;)
The Commentariat -- Sept. 20, 2015
Internal links removed.
** "The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration." Ta-Nehisi Coates writes the Atlantic's cover story: "American politicians are now eager to disown a failed criminal-justice system that's left the U.S. with the largest incarcerated population in the world. But they've failed to reckon with history. Fifty years after Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s report 'The Negro Family' tragically helped create this system, it's time to reclaim his original intent." ...
... CW: One thing Coates doesn't mention in this long & worthy essay is a peculiar lack of impact incarcertation has on the black community. That is, if incarceration becomes so common that every family has a son or nephew or brother in jail -- as is currently the case -- there is no shame to it. Yes, there are all the downsides Coates enumerates, but there is little or no social ostracism or embarrassment associated with incarceration. And why would there be? As Li'l Randy pointed out in the GOP debate (in one of its few high points), when Jeb! smoked weed, there were no consequences. And you can bet if Jeb! was dealing to his posh friends (and I have no reason to think he was), the consequences would have been minimal, too. Not so for a black kid living in an impoverished area. When a white guy tells me he's been in jail, I assume he did something bad. When a black man tells me he's served time, I figure there's about a 50-50 chance he did something bad, & I give him the benefit of the doubt. (I heard these admissions dozens of times when I was registering voters in Florida in 2008.) ...
... David Margolick, in the New York Times Book Review, pans Wil Haygood's book Showdown, about the appointment of Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court. I would give Margolick's review a good review, however, as it's quite informative.
David Sanger of the New York Times: "The United States and China are negotiating what could become the first arms control accord for cyberspace, embracing a commitment by each country that it will not be the first to use cyberweapons to cripple the other's critical infrastructure during peacetime, according to officials involved in the talks." ...
... CW: Sen. Tom Cotton (RTP-Ark.) immediately dashed off an open note to China's President telling him he needed to understand that in our constitutional system, the POTUS is essentially powerless, so any so-called agreement his government might reach with the Obama administration is not worth the rice paper it's written on. Cotton told reporters it was a snap to write his missive to Xi. "I just changed the name of the addressee in the letter I wrote to the Iranian ayatollahs. International diplomacy is much easier than you might think."
Mimi Whitefield, et al., of the Miami Herald: "Pope Francis began his historic trip to Cuba with a message of solidarity and reconciliation. After his flight from Rome touched down Saturday afternoon at Jose Martí International Airport in Havana, the pontiff greeted the Cuban people by noting that this year marks the 80th anniversary of establishing diplomatic ties between Cuba and the Holy See." ...
... Jim Yardley, et al., of the New York Times: "... as he arrived in Havana on Saturday, the first stop of a nine-day papal trip to Cuba and the United States, Francis faced a new challenge altogether: Having helped open up Cuba to the world, the first Latin American pope must now try to fully open up Cuba to the Roman Catholic Church.... Francis was greeted at the airport by President Raúl Castro and children who welcomed him with flowers."
Presidential Race
Mario Trujillo of the Hill: "Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz repeatedly attempted on Saturday to quiet an audience of 4,000 in New Hampshire who called for more Democratic primary debates. During her opening speech at the New Hampshire Democratic Party Convention, she interrupted her prepared remarks on at least two occasions to address chants of 'more debates' and 'we want debates.'... C-SPAN cameras broadcasting live panned to audience members holding posters that called for more that half a dozen debates in the 2016 presidential primary."
Jordan Fabian of the Hill: "President Obama is throwing more punches at the Republicans vying to take his place in the White House as the 2016 campaign enters a busy fall. Obama this week went after GOP front-runner Donald Trump, as did Vice President Biden, who is considering his own presidential bid.... A White House official said there are not yet any major strategic discussions underway about Obama's role in the 2016 campaign. But the aide also expects the president to defend his record against GOP attacks and boost the Democratic nominee."
