The Commentariat -- August 26, 2014
Internal links, defunct video removed.
Mark Landler & Helene Cooper of the New York Times: "President Obama has authorized surveillance flights over Syria, a precursor to airstrikes there, but a mounting concern for the White House is how to target the Sunni extremists without helping President Bashar al-Assad." ...
... Oren Dorell of USA Today: "British intelligence said a London rapper who traveled to Syria last year to fight with Islamist militants is suspected of beheading American journalist James Foley last week, according to the British newspaper The Sunday Times.... A spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department said U.S. intelligence officials have yet to confirm the killer's identity on the video showing the killing and continue to work the case.... British intelligence agencies MI5 and MI6 identified the killer and named Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, 24, as a key suspect, The Sunday Times reported, citing unnamed officials. Abdel Bary, also known as L Jinny or Lyricist Jinn in London, left a budding music career that included appearances on BBC Radio in 2012, several British newspapers reported." ...
... Luke Harding & Fazel Hawramy of the Guardian: "The United Nations said on Sunday it had evidence that fighters from Islamic State (Isis) had killed as many as 670 prisoners in Mosul and had carried out further abuses in Iraq that amounted to crimes against humanity. Navi Pillay, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said Islamic State and allied fighters were committing 'grave, horrific human rights violations' on a daily basis. These included, including targeted killings, forced conversions, abductions, trafficking, slavery and sexual abuse, Pillay said." ...
... The hawks on the Washington Post editorial board call for "boots on the ground" against ISIS.
Harriet Sherwood of the Guardian: "An American journalist who was freed after almost two years of captivity in Syria is believed to be in the custody of the US embassy in Tel Aviv, where he is likely to be undergoing medical checks and preliminary debriefing. Peter Theo Curtis, 45, was handed over to UN peacekeepers in the village of al-Rafid, close to the boundary between the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and Syria. He had been held by Jabhat al-Nusra, an affiliate of al-Qaida, since autumn 2012."
David Kirkpatrick & Eric Schmitt of the New York Times: "Twice in the last seven days, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have secretly launched airstrikes against Islamist-allied militias battling for control of Tripoli, Libya, four senior American officials said, in a major escalation of a regional power struggle set off by Arab Spring revolts. The United States, the officials said, was caught by surprise: Egypt and the Emirates, both close allies and military partners, acted without informing Washington, leaving the Obama administration on the sidelines. Egyptian officials explicitly denied to American diplomats that their military played any role in the operation, the officials said, in what appeared a new blow to already strained relations between Washington and Cairo." ...
... CW: As contributor Haley Simon asks, "Anybody else wondering how it was that the US had 'no idea' that Egypt and the Emirates were bombing Libya given their worldwide surveillance of everybody? We surely do suck at whatever it is that the NSA is doing."
Connie Bruck has a long piece in the New Yorker on AIPAC, which has captured nearly every legislator in Washington, a fearsome fact given Israel's right-wing, militaristic government. CW: Another reminder that we will never have representative government without a Constitutional amendment on campaign finance reform.
** Stephen Ohlemacher of the AP: "The Veterans Affairs Department says investigators have found no proof that delays in care caused any deaths at a VA hospital in Phoenix, deflating an explosive allegation that helped expose a troubled health care system in which veterans waited months for appointments while employees falsified records to cover up the delays." ...
... Jim Kuhnhenn of the AP: "Three months after a veterans' health care scandal rocked his administration, President Barack Obama is taking executive action to improve the mental well-being of veterans. The president was to announce his initiatives during an appearance before the American Legion National Convention that is fraught with midterm politics. The president's address to the legionnaires Tuesday in Charlotte, North Carolina, is the latest administration response to the health care lapses that led to the resignation of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki in May."
The Tie Goes to the Republicans. Nicholas Confessore of the New York Times: "... more than 200 times in the past six years that the [Federal Election Commission] has split votes, reflecting a deep ideological divide over how aggressively to regulate money in politics that mirrors the partisan gridlock in Congress. But instead of paralyzing the commission, the 3-to-3 votes have created a rapidly expanding universe of unofficial law, where Republican commissioners have loosened restrictions on candidates and outside groups simply by signaling what standards they are willing to enforce." The rule is: it's legal if the members of the commission vote 3-3.
