The Commentariat -- May 25, 2015

Internal links removed.

Afternoon Update:

Mitch Smith & Matt Apuzzo of the New York Times: "The city of Cleveland has reached a settlement with the Justice Department over what federal authorities said was a pattern of unconstitutional policing and excessive use of force, people briefed on the case said Monday."

Darlene Superville of the AP: "President Barack Obama on Monday saluted Americans who died in battle, saying the country must 'never stop trying to fully repay them' for their sacrifices. He noted it was the first Memorial Day in 14 years without U.S. forces engaged in a major ground war."

Jeff Amy of the AP: "U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran -- the Mississippi Republican whose 2014 primary campaign drew national attention over an aspiring blogger's photos of his bedridden wife -- has married his longtime aide, his office said Monday. The wedding to Kay Webber took place privately Saturday in Gulfport. The senator's former wife, Rose Cochran, died in December at age 73 from dementia after living in a nursing home for 13 years. Political blogger Clayton Kelly took pictures of a bedridden Rose Cochran in April 2014, and officials say he intended to use the images to advance allegations that the senator was having an inappropriate relationship with Webber."

Charles Blow: "Memorial Day may be a time for us to consider the evolution of this day: a day established by a disadvantaged population to honor war heroes who now belong to a military whose members are increasingly being drawn from a disadvantaged population." ...

Emmarie Huetteman of the New York Times: "Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said Sunday that Iraqi forces had demonstrated 'no will to fight' against the Islamic State, blaming them for a retreat that led to the terrorist group's victory in capturing the Iraqi city of Ramadi. While that critical assessment of Iraqi security forces has been voiced in Congress and by policy research institutes, Mr. Carter's remarks on CNN's 'State of the Union' were some of the administration's strongest language to date about Iraq's repeated inability to hold and take back territory from the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. 'They were not outnumbered. In fact, they vastly outnumbered the opposing force and yet they failed to fight and withdrew from the site,' he said."

Patricia Cohen of the New York Times: "Because blacks hold a disproportionate share of [government] jobs, relative to their share of the population, [local, state & federal] cutbacks [since 2008] naturally hit them harder." ...

... CW: Cohen's story illuminates an important aspect of conservatives' hatred of government: they see it as of black people, by black people, & for black people. As far as they're concerned, government jobs are egregious means of raising blacks into the middle class, & in confederates' limited worldviews, they figure raising one group lowers everybody else. Confederates don't hate only "lazy black people living on the dole"; they despise working black people, too, especially those mid-or high-level bureaucrats who can exercise some power over white people. Breitbart's attack on Shirley Sherrod is a classic example: obviously, Breitbart knew Sherrod's real message was a lesson in nondiscrimination, so they edited out that real message to turn her into -- however briefly -- a symbol of government of, by and for black people. In addition, their purposeful edit was meant to make her into a surrogate for President Obama -- the black dude in the White House who would lower the boom on white people.

Paul Krugman: "A growing number of economists, looking at the data on productivity and incomes, are wondering if the technological revolution has been greatly overhyped -- and some technologists share their concern.... A funny thing happened on the way to the techno-revolution. We did not, it turned out, get a sustained return to rapid economic progress." CW: Oddly, Krugman does not mention the fact that U.S. workers' productivity has skyrocketed, but the corporate bosses -- not the workers -- have scooped up the lions' share of the gains:

Via Mother Jones.

Presidential Race

On this Memorial Day, Sam Tanenhaus of the New York Times, in Blumberg, relates the history of the Party of War (not that many in the party actually have participated in these wars). As the GOP presidential candidates all scramble to be the most muscular advocates for American military might, Tanenhaus writes, "Welcome back George W. Bush. Put down the paintbrush and grab the bullhorn. It's your party again." Thanks to safari for the link.

Matt Viser of the Boston Globe: "Jeb Bush, who has a longtime relationship with [Kennebunkport, Maine,] where generations of Bushes have vacationed, is having a house built for him at the family compound on Walker's Point, with a wraparound porch and expansive views of the Atlantic Ocean. The home, on a 1.3-acre site assessed by the town at $1.4 million, was initiated for him by his mother and father.... But as he tries to appeal to middle-class Americans in his likely Republican presidential campaign -- and distinguish himself as his own man ... -- having a vacation home erected on a spit of land in coastal Maine could be a vivid reminder of the complications facing his campaign." CW: I don't see a place for a car elevator.

The Jeb Cottage, under construction.

Beyond the Beltway

Ralph Ellis & Eliott McLaughlin of CNN: "Cleveland police tried to give peaceful protesters the space to exercise their First Amendment rights following the Michael Brelo verdict, but some of them crossed the line several times, resulting in 71 arrests, city officials said Sunday."