Kyle Cheney of Politico: "Vice President Joe Biden's last-minute decision to score some facetime with powerful black leaders may do little to shake their strong inclination toward Hillary Clinton. But among the rank-and-file attendees at Saturday's prayer breakfast hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, the Democratic primary is still a wide open fight. Biden earned several warm ovations from the admiring crowd, and he held court for 20 minutes while breakfast was served, posing for selfies with dozens of fans and turning on his classic, toothy charm as he clasped hands with well-wishers and slapped the backs of strangers angling to get close to him." ...
... Matthew Speiser of Business Insider: "Vice President Joe Biden's aides have begun suggesting to donors that he's more inclined to run for president than not, The Wall Street Journal reports, citing anonymous sources familiar with the matter. The aides say their talks have shifted largely from whether he's going to run to when he's going to announce, sources told the Journal, noting that he could still change his mind if his grief over his recent son's death becomes overwhelming."
Bernie Sanders appeared on Stephen Colbert's show Friday night. You can watch a clip here. The entire segment is here, beginning about 25 min. in. You'll have to watch quite a few capitalist commercials before the segment begins. ...
... Missed this, which aired Sept. 16:
Worse Than Trump. Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson says in an interview airing Sunday that he doesn't believe the United States should have a Muslim president because Islam is inconsistent with the Constitution."
Muchas Gracias, Don Donaldo. Eliza Collins of Politico: "Hispanic activists have two words for Donald Trump -- thank you.... While many activists find his comments downright offensive, they also see an opportunity. Trump has managed to get Latinos engaged with the 2016 race, and activists plan to exploit that to the fullest extent possible.
Am I morally obligated to defend the president every time somebody says something bad or controversial about him? I don't think so! -- Donald Trump tweet, Saturday, in response to across-the-board criticism of his response to a man who said President Obama was a Muslim & "not an American," then asked how we could "get rid of" Muslims in this country
... Update. Trump Discovers First Amendment Prohibits Disagreement with Others. Trip Gabriel of the New York Times: "In front of several hundred evangelical Christians on Saturday, Donald J. Trump took a dig at Senator John McCain for a well-known incident in which Mr. McCain took away a microphone from a woman to correct her after she said that Barack Obama was an Arab.... He told the Iowa crowd that if he had ... corrected the man..., he would have been attacked for violating the man's right to free speech." ...
... How is Donald Trump like George W. Bush? Neither one can think of any mistakes he's made. ...
... Update. M. J. Lee & Noah Gray of CNN: "Donald Trump on Saturday responded to a question from CNN about whether Muslims pose a danger to the country, saying: 'I love the Muslims. I think they're great people.'... During a question-and-answer session with students..., one student ... asked whether the billionaire businessman would consider putting a Muslim in his Cabinet or on his ticket. 'Oh, absolutely,' Trump responded. 'No problem with that.'"
How to Lose Wacko AND Sane Voters. Sean Sullivan of the Washington Post: "Jeb Bush responded Friday night to Donald Trump's decision this week not to correct a questioner who said President Obama is a Muslim who is 'not even an American.' 'Barack Obama is a talented man -- and by the way he's an American, he's a Christian -- his problem isn't the fact that he was born here or what his faith is,' said Bush in a speech here. 'His problem is that he's a progressive liberal who tears down anybody that disagrees with him.'" ...
... CW: Meanwhile, it's okay for Jeb! to claim President Obama is "incompetent," a failed leader, has created "chaos" in the world, lost the Iraq War that Dubya won, capitulated to Iran, threatened Israel's security, enabling ISIS, causing Washington gridlock, etc. etc., and also too uses too many "big-syllable words." See, that's not "tearing down" Obama; it's just stating facts.
... Do as I Say, Not as I Do. Eli Stokols of Politico: "Jeb Bush ... vowed in his first policy speech as a presidential candidate last June to halt the 'revolving door' between Congress and K Street.... But the promise was undercut both by the audience to which Bush spoke -- which included numerous lobbyists from his days as governor -- and by the intensity with which Bush replenished his personal bank accounts upon leaving office by cashing in on the connections he had made.... After two terms as governor, Bush left office in 2007 with a net worth of just $1.3 million -- but within seven years, according to a Politico analysis of his financial disclosure forms, he had built it up to $24.89 million. His new wealth was driven by income from consulting work and a dozen board seats on the firms of people with significant business interests before the state while he was governor -- including more than $12 million from firms that earned millions in fees when Bush redirected $350 million of Florida public workers' retirement funds into venture capital investments run by major donors to his brother and his campaigns." ...
