The Commentariat -- Dec. 22, 2014
Internal links removed.
Amy Chozick of the New York Times: "... , President Obama said he would 'review' whether to return North Korea to the list [of nations that sponsor terrorism], part of a broader government response to a damaging cyberattack on Sony's Hollywood studio.... Republicans pushed back at Mr. Obama's characterization of the attack as only cybervandalism. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, told CNN..." "blah, blah, war, blah." (Paraphrase.) ...
... You can watch excerpts of Candy Crowley's interview of President Obama here. ...
... CW: I wonder if Prince Rebus & the Republican party will still promote the film "The Interview" (see yesterday's Commentariat) when they find out President Obama made the movie. At least, that's what North Korea claims. Maybe we've found someone who blames Obama for more stuff than the GOP does: Kim Jong-un. Congrats, GOP! You're better than a goofy dictator....
... Jonathen Behr of CBS Moneywatch: "Big corporations tend to have insurance to protect them from nearly all imaginable risks. But Sony (SNE) may find it difficult to get its insurers to cover the $100 million or so it's reportedly losing from canceling the release of the film 'The Interview.'" ...
... Uri Friedman of the Atlantic suggests that Sony had other options in making the film; for instance, the main character could have been lightly fictionalized. ...
... Ditto David Carr of the New York Times: "... while I am all for bold creative choices, was it really important that the head being blown up in a comedy about bungling assassins be that of an actual sitting ruler of a sovereign state? If you want to satirize a lawless leader, there are plenty of ways to skin that cat, as Charlie Chaplin demonstrated with 'The Great Dictator,' which skewered Hitler in everything but name." In the end, Carr, like Prince Rebus, says he'll watch the movie when it airs as a way of doing his "bit for artistic freedom." ...
... CW: Personally, I do my for artistic freedom by not watching crap movies. Sony has a right to make them, & I have a right to ignore them. BTW, how surprising is it that someone who thought jokes about President Obama's race were funny also thought exploding an actual dictator's head was funny, too? (Although she apparently got the filmmakers to cut back a little on the gore)? This insensitivity is of a kind.
** A Note to Neocons from Paul Krugman: "War makes you poorer and weaker, even if you win.... There is a still-powerful political faction in America committed to the view that conquest pays, and that in general the way to be strong is to act tough and make other people afraid. One suspects, by the way, that this false notion of power was why the architects of war made torture routine -- it wasn't so much about results as about demonstrating a willingness to do whatever it takes." ...
... Alec Luhn in Politico: Russians with money respond to the ruble crisis by -- shopping!
Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times: Maurice "Greenberg, the former chief executive of A.I.G. ... is not the most sympathetic figure. But the lawsuit he has brought on behalf of Starr International, a large stockholder in A.I.G., seeking compensation for shareholder losses during those crucial days of the financial crisis, raises troubling issues.... To me..., the case's significance lies in the information it unearthed about what the government did in the bailout -- details it worked hard to keep secret. And new documents produced after the trial seem to bolster Starr's case, casting doubt on central testimony by some of the government's witnesses."
New York Times Editors: "Prosecute the torturers and their bosses.... The nation cannot move forward in any meaningful way without coming to terms, legally and morally, with the abhorrent acts that were authorized, given a false patina of legality, and committed by American men and women from the highest levels of government on down.... The American Civil Liberties Union is to give Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. a letter Monday calling for appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate what appears increasingly to be 'a vast criminal conspiracy, under color of law, to commit torture and other serious crimes.'"
CW: A reader has recommended these videos featuring Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill & Pardiss Kebriaei, a senior lawyer at the legal advocacy group the Center for Constitutional Rights. I am not self-loathing enough to punish myself during this joyous season to watch them, but maybe you'll find them fascinating.
Sari Horwitz of the Washington Post: "Sally Quillian Yates, a longtime prosecutor and the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia since 2010, is expected to be announced as the pick for deputy attorney general, the official who runs Justice Department operations day to day. Yates, who has served as the vice chair of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.'s advisory committee, is the first woman to serve as the U.S. attorney in Atlanta." ...
... CW: At his end-of-year news conference, President Obama called on female reporters only, ignoring the male reporters who had pressing questions about Cuban cigars. Now the President wants to replace not only the male attorney general with a woman but also the male deputy AG. It's almost as if this President thinks women are at least as competent as men.
Mark Santora & David Goodman of the New York Times: "The man who shot and killed two police officers in New York City on Saturday afternoon, targeting them solely because of the uniforms they wore, boasted to two people about what he was about to do just moments before he opened fire on the officers as they sat in their patrol car. In a chilling and detailed account of the shooting, the police department's chief of detectives, Robert Boyce, said that the gunman, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, 28, first walked past the patrol car, crossed the street and then approached the car from behind. He stood outside the passenger side window and fired four shots into the vehicle, killing the officers, Wenjian Liu, 32, and Rafael Ramos, 40. Mr. Brinsley fled the scene but was followed by two Consolidated Edison workers whom the police called heroic. They alerted the police that Mr. Brinsley had headed down onto a Brooklyn subway platform, where he was confronted by police officers and killed himself with a single bullet." ...
