The Commentariat -- Dec. 27, 2015

Internal links removed.

Peter Schroeder of the Hill: "Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has elevated debt relief for Puerto Rico to the top of the congressional agenda in 2016.... Puerto Rico Gov. Alejandro Garcia-Padilla (D) blasted Congress for failing to include language in the omnibus package, accusing lawmakers of acceding to hedge funds invested in the island's debt.... 'I am instructing our House committees of jurisdiction to work with the Puerto Rican government to come up with a responsible solution by the end of the first quarter of next year,' [Ryan] said in a statement one day after the omnibus was unveiled." ...

... New York Times Editors: "Congress needs to help the island, which is home to 3.5 million American citizens, by giving it the ability to restructure its debts in an orderly way.... [W]hat needs to happen is clear: Congress should change the law that excludes Puerto Rico from bankruptcy protection.... Congress failed to move on restructuring legislation before members left Washington for the holidays. Wall Street investors that own bonds issued by the island mounted an aggressive lobbying effort, aimed primarily at Republicans, to stall legislation." ...

... CW: We need to hear from Donald Trump on this. Trump has been thru four business bankruptcies himself; would he extend the same benefit to Puerto Rican-Americans?

David Willman of the Los Angeles Times: "... the Obama administration and Congress poured more than $230 million into design and engineering work on [the Precision Tracking Space System, supposed to detect missile launches & track warheads in flight] in 2009. Four years later, the government quietly killed the program before a single satellite was launched. The Missile Defense Agency said PTSS fell victim to budget constraints. In fact, the program was spiked after outside experts determined that the entire concept was hopelessly flawed and the claims made by its advocates were erroneous. It was the latest in a string of expensive failures for the missile agency.... 'It's an example of what can go wrong in defense procurement: Huge amounts of money just pissed away on things that should never have advanced beyond a study,' said David K. Barton, a physicist and radar engineer who served on a National Academy of Sciences panel that reviewed U.S. missile-defense programs, including PTSS."

Kimberly Kindy, et al., of the Washington Post: "Nearly a thousand times this year, an American police officer has shot and killed a civilian.... In a year-long study, The Washington Post found that the kind of incidents that have ignited protests in many U.S. communities -- most often, white police officers killing unarmed black men -- represent less than 4 percent of fatal police shootings. Meanwhile, The Post found that the great majority of people who died at the hands of the police fit at least one of three categories: they were wielding weapons, they were suicidal or mentally troubled, or they ran when officers told them to halt." ...

... Monica Davey of the New York Times: "Police fatally shot a man and a woman on [Chicago's] West Side early Saturday, setting off a new flurry of questions about a department already under intense scrutiny." ...

     ... Caryn Rousseau of the AP: "A Chicago police officer responding to a domestic disturbance call accidentally shot and killed a 55-year-old woman, who was among two people fatally wounded by police gunfire, according to officials with the department that's already facing intense scrutiny." CW: Here's the way the police describe the "accident": "Officers who responded to the call "were confronted by a combative subject resulting in the discharging of the officer's weapon." Why, the officer with his/her finger on the trigger had nothing to do with it. The "combative subject" somehow caused the weapon to "discharge." Innocent by virtue of the passive voice & euphemism. ...

     ... AP: "Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has issued a statement on the fatal police shooting of a man and woman after authorities said officers responded to a domestic disturbance call. In the statement on the early morning shooting issued late Saturday by the mayor, Emanuel says that 'anytime an officer uses force the public deserves answers, and regardless of the circumstances, we all grieve anytime there is a loss of life in our city.'" CW: Anytime. Which is an adverb. Even if Emanuel makes it a noun twice in one sentence. But it's nice anytime a mayor is concerned a combative public may result in the discharging of him. ...

... Margaret Talbot of the New Yorker: "The code of silence has protected some particularly reprehensible behavior in the [Chicago Police Department], much of it directed at the city's black population."