** Peter Mancuso in the Washington Monthly. The militarization of police forces in only part of the story: "That larger story begins many years before our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It involves a tit-for-tat escalation of armaments between criminals, citizens, and police departments that has been egged on by America's arms manufacturers and gun rights groups.... [The] call to increase police officer fire power was further exacerbated by the fact that state legislatures failed miserably in the face of the gun lobby to curb the sale of some of the most powerful and lethal firearms that posed threats to police officers across the country in the first place.... New huge profits for weapons makers [by opening up the law enforcement market for heavier firepower] meant increased contributions from these same firearms manufacturers to the National Rifle Association, (NRA).... The NRA's unabated, vigorous, and highly successful marketing strategy, wrapped the whole sales pitch in 'Second Amendment' parchment and a 'Red, White, & Blue' ribbon for the American public market." Read the whole post. ...
... Ed Kilgore: "It’s actually a bit worse than Mancuso suggests. The arms race between police departments and lawbreakers created an atmosphere of spectacularly lethal violence (even as violent crime rates actually went down) that made it easy for the gun lobby and its paymasters to argue that every single citizen needed to become his or her own police force, as heavily armed as the cops and robbers. 'Army of One' indeed. So we aren't just witnessing the consequences of the 'militarization of the police.' It's the militarization of America, which happens when you deliberately destroy the state monopoly on means of lethal violence.... [This is an] angle that libertarian folk like Rand Paul do not want to pursue: cops bulking up with military hardware as part of an arms race created by Second Amendment absolutism."
Cristina Marcos of the Hill: "House Republicans have hired D.C. law firm BakerHostetler to provide legal representation to sue President Obama. House Administration Committee Chairwoman Candice Miller (R-Mich.) signed a contract on Monday for BakerHostetler to represent the House in the civil action lawsuit in a U.S. district court against the president.... The contract authorizes the House general counsel to pay BakerHostetler $500 per hour for 'all reasonable attorney time expended in connection with the litigation.' However, the contract states that the legal costs will not exceed a 'firm cap' of $350,000 that 'will not be raised.'" ...
... CW: There is some good news here. It turns out that Miller, who is the only woman committee chair -- appointed after multiple news sites noted that all of the House committee heads were white guys -- actually gets to do something more substantial than keeping the coffee room stocked & ironing her colleagues' shirts. Always look on the bright side.
Richard Perez-Pena of the New York Times: "As the shaded quadrangles of the nation's elite campuses stir to life for the start of the academic year, they remain bastions of privilege. Amid promises to admit more poor students, top colleges educate roughly the same percentage of them as they did a generation ago. This is despite the fact that there are many high school seniors from low-income homes with top grades and scores: twice the percentage in the general population as at elite colleges.... As Anthony P. Carnevale, director of Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce, put it, 'Higher education has become a powerful force for reinforcing advantage and passing it on through generations.'" ...
... Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post: Our educational system is largely to blame for the lack of gender & racial diversity in high-tech companies.
Vauhini Vara in the New Yorker: "The problem with [the DOJ's multi-billion-dollar settlements with big banks] isn't that banks' relief efforts don't have a wider scope; it's that by describing the settlements in grandiose terms, banks and officials risk misleading the public about the scope, which, at best, can confuse people and, at worst, can set them up to fall victim to fraud." CW: Actually, the point seems to be to mislead the public.
The Whopper Challenge. Danny Vinik of the New Republic: "The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday evening that Burger King is seeking to buy Tim Horton's, the Canadian coffee and donut chain, to lower its U.S. tax bill.... The deal is structured as a 'tax inversion' which allows Burger King to switch its official tax jurisdiction from the United States, where the federal corporate tax rate is 35 percent, to Canada, where it is 15 percent.... If it sounds ridiculous that an American company can purchase a foreign firm and suddenly avoid the U.S. corporate tax system, that's because it is." ...
... Joe Weisenthal of Business Insider: "There has been talk of legislation to limit tax inversions, but in this political climate, the idea of anything actually passing both houses of Congress seems very slim. So earlier this month, the White House said it may use an executive order to limit tax inversions, though it remains unclear how much teeth any executive order would have.... Greg Valliere of Potomac Research says that Burger King's actions are a direct statement to the White House and the Treasury, basically daring them to back up their warning with action." ...
