;)
Thursday
May302013
The Commentariat -- May 31, 2013
AP: "College students are joining President Barack Obama at the White House as he calls on Congress to keep federally subsidized student loan rates from doubling on July 1. Friday's White House event marks the beginning of a public campaign by Obama to temporarily extend current rates or to find a long-term compromise that avoids the scheduled rate increase."
Dan Donahue, et al., of CNN: "Officials intercepted Thursday a letter addressed to President Barack Obama that was similar to threatening letters sent to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and a gun-control group he founded. (See also Thursday's News Ledes.) 'The law enforcement people I've spoken to say that the letters are virtually identical," said Congressman Peter King, R-New York.... Initial testing on the two letters sent to Bloomberg and his group came back positive for ricin, which has become the deadly poison of choice lately for mail attackers. A source tells CNN that those letters contained the message:
You will have to kill me and my family before you get my guns. Anyone wants to come to my house will get shot in the face. The right to bear arms is my constitutional God given right and I will exercise that right till the day I die.
... CW: You can thank the NRA & its Congressional (& Supreme Court) enablers for inciting this kind of dangerous crackpot. This was definitely not what the Founders had in mind.
... Update. Aaron Katersky, et al., of ABC News: "FBI agents are questioning a man they consider a person of interest in the mailing of letters possibly laced with the poison ricin to public officials, according to a source familiar with the case. The agents are questioning a man from New Boston, Texas, whose wife called authorities after she noticed strange material in her refrigerator, and noticed computer searches for ricin, the source said."
Michael Schmidt & Ellen Berry of the New York Times: "A man who was killed in Orlando, Fla., last week while being questioned by an F.B.I. agent about his relationship with Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, had knocked the agent to the ground with a table and ran at him with a metal pole [or maybe a broomstick!] before being shot, according to a senior law enforcement official briefed on the matter." ...
... Dashiell Bennett of the Atlantic: "Law enforcement officials are still trying to explain how a supposedly peaceful interview with an important witness in the Boston bombing case turned into a deadly shooting, but as usual, every new attempt to explain the death of Ibragim Todashev only raises more troubling questions. After originally accusing the suspect and potential murderous accomplice of Boston bomber Tamleran Tsarnaev of attacking an FBI agent with a knife, and then walking back that claim entirely, an new anonymous source says Todashev, may have injured the agent with a table and a metal pole. Or maybe not.... The new version of event also doesn't answer the question of why the FBI agent immediately began firing his weapon or why the other police officers in the room failed to intervene. Which leaves us right back where we started: A confusing scene, an apparently unnecessary death, and a lot of unanswered questions. And on top of all that, the FBI lost what could have been one of their most valuable sources of information on what the Tsarnaev brothers were really up to before the carried their attack."
Also from Bennett: "A new report by the Congressional Budget Office finds that just ten popular tax breaks eat up more of the federal budget than Medicare, Social Security, or defense spending. And -- prepare to be shocked -- the benefits skew overwhelmingly to the rich." ...
... Paul Krugman extols the many virtues of food stamps. "So what do Republicans want to do with this paragon of programs? First, shrink it; then, effectively kill it.... Why must food stamps be cut? We can't afford it, say politicians like Representative Stephen Fincher, a Republican of Tennessee, who backed his position with biblical quotations -- and who also, it turns out, has personally received millions in farm subsidies over the years, [a nice irony since the Ag department administers both farm subsidies & food stamps].... The supposed rationale: We're becoming a nation of takers, and doing stuff like feeding poor children and giving them adequate health care are just creating a culture of dependency -- and that culture of dependency, not runaway bankers, somehow caused our economic crisis.... This is a time to get really, really angry."
Tim Egan: "Today, many Republicans, cornered into rethinking their absolutist position by the nation's inevitable demographics, still oppose a pathway to citizenship for undocumented people who have been in the United States for years. They want storybook immigrants, nothing less -- a blanket fantasy. Of course, there are those who waited in line, and had the money or connections or smarts to come into the country clean. But so many others, who are productive, proud Americans in every way but their citizenship papers, started their new lives in the shadows."
Linda Greenhouse has a good overview of how all three branches of government have thwarted the closing of the prison at Guantanamo.
