Tuesday Reads: Hillary in 2016?
Posted: September 24, 2013 Filed under: 2016 elections, Hillary Clinton, morning reads, Republican politics, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: Bill Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, Doug Band, Huma Abedin, Taylor Marsh, Terry McAuliffe 70 Comments
The face of a President?
Good Morning!!
For the past few weeks, I’ve been suffering from a bad case of what JJ calls “PAD” or “Political Affective Disorder.” I’ve been finding myself escaping into a haze of detective stories, Criminal Minds reruns, and video games. I’ve still kept up with the news–barely–but I haven’t felt much like writing about it. I feel discouraged about the fate of our nation and I’m paralyzed about my own personal future too.
Beginning in 1993, I focused most of my attention of getting the education I missed out on as a young woman after I left college after only two years. From 1993 to 2010, I lived the life of a full-time student–and I loved it! After I finally achieved my goal–a doctorate in psychology–I had no idea what to do next. I was near retirement age, and faced the reality that the best “job” I might be able to get in the current economic climate was as an adjunct professor with low pay and no benefits.
I had learned after 12 years of teaching that the kinds of teaching jobs I might be able to get wouldn’t allow me to experience the aspects of teaching that I truly enjoyed–working directly with students and leading class discussions–wouldn’t be available to me. Instead I’d be lecturing to classes of 150-200 students with little opportunity for class discussion or personal interaction. In addition, I had serious problems with grade inflation and the “customers are always right” attitude of the universities I had taught at.
I had fantasies of focusing on writing and research, and I thought that might be a realistic goal, but then my mentor died suddenly and shockingly, and I no longer had anyone in academia to turn to for advice or to help me negotiate the publishing process. I was already so exhausted by the effort to complete my dissertation and my father’s death in March of 2010, that I really felt the need to just do nothing for awhile.
I threw myself into blogging, because it gave me opportunities to write and express myself on a daily basis. I’ve always loved following politics and it has been great to connect with so many other people who have the same interests and obsessions. But lately the world of politics seems as paralyzed as I am in my own life. The Republican Party has managed to largely control the agenda despite the fact that they only control the House.
Right now, I have the ability to live on a very low income and still have a decent lifestyle. But the day is eventually going to come when I won’t have a free place to live. I’m also finding myself less satisfied with just recovering from the effort to finish my Ph.D. and the major losses of my father and my academic father figure–my mentor. What will my future look like? I seems wrong not to use the skills and knowledge I’ve gained over the years to give back in some way, no matter how small.
Well, I can’t solve all those problems today. But I can keep on keepin’ on and imagine ways things might change. You might call it, “The Audacity of Hope.” And that’s where Hillary comes in. More and more I see her as a model for survival, for achievement late in life, for looking at problems in new and productive ways. Could she really become the first woman president at approximately the same age I am? Could she be a better, more innovative leader than Barrack Obama has been? I want to take that leap of faith and believe in her ability to win the nomination and general election and succeed as president. I also want to believe that she and we can survive the Clinton hate that we’ll all have to go through to make it happen.
Suddenly Hillary is all over the news! Yesterday Dakinikat posted a link to the first major interview (at New York Magazine) Hillary has done since leaving the State Department. Yesterday I was feeling so apathetic that I didn’t even manage to read the whole thing. But I’ve promised myself I’m going to do that today. In the meantime, here are some crib sheets and reactions to the New York article:
From NBC News’ First Thoughts:
*** Clinton news — everywhere! If you wanted an idea of what the media landscape would look like the moment we get a clear indication if Hillary Clinton is running for president, we got a taste of it over the past 48 hours. Hillary Clinton gave her first private-citizen interview to a news organization; Bill Clinton is making news ahead of his Clinton Global Initiative meeting; and the New Republic runs a tough piece on Bill Clinton aide Doug Band. It’s a reminder of what comes with the Clintons — excitement, news and attention, and baggage. Now on to these individual stories…
*** “She’s running,” Hillary confidante tells New York magazine: In her first interview with a news organization since leaving her secretary of state post, Hillary Clinton certainly didn’t seem like someone who was shutting the door to a 2016 presidential bid. In fact, it was the opposite. When New York magazineasked if she wrestles with running, Clinton responded, “‘I do,’ she says, ‘but I’m both pragmatic and realistic. I think I have a pretty good idea of the political and governmental challenges that are facing our leaders, and I’ll do whatever I can from whatever position I find myself in to advocate for the values and the policies I think are right for the country. I will just continue to weigh what the factors are that would influence me making a decision one way or the other.’” It’s a significant step that she’s decided to acknowledge publicly that she’s thinking about it. We may all think we know this and treat it as a given inside the Acela Corridor, but it’s still significant to read her SAYING it. But the article adds, “Some of her close confidants, including many people with whom her own staff put me in touch, are far less circumspect than she is. ‘She’s running, but she doesn’t know it yet,’ one such person put it to me. ‘It’s just like a force of history. It’s inexorable, it’s gravitational. I think she actually believes she has more say in it than she actually does.’” Other than sending signals that she’s running, the other unmistakable take away from the Hillary interview: She won’t be surrounding herself with a lot of the Bill alum, a la 2008. More Team Hillary, less Team Bill in 2016. Translation to nervous donors/supporters about a repeat of 2008: Mark Penn and other Bill veterans aren’t running this thing.
