There's Something About Ben

"Unless," The Daily Show's Trevor Noah says (video below), "slow,languid pace, dead eyes. loves brains. Oh my God, this explains everything. Ben Carson is a zombie!" Though meant primarily in humor, that was no less insightful, no less likely, than Noah's notion "It's just shocking that such a smart man, a brain surgeon, could have this kind of perspective- rushing a gunman" or that "a body with bullet holes" is no "more devastating than taking the right to arm ourselves away."

It's not that Carson's various commenting about firearms are so ridiculous.  He says people should charge a gunman threatening them because at least not all the individuals would be shot and killed ("after you, Dr."). When he himself was faced with a robber at a Popeyes restaurant, Carson claimed, he "directed him, he went to the cashier, the cashier gave him the money, and he ran out of the store."

It seems a little strange that a presidential candidate would voluntarily remark that he offered up someone else in his place to be possibly killed. The incident itself  has been called into question, with one blogger (or headline writer) remarking "Ben Carson should produce his long-form Popeyes receipt" (which, oddly, is funnier than anything Noah's writers could come up with).

Arguing also that Jews in Nazi Germany would have been better off armed, Carson contended “I think the likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed … I’m telling you that there is a reason that these dictatorial people take the guns first."   Carson's fantasy aside, there were at least ten major instances of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust.   It took, further, powerful nations and one heck of a winter in Russia before the Nazi regime was defeated. Oh, and comparing something to Nazi Germany is never a good thing.

But Carson's bizarre statements are no less ridiculous than Marco Rubio claiming he can create a budget surplus by cutting taxes by trillions of dollars. They are less arrogant than John Ellis Bush almost casually stating that his brother kept the nation safe from terrorism. Nor are they more appalling than Carly Fiorina lying about Planned Parenthood- repeatedly- or her record at Hewlett-Packard, or imagining a hardscrabble background. (Give her enough time and Fiorina would vehemently deny she ever worked at HP.)  And then there is Donald Trump- where would we begin?

Unlike with Rubio, Bush, Fiorina, and Trump, Carson appears actually to believe what he is saying. He's probably not an actual zombie, though the odds of him being so are roughly equal to those of Carly Fiorina getting through the next GOP debate without fabrication.

Perhaps Dr. Carson simply is an evil genius, offending Jews, victims of violence, and other people in some nefarious scheme to obtain the GOP nomination.   "The key to success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you've got it made," a famous talk-show host once quipped, and maybe that's Carson's M.O.

But it's more likely that Trevor Noah is naive to believe that such an esteemed, successful individual in the highly-technical field of brain surgery could be so devoid of intellectual heft in another subject area.  Ben Carson might be the brilliant doctor we always hear he is and may have made greater contributions to mankind than the vast majority of human beings. Knowledge and understanding are not always transferrable to another field of study.

Politics, foreign affairs, economics, history, and everything else not labeled "medical science" are not medical science. And when it comes to most of those subject areas in which a president must exhibit some rudimentary knowledge and have the ability to acquire further understanding, the good doctor may be out to lunch.













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Charter Schools. And A Lot More.

It wasn't our idea, Joe. You brought it up. In what should be the least surprising revelation yet about Campaign 2016, Politico last week found

Joe Biden has been making his 2016 deliberations all about his late son since August.
Aug. 1, to be exact — the day renowned Hillary Clinton-critic Maureen Dowd published a column that marked a turning point in the presidential speculation.

According to multiple sources, it was Biden himself who talked to her, painting a tragic portrait of a dying son, Beau’s face partially paralyzed, sitting his father down and trying to make him promise to run for president because "the White House should not revert to the Clintons and that the country would be better off with Biden values.”

It was no coincidence that the preliminary pieces around a prospective campaign started moving right after that column. People read Dowd and started reaching out, those around the vice president would say by way of defensive explanation. He was just answering the phone and listening.