Michael Calderone of the Huffington Post: "Media executives and editors are divided over whether to attend an off-the-record meeting this week with Attorney General Eric Holder to discuss guidelines for dealing with journalists in leak investigations, an issue that's gotten a lot of attention amid controversies involving the AP and Fox News. Here's how it looks so far if any meeting with Holder remains off-the-record:
"Not going: New York Times, AP, Huffington Post, McClatchy, CNN, CBS News, Fox News, Reuters, and NBC News.
"Going: The Washington Post, Politico, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times/ Chicago Tribune, ABC News, Bloomberg, USA Today." ...
... Jonathan Easley & Jordy Yager of the Hill: "The boycotting news outlets said that the Department of Justice's insistence that the media groups not report on the content of the discussions violated their journalistic guidelines or was a conflict of interest." ...
... Erik Wemple of the Washington Post: "A Justice Department official confirmed to the Erik Wemple Blog that two meetings of Washington bureau chiefs on Thursday and Friday would be off the record. Another round of discussions will pull in media executives and counsel under the same off-the-record ground rules. What it all means is that the folks in attendance can't emerge from the meeting and write accounts of the meeting's ins and outs." ...
... CW: when the Justice Department keeps doing stuff wrong, one is inclined to invoke the adage, "A fish rots from the head down." ...
... CW: Most of the U.S. attorneys general whose names I can remember were horrible or fairly horrible: John Mitchell, Ed Meese, Janet Reno, John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales. Nick Gillespie of the Daily Beast explains why. ...
... Dylan Byers of Politico on Walter Pincus's column on the press's overheated reactions to the AP & James Rosen cases. Pincus's controversial column (also linked May 29) is here.
E. J. Dionne: "In fact, Bachmannism is far from finished. The Minnesota right-winger deserves to be memorialized with an 'ism' because she perfected a tactic well-suited to the current media environment: continually toss out outlandish, baseless charges, and, eventually, some of them will enter the mainstream media.... Her video provided choice examples of the Bachmann method and the extent to which it is now being emulated by others." ...
... The smart person's Michele Bachmann is of course Ted Cruz. Greg Sargent demonstrates how deftly and effectively Cruz manages to use unfounded suppositions & unrelated events to deftly "explain" his outlandish positions. See also my response in today's Comments to OldStone50. Cruz's twisting of facts is of the same ilk as OldStone50's. Cruz, of course, knows what he's doing.
... Henry Decker of the National Memo: "According to a new study from the nonpartisan Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University, Republicans are significantly more likely to lie than Democrats -- and the gap is widening as President Barack Obama spends more time in office.... Notably, the credibility gap seems to be growing with time. In May, as Republicans have obsessively tried to tie the president to a series of scandals, their percentage of false claims has risen to 60 percent." CW: the good news for Republicans? Since the study is slightly sciencey, they can just pretend it's a hoax. OR THIS ...
... Billy Hallowell of Glenn Beck's the Blaze says the results may reflect PolitiFact's bias against Republicans. ...
... Tim Graham at NewsBusters agrees with Hallowell. ...
... CW: Oh, I'm being so unfair. It turns out Red State's Erick Erickson is totally into science:
I'm so used to liberals telling conservatives that they're anti-science. But liberals who defend this and say it is not a bad thing are very anti-science. When you look at biology, when you look at the natural world, the roles of a male and a female in society and in other animals, the male typically is the dominant role. The female, it's not antithesis, or it's not competing, it's a complimentary role. -- Erick Erickson ...
... Amanda Marcotte, in Slate: "Erickson must have this nifty scientific 'fact' by studying the animals in the well-known academic text, The Berenstain Bears, which clearly shows Papa Bear going out and earning the money while Mama Bear stays at home and cooks the food for the cubs. Of course, in the actual natural world, bears don't make money -- plus there's a lot of diversity in how animals raise their young." Please read the whole piece, in which Marcotte takes on the all-male panel Fox "News" chose to discuss the news that in 40% of families with children, the female is the primary breadwinner. ...
... Steve Benen: "... the key takeaway from the all-male Fox panel Erickson participated in: men, they said, should be economically dominant in American society. To disagree is in Fox's Doug Schoen's words to invite 'catastrophic' consequences that 'could undermine our social order.'"
