House Teabaggers Don't Fear McCain's Pending Attack... Not Even A Little

No one in the House Republican caucus thinks the man who befriended Muammar Qaddafi and lolled away his evenings at the Qaddafi family ranch, is any kind of threat to their political careers.

Beltway Republicans expect McCain to blow any minute now-- and that the target of his wrath will be the far right of the House Republican caucus this time-- teabaggers, Know Nothings and the blatantly racist end of the party. But they're laughing at the 2008 presidential candidate. His opposition-- the louder and more vitriolic, the better-- makes them stronger with an electoral base that gets all its information from Hate Talk Radio and Fox News. He's mad because the right-wingers are blocking immigration reform again and letting their anti-Hispanic/anti-Asian freak flags fly one more time. McCain worries that they're leading the party into a ditch so deep they'll never recover-- sort of like what happened to the California Republican Party when it went off on a racist jihad against Hispanics and turned itself into a sad, toothless rump. Still, Molly Hooper at The Hill, perhaps looking for some political news during the long, sweltering July 4th weekend, predicts that McCain is "on a collision course with House conservatives" (although she means House reactionaries or House fascists. McCain is a conservative. John Barrow. Lindsey Graham, John Boehner and Walter Jones are conservatives. Steve King and Louie Gohmert and Steve Stockman and racists, fascists and, if you want to be polite, reactionaries).

Throughout his Senate career, McCain has clashed with House Republican lawmakers over high-profile issues, including campaign finance reform, detainee interrogation techniques, earmarks and tax cuts. This year, McCain has ripped Republicans in the lower chamber for not agreeing to enter into a budget conference with the Senate.

Some political observers believe it’s just a matter of time before McCain aggressively goes after House GOP members for not voting on the Senate-passed immigration measure.

The five-term senator has stopped short of criticizing Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) vow to move immigration reform only if a majority of House GOP lawmakers are on board. Yet, McCain made a pointed comment last weekend that suggested he would only bite his tongue for so long.

“I really don’t feel it's appropriate for me to tell [Boehner] exactly how he should handle this. But I think Republicans realize the implications for the future of the Republican Party in America if we don't get this issue behind us,” McCain said on Fox News Sunday.

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who strongly opposes the Senate bill, took issue with McCain’s warning, but said he expects the 2008 GOP presidential nominee to continue challenging conservatives on the airwaves.

“Most of what [McCain] will do, in my anticipation is through the media. … He likes to drop a little bomb and watch how people will react, and he’ll do it again,” King said in an interview with The Hill.

King said McCain “should have learned his lesson” when he tried to pass immigration reform with the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.).

You can imagine how frustrating it is for a mainstream conservative like McCain when he finds himself on a team with people talking about, as Louie Gohmert recently did (video below) about people who have "a love for an animal" and want to get married-- a well known and long-standing problem in the east Texas district he represents.



Do you miss Michele Bachmann yet?

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"Israeli racism has a new and original justification: The people love it" (Gideon Levy in Haaretz)

Haaretz caption: Beitar Jerusalem fans holding the flag of the outlawed racist Kach party at Teddy Stadium

by Ken

Probably there will be a lot of Americans who bristle at the idea that Israelis have broken new ground with the discovery that bigotry is good for business. Certainly Chick-fil-A CEO doesn't need any lessons from around the world in making bigotry pay -- although he does seem to have some killjoy traitors in his organization who leaned on him to delete the tweet he sent out decrying the Supreme Court decisions on same-sex marriage.

Israel has its killjoys too, among them Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy, who unaccountably isn't thrilled by the idea of using anti-Arab bigotry to sell soccer. Can you imagine? My friend Leo passed this along to me, and I couldn't resist sharing it.

The Haim Revivo racism project

The new representative of Beitar Jerusalem's owner announced last week he wouldn't sign Arab players.

By Gideon Levy | Jul.07, 2013 | 4:41 AM |  7

Israeli racism has a new and original justification: The people love it. When there is racism, Arabs are prevented from joining sports teams, so the teams can find sponsors. If once we had political, practical, spiritual and religious Zionism, now we have ideological racism and racism stemming from the need to sign sponsors. The person who thought this idea up, the ideological successor to Theodor Herzl and Ahad Ha'am, is an ex-soccer player, someone who made the list of greatest Israelis of all time: Haim Revivo.

The new representative of Beitar Jerusalem's owner announced last week that he wouldn't sign Arab players. "We do not seek to bring in an Arab player and provoke the fans," Revivo said. "It wouldn't be the right thing to do." He also told the fans to tone it down because "these things make it hard to get sponsors" - he was referring to the spate of racist slurs, stone-throwing, spitting and other violent acts by Beitar fans.

Revivo's new deal, as clear as the whistle of former star referee Pierluigi Collina, is that racism is good because the fans like it. The fans must not be provoked because then there will be no sponsors and no money. Jean-Marie Le Pen and Jorg Haider never thought of that.

It's a fine thing to hear from Revivo, of all people, such base justification for racism. He reached the height of his glory when he played in a Muslim country. From 2000 to 2003, Revivo was the king of Turkey. He played for the two finest teams in Istanbul, Fenerbahce and Galatasary, scored lots of goals and was voted the best foreign soccer player in Turkey. To this day there are taxi drivers in Taksim Square who, if you say "Israel" to them, will respond "Revivo," their eyes glistening.

No "representative of the owner" at those two clubs ever said he wouldn't sign Jewish (or Israeli ) players so as not to provoke the fans. Nor was there any problem with sponsors. It's not hard to guess what would have happened if a problem had come up with the Jew Revivo. A top-of-their-lungs chorus would have emerged from Elie Wiesel, the Wiesenthal Center, Yad Vashem, the Anti-Defamation League and Benjamin Netanyahu against the Turkish anti-Semitism that was calling for our destruction. But Turkey simply loved Revivo, judging him only on the number of goals he scored, not where he came from.

Revivo has forgotten this. He is a coward, with the reality shows "Dancing with the Stars" and "Eyal Golan is Calling You" and chairmanship of the Israel Football Players' Association under his belt. He knows the soul of the beast - the fans of his new club - which is the soul of many Israelis, just more crude and violent. So sometimes I love the Beitar fans; they shout what Israelis are thinking. It's not for nothing that Eyal Golan sings: "Who casts out the demons? / It's us, the Beitars. / Who's the queen? / Who's the champ? / Beitar Jerusalem on top."

This tune just goes on and on; words of praise for Yitzhak Rabin's assassin, Yigal Amir, and words of hatred for Rabin and his late wife, Leah. "It happened in the square / The SWAT team was helpless / It didn't stop Amir / And suddenly, a red stain / We don't want a peace treaty." (The next part, about Leah Rabin, is unprintable ). And they sing: "We swear by the menorah / To the racism that is our dream / The whole world is our witness / There will be no Arabs here."

When they are lectured day and night about a Jewish state, they understand the real meaning better than other Israelis. Do Netanyahu and Likud MKs Yariv Levin, Danny Danon and Miri Regev think differently? Would Habayit Hayehudi leaders Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked phrase it differently?

Beitar's racist singing raises up dark and hidden feelings, whose very raising the self-righteous reject. Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu of Safed and the Beitar fans known as La Familia are the only ones who still manage to disgust us. Our political, judicial and educational leaders, no less racist and much more institutionalized, harmful and systematic, don't disgust us. So maybe we should thank this project of Revivo's. At least it disgusts us.

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Is Obama Lying When He Says The U.S. Wasn't Complicit In The Egyptian Coup?

