You may be aware that Australian director George Miller has done a reboot of his seminal 1979 film Mad Max.
What you may not be aware of is the fact that various members of the really small penis brigade, aka “Men’s Rights Advocates”, have called for a boycott of the film.
The new Mad Max movie may be the most guy movie ever made. The plot is literally Tom Hardy (Mad Max) and Charlize Theron (Furiosa) rescue scantily-clad supermodels. If you asked me when I was 15 to list movie ideas, the list would have gone something like: scantily-clad supermodels, 18 wheelers, guys getting shot, guys getting blown up, fist-fights on top of an 18 wheeler, guys with chainsaws, guys getting run over by 18 wheelers, guys with guitars that shoot fire, and cars crashing into 18 wheelers and blowing up. This list is basically the script for Mad Max: Fury Road. The only thing missing is a helicoper piloted by velociraptors crashing into an 18 wheeler. But there’s always the chance of a sequel.
He further notes that the this shows just how toxic the “Mens Rights” Movement is. Not only are they demandin “guy films”, they are demanding the exclusion of any strong women from the movie, even though the director, George Miller, has a long history of woman warriors in his films.
His closing statement says it all, “If you are a guy and you refuse to go on your rescuing-supermodels adventure because Charlize Theron is coming with you, you really need to reconsider your commitment to heterosexuality.”
Top House Republicans believe the business community is blowing its chance to clinch a trade deal.
Unlike unions, they say, Big Business advocates aren’t flooding Capitol phone lines. They’re not winning over skeptical Republicans. And they haven’t made much headway with business-friendly Democrats who are considering voting for the package, either.
That threatens to create a dangerous reality for supporters of a sweeping trade deal with Pacific Rim nations: that it will become more politically tenable for Republicans to be against trade promotion authority legislation than for it.
The chorus of GOP complaints — striking considering the typically close ties between Republican leadership and Big Business — is coming from all over the Capitol. But it’s loudest on the House side.
David Stewart, a top aide to Speaker John Boehner, voiced the frustration of Boehner’s office during a meeting Friday with officials from business lobby groups, telling them their effort is falling short. During the meeting at the offices of the Business Roundtable, Stewart said unions are outworking the business groups on calls to GOP lawmakers’ offices.
“The lobbying effort on the Hill has been abysmal,” one senior GOP aide said. “Calls and letters into member offices are running 10 to 1 against TPA. This is an uphill fight already given the lack of trust in the president and the general unpopularity of TPA, and the current lobbying effort has not made it any easier. If TPA passes in the House it will be despite the downtown coalition and the president, not because of them.”
Of course, trade politics are tricky — the debate over TPA has triggered concerns ranging from job losses in individual House districts to currency manipulation — and it’s not just the business community that’s struggling. President Barack Obama hasn’t yet been able to build enough Democratic support to get the fast-track bill across the finish line. He faces a big obstacle in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who is vehemently opposed to the legislation as it’s currently written.
Gee, do you want some cheese with that whine?
More important, the big business lobbyists have limited effect on the Teabaggers in the base, and the wackdoodle base cannot deal with being on the same side of an issue as a black President.
Considering the number of scalps that the Teabaggers have accumulated in primaries, it’s no wonder that big business lobbyists are having difficulty moving the needle.
Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin told The Washington Post in an interview Friday that she is “seriously interested” in running for the White House in 2016. “You can absolutely say that I am seriously interested,” Palin said, when asked to clarify her thinking about a possible presidential bid.
My brain hurts.
This is bad for the Republicans, and bad for the country.
The only people to benefit by this are political satirists.
Less than a week ago, Jeb Bush called his brother, George W., one of his closest foreign policy advisers, and said that he would have invaded Iraq in 2003 as well.
Today, he was giving a speech at a small gathering, and Ivy Ziedrich, who appears to be very sharp said “Your Brother Created ISIS.”