From The Daily Beast: Seven Juiciest Bits from Hillary Clinton’s New York Profile. Go read the whole thing, but I’ll excerpt the part I found most intriguing:
7. The future of Clintonworld now lies with Chelsea.
Of course, there’s a third person in the Clinton family: Chelsea, whose name has been added to the name of the foundation, making it the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. Chelsea had tried out a number of careers before turning to the family business, first as a consultant at McKinsey & Co., then a hedge fund and a stint NBC. But not everyone at the foundation was happy about Chelsea’s sudden appearance and her decision to bring in an old McKinsey associate as CEO—and Bill eventually stepped out and defended his comrades, a move that hinted there might have been conflict between the three Clintons. “This is an operation that runs on its proximity to people,” one staffer said. “Now it’s three people. How does that work?”
But Hillary says Chelsea’s entrance is simply in her daughter’s DNA (a move that seemed especially true after Chelsea’s Daily Show appearance on Thursday night). Hillary said Chelsea, the family’s now-gatekeeper, “comes by it” at the foundation “naturally.” Ever the proud parents, Hillary said Chelsea is “an incredibly able—obviously I’m biased—but extremely well-organized, results-oriented person, so rather than joining a lot of other groups, on which she could pursue her interests, she thought, I want to be part of continuing to build something I have worked on off and on over the years, and I really believe in it. I was thrilled to hear that.”
A negative note from The Atlantic: Hillary Clinton’s Presidential Campaign Is Already Haunted
Clinton-watchers have an abundance of bedtime reading options this Sunday with not one, but two long profiles aimed at a possible 2016 run for Hillary Clinton. In New York magazine, Clinton herself breaks a mini “press hiatus” to spend some time with Joe Hagan, who then digs into the extensive support system for the family dynasty. But it’s The New Republic’s profile of Doug Band, longtime advisor to Bill Clinton, that hints at one of the challenges Hillary will face in a 2016 campaign: the ghosts waiting in the wings from the Clintons’ long public life.
Band, writer Alec MacGillis explains, is “rarely written about, almost never quoted, and many Clinton associates are loath to discuss him on the record.” But lately, he’s emerged from under the Clinton umbrella to strike out on his own, leaving him more vulnerable to scrutiny. In the past few months, his name has popped up as something of an antagonist in stories of troubles at the family foundation. Even though Band declined to speak to MacGillis for his expansive profile, the piece connects some dots that could be unwelcome for Team Clinton: “the unease with Band reflects an unease with the phenomenon of post-presidential Clintonism itself,” he writes. That Clintonism angst, TNR’s piece posits, could extend to Hillary, albeit with few to no direct ties. Band’s role in the Clinton administration was as the body man, a presidential version of a personal assistant.
Taylor Marsh points out that Hillary is not Bill just because she’s married to him: Bill Clinton, Hillary, and a Bone Picking Exposé on Doug Band.
The fact is Hillary Clinton doesn’t have a trail to give us an idea what she’d do, let alone if she thinks similarly to her husband on economics. What we know about Hillary in matters commander in chief is that unlike where Bill started, she’s respected at the Pentagon, which is one reason a contingent of progressives will oppose her candidacy. People tried to hook NAFTA to her back during the 2008 season, which I debunked, because not even Carl Bernstein, someone who wrote a fairly tough book on Hillary, would allow that to go unremarked upon, throwing ice cold water on any notion she supported NAFTA, a free trade agreement that exemplifies neoliberalism.
Just because she’s Bill Clinton’s wife doesn’t mean her views are identical to him. You’d think Democratic activists and progressives would understand the insult of assuming Hillary would be just like Bill. Opposing NAFTA also doesn’t mean she won’t approve of other free trade deals. Of course, for many Iraq, then her role in Libya, now Syria, is enough to make her unsupportable.
The other issue is that to people inside the power structure who want to be in charge, pretending corporations aren’t part of politics is to lose your foothold on the ladder taking you upward. You can choose not to participate as a voter and activist, but anyone in the political food chain who wants to rise cannot. This is one of the immovable, unsolvable, implacable truths that create the catch-22 of American politics.
Anyone who wants to change the system can’t get access to power without using the system and by the time they rise within the system they’ve lost credibility with the voters who put them in office to fight the system. Once in the political stream that gives you access to the power as a politician, the corporations who run the world also control the political apparatus you need to get anything done. Thus instead of Barack Obama changing Washington it changed him, as it will anyone governing in the era of international globalization. It gets to the question of whether a person is strong enough to also exact their own pound of economic flesh so that the stacked deck for the wealthy against the middle class at some points starts evening out.
So we don’t talk about neoliberalism when it comes to Democrats, Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, and a scorching investigation of Doug Band won’t change that fact, or that Hillary being married to Bill doesn’t tell us anything definitive about what she’d do if she ran for president and won.
John Dickerson at Slate via CBS News: Hillary Clinton: The long game.
Hillary Clinton, in her first interview after leaving the State Department, offered a wise metaphor about the current state of presidential election madness. “This election is more than three years away, and I just don’t think it’s good for the country,” she told New York magazine, referring to the fevered speculation about her possible candidacy. “It’s like when you meet somebody at a party and they look over your shoulder to see who else is there, and you want to talk to them about something that’s really important; in fact, maybe you came to the party to talk to that particular person, and they just want to know what’s next,” she says. “I feel like that’s our political process right now. I just don’t think it is good.”
