this charming underwater dance of a son with his 76-year old mother! http://vimeo.com/conorhorgan/deependance