Lazy Saturday Reads: Trump’s Epic Meltdown Continues
Posted: August 20, 2016 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: African American voters, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Paul Manafort, Racism, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin 15 Comments
Good Afternoon!!
Yesterday, Trump fan Chris Matthews devoted much of his 7PM Hardball program to praising Donald Trump’s supposed “modulation” of his “tone.” By the time the rerun of the program aired at 10PM, it was already obsolete. Trump had given a speech in Michigan in which he blatantly lied about the state’s economy and delivered more stunning insults to black voters while speaking to a nearly all-white audience. The Detroit News reports:
DIMONDALE — On his second visit to Michigan in two weeks, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Friday blasted Democratic policies he said have destroyed Detroit and other urban centers and called for African Americans to support him, saying blacks cannot expect change otherwise….
Trump’s remarks, however, seemed somewhat out of place, given that he was delivering it in a hall outside Lansing, halfway across the state from the Detroit. He also hammered away on a message than Michigan manufacturing is in the dumps, just days after Gov. Rick Snyder — also a Republican — noted that unemployment in the state has dropped to its lowest levels since the early 2000s.
“Your business and plants have been ripped out,” said Trump, who repeated earlier promises to stop manufacturing from leaving Michigan — even though auto jobs are up sharply since the depths of the 2007-9 recession….
Trump said “the Michigan manufacturing sector is a disaster,” and no sector has been hurt more by “Hillary Clinton’s policies than the auto sector,” statements which seemed to ignore that since the rescue of General Motors and Chrysler in 2008-9, auto manufacturing jobs in Michigan have grown from 22,800 to 38,200 and auto parts jobs also have grown, from 73,400 to 162,800.
Artist unknown
Trump’s message to black voters:
“What do you have to lose by trying something new like Trump?” he asked of blacks.
Trump noted that Detroit is the most violent city in America — a statistic he didn’t back up but Detroit does show up at or near the top of lists of major cities in terms of violent crime and murders — and said he could work changes on the city if elected. A recent EPIC-MRA poll reported by the Free Press last week showed Trump behind Clinton in Michigan by a margin on 85%-2%, with 10% undecided.
“It’s time to hold Democratic politicians accountable for what they have done to these communities,” Trump said. “At what point do we say enough?”
“I will produce for the African Americans,” he said. “All the Democrats have done is taken advantage of your vote. … You have nothing to lose.”
But that’s not all. Trump went off-script with these lovely remarks (h/t Slate):
“What do you have to lose by trying something new like Trump?” he said. “What do you have to lose? You’re living in poverty; your schools are no good; you have no jobs; 58 percent of your youth is unemployed. What the hell do you have to lose?”
Never mind that Trump—who recently polled at 1 percent among black voters in a nationwide survey—was treating black people as a monolithic group of poor, unemployed people. His ad-libbed “what the hell do you have to lose” line sounded very much like Trump thinks he knows what’s better for black voters than they know for themselves….
There were other moments where Trump veered wildly off-script in a way that seemed absurd. Specifically, Trump said that he would not just win this election, but win re-election in 2020 with 95 percent of black voters supporting him—again, earlier this month Trump’s polling among black voters was somewhere between 1 and 4 percent.
“At the end of four years, I guarantee you that I will get 95 percent of the African-American vote,” he said. “I promise you, because I will produce for the inner cities and I will produce for the African-Americans.”
Darren Thompson
Cable news commentators are speculating that these disgusting remarks about black people are probably aimed at college-educated Republican women who have abandoned Trump in droves. I can’t imagine it will work.
Philip Bump responded to some of the charges made by Trump: It’s hard to imagine a much worse pitch Donald Trump could have made for the black vote.
Consider: Black Americans are not “living in poverty” as a general rule. A quarter of the black population is, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation, about the same as the percentage of Hispanics. In Michigan, the figure is slightly higher. Most black Americans don’t live in poverty, just as most white Americans don’t.
Consider: The unemployment rate in the black community is higher than that in the white community, as it has been since the Department of Labor started keeping track. Among young blacks, though, the figure is not 59 percent — unless (as Politifact noted) you consider not the labor force butevery young black American, including high school students. Many young black high school students are unemployed. This isn’t a metric that Labor typically uses, for obvious reasons, but calculating the rates for young whites gives you about 50 percent, too.
Consider: Black voters are perfectly able to evaluate candidates on qualities other than their political parties. Black voters began supporting the Democratic Party heavily thanks to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Since then, they have consistently voted for the party — a party that is one-fifth black and which since 1964 has elected the vast majority of the black members of Congress. (This line of argument from Al Sharpton in 2004 is worth a read.) Democrats win the support of black voters consistently because those voters like the work that they do and like the fights that they fight.
When Barack Obama won reelection in 2012, 93 percent of black Americans thought he was doing a good job as president. That’s also the percentage of the vote he received, according to exit polls, beating Mitt Romney by 87 points.
And yet, somehow, Trump is doing worse.
Les Muses, Maurice Denis
There’s much more at the Washington Post link above. The gist is that Donald Trump is pathetically ignorant about the lives of African Americans.
Yesterday Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort resigned after being pushed aside in the latest campaign shakeup and after multiple revelations about his involvement with foreign leaders close to Russia. Politico has all the gory details: Inside the fall of Paul Manafort.
According to Politico, Manafort told Trump in early August that the stories coming out about his foreign consulting and lobbying would become a “distraction” and he wanted to come up with a new leadership plan just in case.
