Tuesday Reads: The Truth is Out There
Posted: January 5, 2016 Filed under: Barack Obama, morning reads, U.S. Politics 36 Comments
Good Morning!!
President Obama has announced executive actions he will take in an effort to “reduce gun violence.” The previous link will take you to the White House website where you can read the details. The goals are to increase the efficiency of background checks, encourage effective enforcement of gun laws, invest in mental health treatment and facilitate reporting of people who are prohibited from having guns, encourage the use of gun safety technology as well as funding research on “improving gun safety.”
The Boston Globe reports: Obama moves to require background checks for more gun sales.
The president approved a series of long-awaited executive steps aimed at curbing gun violence despite opposition in Congress to new gun laws.
The Justice Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives will issue updated guidance that says the government can consider someone a gun dealer regardless of where the guns are sold. The guidance aims to narrow the loophole that exempts weapons sold at gun shows, online, and other informal settings from required background checks. Under the previous rules, only federally licensed gun dealers must conduct checks on buyers.
The White House said the FBI will hire 230 more examiners to process background checks. It is an attempt to speed up the process so buyers don’t neglect the requirement….
‘‘This is not going to solve every violent crime in this country,’’ Obama said, tempering expectations for gun control advocates calling for far-reaching executive action. ‘‘It’s not going to prevent every mass shooting; it’s not going to keep every gun out of the hands of a criminal. It will potentially save lives and spare families the pain of these extraordinary losses.’
Illustration of Flying Saucer over London
No it won’t, because what we really need to do is get guns off the streets and ban assault rifles completely. Still, it’s a step in the right direction. Of course the gun nuts are all rushing to the stores to buy more guns before the new regulations take effect. WaPo:
New federal data shows 2015 was a record-smashing year for the American firearms industry, with gun sales appearing to hit the highest level on record. Background checks for gun purchases and permits jumped 10 percent last year to 23.1 million, the largest number since the federal background check system began operating in 1998.
Black Friday 2015 was the single biggest gun-purchasing day ever, with more than 185,000 checks processed, according to background check figures from the FBI. December saw the highest number of background checks processed in any month. The last five weeks of the year all ranked among the 10 biggest weeks ever for firearm background checks.
The year-end surge happened partly in response to the mass shooting in San Bernardino, followed by calls by President Obama for more restrictions on gun sales. On Monday, Obama unveiled a package of executive actions that seek to curb gun violence, including conducting more background checks.
This matches a pattern we’ve seen plenty of times in the past: tragedy, followed by calls for gun control, followed by surging firearm sales. Interest in concealed carry permits has generally followed a similar pattern.
Speaking of gun nuts, the wacko hillbillies are still camped out in Oregon. Here’s the latest from Oregonlive.com: Oregon militants: What you need to know Tuesday morning.
1. Dave Ward, sheriff of Harney County, where the militants have set up shop,asked them to go home.
“You said you were here to help the citizens of Harney County,” Ward said in a message aimed at the occupiers. “That help ended when a peaceful protest became an armed and unlawful protest.”
2. There is not likely to be an aggressive showdown between federal law enforcement agents and the militants. Experts say federal officials have learned from sieges at Waco, Texas, and Ruby Ridge, Idaho. They expect federal officialswill take a wait-them-out approach.
3. Meanwhile, the two ranchers whose arson case prompted all of this, Dwight Hammond Jr. 73, and Steven Hammond, 46, quietly surrendered at a Southern California federal prison and their attorneys announced that both men will see a presidential pardon.
And there’s this from Mother Jones: How the Leader of the Oregon Armed Protest Benefited From a Federal Loan Program.
Ammon Bundy runs a Phoenix-based company called Valet Fleet Services LLC, which specializes in repairing and maintaining fleets of semitrucks throughout Arizona. On April 15, 2010—Tax Day, as it happens—Bundy’s business borrowed $530,000 through a Small Business Administration loan guarantee program. The available public record does not indicate what the loan was used for or whether it was repaid. The SBA website notes that this loan guarantee was issued under a program “to aid small businesses which are unable to obtain financing in the private credit marketplace.” The government estimated that this subsidy could cost taxpayers $22,419. Bundy did not respond to an email request for comment about the SBA loan.
Read more at the link.
Esquire reports on survey research they did with NBC News. The article is titled “American Rage.” You can peruse the findings at the link, but I found this notable about women:
When we take a close look at our respondents by gender, women report a greater rise in anger than men over the past year. (See question two.) One possible explanation: Although they share many of the same frustrations with respect to dashed expectations, they are more likely than men to be angry about the treatment of others. (See question 14.) That perception of unfairness has a way of rubbing people the wrong way.
Maybe, just maybe, women are angry about the way so many states are treating women like breeders with no individual rights? Nahhhhh . . . although the survey did find that 48% of women are angry about “the way they are treated. (The question of specifically why individual women are so angry doesn’t even seem to have been asked.)
Check it out at Esquire.
I suppose the Berniebots will beat up on Hillary for this. She talked about UFOs recently in response to a question. At least CNN understood she was speaking tongue in cheek: Hillary Clinton (jokingly) pledges UFO probe.
During a meeting with The Conway Daily Sun, Hillary Clinton jokingly pledged to look into UFO’s, an article from the New Hampshire paper says.