... Kim Barker & Al Baker of the New York Times: "Ismaaiyl Brinsley ... had an extensive history with the police, having been arrested 20 times -- mainly for petty crimes like stealing condoms from a Rite Aid drugstore in Ohio. He spent two years in prison after firing a stolen gun near a public street in Georgia. Mr. Brinsley had also suffered from mental problems." ...
... The Washington Post story on Brinsley's background, by Peter Holley, is here. ...
... Matt Flegenheimer of the New York Times: "The long-simmering tensions between Mayor Bill de Blasio and the Police Department he has pledged to reshape have reached an extraordinary nadir." CW: That's not necessarily a bad thing; the NYPD, like many police departments across the country, needs a serious housecleaning & attitude adjustment. ...
... Liz Robbins & Nikita Stewart of the New York Times: "One day after two police officers were fatally shot at point-blank range as they sat in their squad car in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, leaders of several groups who had been rallying for criminal justice reform scrambled to condemn the killings while still keeping the push for police reform alive. Justice League NYC, an organization that had met with Mayor Bill de Blasio on Friday, held a march as planned on Sunday night. But after the killings, the route was redirected to end at First Corinthian Baptist Church in Harlem for a service of healing to remember all victims of violence -- including police officers." ...
... Igor Volsky of Think Progress: Former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani blames Obama, Holder & Al Sharpton for the officers' assassinations, because the leaders' "created an atmosphere of severe, strong, anti-police hatred in certain communities.... We've had four months of propaganda starting with the president that everybody should hate the police." ...
... CW: Okay, maybe I'm not being completely fair to Kim Jong-un. ...
... Hudson Hongo of Gawker has more. ...
... So does T. Bogg of the Raw Story. ...
... CW: I don't know what-all Al Sharpton has said, but I've read most of what Obama & Holder have said publicly about the police. Nothing they said came anywhere near "propaganda" or "anti-police hatred." Their remarks were always measured & supportive of police. It's worth noting that Rudy Giuliani is a former federal law enforcement official & of course mayor of New York City. It is a true outrage that a person who held these important posts could make public comments that are (a) flat-out lies (b) invented to attack the highest-ranking American official & highest-ranking law-enforcement official. Even Fox "News" should not allow this lying, twisted, reckless, malevolent sack of shit near a microphone. And, yeah, that characterization of Giuliani was as "measured" as he deserves. I'd say it to his face.
... Trevor Eischen of Politico: "On Sunday, Obama spoke out against the killing of the police officers Saturday, saying there is no justification for the slayings." ...
... Josh Lederman of the AP: "President Barack Obama is offering full support and federal assistance to the New York Police Department in the wake of the killing of two officers. The White House says Obama called New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton on Sunday from Hawaii, where the president is vacationing and offered condolences."
Emily Badger of the Washington Post on the extraordinary rise of single-parenthood, especially among blacks, over the past decades.
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Here's something I'm way late picking up, but it's worth knowing what kind of "independent journalism" Maureen Dowd practices. Matthew Zeitlin of BuzzFeed: "Leaked emails from Sony suggest that New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd promised to show Sony Pictures co-chair Amy Pascal's husband, Bernard Weinraub, -- a former Times reporter -- a version of a column featuring Pascal before publication." Read the whole post. ...
... CW P.S. Do I feel guilty about linking to a story that relies on the Sony hacks? Yes. A teensy bit.
Presidential Election
Justice Sink of the Hill: Marco & Randy bicker on talk shows & Twitter.
News Ledes
New York Times: "Joe Cocker, the gravelly British singer who became one of pop's most recognizable interpreters in the late 1960s and '70s with passionate, idiosyncratic takes on songs like the Beatles' 'With a Little Help From My Friends,' died on Monday at his home in Crawford, Colo. He was 70. The cause was lung cancer, his agent, Barrie Marshall, said."
New York Times: "The fate of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl now rests with a four-star Army general at Fort Bragg, N.C., who will decide whether the soldier, who disappeared from his tiny Army outpost in rugged eastern Afghanistan in 2009, should be court-martialed and what, if any, charges will be filed against him. A Pentagon statement on Monday said the military's investigation of the sergeant's disappearance had been forwarded to Gen. Mark Milley, the commander of Army Forces Command, who will 'determine appropriate action -- which ranges from no further action to convening a court-martial.'"
