The Ledes

Sunday, October 6, 2024

New York Times: “Two boys have been arrested and charged in a street attack on David A. Paterson, a former governor of New York, and his stepson, the police said. One boy, who is 12, was charged with second-degree gang assault, and the other, a 13-year-old, was charged with third-degree gang assault, the police said on Saturday night. Both boys, accompanied by their parents, turned themselves in to the police, according to Sean Darcy, a spokesman for Mr. Paterson. A third person, also a minor, went to the police but was not charged in the Friday night attack in Manhattan, according to an internal police report.... Two other people, both adults, were involved in the attack, according to the police. They fled on foot and have not been caught, the police said. The former governor was not believed to have been targeted in the assault....”

Weather Channel: “Tropical Storm Milton, which formed in the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday, is expected to become a hurricane late Sunday or early Monday. The storm is expected to pose a major hurricane threat to Florida by midweek, just over a week after Helene pushed through the region. The National Hurricane Center says that 'there is an increasing risk of life-threatening storm surge and wind impacts for portions of the west coast of the Florida Peninsula beginning late Tuesday or Wednesday.'”

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Public Service Announcement

Washington Post: "Americans can again order free rapid coronavirus tests by mail, the Biden administration announced Thursday. People can request four free at-home tests per household through covidtests.gov. They will begin shipping Monday. The move comes ahead of an expected winter wave of coronavirus cases. The September revival of the free testing program is in line with the Biden administration’s strategy to respond to the coronavirus as part of a broader public health campaign to protect Americans from respiratory viruses, including influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), that surge every fall and winter. But free tests were not mailed during the summer wave, which wastewater surveillance data shows is now receding."

Washington Post: “Comedy news outlet the Onion — reinvigorated by new ownership over this year — is bringing back its once-popular video parodies of cable news. But this time, there’s someone with real news anchor experience in the chair. When the first episodes appear online Monday, former WAMU and MSNBC host Joshua Johnson will be the face of the resurrected 'Onion News Network.' Playing an ONN anchor character named Dwight Richmond, Johnson says he’s bringing a real anchor’s sense of clarity — and self-importance — to the job. 'If ONN is anything, it’s a news organization that is so unaware of its own ridiculousness that it has the confidence of a serial killer,' says Johnson, 44.” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I'll be darned if I can figured out how to watch ONN. If anybody knows, do tell. Thanks.

Washington Post: “First came the surprising discovery that Earth’s atmosphere is leaking. But for roughly 60 years, the reason remained a mystery. Since the late 1960s, satellites over the poles detected an extremely fast flow of particles escaping into space — at speeds of 20 kilometers per second. Scientists suspected that gravity and the magnetic field alone could not fully explain the stream. There had to be another source creating this leaky faucet. It turns out the mysterious force is a previously undiscovered global electric field, a recent study found. The field is only about the strength of a watch battery — but it’s enough to thrust lighter ions from our atmosphere into space. It’s also generated unlike other electric fields on Earth. This newly discovered aspect of our planet provides clues about the evolution of our atmosphere, perhaps explaining why Earth is habitable. The electric field is 'an agent of chaos,' said Glyn Collinson, a NASA rocket scientist and lead author of the study. 'It undoes gravity.... Without it, Earth would be very different.'”

The New York Times lists Emmy winners. The AP has an overview story here.

New York Times: “Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who had captured the public’s imagination since 2019 after he was spotted wearing a harness seemingly designed for a camera, was found dead on Saturday in Norway, according to a nonprofit that worked to protect the whale.... [Hvaldimir] was wearing a harness that identified it as “equipment” from St. Petersburg. There also appeared to be a camera mount. Some wondered if the whale was on a Russian reconnaissance mission. Russia has never claimed ownership of the whale. If Hvaldimir was a spy, he was an exceptionally friendly one. The whale showed signs of domestication, and was comfortable around people. He remained in busier waters than are typical for belugas....” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Oh, Lord, do not let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., near that carcass. ~~~

     ~~~ AP Update: “There’s no evidence that a well-known beluga whale that lived off Norway’s coast and whose harness ignited speculation it was a Russian spy was shot to death last month as claimed by animal rights groups, Norwegian police said Monday.... Police said that the Norwegian Veterinary Institute conducted a preliminary autopsy on the animal, which was become known as 'Hvaldimir,' combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'There are no findings from the autopsy that indicate that Hvaldimir has been shot,' police said in a statement.”