But in truth, Biden had effectively placed an ad in The New York Times, asking them to call.
Before that moment and since, Biden has told the Beau story to others. Sometimes details change — the setting, the exact words. The version he gave Dowd delivered the strongest punch to the gut, making the clearest swipe at Clinton by enshrining the idea of a campaign against her in the words of a son so beloved nationally that his advice is now beyond politics. This campaign wouldn’t be about her or her email controversy, the story suggests, but connected to righteousness on some higher plane.

Politicians have been using their families for an excuse since time immemorial. It's particularly common when one has been criticized and complains that he himself is not hurt, but his wife and children should not have to be subjected to such personal attack.  And so the discovery that Biden himself leaked the story, or even legitimate speculation that a son's dying words might not have been about love for his son or his own family but "go for it, dad!", is not a hanging offense.

Still, Biden's family connections may be worth exploring.  In July, 2013, the Sun-Sentinel reported that an Ocean Ridge, Florida resident named Frank at the time was

president of Mavericks Charter High Schools, which operates seven charter schools, mainly in South Florida. Like his brother, Vice President Joe Biden, he's an unabashed Democrat. His schools serve mainly minority students. Many have criminal records, or deal with addiction problems. Most failed miserably in the traditional public school environment. The Mavericks charter schools tailor education programs to individual students' circumstances, and at least give them a chance at success.

"These kids have made a choice to give education another go," Biden said, with the passion of a true believer. "Education is their civil rights issue. These kids have a right to the same education others receive." Biden and the Mavericks schools have been a source of controversy. Among other things, critics claim graduation rates aren't good enough. Still, these schools are dealing with a student population that had been written off by the rest of society.

Frank Biden at that time had in Washington two powerful friends, one of whom recently resigned. Not surprising then, that the Sun-Sentinel, would ask  "what about those who claim charter schools are failing in their mission?" and Biden would respond "if they sat down with Arnie Duncan, my brother and the president and told them that, they'd be laughed out of the room."

Ha, ha! We all laughed, too!  In a perverse way, Frank was right- charter schools are not failing in their mission.   Unfortunately, that mission has nothing to do  with civil rights or those "kids" but about profit for a few.  The invaluable Diane Ravitch refers us to an article (part of an ongoing series about Florida charter schools) by Karen Yi and Amy Shipley in which we learn

Mavericks in Education Florida launched a network of charter schools more than five years ago, drumming up publicity with prominent pitchmen and pledging to turn dropouts into graduates.

But more than a thousand pages of public records obtained by the Sun Sentinel raise questions about the private company's management of its six charter high schools, including five in South Florida, which are publicly funded but independently operated.

Many of the company's schools have been investigated and asked to return public dollars. Three have closed. Local, state or federal officials have flagged academic or other problems at Mavericks schools, including:

But more than a thousand pages of public records obtained by the Sun Sentinel raise questions about the private company’s management of its six charter high schools, including five in South Florida, which are publicly funded but independently operated.

Many of the company’s schools have been investigated and asked to return public dollars. Three have closed. Local, state or federal officials have flagged academic or other problems at Mavericks schools, including:

• Overcharging taxpayers $2 million by overstating attendance and hours taught. The involved schools have appealed the findings.

 Submitting questionable low-income school meal applications to improperly collect $350,000 in state dollars at two now-closed Pinellas County schools.

• Frequent academic errors that include skipping state tests for special-needs students, failing to provide textbooks and using outdated material...

(Jim) Pegg, who oversees charter schools for the Palm Beach County school district, said problems with Mavericks in Education have frustrated district officials. State charter-school laws do not address the performance of management companies.

"The statute doesn't give any kind of authority to hold those management companies accountable; we can only hold the schools accountable," Pegg said. "We need to be able to have some authority with [management companies]. They are the ones taking the tax dollars."

Mavericks in Education is the management company for five schools in South Florida and another in Kissimmee in central Florida. That school has not been cited for any major violations, records show. Mavericks also operated two schools in Pinellas County and one in Leon County that recently closed.

John Ellis Bush, who championed charter schools and continues to tout them in his pitiful presidential campaign, by far is the character who most needs to be held accountable for the deterioration of the public school system in Florida.  But Joe Biden wants to  exploit (though not as much as his Super Pac) his family's tragedy for political gain and his brother's involvement in Florida's charter school debacle is a legitimate topic of inquiry.  

