;)
Tuesday
Oct072014
The Commentariat -- October 8, 2014
Internal links, graphic & related text removed.
Ewen MacAskhill of the Guardian: "The Obama administration is becoming increasingly frustrated over Turkey's inaction against Islamic State (Isis), in particular its failure to intervene to prevent the jihadis overrunning the Syrian border town of Kobani. The US president is scheduled to hold a meeting on Wednesday of the national security council along with the secretary of state, John Kerry, to discuss Turkey's reluctance so far to help in the battle against Isis. The US is especially angry with Turkey because it is a Nato ally and yet it has refused to provide even basic logistical assistance to the US-led coalition, which is hitting Isis positions in Syria with air strikes."
American "Justice," Ctd. Chris Hamby of BuzzFeed: "The Justice Department is claiming, in a little-noticed court filing, that a federal agent had the right to impersonate a young woman ... Sondra Arquiett, who then went by the name Sondra Prince ... online by creating a Facebook page in her name without her knowledge. Government lawyers also are defending the agent's right to scour the woman's seized cell phone and to post photographs -- including racy pictures of her and even one of her young son and niece -- to the phony social media account, which the agent was using to communicate with suspected criminals.... Leading privacy experts told BuzzFeed News they found the case disturbing. 'It reeks of misrepresentation, fraud, and invasion of privacy,' said Anita L. Allen, a professor at University of Pennsylvania Law School." The day after BuzzFeed first published the story, the DOJ said the the practice was "under review." CW: That's comforting. Read the whole story. You don't have to be Rand Paul to find the government's actions -- and subsequent legal claims -- appalling.
Nicky Woolf of the Guardian: "Twitter has filed a lawsuit against the US government in which it asks to be allowed to publish information about government surveillance of users, the company announced today. In the suit, filed in the US district court of Northern California, Twitter requests 'relief from prohibitions on its speech in violation of the first amendment'."
Dan Roberts of the Guardian: "Prison rules governing the length of facial hair were ridiculed in the supreme court on Tuesday as justices grappled with the question of whether Muslim inmates should be allowed a religious exemption to grow beards. In often surreal exchanges between sceptical justices and lawyers, the question of whether Arkansas convict Gregory Holt should be allowed to keep his half-inch long beard proved less a test of religious freedom than of judicial patience." ...
... CW: The photo of the Supremes the Guardian chose to accompany the article is fairly risible, too. It's at least six years old: No Justice Sotomayor, no Kagan. But Souter & Stevens! Maybe e Guardian figures since Sotomayor & Kagan can't grow beards, they would have no idea how to adjudicate this case.
Kimberlee Kruesi & Paul Elias of the AP: "A federal appeals court declared gay marriage legal in Idaho and Nevada on Tuesday, a day after the U.S. Supreme Court effectively legalized same-sex marriage in 30 other states. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco struck down the two states' bans on gay marriage, ruling they violated equal protection rights." ...
... Joe Coscarelli of New York: "In response to claims by Idaho Governor Butch Otter and the Nevada Coalition to Protect Marriage that equality will make the institution of marriage "more adult-centric and less child-centric," Judge Stephen Reinhardt writes:
[Otter] also states, in conclusory fashion, that allowing same-sex marriage will lead opposite-sex couples to abuse alcohol and drugs, engage in extramarital affairs, take on demanding work schedules, and participate in time-consuming hobbies. We seriously doubt that allowing committed same-sex couples to settle down in legally recognized marriages will drive opposite-sex couples to sex, drugs,and rock-and-roll.
... CW: Should be an occasion of joy, not only for Iowa & Nevada couples, but also for Gail Collins, who thus has been granted another excuse to write, "Butch Otter."
... Paul Waldman on the Supreme Court's marriage equality non-decision: "When the party bigwigs are saying, 'We really need to talk about something else,' the base is going to conclude that they are once again being betrayed by a bunch of elite Washington Republicans who are perfectly happy consorting with the sodomites who inhabit their metropolis of depravity. Which, to a certain degree, is true. Many of those elite Washington Republicans may still write columns in support of 'traditional marriage,' but they also regularly interact with gay people. They'll come around before long, which will only make the base angrier." ...
... Here's GOP chair Prince Rebus trying unsuccessfully to "talk about something else." CW: Igor Volsky accuses Priebus of calling marriage equality "a threat to our economy & national security," but IMO, that's not really what Priebus said; instead, he mumbled that anti-gay conservatives "are right to be concerned about what's happening here in this country," by which he meant the "something else," if you will, not the icky gay marriage thing. He immediately segued into something about "a strong economy, a strong defense and a strong society, blah-blah"; in other words, the "something else." ...
... CW: Yeah, I noticed this, too. Russell Berman of the Atlantic: "Even [Ted] Cruz's proposal is notable for its modesty. His amendment would still allow states to decide the question of marriage, a stark contrast from the constitutional amendment that President George W. Bush and other party leaders backed in 2004, which would forbid the unions altogether." ...