New York Times: Botswana's “President Mokgweetsi Masisi grinned as he lifted the diamond, a 2,492-carat stone that is the biggest diamond unearthed in more than a century and the second-largest ever found, according to the Vancouver-based mining operator Lucara, which owns the mine where it was found. This exceptional discovery could bring back the luster of the natural diamond mining industry, mining companies and experts say. The diamond was discovered in the same relatively small mine in northeastern Botswana that has produced several of the largest such stones in living memory. Such gemstones typically surface as a result of volcanic activity.... The diamond will likely sell in the range of tens of millions of dollars....”

Click on photo to enlarge.

~~~ Guardian: "On a distant reef 16,000km from Paris, surfer Gabriel Medina has given Olympic viewers one of the most memorable images of the Games yet, with an airborne celebration so well poised it looked too good to be true. The Brazilian took off a thundering wave at Teahupo’o in Tahiti on Monday, emerging from a barrelling section before soaring into the air and appearing to settle on a Pacific cloud, pointing to the sky with biblical serenity, his movements mirrored precisely by his surfboard. The shot was taken by Agence France-Presse photographer Jérôme Brouillet, who said “the conditions were perfect, the waves were taller than we expected”. He took the photo while aboard a boat nearby, capturing the surreal image with such accuracy that at first some suspected Photoshop or AI." 

Washington Post: “'Mary Cassatt at Work' is a large and mostly satisfying exhibition devoted to the career of the great American artist beloved for her sensitive and often sentimental views of family life. The 'at work' in the title of the Philadelphia Museum of Art show references the curators’ interest in Cassatt’s pioneering effort to establish herself as a professional artist within a male-dominated field. Throughout the show, which includes some 130 paintings, pastels, prints and drawings, the wall text and the art on view stresses Cassatt’s fixation on art as a career rather than a pastime.... Mary Cassatt at Work is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Sept. 8. philamuseum.org”

New York Times: “Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy. Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album 'The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart' — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.... Bob Newhart holds up. In fact, it’s hard to think of a stand-up from that era who is a better argument against the commonplace idea that comedy does not age well.”

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The Commentariat -- May 1, 2013

Obama 2.0. Shahien Nasiripour of the Huffington Post: "President Barack Obama will nominate Mel Watt, a longtime Democratic congressman from North Carolina, to oversee government-controlled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in a move that may give the White House greater control over housing policy. Obama will announce his nomination of Watt to lead the Federal Housing Finance Agency on Wednesday...." ...

... Obama 2.0, Ctd.. Jessica Yellin of CNN: "President Barack Obama will announce Wednesday he's nominating Tom Wheeler, a top fundraiser for the president's re-election campaign, to head the Federal Communications Commission, according to a White House official."

Megan Three-Brenan of the New York Times: "Americans are exhibiting an isolationist streak, with majorities across party lines decidedly opposed to American intervention in North Korea or Syria, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll." ...

... Stephanie Gaskell of Politico: "The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff [Martin Dempsey] hit a cautionary note on Syria Tuesday, questioning just how effective U.S. military intervention might be in ending the two-year civil war there." ...

... Mark Landler & Rick Gladstone of the New York Times: "The White House is once again considering supplying weapons to Syria's armed opposition, senior officials said Tuesday. Such a decision would be a policy shift for the Obama administration, which has stepped up its nonlethal aid but stopped short of lethal weaponry and has expressed reluctance about greater military entanglements in the Syrian civil war."

Eric Lipton of the New York Times: "Wall Street bankers and some of the world's top finance ministers are waging a bitter international campaign to block Washington financial regulators from extending their policing powers far beyond the nation's shores.... A former investment banker, [Gary] Gensler [chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission,] defends his proposals, arguing that too many bad bets in the global derivatives market can be traced to overseas locations -- including the $6 billion loss last year by a JPMorgan Chase trader called the London Whale -- and threatened markets in the United States."

Jamelle Bouie of the American Prospect: "Barack Obama Asks Press to Maybe, Possibly Hold Republicans Responsible Sometime.... Much of Washington is in the grips of what several observers call the 'Green Lantern Theory of Presidential Power.' For those unfamiliar with the comics, the Green Lanterns are a galaxy-spanning corps of space police. Each Lantern is given a power ring that emits a green energy. With it, Lanterns can do anything -- the only limit is their will. Likewise, pundits and journalists from across the spectrum seem to understand the president as a singular figure whose power flows from his willingness to 'get things done.'" ...

