The Commentariat -- Dec. 26, 2015
Internal links removed.
Diane Superville of the AP: "In a Christmas Day gesture of gratitude, President Barack Obama told U.S. troops that 'we never take for granted' what they do to keep Americans safe and free. Obama spoke a few days after six American service members were killed this week in a suicide attack at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, the largest U.S. facility in the country."
You-Ess-Ay! You-Ess-Ay! Nicholas Fandos of the New York Times: "Foreign arms sales by the United States jumped by almost $10 billion in 2014, about 35 percent, even as the global weapons market remained flat and competition among suppliers increased, a new congressional study has found. American weapons receipts rose to $36.2 billion in 2014 from $26.7 billion the year before, bolstered by multibillion-dollar agreements with Qatar, Saudi Arabia and South Korea. Those deals and others ensured that the United States remained the single largest provider of arms around the world last year, controlling just over 50 percent of the market."
Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post: "The Justice Department has charged at least 60 individuals this year with terrorism-related crimes, an unprecedented number that officials attribute to a heightened threat from the Islamic State and the influence of social media on potential recruits. Last week alone, prosecutors charged three people and convicted two others on terrorism-linked charges."
Amanda Holpuch of the Guardian (Dec. 24): "Hundreds of undocumented families in the US could be rounded up and deported as soon as January, according to a report that has shocked immigrants rights' advocates and provoked condemnation from Democratic presidential hopefuls. The Department of Homeland Security is preparing for raids that would see hundreds of recently arrived immigrants deported, according to a report in the Washington Post.... Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton, Martin O'Malley and Bernie Sanders roundly denounced the plan." CW: Definitely sounds as if ICE is gearing up for President Trump. ...
... Apparently, the Trumpster thinks so, too. Ian Swanson of the Hill: "Donald Trump was on Twitter for Christmas to for a second day in a row take credit for reports that the Obama administration is planning an effort to deport illegal immigrants."
New York Times Editors: "As untold millions of dollars pour into the shadowy campaign troughs of the presidential candidates, voters need to be reminded of the rosy assumptions of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision that legitimized the new spending frenzy.... In the new budget bill, Republicans inserted a provision blocking the Internal Revenue Service from creating rules to curb the growing abuse of the tax law by thinly veiled political machines posing as 'social welfare' organizations.... In another move..., the Republicans barred the Securities and Exchange Commission from finalizing rules requiring corporations to disclose their campaign spending to investors.... For two years, President Obama has dithered and withheld the one blow he could easily strike for greater political transparency: the signing of an executive order requiring government contractors to disclose their campaign spending." ...
... It Ain't Only Republicans. Matea Gold of the Washington Post: "The Federal Election Commission has quietly given the green light to federal candidates who want to solicit contributions for super PACs by meeting in small groups -- so small that there can be just two other people in the room. In addition, the little-noticed advisory opinion gives permission to a candidate's campaign consultant and other aides to solicit large donations for a super PAC, as long as they make clear that they are not making the request at the direction of the candidate. The decisions -- which came in response to a request from two Democratic super PACs, including one with close ties to Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) -- further erode the boundary between campaigns and their independent allies at a time when they are already engaged in unprecedented collaboration."
He Nabbed Him with the Googles. Nathaniel Popper of the Times: The FBI & the Department of Homeland Security got most of the attention for nabbing Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the online drug bazaar Silk Road, but a young IRS agent, Gary Alford, actually identified Ulbricht. It took three months for other law enforcement authorities to take his evidence seriously. CW: I think you'll enjoy this story.
Paul Krugman: "... space technology is moving forward after decades of stagnation. And to my amateur eye, this seems to be part of a broader trend, which is making me more hopeful for the future than I've been in a while.... [Since the 1970s] there has just been less progress in our command over the physical world -- our ability to produce and deliver things -- than almost anyone expected.... The really big news is on energy, a field of truly immense disappointment until recently." And Marco Rubio is an idiot (paraphrase). ...
... BUT Drones! Michael Rosenwald of the Washington Post: "It's a good thing that Santa is now largely out of the American airspace, because many of those drones are now careening wildly through the air, crashing into lawns, cars, roofs and grandmas. Twitter is loaded today with tales of aerodynamic woe." Rosenwald re-publishes some of the tweets. CW: I laughed out loud.
Elliot Hannon of Slate, citing the Center for Global Development: "A 2008 study from the US Energy Department's Energy Information Administration (EIA) found that decorative seasonal lights accounted for 6.6 billion kilowatt hours of electricity consumption every year in the United States. That's just 0.2% of the country's total electricity usage ... It's also more than the national electricity consumption [FOR THE YEAR] of many developing countries, such as El Salvador, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Nepal, or Cambodia." CW: Might wanna turn off those icicle lights. The chili lights in my kitchen, however, are staying on. ...
