;)
Tuesday
Sep172013
The Commentariat -- Sept. 18, 2013
NEW. Pedro da Costa & Alister Bull of Reuters: "The U.S. Federal Reserve said on Wednesday that it would continue buying bonds at an $85 billion monthly pace for now, surprising financial markets that were braced for a reduction in the central bank's economic stimulus."
Craig Whitlock, et al., of the Washington Post: "The man named as the shooter in Monday’s Washington Navy Yard rampage had a highly checkered four-year career as a Navy reservist, a period marked by repeated run-ins with his military superiors and the law.... Aaron Alexis was cited at least eight times for misconduct for offenses as minor as a traffic ticket and showing up late for work but also as serious as insubordination and disorderly conduct, said a Navy official.... Law enforcement officials said Tuesday that Alexis had acted alone in the rampage and engaged in a firefight with police that lasted more than 30 minutes. They said they are reviewing his medical and criminal histories...." ...
... Theresa Vargas & others of the Washington Post have more on Alexis's history of erratic behavior & run-ins with the law. "A Navy official ... said that Alexis received a general discharge for 'misconduct' and that [a] 2010 firearms incident in Texas played a role in his departure." ...
... Joseph Goldstein, et al., of the New York Times: "The former Navy reservist who killed 12 people in a shooting rampage at the Washington Navy Yard on Monday had exhibited signs of mental illness dating back more than a decade, including a recent episode in which he complained about hearing voices and of people sending 'vibrations to his body' to prevent him from sleeping, law enforcement officials said Tuesday. Only a month ago, the gunman, Aaron Alexis, 34, was suffering from hallucinations so severe that he called the Newport Police Department in Rhode Island where he told officers he was on business." ...
... Craig Whitlock, et al.: "Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel intends to order a security review at all U.S. military bases worldwide, a senior Pentagon official said Tuesday, a day after a contract worker -- who had obtained a security clearance despite a history of violent behavior -- killed 12 people in a shooting rampage at the Washington Navy Yard." ...
... Jake Tapper of CNN: "Navy officers were aware that in 2004 Aaron Alexis was arrested for shooting out the tires of a car in a black-out fueled by anger, and yet they admitted him into the Navy and granted him security clearance in 2007 anyway...." ...
... Carol Leonnig & Ed O'Keefe of the Post: "The owner of the company that employed Aaron Alexis, who police have identified as the Navy Yard shooter, said he would not have hired the Fort Worth computer technician if he had known about some of his brushes with the law and said the military should have shared more information with the company about Alexis' history. His complaints come amid calls from several members of Congress, including the senator [Thomas Carper (D-Del.)] with lead federal oversight over the District of Columbia and federal employees, for a serious examination of how federal agencies and government contractors conduct background checks on potential hires. A Defense Department report to be released Tuesday raised questions about whether the Navy had been properly conducting such checks on government contractors." ...
... The Post is liveblogging developments. ...
... The Post has sketchy profiles of the victims. ...
... Some Massachusetts academics do a regression analysis & conclude just what you & I would have expected, but not what Wayne LaPierre would want us to know: "We observed a robust correlation between higher levels of gun ownership and higher firearm homicide rates. Although we could not determine causation, we found that states with higher rates of gun ownership had disproportionately large numbers of deaths from firearm-related homicides." ...
... Charles Pierce: "The results of the study may seem little more than an exercise in confirming the obvious, but that's an exercise the country needs. It needs to have the obvious -- guns kill people, health-insurance helps keep them alive, large banks are all thieves, economic oligarchy is incompatible with political democracy ... proven to it, over and over again, because the industry of bullshit has become too efficient. The contempt for learning, the scorn heaped on reason, the distrust of expertise, has leached like foul water into all of our institutions, and particularly into our politics." ...
... CW: I don't know which comes first here, the chicken or the egg. Do wingers mistrust science & other book-learning stuff because the facts refute their beliefs, or do their beliefs "prove" to them that scholars & scientists are untrustworthy? ...
... Wingers would like you to know that Alexis was a "liberal who supported Obama," according to a self-described conservative friend of his. ...
... You may have heard -- because that is what has been reported -- that the NRA opposes allowing people with Alexis's mental health history to purchase a firearm, but Steve M. of NMMNB sets the record straight. Since no judicial authority had committed Alexis to a mental institution, the NRA deems him good to pack heat.
... David Edwards of the Raw Story: "New Fox & Friends host Elisabeth Hasselbeck [who used to be the winger dingbat on ABC's "The View"] on Tuesday suggested that 'the left' was trying to make Monday's mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard about 'gun control,' when what the country really needed was a registry to track video game purchases." ...