... Greg Sargent: "here's the problem: If a reporter or analyst were to call out Republicans for failing to compromise with Obama, that reporter or analyst would be calling on them to adopt a particular policy position.... It would amount to a criticism of the Republican position.... This is impermissible for the neutral writer, because it constitutes an ideological judgment. On the other hand, faulting Obama for failing to get Republicans to move his way does not constitute taking any kind of stand on who is right, ideologically speaking. It only constitutes a judgment of Obama for failing to manipulate the process adequately." CW: so it's all about reportorial neutrality. But an opinion writer does not have to jump through the neutrality hoop. So that doesn't account for ...

... Green Lantern Aficionado MoDo: "Actually, it is[ Obama's] job to get [Congress] to behave. The job of the former community organizer and self-styled uniter is to somehow get this dunderheaded Congress, which is mind-bendingly awful, to do the stuff he wants them to do. It's called leadership." CW: She does bring up one point of which I was unaware: "Congress put restrictions on transfers of individuals [in Guantanamo] to other countries with bad security situations. But, since 2012, Congress has granted authority to the secretary of defense to waive those restrictions on a case-by-case basis. [Emphasis added.] The administration hasn't made use of that power once. So it's a little stale to blame Congress at this point." ...

... Ah, Charlie Savage of the New York Times explains: "The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Representative Howard P. McKeon, Republican of California, noted that the Obama administration had never exercised the power it has had since in 2012 to waive, on a case-by-case basis, most of the restrictions lawmakers have imposed on transferring detainees to countries with troubled security conditions." ...

... New York Times Editors: "If [President Obama] is serious about moving toward closure [of Guantanamo], there are two steps proposed by the American Civil Liberties Union that could get the ball rolling. He could appoint a senior official 'so that the administration's Guantánamo closure policy is directed by the White House and not by Pentagon bureaucrats,' the A.C.L.U. said, and he could order Mr. Hagel to start providing legally required waivers to transfer detainees who have been cleared. Senator Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has urged Mr. Obama to urgently review the status of those prisoners -- a primary issue for the hunger strikers."

Allison Kopicki of the New York Times: "Nearly half of Americans agree with the Obama administration's contention that the economy will be hurt by the spending cuts prompted by the sequestration, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. About one-third said the automatic cuts to military and domestic programs that went into effect because President Obama and Republicans in Congress could not agree on a budget plan would have no effect on the economy one way or the other. Just 1 in 10 said the automatic cuts would help the economy."

Julia Preston of the New York Times: "Gay advocates were sharply disappointed to find that same-sex couples were excluded from the [immigration reform] legislation.... But in the lengthy closed-door negotiations that produced the overhaul proposal, the four Republicans in the bipartisan group made it clear early on that they did not want to include such a hot-button issue in a bill that would be a challenge to sell to their party even without it.... Now, with the immigration bill scheduled to advance next week toward a vote in the Judiciary Committee, Democrats are in a quandary about whether to offer an amendment that would give green cards to same-sex partners."

The People Who Make Your Lovely Clothes Are Dead. Jim Yardley of the New York Times: Sohel "Rana, 35, is under arrest, the most reviled man in Bangladesh after the horrific collapse of Rana Plaza last week left nearly 400 people dead, with many others still missing. On Tuesday, a top Bangladeshi court seized his assets, as the public bayed for his execution, especially as it appears that the tragedy could have been averted if the frantic warnings of an engineer who examined the building the day before had been heeded. But Mr. Rana ... is partly a creation of the garment era in Bangladesh, during which global businesses have arrived in search of cheap labor to keep profits high and costs low. Directly or indirectly, international brands are now sometimes interlinked with men like Mr. Rana.... Television stations reported the cracks in the building the night before it collapsed, but no local authority prevented Mr. Rana from opening the building the next morning." ...

... Made in the USA. Brad Plumer of the Washington Post: "Lenovo..., Caterpillar, GE and Ford are among those that have announced that they're shifting some manufacturing operations back to the United States. And economists are debating whether these stories are a blip -- or whether they signal the beginning of a major renaissances for American manufacturing.... The narrowing of the wage gap between China and the United States is the most significant factor. China has been getting wealthier, and its factory workers are demanding ever-higher wages. Whereas the gap in labor costs between the two countries was about $17 per hour in 2006, that could shrink to as little as $7 per hour by 2015...." CW: as I've always believed, we're better off when people in other countries are better off. Being the world's biggest economic power may be great for American fat cats, but it is bad for American workers.

