The Commentariat -- Feb. 21, 2015
Internal links removed.
Michael Shear of the New York Times: "The White House on Friday said that lawyers at the Justice Department would seek an emergency order from an appeals court to allow the federal government to issue work permits and provide legal protections to hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants while it appeals a judge's ruling halting the programs. The move came in response to a ruling issued by a federal judge on Monday night indefinitely postponing President Obama's sweeping executive actions on immigration." ...
... AND Now a Judicial Whack from the Left. Molly Hennessy-Fiske & Christine Mai-Duc of the Los Angeles Times: "A federal judge has issued a temporary injunction halting the Obama administration's policy of locking up immigrant mothers and children applying for asylum in order to deter others from illegally crossing the border. In a 40-page opinion issued Friday, U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg in Washington said the government's policy of using deterrence as a reason to detain the immigrants instead of releasing them while their asylum claims were being processed was 'likely unlawful.'" Boasberg is an Obama appointee.
Robert Pear of the New York Times: "About 800,000 taxpayers who enrolled in insurance policies through HealthCare.gov received erroneous tax information from the government, and were urged on Friday to hold off on filing tax returns until the error could be corrected. The Obama administration, under heavy pressure from congressional Democrats, also announced that it would give several million people more time to buy health insurance so they could comply with federal law and avoid tax penalties."
Ron Nixon of the New York Times: "The Obama administration wants a single new agency..., the Food Safety Administration, a colossus that would be housed within the Department of Health and Human Services to 'provide focused, centralized leadership, a primary voice on food safety standards and compliance with those standards,' the administration said in its new budget request. At least 15 government agencies -- from the Environmental Protection Agency to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration -- have some role in making sure the food Americans eat is safe, according to the Government Accountability Office, a situation that has defied streamlining for decades. And the Obama administration's new push to untangle that web is already running into opposition from some food safety experts, consumer groups and the inspectors who would be most affected."
White House: "In this week's address, the President underscored the importance of continuing to grow our economy and support good-paying jobs for our workers by opening up new markets for American goods and services":
Jim Kuhnhenn of the AP: "Taunting Republicans, President Barack Obama said Friday it's 'not an accident' that the economy is improving under his watch and chided GOP critics for 'doom and gloom' predictions that haven't come true. Obama said he welcomed the attention Republicans have been giving to the middle class, 'but so far at least the rhetoric has not matched the reality.' In a speech at the Democratic National Committee's winter meeting, Obama gave a rousing defense of his economic policies and promoted his agenda as the right policy and political prescriptions for Democrats heading into the 2016 elections":
Matthew Lee & Julie Pace of the AP: "In what is becoming an increasingly nasty grudge match, the White House is mulling ways to undercut Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's upcoming trip to Washington and blunt his message that a potential nuclear deal with Iran is bad for Israel and the world."
Evan Perez & Wes Bruer of CNN: "A new intelligence assessment, circulated by the Department of Homeland Security this month and reviewed by CNN, focuses on the domestic terror threat from right-wing sovereign citizen extremists and comes as the Obama administration holds a White House conference to focus efforts to fight violent extremism. Some federal and local law enforcement groups view the domestic terror threat from sovereign citizen groups as equal to -- and in some cases greater than -- the threat from foreign Islamic terror groups, such as ISIS, that garner more public attention. The Homeland Security report, produced in coordination with the FBI, counts 24 violent sovereign citizen-related attacks across the U.S. since 2010." ...
... CW: And here I just got thru saying that Jeh Johnson doesn't spend any time frightening me.
Rudy the Rudest Party-Crasher Ever. Nicholas Confessore & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "Remarks by former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York about President Obama set off an uproar at a reception for Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin on Wednesday. But it turns out that Mr. Giuliani was not scheduled to speak at the event, or even attend.... The gathering, at New York's '21' Club, was meant to give Mr. Walker an opportunity to mix with and impress some of New York's wealthy financiers and [discredited] supply side economists." ...
People find him unemotional except on subjects where he gets emotional. Not the slaughtering of the Christians, not the slaughtering of the Jews, not the slaughtering of the Syrians, but Ferguson. -- Rudy Giuliani, Friday, on President Obama
CW Translation: The POTUS is black, so he only cares about black people.
CW: Worth noting: Contra Rudy, reporters & pundits suggested President Obama was not at all emotional in his comments about the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. Giuliani is so twisted by racial animus that he has no touch with reality. Thus, in Rudy's imagination, anything Obama says about bias or crimes against blacks is over-the-top socialism, & everything he says about other injustices is insincere at best. Giuliani is one crazy, vicious pipsqueak. And I don't feel one bit sorry for him.
