;)
Thursday
Feb282013
The Commentariat -- March 1, 2013
Abdication! Ashley Parker of the New York Times: "As the president and Congressional Democrats have tried to force [House Speaker John] Boehner back to the table for talks to head off the automatic budget cuts set to take effect on Friday, Mr. Boehner has instead dug in deeper, refusing to even discuss an increase in revenue and insisting in his typical colorful language that it was time for the Senate to produce a measure aimed at the cuts. 'The revenue issue is now closed,' Mr. Boehner said Thursday, before the House left town for the weekend without acting on the cuts and a Senate attempt to avert them died. Mr. Boehner said the dispute with Democrats amounted to a question of 'how much more money do we want to steal from the American people to fund more government.'" ...
... Thomas Mann & Norm Ornstein, in a Washington Post op-ed, take a very balanced approach in explaining how the sequester came about & what it means. ...
... So does Stephen Colbert:
... Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times:The Senate on Thursday shot down competing bills to undo -- or at least mitigate the impact of -- across-the-board spending cuts in a desultory bit of political theater that ensured the cuts would go into force Friday with a partisan blame game in full tilt.... The Republican bill received only 38 votes out of the 60 needed to be considered for final passage, losing 9 Republican senators. The measure failed, 62 to 38, with two Democrats voting yes. The Democratic bill barely garnered a majority, 51 votes, but needed 60 under the rules adopted beforehand." ...
... The Sequester Was the Pre-game Show. Alex Altman of Time: "The White House released reams of scary economic reports. The House deferred to the Senate, which finally on Thursday staged dueling stunt votes whose failure was a foregone conclusion. At which point Congress, having barely tried to avert a crisis of its own making, skipped town for the weekend.... The two parties are already looking ahead to the next skirmish: a fight over how to fund the federal government beyond the end of the month. For the past few years, with the formal budget process broken, Congress has kept the government running with a series of stopgap funding bills, known as continuing resolutions. By March 27, lawmakers have to pass a new one or the lights go off. Unlike the effects of the sequester, whose hazards are real but not immediate, a shutdown's seismic impact would reverberate across the economy right away. ...
... Steven Dennis of Roll Call: If Democrats know how they're going to handle the likelihood of a forced government shutdown, they are not saying. Via Greg Sargent. ...
... ** Ruby Cramer & Rebecca Bird of BuzzFeed: "While lawmakers in Washington trade shots over the $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts, due to take effect Friday, there's a growing consensus among liberals across the country that the real threat to the social safety net isn't this fight, but the next one.... Although House Democrats signed a letter this month stating their opposition to entitlement cuts, President Barack Obama has signaled a willingness to bring such spending reductions to the table as part of a grand bargain with Republicans."
... Uncertainty. Steve Benen: "In 2009 and 2010, the single most common Republican talking point on economic policy included the word 'uncertainty.' It was a dumb talking point borne of necessity -- Republicans struggled to think of a way to blame Obama for a crisis that began long before the president took office.... Mysteriously, early in 2011, the 'economic uncertainty' pitch slowly faded away.... I have a hunch we know why: Republicans decided to govern through a series of self-imposed crises that have created more deliberate economic uncertainty than any conditions seen in the United States in recent memory.... Looking back over the last ... 22 months -- Republicans have made three shutdown threats, forced two debt-ceiling standoffs, pushed the country towards a fiscal cliff, refused to compromise on a sequester, and have lined up even more related fiscal fights in the months ahead."
John Schwartz & Adam Liptak of the New York Times: The Obama administration threw its support behind a broad claim for marriage equality on Thursday, and urged the Supreme Court to rule that voters in California were not entitled to ban same-sex marriage in that state." The Justice Department's amicus brief is here." ...