... AND This Tidbit. Richard Rubin of Bloomberg News: "Two top Republican lawmakers profited from a corporate tax-avoidance maneuver that the U.S. Treasury Department is seeking to curb. While U.S. House Speaker John Boehner and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp have resisted calls for a crackdown on companies adopting overseas addresses to pay lower taxes, both have made money off one of the deals. They also have investments at risk of losing value because of government action.... Their actions are legal.... Still, the two lawmakers, who have more sway over tax policy than any other House members, are invested in deals that Obama and other Democrats say are wrong and unpatriotic."
Libertarian Ascending? Hah. Ed Kilgore: Pew Research Center discovers even "self-identified libertarians aren't much 'libertarian,' either." Here's a funny bit: "These findings of the non-particularity of 'libertarian' views, mind you, is after Pew has melted the category down from 17% of the public to 11%, since a lot of 'libertarians' could not accurately distinguish 'libertarian' from 'communist' or -- get this -- 'Unitarian.'"
... The Pew Research findings are here:
Self-described libertarians tend to be modestly more supportive of some libertarian positions, but few of them hold consistent libertarian opinions on the role of government, foreign policy and social issues... In some cases, the political views of self-described libertarians differ modestly from those of the general public; in others there are no differences at all.
Charles Pierce reviewed the Sunday shows yesterday, & he remains unkind to Chris Jansing, who filled in as host for the rudderless "Press the Meat": "... the Dancin' Master's old place ... was later turned into a Rand Paul infomercial by guest DJ Chris Jansing. Prior to that, of course, Jansing let [Rep. Mike] Rogers [R-Mich.] deliver the kind of old boogedy-boogedy that's going to make his new show a hit among the canned-peach shut-ins of his target audience." ...
... CW: It occurs to me that Chuck Todd's new show may not be a hit with "the canned-peach shut-ins." Maybe the NBC Chipmunk has the same "problem" David Gregory had: he's just too young to connect with the shut-ins. Ergo, the most popular Sunday morning show today is anchored by "onetime military advisor to the House Of Rurikovich Bob Schieffer." If a network want an actual audience for its Sunday news show, it would have to turn over the airwaves to the likes of John Oliver or Jon Stewart. This week's guest host: Chris Rock. No, it's not gonna happen. The networks, aware that they are dying, have advanced along the Kubler-Ross model to Stage 5 (acceptance), whereas many viewers are stuck at an earlier stage -- anger or depression. ...
... CW Update: Oh, I must have been wrong. It turns out the new & improved "Press the Meat" will have "more edge":
The show needs more edge. It needs to be consequential. I think the show had become a talking shop that raked over the cold embers of what had gone on the previous week. The one-on-one conversation belongs to a decade ago. We need more of a coffeehouse conversation. -- Deborah Turness, President of NBC News
... CW: Wow! I'm really looking forward to hearing a "coffeehouse conversation" between Newt Gingrich & Mary Matalin. I guess Chuck will play the part of the hippie waiter. Maybe a bona fide newsmaker like Dick Cheney will drop by & order a cup of GI Joe. It will be like SNL just carries right through to Sunday morning. Eddddgy! ...
... [Emmy Awards host] Seth Meyers made a sardonic joke about network television holding an awards show and giving all the trophies to cable and other services. 'That would be crazy,' he said. 'Why would they do that?' ...
... TeeVee for the Well-Heeled. Alessandra Stanley of the New York Times: "There is an exhilarating confluence of talent and opportunity at places like HBO and Showtime. Shows like 'Breaking Bad' and 'True Detective' are more inspired than movies, telling stories that are a complete vision rather than a committee-dulled compromise. But it's increasingly obvious that the most rewarded series are also the ones that penalize audiences with costs that add up and count many viewers out."
Beyond the Beltway
Here is the Washington Post liveblog of the Bob & Maureen McDonnell corruption trial.
Rosalind Helderman, et al., of the Washington Post: "A pivotal moment in the corruption trial of Robert F. McDonnell and his wife began Monday as a prosecutor aggressively opened his cross-examination of the former Virginia governor. In a series of rapid-fire questions, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Dry asked whether McDonnell denied key facts about his relationship with businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. -- who prosecutors say bribed the first couple in an effort to curry favor for his onetime company." ...