... Arlette Saenz of ABC News: "Press Secretary Josh Earnest said today that he feels 'sorry' for former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who is under fire for recently questioning President Obama's love for America.... 'It's sad to see when somebody who's attained a certain level of public stature and even admiration tarnishes that legacy so thoroughly,' Earnest said of the former Republican mayor. Earnest said the president has expressed his love for America on numerous occasions and highlighted the last line of this year's State of the Union address when President Obama said 'God bless this country we love.'" ...
... "What Rudy Knows about Love." Wayne Barrett, who has written a book on Rudy, wrote a nearly-perfect takedown in the Daily News of Mr. 9/11-a-Slur-&-a-Lie. CW: I linked Barrett's commentary in yesterday's Comments. Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link. ...
... Steve M. "Barack Obama's grandfather fought in World War II. Rudy Giuliani's was barred from military service because he was a felon. Yeah, maybe Giuliani's right. Maybe we really are formed by the character of the people who raised us." ...
... Jonathan Chait: "As Wayne Barrett points out, Giuliani's father was a mob enforcer, and he and his five brothers all avoided military service during World War II. What about this upbringing in any way suggests it conveyed some deeper patriotism than Obama's?... Any attempt to salvage an idea from Giuliani's gaseous smear invariably fails. His dark insinuation that this liberal Democratic president hates America in a way unlike other Democratic presidents is under-girded by nothing but a generalized suspicion neither he nor his supporters can define." ...
... Jennifer Steinhauer of the New York Times: "Mr. Giuliani’s road to and through City Hall was punctuated with racial controversy. From his 1993 campaign challenging David N. Dinkins, the city's first African-American mayor, during which Mr. Giuliani stood with rowdy protesting police officers -- some of whom carried signs suggesting that voters should 'Dump the washroom attendant!' because Mr. Dinkins had proposed a commission to look into police misconduct -- to his writing off a black New Yorker killed by the police as 'no altar boy' (though he actually was), Mr. Giuliani has had a complicated relationship with African-Americans." ...
... Laura Clawson of Daily Kos: "Rudy, Rudy, Rudy. If you're going to claim you're not being racist, you first have to start by using an actual dog whistle instead of whatever it was you used in the "loves America" comments, because maybe you thought that was a dog whistle, but people could totally hear it. Then, you have to do better than 'but his mother was white.' It's a funny thing, but turning to completely racially based logic is about the least convincing possible way to rebut charges of racism."
... Jamelle Bouie of Slate: "Crude as he is, Giuliani isn't wrong to sense a difference between Obama and his predecessors. Previous presidents have been profuse with their praise of America's perceived exceptionalism. And they've done so without question or reservation.... Barack Obama's view is a little different. Compared with the visions of his predecessors, his is less triumphant and informed by a kind of civic humility.... Why does his praise come with a note of reservation?... By choice as much as birth, Obama is a black American. And black Americans, more than most, have a complicated relationship with our country...." ...
... CW: One need not be black to share Barack Obama's view of "American exceptionalism." One need only look to Giuliani himself to see our flaws.
Arturo Garcia of the Raw Story publishes the transcript of Bill O'Reilly's non-responsive response to the Mother Jones story, linked here yesterday. Turns out Mother Jones reporter David Cohn is a liar. Al Franken, too! Sen. Franken is never mentioned in Corn's Mother Jones story. O'Reilly's just can't get over the author of Lies & the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. ...
... CW: C'mon, WashPo & NYT: you all knocked yourselves out tracking down Brian Williams' exaggerations & fabrications. Can't you throw O'Reilly a bone? He's, like, the most popular star on cable "news"! ...
... Steve M.: "The folks in the mainstream press won't hold O'Reilly to the same standard [as they hold Williams] because he and his defenders will shout and bray and beat their chests, and the MSM will shrink back from this dominance challenge.... This kind of thuggish behavior seems to have worked extraordinarily well for Murdoch for decades...." ...
... Dylan Byers of Politico: "The editors-in-chief at Mother Jones have written a letter to Fox News requesting that Bill O'Reilly apologize for saying that journalist David Corn deserved to be 'in the kill zone.'..."
Presidential Race
** Dana Milbank: "What Rudy Giuliani did this week was stupid. What Scott Walker did ought to disqualify him as a serious presidential contender." Read the whole post. ...
... "Spineless." Washington Post Editors: "On two occasions in recent days, [Walker] has proved himself incapable of saying basic truths that might offend some of his potential voters: First, that evolution is real, and second, that an honorable politician riticizes his opponent's policies, not his patriotism." ...
... Also, too, Walker is sleazy, sneaky & "doesn't love American workers": Patrick Marley & Jason Stein of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "After saying in his re-election bid that he wouldn't push so-called right-to-work legislation, Gov. Scott Walker committed Friday to signing it, acting after GOP leaders fast-tracked the proposal for a Senate vote next week. Walker as a lawmaker sponsored the labor legislation two decades ago and as governor was careful never to say he would veto it, but as recently as September he said he wouldn't be 'supporting it in this session.'" ...
