Month: November 2013

It’s funny to listen to conservative American Catholics try to cognitively process the things that Pope Francis says that they don’t agree with. Some examples:

1. “He didn’t really mean what he said.”
2. “When you’re speaking off the cuff, you are not infallible.”
3. “The media distorted what he said. He didn’t say anything different from any other pope.”
4. “He’s a Pope of Darkness, as told by prophesy.”
5. “Some popes are terrible. I’m not saying that Francis is terrible. I’m just saying…”

If President Obama were the pope, it would be hilarious to see which conservative commentators used which of the above approaches to understanding him.

Two dead. Twenty-two injured, some seriously, some not. All because someone brought a gun to a large house party in the Cypress area of Harris County, Texas, a suburb outside of Houston. No one knows the motive of the shooters (believed to be two people) but does it matter in a country where shootings like this one occur on a daily basis in communities all across the United States? From the Houston Chronicle:

More than 100 people, mostly young adults, were at a house celebrating a birthday, officials with the sheriff’s office said.

A man and a woman were killed, according to a news release sent by the office. One died at the party and the other at Cypress Fairbanks Medical Center Hospital. […]

The others shot have injuries ranging from serious to non-life threatening, said Thomas Gilliland, spokesman with the Sheriff’s Office. Some were shot in the foot or ankle. Others were shot in the hip, he said. Most of the injured were from 17 to 20 and were taken to five area hospitals.

One party-goer described the gunshots as sounding like “balloons popping” and seeing people bleeding as he tried to move others toward the house garage. A neighbor told the reporters that the scene was chaotic, with teenage girls screaming and pounding on the front doors of other houses in the neighborhood, pleading for someone to call 911.

War on terror? We are living it everyday in our own country. No one can predict when another innocent person will be shot or killed. Of course some communities, especially the poor and minorities have been living with this level of gun violence for too many years to count, even from the police, who are supposed to protect them, as Denise Oliver Velez so eloquently, yet with righteous anger, details for us in her front-paged story. You think you are safe? I’ll bet those kids at this birthday celebration did, too, before this happened to them. I’m sure the people in Aurora and Tuscon and Newtown and The Washington Navy Yard and … well, how many incidents could I list? Too many, far too many.

And still, as a nation we do nothing. We turn our eyes away. Even the most senseless and horrific slaughter of six year old children, a turning point so many said when it happened less than a year ago, seems to have faded from our collective memory. Certainly it has faded from the memories of all the politicians and news media pundits who proclaimed that this time something would be done. Yet, what steps have been taken nationally to end the gun slaughters. I’m not talking about a few isolated states like Colorado and New York. Indeed, if anything more states have gone the other way, such that many states now have laws that permit an increase in the use of gun play in public or have proposed further relaxation of current laws.

Is this freedom? I don’t think so. It’s madness.

My sincere condolences to the families of the latest victims in Harris County, Texas, and across the United States. It doesn’t count for much I know, and I’m very sorry for that, too.

The scale of destruction in the Philippines is frightening.

As many as 10,000 people are believed dead in one Philippine city alone after one of the worst storms ever recorded unleashed ferocious winds and giant waves that washed away homes and schools. Corpses hung from tree branches and were scattered along sidewalks and among flattened buildings, while looters raided grocery stores and gas stations in search of food, fuel and water.

Officials projected the death toll could climb even higher when emergency crews reach areas cut off by flooding and landslides. Even in the disaster-prone Philippines, which regularly contends with earthquakes, volcanoes and tropical cyclones, Typhoon Haiyan appears to be the deadliest natural disaster on record.

Haiyan hit the eastern seaboard of the Philippine archipelago on Friday and quickly barreled across its central islands before exiting into the South China Sea, packing winds of 235 kilometers per hour (147 miles per hour) that gusted to 275 kph (170 mph), and a storm surge that caused sea waters to rise 6 meters (20 feet).

It wasn’t until Sunday that the scale of the devastation became clear, with local officials on hardest-hit Leyte Island saying that there may be 10,000 dead in the provincial capital of Tacloban alone.

