The 2016 Race So Far

Jon Stewart covers the path on the route to the road to the primaries:

Harper Lee

 

When I first read that Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, was about to publish another novel about Scout and Atticus Finch, it sounded wonderful. As the news stories have it, the book, called Go Set a Watchman, was written before To Kill a Mockingbird but takes place 20 years after the events in the Pulitzer Prize winning novel.

And as the news stories have it, the 88-year-old author's comment on the new publication (due out in July) was:

I hadn't realized it had survived, so was surprised and delighted when my dear friend and lawyer Tonja Carter discovered it. After much thought and hesitation I shared it with a handful of people I trust and was pleased to hear that they considered it worthy of publication. I am humbled and amazed that this will now be published after all these years.

But there are concerns that something else is going on here.

The Christian Science Monitor has more information here.

Something to Think About When You're Sleepless at 2 a.m.

From the February 2015 issue of National Geographic:

Several years ago I made a bet about face mites, animals that live in hair follicles. They are so small that a dozen of them could dance on the head of a pin. They are more likely, though, to dance on your face, which they do at night when they mate, before crawling back into your follicles by day to eat. In those caves mother mites give birth to a few relatively large mite-shaped eggs. The eggs hatch, and then, like all mites, the babies go through molts in which they shed their external skeleton and emerge slightly larger. Once they're full size, their entire adult life lasts only a few weeks. Death comes at the precise moment when the mites, lacking an anus, fill up with feces, die, and decompose on your head.

Read the rest if you dare. But if you don't, let me just give you one bit of advice: Politely decline an offering of Mimolette cheese.

The Netanyahu Disaster

Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic has written the article I was going to write about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's scheduled speech to the U.S. Congress.

An excerpt:

Netanyahu, grappling with a fear that Obama will go wobbly on Iran, could have tried a long time ago to create a discreet, continuous, and respectful dialogue in advance of the conclusion of negotiations, in order to try to shape the president’s thinking, and—this is important—to work with Obama on issues that interest the United States (advancing the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, for instance, by taking the initiative once in a blue moon) in order to make the American side understand that his government is interested in giving, not merely in taking.

Instead, Netanyahu chose to make a desperate-seeming end-run around the president and attempted to appeal directly to Congress to oppose a decision Obama has not yet made. In a plan concocted by Ron Dermer, who serves as Netanyahu’s ambassador to the U.S., the speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, invited Netanyahu to address Congress on the dangers of a nuclear deal and the need for tougher sanctions, without first informing the White House.

The flaws in this approach are many.

[snip]

Israel has been, for several decades, a bipartisan cause in Washington. Bipartisan support accounts for the ease with which Israeli prime ministers have historically been heard in Washington; it accounts for the generous aid packages Israel receives; and it also explains America’s commitment to maintaining Israel’s qualitative military edge.

 Netanyahu’s management of his relationship with Obama threatens the bipartisan nature of Israel’s American support. His Dermer-inspired, Boehner-enabled end-run has alienated three crucially important constituencies. First, the administration itself: Netanyahu's estrangement from the Obama White House now appears to be permanent. It will be very difficult for Netanyahu to make the White House hear his criticisms of whatever deal may one day be reached with Iran.It will be very difficult for Netanyahu to make the White House hear his criticisms of whatever deal may one day be reached with Iran.

Netanyahu has also alienated many elected Democrats, including Jewish Democrats on Capitol Hill. One Jewish member of Congress told me that he felt humiliated and angered by Netanyahu’s ploy to address Congress “behind the president’s back.” A non-Jewish Democratic elected official texted me over the weekend to say that the damage Netanyahu is doing to Israel’s relationship with the U.S. may be “irreparable.” 

A larger group that Netanyahu risks alienating is American Jewry, or at least the strong majority of American Jews that has voted for Obama twice. Netanyahu’s decision to pit U.S. political party against U.S. political party—because that is what his end-run does—puts American Jewish supporters of Israel in a messy, uncomfortable spot, and it is not in Israel's interest to place American Jews in a position in which they have to choose between their president and the leader of a Jewish state whose behavior is making them queasy.

