The Commentariat -- August 24, 2014
Matt Apuzzo & Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: "Jolted by images of protesters clashing with heavily armed police officers in ]Missouri, President Obama has ordered a comprehensive review of the government's decade-old strategy of outfitting local police departments with military-grade body armor, mine-resistant trucks, silencers and automatic rifles, senior officials say. The White House-led review will consider whether the government should continue providing such equipment and, if so, whether local authorities have sufficient training to use it appropriately, said senior administration and law enforcement officials. The government will also consider whether it is keeping a close enough watch on equipment inventories, and how the weapons and other gear are used." ...
... Alex Kane of AlterNet, in Salon: "... One group of people is decidedly happy about the militarized response in Ferguson: those who work in the weapons industry. The array of police forces -- the Missouri State Highway Patrol, the St. Louis county and city police and local Ferguson officers -- that descended on the largely black Missouri city have used the products these corporations are selling in abundance.... Many of the corporations' products that are being turned on protesters in Ferguson will be put on display next month -- in Missouri."
Erik Eckholm of the New York Times on voter suppression laws in Arizona & Kansas that have created a two-tiered voting rights regime: voters will be allowed to vote only in federal elections & be disallowed from voting in local elections if they do not provide birth certificates, & in the case of married women who have changed their names, also marriage certificates. The issue will come before the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals this week; if the states win, then those now eligible to vote in federal elections only will be disenfranchised there, too.
"Blue-State Diaspora." Robert Gebeloff & David Leonhardt of the New York Times: "Over the last few decades, residents of many traditionally liberal states have moved to states that were once more conservative. And this pattern has played an important role in helping the Democratic Party win the last two presidential elections and four of the last six. The growth of the Latino population and the social liberalism of the millennial generation may receive more attention, but the growing diaspora of blue-state America matters as well." CW: I would credit this as the Air Conditioning Effect. Thanks to MAG for the link.
AP: "Vice President Joe Biden says the U.S. is prepared to help Iraq pursue a federal system that would decentralize power away from Baghdad. In an opinion piece in The Washington Post, Biden says Iraq is making progress in forming a new government. But he says sectarian divisions are fueling extremist movements like the Islamic State. Biden says federalism is emerging as one approach to Iraq's future. He's alluding to a plan he proposed in 2006 that would see Iraq divided into three semi-independent regions for Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds." Vice President Biden's Wash Po op-ed is here.
Armartya Sen in the New Republic on the need for a global plan -- & philosophy -- for energy distribution & power production. CW: Reading this, it was impossible for me not to imagine the Jim Inhofe-Marco Rubio contingent reactions to Sen's analysis & not to realize anew what horribly ignorant, inadequate politicians we elect. And how much that matters.
Alleged Serial Auto Thief Darrell Issa Feigns Concern that Obama Violated the Hatch Act. Lauren French of Politico: "Darrell Issa issued a subpoena for White House documents Friday, throwing more fuel on his summer-long feud with David Simas, the director of the White House Office of Political Strategy and Outreach. Issa ... wants documents on the creation of Simas' office and trips the president took in 2014.... Issa is asking the White House to turn over documents related to Obama's June trip to Minnesota and July trip to Colorado. Both trips were billed as officials trips, even though Obama attended fundraisers for Sen. Mark Udall and other congressional Democrats.... President George W. Bush's White House and previous administrations had a similar office during his tenure, but Obama shut it down during his first term after the U.S. Office of Special Counsel found that the office misused taxpayer funds and violated the law. Obama administration officials have stressed that the new office run by Simas was restructured to avoid Hatch Act violations. The White House has dismissed Issa's interest in Simas' office as a political stunt."
Beyond the Beltway
James Hohmann of Politico extracts some of the most damaging passages from the Friday-docudump of in the Gov. Scott Walker corruption investigation. CW: Even if what Walker did was not illegal -- and it sounds as if it was -- this tiny peak into the shear tawdriness & greed which is the American Way of Politics will probably disgust you.
Tarini Parti of Politico: "A Florida judge ruled Friday that the state's reconfigured congressional map will take effect for the 2016 elections, a victory for Republicans that allows this year's races to proceed under the existing lines."
Alan Zagier of the AP: "Tensions briefly flared then subsided late Saturday night and early Sunday in Ferguson as nightly protests continued two weeks after a white city police officer fatally shot an unarmed black 18-year-old. Police reported only a handful of arrests, and traffic flowed freely along the West Florissant Avenue commercial corridor near the suburban St. Louis apartment complex where Ferguson officer Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown six times in the middle of the street on Aug. 9." ...
... The St. Louis Post-Dispatch report is here. ...
... Chris Campbell & Chris McGreal of the Guardian: "Supporters of Darren Wilson ... on Saturday staged a rally outside a St Louis pub.... In Ferguson on Saturday, Ron Johnson, the state highway patrol captain who was brought in after criticism of tactics applied by local police, walked at the front of a march organized by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Johnson, who is black, and St Louis county police chief Jon Belmar, who is white, helped to carry an NAACP banner."
... Julie Bosman & Joseph Goldstein of the New York Times: "Just after noon on Saturday, Aug. 9, Michael Brown was shot dead by a police officer on Canfield Drive. For about four hours, in the unrelenting summer sun, his body remained where he fell.... Local officials say that the image of Mr. Brown's corpse in the open set the scene for what would become a combustible worldwide story of police tactics and race in America, and left some of the officials asking why." ...