... Charles Pierce provides an overview of Walker's budget proposal for the state of Wisconsin: "Where it is not actively hostile to the interests of anyone except his state's plutocrats and out-of-state mining interests, there is in the budget a low-running contempt for the concept of the government's obligation to do much of anything except protect the wealth of the wealthy and throw the right people in jail. His idea of 'going big and bold' is to be petty and small-minded. His budget is a melange of childish vandalism, cut-rate empire building, and the construction of a Potemkin record for the consumption of oligarchical moneybags and hayshaking god-botherers in Iowa and elsewhere."
Charles Pierce: "As a presidential candidate in 2016, [Rand Paul] has enough problems, and he's picking up new ones almost by the day, and he's going to have to answer for his father's lifelong devotion to, among other things, the oldest form of American sedition." ...
... Andrew Kaczynski of BuzzFeed has video of Ron Paul's remarkable speech advocating for nullification & secession.
Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: Hillary Clinton has hired a self-oppo research firm.
Beyond the Beltway
Matt Zapotosky, et al., of the Washington Post: "Maureen McDonnell was sentenced Friday to a year and a day in federal prison after an emotional, hours-long hearing in which the former first lady of Virginia apologized publicly for the first time since she and her husband were first accused of public corruption."
Today in Responsible Gun Ownership. AP: "Police say a 55-year-old southwestern Michigan woman who died after accidentally shooting herself in the head in January was adjusting a handgun in her bra holster at the time." Thanks to Barbarossa for the lead.
News Ledes
Reuters: "Yemen's ousted president Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi appeared to rescind his resignation and attempt to reclaim his position in a statement on Saturday after escaping house arrest by the Houthi militia in the capital Sanaa and fleeing to Aden. The statement, signed 'president of the republic of Yemen' and read out on al-Jazeera news channel, was his first public comment since he resigned last month when the Houthis overran his private residence and the presidential palace."
Weather Channel: "Hypothermia has been blamed for the deaths of at least 20 people as an arctic blast, known as the Siberian Express, continues to push through the central and eastern parts of the U.S. The toll includes nine people in Tennessee, six in Pennsylvania, two in Illinois and one each in Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky. Several other deaths suspected of being related to the cold are still being investigated."
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Reader Comments (18)
The Tweet of the day, from Rep. Steven Cohen:
"Rudy Giuliani questioned how much,or even if, President Obama loves America.Maybe he thinks he loves it 3/5 as much as Giuliani & his pals."
“President Obama’s sweeping executive actions on immigration." The geniuses at the NYT are paralyzed by trite janitorial clichés. In like spirit, I suggest “mopping executive actions,” or “dusting executive actions,” or “waxing executive actions.” Or, God forefend, simply “executive actions.”
@James Singer. Sorry, besides having its own style manual, the NYT apparently has its own thesaurus, & "mopping" & "dusting" are not there for "sweeping." "Mopping-up operations" is an acceptable idiom in some circumstances, but the use of "dusting" is limited to city-beat reporters; e.g., "dusting for prints," & the weather guy: " a light dusting of snow."
I haven't seen the latest edition of the Times' style manual, but I'm pretty sure it calls for liberal use of dramatic adverbs & adjectives whenever practicable; ergo, forget "executive actions."
Looks as if one Jennifer Ellis learned the same lesson I did: "Most writers know that adverbs ... are considered the hallmark of overwritten and lazy prose. Adverbs clutter writing." A sweeping stylistic generalization if there ever was one.
Marie
Personally, I quite frequently think adverbs are overly much maligned.
"I'm glad you like adverbs--I adore them; they are the only qualifications I really much respect." (Henry James, letter to Miss M. Bentham Edwards, January 5, 1912; The Letters of Henry James, 1920)
http://m.dailykos.com/story/2015/02/19/1365473/-Woman-Fatally-Shoots-Self-In-Tragic-Bra-Holster-Accident?detail=email
"Responsible" gun ownership mixed with style.
What earthly reason is there for such an item of clothing? She certainly proved there are flaws in the design.
@MAG: I now condemn you to spending a long winter's eve, and the one after that and the one after that, and ... reading a Henry James novel.
As you're wading through your 1,000th 100-word sentence, searching, searching for a verb, ask yourself this: how much shorter would this torture be if Henry had omitted the adverbs?
Now I shall leave you with this thought of Mr. James, whatever the hell the thought may be:
"The principle I have just mentioned as operating had been, with the most newly disembarked of the two men, wholly instinctive -- the fruit of a sharp sense that, delightful as it would be to find himself looking, after so much separation, into his comrade's face, his business would be a trifle bungled should he simply arrange for this countenance to present itself to the nearing steamer as the first 'note' of Europe." -- James, The Ambassadors
Settle in!