Although Manafort told associates that he thought he would be able to weather the controversy, his meeting with Trump nonetheless sparked internal discussions about changes to the campaign’s senior management structure. They included elevating pollster Kellyanne Conway, who had been brought onto the campaign last month, into a more senior role, and also officially bringing on Breitbart News chief Steve Bannon, who had been informally advising people around the campaign for months.
Still, Manafort associates said, he hoped he could ride out the storm and remain with the campaign until the end. That’s despite what the associates characterize as Manafort’s growing frustration with Trump’s unwillingness to embrace advice for a more scripted, measured tone and a greater reliance on more traditional campaign tactics.
But it quickly became clear that Manafort would have to go. More details about the crumbling mess of a campaign at the link.
Cocotte, reading, by Camille Pissarro
There’s a federal investigation now, and it involves the Podesta Group, which is currently being run by Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s brother. Rosie Gray at Buzzfeed: Top Firms Lawyer Up In Ukraine–Manafort Lobbying Controversy
Two powerful Washington lobbying firms are engaging outside counsel after becoming embroiled in a controversy over undisclosed foreign lobbying by former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy.
The situation concerns a period between 2012 and 2014, when the Podesta Group and Mercury Public Affairs worked on behalf the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine. The Brussels-based nonprofit is closely linked to the Party of Regions, the political party of Ukraine’s pro-Russian ex-president Viktor Yanukovych.
Manafort and his associate Rick Gates connected the European Centre with the two firms, according to the AP, which also reported that Gates personally gave instructions to Mercury and Podesta Group employees in a lobbying effort on behalf of Ukrainian officials. At the time, Manafort and Gates were consulting for Yanukovych in Ukraine. The AP’s story showed that Manafort and Gates had acted as unregistered foreign agents, never disclosing their work for the Ukrainians to the Department of Justice, as is required under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
Now, the Podesta Group is acknowledging that the European Centre may have been directed by the Party of Regions and has hired outside lawyers to advise on the situation.
“The firm has retained Caplin & Drysdale as independent, outside legal counsel to determine if we were misled by the Centre for a Modern Ukraine or any other individuals with regard to the Centre’s potential ties to foreign governments or political parties,” Podesta Group CEO Kimberly Fritts said in a statement to BuzzFeed News. “When the Centre became a client, it certified in writing that ‘none of the activities of the Centre are directly or indirectly supervised, directed, controlled, financed or subsidized in whole or in part by a government of a foreign country or a foreign political party.’ We relied on that certification and advice from counsel in registering and reporting under the Lobbying Disclosure Act rather than the Foreign Agents Registration Act. We will take whatever measures are necessary to address this situation based on Caplin & Drysdale’s review, including possible legal action against the Centre.”
Much more at the link.
John L. Wellington
As Trump melts down, the media has tried to get voters outraged about “scandals” involving Hillary Clinton’s emails and the Clinton Global Foundation; but so far it’s not working very well. Trump’s high profile flame-out is getting most of the attention. There’s so much happening that I can’t possibly cover all of it, but here are a few more interesting links to check out.
NYT: In Maze of Trump’s Empire, Unknown Ties and $650 Million in Debt.
Sarah Kenzior at Quartz: Donald Trump’s bromance with Vladimir Putin underscores an unsettling truth about the two leaders.
Former Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul at the WaPo: Why Putin wants a Trump victory (so much he might even be trying to help him).
Ruth Marcus at the WaPo: Trump’s Sickening attacks on Clinton’s health.
Daily News Bin: Donald Trump goes to Louisiana flooding site, spends a minute handing out Play-Doh, leaves.
Buzzfeed: Trump Campaign Manager On Manafort: “He Was Asked” To Resign.
Politico: Republicans prep ‘break glass’ emergency plan as Trump tumbles.
Christian Science Monitor: Trump hands his campaign to the ‘alt-right’ movement.
What else is happening? Please post your thoughts and links in the comment thread and have a great weekend!
Monday Reads: They are different from you and me …
Posted: August 15, 2016 Filed under: 2016 elections | Tags: black ledger, Donald Trump, Paul Manfort, poor, Ukraine, wealthy 36 Comments“Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.”
from “All the Sad Young Men” published in 1926 by F Scott Fitzgerald
Good Morning!
Half of the global wealth is held by the richest 1% in the world according to a recent Oxfam report. A good deal of it is salted away in the world’s “treasure isles” or banking havens. This is especially true for those wealthy despots that raid the treasuries of their countries. The global elite tend to run in international circles and have a lot more in common with each other than the rest of the countrymen they grift. I’m reminded of all of this as we continue to unravel the reality of the Trump Campaign which just seems to be yet another grab at more wealth and power using propaganda and lies.
The latest Trump scandal is a good lesson in this and it explains why Russian despots appear to be squarely in the middle of the US campaign for President. We’re living through another shocking Gilded Age but where are the Trotskyites that bring down the Czars? Where are the FDRs that moderate American excess with a New Deal?
It is certainly not within the camps of Trump and Paul Manafort. Yesterday, we learned exactly how twisted the tentacles get with this headline from The New York Times: “Secret Ledger in Ukraine Lists Cash for Donald Trump’s Campaign Chief”. Is Manafort an unregistered Foreign Agent? Is Donald Trump complicit or a dupe?
And Mr. Manafort’s presence remains elsewhere here in the capital, where government investigators examining secret records have found his name, as well as companies he sought business with, as they try to untangle a corrupt network they say was used to loot Ukrainian assets and influence elections during the administration of Mr. Manafort’s main client, former President Viktor F. Yanukovych.
Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr. Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukraine’s newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Investigators assert that the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials.