... All My Delusions. Chas Danner of New York: "In a speech kicking off the Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference, Jeb first criticized Hillary Clinton's foreign policy record, asking the crowd to 'name a country in the world where our relationship is better today than the day that Hillary of Clinton became secretary of state.' He then claimed that he would be able to lead a stronger foreign policy for the nation, and that 'I know how to do this because, yes, I am a Bush. I happened to see two really good presidents develop relationships with other countries.'"
Andrew Prokop of Vox: "Over the last few weeks, the news for Scott Walker's presidential campaign has been getting grimmer and grimmer..... Word of money problems often serves as the canary in the coal mine -- signifying an imminent campaign collapse.... If Walker already isn't paying his consultants, fundraising has likely fallen well short of expectations, and the campaign has committed to much more spending than it can afford.... In person, Scott Walker simply isn't compelling or attention-grabbing. I argued nearly a year ago that Walker's lack of charisma would be his biggest problem 'in a world where primary candidates rise and fall in the polls based partly on their performance in televised debates.'" ...
... CW: It isn't so much his lack of "charisma," but his lack of intelligence & competence that defeated Scott Walker. Voters may or may not want a president they'd like to have a beer with, but they'd like one who doesn't take three days to come up with three different answers to a simple yes-or-no question, then deny he ever gave the first two answers. How Walker ever succeeded in Wisconsin, I'll never know, because besides being dumb & incompetent, he's a nasty piece of work.
Beyond the Beltway
Adam Beam of the AP: "In a court filing Friday, the attorney for one of [Kim] Davis' employees said he believes Davis has again violated a federal court order by altering marriage license forms.... In a separate court filing on Friday, attorneys for the gay couples who sued Davis appear to agree and say they are 'exploring legal options.'... When she returned to work, Davis altered the marriage forms by removing her name, making deputy clerk Brian Mason initial the form instead of sign it, and then requiring the form to be notarized.... Mason's attorney, Richard Hughes, told The Associated Press on Friday after filing a status report with the judge ... it was 'really bizarre' that Davis would alter the forms. 'Unless she's got a really good reason, and I'll certainly be patient and wait to hear it, the only inference I personally can draw from it is she is trying to circumvent the court's order,' he said.... Also Friday, the attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union said in a court filing that the changes on the form require Mason to issue the licenses 'in his capacity as a "notary public" rather than a deputy clerk of the Rowan County Clerk's Office,' changes that 'do not comply' with the court's order to not interfere with her employees who issue the licenses."
Post Script. It Was a Hoax! Anthony, in ArtVoice, takes a close look at young Ahmed Mohamed's clock & discovers that "Ahmed Mohamed didn't invent his own alarm clock. He didn't even build a clock." Instead, he took apart an old Radio Shack clock & put it in a pencil box. ...
... CW: I didn't link to this story when I first read about it because I thought it was much ado about nothing. Then the President, Hillary Clinton & others weighed in, & I felt obligated to cover it. Now we're back to my original take: it's much ado about nothing. Even I could take the clockworks out of a 1980s fake-woodgrain box & insert it in a cooler-looking pencil box. (I actually did something similar last week. I have not been arrested & the President has not invited me to his place.) I think Ahmed has talent, but at this point his talent is artistic, not technological.
Way Beyond
Sewell Chan & Palko Karasz of the New York Times: "Thousands of migrants poured into Austria on Saturday after being bounced around countries overwhelmed by their arrival and insistent that they keep moving. Hungary -- which had taken the most draconian and visible measures to turn back the exodus, notably the construction of a razor-wire fence along its border with Serbia -- partly caved Friday evening. It grudgingly allowed at least 11,000 migrants to enter from Croatia, and then sent them by bus and train to processing centers along its border with Austria."