Kaiser Foundation: "Four in ten Americans (42 percent) are unaware that the [Affordable Care Act] is still the law of the land, including 12 percent who believe the law has been repealed by Congress, 7 percent who believe it has been overturned by the Supreme Court, and 23 percent who don't know whether or not the ACA remains law." Via Alex Rogers of Time.

Kathleen Miles of the Huffington Post: About half of the L.A. Times' reporters say they would quit if the Koch brothers bought the paper. CW: I doubt that the Koch boys care; they can tap into that deep bench of A-Plus "reporters" from Breitbart, Daily Caller, etc.

Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: "The contentious political fight over gun control moved into the White Mountains of New Hampshire on Tuesday as gun-control activists began to focus on Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) as a prime target in their effort to revive their push for stricter gun laws."

Steve Benen on Tailgunner Ted: "All of this dishonest grandstanding ... should ... cause Cruz some trouble on Capitol Hill. Senators have traditionally forged relationships with their colleagues in order to build coalitions and be more effective in passing legislation. Cruz is going out of his way to do the opposite -- scolding his veteran colleagues, lecturing them on his wisdom, and creating conditions in which just about everyone who knows him dislikes him. This should make it all but impossible for Cruz to play a constructive role in the chamber, though that may not matter to him, since he doesn't seem especially interested in governing anyway." ...

... Steve M. of No More Mister Nice Blog: "Cruz is the future of GOP politics. He doesn't even bother trying to seem cooperative. He defines everyone to the left of him, even the likes of Jennifer Rubin, as sellouts and RINOs.... His goal is noncooperation until the wingnut revolution happens, and then merciless application of right-wing Correct Thinking afterward. He's the counterrevolutionary New Man." ...

... Robert Costa of the National Review: "Freshman senator Ted Cruz is considering a presidential run, according to his friends and confidants." Via Alex Rogers. CW: wonder if Tailgunner Ted & fellow Savior-of-the-Constitution Li'l Randy will remain best buds when they each notice the other guy wants to be president, too.

Poster Boy. Cameron Easley & Lisa Weissmann of WCSC, Columbia: "A website connecting users looking for casual, and often extramarital, affairs is making Mark Sanford the face of their new marketing campaign. AshleyMadison.com unveiled a billboard on Interstate 26 in Columbia...."

 

Congressional Race

Martin Finucane & Michael Levenson of the Boston Globe: "Gabriel E. Gomez, a 47-year-old son of immigrants who became a Navy pilot and SEAL before becoming a private equity investor, won the Republican nomination tonight for the US Senate special election to replace John F. Kerry, bringing a fresh face to a race that had drawn scant interest from an electorate distracted by the Boston Marathon bombings. Meanwhile, veteran US Representative Edward J. Markey beat fellow Representative Stephen F. Lynch in the race for the Democratic nod in the traditionally blue state." ...

... Alexandra Jaffe of the Hill: "Markey defeated Rep. Stephen Lynch (D) for the Democratic nomination with 57 percent support to Lynch's 43 percent support, with 60 percent of precincts reporting.... Washington Democrats ... hammered Gomez as 'way outside the mainstream' of Massachusetts voters in a statement from Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee deputy executive director Matt Canter. 'A small group of Republican voters in Massachusetts have decided that Gabriel Gomez, a former spokesman for a Super PAC that attacked President Obama over the killing of Osama bin Laden, best represents their extreme right wing views....'"

The Louis Gohmert Weekly (or is it Daily?) News

Igor Volsky of Think Progress: Rep. Louie Gohmert (RTP-Texas) "suggested on Tuesday that Attorney General Eric Holder permitted a federal judge to read Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev his Miranda rights because the Obama cabinet official is biased towards terrorism."

News Ledes

Boston Globe: "Two men from Kazakhstan and a man from Cambridge were arrested and charged today in the Boston Marathon bombings investigation, federal prosecutors said. Azamat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev, both 19 and of New Bedford, were charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice by plotting to dispose of a laptop computer and a backpack containing fireworks belonging to bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the US attorney's office said in a statement. Robel Phillipos, 19, of Cambridge was charged with making false statements to law enforcement officials in a terrorism investigation, prosecutors said. All three were, or had been, students at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, where Tsarnaev, 19, was also a student."

Guardian: "Three British soldiers have been killed and several others injured after the heavily armoured vehicle they were travelling in was hit by a large roadside bomb while they were on a routine patrol in Afghanistan."

Comments Off

Reader Comments (13)

Louie is such a treasure. And to think, 70+ percent of goobers in his district voted to send him to our national monkey house! That's just awesome. I'm simply speechless when confronted by this kind of demonstration of our citizenry exercising of their collective voting franchise. Absolutely speechless.

