Not much to say tonight, but a mixed bag of pretty good links, starting with today’s OID story: A soccer ref working an adult-league recreational game is sucker-punched by a player he’s trying to red card, and DIES two days later. So much for the beautiful game.
The great Monica Hesse went to the men’s-rights conference last weekend, and came back with a better story than most.
How is the NYT’s Blackwater coverage not getting a higher profile? I don’t know what’s more astonishing, the first paragraph or the second:
WASHINGTON — Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor’s operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater’s top manager there issued a threat: “that he could kill” the government’s chief investigator and “no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq,” according to department reports.
American Embassy officials in Baghdad sided with Blackwater rather than the State Department investigators as a dispute over the probe escalated in August 2007, the previously undisclosed documents show. The officials told the investigators that they had disrupted the embassy’s relationship with the security contractor and ordered them to leave the country, according to the reports.
A difficult-to-read story about a man’s rape that will make your stomach churn, but perhaps illuminate the issue from a new direction. Starting with the why-didn’t-he-report-it angle.
And with that, I’m off to bed. A short week, half-done.
Sherri said on July 2, 2014 at 12:51 am
Per our discussion yesterday, whether there is a debate or not over which contraceptives are abortifacients turns out to be irrelevant to the SCOTUS decision, because the decision applies broadly to all contraceptives: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/scotus-says-hobby-lobby-ruling-applies-broadly
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 2, 2014 at 7:52 am
I also see there’s a similar post describing how Little Caesar’s can now sacrifice Christian employees to lions . . .
http://www.moonmontchronicle.com/supreme-court-rules-jcpenney-allowed-to-sacrifice-employees-to-appease-cthulhu.html
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coozledad said on July 2, 2014 at 8:06 am
Erik Prince lives in Dubai now, training personal armies for people who made money when we took all that Iraqi oil off the market. He’s a traitor and a war criminal.
He, John McCain and Miss Lindsey ought to join the Dick Cheney “Was it Good For You?” tour.
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beb said on July 2, 2014 at 8:09 am
I’m surprised there’s so little traction to the Blackwater story but then there’s so much distraction from the Hobby Lobby court decision, Benghazi, soccer, Benghazi and who knows what-all else. Of course no matter how “breaking” a story is it won’t go anywhere unless someone starts beating the drum about it. Republicans are going to because Blackwater’s robust lawlessness is exactly what they want from American Foreign Policy. And the media never listens to Democrats. So no story.
Monica Hesse should be applauded for writing a well balanced story about the Men’s Rights Conference. Anecdotally I can confirm that men can be massive pricks and woman can be stupid sluts. Sadly I refuse to the same couple. Libertarians think the world would get along just fine without laws. The douchiness of humanity says otherwise.
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brian stouder said on July 2, 2014 at 8:44 am
What Beb said!
And – don’t miss Kirk’s story at the end of the last thread…it’s good stuff.
It left me with a question, although I’m pretty sure there’s no answer: Why run on the field?
What is the exit strategy?
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Kirk said on July 2, 2014 at 8:54 am
Brian@5: Rum had a lot to do with it.
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brian stouder said on July 2, 2014 at 9:01 am
I’d have been scared out of my wits, in the moment!
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brian stouder said on July 2, 2014 at 9:49 am
An interesting obituary – which will make you chuckle at the end
http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/01/showbiz/movies/obit-paul-mazursky/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
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Dorothy said on July 2, 2014 at 9:59 am
That’s sad about Paul Mazursky, Brian. He was in one of my favorite films, 2 Days in the Valley, with Danny Aiello, Teri Hatcher, Jeff Daniels, Eric Stolz and Charlize Theron, among others. I think I own a copy of that movie – I might have to get it out and watch it this weekend. Here’s Roger Ebert’s review of it in case some of you are unfamiliar with it:
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/2-days-in-the-valley-1996
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brian stouder said on July 2, 2014 at 10:15 am
Dorothy – sold!
I’ll have to get a copy of that movie (possibly it will stream on Amazon…)
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4dbirds said on July 2, 2014 at 10:19 am
Not only why didn’t he report it, what was he wearing? Tongue in cheek but you guys know that.
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Jeff Borden said on July 2, 2014 at 10:42 am
Funny, but I really didn’t like Paul Mazursky in “2 Days in the Valley,” an otherwise nifty little movie with the great James Spader as his smarmiest. The whole schtick with the dog named Bogey was too cute by half. . .at least for me.
Reading the rape story made me think about how frequently police procedurals on TV include the detectives chiding a suspect that if he doesn’t help them out and he winds up in jail, he’ll be someone’s bitch. Very creepy.
