The Commentariat -- May 20, 2014
Internal links removed.
Ben Protess & Jessica Silver-Greenberg of the New York Times: "Credit Suisse has done what no other bank of its size and significance has done in over two decades: plead guilty to criminal wrongdoing. In a sign that banking giants are no longer immune from criminal charges, despite concerns that financial institutions have grown so large and interconnected that they are too big to jail, federal prosecutors demanded that Credit Suisse's parent company plead guilty to helping thousands of American account holders hide their wealth."
Lena Sun of the Washington Post: "Three years after the CIA used an immunization survey as a cover in its hunt for Osama bin Laden, the White House has promised that the Central Intelligence Agency will never again use a vaccination campaign in its operations, an official said Monday.Responding to a letter from the deans of 12 U.S. public health schools, Lisa Monaco, the assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, informed them last week that the CIA will no longer conduct such campaigns, White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said."
Keith Bradsher of the New York Times: "The Chinese government responded furiously [to a U.S. DOJ indictment] on Tuesday, calling in the newly installed American ambassador, Max Baucus, to protest the release of the indictment, which was accompanied by F.B.I. 'wanted' posters of Chinese soldiers in uniform. The Chinese foreign ministry and defense ministry vehemently denied any wrongdoing while accusing the United States of engaging in extensive intelligence gathering of its own."
Maya Rhodan of Time: "Civil rights icon and Georgia Congressman John Lewis said Monday he would not support President Obama's controversial choice for district judge in his state. In a statement issued Monday, Lewis said he opposed the nomination to the federal bench of Michael Boggs, who as a state lawmaker voted to pass a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and to keep the Confederate insignia on the Georgia state flag. His record, said Lewis, is 'in direct opposition to everything I have stood for during my career.' ... The Congressional Black Caucus opposes his confirmation, as does Senate majority leader Harry Reid. Lewis, however, had been expected to support the President's nomination."
In a Fox "News" opinion piece, hilarious for its braggadocio & run-on cliches ("elite salons of Washington," "Obamacrats," "the country that won two world wars and put a man on the moon," etc.) Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-La.) asserts that "... based on my decades of experience, the idea that ObamaCare cannot be repealed defies both logic and real world justification...."
Beyond the Beltway
Jessica Glenza of the Guardian: "A small-town New England police commissioner, who came under fire after he was heard using the N-word to describe Barack Obama, has resigned. Robert Copeland, 82, of Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, became the subject of a town meeting and dedicated Facebook page after he was heard describing the US president as a 'fucking nigger' at a local restaurant in March.Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who owns a home in the area, called Copeland's remarks a 'vile epithet' that have, 'no place in our community,' the Boston Herald reported. 'He should apologize and resign,' Romney said." Thanks to James S. for the link. ...
... CW: Copeland should have consulted Mitt's 2012 running mate, who could have told him the proper term is "urban" person or "inner city" man. Or Mitt's opponent Rick Santorum, who would advise the more descriptive term "blah person." Mitt himself would have cast a larger net & wrapped Obama into the 47 percent.
Jeff Mapes of the Oregonian: "Oregon's ban on same-sex marriages was struck down Monday by U.S. District Judge Michael McShane, who ruled that the prohibition violated the federal constitutional rights of gays and lesbians. Jubilant couples who anticipated a favorable decision from the judge began the rush to officially wed at locations around the state. McShane ordered that his ruling take immediate effect.... Deanna Geiger and Janine Nelson, two of the plaintiffs in the case, were the first couple to marry in Multnomah County following the ruling.... Unlike in the other states -- Idaho, Utah, Michigan, Virginia, Oklahoma and Texas -- there was no one with the immediate standing to appeal the decision."
These people, that will now receive $220 million from the state of Florida unless this is stopped, will promote double-mindedness in state education and attract every one of your children to become as homosexual as they possibly can. -- Florida state Rep. Charles Van Zant (R), illuminating a previously-undisclosed effect of the Common Core curriculum
Perhaps Geiger & Nelson [see Oregonian story above] were Common-Cored into their 'lifestyle.' Also, I'm wondering how homosexual they are. A little homosexual? Or super-duper homosexual? Are they as homosexual as they can possibly be? -- Constant Weader
Brady McCombs of the AP: "A federal judge on Monday ordered Utah officials to recognize more than 1,000 same-sex marriages that took place in the state before the U.S. Supreme Court issued an emergency stay. If the rulings stands after a 21-day hold the judge placed on it, the state would be required to lift its freeze on benefits requested by gay couples."