I think this is the type of thing climate scientists were warning us about. We may not get more destructive storms overall, but when the conditions are right, the storms are going to have more power than we’re used to because there is just more energy in the environment.

But we can’t do anything to mitigate this because it would cut into the Koch Brothers’ bottom line.

Benghazi!!

I wonder what the wingnuts will think when they learn that the French surrender monkeys have taken on the role of bad cop in the major powers’ negotiations with Iran. Obviously, this cannot mean that France is strong, because Hitler. So, it must mean that Obama is weak. Because who has ever heard of the good cop?

UPDATE: I just found this nice piece about the Iranian thinking a few days after the breakdown. The rest down below is fading into background information.

From: Iran and the two Genevas in al-monitor.com…

“There is no reason to be tormented,” an official source in Tehran told Al-Monitor. “Iran knows what it wants, and that’s what we are after.” The source explained that a deal on the nuclear front will help get other files in the region sorted. “The Syrian crisis wasn’t at the heart of the negotiations, but it was discussed thoroughly during side talks. Moreover, there was an American request that we discuss possible options whenever the nuclear deal is sealed, and that’s why some regional powers asked the French to put their spanners [wrench] into the talks, and here we are.”

The source elaborated on this last point, stressing that Syria was one of the reasons that a deal failed to be reached. “It’s not right to say that Israel and Saudi Arabia didn’t want a deal for the same reason. The Saudis’ main reason was Syria. They don’t want US-Iranian talks on Syria, because they know this will affect their vision there.” He added that this gave the French another good reason to interfere: “They wanted to please Israel, and now they could please the Saudis too, and the latter aren’t pleased for free. So they did whatever they could to [ensure] a deadlock, but this is temporary. Things will not continue this way.”

So what was discussed in Geneva, even if briefly?

“We can say there’s a genuine American will to end the conflict in Syria. At least, this is what our officials understood.” The source then looked at a paper to the side and read from it: “This is what we told everyone, including the Americans. Iran wants to see Syria without terrorists and the Syrian people deciding who they want to rule them. Very clear and concise.” Iranian officials, according to the source, explained to the Americans that there is no chance the rebels or anyone backing them can win on the battlefield. “From Damascus to Aleppo to Homs, the status quo is in favor of the regime, and wherever the regime is not in control, the ones who have the upper hand are al-Qaeda affiliates, so it’s not in anyone’s interest to see them winning. Geneva II is good for the opposition. It’s their chance to find themselves a real place in Syria, or it’s either the regime or the terrorists who will end them.”

The signs to a first stage agreement over the Iranian nuclear program were thwarted at the last minute by objections raised by the French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius. Does this signify a detour to a dead end siding for the Peace Train? Of course not! Let’s dig in a little deeper to clarify the recent events.

Now this is one citizen’s unexpert narrative of what we are seeing, so please correct if you have better knowledge.

So it was all smiles. Everybody was very upbeat (except the usual suspects, natch). The logic of it has been looming there, like a fat hanging curveball, for years. The quickening that was going to lead to a swift pivot was palpable. Has the Ziosphere ever been shaken as badly as it being shaken this weekend? I’ve been following the I/P scene at Mondoweiss for years. Steady movement, but still drip, drip, drip. But the tone, substance and audience of Kerry’s remarks was a major gauntlet laid down. THAT means Obama senses that a tipping point is at hand in our relationship with Israel. As a nightflower, the fragrance of the lobby could be smelled everywhere but never seen. But it is being progressively exposed as to its true nature. Soon, the question of ‘which country are you loyal to, anyway?’ will carry a much greater sting when you are on the side of NOT making peace. So back to this weekend.

Since the Zionist ideology plays such a prominent role in the discussion, through Israeli actions and the hasbara that permeates our media and government, and the Israeli press is open to wide ranging perspectives, it’s a good place to gauge the reaction to the changing diplomatic scene.

Talks in Geneva between world powers and Iran ended early Sunday morning without a deal on Iran’s rogue nuclear program, after hitting a snag on Saturday when France questioned the terms of a proposed agreement. The sides agreed to meet again in Geneva on November 20, but at the level of “political directors” rather than foreign ministers.

