The Commentariat -- Oct. 17, 2014
Internal links removed.
"Privatized Politics." Jim Rutenberg in the New York Times Magazine: "The result [of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision] was a massive power shift, from the party bosses to the rich individuals who ran the super PACs.... Almost overnight, traditional party functions -- running TV commercials, setting up field operations, maintaining voter databases, even recruiting candidates -- were being supplanted by outside groups. And the shift was partly because of one element of McCain-Feingold that remains: the ban on giving unlimited soft money to parties..... A party platform has to account for both the interests of the oil industry and those of the ethanol industry; those of the casino industry and those of the anti-gambling religious right; those of Wall Street and those of labor." ...
... Spencer Woodman of Slate: "... the Business-Industry Political Action Committee, or BIPAC, [is] a political organization ... [whose] primary aim ... is to turn as many private employers as possible into 'employee political education' machines for business interests. BIPAC urges major companies to transform their workforces into a voting bloc and provides sophisticated tools that show employers how to do it. Although BIPAC claims nonpartisanship, in the races that matter most -- such as this year's hotly contested battles that will determine control of the Senate -- BIPAC has the GOP's back.... The group has partnerships with most companies on the Fortune 100 list...."
Michael Shear of the New York Times: "President Obama remained at the White House on Thursday to focus on the government's response to Ebola, canceling a second day of election-season travel as the administration concentrated on what is already turning into a political as well as a public health crisis.... The drop-everything approach is a striking change for a White House that prides itself on always maintaining its cool." ...
... Michael Shear: "President Obama said Thursday evening that he might appoint an 'Ebola czar' to manage the government's response to the deadly virus, a concession to critics who have questioned whether his administration has stayed on top of the medical crisis." ...
... Here's an expanded Times story by Jack Healy, et al., on the czar thing. ...
... John Cassidy of the New Yorker: "The President's problem is that he appears to be reacting to events rather than dictating them. Initially, his Administration resisted calls to screen visitors from West Africa; the day Duncan died, it announced a system of screening. Until yesterday, the White House insisted that the C.D.C. had established proper protocols and systems for hospitals dealing with Ebola victims. Now it is beefing up federal oversight and promising to fly in SWAT teams." ...
... Alan Cowell of the New York Times: "Adding a new and troubling dimension to the search for Americans possibly exposed to the Ebola virus, the State Department said Friday that an employee of Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital who may have had contact with specimens of the disease had left the United States aboard a cruise ship. The employee and a traveling partner, who were not identified by name, had agreed to remain isolated in a cabin aboard the vessel, the State Department said, and 'out of an abundance of caution' efforts were underway to repatriate them. A physician aboard the cruise ship had said the employee was in good health.... 'The individual was out of the country before being notified of the C.D.C.'s updated requirements for active monitoring,' [according to a State Department] statement. 'At the time the hospital employee left the country, C.D.C. was requiring only self-monitoring.'" ...
... Sabrina Tavernise of the New York Times: "Facing sharp questioning at a Congressional hearing on Thursday about the troubled handling of Ebola cases in the United States, federal health officials said that a nurse with Ebola would be transferred to a specialized unit at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland, to ease the burden of the Dallas hospital where she became infected.... Both nurses [who have contracted Ebola] worked in the hospital's intensive care unit, and Dr. [Thomas] Frieden said that investigators' 'leading hypothesis' was that the women became infected in the first few days of caring for Mr. Duncan, when, according to hospital officials, they were wearing basic protective gear but had not yet upgraded to full biohazard suits." ...
... Eun Kyung Kim of the "Today" Show: "Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital nurse Briana Aguirre, who cared for her friend and co-worker Nina Pham after she tested positive for the Ebola virus, says she can no longer defend her hospital over how she claims it responded to the disease once Thomas Eric Duncan arrived. 'I watched them violate basic principles of nursing,' Aguirre told 'Today''s Matt Lauer ... Thursday.... Administrators never discussed with staff how the hospital would handle an Ebola case prior to Duncan's arrival, Aguirre alleged.... She said there was mass confusion over procedures...." ...
