The Commentariat -- Oct. 3 & 4, 2015
Internal links & defunct video removed.
CW: I'll be out for all or most of the weekend. Also, the NYT seems to be having some problems: between 1:52 am ET & 5:40 am (so far), they haven't added any content.
Michael Crowley of Politico: "Vladimir Putin is weak, Russia faces a 'quagmire' in Syria, and critics of U.S. policy in Syria are talking 'mumbo-jumbo.' That was President Barack Obama's defiant take at a White House press conference on Friday afternoon, at which he fielded questions about Russia's surprise air strikes on Syrian rebels." CW: Sorry I missed this earlier; it wasn't on the White House schedule as of late Friday morning. ...
... Peter Schroeder of the Hill: "President Obama vowed Friday that he would not sign another short-term funding measure, pushing lawmakers to craft a long-term budget agreement. Speaking to the press two days after signing a two-month continuing resolution to keep the government from shutting down, Obama said that would be the last he is willing to tolerate. Government funding is now set to expire Dec. 11 after the latest agreement." ...
... The presser begins at about 19 minutes in:
White House: "In this week's address, the President emphasized that we need to do everything we can to strengthen economic growth and job creation":
... Also see clip under Presidential Race. ...
... ** Daniel Drezner (a fairly conservative writer) in the Washington Post: "The most obvious difference between tea party conservatives and [President] Obama is their divergence on a host of policy issues. But another significant difference is that the president, like [Speaker] Boehner, is a traditional politician who recognizes the limits of what can be accomplished without political support. This president has not been afraid to use his executive branch powers to enact controversial policies, but he also recognizes the hard limits of that approach." ...
Rachel Bade & John Bresnanhan of Politico: "House Oversightand Government Affairs Chairman Jason Chaffetz [RTP-Utah] is planning to run for House speaker, taking on Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy in what appears to be a long-shot bid to lead House Republicans, according to multiple sources." ...
.. Oops! I Forgot. Secret Service Director Joseph Clancey suddenly remembers he did know about agency personnel circulating an e-mail urging the Service to publicize the fact that Jason Chaffetz once unsuccessfully applied for a Secret Service job. Carol Leonnig & Jerry Markon of the Washington Post report: "The director of the Secret Service knew that unflattering, private information about a congressman was circulating among agency staff members before it was leaked to the news media, contrary to an earlier statement made to federal investigators.... President Obama picked Clancy as director this year against the advice of an administration panel of experts, who urged selecting an outsider to help improve the Secret Service. Clancy is a 27-year veteran of the agency." CW: Now, this is something actually worthy of an investigation by Chaffetz's House Oversight Committee, but I guess it would look bad for a public official to investigate why federal agents would break privacy laws to humiliate him. So Planned Parenthood. Because beating up on Cecile Richards looks so manly. And somewhere there's an Obama advisor saying, "Toljaso." ...
... CW: I'd say it's no coincidence that the White House just (Oct. 2) published a video of President Obama's commending the Secret Service (on September 29) for keeping safe the Pope & members of the U.N.:
Larry Buchanan, et al., of the New York Times: "Criminal histories and documented mental health problems did not prevent at least eight of the gunmen in 14 recent mass shootings from obtaining their weapons, after federal background checks led to approval of the purchases of the guns used." A case-by-case report of "how they got their guns." ...
... ** Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker: "... the only amendment necessary for gun legislation, on the local or national level, is the Second Amendment itself, properly understood, as it was for two hundred years in its plain original sense. This sense can be summed up in a sentence: if the Founders hadn't wanted guns to be regulated, and thoroughly, they would not have put the phrase 'well regulated' in the amendment." ...
... CW: We often discuss here how winger presidential candidates & crazy Congress inflame the nut-base with irresponsible rhetoric & careless legislative agendas. But few of these presidential hopefuls or elected representatives have done as much to validate & encourage the crazies as did Nino Scalia & the Supreme confederates in their 2008 5-4 decision in Heller v. D.C. Heller confirmed to these freeedom/gun-loving nuts that government officials had been depriving them of their Constitutional rights for 200 years, & now, by god, they were going to exercise those rights. While I don't deny that much of the right's antipathy to President Obama is racist & tribal, it is also no coincidence that he ascended to the presidency at the same time Nino instantly released the freeedom/gun guys from the long national nightmare of reasonable gun safety laws.
