;)
The Commentariat -- Dec. 22, 2012
My column in today's New York Times eXaminer is titled "Predicting David Brooks," & compares Real David Brooks' column in today's New York Times with Fake David Brooks' syllabus, which I "found" yesterday.
The President's Weekly Address:
... The transcript is here.
Cliff Notes
President Obama's statement late this afternoon on "fiscal cliff" negotiations:
Carrie Brown & Manu Raju of Politico: "The scope of a potential fiscal cliff deal narrowed dramatically Friday as President Barack Obama called on Congress to at least pass a scaled-down agreement that preserves the middle-class tax cuts and unemployment insurance.... Twenty-six Republicans [in the House] would need to back the bill for passage if every Democrat voted in favor." Plus, Senate Republicans would have to agree not to filibuster the bill. The good news: no chained CPI is envisioned in the proposal. So far.
LaTourette's Syndrome. [The idea that this episode has hurt Boehner's speakership is] like saying the superintendent of an insane asylum should be discharged because he couldn't control the crazy people. I mean that's nuts. -- Steven LaTourette (R-Ohio), "who is close to Speaker Boehner
CW: It's encouraging that some Republican members of the House realize that their own caucus is best compared to the "crazy people" in an "insane asylum," even if "crazy people" and "insane asylum" are not the most politically correct term. Unfortunately, it definitely appears to be the case that the inmates are running this particular asylum. ...
... Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post: "Disarray is a word much overused in politics. But it barely begins to describe the current state of chaos and incoherence as Republicans come to terms with electoral defeat and try to regroup against a year-end deadline to avert a fiscal crisis." ...
LaTourette, Part 2. [The collapse of Boehner's tax effort] weakens the entire Republican Party. It's the continuing dumbing down of the Republican Party, and we are going to be seen more and more as a bunch of extremists that can't even get a majority of our own people to support policies that we're putting forward. If you're not a governing majority, you're not going to be a majority very long. -- Steven LaTourette (R-Ohio), who is retiring ...
... Charles Babington of the AP: "The uncompromising conservatives who blocked Speaker John Boehner's tax bill were merely sticking to policies that Boehner and nearly all other GOP leaders have pushed, without reservation, for years: It's always wrong to raise tax rates on anyone, no matter how rich. The nation's big deficit is entirely 'a spending problem, not a revenue problem.' And in any deficit-reduction plan, spending cuts must overwhelm new revenues, by 10-to-1 if not more." CW: I hope every newspaper in the country prints this AP piece. Babington pulls no punches.
... Gail Collins: "We have seen the future, and everything involves negotiating with loony people." CW: Collins should not have picked on the seer (or seeer, as contributor Ken Winkes prefers) warning of the "dairy cliff." No, there will not be eggnog. There will be $8/gallon milk. I am stocking up on powdered milk, as any loony person would.
Instead of offering solutions to a problem they have helped create, they offered a paranoid, dystopian vision of a more dangerous and violent America where everyone is armed and no place is safe. -- Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York City, on Wayne LaPierre's statement ...
... Tracy Connor of NBC News: "Gun-control advocates responded with outrage and disbelief Friday after the National Rifle Association called for armed guards in every school and blamed the music, movies and video games for firearms violence." ...
... Here's the transcript of NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre's statement, should you care to read it. ...
... Josh Barro of Bloomberg News: LaPierre's "colleague Asa Hutchinson, a former U.S. representative and Drug Enforcement Agency head, suggested the armed guards could be volunteers, to save money.... Schools are already safe, and increases in physical security should not be a policy priority.... We should find approaches to combating violence that don't send the message that school is a scary place where you need a cadre of men with guns to protect you -- because that's just not true." ...
... Jamelle Bouie in Salon: "In other words, the small-government NRA -- which shouts whenever politicians discuss the most modest new rules and regulations on firearms -- wants a new program of armed guards in every public school -- all 100,000 of them.... Watching the press conference, it's hard to understand why the NRA is so influential. LaPierre's statement -- his diagnosis of gun violence, his prognosis for solving the problem -- bears little relation to the world as it exists.... If there's anything to take away from this press conference, it's that politicians should not be afraid of the NRA." ...