Clinton knows what it’s like to be on both ends of that exchange. She was a political spouse; the shortsighted looked over her shoulder for many years, seeing her as merely an adjunct to her accomplished husband. Now, she is the person who draws every eye in the room–away from even her husband. (When someone says “Clinton”, it may not be long before a majority of people think of the former secretary of state and not the former president).
Read more at the link.
And finally articles on two important members of the Clinton orbit:
NY Daily News: Hillary Clinton running for president in 2016, friends say — and Huma Abedin will have tough choice
WaPo: McAuliffe leads Cuccinelli in Virginia governor’s race
Soooooo . . . what’s your take on Hillary’s chances? How can we handle the CDS and the rampant misogyny we know she’ll face?
Of course this is an open thread, so feel free to post your links on any topic in the comments. I promise to click on every one!
Saturday Open Thread: Waiting for the Apocalypse
Posted: September 21, 2013 Filed under: Barack Obama, morning reads, Republican politics, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: food stamps, nuclear near-misses, Rep. Kevin Kramer, SNAP 12 Comments
Good Afternoon Sky Dancers!!
Mona is under the weather today, so I’m going to put up some links to get some discussion going.
Hey, remember when elections used to have consequences? That was before we elected the black guy. Now the right wing nut party tells us what “the American people really think.” At Maddowblog, Steve Benen writes:
If you listen to congressional Republicans defend their shutdown scheme and crusade to destroy the federal health care system, they’ll routinely use the same phrase. The “American people,” the GOP claims, are on their side. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) argued at a press conference yesterday, for example, “The White House may not get it, but, frankly, the American people get it.” [….]
It may seem like ages ago, but about 10 months ago, the United States held national elections. One party, the Republican Party, ran on a fairly specific platform, near the top of which was a promise to destroy the Affordable Care Act in its entirety. Their rivals, the Democratic Party, also had a platform, which included preservation of the Affordable Care Act.
The “American people” were asked to make a choice. And they did.
At the presidential level, the Democratic candidate won with relative ease, and became only the sixth presidential candidate in American history to win 51% of the popular vote twice. In the U.S. Senate, Democrats not only held their majority for the fourth consecutive election cycle, they also unexpectedly added seats. In the U.S. House, Democratic candidates collectively won 1.4 million more votes than Republican candidates….
We’ve all heard the “elections have consequences” adage many times, but let’s be clear about what we’re witnessing in 2013: Republicans are very clearly telling the country, “No, actually, elections don’t have consequences. We’re still going to do as we please.”
I have to say, it’s really getting old too. I don’t know how much more of this I can take. I’m on the verge of giving up on politics and just playing video games and reading detective stories until the apocalypse overtakes us.
Here’s an example of one of the wingnuts who’s leading us all to armageddon: North Dakota Rep. Kevin Kramer. The North Decoder reports on exchange that took place on Kramer’s Facebook page:
[A] constituent of North Dakota Congressman Kevin Cramer posted a comment on Cramer’s Facebook wall. The constituent apparently wanted to make sure that — after Cramer’s vote to take food out of the mouths of hungry children, disabled people, the elderly and many military veterans — Cramer was aware of some of the Biblical passages supporting the idea of helping the least of these. Cramer’s response is kind of stunning. His response is, essentially, to let those people starve. Citing a different Biblical passage, here’s what Cramer wrote:
Congressman Kevin Cramer 2 Thessalonians 3:10 English Standard Version (ESV) 10 For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.Facebook (source)
So there you go folks. The hungry children of veterans who can’t find jobs or who are disabled; those kids can just starve. See, Cramer’s a good Christian, and Thessalonians says we need to let the children of people who can’t work or who can’t find jobs starve….
Cramer assumes everybody who receives SNAP assistance is lazy. Because, of course, the Christian thing to do is to assume that everyone who isn’t working isn’t willing to work. And we should hate those people and let them “not eat.” Let’s just forget all that crap the Bible says about helping poor people. Why not?!? He forgets that many who receive SNAP assistance work. Many work full-time. Many work multiple jobs. It’s not that they’re lazy, Kevin; it’s that our economy needs a lot of working poor people. WalMart needs a lot of working poor. Kevin’s owner — the Man Who Bought North Dakota — needs a lot of working poor people. How would the Walton family make so much money if they weren’t able to pay so many people so little?!?
Read the whole Facebook post at the link.
Here’s some advice for journalists on the Republican campaign to starve low wage workers and unemployed people and their children to death from Dan Froomkin: Writing a Neutral Story About Something So Heartless As the Food Stamp Vote Is Not Good Journalism.
The Republican-led House yesterday voted to make deep cuts to the food stamps program that has kept millions of American families from going hungry since the recession hit, saying its response to growing need was instead a sign of bloat and abuse.
The New York Times editorial board this morning said the vote “can be seen only as an act of supreme indifference.”
But that’s not the way the paper’s own reporters covered it. Like those at essentially every other mainstream news organization, they wrote it straight. They focused on procedure. They quoted both sides. And they called it a day.