... Don't worry, Elisabeth. As Dana Milbank notes, the prospects for gun control legislation are nil. Deranged Americans planning suicide by mass-murder will still acquire guns in our wonderful free-market system, and these periodic massacres will continue apace, providing the news media with occasional ratings boosts & non-victims many opportunities to tut-tut about whatever aspect of the latest shooting spree most irritates us.
C. J. Chivers takes the New York Times' third stab at reading the U.N. inspectors' report on the August chemical weapons attack. Each new version of the story differs from the one before. Now Chivers writes the lede, "Details buried in the United Nations report on the Syrian chemical weapons attack point directly at elite military formations loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, some of the strongest findings to date that suggest the government gassed its own people.... The inspectors, instructed to investigate the attack but not to assign blame, nonetheless listed the precise compass directions of flight for two rocket strikes that appeared to lead back toward the government's elite redoubt in Damascus, Mount Qasioun, which overlooks and protects neighborhoods and Mr. Assad's presidential palace and where his Republican Guard and the army's powerful Fourth Division are entrenched."
Peter Baker & Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "... deep in his fifth year in office, Mr. Obama finds himself frustrated by members of his own party weary of his leadership and increasingly willing to defy him." CW: I don't have a lot of faith in either Baker or Peters when it comes to analyzing stuff, but this report seems to be pretty even-handed, & the writers manage to get real people commenting on the record. ...
... Arnie Parnes of the Hill: "A struggling President Obama is calling for help from members of his first-term A-Team, who have left the White House for other jobs. With his poll numbers falling and his second-term floundering so far, Obama has sought help from the former aides who helped catapult him to the presidency.... Ex-advisers like [David] Plouffe, [Robert] Gibbs and David Axelrod routinely participate in calls with current White House staffers, and Obama has invited the first-term all-stars to strategy sessions on other issues too, former aides said." ...
... Katrina vanden Heuvel of the Nation, in the Washington Post: "As the liberal revolt against the potential nomination of Larry Summers to head the Federal Reserve revealed, President Obama faces increasing pressure from a wing of the Democratic Party no longer willing to sign onto the conservative economic policies of Wall Street. President Obama announced that he would not negotiate on raising the debt ceiling. That he would not sign on to the delay or defunding of health-care reform. That he wanted the harsh and mindless across-the-board cuts known as sequestration repealed... This time his 'bright red lines' might mean something, because increasingly restive progressive legislators in the House and Senate will hold him to his promise." ...
... BUT. Extreme Austerity. Harry Stein of the Center for American Progress: The entire conversation about federal spending, across party lines, has moved way to the right. "Last year, the House of Representatives demonstrated an understanding that austerity could go too far when it rejected the extreme Republican Study Committee budget. Senate Democrats now accept spending levels in line with previous [Paul] Ryan budgets, and the federal budget is stable over the medium term. Despite all that, House Republican leaders are demanding a new round of discretionary spending cuts." ...
... Greg Sargent points to this National Review post by Bob Costa, which details how Tea Party & like-minded pressure groups are revved up & fiercely pushing GOP members of Congress to insist upon defunding ObamaCare, much to the consternation of Republican leadership. "For the tea-party coalition and its leaders, it's a triumphant return to power inside the Beltway...." ...
... Sargent: "The scam is working, successfully persuading untold numbers of GOP base voters Obamacare's demise is at hand. There's no sign GOP leaders know what to do about it or can get the votes to keep the government open." ...
... Even the austerity fanatics that comprise the Wall Street Journal editorial board are begging conservative House members not to pursue their quixotic plan to defund ObamaCare. "Kamikaze missions rarely turn out well, least of all for the pilots." Via TPM. Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link. ...
I cannot remember a time when one faction of one party promises economic chaos if it can't get 100 percent of what it wants. That's never happened before. But that's what's happening right now. -- Barack Obama, in a speech delivered Monday ...
... Jonathan Chait of New York: "Since taking control of the House of Representatives in 2011, a coterie of Republicans ... [hold the] belief ... that the absence of cooperation should lead not to stalemate but to the president bending to their will. That assumption implies a delegitimization of the presidency that Obama has come to understand, belatedly, that he can't accept." Thanks to contributor MAG for the link. ...
... CW: Teabaggers are sociopaths. They don't think they have to play by the rules because they think any rules that give their opponents a fair shake are illegitimate. It's like playing poker with a card cheat. Since he's stacked the deck against you, you lose most hands. Then, by the luck of the draw, you happen upon a hand so good you can't lose & win a big pot. So the card cheat sticks you up & leaves with the pot. The 2012 election was Obama's big pot. ...