... Russell Berman of the Atlantic: "Dr. Thomas Frieden, the CDC director, [argued against a travel ban] on Thursday to a lineup of Republican lawmakers who wanted to know why the government hadn't banned commercial travel from the west African countries at the center of the Ebola epidemic. Frieden said authorities preferred a system where they could screen people trying to come to the U.S. by air rather than instituting a ban that would force would-be travelers to go around checkpoints and slip into the country undetected.... Frieden, with help from Democrats on the committee, also argued that a travel ban would restrict access to the 'huge quantities' of aid and personnel that needed to get in and out of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea to help stem the crisis at its source. ...
... Lena Sun, et al., of the Washington Post profile Thomas Friedan, the CDC director. ...
... Amy Davidson of the New Yorker: Thomas "Frieden's ... account of how [Amber] Vinson[, a nurse infected with Ebola,] got on the plane ... was at least evasive and, depending on what he knew and what exactly Vinson was told, may have been worse. He was asked three different ways if Vinson had been told not to fly, and each time dodged the question in a way that left the impression that Vinson was some sort of rogue nurse who just got it into her head that she could fly wherever she wanted. He talked about her 'self-monitoring,' and that she 'should not have travelled, should not have been allowed to travel by plane or any public transport' -- without mentioning that his agency was who allowed it." Read the whole post. ...
... Josh Voorhees of Slate writes an excellent, balanced piece on the parties' Ebola vaccine blame game. ...
... Dylan Scott of TPM: "It isn't a surprise to see conservative media beating the drum of conspiracy and incompetence. But now, with all perspective and nuance being tossed aside, the more mainstream media is starting to pick it up, too." Thanks to Victoria D. for the link. ...
... Brian Beutler of the New Republic: "... the story that many conservatives are telling about Ebola goes something like this: We'd love to eschew hysteria, and we'd love to believe our public health officials can break the chain of transmission within the U.S., but the Obama administration has proven itself untrustworthy.... Members of the media are enabling this opportunism. They should be anathematizing it.... That the risk is provably infinitesimal underscores the fact that the issue with Ebola isn't the virus itself so much as paranoia about it." ...
... Simon Maloy of Salon: "... 'the Doom-and-Disease Chorus' [is] ... nurturing along the perception that existing policies are failing horribly and the likelihood of outright catastrophe is increasing. The 'do something' politicking is the natural outflow from all their efforts to keep people scared. It won't solve the problem -- it could even make it worse -- but it appeals to the frightened person who's been made to feel that the situation is slipping into chaos and is just looking for something, anything, to be done." ...
... Julian Hattem of the Hill: "Federal officials have no indications that terrorists are seeking to use the Ebola virus as a biologic weapon against the United States, FBI Director James Comey said on Thursday. 'No,' Comey replied simply when asked whether there was any credible evidence that foreign terrorists were looking into using the virus to target the U.S." ...
... Michael Schmidt & Nicole Perlroth of the New York Times: "The director of the F.B.I., James B. Comey, said Thursday that federal laws should be changed to require telecommunications companies to give law enforcement agencies access to the encrypted communications of individuals suspected of crimes. In a speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington, Mr. Comey warned that crimes could go unsolved if law enforcement officers cannot gain access to information that technology companies like Apple and Google are protecting using increasingly sophisticated encryption technology."
Dave Philipps of the New York Times: "Four [Department of Veterans Affairs] executives were selected for termination in recent weeks, but two of them retired abruptly before they could be shown the door.... On Tuesday, Susan Taylor, the deputy chief of procurement for the Veterans Health Administration, announced her retirement by email, three weeks after the Veterans Affairs agency released a scathing report saying she had steered business toward her lover and to a favored contractor, then tried to 'assassinate' the character of a colleague who attempted to stop the practice. The other executive who retired before being fired, John Goldman, was accused of allowing employees at a V.A. hospital in Georgia to delete hundreds of appointments from records to hide wait times at the hospital. He submitted his resignation in September."