This is fairly hilarious. Tom Kingston of the Los Angeles Times: "A week after Pope Francis met Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk jailed for her refusal to issue marriage licenses for same-sex couples, the Vatican on Friday suggested that she exploited the meeting to promote her views, denied that the pope fully supports her and cast doubt on her account of the encounter. The Vatican later noted that Francis did have a private 'audience' in Washington with a former student of the pope, Yayo Grassi, an openly gay Argentine who along with his longtime partner and some friends met with Francis." CW: Don't punk the Pontiff, Kimbo. ...
... Philip Pullella of Reuters: "One Vatican official said there was 'a sense of regret' that the pope had ever seen Kim Davis.... While [Vatican spokesman Federico] Lombardi declined to take questions on the incident, his assistant, Canadian priest Father Tom Rosica, laid the blame on the Vatican embassy in Washington, saying it had underestimated the impact of Davis's presence at the reception.... Rosica said he did not believe the pope was even indirectly involved in inviting Davis.... Asked if the pope had been set up intentionally by someone in the embassy, Rosica said: 'No, reading all of the information, listening to all of the facts, these things happen.'" ...
... Joshua McElwee of the National Catholic Reporter: "Rosica said the Vatican was unsure who the meeting was organized by, and that it might have been an initiative by the Vatican's ambassador to the U.S., Archbishop Carlo Vigano.... Rosica said ... Francis had personally approved Friday's press statement after a meeting with Lombardi on the issue." ...
... Jason Horowitz of the New York Times writes an informative background story on Vigano, who was at the center of the "Vatileaks" scandal & whose "exile" to the U.S. was a major demotion. CW: As contributor Diane & I have speculated, Vigano will go, & it turns out there's a ready-made mechanism to do that: "In January, Archbishop Viganò will turn 75, the age at which bishops must submit a formal request to the Vatican for permission to resign. These requests are not automatically accepted, and bishops often stay in their appointments long after. It seems unlikely, church analysts say, that Archbishop Viganò will be one of them." MEANWHILE, lawyer is Mat Staver is not helping his client Kim Davis's case: "... Mathew D. Staver said in an interview that the Vatican's version of events was 'absolute nonsense' and that 'somebody is trying to throw some people under the bus.'" Since Francis reportedly personally approved the official Vatican statement distancing the Pope from Davis, Staver is calling the Pope a liar. Even if he's right, which is doubtful, that's pretty stupid. ...
... Rosie Scammell & David Gibson of Religion News Service: "After breaking the news Tuesday night, Davis' camp said the meeting had been requested by the pope and validated Davis' efforts.... [Davis' attorney Mat] Staver on Tuesday told CBS News that the Vatican contacted him a few days before the pope was to arrive on his first visit to the U.S., because Francis had been following Davis' saga 'and obviously is very concerned about religious freedom not just in the United States but worldwide.'" ...
... Laurie Goodstein & Jim Yardley of the New York Times: "The church distanced itself on Friday from the case of [Kim] Davis, the Rowan County, Ky., clerk who defied a judge's order and refused to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples. It said 'the only real audience' Francis gave in Washington was to a former student of his. Contacted by phone, a former student of Francis, Yayo Grassi, said he had been granted a meeting with the pope. Mr. Grassi is an openly gay man living in Washington, and he said he had been accompanied by his partner of 19 years, Iwan Bagus, as well as four friends." (Also linked yesterday.)
Michael Shear of the New York Times: "Arne Duncan, the secretary of education and a member of President Obama's original cabinet, will step down in December after a long tenure in which he repeatedly challenged the nation's schools to break out of their hidebound ways." CW: Buh-bye. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Presidential Race
Noam Scheiber & Amy Chozick of the New York Times: "The International Association of Fire Fighters, one of the country's more politically powerful unions, has abandoned its initial plans to endorse Hillary Rodham Clinton for president, according to union sources. Harold A. Schaitberger, the union's general president, informed Mrs. Clinton's campaign manager, Robby Mook, in a telephone call on Monday. According to a union official, Mr. Schaitberger told Mr. Mook that the executive board and rank-and-file members -- the latter were recently polled -- did not support a Clinton endorsement.... In recent weeks, as Mrs. Clinton's numbers in some polls have sagged and she has faced an increasingly formidable challenge from Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, some labor unions appear to have had second thoughts.... 'Secretary Clinton doesn't sell well here,' said Roy L. McGhee III..., an I.A.F.F. board member who represents Texas and Oklahoma. 'I think the Republican attack machine, the media machine, has made sure of that. The vice president will do better. He's popular among firefighters.'"
