CNBC: “Job growth proved better than expected in June, as the labor market showed surprising resilience and likely taking a July interest rate cut off the table. Nonfarm payrolls increased a seasonally adjusted 147,000 for the month, higher than the estimate for 110,000 and just above the upwardly revised 144,000 in May, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday. April’s tally also saw a small upward revision, now at 158,000 following an 11,000 increase.... Though the jobless rates fell [to 4.1%], it was due largely to a decrease in those working or looking for jobs.”
Washington Post: “A warehouse storing fireworks in Northern California exploded on Tuesday,leaving seven people missing and two injured as explosions continued intoWednesday evening, officials said. Dramatic video footage captured by KCRA 3 News, a Sacramento broadcaster, showed smoke pouring from the building’s roof before a massive explosion created a fireball that seemed to engulf much of the warehouse, accompanied by an echoing boom. Hundreds of fireworks appeared to be going off and were sparkling within the smoke. Photos of the aftermath showed multiple destroyed buildings and a large area covered in gray ash.” ~~~
New York Times: “The Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, who emerged from the backwoods of Louisiana to become a television evangelist with global reach, preaching about an eternal struggle between good and evil and warning of the temptations of the flesh, a theme that played out in his own life in a sex scandal, died on July 1. He was 90.” ~~~
~~~ For another sort of obituary, see Akhilleus' commentary near the end of yesterday's thread.
Help!
To keep the Conversation going, please help me by linking news articles, opinion pieces and other political content in today's Comments section.
Link Code: <a href="URL">text</a>
OR here's a link generator. The one I had posted died, then Akhilleus found one, but it too bit the dust. He found yet another, which I've linked here, and as of September 23, 2024, it's working.
OR you can always just block, copy and paste to your comment the URL (Web address) of the page you want to link.
Note for Readers. It is not possible for commenters to "throw" their highlighted links to another window. But you can do that yourself. Right-click on the link and a drop-down box will give you choices as to where you want to open the link: in a new tab, new window or new private window.
Thank you to everyone who has been contributing links to articles & other content in the Comments section of each day's "Conversation." If you're missing the comments, you're missing some vital links.
Commencement ceremonies are joyous occasions, and Steve Carell made sure that was true this past weekend (mid-June) at Northwestern's commencement:
~~~ Carell's entire commencement speech was hilarious. The audio and video here isn't great, but I laughed till I cried.
CNN did a live telecast Saturday night (June 7) of the Broadway play "Good Night, and Good Luck," written by George Clooney and Grant Heslov, about legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow's effort to hold to account Sen. Joe McCarthy, "the junior senator from Wisconsin." Clooney plays Murrow. Here's Murrow himself with his famous take on McCarthy & McCarthyism, brief remarks that especially resonate today: ~~~
~~~ This article lists ways you still can watch the play.
New York Times: “The New York Times Company has agreed to license its editorial content to Amazon for use in the tech giant’s artificial intelligence platforms, the company said on Thursday. The multiyear agreement 'will bring Times editorial content to a variety of Amazon customer experiences,' the news organization said in a statement. Besides news articles, the agreement encompasses material from NYT Cooking, The Times’s food and recipe site, and The Athletic, which focuses on sports. This is The Times’s first licensing arrangement with a focus on generative A.I. technology. In 2023, The Times sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, for copyright infringement, accusing the tech companies of using millions of articles published by The Times to train automated chatbots without any kind of compensation. OpenAI and Microsoft have rejected those accusations.” ~~~
~~~ Marie: I have no idea what this means for "the Amazon customer experience." Does it mean that if I don't have a NYT subscription but do have Amazon Prime I can read NYT content? And where, exactly, would I find that content? I don't know. I don't know.
Washington Post reporters asked three AI image generators what a beautiful woman looks like. "The Post found that they steer users toward a startlingly narrow vision of attractiveness. Prompted to show a 'beautiful woman,' all three tools generated thin women, without exception.... Her body looks like Barbie — slim hips, impossible waist, round breasts.... Just 2 percent of the images showed visible signs of aging. More than a third of the images had medium skin tones. But only nine percent had dark skin tones. Asked to show 'normal women,' the tools produced images that remained overwhelmingly thin.... However bias originates, The Post’s analysis found that popular image tools struggle to render realistic images of women outside the Western ideal." ~~~
~~~ Marie: The reporters seem to think they are calling out the AI programs for being unrealistic. But there's a lot about the "beautiful women" images they miss. I find these omissions remarkably sexist. For one thing, the reporters seem to think AI is a magical "thing" that self-generates. It isn't. It's programmed. It's programmed by boys, many of them incels who have little or no experience or insights beyond comic books and Internet porn of how to gauge female "beauty." As a result, the AI-generated women look like cartoons; that is, a lot like an air-brushed photo of Kristi Noem: globs of every kind of dark eye makeup, Scandinavian nose, Botox lips, slathered-on skin concealer/toner/etc. makeup, long dark hair and the aforementioned impossible Barbie body shape, including huge, round plastic breasts.