Obama won't even acknowledge the military takeover from a legitimately-elected government in Egypt was a coup. And he claims the U.S. had nothing to do with it. U.S. allies and puppets in the region-- other than Israel-- aren't hiding their participation though. From a report by the right-wing Israeli military intelligence website, DEBKAfile:

The lightening coup which Wednesday, July 3, overthrew President Mohamed Morsi put in reverse gear for the first time the Obama administration’s policy of sponsoring the Muslim Brotherhood movement as a moderate force for Arab rule and partner in its Middle East policies. DEBKAfile reveals that the Egyptian military could not have managed their clockwork coup without the aid of Saudi and Dubai intelligence and funding.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE threw their weight and purses behind Egypt’s generals aiming to put their first big spoke in the US-sponsored Arab Revolt (or Spring), after they failed to hold the tide back in Libya, Egypt and thus far Syria.

...The coup leader, Defense Minister and army chief Gen. Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, had two more Saudi-Gulf commitments in his pocket, say DEBKAfile's Middle East sources:

1. Should the Obama administration cut off the annual US aid allocation of $1.3 billion, Saudi Arabia and the UAE would make up the military budget’s shortfall;

2. The Saudis, UAE and other Gulf nations, such as Bahrain and Kuwait, would immediately start pumping out substantial funds to keep the Egyptian economy running. The Egyptian masses would be shown that in a properly managed economy, they could be guaranteed a minimal standard of living and need not go hungry as many did under Muslim Brotherhood rule.

According to our sources, the Saudis and the UAE pledged to match the funds Qatar transferred to the Muslim Brotherhood’s coffers in Cairo in the past year, amounting to the vast sum of $13 billion.

This explains President Barack Obama’s caution Thursday morning, July 4, in his expression of deep concern over the ousting of the Egyptian president and the suspension of its constitution. He urged the military to restore government to civilian hands-- without accusing them outright of a coup d’etat-- and to “avoid arresting President Mosi and his supporters.”

...The removal of Muslim Brotherhood rule in Egypt has far-reaching ramifications for Israel. In the immediate term, it gives Israel some security relief-- especially, easing the dangers posed from Sinai to its southern regions. The radical Palestinian Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood offshoot which rules the Gaza Strip, has suffered the most damaging political and military setback in its history with the loss of its parent and patron in Cairo.

DEBKA is a mouthpiece for the Israeli intelligence community and its not always easy to read between the lines and understand what they're pushing and what they're hiding. Over the weekend, though, David Kirkpatrick at the NY Times filed a report from Cairo that made it crystal clear that Obama's claims that the U.S. wasn't involved with the coup or putsch or whatever he wants to call it are blatantly false. When an Arab foreign minister called Morsi with a final offer before the tanks rolled out of their barracks, Morsi sent his response-- a rejection of the terms-- to Anne Patterson, the U.S. ambassador and Susan Rice, Obama's national security adviser. The State Department told the Times it would have no comment on the report.

Some people couldn't help recalling how the British and American intelligence services orchestrated-- and paid for-- populist street protests in Tehran in 1953 when they wanted to justify a coup to overthrow the popular government led by the very independent-minded Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddegh. The CIA paid Iranian Organized Crime to set the coup right when it foundered on the first day causing the weak American client, the Shah, to flee the country. Take a look at Bill Moyers' report for PBS in 1987 about what happened in Iran... and how it turned out:



Now, back to Kirkpatrick's report in the Times:

The abrupt end of Egypt’s first Islamist government was the culmination of months of escalating tensions and ultimately futile American efforts to broker a solution that would keep Mr. Morsi in his elected office, at least in name, if not in power.

A new alliance of youthful activists and Mubarak-era elites was driving street protests. A collapsing economy put new pressure on Mr. Morsi and his allies in the Muslim Brotherhood, the once-outlawed Islamist group that had finally come to power after the ouster of the former president, Hosni Mubarak. And an alliance between Mr. Morsi and the nation’s top generals was gradually unraveling.

Senior Brotherhood officials said Mr. Morsi’s adamant response to the last proposal-- a combination of idealism and stubbornness-- epitomized his rule. It may also have doomed his presidency.

As long ago as the fall, he had spoken fatalistically of the possibility of his own ouster, his senior advisers said. “Do you think this is the peak?” he asked a visibly anxious aide during his first major political crisis. “No,” Mr. Morsi said with resignation, “The peak will be when you see my blood flowing on the floor.”

That was just after what his advisers and Muslim Brotherhood leaders now acknowledge was the defining blunder of his one-year presidency. After Mubarak-appointed judges dissolved the Islamist-led Parliament, Mr. Morsi in November declared his own authority above the courts until a constitutional convention could finish its work.

...Through it all, Mr. Morsi never believed the generals would turn on him as long as he respected their autonomy and privileges, his advisers said. He had been the Muslim Brotherhood’s designated envoy for talks with the ruling military council after the ouster of Mr. Mubarak. His counterpart on the council was Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi.

The Brotherhood was naturally suspicious of the military, its historical opponent, but General Sisi cultivated Mr. Morsi and other leaders, one of them said, including going out of his way to show that he was a pious Muslim. “That is how the relationship between the two of them started,” said a senior Brotherhood official close to Mr. Morsi. “He trusted him.”

The two grew so close that Mr. Morsi caught his advisers by surprise when he promoted General Sisi to defense minister last summer as part of a deal that persuaded the military for the first time to let the elected president take full control of his government. Mr. Morsi kept relations with the military as his “personal file,” and worked out the deal without consulting his aides, one adviser said.

...Morsi insisted to his aides that he remained fully confident that General Sisi would not interfere, almost until the end of his presidency. He was the last one in the inner circle to acknowledge last week that General Sisi was ousting them.

United States officials had repeatedly urged Mr. Morsi to compromise with the opposition and include it in government. In December, President Obama met with Mr. Haddad, Mr. Morsi’s foreign policy adviser, in the Oval Office to deliver that message, Mr. Morsi’s advisers said. At one point, they said, Mr. Obama offered to intervene with the opposition leaders, either Mohamed ElBaradei, the former United Nations diplomat, or Amr Moussa, a former foreign minister under Mr. Mubarak. But Mr. Morsi declined.

Embassy officials tried to act as intermediaries, Morsi advisers said. They said Secretary of State John Kerry suggested naming Mr. ElBaradei as prime minister. But this year, Ms. Patterson pointedly told Mr. Morsi’s aides that some in Washington were running out of patience with her defense of Egypt’s new Islamist leaders, his advisers said.

By June, the economy was sputtering, with gas shortages and blackouts. Young organizers tapped into the growing discontent with a petition drive calling for Mr. Morsi’s removal, and it was set to culminate in a demonstration on the anniversary of his inauguration, June 30.

The first alarms went off in Mr. Morsi’s inner circle on June 21, when General Sisi issued a public statement warning that the growing “split in society” between Mr. Morsi’s supporters and opponents compelled the military “to intervene.”

Mr. Morsi was given no warning, his advisers said. But when Mr. Morsi called the general, General Sisi told the president that “it was to satisfy some of his men” and that “it was nothing more than an attempt to absorb their anger,” one of Mr. Morsi’s advisers said. “So even after that first statement, the president didn’t think a coup was imminent.”

The day before the protests, General Sisi called Mr. Morsi to press him for a package of concessions, including a new cabinet. But Mr. Morsi refused, saying he needed to consult first with his Islamist coalition.

When the protests came last Sunday, demonstrators were energized by the general’s suggestions of a possible intervention. Millions poured into the streets.

Inside Mr. Morsi’s office. Mr. Morsi’s team checked the official crowd count, sent its own observers, monitored the gathering on Google Earth, and even compared the numbers of mobile phone signals in various public squares, one adviser said, and mistakenly concluded that the pro-Morsi rally in Cairo outnumbered the protests against him.

“We felt a sense of relief,” the adviser said.

The next day, on Monday, General Sisi gave political leaders a 48-hour ultimatum to reach a compromise. A shaken Morsi adviser, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said at the time the president’s team considered it “a military coup.”