Larry Lessig in Politico Magazine: "I'm running for President. Or trying. After raising $1 million in less than 30 days, I entered the primary on September 9 as the Democrat's only non-politician.... But [my] message is being stifled with the tacit approval of the Democratic Party leadership, who are deploying the oldest method available for marginalizing campaigns they don't like: keeping me out of the Democratic presidential debates." ...
... CW: The question is, should the Democratic party let every person who can put up $1MM participate in the debates?
Stuff happens. -- Jeb Bush, responding to Oregon mass murder ...
... Yeah, He Really Said That. Inae Oh of Mother Jones: "While speaking to reporters during a campaign stop in Greenville, South Carolina, on Friday, Jeb Bush weighed in on the latest school shooting to take place in the United States, this time in Oregon, just a day before. 'We're in a difficult time in our country and I don't think more government is necessarily the answer to this,' Bush said. 'I think we need to reconnect ourselves with everybody else. It's very sad to see. But I resist the notion, and I had this challenge as governor -- look, stuff happens. There's always a crisis. The impulse is always to do something and it's not necessarily the right thing to do.'" ...
... Daniel Strauss of Politico: "The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza asked if Bush made a mistake with the phrasing. 'No, it wasn't a mistake, I said exactly what I said. Why would you explain to me what I said wrong?' Bush said. Lizza responded, 'Well you said "stuff happens.'" "'Things" happen all the time. "Things," is that better?' Bush said." Bush went on to say that people die all the time & "you don't solve the problem by passing the law."... "Asked to react to Bush's comment, President Barack Obama was blunt. 'I don't even think I have to react to that one, I think the American people should hear that and make their own judgments based on the fact that every couple of months we have a mass shooting,' Obama said at a press conference Friday afternoon. 'They can decide whether they consider that "stuff happens."'"
... Politico reprises some of the Doofus's "growing number of unfortunate comments." ...
... Matt Flegenheimer Jeb!, who last week revived the "free stuff" for black people meme, has had problems addressing issues important to minorities since before he became governor of Florida. What will you do for blacks if elected governor? "Probably nothing." CW: "Probably nothing" & "free stuff" do make nice bookends to an undistinguished, elitist political career. It's about time for Jeb! to quit the campaign trail & go back to ruining public schools, one of his signature causes.
Dana Milbank: "The day [Donald] Trump clinches the nomination I will eat the page on which this column is printed in Sunday's Post. I have this confidence for the same reason [Mitt] Romney does: Americans are better than Trump.... Consider what Trump said in Keene, N.H., this week about those fleeing Syria in the largest refugee crisis since World War II. 'This could be one of the great tactical ploys of all time,' he said of the desperate masses fleeing Syria's civil war. 'A 200,000-man army, maybe.... I don't know that it is, but it could be possible.' And what would happen to the refugees under President Trump? 'They're going back,' he said. To their deaths, presumably."
Paul Waldman: "... there's one thing that distinguishes [Ben Carson] from other candidates: ... only he fully embraces an apocalyptic vision of the American nightmare that is upon us.... If you listen to Carson, you won't have to wait long before he references some bizarre conspiracy theory or says something indicating that he thinks everything is about to turn to hell.... Conspiracy theorists ... seem to have slunk back away from the center of the conservative movement, at least to the point where Republican presidential candidates feel no need to court them. Except for one, Ben Carson. By all indications, he's doing it not by way of some clever political strategem, but because he actually believes what he says. Which is the most disturbing thing of all."
