Arians came to football’s defense yet again on Friday here at the Cardinals training facility. He delivered the keynote address to over 130 high school football coaches at the “Arizona Cardinals High School Football Coaches Clinic,” and, as always, Arians was full of passion and energy for the sport, and he didn’t hold back any punches when speaking on stage in front of the men.
“We feel like this is our sport. It’s being attacked, and we got to stop it at the grass roots,” Arians said. “It’s the best game that’s ever been f—— invented, and we got to make sure that moms get the message; because that’s who’s afraid of our game right now. It’s not dads, it’s moms.”
We’ll be leaving Philadelphia to return to Kansas this summer: “Philadelphia Bucket List” is an occasional series of posts about what we’ll miss about this great city.
The first time I heard the Philadelphia Orchestra was in September 2008, on Dilworth Plaza — now Dilworth Park — at City Hall. My son had been born weeks earlier and we were crazed with a lack of sleep; an outdoor concert seemed an appropriate way to allow us to have a cultural experience in our new city where an infant would be appropriate.
My son at his first orchestra concert, September 2008.
I remember a couple of things about that night. First: It was kind of chilly. Second: An officer had been killed in the line of duty that day. Mayor Nutter took the stage and said the death nearly caused him to cancel the concert. Instead, the orchestra opened with addition to the evening’s program: Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings.”
I don't mean to be ostentatiously ambivalent, here. I'm trying to work this out, and doing some thinking by writing.
But my reasons for voting for Hillary tend to be defensive: I think she's better-positioned to beat a Republican candidate and has a better temperament for leading despite the obstacles of a Republican Congress than does Bernie.
That raises a question, though: Is there a good, affirmative reason to vote for Hillary?
I thought about it. Started a list. But most of the reasons I'd affirmatively vote for Hillary Clinton could be applied to any generic Democrat. (I.E. Supreme Court appointments.) But affirmative reason to vote for Hillary over Bernie?
This is what I came up with:
• She'd be the first woman president: It's not the only thing. It's not even, from my perspective, the most important thing. But it's important. How amazing would it be to get my 7-year-old son, born two months before Obama's election, to the age of 16 — almost voting age — with no memory of a white guy ever running this country? And how might that shape his view of what's possible for himself and for others in the future?
That's about it. Like I said, the rest of the reasons I came up with were generic and could apply to any Democrat. It's why Bernie's still in play for me
The polls I've seen show Trump doing better against Clinton than Sanders. Said another way, people seem to be willing to vote for Sanders over Trump to a greater extent than they are to vote for Clinton over Trump. So in terms of who can win the general, it seems the better choice is Sanders.
I've heard this several times. I'm skeptical.
I think, quite simply, that the GOP has been so hung up on its internal battles that it hasn't turned its attention to Bernie yet. But when it does, I fully expect the full extent of the GOP's "turn the Dem candidate into an America-hating demon" forces against him. It's possible Sanders could still win the election — Obama and Bill Clinton both survived the process and won the presidency. But I'm not sure he'll be much more electable once Republicans decide to target him in earnest.
Sanders could possibly beat Trump more easily than Clinton could today; will that still be the case in November? A lot rides on the answer to that question.
It's is a good reminder to take a deep breath and remind ourselves that as batshit insane as this particular election season seems, this is not 1968, with the country seemingly spinning out of control and major public figures being assassinated. Trump is a threat to good order, but we haven't reached those heights.
We throw around this label "hawk" without much thought for what it means - it's a vaguely distasteful moniker. What kind of body count do you imagine is tied to Clinton's particular "foreign policy experience"? How much suffering? And to what end? Whose ends?
You usually write as a sort of demonstration of the conscience of the center-left. But in this piece you devolve into the sort of nervous gamesmanship that has for decades undermined progress on issues you obviously care about.
The suggestion - and lots of Bernie fans are making it - is that Hillary essentially disqualified herself with support for the Iraq War. I'm ... sympathetic to that argument. And I'm even sympathetic to the "nervous gamesmanship" allegation my friend lobs at me.
But I don't think nervous gamesmanship is necessarily a bad thing. A Trump Supreme Court pick really would be an awful thing, one that might not be undone for a generation.
So maybe I'm wrong, but I do think a central question of the campaign is this: Would the primary task of a Democratic president be to defend some gains that have been made over the last eight years, and defend against a Republican agenda? Or is there a chance to go on offense, as it were, and create progress on issues I care about?
If I think we're on offense, I'm more likely to go with Bernie. But I think Dems will be on defense. Perhaps there's a path to Dems regaining control of Congress this election, but I don't see it. And without Congress, a president's agenda will be a limited thing. That's not a dynamic made for Bernie.
On the other hand: Hillary's hawkishness really is a problem for me, and not an abstract one. The Iraq War was avoidable foolishness, the worst foreign policy mistake of my lifetime, and the rest of my lifetime is going to be spent witnessing the fallout from that. It's why I was an enthusiastic Obama cheerleader in '08.
I'm not enthusiastic about Hillary. But on occasion, it can be wise to vote your fears. This seems like one of them.