I decided to closely examine this morning’s coverage of the vote because such a blatantly absurd and cruel move struck me as a good test of whether the Washington press corps could ever bring itself to call things as they so obviously are — or whether they would check their very good brains at the door and just write triangulating mush that leaves readers to fend for themselves. It was no contest.
Read Froomkin’s review of the coverage at HuffPo. American journalism is pretty much dead these days, folks.
Speaking of approaching armageddon, lately we keep hearing about near miss nuclear explosions in our past. The latest of these incidents to be revealed took place in North Carolina in 1961. BBC News:
The plane was on a routine flight when it began to break up over North Carolina on 23 January 1961.
As it was breaking apart, a control inside the cockpit released the two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs over Goldsboro.
One fell to the ground unarmed. But the second “assumed it was being deliberately released over an enemy target – and went through all its arming mechanisms save one, and very nearly detonated over North Carolina,” Mr Schlosser told the BBC’s Katty Kay.
Only the failure of a single low-voltage switch prevented disaster, he said.
The bomb was almost 260 times more powerful than the bombs that fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The incident is only one of the terrifying “near misses” reported by Eric Schlosser in a new book Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety. Schlosser is also the author of Fast Food Nation.
Sooooo…. What are you up to today? If you have any interesting news links to share, please post them in the comment thread.
Thursday Reads
Posted: September 19, 2013 Filed under: Barack Obama, morning reads, Republican politics, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: Federal debt limit, Income Inequality, John Boehner 18 Comments
Good Morning!!
Before I get started on today’ news, I want to say that I hope all the surgeries go well. Today RalphB is having surgery and then will have to go through rehab. In addition, JJ’s daughter just had hers on Tuesday and is home recovering. Please keep them in your thoughts. Hang in there JJ and RalphB! Remember you have friends at Sky Dancing Blog who care!
Now to the news…
As I’m sure you know by now, the House Republicans are again engaged in a fruitless but damaging effort to get rid of Obamacare. Speaker John Boehner is threatening to shut down the government by refusing to raise the debt limit unless the Affordable Care Act is killed. From the LA Times: ‘This is the line in the sand,’ House Republicans say.
House Republicans united Wednesday around a plan to use the threat of a government shutdown as leverage to repeal President Obama‘s healthcare law, confident the American people are on their side.
House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) yielded to his right flank by agreeing to attach the healthcare law repeal to a must-pass bill to keep the government funded past Sept. 30. A vote is expected Friday on a bill that would allow the government to stay open for the next few months.
The measure is all but certain to pass the Republican-led House, but faces rejection in the Senate, where the Democratic majority has shown little interest in undoing Obama’s signature domestic achievement.
Without a resolution by Oct. 1, the start of the new federal fiscal year, the government will run out of money to keep federal workers on the job and provide basic services.
And so, after a quiet summer, the battle begins again. Honestly, sometimes I really feel as if I must be having a bad dream that I can’t wake up from. Some responses to the shutdown threat:
Gail Collins at the NYT: World War O
Seriously, people, why do you think the Republicans have gone so completely lunatic when it comes to this issue? Why do they behave as if, once the health law begins to roll out, it will be cemented in place like an amendment to the Constitution?
True, it would be a pain to repeal the whole thing if it doesn’t work out. But not a pain sufficient to wreak havoc on the global economy like, say, refusing to raise the debt ceiling. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas has been leading the push to shut down the government unless Congress repeals Obamacare. But have you ever heard him vow that if Congress doesn’t repeal Obamacare there will be … elections and then a new Congress that will repeal Obamacare?
Actually, Ted Cruz has an answer for this. Once the law goes into effect, he told the Web site The Daily Caller, the public will be overwhelmed by its sugary sweetness — “hooked on the subsidies.” It’s the duty of Congress to take it back before people can taste it, just the way New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg tried to whisk away high-calorie Big Gulps.
So, the message is clear. The new health care law is going to be terrible, wreaking havoc on American families, ruining their lives. And they are going to love it so much they will never have the self-control necessary to give it up.
Karl Rove, who used to be considered a far right wing nut is now trying to reason with the even farther right nuts who have succeed him. At the Wall Street Journal, Rove pleads for rationality:
A shutdown now would have much worse fallout than the one in 1995. Back then, seven of the government’s 13 appropriations bills had been signed into law, including the two that funded the military. So most of the government was untouched by the shutdown. Many of the unfunded agencies kept operating at a reduced level for the shutdown’s three weeks by using funds from past fiscal years.
But this time, no appropriations bills have been signed into law, so no discretionary spending is in place for any part of the federal government. Washington won’t be able to pay military families or any other federal employee. While conscientious FBI and Border Patrol agents, prison guards, air-traffic controllers and other federal employees may keep showing up for work, they won’t get paychecks, just IOUs.
The only agencies allowed to operate with unsalaried employees will be those that meet one or more of the following legal tests: They must be responding to “imminent” emergencies involving the safety of human life or the protection of property, be funded by mandatory spending (such as Social Security), have funds from prior fiscal years that have already been obligated, or rely on the constitutional power of the president. Figuring out which agencies meet these tests will be tough, but much of the federal government will lack legal authority to function.