... Here's the blow-by-blow by Washington Post reporters.
Elisa Crouch of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "Hundreds of mourners gathered at a St. Louis church this morning for the funeral of 18-year-old Michael Brown...." ...
... The Washington Post story, by Darryl Fears, et al., is here. The New York Times story, by Monica Davey, is here. ...
... Annals of Journalism, Ctd.
... CW: I can't help it -- I love the way Fox "News" covered Brown's funeral. Here's the headline: "More White House officials at Michael Brown's funeral than Thatcher's." Here's the lede: "The White House sent three officials to attend Monday's funeral for Michael Brown in St. Louis -- three more than it sent for former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's funeral last year. The administration's handling of the Brown funeral already has started to raise comparisons between the two." Yessiree, the first think I thought of in regard to Michael Brown's funeral was how many Obama administration attended Margaret Thatcher's funeral. "Started to raise comparisons"? I wonder who might be doing the comparing. It appears Fox "News" has launched a new school of journalism: self-referential reportage.
... Erik Wemple of the Washington Post with a few of the "outraged" responses to the New York Times' profile of Michael Brown (profile linked here yesterday). ...
... Margaret Sullivan of the New York Times: "Two words -- 'no angel' -- have become a flash point for many of the difficult, contentious, entrenched issues that have arisen in Ferguson, Mo. On Twitter, in my email queue and across the Internet, many Times readers are angry and disappointed about the use of those words, which have become yet another Ferguson-related hashtag. Let's get the obvious out of the way first: That choice of words was a regrettable mistake." ...
... CW: All-in-all, I'm with Steve M. on this: "I read John Eligon's New York Times profile of Mike Brown this morning and came away with the impression that it was a largely positive portrait. Then I went online and realized that I was supposed to be appalled by it." ...
... CW: I do think the Times made two mistakes, neither of which was the fault of the piece's author, John Eligon, who is a young black man. (1) The Times published the Brown profile on the day of Brown's funeral; ergo, readers are looking for an obituary-type remembrance, not a warts-and-all profile. Obituaries, unless the subjects are primarily famous for their notoriety, tend to be rather kind glosses. (2) The Times published the Brown profile side-by-side with one of Brown's killer Darren Wilson, & that piece found no specific fault with Wilson; rather, it seemed to explain the factors that might have led to his wantonly shooting dead a black man. Max Read of Gawker highlights the problem with that ill-conceived editorial decision. ...
... ** Matthew Yglesias of Vox: "Michael Brown didn't do anything as a teen that I didn't — but only one of us got killed.... But since the officer who apprehended us managed to handle the situation without killing us, the NYPD and the New York Times never felt the need to air our dirty laundry in public.... Angels, it turns out, are pretty rare. But if you look the right way, you don't need to be one to survive into adulthood." CW: This is the same point that Aqua Buddha boy -- and others -- have made. Acting like a jerk, including doing illegal things, is something in which probably most young men & many young women engage. It's a rite of passage. Some get caught by law enforcement. Few of the youthful miscreants end up dead or even with a criminal record. That small percentage goes way up for young black offenders. ...
CNN plays an audio recording of the shots that killed Michael Brown. Holly Yan of CNN: "In the recording, a quick series of shots can be heard, followed by a pause and then another quick succession of shots. Forensic audio expert Paul Ginsberg analyzed the recording and said he detected at least 10 gunshots -- a cluster of six, followed by four." ...
... Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post: "... the average black person's friend network is 8 percent white, but the average white person's network is only 1 percent black. To put it another way: Blacks have ten times as many black friends as white friends. But white Americans have an astonishing 91 times as many white friends as black friends.... A full 75 percent of whites have 'entirely white social networks without any minority presence.' The same holds true for slightly less than two thirds of black Americans." ...
Presidential Race
Chuck Lindell & Tony Plohetski of the Austin American-Statesman: In a 60-page motion to dismiss, Rick Perry's lawyers argued that "The two-count indictment ... defies common sense and should be dismissed 'immediately if not sooner' as a violation of the U.S. and Texas constitutions.... The wide-ranging attack argued that Perry's criminal charges were based on state laws that are unconstitutional or, at the very least, were misinterpreted -- constituting an improper attempt to criminalize politics and limit gubernatorial power in 'intolerable and incalculable' ways." ...
