The Commentariat -- January 1, 2015
Internal links removed.
Dave Barry's Year in Review 2014, in the Washington Post. ...
... Here's Gail Collins' year-end quiz. Thanks to Unwashed for the link. CW: I decided not to take the quiz when I figured the answer to the first question must be "all of the above," & all of the above" was not among the possible answers. ...
... CW Update: Okay, I relented & took the quiz & got 'em all right (I usually miss at least one.) I still bet the best answer to No. 1 is "all of the above."
Rachel Abrams of the New York Times: "By Thursday, minimum wage increases will go into effect in 20 states ... as well as in the District of Columbia. A few other states will enact a pay bump later in the year.... The federal minimum wage has not been increased since 2007. President Obama has proposed raising it to $10.10 an hour, but that effort has stalled in Congress. Despite the popularity of minimum wage increases in many states, including those dominated by Republicans, and favorable attitudes toward higher minimum pay expressed in many public opinion polls, the federal proposals are unlikely to gain much traction in 2015, especially now that Republicans control the House and the Senate." ...
... CW: Thanks to Abrams for placing the blame where it belongs -- on Congressional Republicans.
John Wagner of the Washington Post: "Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) announced Wednesday that he would commute the sentences of Maryland's four remaining death-row inmates to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The decision comes nearly two years after the legislature repealed capital punishment in Maryland at O'Malley's urging, and three weeks before O'Malley will complete his second and final term in office. He is considering running for president in 2016." Gov. O'Malley's statement is here.
Stephanie Grace, a Louisiana political reporter and columnist for the past 20 years, first with The Times-Picayune in New Orleans and now The Advocate of Baton Rouge, recalled her first meeting with Mr. Scalise.
He [Steve Scalise] was explaining his politics and we were in this getting-to-know-each-other stage. He told me he was like David Duke without the baggage. -- Stephanie Grace, a Louisiana political reporter and columnist for the past 20 years..., recalling her first meeting with Scalise ...
... Jeremy Alford of the New York Times: "Two decades [after white supremacist* David Duke almost won Louisiana's gubernatorial election], much of his campaign has merged with the political mainstream here, and rather than a bad memory from the past, Mr. Duke remains a window into some of the murkier currents in the state's politics where Republicans have sought and eventually won Mr Duke's voters, while turning their back on him." CW: In reading the article, one is left with the impression -- I don't think it a misimpression -- that Louisiana Republicans have dropped racist rhetoric as a political strategy but not as an ideology.
*Now the former KKK leader claims he's not a racist, just an anti-Semite, or rather a fierce opponent of "the ultimate racists, the Jewish, Zionist tribalists." Okay, then.
Jana Winter of the Intercept: "The hackers who infiltrated Sony Pictures Entertainment's computer servers have threatened to attack an American news media organization, according to an FBI bulletin obtained by The Intercept. The threat against the unnamed news organization by the Guardians of Peace, the hacker group that has claimed credit for the Sony attack, 'may extend to other such organizations in the near future,' according to a Joint Intelligence Bulletin of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security obtained by The Intercept." CW: No nude pictures of Chuck Todd, please. ...
... Matthew Keys of the Desk surmises the targeted news organization is CNN, "based on copies of messages posted to Pastebin on December 20. The messages have since been removed from Pastebin." Okay, nude pix of Wolf Blitzer. But don't publish any of his dippy random thoughts shared in e-mails. That would be too much.
Andy Greenberg of Wired: "The mysterious corner of the Internet known as the Dark Web is designed to defy all attempts to identify its inhabitants. But one group of researchers has attempted to shed new light on what those users are doing under the cover of anonymity. Their findings indicate that an overwhelming majority of their traffic is driven by the Dark Web's darkest activity: the sexual abuse of children.... The researchers' disturbing statistics could raise doubts among even the staunchest defenders of the Dark Web as a haven for privacy. 'Before we did this study, it was certainly my view that the dark net is a good thing,' says [Gareth] Owen[, who conducted the study]. 'But it's hampering the rights of children and creating a place where pedophiles can act with impunity.'"
Thomas Fuller & Keith Bradsher of the New York Times: "Although in recent years there were glimmers of hope that aviation safety might be improving, the crash of AirAsia Flight 8501 into the Java Sea on Sunday has renewed concerns that Indonesia cannot keep up with the ever-growing popularity of air travel as incomes rise and low-cost carriers multiply."
