;)
The Commentariat -- June 3, 2015
All internal links removed.
Jennifer Steinhauer & Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "In a remarkable reversal of national security policy formed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Senate voted on Tuesday to curtail the federal government's sweeping surveillance of American phone records, sending the legislation to President Obama's desk for his signature. The passage of the measure, achieved after a vigorous debate on the Senate floor, will lead to the reinstatement of government surveillance efforts that were blacked out on Monday after Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, blocked their extension. The vote was a rebuke to Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, as lawmakers beat back a series of amendments that he sought that would have rolled back proposed controls on government spying.... The vote was held after members of the House starkly warned that they would not accept any changes to the law, setting off an unusual stalemate between House Speaker John A. Boehner and Mr. McConnell." ...
... New Lede (9:00 pm ET Tuesday): "In a significant scaling back of national security policy formed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Senate on Tuesday approved legislation curtailing the federal government's sweeping surveillance of American phone records, and President Obama signed the measure hours later.' ...
... As Dana Milbank points out in his column, linked under Presidential Race, both McConnell & Paul "came out losers. Paul, an opponent of the Patriot Act, not only failed in his effort to block the reauthorization, but he antagonized his colleagues so much that they refused to take up his (reasonable) amendments. McConnell, a fan of the original Patriot Act, tried to outmaneuver Paul by pushing the vote to the deadline, but this miscalculation caused the Patriot Act to lapse, and McConnell failed in his bid to strengthen the new legislation." ...
Glad the Senate finally passed the USA Freedom Act. It protects civil liberties and our national security. I'll sign it as soon as I get it. -- @POTUS
... Sabrina Siddiqui of the Guardian: "The US Senate on Tuesday passed a bill that would end the bulk collection of millions of Americans' phone records, the most significant surveillance reform for decades and a direct result of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden's revelations to the Guardian two years ago." ...
... Tuesday Afternoon. Mike DeBonis & Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post: "The Senate advanced a sweeping remake of U.S. surveillance powers Tuesday, two days after an internal split among Republicans caused the legal authority for key counterterrorism programs to temporarily expire. By a vote of 83 to 14, the measure cleared a crucial procedural hurdle, as senators acted to close debate on the USA Freedom Act, a House-passed bill that would end the National Security Agency's practice of collecting troves of call data from telephone companies.... Depending on the amendment votes and procedural maneuvers, the bill could be signed into law as soon as Tuesday night." (Also linked yesterday.)
The TSA as Audience-Participation Kabuki Theater. David Graham of the Atlantic: "The TSA doesn't work and never has.... TSA's failure to detect undercover agents might seem like familiar news, since it's a part of a pattern. Reports about the TSA failing to find planted weapons and the like pop up every few years."
Fear of the Supremes. Louise Radnofsky & Stephanie Armour of the Wall Street Journal: "Officials from states across the nation flew to Chicago in early May for a secret 24-hour meeting to discuss their options if the Supreme Court rules they have to operate their own exchanges in order for residents to get health-insurance subsidies." CW: You'll probably have to access this article via Google. Starting here worked for me. ...
... The Kaiser Foundation has a state-by-state map of how many people would lose subsidies if the plaintiffs in King v. Burwell prevail & how much federal money is at stake for people in these states. Via Greg Sargent, who writes, "... the greatest numbers of people who stand to lose subsidies live in states that are key presidential battlegrounds and home to some of the most contested Senate races of the cycle."
Jon Swaine & Oliver Laughland of the Guardian: "A plan to force all American law enforcement agencies to report killings by their officers was unveiled by US senators on Tuesday, a day after the Guardian published an investigation into the fatal use of force by police. Senators Barbara Boxer [D] of California and Cory Booker [D] of New Jersey proposed legislation that would demand all states submit reports to the US Department of Justice that they said would bring 'transparency and accountability to law enforcement agencies nationwide'."