Tom Boggioni in AlterNet: "Saying he did nothing wrong, a Virginia police officer resigned from the Fredricksburg[, Virginia,] Police Department after body-cam video showed him using his Taser, and then pepper-spray, on an unresponsive black man sitting in his car. According to the WHOP, 34-year-old David Washington was having a stroke at the time of the incident.... In the video, [Officer Shaun] Jurgens is seen walking up to Washington's car and using his Taser on him, without warning, as he sits at the wheel of his car staring forward. After another officer opens the door of the car, Jurgens sprays a massive amount of pepper spray into the face of Washington, who barely flinches. Jurgens can then be heard yelling, 'Get out the car. Get out the car, or I'm going to f*cking smoke you. Get out the car, right now. We ain't playing.'" ...

     ... CW: The whole world has been watching the shame of police violence against black Americans, yet so many cops are oblivious to all (or else they're defiantly brutal). Still today, there's "nothing wrong" with tasing, pepper-spraying & threatening the life of a person of color. ...

... AND speaking of racist cops, Maricopa, Arizona, County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is emailing his "followers" to send him cash to help him pay personal legal bills he says he is accumulating on accounta his failure to notice a few little court orders "that slipped through the cracks" & which prohibited him from targeting Latinos in various creative "policing" tactics. CW: Well, count me out, Joe.

News Lede

New York Times: "Texas marked 24 counties as disaster areas on Monday as drenching rains and violent weather swept through that state and Oklahoma, forcing thousands of people from their homes and killing at least three."

Comments

[safari]

Here's a really long article that traces the history of the internal feud of warmongers in the GOP party. It essentially says that the GOP this election cycle is going to emulate Dubya's "chaos and war" strategy since it worked so well for him. Pretty interesting stuff, although some of it must be taken with a large grain of salt, for ex:

"Grant and Eisenhower, Reagan and Bush. Each was in his own way a warrior—two of them generals, the others citizen-soldiers who led global crusades, first against communism, and then against “Islamo-fascism.” Putting Grant and Eisenhower next to Reagan and Bush as 'citizen-soldiers' is a huge disservice to those who actually went to war and know its realities, rather than ducking and dodging at every chance then putting on the victory suits when the bloods and tears are wiped away.

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/features/2015-05-18/the-gop-is-campaigning-for-george-w-bush-s-third-term

[PD Pepe]

I thank safari for giving us the link to Tannenhaus', yes, long article, but so worth the read––excellent. Another vulcan he could have mentioned at the time of the "Great Empire"talks with the hidden message of white supremacy was the Brit, Niall Ferguson, who catapulted to fame with his book, "The Cash Nexus."

"In retrospect, The Pity of War’s Stoddardesque laments about the needless emasculation of Anglo-Saxon power announced a theme that would become more pronounced as Ferguson, setting aside his expertise in economic history, emerged as an evangelist-cum-historian of empire. He was already arguing in The Cash Nexus, published a few months before the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, that ‘the United States should be devoting a larger percentage of its vast resources to making the world safe for capitalism and democracy’ – if necessary by military force. ‘Let me come clean,’ he wrote in the New York Times Magazine in April 2003, a few weeks after the shock-and-awe campaign began in Iraq, ‘I am a fully paid-up member of the neoimperialist gang.’" (TLRB)

And all this brought to mind a nursery rhyme (I was raised on a steady diet of Mother Goose and Grimm) I always had fun reciting:

"This is the house that Jack built..." with one thing following another–––consequences––the forlorn maiden that milked the cow that tossed the dog that worried the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built .... And this, strangely enough, brought me back to war mongering and the war mongers who love the idea of the U.S. military forging into countries willy-nilly because---freedom. Here's the connection with the nursery rhyme:

When we went into Afghanistan and destroyed the infrastructure such as irrigation and roads the opium production became more profitable. Why? Because opium is more drought resistant than wheat, the main alternative crop, that, by the way, we were giving millions of dollars to farmers to grow, and opium does not require road transportation. In other words:
The fighting in Afghanistan accelerated the country's drug trade, which enriched the Taliban, which caused the U.S. to launch an effort to eradicate poppy cultivation, which enriched the Taliban even further, which caused the U.S. to step up its assault on the Taliban's territory which caused more farmers in Taliban territories to switch from wheat to opium, which accelerated the drug trade.

Mother Goose never addressed wars and failed military prowess but she did get to the heart of the matter:

"For want of a nail
the shoe was lost,
For want of a shoe
the horse was lost
For want of a horse
the rider was lost,
for want of a rider,
the battle was lost,
For want of a battle
the kingdom was lost
And all for the want
of a horse shoe nail."

And Cheney, Bush, and the rest of the crew say, "Let's do this again!"