The Commentariat -- July 15, 2013
Paul Krugman: "Long ago, when subsidies helped many poor farmers, you could defend the whole [farm bill] package as a form of support for those in need. Over the years, however, the two pieces diverged. Farm subsidies became a fraud-ridden program that mainly benefits corporations and wealthy individuals. Meanwhile food stamps became a crucial part of the social safety net. So House Republicans voted to maintain farm subsidies -- at a higher level than either the Senate or the White House proposed -- while completely eliminating food stamps from the bill.... One of our nation's two great parties has become infected by an almost pathological meanspiritedness...."
CSI Macy's. Stephanie Clifford & Quentin Hardy of the New York Times: "Nordstrom's experiment [in shopper-tracking] is part of a movement by retailers to gather data about in-store shoppers' behavior and moods, using video surveillance and signals from their cellphones and apps to learn information as varied as their sex, how many minutes they spend in the candy aisle and how long they look at merchandise before buying it. All sorts of retailers -- including national chains, like Family Dollar, Cabela's and Mothercare, a British company, and specialty stores like Benetton and Warby Parker -- are testing these technologies and using them to decide on matters like changing store layouts and offering customized coupons." CW: and you're apopletic because the government is storing your e-mails??? ...
... Jenny Barchfield of the AP: "Edward Snowden has very sensitive 'blueprints' detailing how the National Security Agency operates that would allow someone who read them to evade or even duplicate NSA surveillance..., [Glenn Greenwald] said Sunday." ...
... CW: I am growing more & more pissed at the NSA for allowing such access to a kid who had worked for the agency for only weeks. The "experts" who are supposed to be protecting us from so-called terrorists can't even protect themselves from a new-hire hacker with little formal education. Whatever you may think of Snowden's motives, the bottom line is that he did it because he could. ...
... Ellen Nakashima & Joby Warrick of the Washington Post: "In his eight years at the helm of the country's electronic surveillance agency, [Gen. Keith] Alexander, 61, has quietly presided over a revolution in the government's ability to scoop up information in the name of national security. And, as he did in Iraq, Alexander has pushed hard for everything he can get: tools, resources and the legal authority to collect and store vast quantities of raw information on American and foreign communications." ...
... Ian Cobain of the Guardian writes an interesting piece on the U.S. "disposition matrix," a/k/a Obama's "kill list" & how Great Britain has used it to target individuals with dual British-&-Someplace citizenship.
The No-Policy Policy. George Packer of the New Yorker: "In the two and a half years since the popular protests that overthrew the Mubarak regime, the Administration has followed a pattern: express concern about tumultuous events [in Egypt], then accept their outcome as a fait accompli and make the best of the new status quo, without a perceptible effort to use whatever influence the U.S. still has over the main actors in Egypt's political drama."
Adam Nagourney of the New York Times: "The fallout over the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin reverberated across the country on Sunday from church pulpits to street protests, setting off a conversation about race, crime and how the American justice system handled a racially polarizing killing of a young black man walking in a residential neighborhood in Florida." ...
... Statement by the President. "I now ask every American to respect the call for calm reflection from two parents who lost their young son." ...
... Alexander Bolton of the Hill: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Sunday urged the Justice Department to review federal charges against George Zimmerman who was acquitted in Sanford, Fla., of murder and manslaughter in the shooting death of teenager Trayvon Martin."...
... Evan McMorris-Santoro of BuzzFeed: "Federal prosecutors are pressing forward with their investigation into the killing of Trayvon Martin following the acquittal of the man who shot him, George Zimmerman, on state charges, a spokesperson for the Justice Department said Sunday.... The Justice Department's civil rights division as well as the FBI are continuing to investigate Martin's death, the statement said." ...
The evidence didn't support prosecution and the Justice Department engaged in this, the President engaged in this and turned it into a political issue that should have been handled exclusively with law and order. -- Rep. Steve King (RCrazy-Iowa)
... the grand jury in the case also did find that there was 'probable cause.' King's suggestion that a 'not guilty' verdict proves that there should not have been an investigation or trial at all suggests a stunning disregard for the value of Martin's life. But his -- and [Fox 'News' host Chris] Wallace's -- inference that there would not have been a prosecution if not for President Obama is flatly contradicted by the facts. -- Josh Israel, Think Progress
David Edwards of the Raw Story: "Republican strategist Karl Rove on Sunday accused President Barack Obama of tearing the country apart by sympathizing with the parents of slain teen Trayvon Martin.... 'We need a president to bring us together, not rip us apart,' he added. 'And I hope the Justice Department does not respond to the ill-advised recommendation of the NAACP to continue this controversy.'" CW: so according to Karl, the best way to "bring us together" is to condone or at least ignore radical, random violence against young black men. ...
