The Commentariat -- October 22

I've posted an Open Thread for comments on Off Times Square.

The President's Weekly Address:

     ... The transcript is here. Reuters: "President Barack Obama sought on Saturday to cast himself as a strong leader on foreign policy, highlighting a U.S. pullout from Iraq and the death of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi as success stories."

To rid the world of Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki and Moammar Qaddafi within six months: if Obama were a Republican, he'd be on Mount Rushmore by now. -- Andrew Sullivan

First the Republicans were about to impeach Obama for intervening in Libya (even though he sent no combat troops there) and then when his strategy works spectacularly they say he didn't do anything. -- Calyban

Glenn Greenwald: we're bringing the troops home from Iraq because the Iraqi government wouldn't let them stay. ...

... Indeed, here's how Ewen MacAskill of the Guardian reports the story: "The US suffered a major diplomatic and military rebuff on Friday when Iraq finally rejected its pleas to maintain bases in the country beyond this year. Barack Obama announced at a White House press conference that all American troops will leave Iraq by the end of December, a decision forced by the final collapse of lengthy talks between the US and the Iraqi government on the issue. The Iraqi decision is a boost to Iran...." CW Note: this is the Guardian's front-page news report, not an opinion piece. The story goes a long way to explain what I couldn't figure out earlier -- why Obama used a Friday afternoon news dump to make his announcement. ...

     ... Update. The New York Times now has this story by Tim Arango & Michael Schmidt: "President Obama’s announcement on Friday that all American troops would leave Iraq by the end of the year was an occasion for celebration for many, but some top American military officials were dismayed by the announcement, seeing it as the president’s putting the best face on a breakdown in tortured negotiations with the Iraqis." ...

... Spencer Ackerman of Wired: "... the fact is America’s military efforts in Iraq aren’t coming to an end. They are instead entering a new phase. On January 1, 2012, the State Department will command a hired army of about 5,500 security contractors, all to protect the largest U.S. diplomatic presence anywhere overseas. The State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security does not have a promising record when it comes to managing its mercenaries.... You can also expect that there will be a shadow presence by the CIA, and possibly the Joint Special Operations Command...."

Kate Zernicke of the New York Times: "... conservatives and Tea Party activists have rushed to discredit the comparison [between the Tea Party & Occupy Wall Street]. They have portrayed the Occupy protesters as messy, indolent, drug-addled and anti-Semitic, circulated a photo of one of them defecating on a police car.... While Occupy forces find fault in the banks and super-rich, the Tea Party movement blames the government for the economic calamity brought on by the mortgage crisis, and sees the wealthy as job creators who will lift the country out of its economic malaise. To them, the solution is less regulation of banks, not more." CW: oligarchs on the right have a deeply-vested interest in creating a division between Tea Party & OWS protesters. It is not surprising that they, and Tea Party leaders with an interest in maintaining their own power, will make huge efforts to sever the natural ties between the two movements.

Risa Goluboff & Dahlia Lithwick in Slate: "... a look at the history of voting rights in this country shows that the current state efforts to suppress minority voting — from erecting barriers to registration and early voting to voter ID laws — look an awful lot like methods pioneered by the white supremacists from another era that achieved the similar results.... The reasons [given] for introducing all of these new rules echo the pretextual rationales of the Jim Crow era.... The underlying goal of these restrictions is also unchanged: to shape an electorate that will vote for particular kinds of politicians."

Jared Bernstein: "The whole tax reform thing is really overplayed. Yes, there are gross complexities and inefficiencies in the current system — and btw, such complications can easily be replicated in any other system, including a flat tax. Our best move would be to simplify our current system — get rid of loopholes (e.g., deferral of foreign earnings), distortions (favoring of debt financing, special rates for unearned income, some of the large tax expenditures like the mortgage interest deduction), and we’d be fine. Remember, our biggest problem is pretax–jobs, income, wages, inequality. And despite rhetoric to the contrary, we can’t solve that through tax reform (though with plans like 9-9-9, we can make it worse)." YOu can watch the Kudlow segment at the linked site; only Bernstein is worth hearing.

