The Commentariat -- June 21, 2015
Frances Robles of the New York Times: "A website discovered Saturday appears to offer the first serious look at [mass murderer Dylann] Roof's thinking, including how the case of Trayvon Martin ... triggered his racist rage. The site shows a stash of 60 photographs, many of them of Mr. Roof at Confederate heritage sites or slavery museums, and includes a nearly 2,500-word manifesto in which the author criticized blacks as being inferior while lamenting the cowardice of white flight.... It is not clear whether the manifesto was written by Mr. Roof or if he had control of it."
Terrorism is act of violence done or threatens to in order to try to influence a public body or citizenry so it's more of a political act and again based on what I know so more I don't see it as a political act. -- James Comey, FBI Director, Saturday
I have to do it. You rape our women and you're taking over our country. And you have to go. -- Dylann Roof, allegedly, before murdering nine people of color, one a prominent politician & civil rights leader, at the AME church
I have no choice. I am not in the position to, alone, go into the ghetto and fight. I chose Charleston because it is most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to Whites in the country. We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the internet. Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me. -- Dylann Roof, on a Website believed to be his
Sounds like terrorism to me. -- Constant Weader
... It would be a good idea if Comey read this piece by historian Heather Richardson on how perfectly Roof's act of terror follows a pattern of Southern white male terrorism that goes back to the early years of the nation. ...
... Timothy Phelps of the Los Angeles Times: "During the attack at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., on Wednesday night, suspected gunman Dylann Roof tried to kill himself, according to the son of one of the victims. 'He pointed the gun at his head and pulled the trigger, but it went 'click,'" because the chamber was empty, said Kevin Singleton, the son of 59-year-old Myra Thompson." ...
... Abby Phillip of the Washington Post: "The continued presence of a Confederate flag on the grounds of the South Carolina state Capitol has become a galvanizing cause after nine people were killed inside a black church on Wednesday." Read down to the politicians' comments. ...
... Mark Hensch of the Hill: "South Carolina state Rep. Norman 'Doug' Brannon (R) said Friday night he plans on introducing a bill to remove the Confederate flag near his state's capitol building." ...
... If you missed it, read Ta-Nehisi Coates (linked last week) on the flag's purpose as a symbol of white supremacy.
Richard Oppel of the New York Times: "One year after outrage about long waiting lists for health care shook the Department of Veterans Affairs, the agency is facing a new crisis: The number of veterans on waiting lists of one month or more is now 50 percent higher than it was during the height of last year's problems, department officials say. The department is also facing a nearly $3 billion budget shortfall, which could affect care for many veterans.... The crisis may come to a head when [VA Deputy Secretary Sloan] Gibson testifies on Thursday on Capitol Hill...." CW: While several factors are at play, including increased requests for visits, you will not be surprised to learn that part of the problem stems from Republicans' insistence on implementation of a program to shift some veterans to private care.
David Sanger, et al., of the New York Times: "Undetected for nearly a year..., Chinese intruders executed a sophisticated [hack] attack that gave them 'administrator privileges' into the computer networks at the Office of Personnel Management, mimicking the credentials of people who run the agency's systems, two senior administration officials said. The hackers began siphoning out a rush of data after constructing what amounted to an electronic pipeline that led back to China, investigators told Congress last week in classified briefings."
Dana Milbank: "... new polling shows a significant increase in the number of Americans who describe themselves as liberal and the number of Americans taking liberal positions on issues."
Larry Summers in the Washington Post: "... financial historians may look back at the next week and wonder how Europe's financial unraveling was permitted." CW: For Summers, pretty readable.
God News
"Spiritual Warfare." CW: The president of the Southern Baptist Convention threatens the members of the Supreme Court with assassination if they rule in favor of same-sex marriage. I don't see any other way to read his language. If you want to know how hate crimes & mass murder/terrorism can possibly happen in this exceptional nation of ours, there you go. Violence R Us. Steve Benen reports.
What with it's being Sunday, I was wondering what the Vatican's emissary to the New York Times thought about the papal encyclical. Well, I'm afraid Douthat has quit his job & is now accusing Pope Francis not of being a leftie but of being an apocalyptic "catastrophist." Douthat seems to think Francis should be more cheerful.
Presidential Race
Erin Dooley of ABC News: "In the wake of the massacre in Charleston, South Carolina, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton [Saturday] vowed to keep fighting for common sense gun control and delivered a blistering indictment of racism in America." ...
... Maureen Dowd: "CNN reported that Hillary had enthusiastically promoted the trade pact 45 times as secretary of state. Aside from the fact that Hillary should be able to take a deep breath and stick with something she's already argued for, it plays into voters' doubts about her trustworthiness." ...
... CW: Nobody knows what Hillary's genuine deep-down, secret views on the TPP are, but Dowd might at least play a teensy bit fair & point out that part of the job of secretary of state is to promote the boss's agenda. The task of promoting the TPP would fall to a number of departments, including state. Either Dowd doesn't understand this, or she's doing a David Brooks imitation.
Paul Krugman has more on Jeb!'s briliant management of the Florida economy in a blogpost published last week.