Famous Economists Who Don't Like Each Other. Paul Krugman: "... it's hard to escape the conclusion that people like [former Fed chair Alan] Greenspan knew as much about what the market wanted as medieval crusaders knew about God's plan -- that is, nothing.... In fact, if you look closely, the real message from the market seems to be that we should be running bigger deficits and printing more money. And that message has gotten a lot stronger in the past few days.... I'm talking about interest rates, which are flashing warnings, not of fiscal crisis and inflation, but of depression and deflation. Most obviously, interest rates on long-term U.S. government debt -- the rates that the usual suspects keep telling us will shoot up any day now unless we slash spending -- have fallen sharply."
Famous GOP Senators Who Hate Each Other. Judy Kurtz of the Hill: "Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) daughter [Meghan McCain] said on Wednesday that her father and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) 'hate each other.'"
Katie Zezima of the Washington Post: "Vice President Joe Biden's son Hunter was discharged from the Navy Reserve after testing positive for cocaine, according to a report. The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Biden was discharged earlier this year after failing a drug test in June 2013. A lawyer and former lobbyist, Biden was commissioned as an ensign in the Navy Reserve in 2013. He applied for a commission into the reserve as a public affairs officer at age 42."
Michelle Boorstein of the Washington Post: "Facing outrage from traditional Catholics, top clergy at a Vatican meeting on Thursday altered a document meant to guide future outreach to gays and lesbians, changing the goal of 'welcoming homosexual persons' to 'providing for homosexual persons.'"
November Elections
Mark Lopez, et al., of Pew Research: "A record 25.2 million Latinos are eligible to vote in the 2014 midterm elections, making up, for the first time, 11% of all eligible voters nationwide. But despite a growing national presence, in many states with close Senate and gubernatorial races this year, Latinos make up a smaller share of eligible voters...."
Florida "Fangate," Ctd. Jim Newell of Salon: "If this weird, petty nonsense is the sort of thing that decides the next governor of Florida, it won't be a tragedy. It will be fitting. This is a race between two notorious creeps. Rick Scott is an arch Medicare fraudster. Charlie Crist, who was a Republican vice-presidential short-lister not that long ago, is one of the purest opportunists in modern American politics. The debate that eventually happened between the two last night consisted of them flinging these very valid critiques of each other back and forth. This race, like so many others in this cycle of blanket unpopularity, is not one of profound optimism and inspiration."
I waited to be -- 'til we figured out if he was gonna show up. He said he wasn't going to come to the, uh -- he was -- he said he wasn't gonna come to the debate. So why come out until he's ready? -- Rick Scott, explaining why he missed the first six minutes of his gubernatorial debate with Charlie Crist
Makes a lot of sense. -- Constant Weader
Iowa. Greg Sargent: "Democrats have unearthed new audio of Joni Ernst [RTP] in 2013, in which she details rather stark views about the relationship of Americans with their government.... In it, Ernst claims that we have created 'a generation of people that rely on the government to provide absolutely everything for them,' and that wrenching them away from their dependence 'is going to be very painful.'" Here's more:
We're looking at Obamacare right now.... It's exponentially harder to remove people once they've already been on those programs.... We rely on government for absolutely everything. And in the years since I was a small girl up until now into my adulthood with children of my own, we have lost a reliance on not only our own families, but so much of what our churches and private organizations used to do. They used to have wonderful food pantries. They used to provide clothing for those that really needed it. But we have gotten away from that. Now we're at a point where the government will just give away anything. ...
... Jonathan Chait: "That's the fundamental belief that motivates most, if not all, the conservative opposition [to ObamaCare]: Health care should be a privilege rather than a right. If you can't afford health insurance on your own, that is not the government's problem." ...