Annals of "Justice," Ctd. AP (via the L.A. Times): The organization Equal Justice Under Law has "filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of ... jail inmates who argue that San Francisco and California's bail system unconstitutionally treats poor and wealthy suspects differently. Wealthy suspects can put up their houses or other valuable assets -- or simply write a check -- to post bail and stay out of jail until their cases are resolved. Poorer suspects ... [may] remain behind bars or pay nonrefundable fees to bail bonds companies.... Some ... who can't afford to post bail plead guilty to minor charges for crimes they didn't commit so they can leave jail.... [The organization's founder Phil] Telfeyan said a win in California could add momentum to the center's goal to rid the country of the cash bail system, which the lawyers say is used by most county jails in all 50 states." ...

     ... CW: The number of ways various governmental entities discriminate against the poor boggles the mind. It would appear that the words "justice" or "justice system" should almost always appear in scare-quotes.

Jordan Fabian of the Hill: "President Obama and first lady extended their 'warmest wishes' to those celebrating Kwanzaa, the week-long holiday as it began Saturday."

"Right to Rise." Harold Holzer & Norton Garfinkle in Salon: Abraham "Lincoln's decision to resist Southern secession and fight a war to maintain the American Union was motivated primarily by his belief that the nation was founded on the idea that this country 'proposed to give all a chance' and allow 'the weak to grow stronger.' The toxic combination of secession together with an unending commitment to unpaid human bondage by a new and separate Confederate nation, he calculated, would be fatal to the American Dream. It posed a direct threat to a self-sustaining middle-class society and to the promise of America leading the way to spreading the idea of opportunity and upward mobility throughout the world." Republished from their book A Just and Generous Nation. ...

... CW: Holzer & Garfinkle's analysis only further convinces me that the Civil War was a Big Mistake. A century-and-a-half later, the South is still resisting the "right to rise" (Jeb!'s slogan!), & neither the civil rights movement nor the influx of Northerners has much changed that.

Nicholas Thompson of the New Yorker reprises the Best of Borowitz for 2015.

Rachel Gross in Slate reports on a masterful bit of irony: "In what is almost a too-clever illustration of how evolution works, a scientist at Australian National University has created a chart to show us the evolution of anti-evolution bills."

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. D. R. Tucker of the Washington Monthly wonders when major teevee media will start covering climate change. C.W.: Network newscasts are just slightly-more sophisticated versions of when-it-bleeds-it-leads local news showz. The networks favor "breaking news," dramatic stories that give their anchors chances to fly around in helicopters & stand in front of war zones "Daily Show"-style. While many of the weather events they cover can be attributed in part to the effects of climate change, the story is the devastation, not the cause of the devastation. The "substance" of their coverage of these weather events is talking to local survivors who announce through tears that "God saved me because he has a plan for me" (after which they go looking for their FEMA money).

Presidential Race

Yay! Another conspiracy theory. Hunter Walker of Yahoo News: "The dustup over a data breach that briefly erupted in the Democratic presidential primary last week isn't over as far as Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and his team are concerned.... [A] top Sanders adviser told Yahoo News one of the remaining concerns is that [Josh] Uretsky[, the data manager Sanders fired for breaching the Clinton campaign's data files,] was recommended to the campaign by people with ties to the DNC and NGP VAN." CW: That is, Uretsky may have been a Clinton/DNC plant.

Ben Brody of Bloomberg: "Since dropping out of the race for the Democratic nomination, [former Sen. Jim] Webb has continued to maintain his Webb2016 website, which he has updated with posts about the possibilities of an independent run. On Twitter, he and his fans have been promoting a #WebbNation hashtag." Now he's using both to attack Hillary Clinton for her handling of Libya & to congratulate Bernie Sanders for taking on the DNC.

Jim O'Sullivan of the Boston Globe: Top Northerneastern Republican moderates won't rule out supporting Donald Trump if he's the GOP presidential nominee.

Peter Beinart of the Atlantic (Dec. 23): "It's less the content of what Trump says that offends Jeb than the manner in which he says it.... Jeb, like his brother and father, prizes decorum. He wants presidential candidates to behave like gentlemen." Even when he touches on substance, he "triangulates": "In Jeb's view, Trump was wrong to insult to Hillary for, essentially, being a woman, and Hillary was equally wrong for being insulted."