... Sean Sullivan of the Washington Post followed Rick Perry around New Hampshire for two days. Here's what he learned about Perry: He really wants to run for president again.... The dude is stylish.... He's decided which foreign policy lane he wants to occupy in 2016. Perry wants to be the hawkish, authoritative voice on national security.... He likes retail politics." ...
... Brian Beutler: Rick Perry's biggest gaffe in the 2012 primary debates, in the eyes of the GOP faithful was "Not the time he drew a blank, under pressure, about his desire to abolish the Department of Energy, but the time he called Republicans who oppose in-state tuition for so-called DREAMers heartless." He's making up for that now in his border antics & is setting the bar for all Republican presidential hopefuls: "Perry is helping to establish a theoretical baseline -- militarized border, maximum deportation of low-priority offenders -- that will become policy if a Republican manages to win the presidency in 2016."
Alexander Bolton of the Hill: "Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) is gearing up for a presidential primary challenge against Hillary Clinton and hopes to capitalize on Democratic concerns over Clinton's coziness with Wall Street banks. Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Senate Democrats, plans to travel to two crucial presidential battleground states next month."
Senate Races
Larry Sabato, et al., in Politico Magazine: "... the midterms are far from over. In every single one of the Crystal Ball's toss-up states, (Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Louisiana and North Carolina), the Republican Senate candidate has not yet opened up a real polling lead in any of them. Democratic nominees have been running hard and staying slightly ahead, or close to, their Republican foes.... As we've said many times, 2014 should be a Republican year, with GOP gains in both houses of Congress. Yet Republicans have a terrible record of beating incumbent Democratic senators, going back to their last good year in this category, 1980."
News Ledes
New York Times: "The Standard & Poor's 500-stock index reached a milestone on Tuesday, closing above 2,000 for the first time ever, if just barely. It was a lazy day of trading that picked up on some encouraging signs in the United States economy, but not enough for sustained optimism in the market."
ABC News: "A third American hostage held by ISIS has been identified as a 26-year-old American woman who was kidnapped a year ago while doing humanitarian relief work in Syria. The terror group is demanding $6.6 million and the release of U.S. prisoners for the life of the young woman, whom a representative for the family requested not be identified."
New York Times: "A 33-year-old American who was fighting for the militant group the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria was killed in recent days in a battle with a rival group in Syria, a senior American official said on Tuesday. The authorities identified the man as Douglas McAuthur McCain, of San Diego. According to a human rights group that tracks the conflict in Syria, Mr. McCain was killed in a battle in Marea, a city in northern Syria near the Turkish border. Mr. McCain had been on a watch list of potential terrorism suspects maintained by the United States government...."
New York Times: "Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday reached a long-term cease-fire after seven weeks of fighting, according to officials on both sides, halting the longest, bloodiest battle either side has experienced in years -- but without resolving many of the bigger issues underlying the conflict."
New York Times: "Burger King Worldwide agreed on Tuesday to buy the Canadian restaurant chain Tim Hortons for about $11.4 billion, creating one of the biggest fast-food operations in the world -- with a little help from Warren E. Buffett. As part of the transaction, however, the American burger giant will move its home to Canada, where the combined company's biggest market will be."
Washington Post: "Ukraine said Tuesday its forces detained a group of Russian paratroopers who crossed the border into eastern Ukraine, and the U.S. ambassador to Kiev warned of a possible 'Russian-directed counteroffensive' by pro-Moscow separatists, raising tensions between the two countries as their presidents attended a regional summit."
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Reader Comments (11)
Marie makes an excellent point comparing the youthful misdeeds of Li'l Randy with, say, a kid like Michael Brown.
It seems pot played a role for both, although I have yet to hear that Brown ever abducted someone after getting high, tried to force that person to take some bong hits, then trundled them off for forced participation in some whacky pagan ritual. Just imagine the outcry if he had. The Foxbots and the white supremacists would demand he be dug up so's they could lynch his already dead body from a tree in dowtown Ferguson.
And yet the kid who actually did those things could be the next president.