“Yes, I’m going to get to the bottom of it,” Clinton said, tongue-in-cheek, in response to a question from reporter Daymond Steer on UFOs.
This was far from the first time someone in the former secretary of state’s orbit addressed the topic of intelligent life on other planets.
Former President Bill Clinton spoke about the topic at length in a 2007 interview with late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. At the time, the former president said that he had reviewed government information on Roswell and Area 51, locations at the heart of some alien conspiracies. He claimed at the time that he had seen no evidence of visitors to Earth from another planet.
“If we were visited someday, I wouldn’t be surprised,” Bill Clinton said. “I just hope that it’s not like ‘Independence Day.'”
Steer wrote that when he asked the Democratic front-runner about her husband’s comments, she claimed that aliens may have already visited our planet.
“We don’t know for sure,” Clinton said.
And there’s this from Mother Jones:
Clinton’s comments are among the rare public statements she’s made on UFOs and possible government cover-ups—a familiar subject for both Hillary and Bill Clinton. AsMother Joneshas reported, the couple’sinterest in extraterrestrial activityreaches as far back as the 1990s, when Laurence Rockefeller began lobbying the Clinton administration for the release of government documents relating to UFOs—documents that many say reveal the extent of government research into the phenomena.
Additionally, Clinton’s current campaign chairman, John Podesta, a former chief of staff to Bill Clinton and anX-Filesfan, has long expressed interest in the topic.
But these statements are Clinton’s first remarks on the subject during this campaign. They will likely strengthen her support among voters who happen to be UFO enthusiasts and are not supporting any extraterrestrial candidates in the Republican field.
Have you heard? Donald Trump is “one of the great advocates for women” and he “100 percent believes in equality of gender.” That’s according Trump’s daughter Ivanka who appears on the cover of the February issue of Town and Country Magazine.
So that settles that then.
Finally, Mitt Romney emerges from the shadows again to dump on Jeb Bush. From the WaPo:
“A Bush-versus-Clinton head-to-head would be too easy for the Democrats,”he told my colleagues Dan Balz and Philip Rucker during an interview last week in Boston fora broader storyabout the political events of 2015.
The 2012 GOP nominee recalled thinking, “I like Jeb a lot, I think he’d be a great president, but felt he was unfairly butseverely burdened by the W. years— and when I say the W. years, it’s not only what happened to the economy, but the tragedy in Iraq.”
Mitt says he expressed this point to Bush’s face during a private sit-down in Utah last Jan. 22.“Jeb, to be very honest, I think it’s very hard for you to post up against Hillary Clinton and to separate yourself from the difficulty of the W. years and compare them with the Clinton years,” Romney recalls telling the former Florida governor when they met at his house in a Salt Lake City suburb. Romney says Bush responded by saying “he was going to make his campaign about the future, not about the past.”
“I didn’t say anything at that point,” Romney recalled. “But as he left, I said to myself,‘Gosh, in my opinion, it’s not going to be as easy to make that separation as I think he gives the impression it will be.’One of the few things I predicted that turned out to be true.”
Gee Golly Gosh. Good one, Mitt.
What stories are you following today?
Lazy Saturday Reads: Trump May Have Bitten off More than He Can Chew
Posted: January 2, 2016 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: agism, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Sexism 29 Comments
Good Morning!
In the past week or two Donald Trump has begun directing his crude and crass public attacks at Hillary Clinton rather than his Republican rivals for the presidential nomination.
Trump claimed that it was “disgusting” that Hillary went to the ladies room during a break the last Democratic debate. He said that Obama “schlonged” Hillary in the 2008 presidential primaries. He announced that it was “fair game” for him to use Bill Clinton’s infidelities in the 1990s against Hillary. Will it work?
From the NYT: Poll Show Attacks on Bill Clinton May Only Help Hillary Clinton.
Survey data from the Pew Research Center show’s [sic] Mrs. Clinton’s favorability rating jumping to 63 percent in August of 1998, four months before Mr. Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives. In December of that year, as controversy about their marriage continued to swirl, her popularity climbed higher, reaching 66 percent.
“In contrast to her husband, Hillary Clinton continues to draw high marks from the public,” Pew found at the time. “Two-thirds of Americans say they admire Hillary Clinton’s decision to stand by her husband and nearly as many have a favorable opinion of the first lady.”
Figures from Gallup also showed Mrs. Clinton’s favorability rating rising as accounts of Mr. Clinton cheating dominated headlines. That rating, which was at 39 percent in 1992, remained high through 1999 before leveling off. It hovered from 40 percent to 50 percent in the 2000s and topped 60 percent again when she joined President Obama’s cabinet.
Shawn J. Parry-Giles, a communications professor at the University of Maryland, explained in her 2014 book about the role of gender in American politics that Mrs. Clinton was seen as more sympathetic and authentic as she endured the fallout from her husband’s affair.
“As she showed a clear sense of marital fortitude by staying with her cheating husband, her poll numbers would rise,” Ms. Parry-Giles wrote. “As the scorned and sad woman attracting sympathy from others, Clinton would more closely resemble the traditional ideals of authentic womanhood.”
Paul Waldman at The Week: Bill Clinton’s sexual history is fair game for Donald Trump. But it’s bad politics.