... BUT. Many MOCs are acting out of sheer self-interest rather than from crazed ideology or delusions of defunding. New York Times Editors: "If you're wondering why so many House Republicans seem to believe they can force President Obama to accept a 'defunding' of the health care reform law by threatening a government shutdown or a default, it's because [hard-right activist] groups have promised to inflict political pain on any Republican official who doesn't go along.... These groups, all financed with secret and unlimited money, feed on chaos and would like nothing better than to claim credit for pushing Washington into another crisis. Winning an ideological victory is far more important to them than the severe economic effects of a shutdown or, worse, a default, which could shatter the credit markets. They also have another reason for their attacks: fund-raising. All their Web sites pushing the defunding scheme include a big 'donate' button...." ...
... Whatever the motivation, here's one outcome. Jake Sherman & John Bresnahan of Politico: "House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor are playing the last cards in their hand -- and they're most likely losers. The House Republican leadership's decision to try to defund Obamacare this week in its government funding bill, and their promise to wage a a no-holds-barred fight to delay the health care law as part of the debt ceiling fight, is a double-barreled strategy that could set Boehner, Cantor, Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and the House Republican Conference up for two big defeats."
Michael Schuman of Time: Today Fed Chair Ben Bernanke will announce "whether the Fed will scale back, or 'taper,' its unconventional economic stimulus program known as quantitative easing...
Blame It on Boehner (Because It's His Fault.) Evan McMorris-Santoro of BuzzFeed: "President Barack Obama told Telemundo Tuesday that the future of immigration reform comes down to the decision of one man: House Speaker John Boehner. 'The only thing that's holdin' it back right now is John Boehner calling in to the floor,' Obama told Telemundo's Jose Diaz-Balart in a wide-ranging interview, 'because we've got a majority of members of Congress, Democrats and some Republicans, in the House of Representatives, who would vote for it right now if it hit.'"
Dana Milbank takes a field trip to the Heritage Foundation. President Obama has a secret plan to arm Al Qaeda in Libya & Hillary Clinton makes too much money & Valerie Jarrett controls the U.S. military and, and ... Benghaaaaazi!
Obama 2.0. New York Times Editors: "The coal industry and its allies [partially financed by the Koch brothers] are angry about President Obama's energy policies, and they have decided to take it out on his nominee to lead the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which regulates the interstate transmission of electricity, natural gas and oil. The commission has no regulatory authority over coal. But that doesn't matter to the industry. It has come out against Ronald Binz, the nominee, because he supported clean fuels when he was a state energy regulator.... Senators should ignore the attacks from vested special interests, many of whom deny the existence of climate change, and confirm Mr. Binz."
Maureen Dowd pulls out her Obama-Is-Aloof column. Same title & all, but she plugs in the news of the day, like why couldn't Obama be more like the CEO of a Washington hospital where victims of the Navy Yard massacre were being treated. Here's what the doctor/CEO said: "There is something wrong, and the only thing that I can say is we have to work together to get rid of it." Now, I'm in agreement with this sentiment, but it is hardly a memorable, president-worthy remark. If Obama had said that, MoDo would have pulled out her Obama-Is-Clueless template. Speaking of clueless, It isn't clear Dowd knows Obama was talking about her when he said, "I think that folks here in Washington like to grade on style," a remark which Dowd cites.
Local News
Weed Rules (wherein "Rules" may be a noun or a verb). Jeremy Meyer of the Denver Post: "Denver City Council Monday night passed a historic bill that sets the rules and regulations for the retail marijuana industry in the state's largest city." The ordinance is here.
David Wenner of the Central Pennsylvania Patriot News: "Gov. Tom Corbett [R] said Monday he's willing to use billions in federal Medicaid expansion funds to enable roughly 500,000 uninsured Pennsylvania residents to buy health insurance coverage on the Obamacare health insurance exchange. He'll do so only if the Obama administration gives in on many things, including allowing Corbett to impose new work and cost sharing requirements on people already covered by Medicaid, as well as on those who would obtain the new coverage." CW: looks like talking tough & pretending Medicaid expansion isn't Medicaid expansion is the way Republican governors plan to garner millions of federal dollars for their state while still railing against ObamaCare.
The Rent Is Too Damn High. Mireya Navarro of the New York Times: "With New York City's homeless population in shelters at a record high of 50,000, a growing number of New Yorkers punch out of work and then sign in to a shelter, city officials and advocates for the homeless say. More than one out of four families in shelters, 28 percent, include at least one employed adult, city figures show, and 16 percent of single adults in shelters hold jobs. Mostly female, they are engaged in a variety of low-wage jobs...." CW: Navarro cites one young woman-- Dierdre Cunningham -- who holds two part-time jobs, one as a bank teller & the other as a sales clerk for a Manhattan electronics store. Please somebody explain to me why multi-multi millionaires like "savvy businessman" Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase should get away with keeping this woman working part-time (so she isn't eligible for benefits) for wages that don't allow her to put a roof over her head. ...