Annals of Journalism, Ctd.
Punch & Jilly. Apparently immune to irony, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., has chosen Vanity Fair as the venue to defend his vanity talk about how awful the press has been in reporting his firing of Jill Abramson. ...
... Jonathan Chait: "The Jill Abramson story completely reversed this weekend." ...
... CW: Contributor MAG makes the point, via NPR's Ira Glass, that "maybe we all shouldn't care" about Abramson's firing. Personally, I'm not a fan of Abramson's, partly because she more-or-less fired me from my nonpaying "job" as op-ed page commenter. But when a media outlet is your main source for news, it's helpful to know the biases that enter into management decisions on what passes for news. While some publishers take a hands-off approach even to the opinion pages, Pinch makes the hiring & firing decisions there -- which explains the mediocrity of most of the columnists. That he sucks as a manager explains why the Times is still playing catch-up on it digital edition. And his low opinion of "teenagers and the unemployed" partly explains why the paper went to all-subscription. If you can't afford the Times online, you aren't good enough to read it. That mindset -- "all the news that's fit for my sort of people to read" -- should inform your reading. Yes, you can get a great deal from the Times if you read it in Ira Glass-style ignorance, but you won't know what you're missing, & you won't be alert to the underpainting that may shade the story. P.S. Thanks to Jessica Glenza of the Guardian for "fucking nigger."
Congressional Races
Chris Good of ABC News: "Today is the big one, the Super Tuesday of the primary season, with six states holding primaries across the country, including Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Oregon,and Pennsylvania." ...
... Cameron Joseph of the Hill: "The GOP establishment is poised for a good Tuesday evening as it faces its biggest primary night yet. With six states set to vote, business-friendly Republicans are expected to defeat conservative challengers in primaries in Kentucky, Georgia, Idaho and Oregon, giving national GOP favorites a slew of victories over social and fiscal hard-liners." ...
... Alex Altman of Time: "Money talks in elections. And the GOP's grandees are spending lots of it. A massive fundraising push is the biggest factor in the early success of the Establishment's primary campaign, which aims to prop up vulnerable incumbents and defeat volatile insurgents who might jeopardize the party's chances in November."
Alexandra Jaffe of the Hill: "Sen. Thad Cochran's (R-Miss.) legal team apparently held onto information concerning a man's taping of the senator's bedridden wife for as many as two weeks before turning it over to the police." ...
... Therese Apel of the Jackson, Mississippi, Clarion-Ledger: "A representative of the Madison Police Department said there are other individuals in the case that they'd like to talk to 'who might have been part of a conspiracy.' At this point, police won't comment further, citing the ongoing investigation."
Could Be the Worst Campaign Video of the Year. BUT Ed Kilgore loves it: "... my new favorite GOP congressional candidate anywhere. His name is Brian Slowinski, and he's running to succeed Rep. Paul Broun [R-Ga.] with a campaign message totally in the spirit of the incumbent. Gaze in awe at this video":
News Ledes
The Washington Post has live updates of today's primary election results.
New York Times: "Arthur Gelb, who by sheer force of personality was a dominant figure at The New York Times for decades, lifting its metropolitan and arts coverage to new heights and helping to shape the paper in its modern era, died on Tuesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 90."
BBC News: "The Thai military has imposed martial law amid a political crisis "to preserve law and order", but says the surprise move is not a coup. In response, the acting prime minister urged the army to act 'under the constitution' and 'with no violence'. Soldiers have taken over TV and radio stations, and blocked off roads in the capital, Bangkok."
ABC News: "Oscar Pistorius will begin his court-ordered observation at a state mental institution on May 26, with psychiatric evaluation lasting a month, the judge in his murder trial announced today."
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Reader Comments (12)
From yesterday: I want to thank MAG for correcting my giving credit to Disney where credit was not due.
The Slowinski ad above is one of the worst I have ever seen. But I wonder if the singer––was it Brian himself?––-could actually sing it might have been palatable.
Ya, know—this Ira guy's got a point. Maybe we all shouldn't care. Ira Glass Doesn’t Know or Care Who Edits the New York Times (on the firing of Jill Abramson).
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/05/ira-glass-doesnt-know-or-care-who-edits-new-york-times.html
Re: Y. M. C. A.! Village People alert; you cops, you cowboys, you construction men, you dancers and singers, body builders and actors, listen up; Be as gay as you can be! Core education is here! Study hard; play hard; be hard 24/7. There's a reason a PhD is pronounced "Pud". Nothin' queerer than a science loner, quantum physics gives you a boner. Born gay? Hell no, graduated that way.