New York Times: “George Clooney’s Broadway debut, 'Good Night, and Good Luck,' has been one of the sensations of the 2024-25 theater season, breaking box office records and drawing packed houses of audiences eager to see the popular movie star in a timely drama about the importance of an independent press. Now the play will become much more widely available: CNN is planning a live broadcast of the penultimate performance, on June 7 at 7 p.m. Eastern. The performance will be preceded and followed by coverage of, and discussion about, the show and the state of journalism.”
No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land. -- Magna Carta ~~~
~~~ New York Times: “Bought for $27.50 after World War II, the faint, water stained manuscript in the library of Harvard Law School had attracted relatively little attention since it arrived there in 1946. That is about to change. Two British academics, one of whom happened on the manuscript by chance, have discovered that it is an original 1300 version — not a copy, as long thought — of Magna Carta, the medieval document that helped establish some of the world’s most cherished liberties. It is one of just seven such documents from that date still in existence.... A 710-year-old version of Magna Carta was sold in 2007 for $21.3 million.... First issued in 1215, it put into writing a set of concessions won by rebellious barons from a recalcitrant King John of England — or Bad King John, as he became known in folklore. He later revoked the charter, but his son, Henry III, issued amended versions, the last one in 1225, and Henry’s son, Edward I, in turn confirmed the 1225 version in 1297 and again in 1300.”
NPR lists all of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize winners. Poynter lists the prizes awarded in journalism as well as the finalists in these categories.
Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts. — Anonymous
A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. — Edward R. Murrow
Publisher & Editor: Marie Burns
I have a Bluesky account now. The URL ishttps://bsky.app/profile/marie-burns.bsky.social . When Reality Chex goes down, check my Bluesky page for whatever info I am able to report on the status of Reality Chex. If you can't access the URL, I found that I could Google Bluesky and ask for Marie Burns. Google will include links to accounts for people whose names are, at least in part, Maria Burns, so you'll have to tell Google you looking only for Marie.
As many of you noticed, safari & Akhilleus kept Reality Chex going while I was on the road. They did a fine job of it, too. I did not specifically ask them to help out; unlike me, I gather they both have real jobs and other real commitments and interests that take up a lot of real time. Nevertheless, both made significant contributions over the past week.
Here's the point where I have to wonder where the hell everybody else was. There are six other contributors who know how to do what safari & Akhilleus did. In addition, everybody who reads Reality Chex knows how to provide links to stories in the Comments section, as a few contributors did.
I'm not sure if you can call yourself a liberal -- and I know you can't describe yourself as a Sanders-style democratic socialist -- if you're happy to regularly take advantage of this site but you're unwilling to support it with a few contributions.
P.S. If you comment on a news story or opinion piece that has not been linked here, for Pete's sake, provide a link. Even if you're commenting on a news event you saw on TV or heard on the radio, it's highly likely the story also made it into print. I used to accommodate "Random Reader Remarks" by trying to track down the stories the writers might have referred to. But I resent having to babysit adult commenters so I've pretty much quit doing that -- although I did it yesterday, and I'll do it again if someone comments or hints at some event that might be newsworthy.
Paul Krugman writes what is probably a pretty good column about President "Obama's War on Inequality," but I didn't get to read it because Krugman insulted me in the first sentence. You know where to find him.
"Shame!" Rachel Bade and Ben Weyl of Politico: The House erupted in chaos Thursday morning with Democrats crying foul after Republicans hastily convinced a few of their own to switch their votes and narrowly block an amendment intended to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people from discrimination. It was an unruly scene on the floor, with Democrats chanting 'shame!' after GOP leaders just barely muscled up the votes to reject, 212-213, an amendment by Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) that would have effectively barred federal contractors from getting government work if they discriminate against the LGBT community. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Akhilleus: Apparently Paul Ryan pulled a fast one to change the outcome of the vote by ignoring House rules including informing members of exactly which cowardly bigots changed their vote at the last minute. Darrell Issa was one. Disgraceful.
David Dayen of the New Republic: "Senator Elizabeth Warren has a knack for recognizing the challenges facing ordinary Americans years before the rest of the political world gets there.... The structure of employment law that served the nation over the past eight decades is fraying, shot through with loopholes that employers use to their advantage to shortchange workers.... We need to make benefits currently tied to the workplace universal and portable. Warren ... wants to universalize workers' compensation and paid time off (vacation, personal, and sick days, along with paid family and medical leave). She also wants to require Social Security payroll deductions." -- CW
Think Warren is Special? She is. And not just because she's smart, but because she uses her eyes. Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone: "The tone of American political coverage for some time hasn't matched the reality of what voters have been going through...Every four years, we whipped up audiences into a lather over the same patriotic fairy tale of political athletes...chasing the ultimate power prize, the White House. Reporters traveled tens of thousands of miles to cover these races, but not to tell stories about people they met on the road who'd lost their jobs, been bankrupted by health problems, become addicted to pills, etc."