Mr. Morsi’s advisers had meetings with Ms. Patterson and her deputy as well as a phone call with Ms. Rice, the national security adviser. Mr. Morsi’s advisers argued that ousting the president would be “a long term disaster” for Egypt and the Arab world because people would “lose faith in democracy.” They said it would set off an explosion in the streets that they could not control.

And they argued that the United States was implicated: “Nobody who knows Egypt is going to believe a coup could go forward without a green light from the Americans.”

At a meeting with General Sisi at 2 p.m. the next day, Mr. Morsi’s advisers said that they had their coalition’s blessing to accept the earlier concessions the general had suggested before the protest.

But when the general returned to the Republican Guard building at 6 p.m., he said “the opposition” had balked, the advisers said.

Mr. Morsi’s team did not know who the general actually consulted and the young protest leaders and some other opposition leaders said they did not know either. But that night Mr. Morsi delivered a fiery address denouncing his opponents as traitorous conspirators.

General Sisi later publicly cited the speech as a turning point in his decision to act.

On Wednesday, the generals convened a four-hour meeting at military headquarters with protest and opposition party leaders. The head of Mr. Morsi’s Islamist party, now jailed, was invited but did not attend.

In Washington, officials stepped back and said little.

This is going to be a real disaster in the long run, probably as bad as the one the CIA triggered in Iran in 1953. I'll go to my grave glad I didn't vote for Obama in 2012. Congress is already splitting between those who want to keep giving away billions of taxpayers dollars to Egypt's military and those who want to obey the law and cut off the aid.

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Sunday Classics: Brooding and striving, grand and intimate, it's Bruch's "Scottish Fantasy"

by Ken

In Friday night's preview we revisited Beethoven's Choral Fantasy (for piano, soloists, chorus, and orchestra) and Liszt's Hungarian Fantasia (for piano and orchestra) in anticipation of turning our attention today to Max Bruch's Scottish Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra.

With this installment we have concluded our survey of the three works of Bruch known to most music lovers. We heard the soulful Kol Nidrei for cello and orchestra ("A haunting little piece that tells us less than we would think about its composer's roots") and the great First Violin Concerto in G minor ("From brooding depths to sparkling heights") in April.

THE SCOTTISH FANTASY WAS COMPOSED IN 1879-80 . . .

. . . following Bruch's return to Germany from a trip to Britain -- though not, as far as I know, to Scotland. The Scotland of the fantasy seems to be the brooding world of the romances of Sir Walter Scott, as Bruch establishes pretty clearly at the outset in the Grave introduction, but as we can hear as well in the transformation of the Scottish popular tunes around which each of the four subsequent movements is built. Bruch seems to have thought his extensive use of the harp would evoke the Scottishness he was after. On the title page of the score, the work is billed as Fantasie (Einleitung-Adagio-Scherzo-Andante-Finale) für die Violine mit Orchester und Harfe unter freier Benutzung schottishcer Volksmelodien. (That last part tells us: "with free use of Scottish folk melodies.")

The four movements recall the frequent slow-fast-slow-fast pattern so often used in the old baroque concerto (as in the wonderful Telemann Viola Concerto and Handel organ concertos we heard in November 2010.

The note accompanying the Heifetz stereo Scottish Fantasy (uncredited in the CD edition) says: "Bruch prided himself on the fact that the folk melodies [Bruch] incorporated were not simply extracted from books but discovered during his own travels in Britain." Hey, could be! The violin pedigree of the Scottish Fantasy could hardly be starrier. It was dedicated to the great Pablo de Sarasate, who played it at the Hamburg premiere in 1880, and in preparing it for publication Bruch consulted the great Joseph Joachim.

ABOUT OUR PERFORMANCES

Once I figured out that we were going to split the honors up among three of the greatest of all violinists at the height of their powers (Jascha Heifetz, Arthur Grumiaux, and David Oistrakh) and a hugely gifted youngster in, astonishingly, her debut recording (Kyung Wha Chung), the math suggested two movements apiece, and I thought it would be well to hear each play a fast and a slow movement.

Then I thought that, to get some feel for the artists' sense of musical progression, it would be well to hear each team in consecutive movements. In the end I split the piece down the middle, between the Heifetz-Sargent and Grumiaux-Wallberg teams in the first half and the Oistrakh-Horenstein and Chung-Kempe teams in the second half -- even though, as with the Introduction and first-movement Adagio cantabile, there is no break between the second-movement Allegro and third-movement Andante sostenuto. I've ruthlessly split them up anyway, and with barely even an apology. (This is it.) We'll hear them properly rejoined when we hear the piece performed as a whole by the younger Heifetz.

There are certainly contrasts between our paired performances, and between the first-half and second-half teams, but I'm if anything more struck by the way different sensibilities wind up expressing much the same thing -- only a little differently. Consider the recitative-like violin solo in the Introduction. ("Recitative-like" isn't my inspiration. Bruch marks the solo "Quasi Recit.") Since we're hearing Grumiaux first, we will hear the whole thing, low and high, mournful and striving, played in about as beautiful a lush romantic tone as the violin is capable of producing. And then we'll hear Heifetz, whose technical command would have enabled him to play the music any damned way he wanted, play it with a simplicity that's simply riveting. (If anyone wants to tell you that Heifetz's playing was "inexpressive," send 'em here.) I don't think these great virtuosos had a wildly different understanding of the music; it just comes out a little, you know, differently.

By the way, I mentioned in Friday night's preview that we were going to hear an especially felicity battery of conductors, and that's important for a piece that aspires to such grandeur and such intimacy. In our second-half teams we hear two great conductors, Rudolf Kempe and Jascha Horenstein, who are old Sunday Classics friends. (Horenstein's brief celebrity came late, you'll recall. In 1972 I expect he was only too happy to have even a half-record's worth of a major-label accompanying gig -- on the other side of this LP, Oistrakh played the Hindemith Violin Concerto with the composer conducting.) But it would be a mistake to undervalue Sir Malcolm Sargent or Heinz Wallberg, both of whom conducted pretty much anything they were asked, and pretty much always with a distinction and musical completeness superior to many of their more highly esteemed competitors.

Finally, a word about the musical term "fantasy," or "fantasia." First off, if a work's original language is German or French or Italian, the distinction we have in English simply doesn't exist. Bruch called this work a Fantasie, and we can translate it either way. "Fantasy" seems to stress the, well, fantasy element of the piece, whereas "fantasia" sounds more like an actual musical form. But in truth there isn't really a definable musical form.

I noticed in assembling Friday night's preview that I had referred originally to Beethoven's Choral Fantasy and Liszt's Hungarian Fantasia. Those usages suited my ear at the times of those original posts, but in truth they could perfectly well have been switched.

Above the title this score title page says: "To his friend Pablo de Sarasate dedicated." The "his" refers forward to what follows that long, long title: "composed by Max Bruch."

BRUCH: Scottish Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 46

Introduction: Grave
i. Adagio cantabile

As previously noted, the Introduction and the Adagio cantabile are musically continuous -- the climactic note of the former does double duty as the first note of the latter. But since the CD of the Grumiaux-Wallberg recording has a track point at the start of the first movement proper, in our format we hear them on separate tracks, which I thought might be helpful for hearing the transition more clearly.

The RCA annotator says: "After a solemn introduction for brass and a quasi-recitative for solo violin, the first movement presents the lovely melody of Auld Rob Morris." I would just add that at the moment of the solo entry with the tune, it's remarkable how Bruch has planted the need for a big tune -- and somehow the need for the violin to go almost immediately into those tone- as well as harmony-enhancing double stops. And, oh yes, the tune returns at the end of the second and fourth movements.


Arthur Grumiaux, violin; New Philharmonia Orchestra, Heinz Wallberg, cond. Philips, recorded Sept. 20-23, 1973

Jascha Heifetz, violin; New Symphony Orchestra of London, Sir Malcolm Sargent, cond. RCA-BMG, recorded July 15 and 22, 1961

ii. Allegro

Here's the RCA annotator: "The second movement is based on the engaging Hey, the Dusty Miller, initially outlined by the orchestra, then by the violinist, and eventually returning in the orchestral strings while the soloist undertakes some virtuoso histrionics." (You'll notice that our musical example of the song credits it to "Ireland." Let's leave that to the Scots and Irish to thrash out.)