... From One Racist Police Force to Another. Carol Leonnig, et al., of the Washington Post: "The small city of Jennings, Mo., had a police department so troubled, and with so much tension between white officers and black residents, that the city council finally decided to disband it. Everyone in the Jennings police department was fired. New officers were brought in to create a credible department from scratch. That was three years ago. One of the officers who worked in that department, and lost his job along with everyone else, was a young man named Darren Wilson." Wilson came from a troubled home & turned to policing for "stability." Last year he divorced his wife. CW: Way, way down in the story is this interesting note: Wilson was moonlighting as a security guard someplace & was supposed to work the night he killed Brown. So on top of whatever other problems Wilson may have had, he also was probably dog-tired from working two jobs.
Witness for the Defense. Laura Vozzella, et al., of the Washington Post: Former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell claimed in testimony in his corruption trial that he managed the family finances, but his wife Maureen messed everything up. ...
... CW: If Bob was "managing" the finances, he was doing a piss-poor job, making real estate investments the couple could not afford. It actually seems as if Maureen was trying -- in a foolish way -- to get the family out of the financial jam Bob had engineered, & Bob was swooping in to close the deals she was proposing to snake-oil salesman Jonnie Williams. It's pretty hard to believe he had no idea what was going on when he was the chief loan negotiator. It's also pretty hard to imagine he thought Jonnie was making loans & outfitting the family -- including Bob -- in fancy duds for some altruistic motives or out of admiration for Governor Bob. Some men might get away with the naif defense, but the governor of a state -- who also is a lawyer & a former state attorney general -- would be expected to be more savvy than that.
Presidential Race
Brett LoGiurato of Business Insider, republished in the Houston Chronicle: Texas Gov. Rick Perry's "new political action committee unveiled a T-shirt featuring Perry's mug shot. The back of the shirt features the mug shot of District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg, whose character Perry has repeatedly tried to attack while making her the poster child of his pushback. The caption under Perry's mug shot says he's 'wanted' for 'securing the border and defeating Democrats.' Lehmberg's side says she's 'wanted' for 'driving while intoxicated and perversion of justice.'"
News Ledes
Guardian: "Libya has lurched ever closer to fragmentation and civil war this weekend after Islamist-led militias seized the airport in the capital, Tripoli, proclaimed their own government, and presented the world with yet another crisis. Operation Dawn, a coalition of Islamist and Misrata forces, captured the airport on Saturday in fierce fighting against pro-government militias after a five-week siege that battered parts of the capital."
New York Times: "Richard Attenborough, who after a distinguished stage and film acting career in Britain reinvented himself to become the internationally admired director of the monumental 'Gandhi' and other films, died on Sunday. He was 90."
Los Angeles Times: "Ninety to 100 homes in Northern California have been red-tagged -- that is, labeled unfit to enter -- after a 6.0 earthquake struck near Napa early Sunday, and there have been more than 50 aftershocks, but a large follow-up earthquake is now unlikely, state officials announced." The San Francisco Chronicle story is here.
New York Times: "An American freelance journalist held captive for nearly two years by Al Qaeda's branch in Syria was freed on Sunday in a handover to United Nations peacekeepers in the Golan Heights. The freelance journalist, Peter Theo Curtis, from Boston, was abducted near the Syria-Turkey border in October 2012. He was held by the Nusra Front, the Qaeda affiliate in Syria, which has broken with the even more radical Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS."
Washington Post: "The British ambassador to the United States said Sunday that authorities are 'close' to identifying the Islamist militant who beheaded American journalist James Foley. Speaking on CNN's 'State of the Union' and NBC's 'Meet the Press,' Ambassador Peter Westmacott said advanced voice-recognition technology is helping authorities identify the man, who spoke with a British accent." ...
... Guardian UPDATE: "The US has unequivocally denied paying any money at all to the Syrian extremist group that until Sunday held an American journalist hostage. Whatever prompted Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaida’s chosen affiliate in Syria, to release Peter Theo Curtis, the government of Qatar, increasingly a regional power broker, was involved."
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Reader Comments (4)
War. War. War.
This keeps coming to mind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyeKYQdYISg&feature=share
Now, this sounds promising! "The Growing Blue-State Diaspora" though it may take a while longer to turn more red states purple!
"The changes in purple North Carolina (where the blue-born population is up an astounding 41 percent since 2000) and Georgia (30 percent) are fairly well-known. Perhaps not as well-known is the migration of blue-staters to South Carolina (39 percent), Utah (34 percent) and Idaho (30 percent)."
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/24/upshot/the-growing-blue-state-diaspora.html?ref=opinion&abt=0002&abg=1
Thomas Frank interviews Cornel West about Obama and stuff: “He posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit. We ended up with a Wall Street presidency, a drone presidency”
http://www.salon.com/2014/08/24/cornel_west_he_posed_as_a_progressive_and_turned_out_to_be_counterfeit_we_ended_up_with_a_wall_street_presidency_a_drone_presidency/?source=newsletter
James Singer - thanks for the Marx bros. clip. I greatly enjoyed it, most especially when imagining Photoshopping John McCain's and L. Butters Graham's heads on those of the two lesser Marx boys. Wouldn't it be great fun if this enhanced video played on all broadcast networks anytime they started spouting their eternal calls to war?