... Laura Bassett of the Huffington Post: "Iowa Republican Senate candidate Joni Ernst said she would support a federal bill that gives legal personhood rights to fetuses from the moment of fertilization, effectively wiping out legal abortion in the United States." ...
... Manu Raju & John Bresnahan of Politico: Tom Harkin is a selfish cheapskate, & the result maybe that winger Joni Ernst takes his seat.
Kansas. Trip Gabriel of the New York Times: "... as Supreme Court rulings reignite a national debate over voter ID and fraud, no candidate more defines this moment of politicized voting rules than Secretary of State Kris W. Kobach, who has transformed an obscure office in a place far from the usual political battlegrounds, to become a lightning rod on restrictive voting and illegal immigration.... Mr. Kobach was elected by a 22-point landslide in 2010. Now he faces an unexpectedly tough re-election fight in deeply Republican Kansas, where many think the party may have gone too far. It is the same wave threatening to swamp Gov. Sam Brownback."
North Carolina. David Firestone of the New York Times: "In North Carolina, [GOP Senate candidate] Thom Tillis is the last holdout against gay marriage.... Pursuing [an] appeal [of a lower court ruling striking down the state's same-sex marriage ban] will cost the taxpayers thousands of dollars, all so that he can rally conservative opponents of gay marriage to support his election bid. Though the appeal has no chance of success, Mr. Tillis has his eye on a very different victory." CW: So consider it a taxpayer-funded campaign contribution.
Pennsylvania. E. J. Dionne: Tom Wolf, Pennsylvania's Democratic candidate for governor, who is almost certain to oust current Gov. Tom Corbett, is "a businessman who ... thinks capitalism works best when employees have a stake in their firm's success. 'I share 20 to 30 percent of my net profit with my employees,' Wolf says. 'Everybody is a stockholder in the company. My Republican father came up with the idea. And he did it because it really works. I am judged in my company by my truck drivers, not by me. They see my customers more than I do....' Thinking of workers as stakeholders is old-fashioned. But these days, it's also revolutionary."
Beyond the Beltway
Christine Byers of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: A grand jury witness "who said he saw the killing of [Michael] Brown from start to finish and talked to the grand jury recently -- has given the Post-Dispatch an account with some key differences from previous public statements from other witnesses.... After an initial scuffle in the car, the officer did not fire until Brown turned back toward him. Brown put his arms out to his sides but never raised his hands high. Brown staggered toward [Officer Darren] Wilson despite commands to stop. The two were about 20 to 25 feet apart when the last shots were fired."
Odd News. Patricia Wen & Martin Finucane of the Boston Globe: "An unusual witness testified Thursday in the trial of a friend of accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokar Tsarnaev. Former Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis said he and his wife were long-time family friends of Robel Phillipos's mother. Dukakis even took Phillipos to the Democratic National Convention in 2004, he said. Dukakis testified in US District Court in Boston that several days after the Marathon bombing Phillipos's mother said she was concerned about him, so he got Phillipos's cellphone number and called him."
Presidential Election
Bro Nation. Steve M. on "The Most Interesting Man in Politics!" CW: For your amusement. Tho it won't be so funny as we watch Steve M.'s predictions come true. ...
... Most Interested Reporter at Politico Interviews Most Interesting Man in Politics. Mike Allen: "Sen. Rand Paul tells Politico that the Republican presidential candidate in 2016 could capture one-third or more of the African-American vote by pushing criminal-justice reform, school choice and economic empowerment."
News Ledes
Reuters: Alan Long, "the mayor of Murrieta, California, who led a local backlash against the arrival of undocumented Central American immigrants flooding the U.S. border, has been arrested on suspicion of drunken driving in an accident that injured four teenagers."
Florida Times-Union: "Twenty-three months after Michael Dunn shot and killed Jordan Davis, a judge sentenced the 47-year-old man to life in prison Friday. Dunn will serve life in prison without possibility of parole for the death of Jordan Davis and 90 years for shooting at the three other teenagers."
