The Commentariat -- June 15, 2015
Internal links removed.
Michelle Boorstein, et al., of the Washington Post: "A draft of a major environmental document by Pope Francis says 'the bulk of global warming' is caused by human activity -- a perspective aligned with most climate scientists but still highly controversial to some Americans. In the draft, portions of which were translated by The Washington Post, the pope takes climate change deniers to task and calls on 'humanity' to take steps -- including changing manufacturing and consumption trends -- to turn back the clock on global warming. He backs the science behind climate change, citing 'a very considerable consensus that points out we are now facing a worrisome warming of the climate.'" ...
... CW: This is bad news for "I Am Not A Scientist" Roman Catholic GOPers. Should be fun to watch Marco finesse this one.
Good News for Women & Families. Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from North Carolina officials seeking to revive a state law that had required doctors to perform ultrasounds, display the resulting sonograms and describe the fetuses to women seeking abortions. The Supreme Court's one-sentence order, as is the custom, gave no reasons. Justice Antonin Scalia noted a dissent, also without saying why. 'The state cannot commandeer the doctor-patient relationship to compel a physician to express its preference to the patient,' Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III wrote in December for a unanimous three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va. 'This compelled speech, even though it is a regulation of the medical profession, is ideological in intent and in kind.'"
Mark Berman of the Washington Post: "The Colorado Supreme Court ruled Monday that a business can fire an employee for using medical marijuana even if the employee is off-duty at the time, a decision that could have far-reaching ramifications in a state that has decriminalized most marijuana use."
Richard Perez-Pena of the New York Times: Rachel Dolezal, "the head of the N.A.A.C.P. chapter in Spokane, subjected to national scrutiny and ridicule after it appeared she lied about her own racial background, announced Monday that she was quitting that post."
Mark Gethfred & Mitch Smith of the New York Times: "The Roman Catholic archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis and a deputy bishop resigned on Monday after prosecutors recently charged the archdiocese with having failed to protect youths from abuse by pedophile priests. In statements released Monday morning, the archbishop, John C. Nienstedt, and an auxiliary bishop, Lee A. Piché, said they were resigning to help the archdiocese heal."
Sabrina Siddiqui of the Guardian: "The feud between Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and the news media escalated on Monday, when the reporter designated by the traveling press to cover Clinton's events [in New Hampshire] was denied access. David Martosko, the US political editor at The Daily Mail, was scheduled as the so-called 'pool' reporter for Clinton's visit through New Hampshire. But when he arrived at the gathering spot for the traveling press corps on Monday morning, Martosko was turned away by a Clinton staffer who said the reporter was no longer the approved pooler for the day's events."
*****
** Our Long National Nightmare Is Over. Paul Krugman: Democratic politicians have returned to being Democrats. Krugman suggests several factors that explain why. "... you can describe all of this as a move to the left, but there's more to it than that.... Democrats are adopting ideas that work and rejecting ideas that don't, whereas Republicans are doing the opposite.... Something important is happening, and in the long run it will matter a great deal." ...
... Krugman's old pal Larry Summers didn't get the memo. (In fact, Krugman takes a dig at Summers, tho of course Krugman is too polite to name him.) In a Washington Post op-ed, Summers tells us the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal is absolutely fabulous, & the Congress's failure to send a clean bill to the President is almost as bad as 100 years ago when the Senate rejected the League of Nations. Can World War III be far behind?
Odd News. Brad Meltzer in the New York Daily News: The Secret Service told me that when "Reagan was President, he carried his own gun.... A .38. Reagan used to hide it in his briefcase and take it on Air Force One." CW: Which should serve to demonstrate how safe packing heat keeps you.
Presidential Race
Kyle Cheney of Politico: "Hillary Clinton, facing criticism from rivals for her silence on a stalled international trade agreement, spoke out Sunday during a campaign stop in Iowa, urging President Barack Obama to collaborate with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and craft a deal more palatable to Democrats":
The president should listen to and work with his allies in Congress starting with Nancy Pelosi, who have expressed their concerns about the impact that a weak agreement would have on our workers to make sure we get the best strongest deal possible. And if we don't get it, there should be no deal.