If and when he announces for the Democratic nomination for the presidency he refers to Beau, Joe Biden should be asked about Frank in the context of the vice-president's support of public schools. At some point, he also ought to be asked about undercutting Harry Reid and progressive tax and budget interests; about his differences with Senator Warren about bankruptcy and financial regulation generally (video below); about believing a woman's choice to have an abortion never is justified; and about putting Clarence Thomas on the United States Supreme Court. It should be good for a lot of laughs.















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Yes, It Is About Guns.

Once House Republicans claimed the scalp of Speaker John Boehner, there was speculation that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would be the next target of the right wing of America's right wing party.  However, though it appears many House Republicans want to see the Kentucky Senator lose his position, he is safe with the group, his own caucus, which really counts.

That is wise given that Senator McConnell again has demonstrated strategic deftness, as his spokesperson maintains of mass shootings "The president told them to politicize the issue, and apparently they're taking him up on it."

The statement is reasonably accurate inasmuch as, following the mass killing at Umpqua Community College, Obama boldly stated "And, of course, what’s also routine is that somebody, somewhere will comment and say, Obama politicized this issue.  Well, this is something we should politicize."   Although the President might have noted that Republicans already have politicized the issue, he did not, probably because he is unaware that their remarks, avoiding the issue of gun violence, not only are insufficient but misguided.

McConnell's comment allowed him not only to criticize the Democratic President, but to remain wisely agnostic on the excuse offered by his fellow Republicans as they themselves rushed to politicize the issue- as they have in the past.

Following the incident, Donald Trump released a statement criticizing gun control efforts and claiming

All of the tragic mass murders that occurred in the past several years have something in common – there were red flags that were ignored. We can’t allow that to continue. We need to expand treatment programs, because most people with mental health problems aren’t violent, they just need help. But for those who are violent, a danger to themselves or others, we need to get them off the street before they can terrorize our communities. This is just common sense.

On ABC's This Week, presidential candidate Chris Christie argued

that the focus needs to be put on mental health and take some of the murkiness out of the law.
“Let’s make involuntary commitment of people who speak violently easier for doctors,” said Christie, who says he has proposed similar legislation in New Jersey.

The governor also seemed to brush off calls for tougher laws following the shooting.

Interviewed by GOP partisan Hugh Hewitt, Ben Carson contended

Obviously there are going to be those calling for gun control but that happens every time we have one of these incidents. Obviously that’s not the issue. The issue is the mentality of these people. And we need to be looking at the mentality of these individuals and seeing if there are any early warning clues that we can gather that will help us as a society be able to identify these people ahead of time.

There is an "obvious" here, but it's not what Carson evidently thinks it is.  Most mentally ill people are not violent and the vast majority of violent crimes are not committed by a person with a serious mental illness (John Oliver on the subject, below). The Huffington Post reports 

According to Harold Pollack, co-director of the Crime Lab at the University of Chicago, gun reform can't be achieved until Americans stop looking at mental illness as a scapegoat for violent behavior.

"We don't want to stereotype people with a severe mental illness," Pollack told HuffPost Live host Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani. "Severe mental illness accounts for something like five percent of the violence we see in America, and we don't have a particularly higher rate of severe mental illness than many other places that have much lower gun homicide rates than we do."

Additionally, Pollack argued the practice of concealed carry permits fosters a culture that normalizes firearm possession -- no matter the state of mental health. 

"What kind of norms are we really creating by having people walking around in public with dangerous weapons?" he said. "The people who have concealed carry permits are not particularly the people who are the dangerous people, but they're contributing to an environment that is a problem."

Real estate mogul Trump, Governor Christie, and brain surgeon Carson have something in common other than wanting to ignore gun safety. It is not hypocrisy because only Christie has cut psychiatric services and additionally made it easier for mentally ill individuals to purchase firearms. Instead, none of the three had ever examined, or even met, Christopher Harper-Mercer or any of the other mass murderers. But they just know they must have been mentally ill.