... Justices Are Just Opinionators, Not Deciders." It is shocking that many elected officials, attorneys and judges think that a court ruling is the 'final word.' It most certainly is not. The courts are one branch of government, and equal to the other two, but not superior to either and certainly not to both. Even if the other two branches agree with the ruling, the people's representatives have to pass enabling legislation to authorize same sex marriage, and the President (or Governor in the case of the state) has to sign it. Otherwise, it remains the court's opinion. It is NOT the 'law of the land' as is often heralded. -- Former Arkansas governor & frequent GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, arguing for nullification of the Supreme Court's decision not to hear challenges to marriage equality rulings
I sure wish Al Gore had taken that position & just moved on in to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. -- Constant Weader
... Brian Beutler: "When [Ted] Cruz's statement landed on Monday, I assumed it would constitute the right-most bound of the GOP presidential primary debate over same-sex marriage, with [Scott] Walker's fifth-stage of grief constituting the left bound. But thanks to Huckabee et al, we're left with the real possibility that Republican presidential hopefuls will end up debating the merits of ignoring the Supreme Court and enforcing same-sex marriage bans until the National Guard rolls into town and forces clerks to start printing up licenses."
Zachary Warmbrodt & M. J. Lee of Politico have an update on the case AIG has brought against the government for bailing them out under less generous terms than the government afforded some banks.
Andrea Jones writes a long, readable piece in Rolling Stone on mandatory minimum sentencing: "Between 1980 and 2010, state incarceration rates for drug crimes multiplied tenfold, while the federal drug prisoner population ballooned by a factor of 20. Every year, taxpayers shell out $51 billion for drug war spending. Meanwhile, 2.2 million people -- or a quarter of the world's prisoners -- crowd a system that exacts its harshest toll on the most vulnerable. Racism undermines the justice process from initial stop to sentence, and 60 percent of those incarcerated are people of color. Rates of illiteracy, addiction, and mental illness are disproportionately high." ...
... Charles Pierce: "It is hard not to conclude that, for the past 30 years, in the 'war' on drugs ... has resulted in a culture of armed impunity within police departments, and a culture within the general community that accepts this situation, as long as it doesn't break down their front doors. No-knock warrants are inherently dangerous, especially if special tactical units are encouraged to treat every raid as though they were landing on Omaha Beach. But, as long as it's Their children getting their noses blown across the room, and not Our children, that's just the way things go.... We want to feel safe. Anonymous and reckless deadly force used by law enforcement is the price we're willing to have other people pay."
Capitalism Is Awesome, Ctd. Anne D'Innocenzio of the AP: "Wal-Mart ... will no longer offer health insurance to employees who work less than an average of 30 hours a week. The move affects 30,000 employees, or about 5 percent of Wal-Mart's total part-time workforce, but comes after the company already had scaled back the number of part-time workers who were eligible for health insurance coverage since 2011. The announcement follows similar decisions by Target, Home Depot and others to completely eliminate health insurance benefits for part-time employees. It also comes a day after Wal-Mart said it is teaming up with an online health insurance agency called DirectHealth.com to help customers shop for health insurance plans.... Wal-Mart said far more U.S. employees and their families are enrolling in its health care plans than it had expected following rollout of the Affordable Care Act.... [The ACA] also requires most Americans to have health insurance or pay a penalty." CW: What WalMart does not contribute to the health care of these part-time employees, you & I will. ...
... MEANWHILE, the Waltons are still The Richest Family in the World. ...
... David Leonhardt of the New York Times: "American workers have been receiving meager pay increases for so long now that it's reasonable to talk in sweeping terms about the trend. It is the great wage slowdown of the 21st century. The typical American family makes less than the typical family did 15 years ago, a statement that hadn't previously been true since the Great Depression."
Jonathan Chait: "Over the last generation and a half, American politics has been gradually reshaped as the two parties have refashioned themselves from loose coalitions into tightly knit factions.... Washington is awash in nostalgic memories of congenial dinner parties and tales of Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan knocking back drinks together, and largely blind to the cold rationalism undergirding its current circumstances. The good old days are not coming back."...
... CW: This is something the Village Idiots don't seem to get: that in "the good old days," both parties -- especially the Democratic party -- were composed of hard-line internal factions, making Southern Democrats much less likely than New England Republicans to vote with non-Southern Democrats; ergo, "bipartisanship." ...
... The Party of Lincoln. It is on this history, BTW, that modern ultraconservative (&, gee, maybe racist) Republicans routinely hang their claim that "the Democrat party is the racist party." Yeah, if you back to 1964, or 1864 -- as they will -- the Democratic party was the party of slavery & black oppression. Like the guy who wrote the linked story & Rafael Cruz, father of Ted, they are anxious to "educate" ignorant black people on these historical points. If only black people knew what the parties were like in the 1860s, they would vote Republican all the time.
Eric Dolan of the Raw Story: "Bill Donahue, president of the Catholic League, said Tuesday that one of the reasons that liberals defended Islam was because they shared common enemies: The United States and Jews." ...
... Steve M.: "Catholic League founder apparently forgets that he doesn't particularly like Jews." Steve goes on to cite instances in which Donahue made anti-Semitic remarks.
Epidemiologist David Dausey, in a Washington Post op-ed: "The human errors in this single case [-- Ebola victim Thomas Duncan, who traveled from Liberia to Dallas --] highlight why it is urgent that we ban all commercial flights from the impacted countries to all non-affected countries until the outbreak is contained." (See also L.A. Times story lined in yesterday's News Ledes.) ...