Eugene Scott of CNN: "Rep. Trey Gowdy will spend the final days of 2015 campaigning in Iowa with Marco Rubio and will offer the Florida senator his 'full support,' a campaign aide told CNN Saturday. The aide, however, stopped short of saying that Gowdy would officially endorse Rubio." CW: Does this make sense? Is Gowdy being coy. Or what?

Alexander Burns & Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "As a presidential candidate, Gov. Chris Christie has sought to differentiate himself by spotlighting his tenure as the United States attorney for New Jersey, framing it as a time when he spent his 'life protecting our country' against terrorism. The message has begun to resonate: Mr. Christie, long an underdog in the Republican presidential field, has recently risen in the polls. A close examination of Mr. Christie's record as New Jersey's top federal prosecutor from 2002 to 2008 shows that he did acquire greater counterterrorism experience than his current rivals. But it also shows that he has, at times, overstated the significance of the terrorism prosecutions he oversaw -- he has called them 'two of the biggest terrorism cases in the world' -- and appears to have exaggerated his personal role in obtaining court permission for surveillance of terrorism suspects." ...

... In the Dec. 25 edition of the Washington Post, Frances Sellers also tried to make the case that Christie exaggerated his role but she made Christie's counterterrism-warrior claims look fairly credible.

Beyond the Beltway

Daniel Politi of Slate: "Authorities are investigating a two-alarm fire at a mosque in southwest Houston as possible arson. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives said the fire 'appears suspicious' because it had 'multiple points of origin.'" ...

     ... Update. Samantha Ptashkin of KPRC Houston: "Investigators with the Houston Fire Department said a fire that damaged a southwest Houston mosque was intentionally set."

Joel Rubin of the Los Angeles Times: "Feds step in & prosecute five L.A. County sheriff's deputies for beating a handcuffed man, Gabriel Carrillo, after the L.A County District Attorney failed to bring charges & cleared the deputies. Carrillo was not an inmate; he was visiting his brother, who was in jail, when he was caught carrying a cellphone in the jail's visitor center. CW: There should be a federal law against allowing local prosecutors to "investigate" cases of alleged police misconduct.

Way Beyond

Liz Alderman of the New York Times: "Few places are tilting toward a cashless future as quickly as Sweden, which has become hooked on the convenience of paying by app and plastic. This tech-forward country ... has been lured by the innovations that make digital payments easier. It is also a practical matter, as many of the country's banks no longer accept or dispense cash."

Sewell Chan & Milan Schreuer of the New York Times: His schoolteachers in Brussels had warned that Bilal Hadfi, who "blew himself up outside the national soccer stadium on the northern outskirts of Paris, part of attacks that killed 130 people," had become radicalized but school administrators never passed the warnings on to police. School officials suspended, on a flimsy "cause," one of the teachers who had warned of Hadfi's radicalization.

News Ledes

Washington Post: "Iraqi forces said Sunday that they had captured the main government compound in Ramadi, a symbolic win in a key city that has been under Islamic State control for seven months. Engineering teams were still working to clear explosive devices in the area, but the complex was entirely under the control of Iraqi forces, military commanders said. Still, much of the city's downtown remains in the hands of the militants, Iraqi officials said."

Weather Channel: "At least three tornadoes struck the Dallas suburbs Saturday, killing at least seven people, destroying several homes and damaging many more Saturday as Winter Storm Goliath emerged from the western U.S. and began interacting with the record warmth blanketing much of the South, leading to a large zone of severe weather risk." ...

     ... New York Times Update: "At least 11 people were killed in the Dallas area Saturday night when 11 tornadoes swept North Texas, officials said. The storm tossed cars off freeways and destroyed at least one apartment building, a recreation vehicle park and several homes across the suburbs northeast of the city, according to officials with the Dallas County Sheriff's Department and the Garland Police Department. About 50,000 people were without power, officials said." ...