But won’t voters be swayed by the arguments for defunding? The GPS poll tested the key arguments put forward by advocates of defunding and Mr. Obama’s response. Independents went with Mr. Obama’s counterpunch 57% to 35%. Voters in Senate battleground states sided with him 59% to 33%. In lean-Republican congressional districts and in swing congressional districts, Mr. Obama won by 56% to 39% and 58% to 33%, respectively. On the other hand, independents support by 51% to 42% delaying ObamaCare’s mandate that individuals buy coverage or pay a fine.
EJ Dionne at the WaPo: Why Republicans are desperate for a shutdown:
To begin with, this is not just a fight between Republicans and Democrats. The GOP is clearly divided between those who take governing seriously — they still believe in government enough to accept responsibility for keeping it open — and those who see in every issue the “final conflict” that Marxists kept predicting. Stopping Obamacare, in their view, is necessary to prevent the country from reaching the end of the road to serfdom. Compared with this hellish prospect, who cares about shutdowns?
What’s fascinating, and this speaks to the perceived power of the tea party in primaries, is that it has taken only a small minority of House Republicans to push toward Armageddon. The Post’s Lori Montgomery and Paul Kane estimated thatroughly 40 conservatives revolted against their leadership’s efforts to keep the government open past Sept. 30. That’s 40 in a 435-member House of Representatives. What’s become of us when less than 10 percent of one chamber of Congress can unleash chaos? What does this say about the House Republican leadership gap?
But it’s also important to understand why the Republican right is so fixated on killing or delaying Obamacare before it goes into effect. Its central worry is not that the program will fail but that it will succeed.
So I guess the House Republicans believe it is worth it to destroy the economic recovery we’ve made so far and possibly crash the global economy to prevent millions of Americans from discovering what it would be like to have health care coverage. It’s unbelievable!
In other economic news, the Fed yesterday indicated that it will not taper of the stimulus as many were expecting them to do. Bloomberg:
The Federal Reserve unexpectedly refrained from reducing the $85 billion pace of monthly bond buying, saying it needs more evidence of lasting improvement in the economy and warning that an increase in interest rates threatened to curb the expansion.
“Conditions in the job market today are still far from what all of us would like to see,” Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said at a press conference today in Washington after a two-day meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee. “The committee has concern that rapid tightening of financial conditions in recent months would have the effect of slowing growth.”
U.S. stocks rose, sending the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index to a record, while Treasuries and gold rallied as Bernanke stressed that the pace of bond buying would be dependent on economic data, and the Fed has no predetermined schedule for tapering the purchases that have pushed its balance sheet to $3.66 trillion.
“There is no fixed calendar schedule, I really have to emphasize that,” Bernanke said. “If the data confirm our basic outlook” for growth and the labor market, “then we could begin later this year.”
No kidding. Earth to the top 1 percent: most of us are still making zero progress. We’re essentially in the same boat as people like us in the days of the Robber Barons. Economic inequality is the highest in history, salaries are stuck at about 1980s levels, and we’re sick and tired of you 1 percenters hogging all the riches. It’s getting close to the time when ordinary people are going to break out the pitchforks and the tar and feathers.
Now here’s a sample of what the 1 percenters think from some moronic Ayn Rand fan at Fortune named Harry Binswanger: Give Back? Yes, It’s Time For The 99% To Give Back To The 1%. Here’s a taste, but you really need to go read the whole thing.
It’s time to gore another collectivist sacred cow. This time it’s the popular idea that the successful are obliged to “give back to the community.” That oft-heard claim assumes that the wealth of high-earners is taken away from “the community.” And beneath that lies the perverted Marxist notion that wealth is accumulated by “exploiting” people, not by creating value–as if Henry Ford was not necessary for Fords to roll off the (non-existent) assembly lines andSteve Jobs was not necessary for iPhones and iPads to spring into existence.
Let’s begin by stripping away the collectivism. “The community” never gave anyone anything. The “community,” the “society,” the “nation” is just a number of interacting individuals, not a mystical entity floating in a cloud above them. And when some individual person–a parent, a teacher, a customer–”gives” something to someone else, it is not an act of charity, but a trade for value received in return.
I’m running out of space and time, so here are the rest of my news items link-dump style:
The Daily Mail: Sister of suspected Boston Marathon bomber appears in court charged with dealing marijuana
The NYT: Starbucks Seeks to Keep Guns Out of Its Coffee Shops
NBC News: Gamer stabbed, robbed of ‘Grand Theft Auto V’ just minutes after buying game
NBC News: ‘Grand Theft Auto V’ torture episode sparks controversy
Science Recorder: European scientists plan to free robot snakes on the Red Planet
NPR: Officials Say Edward Snowden’s Leaks Were Masked By Job Duties
WaPo: Navy Yard shooter carved odd messages into his gun before carnage
Tuesday Reads
Posted: September 17, 2013 Filed under: Barack Obama, Foreign Affairs, morning reads, Republican politics, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: Aaron Alexis, Glenn Greenwald, Greenwald Derangement Syndrome, Keith Alexander, NSA leaks, Star Trek 27 Comments
Good Morning!!