Washington Post: "The cruise ship carrying a Texas health-care worker who 'may have' handled lab specimens from Dallas Ebola victim Thomas Eric Duncan is headed back to the United States after Mexican authorities failed to grant permission for the ship to dock off the coast of Cozumel, according to a Carnival spokeswoman."
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Reader Comments (20)
Dyalan Scott has an interesting piece at TPM regarding some of the over the top press coverage alleging Ebola will be Obama's Katrina. What was particularly stunning was a tweet by Michael Barbaro of the Times alleging that a botched Ebola response will potentially dwarf the ACA in the Presidents's legacy. Really, I didn't think Times' writers could be that stupid.
This bad news is killing me. And here's another small bit.
The body they dug up wasn't William Bradford Bishop.
Tom Corbett's thinking that capitalism works best when employees have a stake in their firm's success would make Marx rise from the grave and give a salute. Some have said that Marx thought wages could never rise under capitalism which isn't true. What he did say was that profits would increase faster than wages, so that workers would become poorer relative to capitalists over time. Now don't that sound like something we got right here in River City?
I recall seeing some program where they featured small companies whose workers have a large stake in their companies' profits because they own shares given to them from the outset.
Re: Krugman's piece. I recall him saying many years back when Greenspan was on the throne speaking gobblegook that many took as "the word":"Greenspan never said, 'Let's raise taxes and cut benefits for working families so that we can give big TAX CUTS to the rich!' But that's the end result of his advice."
Watched part of the debate between Ernst and Braley: My, my, that lady is really put together. For someone who boasts of boots on the ground and hog castrations (a bloody business fer sure and I find it humorous and troubling that she obviously is for the "personhood" mandate, but won't own it, yet she has no trouble with castration) she presents as a 1950s band box perfection––everything in its place and a place for everything. I find her frightening.
"Facing outrage from traditional Catholics, top clergy at a Vatican meeting on Thursday altered a document meant to guide future outreach to gays and lesbians, changing the goal of 'welcoming homosexual persons' to 'providing for homosexual persons.'”
Seems that God turns out to be a mealy-mouthed, triangulating politician, too.
How disappointing...
"Terrorists seeking to use Ebola virus..."
Sorry, I can't see any of those uber-macho ISIS cowards subjecting himself to weeks of unbearable pain, vomiting, diarrhea and hemorrhaging for the cause.
@ P.D.Pepe: You meant Tom Wolf, not Tom Corbett.
Marie
Nancy,
The idea of terrorists using ebola as a weapon is pure nonsense. As Dr. Anthony Fauci responded when Bob Schieffer, on his Sunday morning gasbag show, asked him this question, ebola is a highly inefficient choice for use in a bioterrorist plot. There are plenty of other options if they wished to go that route. Also, as you infer, for all their success at cutting peoples' heads off in the desert, the particular skill sets required for handling and dispersion of deadly viruses may be beyond ISIS.
But facts have never been known to get in the way of a good Republican scare story, so expect to see more of the "terrorists are coming across our "porous" border to spread ebola" fictions.
And speaking of fictions, or, more accurately, fantasies:
“If Republicans have a clue and do this and go out and ask every African-American for their vote, I think we can transform an election in one cycle..."
Li'l Randy (R-TP)
The Little One must have gone back to drinking the bong water.
So the idea is that Republicans just go up to African-Americans, ask them for their support--because Republicans have always been so supportive of African-Americans--and next thing ya know....they see the right-wing light. Millions of voters switch parties overnight. (And don't miss Randy's slur, referring to the Democrat Party, something that doesn't exist.)
Okay, that might work, as long as, when they're asking for votes, they remember to take off their hoods and hold off on the cross burning thing.
Republicans haven't done anything substantial for black people since 1863. Ahh....let's do the math, three from four is one...six from 11 is 5.....makes it....151 years. Hey, it was just yesterday, right? What's a century and a half between friends?