…since Hillary Clinton often mentions her husband’s presidency as an example of the kind of successful approach she would bring, that presidency — warts and all — is certainly relevant. But if Republicans want to re-litigate the Monica Lewinsky matter, they probably shouldn’t hope that things will turn out differently this time. You may recall that they were unable to remove Clinton from the presidency, and two years after being impeached he left office with approval ratings in the high 60s. In the end, the public decided that though his private behavior was deplorable, they were happy with the job he was doing as president. They also concluded that a bunch of prurient Republicans had become positively obsessed with Clinton’s sexual life and dragged the country through a needless impeachment crisis.
It’s fair game to talk about all that again (which, I must point out, members of the media would absolutely love to do). What’s much harder to figure out is why Bill Clinton’s behavior provides a reason to vote against his wife. That’s the substance of the question, which still awaits an explanation.
One might even ask what relevance Donald Trump’s obvious sexism has for the presidency. Unlike with some of the other large groups he has alienated, it’s less clear what the connection would be between Trump’s sexism and his actual policy positions. Yes, he finds women’s bodily functions “disgusting,” in the word he repeatedly uses (see here or here), and has a history of dumping his wives when they hit their 40s so he can get himself a younger model. But his positions on issues of particular concern to women are little different from those of most Republicans, even those who are perfectly polite and respectful to everyone (you can argue that things like opposing abortion rights are inherently sexist, but that doesn’t tell us anything about Trump specifically).
But it would be “fair game” now, right? Please go read the rest of the piece at the link. It’s good.
Mary Sanchez at the Chicago Tribune: Donald Trump should think twice about taking on Bill Clinton.
Donald Trump might be picking the wrong schoolyard fight. His modus operandi is to bully. And it’s proved to be an ideal strategy for tying his Republican rivals in knots. But now he’s trying it on someone whose powers of political legerdemain are legendary: Bill Clinton.
The 69-year-old former president is wilier than Trump could ever dream of being. This is the man who hung the 1995-1996 government shutdown around the neck of his chief political adversary, House Speaker Newt Gingrich. A formidable huckster in his own right, Gingrich was the It Boy of conservatism and the leader of an ascendant “Republican Revolution,” but after losing his budget showdown with Clinton, his career went into permanent eclipse.
Gingrich’s oafish understudies then mounted an ill-advised impeachment campaign against Clinton, which only burnished the president’s credentials as a victim of partisan fanaticism.
Trump, by contrast, is a cad whose vulgarity and brutishness are given cover by the fact that those very qualities are cheered by a large portion of the Republican base. He’s making the P.T. Barnum bet on the Republican electorate, and so far it’s paying off.
In recent days, Trump has pounced on Hillary Clinton’s husband, in particular his record of cheating, as a new stratagem to upend her campaign. On Twitter, he asserted: “If Hillary thinks she can unleash her husband, with his terrible record of women abuse, while playing the women’s card on me, she’s wrong!”
But this only underscores another difference between Bill Clinton and Donald Trump: The former president’s record on so-called women’s issues is stellar. He appointed the first women to become U.S. attorney general and secretary of state, added Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the U.S. Supreme Court and signed the Violence Against Women Act, along with other measures that benefited women.
Most recently Trump has been claiming that Hillary is “weak” and “low energy” and that she “lacks .”
From the Washington Post:
For as long as Hillary Clinton has been in the public eye, she has answered questions — and sometimes volunteered information — about how much and how hard she works to get it all done.
Few, even her political enemies, have questioned her work ethic or staying power — until Donald Trump.
“She’ll do a couple of minutes in Iowa, meaning a short period of time. And then she goes home,” the GOP presidential front-runner said in Davenport, Iowa, a few weeks ago, as his attention turned to those areas. “You don’t see her for five or six days. She goes home, goes to sleep. I’m telling you. She doesn’t have the strength. She doesn’t have the stamina.”
Ever since — and increasingly in recent days — the magnate has lobbed a barrage of insults at Clinton from onstage at his campaign rallies, on television and online. The former secretary of state is “low-energy,” Trump says. She lacks stamina. She’s physically weak.
The attacks — often coded, always personal — seem to be aimed at raising questions in voters’ minds about a factor that has long been whispered in some GOP circles: how Clinton’s age could affect her ability to serve.
Trump is older than Clinton, but I guess he thinks he’s not affected by aging. Or maybe he thinks only women are?
“I think that my words represent toughness and strength. Hillary’s not strong. Hillary’s weak, frankly. She’s got no stamina; she’s got nothing,” the billionaire said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “She couldn’t even get back on the stage last night.”
Her energy level, he has said, should disqualify her from the presidency. “Hillary is a person who doesn’t have the strength or the stamina, in my opinion, to be president,” Trump told ABC’s “This Week.” “She doesn’t have strength or stamina. She’s not a strong enough person to be president.”
Trump, who often takes credit for saddling former Florida governor Jeb Bush (R) with a “low-energy” label, has lately used the same line on Clinton.
“She’s even lower-energy than Jeb Bush,” he told a South Carolina crowd on Wednesday.
Trump has looked tired by the end of every GOP debate. I’d love to see him sit through 11 hours of hostile questioning at a Congressional hearing as Hillary did not too long ago. Who know what’s in Trump’s fevered brain, but I think these are all sexist attacks designed to make people believe a woman couldn’t handle the presidency. I don’t think this line of attack is going to work for Trump either.