Idaho, State of Denial. Terrence McCoy of the Washington Post: Veronica Rutledge, the woman whose two-year-old son shot her dead in an Idaho WalMart, had the gun zipped in a purse designed to carry a concealed weapon, a Christmas gift from her husband. The boy's paternal grandfather Terry Rudledge is "angry at the observers already using the accident as an excuse to grandstand on gun rights." ...
... Jessica Glenza of the Guardian: Rutledge was a nuclear research scientist.
New Realities/Old Biases. Benjamin Wallace-Wells of New York: "In the debates over policing that followed the tragedies of Michael Brown and Eric Garner and Tamir Rice and officers Ramos and Liu, race has assumed the central role, displacing crime. This has brought about a more direct confrontation with our remaining national sickness around race, but it has also surfaced an atavistic, tribal strain in our politics, reminiscent of the racialized fights of an earlier era.... Instead of a reasonable, technocratic decision to adjust policies of policing and punishment to a place where there is much less crime, [the usual suspects] saw the debate as a declaration of allegiances -- of whose side you were on." ...
... Al Baker & David Goodman of the New York Times: "A top [New York City police] union official flatly denied that there was a job action and pointed to the orders to double up and the need to police demonstrations as the main reasons [for a drastic reduction in arrests & ticketing since the murders of officers Rafael Ramos & Wenjian Liu].... Still, one senior police official who reviewed precinct-level data across the city said the decline had the signs of an organized effort and was continuing this week.... 'Ironically, this is the kind of thing we're calling for,' said Robert Gangi, the director of the Police Reform Organizing Project. 'It's officers deciding on their own to, in effect, scale back on the application of broken-windows policing.'"
Evan Ratliff of the New Yorker writes a devastating post mortem of Michael Grimm's "pugnacious career in government service." ...
... CW: Something I completely missed: Tim Mak of the National Post (September 2010): "Grimm told the interviewer on NY1's Inside City Hall that [his Democratic Congressional opponent Michael] Allegretti 'sleep[s] under a blanket of freedom that I helped provide.... You should just say thank you.' The original line, said by Jack Nicholson's Colonel Jessep to Tom Cruise's Lieutenant Kaffee in the film, was that Kaffee 'sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it. I'd prefer you just said "thank you" and went on your way.' As if for comical effect, Grimm later told the interviewer that 'what you see in my life, you've seen in the movies.'"
Jennifer Schuessler of the New York Times: "The criticism of the film ['Selma''s] depiction of the president [Lyndon Johnson] has come not just from Johnson loyalists, but from some historians who said they admired other aspects of the film.... Diane McWhorter, the author of 'Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution,' said in an interview. '... with the portrayal of L.B.J., I kept thinking, "Not only is this not true, it's the opposite of the truth.'... 'They [the filmmakers] obviously wanted to create a villain, and really miss who Lyndon Johnson was," [Prof. Julian Zelizer] said." ...
... NEW. Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post: In the film, Martin Luther King, Jr. says to President Johnson, "'Mr. President, in the South, there have been thousands of racially motivated murders. We need your help!' To which he gets a pat on the shoulder. 'Dr. King, this thing's just going to have to wait,' Johnson says. In real life, that December 1964 meeting happened -- but not that way, according to one who was there. 'It was not very tense at all. We were very much welcomed by President Johnson,' recalled former Atlanta mayor and U.N. ambassador Andrew Young, who attended the session as a young lieutenant to King. 'He and Martin never had that kind of confrontation.'... Young recalled the real-life meeting in an interview with The Post in a three-way phone conversation in which [film director Ava] DuVernay was also on the line. She declined to be interviewed on the record for this article.... Johnson's daughters, Lynda Bird Johnson Robb and Luci Baines Johnson, are furious about how their father is portrayed in the film, according to several sources." ...