Everything Is Obama's Fault, Ctd. This from the top of the Drudge Report. Via Steve M.:
... Ben Shapiro of Truth Revolt: In Southern California, "bumper stickers began appearing on area cars featuring the word Ebola with the Obama logo replacing the letter 'o.' The scathing stickers come on the eve of President Obama's Thursday trip to LA for a fundraiser at the home of Gwyneth Paltrow and on the same day that the LATimes reports that it may be premature for Mr. Obama's government to declare that the deadly Ebola virus is not transmitted by air." Also via Steve M.
Katie Zavadski of New York: After "Madrid's government announced its decision to euthanize a dog owned by a Spanish nurse infected with Ebola out of public-health concerns..., animal-rights activists [are] keeping watch over the owners' house and nearly 200,000 [people have signed] on an online petition for the poor dog." See update in today's News Ledes.
CW: What I Said. Justin Sink & Amy Parnes of the Hill: "Leon Panetta's critique of President Obama turned scalding Tuesday as the former Pentagon and CIA chief ripped the man he once served, bolstering the Republican case against Obama for the midterm elections. In a series of rapid-fire media appearances -- including interviews with CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Yahoo News and USA Today -- Panetta has delivered blow after blow, casting Obama as too willing to 'step back and give up' when confronted by tough problems. During an appearance Tuesday night on 'The O'Reilly Factor,' Panetta doubted whether the president had the will to make tough decisions.... Panetta's broadsides couldn't come at a worse time for Democrats.... Democratic commentator Brent Budowsky, a columnist for The Hill, said it is 'despicable' that Panetta would go after the president so close to the midterm elections. 'It is outrageous and sickening he'd put it out shortly before a midterm to make money on book sales in a way that would hurt Democrats running in Congress as well as the White House,' he said." (Emphasis added.) ...
... Former Obama spokesman Bill Burton on Panetta:
... Jonathan Topaz of Politico: "Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Wednesday defended his decision to speak out against President Barack Obama, saying he did so to help the president succeed in his last two years in office." CW: Also, what I hypocritically characterize as "loyalty to the President" is selling a truckload of my books & getting me facetime on O'Reilly. And I really don't give a shit how the midterms turn out. ...
... Piling On. Jonathan Topaz: "Former President Jimmy Carter is criticizing President Barack Obama's Middle East policy, saying he has shifting policies and waited too long to take action against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. In an interviewed published Tuesday in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the 39th president said the Obama administration, by not acting sooner, allowed ISIL to build up its strength." ...
... CW: This is just stupid. It's fine to criticize the POTUS, especially if you think your criticism could lead him to change his views. (Carter, in the interiew, talks about his opposition to the military's deployment of drones.) But how the hell does it help advance your own policies to criticize a president of your own party, weeks before a national election (which people are already voting in many states), for what he didn't do in the past? (In the interview, Carter suggests he would support Hillary Clinton were she the nominee. Does he think she wouldn't use drones?)
Brad Richardson of the Claremont Independent: "Nationally syndicated columnist George Will was slated to speak at the ninth annual Elizabeth Hubert Malott Public Affairs Program [at California's Scripps College], the mission of which is to bring speakers to campus whose political views differ from the majority of students at the all-women's college, but had his invitation rescinded after he wrote a column about sexual assault on college campuses. 'It was in the works and then it wasn't in the works,' Will said in an interview with the Independent. 'They didn't say that the column was the reason, but it was the reason.'"
Beyond the Beltway
Rachel Weiner, et al., of the Washington Post: "A panel of federal judges on Tuesday declared Virginia's congressional maps unconstitutional because they concentrate African American voters into a single district at the expense of their influence elsewhere. The decision, handed down in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, orders the Virginia General Assembly to draw up new congressional maps by April -- potentially launching a frenzied and highly political battle for survival within Virginia's congressional delegation.... The [state] attorney general's office, in consultation with the Department of Elections, will decide whether to appeal...." CW: Virginia's attorney general, Mark Herring, who won the post by the narrowest of margins, is a Democrat. Elections matter. Your vote counts.
... Igor Volsky of Think Progress: "As Virginia currently has a Democratic governor, Gov. Terry McAuliffe will be able to veto any plan which is unfair to his fellow Democrats, while the GOP-controlled legislature will no doubt push for a map that serves Republican interests. Because the current maps favor Republicans so strongly, however, the likely result will be maps that are much more favorable to Democrats."
We're the ones who gave all y'all the freedoms that you have! -- Blond white lady to Ferguson protesters
Us Against Them. Catherine Thompson of TPM: "In a video that may actually merit a 'this video will destroy your faith in humanity' tagline, St. Louis Cardinals fans taunted protesters demonstrating for Ferguson teen Michael Brown Monday night outside Busch Stadium by chanting the name of the white police officer who fatally shot him.... The baseball fans first countered the protesters' 'Justice For Mike Brown' chants with a 'Let's Go Cardinals' refrain. Then the 'Let's Go Cardinals' chant morphed into shouts of 'Let's Go Darren' and 'Darren Wilson.'" ...
... CW: The gracious blond white lady betrays a central truth of today's white racists -- they fervently believe that black people should be kissing their white asses because white people so generously (also voluntarily!) "gave" black people a measure of "freeeedom," & they deeply resent the failure of blacks to properly appreciate the generosity of their kindly white benefactors. See also, Rafael Cruz. ...