Odd, most gays I've known are really smart; maybe Van Zant is right.
Yesterday I bemoaned the state of civil debate and rational argument in this country. Taking a position on an issue, bolstering it with facts, and defending that position against, hopefully, equally well presented opposite points of view used to be way things were done. But no longer.
Each day, like some morning red tide washing up more poison, brings us new examples of what passes for serious public discourse. Some days it's simply nothing more than imbeciles frothing at the mouth demanding that their rants be taken at face value and factored into public policy and made into laws.
Today Marie highlights a state rep in her former state of Florida who has gone all the way around the bend and is feeling so lonely, he wants everyone else to join him. For this jamoke, Charles Van Sant, good education=gay. That's the size of it. And the higher the educational standards, the gayer the student. (It's pretty clear this guy isn't gay. He's as useless as a bent nail).
But according to Scott Keyes at Think Progress, he's not the only kook. Other wingnuts (yes, they're all R, what did you think?) are claiming that Common Core standards will make us slaves, will turn us into socialists run by both the Nazis and the Red Chinese (these people can never keep their bad guys straight. They're all on the same team, fascists, socialists, Anabaptists, the Mongol Horde, Gay Scoutmasters of the World, Boris and Natasha, The Yellow Peril, Lex Luthor, Snidely Whiplash...it doesn't matter). One guy says that anyone who votes for common core is going straight to hell.
All very interesting and, er, shall we say, flamboyant assertions. I think we can all agree on that. Now the thing about any wild-ass assertion is the part where the asserter (them) tells the listener/reader (us) how in the jumping blue hell they arrived at such an idea, ie, the proof. The smoking gun. The pièce de résistance. The stack of indisputable (or at least barely disputable) evidence, written and verbal, from multiple sources that supports the idea that what they're saying has merit and deserves the attention of serious people.
Anyone? Evidence?....No? How about a half-assed argument. Maybe one itty-bitty widdow factoid? Third party testimony overheard from a snockered 'bagger in the men's room of your regular strip joint?
Nothing?
Okay. See, this is how it goes. Oh wait....you in the back, the one with the propeller hat. No, the other propeller hat. The RED one! Yeah, you. You got some proof? Great. Stand up. What do you have to back up these assertions that common core will turn kids gay, make us Nazis, put us under the boots of Chinese Communists, destroy the Constitution, end America as we know it, and send us all to hell ?
Say again?
Glenn......Beck.
Glenn Beck? That's your proof? Say what? Glenn says this stuff every day.....so....it...must...be...true.
Ahh...I see. You must be the brains of the operation. Well, thank you, you can sit down now. Here's a lollipop.
The guy does have a point. Glenn Beck is responsible for most of this craziness, but he never feels a need to support any of his assertions either, so we're back where we started.
What we have here are people, not much different from raggedy-ass zombies wandering the streets, homeless, suffering from mental problems and addictions, scrounging in dumpsters and trash cans and going on about how Martians sucked out their brain juice, making policy in this country. People no better than the unshaven guy wandering around the grocery store with his fly down demanding to know who moved the chocolate Jello are now deeply involved in running various parts of this nation. And their party is letting it happen. Not only that, they invited these guys in off the streets and from out of their basements where they were hiding with tinfoil covering their heads so aliens couldn't listen in on their thoughts.
Now these people are senators and representatives. And running for even higher offices. Seven of them ran for president a couple of years ago.
The Modern GOP.
It's not just the state of forensic debate that's screwed.
Slowitski looks like he would benefit from some pointers on dental hygiene.
"Glenn Beck is responsible for most of this craziness, but he never feels a need to support any of his assertions..." ???
What about those blackboards?? Blackboards don't make things up!!! Nor do Rovian whiteboards!! What more support do they need? Do they need to speak in ALL CAPS??? Or just use more exclamation points and q-marks???!! How much proof do you need for self-evident stuff, like earthflatness, cosmo-centric gravity, God-designed eyeballs, and the hierarchy of races?
And ... Abrahamson was fired because she talks funny.
Patrick,
It's the crying that gets me.
When little Glenny breaks down 'cause no one will listen to his lonely voice in the wilderness sobbing and weeping for truth and FREEDOM!!!!, that's when I know he's telling the truth.
Or off his meds.
Bobby Jindal's opinion piece on Faux News absolutely IS hysterical, as advertised.