... ** CW: Which brings to mind this horrifying post by Tom Edsall, who details some of the ways Jamie & his banker buddies exploit the poor, through their interests in payday loan outfits that charge borrowers in the neighborhood of 400 percent interest. Edsall demonstrates how predators at all levels scam the poor. I'd really like to know what the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is doing about some of this. Other than collecting some data & making it available to reporters, as Edsall reports, I don't see that the CFPB is doing anything, & I don't think they have the authority to do anything other than to say, "Look, look, this guy is a crook." ...
... Which brings to mind the $700MM+ fine the feds imposed upon Jamie's Giant Bank. Contributor Diane calculated that the proposed fine would amount to no more than .0375% of JPMorgan Chase's 2012 profits, & "2013 profits are projected higher than 2012." In fairness to Jamie, Diane is just a girl so she probably doesn't have the "intrinsic aptitude" to do complicated stuff like math. ...
... Update. Oops, looks as if Larry was right. Diane is two decimal points off. The fine will be closer to three or four percent of profits, not .0375 percent. See comment by Maxwell's Demon below. (If anybody thinks MD's math & mine is wrong, please wise us up.) ...
... Which brings to mind this post by Juan Cole which contributor Kate M. remarked on the other day: "It is a great mystery why Barack Obama even considered rewarding Summers for his role in increasing income inequality in the US and around the world and in allowing the non-banks to play banks and both to operate as casinos. Obama praised Summers for his alleged role in helping dig back out of the 2008 hole. In fact, Summers made the recovery far less robust than it should have been, by arguing against a bigger stimulus. Moreover, Obama did not note Summers' role in helping cause it in the first place. Plus, since the recovery has been a recovery for rich people, Summers isn't owed much thanks from the 99%." ...
... So all of this makes us unsurprised by this report. Maya Rhodan of Time: "The poverty rate and the number of people living in poverty haven't budged since 2011 despite the slowly improving economy, according to a report released early Tuesday. 46.5 million people were living in poverty in 2012, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2012 Income Poverty and Health Insurance report. That translates into a national rate of 15% of Americans below the poverty line." ...
** It's the Economy, Stupid. John Cassidy of the New Yorker wraps it all up: "Why is Washington so screwed up? Some people blame the Tea Party, others blame the lobbyists; my culprit is the economy. Countries with healthy economic systems tend to have polities that function pretty well. (The United States of the postwar era is a good example.) Countries with dysfunctional economies tend to have dysfunctional political systems, in which radical groups look for someone to blame and rival interest groups fight over the spoils. And that, sadly, is where we are now.... For forty years now, the engine that generates across-the-board rises in living standards has been stalled, with incomes stagnating at the bottom and in the middle while growing rapidly at the top."
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Reader Comments (33)
Sorry no time for a review of background checks and hiring practices that might weed out the next Aaron Alexis. Congress has more important investigatin' to do, like, fer instance, BENGHAAAZIII and the IRS and Fast and Furious and Solyndra and the New Black Panthers and a black president and black dogs in the White House.
Oh, but there will be an inquiry into exactly what kind of Jedi mind tricks President Obama employed to hypnotize Alexis into going postal. I mean, he was hearing "voices" right? Did they sound like a certain Kenyan socialist hater of guns and freedom?
I know this sounds a bit too flip given events of the last 24 hours, but seriously, the time and effort consumed by GOP blather and teabagger twaddle is staggering. I guess that's one of the goals. Divert attention from real problems by inventing fake crises, careening about, hair aflame, eyes bulging, tongue flapping, for months on end until the next "crisis" can be manufactured.
Meanwhile, governing grinds to a halt, economic plans are moot, and the MSM and right-wing bobble heads are too stupefied by the spinning wheels and colored lights to do anything more than regurgitate on command.
Indeed. Jonathan Chait has more on the clash between the traditional GOPers & their Tea Partites on the debt ceiling and ACA. Via Jonathan Cohn, “The breakdown is more extensive than you’ve heard,” this person told me. “There is no discussion going on at all at this point.”
The infighting is quite the scene! Behind-the and out front. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/09/obama-republicans-and-the-crisis-of-legitimacy.html
P.S. to CW: $23 for a repair at the car dealer? Here, I'd be lucky if that were the tax!
MAG,
I have not the slightest care in the world as to the problems of "traditional" Republicans. Why? Because it's an extinct species, right up there with the Dodo and the Diplodocus and other dinosaurs Adam and Eve rode to the 7-11 to refill their Jesus-head Pez containers.