Alex Massie of the (UK) Spectator: how weak is the field of Republican presidential candidates? Not much worse than either the Republican or Democratic fields in earlier years.

CW: I haven't been following the Fisker "scandal," but if you have, here's the lowdown from David Roberts of Grist: "ABC News and iWatch have a big new report out that desperately tries to lend an air of scandal to another Department of Energy loan guarantee. It's a remarkable package, nearly 3,000 words and three ABC News segments full of handwaving and innuendo suggesting that there's something shady going on, using the word 'Solyndra' as often as possible, but in the end there's ... nothing. Not a single bit of evidence of wrongdoing or corruption.... It just describes the loan program working exactly as it was intended to, but in a tone of dark insinuation." Roberts backs up his contention.

CW: look for the right-wing media to be pumping out more stories like this one from Rupert Murdoch's New York Post: "A married mother of four from Florida ditched her family to become part of the raggedy mob in Zuccotti Park -- keeping the park clean by day and keeping herself warm at night with the help of a young waiter from Brooklyn.... Ironically, [she] is married to a banker!" Iin case you missed the subtlety here, the Post wants you to know: OWS protesters are depraved!

CW: There's are aspects of the climate change study linked in yesterday's Ledes that I missed: per Brad Plumer of the Washington Post, the study -- which used a massive database & which confirms global warming -- was conducted by climate change skeptics. Oh, and funded in part by our good friends & industrial polluting Koch brothers!

Jon Stewart reacts to the death of Muammar Gaddafi -- and at about 6:20 min. in, to the right wing's response to the news:

Right Wing World

Does Eric Cantor Ever Tell the Truth? About Anything? Judd Legum of Think Progress: "Today, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) abruptly canceled his speech on income inequality scheduled for this afternoon at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. Cantor placed the blame squarely on the university, saying they changed the attendance policy at the last minute.... In a statement just released by the university, the school disputes Cantor’s explanation, saying the speech was always billed as 'open to the general public.'”

What If There's a Mutiny... Reuters: "Staff members in New Hampshire for Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann have resigned en masse, a Republican familiar with the situation said on Friday, in a fresh blow to her 2012 hopes." ...

... But the Captain Doesn't Notice? Trip Gabriel of the New York Times: Later, Bachmann says in a radio interview it's news to her. 

It Depends on What the Meaning of "Exile" Is. Oh, and What the Meaning of "Follow" Is. Steve Benen: "Throughout the day, [Sen. Marco Rubio's {R-Fla.}] office has been engaged in some pretty aggressive pushback [links that follow are to cited works], publishing a piece in Politico, circulating a Miami Herald article in which he recently told his parents’ story accurately, and generally putting a spin on the word 'exile.' But for all of his righteous indignation, Rubio’s personal bio still includes this claim:

In 1971, Marco was born in Miami to Cuban-born parents who came to America following Fidel Castro’s takeover.

     ... That’s just not true. 1956 does not 'follow' 1959. It’d be easy for the senator and his office to fix this. When Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) got caught plagiarizing on his website, the senator blamed it on a staff error and took down the content. Notice, however, that Marco Rubio refuses to do back down...."

Steve Kornacki of Salon: Marco Rubio has bigger problems than making misstatements about his parents' immigration. If he was sloppy about his family history, he's been even sloppier about keeping track of campaign money & party credit card expenses. "This is the sort of stuff that could raise serious red flags during the V.P. vetting process. And you’ve got to imagine that after the Palin experience of 2008, the next GOP nominee will be a little more careful."

Philip Elliott & Shannon McCaffrey of the AP: "After captivating Republicans hungry for an alternative to Mitt Romney, [Herman Cain] has made a series of stumbles that have left some questioning if he's ready for the White House." CW: Some??? 