Jack Gillum, et al., of the AP: "Scores of low-flying planes circling American cities are part of a civilian air force operated by the FBI and obscured behind fictitious companies, The Associated Press has learned. The AP traced at least 50 aircraft back to the FBI, and identified more than 100 flights in 11 states over a 30-day period since late April, orbiting both major cities and rural areas.... Some of the aircraft can also be equipped with technology that can identify thousands of people below through the cellphones they carry, even if they're not making a call or in public. Officials said that practice, which mimics cell towers and gets phones to reveal basic subscriber information, is used in only limited situations." ...
... Digby: "Well, ok then. Their identity is hidden behind front companies, they don't bother with warrants and they only use the information for really, really important stuff to catch real criminals."
Sam Stein of the Huffington Post: "At least one member of Congress was aware that former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) allegedly sexually molested a male former student prior to his time in Congress. Relatively early on during Hastert's speakership, Rep. Mel Watt (D-N.C.) was approached with news about the alleged abuse, according to a source with knowledge of the conversation that took place with Watt.... According to the source, the person who approached Watt was an intermediary for the family of the abuse victim and knew the North Carolina congressman informally.... After The Huffington Post first reported the claims on Tuesday, Watt sent a statement saying that he had, in fact, heard about allegations against Hastert during the early days of his speakership. But he said the information did not appear either reliable or serious enough to prompt action."
Eesha Pandit in Salon: In EEOC v. Abercrombie, "Why would [Justice] Scalia, such a noted opponent of civil rights protections, leverage the Civil Rights Act which he has challenged in many of the opinions he's penned? In fact, this kind of ruling is of a piece with other recent decisions within the Roberts Court, in which the conservative judges are more open to civil rights claims in which religious discrimination is alleged.... Particularly interesting here is the burden of protection: If employers like Abercrombie are required to make accommodations for a person's religious expression, then how can they be allowed to dictate their employee's access to health care (like birth control) at the behest of the employer's religious beliefs? How might Justice Scalia, who notes that it was Abercrombie's responsibility to ensure that Samantha Elauf could practice her religious expression, find that it was acceptable for Hobby Lobby's owners to foist their values on employees?"
Jerry Hirsch of the Los Angeles Times: "Elon Musk says his companies don't need the estimated $4.9 billion they enjoy in government support, but the money will help them move faster to transform the dirty business of energy. 'If I cared about subsidies, I would have entered the oil and gas industry,' said Musk, the chief executive of Tesla Motors and SpaceX and the chairman of SolarCity. Musk's remarks came in response to a Times story detailing his corporate strategy of incubating high-risk, high-tech companies with government money — estimating the total received or pledged so far at $4.9 billion, a figure Musk did not dispute." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Sam Borden, et al., of the New York Times: "Sepp Blatter ... said Tuesday that he would resign his [presidency of FIFA] as law enforcement officials confirmed that he was a focus of a federal corruption investigation. Mr. Blatter had for days tried to distance himself from the controversy, but several United States officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that in their efforts to build a case against Mr. Blatter they were hoping to win the cooperation of some of the FIFA officials now under indictment and work their way up the organization." CW: No surprise here. ...
... (Tuesday Afternoon.) Sam Borden: "Sepp Blatter said Tuesday that he would resign from the presidency of FIFA, the international governing body of soccer, in the wake of a corruption inquiry, an extraordinary turn just four days after he was re-elected and defiantly insisted that he was blameless and committed to cleaning up the organization. Mr. Blatter, 79, said he would ask FIFA to schedule a new election for his replacement as soon as possible. The next FIFA congress is scheduled to meet in May 2016, but he acknowledged that the organization could not wait that long for new leadership given the current situation." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Presidential Race
David Fahrenthold, et al., of the Washington Post: "Today, the Clinton Foundation is unlike anything else in the history of the nation and, perhaps, the world: It is a global philanthropic empire run by a former U.S. president and closely affiliated with a potential future president, with the audacious goal of solving some of the world's most vexing problems by bringing together the wealthiest, glitziest and most powerful people from every part of the planet." The writers take a deep dive into history & doings of the foundation. ...