A few more reactions to Trump’s attacks on Hillary and Bill Clinton:
Joe Conason at The National Memo: Below Par: Donald Trump’s Ardent Courtship Of Bill And Hillary Clinton.
Janelle Ross at the WaPo: Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and how sexism is now partisan.
Lanny Davis at The Hill: Thank you, Mr. Trump — keep attacking the Clintons.
What do you think? What stories are you following today?
New Year’s Eve Reads
Posted: December 31, 2015 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics 22 Comments
Halston, Bianca Jagger, Jack Haley Jr, his wife Liza Minnelli and Andy Warhol at a New Year’s Eve party at Studio 54 in 1978.
Good Afternoon!!
Here we are on the last day of 2015. I’m going to make this a link dump, as JJ calls it, because I know it will be another quiet day and I once again overslept. I hope I can get myself back into a normal routine in 2016! So here are some stories I’ve been reading.
The National Memo: This Year In Crazy: 2015 Belonged To The Wingnuts.
As you may recall, this year kicked off with a big national conversation about the efficacy of vaccinations — setting the tone for a host of debates utterly untethered to reality, whether it was fraudulent anti-abortion videos meant to “expose” Planned Parenthood, or a U.S. senator using a single snowball to disprove 97 percent of peer-reviewed climate science.
We saw loony conspiracy theories that would be too unrealistic for an episode of 24 gaining currency with a surprising number of politicians, as when a handful of paranoid Texans thought that a military exercise was the opening salvo in a federal invasion. This delusion then gained traction and metastasized wildly in the patchwork of talk radio shows and fringe websites that have become the touchstone of our political discourse, until even Texas governor Greg Abbot and Ted Cruz voiced their concern.
The Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage was a landmark victory for civil rights, but it sent conservative Christians into an apocalyptic tizzy. Governors tried to pass legislation to legally discriminate against same-sex couples under the reprehensible camouflage of “religious liberty,” and one county clerk became a national martyr when she spent five nights in jail rather than let two men walk down the aisle.
When a racist terrorist shot up a black church with a gun,conservatives told us we could blame the attack on anything except racism and guns. Finally, we all just blamed a flag. Even so, down in Dixie and elsewhere, there were many who fought to fly it proudly — on the lawn of the South Carolina state house and over a grassy knoll in Texas just off Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.
It was hard to narrow it down, but based on your votes, we have assembled the top 5 crazies from this year’s archives.
Head over to the National Memo to read their top choices–it’s worth clicking the link just to see the illustration at the top of the article.
Here’s a WTF story for you from PC Magazine: Twitter Criticized For Hiring White Male as New Diversity Chief.
The microblogging service this week announced that Jeffrey Siminoff will join the company to lead global diversity and inclusion at Twitter. Siminoff has an impressive resume as Apple’s former Director of Worldwide Inclusion and Diversity, but there’s just one problem, according to critics: He’s a white male.
His appointment was criticized by diversity supporters such as Mark S. Luckie, who doesn’t seem to have a problem with Siminoff himself, but said it “makes no sense” to hire a white male for the role.
“Not saying a white guy can’t be head of diversity but for a company that hires a majority white guys it sends the wrong message,” Luckie wrote on Twitter Tuesday. “I’m sure he’s a great guy but you’ve set the company back instead of moving it forward”….
Twitter last year said its workforce is 70 percent male and 30 percent female. Fifty nine percent of its employees are white, while 29 percent are Asian. African-Americans, Latinos, and people of other ethnicities represent just a fraction of those numbers.
Why is Chris Cillizza writing for a major newspaper?
Washington Post: I said Hillary Clinton had the ‘Worst Year in Washington.’ Here’s why.
I write a weekly column awarding someone — usually a political figure — the “Worst Week in Washington.” It’s just what it sounds like. At the end of the year, I write one big piece about who had the “Worst Year in Washington.” President Obama won it in 2013 and 2014. This year, I named co-winners: Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton.
Outrage!
How could I compare Jeb(!) with Hillary, people screamed. One is barely relevant in the presidential race; the other is a clear front-runner for her party’s nomination. Naming Clinton as a co-winner was either evidence of my “both sides do it” obsession or the latest example of me being just plain dumb.
Roughly 1 billion people sent me this tweet from ESPN’s Nate Silver, which provided further proof of my (a) bias or (b) stupidity.
It’s possible, of course, that I am biased, dumb or maybe a little bit of both. But let me explain why I picked Clinton and why I stand by it.
You’re biased, stupid, ignorant, moronic, out-of-touch, and the ultimate Villager, Chris. Read Cillizza’s convoluted defense of his stupidity at the link.
This news just broke at Politico: Two of Carson’s top aides resign.
Campaign manager Barry Bennett and communications director Doug Watts both resigned, effective immediately, on Thursday. “Barry Bennett and I have resigned from the Carson campaign effective immediately,” Watts said in a statement. “We respect the candidate and we have enjoyed helping him go from far back in the field to top tier status.”
The announcement comes as Carson has struggled to halt a dramatic slide in his poll numbers as doubts arose about his grasp of foreign policy issues and the accuracy of his personal narrative.
TPM: Donald Trump Offers Passionate Defense Of Aerosol Hair Spray In South Carolina.