... Lizette Alvarez of the New York Times: " Mr. Zimmerman had the power of self-defense laws on his side, and was helped by a spotty police investigation and prosecutorial missteps." Alvarez provides a good explanation of why the jury found Zimmerman not guilty. ...
... CW: if you're blaming -- or partially blaming -- the jury for their verdict, you're making a mistake. And no, Geraldo, the verdict does not support your contention that the white women on the jury would have acted just as Zimmerman did. ...
... CW: I don't agree with this, but it is pretty funny. Thanks to James S. for sending it along:
Fucking punks. These assholes. They always get away. -- George Zimmerman, shortly after shooting Trayvon Martin dead ...
... Charles Pierce: "George Zimmerman can load his piece, tuck it into the back of his pants, climb into his SUV, and drive around Sanford, Florida looking for assholes and fucking punks who are walking through neighborhoods where he, George Zimmerman, defender of law and order, doesn't think they belong.... The Sanford P.D. was ready to hand Zimmerman back his gun with a fast shuffle until people got into the streets and suggested, loudly, that maybe the circumstances required another look. This is something that should be remembered now by all those sharp guys who talk about how the evidence cut both ways, and about how the prosecution overcharged the defendant, and about how well the defense mounted its case. There wasn't supposed to be a trial at all." ...
... Yup. Matt Guttman & Seni Tienabeso of ABC News: "George Zimmerman will get his gun back now that he has been cleared of murder and his lawyer said today that Zimmerman needs the weapon 'even more' than before.... Mark O'Mara [the attorney] ... said that Zimmerman intends to rearm himself." CW: because killing one hoodie-wearing scary kid is not enough. ...
... The Real Victim. Chris Francescani of Reuters: "After his acquittal on murder charges for fatally shooting Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman may go to law school to help people wrongly accused of crimes like himself, close friends told Reuters on Sunday." ...
CW: Lest it should possibly get lost among the hype, "not guilty" does not equal "innocent." That is especially true in Florida, where the state has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused did not act in self-defense. Here the tie goes to the one who didn't get shot dead.
... Erik Wemple of the Washington Post: "Last night's not-guilty verdict in the George Zimmerman trial will enable the neighborhood-watch volunteer to resume his case against NBC News for the mis-editing of his widely distributed call to police. Back in December, Zimmerman sued NBC Universal Media for defamation over the botched editing, which depicted him as a hardened racial profiler."
Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker describes "... a Republican strategy to defeat immigration reform, increase its support among whites, and make it harder for some nonwhites to vote. It's a recipe for a future in which America's two parties are largely defined by race. The unpleasant conclusion of this debate -- and of the Obama years -- could be the opposite of where we thought we were headed as a country.... The decision that Republicans make on immigration reform in the coming months will help determine that future." ...
... CW: now ask yourself why conservatives are embracing George Zimmerman. It is not foolish, BTW, to see the glorification of the Second Amendment as racism-inspired. Worth noting: the Second Amendment found its way into the Bill of Rights specifically because Southerners wanted to make sure they could put down slave rebellions.
Paul Fahri of the Washington Post: "Faced with news articles they consider flawed or biased, the [Koch] brothers and their lieutenants ... take the offensive, with detailed responses that oscillate between correcting, shaming and slamming journalists who've written unflattering stories about the company or the Kochs' myriad political and philanthropic activities.... Unlike most companies, which tend to work out their differences with reporters behind the scenes, Koch ... often takes its feuds public.... Journalists who've run afoul of the Kochs will often see their personal e-mail exchanges with company executives posted, on the Koch Web site.... KochFacts also posts lengthy, point-by-point critiques of news stories and calls out reporters for alleged factual errors and biases. A typical KochFacts headline from May: 'New Yorker's Jane Mayer Distorts the Facts and Misleads Readers Again.'" CW: The Kochs's all-out war on Mayer must cheer her immensely.