"Traditional Republican" to me, are guys like Henry Cabot Lodge, Nelson Rockefeller, Ed Brooke, Elliot Richardson, Christ, even Howard Baker or Robert Taft. Guys with brains and an ability to think rationally. You might not agree with their conclusions, but you couldn't describe their brain pans as sieves.
The people now impersonating statesmen, are drooling morons. The closest thing we have to a "traditional" Republican is drunken Cheeto Man Boehner.
The rest are an invasive species of toxic bacteria never before seen in the body politic. Call the fucking CDC. Oh, wait. The CDC operates on scientific fact. Republicans have defunded the CDC.
Never mind. Fantasy for everyone!
Ak, your assessment is exactly right. And I knew, I knew...as the word 'traditional' was typed it fell short. A much too generous descriptive for their ilk.
There once was a president who wanted to keep his lines of communication open with the people and the press, and scheduled over 200 press conferences during his 8 years in office. His expressed interests during the transition leading up to his first term were to end the war, control the deficit, to continue the programs of the New Deal, and to expand Social Security. He did all these things.
This president created the Department of Health Education and Welfare and integrated the armed services. When the right wing tried to take over the party, this president said, "I have just one purpose ... and that is to build up a strong progressive…Party in this country. If the right wing wants a fight, they are going to get it ... before I end up, either this…Party will reflect progressivism or I won't be with them anymore."
Upon leaving office, this president warned the country about the dangers of a massive standing army and the rise of the military-industrial complex.
Who was this flaming liberal? In case you hadn't already guessed, it was Dwight David Eisenhower.
Would that our president, and everyone in Congress, was as good a Republican as Eisenhower.
Ak left out Everett Dirksen – A billion here and a billion there and pretty soon we're talking real money – who co-authored the Civil Rights Act.
Re: Now for some good news...@James Singer; after work yesterday I took a swim in the ocean and a posse (platoon, party? I don't have the right word) of pelicans were feasting off a school of anchovies. It was a raucous scene, diving birds, seagulls screaming for leftovers, a salt water picnic. I floated around looking at the action and the thought came to me, "Hey, James Singer, that article you wrote so many years ago? It helped." Everybody had a good time. Except the anchovy. Thanks.
@Noodge: If you read Obama's Happy-Anniversary-Lehman-Brothers speech, which I've linked above (videos of which I embedded in yesterday's & in Monday's Commentariat posts), you'll find that this president is indeed "as good a Republican as Eisenhower." Like you, I'm dismayed by Obama's comfort with right-wing values, but he also espouses traditional liberal values. As someone who is guilty of (wrongly) comparing Obama unfavorably to Nixon -- who, working with a solidly Democratic Congress -- signed progressive legislation, I can't very well fault you for your claim that Obama Is Worse Than Ike. But it isn't true.
Marie
Ergo! More on crazy, Charles Pierce this morning: "A great piece of the Republican party establishment went to the bank believing that most of these people didn't really believe what they were saying, that they could be allowed to spread preposterous lies about (especially) the Affordable Care Act, because that's was a way for the Republicans to gain a House majority, which would then do what the Republican establishment -- whatever that is any more -- told it to do. I'm not entirely sure people like John Boehner had any idea that these people who do what they said they would do."
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Triumph_Of_Crazy_History
I am down on the big banks having worked in that industry and seen first hand their callous perfidy. I also have had the privilege of working with a number of women who are very, very good at science and math so it is with a bit of regret that I have to correct either the arithmetic or the reporting on your post regarding the size of the fine JPMorganChase paid as percent of its 2012 profits.
In 2012 JPM reported a net income of $21.3 billion thus a fine of $700 million would amount to around 3.3% or .033 (without the percent sign) of profits. I really hate to be the nitpicker here but when you want to make a statement about women's "intrinsic ability" to do math as an add on to your fair observation about the relatively small size of what sounds like a large fine, you really need to check your work lest it belie your point. Sorry.
@Maxwell's Demon: Thanks. I forced myself to do the math just now, & you're right. Three percent is something of a big deal & probably means some JPMorgan Chase bankers won't be getting quite as big bonuses as they anticipated. Too bad. I'll correct the entry above.
Marie
Marie,
Great analogy describing the sociopathy of teabaggers. I think one quality that most of us would like to ascribe to Americans is an innate sense of fairness. It may not win the day all the time or in as timely a manner as we'd like, but that sense of fair-mindedness and decency has been instrumental, if not essential, in directing a general trend, historically, toward a more civil society.
At least it used to.