At the sold out campaign event in Hilton Head, South Carolina, Trump lobbed an attack at President Obama’s action on climate change, saying Obama still flies on “a very old Air Force One…spewing stuff” despite being concerned about his carbon footprint.
“You can’t use hair spray, because hair spray is going to affect the ozone,” the billionaire mogul told crowd.
He continued, pausing to pantomime spraying and styling his shag carpet-like hair: “I’m in my room, in New York City, and I want to put a little spray…but I hear they don’t want me to use hairspray, they want me to use the pump.”
The presidential candidate very much prefers aerosol hair spray to “the pump” version, which he said “comes out in big globs and it’s stuck in your hair and you say, ‘oh my god, I’ve gotta take a shower again because my hair’s all screwed up.’”
Trump also contended that using aerosol hair products in his “sealed” apartment can’t cause harm to the environment.
“I’m sitting in this concealed apartment, this concealed unit – you know, I really do live in a very nice apartment – but it’s sealed! It’s beautiful! I don’t think anything gets out,” he concluded.
Aerosol cans haven’t contained ozone-damaging chemicals since the late 1970s, when the Environmental Protection Agency imposed regulations on the products, but other chemicals in the cans do raise your carbon footprint “ever so slightly,” according to Scientific American. Trump has also railed against EPA water regulations for ruining his signature hairdo.
I have to wonder why all those gun-toting, manly white men who follow Trump don’t find him a little effeminate talking about his hairdo all the time.
In the same speech Trump babbled a lot of nonsense about how women supposedly don’t like Hillary Clinton. Politico:
The real estate mogul told the Hilton Head crowd that Clinton has been hitting him “really hard with the women card, OK? Really hard.”
“And I had to say, OK, that’s enough. That’s enough. And we did a strong number. She’s not going to win,” Trump said, reiterating that “I love” the concept of a female president, but it “can’t be her.” ….
Hillary Clinton is “horrible,” Trump continued. “But I’ll tell you who doesn’t like Hillary are women. Women don’t like Hillary. I see it all the time,” he proclaimed to cheers in the audience. (The latest national CNN poll found that 82 percent of female registered Democrats have a favorable opinion of Clinton, while 15 percent have an unfavorable view.)
The former secretary of state is “always so theatrical” when she criticizes him, Trump observed, mimicking Clinton for saying “Mr. Trump said this and that and this.”
“I shouldn’t do it. I just have to turn off the television sometimes. She just gives me a headache,” Trump said, before remarking, “Although last night I think I gave her a big headache.
Hillary would swat Trump like an annoying mosquito.
Washington Post: How Rubio helped his ex-con brother-in-law acquire a real estate license.
When Marco Rubio was majority whip of the Florida House of Representatives, he used his official position to urge state regulators to grant a real estate license to his brother-in-law, a convicted cocaine trafficker who had been released from prison 20 months earlier, according to records obtained by The Washington Post.
In July 2002, Rubio sent a letter on his official statehouse stationery to the Florida Division of Real Estate, recommending Orlando Cicilia “for licensure without reservation.” The letter, obtained by The Washington Post under the Florida Public Records Act, offers a glimpse of Rubio using his growing political power to assist his troubled brother-in-law and provides new insight into how the young lawmaker intertwined his personal and political lives.
Rubio did not disclose in the letter that Cicilia was married to his sister, Barbara, or that the former cocaine dealer was living at the time in the same West Miami home as Rubio’s parents. He wrote that he had known Cicilia “for over 25 years,” without elaborating.
I actually don’t have a problem with ex-cons getting jobs. I hear Obama is thinking of issuing an executive order to prevent employers from asking about criminal records. I don’t think this will hurt Rubio much.
More links:
New York Times: Donald Trump’s Strongest Supporters: A Certain Kind of Democrat. (Spoiler: they are people registered as Dems who call themselves Repubs and they are mostly in the South.)
Think Progress: Another Texas Republican Under Fire For Rape ‘Joke.’
Texas Observer: Jonathan Stickland’s Pot Antics are Comical. His Views on Rape are Terrifying.
ABC News: Man Charged With Arson in Houston Mosque Fire says he was a member of the congregation.
CNN: Donald Trump doesn’t understand what ‘sexism’ is.
Des Moines Register: Jeb Bush cancels Iowa TV buy, shifts money to ground game.
What stories are you following?
Tuesday Reads: Politics Free Zone
Posted: December 29, 2015 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: AJ Waines, books, Ernest Hemingway, giant squid sighting, JRR Tolkien, Paula Hawkins, Pompeii 9 CommentsA view of one of the frescoes of the newly restored Villa of Mysteries on the occasion of its presentation to journalists in the ancient site of Pompeii, Italy, Friday, March 20, 2015. (AP)
Good Afternoon!
In just a few more days it will be 2016, and the slow news zone of the holidays will be over. I sure hope the new year will be an improvement over 2015. At least I’m hoping to see woman President of the U.S. by next year’s end.
I’m going to avoid politics today. I’m just not in the mood for stories about Donald Trump attacking Hillary and anyone else who dares to say something truthful about him and his campaign.
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been fascinated by the story of Pompeii and how the city was frozen in time by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The ancient city is in the news now, because Italy has restored six houses and opened them to public view. CNN:
Newly restored ruins in the ancient city of Pompeii, with intricate mosaic tiles, bathhouses and even graffiti were officially unveiled to the public on Thursday after a lengthy restoration process.