They do not. But what we do know is that Christopher Harper-Mercer would not have been able to kill nine people if he had been running around with a knife. Mental illness is a factor, but only sometimes; it is handier as an excuse.














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Misleading Analogy

It appears to be a fairly loathsome remark. Appearance is not necessarily reality, however, and the reality is that it is a very loathsome remark.

Not the one from Campbell Brown, an activist in the destroy-public schools reform movement. “What happened here is very clear: The teachers unions have gotten to these candidates," maintains Brown, who had planned for Democratic candidates an October education forum sponsored by her organization, The Seventy Four, along with "school choice advocacy group" American Federation for Children, and the Des Moines Register.  Her scheme fell apart, however, when it became clear that the candidates notably decided to steer clear.

None of the Democratic candidates claims to be a member of MENSA but all recognize an ambush when they see one  and Brown, an advocate of charter schools, standardized testing, ending tenure and derailing due process rights of teachers, was disappointed she had been denied the opportunity.

While disagreeing strenuously with Brown, American Federation for Teachers director Randi Weingarten acknowledged "Campbell Brown is entitled to her opinion about public education." So, too, perhaps, is the disingenuous ex- District of Columbia city councillor Kevin Chavous, now the executive counsel for the American Federation for Children, who perversely claimed

It’s shameful how my party is being held hostage by the unions. I see no difference between their strong-arm tactics on the Democrats and the gun lobby’s tactics on Republicans. And for the candidates to refuse even to discuss these issues, I think it’s insulting to the Democratic base of black and brown voters.

Leave aside that Mestizo, Chicano, Latino, Hispanic, Mexican, Salvadoran and Puerto Rican identify ethnicity, culture, and national heritage rather than race, and (as once common) that referring to Hispanics as "brown" is as accurate as referring to Asians as "yellow" and Native Americans/American Indians as "red."

Chavous purports to "see no difference between the"strong-arm tactics on the Democrats and the gun lobby's tactics on Republicans."  There is a huge- nay, gargantuan- difference.   One argument is made on behalf of corporate interests; the other, against.

While conceding that most of the funding (chart below from Center for Responsive Politics via CNBC) of the National Rifle Association is derived from merchandising ads in the organization's magazine, membership dues, and elsewhere, the Huffington Post in 2013 explained

“Your fight has become our fight,” then-NRA president Charlton Heston declared before a crowd of gun company executives at the annual SHOT Show, the industry's biggest trade show. “Your legal threat has become our constitutional threat," he said.

Following the passage of the shield law that dismembered those lawsuits, the NRA launched a new fundraising drive targeting firearms companies the organization had just helped in a big way. That effort, dubbed "Ring of Freedom," paid off handsomely. Since 2005, the NRA drive has pulled in $14.7 million to $38.9 million from dozens of gun industry giants, including Beretta USA, Glock and Sturm, Ruger, according to a 2011 study by the Violence Policy Center, a group that favors gun control.

The Violence Policy Center study cited an NRA promotional brochure about the corporate partnership drive, noting that LaPierre promised that “this program is geared towards your company’s corporate interests.”

Despite the millions of dollars it has collected from the gun industry, the NRA’s website says “it is not affiliated with any firearm or ammunition manufacturers or with any businesses that deal in guns and ammunition.”

Besides its heavy lobbying for the special legal protections for gunmakers and distributors, the NRA pushed successfully in 2004 to ensure that a 10-year ban on assault weapons, enacted in 1994 over strong NRA objections, wasn’t renewed. Since then, annual rifle production by U.S. gunmakers has risen by almost 38 percent, according to federal gun data.

“The NRA clearly benefits from the gun industry,” William Vizzard, a former agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, told The Huffington Post. “There’s a symbiotic relationship. They have co-aligned goals much more than 30 or 40 years ago.”

Vizzard noted that the gun industry has evolved slowly in recent decades from a “stodgy and conservative” business, which sold mostly rifles and sporting arms, to one that now traffics in paramilitary weapons and handguns. The NRA and the gun industry “have grown closer as the business has changed,” he said.

The intertwining interests of the NRA and the gun industry are also underscored by the gun company executives on the NRA board.