Dylan Stableford of Yahoo News: "A day after Hillary Clinton formally kicked off her 2016 presidential campaign with a speech at a rally on New York's Roosevelt Island, current and would-be rivals on both sides of the political aisle took aim at the former secretary of state on Sunday morning talk shows." ...
... Adam Desiderio of ABC News: "New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie took a swipe at Hillary Clinton today, saying he doubts whether the Democratic presidential candidate knows the concerns of 'real Americans.' Christie ... said Clinton's speech during her campaign rally Saturday in New York City sounded like it was put together by 'liberal political consultants.' 'I thought Elizabeth Warren wasn't running for president,' Christie said in an exclusive interview on ABC's 'This Week.'" With video. ...
... Mark Hensch of the Hill: "Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on Sunday that Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is the only 2016 GOP presidential candidate with foreign policy stances that are worse than Hillary Clinton's." ...
... Mark Hensch: "Barely hours after Hillary Clinton's campaign launch in New York on Saturday, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) used footage from the event for an ad that mocks Clinton as a politician of the past":
Michael Barbaro & Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: Jeb Bush will announce his candidacy today at 3 pm ET at a public college in the Miami area. " ... he will offer himself as a messenger of optimistic conservatism, uninterested in the politics of grievance, obstructionism and partisanship that, in his eyes and those of his allies, have catapulted less accomplished rivals, like Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky, to national prominence." ...
... Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post profiles Bush's political metemorphosis from "head-banging conservative" to less-obnoxious conservative. It was a change of style, not a change of ideology. ...
... Favorite Son? Maybe Not. Joshua Green of Politico: "Jeb Bush's big political credential, and his presumed strength in the presidential campaign he'll launch on Monday, is the broad appeal he demonstrated over two terms as Florida governor -- doubly important given the critical role Florida's primary will play in winnowing the GOP field.... But he may not be nearly as strong in Florida as his reputation suggests. A Bloomberg Politics study conducted with University of Florida political scientist Daniel A. Smith found that nearly three-quarters of Florida's 12.9 million currently registered voters have never even seen Bush's name on a ballot.... By contrast, 92 percent of Floridians who voted when Marco Rubio was last on the ballot, in 2010, are still registered." ...
... Ha Ha. Brad DeLong catches Team Jeb comparing his revamped campaign to Pickett's charge. As DeLong puts it: "Jeb Bush: I want to send a message that my campaign is like a disastrous and profoundly stupid attack that costs three casualties for every one inflicted.... As George Pickett said of Robert E. Lee -- the general who ordered the charge -- 'That man destroyed my division!'" CW: Aw, maybe they meant the charge of the Light Brigade."
Mark Hensch: "Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said the defeat of President Obama's trade legislation in the House on Friday was the right outcome for average Americans. 'The House has put a kibosh on the Trans-Pacific [Partnership],' he said at a rally at Drake University in Des Moines late Friday, according to The Des Moines Register. 'Our trade policies over the last 40 years .. have been a disaster,' Sanders said. 'TPP is a continuation of these disastrous trade policies.' 'Today, the good side won,' he added."
Beyond the Beltway
** Surprise! Gun Control Works. Jeff Guo of the Washington Post: "... researchers at Johns Hopkins University and the University of California, Berkeley, say that Connecticut's [1994] 'permit-to-purchase' law was actually a huge success for public safety. In a study released Thursday in the American Journal of Public Health, they estimate that the law reduced gun homicides by 40 percent between 1996 and 2005. That's 296 lives saved in 10 years.... There is a 40 percent gap ... between the expected number of gun-related homicides and the actual number of gun-related homicides."
Robert Roldan of the Louisville Courier-Journal: "Community members and activists are questioning a Louisville Metro Police officer's use of deadly force against an African man in Old Louisville on Saturday afternoon. But Police Chief Steve Conrad said the man, who he said was thought to be an African man in his mid-30s, was shot twice in self-defense after he allegedly picked up a metal flag pole and swung at the officer outside a convenience store." The video is here.
