Monday Reading

 

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

ICYMI,  Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell was on "60 Minutes" last night and had this to say about economic growth and employment over the coming year:

Scott Pelley: What are your projections for growth and employment?

Jerome Powell: If you look at what private sector forecasters are saying or what forecasters who sit around this table who are on the Federal Open Market Committee, our rate setting committee, what they're forecasting is growth for this year in the range of 6% or 7%, which would be the highest level in, you know, 30 years. Or even maybe a little bit higher. And forecasting unemployment to move down substantially from 6%, where it is now, maybe to between 4% and 5%.

Scott Pelley: It seems like you're not expecting a recovery, you're expecting a boom.

Jerome Powell: Well, I would say that this growth that we're expecting in the second half of this year is going to be very strong.

If the Biden infrastructure bill is passed this year, this growth could be sustained for years.

E.J. Dionne, Jr., has a rebuttal to the argument against adding justices to the Supreme Court made by Justice Stephen Breyer, the Court's answer to Joe Manchin:

If I believed that today’s judicial conservatives shared Breyer’s inclination toward compromise and restraint, I might agree with his warnings last week against the movement to enlarge the Supreme Court.

Unfortunately, most right-wing judges are not who Breyer wants them to be, and the court on which he serves is not as apolitical as he wishes it were.

The Supreme Court faces a legitimacy crisis not because progressives are complaining but because of what they are complaining about: a reckless, right-wing, anti-democratic court majority, and a conservative court-packing campaign marked by the disgraceful Republican blockade against President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland in 2016 and the unseemly rush to confirm Justice Amy Coney Barrett just before President Donald Trump’s defeat last November. [snip]

In my ideal world, we would not have to worry about a thoughtful justice such as Breyer spending the rest of his days on the court. But that world no longer exists.

This is why many liberals are calling on the 82-year-old justice to resign. They want a Democratic president, backed by a Democratic Senate, to install his replacement. After Garland, only a fool (something Breyer certainly is not) would believe that a Republican Senate would give a Democratic president’s appointee, no matter how moderate or qualified, a hearing.

Breyer needs to be convinced to retire now, while Democrats hold a paper thin majority, but one that's dependent on several octogenarians staying alive for the next 2 years.

The more his political career is in danger, the more Bibi "Bomb Bomb" Netanyahu is willing to blow up the Middle East:

Iran blamed Israel on Monday for a sabotage attack on its underground Natanz nuclear facility that damaged its centrifuges, an assault that imperils ongoing talks over its tattered nuclear deal and brings a shadow war between the two countries into the light.

Israel has not claimed responsibility for the attack. It rarely does for operations carried out by its secret military units or its Mossad intelligence agency. However, Israeli media widely reported that the country had orchestrated a devastating cyberattack that caused a blackout at the nuclear facility. Meanwhile, a former Iranian official said the attack set off a fire.

The attack further strains relations between the U.S., which under President Joe Biden is now negotiating in Vienna to re-enter the nuclear accord, and Israel, whose Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to stop the deal at all costs. Netanyahu met Monday with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, whose arrival in Israel coincided with the first word of the attack.

Bomb Bomb is one of the most reckless, dangerous figures in the world right now, and he's putting his own survival ahead of that of the State of Israel.

"Matt who?"

Rep. Matt Gaetz, who's facing a federal investigation into sex trafficking allegations, was recently denied a meeting with Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate as the ex-President and his allies continue to distance themselves from the Florida congressman.

Two people familiar with the matter said Gaetz tried to schedule a visit with Trump after it was first revealed that he was being investigated, but the request was rejected by aides close to the former President, who have urged Trump not to stick his neck out to defend Gaetz. Harlan Hill, a spokesman for Gaetz, said the congressman did not request a meeting with Trump this week.

Also, Harlan Hill is a spokesman for Gaetz now?  The same faux "Bernie Sanders Democrat" Harlan Hill trotted out by Fox "News" to regularly bash Democrats, until he called Kamala Harris an "insufferable lying bitch"?  That lying little lump?  Well, he's finally sunk to his proper level now.

 

Infidel 753 has his usual, superb link round-up to interesting posts from around the Internet to share with us.   Don't miss it, or his thought- provoking essays (the latest of which concerns the obsession with blood in Christianity -- check it out, too).

 

Easter Sunday Reflection: Silence

 

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."-- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who was assassinated on this day in 1968 in Memphis, TN.