... CW: The year Martin Luther King, Jr., was born -- 1929 -- LBJ was teaching Mexican-American children in a segregated school in Texas. He later said of that experience, "I shall never forget the faces of the boys and the girls in that little Welhausen Mexican School, and I remember even yet the pain of realizing and knowing then that college was closed to practically every one of those children because they were too poor. And I think it was then that I made up my mind that this nation could never rest while the door to knowledge remained closed to any American." Johnson had an affinity for the civil rights movement even before MLK was in short pants. When he was veep, Johnson pushed a reluctant President Kennedy on civil rights issues, & he used Kennedy's assassination as a vehicle to get Congress to pass "Kennedy"'s Civil Rights Act of 1964. Johnson's own remarkable "Gettysburg Address" -- May 1963 -- went considerably further than Kennedy ever did on the issue of civil rights:
Presidential Election
The New Jeb! Tom Hamburger & Lindsey Layton of the Washington Post: "Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, moving closer to a possible presidential run, has resigned all of his corporate and nonprofit board memberships, including with his own education foundation, his office said late Wednesday night. He also resigned as a paid adviser to a for-profit education company that sells online courses to public university students in exchange for a share of their tuition payments.... The effort underscores the lengths to which Bush ... appears willing to go to avoid pitfalls that hurt the party in 2012." CW: Because everybody will be convinced that Divested 2015 Jeb is totally different from Money-Grubbing 2014 Jeb.
News Ledes
New York Post: "Two top executives at the New York State Thruway Authority submitted their resignations Wednesday -- ahead of a scathing investigative report on the agency's operations, sources said. Executive Director Tom Madison and his chief of staff, John Bryan, have been forced out, sources told The Post."
New York Times: "Egypt's highest appeals court on Thursday ordered a retrial for three imprisoned journalists from Al Jazeera's English-language network, in what appeared to be a belated acknowledgment of deep flaws in a case that focused international criticism on the country's government. But the decision, after a brief hearing Thursday morning, offered no guarantees that the journalists would be freed. Lawyers for the journalists said that the judge had declined requests to suspend their clients' sentences as they awaited a new trial, as a result extending their imprisonment, which has lasted for more than a year."
New York Times: "Edward Herrmann, a stalwart American actor of patrician bearing and earnest elocutionary style who became familiar across a spectrum of popular entertainment, from movies and television shows to plays, audiobooks and advertisements, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 71."
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Reader Comments (14)
Being a nuclear researcher and a nuclear scientist are different. But why quibble. She was obviously a nitwit... maybe a nuclear nitwit.
Interesting, a few listings and we have the names of 10 people involved with guns. More than 10 dead. Just another day in America. I mean the posts miss another 80 or so for a typical day.
2015
I saw a very sick comment on Facebook--which Veronica Rutledge's father-in-law should see: "Guns Don't Kill People; Toddlers Kill People."
Yes, that is sick, but no more so than the Rutledge paterfamilias' denial of the danger of carrying around loaded guns. ("We are gun people!") I worked for many months last year on the ASK program for Ceasefire Oregon (Asking Saves Kids). The whole idea was for people who own and/or carry guns to keep them in a gun safe at home and to carry them unloaded. If Veronica Rutledge had signed on to the campaign, she would likely be alive right now.
And of course the little boy is upset, Doofus grandfather. He has no concept of what he has done. The poor sad child will have to live with this for the rest of his life.
So Grimm thinks of himself as a hero in a movie? As Jack Nicholson playing a hard ass marine colonel? I guess that means we've already seen the next chapter of his life in a different movie: "Jailhouse Rock". He can pretend he 's Elvis Presley.
Dick.
@Akhilleus: Funny thing is, Nicholson plays a villain in the movie. Grimm, in trying to explain that his "unintended" plagiarism of a movie speech, said he saw "A Few Good Men" many times. I guess we're supposed to think he internalized Jessup's speech.
It appears that Grimm saw the lying, authoritarian Nicholson character Jessup as a hero & role model. That fits. And it explains why Grimm could do the terrible things he's done & still see himself as a victim of conspiracies & bad press & over-zealous prosecutors, etc., etc.
Grimm says he's ready to "start the next chapter of his life." It's bound to be just as ignoble as those that had preceded it.
Marie
Happy New Year to all!
It's time one again for Gail Collins' year-end quiz in which the correct answers are just as silly as the incorrect ones. (Spoiler alert: Seamus make another appearance.) Got 'em all right thanks to the outstanding training provided by CW and RC.
Also, some interesting charts by Steve Rattner showing the economic and political situation over time. The Do Nothing Congress certainly earned it's name.