...Akhilleus: Warren has been paying attention to something beltway geniuses, experts, docents, and retainers have not: average Americans.
Nick Gass of Politico: "Sen.Tom Cotton on Thursday slammed his colleagues' efforts to pass sweeping criminal justice reforms, saying the United States is actually suffering from an "under-incarceration problem." --safari
MIchael Shear of the New York Times: "A federal judge in Texas on Thursday excoriated the Justice Department, demanding ethics classes for the department's lawyers and ordering other sanctions for those who argued the case involving President Obama's immigration executive actions. He also ordered the government to produce a list of about 100,000 immigrants who entered illegally and who are participating in a government program that protects them from deportation. In a blistering order, Judge Andrew S. Hanen of Federal District Court in Brownsville accused the Justice Department lawyers of lying to him during arguments in the case, and he barred them from appearing in his courtroom.... A spokesman for the Justice Department said Thursday that 'we strongly disagree with the order' but declined to comment further." CW: We knew Hanen was a bigot, but now I suspect he's insane.
Declan Walsh & Kareem Fahim of the New York Times: "An Egyptian jetliner carrying 66 people from Paris to Cairo abruptly swerved, vanished from radar and plunged into the Mediterranean early Thursday, shortly before it was scheduled to land. Egyptian officials issued conflicting information about whether wreckage had been found and suggested terrorism was a more likely cause than technical failure." See also yesterday's Commentariat. -- CW ...
... The Guardian's liveblog of developments is here.
American Adventures Abroad. Dan Lamothe of the Washington Post: "The U.S. military's top general said Thursday that the Libyan government is in a 'period of intense dialogue' that could soon lead to an agreement in which U.S. military advisers will be deployed there to assist in the fight against the Islamic State." -- CW
CBS News: "Morley Safer, the CBS newsman who changed war reporting forever when he showed GIsburning the huts of Vietnamese villagers and went on to become the iconic 60 Minutes correspondent whose stylish stories on America's most-watched news program made him one of television's most enduring stars, died today in Manhattan." He was 84. -- Akhilleus (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... The "60 Minutes" special on Safer's career, which aired Sunday, is here. (I couldn't get it to play in Firefox, but it works in Chrome.)Safer's New York Times obituary is here. -- CW
CW: If today's Opinion section is any indication, it appears the New York Times has cancelled its Opinion comments section & transferred it to Facebook. None of today's Opinion columns has a Comments facility, and there's an "invitation" on the Times' front page to "join us on Facebook." I clicked on a couple of news stories, & they don't have a Comments option, either. So, good for Mark Zuckerberg, I guess. ...
... Update: Must have been an NYT glitch. After MAG was able to access the NYT comments, I tried again, & they were up & running. The first comment on Krugman wasn't posted till about 11:20 am ET though, which is at least seven hours after his column appeared online.
Presidential Race
CW: There is & will be a lot of presidential polling & associated hand-wringing. I mostly will not cover this at least until we get closer to the election, but you're welcome to do so in the Comments section.
Hillary Clinton says Donald Trump is not qualified to be president:
Abby Phillip & Anne Gearan of the Washington Post: "In an attempt to head off an ugly conflict at its convention this summer, the Democratic National Committee plans to offer a concession to Sen. Bernie Sanders -- seats on a key convention platform committee -- but it may not be enough to stop Sanders from picking a fight over the party's policy positions." -- CW
Jessica Valenti of the Guardian: "Hillary Clinton's campaign needs to explain to voters why they should care about Trump's misogyny -- and misogyny in general -- and talk about the impact it could have. Because sexism knows no party, and some of those irate male Sanders fans could make their way to Trump instead of supporting Clinton (something Trump's campaign is prepared for.)... If the Democratic elite assumes that all liberal voters are outraged by sexism, they'll be making the same devastating miscalculation the GOP elite did when they assumed Republican voters were tied to the same conservative ideals they cared about." -- CW
** Matt Taibbi writes an entertaining eulogy for the "establishment" wing of the Republican party, made up of a "surprisingly small collection of uptight lawyers, financiers and Beltway intellectuals, who'd just seen their chosen candidate, the $100 million Jeb Bush, muster all of four delegates in the presidential race. Meanwhile, candidates whose talking points involved the beheading of this same party establishment were likely to win around 2,000." -- CW
Today in Responsible Leadership from the Guy Who's Not Hitler: David Graham of The Atlantic: "Disasters serve as the crucibles in which leaders are tested, and the disappearance of EgyptAir 804 -- though less than 24 hours old -- is already serving that purpose in the presidential race. Early Thursday morning, before Egyptian authorities (or anyone else) had made any statements about possible causes for the airplane's disappearance over the Mediterranean, Trump tweeted this:
Looks like yet another terrorist attack. Airplane departed from Paris. When will we get tough, smart and vigilant? Great hate and sickness!" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Akhilleus: At least he's right about great hate and sickness. Making political hay off the deaths of 66 passengers with zero knowledge of the facts is not the best predictor of the possibility of prudent action as president.