... Ed Kilgore: "... unlike the scandal-seeking missile that is the New York Times coverage of All Things Hillary, the WaPo take concedes that the Clinton Foundation's genesis is almost entirely altruistic, and that whatever benefits donors or the Clintons derived from its efforts were a byproduct of the unique situation of two people with a globally significant past and (perhaps) future." ...
... James Rosen of Fox "News": "Over a five-year span, senior officials at the National Archives and Records Administrations (NARA) voiced growing alarm about Hillary Clinton's record-keeping practices as secretary of state, according to internal documents obtained by Fox News." CW: Despite the source, this story would seem to be credible. Rosen cites specific NARA e-mails obtained via an FIOA request. ...
... Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "Chris Hughes, the publisher of The New Republic, and his husband, Sean Eldridge, will hold a fund-raiser for Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign, two people briefed on the invitation said. The event will be held on June 30 at the couple's lower Manhattan home, the people said. Mr. Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook, and Mr. Eldridge have sought in the last few years to become political players."
He seems nice.Jamelle Bouie of Slate: "The Republican Party consensus has turned back toward Cheneyism.... Like Cheney, these [presidential] candidates have plans for an aggressive, more confrontational United States."
"The Senate Held Hostage by Presidential Ambitions." Dana Milbank: Senate Republicans who are running for president "have discovered that tying the Senate in knots is a cheap and easy way of gaining attention. But a casualty of their game is governing: turning Congress, already barely functioning, into a legislative mess. It is no small irony that Republicans are running for president by proving that their party can't govern."
Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: Rand Paul's campaign against bulk collection of telephone records has raised his standing with his father Ron's libertarian supporters.
** Jennifer Senior profiles Jeb Bush in New York. Pretty entertaining. Here's a tidbit: "He is stubborn, relentless, exhausting.... [When he was governor,] Jeb mainly espoused a gentlemanly approach to dissent. But on occasion, he could be ruthless. When Alex Villalobos, a Republican state senator, refused to support an education initiative of his in 2006, Jeb stripped him of his position as majority leader and moved him to a minuscule office with only a TV tray for a desk." CW: Make that petty, vindictive, obnoxious. ...
... Here's Senior's take on Jeb's competition: "Almost all of the other candidates seem to have more Achilles' heels than they do feet." Ha! ...
... "Making a Mockery of the Law." Eric Lichtblau & Nick Corasaniti of the New York Times: "... lawyers say [Jeb] Bush ... is stretching the limits of election law by crisscrossing the country, hiring a political team and raising tens of millions of dollars at fund-raisers, all without declaring -- except once, by mistake -- that he is a candidate. Some election experts say Mr. Bush passed the legal threshold to be considered a candidate months ago, even if he has not formally acknowledged it. Federal law makes anyone who raises or spends $5,000 in an effort to become president a candidate and thus subject to the spending and disclosure restrictions. Some limited activities are allowed for candidates who are merely 'testing the waters' for a run.... Last week, two campaign watchdog groups, Democracy 21 and the Campaign Legal Center, called on the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel to investigate whether Mr. Bush had broken election law...." ...
... Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "The Nevada Legislature adjourned Monday without voting on a measure to change the state's presidential nominating process from caucuses to a primary, a blow to Jeb Bush, who was hoping for the switch. Some Nevada Republicans supported the change, but the party's leaders in the Assembly did not think there were enough votes for passage and never called the roll. That was in part because Harry Reid, the state's senior United States senator and the Democratic leader, intervened to help torpedo the change. Mr. Reid called Harvey Munford, the lone Democratic member of the Assembly ... to support the switch in committee, and persuaded him to drop his support."
Daniel Strauss of TPM highlights some features of Scott Walker's state budget proposal, the better to make him popular among the nation's buttheads: drug-testing public assistance recipients (somebody get a big ole pee cup for Elon Musk); slashing the state university system's budget (get thee behind me, liberal profs); getting rid of half the scientists in the state natural resources department (heathens!); cutting state parks funds (stay indoors more, kids); cutting public broadcastings (bunch of leftist liars). ...
... Digby in Salon: "No matter how far to the right [Scott Walker] goes, it will never be enough for a Republican base gone mad."