Thanks to contributor MAG, we now can answer the burning question, Whatever happen to Scott Brown, short-time senator? He is working as an unpaid intern in a bike shop. Really. Also, too, he's giving advice to GOP presidential candidates on how to win in New Hampshire. I hope they're listening. I do want to warn MAG & other Mainers that Scottie is still living very, very close to Maine, the state of his birth.
ELSEWHERE in New Hampshire. WGME: "A New Hampshire man wants to defy an Islamic prohibition on depicting the prophet Muhammad in pictures and plans to host a 'Draw Muhammad' art contest in August. Jerry Delemus, a 60-year-old former Marine, says the freedom of expression guaranteed by the First Amendment trumps any religion's limitations on such expression." ...
... CW: WGME might have said a little more about Delemus: He ran for "Constitutional sheriff" of Strafford County, New Hampshire (and lost), he is/was planning to form "a militia as a bulwark to protect the general population from despotism or tyranny," & was "the founder of Rochester's Glenn Beck-inspired 9/12 Project." In 2014, "Jerry DeLemus grabbed his Gadsden flag and raced to Bunkerville, Nevada to support [Cliven Bundy] in his confrontation with federal officials. When he arrived, the former Marine sergeant was appointed commander of the growing armed militia and was featured in numerous news reports and videos." His wife Susan, a former state representative, is a notorious birther.
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Reader Comments (15)
Ohhh....so many politicians (men) to detest these days. (I do not include women like Carly Fiorina, although she is a major ass wipe!)
At the top of my list though is: Larry Summers! Yikes. He is completely hopeless. Arrogant, clueless and a bully. Chris Christie runs a close second, because he is ditto--only I expect less from him.
Add Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal and the rest of the occupants of the Republican Clown Caravan (there are too many for a car). I exclude Donald Trump, because he is such an obvious, manipulative psychopath, and just wants to have his stupid Tee Vee show renewed. No way does he expect ever to be Prezident.
Amen.
Why Facts Matter.
Sounds pretty, well, matter of fact, doesn't it? But it's a pretty radical concept for wingers to wrap their heads around, especially those used to the luxury of a supine media that will accept at face value any serving of homemade ideological whole cloth made to order.
It's one thing, of course, for the Scott Walkers and Ted Cruzes of the world to proffer gossamer webs of lies as solid rock. Truth is a mild inconvenience to these guys. But for media stars like David Brooks who create an entire social and economic framework out of bad assumptions, false premises, fabrications and half truths, which get repeated and, after further iterations, serve as the justification of modes of thought which are then morphed, further along the chain, into social policies and legislation, getting it wrong up front has disastrous real world consequences.
Case in point, a seriously fact challenged Brooks anecdote, deconstructed and fact checked on today's Salon by David Zweig, that has been bouncing around in the right-wing echo chamber and being used to "prove" assumptions that point to questionable conclusions.
In short, Brooks claims that a Gallup poll taken in 1950 has only 12% of high school seniors claiming that they thought of themselves as important people, whereas the same question asked in 2006 got an 80% response in the same direction. Brooks uses this as the cornerstone of yet another of his dreadfully tiresome, pedantic pseudo-sociology diatribes to show that conservative values have been trumped by dangerous liberal ideas. And Hippies, 'course.
Read the piece. It's a thorough debunking of Brooks' claims. Zweig shows that not only did Brooks get the dates wrong, he got the question and the context and even the source wrong.
This might seem a small point, given that it's an anecdote, but showing how such false assumptions stemming from either shoddy research or outright mendacity (for purposes of a better story or stronger support for Brooks' foregone conclusion) can poison the well demonstrates the damage to clear thinking produced by a cavalier approach to facts. The actual second poll referred to above was taken not in 2006, but in 1989. Referring to Brooks' timeline and conclusions, by which Brooks means to prove that humility has fled the public scene (he wants proof of that? How 'bout the nearest mirror?) because of liberal nonsense and permissiveness, a Fox bot holds up a cell phone, waving it around to show one reason kids today, blah, blah, blah.