It reminds me of the film "Being There" in which a mild mannered man with the mental capacity of a small child is mistaken for a genius, a savant who is invited to the White House and welcomed in by Wall St tycoons. In one scene, the man, appropriately named Chance, is seen on The Tonight Show being feted for his supposed sagacity. A black woman who had worked as a maid in the same estate as Chance, who used to fix his meals for him because he was unable to feed himself, sees this, and with a shake of the head exclaims "Well it sure is a white man's world".
This Jerzy Kosinski tale makes this point clearly, a point that too many refuse to see, especially on the right. A lot of it IS chance. Being born white into a well-to-do family, with access to good schools and excellent connections pretty much means you will never be screamed at by a cop for walking down the road, and would never in this or any other universe be shot by that cop.
There's a difference between being born already on first, second, or third base (and believing you deserve it), and being born at the plate with the count 0-2, a sawed off piece of wood in your hand instead of a bat, and an umpire who hates you.
When the Aqua Buddha revelation hit the headlines, wingers either dismissed it as a lie or as "youthful hijinks", courtesies they would never extend to a young black man. The Little One, true to form, recalled none of those events. No one ever described Li'l Randy as "no angel" like they did Mike Brown. The other difference is that, today, Rand Paul is thinking about measuring the windows in the Oval Office for new drapes. Mike Brown was just measured for a pine box.
The Red State state of mind.
Yesterday, in conversation with a red state acquaintance, the topic of "Obamaphones" came up. She immediately dismissed it as another example of Obama taking money from working Americans and using it to buy free stuff for poor people.
I pointed out that the idea of access to free phone service for those who qualified, was developed by the FCC during the Reagan administration. The free cellphone giveaway program, again means tested, began during Bush II.
She wanted proof. So I looked it up and found a good description of the Lifeline program on Snopes.com. I also learned that the program is not payed for by taxpayers. It's funded by fees assessed to phone service providers.
The Republican involvement, of course, changed everything.
Instead of this being a socialist scheme of Obama's to take money from hard working Americans for handouts of free cellphones to the poor, it suddenly became an example of compassionate conservatism.
And this woman is not stupid. She's a very smart, successful professional.
And yet, the accepted right-wing explanation, repeated over and over again on Fox and hate radio, that Obama is stealing money from decent working people and handing it over to undeserving moochers was her default understanding of this program. Of course, when it was clear that it began and was expanded under Republican administrations, it was nothing of the sort. Now it's a wonderful demonstration of Christian charity at work.
I don't know if there's any way to get through the ideological wall built up on the right. And this anecdote certainly demonstrates that the president has been wrong to try to work with these people. They hate him. If he discovered the cure for cancer, they'd blame him for not doing it sooner.
The Red State state of mind is, for most denizens, a locked room.
Obama Outrage #33,567 (and counting).
Marie refers, above, to the way Fox has been comparing how many people Obama sent to the Brown funeral with how many attended the great Margaret Thatcher's, her being Ronald Reagan's secret paramour in conservative thuggery.
Yesterday, Steve M. from No More Mister Nice Blog unpacked a slew of right-wing declarations of outrage against--who else--the president, for not doing something they thought he should do even though no other president has done it. Or something. Who fucking knows at this point?
The latest outrage involves White House or presidential representation--or not--at the funerals of high ranking military personnel.
"On August 14, Major General Harold Greene was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery. He was the first U.S. general to die in combat in decades. President Obama did not attend his funeral."
Which is true. But this has set off a firestorm among the wingnut trolls who are incensed beyond words, because Obama has bucked a presidential "tradition" adhered to by Nixon and Bush. The only problem is that there seems to be no such tradition and neither Nixon nor Bush attended the funerals to which the wingers refer.
Then they move on to the Michael Brown funeral (Outrage #33,568), making the same Thatcher comparison the Fox droolers insist proves....something. Who knows? But as Steve M. points out:
"And with regard to the Brown funeral: I'd say the delegation Obama is sending is the definition of "low-level" -- no president, vice president, neither of their wives, no Cabinet members. The supposedly "low-level" delegation to the Thatcher funeral included two former secretaries of state and two top diplomats."