Julia Preston, et al., of the New York Times: "Mr. Trump has suggested he will flesh out his ideas [on how to curb illegal immigration] in a forthcoming speech. But experts across many fields who have analyzed his plans so far warn that they would come at astronomical costs -- whoever paid -- and would in many ways defy the logic of science, engineering and law.... 'I can't even begin to picture how we would deport 11 million people in a few years where we don't have a police state, where the police can't break down your door at will and take you away without a warrant,' said Michael Chertoff.... By any tally, the costs would be enormous. The American Action Forum, a conservative-leaning research group, calculated the federal outlay to be at least $400 billion, and then only if the deportations were stretched over 20 years." ...
... CW: When Michael Chertoff deplores a Trump-style "police state," that's saying something. You may remember Chertoff. As James Petras wrote in 2012, "Chertoff headed the Criminal Division of the Justice Department (from 2001 -- 2003). During that time he was responsible for the arbitrary arrest of thousands of US citizens and immigrants of Muslim and South Asian heritage, who were held incommunicado without charge and subject to physical and psychological abuse -- without a single resident alien or Muslim US citizen linked to 9/11.... More than any other official, Michael Chertoff has been the chief architect of the 'Global War on Terror' -- co-author of the notorious 'Patriot Act' which trashed habeas corpus and other essential components of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. As Secretary of Homeland Security from 2005-2009, Chertoff promoted 'military tribunals' and organized the vast internal spy network, which now preys on private US citizens."
Mark Danner in the New York Review of Books: "However unlikely Trump's candidacy may be -- and we have seen over the past ten months how the unlikely can be overtaken by reality television politics -- such a nominee, despite his negative poll numbers among women and minorities and all the other factors that, we are told, will make his election impossible, might stand only one highly telegenic terrorist attack away from becoming the national embodiment of all our fears." Thanks to Ken W. for the link. See also the discussion of the Danner piece in yesterday's Comments. -- CW
**Robert Kagan of the Washington Post: "The Republican Party's attempt to treat Donald Trump as a normal political candidate would be laughable were it not so perilous to the republic...But the phenomenon he has created and now leads has become something larger than him, and something far more dangerous...But what he has tapped into is what the founders most feared when they established the democratic republic: the popular passions unleashed, the 'mobocracy.'" Read on --safari
The Apostate Opines: David Frum, in the Atlantic, presents the problem The Guy Who isn't Hitler poses for Republicans but is waaaay off in his assessment of their abilities to do anything about it: "[Trump's] also demonstrated that he himself is a dangerous person, contemptuous of constitutional restrictions on the power of the presidency, hostile to fundamental freedoms, and worryingly impressed by foreign authoritarian rulers. To save themselves and their country, Republican politicians will have to rediscover the politician's arts of deftness, flexibility, and self-preservation --- while stealthily hastening Trump toward the defeat that almost certainly awaits him in November." ...
... Akhilleus: Frum is talking about Ryan, McConnell, and Priebus. Self-preservation they've got down. Deftness and flexibility? Not so much. This is a classic category error. These guys are not politicians, they're inept, extremist ideologues. Big difference. He does make some good points about Trump, but he assumes, incorrectly, that the above named worthies have a great concern for their country. They don't. The problem posed by Trump, for these guys, is not how to stop him from ruining the country, but how to retain their phony baloney jobs, Trump or no Trump, full stop.
The Age of Trump. Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian: "Part of it is sheer showbiz.... An underestimated part of the formula is humour.... But most powerful is the thrill Trump generates in the room, and in the audience watching on TV, when he dares reject the rules of the game.... It signals the arrival of an outsider, a maverick unbound to the old order and ready to destroy it in favour of something entirely new." --safari
Burgess Everettet al.of& Politico: "Donald Trump's newly empowered chief strategist [Paul Manafort] sought to convince top GOP congressional officials on Capitol Hill that Trump can compete for the Latino vote, exploit Hillary Clinton's weaknesses and become a Reagan-esque figure in the party, according to attendees and sources familiar with the meeting." --safari
Nolan McCaskill of Politico: "Days after The New York Times published a Sunday cover story chronicling instances in which Donald Trump crossed the line with women, a former Miss Universe [Alicia Machado] is sharing how ... [Trump] shamed her decades ago, even going as far as to call her 'Miss Piggy' for gaining weight.... Machado said Trump not only made her feel 'so fat,' but he also ridiculed her English-speaking ability, calling her 'Miss Housekeeping.' The model and telenovela star said her weight issues led to years of eating disorders -- anorexia and bulimia -- that required therapy." -- CW
Jonah Shepp of New York: "Donald Trump ... held a fundraiser on Thursday that he claimed would pay off the entire campaign debt of his erstwhile rival (and suspected hostage) New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, the Associated Press reports." -- CW
Josh Harkinson of Mother Jones: "A Maryland delegate selected by Donald Trump's presidential campaign for the Republican National Convention was indicted on Wednesday on federal weapons and child pornography charges. The federal indictment alleges that Caleb Andrew Bailey, 30, of Waldorf, Maryland, illegally mailed a cache of ammunition and explosives through the US Postal Service and illegally possessed a machine gun and child pornography. The indictment also further alleges that Bailey "attempted to use and did use a minor to engage in sexually explicit conduct to produce child pornography." Thanks to Ophelia M. for the link. Ophelia wonders if the selection of Bailey was another of those Trump delegate "database errors." -- CW
Jonathan Chait explains to conservative "intellectuals" that the Tea party & Trump party are one in the same: a bunch of selfish, racist bastards who are afraid of the coming non-white majority. CW: It is downright amazing that these "intellectuals" need convincing; it's fine to hope the folks on your side are pure as the driven snow, but it's delusional to maintain that belief once convincing evidence against it piles up.