... New York Times Editors: "... we were stunned by Mr. LaPierre’s mendacious, delusional, almost deranged rant. Mr. LaPierre looked wild-eyed at times as he said the killing was the fault of the media, songwriters and singers and the people who listen to them, movie and TV scriptwriters and the people who watch their work, advocates of gun control, video game makers and video game players.... A sheriff's deputy was at Columbine High School in 1999 and fired at one of the two killers while 11 of their 13 victims were still alive. He missed four times." ...
... Alex Seitz-Wald of Salon: "... there was an armed sheriff's deputy at Columbine High School the day of the shooting. There was an armed citizen in the Clackamas Mall in Oregon during a shooting earlier this month. There was an armed citizen at the Gabby Giffords shooting -- and he almost shot the unarmed hero who tackled shooter Jared Loughner. Virtually every university in the county already has its own police force. Virginia Tech had its own SWAT-like team. As James Brady, Ronald Reagan's former press secretary cum gun control advocate, often notes, he was shot along with the president, despite the fact that they were surrounded by dozens of heavily armed and well-trained Secret Service agents and police." Read the whole post. ...
... Charles Blow: "An analysis this year from the Violence Policy Center found that 'states with low gun ownership rates and strong gun laws have the lowest rates of gun death.' The report continued, 'by contrast, states with weak gun laws and higher rates of gun ownership had far higher rates of firearm-related death.' ... Another report this year by the Violence Policy Center, using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that while gun deaths remained relatively flat from 2000 to 2008, the total number of people shot went up nearly 20 percent since 2001." ...
** Prof. Robert Spitzer in the Washington Post: "Five myths about gun control."
... Alec MacGillis of The New Republic: "LaPierre's rambling statement on the shootings wasn't really any more more far-out than anything else he's been saying the past few years.... But this was the first time many in Washington and across the country had actually focused squarely on him and his organization in a long time, and this newfound focus, combined with the post-Newtown context in which LaPierre was speaking, was enough to make the NRA seem utterly, surreally amateurish and out of touch.... [Democrats] simply ceded the field to the gun lobby, assuming a level of influence, savvy and popular support far greater than what it possessed in reality. Today, that reality was exposed for all to see, and it was hard to watch. Not least because it was, in a way, an indictment of us all." ...
... Case in Point. Jonathan Tamari of the Philadelphia Inquirer: "Sen. Bob Casey [D-Penn.], who has long opposed new gun laws, said Wednesday that he had changed his views in the aftermath of last week's shootings in Newtown, Conn., and would support bills to ban assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips." ...
... AND Evan McMorris-Santoro of TPM: Rep. Mike Thompson, a pro-gun Democrat from California who has been asked by "House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to lead a Democratic task force on gun violence" favors a strong assault weapons ban, which he said would be good for law-abiding, "mentally-stable" gun owners because assault weapons give gun owners a bad rep. ...
... PLUS Anna Palmer & Ginger Gibson of Politico: "The National Rifle Association didn't win many friends on Capitol Hill.... Democratic lawmakers, including some from Connecticut, condemned the idea outright. Republicans, meanwhile, were quiet Friday afternoon." CW: Palmer & Gibson quote half-a-dozen Democrats; no Republicans. ...
Dorothy Wickenden of the New Yorker talks with Jill LePore & Patrick Keefe about the possibility of gun control legislation:
... Joe Nocera has a very good column on "Cerberus Capital Management, the private equity firm run by the secretive financier Steven Feinberg," which owns Freedom Group, "a motley collection of gun and ammunition firms it had gathered together under one umbrella company." ...
... Amy Davidson of the New Yorker: "This is where gun advocacy ends: not with a right to bear arms, but with an insistence that the rest of us have an obligation to do so. In the name of a misreading of the Second Amendment, teachers and children are conscripted in a gunfight."
... Katie Zezima of the AP: "... new details emerged Friday about the [Newtown] gunman, Adam Lanza, who acquaintances said was able to take apart and reassemble a computer in a matter of minutes but rarely spoke to anyone."
Mike Allen of Politico: "Former Sen. Chuck Hagel, seeking to preserve his viability for nomination as secretary of Defense, on Friday issued a strong apology for a gay slur in 1998 that turned some top Democratic activists against his potential selection. Hagel's statement is part of an extremely unusual campaign to bolster a candidate for a top job who has not yet been nominated. The White House this week took the extraordinary step of publicly defending Hagel against attacks by backers of Israel." ...
... Greg Sargent: "But in an interview this afternoon, the target of the 1998 slur, leading gay philanthropist James Hormel, told me he never received an apology from Hagel himself, questioned the sincerity of the apology, and said the incident should still raise questions about whether Hagel is the right man to oversee the repeal of don't ask don't tell."
Nate Silver looks at Sen. Scott Brown's (R-Mass.) chances of winning a special election now that Sen. John Kerry is almost certain to become Secretary of State. "One thing is certain: if Mr. Brown is the senator from Massachusetts in January 2015, he will have earned it, having run for office four times in less than five years."
Gen. Eric Shinseki, Secretary of Veterans' Affairs, remembers Sen. Daniel Inouye (this takes a few seconds to load, but it's worth it):
Call Her "Irresistible" -- and Unemployed. AP: "The Iowa Supreme Court says a dentist did not commit sex discrimination when he fired an attractive female assistant he viewed as a threat to his marriage. The court ruled Friday that a boss can fire an employee he considers an 'irresistible attraction,' even if the employee has done nothing wrong. The decision is the first in Iowa, but in line with rulings elsewhere."
Russia's Legislators Are as Bad as Our Legislators. New York Times Editors: "Russian legislators looking to retaliate against a new American human rights law have settled on an exceptionally vulnerable target: Russian orphans. The proposal would bar American citizens from adopting them."
News Ledes
AP: "Authorities in central Pennsylvania are trying to determine why a man fatally shot three people along a rural road before being killed in a gunfight with police." CW: the dateline is "Hollidaysburg."
Al Jazeera: "Polling stations opened in Egypt in the second and final round of a referendum on a new constitution that was drafted by an assembly dominated by Islamists and that the opposition says is polarising the nation. After a first round vote last week, polls opened on Saturday in areas analysts expected would give another 'yes' vote." ...
... AP Update: "Egypt's Islamist-backed constitution received a 'yes' majority in a final round of voting on a referendum that saw a low voter turnout, but the deep divisions it has opened up threaten to fuel continued turmoil."
Al Jazeera: "Two rival rebel groups in Mali have agreed to stop fighting, a day after the United Nations Security Council voted on a French-drafted resolution authorising full military intervention in the west African country.... The two groups, who took control of large swathes of northern Mali earlier this year, met in the Algerian capital Algiers, where representatives signed the agreement."
Reuters: "Rigorous new sanctions against Iran's banking, shipping and industrial sectors took effect on Saturday, as part of the European Union's effort to force Tehran to scale back its nuclear program. The sanctions, agreed in October, entered EU law with their publication in the European Union's Official Journal on Saturday."
AP: "President Barack Obama and his family have arrived in Honolulu to spend Christmas in Hawaii.... Air Force One touched down in Honolulu minutes after midnight local time on Saturday. The first family departed the plane and traveled quickly to their vacation house in the beach town of Kailua, a scenic, sleepy beach town on the east side of Oahu."
AP: "Pope Benedict XVI granted his former butler a Christmas pardon Saturday, forgiving him in person during a jailhouse meeting for stealing and leaking private papers in one of the gravest Vatican security breaches in recent times. After the 15-minute meeting, Paolo Gabriele was freed and returned to his Vatican City apartment where he lives with his wife and three children. The Vatican said he couldn't continue living or working in the Vatican, but said it would find him housing and a job elsewhere soon."
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Reader Comments (14)
First I read, "Wayne LaPierre Speech was a Total PR Disaster, say PR Experts " (HuffPost http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/21/wayne-lapierre-speech-public-relations-disaster_n_2346967.html). Yes,of course ...but shortly afterward I scrolled further down the page to see a feature: "Why the NRA Speech Was a Total Success" by Jason Linkins. WHAT?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/21/nra-wayne-lapierre_n_2348277.html
That was the hook to catch attention, whereby Linkins goes on to define the effectiveness; i.e, "Wayne LaPierre went out in front of reporters because he knew it was time to leverage the Sandy Hook shooting into a unique, sales-boosting opportunity for the industry he represents."
Linkins on David Gregory's big get for MTP tomorrow:
"And people wonder if, as a result of today's presentation, David Gregory is going to tear LaPierre a new one on "Meet The Press" this weekend. The people who wonder that have obviously not been watching David Gregory or "Meet The Press" lately, but that's beside the point. "
Anyone gonna watch?