     ... The front page of the Dallas Morning News currently links to numerous stories about the tornados. ...

... AP: "At least 11 people died and dozens were injured in apparently strong tornadoes that swept through the Dallas area and caused substantial damage this weekend, while five people died in a flash flood in Illinois. It was the latest of a succession of powerful weather events across the country, from heavy snow in New Mexico, west Texas and the Oklahoma panhandle to flash flooding in parts of the plains and midwest. Days of tumultuous weather have led to 35 deaths overall -- those in Texas and Illinois, plus 19 in the south-east after another body was found Sunday in floodwaters."

AP: "The Islamic State group on Saturday released a new message purportedly from its reclusive leader, claiming that his self-styled 'caliphate' is doing well despite an unprecedented alliance against it and criticizing the recently announced Saudi-led Islamic military coalition against terrorism."

The Commentariat -- Dec. 26, 2015

Internal links removed.

Diane Superville of the AP: "In a Christmas Day gesture of gratitude, President Barack Obama told U.S. troops that 'we never take for granted' what they do to keep Americans safe and free. Obama spoke a few days after six American service members were killed this week in a suicide attack at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, the largest U.S. facility in the country."

You-Ess-Ay! You-Ess-Ay! Nicholas Fandos of the New York Times: "Foreign arms sales by the United States jumped by almost $10 billion in 2014, about 35 percent, even as the global weapons market remained flat and competition among suppliers increased, a new congressional study has found. American weapons receipts rose to $36.2 billion in 2014 from $26.7 billion the year before, bolstered by multibillion-dollar agreements with Qatar, Saudi Arabia and South Korea. Those deals and others ensured that the United States remained the single largest provider of arms around the world last year, controlling just over 50 percent of the market."

Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post: "The Justice Department has charged at least 60 individuals this year with terrorism-related crimes, an unprecedented number that officials attribute to a heightened threat from the Islamic State and the influence of social media on potential recruits. Last week alone, prosecutors charged three people and convicted two others on terrorism-linked charges."

Amanda Holpuch of the Guardian (Dec. 24): "Hundreds of undocumented families in the US could be rounded up and deported as soon as January, according to a report that has shocked immigrants rights' advocates and provoked condemnation from Democratic presidential hopefuls. The Department of Homeland Security is preparing for raids that would see hundreds of recently arrived immigrants deported, according to a report in the Washington Post.... Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton, Martin O'Malley and Bernie Sanders roundly denounced the plan." CW: Definitely sounds as if ICE is gearing up for President Trump. ...

... Apparently, the Trumpster thinks so, too. Ian Swanson of the Hill: "Donald Trump was on Twitter for Christmas to for a second day in a row take credit for reports that the Obama administration is planning an effort to deport illegal immigrants."

New York Times Editors: "As untold millions of dollars pour into the shadowy campaign troughs of the presidential candidates, voters need to be reminded of the rosy assumptions of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision that legitimized the new spending frenzy.... In the new budget bill, Republicans inserted a provision blocking the Internal Revenue Service from creating rules to curb the growing abuse of the tax law by thinly veiled political machines posing as 'social welfare' organizations.... In another move..., the Republicans barred the Securities and Exchange Commission from finalizing rules requiring corporations to disclose their campaign spending to investors.... For two years, President Obama has dithered and withheld the one blow he could easily strike for greater political transparency: the signing of an executive order requiring government contractors to disclose their campaign spending." ...

... It Ain't Only Republicans. Matea Gold of the Washington Post: "The Federal Election Commission has quietly given the green light to federal candidates who want to solicit contributions for super PACs by meeting in small groups -- so small that there can be just two other people in the room. In addition, the little-noticed advisory opinion gives permission to a candidate's campaign consultant and other aides to solicit large donations for a super PAC, as long as they make clear that they are not making the request at the direction of the candidate. The decisions -- which came in response to a request from two Democratic super PACs, including one with close ties to Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) -- further erode the boundary between campaigns and their independent allies at a time when they are already engaged in unprecedented collaboration."