... Shushannah Walshe of ABC News: "A growing split in the Republican Party deepened today when Clint Eastwood, the movie star who rocked the GOP convention by interviewing an invisible President Obama, joined the ranks of Republicans who are in favor of legalizing gay marriage. The support for gay marriage by Eastwood and about 100 prominent Republicans, along with budding support within the party for immigration reform, is creating an obvious divide in the party. It pits moderate Republicans and party operatives on one side against conservative activists who drive turnout in the primary elections."
Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "Pfc. Bradley Manning on Thursday confessed in open court to providing vast archives of military and diplomatic files to the antisecrecy group WikiLeaks, saying that he wanted the information to become public 'to make the world a better place.' ...Before reading the statement, Private Manning pleaded guilty to 10 criminal counts in connection with the huge leak, which included videos of airstrikes in Iraq and Afghanistan in which civilians were killed, logs of military incident reports, assessment files of detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and a quarter-million diplomatic cables. The guilty pleas exposed him to up to 20 years in prison. But the case against the slightly built, bespectacled 25-year-old -- who has become a folk hero among antiwar and whistle-blower advocacy groups -- is not over.The military has charged him with a far more serious set of offenses, including aiding the enemy and multiple counts of violating the Espionage Act...." ...
... The Washington Post story on Manning is by Julie Tate & Ernesto Londoño.
Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post: "The Republican-controlled House on Thursday approved an updated version of the Violence Against Women Act that includes new protections for gay men and lesbians, part of an effort by GOP leaders to improve their image among women after last year's poor election results. The Senate approved the measure in January and President Obama said he will quickly sign it into law.... The bill passed the House on a vote of 286 to 138, as a unified Democratic caucus joined 87 supportive Republicans.... More Republicans opposed the bill than supported it -- the third time since December that House Speaker John A. Boehner (Ohio) has allowed legislation to move off the floor that did not have the support of a majority of his divided members." CW: way back in January that Boehner had better learn to start working with Pelosi because that was the only way he was going to get any legislation passed that could also pass the Senate. Well, case on point.
In his column today, Paul Krugman develops a theme he covered in a blogpost: "... leaders of the [austerity] consensus continue to be regarded as credible even though they've been wrong about everything (why do people keep treating Alan Simpson as a wise man?), while critics of the consensus are regarded as foolish hippies even though all their predictions -- about interest rates, about inflation, about the dire effects of austerity -- have come true. So here's my question: Will it make any difference that Ben Bernanke has now joined the ranks of the hippies?
Both Joan Walsh of Salon (here) & Meteor Blades of Daily Kos (here) have posts contrasting Nino Scalia & John Lewis. ...
... Amy Davidson of the New Yorker: "Protection against discrimination, it would seem, now counts as an entitlement -- a loaded word these days. The notion that everyone is harmed, and our system is corrupted, if any group is denied the vote seems to be missing.... The role of the Court, Scalia seems to be saying, is to step in when members of Congress are scared of being called racist. Scalia does not seem to be afraid of that."
;)
CLICK TO SEE LARGER IMAGE.Meanwhile, the editors at Bloomberg's Business Week are horrified the unwashed unwhites are getting mortgage loans again. Business Week's actual cover -- portraying Hispanics & blacks grinning & rolling in piles of cash, much of which they're casually letting fly away or feeding to the dog, etc. -- is at left. What could possibly be wrong with that? ...
... Ryan Chittum of the Columbia Journalism Review has a few answers: "The cover stands out for its cast of black and Hispanic caricatures with exaggerated features reminiscent of early 20th century race cartoons. Also, because there are only people of color in it, grabbing greedily for cash. It's hard to imagine how this one made it through the editorial process. Compounding the first-glance problem with the image is the fact that race has been a key backdrop to the subprime crisis."
Matt Yglesias publishes Business Week's non-apology apology:
Our cover illustration last week got strong reactions, which we regret. Our intention was not to incite or offend. If we had to do it over again we'd do it differently. -- Josh Tyrangiel
That is, the management regrets you people object to racist pictures. -- Constant Weader ...