The Little One seems to be making an effort at courting the black vote, but I have yet to hear him do anything but lecture black audiences. And he still has not explained his tight connections with blatant racists, nor his statement that he would have voted against the Civil Rights Act, not to mention his thinking that it's perfectly fine for businesses to keep out black patrons if they want to.
He also needs to come up with some pretty fancy choreography to dance around things like vicious, race-based vote suppression in predominantly black areas. And how about the fact that many of his colleagues are all for shutting the door on any help for West African nations suffering through an epidemic. And equally big on taking away any health insurance many people have only recently obtained.
Black people are and have been for many years, prime targets for Republicans. Saint Ronald of Reagan famously described black women as welfare queens living large off the largesse of white taxpayers, driving Cadillacs and eating steak. Paul Ryan describes them as takers, swaying in a hammock while the rest of America works hard.
But hey, no worries.
Randy has a plan. In a couple of months we'll be hearing that Martin Luther King would be a Tea Party Republican and a HUGE supporter of Li'l Randy, if he were alive today. Maybe they'll have him exhumed for a photo op.
"Most interesting man in politics?" I'd like to know where the bar is set for "interesting" and how far away the notch is for "delusional".
And don't forget, this guy wants the keys to the White House.
@Marie––oh my, of course I meant Tom Wolf. Thanks for the correction.
@ Akhilleus wrote, "Republicans haven't done anything substantial for black people since 1863."
Aah, you're going overboard here. Until, say, 2008, there was a moderate wing of the Republican party, & some of them consistently voted for policies that helped poor people & minorities. As Republicans like to point out, the significant civil rights legislation of the 1960s & early '70s passed only because of substantial Republican support. Two of the more liberal justices on the Supreme Court who retired within the decade -- David Souter & John Paul Stevens -- are Republicans.
The shift of course came with Nixon's Southern strategy, which ultimately allowed Republicans to capture the once-solidly Democratic South. Now there are less than a handful of Republican MOCs who even believe in the concept of equal rights: Mark Kirk of Illinois comes to mind. I haven't figured out yet if it's a good thing or a bad thing that both parties are now ideologically "pure"; I think it's a bad thing because the leadership seems to have more control over the rank-&-file members now than when an MOC could not be counted on to follow the party line on every piece of legislation.
Marie
Marie,
Well, ya got me.
I was being a tad hyperbolic there (okay, maybe more than a tad), but my more specific point was that there's not much in the way of anything useful or helpful that any Republican can point to over the last 25-30 years, when addressing a black audience.
I knew it wasn't exactly true, but it sure seems that way. Those days of moderate Republicans who could be counted on to vote their consciences are long gone and I don't believe Rand Paul is the guy to lead the party back to those halcyon days of yore.
I give him credit for at least making noises in that direction, which is far more than most Republicans, but that's pretty much all it is, for now anyway.
I'm sorry but I think this Ebola Czar shit is bad politics and just plain fucking stupid. Yes, it exists and it's dangerous, and we should take preventative measures. But as many have pointed out, we don't even have a surgeon general because of relentless intransigence of the GOP to everything Obama. Could we not turn this fact into a political hammer and beat the asshat Repubs until they relent and confirm a surgeon general who could then take up Ebola prevention as job numero uno? Do we not already have someone in our super expensive health care industry competent to take up the cause? Or do we really need to relent to GOP scare tactics by creating a new bureaucratic structure, pushed by government hating Republicans, which just reinforces the winger narrative that Obama leads from behind and it's the GOP scare machine with the bright ideas.
Wingers demanded the Ebola czar, Obama acquiesced, and now the wingers will slam him for it. Sounds like Obama's political team has been watching too much Teevee to believe an Ebola Czar was either necessary or pragmatic given the scientific reality of the disease.
Next thing you know we'll have a Republican-controlled Senate and the first ordre du jour will be impeaching Obama due to his faux patriotism facing the Ebola 'outbreak'. Gimme a break.