He Nabbed Him with the Googles. Nathaniel Popper of the Times: The FBI & the Department of Homeland Security got most of the attention for nabbing Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the online drug bazaar Silk Road, but a young IRS agent, Gary Alford, actually identified Ulbricht. It took three months for other law enforcement authorities to take his evidence seriously. CW: I think you'll enjoy this story.

Paul Krugman: "... space technology is moving forward after decades of stagnation. And to my amateur eye, this seems to be part of a broader trend, which is making me more hopeful for the future than I've been in a while.... [Since the 1970s] there has just been less progress in our command over the physical world -- our ability to produce and deliver things -- than almost anyone expected.... The really big news is on energy, a field of truly immense disappointment until recently." And Marco Rubio is an idiot (paraphrase). ...

... BUT Drones! Michael Rosenwald of the Washington Post: "It's a good thing that Santa is now largely out of the American airspace, because many of those drones are now careening wildly through the air, crashing into lawns, cars, roofs and grandmas. Twitter is loaded today with tales of aerodynamic woe." Rosenwald re-publishes some of the tweets. CW: I laughed out loud.

Elliot Hannon of Slate, citing the Center for Global Development: "A 2008 study from the US Energy Department's Energy Information Administration (EIA) found that decorative seasonal lights accounted for 6.6 billion kilowatt hours of electricity consumption every year in the United States. That's just 0.2% of the country's total electricity usage ... It's also more than the national electricity consumption [FOR THE YEAR] of many developing countries, such as El Salvador, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Nepal, or Cambodia." CW: Might wanna turn off those icicle lights. The chili lights in my kitchen, however, are staying on. ...

... Besides, when the temperatures are unseasonably warm on the East Coast, we need something to remind us of Christmas. Or not: Peter Schwartzman of the Washington Post found another explanation for the warm weather: "Jesus might be coming back." CW: Maybe climate denialism isn't denialism at all but a twisted expression of longing for the end times. As another woman told Schwartzman, "End times must be on the way. I'm delighted with this." I, for one, am not cheerful about this development, because I'll definitely be banished to hell, which I hope is nicer than the Bible lets on. Not that I won't argue with Jesus about it; I'm pretty damned good at standing up to authoritarian men. Say, how come all those teabaggers who protest every governmental imposition, real & imagined, are willing to let a stranger from heaven determine their eternal fate?

Tim Egan finds "some snippets of qualified joy" to celebrate.

Salon publishes as excerpt from Alison Greene's No Depression in Heaven: "The greatest power of the Greatest Generation was their collective acknowledgment that they could not go it alone. Nowhere was this transformation more dramatic than in the South. For a moment, the southern Protestant establishment faced the suffering that plantation capitalism pushed behind its public image of planters' hats and hoopskirts and mountains of pure white cotton.... [Franklin] Roosevelt's New Deal threatened plantation capitalism even as it bent to it."

Nicole Winfield of the AP: "Pope Francis issued a Christmas Day prayer that recent U.N.-backed peace processes for Syria and Libya will quickly end the suffering of their people, denouncing the 'monstrous evil' and atrocities they have endured and praising countries that have taken in refugees."

D. C. Clark adds the Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Choir's mashup of Simon & Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and Coldplay's "Fix You" to our lovely medley of holiday songs. Again, not a Christmas song, but so what? The NHS Choir put together the piece to celebrate the work & workers of Britain's National Health Service. Against long odds, the recording topped Britain's Christmas week chart, after several celebrities, including Justin Beiber, who had a song in the running but urged his fans to buy the NHS's single. If the NHS were a U.S. agency, an inspector general would have charged them with breaking lobbying laws:

Presidential Race

Goldbuggery! Michael Grunwald in a Politico Magazine opinion piece: It isn't just Donald Trump who has crazy ideas. Most of the GOP presidential candidates have proposed wacko policies, right there in the debates for all to see. "The Democrats would say the GOP is simply defying reality -- on climate, on economics, on the ease with which muscular foreign policies can fix the world, on just about everything. Then again, the Republican Party isn't the party that's hiding its debates on weekend nights. Its views may be extreme, but it's airing its views for all to see."