The project, including six restored homes, is the result of a 2012 partnership between the EU’s European Commission and Italian authorities.
The partnership spent 150 million Euros for 12 projects geared towards consolidating “high risk” structures, building a drainage system, and restoring artifacts at the UNESCO World Heritage site situated near Naples, Italy.
Pompeii is one of most famous historical sites in the world. In 79 A.D., Mount Vesuvius buried the town and its unsuspecting inhabitants in hot rock, volcanic ash and noxious gas. Those who did not escape, suffocated or burned. Some were covered in several feet of ash and preserved and fossilized in the process. The resulting archeological record is remarkable. Its furnished rooms, paintings and even plaster casts of deceased inhabitants offer a detailed picture of life during the Early Roman Empire.
The Italian government has been accused of neglecting the historic site, but now it is apparently committed to maintaining and improving it.
Journalists take photos of frescoes of the newly restored Villa of Mysteries in March 2015 (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
The Daily Mail on the Villa of Mysteries:
The Villa dei Misteri (Villa of Mysteries), an estate on the outskirts of Pompeii’s city centre that features some of the best-preserved frescoes of the site, is now open to the public after one of many restoration projects ordered by the EU….
Pompeii, a busy commercial city overlooking the Mediterranean, was destroyed in A.D. 79 by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius that killed thousands of people and buried the city in 20 feet of volcanic ash.
But the ash also helped preserve Pompeii’s treasures, providing precious information about life in the ancient world.
The first excavations began in the 18th century, but even today only two-thirds of the site’s 60 hectares (150 acres) have been uncovered.
In recent years, Pompeii has been bedeviled by neglect and mismanagement characteristic of Italy’s underdeveloped south, as well as brushes with the corruption that has infected some other important public works in Italy, including its Expo 2015 World’s Fair in Milan and the Moses water barrier project in Venice.
One of the frescoes that has been restored to its former glory at the Villa of the Mysteries at the ancient archaeological site of Pompeii.
The ash also preserved the shapes of the bodies of many people who perished in the disaster.
From Metro UK: Pompeii restoration reveals tragic scene of ‘scared boy cowering on his mother’s lap’.
Through plaster casts experts have managed to show the devastating scene of a ‘scared boy on his mother’s lap’.
It is thought the child, who was around four, had run to his mother as Mount Vesuvius erupted and covered the Roman town in ash in 79 AD. Read about the making of the plaster casts at the link.
You can see many more stunning photos from Pompeii at the links I’ve provided and at this Pinterest page.
NPR recently covered the story of another important restoration project, that of Ernest Hemingway’s home in Cuba.
New Conservation Effort Aims To Protect Papa’s Papers.
It’s been a year since the U.S. and Cuba began normalizing relations. Tourism, business and cultural exchanges are booming. And there is another curious benefactor of those warmer ties — Ernest Hemingway, or at least, his legacy. The writer lived just outside of Havana for 20 years, and that house, called the Finca Vigia, has long been a national museum.
But years of hot, humid Caribbean weather has taken a toll on the author’s thousands of papers and books. A Boston-based foundation is helping restore those weathered treasures, and who better to lead that effort than the original dean of home repairs: Bob Vila, of public television’s This Old House. He tells NPR’s Carrie Kahn that he has a personal connection to Cuba. “I’m American-born Cuban,” he says. “My Havana-born parents emigrated during the latter part of World War II, and I was born in Miami, raised there and partially in Havana up until the revolution in 1959.”
Read more about the project and listen to the story at the link above.
Ernest Hemingway wrote The Old Man and the Sea here at the Finca Vigia, his home outside Havana. Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Did you hear about the siting of a giant squid in Japan on December 24? From CNN:
It isn’t every day that a mystery from the deep swims into plain sight. But on Christmas Eve, spectators on a pier in Toyama Bay in central Japan were treated to a rare sighting of a giant squid.
The creature swam under fishing boats and close to the surface of Toyama Bay, better known for its firefly squid, and reportedly hung around the bay for several hours before it was ushered back to open water.
It was captured on video by a submersible camera, and even joined by a diver, Akinobu Kimura, owner of Diving Shop Kaiyu, who swam in close proximity to the red-and-white real-life sea monster.
“My curiosity was way bigger than fear, so I jumped into the water and go close to it,” he told CNN.
“This squid was not damaged and looked lively, spurting ink and trying to entangle his tentacles around me. I guided the squid toward to the ocean, several hundred meters from the area it was found in, and it disappeared into the deep sea.” Here’s a screen shot from video footage (CBS News).
I was browsing through some end-of-the-year articles on books, and I came across this interesting article at the BBC. The article is based on a new book by Dominic Sandbrook:
Did Tolkien Write Juvenile Trash?
Taking Tolkien seriously is inevitably complicated by the fact that he has long been associated in the public mind with a sweaty, furtive gang of misfits and weirdoes – by which I mean those critics who for more than half a century have been sneering at his books and their readers. Self-consciously highbrow types often have surprisingly intolerant views about what other people ought to be writing, and when the first volume of The Lord of the Rings was published in the summer of 1954, a few weeks before Lord of the Flies, many were appalled by its nostalgic medievalism.