You're entirely correct in your analysis that the right--and the 'baggers especially--in this country has decided that decency and fairness only apply to them. Everyone else gets the shaft. And if they have to screw you with underhanded, illegal, and even treasonous machinations, tough cookies, baby.
For a very bad analogy, see the ever pompous, preposterous, pinheaded wonderment that is Louie Gohmert. Gohmie, in his rush to defend mass murder, like all good winger stormtroopers, itches to remove guns completely from the conversation. He claims that guns are to murder as spoons are to obesity. No causality there, according to the Texas Chainsaw Moronica. But he doesn't neglect to mention that rather than blame guns we should be blaming video games. Hey, why not blame excess sugar too? Maybe the guy had a Zagnut bar and broke out the shotgun shells.
(Let's break this down really quickly because it's a treasure trove of illogical and magical thinking. First, there is no causality connected to guns, the instruments by which murders are committed, but there is direct causality--no facts or resources given, natch--in a second or even third degree function, that being video games. So playing a game can make you shoot someone but guns are not involved. See? Anyone can play! Just make shit up.)
Elizabeth (what are those liberals saying? I can't hear; I have shit in my ears) Hasselbeck must have gotten that same "Blame Video Games" memo through the wingnut grapevine, as you indicate in your link. But Hasselbeck goes even further around the bend than Gohmie in demonstrating exactly how screwy the right has become. She suggests setting up a database to track the purchases of video games!! She clearly doesn't get how stupid this sounds. Track gun purchases? Fuck no! But we do need a national video game database!
"Earth to wingnuts, Earth to wingnuts....come in wingnuts...You're off course and flying straight into the sun....Oh well....never mind. Carry on."
Whyte Owen,
Quite right. Dirksen would serve as an estimable example of what I was thinking of as a "traditional Republican."
Old Everett was very quotable. He also once said "I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times".
Think any Republican would get elected with that mindset today?
Sorry about my error, failed to drop 2 decimals before I added the %. Thanks to Maxwell. My bad. I feel appropriately shamed. From under the dunce cap.........
JJG: Thanks. Always liked pelicans. Thought they looked like pterodactyls when they were skimming the waves.
I, too, was going to bring up one of my favorite OLD TRADITIONAL Republicans, Everett Dirkson, a lion of a man with a mane of silver hair AND that deep, deep baritone that could, with a few words cut his opponent down to size. He once foretold the death of an opponent’s bill by saying, “It will have all the impact of a gentle snowflake falling on the broad bosom of the Potomac.” Lovely, just lovely.
@Noodge: Before we get too starry-eyed about Ike, let's not forget his reluctance to deal with McCarthy (some of his staff quit in protest), his lying about the U-2 blunder and because of that the summit with Krushev was doomed even before it began and with it any hopes for a test-ban treaty with our Russian "dicktator" walking out while savaging Americans and ridiculing the president in the most personal manner. The other major blunder was not accepting the recommendations of the Oppenheimer panel in 1953 (Russia was essentially a paper tiger) thereby accelerating the Cold War. The Russian archives now reveal as much. Without going into details it's clear mistakes were made but my main point here is there has been no president in our history that has not blundered and it's prudent to keep these men in prospective. But––I agree with you that when we look at the old Republicans, Ike is one shining example.
You would think there would be enough "Duhs" to go around (after all they don't cost much--just a little thrust of the tongue behind the front teeth, minimal effort really) but "duh's" in our culture are sadly and obviously in short supply.
Take this latest mass shooting thing at the Washington Navy yard. We have people all in a bunch, an angry, unbalanced man, a plethora of guns--of course you can take a gun from a dead cop; who has to buy one?--security clearances handed out like bubble gum, and a country where people are "free" to go anywhere they want and do darn near anything (turns out Mr. Alexis' trail of woe includes a speeding ticket, which he never paid, on I-5 not far from my home) because we don't want to do something about mental illness, because it costs too much, because it is often hard to treat successfully, (because our jails are already bursting with black marijuana users?) and because we don't want to admit the human race (except for me and thee, of course) is as nuts as it really is.
Instead, we just close our eyes and pretend the mental health of many is not as bad as it might seem, but obviously (Duh!) it is often worse.
Just in the last few weeks in our mostly rural county, we know or know someone who knows the person who might have set fire--she's charged with arson--to her own home, and the person who has just been convicted of murdering her own foster child via excessive punishment and neglect, tying her up outside, exposed to the Northwest weather, until she perished. The lesson (Duh!): There's a lot of crazy in each of us, a hefty potential for violent, destructive behavior that we either pretend doesn't exist or assign only to people we don't know because keeping that crazy out there, away from us, makes us feel more civilized and safer than we have every reason to know we really are.