 Read the whole article here.

An Antidote for Cynicism

It seems like every traffic light intersection in Chicago is patrolled by somebody with a paper cup and a sign written on a piece of cardboard, asking for money. My own reaction to this is usually annoyance. Sometimes I break down, especially if it's somebody I've met at the food pantry or the free Thanksgiving Dinner at church. But usually I look the other way. "It's a franchise," I mutter.

A young man named Josh Paler Lin likes to do videos for the "pranks" channel on You Tube. He decided he'd give a hundred-dollar bill to one of those franchisees, then follow him to see what he does with it. And sure enough, the guy goes straight to the nearest liquor store.

But wait ...

Koch Brothers Advertise on the Daily Show

They might be sorry about that.

The Daily Show
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Fearmongering at Fox

Stephen Colbert shows me almost more of what's going on at Fox than I can stand. But if you want to see what the dictionary definition of idiot is, Colbert has some great examples.

[Sorry, but the video that was linked here has been removed from its source page. Thanks to Chip for letting me know. (Sigh) You just can't trust the internet anymore.]

You can laugh, but consider: there are people who voluntarily watch this kind of blather.

Maureen Dowd

I had pretty much the same reaction to this as did Kevin Drum in a post named "How is Robin Williams Like Hillary Clinton?":

Tonight's Maureen Dowd column begins with an anecdote about an interview she once did with Robin Williams:

As our interview ended, I was telling him about my friend Michael Kelly’s idea for a 1-900 number, not one to call Asian beauties or Swedish babes, but where you’d have an amorous chat with a repressed Irish woman. Williams delightedly riffed on the caricature, playing the role of an older Irish woman answering the sex line in a brusque brogue, ordering a horny caller to go to the devil with his impure thoughts and disgusting desire.
I couldn’t wait to play the tape for Kelly, who doubled over in laughter.
So when I think of Williams, I think of Kelly. And when I think of Kelly, I think of Hillary, because Michael was the first American reporter to die in the Iraq invasion, and Hillary Clinton was one of the 29 Democratic senators who voted to authorize that baloney war.

That's, um, quite a segue. I wonder if there's anything left in the world that doesn't remind Dowd of Hillary Clinton?

Thinking about Social Security

Social Security's main problem right now is not the state of the trust funds, but a toxic political climate that is being manipulated by people who would like to do away with the program entirely. Much of this is coming from Wall Street, which covets the commissions that would come from a privatized Social Security. Some of the manipulation is coming from people who have some kind of "philosophical" objection to any government program. There are other groups with agendas that have nothing to do with preserving Social Security, but all the groups love to couch their agenda in sober, adult-sounding words of concern about the national debt.

The essential selfishness of those groups' motives makes it difficult for people of good will to make their arguments, especially if their argument is that we need to reduce Social Security benefits. Why should anyone believe they are honestly trying to think this through, when they are making the same argument as groups who are not being honest (even, for that matter, sometimes citing them as authorities)?

Last week the Social Security Trustees released their annual assessment of the trust funds, which resulted (as always) in a rash of obligatory, thinly thought out op-eds and editorials.  Predictably, some of these were by people with agendas other than providing financial security for older Americans.

A prominent example is an op-ed by Laurence Kotlikoff in the New York Times. Mr. Kotlikoff is a professor of economics at Boston University who in 2012 offered himself as a presidential candidate to an ambitious group called "Americans Elect" (after which Americans Elect decided not to field a presidential candidate). He is also a proponent of a weird little field of economics called "generational accounting."

