The Commentariat -- March 1, 2015
Internal links removed.
David Newhauser of the National Journal: "Reports of Speaker John Boehner's demise have been greatly exaggerated." ...
... Alexander Bolton of the Hill: "Senate Republicans are fuming over the House GOP's decision to extend the standoff over the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), a move that they say uses up political oxygen and burns precious time on the legislative calendar."
Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times: U.S. "Immigration officials are moving to deport at least 150 Bosnians living in the United States who they believe took part in war crimes and 'ethnic cleansing' during the bitter conflict that raged in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. In all, officials have identified about 300 immigrants who they believe concealed their involvement in wartime atrocities when they came to the United States as part of a wave of Bosnian war refugees fleeing the violence there. With more records from Bosnia becoming available, the officials said the number of suspects could eventually top 600."
Shahien Nasiripour of the Huffington Post: "The U.S. Department of Education, under fire for its lackluster oversight of student loan contractors, said Friday it will terminate its relationship with five debt collectors after accusing them of misleading distressed borrowers at 'unacceptably high rates.' The surprise announcement follows years of complaints about allegedly illegal debt-collection practices by Education Department contractors, the department's seeming lack of interest in ensuring that borrowers are treated fairly, and the relative opacity of the entire operation." CW PS: Arne Duncan is the most corrupt tool in Obama's box. If you're looking for a cabinet-level department to eliminate, go for Education.
Love in the Age of Feminism. Jeb Lund of the Guardian on CPAC's side in the "War on Women," where the strategy is, "To win the War on Women, you better put a ring on it." Also, "vague problems demand vague solutions." Thanks to James S. for the link. ...
... Love in the Age of Gilded. Lund's column led me to this year-plus-old column by Jill Filipovic of the Guardian: "... stable marriages -- the kind that are most likely to produce successful, socially mobile, healthy children -- are disproportionately available to people who are already financially stable and well-educated.... Accessible family planning tools, coupled with a reason to delay childbearing, means that when middle and upper-class women give birth, their child has a series of advantages." ...
... AND, Filipovic's column led me to Dana Goldstein's 2013 column in the Daily Beast on why the poor have children outside of marriage. ...
... So here's the thing, Mitt Romney, et al., in your notion that poor people should marry to pull themselves & their children out of poverty: you're putting the cart before the horse. Marriage doesn't fix poverty; poverty fixes marriage.
Lauren Gambino of the Guardian: "Gun-rights advocates are up in arms over a new proposal by Barack Obama's administration that aims to ban a popular 'armor-piercing' bullet used in AR-15 semiautomatic rifles. The US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) this month quietly unveiled a proposal that would ban the popular 5.56mm green tip rifle bullets, in a move that the bureau said would help protect police officers. But pro-gun supporters, from Congress to NRA leader Wayne LaPierre pushing on Friday to 'take back the country', cast the administration's plans as an attempt to undermine the manufacture and sale of AR-15 rifles themselves." Thanks to safari for the link.
The FCC just voted for government to sensor all content distributed onto the web. Prepare to be brainwashed with Liberal propaganda, and the word Freedom stripped from our vocabulary. -- Fox "News" Commenter
... Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. If you'd like to know the starting point of this outlandish claim, look only to Fox "News" itself: Here's their Twitter "report." via Scout Finch of the Daily Kos: "Breaking News: The Federal Communications Commission, in a party-line vote, approves sweeping 'net neutrality' plan allowing broad regulation of how Americans use the Internet. So, yes, the commenter, & others Finch highlights are somewhere between misinformed & outright insane, but Fox "News" helped make them that way. It's no wonder Fox doesn't care that Bill O'Reilly is a serial liar. Serial lying is their business model. Thanks to contributor Barbarossa for the link.
Sergei Loiko & Carol Williams of the Los Angeles Times: "World leaders on Saturday joined allies of slain Russian opposition leader Boris Y. Nemtsov in mourning the loss of a tireless advocate for democracy in a country increasingly dominated by an autocratic ruler." ...
... The Guardian story, by Shaun Walker & Chris Johnston, is here. ...
... Michael Birnbaum of the Washington Post: "Russia's imperiled opposition movement on Saturday accused the Kremlin of being linked to the gangland-style murder of a towering figure of post-Soviet politics, amid the first signs that the true culprits may never be known. The killing of Boris Nemtsov -- at the Kremlin's doorstep and beneath the colorful domes of St. Basil's Cathedral -- stunned the opposition." ...
... Julia Ioffe, in the New York Times Magazine, reports on more reactions of Russian liberals about Nemtsov's assassination.
Zack Beauchamp of Vox: "After ISIS's seemingly unstoppable rampage from June to August of 2014, the Iraqi government and its allies have turned the tide. Slowly, unevenly, but surely, ISIS is being pushed back."
Presidential Race
Nicholas Confessore & Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "Long before the season of baby-kissing and caucus-going begins in early primary states, a no less decisive series of contests is playing out among the potential 2016 contenders along a trail that traces the cold-weather destinations of the wealthy and private-jet-equipped. In one resort town after another -- Rancho Mirage, Calif.; Sea Island, Ga.; Las Vegas -- the candidates are making their cases to exclusive gatherings of donors whose wealth, fully unleashed by the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, has granted them the kind of influence and convening power once held by urban political bosses and party chairmen." ...