Beyond the Beltway

Washington Post: "Authorities say a fire that caused minor damage to former president Bill Clinton's first childhood home in Hope, Ark., may have been arson."

Nancy Scola in Politico Magazine (first published Nov. 20): Charlotte, North Carolina, has gone green, eschewing bright lights & promoting water conservation. "... Envision Charlotte [is] a non-profit that leaders of the city's largest corporations like Duke Energy are betting will position Charlotte in the urban vanguard of environmental sustainability. If it works, Envision Charlotte will rekindle growth that in the best of times reached 10 percent annually." ...

... Caleb Hannon in Politico Magazine (first published Aug. 15): "The Hennepin Energy Recovery Center, better known as the HERC, has emerged as the centerpiece of Minneapolis's own push to be carbon-neutral by 2030, as Minnesota's largest city looks to vault itself into the world's top tier of sustainable cities. In doing so, it hopes to join places like Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm that have a long reputation of balancing the environment and human impact. It's an ambitious goal for the Midwestern city of 400,000, but one that Minneapolis hopes to achieve by transforming its residents' relationship to their own trash, and one that it -- and 17 other global cities, including Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm and San Francisco -- all joined together to announce in 2014 during a meeting in Copenhagen when they created the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance pact."

Way Beyond

Ellen Barry & Salman Masood of the New York Times: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid an impromptu visit Friday to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan. "It was the first visit to Pakistan by an Indian premier in 12 years."

Anne Barnard of the New York Times: "The commander of one of the most powerful Syrian insurgent groups in the suburbs of the Syrian capital, Damascus, was killed Friday in an airstrike, according to the government and its opponents. The death of the commander, Zahran Alloush, is a significant blow to the armed opposition, bolstering President Bashar al-Assad ahead of a planned new round of peace talks.... Local opposition figures reached in Damascus said the airstrikes had been carried out by Russian warplanes, but that information was not immediately confirmed by Russian or Syrian officials.

News Ledes

Los Angeles Times: "Pacific Coast Highway north of Ventura reopened in both directions Saturday afternoon after a wind-driven brush fire scorched more than 1,200 acres in the area overnight, prompting mandatory evacuations...."

Washington Post: "The Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a written statement Saturday that [Ursula Gauthier,] the Beijing correspondent for French news magazine L'Obs, would not be issued press credentials for 2016, effectively expelling her. Gauthier drew Beijing's ire country by writing an essay that questioned the Chinese government's rhetoric on terrorism."

Weather Channel: "Damaging storms continued to take aim at the South on Christmas Day, bringing severe flooding just days after an outbreak of tornadoes and severe thunderstorms killed at least 15 people across the region." ...

... New York Times: "Gov. Robert Bentley of Alabama declared a state of emergency on Friday as heavy rain and flooding paralyzed areas in the central and northern parts of the state." CW: Yes, he's asking the socialist president to be sending more of those federal dollars Alabama's way.

December 25, 2015

Defunct videos removed.

National Christmas Tree 2015.In keeping with my seven-year tradition of doing nothing useful on Christmas Day, following are some popular 20th-century Christmas songs I can bear:

Nat King Cole sings "The Christmas Song," written by Bob Wells & Mel Torme: 

"The Little Drummer Boy," written by Katherine Kennicott Davis in 1941 & performed by the Harry Simeone Chorale (1958):

Bing Crosby sings "Do You Hear What I Hear," lyrics by Noël Regney and music by Gloria Shayne Baker. Regney & Baker, who were then married to each other, "wrote it as a plea for peace during the Cuban Missile Crisis."

So maybe not Christmas music exactly, but from "A Charlie Brown Christmas:

Bob Dylan's version of "Must Be Santa" ended up on my Worst Christmas Songs Ever list for a couple of years. Then I got used to it. Dylan's version sure beats Mitch Miller's original:

Top hillbilly Christmas song: Elvis Presley & Martina McBride sing "Blue Christmas":

My Favorite: The Drifters' "White Christmas"; cartoon by Joshua Held: