;)
The Commentariat -- July 15, 2015
Internal links & defunct videos removed.
Afternoon Update:
Michael Shear & Julie Davis of the New York Times: "President Obama on Wednesday urged lawmakers to support the nuclear deal reached with Iran, saying that failure to put it in to effect would increase the likelihood of war in the Middle East and accelerate a nuclear arms race in the region that would threaten the safety of the United States. 'That's the choice that we face,' Mr. Obama said in opening comments at a news conference in the East Room of the White House. 'If we don't choose wisely, I believe future generations will judge us harshly, for letting this moment slip away.'"
Ziva Branstetter & Dylan Goforth of the Tulsa Frontier: "When President Barack Obama arrives in Durant[, Oklahoma,] today and travels to the town's high school to give a speech, he will apparently be greeted by residents waving Confederate flags." CW: Nothing racist about this demonstration of "heritage," of course. The Chocktaw Nation kicked these fine patriots off Chocktaw land. ...
You know, there are three branches of our government. You have the Supreme Court, the legislative branch and the people, the people and their ability to vote. -- Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin, explaining the Oklahoma constitution to people she had better hope are even more ignorant than she, in the context of her refusal to follow a state supreme court's order to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments from the statehouse grounds
One has to wonder where Fallin sees her job fitting into this scheme. -- Constant Weader
Thanks to Akhilleus for the news from Oklahoma.
Joshua Partlow of the Washington Post: "Mexican authorities released the surveillance footage of [Joaquin] Guzman's dramatic prison escape on Tuesday night. From a hole in the shower floor, one of the small blind spots for the surveillance camera, Guzman's allies had built a hatch over a shaft dropping 30 feet underground and leading to a tunnel that ran to a small cinder-block house in the corn fields south of the prison." Includes video.
*****
CW: Okay, I know this is painful, but sometimes we must make sacrifices:
... For the both-sides report, Peter Baker of the New York Times does his usual best. ...
... Alexander Bolton of the Hill: "Republican leaders in Congress are crafting their attack plan against the Obama administration's nuclear deal with Iran. Lawmakers will have 60 days to review the deal after the White House delivers the text of the historic agreement to Capitol Hill. The GOP could seek to move a measure of disapproval, but it will be difficult to win a filibuster-proof 60 votes, much less the 67 required to overcome a presidential veto." ...
... Dana Milbank: Sen. Lindsey Graham went on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" early Tuesday to denounce the Iran nuclear agreement in dramatic terms. "But had Graham actually seen the deal? 'No,' he admitted. But Graham and his congressional colleagues are not reserving judgment until they know the facts.... This is legislating by reflex -- a mass knee-jerk by the Republican majority in Congress.... [Serious] considerations got lost in the reflexive response, kicked off by [Israeli PM Benjamin] Netanyahu, who proclaimed an hour before the deal was announced that, based on 'early reports,' it was 'a historic mistake.'... By about 9 a.m., House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had both reached conclusions. Boehner said that ... the deal would put Iran on 'a break-out threshold to produce a nuclear bomb,' and that it would 'only embolden Iran -- the world's largest sponsor of terror.' 'It sounds,' a reporter later said to Boehner, 'like you've already rejected it.' 'I want to review all the facts,' the speaker replied. Verdict first -- then the facts." ...
... ** American Self-Deceptionalism. Peter Beinart of the Atlantic: "When critics focus incessantly on the gap between the present deal and a perfect one, what they're really doing is blaming Obama for the fact that the United States is not omnipotent. This isn't surprising given that American omnipotence is the guiding assumption behind contemporary Republican foreign policy. Ask any GOP presidential candidate except Rand Paul what they propose doing about any global hotspot and their answer is the same: be tougher.... And recognizing the limits of American power also means recognizing the limits of American exceptionalism. It means recognizing that no matter how deeply Americans believe in their country's unique virtue, the United States is subject to the same restraints that have governed great powers in the past. For the Republican right, that's a deeply unwelcome realization. For many other Americans, it's a relief. It's a sign that, finally, the Bush era in American foreign policy is over."
... Julian Borger of the Guardian outlines the key points of the agreement. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Joby Warrick of the Washington Post: "In a remarkable reversal, the goal of freezing Iran's progress toward a weapons capability was achieved not with warplanes but with handshakes." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... The New York Times is updating reactions to the international nuclear agreement with Iran. "The Iran nuclear deal was welcomed by world leaders like David Cameron of Britain, Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Pope Francis." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Abby Ohlheiser of the Washington Post: "The fate of several Americans held in Iran, including a Washington Post journalist detained last July, remains separate from the historic nuclear deal announced Tuesday, even after U.S. officials repeatedly raised the issue with Tehran. After news of the nuclear deal, Jason Rezaian's brother and The Washington Post's executive editor renewed calls for the release of Rezaian, The Post's Tehran bureau chief, who is facing trial on charges that include espionage. Rezaian has strongly denied the allegations."
Katie Zezima of the Washington Post: "President Obama will announce a pilot program to bring broadband to low-income households, attempting to close a gap that leaves many without high-speed internet. The plan, called ConnectHome, will launch in 27 cities nationwide and is expected to reach 275,000 low-income households. The program will also come to the Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma, where Obama will speak Wednesday."
Binyamin Appelbaum of the New York Times: "Janet L. Yellen, the Federal Reserve chairwoman, told lawmakers Wednesday that proposals to increase congressional oversight of the central bank could cause collateral damage to the broader economy. Ms. Yellen's warning, delivered in prepared testimony to the House Financial Services Committee, marked an intensification of the Fed's opposition to the measures, mostly backed by congressional Republicans."
Josh Lederman & Nancy Benac of the AP: "... President Barack Obama called Tuesday for bipartisan action to revamp a criminal justice system riddled with inequities that result in unduly harsh prison sentences, particularly for minorities, and cost the government billions for unwarranted mass incarceration. 'In far too many cases, the punishment simply does not fit the crime,' Obama told a crowd of more than 3,000 at the NAACP's annual convention.... Obama ticked off statistics showing that the U.S. prison population has quadrupled since 1980 and doubled in the last two decades alone."
Katrina vanden Heuvel in the Washington Post: "... House Republicans are actively working to protect dark-money groups, inserting a provision into a spending bill last month to protect them from new disclosure requirements. But there is a simple way that President Obama can address the issue of dark money and advance the cause of transparency. The president should sign an executive order requiring federal contractors to disclose their contributions to dark-money groups.... Such an order would not eliminate dark money. It would, however, expose de facto political contributions by powerful corporation that hold federal contracts, including JP Morgan Chase, Exxon Mobil, and Koch Industries. Moreover, with the 10 largest federal contractors receiving approximately $1.5 trillion from the government since 2000, an executive order would enable the American people to see where their tax dollars are really going."
Paul Krugman: "... only a combination of rigid preconceptions and sheer ignorance can explain the way right-wingers still go around sniggering about [President] Obama's green-energy promotion. Far from being a bust, that policy was at least a contributing factor to an energy revolution."
Jonathan Chait on the ridiculous gimmicks Congressional Republicans cook up to increase domestic spending without upsetting Grover Norquist. "In theory, they like cutting spending, but in practice, the only spending programs they actually specify for reductions are the ones aimed at poor people, which Democrats don't like to cut, creating a stalemate."
Mark Berman of the Washington Post: "Missouri and Texas, which have combined to carry out nearly all of the executions in the United States this year, are set to execute two inmates by lethal injection this week.... These executions would be the first since the Supreme Court said last month that a drug used in troublesome lethal injections could be used going forward. ...
... New Lede: "Authorities in Missouri executed an inmate on Tuesday night, making him the first person put to death by a state since the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on lethal injection last month."
Please Don't Feed the Animals People. Tara Culp-Ressler of Think Progress: "In a Facebook post published Monday night, the Oklahoma GOP suggested that the millions of Americans receiving food stamps this year should not be enrolled in the program because 'the animals will grow dependent on handouts and will not learn to take care of themselves.'... Opponents of maintaining state and federal funding for social safety net programs have a long history of making comparisons between government beneficiaries and animals, which is widely considered to be a racially coded insult." ...
... Randy Brogdon, Oklahoma Republican party chair: Oh, sorry, didn't mean to offend. BUT "This post was supposed to be an analogy that compared two situations illustrating the cycle of government dependency in America, not humans as animals." You yahoos "misinterpreted" it. Something, something about "free market principles." CW: Yes, how could anybody find an analogy -- a mere literary device -- offensive? We must be stoopid. ...
... Ed Kilgore: "For a political party or an elected official or a great big adult political candidate to do so is offensive not because it 'offends' people or is 'politically incorrect' but because it is factually incorrect and hateful and certainly in conflict with the Judeo-Christian values that I am quite sure the Republican Party of Oklahoma believes it upholds."
Sandhya Somashekhar & Danielle Paquette of the Washington Post: "An anti-abortion group on Tuesday released an undercover video of an executive at Planned Parenthood sipping red wine while discussing in graphic detail how to abort a fetus to preserve its organs for medical research -- and also the costs associated with sharing that tissue with scientists. The video, filmed by a group called the Center for Medical Progress, threatens to reignite a long-standing debate over the use of fetal tissue harvested through abortions, and could add fuel to efforts seeking to ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. In a statement, a spokesman for Planned Parenthood said the video misrepresents the organization's work." ...
... Here's Planned Parenthood's statement. CW: Sorry, PP, being reasonable, lawful & ethical holds no truck in right-wing world's view. Just looky here:
... Polly Mosendz of Newsweek: "Planned Parenthood is under investigation in Louisiana after a video surfaced claiming to implicate the organization in a scheme to sell the body parts of infants. 'Today's video of a Planned Parenthood official discussing the systematic harvesting and trafficking of human body parts is shocking and gruesome,' Governor Bobby Jindal said in a statement. However, the video is not nearly as straightforward as Jindal's explanation." CW: There is no matter too obscure, too discredited nor too crazy to incite Bobby Jindal to exploit. ...
... Also, Carly Fiorina. John McCain.weighs in, too. And Connie Chung, what are you doing? ...
... Scott Walker, et al.: me too, me too, me too. Surprisingly, they're calling on Congress to defund Planned Parenthood.
Jack Ewing of the New York Times: "The International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday that it would remain involved in Greece's bailout only if eurozone leaders agreed on a plan that would make the country's debt manageable for decades to come. The aggressive stance sets up a stand-off with Germany and other eurozone creditors, which have been reluctant to provide additional debt relief. The I.M.F., in a report released publicly on Tuesday, proposed that eurozone creditors should consider letting Athens write off part of its huge debt or at least make no payments on its eurozone debt for 30 years." ...
... Josh Barro of the New York Times: "The I.M.F. memo amounts to an admission that the eurozone cannot work in its current form. It lays out three options for achieving Greek debt sustainability, all of which are tantamount to a fiscal union, an arrangement through which wealthier countries would make payments to support the Greek economy. Not coincidentally, this is the solution many economists have been telling European officials is the only way to save the euro -- and which northern European countries have been resisting because it is so costly.... If Greece stays in the euro, it will need much more financial support from the rest of Europe than was admitted in Monday's deal, and the I.M.F. is asking European governments to put that admission on paper."
Presidential Race
Mike Lillis & Cristina Marcos of the Hill: "Hillary Clinton took Capitol Hill by storm on Tuesday with a daylong series of friendly talks with congressional Democrats on the most pressing issues of the day.... Bernie Sanders ... hijacked a set of microphones -- usually reserved for Senate leaders -- after leaving a private meeting between the former secretary of State and Senate Democrats in the Capitol Tuesday afternoon. He then used the impromptu press conference to question Clinton's populist bona fides on a range of issues, including trade policy, the Iraq War, regulating big banks and tackling climate change." ...
... Jonathan Weisman & Nicholas Fandos of the New York Times: "Hillary Rodham Clinton unequivocally embraced the Iran nuclear deal in a meeting with House Democrats at the Capitol on Tuesday, according to people who were at the meeting. Mrs. Clinton, who was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, reminded the Democrats, many of whom are nervous about the agreement, that she helped assemble the international coalition that imposed crippling economic sanctions on Iran. That, she told them, was what forced the Iranians to the bargaining table." ...
... Nicholas Fandos: "Hillary Rodham Clinton took her campaign to Capitol Hill on Tuesday, where she made overtures to Congressional Democrats and spoke cautiously -- and with a potential eye toward the future -- about the Iran nuclear deal announced earlier in the day." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Alan Rappeport of the New York Times: "Statements from [GOP] White House hopefuls warned of nuclear chaos in the Middle East, criticism of President Obama's abilities as a negotiator, and calls on Congress to stop the deal in its tracks." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Nick Gass & Adam Lerner of Politico rounded up all the GOP presidential candidates' statements about how horrible was the deal they hadn't read. ...
... Ed Kilgore contrasted the "Tell It Like It Is" Chris Christie from a few weeks ago with the "Tough Talking" Chris Cristie of yesterday.
Alan Rappeport: Donald Trump "is in a statistical tie with former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida in a Suffolk University/USA Today national poll of potential primary voters released on Tuesday." CW: Yeah, yeah, I know: early polling isn't predictive of the eventual outcome of the primaries, but in this case, it does remind us of how base the GOP base is. ...
... Ben Dreyfus of Mother Jones: Donald Trump tweeted -- & his campaign later deleted -- a "Make America Great" campaign message featuring Waffen-SS soldiers as exemplars of "greatness." His campaign blamed an intern for the tweet. CW: You're fired, kid. The stock photo the Donald/intern lifted is here.
CW: We've all been so terribly upset that Ted Cruz's book A Time for Truth didn't make the New York Times best-seller list that we forgot to read it. Seems Ted's fellow Republicans Mitch McConnell & Rand Paul are denying some of Ted's "truths." They are all such paragons of probity it's hard to know whom to believe, isn't it?
Beyond the Beltway
Manny Fernandez of the New York Times: "Jade Helm 15, an eight-week military exercise that has generated paranoia for months fueled by conservative bloggers and Internet postings, begins Wednesday in Texas and six other states: Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico and Utah.... The military exercise will train Special Operations troops in what Army planners call 'unconventional warfare.'... Much of the paranoia over Jade Helm 15 is the outgrowth of an anti-Obama sentiment that is widespread in Texas and parts of the Southwest.... Sindy Miller, who runs a hair salon on Main Street [in Christoval, Texas], said fears of a military takeover have been the talk of this West Texas town, southeast of Midland. 'They're worried that they're going to come in and take their firearms away,' Ms. Miller said. 'Martial law, basically. I try not to listen to all these conspiracy-theory-type people. All they're worried about is their beer and their guns.'" ...
... CW: If you want to know how successful the McConnell-Boehner-Ailes-Koch alliance has been at unifying the nation behind conservative ideals, this article should help. Their efforts have turned common ignoramuses into crazy ignoramuses. This bunch will go down in history as the worst source of domestic turmoil & anti-American sentiment in 100 years, maybe in 175 years.
Richard Winton & Joel Rubino of the Los Angeles Times: "In the two years since Gardena police officers fatally shot an unarmed man, city officials fought to keep graphic video of the killing under wraps.... Gardena's attempts to prevent the public from viewing the shooting met with defeat Tuesday, when a federal judge ordered the release of the recordings. In unsealing the videos, U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson said the public had an interest in seeing the recordings, especially after the city settled a lawsuit over the shooting for $4.7 million.... The judge's decision was a response to a request from the Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press and Bloomberg, which challenged a blanket protective order that had prevented the release of the videos and other evidence in the court case.... After The Times published the videos online, 9th Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski issued an order that 'the police car camera video footage shall remain under seal pending further order of this court.'" Includes video.
News Ledes
New York Times: "After a marathon session that stretched into the early hours of Thursday, Greek lawmakers narrowly approved a package of harsh austerity measures and economic policy changes that were required by its creditors as the terms of a $94 billion bailout package.... The vote was seen as a victory for the country's prime minister, Alexis Tsipras."
Denver Post: "Starting Wednesday morning, jurors will begin deliberating about whether James Holmes is guilty of killing 12 people and trying to wound 70 more.' The prosecution & defense presented their closing arguments today.
AP: "A team trying to fly a solar-powered plane around the world said Wednesday it is suspending the journey in Hawaii after the plane suffered battery damage during its record-breaking flight to the islands."
Reuters: "The United States handed back to Iraq on Wednesday antiquities it said it had seized in a raid on Islamic State fighters in Syria, saying the haul was proof the militants were funding their war by smuggling ancient treasures."
Reuters: "A 94-year-old German who worked as a bookkeeper at the Auschwitz death camp has been convicted of being an accessory to the murder of 300,000 people and sentenced to four years in prison, in what could be one of the last big Holocaust trials. Oskar Groening did not kill anyone himself while working at the camp in Nazi-occupied Poland during the second world war, but prosecutors argued that by sorting the bank notes taken from the trainloads of arriving Jews he helped support a regime responsible for mass murder." ...
... CW: For more on Groening, Politico Magazine publishes an adaptation of a section of Laurence Rees' book Auschwitz, a New History.
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And now, your moment of zen:
Watching the Daily Show's Month of Zen, streaming all of the shows in order, has been an interesting history lesson. But tonight we achieved true zen. Lewis Black's rant (2/16/2006 show) included something about an obscure NASA mission, whose prime objective was so far in the future it was of no consequence: The launch of the New Horizons spacecraft, due to pass Pluto sometime in 2015. Today.
http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/4mss3r/back-in-black---exploration
Yesterday I linked Dennis Ross' WaPo thoughts on the Iran deal, today here are Israel Ambassador Ron Dermer's (spoiler alert - he thinks it's a bad deal).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-bad-deal-today-a-worse-deal-tomorrow/2015/07/14/5d34ba00-2a39-11e5-a250-42bd812efc09_story.html?hpid=z3
Dermer's first objection to the deal is that it does not "dismantle for dismantling," meaning that a preferred trade would be that the multiple sanctions would be cancelled by the P5+1 (including UN sanctions) in step with Iran's dismantling of its entire nuclear capability, down to zero. Since that outcome has never been on anyone's negotiating table, Dermer's objection can be discounted as a red herring.
I won't get into his other objections, because I just want to focus on the first, here. Note that this nuclear deal does not require Israel to do ANYTHING! If you were an Iranian negotiator, and the P5+1 was asking you to dismantle your nuc capability, would you not ask first in return to get assurance that your principal regional adversary (for Iran, this is Israel, although you could loop in Pakistan as a potential threat if you want to get creative) also demonstrate that it is nullifying any nuclear potential? I assume that way back at the informal start, that must have been an Iranian demand, but over the many months of preliminaries the P5+1 persuaded the Persians that there was no way that Israel's capabilities could be discussed or factored into any agreement. Imagine how difficult it must have been to get that accepted by Iran's negotiators. And Israel's leadership must have been well aware of the dynamic. But to quote Randy Newman: "Are they grateful? No, they're spiteful and they're hateful."
So, in this agreement, Israel's (alleged) nuclear capabilities have been completely unexamined, unchanged, which is a huge unpublicized accomplishment. But Ambassador Dermer is not about to give credit to that when he criticized "dismantlement."
Hatred as a Political Philosophy
Marie points to the McConnell/Boehner/Ailes/Kochs cabal, or maybe that should be junta, as prime progenitors (or at least vital supporters and instigators) of the sort of propaganda that instills fear, hatred, ignorance, and suspicion in a certain population. That's bad enough, but the problem for those of us who eschew the Confederate Kool Aid, is that those who imbibe that fetid concoction in ever larger doses have created a swelling army of winger zombies who see conspiracies, wrongdoing, and treason everywhere.
I submit, as my first exhibit today, an innocuous and rather sweet story posted on boston.com about a woman who spends her summer months serving as a tour guide about that city on something called Duck Tours. The rest of the year she keeps busy with odd jobs. A nice little story, right?
Wrong.
She is clearly a soshulist taker from the "democrat" party who is picking the pockets of real 'mericans by illegally going on welfare.
I shit you not, kids. The comments are full of this sort of crap. First, there is not the slightest mention of a party affiliation in the story. There is also no indication that this woman receives unemployment or any government assistance when she leaves her tour gig. She's a seasonal employee by choice and works other jobs during the winter months. For this she's attacked by wingers trained by the above cabal to see traitors and takers in their Cheerios. (Oh, and a great big thanks a bunch to Mittens (The Rat) Romney as well.)
Others complain that the website is most certainly an arm of liberal propagandists for not posting this woman's financial records in order to prove to Real Americans that she's not living off their tax dollars.
It's a story about a fucking tour guide you idiots!
I know this is not on a par with the Iran deal or the ACA or even marriage equality. But in many ways it's even more significant because it reveals the depths to which the mendacity and suspicions of treason promoted by Confederate hypocrites have penetrated. Every day in my red state I hear snippets of conversations, angry, resentful conversations about all the takers who are destroying this country, forcing people to do things they "shouldn't have to do", and the need to "take back our country" from the "moochers" and "you know who I'm talking about..."
You can smell the hatred.
And that right there, that vengeful warping of this country's DNA, is what these people have been up to. And they've been immensely successful. Any sense of kindness, concern for others, or a belief in the idea of innocent until proven guilty have been replaced by knee jerk condemnation and attacks of the most shocking kind. I can't sit in on a meeting without hearing some mention about how the guv'mint is ruining everything for everyone, and those Democrats! Worse than Nazis. Presentation of facts in such cases is met with deep suspicion.