But had Brooks not changed the date to suit his preconceived conclusion, no one could blame cell phones for kids not being good little Reaganite goosesteppers. The only ones who had mobile phones in 1989 were Gordon Gecko types.
This might seem a small problem, but when you add up the number of these fact-less charades and calculate the exponential explosion of mendacity, the result is monstrous. Thus memes like death panels and global warming denial and how taxes and a higher minimum wage will kill the economy and how the ACA is "busted" become woven into the talking points of media monkeys who care less about facts and accuracy than they do a good punchline. Cell phones undoubtedly have had massive social effects, but if you're gonna make a claim one way or the other from which policy may evolve, it better be backed up with actual facts.
Small missteps in logic can end up, like a mistake in mathematical calculations, with calamitous results, especially if you're planning on using those results as the basis for and proof of the need for public policy.
Not checking for accuracy and not caring about facts is what people like Brooks do all the time. Take Sean Hannity, Cliven Bundy's biggest fan until...whoops...More recently, he's been touting the veracity of one Sean Toon, (more car-toon than sean-toon) who has been straddling the thin blue line in McKinney, demanding that everyone listen to his tale of how the cops were right and it was all the fault of those no good blackity, black kids. Turns out that it may have been Toon and his racist wife and the people they were with who were instrumental in starting the whole fracas in the first place.
Facts matter. Even a few Fox bots are realizing that. Vide Chris Wallace's tanning of Paul Ryan's sensitive hide last week as Ryan tried to blow smoke about the Republican's plan (the SECRET ONE?) to replace the ACA after their BFF's on the Court gut it. Just think of all the harm caused by laws passed based on generally accepted "wisdom" spun out of lies like those Brooks passes on.
It's the exact opposite of good citizenship, a quality Brooks goes on about day and night.
After reading Summers this morning I felt, as I often do after reading Summers, that slow decline of understanding exactly what the heck he's actually saying. And since I am still trying to understand the whole trade business I turned to the NYT and found a piece by Neil Irwin–-"What you should know about the Trans-Pacific Partnership" giving us the "Winners" and the Losers" in clear language. On the side bar are related articles that are also clarifying. I see that Marie has included a Krugman way- in which will help even more.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/13/upshot/what-you-should-know-about-the-trans-pacific-partnership.html?ribbon-ad-idx=5&rref=upshot&module=Ribbon&version=context®ion=Header&action=click&contentCollection=The%20Upshot&pgtype=article&abt=0002&abg=0
Bankruptcy in the Middle Ages. Or something...
According to Scotusblog, three decisions came down today, none momentous, except, of course, to the petitioners, no doubt.
In Mata v Lynch, the court decided that a deportation appeal that had been denied was done so unlawfully. Get your shit together, boys.
Kerry v Din involved a visa for the married spouse of a US citizen being denied because of prior connections to a terrorist organization (Taliban--oops). The plaintiffs claim due process was not provided. The court disagreed. NEXT...
Baker Botts v ASARCO is one of those cases that makes me wonder what these guys are smoking. Maybe I'm missing something but I'm wondering how a case about whether or not lawyers can claim fees for representing a company in bankruptcy proceedings makes it to the Supreme Court.
Go figure.
In other SCOTUS news, Scalia demonstrates oncoming Alzheimers. At one point he apparently referred to RBG as Justice "Goldberg". Maybe he forgot Ruth's last name. Aren't they supposed to be good friends? He also apparently couldn't resist the chance to throw in a reference to the Magna Carta (800th anniversary today, in case you hadn't heard). I can imagine him picturing himself standing in gleaming armor on the grass at Runnymede with a poker to shove up King John's ass. Brits should consider themselves lucky Scalia is not on the UK Supreme Court. His references to originalism would have them all scurrying to abide by 13th century legal strictures.
Little Johnny and his band have a couple of weeks to get through 17 more cases (yikes!). Back on Thursday with more legalisms from the middle ages.