Add to our penchant for crazy the way we have chosen to arrange ourselves physically in our burgeoning hives and the immense fire power we have decided to equate with the "freedom" we hold so dear--related to "crazy" I venture--the surprise should be (Duh!) that we have so few mass killings, not so many.
We call them random because the next one could happen anywhere, but also because calling them random absolves us of any responsibility for them. But that mass shootings will happen, again and again is not random; is certain, in fact, as long as we close our eyes to the factors that contribute to them--our convictions that people should be free to be as mentally ill as social decorum permits (naked at noon on Main Street will likely draw attention, but not much else) and to own as many guns as they wish--and to loose these beliefs, like a pack of maddened Dobermans, into a crowded, mobile population whose social ties have been frayed in all they ways scholars have written an entire library about (Duh!) can have only one result.
And it is not random.
Kinda reminds me of the way we're dealing (or not) with climate issues (Double Duh!) or any number of other things on our growing list of crazy. As a mark of our arrested development, we just continue to pretend.
JJG: Wonderful analogy---anchovies and pelicans. Why do I feel
like us former middle classers are a school of anchovies and the
pelicans we voted to send to Washington (or Lansing) are a flock
of pelicans? And does everyone know what a group of screaming
baboons is called? Its very apropos.
Another nasty about "our Larry," just when you thought you had heard it all. Here is Greg Palast on Larry, Robert Rubin and Goldman--who Larry speaks of as a person. Yikes!
It is just beyond me why Obama depends on and defends this guy so strongly!
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/19459-larry-summers-goldman-sacked
Forrest: Presume you don't mean "flange," ala Wiktionary entry, which I had to check.
Gun controls don't work.
That's the order of the day for the right over the next few weeks, per order of the NRA and GunNutRus, or at least until the next massacre of innocents.
But how about one itty bitty codicil in place in the state of Virginia that prevented an out of state buyer, the mentally disturbed Aaron Alexis, from purchasing an AR-15 assault rifle, the kind that allowed the Newtown shooter to fire off 155 rounds in less than 5 minutes?
Not persuasive?
Well, look at it this way, if he had the AR-15 instead of a pump action shotgun how many more victims would there have been? 20? 30? 100? And we're not exactly talking about a highly prophylactic law here, one that steals everyone's freedom. He could probably have driven to some other state or bought one in his state of residence, out of the trunk of a car at a gun show, or online, with no problem. But that one little legal blockade saved dozens, perhaps scores of lives. No doubt the nuts are already drafting legislation to get rid of that block on their freedom. But it worked, dammit.
But, Oh, scream the nuts, he still passed your fancy-schmancy mental health test, the suggestion being that it doesn't work so let's scrap it instead of considering that the test should be strengthened rather than tossed, because the rational thing to do with a protection that fails because it's not comprehensive enough is to weaken it further, right? "Duh", as Ken would say.
Ken also mentioned that mass killings are somewhat rare and that may be technically true, but when dozens of people are killed by gunfire on any given day in this country, that's nothing less than a massacre.
And anyone who says that more guns is the solution hasn't much purchase on reality or knowledge of facts. The rate of gun related deaths in the UK, where gun controls are strictly enforced, is 40 times lower than that of the US. Let me say that again: 40. Times. Lower.
Gun controls work.
Of course the opposite is true as well, if by "work" you mean a whole lotta bodies. Every day.
I see some nostalgic talk about Ike and 'traditional' Republicans: I'd like to point out that at the end of the second world war, the US controlled most of the world's economic capacity. In a sense, it has been all downhill since then.
What passes for civilization is a pretty tenuous thing when you consider the research of Rachael Jewkes.
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS2214-109X(13)70074-3/abstract and http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=220902542
The anti-social actions of the Republicans, the Koch brothers show a decided tendency toward uncivil anarchy where the masses are ruled by the few. And periodically the masses are allowed to unwind with a "wilding" of some form or other. To paraphrase the economist Richard Wolfe, monarchists said common people could never handle their own democracy; men said women couldn't handle voting; MBAs say workers can't handle business management for worker directed enterprises. And essentially the Republicans act like the masses can't find their own best interests.
A group of screeching baboons is called a congress. (I had a friend
at the Brookfield Zoo who had lots of little tidbits about animals).
Interesting graphic about gun violence since Sandy Hook in Huffpost.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/17/mass-shootings-2013_n_3941889.html
Re: Here's something uncomfortable to try on; Ak, Ken and others; I see a correlation between the young man who was shot to death for asking help in Carolina a couple of days ago and the mentally ill man who went on a killing rampage with the help of the NRA.