This guy gets stupider by the week. It's like someone is shutting down selective parts of his brain. In a few months he'll be like HAL the computer on 2001 who loses his mind: "Dave, I can sing a song. Would you like to hear it? It's called "Daisy."
What's next, Bobby? Maybe we can get the kids together and put on a show to advertise all the other things that need repealing. How 'bout smallpox vaccines? Pain in the ass liberal bullshit. How about we bring back polio? I can see it now....convoys of iron lungs on the way to Louisiana to help save those kids dying of freedom. You can hold a press conference when they strap the first little girl in one and snap the latches. We'll all say a prayer she makes it to her tenth birthday, praise the lord. Then after that, we'll go after Medicaid and Social Security. That'll teach those old people a thing or two about what it means to be Free in America, dammit. Freedom is for the rich.
C'mon gang....it's not too late. Grab a pitchfork and follow ol' Bobby to the 17th century! Hell, why stop there. Too many smart ass enlightenment liberals like Voltaire and Locke. We need a reliably conservative century, where we can kill people who disagree with us. Next stop, a cave outside a monastery in the 9th century. Eating grubworms, praising Jesus, and all dead by 39. Hey, gunpowder was invented in the 9th century! We can have GUNS! Everything will be awesome.
Bobby Jindal. Three months from now.
Finally worked my way to watching that Slowinski video. Not the worst I've ever seen. Amateurish, yes. Terrible production values, yes, but that's not such a bad thing (a lot can be accomplished with creativity and cleverness. Sadly, both are entirely absent here).
He loves guns. Got that. But at least unlike so many other 'bagger challengers this year, he doesn't feel the need to include lengthy clips of himself shooting at stuff.
I posted a long comment recently on the terrible, horrible, awfulness that typically ensues when conservatives try to do rock and roll, and although I'm not sure this is actually an attempt at rock, I can't rightly say what it is exactly, except maybe a how-not-to-do-it-right tutorial.
There's some weird kinda white-bread country almost pseudo rap thing going on, which is excruciatingly embarrassing. And like many Republicans, he loves beating on things that can't hit back. He may want voters to think he's the Great White Hope on the speed bag, but his technique sucks.
Speaking of Great White Hope, for a candidate in Georgia, third in the country with greatest numbers of African-American residents (over 30%), there is not a single black face in this video. Not even a token black cleaning up in the background.
Finally, someone may want to inform Candidate Slowinski, that before he goes to Washington to clean house and toss elected officials like President Obama and Hillary Clinton in the dumper, that the president can only be "dumped" by impeachment. And Hillary Clinton is a private citizen. He can't "dump" her in any way, shape, or form. She is not currently an elected official.
But I'm sure that doesn't matter.
I suppose the bottom line is you want your campaign materials to be memorable.
And this is. Like a bad night on bathtub gin.
(And please tell me, why do so many of these guys look so freakin' creepy? Those Cheshire teeth!)
Billionaire Steyer picks fights with Kochs, Rubio in climate change push. Online article: http://www.cnbc.com/id/101689417
With a video to watch starring "climatologist "Marco Rubio: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ7j5Z6ncMA
"NextGen Climate launched a new media campaign called "Planet Rubio" to point out "the absurdity of denying the scientific consensus on man-made climate change," according to an email announcing the effort. "
Last night Chris Hayes featured Kansas, the home of the Koch Industries. He gave us a mini biography of the Koch's ––the father being entwined with the John Birch Society snaggletooths. We were taken to some of the small towns in Kansas where their electricity is generated solely on wind and solar–––it's always windy in yonder parts of Kansas––and this has made the Koch's uneasy to say the least. Chris invited the brothers–-one or both to be on the program but they declined. Wouldn't we love to witness a debate between the wind wheelers and the oil polluters. It seems that Governor Brownback speaks green–– is all for those windmills and solar technology–––at least he says he is––but is in the pocket of those two brothers who have given him oodles of oil money that keep him slippery and unctuous while pretending he's this side of salubrious.
AK: (And please tell me , why do so many of these guys look so
freakin' creepy? Those Cheshire teeth!).
I can tell you why in two words or less. EVOLUTION!. They don't
believe in it so here they are, stuck in the 21st century and looking
like throwbacks from the 9th century and they just don't get it that
most of us have evolved into some life form that they do not understand, like, we can put words together and make sentences,
and then make paragraphs, then write books. And the sad part is,
it ain't just these guys from Georgia. They be all over the country.
What to do? They seem to get lots of votes from like-minded
whatevers. Sad. Sad.