Watch for the eye of the beholder

They placed eyeglasses on a museum floor as a prank. Within minutes, it was a work of art. https://t.co/B42eRNqWL2 pic.twitter.com/giuxF9DQCm

— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 30, 2016

NYT: Trump unnerved women in private encounters over 40 years

Drag a billion dollar bill through the Upper East Side, you never know what you'll findhttps://t.co/lhItKN6IYt

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) May 14, 2016

Their stories: Link

Glenn Reynolds: The New York Times Deploys ‘Stray Voltage.’

"Because when people are talking about gun control, they’re not talking about Obama’s many failures, ranging from the failures of vetting and counterterrorism that may have led to the San Bernardino attacks themselves, to Obama’s foreign policy debacles in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, to how the #BringBackOurGirls hashtag campaign against Boko Haram accomplished nothing, to how Putin is running wild in Eastern Europe, to Obama’s plans to import more poorly-vetted refugees from Muslim countries that foment terror or the still-anemic economy that has left far too many Americans unemployed or underemployed despite years of “recovery.”"

"Those are all things that the Obama Administration — and the Hillary Clinton campaign — don’t want to talk about. So the editorial board of the Times has pulled out all the stops to ensure that we talk about gun control instead. Gun control isn’t a great issue for the Democrats, but it’s better than all those other topics of discussion, and the expected angry response from the gun-rights community will ensure that people aren’t talking about topics that make the White House look bad." (read the whole column)

AllenS emails...

"Murder Rates Rising Sharply in Many U.S. Cities"

"More than 30 other cities have also reported increases in violence from a year ago. In New Orleans, 120 people had been killed by late August, compared with 98 during the same period a year earlier. In Baltimore, homicides had hit 215, up from 138 at the same point in 2014. In Washington, the toll was 105, compared with 73 people a year ago. And in St. Louis, 136 people had been killed this year, a 60 percent rise from the 85 murders the city had by the same time last year."

Law enforcement experts say disparate factors are at play in different cities, though no one is claiming to know for sure why murder rates are climbing. Some officials say intense national scrutiny of the use of force by the police has made officers less aggressive and emboldened criminals, though many experts dispute that theory. (read more)

Must be that climate change Obama talks about all the time.

"New York Times Ignores Children of Gay Parents..."

 "...Who Want a Mom and Dad"

The New York Times ran an article this weekend (June 13) profiling and quoting many children of gay and lesbian parents under the headline “What Could Gay Marriage Mean for the Kids?”.  Noticeably absent were any children who, while loving their two moms or two dads, yearned for both a mom and dad...

In February 2015, Katy Faust published her moving testimony in the form of a letter to the man known to be the pivotal vote on the Supreme Court: “Dear Justice Kennedy: An Open Letter from the Child of a Loving Gay Parent.” She wrote:

I write because I am one of many children with gay parents who believe we should protect marriage. I believe you were right when, during the Proposition 8 deliberations, you said “the voice of those children [of same-sex parents] is important.” I’d like to explain why I think redefining marriage would actually serve to strip these children of their most fundamental rights.

Faust explains: “While I did love my mother’s partner and friends, I would have traded every one of them to have my mom and my dad loving me under the same roof.” (read more)

The Big Story: Marco Rubio driving history includes FOUR moving violations

"Mr. Rubio’s troubles behind the wheel predate his days in politics."

According to a search of the Miami-Dade and Duval County court dockets, the Rubios have been cited for numerous infractions over the years for incidents that included speeding, driving through red lights and careless driving. A review of records dating back to 1997 shows that the couple had a combined 17 citations: Mr. Rubio with four and his wife with 13. On four separate occasions they agreed to attend remedial driving school after a violation.

Twitter has a #RubioFacts hashtag trending...

I heard that, once, he ate a piece of pizza, chucked the crust and grabbed another piece of pizza. #RubioFacts

Left the faucet running while brushing his teeth. #RubioFacts

#RubioFacts Rubio used to run while carrying scissors. @nytimes

NYT Editorial: "Insurance Policies Not Worth Keeping"

The following three paragraphs were merrily selected from yesterday's bitterly clinging NYT Editorial.

Mr. Obama clearly misspoke when he said that. By law, insurers cannot continue to sell policies that don’t provide the minimum benefits and consumer protections required as of next year. So they’ve sent cancellation notices to hundreds of thousands of people who hold these substandard policies. (At issue here are not the 149 million people covered by employer plans, but the 10 million to 12 million people who buy policies directly on the individual market.)

This overblown controversy has also obscured the crux of what health care reform is trying to do, which is to guarantee that everyone can buy insurance without being turned away or charged exorbitant rates for pre-existing conditions and that everyone can receive benefits that really protect them against financial or medical disaster, not illusory benefits that prove inadequate when a crisis strikes.

Some conservative groups, eager to cripple the individual market by deterring enrollment, are urging consumers not to take out insurance and to instead pay the fine, which is cheaper than the cost of insurance but hardly negligible. For individuals, it starts at $95 or 1 percent of applicable yearly income in 2014, whichever is higher, and rises to $695 or 2.5 percent of applicable income in 2016. But why pay the penalty and get nothing when you can pay a reasonable fee and get a good policy?

NYT Editorial

"Putin: Rhymes With Rasputin"

Flashback on the world stage to the moment when Vladimir Putin first appeared to us and William Safire memorably quipped: "Putin: Rhymes with Rasputin."