Ashton appeared more disappointed than Zarif that the marathon negotiations had failed to yield an agreement. A relaxed and smiling Zarif, indeed, said it was “natural that when we start dealing with the details there would be differences of views, and we expected that.”

The issues of centrifuges, enrichment levels, and the Arak reactor are very close to being settled. The objections raised by the French FM are not substantive, but somebody had to speak up. I think this observer sees the REAL existential threat to Israel……

While everyone is talking about Iranian nuclear weapons the real Iranian threat is being overlooked. Not since the ancient times has Persia been such a powerful force in the region. From the Mountains of the Hindu Kush to the Mediterranean Sea the Ayatollahs either hold sway or have their forces fighting to impose the power of Iran upon the country’s populace.

Where once Assad was merely a useful dictator for the Iranians he is now firmly in their pocket, where once Iraq was an implacable enemy of Iran the Shi’ite armies are fighting a bloody sectarian civil war. 10 years ago there was one Western army sitting to Iran’s East and another sitting to the West, where American influence once lay Iranian influence has either taken over or is in the process of doing so. Here in Israel we now have Iranian backed forces to our North in Lebanon and the North East on the Golan Heights, they are also supporting Hamas in Gaza to the South West.

But it appears that Israel, Europe and the once all important United States are too busy talking about weapons of mass destruction to notice the placement of their adversary’s pieces on the global chessboard.

Many people are sophisticated enough to recognize the psychology of projection. We see it continuously with our brethren of the righteous legions in regions of this country. Here are some quotes from Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon. See if you can find the projection.

“Precisely at this time, when the regime in Tehran is in a dire economic situation and is worried about its survival, Western powers must not blink and reach an agreement with it that will provide it with breathing room for which it’s not required to give anything in return,” Ya’alon said in a press release Saturday.

“If one wants to prevent the use of force, one must know how to use tough diplomacy to bring Tehran to a point where it must decide between continued nuclear activity and its survival,” he went on.

“A deal now, under the current conditions is a historic mistake that will enable a war-mongering regime to carry on with its dangerous nuclear activities,” Ya’alon warned.

My bold above.

I just read, on the internet duh, that there was a previous potential agreement back in 2005 or so that Bush wouldn’t sign on to. In that one, Iran would have been limited to 3000 centrifuges (of an older model). Now they claim 19,000 and many are the newer, more efficient models. And they are spinning right now. At that time Iran had 1000 pounds of low enriched uranium. Now they have 10,000 pounds. So what exactly has been gained by NOT reaching an agreement?

Diplomacy now seems like the only game in town. After their last-minute success at avoiding an attack on Syria, the Americans apparently believe they can reach a similar achievement on the Iranian track. The possibility of Israeli military action against Iran may only come up again next spring, if attempts to reach a final agreement fail. Moreover, many experts say that Iran has made enough progress on its nuclear project that no significant damage would result from an Israeli attack, unless other countries participate.

If Netanyahu still has any options for pressuring the Americans, they lie in two indirect paths. One is through Congress, by prodding the bipartisan base of support for Israel into making life difficult for the administration, and the second is via the Palestinian channel, where the prime minister can thwart the efforts of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to achieve progress in the bilateral talks, if Washington ignores Israel’s demands in the Iranian context.

But, in both of the cases, it is difficult to assess the strength of Israel’s bargaining position. Washington’s reluctance to pursue military action in Iran is broad and is shared by many in both major American political parties. As for the Palestinian issue, leaving aside Kerry’s awkward and superfluous threat about the outbreak of a third intifada, it is doubtful whether prolonged stagnation and diplomatic inaction serve Israel in the long run.

More Israeli reaction….

Strategic and Intelligence Affairs Ministers Yuval Steinitz spoke about the changing nature of the deal with Iran at a cultural event in Bat Yam on Saturday morning.

“The outline presented to Israel until several days ago, including during the strategic dialogue in Washington, looked substantially different from what is being discussed at this time,” he said.