In addition, criminal prosecutors are investigating a group of offshore shell companies that helped members of Mr. Yanukovych’s inner circle finance their lavish lifestyles, including a palatial presidential residence with a private zoo, golf course and tennis court. Among the hundreds of murky transactions these companies engaged in was an $18 million deal to sell Ukrainian cable television assets to a partnership put together by Mr. Manafort and a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin.
Also,this arrived to the Twitter feed yesterday along with a picture of Ivanka on vacation with Putin’s latest squeeze, the ex wife of Rupert Murdoch Wendy Deng. Exactly how are Trump’s racists and working white groupies to take all this information? You think a few banking execs on Wall Street want money and power? That’s kindergarten rent-seeking compared to the company that Trump and Manafort keep.
The funny thing about all this is Deng is rumored to be dating frequently shirtless despot Vladimir Putin, who may or may not have authorized the hacking of Hillary Clinton’s e-mails, and whom Donald Trump swears he has no financial tethers to, despite a new trove of evidence to the contrary. Here would be a good place for the thinking-face emoji, but I’d argue the Trumps know exactly what they’re doing. Tight stuff.
So, both are disturbing pictures of the kind of things that lead to conspiracy theories about shadowy global networks of bankers. Only, this is a black ledger and unlikely to wind up in anything but an account in a Treasure Isle. All $12.7 million of it. We’ll be fortunate to find it among the Swiss Banks accounts.
The ledgers, discovered in the Party of Regions headquarters following the 2014 revolution that forced Yanukovych to flee to Russia, were given to investigators by Viktor Trepak, a former Ukrainian domestic intelligence official, Manzhura said. He received the documents from an undisclosed source.
The “black ledger” includes more than 20,000 line items, and investigators are sifting through the names, primarily seeking proof that government officials were receiving bribes. The agency cannot make indictments but must pass on any evidence to prosecutors, who can decide whether to file charges. Manzhura said that processing the list will take a long time, as will matching signatures to individuals and proving that money actually changed hands.
For investigators, she said, Manafort is not the priority.
“He’s not a Ukrainian government official, so taking into account the role and tasks of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, Paul Manafort is not the number-one priority to investigate on this list,” Manzhura said.
It did not appear that Manafort had signed the ledger himself, she added.
“The signatures against his surname probably don’t belong to him; they belong to other people,” she said, adding they may have been intermediaries. “So this information needs to be checked separately.”
The Times reported that Ukrainian officials are also investigating numerous offshore companies that allegedly funded the high-rolling lifestyles of Yanukovych and those close to him. The deals made by these companies include a multimillion-dollar plan to sell Ukrainian cable television assets that involved Manafort and a Russian oligarch who is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, though the Times reported that Manafort is not a target in the Ukrainian investigation of offshore companies.
Manafort is no stranger to controversy, controversial figures or global dealmaking. His friends have labeled him “the Count of Monte Cristo,” the hero of a 19th century novel.
So, will the Donald dump him or maintain that infamous Trump loyalty to the folks that are known to do the black deeds for him? Manafort is 
denying the payments.
“Once again, the New York Times has chosen to purposefully ignore facts and professional journalism to fit their political agenda, choosing to attack my character and reputation rather than present an honest report,” Manafort said in a statement obtained by NBC News. “The suggestion that I accepted cash payments is unfounded, silly and nonsensical.”
The story comes a little more than a day after the Times published a story examining the internal struggles facing Trump’s campaign, a story that also elicited strong responses from the Republican nominee and his campaign.
It’s unclear if Manafort actually received payments, but prosecutors told the Times that Manafort “must have realized the implications of his financial dealings.”
But Manafort strongly denied that he ever received off-the-books payments or has done work with the governments of Ukraine or Russia.
“My work in Ukraine ceased following the country’s parliamentary elections in October 2014,” Manafort says. “In addition, as the article points out hesitantly, every government official interviewed states I have done nothing wrong.”
The Times story was retweeted by Corey Lewandowski, the former Trump campaign manager and Manafort rival who was fired in June.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, Robby Mook, called the alleged connections between Manafort and members of pro-Russian factions troubling.
“Donald Trump has a responsibility to disclose campaign chair Paul Manafort’s and all other campaign employees’ and advisers’ ties to Russian or pro-Kremlin entities, including whether any of Trump’s employees or advisers are currently representing and or being paid by them,” Mook said in a statement.
Troubling indeed. Meanwhile, the most likely Trump supporters who raise the likes of Trump up as some kind of hero, demonize the very poorest. We really haven’t come very far from the Reagan Years when women with hard scrabble lives were made the center of all evil in the world. Check out the comparisons of these surveys.
Sharp differences along lines of race and politics shape American attitudes toward the poor and poverty, according to a new survey of public opinion, which finds empathy toward the poor and deep skepticism about government antipoverty efforts.
The differences illuminate some of the passions that have driven this year’s contentious presidential campaign.
But the poll, which updates a survey The Times conducted three decades ago, also illustrates how attitudes about poverty have remained largely consistent over time despite dramatic economic and social change.
Criticism of the poor – a belief that there are “plenty of jobs available for poor people,” that government programs breed dependency and that most poor people would “prefer to stay on welfare” – is especially common among the blue-collar, white Americans who have given the strongest support to Donald Trump.
The opposite view — that jobs for the poor are hard to find, that government programs help people get back on their feet and that most of the poor would rather earn their own way — is most widely held among blacks and other minorities, who have provided the strongest backing to Hillary Clinton.
Roughly a third of self-described conservatives say that the poor do not work very hard, a view at odds with big majorities of moderates and liberals.
But while Americans disagree in how they view the poor, they’re more united in their skepticism of government programs.