Saeed Ahmed of CNN: "A federal judge has ruled that police in Ferguson, Missouri, violated the Constitution when they told protesters that they had to keep walking and that they couldn't stand still. U.S. District Judge Catherine Perry issued a preliminary injunction Monday forbidding law enforcement from carrying out the practice because "it is likely that these agencies will again apply this unconstitutional policy. Law enforcement agencies adopted the policy on August 18...." CW: So much for the crime of Standing While Black. ...
... Never Mind. Zachary Roth of NBC News: "Local election officials said last week that 3,287 people had registered to vote in Ferguson since the Aug. 9 police shooting of Michael Brown -- a massive spike in a city with a population of 21,000. But Tuesday, the board backtracked, saying that in fact only 128 people had registered." ...
... CW: If you don't recruit qualified, articulate candidates to further your political philosophy & if you don't bother to vote for them, you're not going to get the government you want. Protests against current conditions are fine & noble & maybe cathartic, but in Ferguson, they are falling on the deaf ears of the status quo defenders of police brutality.
National Elections
Trip Gabriel of the New York Times: "Just weeks before elections that will decide control of the Senate and crucial governors' races, a cascade of court rulings about voting rules, issued by judges with an increasingly partisan edge, are sowing confusion and changing voting procedures with the potential to affect outcomes in some states."
Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: President Obama "has been reduced to ... an isolated political figure who is viewed as a liability to Democrats in the very states where voters by the thousands had once stood to cheer him." CW Note: The irony to this is that Obama is doubtlessly a better & wiser statesman today than he was back when he was a rock star.
Katie Glueck of Politico: "Former President Bill Clinton on Monday warned Arkansans to avoid taking a 'protest vote' against national Democrats in the midterms, urging them instead to 'vote your heart' and back Democrats running at home. He also blasted the influence of outside money in the races. Drawing rousing applause in a fiery speech here at the University of Central Arkansas, the beloved former governor of this state called on the crowd to vote 'for what you are for, not for what you are against.'"
James Hohmann of Politico: "Democrat Michelle Nunn repeatedly hammered Republican David Perdue for outsourcing jobs in a Georgia Senate debate Tuesday -- even in response to unrelated questions -- a sign her campaign believes the outsourcing story line can narrow a race that favors the GOP. Perdue, meanwhile, linked Nunn with Barack Obama at every opportunity and slammed her over a leaked campaign strategy plan that he said shows she doesn't really care about agriculture. The hourlong debate at the Georgia National Fairgrounds in Perry was broadcast live by WMAZ-TV, the CBS affiliate in Macon.... Perdue said in a 2005 deposition, first reported by Politico, that he'd spent most of his career outsourcing." ...
... Charles Pierce on "Debate Night": "If you're not depressed, you're not paying attention."
GOP Cuts Its Losses in Michigan. Cameron Joseph of the Hill: "The National Republican Senatorial Committee has cut the remaining television it had reserved in Michigan amid signs former Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land (R) is having trouble catching Rep. Gary Peters (D-Mich.). The NRSC's independent expenditure arm has canceled television reservations for the last two weeks of the campaign, pulling more than $850,000 out of the state.... Peters has had a consistent lead over Land in public polling since early summer in the Democratic-leaning state, with a lead outside the margin of error in most recent polling, and Republican strategists privately concede that she's struggled."
Luke Brinker of Salon: "A construction company owned by GOP Iowa Senate candidate Joni Ernst's father received more than $200,000 in county contracts while she served as auditor of Montgomery County, Iowa, despite a strict conflict of interest code governing the provision of contracts to family members of county officials." Part of Ernst's job as auditor involved "working" bids for country contracts. CW: Aw, let's just put Ernst's "working" Dad's bid as a fine example of Iowa family values. Ernst (R-WayTP) is the Iowa's GOP nominee for U.S. Senate. ...
... Oh, and Joni has a little trouble -- as do many candidates -- separating her "independent" PACs from her campaign.
Greg Sargent: Arkansas Senate nominee Rep. Tom Cotton (RTP) warns Arkansans that ISIS, in collaboration with Mexican drug cartels, whose members apparently roam freely across the porous Mexican-U.S. border, are coming "to attack us right here in places like Arkansas." If anybody votes for Sen. David Pryor (D). You know it must be true because he read it in the Breitbart News. ...
... David Ramsey of the Arkansas Times picked up Sargent's story: "When it comes to rank demagoguery and fear-mongering, this is hard to top.... Cotton wants to attack Pryor on immigration (and connect him with Obama on this issue) and he wants to attack him as weak on foreign policy (again, Obama!), so might as well mix up the two."
News Ledes
New York Times: "The weekslong hunt through the Pocono Mountains for a man wanted in the ambush and killing of a Pennsylvania state trooper took another dramatic turn on Wednesday as police officials revealed chilling reflections recorded in handwritten notes found at a campsite apparently abandoned by the elusive suspect."
New York Times: "Gun battles and explosions echoed from the embattled Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani on Wednesday, as Islamic State militants detonated a car bomb and new American-led airstrikes hit the northern edge of the town, close to the Turkish border. A Kurdish official in Kobani, Assi Abdullah, said that despite the bombing, Islamic State fighters had managed to enter new areas of the town and move north, closer to the border." ...