Megan Apper & Andrew Kaczynski of BuzzFeed: "Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee joked earlier in the year he wished he could have pretended to be transgender in high school 'when it came time to take showers in PE.' Huckabee made the comments at the 2015 National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, earlier this year but the comments were uploaded to YouTube over the weekend by World Net Daily. 'For those who do not think that we are under threat, simply recognize that the fact that we are now in city after city watching ordinances say that your 7-year-old daughter, if she goes into the restroom cannot be offended and you can't be offended if she's greeted there by a 42-year-old man who feels more like a woman than he does a man.'"
David Edwards of the Raw Story: "Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said this week that he was a 'huge fan' of Pope Francis but that the pontiff should stop buying into the global warming debate and, instead, 'leave the science to the scientists.'" ...
... Stupid AND Ignorant. Steve M.: "Does Santorum not realize that the pope actually is 'leaving science to the scientists' -- including the eighty credentialed members of the Vatican's own Pontifical Academy of Sciences, under whose aegis last year's statement on 'Sustainable Humanity, Sustainable Nature: Our Responsibility' was issued?" ...
... CW: Besides all those non-sectarian members of the Pontifical Academy, some of whom are Nobel-Prize winners, Pope Francis himself has an M.A. in chemistry. Nonetheless, you can bet Santorum will repeat his advice to the Pope. Because stupid AND ignorant works for Santorum.
Steve Benen: Ted Cruz goes to Massachusetts & tells the folks gathered before him that John Kennedy would be a Republican today. Because tax cuts. Benen walks back Cruz's "reasoning."
Carrie Dann of NBC News: "Republican Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal will make a 'major announcement' about his 2016 plans in New Orleans on June 24. Jindal, who has already made frequent visits to key primary states and launched a presidential exploratory committee, has previously said that he would made his 2016 plans known after the end of Louisiana's legislative session on June 11." ...
Stephanie Graham of the Washington Spectator, in Salon: Bobby Jindal, at the behest of Grover Norquist, has ruined Louisiana's fiscal health, and all three Republicans who are running to succeed him --including diaper-fetishist Sen. David Vitter -- are running against Jindal's Norquist-centric policies. They are say, BTW, they would accept the Medicaid expansion.
Beyond the Beltway
Texas Winning Arms Race! Manny Fernandez & Dave Montgomery of the New York Times: "Students and faculty members at public and private universities in Texas could be allowed to carry concealed handguns into classrooms, dormitories and other buildings under a bill passed over the weekend by the Republican-dominated Legislature. The measure is being hailed as a victory by gun rights advocates and criticized by many students and professors as irresponsible and unnecessary. The so-called campus-carry bill is expected to be signed into law by the Republican governor, Greg Abbott." ...
... CW Reminder: Many towns in the "Wild West" did not allow people to carry guns within the town limits.
David Kumbroch of WHNT-Huntsville, Alabama: Alabama legislators think they've figured out a way to avoid issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples; they'll do away with the licenses altogether & issue contracts -- to different-sex couples only. CW: Why do I suspect this stunt won't work?
Ben Mathis-Lilley of Slate: "On Tuesday morning, a 26-year-old Muslim man named Usaama Rahim was shot and killed by FBI and Boston law enforcement officials after allegedly drawing a knife during a confrontation. An FBI agent says Rahim had been under 24-hour surveillance as the subject of an 'ongoing' investigation; Boston's police chief says the investigation was terrorism-related and that Rahim was considered a 'threat' who was being approached for questioning.... Rahim's older brother, however, disputes this account.... It's not clear how the elder Rahim, who is said to be 'an imam at a mosque in the San Francisco area,' arrived at his account of events."
CBS Denver: "Della Curry..., the former kitchen manager at Dakota Valley Elementary School in Aurora..., lost her job on Friday after giving school lunches to students who didn't have any money.... In the district, students who fail to qualify for the free lunch or reduced lunch program receive one slice of cheese on a hamburger bun, and a small milk. Curry says that meal is not sufficient. Many times she paid for lunches out of her own pocket."