Maggie Haberman & Thomas Kaplan of the New York Times: "William F. Weld, the twice-elected former Republican governor of Massachusetts, who was last seen campaigning in the 2006 Republican primary for governor of New York, now hopes to be on a national ticket as the vice-presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party.... In his first interview since accepting an invitation to be the running mate of former Gov. Gary Johnson of New Mexico, Mr. Weld assailed Donald J. Trump over his call to round up and deport the 11 million immigrants in the country illegally. 'I can hear the glass crunching on Kristallnacht in the ghettos of Warsaw and Vienna when I hear that, honest,' Mr. Weld said Thursday." -- CW
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Constant Weader: Last week or so, David Roberts, Steve M., Paul Krugman & others wrote about how the MSM would "normalize" Donald Trump. One of the worst political writers around, Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post, is busy proving that point. Here's the title of his post today: "5 very smart things Donald Trump has done since becoming the presumptive GOP nominee." In the past, some readers have defended Cillizza after I've criticized his superficiality. I used to think he was just an innocuous nitwit. But any writer who purposely assists Trump, as Cillizza does here, is a danger to society.
Beyond the Beltway
Enlightenment in the Confederate Midwest: Sarah Ferris of The Hill: "Oklahoma lawmakers on Thursday approved a bill making it a felony for doctors to perform abortions, which opponents say is essentially a ban on the procedure. The Republican bill, which has been called the first of its kind nationally, will now be sent to the desk of GOP Gov. Mary Fallin. She has five days to sign or veto the bill before it automatically becomes law." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Akhilleus: Sorry ladies, the Supreme Court might say that you have the right to an abortion but they didn't say you had any right to a doctor. But hey, good luck with that coat hanger. ...
... Paul Waldman: "Coming soon: a bill that says you can have an abortion if you can stand on your head and recite pi to 100 places without any mistakes while a Republican state representative screams 'Slut!' over and over in your face." ...
... CW: If Fallin isn't completely stupid, she'll veto this unconstitutional bill.
Patrick McGreevy of the Los Angeles Times: "The [California] state Senate on Thursday approved sweeping new restrictions on using guns in California in response to the December mass shooting by two terrorists that left 14 dead in San Bernardino. Lawmakers approved 11 bills including measures mandating background checks for Californians buying ammunition and outlawing the manufacture and sale of semiautomatic rifles with detachable magazines. The bills, which next go to the Assembly for consideration, represent the most ambitious effort at gun control in decades in California, which already has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation." -- CW
Ashley Balcerzak of the Washington Post: "Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan on Thursday became the latest state leader to sign contentious legislation restricting civil asset forfeiture -- the process that allows police to seize and keep property suspected of being connected to illegal activity without having to convict, or even charge, the owner with a crime. Hogan's signature represents a reversal for the Republican governor, who, under pressure from high-profile law enforcement groups, vetoed a bill on the same subject last year. The General Assembly promptly overrode the veto to pass that measure and then introduced additional changes this year that limit state involvement in a federal forfeiture program and require authorities to report what they seize." CW: Kudos to Maryland's Democratic legislators.
Emily Green, et al., of the San Francisco Chronicle: "San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhrresigned Thursday at the request of MayorEd Lee, hours after the fatal police shooting of a woman renewed questions about whether the Police Department had lost the confidence of minority communities in the city. Lee had stood by the chief he appointed in 2011 through two controversial police shootings within the past six months and revelations that a number of officers had exchanged racist and homophobic text messages. But at a late-afternoon news conference at City Hall, the mayor said that after Thursday's shooting,* he had 'arrived at a different conclusion to the question of how best to move forward.'" *The story includes details of "Thursday's shooting." -- CW
Way Beyond
Peter Baumont of the Guardian: "Israel's defence minister has announced his resignation, delivering a stinging rebuke to the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, whom he said he no longer had 'faith in'. The departure of the former defence chief Moshe Yaalon came after Netanyahu, with whom he had recently clashed, invited the hawkish ultranationalist Avigdor Lieberman to replace Yaalon as part of moves to widen his fragile coalition.... Yaalon's exit could put a new dent in domestic and western confidence in the Netanyahu government. " --safari...