The whole exchange is telling:
“Your brother created ISIS,” the young woman told Jeb Bush. And with that, Ivy Ziedrich, a 19-year-old college student, created the kind of confrontational moment here on Wednesday morning that presidential candidates dread. Mr. Bush, the former governor of Florida, had just concluded a town-hall-style meeting when Ms. Ziedrich demanded to be heard. “Governor Bush,” she shouted as audience members asked him for his autograph. “Would you take a student question?” Mr. Bush whirled around and looked at Ms. Ziedrich, who identified herself as a political science major and a college Democrat at the University of Nevada. She had heard Mr. Bush argue, a few moments before, that America’s retreat from the Middle East under President Obama had contributed to the growing power of the Islamic State. She told the former governor that he was wrong, and made the case that blame lay with the decision by the administration of his brother George W. Bush to disband the Iraqi Army. “It was when 30,000 individuals who were part of the Iraqi military were forced out — they had no employment, they had no income, and they were left with access to all of the same arms and weapons,” Ms. Ziedrich said. She added: “Your brother created ISIS.” Mr. Bush interjected. “All right. Is that a question?” Ms. Ziedrich was not finished. “You don’t need to be pedantic to me, sir.” “Pedantic? Wow,” Mr. Bush replied. Then Ms. Ziedrich asked: “Why are you saying that ISIS was created by us not having a presence in the Middle East when it’s pointless wars where we send young American men to die for the idea of American exceptionalism? Why are you spouting nationalist rhetoric to get us involved in more wars?”
What Ms. Ziedrich said both true and a devastating indictment of Jeb’s and Dubyah’s foreign policy chops.
It’s not just the family thing here. Jeb Bush described his brother as his most important foreign policy adviser, and he has said, even knowing what we know now, he would have invaded Iraq.
We need real campaign finance reform, if just so that Republicans can tell people like Ellison and Adelson to shut the f%$# up.
*RRJ said about Dick Cheney, “I don’t think he’s a mindful human being. That’s probably the nicest way I can put it,” when describing Cheney’s behavior toward his mom, Nancy Reagan at his Dad’s funeral.† †The Link is here. The Cliff Notes version is that Dick Cheney escorted her to Reagan’s casket, and he stopped at the bottom of some stairs, and allowed an 80 year old woman with glaucoma to flounder her way up the stairs. (Really classy)
If we eliminate the most significant issue in the whole Freddie Gray case, the fact that a 25 year old man was killed by the callous, brutal, and unprofessional behavior of members of the BPD, we still have the following:
A bogus arrest (you cannot tell if a knife is legal or illegal from seeing the clip sticking out of his pocket).
I think that it’s well past time for police to follow the laws that they are sworn to uphold.
I am well aware that the job of being a policeman is a tough one, and I know that it involves tough calls, and I know that human beings make mistakes.
This goes well beyond mistakes.
That’s not the problem. The problem is the fact that there is a culture of impunity that is nearly universal among law enforcement officers in the United States, and this ill serves both the citizenry and the constabulary.
BTW, I think that one of the things that would help here is if cops got a mandatory 6 paid months off every 3 years, and officers were required to attend mandatory counseling on at least a monthly basis.
I have a friend in the psychological biz, and his assessment is that most police officers who have been on the job for more than a few years suffer from PTSD.
This does not make for a well functioning civil society.
Obama spoke at a Nike plant to promote the Trans Pacific Partnershio (TPP).
This is an interesting choice, considering that the show manufacturer is patient zero in shipping jobs overseas to contractors who practice abusive worker policiew.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is calling upon President Obama to cancel his plans to visit Nike’s corporate headquarters this week as part of the White House’s push to drum up support for a major new trade agreement.
Sanders said the shoe giant, which has moved many of its manufacturing jobs to cheaper markets overseas, only epitomizes how previous trade deals “have failed American workers.”
In a letter sent to Obama Wednesday afternoon and obtained by the Los Angeles Times, the self-identified socialist, who is now running for president as a Democrat, says the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, would only boost Nike’s profits while doing nothing to increase manufacturing jobs here.