Addendum:
D. C. Clark reckons this clip is essential to today's Comments discussion:
News Ledes
New York Daily News: "A senior White House advisor was struck and killed by a car when he lost control of his bicycle while participating in a charity bike ride raising money for cancer. Jacob Thomas Brewer, 34, was entering a sharp bend in Mt. Airy, Md., when the married father and senior policy advisor crossed into an oncoming car's lane late Saturday afternoon, Howard County police said." ...
... Hill: "President Obama on Sunday mourned the loss of a top White House staffer who was killed in a bicycle crash."
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Reader Comments (14)
I'm going to be keeping an entertained eye on the Pope's visit this week to the U.S. The faints and teeth-grinding of the "Religious Right" and other self-proclaimed Holy folks in this country are likely to be highly visible and chock-full of their not-so-subtle yet completely accepted hypocrisy.
I read that the Pope planned to give most of his speeches in Spanish while in the U.S., except for the welcoming ceremony and his speech before Congress. Otherwise it'll be in Spanish (his native tongue obviously) and the Wingers will most likely lose it. Trump will probably bash the Pope for inciting immigrants and his poll numbers will soar. Family Values, right? American politics at its best.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/15/us-pope-usa-language-idUSKCN0RF1RM20150915
You absolutely, positively, cannot make this shit up:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/09/19/sarah_palin_slams_ahmed_that_s_a_clock_and_i_m_the_queen_of_england.html
Gawd, I love it.
@safari: Francis speaks Spanish & Italian fluently & knows Latin very well (I don't know that Latin scholars actually speak Latin). These languages, obviously, are "business"-related. Reportedly, he knows a little French & German, too. But he apparently doesn't speak English any better than I do any language other than English; that is, he can manage a few niceties, but that's it. As I recall, when he does say something in English, he has a thick accent. It would be ridiculous for him to attempt to deliver a full address in a language he doesn't know, even with a teleprompter or script. Would Congressman Yokel address the German parliament in German? I don't think so. But you can bet Congressman Yokel thinks it's terribly rude & ignorant of a world leader not to address him in English. That's a uniquely American conceit. (Well, okay, some French-speakers are pretty uppity about French, too.) The idea that everyone in the world should cater to us is just embarrassing. But, as you suggest, the teabaggers will be embarrassing us once again.
I'm with Diane, who wrote yesterday (in another context): "I am more and more mortified with the ignorance, viciousness, and self aggrandizement that is on display to the world by these GOP candidates fomented and amplified by our media." The single greatest threat to our standing in the world is the narrow world view expressed in both Republican speech & Republican policy.
Marie
MAKING GOVERNMENT LOGICAL: From the NYT, Cass Sunstein makes the case for "the most consequential of Obama's second term"...referring to Obama's executive order to direct federal agencies to incorporate behavior science into their programs.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/20/opinion/sunday/cass-sunstein-making-government-logicalhtml.html?ref=todayspaper
OK, been thinking about it, and I am now totally into Kate Madison conspiracy theory. Palin is obviously a plant. The Vast Leftist Conspiracy to Destroy Our Country somehow duped McCain into bringing her to national attention, assuring the Moose-Lum's election.
Today, somewhere, in some secret chamber, a team of Leftist Comedy Writers, probably headed by Jon Stewart, is preparing her latest gag and laughing their asses off.
Palin is either Tina Fey's secret identical twin, her clone, or is Tina herself. Been seen together, you say? Pish Tosh -- trick photography.
But more likely there are two or more of them. Between drunken brawls, caring for her illegitimate grandchildren, and bible beating...
too much for one person.
Final proof: no human being could possibly be that stupid. They'd die of it -- forget to breath or something.
QED
On language and idiots.