News Lede
AP: "Doctors completed surgery Tuesday on Secretary of State John Kerry's broken leg at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and predicted he would make a full recovery."
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Reader Comments (17)
I probably should be used to the crazy jumble of nuttiness that come out of the mouths of certain politicians, but Huckabee's trans-gender remarks stopped me cold. "We are under threat" ––and those words alone signify some kind of terror––because trans-gender individuals will be using the restrooms according to their gender and young children will be traumatized or something akin to that, I guess. And of course, he thinks, all those young children will be able to recognize that transgender person. And yet––ah, yes, ole Huck woulda just loved to have pretended he was a girl back in High School so he could take showers with all those females. The disconnect here is astounding; what would be a threat is having this man involved in anything that has to do with governing.
RE: the Clintons and their foundation: Throughout this couples' rise and fall and rise many see only their quest for power. They rarely acknowledge that the Clinton's ambition was not only for that power, but for public service and a desire to change the country for the better as they saw it (and how they saw it did not always turn out well). Given our present state of affairs, I'd say that ain't bad.
What IS bad is gun toting Texas–––I'm hoping the Universities and schools will come up with their own mandate that will counter-act this crazy bill––I think they will be able to do that. What are these people thinking???
Re Elon Musk's $4.9 billion in public support:
I don't think that includes the value to SpaceX of 70 years of publicly funded Aerospace Engineering R & D. It is argued that if only we unleash free enterprise, space travel will be as commonplace as air travel. There never was a leash. No private enterprise could have borne the cost or the risk of developing space exploration. NASA Technology Transfer has benefitted American industry many times over it's cost to the taxpayer.
Disclosure: I spent most of my career at NASA. Forgive me if this sounds like cheerleading.
If you are interested in how Bernie Sanders' fared as mayor of Burlington, VT. for eight years, here's the skinny
http://www.thenation.com/article/208849/bernies-burlington-city-sustainable-future#
In many God-less restrooms across Europe, they have a single bathroom for BOTH SEXES! The HORRORS! Sometimes I have to do my business with one of those creatures from the opposite sex in the stall right next to me while she's also apparently doing the same thing, and it's terrifying! I can almost feel society tearing itself apart just in the time it takes to empty my bladder.
@ D.C. Clark:
You're forgiven, many times over.
And NASA itself could not have done as much as it did to advance the US space program (and Elon Musk's fortunes) had it not itself built on the three decades of military hardware that preceded it, given an early generous boost in the United States with Operation Paperclip, which Willy Ley taught me in the late 1950's brought Germany's rockets their developers and to our shores following WWII. Our first successful satellite, as I remember, was launched by a military rocket.
We all stand on the shoulders of giants, whether or not we know or acknowledge it.
Just more proof that egotarians like Musk have no knowledge or sense of history or choose to ignore both in service to their raging self. Libertarians are scammer, pure and simple.
Some, especially the young, scam themselves, I'm sure, but I'd guess Musk is knowingly running an artful con on the rest of us; and there is enough rhetorical magic in the private-everything mythos to allow him to get away with it.
@safari: The worst unisex bathrooms in Europe are the vespasian-style ones that are designed only for a peeing man & which do not have doors. As you must know, this type of facility isn't so rare. They really do not work for women. I'm not overly modest, but when such a restroom was the closest or only choice, I would ask my husband to head off incoming users.
That said, it looks as if the U.S. is finally going, at least in some places, unisex facilities. Unisex changing rooms, which have toilets, are common now. And a couple of weeks ago, I went to a small state- or federal-run roadside restroom that was totally unisex (on a federal highway in New York state).
It makes economic sense to get over our different-sex bathrooms. Conservatives, with their small-business fetish, might give a thought to how many small businesses would save money by not having to provide separate restrooms. And think how exciting it would be to Mike Huckabee to hear the tinkling of a little lady in the next stall. (Well, okay, that's a downside.)