We’ve had another mass-murder and I think I can safely predict it will have no effect on America’s gun culture. Now we’ll have the aftermath: the list of the dead and wounded; the background on the “ticking human time bomb” who “went off” after years of psychological problems and run-ins with law enforcement; the fruitless talk of change that won’t happen because of the right wing nut jobs who apparently run the country despite the Democrat in the White House.
Navy Yard Murders
So far. seven of the people Aaron Alexis killed at the Navy Yard have been named:
— 59-year-old Michael Arnold
— 53-year-old Sylvia Frasier
— 62-year-old Kathy Gaarde
— 73-year-old John Roger Johnson
— 50-year-old Frank Kohler
— 46-year-old Kenneth Bernard Proctor
— 61-year-old Vishnu Pandit
From The Boston Globe: Navy Yard shooting victims had long careers there. You can read some background on each of these shooting victims at the link.
In other news of the massacre, police have now established that Alexis was the only gunman.
Fifth Anniversary of the 2008 Crash
I didn’t see much mention of it, but yesterday was the fifth anniversary of the Lehmann Brothers bankruptcy that precipitated the 2008 financial collapse. The White House released a report on the progress made since then, and President Obama warned Republicans that if the nutjobs in the House continue their efforts to shut down the government, they could easily reverse that progress. From The New York Times:
President Obama on Monday seized on the fifth anniversary of the 2008 financial collapse to warn that House Republicans would reverse the gains made and willfully cause “economic chaos” with the uncompromising stands they have staked out on looming budget deadlines.
“Budget battles and debates, those are as old as the republic,” Mr. Obama said before a friendly audience assembled in a White House annex. But, he added, “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.”
A bloc of conservative House Republicans have said that unless Mr. Obama’s signature health insurance law is delayed or repealed, they will not support financing for government operations in the new fiscal year starting Oct. 1 or an essential increase in the nation’s borrowing limit in mid-October.
Failure to act on federal funding would provoke a government shutdown; even worse, failing to increase the debt limit would leave the government unable to pay bills and creditors and ultimately threaten the nation’s default.
“The last time the same crew threatened this course of action back in 2011, even the mere suggestion of default slowed our economic growth,” Mr. Obama said, recalling that summer’s market-rattling showdown.
No doubt the warning fell on deaf ears…
Fifth Anniversary of the 2008 Crash
I didn’t see much mention of it, but yesterday was the fifth anniversary of the Lehmann Brothers bankruptcy that precipitated the 2008 financial collapse. The White House released a report on the progress made since then, and President Obama warned Republicans that if the nutjobs in the House continue their efforts to shut down the government, they could easily reverse that progress. From The New York Times:
President Obama on Monday seized on the fifth anniversary of the 2008 financial collapse to warn that House Republicans would reverse the gains made and willfully cause “economic chaos” with the uncompromising stands they have staked out on looming budget deadlines.
“Budget battles and debates, those are as old as the republic,” Mr. Obama said before a friendly audience assembled in a White House annex. But, he added, “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.”
A bloc of conservative House Republicans have said that unless Mr. Obama’s signature health insurance law is delayed or repealed, they will not support financing for government operations in the new fiscal year starting Oct. 1 or an essential increase in the nation’s borrowing limit in mid-October.
Failure to act on federal funding would provoke a government shutdown; even worse, failing to increase the debt limit would leave the government unable to pay bills and creditors and ultimately threaten the nation’s default.
“The last time the same crew threatened this course of action back in 2011, even the mere suggestion of default slowed our economic growth,” Mr. Obama said, recalling that summer’s market-rattling showdown.
No doubt the warning fell on deaf ears…
UN Report on Chemical Weapons in Syria
Yesterday the UN released a report on its investigation of the chemical weapons attack in Syria. From the LA Times: U.N. report cites ‘clear’ use of chemical weapons in Syria.
A United Nations report finding “clear and convincing evidence” of a deadly chemical attack built new momentum Monday for demands by the United States and allies to impose tough penalties on Syria if it fails to honor promises to surrender its arsenal.
Although the 38-page report from a U.N. scientific team does not assign blame, Western diplomats and independent experts said it offers undeniable evidence that Syrian President Bashar Assad‘s forces fired sarin-filled rockets with Russian markings into Damascus suburbs on Aug. 21. The United States says more than 1,400 people were killed.
Western diplomats said the weapons and sarin described by U.N. experts displayed sophisticated manufacturing techniques beyond the capabilities of rebel forces, and that U.N. data about the trajectory of the rockets indicated that they were fired from government-held territory.
“The technical details of the U.N. report make clear that only the regime could have carried out this large-scale chemical weapons attack,” said Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. “It defies logic to think that the opposition would have infiltrated the regime-controlled area to fire on opposition-controlled areas.”
A little more from The New York Times:
The weapons inspectors, who visited Ghouta and left the country with large amounts of evidence on Aug. 31, said, “In particular, the environmental, chemical and medical samples we have collected provide clear and convincing evidence that surface-to-surface rockets containing the nerve agent sarin were used.”
But the report’s annexes, detailing what the authors found, were what caught the attention of nonproliferation experts.
In two chilling pieces of information, the inspectors said that the remnants of a warhead they had found showed its capacity of sarin to be about 56 liters — far higher than initially thought. They also said that falling temperatures at the time of the attack ensured that the poison gas, heavier than air, would hug the ground, penetrating lower levels of buildings “where many people were seeking shelter.”