“While manufacturing may not be the most glamorous job, I’m sure that there are workers across America, from Baltimore to Los Angeles to Vermont to Ferguson, who would be more than happy to be paid $15-$20 an hour to manufacture the Nike products they buy,” Sanders wrote.
………
Obama plans to visit Nike’s Portland-area headquarters Friday morning as he takes his sales pitch outside Washington for both the 12-nation Pacific trade deal and the so-called “fast track” authority he has said is vital to finalizing negotiations with Japan and other partners.
Obama’s fellow Democrats are proving to be the main obstacle to passing both in Congress, but he has been ramping up his appeals in recent weeks.
………
But Sanders said TPP would “do nothing to encourage Nike to create one manufacturing job in this country,” and would only boost its executives’ compensation.
He cited a study that Nike employs more than 300,000 workers in Vietnam, where the minimum wage is just 56 cents an hour and labor unions are banned.
Nike has been the subject of protests for its use of foreign sweat shop labor for over a decade, and Obama thinks that it is a good idea to extol the virtues of the TPP there.
I am not sure if Barak is just f%$#ing with us, or if he just believes that no one could possibly have a fulfilling life living on shop floor.
In either case though, his decision to speak there oozes contempt for people on the other side of the issue.
In what is an amazing amount of hubris, even by the standards of a Presidential campaign, she will be running on her record as CEO of Hewlett Packard:
Carly Fiorina became the second woman and the first former chief executive to enter the 2016 presidential campaign when she announced on Monday that her private-sector background and conservative credentials made her best positioned to capture the Republican nomination and take on Hillary Rodham Clinton. Ms. Fiorina’s long-shot campaign — polls show only a sliver of Republicans would support her at this stage — has nevertheless attracted the attention of conservatives in early nominating states, largely because of her increasingly pointed attacks on Mrs. Clinton and her impassioned anti-abortion position. (“Liberals believe that flies are worth protecting but that the life of an unborn child is not,” she said in January.) “I think I’m the best person for the job because I understand how the economy actually works,” Ms. Fiorina told George Stephanopoulos of ABC News on Monday. “I understand executive decision-making, which is making a tough call in a tough time with high stakes.”
Her record is that she nearly destroyed HP.
Employees began spontaneously singing, “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead” at multiple HP sites when the news of her firing broke.
She also approved Lucent’s infamous “Brown Ring of Ambivalence” Logo
Dig under the surface, however, and the story grows more complicated and less flattering. The Lucent that Fiorina walked away from, taking with her $65 million in performance-linked pay, was not at all what it appeared. Nor were several of her division’s biggest sales, including the giant PathNet deal. The Lucent-Fiorina story starts in 1995, when AT&T began to consider selling one of its crown jewels, its equipment-making division. The group had $21 billion in annual revenue and housed the famed Bell Labs, birthplace of the transistor and corporate America’s preeminent research outfit. Spinning off the equipment group into a separate company had instant appeal. As a separate company, Lucent could sell gear to AT&T’s competitors on an even footing with Nortel, Cisco and others. The timing was also perfect. In the late 1990s companies like Worldcom, Qwest and Global Crossing were laying fiber optic cables around the country and the world. Start-ups like Winstar were spending billions on new-fangled wireless networks. Dozens of small companies including PathNet came up with designs for other types of telecom networks. ……… In the giant PathNet deal that Fiorina oversaw, Lucent agreed to fund more than 100% of the company’s equipment purchases, meaning the small company would get both Lucent gear at no money down and extra cash to boot. Yet how could such a loan to PathNet make sense for Lucent, even based on the world as it appeared in the heady days of 1999? The smaller company had barely $100 million in equity (and that’s based on generous accounting assumptions) on top of which it had already balanced $350 million in junk bonds paying 12.25% interest. Adding $440 million in loans from Lucent to this already debt-heavy capital structure would jack the company’s leverage up to 8 to 1, and potentially even higher as they drew more of the loan. Fiorina says in her autobiography that she pushed back against the pressure for short-term growth at any cost, and two former Lucent collegues with whom she remains friendly back her up. On the other hand, this 2001 Fortune story, which described Lucent’s irresponsible growth habits, cites sources saying Fiorina made it known that Wall Street would generously reward companies that emphasized and delivered robust revenue growth. And an executive who sat across the table from Fiorina in a big vendor financing negotiation, when asked this week about what he remembers of the bargaining, described Fiorina as being dead set on chalking up a huge sale. He adds: “The press release was always very important to her.”