And this nice little story about a sweet lady who has a ball doing a job she loves and is obviously very good at, to be attacked as a liberal taker worthy only of hatred and enmity, is a stark demonstration of how ingrained this Confederate philosophy of ignorance, suspicion, and hatred has become.
It's way beyond sad. It's scary. It truly is.
What's lost in the peremptory condemnations of the Iran deal, by people who haven't even read it, is the fact that it was the result of a negotiation.
NEG-O-TI-A-TION:
"...a dialogue between two or more people or parties intended to reach a mutually beneficial outcome..." (per Wikipedia)
A successful negotiation means both sides get some of what they want, but typically, not all of what they desire. This means give and take. You give some, you get some, and so does the other party.
Whenever I hear these idiots demanding that we pull off the Iranian's shoes and stick their feet into a roasting fire until they holler "Uncle" and give us everything while they get nothing, I want to ask, first, how old they are, and second, are they really that stupid or are they just pretending so they can win votes from the really dangerous morons?
Anyone who thinks the Iranians, clearly a smart, tough bunch, were going to bend over and give it all up for a subscription to National Geographic and a twenty year supply of Juicy Fruit inhabits a world I hope never to visit. But if I do end up there, I'll probably be heavily sedated and under a psychiatrist's care.
The Peter Beinart article on The Atlantic site, liked above, is excellent. He makes the salient point that there is a big difference between a fantasy outcome and what is reasonable in the real world. The problem is that people like Tom Cotton don't live in that world. They live in a world where you can go to the downtown Mercedes dealership, offer the guy 20 bucks and threaten to blackjack him if he doesn't hand over, with all speed, a loaded S Class sedan with a full tank of gas.
Where the fuck do these people come from?
More importantly, how did they get elected? These are the sort of people who, 30 years ago, would be sitting, unshaven and unshowered for days, in front of their TV set screaming at the Dialing 4 Dollars guy. Now they're being asked what they think of serious international nuclear agreements.
WTF!
When will that damn interloper start acting like a lame duck? Isn't being President-while-black enough? Instead, he just seems to crack on while the GOP becomes more obviously hateful and ignorant.
Their desperation is polishing Obama's legacy. He looks ever more reasonable, while the GOP looks like a howling pack of lunatics. Looking backward in a few decades, it will be difficult not to recognize this era's GOP clown car, flaming over the cliff ala Evil Kneival. Shameful and embarrassing. Exceptionalism my ass.
Demographic changes are unstoppable, but the Supreme Court, as Kate always reminds us, can easily prolong regressive ideologies.
Whatever had been the outcome of the Iran negotiations there was never any chance that the Republicans and our co-President, Bibi, would have found it anything but a treasonous deal that will guarantee all our deaths in a mushroom cloud. It was engendered under Obama and he has been winning a lot of victories lately. Each one makes them more desperate and more unhinged.
@Akhilleus: Thanks for linking the boston.com story & highlighting the comments. To all those complaints about McKinnon getting a "real job," I liked the comment, "... like sitting around being miserable and posting negative comments? That kind of job?"
None of them bothers to notice that McKinnon's job requires training, & she had the perfect background -- not to mention personality -- for it. Her double major was history & theater & she interned as a tour guide in Washington, D.C.
The Duck Tour sounds like fun. Think I'll go. Hope McKinnon has a tip jar.
Maybe there's a nice Hate-Mobile tour for the commenters where they go around shouting obscenities in front of the JFK Library, the Department of Social Services, & the Mass. Supreme Court building.
Marie
Trumpy Trumped
Trumpy the Trumpet's "Xenophobe's Delight Tour", while a hit with the haters is starting to wear thin on the same winger pundits who used to cheer him on when he was riding the Birther Wave.
Imagine my surprise when the Journal came out with an article quoting several big studies proving, contra Trumpy, that immigrants--especially immigrants from Mexico--have a much lower rate of both criminal activity and incarceration than native born Americans.
In California, home to millions of immigrants, most of whom come from Latin countries (4.3 million from Mexico alone), "The incarceration rate for foreign-born adults is 297 per 100,000 in the population, compared [with] 813 per 100,000 for U.S.-born adults. The foreign-born, who make up roughly 35% of California’s adult population, constitute 17% of the state prison population", that according to the Public Policy Institute of California.
This is, to put it kindly, is just slightly at odds with the picture painted by Sack O Shit Trumpy.