In his NY Times op-ed, Mr. Kotlikoff chose to buttress his argument by citing a segment of the Trustee's Report which predicts the anticipated trust fund shortfall "through the infinite horizon." The "infinite horizon" concept was introduced to the Trustee's Report in the George W. Bush administration, as part of its unsuccessful attempt to dismantle Social Security.  At the time, an alarmed open letter from The American Academy of Actuaries warned:

The new measures provide little if any useful information about the program’s long-range finances and indeed are likely to mislead anyone lacking technical expertise in the demographic, economic and actuarial aspects of the program’s finances into believing the program is in far worse financial condition than is actually indicated. [My emphasis]

As an economist, Mr. Kotlikoff surely knows this, so we now have to be suspicious of his motives.

Good for us.

Postscript: If you're interested in a refutation of Mr. Kotlikoff's op-ed,  I point you to Dean Baker, who is isn't scared. 

An Appreciation of Joe Biden

Cross-posted from Charles Pierce's blog at Esquire:

DETROIT -- Joe Biden, tanned and in very good voice -- which, as we know, is very good voice indeed -- was interrupted briefly during his address to the Netroots Nation confab by some immigration activists who chanted, "Stop deporting our families!" until they were escorted from the hall. As they left, some people applauded.

"You should," said Biden. "You should applaud those young people. Imagine what it must be like to come home one day and find your family gone."

Imagine was a big word for Biden yesterday. Imagine, he asked, a country where domestic violence was no longer called that, was no longer treated as a family matter. "Imagine," he said, " a country where we don't lead with the example of our power but, instead, we lead by the power of our example." There aren't four politicians in America who can pull off that line and not sound like the precinct captain in Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. But Biden is so transparently sincere in his bombast that people applauded him. The abiding characteristic of the persona that Joe Biden has created for himself over the last six years is that he draws the principle response of, "Holy god, he really believes this stuff." It is not the Obama-cool talk about being the change you want to be in the world. There's an undercurrent of principled hilarity in what he does, a feeling that he's in on every joke you can tell about him, and that, in fact, he's in on every joke he can tell about himself. He creates no distance, even when he's declaiming, which is often, and even when his fervor outruns his sentences, as it did when he talked about closing down the Earned Income Tax Credit (bad) instead of the Carried Interest Loophole (good). He smiled and held his forehead for a moment, and then he moved right along, because nobody is more amused by Joe Biden Moments than Joe Biden himself.

(There was one jarring note, however. In talking about the battles he fought, he referred to the "fight that kept (Robert) Bork off the court, and the fights to try and keep Thomas, Alito, and Roberts off the court. In fact, in the lowest moment of his career, Biden took a dive on Thomas during the Anita Hill brouhaha, declining to call other women who could testify similarly to Hill as regards Thomas's basic skeeviness, and leaving Hill out there in the wind to twist. Bad days.)

His speech was delayed because, between the downing of the Malaysian jetliner and the fact that Israel had invaded Gaza with ground troops, the world elsewhere was climbing into the handbasket again. He touched on the situation in the Ukraine, briefly, saying that, as far as he could tell, the plane had been "blown out of the sky." After which, he moved on to his address which, like many Biden speeches, was constructed like a beach house whose architect had been very high throughout the planning stages. Themes rolled out, only to come to a complete stop when some other thought struck him. When it was time to declaim and denounce, he declaimed and denounced, even though what he was declaiming was fairly banal, and what he was denouncing was completely unclear. But the message shone through as it always does -- as it did when he confronted Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny starver from the state of Wisconsin, in the vice-presidential debate in 2012, and Ryan started doing his earnest I-Had-Ayn-Rand-In-Preschool student government bit, and Biden simply threw up his hands and laughed. This is the message that always shines through -- Joe Biden loves this sh**.  [This is still a classy blog.]