Steinitz’s comment was backed by a senior Israeli official involved in the Iranian issue. “On Wednesday, something more acceptable was presented that we also didn’t love but could live with,” the official said. “Suddenly it changed to something much worse that included a much more significant lifting of sanctions. The feeling was that the Americans are much more eager to reach an agreement than the Iranians.”

Awww, poor babies. Looks like a bait and switch to me too. Here’s Haaretz in an editorial……

However, Israel’s strength depends on American and international backing. Without it, Israel cannot deal with either the Iranian threat or the other, closer, regional threats, especially when the United States has Israel’s back against the demand to examine and neutralize Israel’s nuclear potential.

Netanyahu can disagree with the American conception of how to best thwart Iran’s aspirations, but boasting of Israel’s ability to thumb its nose at the international diplomatic process is a dangerous threat in itself. It is a political boomerang, making its way directly back to Israel’s head.

Netanyahu should grit his teeth, curb statements that only widen the rift between Israel and the United States and let the talks with Iran pass the experimental phase. Meanwhile, he should harness his rhetorical abilities and his concerns in progressing the diplomatic process with the Palestinians.

Netanyahu, with his familial angst, doesn’t want to end up being the ultimate frayer…..

[EXCERPTS] There is one correct definition of the term frayer. It means “sucker” or “mark,” in the sense that somebody is a sucker if he goes along with the rules when nobody else is following them, or a mark if he’s a naive target for thieves. . .
. . . In Israeli life and society, the worst thing anybody can ever be is a frayer, and most people will do anything and everything they can at all times to avoid being a frayer. The only way to be certain at any given moment that you are not a frayer is to make somebody else a frayer.

God, this is stupid.

If demography is destiny, Republicans can’t win the presidency by acting more like Democrats. The GOP’s best shot in 2016 is not to nominate a moderate. They must nominate a conservative who can attract more conservative voters to the polls, just like President Obama built his own coalition and increased the relative electoral power of each constituent part.

Start with the first sentence. The premise here must be true or the conclusion is invalid. Also, the conclusion must follow causally from the premise. If demography is destiny, then the last two elections have proven that the Republicans must appeal to different demographics. It’s not as simple as just getting out a bigger percentage of white married women or evangelical Christians. They must stop losing 97% of the black vote and quit hemorrhaging support among Latinos, Asians, unmarried white women, gays, people under thirty, etc. Demography is only destiny if you don’t change your relative levels of support among different demographic groups.

If the Republicans follow Mark Ambinder’s advice, they’ll lose and lose badly.

His advice is particularly terrible if we assume that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee, and that’s an assumption that the Republicans have to make until events give them some rational reason to conclude otherwise.

Look at Ambinder’s checklist:

It is not inconceivable that a GOP nominee can:

(1) Excite the party with the promise of his electability.

(2) Create enough of a contrast with the Democratic nominee to keep the caucus/primary voting base motivated.

(3) Appeal just a bit more to to blue collar white voters and to married women.

Let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, that this prospective Republican candidate can accomplish the first goal. Ambinder asserts that the Republican base will be self-motivated to go against Hillary Clinton regardless of what the Republican nominee has to say. Yeah, that’s true except for all the people in the Republican base who are married white women or are from states like West Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana that voted for Bill Clinton twice. Clinton will motivate everyone in the Republican base except for the people who were dependable Democrats until that “inadequate black man” stole the nomination from her. I can’t believe how lazy Ambinder is with this analysis. The idea that a Republican candidate will be able to appeal more to blue collar white workers and white married women when going up against Hillary Clinton than McCain and Romney did when going up against Obama is absurd. To rely on that strategy would be insane.

This next bit is 100% wrong.

So to those who say: The GOP will ONLY win the presidency if it moderates its tone on social issues, I say: not with the electorate as currently constituted. It might be useful, but it is neither necessary or sufficient.

If by “social issues,” Ambinder has in mind voting, reproductive and gay rights, immigration reform, and climate change, then the Republicans will absolutely have to moderate their positions or they will discover that demography is truly destiny. That’s because they cannot win over more black, Latino, Asian, gay, young, or white unmarried female voters unless they stop alienating those voters. And they can’t do much more to motivate their own base than they’re already doing without losing even more support from the groups that are already shunning them.