Not only that, according to FBI data, from 1990 to 2013, the number of undocumented immigrants shot from 3.5 million to 11.2 million. If you buy Trumpy's brand of manure, this should have more than tripled the rate of criminal activity, yet once again, facts beat Trumpy over his hysterically coiffed head. Violent crime rates declined 48% (this includes rapes by all those sneaky Mexicans). Property crime rates dipped 41%.
Facts are not kind to winger demagogues. Or any winger, now that I think of it.
But I had to wonder why the Journal was going out of its way to be nice to immigrants by printing, ya know, actual facts!
Turns out Trumpy is pissing them off. They can see the graffiti on the wall like many others. They insist that GOP stalwarts like Rick Perry and Marco Rubio have GREAT ideas for dealing with immigration. Last I heard, Perry's idea was a bigger wall. And Rubio, after floating a tiny, half whispered intimation that maybe we should reconsider immigration reform, tucked tail and ran after Fox bots hammered him hard. Way to lead Marco!
The powers that be are getting ready to blame the loss of this election on Trump. They just need to get their fingerprints on the warrant for his arrest while they can still claim to be in on the ground floor. They also make sure to throw in that the "Liberal Press" LOVES Trump and hangs on his every word.
Whatever.
Marie,
I LOVE the idea of a Hate Mobile Tour.
They'd have to make sure the tour bus has bulletproof glass. Not to protect the haters, but to make sure when they all pull out their pieces and try to shoot passersby ("OH GOD! A GAY COUPLE! KILL THEM!") or public monuments or signs that don't have the Confederate Seal of Approval, the bullets will remain inside the vehicle. Might be a good form of pest control too.
In other cities they can drive the tour to locations of past Confederate atrocities where the haters can revel in orgasmic frenzy reliving the glories of mass killings or demonstrations of white supremacy from bygone days.
You'd make a killing. Literally.
Reaching For a Clever Title. Words Fail...
So the president is visiting Oklahoma today, you know that place that exists because Mary Fallin and a few hundred 'baggers built it all by themselves. He'll be addressing the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma about a new program to bring high speed internet connectivity to rural areas. And Oklahomans are getting ready to welcome him with a rally featuring hundreds of.....Confederate flags.
Really?
They say it's all about heritage. But waving the symbol of slavery at a black president? That's heritage alright. The heritage of that beloved winger institution of slavery.
But what can you expect from a state whose governor is completely ignorant of even the basics of American governance as outlined by the Constitution, no less?
It appears the above mentioned Mary Fallin believes that the three branches of government are: the Supreme Court, the legistlative, and.......the people. I suppose she means "white" people. Interestingly she left out the Executive Branch. Funny that, in'it?
How long before those upstanding citizens will be complaining that the Choctaw is a nation of moochers for getting high speed internet connections? We won't remind them that the Choctaw were here when their ancestors in Europe were still painting themselves blue, howling at the moon, and worshiping a big tree. Not to mention that they mooched the land they're living on from Native Americans.
Like I said, words fail.
Re tour guides,
An old friend and former colleague is enjoying his retirement by working as a licensed tour guide in the Gettysburg National Park. To be so licensed requires a lengthy and rigorous process of study, training and testing. see:
http://www.gettysburgtourguides.org/faqs.html
As you may imagine, he has some wonderful stories of clients who insist on hearing about nothing except the valor and heroism of those couragous Sons of the South, fighting the great battle against tyranny and oppression in defense of their freedumb and sacred way of life. Many become downright hostile at any attempt to present the tiniest dose of anything that might conflict with this view.
Those of us of who live in New England and are of a more liberal mindset know not to read the comments on boston.com. I figured it out when I used to read Ellen Goodman's columns for the Globe online. The comments were shockingly hateful; the misogyny, in particular, thick enough to use as vinyl siding. I've certainly read rightwing-crazy comments on the NY Times, but never that sort of vitriol. Makes one wonder why the Globe even allows comments.
But speaking of rightwing-crazy and the Times, who thought we'd be treated to such marvelous examples of the former right there on the front page today? I'm astounded that these people are willing to let their conspiracy-theory paranoia be quoted on the front page of a national paper of the Times' stature. What an incredibly limited world they live in if they actually believe--and some of they do seem to actually believe--that the US military is about to take over Texas. I'd accuse them of taking Orwell's 1984 too much to heart, but I don't think that's where they're getting their ideas.