No kidding. He's one of the last politicians I know who really enjoys getting up and doing this, who really enjoys jumping through the preposterous hoops that are set up for every national candidate. The general feeling here is that Biden will not run for president if Hillary Clinton does. This is unfortunate. If there was ever a contrast to be made with the dour, mechanized, winning-through-effort style of the former Secretary of State, it is Biden's Humphrey-esque joie de pancake breakfast. As much as he deplored the politics of division in this country, which he did throughout the last third of his speech, Biden finds in politics the kind of joy and the kind of outlet for the goofier angels of our nature that have been bred out of our politicians by four generations of political consultants. Biden is Lyndon with his beagles, and FDR with a cocktail shaker. He is the last real eccentric, and he knows it, and he plays it to the hilt because it is so much of what he is. Tattered and worn and old as it is. Joe Biden's freak flag still flies high and proud.

Scott Walker

Cross-posted from Charles Pierce's blog at Esquire:

Any doubts about whether or not there's a presidential campaign a-brewin' on behalf of Scott Walker, the google-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to supervise its Midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin, and any doubts about whether he's fearful that his career may be turned to pulp by a hail of writs, were all allayed yesterday. Walker decided that he would play to da crazees in The Base by asking his pet legislature to repeal Wisconsin's commitments to the Common Core standards in education. Wisconsin, it should be noted, has already invested $25 million to implement the standards that Walker now wants to blow up. Fiscal responsibility!
Anyway, this has caught even some Republicans in Wisconsin by surprise, although why anything Walker does at this point surprises anyone is beyond me.

However, the governor's surprise move prompted the state superintendent and a leading lawmaker on education issues - who is a member of the governor's own party - to suggest political motivations. "It may work well for the political end of things, but it's sending messages to our kids that our system is chaotic, and it's not," state Superintendent Tony Evers said late Thursday. "The idea that they'd just be able to replace the standards at the beginning of the legislative session is absurd," said Steve Kestell (R-Elkhart Lake), the chair of the Assembly's Education Committee. "We're in an election season. People desperate to be re-elected will say anything."

There are any number of good reasons to be dubious about Common Core, but this decision fairly reeks of pure politics. Walker is trolling for votes, not from the people who question Common Core's reliance on standardized testing, but from the people who think that Common Core is a multinational plot to indoctrinate their children in the ways of Kenyan one-worldism. Or something. There are a lot of these people who vote Republican in Iowa, and in New Hampshire, and in Wisconsin. To run for president, he's got to get re-elected this fall. This is a two-fer here.

Bergdahl

I have two articles to recommend on the Bergdahl business:

David Brooks takes a stand [OMG! David Brooks takes a stand on something!] in President Obama Was Right.

And the NY Times gives a good rundown on The Rush to Demonize Sgt. Bergdahl. The main stuff:

Four months ago, Senator John McCain said he would support the exchange of five hard-core Taliban leaders for the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. “I would support,” he told CNN. “Obviously I’d have to know the details, but I would support ways of bringing him home and if exchange was one of them I think that would be something I think we should seriously consider.”

But the instant the Obama administration actually made that trade, Mr. McCain, as he has so often in the past, switched positions for maximum political advantage. “I would not have made this deal,” he said a few days ago. Suddenly the prisoner exchange is “troubling” and “poses a great threat” to service members. Hearings must be held, he said, and sharp questions asked.

[snip]

Republican operatives have arranged for soldiers in his unit to tell reporters that he was a deserter who cost the lives of several soldiers searching for him. In fact, a review of casualty reports by Charlie Savage and Andrew Lehren of The Times showed there is no clear link between any military deaths and the search.

And a classified military report shows that Sergeant Bergdahl had walked away from assigned areas at least twice before and had returned, according to a report in The Times on Thursday. It describes him as a free-spirited young man who asked many questions but gave no indication of being a deserter, let alone the turncoat that Mr. Obama’s opponents are now trying to create.

If anything, the report suggests that the army unit’s lack of security and discipline was as much to blame for the disappearance, given the sergeant’s history.

Thousands of soldiers desert during every war, including 50,000 American soldiers during World War II. As many as 4,000 a year were absent without leave for extended periods during the Iraq war. They leave for a variety of reasons, including psychological trauma, but whatever their mental state, it is the military’s duty to get them back if they are taken prisoner. That’s what the Obama administration did in this case, and there was a particular sense of urgency because a video showed that Sergeant Bergdahl’s life might be in danger.

