Ain't life elemental?

Alexander Granach as Renfield in F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu (1922).

Looks like we won't get to find out how David Brooks responds to the white-terrorist attack on the Mother Emmanuel Church in Charleston, the papal encyclical Laudato Si, or Donald Trump's presidential campaign, all questions of some spiritual interest, because he's still on that book tour (Oregonians can catch him this weekend at branches of Powells) and hasn't got time to look at the papers unless he has special orders, as in Tuesday's TPP column (for which, as I've suggested, somebody else must have done the reading and all he needed to do was to lay out the index cards on the hotel-room shag and then type them up).

Instead what we get is another installment in the crowd-sourced characterology museum he started last month, where visitors to the Road to Character website record the ways in which they found a purpose in life, and then he cuts them up and pins them to the wall with bits of his own prose for continuity:

Like are you saying racism is intrinsically *bad* or something?

The first Memorial Day or Decoration Day was apparently held in Charleston by freed men and women of color, May 1865, when they went to "decorate" the mass graves of mostly white Union soldiers dead in the local POW camps in love and respect. Via Damario Solomon-Simmons.

I never know what to say on occasions for despair like this white-terrorist massacre in Charleston. I'm good to go with Obama's statement, which I thought was very just though almost too sad to bear, and the things all my favorite people have been writing today, I don't have any special insights of my own.

No, wait, there's one thing, in the area we're all talking about, of the weird insistence of the right wing that we shouldn't call the killer a terrorist, or a racist, or refer to the crime as a "hate crime". Like, I can understand why they'd want to say he isn't a conservative, because that would suggest there's something wrong with conservatism.  But for that very reason it's pretty weird when they avoid saying he's a racist, insisting instead that it's wholly unknowable, like Governor Nikki Haley:

Ramadan karim!

"Bajraklidzamija" by Missty011 - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

I was moved by this NPR story on Ramadan preparations in Belgrade, of all places, where the congregation of the Bajrakli Mosque (built 1575, and last survivor of the 273 mosques of Ottoman Belgrade), where local Muslims are toiling to make sure refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, and elsewhere can break their fasts tonight—at the price, in some cases, of doing without themselves. Who knew there were still Muslims living in Belgrade after the horrors of the 1990s?

Get happy! On the Edge of the World

What with the latest kerfuffle over Republican campaign music—Donald Trump somehow imagining he could have permission to use a song by Bernie Sanders supporter Neil Young—Scott Eric Kaufman at Salon has produced an elegant video history of conservative misappropriation of nonconservative musicians going back to the Reagan campaign's strange belief that Bruce Springsteen's 1984 anthem of despair "Born in the USA" could be used to articulate Reagan's message of sunny, childlike millionaire's greed, and wonders by the way if there's any popular music at all that's safe for Republicans to use.

Here's a suggestion for JEB!, anyhow, with a bright and optimistic message, traditional country club sound values, unifyingly bipartisan reference, and performers who might put up with it because of the high irony quotient:

Speaking of irony, Daniel Scotto at The Federalist (or as we call it here, with reference to its Patrick Henry–Jeff Davis ideology, The Confederalist) offers a remarkable piece of retroactionary music criticism demonstrating that "Born in the USA" is really an attack on the Obama presidency:

Trading aces

Buster Keaton in Sherlock, Jr. (1924), via.

Well, here's a challenge: David Brooks out with the big guns in favor of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, forcing me to take a hard critical look at some arguments I'd just wave at if somebody else was writing them because I don't especially want to fight with the conclusion.

Actually there are some superficial signs that somebody else was writing them. The piece is basically entirely coherent, and remarkably sourced, with a total of seven links to information backing up his assertions. That is not Brooksian, particularly when we're talking about a subject as boring as trade policy; he had to look at seven different things, possibly more, in order to crank this out? On the same weekend he was putting out an entire, though feeble, repetitive, and recycling-filled, Dartmouth commencement address?