@Unwashed:
Thanks for the quiz link! I wound up looking like a shoddy local convenience store, scored a weak 7/11, but more importantly I got a good belly laugh recalling the seemingly never-ending ridiculous events that was 2014. What better way to start the new year, eh?
Best Regards for a fine 2015 to All RC posters and especially Marie - thanks so much for keeping us informed, enlightened and entertained.
Dave
"Abraham Lincoln struck off the chains of black Americans, I have written,
but it was Lyndon Johnson who led them into voting booths, closed
democracy ąs a sacred curtain behind them, placed their hands upon the lever
that gave them a hold on their own destiny, made them, at last and forever,
a true part of American political life. LOOK what has been wrought!
Forty-three years ago, a mere blink in history's eye, many black Americans
were unable to vote. Tonight, a black American ascends a stage as nominee
for president. Just give Negroes the vote and many of these problems will
get better, Lyndon Johnson said. Just give them the vote, and they can do
the rest for themselves. All during this long primary campaign, after
reading, first thing every morning, newspaper articles about Barack Obama's
campaign for the presidency, I would turn, as part of the research for my
next book, to newspaper articles from 1965 about Lyndon Johnson's campaign
to win for black people the right to vote. And I would think about Johnson's
great speech, when he adopted the rallying cry of black protest as his own,
when he joined his voice to the voices of all the men and women who had sung
the mighty hymn of the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King cried when
he heard that speech. Since I am not black, I cannot know, cannot even
imagine, Dr. King's feelings. I know mine, however. To me, Barack Obama is
the inheritor of Lyndon Johnson's civil rights legacy. As I sit listening to
Mr. Obama tonight, I will be hearing other words as well. I will be hearing
Lyndon Johnson saying, We shall overcome."
Robert Caro
For all you Downton Abby fans this is quite wonderful:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/31/arts/television/12312015_DowntonAbbey-timeline.html?ref=television#/%23time357_10705#time357_10705
@PD Pepe: Thanks. I've been watched a pirated copy of Season 5. Think I'll spend a few hours today finishing the series. It's a little problematic to watch this way, but once I get each episode up & running, I'm enjoying it, as I have the rest of the series.
Also, thanks for your citation of Robert Caro's comment. It would be nice -- particularly because of the lousy reception Hillary got when she mentioned LBJ's contribution -- for President Obama to acknowledge the thrust of Caro's remembrances. It is ridiculous to suggest that it diminishes the hard work of black civil rights leaders to recognize the contributions of white leaders. As Johnson said in his Gettysburg speech, we're all in this "together."
Marie
Resolution #1: Missed Ms. McConnell's sex tweet on the quiz, an error that left me one short of perfection; should therefore pay closer attention to the tweeted sex lives of Republican women in the New Year.... but then again I maybe missed the point. She did say she WASN'T having sex...all in all a puzzle that required further study.
Resolution #2: An easy one. When I'm near a computer, continue to consult RC morning and evening each day of the New Year. When something is working, why change?
I have found no equivalent to RC, the CW, and its nonpareil commenters anywhere else.
Happy New Year to All.
Oh, for the mind of Dave Barry who ends his hilarious "Year in Review" this way:
"As the year draws to a close, happy revelers jam New York’s Times Square to watch the traditional dropping of the illuminated ball, while in Denver a mellower throng gathers to ring in the new year with the lighting of the 200-Foot Doobie. And all across America, voices join in singing “Auld Lang Syne,” the beloved traditional song that makes no sense. Which makes it perfect for 2014."
After reading his stuff I wish we could always look at the ways of the world through his eyes––laugh like crazy at all the craziness. So even though I know this would not be possible, for just a moment I'm gettin that Denver mountain high!
Re: Walmart mom shot dead. Why she left the purse unatttended is a mystery. Why carry a gun if you lay it down occasionally? There are such things as cross-body purses that are slung over the shoulder, leaving one's hands free. Obviously, the zippered compartment was designed to be easy to open, making it so that a two-year old would have no problem with it. I saw an argument on Facebook that, unlike this woman, most gun owners are responsible. Most motorists are responsible most of the time, but all it takes is one distraction for an accident to happen. But cars aren't designed to kill, where guns are. That gun accomplished its mission, a 29-year old mother is dead.