But the critics seeking political advantage don’t care about the life or mental state of a particular soldier, or of a principle of loyalty that should provide comfort to any soldier in danger of capture. They live only for the attack.

Obama did the right thing, but handled the political end of it miserably.  We are talking about an American soldier here – a POW, for the love of Pete – and the Republicans are seriously suggesting we should have just left him there. If you can't win THAT fight, Barack, give us Hillary.

A Postcard from Screwtape*

Got an unusual postcard the other day:

"Wow!" methinks. "Only one percent of the Humane Society's budget goes to pet shelters? Where does the rest of it go? Oh, I know – into their pockets! Hah!"

Reading on, I see:

"You can be sure of THAT!" says I, and make a mental note to cross them off my charity list. Well, okay, I've never really actually given money to the Humane Society, but now I never would! That'll teach those skunks. Good thing there are folks keeping an eye on these crooks.

And then I forgot about it . . . until I got another postcard from the same people. And that's when the "You're Being Played for a Dummy!" alarm finally went off.

Wwwwaaaaaaiiiiiiiittttttttt a minute! Who's sending me these cards? Is supporting animal shelters the only way to help animals? Wouldn't that just be dogs and cats? Oh, yeah, and bunnies? What about horses? And cattle, hogs, and sheep raised for food? And before I got these postcards, did I really think the Humane Society's main mission was supporting local animal shelters?

The postcard says to go to the web site of something called HumaneWatch.

Google!

Oh, my! HumaneWatch turns out to be a front for the Center for Consumer Freedom, which is run by a person named Richard Berman. Mr. Berman acts, talks, and quacks like a libertarian. He says he is against the "nanny state".  And to demonstrate his noble displeasure, he raises millions from corporations to perform public relations hits on non-profits that are causing them trouble. 

According to a spokesman, John Doyle, the purpose of the CCF is to "draw attention to our enemies: just about every consumer and environmental group, chef, legislator or doctor who raises objections to things like pesticide use, genetic engineering of crops, or antibiotic use in beef and poultry."

Or, in the case of the Humane Society of the United States, organizations that are trying to improve the treatment of factory farm animals and keep sick animals from winding up in your steak or hamburger.

Some corporations, like Kraft and Pepsico, will have nothing to do with Mr. Berman. I guess they want their children to be proud of them – or at least not ashamed of them.

The same does not apply to Coca-Cola, Cargill, Monsanto, Tyson Foods, Outback Steakhouse (take a good look at that steak next time you're there), Anheuser-Busch, Phillip Morris, Davidoff (cigars), Overhill Farms, and Bruss Company (steaks and chops), all of whom have been named as donors to the Center for Consumer Freedom. Quite a rogue's gallery.

I never liked Outback, anyway.

* Screwtape

Net Neutrality

In case you missed the buzz, John Oliver did a bit on the FCC's plan to end net neutrality that managed to send so many commenters to the FCC web site that it brought down their server. To which I can only say: Good!

Another instant classic:



And while we're on the subject, if AT&T tries to convince you to give up your DSL and sign on to U-verse, politely decline. It is so bad I actually started googling to find a class action suit I could join. Although I am paying for speeds "up to" 6 mbs, I can no longer stream movies at night (or most days) because their infrastructure is so poor. And they knew it when they sold it to me.

The class action suit? Well, I certainly wasn't the first to think of it. But it seems there's something in that fine print of their contract that says if they commit fraud, I will not sue them, but will take it to arbitration.

Anyway, enjoy the John Oliver video.

The NRA and Gun Control

So it wasn't just my imagination. Once upon a time, in my life-time even, the National Rifle Association wasn't a bunch of wild-eyed paranoids. They were responsible people who promoted gun safety and advocated common sense gun control.