Put your way back machine on to 2000 and reread Safire's NYT article; it's well worth it -- from a time when I still read that paper religiously. I picked out a few excerpts:

Acting President Putin (pronounced POO-teen, rhymes with Ras-POO-teen) rocketed to popularity on Russian jubilation about the massacre of dark-skinned Chechens who dare to demand independence. He needed a snap election before the blood lust cooled and Russian body bags began returning home.

Was Safire pro-Chechen or just sympathetic? The question is clouded by the Brothers Tsarnaev who were Chechens; remember what they did here: atrocities to bring attention to…? Well, not exactly to bring attention to al-Qaeda...but what then?

It is the Chechens who seek to liberate themselves from Russian rule. The Russian militarists are the ones raining bombs and shells on people who want the same independence as Georgians and Ukrainians. For Clinton to characterize the rape of Grozny as ''liberation'' is an abomination.

Al-Qaeda first appeared on our radar in Afghanistan. But they did fight the Russians (Soviets) before us. It's all so confusing. And Bill Clinton, siding with Putin's take on Chechnya? What will Hillary say and do?

Their task, after last week's coup de main, is to present Putin (means ''born on the road'') to the electorate as a man on horseback out to crush the terrorists trying to tear Mother Russia asunder. 

I would have never guessed that. Safire was very good at etymology; I didn't know he covered Russian etymology too.

Putin is in a race with disillusionment -- that moment when Russians realize that the Chechens won't be beaten without heavy losses, that the flight of capital will continue under Chubais-Berezovsky, and that military spending robs Russia of its ability to compete.

Can I recast that?:

Obama is in a race with disillusionment -- that moment when Americans realize that al-Qaeda won't be beaten without heavy losses, that the flight of capital will continue under Cloward-Piven, and that military spending robs America of its ability to compete.

It's a mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world.

Kerry, with Chris Hayes

Was at pains  to minimize the video’s influence on the debate in Washington and beyond. “No,” he insisted when Hayes asked if the killers in the video “become, by definition, our allies.” Kerry argued: “In fact, I believe that those men in those videos are disadvantaged by an American response to the chemical-weapons use because it, in fact, empowers the moderate opposition.” Kerry added that “they are not part of the opposition that is being supported by our friends and ourselves.”

The daily beast, I know, them, but still. Good for you Chris for asking that. I like the way Kerry can go to that incredibly stupid place for friendly faces and like-minded people and have frank discussions like this. It is not altogether unhelpful having Party mouthpieces like that even when so annoying, but good for Chris for asking that hard question. But okay then, as long as the people in the video are disadvantaged let's do go ahead then and thanks for telling we've been supporting all along, that goes far in explaining Ben Ghazi without mentioning it. 

The thing that drew me to the piece was NYT editors barfing when watching the video. I made up the barfing part, apparently they got ill and I imagined it while reading by accidentally visualizing myself in the room with that information. And a lot other information too, that I would be sorting and attempting to frame into some kind of narrative, so careful with that

Hang an Admiral once in a while.

Insty link to NYT. Blocked for subscribers. nonewsforyou!  grrrrrrr here.

Where NYT damages itself in my reading. I keep getting more annoyed as I go, mostly because the information is good and because NYT is part of the problem it reports on. It spookily writes about itself. The writer says Bush did not pursue investigations into leaking so much because the administration knew it would face political pressure it did not care to expend political capital to pursue. 153 cases brought, 0 indictments. 

NYT would have be the political pressure that Bush would experience and that Obama would not. Here is where it is annoyingly writing about itself without writing about itself directly. It is very important that NYT does not put the same pressure on Obama that it did on Bush. I believe this to be obvious fact. This is what pisses off neutral observers. This is what is impossible for neutral observers to get Democrat partisans to acknowledge or fully appreciate. They dismiss it offhand, and insist you are a partisan Republican for pointing it out. Never mind your pox on both houses attitude you are honorary Republican if you get anything at all off Fox even muted.  

That is the other thing in the piece. Another investigation mentioned because one of the leaks caused Fox viewers to know about a Kim internal dialogue hours after a high level secret memo mentioned it. Officials are angered because the leak led to Fox viewers learning so fast about Kim's intent to fire a test missile. Better for Fox viewers to be uninformed as everyone else as long as possible or convenient for the administration.  In National security terms I am sure that is so,  but it also sure does stick out. 

If you are for prosecuting leakers of national security secrets, and against prosecuting leakers of political secrets how do you tell the difference when they are intertwined? I'm not sure that is possible.  So prosecute away. It's what we do. It's who we are.  

I read that in a spy novel. Sounded good. Probably John Le Carré, the Russian spy character said that to another, it is what Americans do, investigate each other all the time. I was little kid at the time and I thought, wow, that's very insightful thing for a Russian to make about us, oh wait Le Carré is British. 

These are all important investigations, I do not dismiss any of them, none of them look good and all of them that I know about bear on trust, rapidly alarmingly eroding trust in government so clamping down on leakers as this administration is doing in my view is a good thing and Washington altogether should be nice and squeaky tight by the time the next Republican administration rolls in.  Whereupon BLAM 10,000 immediate spilling leaks will flow directly to NYT and a hostile aggressive media blossom once again and the tensioned balance of Maat restored throughout the land. 

Bush did disappoint in pursuing leakers and it is the usual oddness of reading NYT, the place that would squeal loudest and longest and most persistently, daily, to the ground and to death had he done so.