REALITYCHEX.COM - Constant Comments - The Commentariat -- October 22

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Public Service Announcement

Washington Post: "Americans can again order free rapid coronavirus tests by mail, the Biden administration announced Thursday. People can request four free at-home tests per household through covidtests.gov. They will begin shipping Monday. The move comes ahead of an expected winter wave of coronavirus cases. The September revival of the free testing program is in line with the Biden administration’s strategy to respond to the coronavirus as part of a broader public health campaign to protect Americans from respiratory viruses, including influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), that surge every fall and winter. But free tests were not mailed during the summer wave, which wastewater surveillance data shows is now receding."

Washington Post: “Comedy news outlet the Onion — reinvigorated by new ownership over this year — is bringing back its once-popular video parodies of cable news. But this time, there’s someone with real news anchor experience in the chair. When the first episodes appear online Monday, former WAMU and MSNBC host Joshua Johnson will be the face of the resurrected 'Onion News Network.' Playing an ONN anchor character named Dwight Richmond, Johnson says he’s bringing a real anchor’s sense of clarity — and self-importance — to the job. 'If ONN is anything, it’s a news organization that is so unaware of its own ridiculousness that it has the confidence of a serial killer,' says Johnson, 44.” ~~~

~~~ Marie: I'll be darned if I can figured out how to watch ONN. If anybody knows, do tell. Thanks.

Washington Post: “First came the surprising discovery that Earth’s atmosphere is leaking. But for roughly 60 years, the reason remained a mystery. Since the late 1960s, satellites over the poles detected an extremely fast flow of particles escaping into space — at speeds of 20 kilometers per second. Scientists suspected that gravity and the magnetic field alone could not fully explain the stream. There had to be another source creating this leaky faucet. It turns out the mysterious force is a previously undiscovered global electric field, a recent study found. The field is only about the strength of a watch battery — but it’s enough to thrust lighter ions from our atmosphere into space. It’s also generated unlike other electric fields on Earth. This newly discovered aspect of our planet provides clues about the evolution of our atmosphere, perhaps explaining why Earth is habitable. The electric field is 'an agent of chaos,' said Glyn Collinson, a NASA rocket scientist and lead author of the study. 'It undoes gravity.... Without it, Earth would be very different.'”

The New York Times lists Emmy winners. The AP has an overview story here.

New York Times: “Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who had captured the public’s imagination since 2019 after he was spotted wearing a harness seemingly designed for a camera, was found dead on Saturday in Norway, according to a nonprofit that worked to protect the whale.... [Hvaldimir] was wearing a harness that identified it as “equipment” from St. Petersburg. There also appeared to be a camera mount. Some wondered if the whale was on a Russian reconnaissance mission. Russia has never claimed ownership of the whale. If Hvaldimir was a spy, he was an exceptionally friendly one. The whale showed signs of domestication, and was comfortable around people. He remained in busier waters than are typical for belugas....” ~~~

~~~ Marie: Oh, Lord, do not let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., near that carcass. ~~~

~~~ AP Update: “There’s no evidence that a well-known beluga whale that lived off Norway’s coast and whose harness ignited speculation it was a Russian spy was shot to death last month as claimed by animal rights groups, Norwegian police said Monday.... Police said that the Norwegian Veterinary Institute conducted a preliminary autopsy on the animal, which was become known as 'Hvaldimir,' combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'There are no findings from the autopsy that indicate that Hvaldimir has been shot,' police said in a statement.”

New York Times: Botswana's “President Mokgweetsi Masisi grinned as he lifted the diamond, a 2,492-carat stone that is the biggest diamond unearthed in more than a century and the second-largest ever found, according to the Vancouver-based mining operator Lucara, which owns the mine where it was found. This exceptional discovery could bring back the luster of the natural diamond mining industry, mining companies and experts say. The diamond was discovered in the same relatively small mine in northeastern Botswana that has produced several of the largest such stones in living memory. Such gemstones typically surface as a result of volcanic activity.... The diamond will likely sell in the range of tens of millions of dollars....”

Click on photo to enlarge.

~~~ Guardian: "On a distant reef 16,000km from Paris, surfer Gabriel Medina has given Olympic viewers one of the most memorable images of the Games yet, with an airborne celebration so well poised it looked too good to be true. The Brazilian took off a thundering wave at Teahupo’o in Tahiti on Monday, emerging from a barrelling section before soaring into the air and appearing to settle on a Pacific cloud, pointing to the sky with biblical serenity, his movements mirrored precisely by his surfboard. The shot was taken by Agence France-Presse photographer Jérôme Brouillet, who said “the conditions were perfect, the waves were taller than we expected”. He took the photo while aboard a boat nearby, capturing the surreal image with such accuracy that at first some suspected Photoshop or AI."

Washington Post: “'Mary Cassatt at Work' is a large and mostly satisfying exhibition devoted to the career of the great American artist beloved for her sensitive and often sentimental views of family life. The 'at work' in the title of the Philadelphia Museum of Art show references the curators’ interest in Cassatt’s pioneering effort to establish herself as a professional artist within a male-dominated field. Throughout the show, which includes some 130 paintings, pastels, prints and drawings, the wall text and the art on view stresses Cassatt’s fixation on art as a career rather than a pastime.... Mary Cassatt at Work is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Sept. 8. philamuseum.org”

New York Times: “Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy. Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album 'The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart' — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.... Bob Newhart holds up. In fact, it’s hard to think of a stand-up from that era who is a better argument against the commonplace idea that comedy does not age well.”

Page Links

Friday

Oct212011

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."

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