... Guardian: "The White House has admitted that military advances by the Islamic State in Syria show the limits of American policy to 'roll back' its fighters without committing US ground troops, but insisted a long-term coalition strategy will still defeat the militant group."
New York Times: "Federal officials said Wednesday that they would begin temperature screenings of passengers arriving from West Africa at five American airports, beginning with Kennedy International in New York as early as this weekend, as the United States races to respond to a deadly Ebola outbreak. Travelers at the four other airports -- Washington Dulles International, O'Hare International, Hartsfield-Jackson International and Newark Liberty International -- will be screened starting next week, according to federal officials."
USA Today: "Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian national who was the first patient diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, died Wednesday at a Dallas hospital, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital said." ...
... The New York Times story is here. ...
... Washington Post: "... for the first time, officials in America will take on the grim and dangerous task of handling the remains of an Ebola victim, a complicated procedure that can be a critical moment in stopping the transmission of the disease."
... New York Times: "A dog named Excalibur who belonged to an Ebola-infected nurse was euthanized on Wednesday, even as protesters and animal rights activists surrounded the Madrid home of the nurse and her husband. A online petition calling for the dog's life to be spared had drawn hundreds of thousands of signatures. The furor came amid questions about whether dogs can get and transmit the disease."
Guardian: "The methods used by the US military to feed inmates in Guantánamo Bay against their will presents a long-term risk to their health, a federal court heard on Tuesday. Steven Miles, a doctor and professor of medical ethics at the University of Minnesota, told a courtroom that lubricating the feeding tubes at Guantánamo, used on hunger-striking detainees, can cause a form of chronic inflammatory pneumonia, and questioned whether the force feeding was medically necessary." ...
... UPDATE: "Three days of legal arguments concluded Wednesday in the first-ever court challenge to the controversial US practice of forcibly feeding hunger-striking detainees at Guantánamo Bay."
Washington Post: "The 2014 Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded Wednesday to Eric Betzig of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Farm Research Campus in Ashburn, Va. Stefan W. Hell of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry (Germany), and William E. Moerner of Stanford University for their work in overcoming the limitations of the traditional light microscope."
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Reader Comments (20)
Gotta love judge Reinhardt: It "will drive opposite-sex couples to sex, drugs,and rock-and-roll." Shades of the Ducks Breath Mystery Theater!
Once again, Edsall:
A depressing read, but...
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/08/opinion/the-state-by-state-revival-of-the-right.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region®ion=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region
James,
Duck's Breath Mystery Theater!
I haven't heard them (as such) in a while, but I occasionally see Ian Sholes on the site philosophytalk.org. I recall him doing a riff there on how great it would have been had Schopenhauer written a book of jokes, which is really funny if you've every read any Schopenhauer. Besides, did you ever look at the guy? Not exactly the face of comedy.
As for the suggestion that gay marriage will cause straight married couples to descend into depravity and drugged out, drunken orgies, in addition to ruining the economy, triggering a world wide drought, and stopping the sun in the sky, I doubt even the Duck's Breath guys could have come up with something that weird. I think ol' Butch missed his calling. He should have been doing surrealistic stand up.
Buy of course, it's all Obama's fault. Whatever it is.
And Schopenhauer's too. Anyone who spends time trying to disembowel jokes to explain how laughter works simply has to accept the blame for pretty much any bad thing that comes along.
Marie, re your comment on Walmart employees, unless you make over $250K a year (I sure don't), how will you be paying for the healthcare subsidies for these employees?
One of my regrets from a decade in Iowa City is not going down the street to the Union on Saturday nights to take in Duck's Breath before they went West.
Elsewhere: One of my frustrations, as a biologist, with environmental and population coverage by the MSM is the shifting baseline; what we view as goals for conservation or sustainability are far degraded from their equivalents only a few years prior. As Marie educates us, often indirectly, the same has evolved with respect to the MSM coverage of economic, social and international news. This came to mind yesterday while reading a piece from Todd Walton's blog reprinted in the Anderson Valley Advertiser:
http://underthetablebooks.com/blog/
Even while, IMO, somewhat but not drastically, overstated, it points out how much the media, have drifted toward acceptance of public policy, or at least avoiding outrage, no matter how harebrained. Instead we have Friedman, Brooks and endless apologists who only occasionally stick pins in our leaders' claims. Heather D Parton and Mr. C Pierce are rare voices in visible (except at Wendys?) publications. Oh, for the likes of James Howard Kunstler or Noam Chomsky, to break out into the public eye.
The scene in St. Louis was sickening. I can see fans streaming out of a playoff game not wanting to be confronted by protesters (heaven forfend), because of the buzzkill effect, but to actively attack them and taunt them by praising a cop who likely murdered an unarmed black kid for WWB?
Disgusting.
But the white lady screaming that it was she, among others, who deigned to allow black Americans any of the rights they now enjoy (when allowed to), along with the nonsensical statement by another right-winger (I'm assuming that lady was not in any way a liberal), a former and possibly future candidate for president, Mike Huckabee, demonstrate the essential ignorance of these people about not only the history of the country they claim to love, but the civic underpinnings that allow it to operate without descending into caveman chaos.