Jascha Heifetz, violin; New Symphony Orchestra of London, Sir Malcolm Sargent, cond. RCA-BMG, recorded July 15 and 22, 1961

Arthur Grumiaux, violin; New Philharmonia Orchestra, Heinz Wallberg, cond. Philips, recorded Sept. 20-23, 1973

iii. Andante sostenuto

The RCA annotator: "The Andante is based on the tender air I'm a-Doun for Lack o' Johnnie. Here too there is extensive technical coloratura, but . . . ."


Kyung Wha Chung, violin; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Rudolf Kempe, cond. Decca, recorded May 1972

David Oistrakh, violin; London Symphony Orchestra, Jascha Horenstein, cond. Decca, recorded September 1962

iv. Finale: Allegro guerriero

Now let's let the RCA annotator finish the sentence I interrupted above: " . . . but the ultimate brilliance of the violin is reserved for the Finale. At the outset the solo is launched with a passage in triple-stopping, accompanied by the harp. The melody of an old war song, Scot's Wha' Hae, provides the foundation for this, the most brilliant of the four movements."


Kyung Wha Chung, violin; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Rudolf Kempe, cond. Decca, recorded May 1972

David Oistrakh, violin; London Symphony Orchestra, Jascha Horenstein, cond. Decca, recorded September 1962


NOW, AS PROMISED, LET'S HEAR THE WHOLE THING

This is the first of Heifetz's two recordings, made at a time when the Scottish Fantasy was hardly played.

BRUCH: Scottish Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 46:
Introduction: Grave; i. Adagio cantabile
ii. Allegro; iii. Andante sostenuto
iv. Allegro guerriero


Jascha Heifetz, violin; RCA Symphony Orchestra, William Steinberg, cond. RCA-BMG, recorded Sept. 12, 1947


VISIT THE STAND-ALONE SUNDAY CLASSICS WITH KEN

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Fascism In Cairo Cheered By The Americans Who Always Cheer Fascism

Fascists love those military strongmen

There's always been a big audience-- and cheering section-- for fascism in the United States, which explains the popularity of the Wall Street Journal, not to mention Fox News and Hate Talk Radio. The other day we looked at the 1933 fascist coup attempt against Franklin Roosevelt led by Republican industrialists and financiers Irénée du Pont, J.P. Morgan, Prescott Bush, Grayson Murphy, and other prominent Wall Street figures, as well as the pro-Nazi families behind Remington, Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodyear, and Maxwell House. Roosevelt could have-- should have-- hung all the plotter for high treason, but he preferred to allow the plot to be covered up in return for their quiescence as he worked to implement the New Deal.

America's wealthy fascist families did quiet down during World War II, of course, but they've been busy beavers since then. Today, the Koch family is preeminent among the leaders of American fascism... although they try to disguise it as a kind of "libertarianism." Predictably, the Wall Street Journal is cheering the fascist coup in Egypt last week and encouraging the Obama Administration to break the law by calling it something other than a "coup." (A coup jeopardizes the billion-plus dollars of non-Sequestered aid to Egypt in general and the Egyptian military in particular. The powerful Likud lobby insists the U.S. taxpayer continue underwriting that huge burden.) They Journal editorial page has their collective fingers crossed that military Islamist Abdul Fatah al-Sisi turns out to be "as good as" Chilean neo-Nazi hero Augusto Pinochet, up there with Ronald Reagan, Ayn Rand and Ludwig con Mises in the pantheon of right-wing loons.

The Journal blames the popular protests against the democratically-elected Morsi on chronic gas and food shortages and a sinking economy without mentioning that these conditions were carefully orchestrated by the military. There are no long gas lines or shortages in Cairo today... convenient. They credit a powerful "secular business class" with saving Egypt from... democracy?

Yet a military coup riding mass protests carries its own risks to future stability. One danger is the reaction of the Brotherhood, which is still the strongest single political party. The secretive group renounced armed struggle in the 1970s. But that could change if its leaders conclude that democracy works for everyone except for them.

Adly Mansour, a judge and interim president sworn in Thursday, called the Brotherhood "part of the nation." But at the same time the military closed down pro-Brotherhood TV stations and put out warrants for the arrest of the party's senior leaders. The Brotherhood is unpopular now, but as memories fade it could return to power with a vengeance if Egypt's next rulers are also unable to fix the country's many problems.

A more hopeful sign is that General Sisi gathered prominent opposition and Coptic Christian and Muslim leaders to announce a new "roadmap" for Egypt's future. The roadmap proposes, among other steps, a broadly representative committee to rewrite the constitution and to form a technocratic government.

General Sisi is also promising new elections, albeit without a timetable. Mohamed ElBaradei, a prominent (and anti-American) secular leader, and the hardline Islamic Salafist Nour Party, a rival to the Brotherhood, have publicly backed the military plan.

The generals don't seem eager to govern directly, especially after they mismanaged the transition after Hosni Mubarak's 2011 ouster until Mr. Morsi's election. Civilians were tried in military courts and abused in custody. As crime worsened and the economy stalled, public ire turned against the generals.

It will do so again without more enlightened leadership that focuses on economic revival and a political transition to a system of checks and balances. Any transition government will no doubt seek money and oil from the Gulf states as well as an early deal with the International Monetary Fund to make up for Egypt's rapidly declining currency reserves.

America can also do more than it has. The Obama Administration has been caught trailing events at every turn, supporting Mr. Mubarak before abruptly throwing him over, and then embracing Mr. Morsi despite his authoritarian turn.

President Obama stayed quiet throughout the latest crisis, finally issuing an anodyne call Wednesday night for "a democratic political order with participation from all sides and all political parties—secular and religious, civilian and military."

Mr. Obama also requested a review of U.S. aid to Egypt, but cutting that off now would be a mistake. Unpopular as America is in Egypt, $1.3 billion in annual military aid buys access with the generals. U.S. support for Cairo is written into the Camp David peace accords with Israel. Washington can also do more to help Egypt gain access to markets, international loans and investment capital. The U.S. now has a second chance to use its leverage to shape a better outcome.

Egyptians would be lucky if their new ruling generals turn out to be in the mold of Chile's Augusto Pinochet, who took power amid chaos but hired free-market reformers and midwifed a transition to democracy. If General Sisi merely tries to restore the old Mubarak order, he will eventually suffer Mr. Morsi's fate.

Sisi and his puppet presidente were on the air calling for a free and open national discussion-- at the exact same time, his soldiers were shutting down all the TV stations they didn't control and rounding up Muslim Brotherhood leaders and arresting them for... whatever. Meanwhile, aren't New Yorkers lucky that they're not stuck having to read the reactionary Wall Street Journal! After all, they can read the NY Times instead and find out useful info, like how Egyptians seem "to lack even the basic mental ingredients" for a democratic transition.

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TV Watch: If "Food Network Star" has often felt a bit wheezy in Season 9, it's still had its moments

Easily the dopiest challenge of Season 9 of Next Food Network Star was Episode 4's "Dinner and a Movie," in which three-person teams not only had to create a dinner suitable for a genre of movie -- romance, Western, and musical -- but do a trailer for it. Team Musical (Rodney the pie man, Chris, and Lovely) sang, God help us. Click here for a preview of tomorrow's Episode 6.

by Ken

In fairness, by Season 9 of anything it's apt to be a tough haul to find new things to do or new ways of doing things. There's no question in my mind that the first few seasons of what is known now as simply Food Network Star were the best, because we learned so much about how shows are both conceived and, even more, produced, and I suspect that the Food Network executives themselves, notably programming chief Bob Tuschman and marketing and branding chief Susie Fogelson, were forced to clarify in their own minds what they're looking for in their on-air personalities.