I haven't finalized my voting decision yet — I'm still in play — but with about three weeks to go before the Pennsylvania primary, I find myself leaning towards support for Hillary.
It's a close call. Hillary Clinton voted to invade Iraq. And her performance as secretary of state suggests that she's altogether more hawkish than I would prefer. I used to think that her hawkishness was a political pose — meant more to disarm Republicans than as a guide to actual policy. I don't believe that anymore, or at any rate I don't think it matters anymore: She functions as a hawk, therefore her internal beliefs don't matter all that much.
I've said before my heart remains closer to Bernie Sanders, and that remains true. America, I think, is headed for an economic reckoning — the problem of economic inequality is probably the problem of our time, and he's the candidate who seems to take it most seriously.
I've been thinking about this a lot because, after Super Tuesday, it seems likely that Donald Trump will be the de facto Republican nominee for president. And even a lot of Republicans agree that this is bad.
It's even worse if Trump ends up president. So how do we stop him? How do we stop a candidate when every attack on him seems only to make him stronger?
Maybe we think evangelically.
I'm not saying this in the religious sense. I am saying this in the sense that we non-Trump-loving Americans do something that's not tried all that often anymore: We should make a concerted, respectful effort not just to turn our own voters to the polls, but to convince our fellow citizens that a vote for Trump is wrong — not just from our worldview, but from theirs.
…SIEGEL: Toward the end of your tenure at the Center Intelligence Agency, the question of interrogations became extremely controversial. You advised your successor – President Obama’s nominee, Leon Panetta – what to say about waterboarding. I want you to tell us what your guidance was.
HAYDEN: Yeah. I simply said do not use the word torture and CIA in the same sentence ever again. You can object to some of the enhanced interrogation techniques. You can, in your heart of hearts, believe they meet some legal definition of torture. But Leon, you’re taking over a workforce that did these things in good faith, that did these things with the assurance of the attorney general that they indeed were not torture. Do not accuse them of felonies.
SIEGEL: As a matter of institutional politics or as a matter of truth?
HAYDEN: Well, certainly as a matter of truth. Look, I get it. Honest men differ. A lot of good people describe these things as torture. The definitive legal judgment under which the agency was operating – and, you know, sooner or later, Robert, somebody’s got to call balls and strikes, and that’s the way it is.
Gee. I wonder if the CIA could get a lawyer to say it's OK to do bad things to terrorist families, — to call those "balls and strikes" — despite what the Geneva Conventions say?
In the December debate with Cassel, Yoo was asked: "If the president deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?"
Yoo: "No treaty."
Cassel: "Also no law by Congress? That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo [that went to the president]."
Yoo: "I think it depends on why the president thinks he needs to do that."
CNN anchor Jake Tapper repeatedly asked Donald Trump on Sunday to denounce David Duke's support for his candidacy, but Trump insisted he didn't know anything about the former KKK grand wizard.
"Even if you don't know about their endorsement, there are these groups and individuals endorsing you. Would you just say unequivocally that you condemn them and you don't want their support?" he asked Trump.
But Trump again insisted again he didn't know about Duke:
I have to look at the group. I mean, I don't know what group you're talking about. You wouldn't want me to condemn a group that I know nothing about. I have to look. If you would send me a list of the groups, I will do research on them. And certainly I would disavow if I thought there was something wrong.
It is true that Republican leaders have previously steered clear of endorsing Birtherism. But they have also steered clear of denouncing it. Pressed to denounce Birtherism, Republicans have evaded it. (Eric Cantor: “I don't think it's an issue that we need to address at all. … I don't think it's nice to call anyone crazy.” John Boehner: “It’s not my job to tell the American people what to think. Our job in Washington is to listen to the American people.”) They danced delicately around the question because Birthers constitute an important segment of the Republican coalition they could not afford to alienate. The same logic drove Mitt Romney to publicly solicit and accept Trump’s endorsement four years ago, an event that prompted little complaint from conservative intellectuals.
In both cases, the play is the same: Ignore the obvious racism of your constituency by pleading ignorance of a sort. A Venn diagram of KKK members and birthers wouldn't be a perfect circle, but it would be close enough that it's not hard to see a through line.
Again: The Republican-conservative establishment laid the groundwork for this. As Jonathan Chait said this week: "It has been a bracing experience for conservative elites to behold when the forces they have successfully harnessed for so long shake free and turn against them." Again, let us resist Trumpenfreude. But let's not kid ourselves about the foundations of it.
Three thoughts about "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny"...
• I've seen a few reviews calling this a "cheap knockoff" of the original. I don't think that's entirely fair. For one thing, you can only be a virgin once, and the first time we saw rooftop wire work in the first movie was an astounding revelation to many of us Western movie watchers. (There is however a great ice-fighting scene in this edition.) And no, this movie doesn't have the aching, epic artistry that Ang Lee brought to the original. Watched on its own terms, though, it's fun Friday night flick. In some ways, it feels more "Chinese" than the original, which was famed for marrying Western storytelling sensibilities to Chinese martial arts flicks.