A prime example was the American modernist Edmund Wilson, who in a hilariously wrong-headed review for The Nation dismissed Tolkien’s book as “juvenile trash”, marked by – of all things! – an “impotence of imagination”. In the New Statesman, meanwhile, Maurice Richardson, himself a writer of surreal fantasy stories, conceded that The Lord of the Rings might appeal to “very leisured boys”, but claimed that it made him want to march through the streets carrying the sign: “Adults of all ages! Unite against the infantilist invasion.”
Even decades later, long after Tolkien’s book had become an international cultural phenomenon, the academic medievalist Peter Godman was still assuring readers of the London Review of Books that it was merely an “entertaining diversion for pre-teenage children”. Michael Moorcock, likening it to the works of A A Milne, dismissed The Lord of the Rings as “a pernicious confirmation of the values of a morally bankrupt middle class“, while Philip Pullman, always keen to sneer at those authors from whom he had borrowed so liberally, called it “trivial“, and “not worth arguing with”. Yet none of this, of course, has ever made the slightest dent in Tolkien’s popularity.
Read the rest at the link.
J.R.R. Tolkien
Finally, here’s an interesting piece on a popular book of the moment and how it got confused with another book of the same title.
NPR Books: A Tale Of Two Titles: A Girl, A Train And Thousands Of Confused Readers.
The Girl on the Train is a psychological thriller, set in contemporary London, with a female protagonist and a female author — Paula Hawkins. It was published this year, and received wide acclaim.
Girl on a Train is a psychological thriller, set in contemporary London, with a female protagonist and a female author — Alison Waines. It was published in 2013, and received almost no attention….
“An incredible number of people were buying the wrong book,” reporter David Benoit tells NPR’s Linda Wertheimer.
Benoit revealed the case of mistaken identity in the Wall Street Journal — after he experienced it first-hand….
Now Waine’s book is selling well.
“Writing had always been a hobby for her,” Benoit says, but this year she says she sold over 30,000 copies of her book.
And she’s excited to see what happens when her next book comes out….
“Many readers who admit they bought the wrong book liked it anyway,” Benoit wrote in the Wall Street Journal.
“One woman I talked to actually liked Miss Waines’ book better than Miss Hawkins’ book,” Benoit tells Wertheimer.
She made her book club, which had planned on reading the best-seller, pick up Girl on a Train instead.
I might just check that one out.
What stories are you following today? Please share in the comment thread and have a great day.
Extra Lazy Saturday Afternoon After Christmas
Posted: December 26, 2015 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics 21 Comments
Good Afternoon!!
So . . . I was looking for stories to post about and . . . I fell asleep for a really long time.
Sigh . . .Could my fear of Donald Trump as the Republican nominee be doing this to me? And of course there’s the fear of Bernie Sanders as the Democratic nominee.
Then I’d have to read about Republicans attacking Sanders as a “commie” and “socialist,” and we could end up with a fascist, racist, clown as president of the U.S. Please tell me I’m imagining things. Tell me I’m in a nightmare I can wake up from.
Some GOP voters in New Hampshire are “terrified” of Trump as their nominee and they’re trying to figure out which of the clowns in the clown car they should vote for instead.
The Philadelphia Inquirer, via Raw Story: ‘I’m terrified he’s going to be our nominee’: New Hampshire GOP voters horrified by Trump popularity.
In recent weeks, [Chris] Christie has gained support in New Hampshire, the state where he has focused his campaign. Two recent polls have placed him in fourth place there, with 11 percent support — just behind Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Rubio, who were between 12 percent and 14 percent in the polls. Donald Trump led, with 26 percent in one poll and 32 percent in another.
A number of voters at Christie’s events expressed worry over a Trump win.
“I’m terrified he’s going to be our nominee,” said Chris Freiberger, 58, of Manchester. “I think he’s a buffoon, I really do.”
Freiberger, a bank chief information officer, had narrowed his list to Christie, Rubio, and Cruz but feared he would confront a “lesser of two evils” decision between Trump and Clinton.
So there are people who see Chris Christie as a more reasonable alternative to Trump! This is the political world we are living in these days.
I missed this Trump attack on Hillary on Xmas eve. From the Hill:
Trump campaign: Hillary bullied women to hide Bill’s ‘sexist secrets.’
In an interview late Wednesday on CNN, Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson unloaded on Clinton and her campaign, returning fire after Clinton condemned Trump’s “penchant for sexism.”
“What you have on Hillary Clinton’s side are a bunch of people, including women — liberal women — who want to run around talking about the war on women,” Pierson said. “They want to burn their bras and complain about equal pay and be treated as men, and the second they get criticized for anything they start acting like 9-year-old little girls.”
According to Pierson, her candidate’s use of the word “schlonged” to describe Clinton’s loss to Obama in 2008 wasn’t offensive.
“You know, no one really complained in 2011 when he used the exact same word to describe a woman winning an election cycle… and so all of a sudden it’s horrible,” Pierson said. “But Hillary Clinton has some nerve to talk about the war on women and the bigotry toward women when she has a serious problem in her husband.”
According to some polls, more than 40 percent of GOP voters support this garbage.
Also from The Hill, Brent Budowsky says Hillary is tough enough to beat the bully.
Beyond the issue of Trump’s destructive comments about Muslims, and his bizarre but revealing bromance with Putin, is how Clinton showed woman and others how to deal with bullies such as the real estate tycoon.