Marie
@ Marie
Some European bathrooms are atrocious, indeed. My favorites are the ones with no doors and only a hole in the ground, not even a toilet per se. And the rickety doors that don't lock...yeah. Certainly not something we should adopt.
Speaking of the perception of transgender people in American society, Jon Stewart shows another hypocritical angle of how Americans judge women in general.
http://mic.com/articles/120033/jon-stewart-made-a-brilliant-point-about-caitlyn-jenner-that-nobody-s-talking-about
Parisians have the latest in techno-relief, sanisettes, which automatically clean themselves after use. Forget the old fashioned pissoir. Unless, of course, you count yourself among les pauvres. No pay, no pee, or anything else. As in many so-called advanced societies, if you're poor, no access for you.
At least if they get sick the poor in France don't have to start a Go Fund Me page to pay for medical bills, like they do in this country because of the despicably partisan ideology of barbarous misanthropes like Mike Huckabee.
And after considering (with great reluctance) Mike Huckabee's night sweats at the possibility of children encountering a gay or transgender person in a public facility, I would be far more concerned that my kid run into some angry Confederate drooler, bristling with loaded weapons on the lookout for enemies. I'd have a far easier time explaining that the LGBT person was simply trying to be true to themselves than why the other person hated millions of people and was so frightened all the time that they had to be armed everywhere they go in case there's a need for them to kill someone. Now that's some scary shit. But to ol' Mike, it's the 'merican way. I must have missed the part of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus praised the open carry gun nuts, "...for they shall shoot to kill whosoever scares the shit out of them, the numbers of which are as the stars in the heavens."
The enormous gulf between what these Christian hypocrites claim to believe and what they actually say and do is a daily downer. Probably hourly if I cared to pay closer attention.
I don't.
@ Ken Winkes
Today, not even the DoD can get to space without Russian rocket engines.
see: http://nyti.ms/1G5XwGb
Every day, more reasons to be glad I'm not young.
Regarding PD's comment about Texas young adults having guns on campus: I could not agree more. Clearly, these people are not thinking. As a commenter to the "right" of most of you on gun issues, I just don't get these people. College campuses have lots of socializing (strangers through your dorm rooms/gunlocker); there is this paper about intentionality bias: http://umich.edu/brad.bushman/files/intentionality_bias.pdf about how "drunk" participants were much more likely to perceive accidental actions as deliberate. Drunk, hormonal college students with guns is a disaster waiting to happen. As a college student in a gun loving state university, my roommate had a three foot bong, a half gallon of Wild Turkey and an arsenal under his bed at all times. This kind of encouragement is goddamn dumb. (I'm not sure if my link will go through but I have it in my notes as from Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.)
Huckabee and his ilk were likely part of the vast majority of Americans without a passport before 9/11(http://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewbender/2012/01/30/record-number-of-americans-now-hold-passports/). Proud, ignorant and incurious is really a tough group to contest politically. I thank the commenters here; I feel better most days knowing you're out there working against the proud, ignorant, incurious trifecta.
Jamelle Bouie makes the point (linked above) that Republicans are once again embracing the insane bellicosity and unhinged aggression that unleashed the Bush Debacle.
I would maintain that they never gave it up. They may have been quiet about wanting to kill, kill, kill, but belligerence is essential to Confederate chemistry. It bonds with Fear to form the basis of the Republican building blocks of death. Fear is such an essential ingredient in the Confederate world view, that it can only be balanced by an overwhelming desire to kill what they fear, and for Republicans, that's a huge list, so there must be a fountain of weapons in every city and town, an enemies list, a plan for domination, and craven calls for preemptive violence.
Bush and Cheney are and always have been perfect avatars for that bonding of fear and aggression. Even worse, the Bush-Cheney molecule also requires the elements Ignorance and Hubris in order to cause maximum mayhem in the world.
The residual effects of the last Bush-Cheney reaction are still spreading death and horror, war and fear around the globe, like an opportunistic disease, the Bush-Cheney molecule finds its greatest potential in those parts of the body politic infected by the fear spread by its greatest enabler: the Republican Party. Just listen to the fear and aggression in the voices of every single Republican presidential candidate and tell me I'm wrong.