Local News
Steve Eder of the New York Times: "New details about the vetting process [of Rutgers' new athletic director Julie Hermann], which included a 28-member search committee that even its own members found unwieldy, raise serious questions about the thoroughness of the search, and how much university officials, including Dr. [Robert] Barchi, [the university president,] knew about their high-profile hire. Interviews with people close to the search process, as well as internal e-mails, show that it felt rushed and secretive, leaving some elected officials, major donors and search committee members deeply uneasy with how Rutgers responded to one of the biggest scandals in its history." ...
... AND Ted Sherman & Jenna Portnoy of the Star-Ledger: "Rutgers University, beset by the ongoing scandal in its athletics program, got more bad news yesterday from Wall Street, which raised questions about the school's complex merger with the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. Moody's Investor Service downgraded Rutgers' bond rating, saying it had concerns about the impact of the merger on the university's finances."
News Ledes
Houston Chronicle: "Four firefighters died in a five-alarm blaze that broke out at a restaurant Friday afternoon along U.S. 59 in southwest Houston, according to the mayor's office. An arson explosive task force is now involved in the investigation at the scene of the fire, said Franceska Perot, spokeswoman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives."
New York Times: "Japan and South Korea suspended some imports of American wheat, and the European Union urged its 27 nations to increase testing, after the United States government disclosed this week that a strain of genetically engineered wheat that was never approved for sale was found growing in an Oregon field. Although none of the wheat, developed by Monsanto Company, was found in any grain shipments -- and the Department of Agriculture said there would be no health risk if any was shipped -- governments in Asia and Europe acted quickly to limit their risk."
Reuters: "Turkish police fired tear gas and water cannon on Friday at demonstrators in central Istanbul, wounding scores of people and prompting rallies in other cities in the fiercest anti-government protests in years."
AP: " After years of heartbreakingly close calls, Arvind Mahankali conquered his nemesis, German, to become the champion speller in the English language. The 13-year-old from Bayside Hills, N.Y., correctly spelled 'knaidel,' a word for a small mass of leavened dough, to win the 86th Scripps National Spelling Bee< on Thursday night. The bee tested brain power, composure and, for the first time, knowledge of vocabulary."
AP: "Russia's MiG aircraft maker said Friday it plans to sign a new agreement to ship at least 10 fighter jets to Syria, a move that comes amid international criticism of earlier Russian weapons deals with Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime."
Bloomberg: "Consumer spending in the U.S. unexpectedly declined in April as incomes stagnated, putting the biggest part of the U.S. economy on shaky ground at the start of the second quarter."
Reuters: "Unemployment has reached a new high in the euro zone and inflation remains well below the European Central Bank's target, stepping up pressure on EU leaders and the ECB for action to revive the bloc's sickly economy. Joblessness in the 17-nation currency area rose to 12.2 percent in April, EU statistics office Eurostat said on Friday, marking a new record since the data series began in 1995."
Missed this: Reuters: "A Colorado judge on Wednesday rejected challenges to the state's insanity defense statute and death penalty law by accused movie theater gunman
Share Article
Comments for this entry have been disabled. Additional comments may not be added to this entry at this time.
Reader Comments (14)
About Michele, Ma Belle, Bachmann--Nate Silver warns us that because she is not running in 2014 is not good news for Democrats. She won her seat by less than 1% of the vote last election--in a reliable Republican district. To think we will get a less whacked out Republican from the righty richies in Minnesota may be "stinking thinking!"
Truth to tell--I will miss Michele! Rarely have I had the pleasure of seeing such a shallow, mindless know-nothing narcissist take front and center for such a long while. She has been entertaining beyond my wildest dreams. And what will SNL do without her--to say nothing of The Daily Show? You jist knows that she will be replaced by a fat, slimy White guy who is a Biggie Donator to the Repugs.
Sigh.
Regarding the 'gun from my cold, dead hands' letters, it is not entirely fair to place blame wholly on the NRA and its legislative enablers. While they have certainly exploited opportunity - cravenly, cynically, cruelly - the ground they cast their seed on is very fertile. I.e., people today, perhaps especially low income men, fear and feel dis-empowered. They fear loss of control over their own lives due to forces that are somehow vague, shadowy and distant yet nevertheless omnipresent. Guns - and cars - represent the last vestiges of personal control, perhaps even the last vestiges of personal status. The threat, even the hint, that that last little bit of autonomy is going to be taken away...