Thanks for the NYT link about TPP, PD. Not one time does Summers mention NAFTA. Among many other things he mentions our economy "is working spectacularly well for capital and a cosmopolitan elite". He's been part of the elite/effete Boston to DC crowd so long that his compassion for anyone outside his bubble rivals the compassion of Dick Cheney.
There's something oddly humorous about Scott Brown learning how to true a bicycle wheel. Makes me wonder if one can "true" a Republican.
But please, please, please, after he's done learnin' the Confederates in the Clown Van to be all presidential and stuff, and "win" with flinty Granite Staters, can he help them "win" in other states and help the nominee "win" in the general? I think tomahawks and woo-woo-woo war cries would be a good way to open campaigns in the plains states, don't you guys?
Also, plenty of TWD, tweeting while drunk. Keys to success, baby.
Bqhatevwr.
A great big tee-hee and a couple of guffaws to see the climate change denying donkeys hightailing it to the nearest dung heap from which to throw rocks at the pope for suggesting that the science on climate change may actually be....HEAVENS!...correct.
So guys like Santorum and Ihofe, who stick pins in dolls when it hasn't rained in three months know more about science than a guy who actually has had some training in chemistry.
Whatever will they do if he ever changes his mind about ordination for women?
@AK: Your comments about facts and then Scott Brown suddenly reminded me how Scott told the populace over and over how busy he was meeting secretly with Kings, Queens, & Prime ministers. When–-finally––a journalist at one of Brown's outdoor junkets raised his hand and said "Secret?" Oh, well, not really secret it was revealed. Then later another journalist ––finally––zeroed in on all those Kings, et al. Well, maybe just once he met one Queen––in London––at sometime. But this fabrication went on for a good long time before he was challenged.
I think, and I may be way off in left field here, but ever since Mr. Brown posed nude on the cover of some magazine (forget which one) and was used to the ladies' love of his pectorals his love of himself knew no boundaries. Who could resist this viral young stud who would represent you and yours and set the world on fire. With his aw-shucks attitude and red pick-up he rose to high heights for awhile until it finally dawned on people the guy was lacking in the brain department.In the debates with Warren he came off as the dumb high school jock against the smartest girl in the school.
A bicycle built for two––how true.
P.S. Isn't it weird that we have so many politicians with Scott as either the first or the last name?
@Akhilleus: Thanks to link on Zweig's extensive -- and failed -- efforts to get a straight answer out of Brooks &/or his entourage on where he got his fake facts.
Back when I was commenting on & writing about some of Brooks' nonsense columns, I recall that the "studies" he cited most often came from the Heritage Foundation or the American Enterprise Institute, so of course they were suspect at best. The trouble is, of course, that the average NYT reader has no idea that these impressive-sounding organizations are right-wing fake-studies mills.
But once in awhile, Brooks would make his case for some right-wing policy by citing a study from a reputable university or other organization. On one occasion, as I recall, his argument for keeping the minimum wage at starvation level included the Berkeley-endorsed "fact" that ordinary workers didn't want their wages raised anyway. Wow, I thought, have people really been beaten down that far? (This was before the McDonald's workers' cri de coeur.)
One way or another, I found the study Brooks cited, dreading having to scan 30 pages of stats when I wanted to respond to Brooks right away. Well, I didn't have to put myself out much. The authors said right in the abstract or synopsis that the only subset of workers who didn't want to see a hike in the minimum wage (and of course it was only a percentage of these workers -- can't recall whether or not it was a majority) were those who were making just a few cents an hour above the minimum wage. That makes sense: many of those workers had to work a long time to rise above the bottomest rung, & they resented the idea that people who didn't have to go thru what they did could catch up with them with no effort at all. Workers above & below the nearly-lowest pay level wanted to see the minimum wage go up.
So it took me all of five minutes to find out Brooks was full of crap & was perfectly willing to mischaracterize a study that anyone who can type "Google" could readily find. But Brooks doesn't care, because 99.9 percent of his readers will assume that if a NYT columnist made a mistake, a fact-checker would catch it; ergo, his "facts" must be correct & a valid basis for his analysis.