This is perhaps why the Southern Strategy has worked almost too well. It’s blasting through loud and clear in the work of Trump and his cronies. Trump surrounds himself with Republican Ratfuckers.
It’s this mercenary value system that explains why Manafort has made a career out of advising monstrous dictators and conscienceless oligarchs. Manipulating people’s anger and insecurities into fear and rage has been his trademark for his entire career, which is why he could not care less about Trump’s negative influence on the body politic or his incitements to violence.
He doesn’t care about anything but winning, and if his ties to Putin can help Trump, he doesn’t care about the implications of that either.
Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr. Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukraine’s newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Investigators assert that the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials.
In addition, criminal prosecutors are investigating a group of offshore shell companies that helped members of Mr. Yanukovych’s inner circle finance their lavish lifestyles, including a palatial presidential residence with a private zoo, golf course and tennis court. Among the hundreds of murky transactions these companies engaged in was an $18 million deal to sell Ukrainian cable television assets to a partnership put together by Mr. Manafort and a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin.
I don’t know how anyone can not be suspicious that Manafort might have something to do with the way pilferedDemocratic Party emails and text messages are being selectively released to do damage to Hillary Clinton for the benefit of Manafort’s newest client. The consensus among analysts and the intelligence agencies that Putin’s Russia is behind the hacking is very high, and obviously Trump believes it himself since he asked Russia to do more of it.
In any case, Manafort has been partnered up with folks like Charlie Black, Lee Atwater, and Roger Stone (the most notorious political ratf*ker of all time) for more than thirty years.
So, I give you one of the tangled webs woven by some of the most despicable people on the planet. This explains why David Duke and Stormfront love the dude, but how do explain every one’s crazy uncle and cousin? And, how shiny are your bootstraps today?
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Thursday Reads
Posted: February 12, 2015 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Bob Simon, Jeb Bush, measles, Ukraine 45 Comments
Good Morning!!
The top story in the news today is the supposed peace deal on Ukraine reached overnight. From The LA Times, Ukraine cease-fire deal reached after marathon talks.
After two days of hard negotiations, four European leaders have agreed on a cease-fire deal in eastern Ukraine, Russian leader Vladimir Putin announced Thursday.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Putin worked nonstop for seven hours Wednesday and for a few more hours Thursday before they arrived at a compromise to stop the violence.
“We agreed on a cease-fire that takes effect Sunday,” Putin said in a televised statement after the talks in Belarus’ capital of Minsk. “The second position which I think is of extreme importance is the withdrawal of heavy weaponry from the current front line for Ukrainian troops and the demarcation line agreed upon in the Sept. 19 Minsk agreements for the Donbass armed forces.”
Two regions of Donbass engulfed by the armed conflict will get wider special powers in the course of a constitutional reform yet to be conducted in Ukraine.
The Russian leader complained that the night of the talks was “not the best night of my life.”
But is the agreement real? Most commentators are skeptical. Forbes:
In the talking point of the hour, the newly agreed ceasefire offers a“glimmer of hope” for averting a full-scale interstate war and for cautiously deescalating Europe’s worst security crisis in a generation.
The Russia-Ukraine ceasefire, to be sure, is clearly a lot better than nothing. Given the failure of previous attempts on the part of Germany and France to mediate between Kiev and Moscow it’s clear that there very easily could have been no deal at all. One can quite easily imagine a scenario in which Putin and Poroshenko left that conference without signing anything and in which we’d all be one step closer to world war 3. It’s a small victory, but it is at least movement in the right direction. It even got the Russians to free Nadiya Savchenko, a fighter pilot captured by pro-Russian separatists and then sent to Russia where she is currently on trial for a litany of (largely fictitious) offenses
The problem with the ceasefire, however, is in the details. Probably the single most glaring deficiency is that it doesn’t actually start until Sunday the 15th. Until then, as far as I can tell from reading the relevant press reports, the two sides are free to blast away at each other until their heart’s content. For another few days, then, the status quo ante reigns much as it has for the past several months.
Another huge problem is that it is only after Sunday that both sides are supposed to remove their heavy weapons from the front line. And even after they start to remove these weapons, the agreement allows them a full two weeks to finish the process. Given the nastiness of the conflict to date, and its tendency to flare-up immediately after a lull, quite a lot of mayhem and destruction can happen between now and when the heavy weapons are finally removed to a safe distance.
At Business Insider, Michael B. Kelley writes: The new Economist cover says it all.
As Vladimir Putin engaged in marathon peace negotiations with Germany, France, and Ukraine in the capital of Belarus, Russian tanks were allegedly rolling into Ukraine.
So as a inherently flawed peace deal is in place, the circumstances surrounding the agreement say a lot more than the “glimmer of hope” provided by the latest compromise.
“The EU and NATO are Mr Putin’s ultimate targets,” The Economist writes. “To him, Western institutions and values are more threatening than armies. He wants to halt their spread, corrode them from within and, at least on the West’s fragile periphery, supplant them with his own model of governance.”
From Reuters via Business Insider, Ukraine: 50 Russian tanks and 40 missile systems rolled into the country while Putin talked peace.
About 50 tanks, 40 missile systems, and 40 armored vehicles crossed overnight into eastern Ukraine from Russia via the Izvaryne border crossing into the separatist Luhansk region, a Kiev military spokesman said on Thursday.
“The enemy continues to strengthen its forces in the most dangerous areas, especially in northeast Luhansk region and in the direction of Debaltseve,” spokesman Andriy Lysenko said in a daily briefing, referring to a strategic transport hub that has been the focus of heavy fighting in recent weeks.