• If you're going to connect this movie to another, the better comparison might be 1994's "Wing Chun," which starred by Michelle Yeoh and Donnie Yen — same as this movie — and even had the same director, Woo-Ping Yuen. The two movies share more comic outlook; there's even a brief callback to "Wing Chun's" great table-fighting scene. The two "Crouching Tiger" movies contain a brand name — thanks Netflix! — but the newer movie reaches farther back in its references.
One of the problems with today's era of hyperpolarization is the temptation to take pleasure when one's political rivals are running around in a tizzy — even when said tizziness is caused by something that will ultimately cause you and your side pain as well.
Take Donald Trump.
Max Boot and Bill Kristol, in particular are two conservatives who never found a war they couldn't excitedly cheer on. Kristol, in particular, is known for simply being wrong on every great question that's faced the United States for the last few decades.
And today, they're both tweeting up a storm, trying — vainly, I suspect — to rally Republicans against Trump. The panic is manifest:
And so on. And admittedly, in the pit of my stomach, my instinctive response is this:
Tee hee! This is the world you guys helped make! Now you have to live in it! Tee hee!
It's the wrong response. The world in which Trump is conceivably the GOP nominee is a world where Trump is conceivably the president — and in any case, probably coarsens our culture a little further so that even if he fails, we're a little more complacent the next time a Trump-like figure runs.
At the same time, her stark morality tale of a righteous Southern lawyer who stands firm against racism and mob rule struck a chord with Americans, many of them becoming aware of the civil rights movement for the first time. The novel had its critics. “It’s interesting that all the folks that are buying it don’t know they’re reading a child’s book,” Flannery O’Connor wrote in a letter to friend shortly after the novel’s appearance. Some reviewers complained that the perceptions attributed to Scout were far too complex for a girl just starting grade school and dismissed Atticus as a kind of Southern Judge Hardy, dispensing moral bromides.
All I'll say about To Kill a Mockingbird is this: It's a fairy tale.
That's not a criticism. Fairy tales instruct. Fairy tales inspire. Fairy tales have "the moral of the story."
When the book appeared, in 1960, America desperately needed the fairly tale that Harper Lee gave us. We needed to hear that this country, at its best and most just self, extended justice fairly to everybody, no matter the color of our skin. That wasn't a completely unknown idea — the Civil Rights movement was well underway by then — but having the message delivered by a Southern writer, somebody who clearly loved the South, helped the idea spread a bit more quickly, I think.
It wasn't a perfect book. We're not a perfect society. There's still a long way to go to meet that ideal. But Harper Lee, god bless her, gave us a nudge in the right direction.
It's been more than seven years since we moved to Philadelphia and sold our car. For the most part, it's been a good thing: Every step we take — and every gallon of gasoline we don't burn — has been healthier both for us and the environment.
I only occasionally miss having a car. Our experience of the city is certainly different than it otherwise would be: It's much more located in the environs of where we live than it would be if we just go in the car and went whenever and wherever we get the notion. Relying on transit requires planning, which can be the death of "let's go over to Kensington to grab a bite." So I miss that.
Mostly, though, what I miss, is something silly: The ability to sing at the top of my lungs.
I was taking a long walk this afternoon on Market Street, listening to Pandora, when I was suddenly gripped by the urge to start singing along -- loudly -- to Arcade Fire. I looked around to see if I'd get caught. Sure enough: There were too many people around. I'd look like a crazy man if I just started belting.
That's less a problem when you're on the highway. Yes, cars passing you can and do see that you're performing a full-blown concert. But there's still enough privacy that it doesn't matter.
I realize now, years later, that my car was the primary place I experienced music -- and also, the primary place I experienced a certain kind of joy in unashamedly throwing myself into the music. Owning a car in Center City would be a pain in the ass -- it's not a need, and would be an expensive luxury -- but I miss it.
Three thoughts about Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me”:
• This is a relentlessly political book — how could it not be? — and yet attempts to respond to the book from within the typical left-right Democratic-Republican construct of punditry seem to be insufficient to me — they come to the book, as with other political debates, without curiosity, for the sake of trying to win an argument. Let’s try again. This is an American black man telling us how he perceives living as a black man in America today: It contains no policy prescriptions, no endorsement of party or candidate, no 10-point campaign for better living. We haven’t found the right way to talk about this book yet.
The Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They said to Jesus, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?" They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.
But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to deny her cake and flowers at her wedding."
Now: Anybody with passing familiarity with the Christian Bible probably can spot right away that this is not a faithful retelling of the incident in John 8. Instead, it’s a telling of scripture as I re-imagined it in light of the law, passed recently in Indiana, allowing shopkeepers to discriminate against gays. My conservative writing/debating partner, Ben Boychuk, has told me on several occasions that my effort was “glib,” but I disagree. Satirical, yes, but considered satire, with a purpose that was quite serious: To suggest that Christians might want to reconsider this issue in light of an age-old question: What Would Jesus Do?
Of all the responses I received — and I continue to receive them, weeks later — none was quite as surprising as my discovery that the Bishop of Honolulu, Larry Silva, took my column and made it the centerpiece of his Sunday homily a few weeks ago. Suffice it to say, he did not agree with my outlook. He deserves to be quoted at length. (And, in fact, I’ll be writing at some length here, so you might as well settle in.)