Bob and Susie have hardly been in evidence in Season 9, which has been mostly entrusted to Food Network stars Bobby Flay, Giada De Laurentiis, and Alton Brown, which is fine, I guess -- their general role as coaches and judges makes more sense and works better than last season's strange experiment of having them serve as mentor to a team each chose from among the ranks of the not-quite-finalists. You could see the pressure to try something new, even if this something new seemed pretty self-evidently silly.

You'd think that the quality of individual seasons would depend above all upon the mix of talents and personalities chosen, but that hasn't been my experience (speaking as someone who, as best I can recall, hasn't missed an episode of any of the seasons), I think because some law of nature seems to dictate that in winnowing the heap of audition tapes down to a cadre of finalists, you always seem to wind up with the same sort of mix:

* a handful of people who are so obviously unfit that you wonder how they could have gotten through the screening process;

* at the other extreme, another handful of people who ultimately turn out to have something distinctive to share in the way of culinary knowledge and skills combined with the kind of personalty that will actually draw viewers (note that it usually takes a number of weeks for this group to assert itself);

* and then all the people in between, who clearly have some of the desired qualities but not enough of them, including a fair number who might at some point present the complete package but can't figure out how to put it all together.

I don't blame the producers for not being able to refine the talent-selection process more successfully. Is there any occupation where it's been figured out better? I think the above breakdown of talent potential relative to ultimate achievement might be applied to a lot of other walks of life.

One thing the coaches and judges have hardly any control over is the pace at which contestants come to know themselves well enough to draw on what it is they might have to offer. On the most basic level, it remains astonishing how many "finalists" (I put finalists in quotes because in most seasons the people we see in Episode 1 are the "finalists" from the off-air selection process) have apparently never thought to ask themselves why viewers might want to watch their TV show. Even after all these years of judges talking about contestants' "culinary point of view," it continues to come as a surprise to an alarming number of the newbies that they need to have one just as a basic component of some reason for viewers to tune in their show.

It's more understandable that contestants don't understand how exposing it is to do a show like Food Network stars do, and how unprepared they are for being exposed in this way. This remains true despite the large number of contestants in previous seasons who have undergone convulsive on-camera traumas over just such issues. (In every season at some point at least one contestant is going to break down in tears.) We humans don't often reflect on how un-self-knowing we are.

Sometimes the lack of self-knowledge is simple and factual. There was the highly personable, attractive, and even knowledgeable young Brad, who thought he had solved his "culinary POV" problem by presenting himself as "the professional chef," with no clue for many weeks as to how inappropriate and self-defeating moniker that was for him to be claiming. Eventually a run of rocky encounters with people who might fairly present themselves publicly as "professional chefs" sort of sank in. Being smart can be dangerous if you aren't aware of the limits to your smartitude.

Sometimes the lack of self-knowledge is equally basic but harder to recognize for the person affected. I'm thinking of this season's Danushka. I suppose it's harder for extremely attractive people to ask that hard question of why people might want to watch them on Food Network, since nearly all of their life experience has consisted of people always wanting to watch them. But Danushka, who apparently can actually cook, judging from the judges' responses to a number of dishes she prepared, not only seems not to have thought about what would make people watch her show, but she seems shocked to be told how arrogant and dismissive she comes across on-camera. Of course, when it comes to on-air loathsomeness combined with utter obliviousness to same, no one is ever likely to touch Penny from Season 7, who week after week -- until she was finally put out of my misery -- made at least this viewer want to see her suffer an unimaginably horrific and torturous demise.

Still, the judges do try to point the contestants in the direction of greater self-understanding. The most striking case so far in Season 9 has been the camera presentation in which Chris, who had seemed a pleasant fellow with some cooking skills but not much profile, mentioned that food had healed his "broken life," and Bobby Flay picked up on it, obviously recognizing a story similar to his own. With some difficulty Chris explained that he had been a drug addict and general substance abuser and that food had given him something to hold onto and rebuild his life. Everyone in the room was astonished and electrified, and suddenly I suspect that everyone watching as well had a completely new image of Chris. He explained to Bobby that he found this difficult to talk about, which I don't doubt, and Bobby, bless him, pointed out that what he has accomplished in getting his life together is a success story.

It's not that anyone expects Chris to talk about his former "broken life" every time he's on camera. It's that it's a key part of who he is, and how he relates to food and cooking and sharing with other people, and a part of him that, as he comes to feel more comfortable with the road he has traveled, can make him distinctively relatable for a lot of viewers.

It might not occur to many people that a show like Food Network Star might be a good place to learn more about people. To me it's still, nine seasons in, what's most appealing about the show.

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Hospitals-- A Place People Go To Get Even Sicker?

I'm sure many people think of hospitals as places to go to be cured of sickness. I always think of hospitals as places to go to die. And not just to die because medicine doesn't cure much of anything but die because hospitals all filled with disease so that patients who go to them are at risk of catching something unrelated to whatever brought them there in the first place-- and dying. Does that sound crazy?

Thursday Reuters published a report from London that over 3 million Europeans come down with just such an infection in a hospital every year! That's 80,000 people a day, every day. And some of these infections are fatal or can take months of expensive and intense treatment to overcome. One in 18 patients in any given hospital at any given time has something he acquired in the hospital. "Healthcare-associated infections pose a major public health problem and a threat to European patients," said Marc Sprenger, director of the Stockholm-based European Centre for Diseases Prevention and Control (ECDC).

The most common types of infection are respiratory tract infections such as pneumonia and infections of the bloodstream. These are often caused by Klebsiella pneumonia and E. coli bacteria, both of which have shown an ability to develop resistance to some of the most powerful antibiotics.

Among a total 15,000 reported healthcare-associated infections, surgical site infections and urinary tract infections are also common. Many of the infections are also found to be drug-resistant "superbugs," the survey showed.

Among all infections with Staphylococcus aureus bacteria in which full testing was carried out, more than 40 percent were reported as resistant to methicillin-- in other words they were MRSA infections, the ECDC said.

Worldwide, MRSA infects an estimated 53 million people annually and costs more than $20 billion a year to treat. It kills around 20,000 people a year in the United States and a similar number in Europe.

EU health and consumer affairs commissioner Paola Testori Coggi said the findings of the European survey were "worrying" and urged health authorities to do more to protect patients in hospital and to step up the fight against antibiotic resistance.

Drug resistance is driven by the misuse and overuse of antibiotics, which encourages bacteria to develop new ways of overcoming them.

Experts say hospitals are often guilty of overusing antibiotics, giving them as "blanket" treatments before full testing has established which drugs are really needed.

That tendency to over-use antibiotics is even worse among American doctors. In fact in the U.S. hospital-acquired infections cost over $25 billion a year. A report from CBS News last month pointed out that one of the problems with hospital-acquired infection is not just that they can be deadly, they can also take a long time to diagnose. American doctors are hopelessly bad, notoriously so, at diagnosing anything that they didn't learn about in Med School.

One of the major problems is that bacteria found in hospitals has been evolving for generations. These organisms are subjected to antibiotics and disinfectants constantly, so those that survive are considered superbugs.

"These hospital-acquired infections are typically driven by bacteria, and bacteria are living organisms," Accelerate Diagnostics CEO Lawrence Mehren said on CBS This Morning: Saturday. "Like all living organisms, they try to survive and bacteria living in hospitals are living in a high threat environment."

Mehren says that you should not blame the institutions, that they are in fact very clean and that it is really about the biology of the bacteria.

Accelerate Diagnostics, a Tucson, Ariz., biotech firm, has come up with a way to more quickly diagnose these organisms for quicker treatment options. The firm developed a non-cultured testing for the rapid identification of drug-resistant organisms and hospital-acquired infections.