He said the tanks and other military hardware had crossed the border “despite statements by Russian officials about the absence of Russian military equipment and forces on Ukrainian territory.”
Read the whole article at The Economist, Putin’s war on the West, and read more commentary at Bloomberg View, A Time Bomb Wrapped in a Ukrainian Peace Deal, by Leonid Bershidsky. Also at Bloomberg, a backgrounder: Standoff in Ukraine.
Follow me below the fold for more breaking news.
Tuesday Reads
Posted: September 16, 2014 Filed under: Barack Obama, child sexual abuse, children, Crime, Criminal Justice System, Foreign Affairs, Mental Health, morning reads, physical abuse, U.S. Military, Violence against women | Tags: Department of Defense, ebola, ISIS, Liberia, slavery, Ukraine, Word Health Organization (WHO) CDC 41 Comments
Good Morning!!
The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is topping the headlines today. The Obama administration announced this morning that it will send military troops to deal with the situation. Reuters Reports:
The United States announced on Tuesday that it would send 3,000 troops to help tackle the Ebola outbreak as part of a ramped-up response including a major deployment in Liberia, the country where the epidemic is spiraling fastest out of control.
The U.S. response to the crisis, to be formally unveiled later by President Barack Obama, includes plans to build 17 treatment centers, train thousands of healthcare workers and establish a military control center for coordination, U.S. officials told reporters.
The World Health Organization has said it needs foreign medical teams with 500-600 experts as well as at least 10,000 local health workers, numbers that may rise if the number of cases increases, as it is widely expected to.
Liberia is where the disease appears to be running amok. The WHO has not issued any estimate of cases or deaths in the country since Sept 5 and its Director-General Margaret Chan has said there is not a single bed available for Ebola patients there.
Liberia, a nation founded by descendants of freed American slaves, appealed for U.S. help last week.
A U.N. official in the country said on Friday that her colleagues had resorted to telling locals to use plastic bags to fend off the killer virus, for want of any other protective equipment.
Medecins Sans Frontieres, the charity that has been leading the fight against Ebola, said it was overwhelmed and repeated its call for an immediate and massive deployment.
More details from The Washington Post, U.S. military will lead $750 million fight against Ebola in West Africa.
The president’s decision to enlist the U.S. military, whose resources are already under strain as it responds to conflicts in the Middle East, reflects the growing concern of U.S. officials that, unless greater force is brought to bear, the epidemic could wreak havoc on the continent….
Global health experts and international aid groups who have been urging the White House to dramatically scale up its response praised the plan as described. They have said charities and West African governments alone do not have the capacity to stem the epidemic.
The U.S. military, with its enormous logistical capability, extensive air operations, and highly skilled medical corps, could address gaps in the response quickly.
“This is a really significant response on the military side,” said Laurie Garrett, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of a book about the first Ebola outbreak in 1976 and another on the global public-health system. “This is really beginning to seem like a game-changer.”
But much depends on how quickly personnel and supplies can get there.
“The problem is, for every single thing we’re doing, we’re racing against the virus, and the virus has the high ground right now,” she said. “I would hope this would reduce transmission, but it’s all about how fast people can get there and get the job done. If it takes weeks to mobilize, the strategy won’t even be within reach.”
Unfortunately, according to Reuters India, <a href=”http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/09/16/health-ebola-spread-liberia-idINKBN0HB1CD20140916″ target=”_blank”>it make take weeks or months for the operation to get up to speed</a>. For more background on the Ebola virus, you can read a <a href=”http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/outbreaks/guinea/qa.html” target=”_blank”>”questions and answers” page</a> at the CDC and a <a href=”http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs103/en/” target=”_blank”>fact sheet</a> at WHO.
For the past week or so, we’ve been talking quite a bit about the NFL’s domestic violence problem, and in recent days, we’ve focused on Minnesota Vikings star Adrian Peterson’s indictment for beating and injuring his four-year old son. Yesterday we learned that Peterson was also investigated in 2013 for causing head injuries and scars to another four-year-old son from a different mother but was not charged. According to ABC News, Peterson has five children, only one of who lives with him.
As is usually the case with abusers, Adrian Peterson was also a victim in his childhood. Sadly, based on his public statements, Peterson has not yet accepted that what his parents did to him was wrong, and he has continued the cycle of violence with his own children. In fact, he has even praised his parents for the whippings they administered. From ABC News:
Adrian Peterson’s apology for the “hurt” he inflicted on his young son when he punished the boy with a switch was the result of the respect Peterson had for similar discipline his parents had applied to him.
The football star even praised his parents’ tough discipline in his statement today, saying that it prevented him from being “one of those kids that was lost in the streets.”
“I have always believed that the way my parents disciplined me has a great deal to do with the success I have enjoyed as a man,” he said in a statement.
How bad was it? From USA Today, Whippings part of Adrian Peterson’s childhood.
PALESTINE, Texas — David Cummings and Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson still talk about the frequent whippings Peterson’s father administered — and one whipping in particular.
Cummings says he and Peterson were leaving football practice while in middle school when Peterson’s father, Nelson, was waiting near the parking lot.
School officials had called Nelson Peterson to report that Adrian had been disruptive in class, recalled Cummings, who played football and basketball with Adrian Peterson during their youth and through high school.
“His dad asked what happened, and Adrian told him,” Cummings said.
With that, Nelson Peterson unstrapped his belt and whipped Adrian Peterson in front of more than 20 students, Cummings said.
Imagine how humiliating that must have been! But Peterson had to suppress his anger at this mistreatment in order to survive in his violent family. Peterson also experience severe childhood trauma, according to ABC News.