Local News
Jennifer Medina of the New York Times: "Just six months after declaring 'the prison crisis is over in California,' Gov. Jerry Brown is facing dire predictions about the future of the state's prison system, one of the largest in the nation. A widespread inmate hunger strike in protest of California's policy of solitary confinement was approaching its second week on Sunday. The federal courts have demanded the release of nearly 10,000 inmates and the transfer of 2,600 others who are at risk of contracting a deadly disease in the state's overcrowded prisons. State lawmakers have called for an investigation into a new report that nearly 150 women behind bars were coerced into being sterilized over the last decade. And last week, a federal judge ruled that prisoners were not receiving adequate medical care"
News Ledes
Guardian: "A judge in Fulton County, Georgia, has blocked the execution of Warren Hill, an intellectually disabled man who was set to be put to death by lethal injection despite a US supreme court ban on judicial killings of 'mentally retarded' people. Hill, 52, has been granted a slim window in which to argue that his rights have been violated by a recent state law that imposes secrecy on the drugs that would be used to kill him. Under the new Lethal Injection Secrecy Law, the identity of the suppliers of the sedative pentobarbital that would be given to him in a lethal dose has been deemed a 'state secret' in an effort to bypass a growing international boycott of the use of pharmaceuticals in death sentences."
New York Times: "Leonard Garment, a Wall Street litigator who was a top adviser to President Richard M. Nixon at the height of the Watergate scandal and who went on to flourish as one of the capital's most powerful and garrulous lawyers, died on Saturday at his home in Manhattan. He was 89."
AP: "Thousands of demonstrators from across the country -- chanting, praying and even fighting tears — protested a jury's decision to clear neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman in the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager while the Justice Department considered whether to file criminal civil rights charges. Rallies on Sunday were largely peaceful as demonstrators voiced their support for 17-year-old Trayvon Martin's family -- and decried Zimmerman's not guilty verdict as a miscarriage of justice...."
Guardian: Deputy Secretary of State William Burns, "the first senior US official to visit Egypt since the army toppled the country's elected president will hold high-level talks on Monday in Cairo, where thousands of supporters of the ousted Islamist leader Mohamed Morsi are expected to take to the streets."
BBC News: India's telegraph service shuts down forevah. CW: BTW, "private" correspondence, in telegraphic form, was not exactly private.
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Reader Comments (15)
Sorry Marie, I won't be spending any time or money in Florida. It's not a protest. It's a safety issue. If somebody doesn't like the way you look down there, you might be coming home in a box. All sanctioned by the State of course.
I want to "stand my ground" with Karl Rove, who said today that President Obama is responsible for George Zimmerman going to trial, because he said "Trayvon Martin could have been MY child."
If I "kill" Karl Rove, it will be with disrespect and endless spite--my psychological equivalent of a gun!
I am, as are all of you, dismayed and discouraged. There will be no justice for people of color in our lifetime--at least in the South. Sad.
As often happens when criminals get off scot-free, George ("fucking punks") Zimmerman's brother is now portraying himself, his family, and his murderous brother as the real victims. Not a word about the kid he shot to death. Not a word about how none of this would have happened if Zimmerman had obeyed a direct order from local law enforcement and instead took it upon himself to instigate a situation that led to his murdering an unarmed, law abiding teenager, who, contrary to Zimmerman's most fervent, racist desires, was completely within his rights to be walking on that street.
Nope. Zimmerman and his family are the victims. His brother states that poor George will be hounded by those who disrespect the rule of law (unlike Zimmerman) and who are not happy with the verdict.
The mantra of conservative victimhood has bled down to bedrock. They're all victims. The richest and most powerful people in the country. Victims. The Kochs, Mitt Romney, Mitch McConnell, the teabaggers, Thomas and Scalia, every single House Republican, Texas "law" makers who have just taken the decision of how women in that state will run their lives out of their hands, Paul Ryan, Steve King, Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Donald Trump....all of them, victims.
Talk about fucking punks.
As time passes, it seems like Greenwald is losing his identity as a journalist and conflating himself with Snowden. I guess his vitriol is so intense that he can't help himself. He sees in Snowden a pathway to right all those real or perceived wrongs. Right now, the symbiosis is mutually satisfying.
Snowden is a grandiose adolescent who imagines his story as that of a hero for the people, perhaps a tragic one - cue the pathos. He has a romanticized idea of "the people" and seems to think that Chinese communist leaders, a Russian ex-KGB guy and a bunch of Latin American Presidents are the real saviors of "the people". Basically, he's a self important and immature dickhead who probably reads romance novels. Unfortunately, he is now on the world stage in full dickhead mode threatening to expose US intelligence to foreign countries.
Snowden is spending time wondering who will play his character in the movie (I'm thinking Justin Timberlake--maybe it will be a musical). Glenn Greenwald will play himself and the guy from Saturday Night Live will play Obama. Jackie Chan will play Xi Jinping and Chuck Norris will play Vladimir Putin. James Clapper will be played by downed tree. Special guest appearances by a Bonobo chimp as George W. Bush and Ted Nugent as Dick Cheney.