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Dorothy said on July 2, 2014 at 11:00 am
Well I can’t particularly recall if I “liked” Paul Mazursky in that movie, Jeff, but I did really love the movie overall. Reading the Ebert review really got me in the mood to see it again. But much like the Michael Douglas movie “The Game”, once you know all the secrets, it can be difficult to get caught up in the story again. You can’t ‘unsee’ it and forget how the story comes together once you’ve seen it, ya know? Still, there’s an appreciation to seeing a clever film more than once. Stimulating, in a way.
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Jeff Borden said on July 2, 2014 at 11:39 am
True enough.
We’ve been working our way through a couple of boxed sets of film noire from the late `40s and early `50s. There’s some great stuff and no film is ever more than 90 minutes long. “Crossfire” directed by Fritz Lang tells the tale of a cop investigating a hate crime. . .the beating death of a Jew by a former soldier. Robert Young is the cop. Robert Mitchum is a helpful Army sergeant. Robert Ryan is the anti-Semite. Allegedly, the story was to focus on the beating death of a homosexual, but that was too hot for Hollywood, so they changed the victim to a Jewish man. At one point, Young’s character reveals he is a Catholic and that his grandfather was killed by anti-Catholic bigots. It’s all very noir but with a firm moral core.
Even though it’s in the sun-drenched realm of SoCal, I think “2 Days” qualifies as a film noir. If Charlize Theron isn’t a femme fatale, the words have no meaning.
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nancy said on July 2, 2014 at 11:42 am
And you get to see Charlize in that spectacular see-through white lace body suit.
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brian stouder said on July 2, 2014 at 11:40 am
Speaking of good shows – I confess I got hooked into two episodes of CNN’s “The Sixties” – and it was quite good.
The 2 I watched were about our arc from the murder of JFK into the war in Vietnam, with one heartwarming/heartbreaking parallel after the next in the concurrent Civil Rights movement
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brian stouder said on July 2, 2014 at 11:55 am
see-through white lace body suit?
I am THERE!
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Jeff Borden said on July 2, 2014 at 12:06 pm
Brian,
She’s never looked hotter. She also has a pretty intense fight with Teri Hatcher in a motel room. . .if you like that kind of thing, LOL.
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beb said on July 2, 2014 at 12:33 pm
Tag this as “saw it coming”
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/georgia-showdown-guns-everywhere
Tuesday was the first day of Georgia’s Guns Everywhere law. Man enters a convenience story carrying a gun and is approached by another man carrying a gun. Man #2 wants to see Man #1’s ID and gun license, pulling out his gun in the process. Man #1 says no, pays for his purchases, leave and calls the police. Man#2 is arrested for brandishing a gun in a store.
One small misstep by either of these guys and it would have been carnage. I was glad to hear that the police actually made an arrest over the confrontation.
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brian stouder said on July 2, 2014 at 1:28 pm
Terri Hatcher is the hot brunette who was on the TV Superman show a few years back, yes?
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Jeff Borden said on July 2, 2014 at 1:37 pm
Yes. And in one of the most memorable “Seinfeld” episodes, where Jerry is obsessed with determining whether her breasts are real or augmented. She delivers the classic line as she is angrily storming out of his apartment: “They’re real. . .and they’re spectacular.”
I believe during the heyday of the “Lois & Clark” series she was the most searched for woman on the Intertoobz.
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Joe Kobiela said on July 2, 2014 at 2:48 pm
Brian,
I have also been watching the 60’s it is quite good.
The one on civil rights, set me back a bit, was commenting to the wife it wasn’t that long ago, what were we thinking?
Pilot Joe
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Dorothy said on July 2, 2014 at 2:49 pm
Kicking myself for not mentioning my appreciation of that movie when I met Ms. Hatcher about a year ago at Kenyon College. Her daughter was registering for a young writers’ conference and I met her at the bookstore. She allowed me to take a selfie with her to share with my brother Joe, who adores her!
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nancy said on July 2, 2014 at 2:58 pm
Aforementioned selfie.
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brian stouder said on July 2, 2014 at 3:07 pm
Dorothy – very, very cool!
The one on civil rights, set me back a bit, was commenting to the wife it wasn’t that long ago, what were we thinking?
Joe – along those lines, I was born in 1961, and lots of the clips on CNN are from contemporaneous NBC news and CBS newscasts.
My mom was always a CBS news person (Walter Cronkite and Eric Sevareid were larger than life THEN, and looking back at them from here they’re practically monuments) and the thought kept crossing my mind that my mom and dad probably watched that newscast or recalled this particular event directly from what they saw on their black & white TV, while I was a toddler. What kind of world did they suppose they had brought babies into, then?
It reminds one how good things really are, right now.