My first thought was that it must have been altogether ghosted, by some bright young person at the Manhattan Institute or wherever. But there are structural signs he did in fact lay it out himself: the characteristic form of a listicle of italicized representations of the bad things rejecting the TPP will accomplish:

Cheap shots and radiant inner light

Image by J.Scott Applewhite/AP.

Jeb! to Declare Presidential Run, Playing Down His Surname

By MICHAEL BARBARO and JONATHAN MARTIN JUNE 15, 2015

MIAMI — Jeb! (who uses only one name), a son and brother of presidents, formally entered the race for the White House on Monday by portraying himself as the most accomplished leader in the 2016 field, declaring war on Washington’s political culture and insisting that his former family name of Bush gave him no unique claim to the Oval Office.

As his mother, Barbara, a former first lady, looked on, Mr. Jeb! directly confronted the central doubt looming over his candidacy: that he presents the latest incarnation of a tired dynasty and thinks himself entitled to the Republican nomination.

“Not a one of us deserves the job by right of résumé, party, seniority, family or family narrative,” he told a crowd of 3,000 supporters in a community college’s gymnasium. “It’s nobody’s turn. It’s everybody’s test.”

Mr. Jeb!, whose tenure as governor of Florida was marked by the privatization of traditional state services, vowed to “take Washington — the static capital of this dynamic country — out of the business of causing problems.”

Nah, just for fun.

NYTimes commenter AR:

More in sorrow

Image via The Rumpus.

OK, I'm so sick of this I can hardly stand it any more, but David Atkins, whom I really like, is on the one hand correct when he writes this about the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations:

The secrecy is somewhat understandable given that it’s a multilateral international negotiation. Still, it should be much more transparent given the dramatic potential domestic consequences. The loss of manufacturing jobs, while a potent political argument, loses some of its sheen in the face of evidence that trade has already been so liberalized that TPP can’t do much further damage.

And on the other hand really wrong when he writes this:

Cuomo un huracán

Image via.

We're upstate for a family function this weekend, and my seven-month-old grandnephew Mikey was there in spectacular form, this is relevant. We're using a bed that can fairly be described as difficult, and I woke up from a stupid blogging dream in which I was writing a post about some annoying New York state education policy.

The great thing about the dream was that the policy wasn't, at least not directly, Andrew Cuomo's fault, because he had resigned from the governorship and been replaced by his infant son.

No, there is no such child, as far as I know. Presumably he was inspired by Mikey. I was aware that this was a dream, and looking forward to blogging it in the morning. I'd just have to add the infant governor to the post.

Unfortunately I was not aware that the post was also part of the dream and not part of reality, so I don't know what the policy was, so this is all you'll get.

Commencement is only the beginning

Margarete Schön in Kriemhilds Rache by Fritz Lang (1924).

David Brooks writes ("How Adulthood Happens", June 12 2015):

The most important rite of passage from youth to adulthood in our society has gone largely unnoticed, largely I guess because it has no ritual aspects, with no name, no theological underpinnings, and no ceremonies. It takes about eight years to complete, and the people who are performing it and their families have no idea it's going on. Or, putting it more simply, it isn't a rite. Why am I calling it a rite of passage? As a Friedmanesque paradoxical attention grabber, and to underscore my anthropological street cred with people who know even less about the subject than I do. They call me David Brooks.

White House Fool Report: Down to the wire

Eastern gray squirrel. Image via Chris Vaisvil.

I need you to make a phone call

Inbox

x

Elizabeth Warren info@elizabethwarren.com via proofsender1.gc.cuny.edu	12:59 PM (23 hours ago)

David, We have one last chance to stop Fast Track on trade – right now! The House has scheduled a vote for Friday, and dozens of members of Congress are still undecided (or undeclared) about which way they will vote. Will you take a minute right now to call your representative’s office and tell him or her to vote NO on Fast Track?

You need me to make a phone call? Honestly, if I'm doing it, I'm not doing it for you. I hope this great American progressive is not slowly turning into Alan Grayson.