So this lady beleives that white people like her gave black people their rights? Well, first, screaming white lady, according to Thomas Jefferson, some of the most important rights ascribed to human beings can neither be given nor taken away by you or anyone else. Idiot.
In the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson proclaims that all humans are endowed with certain inalienable rights. I'm working off memory now, but I'm pretty damn sure there's nothing in there about screaming white racists being the ones to have endowed anyone with anything, other than maybe chains. If screaming white lady meant the freedom of speech, she didn't give anyone that right either. That's a constitutional freedom that we all agreed upon over two hundred years ago.
As for would be President Huckabee, it's true that the Supreme Court does not have the last word. Who ever said they did? Congress can go in and change laws anytime they damn please. It's a balancing act. But, in lieu of that, once the Supreme Court has decided, or decided not to decide, the result IS, at that moment, the law of the land.
Plenty of things this court has decided that I simply deplore, but I wouldn't be so presumptuous as to say I can ignore them because they don't sit well with me.
The fact is, these people inhabit a completely separate universe, a fantasy world where the only things that matter are what they want to be true, what they want to believe. They are unAmerican. They are dangerous. And they are S T U P I D.
Oh, and by the way, I was wondering why I hadn't heard any reaction from any of the black players on the Cardinals roster about the disgraceful actions of their fans. Then I remembered.
There are none.
The Cardinals haven't had a black player in some years. They began this season as one of the three teams with no African Americans on their roster. The others were Arizona (no surprise) and San Francisco (a bit of a surprise). There are a few players from the DR, but no black Americans.
They also don't have many black fans. Again, no surprise. Which is too bad considering that some of the greatest and most influential Cardinals players in their history have been African Americans: the great Bob Gibson, Willie McGee, Ozzie (the Wizard of Oz) Smith, and the guy who singlehandedly changed the face of baseball for all players, black and white, Curt Flood, who took on the infamous reserve clause that effectively made players indentured servants to the owners. Flood's lawsuit, that made him a hated figure in many quarters, opened the doors to free agency. Flood handled it all with character, dignity and honor.
The fans who attacked the black protesters outside the stadium last night demonstrated none of those qualities.
@Nancy: Not sure what you're referring to here -- maybe the Medicare surcharge for couples earning more than $250K in taxable income & investments? The ACA imposed that surcharge.
No doubt I have been (gladly) subsidizing health insurance for underpaid WalMart workers, but up till this coming January, WalMart has been kicking in something for some of their employees who work less than an average of 30 hours/week. When they quit doing that, I'll just have to kick in a little more. And so will you, if you're a state &/or federal taxpayer.
All federal & state income taxpayers (of which I am one) subsidize people who receive health care & are unable to pay for it. The federal tax contributions to Medicaid & CHIP were about $275BB in 2013. The states match these amounts, so make that $550BB.
If you are of the impression that only the wealthy pay for health insurance subsidies & health care, you are mistaken.
Marie
Whyte,
Great link. I was drawn in immediately by the GB Shaw quote at the top of the page:
“He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.”
It also points, these days, to a career as an online pundit or "reporter", "experts" in anything they choose, whenever they choose it.
You mention the discouraging sliding baseline in the media on coverage of the environment. There are so many people out there today, writing on things they know absolutely nothing about. But because WWW operates much more like a propulsion device rather than an effective filter, much of the most worthless crap rises to the top. Some idiot on Breitbart makes a totally untrue, insupportable claim about environmental protection ("It's all a lie! A world wide conspiracy! It's socialism!") and a few days later, if not hours, it gets repeated by someone on the Washington Times, then the Post then the NYT (in a purely "informational" manner) and next thing you know, Upchuck Todd is asking James (Clearcut) Inhofe what he thinks about it. The next day it's all over the front pages: Environmental protection, a Socialist Plot!
And because few readers (even among those who actually do read) are less inclined to do their own homework, they figure, well, Very Important People on the TV said it, it must be true. And then it's Katy bar the door.
I wouldn't be surprised to hear from some yahoos somewhere out there that the blood moon we saw early this morning (didn't look very red where I am, but any eclipse is just too cool to miss) was a sign that god is angry with Obama because of.....oh, fill in the blank.
As for Noam Chomsky, or anyone like him, appearing on a major MSM outlet, don't hold your breath. Why? Because Chomsky (and I haven't always agreed with Prof. Chomsky, but I've always found his opinions thought provoking at least) has been deemed an untouchable due to his pigeonholing as a LIBERAL. His opinions are automatically discounted.
Funny that actual war criminals like Dick Cheney and Henry(what war? Oh that war? That was a long time ago. No one cares anymore) Kissinger, well known iconic WINGERS are handed gold gilt invitations to come on and pour their poison into Americans' ears on a regular basis.
I ask again, what liberal media?
In fact, can anyone point me to a regular commentator in the MSM who gets invited onto the blowhard shows or nightly news shows, who is an honest to god, card carrying liberal? And don't say Bill Moyers. He's been relegated to PBS and now he's retiring. Besides I never recall him on Press the Meat or anything vaguely like it.
There are none.
But there are hordes--I mean fucking Mongol-type hordes--of far, far, way out, right-wingers, a large collection of both siders, a few namby-pamby, apologetic progressive manqués, but no one, on nearly as regular a basis as you see someone like Bombs Away McCain who could pass as a real liberal.