Holy mother, this shit is exhausting. Do these people ever sleep? It's one thing to be pissed about something real, but these idiots are busting gaskets over la-la fantasy shit. I guess hatred will do that.
Don't you love the fact that certain films become iconic because their truth never goes stale. "Being There," is in the same category as "Dr. Strangelove," both featuring Peter Seller's brilliance. The other film that popped into my head while reading R.C. today is "Cool Hand Luke" where we have the scene of Boss man standing on a ridge above Luke and his prisoner buddies saying, "What we have here is a failure to communicate." The frustration and fury we feel here is based on this obdurate obstruction and hatred by the right wing branch directed at this administration. All the things that need to be done–-need to be addressed like gun control, women's issues, infrastructure, global warming, campaign finance reform, immigration––the list is endless and yet what do we have? A group of pissed off Republicans who are going to sue the president.
I find myself losing faith in this country's sense of itself and worry that those who find a Chance character legitimate, who find corruption and greed the norm, who are besmirching the very things this country once stood for are becoming the majority. I do hope I'm wrong about this.
A little tardy, but I had to think about it. A note on the necessity for a Constitutional amendment that would allow us to control campaign finances, sent to the New Yorker in response to the Jill Lepore article posted here last week:
"While reading Jill Lepore's summary of the successful war that a conservative SCOTUS has waged on campaign finance laws ( all in the name of FREEDOM!, of course) I puzzled yet again over how intelligent people could have become so confused about the meanings of speech and money.
The Court's recent decisions are explicitly based on the assumption that speech and money are the same thing, though they are obviously not. Speech is what one says, and the Constitution properly guarantees that each of us can say darn near anything we wish. But notably, the Bill of Rights does not use the words speech and money interchangeably; it speaks to a person's freedom of speech, not money's freedom. While money allows us to amplify and transmit our speech, the Constitution nowhere states or assumes that money creates or is itself the message. No wonder an emerging jurisprudence that rules as if speech and money are equivalent leads to the kinds of cockeyed decisions that Citizens United and McCutcheon represent, a cartoonish situation that would be laughable if its consequences did not so seriously undermine the assumptions of human equality on which any democracy must be based.
Court critics have said the Citizens United and the recent Hobby Lobby decisions went awry by granting human rights to corporations. That's bad enough, but I see the current Court's errors to be even more destructive. By confusing (thank you, Marshall McLuhan) the message with the medium, the Court has initiated the even more dangerous practice of granting personhood to money itself. When the the conservative members of the Court hear the phrase, "Money talks," they apparently take the personification seriously, while blandly ignoring the stench of corruption the metaphor was meant to convey.
Once a mere medium of exchange, in our current culture money's meaning has expanded to define worth, value, social position, even human possibility. Everything we do floats in money's sea. Its presence sustains us. Its absence condemns us to virtual non-existence. Now money's influence on our lives is so universal and pervasive it has apparently achieved an independent existence. Maybe because we can do little or nothing without it, money has been reified and assigned human qualities. Through its intercession we feed, clothe and house ourselves, but money itself does not decide whom we choose to feed or house. People do. And when we act as if money is in charge of what we say or do, it becomes our master. Recent SCOTUS decisions that certify that speech and money are equivalent reflect and testify to that sad and simple fact.
For the dream of democracy and for those who still take it seriously, when we treat obvious legal and economic fictions like corporations and money as persons and grant them all the rights of citizenship, the democracy of "We the People" is dead.
For those who have only seen the film adaptation of "Being There," which is an excellent adaptation indeed, treat yourselves to the novel. A short gem right up there with Kafka.
Ken,
The Citizens United decision was a long time coming. It was part of a plan hatched years ago by anti-American right-wingers who believed, and still believe, that anything goes as long as their guys win. The former chairman of Citizen's United (best known for its push to have the courts allow them to run a propaganda film smearing Hillary Clinton by agreeing that it was purely informational and had nothing to do with the election, even though they wanted to run it on the eve of an election), was instrumental in the development of the Willie Horton ad. As each election cycle approached, they upped the dirty tricks ante by releasing ever more vicious (and untrue) spots to smear candidates, leaning on their first amendment right to be as dirty as possible.