...safari: If anybody needs a refresher course on how extreme Avigdor Lieberman is, you check here. Consider just one of his famous quotes taken from Ben Norton of Salon: "In an interview with right-wing Israeli news outlet Ynet in February 2015, Lieberman threatened new wars in Lebanon and Gaza, insisting 'a fourth operation in the Gaza Strip is inevitable, just as a third Lebanon war is inevitable.'He made these remarks just six months after the Israeli military killed more than 2,250 Palestinians in Gaza."
The World of Walls. Uri Friedman of The Atlantic: "Clinton is suggesting that walls are useless against today's borderless threats. Obama is suggesting that the world is marching toward ever-more interconnectedness, trampling the walls in its way. Both seem to present walls as a thing of the past. In fact, though, border walls and fences are currently going up around the world at the fastest rate since the Cold War." --safari
Today in Responsible Leadership from the Guy Who's Not Hitler: David Graham of The Atlantic: "Disasters serve as the crucibles in which leaders are tested, and the disappearance of EgyptAir 804 -- though less than 24 hours old -- is already serving that purpose in the presidential race. Early Thursday morning, before Egyptian authorities (or anyone else) had made any statements about possible causes for the airplane's disappearance over the Mediterranean, Trump tweeted this:
Looks like yet another terrorist attack. Airplane departed from Paris. When will we get tough, smart and vigilant? Great hate and sickness!"
Akhilleus: At least he's right about great hate and sickness. Making political hay off the deaths of 66 passengers with zero knowledge of the facts is not the best predictor of the possibility of prudent action as president.
CBS News: "Morley Safer, the CBS newsman who changed war reporting forever when he showed GIsburning the huts of Vietnamese villagers and went on to become the iconic 60 Minutes correspondent whose stylish stories on America's most-watched news program made him one of television's most enduring stars, died today in Manhattan." He was 84. -- Akhilleus
Enlightenment in the Confederate Midwest: Sarah Ferrisof The Hill: "Oklahoma lawmakers on Thursday approved a bill making it a felony for doctors to perform abortions, which opponents say is essentially a ban on the procedure. The Republican bill, which has been called the first of its kind nationally, will now be sent to the desk of GOP Gov. Mary Fallin. She has five days to sign or veto the bill before it automatically becomes law."
Akhilleus: Sorry ladies, the Supreme Court might say that you have the right to an abortion but they didn't say you had any right to a doctor. But hey, good luck with that coat hanger.
"Shame!" Rachel Bade and Ben Weyl of Politico: The House erupted in chaos Thursday morning with Democrats crying foul after Republicans hastily convinced a few of their own to switch their votes and narrowly block an amendment intended to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people from discrimination. It was an unruly scene on the floor, with Democrats chanting "shame!" after GOP leaders just barely muscled up the votes to reject, 212-213, an amendment by Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) that would have effectively barred federal contractors from getting government work if they discriminate against the LGBT community.
Akhilleus: Apparently Paul Ryan pulled a fast one to change the outcome of the vote by ignoring House rules including informing members of exactly which cowardly bigots changed their vote at the last minute. Darrell Issa was one. Disgraceful.
*****
Timothy Noah of Politico: "The Obama administration is shoveling out regulations nearly one-third faster in its final year than during the previous three -- all to beat a May 23 deadline to prevent a President Donald Trump from overturning them. The goal is to deny Trump the opportunity to kill those regulations under an expedited process should he be elected president and Congress remain in Republican control." -- safari ...
Rachael Wade of Politico: "Two weeks ago, in a closed-door meeting with Paul Ryan, Reps. Jim Jordanand Mark Meadows gave the speaker an ultimatum: They would force a House vote to impeach the IRS commissioner -- unless he allowed the Judiciary Committee to take action against John Koskineninstead...But after getting nowhere in the plea for action...Jordan and Meadows took matters into their own hands, threatening to use an obscure House procedure to push the measure to the floor.They got their hearing announcement less than a week later. It's exactly the sort of arm-twisting Ryan set out to avoidwhen he took the speaker's job last fall." --safari...
...Maybe it's just me, but this sounds like Politico trying to give the GOP and Ryan some "responsibility" cover. Does anyone really think Ryan gives two flips about burning down the IRS? Give me a break --safari
... Charles Pierce: "Paul Ryan Thinks Overtime Pay Is Actually -- Wait for It -- Bad for Workers." CW: You'll have to read the post to learn why Pierce concludes, "Biggest. Fake. Ever." Pierce is too kind.
Vann Newkirk IIof The Atlantic: "Ever since the anniversary of Brown v. Board, [it] has provided an opportunity for assessing just how far the country has come since the Jim Crow days of naked segregation. The results have been, at best, mixed.... But one of the most enduring -- and least noticed -- areas of racial segregation even after Brown v. Board has been health care." --safari
Burned. Josh Marshall of TPM: "Over the last several weeks I've had a series of conversations with multiple highly knowledgable, highly placed people...[T]he 'burn it down' attitude, the upping the ante, everything we saw in that statement released today by the campaign seems to be coming from Sanders himself.... Sanders narrative today has essentially been that he is political legitimacy. The Democratic party needs to realize that. This, as I said earlier, is the problem with lying to your supporters. Sanders is telling his supporters that he can still win, which he can't. He's suggesting that the win is being stolen by a corrupt establishment, an impression which will be validated when his phony prediction turns out not to be true." --safari ...