Marco Rubio is calling this the "most dangerous time in history" in order to set the stage, potentially, for further aggression and war.
These people are the real danger. The Republican Party has a lot to answer for. In a time when so many serious problems could be addressed, these people choose to make up fantasy dangers and problems that can only be solved by more efficient ways to kill other human beings. Of course, they call this "Freedom".
Sorry, I can't resist an opportunity to link NASA with European toilets. Working on a joint project with ESA, my colleague Deborah and I were at the aerospace firm Contraves near Zurich Airport. Not another woman in sight except the receptionist at the entry building. In the engineering areas, the only facility was a men's locker room with open showers and WCs, and no latch on the door. As Deborah used this, I stood outside trying to figure out how to explain the situation in Swiss-German: "Entschuldigen, bitte. Meine Kollegin...uh...er..."
Deborah is a brilliant engineer, MIT grad, but then, in her early 30s, looked strikingly like an 18 year old Judy Garland. People tended not to take her seriously, I suppose they kept expecting her to belt out "Over the Rainbow." As we sat in a conference, I was becoming increasingly annoyed that the Swiss engineers seemed to be ignoring her contribution. Until another colleague, a prof from UC Berkeley, asked her a question. Slow on the uptake, I thought: "Why is he asking her that? He knows the answer, knows that she knows he knows..." Of course he was giving her an opportunity to show off, and of course, Deborah knocked it out of the park. It was wonderful to read the expressions on the Swiss as the light dawned: "Oh, my, she has a brain..."
I am pleased to report that Deborah is now Deputy Chief Technologist at Goddard Space Flight Center.
http://women.nasa.gov/deborah-amato/
Bill Moyers takes on conserva/coporate-Dems, specifically Rep. John Delaney of Maryland, for warning against a left turn for the Democratic party. Moyers writes: "The progressive agenda isn’t “left wing.” (Can anyone using the term even define what “left wing” means anymore?) The progressive agenda is America’s story — from ending slavery to ending segregation to establishing a woman’s right to vote to Social Security, the right to organize, and the fight for fair pay and against income inequality."
As for the mainstream press ignoring or writing off Bernie Sanders, Moyers notes "But if Senator Sanders is a crackpot, so are the majority of Americans. The ideas and policies he espouses have far more public support than the journalist habitués of Capitol Hill and Pennsylvania Avenue would have you believe."
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/06/03/turn-left-main-street
I'm anxiously awaiting the arrival of two "Bernie for President" buttons, which my husband and I will wear with pride!
Ken:
Thanks so much for mentioning Willy Ley.
I hadn't even thought of him until you mentioned his name.
In the dim past when I was very young, I remember reading something like "The Conquest of Space", by Willy Ley and illustrated by Chesley Bonestell. Very interesting words and pictures. I just looked up Willy Ley and there does not seem to have been such a book.
No matter. I remembered whatever it was as an amazing introduction to reading for information about things that were Out There.
Life changing at age 9.
Victoria,
Your memory is correct, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conquest_of_Space
Also one of my first and fondest recollections.
Victoria,
There was and is such a book. I saw it, Amazon lists it and Wikipedia notes it. It was published in the late 40's. I still have Ley's "Rockets, Missile and Space Travel" on one of my shelfs. Ley also wrote many other books and article including a science column (he loved quirky natural history) in Galaxy Magazine in late 50's and early 60's.
I don't know his politics but would note he did leave Germany before WWII in 1935 (I looked it up) fleeing from fascism. Would be interesting to ask his shade what he thinks of the rise of corporate-government oligarchy in the nation he fled to.
I cannot envision the Supreme Court not understanding that a ruling against the states with government provided health insurance exchanges will casually kill a few thousand Americans.
The Kaiser Foundation estimates that over six million Americans will lose coverage. Texas and Florida alone account for over two million Americans at risk.
People without medical care die from chronic deceases. People without medical care die younger that the affluent.
Republican wingers are indifferent to the troubles of the unsuccessful. Is the Supreme Court?