Thursday, the Toronto Star looked at some ways hospitals have been fighting back against this plague, beyond just washing your hands, which is what most older doctors tell you to do.

Progress is being made by hospitals to prevent infections from all causes and specifically from superbugs. You can always ask about a hospital’s infection rate, both overall and within each department. You also can ask about the technology used to avoid infections. Here’s what’s new and tried-and-true.

There’s ever-improving older technology. Ultraviolet (UV) germicidal technology continues to be upgraded and is used for sterilizing operating rooms, air ducts, hospital equipment, hallways and patient rooms. And steam/vacuum sterilization (by autoclaving for instruments) and the use of germicides are effective.

New stuff includes robotlike devices that can clean a room by dispersing hydrogen peroxide into the air and then detoxifying it. Some hospitals say this can reduce a patient’s chances of becoming infected with drug-resistant bacterial strains of vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE), methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and C. difficile by 80 per cent.

Lastly there’s what we call the “all-hands-on-deck” approach, combining the latest technological solutions with standard cleaning.

Dr. Mike’s Cleveland Clinic has been a leader in achieving hand hygiene-- the single most effective front-line defence against infection in hospitals. The national average for hand-hygiene compliance in hospitals is less than 50 per cent. An extensive education campaign and the addition of hand-hygiene monitors improved the compliance rate at the Cleveland Clinic to greater than 98 per cent.

Can you imagine yourself insisting that the doctor-- and the nurses-- wash their hands before touching you?

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The Republican Fear Of All Things Womanish

by Noah

No, this isn’t about The Republican Party’s continuing war on women, as recently exemplified in the neo-fascist states of Ohio, Texas, and North Carolina. It’s just something that recent events made me think about on this 4th of July weekend. It’s not about abortion rights per se and it’s not about the hate-filled Herculean pro-death, Republican efforts to stop uterine and breast cancer screening with sneaky late night anti-democratic state legislature maneuvers. No, this is something far more base and basic. It’s about what actually drives the evil of Republicans in both their waking hours and in their dreams, and in their nightmares.

Case in point: Generations Radio’s Pastor Kevin Swanson. Generations Radio serves some sort of propaganda arm for people who call themselves Christians while exhibiting nothing Christian in their attitudes. It’s worth noting that while Pat Robertson may be gone to Hell soon, charbroiling up nicely, right next to Jerry Falwell, on Satan’s big hibachi, the Republicans will always have plenty of would-be replacements. When Pat is gone and his brand of Republican psycho gibberish no longer fills the TV screens of old lady suckers, Swanson will be there vying to take his place.

Here’s Swanson quoting from an old copy of Forbes magazine (courtesy of Daily Kos)-

“Women in the 1980s adopted a male style of dress-- ties, tailored skirt suits, shoulder pads-- in order to gain a foothold in the male dominated world of business. And Carol Moseley Braun, the first African American woman elected to the U.S. Senate, wore a pantsuit on the Senate floor in 1993, ending the Senate’s ban on women wearing slacks there.”

My god! There she was! Slacks! Slacks! Personally, I thought women wearing ties dated back to the mods of the 1960s. I even married one such woman. Does that make me, in republican eyes, some sort of perverted same sex marriage pioneer? Oh rest assured my little republikooks, my wife and I are straight. Obviously, though, the fact that I am writing this at all makes me some sort of Devil’s spawn, right?

A close examination of Pastor Swanson’s pea brain reveals so much about the Republican mind. Notice the choice of words in the Forbes article that so appealed to him. It’s not just about what a woman is, what women are wearing. It’s also about “male dominated” and  “African American woman.”  Damn, right there on the floor of the U.S. Senate; flaunting it! Flaunting her election, her feminism, her ethnicity. It’s too much for a republican to bear! And, he’s quoting about something that happened twenty years ago!

Get over it bozo. Have you even noticed that women Senators now come in the Republican flavor? We have lots of them, right there on the Senate floor, a place that was one of the last bastions on male domination as you would spit it out, Pastor Mr. Christian Love moron. The only thing that’s weird about that, to me, is that any woman, in this day and age, could profess to be a Republican at all, not that they are a Senator representing kooks like you, Pastor Swanson. And, just how did you get to be a pastor anyway? Some back of a matchbook ad while you were lighting up a crackpipe?

It gets weirder. Remember back to 1991: the Clarence Thomas hearings? Thomas was before the Senate, an institution known for its policy of sex harassment (pro); defending himself against charges of sexual harassment and a fascination with the porno movie exploits of a chap named Long Dong Silver (party affiliation unknown). During the proceedings, we had the already senile and still Senator, Orrin Hatch, brandishing a copy of The Exorcist, waving it in the air as if it somehow reflected on Thomas’s accuser, former co-worker named Anita Hill, but, that wasn’t the funniest part. The funniest part was another Senatorial nutjob named Arlen Specter saying to the accuser, “Tell us about the b-b-b-breasts”, like some sort of 13 year old sleepaway camper wanting uber-detailed information from the older kid in the bunk next to him. Sen. Specter could barely say the word. It had so much power over him. He was so worked up.

Here’s Pastor Swanson again:

“Coming back from Australia, I’m stuck in 14 hours of these visual presentations, sitcoms and stuff, on 17 screens in front of me and I’ve never seen so many breasts in all my life. The immodesty going on in our society is far worse than it was back when Cheers, Family Ties, and The Cosby Show was playing. I mean every form of aberrant sexuality and women’s breasts are shown in front of me almost non- stop for 14 hours. It’s such an oppressive, horrible, horrible world and so man of our young girls in our Christian churches are running down to Wal-Mart and buying the same clothes… Why do we have to submit to these sexual sins again and again?”

I’m amazed at so much here; “aberrant sexuality”, “oppressive, horrible, horrible world,” “submit.” Apparently, Wal-Mart is the work of the Devil. Well, to be fair, and I am always fair, Swanson may be right on that point but not for the reason he thinks, unless, he’s worried about how prone to wardrobe malfunctions and inconveniently placed tears Wal-Mart’s cheap clothes may be.

But, wait, there’s more. There’s always more when it comes to Republican kookery. Boys are b-b-b-bad, bad, bad, too!

Lindsey's fairy shoes

“I brought up androgyny and how many young boys are running out and doing the metrosexual thing with the skinny pants and the little fairy shoes. They’re working on the gender blender for themselves and they don’t want to look like a man and God is just so upset. He hates it when men are not manly in their approach. 1 Corinthians 6 speaks about homosexuality and feminine behavior and feminine dress for men. God does not want men to be androgynous and feminine-like in their approach.or that Texas Chainsaw Massacre guy. Our country has suffered your kind before, even when you manage to slow things down. Here’s a tip for you, in the end, you and your sick brethren will inevitably lose and you will take your place in Hell. In the end, you might say that God will shine his grace on thee, and all of us anyway.

He gave them facial hair for a reason.

Hey, Swanson, God gave some women facial hair for a reason, too. What about it? And, is this facial hair obsession some sort of Muslim thou must grow a beard thing?

There it is. Cover up the women in burkas. Men must grow beards; and, this from the party that drums up fears of sharia law taking over the land. It’s a classic example of accusing your “opponent” of being what you, yourself, really are. That’s your Republican Party in 2013 and beyond. It’s one of the older strategies of subterfuge in the history of mankind. By the way, Swanson is beardless. If you were to ask me, I might say that, by his own pronouncements, he just might be in league with ol’ Beelzabubba, hisself.

I had wondered why Swanson had failed to mention Will & Grace, a show which featured a-- dare I say it aloud-- gay character, right out there on the TeeVEE for all to see! Well, now we know. He was just saving the gay stuff, or trying to repress it, or something. Maybe, he just hadn’t caught up to this particular sitcom, which ran from 1998 to 2006. He tries so valiantly to live in the past, longing for a time where everyone was buttoned up and in their place.