... Yglesias, in a follow-up post, reports that the feature article accompanying the cover "says nothing in particular about minority homeowners," & the artist, who is Peruvian, said, "I simply drew the family like that because those are the kind of families I know. I am Latino and grew up around plenty of mixed families." Yglesias writes, "... someone else on the staff should have been able to see how this was going to look in the U.S. context." Yep. ...
... Chittum also has a follow-up.
Jillian Rayfield of Salon: "Rep. Peter King of New York slammed fellow Republican Marco Rubio for fundraising in New York after voting against federal funding for victims of Hurricane Sandy.... King told the New York Observer's Politicker blog, 'It's bad enough that these guys voted against it, that's inexcusable enough. But to have the balls to come in and say, 'We screwed you, now make us president'?' King said that New York donors should cut off Rubio and any other Republicans who 'threw a knife in the back in New York' by opposing the bill."
Brett LoGiurato of Business Insider: "Bob Woodward told Fox News host Sean Hannity Thursday night that he never felt 'threatened' from a White House adviser Gene Sperling's email telling him that he'd 'regret' his reporting on the sequester. But he said Sperling's email felt like a 'coded, "You better watch out." They don't like to be challenged or crossed,' Woodward said of the White House." CW: Yeah, Bob, so expertly coded nobody but a genius like you could break the code. ...
... The ever-careful Woodward, again, does not use the term 'threatened.' He merely uses other words that, together, form the definition of 'threatened.' -- Erik Wemple, Washington Post media critic ...
How to Threaten Bob Woodward
... The chart above comes from, of all places, Alexandra Petri of the Washington Post. She writes, in part, "... a number of younger reporters have leapt up to say that they get emails all the time saying much worse, from the flacks of far more threatening and imposing figures, all the time. ... [One said,] 'Sometimes ... Gene Sperling just sends me menacing GIFs of horseheads. But having grown up on the Internet, I am used to this sort of thing.'" ...
... Alex Seitz-Wald of Salon raises a point we discussed here yesterday: "If Woodward, who has generated best-seller after best-seller over many decades based heavily on anonymous sources, can't accurately convey a conversation with an email trail, should we trust the anonymous sources in the rest of his reporting?" Seitz-Wald goes to on recount some of discrepancies between Woodward's reporting & other accounts. ...
... John Cook of Gawker has an excellent takedown of Woodward, including a reminder of how Woodward tried to make a young reporter "tremble tremble." Cook also links to a post he wrote last year titled "Woodward & Bernstein Were No Woodward & Bernstein," which demonstrates the liberties Woodstein took with journalistic ethics in their Watergate reporting. ...
... Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic says very, very nicely that Woodward doesn't know WTF he's writing about, but Chait tries to get the conversation back to what it's really about -- the realities of how the sequester came about. (Seems Eric Cantor takes credit for it, for one thing. CW: Guess I shoulda read Ryan Lizza's long profile of Cantor, which I linked earlier in the week.) ...
... An excellent piece by John Cassidy on Woodward's unforced errors. (CW: Probably wrong of me to use the term "unforced errors" when Woordward's error was to accuse Obama of "moving the goalposts.") ...
Cook & Cassidy both link to this well-known 1996 Joan Didion takedown of Woodward. Didion is sort of a relative of mine, but I find her writing here & elsewhere pretty Henry Jamesian. As Edith Wharton once said to James when he was attempting to ask a man for driving directions, "Get to the point, Henry!" ...
NEW. FINALLY, Charles Pierce is "starting to think Nixon was framed." In the end, he suggests it might be best if someone should take a stun gun to Woodward.
News Ledes
AP: "The Homeland Security Department released from its jails more than 2,000 illegal immigrants facing deportation in recent weeks due to looming budget cuts and planned to release 3,000 more during March, The Associated Press has learned. The newly disclosed figures, cited in internal budget documents reviewed by the AP, are significantly higher than the 'few hundred' illegal immigrants the Obama administration acknowledged this week had been released under the budget-savings process."