Conservatism is dead. Long live conservatism.

How’s that whole Latino outreach going?

House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) told immigration advocates that lawmakers will not take-up immigration reform this year. As a result, an amendment to deport DREAM-eligible immigrants — which passed with overwhelming GOP support in June — will be the only immigration measure to have received a vote on the floor of the House in 2013.

After taking a shellacking in the 2012 elections, largely due to the fact that they had made it clear in the primaries that they hate Latinos, the Republicans had a little brainstorm and decided that the best way to mitigate the damage they had done would be to ignore all calls for immigration reform and allow precisely one vote on the issue all year. That vote would be on whether or not to deport kids who have done well in school, have no criminal record, and who were brought here by their parents when they were children. They overwhelmingly decided that, yes, those kids should be deported.

That was their plan.

The results will be predictable.

Dylan Ratigan in an idiot. He claims that after he left his well-paying job at MSNBC he bought a catastrophic health insurance plan that cost him $170 a month. According to him, he cannot find a health care plan on the California exchange for less than $600 a month. So, I checked. I used their shop and compare tool and entered in Dylan’s data: 41 years old, living in San Diego County, and making too much money to qualify for any subsidies. Here are the cheapest plans available to Dylan Ratigan.

Bronze (Anthem Multi State Plan Bronze 60, EPO): $237/mo.
Silver (Health Net Silver 70, HMO): $277/mo.
Gold (Heath Net Gold 80, HMO) $313/mo
Platinum (Health Net Platinum, 90 HMO) $377/mo

In other words, even if he gets the top-of-the-line platinum plan, he’ll barely be paying more than half of what he said he’d be paying for the cheapest available plan.

“Well,” you say, “maybe he’s covering someone else on his plan?”

In that case, the Health Net Platinum 90 plan would cost him $525, and the Anthem Multi State Plan Bronze 60 plan would cost him $352.

So, he’s either a liar or a moron.

I’m putting my money on both.

The following excerpt raises so many issues:

As senators in 2005, Obama and Biden publicly defended the filibuster and the requirement of a supermajority to change Senate rules.

[Sen. John] McCain denounced any effort to change the rules unless there is a broad supermajority supporting the move. “We will destroy the very fabric of the United States Senate and that is that it requires a larger than numerical majority in order to govern,” he said.

First and foremost, what John McCain is saying is both correct and incorrect. When we talk about getting rid of the filibuster, whether for nominees or for everything, we are talking about doing something truly extraordinary, which is changing the rules of the Senate in the middle of a Congress, with a mere majority of votes. The potential consequences are so explosive that it has been aptly described as the “nuclear option.” Changing the rules in this way would set a precedent that would allow a majority in the Senate to change the rules as they go along to suit their needs, and it could result in all manner of mischief and discord.

Yet, the rest of McCain’s brief argument is dubious and misleading. For starters, the “very fabric” of the Senate is being destroyed, but it isn’t being destroyed by the Democrats. To see what I mean, go back to February 1st, 2001. That was the day that former Senator John Ashcroft was confirmed as the U.S. Attorney General by a 58-42 majority. At the time, the Senate was split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans, which meant that Vice-President Dick Cheney split ties and gave the Republicans a technical majority. John Ashcroft had just lost his reelection bid to Mel Carnahan, who had actually died shortly before the election in a plane crash. Ashcroft was a divisive and controversial social conservative who the Senate Democrats had been glad to be rid of, and they were very unhappy to see him appointed to head the Justice Department. Nonetheless, no Democrat raised an objection to having a debate and a vote on his confirmation. In the end, eight Democrats (including liberal Russ Feingold) voted for Ashcroft’s confirmation, while 42 Democrats voted against it. Those 42 Democrats were signaling their displeasure, but each and every one of them could have stopped the nomination in its tracks by raising an objection that would have required 60 votes to overcome. None of them did that.