(emphasis mine)
And she thinks that she can run for President, or more likely, she thinks that the Presidential run will set the table for another future Senate bid.
It appears that she has learned nothing from her shellacking by Barbara Boxer. (10% in 2010, which was a Republican wave election)
Two gunmen were killed after they opened fire Sunday evening outside an event hosted by an anti-Islam group in Garland, Tex., featuring cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, local officials said. According to the authorities, the two assailants shot a security guard and were, in turn, shot and killed by police officers.
Officials did not name the gunmen or assign a motive for the attack. A spokeswoman for the F.B.I. in Dallas said the agency was providing investigative and bomb technician assistance to the Garland police.
The City of Garland confirmed the episode in a Facebook posting.
The shooting began shortly before 7 p.m. outside the Curtis Culwell Center at an event organized by the American Freedom Defense Initiative, an anti-Islam organization based in New York.
“As today’s Muhammad Art Exhibit event at the Curtis Culwell Center was coming to an end,” the Facebook posting said, “two males drove up to the front of the building in a car. Both males were armed and began shooting at a Garland I.S.D. security officer.”
The “American Freedom Defense Initiative” has, among other things, campaigned against a mosque being built in Manhattan, because ……… Muslims.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has classified this group, along with most of the other groups she is affiliated with.
Geller is one of the founders of that organization.
Much like issue of the Nazis who wanted to march in Skokie, Illinois, I defend her right to free speech, but like those Nazis, we need to understand that she is a contemptible bigot who should be shunned by all right thinking people.
Instead, I expect to see her on mainstream news media (primarily Fox, but also the others) at least a dozen times over the next few months.
Ben Carson confirmed on Sunday that he will be announcing his presidential bid on Monday.
Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, made the announcement in a television interview with Sinclair Broadcasting ahead of his formal campaign kickoff event, still scheduled for Monday in Detroit . Carson suggested to POLITICO the interview was a pre-interview to be released around the time of the announcement but said in it: “I’m willing to be a part of the equation, and, therefore, I’m announcing my candidacy for president of the United States.” Carson later acknowledged that he did informally disclose his candidacy. His comments came at the Detroit Music Hall, where he was preparing to rehearse for his announcement.
So many Republican candidates, and most of them are walking advertisements for psychotropic medication.
Basically, he is describing the private equity wet dream for charter schools:
Whenever a college student asks me, a veteran high-school English educator, about the prospects of becoming a public-school teacher, I never think it’s enough to say that the role is shifting from “content expert” to “curriculum facilitator.” Instead, I describe what I think the public-school classroom will look like in 20 years, with a large, fantastic computer screen at the front, streaming one of the nation’s most engaging, informative lessons available on a particular topic. The “virtual class” will be introduced, guided, and curated by one of the country’s best teachers (a.k.a. a “super-teacher”), and it will include professionally produced footage of current events, relevant excerpts from powerful TedTalks, interactive games students can play against other students nationwide, and a formal assessment that the computer will immediately score and record. I tell this college student that in each classroom, there will be a local teacher-facilitator (called a “tech”) to make sure that the equipment works and the students behave. Since the “tech” won’t require the extensive education and training of today’s teachers, the teacher’s union will fall apart, and that “tech” will earn about $15 an hour to facilitate a class of what could include over 50 students. This new progressive system will be justified and supported by the American public for several reasons: Each lesson will be among the most interesting and efficient lessons in the world; millions of dollars will be saved in reduced teacher salaries; the “techs” can specialize in classroom management; performance data will be standardized and immediately produced (and therefore “individualized”); and the country will finally achieve equity in its public school system. ……… I’ve started recognizing a common thread to the latest trends in teaching. Flipped learning, blending learning, student-centered learning, project-based learning, and even self-organized learning—they all marginalize the teacher’s expertise. Or, to put it more euphemistically, they all transform the teacher into a more facilitative role.
