June 26, 2015

NYT: Bernie Sanders a Virtual Unknown Among Black Voters

By PATRICK HEALY and JONATHAN MARTIN - JUNE 24, 2015

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is climbing in the polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, and he has drawn thousands of people to rallies for his presidential campaign recently in Denver and Minneapolis. But the shooting last week in Charleston, S.C., has highlighted a daunting obstacle he faces in the Democratic primary contest: Black voters have shown little interest in him.

Even his own campaign advisers acknowledge that Mr. Sanders is virtually unknown to many African-Americans, an enormously important Democratic constituency.

Though he led sit-ins as a civil rights activist in the 1960s, helped the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr. pull off a surprising campaign victory in Vermont in 1988, and espouses liberal policy ideas broadly popular with many Democrats, Mr. Sanders has had little direct experience with black voters as a politician in a state that is 95 percent white. And they have been largely absent from his campaign events so far.

Mr. Sanders, 73, had planned to start introducing himself to larger numbers of African-Americans last Sunday at a large gathering in Charleston, but he quickly postponed the event after the church killings. The massacre also revived debate over a highly charged issue on which Mr. Sanders has a mixed record: gun control.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/25/us/politics/bernie-sanders-lags-hillary-clinton-in-introducing-himself-to-black-voters.html

June 24, 2015

America, Hog Butcher for the World

That's from "Chicago," Carl Sandburg's 1916 tribute to the City of Big Shoulders:

CHICAGO

Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker,
Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them. . . .

Some are complaining about the TPP seeing daylight finally and wondering how Obama, who cut his political teeth in Chicago, could be so heartless as to push us kicking and screaming into the global stockyard of 21st-C international commerce. Well, my question is, what's the alternative? An ever-deepening twilight of discreet poverty? A union of convenience with one of our former rivals? Or the perhaps the military option gloriously pursued by Obama's immediate predecessors? Because when you think about it there's no way we're going to sit out deals like TPP and TTIP and that being the case we might as well be grateful it's Obama at the bat and not Jeb or Ted.

June 21, 2015

In 2003, Rep. Sanders voted to protect "lawful commerce in arms":

He also voted to fund Homeland Security (twice) and military construction:

https://votesmart.org/bill/3157/8217/27110/protection-of-lawful-commerce-in-arms-act#.VYZ77ra1qSo
https://votesmart.org/bill/3184/8100/27110/homeland-security-appropriations-fy-2004-bill#.VYZ6fba1qSo
https://votesmart.org/bill/3184/8556/27110/homeland-security-appropriations-fy-2004-bill#.VYZ7Kba1qSo
https://votesmart.org/bill/3185/21023/27110/military-construction-appropriations-act-2004#.VYZ7aba1qSo

On October 10, 2002, he voted against the Iraq AUMF, but on the same day, he voted to fund the Defense Department in fiscal year 2003:

https://votesmart.org/bill/3083/12790/27110/use-of-military-force-against-iraq#.VYZ9uba1qSo
https://votesmart.org/bill/3122/8511/27110/department-of-defense-appropriations-fiscal-year-2003#.VYZ8NLa1qSo

So possibly Senator Sanders' record is not as sterling as some would have it?

...................
UPDATE: I took out three nay votes I'd originally included, authorizing funding for Head Start, jobs, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act, as they evidently didn't pass muster with Dems either although the bills seemed commendable when I skimmed them. In any case the votes linked above, save the Iraq AUMF, are in my mind problematic, particularly the "protection of commerce in arms" bill, which offers immunity to arms manufacturers and dealers. In the language of the bill its purpose is

Full text here: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c108:1:./temp/~c108oF1Tv6::

June 20, 2015

President Obama Tells Mayors Racism is a ‘Blight’ on Nation

(BOG)

President Obama speaks at the U.S. Conference of Mayors in San Francisco Friday.

KQED - JUNE 19, 2015

President Obama told hundreds of mayors in San Francisco Friday that this week’s massacre at a historic African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina, shows that racism still haunts the United States.

“The apparent motivations of the shooter reminds us that racism remains a blight we have to combat together,” Obama said during a keynote speech to the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

“We have made great progress,” the president said. “But we have to be vigilant because it still lingers — and when it is poisoning the minds of young people, it betrays our ideals and tears our democracy apart.”

The president also used the speech to insist he has not given up on federal gun control reforms, even after being rebuffed by Congress in the wake of the December 2014 slaughter of 20 first-graders and six adults at a school in Newtown, Connecticut.

“If Congress had passed some common-sense gun safety reforms after Newtown — after a group of children had been gunned down in their own classroom — reforms that 90 percent of the American people supported — we wouldn’t have prevented every act of violence or even most. We don’t know it would have prevented what happened in Charleston, no reform can guarantee the elimination of violence,” Obama said. “But we might still have some Americans with us. We might have stopped one shooter, some families might still be whole, y’all might have to attend fewer funerals.”



http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2015/06/19-obama-speaks-in-San-Francisco

June 20, 2015

Obama, Pelosi all smiles at Democratic fundraiser

11:54 p.m. EDT June 19, 2015

Obama and Pelosi appeared together at a fundraiser in San Francisco — an intimate gathering hosted by environmental activist Tom Steyer from his home overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge.

(snip)

Obama said he couldn't have accomplished anything in Congress without a partner in the House. "Nancy Pelosi has been that partner, and I could not be prouder to work with her," he said.