@OldStone50:
What I wrote: "You can thank the NRA & its Congressional (& Supreme Court) enablers for inciting this kind of dangerous crackpot."
Your response: "... it is not entirely fair to place blame wholly on the NRA and its legislative enablers."
I suppose I could pretend that you're not accusing me of putting the blame "wholly on the NRA & its enablers" & that your remark is just a general statement, which you in fact back up with a perfectly reasonable, and I think accurate, remark about other factors that contribute to the crackpottiness.
But what you imply is that I blame the NRA & Friends wholly for the evolution of a darling innocent babe into this violent, vicious nutcase. Of course I don't. We all have "issues" with authority figures, and the vast majority usually deal with those issues in nonviolent, socially-acceptable ways. Indeed, a blog like this is one of those ways. Perhaps 90 percent of what contributors & I write about is authority figures gone wild.
But encouraged & influenced by the NRA & its enablers, some people with pathological power issues end up like the nut who wrote those ricin-laced letters. (Notice, BTW, how he conflates his "Constitutional right" to own a gun with a "God-given right" to pack heat. This is hardly surprising, as many on the right believe God effectively wrote the Constitution [or at least the parts they like]. If I recall correctly, this belief is even part of Mormon doctrine.)
Others are more like Erick Erickson (see links above), who clearly has issues with women, among others. This week these issues translated into his Berenstain Bears version of the scientifically "natural" male-female hierarchy; in 2010 his rhetoric was more violent: he threatened to confront Census workers with his "wife's shotgun." (Fun for Freudians -- in Erickson's perfect nuclear family, the wife holds the shotgun. Oh my.)
What I wrote was "inciting." "Inciting" is not the same thing as "causing" or "is the one & only reason." (You could look it up.) Yours is precisely the sort of misreading in which the right particularly indulges: perverting a writer or speaker's words to give them some darker or insupportable meaning. Debaters call this tactic the "straw man fallacy." When it's unintentional, it's usually the result of careless reading, sometimes exacerbated by personal prejudices; when it's intentional, it's a cheap trick.
Marie
The Todashev situation has been a crazy Keystone Cop scenario from its 1st reporting. In addition to the knife-gun-poleandtable scenario, it defies reason that any law enforcement agency would take a signed confession for a double homicide outside a professional setting and without video - unless it was a deathbed confession. Oh, yeah, it was, well slightly pre-death. The whole thing reads like a 3 day old walleye laying on the sidewalk in the midst of summer.
(Tordashev) "could have been one of their most valuable sources of information on what the Tsarnaev brothers were really up to before the carried their attack." (Bennett/Atlantic) Stop...just...stop. The Tsarnaevs are dickheads. They were "up to" being dickheads before the attack. They're not some grand jihadist masterminds. Anyway, Tordashev's purported confession was about 2 drug murders. I suppose I "could have been" Ms America 1974 if the judges were wearing blindfolds. Sheesh.
When that splendid vaudevillian team of Reinhart & Rogoff whose debt dancing act was shot down a tad by some Harvard upstart, they said, "Oh, shucks, yes, we made a little glitch, but our premise is still accurate: high debt levels lead to slower economic growth, and oh, by the way, we think Paul Krugman has been especially rude to us and we don't like it one little bit!" But hold on––our dancing team is once again being challenged by a U. of Mass. professor by the name of Dube and Dube says, "Dudes, I've researched this till I'm blue in the face, even got charts to prove you guys are wrong. Your premise is exactly backwards." Haven't heard a response from R&R as yet––they are probably busy putting their dancing duds in cold storage and trying to bandage up those nasty marks left by the hook that brought them back from center stage. Life sometimes gives us just enough good performances in order to carry on with optimism and a smile.
Well, while we're on the subject of cheap debating tricks, let's turn to that man o' god down in Tennessee, Rep. Stephen Fincher (R-natch), who wants to starve poor kids because god said so. Or something.