When the former first lady addressed herself to girls who have been bullied, as she did on Tuesday, she demonstrated a warmth, compassion and sensitivity that was worthy of a president as she advised them to stand up for their rights.
When Clinton addresses Trump, who provides the gold standard for low-end bullying in American public life, she provides the gold standard of toughness, firmness and resolve that is needed to lead the nation in a hard and tough world.
Trump has insulted, berated and demeaned women, repeatedly using terms such as fat slobs and bimbos. He even dished personal insults against the highly respected Fox News host Megyn Kelly, whom I strongly supported and applauded in a column earlier in the campaign. If Trump ever tried to make these statements about women in a presidential debate with Clinton standing across the stage, she would administer some serious schooling that he would remember for the rest of his life.
Actually, I think Bernie Sanders would be able to stand up to Trump too, but he would never be able to beat Trump in the Southern or many Western states. Back to Budowsky’s piece:
Trump may fool many Republican voters. He may fool many in the mainstream media who persist in claiming that his tactics are working, when a basic RealClearPolitics search tells the truth of the story, which is that Hillary Clinton might well administer serious punishment to Donald Trump and Republicans in a general election.
Bullies need to be put in their place, with the kind of strength, resolve and character that the former secretary of State has shown in the way she takes charge in the campaign against Trump. And Trump knows Clinton has gotten the better of him, which is why he is reduced to vulgar, sexist and offensive comments as she stands her ground.
Trump can cite his poll numbers all he wants, but it must drive him up a Christmas tree to know that the woman who would become the first female U.S. president will, according to polls, beat him to a pulp in the general election if the GOP is suicidal enough to nominate him.
This story is just plain weird. Could Bernie Sanders really believe this?
Tom Boggioni (T-Bogg) of Raw Story: Sanders campaign hints ‘hacker’ who accessed Clinton data may have been a DNC plant.
In an interview with Yahoo Politics, an adviser to the campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders hinted that the data breach that resulted in the campaign losing access to the DNC servers may have been the result of a employee planted in the campaign by the DNC.
Following the controversy that saw Sanders staffers blocked from accessing some of their own voter data after it was revealed that proprietary information belonging to the Clinton campaign was being viewed, the Sanders campaign apologized and fired the “hacker,” national data director, Josh Uretsky.
However an unnamed adviser to the Vermont independent’s campaign for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination is suggesting that Uretsky maybe have been a plant by both the DNC and the technology company that hosts the data.
“It’s not as if we conjured this guy Josh from thin air. This is an individual … who was recommended to us by the DNC and NGP VAN,” the adviser said.
Is Sanders buying into conspiracy theories now? I hope not. I can’t imagine the DNC would use such a roundabout technique to hurt Sanders when he is already far behind Clinton and she already has enough super delegates to beat him at the convention anyway.
Here’s the original story at Yahoo News: The Sanders campaign is taking its fight with the DNC to the next level.
The dustup over a data breach that briefly erupted in the Democratic presidential primary last week isn’t over as far as Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and his team are concerned.
In a conversation with Yahoo News, a top Sanders campaign adviser made a series of explosive allegations about how the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and a political technology company that works with the party handled the incident. According to the Sanders adviser, the DNC and NGP VAN, a firm that has a contract with the party organization to operate a voter file, have responded to the data breach by “leaking information” and “stonewalling an investigation” into the matter.
“We have demanded a full investigation from top to bottom,” the Sanders adviser said.
Sanders’ adviser noted that a lawsuit the campaign filed in federal court about the data breach last Friday, Dec. 18, is still ongoing, and described it as an attempt to get answers despite the party’s lack of cooperation.
Oh brother. All we need is an ugly battle within the Democratic Party.
There’s been another attack on a mosque, this time in Houston.
Houston Chronicle: Mosque catches fire in southwest Houston.
Smoke rising from across the parking lot of a southwest Houston strip center caught Abdul Hafiz’s attention as he sipped a cup of tea and chatted with friends at a restaurant Friday afternoon.
The source was the Savoy Mosque, where Hafiz had finished his afternoon prayer a bit earlier. Hafiz and a few other men rushed over to the mosque, banging on the glass door as thick, dark smoke billowed around them.
“Thank God there was no one inside,” Hafiz said.It took about 80 firefighters to extinguish the two-alarm blaze that began around 2:45 p.m. at the small mosque, a storefront in the Savoy Plaza, near Wilcrest Drive and West Bellfort Avenue. Arson investigators are trying to determine what caused the fire.
Members of the mosque said images from several digital surveillance cameras in the worship center had been turned over to investigators. Although they hope it was not a case of arson, members said they were baffled about what might have caused the fire. It is only about three years old and well-maintained, they said.
KHOU reports that ATF Says Cause of fire at Houston mosque is suspicious.
An ATF spokesperson has confirmed the cause of a two-alarm fire at a southwest Houston mosque does appear to be suspicious, because the fire had multiple points of origin.
Investigators said they are looking through surveillance video to see if cameras captured a potential suspect.
Firefighters with the Houston Fire Department initially responded to the fire at the Masjid mosque Friday afternoon.
The fire was put out shortly after crews arrived on the scene and no injuries were reported.
There is no word on the amount of damage to the mosque, but officials said several other businesses in the shopping center were damaged by the heavy smoke.
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