The investigators were unable to examine all of the munitions used, but they were able to find and measure several rockets or their components. Using standard field techniques for ordnance identification and crater analysis, they established that at least two types of rockets had been used, including an M14 artillery rocket bearing Cyrillic markings and a 330-millimeter rocket of unidentified provenance.
These findings, though not presented as evidence of responsibility, were likely to strengthen the argument of those who claim that the Syrian government bears the blame, because the weapons in question had not been previously documented or reported to be in possession of the insurgency.
“Greenwald Derangement Sydrome”
After months of wading through Glenn Greenwald’s turgid, error-filled Guardian articles on his NSA “bombshells” and his defenses of his ticket to the bigtime Edward Snowden, and reading his self righteous and self-promoting tweets detailing praise for his “scoops” and his irrational hatred of President Obama and Democrats in general, I’ve reached the point where my dislike of this man is so intense that I can’t stand to look at his smarmy, smirking visage or listen ot his grating, whiny voice. My GDS is so strong that I feel instant empathy for anyone he attacks–even if it’s the Devil incarnate. This brings me to one of the silliest pieces Greenwald has written yet: Inside the mind of NSA chief Gen Keith Alexander. See Alexander had the temerity to have his NSA office designed too look like the deck of the Starship Enterprise from Star Trek. Greenwald intones:
The article describes how even his NSA peers see him as a “cowboy” willing to play fast and loose with legal limits in order to construct a system of ubiquitous surveillance. But the personality driving all of this – not just Alexander’s but much of Washington’s – is perhaps best captured by this one passage, highlighted by PBS’ News Hour in a post entitled: “NSA director modeled war room after Star Trek’s Enterprise”. The room was christened as part of the “Information Dominance Center”:
“When he was running the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command, Alexander brought many of his future allies down to Fort Belvoir for a tour of his base of operations, a facility known as the Information Dominance Center. It had been designed by a Hollywood set designer to mimic the bridge of the starship Enterprise from Star Trek, complete with chrome panels, computer stations, a huge TV monitor on the forward wall, and doors that made a ‘whoosh’ sound when they slid open and closed. Lawmakers and other important officials took turns sitting in a leather ‘captain’s chair’ in the center of the room and watched as Alexander, a lover of science-fiction movies, showed off his data tools on the big screen.
“‘Everybody wanted to sit in the chair at least once to pretend he was Jean-Luc Picard,’ says a retired officer in charge of VIP visits.”
Next, the obligatory attack on Obama:
Numerous commentators remarked yesterday on the meaning of all that (note, too, how “Total Information Awareness” was a major scandal in the Bush years, but “Information Dominance Center” – along with things like “Boundless Informant” – are treated as benign or even noble programs in the age of Obama).
Which “numerous commentators?” Greenwald doesn’t name them, because they probably consist of Greenwald, his boyfriend who is young enough to be his son, and a couple of other Guardian writers.
Okay, Alexander’s office is kind of dumb, but is it really symbolic of some deep evil intent? The interesting thing about Greenwald’s recent Guardian articles is that he is no long writing “substantive” pieces on the NSA leaks. Those have been turned over to writers at the Washington Post, The New York Times, and other media outlets. Perhaps the Guardian got tired of defending Greenwald’s lies and exaggerations.
Along similar lines, I want to call attention to this article at ZD Net that Ralph posted last night. NSA cryptanalyst: We, too, are Americans. It’s an important reminder that not all government employees are evil, despite the claims of Glenn Greenwald, Edward Snowden, and their gang of resentful libertarian white men. Please read it if you haven’t already.
Homeless Man Honored by Boston Police Department
I’ll end with a feel-good story about a Boston man named Glen James who found a backpack containing “$2,400 in cash, $39,500 in traveler’s checks, passports, and various personal papers.” The Boston Globe reports:
A humble homeless man who returned a backpack full of cash and traveler’s checks to police said he felt “very, very good” to do it and used a ceremony honoring him at police headquarters to thank all the people who have ever given him money on the street.
Glen James said, “I don’t talk too much because I stutter.” But he handed out a handwritten statement in which he said, “Even if I were desperate for money, I would not have kept even a … penny of the money I found. I am extremely religious — God has always very well looked after me.”
The statement also said, “I would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank everyone — every pedestrian stranger — who has given me spare change. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”
Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis said that James’s actions were “really a remarkable tribute to him and his honesty.”
“He’s an honest guy and realized the property belonged to someone else,” Davis said.
The middle-aged man, balding, bespectacled, and thin, appeared friendly but shy and slightly overwhelmed by the attention from the media drawn to a feel-good story.
On his way out of the building after the news conference, the police department clerks gave him an ovation.
Now someone please find this man a job and a place to live and maybe send him for FUE hair transplant in Sydney if you are a rich philanthropist.
So….what’s on your reading menu today? Please post your links in the comment thread and have a terrific Tuesday!
what’s on your reading menu today? Please post your links in the comment thread and have a terrific Tuesday!
Monday Evening News Update
Posted: September 16, 2013 Filed under: Crime, SDB Evening News Reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Aaron Alexis, gun violence, mass murder, Workplace shootings 20 Comments
Good Evening!!
It’s been an eventful day in Washington DC, so I thought I’d post a brief update tonight.