Marie
Question of the Day: But for James, would there be Hemingway?
@Marie
Didn't you mean 'settle down!'
Oh, the horror! Anti-Jamesian sentiments!
I, for one, take great enjoyment in wending my way through the tangles of Henry's dependent clauses. Not to mention the fun of all those refined characters coloring when found to be employing the wrong type of handkerchief, everyone taking turns "hanging fire" and what not.
Arcane references to walks in Florentine side streets and distinctions like who and what constitutes "the real thing" are just my meat.
MAG, I'll be settling in as well. Once I've finished this racy pulp drug store novel I'm reading.
No wonder Loofah Boy still hates Al Franken. Just watch that clip in which Franken, on a CSPAN booksellers panel, takes a scalpel to O'Reilly's dense head and, minutes after LB swears that he has never, ever, ever lied about a single thing, ever, reads transcripts of him doing exactly that about all the Peabody Awards he had won. O'Reilly, finally can't take it anymore and resorts to his standard MO when confronted with his sad inability to confront the truth: he screams "Shut up! Shut up!"
And he's still screaming "shut up" all these years later.
Weasel.
Oh, one other funny thing from the CSPAN clip. O'Reilly goes on at length about how he never would call someone a liar. Guess he got over that inhibition.
I can't help myself for weighing in on this literary loquacity because it's like a cleansing breeze after all the dirt that's been hanging in the air lately. I was once a great James' reader––loved all those "tangles of Henry's dependent clauses" but I'm afraid if I started reading him again I'd fall asleep after the first chapter. I find myself nowadays wanting to head back to Faulkner for the grit and southern comfort, such as it is. As far as Hemingway: some writer, don't remember who when talking about Hemingway said: the man's just there like a mountain, or as a grief. you can't fix it, so you've got to stand it.
"... CW: One need not be black to share Barack Obama's view of "American exceptionalism."
EXACTLY! What gives us the right to perpetuate this idea? We are a country among many whose successes need to be tallied along with its failures––period.
Dana Milbank (linked above): "Over-the-top rhetoric comes from both sides of the political spectrum, and it is always in the background." Even though he follows it up with "The problem here is the venom is being sanctioned, even seconded, by those who would lead the Republican Party" I just can't unread the first one.
I fully concur with CW's statement, "One need not be black..." One only needs to have a shred of empathy.
On Walker's budget:
Didn't a wise person once say, "By their budgets, ye shall know them?"
On James: Haven't dipped into a James in years (suspect if I did today my response would be the same as PD's, tho' that's more commonly the case with most of my reading these days), but remember thinking that in most James' stories, if the characters had ever plainly said what was on their minds, the stories would instantly collapse and disappear. Maybe the sense of indirection and uncertainly, what might be generously termed "nuance," conveyed by the prose applies also to his "plots." That's not to say I did not admire James' talents; I just didn't enjoy them as much as I did Plain Talkers, like say Mark Twain...
....and maybe why I enjoy the many Plain Talkers on this site.
But I'm always mindful of C. S. Lewis' dictum suggesting that literary criticism is really about the reader, not the book. Good writing, he said, (in "An Experiment in Criticism") is writing that appeals to good readers. The corollary, of course, is that the contrary is also true.
Guess I'm just not good enough. Lately, I've even had to read some of Dickens' sentences twice...
Ah, Ken, don't despair––it's getting older that's the culprit. I used to have three books going at one time––now it takes longer to get through just one given all the other stuff on the internet one reads plus any magazine one receives. I think our eyes are telling us to slow down a bit––think more, read less?
Here's something else to read–-it's good, well written and food for thought: Jeet Heer talks about Dinesh D'Souza's racism and the shame of immigrant self-hatred.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121105/dinesh-dsouzas-anti-black-racism-rooted-national-review
Haven't read any James so now you've made me curious. With what would one begin - The Portrait of a Lady?
He sounds a bit like Umberto Eco, who can certainly stretch a sentence out a few pages. Regardless, I still like his style and stories.
Unwashed: I'd recommend Daisy Miller. It's shorter, so you'll fall asleep fewer times before you finish it.
My pick for a first crack at James would be "What Maisie Knew" or some of the short stories, The Beast in the Jungle, The Figure in the Carpet, or The Lesson of the Master . Avoid Turn of the Screw as it is unlike most of his stuff and so not altogether representative. Certainly "Portrait" is an excellent choice for a first James novel but leave things like "The Golden Bowl" til you get the hang of it.
James and Ak,
Thanks for the recommendations and warnings. I'll see what I can find, but may heed your advice and save it for some in-flight reading.