As Mark Twain said "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."
I'm a member of both the ACLU and the NRA (each is a defender of an amendment to the Constitution). Over the years, under Wayne LaPierre's leadership the NRA has degenerated from an organization that taught gun safety and targeting skills to a lobby for the manufactures of assault weapons. It has been sad to watch, just as it was sad to watch him in action again today. NRA members need a new leader. Soon.
Thanks for the succinct recital of the armed guards who did not manage to stop shootings. I hope those points will be made frequently in the MSM but doubt it.
@waltwiz
Terry Gross interviewed Tom Diaz of the Violence Policy Center the other day. He said exactly the same thing.
@waltwis. Please consider this a respectful question.
The NRA has been promoting gun violence since at least 1995 when gun enthusiast & former President George Bush quit in disgust. (See especially the Bloomberg News editorial linked in yesterday's Commentariat.) NRA dues have been going to promoting gun violence for a long time. The views of the NRA leadership are not ones that first came to light yesterday.
So why do you maintain your NRA membership? I am not being critical here. I honestly don't get it. And I would like to know. It is obvious from poll responses that the majority of NRA members are not as loopy as LaPierre, so your views are hardly unique within the NRA membership. It is not as if their guns will be confiscated if they quit the NRA.
Marie
Re: I'm too pretty to hold a job; I want to talk about my president's waffle, I want to talk about getting out of Afghanistan, I want to talk about global warming and carbon, I want to talk about my dental assistant who I had to let go(of).
I don't want to talk guns.
I'm tired of gun lovers and assault weapon huggers.
I'm tired of the ritual dance we do on the tear stained graves.
LaPierre is a death merchant.
That he can have a forum to speak is beyond me.
Listening to his ideas one has to question his base, those that pay dues to pay him.
As I wrote last week; we have a cancer. The cancer is fear. A fear that has no cure.
I will no longer talk or discuss or argue with the gun nuts I know.
If I had an alcohol-fueled dragster I would not be able to drive it to work. Simple logic even a idiot could grasp. The same idiot needs to see his multi-bullet clip and his assault weapon in the same light.
No more talk; wash as you want, LaPierre; the blood won't come off your hands.
Crazy, loony, delusional, insane, paranoid. Please note that these words which are becoming more and more a part of the political discussion every day are not referring to the criminals or those defined as mentally ill. No, we are talking about the Republicans and their friends. I wonder when we will will finally get the picture.
@waltwis. You raise some interesting issues.
Though I have guns (which I no longer use), I have never been a member of the NRA. I was for years an ACLU member, but am not now because I did not believe they thought through the CITIZENS UNITED issue very well and hence predictably abetted the kind of poisonous, purchased political discourse we have seen in the last two elections. I remain on the ACLU sidelines because from what I understand, tho' they have nuanced their position somewhat, the ACLU is still having trouble distinguishing the forest of money from the trees of speech.
As you say, both organizations, the NRA and the ACLU, purport to protect guaranteed Constitutional rights. But just as all organizations' purposes shift over time in response to changing social, political and economic dynamics (I'd suggest today's NRA is primarily beholden to gun manufacturers and sellers, not to gun owners, for instance, regardless of the organization's original intent), so must our interpretation of any absolute truth or right, if the way we apply those truths or rights is to have any validity or rational basis in our current world.
When we talk about the right to bear arms--leaving aside the well-regulated militia business for the moment--should not the deadliness of today's arms have something to do with the discussion? Or the density of our population? If an absolute "right" has a growing chance to do harm to others, should it not be reconsidered from time to time?
Or, as another instance, when we talk about speech, is it not reasonable to recognize that hate speech is indeed more hurtful and harmful in a population that grows more diverse every day? How much easier is it to trip the metaphorical threshold of shouting "fire" in a crowded theater when the theater is full of people we don't know?
The point: Because times and circumstances change, absolute rights are not and cannot be absolute, and organizations whose stated purpose is to protect those rights must remain flexible enough to reassess their mission and methods from time to time. Neither the NRA, or to a lesser extent, the ACLU has been nimble enough to do that.
I'd hate to think that in either or both cases it's all about the money.