Among the gun industry heavyweights on the 76-seat NRA board are Ronnie Barrett, CEO of Tennessee-based Barrett Firearms Manufacturing, which makes a military-style rifle sold with high-capacity magazines. Pete Brownell, who heads Iowa-based Brownells Inc., another maker of high-capacity magazines, also sits on the NRA board.

These companies and other gun industry giants have ponied up big bucks to the NRA since 2005, according to a list of NRA corporate partners posted at its last convention.

For instance, Brownells is in an elite group of donors that have given between $1 million and $4.9 million since 2005. Barrett Firearms in the same period chipped in between $50,000 and $99,000.

Another notable donor is Freedom Group, which owns Bushmaster, the company that made the AR-15 military-style rifle used by Adam Lanza in his bloody assault on Sandy Hook. The Freedom Group has donated between $25,000 and $49,000 to the NRA’s corporate effort.

The NRA’s most generous gun industry backer is MidwayUSA, a distributor of high-capacity magazine clips, similar to ones that Lanza loaded into his Bushmaster rifle and Glock pistol. These clips increase the lethality of weapons by allowing dozens of shots to be fired before the shooter has to reload. According to its website, Midway has donated about $7.7 million to the NRA through another fundraising program that dates back to 1992. Under this program, customers who buy Midway products are asked to “round up” the price to the next dollar, with the company donating the difference to the NRA.

Just as the gun-rights lobby is intimately connected with industry, the education reform movement headed by people such as Brown, Chavous, and Michelle Rhee is intimately involved with the financial sector.   Also in 2013,  Forbes observed

Charters have a limited admissions policy, and the applications can be as complex as those at private schools. But the parents don’t pay tuition; support comes directly from the school district in which the charter is located.   They’re also lucrative, attracting players like the specialty real estate investment trust EPR Properties

Charter schools are frequently a way for politicians to reward their cronies. In Ohio, two firms operate 9% of the state’s charter schools and are collecting 38% of the state’s charter school funding increase this year. The operators of both firms donate generously to elected Republicans

The Arizona Republic found that charters “bought a variety of goods and services from the companies of board members or administrators, including textbooks, air conditioning repairs and transportation services.” Most charters were exempt from a requirement to seek competitive bids on contracts over $5,000.

A pretty good scam that, but it gets worse.  Democracy Now's Juan Gonzalez, focusing on New York State, earlier had found

It turns out that at the tail end of the Clinton administration in 2000, Congress passed a new kind of tax credit called a New Markets Tax Credit. And what this allows is it gives an enormous federal tax credit to banks and equity funds that invest in community projects in underserved communities, and it’s been used heavily now for the last several years for charter schools. And I focused on Albany, New York, which in New York state is the district with the highest percentage of children in charter schools. Twenty percent of the schoolchildren in Albany are now attending charter schools. And I discovered that quite a few of the charter schools there have been built using these New Markets Tax Credits. 

And what happens is, the investors who put up the money to build the charter schools get to basically virtually double their money in seven years through a 39 percent tax credit from the federal government. In addition, this is a tax credit on money that they’re lending, so they’re collecting interest on the loans, as well as getting the 39 percent tax credit. They piggyback the tax credit on other kinds of federal tax credits, like historic preservation or job creation or Brownfields credits. The result is, you can put in $10 million and in seven years double your money. 

And the problem is that the charter schools end up paying in rents the debt service on these loans. And so, now a lot fo the charter schools in Albany are straining paying their debt — their rent has gone up from $170,000 to $500,000 in a year, or huge increases in their rents, as they strain to pay off these loans, these construction loans. And the rents are eating up huge portions of their total cost. And, of course, the money is coming from the state. 

So, one of the big issues is that so many of these charter schools are not being audited. No one knows who are the people making these huge windfall profits as the investors. And often there are interlocking relationships between the charter school boards and the nonprofit groups that organize and syndicate the loans. And so, there needs to be sunlight on this whole issue.

Skipping the forumproposed for later this month may not itself have been a good thing, for it may have been turned to the candidate's advantage. But if it is a foreshadowing of the approach of the candidates toward privatization- at least of education- it is a good, even very good, sign.