... Nolan Mccaskill of Politico: "The latest controversy roiling the Democratic Party showed no signs of abating Wednesday, as Bernie Sanders' campaign put the onus of the rift splitting Democrats on Debbie Wasserman Schultz's failed leadership, accusing her of 'throwing shade' on the Vermont senator from the beginning.... Jeff Weaver, Sanders' campaign manager, pointedly accused Wasserman Schultz of undermining the Sanders campaign from the get-go and called into question her leadership."--safari...
...Steve M.: "I'm predicting that Bernie Sanders won't endorse Hillary Clinton. The contempt Sanders feels for Clinton and the Democratic establishment is now bone-deep. It's classic male anger, rooted in outrage at being disrespected...He's going to fight to the last primary, then he's going to try to twist superdelegates' arms, then he and his people are going to demand a platform that resolves every disagreement between himself and Clinton in his favor. And when the platform fails to repudiate the party's nominee on every point of disagreement, he's going to walk." --safari note: Houston, we have a problem.
...Enter the Strongman. TBOGG in RawStory: "Despite assurances from Bernie Sanders campaign manager that, 'There's not going to be any violence in Philadelphia.... I guarantee that,' it is almost a dead certainty that protesters are going to hit the streets of Philly in July and give the GOP and Donald Trumpjust what they need to avoid, if not a loss, a shot at avoiding an election wipe-out.... Enter Donald Trump, who will promise to make America great again by restoring law and order. In 1968, a deeply divided Democratic Party went to Chicago and promptly went to war with itself...In a country already roiled by riots in major cities, former Vice President and failed 1962 gubernatorial candidate Richard Nixon was able to resurrect his his all-but-dead political career as a law and order candidate." --safari
** The Little Woman. Gail Collins: "Hillary wants to be the first woman ever elected president of the United States. The economy is the central issue in the campaign. The fact that she's assuring voters that Bill will take care of it is ... totally wrong. It would be better if he wasn't on the scene at all. Let us count the ways." -- CW
Scott Lemieux in the American Prospect: "Sanders is having an effect on Clinton, but he is not causing her to change her stance, so much as he is compelling Clinton to emphasize her existing, more-liberal positions." -- CW
Katy Tur & Ali Vitali of NBC News: "Donald Trumpmet with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in New York on Wednesday, the latest in his efforts to strengthen his foreign policy bona fides. Trump's motorcade rolled into Kissinger's home around 3 p.m. where the low-profile meeting that lasted about one hour. Trump aides say the presumptive GOP presidential nominee and 92-year-old diplomat have spoken over the phone multiple times, and Trump requested the face-to-face." CW: Great! Man largely responsible (and quite okay with) mass murder of civilians meets with man quite okay with mass murder of civilians.
Don't hold your breath. Peter Breinart of The Atlantic: "Donald Trump's war on the media threatens fundamental American principles -- making it crucial that responsible conservatives speak out...If Republicans rationalize Trump's assault on press freedom as a necessary, hardball response to the media's liberal, pro-Clinton bias, many journalists will treat that as a reasonable point of view. Thus, Trump's behavior will be legitimized. And, of course, if Trump is elected president, his power to intimidate and restrict the press will expand exponentially." --safari
David Frum of The Atlantic: "Republican primary voters have nominated Donald Trump. Republican politicians failed to stop them....[The GOP's] task ahead, in the Biblical phrase, is to pluck the brands from the fire -- rescue as much of their party as can be rescued -- while simultaneously minimizing the damage to party and country by the nominee their rank-and-file has imposed on them." --safari...
...Rise of the Confederacy. Chauncey DeVega in Alternet: "There are two consistent themes about the American right-wing in the Age o Obama. First, racism and conservatism is now one and the same thing. Second, the Republican Party is the United States' largest white identity organization.... The ascendance of Donald Trump and his coronation as the presumed 2016 Republican presidential candidate is the logical outcome of a several decades-long pattern of racism, nativism, and bigotry by the American right-wing and its news entertainment disinformation machine." --safari
...So yesterday we had Trump's wife assure us he's not Hitler (linked yesterday) and today his daugtherIvanka Trump assures us "he's not a groper" of women. Is this really happening? --safari
Mark Stern of Slate: "On Wednesday...Trump likely squashed any Republican fears that his judicial selection would be insufficiently conservative and signaled to those Republicans still unsure about supporting him by releasing his SCOTUS short list. The 11 names on his list are all staunchly right wing, more in the vein of the blatantly partisan Justice Samuel Alito than of the libertarian-leaning iconoclast Justice Antonin Scalia." --safari note: Stern gives a short run down on the top hits list. ...