Just read the piece about Zimmerman's suit against NBC for characterizing him as a vicious murdering piece of shit (prefix left out intentionally). So not only does he walk on a murder rap (a murder he committed--as Marie reminds us, "not guilty" doesn't mean "didn't do it"), but now he'll be rich. Plenty of money to buy more weapons with which to stand his ground. Is this a great country or what?
I've heard of being harassed for "Driving While Black." Now we're to believe that Trayvon Martin was guilty of "Walking While Black."
Speaking of "Stand Your Ground," wasn't Martin entitled to it when he was followed by a strange man with a gun, WHO WASN'T A POLICE OFFICER? The prosecution should have brought this up. If Martin had killed Zimmerman, I'm sure he would have been found guilty.
Of all people who shouldn't have a gun, it's George Zimmerman.
I'm not following your take on Snowden. Whether he's naive, grandstanding and dropped out of high school is irrelevant. We wouldn't know the, in my judgement, excessive reach of our government's surveillance and wouldn't be having this conversation except for his disclosures. You seem comfortable with with what NSA is doing and terribly offended that the punks Snowden/Greenwald have conspired to tell us about it, then suggest that Nordstrom's customer monitoring represents a similar threat?! You've lost me.
Barbarossa,
I've been thinking that simply because he carried a gun may have emboldened Zimmerman to follow Martin, against the express instructions of local police, and then to initiate a confrontation in which he had the chance to draw his weapon and kill an unarmed boy.
There's no way anyone can say for sure, but Zimmerman doesn't seem like the kind of guy who would approach someone he considered dangerous without the bravado and faux courage provided him by the possession of a deadly weapon.
I believe there is some research that supports the idea that people who are carrying weapons can often act in ways they wouldn't were they unarmed, engaging, perhaps, in actions that would otherwise be considered foolhardy, reckless and even life threatening.
But hey, as Wayne LaPierre and his acolytes in congress suggest, everyone should pack heat. Then we can all be stupid.
Guns for everyone!
I can't decide whether the prosecutors in the Zimmerman trial were inept or whether they took a dive.
Barbarossa, this is supports your comment that Zimmerman shouldn't have had a gun: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/07/15/george-zimmerman-shouldnt-have-had-a-gun/
Marie: If you consider Snowden at 29 years old a 'kid' then you must be some incensed that Zimmerman killed a 17 year old baby. Put yourself in Booz-Allen's shoes. An application comes from a 29 year old whose CV shows he worked for the NSA as a security guard in 2005. Obviously had to pass some form of background check to qualify. In 2006 he joins the CIA in an IT position. Must be another, more intense check? For the next 3 years he works for the CIA before leaving to become a contractor with Dell. From 2009 to early 2013 Snowden works for the NSA in Japan as a contractor with Dell. So this 29 year old kid has worked for US secret services for 7 years in positions of increasing responsibility, receiving on the job training and undergoing security checks, the latest in 2011. His posted e-mails indicate a conservative right wing personality. On a base salary of $122,000 he's earning roughly $200,000 so obviously a hard worker. On what basis should Booz-Allen have binned his application?
@Creager. You should have stopped at "I'm not following your take on Snowden." Your subsequent characterization of my "comfort level" is way off-base. I don't blame anyone for not hanging on my every word, but I'm not going to repeat my entire belief system every time I add a one-sentence comment to it.
As for Nordstrom's -- not that I often shop there -- yes, their invasion of my privacy is more problematic for me than is the NSA's. The NSA is not even reading my stuff & won't unless I start using a lot of loaded worded. I readily admit (& have so written) that for some people -- like investigative journalists -- that is not the case.
I don't know what your line of work is, but if you aren't apt to come to the attention of the NSA, it is more than likely that commercial snooping has more of an effect on your life than does the NSA's. Understand that Macy's is trying to change your behavior (and is likely succeed); the NSA is not. I don't think that's difficult to understand.
Marie
More on Zimmerman not having a gun: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/07/14/1223459/-A-Cop-s-take-on-the-Verdict?detail=email#
Kate, I know this isn't going to make your day any better, but Stand Your Ground laws aren't just in the South - NH, PA, MT, and NV have them and many other states have bills pending.
I just read that Nate Silver thinks there is a good chance the Dems will lose the Senate.
As Charlie advises - I'm pouring myself a large glass of Prestone.