... Besides, when the temperatures are unseasonably warm on the East Coast, we need something to remind us of Christmas. Or not: Peter Schwartzman of the Washington Post found another explanation for the warm weather: "Jesus might be coming back." CW: Maybe climate denialism isn't denialism at all but a twisted expression of longing for the end times. As another woman told Schwartzman, "End times must be on the way. I'm delighted with this." I, for one, am not cheerful about this development, because I'll definitely be banished to hell, which I hope is nicer than the Bible lets on. Not that I won't argue with Jesus about it; I'm pretty damned good at standing up to authoritarian men. Say, how come all those teabaggers who protest every governmental imposition, real & imagined, are willing to let a stranger from heaven determine their eternal fate?
Tim Egan finds "some snippets of qualified joy" to celebrate.
Salon publishes as excerpt from Alison Greene's No Depression in Heaven: "The greatest power of the Greatest Generation was their collective acknowledgment that they could not go it alone. Nowhere was this transformation more dramatic than in the South. For a moment, the southern Protestant establishment faced the suffering that plantation capitalism pushed behind its public image of planters' hats and hoopskirts and mountains of pure white cotton.... [Franklin] Roosevelt's New Deal threatened plantation capitalism even as it bent to it."
Nicole Winfield of the AP: "Pope Francis issued a Christmas Day prayer that recent U.N.-backed peace processes for Syria and Libya will quickly end the suffering of their people, denouncing the 'monstrous evil' and atrocities they have endured and praising countries that have taken in refugees."
D. C. Clark adds the Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Choir's mashup of Simon & Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and Coldplay's "Fix You" to our lovely medley of holiday songs. Again, not a Christmas song, but so what? The NHS Choir put together the piece to celebrate the work & workers of Britain's National Health Service. Against long odds, the recording topped Britain's Christmas week chart, after several celebrities, including Justin Beiber, who had a song in the running but urged his fans to buy the NHS's single. If the NHS were a U.S. agency, an inspector general would have charged them with breaking lobbying laws:
Presidential Race
Goldbuggery! Michael Grunwald in a Politico Magazine opinion piece: It isn't just Donald Trump who has crazy ideas. Most of the GOP presidential candidates have proposed wacko policies, right there in the debates for all to see. "The Democrats would say the GOP is simply defying reality -- on climate, on economics, on the ease with which muscular foreign policies can fix the world, on just about everything. Then again, the Republican Party isn't the party that's hiding its debates on weekend nights. Its views may be extreme, but it's airing its views for all to see."
Beyond the Beltway
Washington Post: "Authorities say a fire that caused minor damage to former president Bill Clinton's first childhood home in Hope, Ark., may have been arson."
Nancy Scola in Politico Magazine (first published Nov. 20): Charlotte, North Carolina, has gone green, eschewing bright lights & promoting water conservation. "... Envision Charlotte [is] a non-profit that leaders of the city's largest corporations like Duke Energy are betting will position Charlotte in the urban vanguard of environmental sustainability. If it works, Envision Charlotte will rekindle growth that in the best of times reached 10 percent annually." ...
... Caleb Hannon in Politico Magazine (first published Aug. 15): "The Hennepin Energy Recovery Center, better known as the HERC, has emerged as the centerpiece of Minneapolis's own push to be carbon-neutral by 2030, as Minnesota's largest city looks to vault itself into the world's top tier of sustainable cities. In doing so, it hopes to join places like Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm that have a long reputation of balancing the environment and human impact. It's an ambitious goal for the Midwestern city of 400,000, but one that Minneapolis hopes to achieve by transforming its residents' relationship to their own trash, and one that it -- and 17 other global cities, including Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm and San Francisco -- all joined together to announce in 2014 during a meeting in Copenhagen when they created the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance pact."
Way Beyond
Ellen Barry & Salman Masood of the New York Times: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid an impromptu visit Friday to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan. "It was the first visit to Pakistan by an Indian premier in 12 years."
Anne Barnard of the New York Times: "The commander of one of the most powerful Syrian insurgent groups in the suburbs of the Syrian capital, Damascus, was killed Friday in an airstrike, according to the government and its opponents. The death of the commander, Zahran Alloush, is a significant blow to the armed opposition, bolstering President Bashar al-Assad ahead of a planned new round of peace talks.... Local opposition figures reached in Damascus said the airstrikes had been carried out by Russian warplanes, but that information was not immediately confirmed by Russian or Syrian officials.
News Ledes
Los Angeles Times: "Pacific Coast Highway north of Ventura reopened in both directions Saturday afternoon after a wind-driven brush fire scorched more than 1,200 acres in the area overnight, prompting mandatory evacuations...."
Washington Post: "The Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a written statement Saturday that [Ursula Gauthier,] the Beijing correspondent for French news magazine L'Obs, would not be issued press credentials for 2016, effectively expelling her. Gauthier drew Beijing's ire country by writing an essay that questioned the Chinese government's rhetoric on terrorism."
Weather Channel: "Damaging storms continued to take aim at the South on Christmas Day, bringing severe flooding just days after an outbreak of tornadoes and severe thunderstorms killed at least 15 people across the region." ...
... New York Times: "Gov. Robert Bentley of Alabama declared a state of emergency on Friday as heavy rain and flooding paralyzed areas in the central and northern parts of the state." CW: Yes, he's asking the socialist president to be sending more of those federal dollars Alabama's way.