Beyond the Beltway
Catherine Thompson of TPM: "The sheriff investigating a mass shooting at an Oregon community college ... posted a ["truther"] video to Facebook in 2013 that raised questions about the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin posted a link to a YouTube video called 'The Sandy Hook Shooting - Fully Exposed,' which summarized conspiracy theories surrounding the shooting and quickly racked up millions of views, about a month after the massacre took place. The post was deleted or made private sometime after 2:30 p.m. Friday.... The viral video was quickly debunked in arenas as disparate as The Huffington Post and Glenn Beck's website TheBlaze...." ...
... At about the same time he posted the truther video, Hanlin wrote to Vice President Biden expressing his vehement opposition to gun control laws, which he believes violate the Second Amendment. He vowed to nullify "any federal regulation enacted by Congress or by executive order of the President offending the Constitutional rights of my citizens." ...
... Ian Millhiser of Think Progress: "The letter is also riddled with language commonly used by the 'Oath Keepers,' a right-wing veterans and law enforcement group that is closely associated with armed, anti-government militias.... Hanlin's letter also blurs the line between a matter that is lawfully within state officials' discretion and something much more akin to insurrection.... What Hanlin may not do ... is unilaterally assign himself the power to decide what is or is not constitutional and then refuse to 'permit the enforcement' of federal laws by 'federal officers within the borders of Douglas County Oregon.'"
News Ledes (October 3)
New York Times: "A United States airstrike appears to have badly damaged the hospital run by Doctors Without Borders in the Afghan city of Kunduz early Saturday, killing at least three people and wounding dozens, including members of the hospital staff. The United States military, in a statement, confirmed the 2:15 a.m. airstrike, saying it had been targeting individuals 'who were threatening the force' and that 'there may have been collateral damage to a nearby medical facility.'" ...
... CW: No, people you killed or injured are not "collateral damage." They're people, dead or barely alive. Own up to what you do in words, not in insulting euphemisms. ...
... Guardian Update: "A US airstrike appears to have hit a hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) in the Afghan city of Kunduz, killing nine staff members and injuring up to 37 people." CW: So we're now killing genuine heroes. What a catastrophe.
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Reader Comments (12)
Keep watch to see if Archbishop Vigano is reassigned in a few months. To immediately Pope slap him in public wouldn't be a good PR move. As to being "contacted by the Vatican", I bet that covers clerks in the office of Archbishop Vigano.
We have a Sheriff in Oregon threatening Federal agents, but Diane is more concerned about some homosexuals in Rome. Keep watch, she says. WTF.
@John954: I'm leaving your comment up only to show an example of what we don't do here: diss other commenters. Should you decide to write another comment of this nature, it's gone. Also, I have no idea what "homosexuals in Rome" you're talking about, but that aspect of your comment is pretty shaky, too.
As to Diane's comment, most of the contributors to Reality Chex -- like Diane -- are able to walk & chew gum at the same time. Writers comment every day on subjects that you -- and they -- might not think are the most important issues of the day. Often they raise issues that were not on my radar & nowhere near the top of the news, but present valid concerns.
And here's another thing, although it is fairly irrelevant because there is absolutely nothing wrong with Diane's comment (in fact, by coincidence, I endorsed it in the body of the Commentariat both yesterday & today): Diane wrote her comment before I linked the stories on Sheriff Oafkeeper.
Apologize to Diane, please, & maybe to the "homosexuals in Rome." Or find someplace else to write crap.
Marie
IN GOD NEWS
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/09/28/prayer-caucus-funded-taxpayers-defends-faith-government-policy/72428692/
A caucus for wait for it - prayer, and the 10 commandments.
What a crock!
mae finch
Note to the Congressional Prayer Caucus:
"And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites
are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and
in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men."
Matthew 6:5
Jeb! gloriously and regularly displays the character flaw that runs throughout the whole Bush family: lack of empathy, supposedly the hallmark of narcissistic personality disorder.
What's even worse about this worthless gaggle of human flesh -- except maybe 43's two daughters and I'm not sure about them -- is that they're all so clueless they aren't even aware of it.
Stuff happens, but I bet not in Kennebunkport.
Nancy: Lest we forget, stuff happens in the Kennebunks!
"Sex, Lists, and Videotape—By the time Alexis Wright was arrested, plenty of people around Kennebunk, Maine, had already heard all about the “Zumba Madam” and her amateur porn movies. What they were shocked to discover, though, was how many of their neighbors turned out to be her costars."