Marco, Worse than Jeb! Sam Stein of the Huffington Post: "As a state lawmaker in Florida in 2001, Marco Rubio ... co-sponsored a bill that would have protected the Confederate battle flag's place in public spaces. The bill was described as a racially charged response to a decision from then-Gov. Jeb Bush ... to remove the Confederate flag discreetly from the capitol building in Tallahassee." The legislation failed. ...
... Brian Bennett of the Los Angeles Times has more on GOP presidential hopefuls' stances on the symbol of white supremacy. Unintentionally humorous coda: "Before Saturday, most Republican candidates had avoided a discussion about the racial motives behind the attack and instead focused on the violence against churchgoers."
News Ledes, June 20 & 21
New York Times: "James Salter, whose intimately detailed novels and short stories kept a small but devoted audience in his thrall for more than half a century, died on Friday in Sag Harbor, N.Y. He was 90."
New York Times: "New York State Police troopers converged on Saturday on a spot near Friendship, N.Y., in the southwestern part of the state, where they believed a resident caught sight of the two convicted murderers who staged an elaborate escape from the state’s largest prison." ...
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Picking up on the gun control comment section of yesterday: I am a member of Central Coast Oregon Ceasefire--a local group of gun control activists (mostly women, ahem!), which is affiliated with the Oregon chapter, and more loosely with the national chapter. We are said to be the most active and involved local chapter in the nation, and I believe it.
First of all, Central Coast Oregon is "purple," thanks to the old hippies who live in Newport--but we are in the middle of Bright Red 2nd Amendment crazies. We sponsored a gun "buy-back" in Newport in April, but changed the title to gun "turn-in" when the local police got nervous. We held our "turn-in" at the Newport Police Station, under the direction of the Police Chief. CCCO members were not allowed to touch the guns being turned in (for vouchers at local businesses), which would be melted down to sell. So we kept track of the number of guns--an amazing 345, in a small city of 12,000--and issued the vouchers. I was one of the volunteers and I learned a lot about tragedy and crazy.
First of all, when I arrived at the Police Station on a chilly, rainy Saturday AM, there were already over 100 people waiting on the steps for the Police Dept. to open. These were the "protesters," who had come from not just Oregon--but Nevada, Idaho, Montana and even Wyoming--to meet people who had come to turn in their guns-- before they got in the doors--and to offer them a higher price. They carried posters which touted the 2nd amendment, and portrayed us as "Pussies on Crime, etc." (As I walked in, they chanted, whistled and gave obscene gestures.) I felt like an employee at an abortion clinic in Kansas.
That we actually got 345 guns is nothing short of amazing, because these protesters were quite verbal and pushy with people trying to get in the doors. I talked with all of them, and every person turning in a gun referred to personal experience with gun violence. One person had accidentally shot and killed a friend while cleaning his gun. All had become believers in the necessity of strict gun control and felt hopeless about our government ever doing the right thing.
I tell you this, because I am a believer, obviously, in the necessity of gun control and will continue my work against most odds--except in Oregon. We are lucky right now to have a Democratic governor and a totally Democratic legislature--albeit with a lot of Blue Dogs. Two weeks ago they passed a Universal Background Checks bill and this week a Domestic Violence bill (which includes banning gun possession by abusers). Our Democratic representative joined our Ceasefire celebration last Sunday and regaled us with stories about the hate mail he has received--from all over the U.S.
However.....this is a start. I am not hopeful that this legislation will be the answer to gun violence in Oregon, but it is a beginning. The sad part to me is that it has taken a completely Democratic controlled state to get ANYTHING passed.
America is to me the land of deliberately missing the point. Sad.
To paraphrase the always quotable Barney Frank, what planet does James Comey live on? Pretty much every act of terrorism in the public square is political. That's the whole fucking point. You instill fear to change how a group of people think and act, you make them realize how much, as a group, they are vulnerable. This is not only criminal. This is not just sociopathic. This is po-lit-i-cal.
In fact, and I admit to not having given this a lot of thought, but I can't come with an act of terrorism that ISN'T political. Probably the actions of serial killers, but those killings are typically personal acts of terror that spill over into public fear. But most terrorist actions are planned and carried out for political reasons.
What Cliven Bundy was doing was terrorism. Shock and Awe was terrorism. Islamic State thrives on it. Dylann Roof admits this but James Comey doesn't agree?
Cue "big sigh" sound effect.
That Confedderate flag in SC wasn't "heritage," it was a protest against integration. In fact, it didn't show up until 1963, about the same time it showed up in other southern states. We in Georgia still have a Confederate flag on our state flag, just not the stars and bars.
Heritage my ass. Heritage if you mean white supremacy.
Hope you don't mind me popping in just to say I was at the Denver Bernie Sanders event last night. I went partly because I agree with his policies but also to observe who might show up to support him. People of all ages were there, which was encouraging. It wasn't a very ethnically diverse crowd, but then neither is Denver. The best part of Bernie is his straight talking. He seems intent on opening the eyes of the people who have been voting against their best interest for the past 40 years. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/06/20/bernie-sanders-packs-thousands-into-a-denver-gymnasium/
https://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/06/19/1394713/-Rick-Perry-says-guns-aren-t-to-blame-for-Charleston-accident-it-was-prescription-drugs
Trust Rick Perry to say something stupid to make a horrible situation worse. Why the Air Force trusted him to fly jet fighters is beyond me.