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Scout said on July 2, 2014 at 3:29 pm
Well that didn’t take long:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/religious-groups-lgbt-hiring-hobby-lobby
And herein lies the problem with an activist SCOTUS and the piecemeal chopping up of the separation of church and state. I get it that Holly Hobby Lobby only wanted to deny their employees IUDs and Plan B, and that some of the reaction has been a bit hyperbolic, ignoring that HL isn’t opting out of all birth control. But here it is already… an early sign that le can de la worms, she is open.
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Jolene said on July 2, 2014 at 3:29 pm
Speaking of the Sixties, Marc Fisher, one of my favorite WaPo writers, just posted a new article re how the few Jews in the South reacted to the students, about half of whom were Jewish, who came south to participate in Freedom Summer. Lots of tension between the locals, who felt themselves to be just getting by in terms of tolerance, and the outsiders who came in stirring up trouble. Always interesting to hear first-person accounts and stories within the story.
http://www.momentmag.com/freedom-summer-came-town/?utm_campaign=Magazine+Subscribers+Upcoming+Issue&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=13359945&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_wKf6UPLatInXBbtLc2fxgVNXvcidlt1gqblNwFDXgfcKIO4ZKGOHAwm7fbJfnqIsm82OBmZnokhgQffKkRFdwt9XQtA&_hsmi=13359945
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Sherri said on July 2, 2014 at 3:42 pm
Scout, Hobby Lobby only wanted to deny 4 forms of birth control, but as the link I posted back @1 makes clear, the ruling doesn’t just apply to Hobby Lobby. Hobby Lobby was representative of a set of cases in which lower courts had already ruled that the companies didn’t have to provide any form of contraception because of their religious beliefs, and the justices did not comment, leaving those rulings in place. In cases where the lower court ruled for the administration and against the company, SCOTUS ordered the lower courts to reconsider the rulings. There were about 50 cases involving for-profit companies, some of which are owned by Catholics who oppose all forms of contraception.
So yes, the ruling does let a “closely held” corporation opt out of providing insurance to cover any contraception because of their religious belief. That’s not a hyperbolic overreaction; that’s the law of the land, unless Congress changes RFRA.
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Jolene said on July 2, 2014 at 4:12 pm
The ACA faces another legal challenge in a case to be decided soon, not in the Supreme Court but in the D.C. Court of Appeals. This challenge stems from the unwillingness of some states to set up their own exchanges. The law is written to indicate that subsidies for insurance will be provided through exchanges to be established by the states. But, in the many states that did not establish exchanges, the subsidies are being issued directly by the federal government, which, according to the plaintiffs, is not authorized in the legislation. It’s an effort to undermine the intent of the law by playing on an unanticipated outcome (the failure of states to establish exchanges) and the specific language of the law.
This challenge is much more dangerous to the survival of the ACA than the Hobby Lobby case, as it goes directly to the fundamentals of how it works rather than to a minor coverage provision. See the details at:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/halbig-obamacare-ruling-looms-dc-circuit
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Jolene said on July 2, 2014 at 5:56 pm
Uwe Reinhardt, a Princeton economist who specializes in health care, takes up the case that Sue was making yesterday re employers telling you how to allocate your compensation, arguing that the Hobby Lobby case illustrates the essential stupidity of a health care system linked to employment. We should all hope that it collapses sooner rather than later, preferably with Democrats controlling Congress and the White House.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/03/upshot/the-illogic-of-employer-sponsored-health-insurance.html?_r=1
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Scout said on July 2, 2014 at 6:35 pm
Sherri, we are on the same page. I only reference hyperbolic as it applies to Hobby Lobby specifically. But yeah, this whole thing stinks to high heaven. Activist judges much?
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Suzanne said on July 2, 2014 at 6:40 pm
Excellent article you linked, Jolene. I don’t understand why employers aren’t clamoring for a system that takes health care away from them. Think of the money they would save by not having to include all that paperwork, monitoring, choosing a plan, and the time spent messing with it into their budgets. I don’t get it.
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Deborah said on July 2, 2014 at 7:44 pm
My husband is coming to Santa Fe tomorrow and we’ll be camping on our land a bunch next week. I can’t wait until phase 1 of our building project starts there. This has taken way longer than I ever expected it to. As I’ve said many times, it’s really true, there is such a thing as New Mexico time.
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Scout said on July 2, 2014 at 7:54 pm
Deborah – we arrive in SF on Tuesday night… just in time for you to be out at your land. Sadness.
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Deborah said on July 2, 2014 at 10:43 pm
Keep in touch Scout, we’ll be back and forth on the camping. I really want to meet you guys, so we’ll work it out.
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