In any event, according to Republicans who quote the Bible at the drop of the hat (which come to think of it, probably happens a lot less frequently these days. Must come up with a different idiom), poor hungry babies and children are nothing but sleazy moochers who have their dirty hands in the pockets of GOP lawmakers' $2,000 suits. Crap on a donut! Can't have that, now can we? Unless of course they get rich, like Rep. Fincher, on government subsidies and can buy their own $2,000 suits.
But back to the Bible.
Fincher declares, leaning on the authority of the Bible (because Congress should always consult the Bible whenever they're dreaming up the latest policies to fuck the poor), that, according to a letter (that may or may not have been written) by Paul to the Thessalonians in which basically, he says, "no workee, no eatee", words which give Republicans such a lovely ripple up the back, you know, the kind you get when you boot a hungry kid in the chops.
There are a number of historical/religious debates surrounding Fincher's use/misuse of this particular quote but the best I've read so far is from Candace Chellew-Hodge, a pastor and writer at a Columbia, SC church (and I promise not to go too far down the exegetical rabbit hole here).
Letter of Paul to the Begrudgers
According to Pastor Chellew-Hodge, Fincher has taken the quote completely out of context (surprise, surprise) and neglected to mention that in the original instance, that is way back in old Thessalonica (I remember it well), in the early days of the Christian church, there was a lot of confusion regarding the Second Coming, destruction of the earth and all the evildoers and the raising up of those most deserving of eternal life.
In fact, in the first letter to the Thessies, Paul, or whoever, spends a whole lot of time sorting out issues like "what about people who have already died? Do they see Jesus?", "Do we fly up into the sky or will god meet us halfway?" and "can you validate my parking pass?" Well, by the time the second letter was posted, a fairly large number of residents decided that Jesus was coming any day now, so why bother working? Let's just sit around, chew the fat and dream of glory. This pissed off the people who were still working and carrying an additional load and so Paul (or...) sent them a letter telling them to get off their asses and back to work or go to bed hungry.
So, as the good pastor warns, it's dangerous (but sneakily effective) to toss around Bible quotes out of context. Which is why people do it.
But a larger question here is why are we making laws based on biblical authority in the first place???
The whole debate began when a Democrat(!), Juan Vargas, a former Jesuit, thought he'd use a little Jesus Jiu Jitsu on Republicans who wanted to starve even more children by tossing out the "feed the hungry" dictum. This prompted a Texas Republican, Mike Conaway, to finger wag that Jesus laws only apply to people, not to governments so, nyah, nyah, we don't have to help those brats, which resulted in Fincher's piling on.
But why in the fuck are we using the Bible or the Koran or the Seven Books of The Greenish Goobey Monster to one up each other when making public policy?
It's simple. Kids are hungry. They need help. They need food. Their parents are poor, because of many reasons, but more often than not because of policies written and enforced by Republicans who use the Word of God to back up their cruelty. We can't just help these kids? Why can we help Goldman Sachs but not poor hungry children?
It's fucking insane.
@Diane. Couldn't agree more. The killing of Todashev looks like at least manslaughter to me, no matter what feeble story the FBI eventually settles on.
A gaggle of law enforcement officers go to a man's home -- a man who reportedly had a history of losing his temper & whom they want to question in connection with a brutal triple murder -- and they don't check him for weapons? Of course they did. So he's an unarmed individual, even if he can grab a pole or a broom &/or turn over a table, surrounded by law enforcement guys. And these officers shoot him multiple times, once perhaps in the back of the head. You don't shoot a guy wielding a coffee table. Period.
Every law enforcement action connected with the Boston Marathon bombing looks odd -- from the fact that the Tsarnaevs could walk into the cordoned-off finish area with sacks full of metal, to the shooting by friendly fire of the officer in the shootout, to the younger Tsarnaev's escape, to maybe shooting him while he was cornered in the boat. And now this.
Marie
Diane,
I think you may have established the grounds for an entirely new category of juris(not so much)prudence: The Pre-Deathbed, or Soon to Be Deathbed Confession. "Yeah, well, the guy confessed and I was so upset, I shot him."