... CW: Corruption is so much more chic these days. Thanks, Supremes!
Ariana Cha of the Washington Post: "Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) took the top spot for the third year in a row at Saturday's Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll, edging out Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wis.) as the favorite in the last CPAC presidential preference contest before primary voting begins. Paul had been the prohibitive favorite heading into this year's balloting, which featured 17 candidates. More than 3,000 attendees voted, a 20 percent increase over 2014's turnout."
CW: Yesterday I linked to two stories, one in Jezebel & one in the Daily Beast, about how the Scott Walker administration had used the state budget to remove sexual assault reporting requirements from state universities. Both publications have retracted their stories. The Jezebel correction reads, in part,
Walker delete[d] the requirements because efforts were redundant with their compliance of the Clery Act. Scott Walker's camp assures that he's committed to protecting victims. We reported this piece without full context, and while this piece conveys factual information, omission of that context for that information presents an unfair and misleading picture.
... I've updated the stories in yesterday's Commentariat. Here's the AP story that prompted the corrections.
News Ledes
New York Times: "Minnie Minoso, the hugely popular All-Star outfielder from Cuba who was the major leagues' first black player out of Latin America and a treasured figure in the history of the Chicago White Sox, died on Sunday in Chicago. His true age was never entirely clear, but by an account in his autobiography, he would have been 89 when he died." ...
For South Siders and Sox fans all across the country, including me, Minnie Minoso is and will always be 'Mr. White Sox.' -- President Obama, in a statement
New York Times: "Tens of thousands of people from a wide range of political parties and movements turned out in central Moscow on Sunday to honor the opposition leader Boris Y. Nemtsov, who was shot dead on Friday near Red Square. Many of the mourners walked right past the Kremlin walls, holding signs saying 'I am not afraid.'"
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Reader Comments (3)
I don't hunt, so maybe I just don't get it. But what is the point of using armor-piercing bullets for a gun aficionado? Are deer and ducks growing thicker skins that regular bullets no longer penetrate? Or while out at the shooting range is it popular to try to hit the bullseye while shooting through a flak jacket? Maybe others can enlighten me.
It seems to me that military grade, armor-piercing bullets should be reserved for, well, the military. For those cases that shooting through armor might actually come in handy, because in domestic life I don't see too many of those cases arising. Unless of course it's for shooting holes in fully armored fascist guvmint agents arriving to steal your freeeeedom.
The Obama administration is trying to take a sensible step in gun regulation by banning the sale of one specific type of armor-piercing bullets for public safety reasons, and Wayne LaPierre pops out of his lair to scream about "taking back the country." Really? How does this strategy of conjuring up The End of Days really win every time?
The ammunition was even deemed legal for assault rifles but because gun manufacturers started making handguns that can fire the same bullets the administration finally decided it is a risk to law enforcement. Congresscritter Bob Goodlatte (R-dumbfuck) even claims there's no evidence that such bullets have been fired at police officers from a handgun. Yes, Bob, great strategy there. Wait till some police officers get killed with military grade armor piercing bullets and then write up some bills claiming the need for all officers nation-wide to use armor piercing bullets.
With the asinine gun laws in the US, it's no wonder the police are scared shitless of the public. Besides the obvious character flaws in many of them, the truth of the matter is that not even their flak jackets guarantee protection from a criminal with nothing to lose. That reality leads to a shoot first paranoia, especially knowing the court system has their back.
Imagine accidentally stepping on the shoe of Bob the Plumber, fired from his job because the economy is tanking, fuming around downtown Topeka, Kansas with his concealed handgun he might not even need a permit for loaded with military grade armor piercing bullets.
Insanity reigns.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/28/gun-rights-obama-nra-bullets
@safari: First, the NRA has to think up some excuse to support the armor-piercing-bullet industry. Second, you're forgetting all the armadillo hunters out there.
Marie
But the NRA's immense institutional success is entirely dependent on insanity. If reason were the NRA's yardstick, the NRA in its present form would fold its tent and disappear overnight.
Of course, society does not need every nut job armed with armor-piercing bullets. And of course, if the current Supreme Court chose to interpret the Founders' Second Amendment intent as reasonably as previous Courts have, and if politicians did not stoke unreasonable fear and resentment about damn near anything as a sure path to power, and if gun ownership were not sold as an adequate and socially acceptable substitute for real accomplishment, we would have sane gun laws.
And Cliven Bundy would be in jail where he belongs, and ISIS would not exist. For that matter, much of the nation's business would disappear in a flash, and this morning--hallelujah!-- churches would be empty.
The question I return to when considering the farrago of nonsense that surrounds us and explains so much human behavior is not whether it's nuts or not (it is), but whether the leaders of the institutions or movements that depend on nuttiness for their success know how nuts their supporters and are sinfully manipulating them, or whether they're just whacko, too.
In either case, nuts and their minions have far too much power...and in our democracy far too many people seem to like it that way.
Hence, clowns like LaPierre and James Inhofe and his Stupid Snowball trick at CPAC.
Hell, hence CPAC itself....
....it's so hard to stop.