“Little fairy shoes”? Most normal people got over this stuff back in the 60s when the Beatles and the Rolling Stones came along in their slightly high-heel boots and longish hair, but not Republicans. I remember being called ‘Miss” because of my very long hair back then. I also have very clear memories of a couple of people who, very most likely, never made that mistake with a long-haired guy again.

The problem is, of course, that Republicans want to go back right past the 1960s to the 19th century, but not the 18th; men wore wigs then, and frilly coats, and stockings, and…  Ya know what, our country grew and progressed just fine, and, no, tragic events like the Civil War, Lincoln’s murder, lynchings, the Depression, and the murders of civil rights workers and leaders, were not caused by a punishing god. Those events were caused by reactionaries and greedmongers who were fighting, so much like you, Pastor Kevin Swanson, to preserve a status quo that had already passed.

Swanson, you whine about “fairy shoes” and have bad little dreams about being attacked by big bad breast monsters. You look at the moon and see giant areola and nipples where normal people see craters. You look at the clouds and see threatening vaginas. Maybe the biggest irony is that you are so much like the very reactionaries who nailed your Jesus to a cross and threw a spear at him in an effort to maintain that status quo. You, Pastor Swanson, and all your kind in the aberrant state legislatures across this great land, and in Congress in Washington, DC, have more in common with Richard Speck or that Texas Chainsaw Massacre guy. Our country has suffered your kind before, even when you manage to slow things down. Here’s a tip for you, in the end, you and your sick brethren will inevitably lose and you will take your place in Hell. In the end, you might say that God will shine his grace on thee, and all of us anyway.

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Midterm Report: The Best and the Worst Democratic Freshmen

Time to grade the Democratic freshmen-- or at least to pick out the 10 best and the 10 worst. Which ones lived up to what Alan Grayson laid out in his little monologue above? And which served the interest of careerism and corporate special interests above the interests of their own constituents? Short version-- for people in a hurry-- here are two lists (alphabetized), the 10 best, followed b the 10 worst:

THE BEST:

• Tony Cardenas (D-CA)
• Matt Cartwright (D-PA)
• Alan Grayson (D-FL)
• Jared Huffman (D-CA)
• Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY)
• Joe Kennedy (D-MA)
• Alan Lowenthal (D-CA)
• Grace Meng (D-NY)
• Rick Nolan (D-MN)
• Mark Pocan (D-WI)

THE WORST:

• Cheri Bustos (D-IL)
• Pete Gallego (Blue Dog-TX)
• Joe Garcia (New Dem-FL)
• Ann Kirkpatrick (D-AZ)
• Dan Maffei (New Dem-NY)
• Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY)
• Patrick Murphy (New Dem-FL)
• Scott Peters (New Dem-CA)
• Raul Ruiz (D-CA)
• Kyrsten Sinema (New Dem-AZ)

The other day, Obama seemed to help justify the Egyptian military coup by declaring that democracy is about more than just elections. Eric Cantor liked that. The Washington Post didn't. You decide. Meanwhile, though, figuring out which congressmen did best and did worst is about more than just raw voting. Voting on bills that come to the floor is very, very important, of course, but there are other factors as well, like courageousness, leadership, behavior on committees, integrity. Example: freshmen who voted in the House Financial Services Committee-- so somewhat privately-- to gut Dodd-Frank Wall Street reforms and then piled onto a plane with Democratic corruptionist Joe Crowley to celebrate with Wall Street banksters, are never going to get on a 10 Best list. Freshmen with the guts and smarts to sign the Grayson-Takano No Cuts letter, however, have a leg up on any 10 Best list.

The 10 freshmen who signed that letter are a mixed bag though, including really excellent Members like Grayson himself, as well as Matt Cartwright and Rick Nolan and really awful sellouts looking for another way to bash Obama, like Ann Kirkpatrick, or for a cheap way to burnish progressive credentials for the folks back home, like Juan Vargas. These are the freshman signers (in order of date signed):

• Alan Grayson (D-FL)
• Mark Takano (D-CA)
• Rick Nolan (D-MN)
• Matt Cartwright (D-PA)
• Joyce Beatty (D-OH)
• Ann Kirkpatrick (D-AZ)
• Tony Cardenas (D-CA)
• Donald Payne (D-NJ)
• Dan Kildee (D-MI)
• Juan Vargas (D-CA)

The best freshman and the worst freshman each comes from Florida. Overall best is Alan Grayson, more than just a good voter-- a real leader and organizer. And please do watch that video up top. Ironically, the worst freshman, Patrick Murphy, is also a leader and an organizer-- he's leading other freshmen, really dumb ones, astray and organizing to help push through Boehner's toxic agenda. But let's get to the roll calls that we counted in assessing each freshman. We're listing them in chronological order, starting with a typical cheap trick by the GOP threatening that Members wouldn't get paid 'til a budget was passed. H.R. 325 passed on January 23, 285-144 with 86 Democrats joining most of the Republicans to pass it. It was the first big bill showing that most of the conservative New Dem freshmen would side with the GOP on their agenda. The freshmen who crossed the aisle: Ami Bera (CA), Julia Brownley (CA), Cheri Bustos (IL), Joaquin Castro (TX), John Delaney (MD), Suzan DelBene (WA), Tammy Duckworth (IL), Bill Enyart (IL), Elizabeth Esty (CT), Bill Foster (IL), Pete Gallego (TX), Denny Heck (WA), Steven Horsford (NV), Derek Kilmer (WA), Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ), Ann Kuster (NH), Alan Lowenthal (CA), Michelle Lujan Grisham (NM), Dan Maffei (NY), Sean Patrick Maloney (NY), Grace Meng (NY), Patrick Murphy (FL), Rick Nolan (MN), Beto O'Rourke (TX), Scott Peters (CA), Raul Ruiz (CA), Brad Schneider (IL), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Mark Takano (CA), Dina Titus (NV), and Filemon Vela (TX). Chief New Dem Ron Kind and DCCC chair Steve Israel also voted with the Republicans on this and strongly urged the freshmen to do likewise. It helped established a very bad pattern, a pattern that some have since seen through and have broken free of-- like Lowenthal, Nolan, and Takano-- but one that has ensnared too many freshmen in the quicksand of false bipartisanship. Every one of the 10 worst freshmen voted with the GOP on this early bill.

H.R. 444 passed on February 6 and it was another gimmicky GOP balanced budget bill. 26 Democrats joined 227 Republicans to pass it 253-167. The freshmen aisle crossers were Ami Bera (CA), Cheri Bustos (IL), Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ), Ann Kuster (NH), Dan Maffei (NY), Sean Patrick Maloney (NY), Patrick Murphy (FL), Scott Peters (CA), Raul Ruiz (CA), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), and Dina Titus (NV). So here we were in February and the lines between the good freshmen and the bad freshmen were already starting to become very clear. Most of these would go on to back Boehner and Cantor from then right up until now.

H.R. 273 is intended to freeze the pay of federal employees. It passed 261-154, on February 15, Boehner and Cantor able to claim a bipartisan victory because of these largely worthless freshmen: Julia Brownley (CA), Cheri Bustos (IL), Suzan DelBene (WA), Bill Enyart (IL), Bill Foster (IL), Pete Gallego (TX), Joe Garcia (FL), Ann Kuster (NH), Dan Maffei (NY), Sean Patrick Maloney (NY), Patrick Murphy (FL), Scott Peters (CA), Raul Ruiz (CA), Brad Schneider (IL), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) and Filemon Vela (TX). You should be starting to recognize the repeat offenders now.