I'm always embarrassed whenever I encounter an American, especially those who have never mastered the concept of noun-verb agreement, bitterly criticizing foreign nationals for their shaky English. I once intervened after hearing a redneck creep belittle a Cambodian woman who simply asked for directions in a store. I asked him how fluent he was in another language and would he like it if someone in an Asian country made fun of him for not speaking their language perfectly. His answer? "I ain't gotta know no chinky chink, I'se an American. But if some little asshole made fun'a me, I'd shoot 'em."
Home of the Brave.
But Americans don't hold a patent on ignorance and xenophobic stupidity. Once in a small restaurant/bar in a way station outside of Moscow, I heard a group of German tourists making fun of a confused bartender, first for not having an expansive listing of German beers and then for lacking fluency in German. My Spoken German isn't great but I certainly know what "Sprechen die Deutsch, dummkopf?" means.
So it won't surprise me in the least if a highly educated, accomplished man who has reached the pinnacle of his chosen profession, one who is fluent in a couple of languages and has at least a familiarity with several others is criticized as a "dumbass" by Confederates whose idea of a cultural evening is sitting in front of the TV for a Duck Dynasty marathon.
@D.C.Clark & Kate Madison: You'll have to do a lot more research to convince me that it requires a conspiracy to make Republicans look like dumb-assed bigots. I think it comes by millions of them naturally (or if you want to go nature-vs.-nurture & chalk it up to learned behavior, I'm cool with that, too).
Marie
Marie,
Well, of course there have to be enough dupes dumb enough to believe the bullshit. I'm reminded of a news item some time ago, reporting that an actor who played a villain on some soap opera was often publicly harassed by vidiots unable to distinguish a role from reality.
Nature vs Nurture -- increasing difficult to distinguish, as natural selection no longer operates in H.Sapiens. While stupidity remains a leading cause of death, it does not reliably kill the fools before they've had a chance to reproduce. Again re Bristol Palin.
My German grandchildren can speak English and some French; my American grandchildren speak fluid Spanish whose mother, (Spanish/ Columbian) spoke Spanish to them when infants. My husband and I took an online course in order to learn German, but as time went on it became so difficult we gave it up. On our trips abroad I am astounded at the number of people we encounter that speak English. Now I realize that English is the lingua franca in our world, but it does humble and embarrass this American to realize that our country falls way behind in learning other languages. Akilleus's examples of a certain superiority that Americans harbor speaks loudly.
@ Marie, Safari, Akilleus and all RE: "Language & Idiots"
Selecting (at least) one non-"American" language was a curriculum requirement, starting in Sixth Grade and continuing through High School (time frame: mid to late Sixties). Both schools I attended were small-town, Public and culturally "mixed".
While a disappointment to some - choosing Performing Arts over Language & Linguistics - I can still *just* scrape by (rust = audible) when approached by non-English-speaking visitors to NYC: a grateful gift of Long-Term Memory Recall.
Remembering More (and still infuriating) Language Idiocy:
"Don't Ask, Don't Translate" . . .
from a 2007 New York Times piece:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/08/opinion/08benjamin.html?_r=0
We simply cannot, in one day's commentariat, mention languages, Latin, translation and military occupation, without linking this:
https://youtu.be/KAfKFKBlZbM
Sorry, somebody had to.
@ D.C. Clark:
<< Sorry, somebody had to. >>
. . . Apologies unnecessary (IMO) & so glad that you felt compelled.
Many thanks for the belly-laughs!
"The drug, called Daraprim, was acquired in August by Turing Pharmaceuticals, a start-up run by a former hedge fund manager. Turing immediately raised the price to $750 a tablet from $13.50, bringing the annual cost of treatment for some patients to hundreds of thousands of dollars."
Nah! We don't need no regulations, the free market takes care of things nicely. With such as Martin Shkreli " a nouveau riche
pill peddler, hedge fund founder—who's not the only one doing this sort of egregious price hiking.
Re Germans and Russians and language -- the Russki word for "German" (person) is Nemetzki (sort of transliteration) -- which translates as "dumb" meaning "can't speak". To an Old Russian, Germans talking sounded like babble.