What kind'a notion? A black man is a stranger in a strange land. A land not of his making but a land he must deal with. His world has a glass wall he can not not climb or break down. Even if he jumps through every hoop; college, good job, faith, family, when the night comes he is just another black guy with bad intent. That has got to eat at your soul and your soul is what keeps you sane.
Play by the rules and you lose. Fuck the rules and you lose. What's a stranger to do? Just a quick thought. I think there is a kernel of truth there though.
@Ak: you left out "run around the yard hitting themselves in the head witb a shovel" which I've always liked.
As for LaPierre's ludicrous, deranged idea of everyone armed, the Navy Yard shooter proved that bad people don't have to bring all of their weapons with them--just take them off the dead and wounded. Remember Charlton Heston's "cold dead hand?" Well Charlton, now that you mention it, that is how we'll take your gun--and use it.
The appalling stupidity and lack of critical thinking on the part of the gun nuts is scary. "Ya'll think that idee was stupid? Here's one that's even more stupid."
This bit of Chuck Todd idiocy is getting some play. Charles Pierce had a piece earlier, as did Daily Kos. Here's Driftglass chiming it:
http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2013/09/on-subject-of-picking-of-pockets.html
Barbarossa,
"Remember Charlton Heston's "cold dead hand?" Well Charlton, now that you mention it, that is how we'll take your gun--and use it".
Very clever.
I doubt Mr. Ben Hur, were he still alive, would appreciate the irony, but like hordes of other conservative blowhards who tout the supremacy of the gun, Heston never saw combat. Like Reagan, his only connection with military opponents actually shooting at him took place only in the movies. Brave boys, those.
Dubya, a true scum-sucking pig of a deserter, who preened about his military experience and did a jig aboard an aircraft carrier, presenting himself, shamelessly, as a war hero manquée, declaring the end of combat in a war that, a decade later is still going on, sent men and women to their deaths on the basis of lies and a total lack of familiarity (unlike yourself) with life and death combat situations. For Bush, life and death was whether or not he'd be able to connect with his coke dealer before hitting the bars and discos in Texas, while he was AWOL, of course.
Such a stand-up guy.
Heston, I've no doubt, like so many other gun nuts, had a dramatically inflated sense of his own importance and potency as The Man With the Gun. But, as he conflated his fictional life as a tough guy actor with the real world, he never took stock of the fact that once shot, that tough guy Man With the Gun could have that Glock pried from his cold dead hands and used to shoot innocent people.
Oops.
Conservative brain freeze.
Again.
JJG & others: You don't necessarily have to be black or brown or
yellow to be in the crosshairs of the local police who are hungry for
a confrontation, 'cause they be high on sugared donuts and coffee. I
have dozens of stories in this small town of only a thousand plus
people in the winter and twenty thousand something in the summer. We once called them because the house next door was
rented to (who knows?) but there were dozens of teenagers running
up and down the roof and jumping off to lower levels. WTF. Some-
one is going to get hurt. We called the local police. They pull into
our driveway, and two other squad cars on the street and start to
question us as to why we are doing this. And are these kids on drugs? How the F would we know. I finally had to corral my partner and usher him into the house since he couldn't take the
hostility any more from our protectors. And we are the taxpayers
who are paying their salary. (Could it be that we are white, anglo
saxon protestants and gay?).
Forrest: Presume you saw the tongue in my cheek. "Congress" it is.
Akhilleus. Yes the mass shootings are both rare and far too common. We live in a large, populated country, which in absolute numbers makes the individual deaths and overall occurrences "rare," but they do occur more frequently, I believe, now that they used to. Just look at the PO's half-mast flags, which I noticed again today. The trend would have half-mast become "normal," I'd guess, perhaps within our lifetimes. Hell of a country when half-mast becomes the American flag's default display, don't ya think?
Ken's "Duh" posting let loose the fury that we all feel and I thank him and others today for expressing what many of us think and feel. This passage, however gave me pause:
" The lesson (Duh!): There's a lot of crazy in each of us, a hefty potential for violent, destructive behavior that we either pretend doesn't exist or assign only to people we don't know because keeping that crazy out there, away from us, makes us feel more civilized and safer than we have every reason to know we really are."
The kind of crazy, and perhaps I should only speak for myself and those I know intimately, we all harbor in our bosoms is not the kind of crazy that these mass shooters are afflicted with. These are seriously sick individuals who have brain disorders of one kind or another. I think, however, if we not so crazy folk would find ourselves in a situation where our life would depend on snuffing out some one else's then... (think war situations) but most of us in our ordinary lives would not go on a shooting rampage nor would we drown a baby in their bath water. But I agree that pretending as many do that things like climate change, gun control et al. aren't absolutely necessary to address is another kind of crazy and in the end maybe just as bad as the other kind.