H.R. 933 passed 267-151 on March 6 and the intention was to soften the blow of the sequester for the Pentagon while leaving all the other victims in the lurch. 53 bad Democrats went along with the GOP, including 28 freshmen, these freshmen: Ami Bera (CA), Julia Brownley (CA), Cheri Bustos (IL), Joaquin Castro (TX), Suzan DelBene (WA), Bill Enyart (IL), Elizabeth Esty (CT), Bill Foster (IL), Tulsi Gabbard (HI), Pete Gallego (TX), Joe Garcia (FL), Steven Horsford (NV), Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ), Ann Kuster (NH), Alan Lowenthal (CA), Michelle Grisham Lujan (NM), Dan Maffei (NY), Sean Patrick Maloney (NY), Patrick Murphy (FL), Gloria Negrete McLeod (CA), Beto O'Rourke (TX), Scott Peters (CA), Raul Ruiz (CA), Brad Schneider (IL), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Mark Takano (CA), Dina Titus and Marc Veasy (TX).

H.R. 890, meant to prevent the federal government from giving states greater flexibility when complying with a welfare program’s work requirements, passed 246-181 on March 13. Only 18 Democrats crossed the aisle on this one, including 8 freshmen: Ami Bera (CA), Joe Garcia (FL), Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ), Dan Maffei (NY), Sean Patrick Maloney (NY), Patrick Murphy (FL), Scott Peters (CA), and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), the ones Boehner and Cantor were coming to depend on pretty consistently to make their awful bills "bipartisan."

H Con Res 25 on March 20 was the budget bill. There were a lot of alternatives, starting with a proposal to pass the budget the Senate had already passed, not a great budget, but not nearly as bad as the Ryan budget the House was about to vote on. The Senate budget was defeated in the House 154-261 with 35 Democratic defectors including the 17 worst freshmen: Ami Bera (CA), Julia Brownley (CA), Cheri Bustos (IL), John Delaney (MD), Bill Enyart (IL), Bill Foster (IL), Pete Gallego (TX), Joe Garcia (FL), Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ), Ann Kuster (NH), Dan Maffei (NY), Sean Patrick Maloney (NY), Patrick Murphy (FL), Scott Peters (CA), Raul Ruiz (CA), Brad Schneider (IL) and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ).

When Raul Grijalva introduced the Progressive Caucus budget alternative-- the only budget that would have solved the problems plaguing America-- it lost 84-327. Only 13 freshmen voted FOR it, the better freshmen: Joyce Beatty (OH), Tony Cardenas (CA), Matt Cartwright (PA), Alan Grayson (FL), Jared Huffman (CA), Hakeem Jeffries (NY), Alan Lowenthal (CA), Rick Nolan (MN), Don Payne (NJ), Mark Pocan (WI), Mark Takano (CA), Juan Vargas (CA), and Marc Veasy (TX).

The House Democratic Caucus budget wasn't as good as the one Grijalva proposed but it was still way better than Ryan's. It lost 165-253 and really did encompass a vision for what the House Democrats would like to accomplish. 28 bad Democrats voted against it including 17 freshmen: Ami Bera (CA), Julia Brownley (CA), Cheri Bustos (IL), Suzan DelBene (WA), Bill Enyart (IL), Bill Foster (IL), Pete Gallego (TX), Joe Garcia (FL), Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ), Ann Kuster (NH), Dan Maffei (NY), Sean Patrick Maloney (NY), Patrick Murphy (FL), Scott Peters (CA), Raul Ruiz (CA), Brad Schneider (IL) and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ)-- all the worst garbage in the caucus.

H.R. 624, CISPA, was a domestic spying bill that passed 288-127 on April 18. The Democratic caucus was very split-- 98 against and 92 for. The bad freshmen should be very predictable for you by now, although a few weak links among usually not-as-bad-Democrats went along with it as well: Joyce Beatty (OH), Ami Bera (CA), Julia Brownley (CA), Cheri Bustos (IL), Tony Cardenas (CA), Tammy Duckworth (IL), Bill Enyart (IL), Bill Foster (IL), Loius Frankel (FL), Pete Gallego (TX), Joe Garcia (FL), Denny Heck (WA), Steven Horsford (NV), Hazeem Jeffries (NY), Robin Kelly (IL), Derek Kilmer (WA), Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ), Ann Kuster (NH), Michelle Lujan Grisham (NM), Dan Maffei (NY), Sean Patrick Maloney (NY), Grace Meng (NY), Patrick Murphy (FL), Don Payne (NJ), Scott Peters (CA), Raul Ruiz (CA), Brad Schneider (IL), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Eric Swalwell (CA), Dina Titus (NV), Juan Vargas (CA), Marc Veasey (TX) and Filemon Vela (TX).

H.R. 1062 was another conservative initiative to weaken regulations on Wall Street. It passed 235-161 on May 17 with 17 Democrats voting with the Republicans, including 9 freshmen-- Ami Bera (CA), Tony Cardenas (CA), Pete Gallego (TX), Dan Maffei (NY), Sean Patrick Maloney (NY), Scott Peters (CA), Raul Ruiz (CA), Brad Schneider (IL) and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ).

H.R. 3 was a big one-- the Keystone XL Pipeline bill on May 22. It passed 241-175 with 19 Democrats going along for the ride, including 5 anti-environment freshmen: Cheri Bustos (IL), Bill Enyart (IL), Sean Patrick Maloney (NY), Patrick Murphy (FL) and Filemon Vela (TX).

H.R. 1911 was also a big one-- the GOP bill to double the rate on student loans. Only 4 Democrats were stupid enough to vote for that one and 3 are New Dem freshmen with terrible records: Joe Garcia (FL), Dan Maffei (NY) and Scott Peters (CA).

H.R. 1947 was the failed Farm Bill that shredded food stamps for the most needy Americans. Only 24 Democrats voted for it, including 8 freshmen: Ami Bera (CA), Julia Brownley (CA), Cheri Bustos (IL), Bill Enyart (IL), Joe Garcia (FL), Patrick Murphy (FL), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), and Filemon Vela (TX). There were a ton of amendments that showed how bad some of these freshmen are including one to defund farmers markets by Tom McClintock that drew exactly one "Democratic" vote: New Dem Patrick Murphy (FL). 8 Democrats voted against Jim McGovern's amendment to reinstate the SNAP food stamp funding and 2 of them were freshmen-- Cheri Bustos (IL) and Sean Patrick Maloney (NY).

H.R. 1613 and H.R. 2231 passed June 27 and 28, the two most recent Republican travesties. Both bills, written by Oil and Gas lobbyists, were big giveaways for offshore drilling businesses. The only Democratic freshmen to go along with either or both of them were Ami Bera (CA), Cheri Bustos (IL), John Delaney (MD), Pete Gallego (TX), Joe Garcia (FL), Patrick Murphy (FL), Scott Peters (CA), Raul Ruiz (CA), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) Marc Veasey (TX) and Filemon Vela (TX).

Don't forget, this report card is only for freshmen. We didn't count Ron Barber (New Dem-AZ) as a freshman and he's literally worse than any of the freshmen. So are 4 other more senior Democrats, the worst of their party in the House, by far. From bad to worse (with their ProgressivePunch scores):

• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)- 40.00
• Bill Owens (New Dem)-NY)- 33.33
• John Barrow (Blue Dog/New Dem-GA)- 28.33
• Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT)- 26.67

This year, six Republicans have voted more frequently with the Democrats on crucial roll calls than Matheson and Barrow. The DCCC will spend an estimated $4 million in a desperate and pointless attempt to reelect both of them.

Watch the Grayson video up top again-- and keep it in your mind the next time the DCCC asks you for money. Virtually all of it that doesn't wind up their cronies' pockets, goes to reelect these Democrats who vote most frequently with the GOP. In the clip, Grayson reminds Democratic candidates running for office that "If you have two Republicans running against each other, one with an 'R-e-p' next to his name and one with a 'D-e-m' next to his name, it's a tremendous disservice to the public. The public can't choose that way. And if you run as a Democrat, then there are certain things you should stand for. You should stand for Justice. You should stand for Equality. You should stand for Peace... We need more Democrats who are Democrats... You can't beat a Republican by BEING a Republican."

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