... Bethania Palma Markus of RawStory: "A legal advocacy group for LGBT people has called one of theDonald Trump's prospective Supreme Court nominees 'the most demonstrably anti-gay judicial nominee in recent memory.'...In a 2003 legal brief arguing to uphold a Texas law criminalizing consensual LGBT sex,[William] Pryor compared it to "polygamy, incest, pedophilia, prostitution, and adultery' and argued that states should be free to prosecute gay people as criminals. He said the rights of LGBT people as a group are not protected by the Constitution." --safari ...
... Police Dogs, Da, Gays, Nyet: Donald Trump's list of Supreme Court nominees sounds more like members of the old Soviet politburo than temperate American jurists, according to Betsy Woodruff and Asawin Suebsaeng of the Daily Beast: "Monica Lewinsky connections, Twitter celebrity status, relaxed views on police-dog brutality, and comparisons of gay sex to necrophilia Donald Trump's list of potential Supreme Court nominees has it all. On Wednesday afternoon, the real-estate mogul rolled out eleven names of would-be members of the highest court in the land, and it was a veritable dream team of conservative judiciary icons. -- Akhilleus
A Trumpal Revolution? Fans of Mao are now fans of Trump, according to Jiayang Fan of The New Yorker: "America may still be reeling from Trump's victory as the presumptive Republican Presidential nominee, but many Chinese, watching from the other side of the world, view his ascent as natural: the rise of another strongman whose politics of exclusion and rhetoric of hate both reprise and reflect China's past and present anxieties." ...
... Akhilleus: Can we expect Donaldo to come out with his own Little Red Book any day now? Wonder what the Birchers think about all these commies cozying up to Drumpf?
Beyond the Beltway (and Beyond)
CW Personal Note: I traveled across North Carolina yesterday & stopped at two bathrooms. Not a single transgender person accosted me. The new "bathroom law" is really working! (The fact that not a single transgender person has accosted me ever in 70 years should in no way diminish your view of the effectiveness & necessity of North Carolina's law.) However, I did nearly walk into a men's room by mistake where I might have humiliated some fellows, so I think North Carolina should deal with people like me by passing a law disallowing women to use public restrooms.
Emma Graham-Harrison of the Guardian: "Police have fired teargas at protesters calling for the resignation of the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, and shut down swaths of central Caracas to control the demonstrations, as the Caribbean nation slid deeper into political crisis. Wednesday's protests came the day after Maduro said the opposition-controlled parliament had become irrelevant and predicted that it might soon 'disappear.'" --safari
Juan Cole: Iranian members of parliament have approved the details of a bill that insists US compensate Iran for its crimes against that country. The bill comes as a result of a $2 billion judgment against Iran entered by a US court and backed by an act of the US Congress, on behalf of the families of Marines killed in a Beirut bombing in 1983...Iran won't see a dime. But it is the case that in a world where courts are making claims for universal jurisdiction, the US should be careful about litigating past political and military conflicts.Washington's list of crimes is so long that sooner or later it will boomerang on the US elites." --safari (Thanks to PD for the link)
Powered by nature. Arthur Nelsen of the Guardian: "Portugal kept its lights on with renewable energy alone for four consecutive days last week in a clean energy milestone revealed by data analysis of national energy network figures. Electricity consumption in the country was fully covered by solar, wind and hydro power in an extraordinary 107-hour run...News of the zero emissions landmark comes just days after Germany announced that clean energy had powered almost all its electricity needs on Sunday 15 May, with power prices turning negative at several times in the day -- effectively paying consumers to use it." --safari
Fearmongers? Ewen MacCaskill of the Guardian: "A startling claim that the west is on course for war with Russia has been delivered by the former deputy commander of Nato, the former British general Sir Alexander Richard Shirreff. In a book published on Wednesday, 2017 War With Russia, Shirreff argues that the events in Crimea have destroyed the post-cold-war settlement and set the stage for conflict, beginning next year." --safari
**The Rise of the Far Right. Sylvie Kauffman of the New York Times: "On Monday, the Western world may well wake up to the news that, for the first time since the defeat of Nazism, a European country has democratically elected a far-right head of state. Norbert Hofer, of the Austrian Freedom Party, claimed 35 percent of the vote in the first round of the presidential election on April 24. Now he is heading into the second round on Sunday with the two mainstream parties having been eliminated from the runoff and the Social Democratic chancellor, Werner Faymann, having resigned." --safari
News Ledes
New York Times: "Egypt and Greece mounted a marine search-and-rescue operation in the southern Aegean Sea early Thursday for an EgyptAir passenger jet with 66 people on board that suddenly disappeared over the Mediterranean shortly before it was due to land in Cairo. The reason for the plane's disappearance was unclear, but the developments touched off fears about terrorism and investigations in Egypt, Greece and France, where the plane took off." -- CW ...
... The Guardian has live updates here. The New York Times' updates are here.
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