New York Times: "President Obama issued pardons on Friday to 17 convicted felons, making the first use of his clemency powers in his second term. Their offenses were largely small-scale crimes many years ago, and 12 of the people had not been sentenced to serve time in prison."
New York Times: "The unemployment rate in the euro zone edged up in January to a new record, official data showed Friday, as the ailing European economy continued to weigh on the job market. Unemployment in the 17-nation euro zone stood at 11.9 percent in January, up from 11.8 percent in December, and from 10.8 percent in January 2012, Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, reported from Luxembourg."
Here's How Austerity Works, John Boehner. Reuters: "The risk that Britain is entering its third recession in four years grew on Friday with figures showing that manufacturing shrank unexpectedly last month and mortgage approvals for home buyers dropped in January. Gross domestic product fell at the end of last year, bringing Britain within sight of another recession and the latest data suggested the central bank may need to do yet more to revive the economy."
Reuters: "Italian center-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani on Friday ruled out forming a coalition with Silvio Berlusconi to solve an intractable crisis after this week's inconclusive election." CW: I don't know why....
Reuters: "Silvio Berlusconi accused Italian prosecutors on Friday of threatening a senator with jail to force him to say the billionaire former prime minister paid him to join his center-right party. The bribery allegations against Berlusconi come as parties including his People of Freedom (PDL) formation maneuver to form a government after an inconclusive election that left no party with a majority in parliament. Sergio De Gregorio, a senator formerly with the Italy of Values party, joined Berlusconi's party in 2006, forcing the collapse of a coalition supporting then Prime Minister Romano Prodi."
Reuters: "With Pope Benedict XVI now officially in retirement, Catholic cardinals from around the world begin on Friday the complex, cryptic and uncertain process of picking the next leader of the world's largest church."
AND Dennis Rodman Proves Once Again How Much of a Genius He Is. AP: "Ending his unexpected round of basketball diplomacy in North Korea on Friday, ex-NBA star Dennis Rodman called leader Kim Jong Un an 'awesome guy' and said his father and grandfather were 'great leaders.'"
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Reader Comments (19)
Scalia: This pretty much says it all:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/02/28/1190553/-Mr-racial-entitlement-Justice-Antonin-Scalia-does-not-deserve-to-shine-John-Lewis-s-shoes
Program note: Paul Krugmn will be on the Ed Show tonight.
@Akhelius: Is Benedict's new title Pontifex Maximus Emeritus?
I sometimes wonder how Paul Krugman keeps going week after week: he has had no discernible effect on the MSM, the Washington Establishment---or even the Administration. Must be pretty discouraging.
Bob Woodward is crying all the way to the bank! Mr. Access long ago went Hollywood. Bob Woodward is a shameless Corporate Inside-the-Beltway SLUT! The Gypsy Curse has long been settled on his Karma.
Fellow Reality Chexers, I have a confession to make:
The last dark, solemn hours of my earthly existence have known much strain.
My smiles seem empty, my thoughts perverse.
How am I expected to remain on the right path in these ghastly moments of incertitude? I've lost my Holy-Seer, the guiding light to my mortal mind.
I cry out for assistance! Benoît responds not.
Cloudy thoughts invade my mind. Without my divine contact, Lucifer arouses within. I fear doctrinal fallacy each step I take, each thought I make, even while eating steak.
However shall we continue without the cosmic light emanating from St. Peters?
@Kate Madison. According to several commentators, Woodward is making a spectacle of himself to hype his last book -- which was quite critical of Obama -- & has had low sales & received way too little attention from Obama haters. Woodward has appeared on Fox "News" something like 11 times in the past year, more often than he showed up at Fox during Dubya's entire presidency. Many wingers are now loving on Bob, whom they call a "liberal," of course.
Marie
I just posted this comment to Brooks. As it will probably show up on the NYT site around 3:48 this afternoon, I thought I'd share it here as well. Hope that's OK. ...