Elizabeth Warren doesn't count 'cause she's not a regular anywhere. Besides, producers are afraid that if they invite her on to debate economic issues with Little Paul Ryan or George Will, they'll shit their diapers.
What liberal media?
@Akhilleus, re: President Huckabee. In my view, the Supremes ultimately have more power than the Congress & president because they can nullify acts the Congress passes & documents (including bills) the president signs as well as presidential acts. The Supremes of course have to find a Constitutional basis for their nullifying opinions, but the Constitution is a slippery thing, & Supreme Court justices are pretty damned good at mining the clauses that suit them.
At great pains, the Congress passed a modest campaign finance reform law. Then the Supremes realized that money was speech. First Amendment! Citizens United. Koch brothers. Sheldon Adelson. And their 18K gold soapboxes.
Short of passing a Constitutional amendment & getting 3/4ths of the states to ratify it, the hands of the other two branches are tied behind their backs on campaign finance reform. You will find the guys who tied 'em up at One First St. NE.
Marie
@ Akhilleus. Yeah, how come Elizabeth Warren, Al Franken, Sherrod Brown & Bernie Sanders aren't as ubiquitous on Sunday mornings as John McCain, Lindsey Graham & Kelly Ayotte?
Why is it that bookers think Chuck Schumer or maybe Dick Durbin is a representative "liberal" Senator?
Marie
Marie,
No, I wasn't under the impression that only the wealthy pay for health insurance subsidies and healthcare, so no I'm not mistaken. If I'm smart enough to read this blog, I'm smart enough to know better than that.
I guess I was confused by the post. I inferred that those Walmart employees would now enroll for health insurance under the ACA. Taxpayers do not subsidize ACA unless you are a taxpayer with an income of over $250K. Any other situation, yes, we are paying for them. You are right. Apologies for my confusion.
Akhilleus. Again, so right.
The Right has been whining about the "liberal media" for decades and whatever doubtful substance the charge might have once had--the New Deal and its culture did persist for a while, just long nearly long enough--in each passing decade of their plaint, it has become less and less true, to the point now where it is just another Right Wing lie, a mantra repeated endlessly and unashamed.
Today we have instead a very conservative media, becoming more so every day. Beyond the fatuity of the he said-she said tripe (I meant to type "trope," but my fingers knew better), newspapers and TV regularly feature "experts" and talking heads whose thoughts, claims or policies have been clearly discredited. What do the likes of Dick Cheney, John McCain or George Will, to take just three common and outrageous instances, have to say of value to anyone? When did they last, if ever, propose a practical solution to a problem or present any useful idea? If the media were not in the pockets of the monied, if their time on the air were not in some way--never quid pro quo, Mr. Roberts-- purchased, we would not see them every weekend, if ever.
Ever lower taxes?
More charter schools?
More "free" trade deals?
More boots on the ground in the Middle East?
All dumb ideas dinned into us daily by the so-called liberal media.
Liberal? Yeah, (so to speak) right.
Apologies to C. M. Kornbluth: They're all a bunch of marching morons, and anyone who believes in the face of all the evidence to the contrary that we have a liberal media should join the moron parade.
@ Nancy wrote, "Taxpayers do not subsidize ACA unless you are a taxpayer with an income of over $250K."
That's what I understood you to mean the first time, and that is not correct.
There is an ACA-imposed Medicare surcharge on families with incomes & investments above $250K ($200K for individuals). But that is expected to cover only about 25 percent of the ACA health insurance subsidies. I'll let Jonathan Gruber (who is only right about 98 percent of the time) explain what funds ACA subsidies:
"... about half the costs are offset by projected savings in Medicare payments to insurers and hospitals. Another quarter is offset by added taxes on medical-device makers and drug companies. 'The other source of revenue is a tax increase on the wealthiest Americans,' he says. 'Those families with incomes above $250,000 a year will now have to pay more in Medicare payroll taxes.'"
But that doesn't include the Medicaid expansion, & most of those part-time WalMart employees will qualify for subsidies (in the states that have instituted the Medicaid expansion). The funds going into the Medicaid expansion come from the federal government & states. In the first years, 100 percent of the funds will come from the feds & thereafter 90 percent will be paid from federal tax dollars (which I failed to account for in my response above). The source of those funds, at the federal level, is general revenue: ordinary income taxes, business taxes, estate taxes, etc.
In short, all income-tax payers are subsidizing the ACA. The Medicare surcharge on the wealthy subsidizes only a fraction of it: about 25 percent of the health insurance subsidy part, & some percentage I don't know (but well less than 50 percent) of the Medicaid expansion part.
Marie
Marie,
I was perhaps being a tad too idealistic in my description of our system as a balancing act. In fact, you are correct, since the current court has taken it upon themselves to legislate from the bench and tell the president what he may and may not do, except for the guy they shoved into the White House in their 2000 coup d'etat, there isn't much balance. The gay marriage thing got away from them but you can be sure there will be plenty of black mustache twirling to come in many other areas of what Americans can and cannot do, according to Little Johnny and the Dwarfs.
It's too bad literalists like Scalia are only literal about the wingnut dreams in their heads. If they truly believed the system required checks and balances and that each branch had an important role to play, they wouldn't be constantly putting their thumbs on the ideological scales.