I know JJ is busy dealing with her daughter’s upcoming surgery, and I haven’t been around for the past few days because I was doing some marathon kid-sitting. I’m still a little tired after spending most of the day last Wed. and Fri. and Sat. nights with my 8 and 10-year-old nephews. I love them more than anything and love spending time with them, but their energy does wear me out after a while.
Anyway–the news. The top story is of course the latest mass shooter, Aaron Alexis, who killed 12 people and injured at least 14 others at the Washington Navy Yard this morning. Alexis is also dead. From CNN:
The picture emerging of a dead gunman in Monday’s rampage at the Washington Navy Yard is a study in contrasts, one of a man who practiced languages and meditated and another of a cold-blooded killer.
Authorities have not released a possible motive in the shooting at the headquarters for Naval Sea Systems Command that witnesses described as terrifying and chaotic.
The gunman was identified as 34-year-old Aaron Alexis, a former Navy reservist and a current military contractor, the Washington FBI Field Office told CNN. His identity was confirmed by fingerprints and a picture ID card, the FBI said.
Police are still looking for a possible second shooter, but that wouldn’t fit the pattern of these workplace-type shooters. But we’ll have to wait and see.
Alexis, who was from New York City, served as a full-time Navy reservist between 2007 and 2011, according to military records.
In the Navy, Alexis achieved the rank of aviation electrician’s mate 3rd class, working on aircraft electrical systems, the records show.
Alexis was discharged after a “pattern of misconduct,” a U.S. defense official, with knowledge of the investigation, told CNN on condition of anonymity. The official did not detail the misconduct.
Most recently, Alexis worked as an information technology contractor with the Navy…. His last known address was outside of Fort Worth, Texas…
This CNN story has more details on the shooting itself.
Alexis has a history of violent behavior. In 2010, he was arrested for firing a gun through the ceiling of his Fort Worth apartment, according to USA Today. No charges were filed.
The Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office issued a statement Monday saying that no charges were pursued against Alexis. “It was determined that Alexis was cleaning a gun in his apartment when it accidentally went off,” Tarrant County District Attorney Joe Shannon Jr., said. “No one was injured.”
Aaron Alexis’ mugshot from 2010 arrest
The Smoking Gun has more detail on the incident as well as two earlier ones in 2004 and 2008. The neighbor into whose apartment Alexis fired a bullet (here’s the police report)
said that she was “terrified” of Alexis, who had previously confronted her about making too much noise. The woman, who was “visibly shaken up” when questioned by police, said that she believed the shooting was “intentional.”
When police confronted Alexis, who is seen in the adjacent mug shot, he claimed that he was cleaning the weapon when it discharged. Alexis told cops that he was cooking at the time and his hands were slippery as he “began to take the gun apart when his hands slipped and pulled the trigger discharging a round into the ceiling.”
Asked why he did not notify police or check on the welfare of his upstairs neighbor, Alexis said that he “didn’t think it went all the way through since he couldn’t see any light through the hole.” Additionally, “In regards to the noise he said he thought that people would just think it was a firecracker.”
Um…that really sounds like a red flag to me. Maybe guns going off randomly in apartments isn’t such a big deal in Fort Worth?
In 2004, Alexis was arrested in Seattle for
shooting out the tires of a car owned by a construction worker who purportedly “mocked him.” Alexis told cops that an anger-fueled “black out” promted the shooting. Alexis’s father told investigators that his son suffered from “anger management problems” that were related to post-traumatic stress disorder, perhaps connected to his involvement in rescue work following the September 11 terror attacks.
Here’s more detail on the Seattle incident from the Seattle PD:
At about 8 am that morning, two construction workers had parked their 1986 Honda Accord in the driveway of their worksite, next to a home where Alexis was staying in the Beacon Hill neighborhood.
The victims reported seeing a man, later identified by police as Alexis, walk out of the home next to their worksite, pull a gun from his waistband and fire three shots into the two rear tires of their Honda before he walked slowly back to his home north of the construction site….
Following his arrest, Alexis told detectives he perceived he had been “mocked” by construction workers the morning of the incident and said they had “disrespected him.” Alexis also claimed he had an anger-fueled “blackout,” and could not remember firing his gun at the victims’ vehicle until an hour after the incident.
Alexis’ father told Seattle police that his son had PTSD.
Finally, according to The Smoking Gun, in 2008, he was arrested for disorderly conduct in DeKalb County, Georgia. The guy really got around. I guess we’ll be learning a lot more about him over the next few days.
A man is taken into custody by uniformed Secret Service Police on Pennsylvania Avenue outside the White House on Monday,
The shooting spree at the Navy Yard wasn’t the only out-of-the ordinary incident in Washington DC today. A short time ago, a man was arrested by the Secret Service outside the White House after he tossed some firecrackers over the fence. USA Today:
Officials identified the man only as Alexander Sahagian; he is believed to age 52.
The firecrackers, which to some sounded like gunshots, triggered a lockdown of the White House complex.
Secret Service spokesman George Ogilvie said the suspect was transported to a nearby police station and will likely be charged with illegally throwing a projectile.
If I get more detail on these incidents, I’ll post links in the comment thread. So…what are you hearing? Any big news in your neck of the woods?
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