I read this column looking for the Brooks "twist," the exploitation of seemingly innocuous, if cherry-picked, facts to extol one of Mr. Brooks's preferred virtues. I was nearly disappointed, but at nearly the last possible moment you got in your plug for religion! Yes, as we've seen throughout history, including the Crusades and the Inquisition, lack of religion has made people brutes, so it stands to reason that it has messed with their motivation to learn as well.
If you're going to take a critical look at learning in America, David, I suggest starting with Texas's textbooks, Kentucky's Creationist theme park, and Bobby Jindal in general. First establish that what's taught is true, then get back to me on why students should not be cynical in a world in which their futures were so recently stolen.
Barbarossa,
I think we can just forget the "maximus" and the "emeritus". Not much greatness and not much merit.
How 'bout we just call him Ex-pontifex II.
Safari,
Here's my solution for getting over all that crap.
I say we go out and buy ourselves some of those cool Mexican loafers. That way we can all enjoy wearing the Shoes of the Former Fisherman.
By the way, does anyone else think it's a bit on the creepy/weird side that infant lambs were slaughtered to provide Benny with his new kicks, I mean given the prominence of lambs in Catholic imagery?
You'd think the old boy in his new guise as "humble pilgrim" would have gone in for some Birkenstocks or a pair of flip-flops, or maybe sandals woven from papyrus.
Nope. That shit is for the peasants. Hand made GQ type slip-ons made from the skin of freshly slaughtered new born lambs. That's how to do "humble pilgrim" in style, baby.
He might not have the pope-i-copter and the pope-mobile and the Swiss guards in Renaissance armor with the funny hats, but he still has cool shoes.
James,
Thanks for the Daily Kos link. The title alone says it all but the post is wrenching.
Right-wingers are often quick to describe lefties as idealists, out of touch with the real world, and there may have been plenty of those types at one point, but constant exposure to that real world, its problems, and people like Scalia have transformed many of us.
The fact is that it's wingers like Scalito and Roberts and Thomas who are curmudgeonly, grudging cynics, out of touch with the real world.
I can just picture Scalia on the bus with Rosa Parks. He would have preached a sermon about respecting established customs. And he would have demanded that she remove herself from that seat.
So that he could sit down.
@Akhilleus. Yup: "hand crafted from the skin of neo-natal lambs." And to show you Ex-Papa II can't quite take off the red shoes, two of the three pairs of new loafers he bought are dyed burgundy.
The Jews had a whole host of sins that, to effect forgiveness, required the sacrifice of a lamb. The Pharisees thought this practice was stupid (maybe the Sadducee priests had the burnt lambs for dinner; I don't know that), so it was becoming less common -- but certainly not rare -- in the first century BCE. So one of the good ideas of the early Christians -- who were Jews & (some) came from the Pharisaic tradition -- was to make their savior the "sacrificial lamb," thus eliminating actual animal sacrifice. I might say this was killing two birds with one stone, but since two doves were another common form of sacrifice, I won't. (I am really having trouble with metaphors today!)
So Benedict doesn't have Jesus shoes; he has Jesus feet. Maybe he should follow right-wing cowboy tradition & name his shoes -- Jesus for the right one, Holy Spirit for the left. And that makes him God on earth. Still.
Once a pope, always a pope.
Marie
Ah...I see that Marie had already posted that Daily Kos story about John Lewis.
Thanks again to you both.
And as a rejoinder to Scalia's incredibly uninformed, tone-deaf, ahistorical rant about "racial entitlements" I'd have to ask what entitlements he's talking about? The congressional act Scalia and his troglodyte brothers on the court are thinking of vivisecting, is called the Voting Rights Act, not the Voting Entitlements Act.
That word needs to be expunged from the language for about 20 years. I'm so fucking tired of hearing everyone describe Earned Benefits like Social Security as an entitlement. It is, in fact, something people are entitled to, since they paid into it for decades, but wingers only use it for it's sense of an unearned payout.
Pig people. All of them.
I'm betting their image of "entitlements" is summed up nicely in that Business Week cover. Thick lipped, dark skinned people with bug eyes grasping for money with both hands.