I believe that a good adjective to describe this vision is, “Dystopian“.
A good adjective to describe the article is, “Incomprehensible”.
A good summary is, “Education changes ……… Because ……… Internet.”
Protests escalated in Baltimore on Saturday over the death of Freddie Gray, who suffered a serious spinal cord injury while in police custody. The mysterious injury raised suspicions that he was taken on a “rough ride,” in which officers deliberately drive erratically to injure unbuckled and handcuffed passengers. But the president of Maryland’s police union told ThinkProgress he is unaware of the unsanctioned police practice.
In a word, bullsh%$.
“Rough rides”, a procedure where a person is placed in a paddy wagon, handcuffed but not buckled in, and then subjected to a ride that consists of sudden starts, stops, and abrupt maneuvers, and so tossing them around the inside of the vehicle.
I understand that Mr. Canales has a responsibility to represent his union members, but this sort of bald faced lie, much like the boneheaded statement by Gene Ryan, president of the Baltimore FOP that the earlier peaceful protests were akin to a lynching, are transparently false.
What’s more these statements are clearly inflammatory, and so both of these folks served to put their own members at risk.
“That’s the first time I’ve ever heard that term before,” Maryland Fraternal Order of Police President Vince Canales said when asked about the event that may have caused Gray’s death.
Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts acknowledged on Friday that Gray’s injuries could have been caused by a “rough ride,” but said the investigation into the circumstances of his death will continue even after the police findings are given to prosecutors on Wednesday.
A Baltimore Sun investigation found that Gray is not the only person to emerge from a Baltimore police van with serious injuries — others have won multi-million judgments after suing the police department for their injuries. But despite the repeated brutal incidents, Canales and others closely entwined with the city police are still unaware of the practice.
Baltimore deputy public defender Natalie Finegar told the Baltimore Sun she has no personal knowledge of “rough rides,” but others in her office are aware of the practice. “It is common knowledge among public defenders that [the Baltimore Police Department] has paid out significant judgments in ‘rough ride’ and other cases,” James Johnston, a Baltimore public defender, told the Sun. “In my experience, it is not uncommon for clients to suffer injuries during an arrest.”
When asked about a series of cases of police brutality in Baltimore, Canales presented a very different view from advocates who say the recent incidents in Ferguson, New York City, Cleveland and elsewhere were part of a larger systematic problem with police.
Instead of banning any particular police practices, Canales said each incident should be treated on a “case-by-case” basis because “everyone responds differently to different situations.” But reports from acrossthecountry have proved otherwise. In Baltimore, an investigation from 2014 found that the police department has paid around $5.7 million to more than 100 people since 2011 in lawsuits claiming officers beat up mostly African American suspects.
Maybe police officers should turf out Vince Canales and Gene Ryan at the next union election, because they sure as hell aren’t serving their members or the general public.