Dr. King fought passionately for civil rights and voting rights, knowing that it put his life in constant jeopardy. The segregationist and racist forces that were arrayed against him in the '60s have reemerged in the Republican Party. They don't wear Klan robes now, preferring business suits, blow-dried hairstyles, and code words. But in Georgia, as in Texas, Arizona and other states, they're working mightily to restore those days as they cling to power through voter suppression, gerrymandering, and other anti-democratic actions. Had he lived to this day, you can be certain that to the extent a 92- year- old man could, he would be in front of efforts to stop the new Republican Jim Crow laws. He would never be silent about denying voting rights, this "thing that matters," and neither should we.

(photo: Aides point in the direction of the assassin's shot. Joseph Louw via Getty Images)

Greasy Don Wants YOU!

The comedy duo known as The Good Liars (Davram Stiefler and Jason Selvig) came up with a "recruiting poster" featuring the smug face of Greasy Donald Trump, Jr. encouraging others to enlist. He and his family have never served in the military, and probably never will.

The duo put the poster up at the Army recruiting center in Brooklyn, NY. Well played!

The Terrorists Are Already Here (Cont.)

Why a religion should not be judged by the words and actions of a few (h/t Raw Story).

Exhibit A:

The president of a Christian university encouraged his students to get concealed firearm permits so they could prevent the next mass shooting from happening there.

Jerry Falwell, Jr., head of Liberty University, a Christian school in Virginia, invoked the mass shooting this week at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California. Fourteen people were killed and 21 were injured in the attack, which was carried out by a husband and wife who claimed loyalty to the Islamic State.

Falwell criticized President Obama for urging gun control in the wake of recent shootings, and made it clear he was armed during his speech at a convocation Friday night.  [snip]

He encouraged people to carry guns so they could "end those Muslims before they walk in and kill us,” Falwell said.  (our emphasis)

That would be the son of the late and not lamented Jerry Falwell, creator of "The Moral Majority" (one of the original -- if you don't count the KKK-- "Christian" right political organizations) which, it was said, was neither moral nor a majority.  Apparently being a soulless hypocrite is genetically transmitted.

Exhibit B:

A Florida man taken into custody for vandalizing a Palm Beach Islamic center, has a Facebook page containing posts attacking Muslims, with other photos showing him admiring guns, saying: “That AR-15 will put down any radical Islamic!! I wish they would!!!”

Acting on a tip, North Palm Beach Police arrested 27-year-old Joshua Warren Killets who confessed to detectives after being taken into custody, the Sun Sentinel reports. [snip]

While police did not release any details of his confession or motive, a perusal of his Facebook page shows a deeply-held belief in Christianity combined with hatred for Muslims and refugees.

In one photo, Killets can be seen holding a AR15 assault rifle next to a comment saying it would “take down any radical Islamic.”

In another, in what appears to be the same gun shop, he holds a handgun, with the caption: “Yea it’s bout that time!! The worlds gone crazy!! Ima be ready to protect mines !! Best believe!!!”   (our emphasis)

You be a mean motor scooter and a bad go-getter, white boy!!!

And, wait for it...

Still another posting shows Killets has recently been admitted to Palm Beach Atlantic University  — a “faith-based college” — in their Organizational Management program.

Seems like an intelligent, nice boy who's fully grasped the meaning of Christ's teachings.  Maybe they have a rifle team he can join.  Or possibly a KKK chapter he can organize.

Charleston And The "Culture Of Evasion"

Here's E.J. Dionne, Jr., this morning on how some =cough= Republicans = cough= take cover through a "culture of evasion" to deflect the changes that we need to make as a people in the wake of tragedies like the murders in Charleston, SC:

Right off the top, anyone who wants to discuss the implications of this shooting is scolded for “politicizing a tragedy.” We are told we must heal and mourn first, that it’s “disrespectful” to the victims to ask what this slaughter means and what we must do as a nation. How manipulative: Mourning the deaths of good people — and honoring the astonishing spirit of forgiveness modeled by their families — is used as an excuse to delay reflection on why this happened until the moment of urgency passes. In a media culture with a short attention span, there is no surer way to contain and marginalize the hard questions. (our emphasis)

Hmm.  Could he be referring, at least in part, to an op/ ed in the same paper the day before from Republican apologist and Family Bush publicist Kathleen Parker, who wrote this perfect example of delaying reckoning:

As I hear talk-show hosts scramble to turn this tragedy into issues — gun control, race, mental illness, what’s next? — I can’t help thinking that some manners are in order. People need time to recover from shock and to heal. Grief isn’t bound by deadlines or expressed in sound bites. Southerners, especially, like to take time with their mourning.

Let’s allow them.  (our emphasis)

No, let's not allow them.