The foggy foggy due

Pablo Picasso, Woman with Book, 1932 (Norton Simon Foundation).

Scott Lemieux's Guardian piece on the Texas abortion clinic closure law mentioned:

Casey’s biggest sin was ruling that Pennsylvania’s 24-hour waiting period was constitutional. As the fifth circuit opinion observes, the Casey decision acknowledged that the regulation would be “particularly burdensome” for poor rural women and conceded that it would have “the effect of increasing the cost and risk of delay of abortions.” And yet, justices still found that it was not an undue burden. The road between this and So what if women in west Texas have to drive 150 miles to find an abortion clinic? is shorter than it should be.

I left an IANAL (but I have studied semiotics) note at LGM:

R.I.P. Ornette Coleman

"Dancing in Your Head", live with Ornette Coleman's Primetime Band at the Live Under the Sky Festival in Yomiuri Land, Tokyo, 1986

The great saxophonist, composer, and everything Ornette Coleman has just died, at the age of 85. So a something in memoriam.

West of Eden: If Abadi meets a body

Mongol army besieging Baghdad, 1258. Image by Sayf al-dīn Waḥīdī. Herat, 1430, from the collections of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, via Wikimedia Commons.

Hope nobody's freaking out over the idea that 450 more US military trainers being sent to Anbar means it's Vietnam all over again, an inexorable quagmirization of what almost got to not be a quagmire.

To my mind the right take is that of Juan Cole:

Fast-trackless waste: Footnote

Bull kelp forests provide numerous habitats for nearshore fish and invertebrate species in the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, permanently protected from oil drilling in a move announced this morning by the Obama administration. Credit: Jared Figurski, UCSC.

A new WikiLeak from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, reported in today's Times, provides a really helpful example of something I've been trying to say and had a hard time finding language for:

Facing resistance from its Pacific trading partners, the Obama administration is no longer demanding protection for pharmaceutical prices under the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, according to a newly leaked “transparency” annex of the proposed trade accord.

As far as he's concerned

Concerned Greta Garbo. From Mauritz Stiller's Gösta Berlings Saga, 1924, via Lamb & Serpent.

Verbatim David Brooks, "The Mobilization Error", June 9 2015:

Democratic and Republican presidential candidates face a choice: They can appeal to the broadest possible audience or pander to their most devoted partisans. Most will choose option No. 2, because it's the easiest and clearest route to the presidency.

But it's not the right path.

Hahaha, fooled you, it's Ron Fournier! But I'm not sure you could corroborate that in a blind tasting. There are some formal differences keyed to the fact that one is a blog post, the other a dead-tree column: Fournier uses a lot more blockquotes (with bonus blockquote from CHUCK TODD!) and links, Brooks trots out more "arguments" (first, second, third, finally, and furthermore), but they agree, Hillary Clinton is not doing enough to unify the nation and it's time for concerned well-wishers to get really frowny.

Fast-trackless waste

Bulgarian Army officers fighting over cards, sidearms drawn, 1936 or 1937. Wikimedia Commons.

Pointless argument going on at Political Animal this weekend over the stupid Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, which I swore I was going to stop defending, but the bros keep tricking me into it. There's something toward the end of this exchange, though, that gets to the meat of what really bothers me about the anti-TPP campaign, and the question of internationalism.

I'm not copying it here because it's a Disqus thread and Blogger doesn't like the formating, but it started off with somebody called ninjascience suggesting I don't know the TPP isn't a treaty, and kept insisting if the fast-track authority was not passed the negotiating teams would just buckle down and finish writing the thing anyway.

Words in the Monsignor's Mouth

Image via DancesWithFat.