Some remarkable graphs on the link between wealth and voter inclination, with clear implications for why the R's think the fewer, the better.
Courtesy Vox, Five Thirty Eight and my son:
http://www.vox.com/2014/10/16/6988089/study-helping-poor-people-vote-s
If Democrats do keep the senate I'm not sure to what it might be attributed.
The Republicans have been handed a cornucopia of electoral season gifts, some real, some invented, but all being dutifully regurgitated with little editorial perspective: ISIS, Ebola, IRS, Benghazi (x3), the police shootings which have brought down the wrath of Fox on any who mention white privilege, and which also have the effect of firing up both bases, but the conservative base is fired up all the time, and they vote. And now, Joe Biden's son is booted out of the service. Thanks a lot.
Just between ISIS and Ebola, the fear mongering hordes have plenty of ammo. Both can, and will, be blamed on Obama. Hell, gray skies can be blamed on Obama these days.
We can't expect the media to suddenly get a jolt of conscience and begin to act in a journalistically responsible manner. Fox isn't going to stop saying "Boogie, boogie, boogie" and all those disenfranchised voters aren't going to have their lives made easier over the next few weeks.
Looks bleak, don't it?
We can hope for a few things. We can hope that black and Latino communities organize and get their people to the polls if for no other reason than to give the finger to anti-American, anti-democracy wingnuts. We can hope that Democratic voters get off their asses and get to the polls and the same for the so-called millenial voters. And we can hope that those interminably infuriating "undecideds" decide to vote on the side of reason, not fear and stupidity.
We can also hope for world peace, a rational energy policy, gun control, the implementation of plans to halt global warming, and family planning clinics to open in every community in America.
Me, I'm going to win the lottery, move to Tahiti and do my best Paul Gaugin impersonation (but without the suicide attempt).
@safari: Amen, Amen, Amen.
Marie
RE: the Ebola Czar.
What Safari said.
Opponents of Texas' s voter ID law have appealed for emergency relief to the Supreme Court. It appears that all briefs have now been filed for the Court to render an opinion but here's the (possibly very) bad news:
"The requests by the Justice Department and the others challenging the Texas law are in the hands of Justice Antonin Scalia, who handles emergency legal matters from the geographic area that is the Fifth Circuit, including Texas. It is up to Scalia to decided whether to act alone, or to share action with his colleagues."
http://www.scotusblog.com/2014/10/texas-sees-no-emergency-on-voter-id-law/#more-219693
The trial court, which ruled in favor of plaintiffs/opponents of the law, made extensive findings of fact after a prolonged trial. Among those findings: over 600,000 Texans will be disenfranchised in this election if the law is permitted to go into effect.
Something tells me this will be a selling point to Scalia, persuading him to let the law take effect, rather than the contrary. I hope I am wrong.
Daily Kos just reported that Michael Dunn, slayer of kids listening to loud music, was sentenced to life without possibility of parole. Guess Florida is trying to atone for Treyvon's death.
Sitting back in my rocking chair and trying to put some perspective on the Ebola panic (yesterday at a doctor visit, he expressed annoyance that the U.S. has not closed our borders. At once!), I mused over some not so long ago 'the-next-great-pandemic' fears that consumed the media and us for weeks and months.
Not to make light of how devastatingly terrible Ebola is (which we've known about since the mid 70's), looked up a few of these things that were about to wipe us all out just a few years back... well, SARS is still out there (no vaccine to date, hand washing recommended...), Avian Influenza still around (avoid birds, wash hands), Swine flu ditto (avoid pigs, wash hands frequently), and what appears to be a still developing a related foot-and mouth disease, better known as foot-in-mouth disease (consider washing mouth out frequently).
Basic treatment for all is: SOAP
@CW: Vivek as Ebola Czar? Perfect!
MAG: Your rocking chair seems to provide clear vision. Don't leave it, but move over.