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"Bigot" As A Synonym For "Realist"

In Alternet, where Adam Johnson is an associate editor, it's "Richard Dawkins & Bill Maher Still Baffled Why so Many Liberals Think They're Bigots-- Here's Why." In its Salon reprint, it's "Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins just don't get it: The real reason(s) progressives can't stand them."

To the contrary: they do "get it" and they- or at least Maher- is not a bigot (video of theabsolutely horrid conversation below). Johnson maintains

Dawkins doesn’t go after “all religions” equally. Quite the opposite, he has said that Islam is uniquely sinister, referring to it as “unmitigated evil“, on numerous occasions. Accusations of bigotry against Dawkins, therefore, are not selective in favor of Islam, they are areaction to his selective, repeated highlighting of it – fair or not. Secondly, this position is dripping with libertarian false equivalency. The “I criticize all religions equally” is the close cousin to “I criticize all races equally” — a principle that sounds cute in theory but willfully ignores the burden of history and imperialism.









I rarely have heard the phrase "I criticize all races equally," but perhaps I need to get out more often. Clearly, Johnson appears to be unaware that Dawkins and Maher abhor all manifestations of religous or spiritual belief, whether Western religion, eastern religion, or any New Age perversion of either. Typically, Bible-believing Christians, many of them unaware of Maher's equal opportunity criticism, consider these guys reprehensible.

Obviously obsessed with the evil of western civilization, Johnson argues that the President Obama who

has bombed seven Muslim countries in as many years is seen as irrelevant. Western panic and outrage over “women in beekeepers suits” (what Maher calls burkas) is entirely divorced from the convenient “civilizing mission” of America’s wars in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, and Afghanistan

Johnson does not acknowledge that women have been wearing burkas/beekeeper suits since long before "America's wars in Iraq,Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, and Afghanistan."   He ignores the genital mutilation, honor killings, and the dearth of democratic traditions in Islamic nations.

These characteristics pre-date those wars to which Johnson refers, and which the USA didn't begin. Moreover, no one in American government has described any activities as part of a "civilizing mission," though one must credit Johnson for a subtle implication of racism without specification of individuals or events.

He claims

Without directly addressing American empire and its relationship to radical Islam their analysis will invariably be superficial. Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins have walked into a game between a Division III college football team and the New England Patriots and feel good about themselves for calling holding on both sides. In a very limited, morally O.C.D. way, they’re correct, both sides are technically in violation given the rules of the game. But without addressing these rules or the broader power asymmetry at work, they’re party to a farce, a rigged discourse that mistakes “consistency” for fairness and posturing for principle.

Sorry, Adam: while Maher never has denied that the war in Iraq has contributed to radicalization in the Arab world, terrorist groups such as ISIL cannot be explained merely as an offspring of western imperialism.  Nor will obliviousness to that organization's barbarity, directed most enthusiastically toward innocent, men, women, and children, decline if a blind eye is turned toward its fanaticism or the foreign policy of the west is scapegoated.   Neither is ISIL (or al-Qaeda, Al-Nusra, or other terrorist groups) akin to  a Division III team playing the New England Traitors (uh, er, Patriots).

This is not the Penn Quakers. Nor were US forces responsible when, as was reported in August

ISIL has claimed a powerful car bombing that tore through a Cairo police building on Thursday, injuring at least 29 people.

Six policemen were among those wounded in the explosion but officials said that none of the injuries were life-threatening.

Described by a resident as “like an earthquake”, the overnight explosion shook the working-class Shubra district of northern Cairo, severely damaging the front of the police office and shattering the windows of nearby buildings.

The attack came just days after president Abdel Fattah El Sisi imposed a tough new antiterrorism law. The country is facing a militant insurgency spearheaded by Sinai Province, a local affiliate of ISIL.

Egypt’s interior ministry said that a car had exploded outside the police building, which houses a centre for investigating threats to national security, in the early hours of Thursday morning.

Prior to the explosion, a man was seen parking the car in front of the building and escaping on a motorbike that had followed the vehicle, the ministry said.