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2012/12/kennebunk-maine-prostitution-scandal-alexis-wright-zumba/
On a much darker note, just read the headline and this pitiful, disgusting statement by the US Military:
Airstrike Hits Doctors Without Borders Hospital in Afghanistan
"The United States military, in a statement, confirmed an airstrike at 2:15 a.m., saying that it had been targeting individuals “who were threatening the force” and that “there may have been collateral damage to a nearby medical facility.” '
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/world/asia/afghanistan-bombing-hospital-doctors-without-borders-kunduz.html
Utterly sickening! Collateral damage, indeed.
Casey Stengel said while trying to manage the NY Mets," Can't anybody here play this game?"
If we cannot manage drone warfare without killing innocents and damaging our own image we should stop using drones.
Do it better or stop doing it.
MAG: I, too, am sickened and disgusted after hearing about the U.S. airstrike on the Doctors Without Borders trauma center in northern Afghanistan being described as causing "collateral damage!" WTF? This is why I detest the military "mindset" of dehumanizing people being "accidentally" slaughtered in their missions to "destroy the enemy." It is all so senseless and horrifying!
Doctors Without Borders has called for a thorough investigation into what the United Nations says may be a war crime. DWB said they informed both the Pentagon and Afghanistan headquarters of their GPS location well before the bombing began. Fifteen minutes after the first bombs, there occurred another round of bombing. DWB desperately called again, but the bombing continued for another 30 minutes. This IS a war crime. And should motivate us to begin protesting this war-craziness once more.
Here is the story from The Guardian of Obama's promise to do a thorough investigation. I will believe it when I see it. A head or two will roll, no doubt, and the senseless massacres will continue. I hope Obama is moved to give a speech about this--as powerful and angry as the one he gave after the Oregon massacre. And that he will call a halt to these senseless wars in the Middle East in which we are causing more and more havoc and wasting more and more lives. Violence here, violence there--violence, violence everywhere! What is wrong with us?
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/04/barack-obama-promises-full-probe-into-suspected-us-airstrike-on-kunduz-hospital
Israel restricting Palestinian Access....(http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/05/world/middleeast/israel-restricts-palestinian-access-to-jerusalems-old-city.html?_r=0). How is this apartheid racist measure allowed in a "Democratic" country? Next the Hasidim will restrict women's rights to vote. Will Israel be a democratic country then? Isn't this the just about the same as the Alabama countries removing drivers licensing bureaus to keep those pesky Others from voting? And returning to my originally cited article, why does the NYT stage these kinds articles without comments? Could it be the NYT appeasement toward those of Israeli persuasion so it is not obvious how many hundreds and thousands of Americans that our little democratic friend is such turd to anyone in a turban or keffiyeh?
The killing of 9 and wounding of 10 in Oregon appear to share a bizarre kind of connection with the other front page story about 19 killed in the Afghanistan bombing's 'collateral damage.' Both stories are not new, each time we react as how could this happen...but it does, again and again and again and again.
According to Trump, "...if the teachers/instructors had been ARMED" played well to his gun-loving audience in Tennessee.
Interviews with attendees offered the usual paranoia "...we need guns (more guns) to protect ourselves."
Then the various articles on the bombing include excuses galore. Let's see, one I read had two 'enemy' fighters holed up at the hospital and sniping at the local forces as a rationale...yet, there a graphic (NYTimes) that shows a map of 'known' locations where recent occupancy by the 'threatening forces' as the alleged target. None of them especially close to the hospital site. The location of DWB/MSF's hospital has been well established and known. So much for the targeted efficiency and precision of our computer-directed bombs and drone attacks. These killings were careless, heedless, and in a word: murder.
Both incidents require a lot more than prayers.
Furthermore, I find it interesting that so far there's really only one 'front page' story on the NYTimes Web site about the bombing. And, I have yet to see where they made an article available for comments.
WaPo's bombing article, on the other hand, had close to 2,800 comments when I last checked, though most of those comments aren't worthy of reading...there's no oversight and what appears is much gutter sniping and derogatory insults hurled at others.
Yes, Kate M. ...what is wrong with us?