When Peterson was 7, he witnessed a drunk driver fatally hit his 9-year-old brother while he was riding his bike. More recently, Peterson’s half brother was fatally shot in Houston in 2007 shortly before the NFL draft.
He told USA Today that when he was 13, his father was sentenced to 10 years in jail after selling crack cocaine for a drug ring and getting caught on drug laundering charges. Visits to the Texarkana Federal Correctional Institution and regular letters kept the pair close, but family friends remembered his father Nelson as “a firm disciplinarian.”
USA Today interviewed Peterson’s childhood friend David Cummings about the corporal punishment their parents used when they were growing up.
PALESTINE, Texas — When Adrian Peterson got whippings as a child, it often involved an assignment: Go find a “switch,” a tree branch that would be used to inflict the punishment.
David Cummings, one of Peterson’s longtime friends in their hometown of Palestine, Texas, tookUSA TODAY Sports on a tour of the wooded area near their homes. Switch heaven. Or, depending on your perspective, switch hell.
“It wouldn’t be a shock to be seen anywhere to get a switch,’’ he said.
But the prime spot were the two trees in the frontyard of Cummings’ family home, across the street from the split-level red brick home where Adrian spent many weekends with his father and grandmother. During the tour, Cummings tugged a branch off the one of the trees and sized it up.
“You’re going to get a bruise from it more than likely,’’ he said.
Oh, and Cummings said they gladly found their switches in light of the alternative: get whipped with a stinging, leather belt.
Unfortunately, Peterson has carried the cycle of violence into the next generation, inflicting abuse on his own children. He needs serious therapy, but first he needs to break the denial and admit that what he experience is child abuse and it is wrong.
Child abuse obviously is not just an African American thing, but I found this interesting op-ed at NOLA.com by Jarvis DeBerry on corporal punishment in black culture, Where did black folks learn of whippings, and why are they still a thing?
When I saw the news that Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson had been arrested for whipping his young son with a switch, I immediately thought of a 1998 feature story by Washington Post writer Deneen L. Brown. It’s called “A good whuppin?” Editors at The Washington Post thought of it, too. When I did a search for Brown’s story after the Peterson arrest, I happily discovered that her feature story is now on the newspaper’s website.
Better than anybody else I’ve seen, Brown gives a history of corporal punishment in African-American communities. She also does a good job explaining how stories of a “good whuppin'” become the best-told stories of our adulthood.
But there’s another reason the story has always lodged in my head: In doing her research about this kind of punishment, Brown talks to a chair of the department of Afro-American Studies at Howard University who says that black people did not bring this kind of punishment over from Africa. He asserts that black people learned it here.
“There is not a record in African culture of the kind of body attack that whipping represents,” that scholar told Brown for her 1998 report. “The maintenance of order by physical coercion is rare in Africa.”
The belief is that black people began whipping their children out of fear that the overseers and masters would whip them worse. If so, it’s easy to empathize with parents who made that choice. But if those parents inflicted the same punishment that the slave master would have inflicted, how is that punishment a good thing? Is there a difference between a hateful beating and a loving one? Does the latter feel less painful than the former? Does the skin heal differently?
There’s much more. Read it all at NOLA.com.
Here are a few more links to check out, if you’re interested. I need to wrap this up before it gets too late or WordPress decides to wipe out this post again.
I haven’t read all of this yet, but I thought it looked really interesting. From Collectors Weekly, Women Who Conquered the Comics World, by Lisa Hix.
Scotland will vote on independence from Great Britain on Thursday, and England is pulling out all the stops to get them to vote “no.”
The New York Times, London Repeats Offer of New Powers if Scotland Votes No on Independence.
The Independent UK, David Cameron delivers emotional plea for Scotland to stay.
An update on the child sexual abuse scandal in Britain from the New York Times, Police Chief Quit Over Child Abuse Scandal in English Town.
On the Ukraine crisis, The BBC reports, Rebels granted self-rule and amnesty.
USA Today, U.S. airstrikes target Islamic State in Iraq
NBC News, Ray Rice Isn’t Alone: 1 in 5 Men Admits Hitting Wives, Girlfriends.
Advertising Age, Radisson Suspends Vikings Sponsorship Over Peterson Charges.
Io9, Schizophrenia is Actually Eight Distinct Genetic Disorders.
What else is happening? Please post your thoughts and links in the comment thread, and have a terrific Tuesday!
Lazy Saturday Reads
Posted: September 6, 2014 Filed under: Barack Obama, Foreign Affairs, morning reads, Republican politics, U.S. Politics | Tags: a wolf love story, albino cobra, albino lobsters, Bob McDonnell, Claude Monet, Estonia, Jenna Bush Hager, NATO Summit, Newport New South Wales, Obama at Stonehenge, Pat Robertson, Religious Right, Russia, same sex marriage judicial decisions, Ukraine 19 Comments
Dans la Prairie, Claude Monet
Good Morning!!
I’m going to begin with some light-hearted stories from the NATO Summit. I really liked this one from BBC News, When the Nato summit came to south Wales. After all the ugly attacks on President Obama from both Republicans and Democrats here in the U.S., I was pleasantly surprised to see the warm welcome he received in South Wales. Check it out. There are some nice photos and tweets. I especially liked the expression on Obama’s face while he interacted with some schoolchildren (see below).
From the article:
It takes something pretty unique for the word “Newport” to be trending in Cardiff on Twitter.
But the city had arrived when its larger neighbour was talking about it. The world of social media woke up early for the Nato summit.