Brooks couldn't get any of his malarkey published in a peer-reviewed journal or even in one like "Science" that targets a general audience. But he keeps his gig at the Times because (a) Sulzberger likes him, & (b) he's a reasonable conservative. As scandals go, this is pretty minor; as journalism goes, it's a travesty.
Marie
And speaking of Scotts....
Scott, of the Walker variety, is in the news today, or rather, one of his minions, Kelly Rindfleisch, a former aide in crime to Walker who took taxpayer money to work, illegally on political shenanigans for him. She is demanding that the Supreme Court vacate her felony conviction because, Republican, of course. In one of the more bizarre bits of winger logic, her petition to the court states that the Justice Department had no business looking at her e-mails unless they were directly related to illegal activity. Not sure how that is accomplished unless you actually open the e-mail and check, unless, of course, your e-mail is titled "Illegal Shit" and "Much More Illegal Shit. Shhh...Don't Tell Anyone."
Tell me again how all these people surrounding Scott Walker are guilty of multiple offenses involving shady electioneering, theft, and underhanded political manipulation but he is clean as the driven snow? How is that he gets off all the time?
I guess he must be one of the Scott Frees.
Marie,
You know, you have to be pretty fucking shifty to take the results you mentioned from the Berkeley study, twist the meaning of those numbers sans clarification or qualification, and use the bastardized results to give life to your own dim and highly suspect claim (really? minimum wage workers are happy making $7.25 an hour?).
For someone who spends so much time preening himself and trying to push his bona fides as an educated and cerebral person (how often does he drop Edmund Burke's name?), he is no better than a cynical cheat; an intellectual manqué, a middlebrow card sharp. A cheap poseur.
I was going to say "asshole" but that's too straightforward for such a crooked putz.
Re Jeb as presidential candidate and other clown-car Repubs. Here is an NYT comment from RED LION (in Europe) that deserves to be shared:
Potential Campaign Slogans:
'Jeb -- less incompetent than his brother!'
'Jeb -- so far not a war criminal!'
'Jeb -- the brother who was supposed to be President years ago!'
Then again, GOP Presidential candidate slogans in general could be loads of fun this time:
'Rand Paul -- less obviously racist and crazy than his father.'
'Rick Santorum -- because contraception is icky and sanity is so overrated.'
'Chris Christie -- isn't it time for an angry bully to have his fingers on the nuclear trigger?'
'Scott Walker -- teach those college-boy snots a lesson!'
'Carly Fiorina -- I ruined Hewlett Packard, I can ruin America!'
Apropos the Brooks Berkeley minimum wage reference, from Digby:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3XXQMDGErL0
Kate,
I'm liking 'Jeb -- so far not a war criminal!' but I think my favorite has to be the Chris Christie slogan. They all have the benefit of being true which means, unfortunately, you don't stand a chance as a Republican PR flack. Sorry to break it to you, 'cause those guys will make a gajillion bucks this year, courtesy of Sheldon Adelson, the Kochs, and assorted brigands, pirates, corporate jackals, and Wall Street douchebags.
If you wanted that job, you'd have to be coming up with stuff like "Scott Walker, he'll walk those mean streets for America!" (as long as he can hide under his desk until the coast is clear), or "JEB, What America Needs" (like a bleach enema).
I didn't actually go for "not as incompetent as his brother" because that remains to be seen. Although he'd have to be a loser like you read about to beat The Decider in incompetence.
Whyte,
It's interesting how many studies have demonstrated that many animals have a sense of fairness, as do small children. It seems to be innate. It's only when those children grow up and register as Republicans that they believe that fairness is only for the few and that inequality is an immutable state of nature which should not, under any circumstances, be addressed.
It's funny when the monkey fires the cucumber back, registering his or her displeasure with being unfairly treated, but had that been an Occupy protester demonstrating against manipulated inequality, they'd be pepper sprayed and arrested.