Former House Speaker & Future President Gingrich Would Smack Down Those Supremes. Andrew Cohen of The Atlantic: "Newt Gingrich has expressed many reckless ideas in his long public life. Here is the latest: He wants Congress to subpoena federal judges whose decisions it disagrees with so that legislative committee members can hector those judges in public for 'dictating' the law to the American people. This, Gingrich concludes, would 're-balance' the Constitution in a way that he thinks is appropriate." This, of course, is "unconstitutional under any reasonable interpretation of the document or its subsequent precedent." ...

... Kevin Burke, President of the American Judges Association: in his "campaign manifesto..., Gingrich calls for using 'the clearly delineated powers available to the president and Congress to correct, limit or replace judges who violate the Constitution.' In support of his platform, Gingrich said that 'President Thomas Jefferson abolished over half the federal judgeships.'" Noting that Gingrich is an historian who should have got his history right, Burke delves into what Jefferson did & why -- and why Jefferson was unsuccessful in his attempt to politicize the Supreme Court. "By rebelling against Jefferson's wishes, the Senate sent a message that the independence of the judiciary was not open to political manipulation. Political manipulation seems to be a central tenant of Gingrich's present views on the judiciary, and that is where his fidelity to history and facts fall short." Thanks to a reader for the link.

News Ledes

AP: "Iraq's prime minister said Saturday that U.S. troops are leaving Iraq after nearly nine years of war because Baghdad rejected American demands that any U.S. military forces to stay would have to be shielded from prosecution or lawsuits. The comments by Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, made clear that it was Iraq who refused to let the U.S. military remain under the Americans' terms."

** AP: "The government's promise of lifetime health care for the military's men and women is suddenly a little less sacrosanct as Congress looks to slash trillion-dollar-plus deficits. Republicans and Democrats alike are signaling a willingness — unheard of at the height of two post-Sept. 11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — to make military retirees pay more for coverage." CW Translation: now that we don't need so many people to lay down their lives fighting wars we authorized, we think we can get away with making enlistment a little less attractive. Oh, and those of you who signed up thinking you'd have healthcare for life -- Suckers!

Haircut. AP: "The eurozone's 17 finance ministers have agreed that banks must accept substantially bigger losses on their Greek bonds, and a new report suggests that writedowns of up to 60 percent may be necessary." Related New York Times story here. ...

     ... AP Update: "EU finance ministers neared agreement Saturday on forcing banks to raise just over euro100 billion ($140 billion) to make sure they have enough reserves to weather further losses on their Greek debt holdings and market turmoil...."

Reuters: "Muammar Gaddafi's body lay still unburied as Libya's new men of power wrangled over its fate and a formal announcement the war was over, a move the outgoing premier said on Saturday should mean free elections in the middle of next year. Mahmoud Jibril, an expatriate academic who has been prime minister in the Western-backed rebel government, confirmed he was stepping down...." ...

... New York Times: "International calls mounted Friday for Libya’s interim leaders to provide a fuller accounting of the final moments before Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s violent, messy death, as new videos circulated that showed him and his son Muatassim alive, apparently while in the custody of the former rebels."

AP: "Democrats and Republicans are in rare accord on one thing: Growers with million-dollar incomes shouldn't reap farm subsidies. Eighty-four senators voted Friday to discontinue certain farm subsidies for people who make more than a million dollars in adjusted gross income. The vote represents a sea change in how the heavily rural Senate views farm support." CW: I read several versions of this story, & none tells where this amendment stands in the House, which is to say, I guess the House hasn't considered it. If the deficit supercommittee rewrites the farm subsidy laws, this vote may be moot anyway.

AP: Ninety-two-year-old "folk music legend Pete Seeger joined in the Occupy Wall Street protest Friday night, replacing his banjo with two canes as he marched with throngs of people in New York City's tony Upper West Side past banks and shiny department stores."

AP: "Nevada Republicans are debating whether to bow to national pressure and delay the state's presidential nomination contest. More than 200 of the party's top volunteers and leaders are scheduled to meet Saturday in Las Vegas to decide when Nevada's caucuses should be held."