The summit certainly kept Twitter busy and it might explain – apart from the 9,500 police officers, road blocks and security fencing – why the streets of the capital were generally quiet and people were staying at home, online.
In Newport itself, the sight of armoured vehicles being displayed on the Celtic Manor golf course was a popular shared photo. Just think of the score if Europe had these in the Ryder Cup?
It was a demonstration of the high skills of the south Wales workforce who manufacture them, but the skills of those with Photoshop was also in evidence.
The summit also brought some unusual sights on the streets – and in the air – with Cardiff in particular not used to such a security operation. And there were also some special moments, not least for pupils at a primary school in Newport.
From the Boston Globe, some video of President Obama strolling through Stonehenge, looking awestruck.
After wrestling with threats ranging from Russia to Islamist insurgency in the Middle East, U.S. President Barack Obama took a break from a NATO summit to visit Britain’s prehistoric Stonehenge monument on Friday. “How cool is this?” Obama said as he wandered starry-eyed in his shirt sleeves among the towering stone megaliths.
Silly me, I like having a President who says things like “How cool is this?” Here’s a great shot of him among the standing stones, from NBC News.
And from The Daily Mail, ‘We should have invited him back for coffee’: Family-of-five tell of shock meeting with President Obama during trip to Stonehenge following NATO summit.
A mother has told of her shock after her family-of-five had a chat with President Obama during a trip to Stonehenge – but that she now wishes she had invited him back for coffee.
Inspired by rumours that the President’s helicopter had landed at the ancient site, Janice Raffle and her husband James marched across fields with their three sons in the hope they would catch a glimpse of the US President.
At first the family, who live a mile from the monument, were stuck at a fence. But a good-natured Obama wandered over to where they were standing – and even agreed to pose for a family photo.
Mrs Raffle, 35, who was with her three sons, aged two, six and seven, told Sky News: ‘He waved at us first after my husband marched us all the way there on the chance we might get to see him.
‘We kind of edged closer and closer until he noticed us and waved. We waved back and then one of the high security men edged us forward and he was moving forward at the same time, which was very exciting.
‘The first person to say something was actually James. He said “Welcome to England”.
Lots of photos at the Daily Mail link.
Adolphe Monet Reading in the Garden, Claude Monet
Getting back to potential WWIII news, The Washington Post reported last night: Ukraine cease-fire begins, amid doubts that it will last.
MOSCOW — Ukraine’s increasingly bloody conflict went on hold Friday, after the government and pro-Russian rebels signed a cease-fire deal that at least temporarily solidified the insurgents’ territorial gains.
The agreement, made with the Kremlin’s endorsement, appeared to be a first step toward the type of dormant conflict that Russia has exploited to exert control over former satellites in the decades since the Soviet Union’s collapse, including thwarting their chances of joining the NATO defense alliance.
With rebels making swift gains across eastern Ukraine this week, and preparing to seize the key industrial port city of Mariupol, it seemed that Ukrainian authorities felt they had little choice but to push for a halt to hostilities. The rebels turned the tide of battle early last week after receiving heavy backing from Russian forces, Kiev and its Western allies say. The Kremlin denies aiding the rebels.
The cease-fire deal was made as leaders of NATO countries gathered in Wales this week for discussions focused on the conflict. The terms of the deal underscored Russia’s apparent willingness to commit far more resources than the West to achieve its aims in Ukraine. Kiev has asked for Western military aid, but relatively little has been forthcoming, in part because of Western caution about getting pulled into a proxy military conflict with Russia inside a non-NATO-member nation.
A Woman Reading, Claude Monet
This one is disturbing from The Daily Beast, Russia Steps Up Pressure on the Baltics.
An officer from the Estonian Internal Security Service (ISS), “was abducted at gunpoint at Luhamaa border checkpoint this morning” and “taken to Russia,” according to an Estonian government statement.
The incident comes at an extremely delicate moment, just as the United States and NATO try to convince the front-line members of the Alliance that have solid protection from Russian territorial ambitions. The sleight-of-hand invasion of non-NATO Ukraine over the last several months has raised fears that Russian President Vladimir Putin will claim in the Baltic States, just as he claimed in Crimea and the Donbass region, that the large Russian-speaking population needs to be protected, separated and inevitably annexed to a reconstituted Russian Empire.
The Estonian statement implied the alleged abduction is an intentional slap in the face to the Americans. “The incident comes two days after a visit to Estonia by U.S. President Barack Obama and in the middle of NATO’s summit in Wales,” it said. Apparently there have been “airspace violations” reported as well, including over Finland, which is not a member of the Alliance.
The whereabouts of the officer remain unknown, the Estonians did not name him and what he was doing at the border, precisely, has not been specified except to say he was performing his official functions. The ISS is Estonia’s national agency for counterintelligence and high-profile corruption investigations.
What is Putin playing at? It takes some gall to abuct a government official from a NATO country on the heels of the NATO Summit.
Monet Reading, August Renoir
The New York Times’ Jason Horowitz on Governor Vaginal Probe, For Bob McDonnell, a Miscalculation at the Scene of a Blunder.
On Aug. 15, 2013, Bob McDonnell visited the site of one of Virginia’s great tactical blunders.
As part of his final official tour of the state as its governor, Mr. McDonnell went to Ball’s Bluff State Park in Leesburg, where more than 150 years ago a Union army scout crossed the Potomac River and mistook a row of trees for an unguarded Confederate camp. The next morning, Union soldiers approached the trunks and branches and soon found themselves surrounded by well-armed Mississippi infantrymen. By the end of the skirmish, Confederate soldiers had killed nearly half of the Union troops, many of them pushed off the bluff and into the Potomac.