The guy who took on the Citizen's United case, James Bopp (another piece of work), brought it to a US District Court in 2008 to try to get their blessing for running this crap and calling it purely informational (the "information" was that Hillary Clinton was a socialist schemer who hated America and who was likely a murderer as well--yeah, that kind of "information", the evil rat bastard, lying wingnut kind).
What happened at that hearing is indicative of how radical and wild-eyed the conservatives on the Supreme Court are.
One member of the three judge panel that heard the Citizen's United plea was a judge named Royce Lamberth, a guy who, according to Mother Jones, was a "Clinton basher on par with...Ken Starr". This is a guy who time and time again allowed right-wingers to tangle the Clintons in lawsuits and depositions. But even for this guy, the Citizen's United crowd was just too far out there.
When Bopp tried to convince the judges that the CU hit piece was nothing more or less than investigative journalism, just like what 60 Minutes did, Lamberth laughed in his face. According to the AP, Judge Lamberth, a resolute right-winger, appointed by Saint Ronnie of Reagan, said "You can't compare this to '60 Minutes,'" the judge said. "Did you read this transcript?"
And yet that same group that was laughed at by a Ronald Reagan, Clinton hating judge convinced the right-wingers on the Supreme Court that they were an entirely reasonable group making entirely reasonable claims that deserved to be enshrined in law. Those die-hard conservative Supreme Court judges became what the right has always claimed to abhor. Activist judges who legislated from the bench.
So the wingers on the court got the Citizen's United argument. And now democracy is getting it too.
Right in the neck.
I read "Jerzy Kosinski" and I think Painted Bird. Some books just make the point well how lucky we are most of the time and all the while we are surrounded by low brow fools. Another book is "Shtetl" by Eva Hoffman. Ignorance has always been the norm; the methods to fight ignorance have never been better and are getting better even considering actions of the Supreme Court. Old people in America just as well as a good percentage of young want to go back to "the good old days". I work with a Russian guy of 40+ who wears a CCCP (Soviet Union) t-shirt - how different is he than young Rush fans. Soon (not soon enough for me) I think their stupidity and ignorance will just be a slogan on a t-shirt. Our problem is that the assholes will retire and relinquish power as easily as Dick Cheney. His lying, his errors and his misjudgments need to be repeated every time together with his name. The question is how can you get through the thick head of Alito or Thomas to change their minds? You can't. Their minds are as made up as Scalia's. Roberts and to some degree Kennedy care about their reputations and history. Use shame and reputation whenever possible with your right wing friends. Smart, successful professionals usually can't retain a successful reputation when shunning facts. Good luck with that acquaintance, AK.
Citizen,
Thanks for your comment. In most other worlds and likely, in a plethora of possible alternative universes, ignoring factual information would make a successful career difficult, even if one's chosen career was that of a fiction writer, the best fiction, unless it's focussing on some explicitly dystopian Bizarro world, requiring a solid footing in the real world (anyone up to including the novels of Loofah O'Reilly on a Greatest Fiction list?).
Unfortunately, for those of us who insist on at least an incidental appreciation of facts, residents of Red State World can enjoy long, successful, and rich careers without so much as a nodding acquaintance with the world outside the crenelated walls of conservative ideology.
In a state where the bigoted, wealthy pretenders of Duck Dynasty are considered unreconstructed He-roes (women stay in the kitchen and feed the men- folk), disaffection with the real world is an absolute requirement.
Akhilleus,
Despite protests from the right, the United States Constitution has long been called a living document, and though the "living" part always makes originalists publicly uncomfortable, recent Court decisions, supported by those same originalists, attest to the truth that the Constitution "lives." The Constitution and its interpretations do change with the times, and our current Constitution, filtered by and through the Supremes, tells us that large corporations, hunks of money, and my religious freedom (within strictly Christian limits--I'm guessing Sharia Law is off the Constitutional table) to force you to act in accordance with my beliefs trump the freedoms once guaranteed to individuals.
Originalist poppycock to the contrary, the Constitution does change over time, just not always in the right, progressive direction.
What we have is a living Constitution killing democracy.
I will remember the Supremes.
Made the mistake of tuning in MSNBC and catching Matthews wondering if Obama really should have been off golfing while Ferguson burned, etc, because a Politico pundit criticized the President. Oh, the humanity! The Village is appalled.