“One policemen suffered moderate injuries and the rest [of those hurt] had minor injuries,” said health ministry spokesman Hossam Abdel Ghaffar.

Nor is ISIL the hapless Chicago Bears or the Detroit Lions (from whom officials snatched defeat from the jaws of victory Monday night), for as we learned in August

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has captured Syria's ancient city of Palmyra, giving them control of almost half of the country, according to a monitoring group.

Located in central Homs province and in the heart of Syria, Palmyra lies 210km northeast of Damascus in desert that stretches to the Iraqi frontier to the east.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Thursday that ISIL now controls approximately 95,000 sq km of land in nine out of 14 provinces since they declared their alleged caliphate - which puts them in control of almost half of the country.

When Syria's Bashir al-Assad died, power was transferred to his son, Bashir al-Assad, and not by a fair and free election.  The military state endured and the government in Baghdad has become increasingly theocratic.   Bashir's Baathist regime has been marked by its own viciousness, including torture of political enemies, starving the citizens whom it doesn't spy on, destroying a city of nearly a million people, and the use of chemical weapons. And that state is ISIL's sworn enemy, demonstrating the nature of conflict in the Middle East, and of the partisans involved.

Admittedly, European and non-Muslim nations are not blameless. That applies particularly to Russia, whose contribution to the Syrian civil war now appears to be bombing U.S.-aided rebel groups, which have at least a pretense to desiring a democratic state.

Russia is, however, an outlier among nations not overwhelmingly Islamic. It may not be true, as Aayan Hirsi Ali contends, that "Islam is not a religion of peace."  However, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, we at least must admit it might be a duck, and labeling prominent critics of Islam "bigots" will not prove the religion plays no role in the world's most flammable tinderbox.







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We Get A Clue In Winter

On Friday, Sam Seder stated (video below) of the meeting of Pope Francis and Kim Davis on his Majority Report

The reason why it was surprising for some people is that Pope Francis has made a point of saying "Look, I'm not exactly changing Catholic dogma but I am changing our priorities as to what we should see as being urgent" and he basically said "You know these social issues like the existence of, and the marriage of, gay people, even the question of abortion, they're important they're not that important. They shouldn't define Catholicism's face to the world."

Presumably, we'll learn in 3-4 months whether Pope Francis, as suggested by Seder, wants his religion to be seen less as intruding into the flock's private decisions about sexuality than about "saving the planet and some kind of economic justice."







Via Crooks and Liars via Alan Colmes on Liberaland we learned on Friday

Pope Francis and the Vatican have to rely on local authorities of the church when there is a visit to foreign countries, and if there is a sense that the Pope has been misled, there is hell to pay. Visits with the Pope in D.C. were arranged through the office of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the papal nuncio, or envoy, in Washington.

The Rev. James Martin, editor at large of the Jesuit magazine America, had cautioned in an article this week that the pope meets many well-wishers on his trips, and that news of the meeting with Ms. Davis had been manipulated.

"I was very disappointed to see the pope having been used that way, and that his willingness to be friendly to someone was turned against him," Father Martin said in an interview on Friday…

Archbishop Viganò is turning 75 in January, the age at which bishops must submit a formal request to the Vatican asking for permission to resign. These requests are not automatically accepted, and bishops often stay in their appointments well past age 75. But if Archbishop Viganò is held responsible for what is seen as a grave misstep on an important papal trip, he is likely to be removed at the first respectable opportunity, according to several church analysts.

Charles Pierce, who is inclined to give the pontiff the benefit of a doubt, wrote the initial post suggesting Vigano's responsibility for Francis' meeting and his subsequent interview with ABC News' Terry Moran. He blames the "high level clerical ratfcking" on "civic layabout" Davis, "her most recent husband, and her dingy legal team."

Still, Pope Francis must not only talk the talk, but walk the walk because actions speak louder than words and the proof is in the pudding (cliche day here at the blog!). Arguably, taking any action now against Archbishop Vigano would provoke additional controversy undesired by the pontiff. But within a few months, Pope Francis will have a chance to demonstrate that he is the real deal.