"As I think some of you may have noticed, it's not like I agree with my Democratic caucus on everything,," Obama said, eliciting laughter from the audience — and a blush from Pelosi. "But on 98% of things, they're moving in the right direction and I know where their heart is, and I know what their values are, and I know what they care about," he said.

Pelosi helped sink an extension of trade adjustment assistance in the House last week, reversing her earlier support for the measure in the hopes that it would also scuttle Obama's request for "fast track" trade promotion authority. For days afterward, the White House declined to say whether the two had spoken since the rift.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/theoval/2015/06/19/obama-pelosi-steyer-fundraiser/29022765/
.......................

Another no-drama chapter closes and all's well that ends well . . .

June 20, 2015

Obama will be first sitting U.S. president to visit Ethiopia

Source: Washington Post

June 19 at 5:10 PM

President Obama will become the first sitting U.S. president to visit Ethiopia, the White House announced Friday, when he heads there next month.

Obama's trip to Africa's second-most populous nation -- the second stop on a journey that includes a visit to his father's home country of Kenya -- comes amid growing concern that Ethiopia's government has become increasingly repressive when it comes to internal dissent. During elections last month the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front tightened its hold on power, prompting the opposition to accuse the government of running a one-party state.

In a statement Friday, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the president would travel in late July to Ethiopia for bilateral meetings with both the country's government and the leadership of the African Union, which is headquartered there.

"This visit, which will follow the President’s travel to Kenya, will build on the success of the August 2014 U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit by strengthening ties with our African partners and highlighting America’s longstanding commitment to investing in Africa," the statement read. "This will be the first visit of a sitting U.S. President to Ethiopia and to the African Union headquarters, underscoring our efforts to work with the countries and citizens of sub-Saharan Africa to accelerate economic growth, strengthen democratic institutions, and improve security."

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/06/19/obama-will-be-first-sitting-u-s-president-to-visit-ethiopia/

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President Obama speaks during a meeting with Ethiopian President Hailemariam Desalegn to discuss the Ebola epidemic, Thursday, Sept. 25, 2014, in New York.

June 18, 2015

Paris-NY, sur la mode: "I like to dress Americans, they have faith, figures and francs"

Paris-New York, regards croisés sur la mode (1890-1973)

"I like to dress Americans, they have faith, figures and francs" (Charles-Frederick Worth, 1895). Emilie Hammen (doctorante IFM) raconte les grandes dates de l'histoire des relations transatlantiques dans la mode.

Depuis l'époque du Gilded Age aux États-Unis (1865- 1901), la haute société de la côte Est des Etats-Unis constitue une clientèle privilégiée de la couture française. Les clientes américaines de la haute couture ont été un modèle historique de la "consommation ostentatoire" théorisée par Thorstein Veblen.

Emilie Hammen retrace une histoire riche en influences réciproques, depuis Paul Poiret, considéré comme "the king of fashion" aux Etats-Unis, jusqu'à Eleanor Lambert (1903 2003), qui créa la Fashion Week de New York et organisa Le Grand Divertissement de Versailles en novembre 1973, en passant par Mainbocher, griffe de haute couture fondée à Paris en 1929 et transférée à New York en 1940... On repense à une formule de la Gazette du Bon Ton en 1913 : "la mode, seule industrie française prépondérante aux Etats-Unis".

https://soundcloud.com/ifm-paris/hammen

June 17, 2015

NPR digs into Hillary's hidden past

and finds some awesome photos:

June 15, 2015

psst, PBO coming to Palm Springs next week . . .

. . .but it's a secret!
..............

Obama likely to be in Coachella Valley for Father's Day
The Desert Sun, June 11, 2015

"There's nothing I can say at this time. I haven't heard anything definitive," said Ken Chavez, a spokesperson for the Sunnylands Center and Gardens in Rancho Mirage, where Obama has stayed and golfed during previous visits.

Asked if he'd been forewarned about an Obama visit over Father's Day weekend, Palm Springs International Airport executive director Tom Nolan said he "cannot comment either way."

The White House press office didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

On his first visit to the Coachella Valley, in June 2013, Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping discussed climate change and other global issues at Sunnylands. When the United States and China announced a landmark climate change agreement last year, the deal was hailed in some circles as the "son of Sunnylands."

Since then, Obama's visits to the Coachella Valley have looked increasingly like vacations.

http://www.desertsun.com/story/news/2015/06/11/barack-obama-coachella-valley-fathers-day/71079230/


President Obama gets off Air Force One shortly after landing in Palm Springs, Friday, June 5th, 2013

June 14, 2015

A lot can happen in 17 months, but if I had to, I'd say it ended yesterday when TAA crashed & burned

right after Pelosi announced she was voting against all 3 trade bills. That was a blow but then Kevin McCarthy announced it would be revisited and called for an immediate vote on the other two bills, and ten minutes later TPA squeaked by on a final vote of 219-211, followed by the currency bill which passed with a healthy 240-190:



That means that barring catastrophe, Dems next week will allow themselves to be persuaded to vote for an enhanced TAA -- and it's an assistance bill after all so why wouldn't they? -- and once that's done TPA is in the bag and TPP (also barring catastrophe) should arrive in Hillary's stocking right around Christmas, along with a roaring economy that voters are finally going to notice, allowing her to remind us all how great we had in the 90s and sail to victory, probably a close one, with the help of Bill, Barack, and every other available Dem hand on deck or rowing in the galley with everything they've got.

Of course, I could be wrong, but I don't recall that ever happening . . .