Merry Christmas, You Power-Hungry Hypocrites." Religion News Service: "Pope Francis launched a blistering attack on the Vatican bureaucracy Monday, outlining a 'catalog of illnesses' that plague the church's central administration, including 'spiritual Alzheimer's' and gossipy cliques. The pope's traditional Christmas greeting to the cardinals, bishops and priests who run the Holy See was less an exchange of warm wishes than a laundry list of what the pontiff called the 'ailments of the Curia' that he wants to cure." Here's the National Catholic Reporter story. CW: Iesus Christus! Bet it sounded worse in Latin!
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "Former Milwaukee police officer Christopher Manney will not be charged in connection with the on-duty fatal shooting of Dontre Hamilton at Red Arrow Park, Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm said Monday. The decision comes nearly eight months after the shooting. Chisholm has said he was waiting on reports from an outside expert on the use of force."
Weather Channel: "... we're monitoring not one, but two storms that may make a mess of your holiday travel plans, much as Winter Storm Cato did right before Thanksgiving. Already, aviation forecasters at the National Weather Service say that a 'high impact event' is likely for airports in the New York City area on Wednesday due to the combination of heavy rain and gusty winds."
BBC News: "The Spanish king's sister, Princess Cristina, is to face a tax fraud trial over alleged links to her husband's business dealings."
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Reader Comments (8)
When police across the nation systematically target and at times kill African Americans, police chiefs always call up the "bad apple" theory and claim responsibility (if anywhere) lies on the individual cops, conversation over. No internal review. No self-reflection. No investigative analysis for potential reform. And most certainly not a soul to blame except, maybe, but likely not, the individual officer who killed an unarmed citizen.
Yet a lone, obviously deranged gunman murders two officers and suddenly responsibility for such an individual, heinous act goes all the way to the Mayor of New York and naturally the White House (what isn't Obama's fault these days?). This is a tragic event, but if the police unions were serious about protecting the lives of officers, one would think a serious internal review could at least be looked into, a strategy developed to reconnect local officers to the communities they're paid (by the public!) to protect and serve. And finally, how can they systemically claim the 'bad apple' theory every fucking time they get caught abusing their powers, and then vehemently shake off the same reasoning when the blowback comes back at them? Everyone is to blame for this suicidal maniac except the continued legacy of abuse of power with no accountability. Their pointing fingers at everyone else but themselves is only going to further entrench their defensive, victimized mentality. And conditions will get worse.
Not to belabor the Sony/Kim Jong Un/Guardians of Peace thing too much (and what's with that name?), but Mike Myers had a pretty funny take on it all this weekend on SNL:
Dr. Evil is pissed!
By the by, Myers makes a nice reference to another evil organization. One we talk about all the time...
Heh...
Safari,
And let's not even mention the ridiculously easy access to weapons, even for insane people. In fact, I think several time a year the NRA holds a half-off sale just for the criminally insane. "That's it, boys, just step right over here to my trunk...now what kind of killing tool were you looking for?"
And that Bad Apple theory is pulled out by the NRA and their testicle holders in congress every time someone walks into a school or office or playground and opens fire. "Oh...it's tragic, but this was a case of one lone nut, a bad apple. It has nothing to do with all the law abiding gun owners out there, including those who strut around in Arby's and CVS with loaded semi-automatic rifles and handguns sticking out of their pants. They are just upstanding Americans who love them the 2nd Amendment, just like all real Americans should."
Yeah, but that last "bad apple" was the 132nd just this year.
But still, they get away with it, same as cops get away with shooting or beating unarmed civilians. Or is that Obama's fault too?
A culture of unbridled violence, exceptionally easy access to weapons supported by powerful members of congress, but it's all the fault of one or two bad apples.
Yeah. Got it.
I highly recommend Bill Moyers' interview with historian Steve Fraser about the new Gilded Age, particularly his historical perspective between the two periods and his sociological analysis of why Americans aren't fighting back.
http://billmoyers.com/episode/steve-fraser-new-robber-barons/?utm_source=sidebar&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=newbarons
Surprised, but pleased, nonetheless, that the Times Ed board has seen fit to weigh in on the necessity of putting on trial the architects of torture for their crimes. It won't happen, of course, but at least it's out there.
My feeling is that even were some kind of trial to take place, the criminals would walk and then strut and preen and thump their chests in self-righteous sanctimony at being found not guilty. Fox would then call for the imprisonment and trial of those who called for a trial for the criminals.
But aside from the theatrical aspect of it all, there is no getting around the fact that we cannot hereafter lecture anyone on their moral failings. Not as long as Snarling Cheney and Piggy Painting Bush walk around free.
Taking donations to arrange for a face to face between Marie and Sack O Shit Rudy Giuliani. I might have buy a ticket myself to be there.
@Ak
"Sack O Shit Rudy Guiliani" now flogging
data theft products
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HoJGDq6uYM
mae finch
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