April 30, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterJames Singer

The upside of Cruz's malignant narcissism is that it will destroy him. He is cruising (tee hee) toward a spectacular melt down when he no longer commands any power. He's so busy admiring himself and basking in the glow of his own grandiosity, he won't see it coming. A balloon will only hold so much air before it pops. I hope it is a truly excellent straight jacket and Thorazine moment.

April 30, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterDiane

An interesting article in Salon. Although the comments are more enlightening than the review itself.

April 30, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterGloria

Re: We're watching...and listening...be frank or earnest; just not yourself. @Gloria, the joke is on those foolish enough to respond to the article, right?
Marie touched on the idea of privacy twice recently. Once about your chances of hiding from the government; slim; and his little brother, no. And again when she mentioned getting your records struck from the collectors of data.
I think the horse left the barn more than a few years back. And as Patrick stated recently; those barn doors are not going to be re-hung.
Good read though; I decoded it with my wikiewikie decoding ring. you won't believe the real message. Don't ask.

May 1, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterJJG

Diane,

Alex Parene's recent Salon article on Cruz the Jerk zeroes in on an important point contingent to his narcissism.

Unlike other conservative malignancies, Cruz and his supporters don't really have any policy goals. They don't care about politics or governing. They don't care about winning any debates or convincing anyone of the rightness of their positions. All they really care about is ideological purity. That and sticking it to anyone they consider an enemy, which is a shitload of people. A shitload. Including most of the Republican party.

They hate Boehner and Rove and McConnell and other members of the old boys' network almost as much as they hate Obama, Democrats, liberals, minorities, and hell, probably even Mickey Mouse 'cause Walt wasn't a staunch enough conservative for their tastes.

And any time Cruz can poke their enemies in the eye with a sharp stick, they all leap to their feet and do the Teabagger Tango (it looks like someone kicking a person in the face then jumping up and down on their body). And Cruz takes his bows and a long loving look in the mirror.

But hatred, intransigence, gainsaying for its own sake, and pride in being the outsider, the bad boy, especially with no goals other than ideological purity and self adoration, will only take one so far. I mean, if he wants to run for president he has to have a statement of purpose deeper than "Fuck you, you asshole", otherwise that's what voters will likely say to him.

May 1, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

Gloria,

Thanks for the link. The article, and the book reviewed, offer further evidence of the enormity of the surveillance that goes on 24/7 in the US, paid for with taxpayers' money, thank you very much. Assange is right to be concerned.

Right now an NSA surveillance center in Utah (and who knows where else) is sifting through your e-mails, phone calls, purchases, and probably your shopping list to detect the slightest possibility that you might be a bad person. The list of red flag words is impressively long and contain quite a few normal everyday words that most of us use on a regular basis.

For instance, using any of these words can bring your communications into focus by any of the agencies that subscribe to this type of surveillance:

burn, infection, pork, electric, sick, bridge, port, interstate, watch, relief, subway.

So the sentence "I was feeling sick from the pork I ate. I looked at my watch to check the time and thought if I was going to get any relief, I'd better take the interstate because the subway wouldn't get me to the hospital quickly enough" might be cause for the NSA to start going through your trash. Or surveilling your website (sorry, Marie).

And we know how effective this all is because these guys and their spying on Americans' communications uncovered a dastardly plot to bomb the Boston Marathon.

Didn't they?

But just in case spooks do descend on RC, I have a secret message just for them. Hopefully their server farm and software can decode it:

3aT $h1t & d!e.

May 1, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

Ho hum, another day, another baby dead from a gunshot wound.

I'm I insane or does sound completely whacked?

In Burkesville, Ky, a five year old boy shot and killed his two year old sister with a rifle. The weapon was kept in the corner of a room of the house, accessible at any time. The family, it is reported, forgot that the rifle was still loaded.

Oops.

Now here's the really crazy part (I bet you thought a loaded weapon kept in a house with small children who were allowed to play with it was the crazy part...):

The rifle belonged to the five year old. He got it the year before as a present!!

A four or five year old with their own rifle. Not a toy. A rifle.

And now I find out there is a company, Keystone Sporting Arms, that offers an entire line of weapons for kids. They call the weapon that killed the two year old The Crickett. I'm not sure cute names make these things any less dangerous, but then what do I know?

Somewhere Wayne LaPierre is grinning thinking of all those babies who play with loaded weapons. At least the ones who survive childhood may grow up to become dues paying NRA members and supporters of the gun industry.