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No Politics Here

On Thursday, Ed Morrissey of the influential conservative Hot Air wrote

In the last 24 hours, we’ve seen Democrats screaming about the politicization of four Americans killed more than three years ago in a woefully unprotected consulate in the middle of a failed state created by the policies of a Democratic president and their leading presidential contender, and at almost the same time the leader of the Democratic Party demanding we politicize a shooting that just ended without bothering to wait for any facts at all.

Morrissey is appalled that Democrats would be critical because the second leading GOP member of the House and favorite to become the next Speaker told Sean Hannity "everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi Special Committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping.”

Mission accomplished.   Four months ago, Kevin Drum asked "How many metric tons of evidence does it take for them to admit that it was a tragedy but not an act of treason?"  We now know evidence was the last thing concerning the GOP, but it has succeeded in sowing considerable doubt about the Democratic presidential front-runner, whose favorability numbers have been tumbling.

Politics is what politicians do.  Responding to the mass shooting, Dr. Donald Trump, PsyD., who has examined Christoper Harper-Mercer three times fewer than three, explained  "absolutely a terrible day... it sounds like another mental health problem."

That was only GOP boilerplate, however, virtually a knee-jerk reaction until congressional Republicans can go back to threatening to shut down the government, blocking appropriations for, among other things, mental health centers.  By contrast, the response of John Ellis Bush was quite intriguing.  When he was asked to clarify his comment "Things happen all the time. Things. Is that better?" Bush remarked

Tragedies.  A child drowned in a pool and the impulse is to pass a law that puts fencing around pools. Well it may not change it. Or you have a car accident and the impulse is to pass a law that deals with that unique event. And the cumulative effect of this is, in some cases, you don’t solve the problem by passing the law, and you’re imposing on large numbers of people burdens that make it harder for our economy to grow, make it harder to protect liberty.

A swipe at regulation might have been a slick comment for a Republican primary, yet another nod to the Party's corporate wing by a candidate who was (initially) its favorite. But not for John Ellis Bush, for it turns out

as governor of Florida in 2000, the now-White House hopeful had signed a bill into law that imposed penalties for residents who did not add extra safeguards when installing pools.

"The new law requires Floridians who install pools or hot tubs after Sept. 30 to install one of four safety measures: fencing directly around the pool, safety covers, door alarms or self-latching doors. Failure to comply could carry a 60-day jail term or a $500 fine," the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported at the time.

The law was named the Preston de Ibern/McKenzie Merriam Residential Swimming Pool Safety Act. De Ibern hit his head and fell unconscious into a pool while Merriam drowned in her family's pool, the Sentinel reported. Both were young children.

What Carly Fiorina is to lying, John Ellis Bush may be to hypocrisy, although Fiorina's self-righteous dishonesty represents an exceedingly high bar.  For sheer pandering- firearm division, John Kasich is a formidable competitor. Informed in an interview of the incident in Oregon, the Ohio governor was asked "you have an 'F' rating from the NRA because you support gun control. How come we can't break this and find some change?"

He could have said "You have just told me about this horrible tragedy, so it wouldn't be right for me to comment" or "let's not rush into anything in haste and instead carefully consider the facts and arguments." But having failed to receive the "let's not say or do anything impulsive"memo from Morrissey and other conservatives, Kasich replied

I've always received an "A: rating since I've been governor because, look, one thing you can learn is you can strip all the guns away but the people who commit crimes or have problems are always going to have the guns. And I think more and more people are thinking "I'd like to protect myself."









Kasich forgot one of the golden rule of politics: don't let on that it's all about yourself when you can invoke "family" as in "And I think more and more people are thinking 'I'd like to protect my wife and children.'  But he was deft enough, as the video above indicates, to waste no more than 2.5 seconds to assert his pro-gun credentials.

President Obama has challenged news organizations to "tally up the number of Americans who've been killed through terrorist attacks in the last decade, and the number of Americans who've been killed by gun violence, and post those side by side on your news reports."  But the appeal gather information and to reason does not hold a candle to the pandering , disingenuousness, or ignorance required for a Republican presidential nomination.






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