Even by the time of his visit, Mr. McDonnell seemed likely to enter the state’s history books for his own bad judgment — accepting extravagant gifts and generous loans from a Richmond businessman seeking favor from the governor’s office. On Thursday, the ink dried when a federal jury found him guilty on 11 counts of conspiracy, bribery and extortion.
At Ball’s Bluff last year, Mr. McDonnell announced $2.2 million in grants for battlefield preservation. As he sat in sunglasses on a white folding chair, James Lighthizer, the president of the Civil War Trust, said that ultimately Mr. McDonnell would be most remembered for conserving Civil War battlefields. “He has done more for battlefield preservation than any other governor in the United States of America,” Mr. Lighthizer said.
It looks like Lighthizer was wrong. McDonnell will most likely be remembered–if at all–as the first VA governor to be a convicted felon and for throwing his wife under the bus to try to save himself.
And from Chris Cillizza, a nomination for “the best front page on the Bob McDonnell verdict.” See it at the link. I wasn’t able to copy the photo.
A couple more good articles on McDonnell:
From The Daily Beast, The Religious Right’s ‘Nice Guy’ Who Threw His Wife Under the Bus.
When Bob McDonnell burst onto the national scene in 2009, he was everything the Republican Party needed—a good-looking family man who stopped the Obama juggernaut in its tracks in the swing state of Virginia just 12 months after the party’s McCain humiliation of 2008.
A family-values social conservative (he got his JD from Regent University), McDonnell cleverly wooed Commonwealth voters with his corn-dog “Bob’s for Jobs” campaign slogan and a heavy dose of what appeared to be the TV-perfect brood: five gorgeous kids, including a daughter who served in the military in Iraq, and a devoted, smiling wife who had once been a Washington Redskins cheerleader.
McDonnell’s family was emblazoned on his campaign bus and commercials. At the inaugural ball after he won the governor’s race, the McDonnells slow-danced to “Looks Like We Made It.” McDonnell had even written his master’s thesis on the breakdown of the American family and ways the Republican Party could build it back up. “As the family goes, so goes the nation,” he wrote.
Underlying the entire McDonnell package in 2009 was a known truth about the governor among political operatives who knew him and believed in him—that unlike the divas and the bullies and the egomaniacs who litter both political parties today, Bob McDonnell was just a good guy. Staff called him “Mr. Honest.” Republicans in Washington called him “the Boy Scout.”
Hilarious! I wonder if any of these religious right nuts believe the crap they try to sell to voters? love the smell of schadenfreude in the morning.
And from Rob Boston at Talk to Action, Fall From Grace: What The Religious Right Should Learn From The McDonnell Scandal.
Leaders of Religious Right groups are fond of telling us that if we elect more fundamentalist Christians to office, we’ll have less corruption. Biblical literalists must be more ethical, right?
That claim is looking a little thin in light of recent events in Virginia. Yesterday, Robert F. McDonnell, the state’s former governor, was found guilty on 11 counts related to public corruption, conspiracy and bribery. His wife, Maureen, whom this “family values” politican tried willingly to throw under the bus, was found guilty on nine charges….
Here’s how McDonnell tried to institute “godly rule” in Virginia:
When state officials decided that police chaplains should use non-sectarian prayers at public events, McDonnell rescinded the order. McDonnell’s obsession with blocking access to legal abortion earned him the nickname “Gov. Ultrasound.” He drew up new rules allowing tax-funded “faith-based” adoption agencies to deny services to anyone who failed to meet a strict theological litmus test. He signed a law mandating that public colleges in Virginia give funding to student groups even if they discriminate on religious grounds. McDonnell appointed a private school voucher advocate as education secretary and shifted funding for sex education from comprehensive programs to “abstinence-only” approaches that critics say are often anchored in religion.
McDonnell also pushed for a state constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage (which was later approved by the voters) and even appeared on Robertson’s “700 Club” to lobby for it. McDonnell told a beaming Robertson, “From the Garden of Eden to 2006, we’ve believed that marriage is between a man and a woman. But because of some social trends out there and some court decisions, Pat, as you know, marriage is under attack.”
Based on the religious right’s record of choosing “sinful” candidates like Newt Gingrich, David Vitter and their worship of “divisive extremists like Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Bryan Fischer, Tony Perkins, Ben Carson, Sean Hannity” and their embrace of grifters like Ralph Reed and Dinesh D’Souza, Boston writes:
I’d recommend they start by consulting their own holy book – you know, the one they’re always happy to bash us with. Specifically, they should examine the 7th chapter of the Book of Matthew and the words of Jesus: “Why do you look at the speck of dust that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?…You hypocrite! First take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”
But the religious right really doesn’t pay much attention to the New Testament. They seem to prefer the angry fire and brimstone god of pre-Jesus days.
Extremely rare white lobsters
A few more links you might find interesting:
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Court rules against Wisconsin’s, Indiana’s gay marriage bans.
The New York Daily News, Exclusive: Ex-Prez’ daughter Jenna Bush Hager mistakenly registered with NY’s Independence Party (Breaking: neither of Dubya’s daughters is a Republican.)
The Guardian, Monet landscape found in late German collector’s suitcase. (Stolen by the Nazis?)
Oregon Live.com, Oregon wolf OR-7: Lab tests show mate wandered far to find him (a touching love story, with photos).
Two tales of albino animals, both from Boston.com:
Captured albino cobra taken to Los Angeles Zoo.
Extremely Rare White Lobsters Found Off Maine Coast.
What else is happening? Please share your thoughts and links in the comment thread, and have a great weekend!
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