Sounds reasonable to me. I can see this going all the way to the SCOTUS where Scalia will no doubt rule in favor of its eminent reasonableness. Hey, his good buddy Darth once shot a guy in the face out of pure incompetence and he was cool with that.
I mean, why would the FBI send Quick Draw McGraw to interview a guy who may have been able to shed some additional light on the Boston Bomber case? Why send some jamoke who's likely to come out blasting? Too often we get the impression, from TV and movies that FBI field agents are smart, tough, investigators. This guy shoots an unarmed kid. Seven times! Plus an extra one in the top of the head, you know, just to make sure. Oh, the kid became "agitated"? Aren't these guys trained to deal with that situation? Unless maybe the FBI handbook says:
Kid becomes agitated. Empty your weapon into him. And don't forget one in the top of the head, you know, just to make sure.
Whereupon it's all good.
Hey, this FBI goober wasn't by any chance related to George Zimmerman, was he?
"Why can we help Goldman Sachs but not poor hungry children?"
MONEY–-POWER––AND A SUPERCILIOUS SLANT on anything that smacks of real caring for one's fellow man (and little hungry children who can't vote).
" But a larger question here is why are we making laws based on biblical authority in the first place???"
Ha! Holy Moses, Batman, don't you know that the BIBLE is the WORD of...???.damn, just slipped my mind. I'll get back to you on that. Meanwhile, we'll continue making public policy according to the good book because, hell, it's so much easier than having to THINK.
PD,
Plus it's a nice sop to the Bible Beaters who vote for you.
The thing that pisses me off is all the cherry picking involved.
Let's quote stuff out of context that makes it seem like god is on our side and will smite (great word, though) anyone who disagrees, but let's not mention those passages that insist men should be killed for cutting their beards, children for cussing out their parents, gays and lesbians, just because, or anyone else for wearing yellow crossed garters on Tuesday, and orders to rape and murder people from tribes we don't like.
What about all that batshit crazy stuff?
I can just imagine the eye rolling of the founders when thinking about how nusto the place would get if not for Jefferson's Wall of Separation.
They should see us now.
@Akhilleus. For religious Christians who believe the Bible stories, Jesus isn't very helpful. Jesus says, "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto to God what is God's." (Mark 12:17) What he means here is Jews should pay both Roman taxes (Caesar) & Temple taxes (God).
The Romans no doubt kept their take for their own purposes. The Temple did, too, in part -- the Temple priests were notoriously corrupt -- a central theme of the Gospels.
But here's the rub. The Temple was the Jewish government -- it wrote & enforced the laws, & it invoked the authority of God as Chief Celestial Tax Collector (not that they didn't have actual tax collectors -- often portrayed as bad guys, then as now).
Jews were required to give generously to the Temple, & part of that Temple gift went to support the poor. So in the Mark 12 passage -- one of the most famous in the New Testament -- Jesus endorses government handouts to the poor.
In Matthew 6, Jesus also endorses giving alms to the poor via the Temple, urging his followers to give discreetly, in contrast to the "hypocrites" who show off their holiness.
If those good Christian Republicans had the slightest idea what the Gospels mean, rather than using isolated passages as pretenses to do whatever suits them, they would STFU with their claims that the Bible supports only individual giving.
Marie
Remember the Citadel? The Southern Poverty Law Center's take on it is here:
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2013/summer/behind-the-walls#.Uaj83OCAZUM
Pierce is quite simply on fire in his column about Noonan today who is, per usual, twirling on her butt nonstop. "...on her way to 2-for-1 Happy Hour at the Dreary Haggard Bar And Grille" should be memorialized under a bust of Noonan prominently displayed in the head at the Reagan library.
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Peggums_Makes_Me_Work_Too_Hard
@Diane: Frank Rich ran into the same problem with our Lady of the Vapors on several occasions. Here he is in 2000:
"The Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan upped the ante further [a discussion re: Al Gore] likening the noble act of fighting a Gore presidency to that of fighting Hitler. 'You don't have to be Jewish to know that if Al Gore had been Hitler, Germany would have fallen asleep before England did.' Oy Vey!"
This very Irish Catholic lass has had her head firmly planted in a land where flowers bloom all year long and she will tell you–-over and over–– that this country's song is one of Reagan's special tunes, the one she and he would sing together on those special mornings in America.