Shorter Ross Douthat, "Running against Hillary", June 7 2015:

Hillary Clinton's poll numbers are similar to the percentage of the vote obtained by Nursultan Nazarbeyev in the last Kazakhstan elections, suggesting that people are afraid if they don't tell Gallup they support her they'll be getting that knock on the door from her secret police force goons I NEVER SAID THAT funded by her billions in bribe payments from oil companies. So the brave souls risking the Gulag to run against her YOU'RE PUTTING WORDS IN MY MOUTH have their work cut out for them. They can't run to her left on domestic policies unless they happen to be Bernie Sanders (as in one case they actually are) because she is herself turning out to be a virtual Communist, and they can't criticize her foreign policy hawkishness because she has decided not to be any more hawkish than President Obama, so my view as a completely disinterested observer is that they ought to hammer her for being evil and corrupt, which will not help them win but will at least provide material that Republicans can use in the general WHAT I mean so that after she's president for life and the best Americans can say for themselves is "At least we're not Kyrgyzstan" we won't be able to say we weren't warned THAT'S NOT WHAT I SAID.

No, Monsignor, it isn't, but it's what all your fans heard. How does that work?

Eat lead, you dirty varmint. No, wait, don't!

Actually an English tourist at a Las Vegas machine gun. Photo by John Locher/AP.

Heard this on the radio from RevealNews, and subsequently saw the story in prose from the Seattle Times, which has been doing a mammoth investigation of the subject:

For over a year, The Seattle Times has been investigating how people shooting at dirty gun ranges across the U.S. have suffered from lead poisoning. Sometimes, they’ve lost feeling in their hands and feet. Other times, they’ve been too tired to get out of bed. Police are especially at risk because they have to go to gun ranges to keep their jobs. We hear from a corrections officer who got sick, and we talk to the family of an officer who died after a weeklong training session. We also look at steps firing ranges can take to prevent lead exposure.

All the fault of those liberal Iraqis. Redux.

Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik (George Melford, 1921).

Taking advice from David Brooks on Iraq, obviously, is like taking advice from Elizabeth Taylor on keeping your marriage stable. No, wait, that's cheap, Taylor never went around posing as an expert; make that taking advice from David Brooks on keeping your marriage stable. Or on anything.

Today he goes back to a theme he first broached a year ago, that the regime installed in Iraq by the Bush administration is just too damn big-government liberal, with its insistence on centralized decision-making, and what they need is some of that federalism (meaning, as ever, anti-federalism). This time he seems to have been spurred by a report in yesterday's Times noting how the Da'esh organization in Syria exploits the rage of the Sunni majority against the Assad regime to make itself an acceptable alternative:

Mind the Gap

Floating around in my drafts file is a Times business column by Eduardo Porter, discussing the (lack of) progress in talks toward next December's Paris climate change agreement, a problem, of course, with corralling the world's two largest greenhouse gas producers, China, and the United States, into a worthwhile pact. For example,

What if every other advanced nation, as a way to encourage energy efficiency and spur investments in alternatives to fossil fuels, agreed to put a price of $25 per ton on carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere? As a tax, that would add some 22 cents to the price of a gallon of gas, something few American politicians — fearing public anger — are yet ready to consider.

According to calculations by William Nordhaus, an expert on the economics of climate change at Yale, the United States, on net, would gain $8 billion a year by benefiting from everybody else’s efforts to slow down the Earth’s warming without having to exert any effort itself.

But then, what if the other nations had some mechanism for pushing the US into less anti-social behavior?

if the other advanced nations had a stick — a tariff of 4 percent on the imports from countries not in the “climate club” — the cost-benefit calculation for the United States would flip. Not participating in the club would cost Americans $44 billion a year.

This is a great idea in my view, but it also sounds "Draconian", as Porter says; it's an idea for using a trade agreement to interfere with the sovereign ability of the United States to do whatever the hell it wants. What's the progressive position on that, Senator Warren?

My position is I don't really care about the sacred sovereignty of the United States in a context like this. At all. Like the original progressives negotiating a League of Nations in Versailles in 1919 while the conservatives back in Washington conspired to make sure the US would not take part in such a thing, I would like to see the US give up some sovereignty in return for some international progress.

Which brings us to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, sort of. Why would we trust the US government better than a hammered-out body of international regulation? On the basis of what experience?