Getting a speeding ticket is not a feel-good moment for anyone. But consider Reima Kuisla, a Finnish businessman. He was recently fined 54,024 euros (about $58,000) for traveling a modest, if illegal, 64 miles per hour in a 50 m.p.h. zone. And no, the 54,024 euros did not turn out to be a typo, or a mistake of any kind. Mr. Kuisla is a millionaire, and in Finland the fines for more serious speeding infractions are calculated according to income. The thinking here is that if it stings for the little guy, it should sting for the big guy, too. The ticket had its desired effect. Mr. Kuisla, 61, took to Facebook last month with 12 furious posts in which he included a picture of his speeding ticket and a picture of what 54,024 euros could buy if it were not going to the state coffers — a new Mercedes. He said he was seriously considering leaving Finland altogether, a position to which he held firm when reached by phone at a bar where he was watching horse races. “The way things are done here makes no sense,” Mr. Kuisla sputtered, saying he would not be giving interviews. Before hanging up, he added: “For what and for whom does this society exist? It is hard to say.” ……… But the idea that the rich should pay heavier fines did not seem to be much in question. “It is an old system,” said Pasi Kemppainen, chief superintendent at the National Police Board. “It may lead to high fines, but only for people who can afford it.” In fact, the Finnish “day fine” system, also in use in some other Scandinavian countries, dates to the 1920s, when fines based on income were instituted for all manner of lesser crimes, such as petty theft and assault, and helped greatly reduce the prison population. Advertisement The fines are calculated based on half an offender’s daily net income, with some consideration for the number of children under his or her roof and a deduction deemed to be enough to cover basic living expenses, currently 255 euros per month. Then, that figure is multiplied by the number of days of income the offender should lose, according to the severity of the offense. Mr. Kuisla, a betting man who parlayed his winnings into a real estate empire, was clocked speeding near the Seinajoki airport. Given the speed he was going, Mr. Kuisla was assessed eight days. His fine was then calculated from his 2013 income, 6,559,742 euros, or more than $7 million at current exchange rates. Someone committing a similar offense and earning about 50,000 euros a year, or $54,000, none of it capital gains, and with no young children, would get a fine of about 345 euros, or about $370. Someone earning 300,000 euros ($322,000), would have to pay about 1,480 euros ($1,590).
One of the big questions about Ted Cruz is whether he is a true believer, or if he is just a self-aggrandizing asshole who is doing this for his own selfish reasons.
Senator Ted Cruz has positioned himself as a strong opponent of same-sex marriage, urging pastors nationwide to preach in support of marriage as an institution between a man and a woman, which he said was “ordained by God.”
But on Monday night, at a reception for him at the Manhattan apartment of two prominent gay hoteliers, the Texas senator and Republican presidential hopeful struck quite a different tone.
During the gathering, according to two people present, Mr. Cruz said he would not love his daughters any differently if one of them was gay. He did not mention his opposition to same-sex marriage, saying only that marriage is an issue that should be left to the states.
The dinner and “fireside chat” for about a dozen people with Mr. Cruz and his wife, Heidi, was at the Central Park South penthouse of Mati Weiderpass and Ian Reisner, longtime business partners who were once a couple and who have been pioneers in the gay hospitality industry.
“Ted Cruz said, ‘If one of my daughters was gay, I would love them just as much,’” recalled Mr. Reisner, a same-sex marriage proponent who described himself as simply an attendee at Mr. Weiderpass’s event.
(emphasis mine)
Cruz doesn’t care about hating on the ghey, he’s just using it for political advantage.
Politicians weasel on issues all the time, but some issues, and I would include same sex marriage among these issues, there has to be a real moral component (at least on the pro-bigotry side).
The estate of Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s minister of propaganda, is taking legal action against the publisher Random House over a new biography, claiming payment for the use of extracts from his diaries.
Cordula Schacht – a lawyer whose own father, Hjalmar Schacht, was Hitler’s minister of economics – is suing Random House Germany and its imprint Siedler, over the book Goebbels, by Peter Longerich, professor of modern German history at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Longerich, an authority on the Holocaust and Nazi era Germany, drew extensively on Goebbels’ diaries in his biography, which was published in Germany in 2010. Now those same passages from the diaries are set to appear in the English edition, which Penguin Random House UK and its imprint Bodley Head will publish on 7 May.
Rainer Dresen, general counsel of Random House Germany, told the Guardian that an important principle was at stake. “We are convinced that no money should go to a war criminal,” he said.
Agreed, Mr. Dresen.
Not only is this chutzpah, it’s insane, even when not considering the overweening nature of the international copyright regime.