I worked in media in Los Angeles & had many occasions -- because of my husband -- to meet famous people when I lived in Manhattan. So I know how to behave. And I do.
In 2008 I went to a political event which was held in a public park. I'm sure somebody had some Obama-Biden posters & what-all around, but the event was to support local (city & county) Democrats. I was chatting with a woman running for the hospital board who was a friend of a friend when a man & woman walked by. As they passed, I blurted -- like some schoolgirl -- "Oh, my God! Is that John Lewis?!"
Well, it was. He stopped to talk with me, & I managed to somewhat re-compose myself. He was, of course, delightful & kind.
That is the only time in four decades that a famous person bowled me over. If I saw him again, I would have the same reaction.
If I saw Nino Scalia, I would gladly give up my seat on the bus to him. In fact, I'd get off the fucking bus. I don't wanna be on Nino's bus.
Marie
Marie,
And wearing the new lambfers gives Benny a fresh way to connect with the blood of the lambs.
Or maybe he's experiencing the silence of the lambs.
Ouch. This could get messy.
Better quit before I fall into the Metaphor Swamp as well. Pretty soon we'll be killing two birds with one in the bush.
Okay...stopping now before I get too bird-ensome.
Hey! No dissing Henry James!
I do love Henry, but I can't not laugh at H.G. Wells' description of the James prose style resembling a hippopotamus attempting to pick up a pea.
But if Henry's prolixity was epic he was an acute observer of human interactions, nature, and motives. I would love to be able to read his dissection of a dissembling sycophant like Woodward. He'd make Henry's worst bounders appear downright upright.
I am puzzled by Obama's response to Republicans refusing to consider additional taxes or revenues. I think if the President would talk about the added revenue as closing loopholes for oil companies and requiring hedge fund managers to pay appropriate taxes, it would make a stronger case. Naming those loopholes and breaks as 1% entitlements seems a better PR move than just allowing the Republicans to obscure the actual targets of the President's proposed additional revenues in the language of "more taxes".
Harkin, et al have a seemingly great proposal for taxing specified trades that don't effect regular folks in the market, but will raise billions of $s. Maddow had the story last night. Seems Geithner nixed it, but Lew may be open to it.
http://www.harkin.senate.gov/press/release.cfm?i=334643
Re: I got nothin' to lose; come on dice; my baby needs new shoes...
A good pair of Mexican guaraches comes with a truck tire sole. the word guarache can mean "tire patch" as well as the woven sandal that tourists bring back from Mexico. Pesos to dollars the benched pope(pope with little "p") has a rico pair with soft lambskin bottoms that would not last a day in the dirt of the earth. So when Peter shows up and asks, "Who's shoes?" I hope to hell the new first stringer Pope( pope with big "P") is wearing a pair of beat-to-shit peasant truck tire sandals that show the miles and the trials of his followers and not slippers of the pampered benchwarmer small "p" pope. Didn't somebody say something about walking a mile in other person's shoes?
I'm not a fan of sports metaphors but I'm jumpin' in with "Dropkick me Jesus, through goal posts of life" Wearing the proper boot, of course.
And I am puzzled that with all the angst over "entitlements" and our grandchildren, why is there so little current discussion of raising the cap on Social Security, or eliminating it, so that more or all income is subject to Social Security deduction? See http://aging.senate.gov/crs/ss9.pdf
That would be an increased "tax" that affects only those with incomes, and according to the analysis in the reference the "no cap" option would cover SS for at least 75 years. Right now, the top end of very high earners' income is not subject to SS withholding. People making less than $106K/yr contribute based on their entire salary; people making, say, $212K/yr contribute based on half of their salary.
Why is there no political interest in this in the current deficit hassles?
@Patrick... because Social Security is a faux problem. The problem is two unfunded wars and an unfunded Medicare Part D. Although I agree, the cap on SS contributions should be abolished... if only for the fuck of it.