Manners?  How is flying the flag of slavery and treason -- the "American swastika" -- at the South Carolina state capitol mannerly?   Southerners "like to take time" in a lot of things, don't they?  Southerners are taking their time getting over the Civil War, over integration, over voting rights, over same-sex marriage -- essentially over entering the 20th (much less the 21st) century.

No, they've had enough time.  And they don't have the moral authority to decide when and how long to mourn the victims of their "heritage."

UPDATE:  The Governor of South Carolina is now calling for the flag of slavery and treason to come down.

A Birthday To Reflect On

Martin Luther King, Jr. would have been 82 years old today. It's hard to believe that he was only 39 when he was assassinated. He had accomplished enormous things in a brief life, yet we wonder what else he would have accomplished had he lived longer. We were made far poorer for his loss.

Number 8 Is 50

Happy birthday to one of the all-time great baseball players, Baltimore's Cal Ripken, Jr., who turns 50 today. Ripken holds what will probably be the unbreakable record of 2,632 straight games from May, 1982 to September, 1998. He eclipsed Lou Gehrig's record of 2,130 consecutive games in 1995, and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY on the first ballot in 2007.

Ripken played his entire career with the Baltimore Orioles, notable in this age of free agency and the grab-it-while-you-can sports business.

Not Buying This Ford

Political chameleon and conserva-Dem Harold "Prince Hal" Ford is putting out statements that he's considering challenging New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand in the Dem primaries. Prince Hal had a snark-worthy interview published in the New York Times a few days ago, that showed him to be the privileged operator the transplanted Tennessean is. What NY team does he support? The one whose owner he's closest to. Been to all the boroughs in New York City? He's flown over all of them. Mingled with New Yorkers? He takes a limo to and from work -- sometimes MSNBC, sometimes Merrill Lynch, where he's a vice president. And he always has breakfast at the Regency on Park Avenue.

The superb and charismatic New York Rep. Anthony Weiner has a few great words on the subject of Prince Hal, who must think New York owes him a Senate seat. Better for Prince Hal to return to Tennessee, where he can pretend to be a Dem again.

(photo: African American [!] Prince Hal campaigned as a "Dem" in Tennessee in 2006 -- enough said)

Send Frank Gaffney to Afghanistan -- In Uniform

Far right-wing chickenhawk Frank "Gas" Gaffney was on Tweety's Hardball show yesterday, and at the end of his extreme fulminations about Afghanistan attacked guest Ron Reagan, who was pointing out the dire situation there, thanks to the previous gang. Gas was fresh from giving felon Irving "Scooter" Libby and The Dick awards for being fellow right wingers at his "Center for Security Policy", which is sponsored by the Scaife Foundation and other far right sources of wingnut welfare. Things heated up when Gas said to Reagan, "your father would be ashamed of you," and Reagan replied, "you better watch your mouth about that."

Gas is one of those neocons who chose not to wear the uniform of their country, but who fancy themselves "tough" military experts unafraid of sending other Americans to their deaths. On an earlier appearance on Hardball, Gas was discussing American troop deaths in Iraq:

"It is regrettable that they had to die, but I believe they did have to die. . . .I'm still delighted that we did what we did."

Since Gas seems to think that Ron Jr.'s opposition to further troop increases in Afghanistan would make Ron Sr. "ashamed," we'd like to see Gas put his ass where his gas is and sign up for front line duty in Afghanistan. That way, Ron Sr. wouldn't be ashamed of him either for sitting another war out on the sidelines.

A Sad Anniversary

Ten years ago today, John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife Carolyn, and his sister-in-law Lauren Bessette died in a plane crash off of Martha's Vineyard. For a time, the handsome prince of the Kennedy family was talked up as a future president, but it was questionable that he had the desire for the job his father held so many years ago. Now, we'll never know. He was by all accounts a modest, normal guy, loved by his friends and family, who happened to be born with the looks of a movie star and the name of the most famous family in the U.S.

Buckley Dead at 82

William F. Buckley, Jr., one of the major figures in the resurgence of conservatism in the U.S. has died at 82. Buckley, "born to the manor" to a wealthy New York family, was a Yale-educated, often condescending, and aristocratic spokesman and publisher for right wing causes for some 50 years, but he was at the same time entertaining and interesting on his long-running "Firing Line" program (ironically, on commercial-free public television). He counted some progressive luminaries, such as John Kenneth Galbraith and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. among his friends. To his credit, he lacked the crude, thuggish instincts of today's Limbaugh/Coulter/Hannity/Savage crew of reactionary bloviators.