I guess that's another idealistic fantasy.
Ken,
Cheney and McCain and Will and the other denizens of CM Kornbluth's dystopic future have nothing useful to offer. The fact is, they don't want anything fixed. They're not looking for any answers but the one they want, and that is a sort of "truth" that underlies everything they do and say. They're not seeking "truth" because they've already got their own.
They don't want government to run at all. They see government as a tool they can use to achieve their own ends and they don't now, nor have they ever, seen it as anything else. This is why they can rig elections. This is why they scheme and lie and obfuscate, then go on the Sunday morning gasbag extravaganzas and say "Who, me? I LOVE government. As long it stays in that box in the corner and shuts up until we need it."
By the way, any mention of Kornbluth causes an instantaneous image of several beloved and fearsomely dog-eared books of my adolescence, the Avon Science Fiction Hall of Fame collections. I had those suckers memorized. Volume 1 had Kornbluth's "Little Black Bag", a hell of a story. "Marching Morons" was in Vol. 2. Volume 1 also included Lester Del Rey's surprisingly emotional "Helen O'Loy" and Theodore Sturgeon's brain bending "Microcosmic God". Vol 2 had the story "In Hiding" in which kids with amazing intellects were forced to hide out because, it was felt, smart people were distrusted and feared. It's not a lot different today.
I seem to recall that one of the reasons for Kornbluth's world of marching morons was that smart people stopped having children while the idiots bred like rabbits. Another reason Republicans are anti-choice. The more idiots, the better. Dick Cheney presents them with his version of the truth and they applaud as if he'd just handed them the secret to the sweet mystery of life.
Vaclav Havel once said (I may be paraphrasing) "Surround yourself with seekers of truth, but run like hell from those who claim to have found it."
And ain't that the truth.
Marie,
"Why is it that bookers think Chuck Schumer or maybe Dick Durbin is a representative "liberal" Senator?"
First, Chuck Schumer has been in the tank for a long time. He can be counted on not to show up and talk about dreary things like income inequality and the American underclass perpetuated by the Masters of the Universe on Wall St. and their congressional poodles. Dick Durbin is no boat rocker either. He certainly ain't Elizabeth Warren.
Besides, who wants to be bothered on a Sunday morning thinking about our responsibility as citizens and income inequality and all those very unfashionable poor people? C'mon, man, it's Sunday. Let's talk about bombs and billionaires and the best way to get rid of that horrible nee-groe in our White House. Where was he born again?
Panem et circenses, baby. Panem et circenses.
Okay, just a quick one then I'm done.
Been thinking about war lately.
Last night I pulled out a book I haven't looked at in over 20 years, Peter Paret's "Maker's of Modern Strategy" a 1986 compendium of articles concerned with theories of international conflict and war. I was looking for a particular article by Paret, on Von Clausewitz. While cruising down the ToC, I ran across an article on Russian strategy during WWII written during the Reagan years by a young assistant professor at Stanford. I remembered reading this piece years ago but completely forgot that it was written by Condoleezza Rice.
One quote struck me between the eyes. Rice recounts a boastful Stalin telling a Russian general about his strategy for war. "Do you know why we won?" [he asked] "Because I prepared the country for war."
That made me think about the frenzied run up to the Iraq debacle, the lies, the subterfuge, the rush to arms, the no holds attacks on any who stood in the way of the Bush administration's expressway to war. Then I thought of one of Rice's more flamboyant contributions to the preparation for war, the infamous "smoking gun/mushroom cloud" scare tactic.
Uncle Joe would have been proud.
More on Clausewitz later.
Bet you can't wait. Ha.
We should remember that if it hadn't been for his widow, Maria, we wouldn't have "Vom Kriege" in its present form.
Barbarossa,
Why am I not surprised that you know that?
I've always found it interesting that two of the most influential 19th C German theorists (although Clausewitz probably considered himself Prussian, not German, as the modern idea of "Germany" was still in flux at that time), Carl Von Clausewitz and Friedrich Nietzsche, required the assistance of the most important women in their lives to ensure that some or all of their output saw the light of day.
I would wager that Marie Von Clausewitz's editorial work is far more reliable than Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche's, who, later in life, used her brother's prestige and intellectual cachet, and her own virulent antisemitism as entrée into Hitler's inner circle. Hey, why align yourself with the miserable when you can minuet with the murderers?
Oh yeah, one other woman (that I can think of) in 19th century German culture took it upon herself to shepherd the work of her husband into the 20th century, with great success: Cosima Wagner. Cosima, the daughter of the legendary Franz Liszt, was married to the influential conducter Hans von Bülow, but gave birth to two of Wagner's children while still married to von Bülow, who, ironically, was one of Wagner's early supporters. Nice, in'it?
After Wagner died, she threw her support to overtly anti-semitic forces such as the Bayreuth Circle which later went on to become a major cultural feather in the cap of the National Socialists, a group for whom the concept of "culture" typically referred to the physical.
But unlike in the case of Nietzsche, whose sister twisted her brother's philosophy, Richard Wagner, although not nearly the psychotic anti-semite his wife was, could be a genuine asshole when he was alive.
Ah, me. History is a ragged thing with plenty of uneven edges.
Too bad Republicans can't admit that. Slaves? Why, they had a life of ease and luxury? Doncha know?