Charles G. and David H. Koch, the influential and big-spending conservative donors, appear to have a favorite in the race for the Republican presidential nomination: Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin. On Monday, at a fund-raising event in Manhattan for the New York State Republican Party, David Koch told donors that he and his brother, who oversee one of the biggest private political organizations in the country, believed that Mr. Walker would be the Republican nominee. “When the primaries are over and Scott Walker gets the nomination,” Mr. Koch told the crowd, the billionaire brothers would support him, according to a spokeswoman. The remark drew laughter and applause from the audience of fellow donors and Republican activists, who had come to hear Mr. Walker speak earlier at the event, held at the Union League Club. Two people who attended the event said they heard Mr. Koch go even further, indicating that Mr. Walker should be the Republican nominee. A spokeswoman disputed that wording, saying that Mr. Koch had pledged to remain officially neutral during the primary campaign. But Mr. Koch’s remark left little doubt among attendees of where his heart is, and could effectively end one of the most closely watched contests in the “invisible primary,” a period where candidates crisscross the country seeking not the support of voters but the blessing of their party’s biggest donors and fund-raisers.
Not surprising.
The Kochs don’t want to waste money, and Scotty, goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage its Midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin,* is already bought and paid for.
**Credit where credit is due. This bon mot was coined by Esquire magazine’s inimitable Charlie Pierce.
When Pope Francis used the term “genocide” on Sunday to describe the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turks 100 years ago, he was not breaking new ground. Pope John Paul II had written the same in 2001, and Francis had made similar references before. But the timing and setting of the pope’s remarks — a Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica marking the centenary of the killings, with top Armenian religious and political leaders in attendance — drew a strong international response. Armenians worldwide expressed deep gratitude to Francis, while Turkey reacted in anger. ……… The Turkish government responded to the pope’s comments by recalling its ambassador to the Vatican, and summoned the Vatican’s ambassador in Ankara to express its “great disappointment and sadness.” Turkey claims that just half a million Armenians died in fighting when they rose up against their Ottoman rulers during World War I, and denies that their deaths constitute an act of genocide. That position conflicts with the views of most historians of the period, who agree that as many as 1.5 million Armenians were victims of genocide at the hands of the Turks. ……… Francis said it was “necessary, and indeed a duty,” to remember the Armenians killed, “for whenever memory fades, it means that evil allows wounds to fester. Concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it!” Among those listening at St. Peter’s were Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and the leadership of the Armenian Apostolic Church, including Karekin II and Aram I, the two Catholicoi at the top of the church’s hierarchy. ……… Turkey said Francis’ comments “contradicted his message of peace, reconciliation and dialogue” made during his visit to the country in November. “The pope’s statement, which is far from the legal and historical reality, cannot be accepted,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu tweeted on Sunday. “Religious authorities are not the places to incite resentment and hatred with baseless allegations,” he added. Francis now risks losing Turkey’s support as he seeks to defend Christian communities being persecuted by Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Many Christians have sought refuge in Turkey, a predominantly Muslim country, as they have fled the Islamist militants.
Does anyone hear this statement, and interpret it as saying, “Nice Christians, you have there, it would be a shame if anything happened to them.”
I do understand that the Turks have made a habit of denying the Armenian Genocide, which has never made much sense to me, since the government that did it, the Ottoman Empire ceased to exist almost a century ago.
I do understand why Erdoğan’s government is determined to whitewash this though. It is very clear that his AKP party is trying to relegate the reforms of tye Young Turks and Ataturk to the dust-bin of history.
That is why the plans to redevelop Taksim square included the rebuilding of the Taksim Military Barracks, which was a central symbol of the attempted Ottoman counter coup in 1909.
With even mainstream Democrats coming to embrace the idea of expanding Social Security to help address our looming retirement crisis, it couldn’t be long before the pushback emerged from conservatives and Republicans. Bloomberg’s libertarian economics columnist Megan McArdle was quick out of the box, with a column published Tuesday titled, “The Left Gets it Wrong About Social Security.” You should read it, because it’s rare to find so much sophistry, misunderstanding and misinformation about Social Security packed into one article. You can count McArdle’s disdain for retired people, seldom expressed so openly, as a dividend.
Read the rest.
It methodically takes apart her assumptions, and shows how they have nothing to do with reality.
Go read the rest of Michael Hiltzik’s article in the LA Times.