According to the coroner, it was just a "crazy accident".

Well thank goodness for that! I can sleep a lot easier knowing that it was just a crazy accident.

May 1, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

My heart went out to Obama at yesterdays press conference. It could only have been worse if his statement "I should just pack up and go home" were posed as a question and not conjecture. The answer could have been devastating.

Small wonder one of his scarce remaining exercises of power is the choosing of live or die boxes on a list of supposed al Qieda terrorists. According to Greenwald's column in today's Guardian he has killed one Yemeni terrorist leader 3 times already and the man is back for a fourth try. No clues as to who the collateral damage was.

May 1, 2013 | Unregistered Commentercowichan's opinion

As always with SloMO, she got it half right. Well, what do you expect? An half ass writer will, at times, get it half right...just like a stopped clock,i.e., twice a column.
It's true that the DOD was authorized to release detainees at GitMo, but there's no funds and the nut heads in Congress restricted transferred to any prison in the US, and, while there are 86 detainees ready to go, most are from Yemen, and, if sent back, would be tortured, executed, or return to the battlefield. So, it's never as easy as one would think.
Check out this interview http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2013-04-29/hunger-strike-guantanamo-prison/transcript

May 1, 2013 | Unregistered Commenterdan

Akhilleus
I'm not sure, in Cruz's case specifically, that espousing ideological purity is any more than a convenient means to act out his real driver. I still maintain that he is an example of a person with a clear cut character disorder that is fundamentally ( I used to like the word until it became Gingrich's go-to-word) anti-social. I think the energy he generates around ideological purity is the expedient pathway to mobilizing a particular voting group. He is only a true believer in his own superiority, which is a function of what he perceives as his personal strength of self not the righteousness of his beliefs. Cruz would not be able to conduct retail politics among the unwashed. He would quickly expose himself as a malevolent freak. Cruz is not capable of reaching out to others and making them "feel the love". He won't acquiesce to the Tea Party's wish for stupidity in a candidate that matches their own. Sarah was a much better actress and she had useful family props. Not to mention the added benefit of genuine stupidity.

Now I could be, as my Daddy used to say, "talking out my ass because my mouth knows better." But that's how I see him.

May 1, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterDiane

Sorry. Probably a day late and a dollar short to the dance, but Pierce's column on Dowd is a major kick today. My favorite line:

"...Dowd once again seems to be writing from an assisted-living facility on the far side of a world Beyond The Planet Of The Ultra-Vixens."

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Maureen_Dowd_Dreams_Of_Lincoln_And_The_Borgias

OK I'll shut up now, have to go clean the fridge.

May 1, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterDiane

Diane,

I think that's correct. I should have been more accurate by stating clearly that even though his constituency demands ideological purity, for Cruz, as you suggest, that's less a closely held tenet than it is a portal for his ambitions (although he may himself be an adherent to certain elements of that ideology, as in the case of Joe McCarthy, I think that although he may have been a genuine hater of communism, and probably was, he used the HUAC hearings and the witch hunts to bolster his own ego and reputation as much as to "protect our freeedoooommm").

Cruz can demand ideological purity from the "squishes" without being a card carrying, teabagging true believer because that's what his supporters want to see. But at the least, he has to appear to subscribe to it himself. Whatever it takes, I guess. Some sociopaths are great at pretending to care (Dubya). Some not so much (Paul Ryan).

What confounds me are the amazing number of wingers, who despise government, who strive mightily to enter the ranks of governance.

I guess the idea is to try to kill it from within. But what's the result? Anarchy? Have any of these idiots thought about what the country would be like without a government? Or the federalist dream of 50 largely independent, loosely connected governments?

May 1, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

If we want to get into DSM psychiatric diagnoses, we will have to take a look at 95% of the House and Senate and much of the Executive branch. All are narcissists, for sure--though some are malignant, grandiose and stupid, while a few are grandiose, thoughtful and smart. Almost all seem to be greedy, which perhaps should be a new DSM category.

As for Ted Cruz. I vote, above all, for STUPIDO asshat! I would just love for him to get the Republican nomination--if not for Prezident than for VP. Maybe he could run with Marco Rubio. Tee hee! Hillary would wipe up the streets with either or both of them. It would be a sick joy to see debates with Clinton vs Cruz. With all the shit going down in our cruel, insane world--this would provide true "gallows" humor! About the only kind I can manage right now--except when I watch "cute kitten" videos.

May 1, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterKate Madison
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