Compare that to what the Republicans are doing today. They are requiring 60 votes for virtually all of the president’s nominees, even ones that they overwhelmingly support. In many cases, they don’t object to the nominee but they just don’t want the position filled. That’s the case with three vacancies on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals:

“The court is currently comprised of four active judges appointed by Republican presidents and four active judges appointed by Democrat presidents. There is no reason to upset the current makeup of the court, particularly when the reason for doing so appears to be ideologically driven,” Sen. Charles E. Grassley (Iowa), the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said during floor debate.

The Republicans held up Richard Cordray’s nomination to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for more than a year just because they opposed the very existence of the agency.

Then there is the case of Rep. Mel Watt (D-NC), who was just denied a debate and a vote over his nomination to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Rep. Watt, who happens to be an African-American, has seniority on the House Financial Services Committee that oversees the agency. But the Republicans don’t want a Democrat to oversee the agency, so they are arguing that Watt is unqualified.

In a floor speech before the vote, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said that Watt’s lack of experience in the industry represented the sort of “extraordinary circumstance” that he was thinking of in 2005 when he first helped defuse a showdown over presidential nominations.

The Senate hadn’t denied a confirmation vote to a sitting member of Congress since the 19th-Century, and that was really a dispute about slavery. The optics of filibustering a black congressman, while calling him unqualified despite his years of experience working on financial issues, are so toxic that it is astounding that the Republicans were willing to take the hit.

As should be clear, this isn’t part of the historical “fabric” of the Senate. This is a major aberration.

But, you might object, back in 2005, Sens. Obama and Biden defended the Democrats’ right to filibuster objectionable judges and defended the precedent that the rules could only be changed with supermajorities. That’s true, but things have changed.

First of all, we should distinguish between nominations to serve in the administration, which are basically term-limited, and nominations to the federal courts, which are generally lifetime appointments. As you saw with the Ashcroft confirmation vote, the Democrats were willing to vote in protest against certain administration appointments, but they didn’t block them or even require 60 votes for their confirmation. They could have done that, but they just didn’t.

Secondly, when the Democrats did filibuster some of Bush’s judicial nominations, they did so because they objected to something in those nominees’ records. They did not argue that no one, no matter how qualified and moderate, should fill those seats on the bench. They wanted different nominees, not no nominees at all.

So, the two things that have changed are that the Republicans are now requiring 60 votes for virtually all nominees, and they now using this nullification by filibuster to deny votes without any regard for the qualifications of the nominees. In the latter case, they are deliberately keeping offices vacant just because they don’t like the offices. This is why you cannot accurately accuse Obama and Biden of hypocrisy, because you are comparing apples to oranges.

Nonetheless, when John McCain says that the “very fabric” of the Senate is dependent on the idea that it “requires a larger than numerical majority in order to govern,” he is correct. Without that structure, the Senate would just be a smaller, less representative, version of the House of Representatives. It would be redundant in most ways. But the structure of the Senate, until very recently, has never required “more than a majority” to govern on most things. That 60 vote requirement had been reserved for only the most contentious and divisive issues. Yet, at this point, the Senate cannot even confirm non-controversial nominees, nor can it pass routine appropriations bills. And it must be beaten and kicked to even agree to protect the nation’s credit rating by paying our bills on time.

The structure of the Senate has been broken, and it has been broken by the Republicans’ obstruction. The rules are therefore no longer working and we have no compelling reason to preserve them. Unfortunately, if the Republicans will not relent, the filibuster will have to go.

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the painting of the  Grand Canyon. The photo that I will be using is seen directly below. I will be using my usual acrylics on a 12×12 gallery-wrapped canvas.

When last seen, the painting appeared as it does in the photo seen directly below.

Since that time, I have continued to work on the painting.

I have continued to work on the central butte.  It now appears in a pinkish color with dark shadows.  I will be adding further thin watery layers of paint to gradually change the color.  This technique has worked well in other applications.  In doing this, the pink will remain a part of the final result.  But you’ll see that as we go along.  Further additions include paint added to the closest butte to the extreme right and blue in the far distance.  Remaining unloved with no paint at all is the butte in the middle distance.  That should change for next time.

The current state of the painting is seen directly below.

I’ll have more progress to show you next week.  See you then.

Earlier paintings in this series can be seen here.