And did Ronald Reagan really say he saw "no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons" and that legislation restricting it "would work no hardship on the honest citizen"?

My, how things have changed.

Fundamentals of Coaching Basketball

The Washington Post has a fascinating story up about bankruptcies among professional athletes.

The data on professional athletes are startling: Shortly after they retire, nearly four of five NFL players are bankrupt or under financial stress, according to Sports Illustrated. Joblessness and divorce are the main reasons. It’s marginally better in the National Basketball Association, where after retirement nearly two of three players are broke within five years.

Consider this chart:

It's really sad.

Timothy Geithner for Wonks

Once again, Jon Stewart makes "real" journalists look like uneducated chumps.

Here's a link to a 42-minute interview Stewart had with former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. (We couldn't get the embed to work.) I would say my attitude toward Geithner is about 51% positive. There's a lot about Stewart's approach to be critical of, like his tendency to cut off Geithner whenever he's trying to make a substantive point. But I've never seen a major media newsman as well informed and comfortable with talking about derivatives as Stewart is here.

I don't recommend this video if you're not particularly interested in the subject matter, but if you are, I think you'll find it entertaining.

The link is here.

The News Hour, India Style

While searching for results of the Idaho gubernatorial debate the other day, we inexplicably found ourselves directed to a link to an Indian program called News Hour (obviously not the venerable MacNeill-Lehrer offering). The segment was a debate concerning remarks the Pakistani Interior Minister had made about Norendra Modi, the newly elected Prime Minister of India, and Modi's remarks about a criminal Pakistan is harboring named Dawood Ibrahim.

When I was in junior high school, my mother subscribed to a weekly, 8-page news summary called India News (I think). I can't remember the background on how she came across it, but I'm certain that the subscription was intended to give my brother(s) and me a window to a different world. It certainly did. I read it occasionally, but not often enough to make sense of the cricket stories.

Since I was later a PolySci major, with some interest in international governments, and with this "deep" background in Indian politics, when the hour-long News Hour debate showed up, I thought, "Sure, why not?"

And wow.

Just see for yourself. Try to watch five minutes of it. It starts out slowly. The first person to talk is the moderator, for the love of Pete.



So I was pretty delighted to find that the Colbert Report's Jason Jones had discovered the state of Indian journalism, too, and filed this report (start it at 5 minutes, unless you want to watch the whole show).

The Idaho GOP

In reference to an earlier post about the Idaho GOP gubernatorial debate, the sentient reader might wonder how it came to be that two "non-normal" persons were included in the debate. It was, depending on how you look at it, a generous gesture of democratization by Idaho Governor Butch Otter, a brilliant political move by the governor, or a craven political move by a governor who had no respect for the voters in his state.

The background is that state Senator Russ Fulcher is going after two-term Governor Otter, on the basis that Otter is just not Tea Party enough, and challenged him to a debate. Otter agreed to the debate on the condition that the two other men who had qualified for the ballot be included, thus reducing by half the amount of time Fulcher would have to attack him.

The Idaho primary is today (Tuesday, May 20). It will be interesting to see what effect the exposure for Messrs. Harley Brown and Walt Bayes will have on the outcome. Stay tuned.

Another Reason to be Glad You Live in Minnesota

Earlier this Spring, we had the spectacle of an armed mob pointing guns at, and otherwise threatening, Bureau of Land Management employees in Bunkerville, Nevada.

The craziness is continuing in Texas, where a group calling itself Open Carry Texas likes to terrorize people in fast food restaurants. They do this by showing up en masse brandishing military weaponry it is allegedly their Constitutional right to carry anywhere they wish. When they showed up at a Jack-in-the-Box, Fort Worth police said, the store employees "locked themselves inside a freezer for protection out of fear the rifle-carrying men would rob them."

THAT was such a good time for Open Carry Texas that they followed the visit up a few days later with a group trip to their local Chipotle. Make sure you scroll down on the link to that one, for pictures of our Constitutional scholars.