I was wondering after I heard LaPierre's suggestion we have armed guards at all the schools in the U.S. just how he envisioned that. Would the guards, like the royal ones, stand at attention and pace back and forth for hours on end? Or would they participate in the classrooms helping the kids learn their ABC's. Would the NRA fund these nice police because the states ain't gonna cough up the money even if they could. Has anyone asked Mr. guns-are-my-bread-and butter this question?
Just got through reading a piece in Truthdig on Phil and Wendy Gramm–-the Bonnie and Clyde of deregulation ––here's the link:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/crony_capitalisms_power_couple_20121221/
"Where is Phil Gramm hiding? The former Republican senator from Texas, who wrote the radical banking deregulation of the 1990s and was rewarded for his efforts to enrich the banks with a plum job at Switzerland-based UBS, has not been heard from since his bank got nailed by the G-men. Or, as The New York Times put it, UBS now has the distinction of being “the first big global bank in more than two decades to have a subsidiary plead guilty to fraud.”
This got me thinking of all those important "serious" people that screwed us and left us in the lurch––all those Bushies who took us into a war we shouldn't have gone into plus all those Enron type frauds who crippled our system. It's as though they come, they conquer, they destroy and they disappear. Poof! All gone, all forgotten except when we catch them once again still trying to play those bad hands.
Well, yes, we do need to change our name since we have two new members: Haley's brother joins the group along with Calyban's sister, a Rushbo affectionato. How about Sibling's Suck Society? I'll spring for the first round of beers and then it will be toss of the coins.
@waltwis. When I was in high school back in the late 50's, I was a junior member of the NRA. As you said, back then they promoted gun safety and targeting skills. I went every week to the local indoor range to shoot one of the club .22's. Like the Republican Party (which I voted for a few years), the NRA morphed into an organization run by lunatics. Now, I wouldn't dream of supporting either one.
@PDPepe: My brother still thinks the Republicans are just wonderful, even though he worked for the government for over 30 years and draws Civil Service retirement, Social Security, and military reserve retirement, all of which his party hates.
US Shooting deaths since Sandy Hook top 100. Here are some of those stories:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/21/us-shooting-deaths-sandy-hook_n_2348466.html
I don't know what the Nuts Raving Away (NRA) are so concerned about--clearly, our 2nd Amendment right to shoot people is in no danger as we speak. Or should I say, as we duck?
I used to think we had four branches of government--legislative, executive, judicial, and rich people. I keep forgetting the fifth branch, the NRA.
Apologies in advance to any techies in the audience, but I don't quite get the statement that Lanza "was able to take apart and reassemble a computer in a matter of minutes but rarely spoke to anyone." I mean, "but"? Shouldn't the conjunction be "and"?
Sorry.
Re, "Or, as another instance, when we talk about speech, is it not reasonable to recognize that hate speech is indeed more hurtful and harmful in a population that grows more diverse every day?" It could also be argued that its overall effect is dampened through over-coverage and repetition. Example: the media joke that the KKK has become. On one hand, we don't want words like "n*gger" and the like to lose their edge, lest we forget their horrible historical contexts; on the other hand, yes, we actually do want such words to lose their edge.
I think the NRA has infinitely greater issues than a lack of cognitive flexibility. Its time is done. No mourning necessary, imo.
Just read a NYT Newsflash (which had disappeared when I went back to check the title) about the acute rise in sales of assault weapons at gunshows since Newtown. Here are a couple of paragraphs:
..."Reuters reporters went to gun shows in Pennsylvania, Missouri and Texas, and found long lines to get in the door, crowds around the dealer booths, a rush to buy assault weapons even at higher prices and some dealers selling out.
The busiest table at the R.K. Gun & Knife show at an exposition center near the Kansas City, Missouri airport was offering assault weapons near the entrance."
*************
Honestly, this craziness is beyond what Gail Collins can write about in one of her ironic columns. What is going on in the pea brains of the paranoid, irresponsible, delusional people who are buying up assault weapons (especially the type Adam Lanza used) because they can?
We may be going unwillingingly over the fiscal cliff and the dairy cliff, but we already willingly have jumped off the sanity cliff. I thought about jumping myself after I heard that Wayne LaPierre, of NRA fame, makes over $1 million a year (including bonuses). Tell me please, why does that asswipe get bonuses? And who coughs them up?
Will my fellow commenters (I see there are more and more of us)--who have insane right wing siblings, please ask them (in a kind, non-judgmental fashion to which you may get a response) what the deal is? And please tell.