The Commentariat -- Sept. 15, 2013

Devin Dwyer of ABC News: "President Obama says a tumultuous month as commander in chief, when his policy toward Syria took a number of unexpected turns, may not have looked 'smooth and disciplined and linear,' but it;s working." CW: Stephanopoulos says in his lead-in to the interview, "If it works, and that's big 'if' right now, the President may be able to claim a measure [a word he stretches out & delivers with a skeptical inflection] of victory for an approach that's brought him a mountain of criticism." That's George, perfectly playing one of the Village people, unhappy perhaps that Obama has deprived ABC News of increased ratings courtesy of war coverage. Schmuck. (For more on Village people groupspeak, see Michael Tomasky's review of Mark Leibovich's Our Town, linked below.)

Steve Holland of Reuters: "President Barack Obama vowed on Saturday that Syria will be held to account if it fails to live up to its promises to surrender chemical weapons as he faced questions about how a deal brokered by U.S. and Russian diplomats would be enforced." Here's the "Statement by the President on U.S.-Russian Agreement on Framework for Elimination of Syrian Chemical Weapons." ...

... Here's the framework of the agreement between the U.S. & Russia for the elimination of Syrian chemical weapons, via the State Department. ...

... The AP summarizes the points of agreement & unresolved issues. ...

... NEW. Here is a transcript of remarks by Kerry & Lavrov, following the meeting in which they forged the agreement on Syrian chemical weapons, via the U.S. State Department. ...

... NEW. Right on cue, Margaret Wente of the Toronto Globe & Mail, writes a column that's getting a lot of Internet action titled, "Barack Obama, the 98-pound weakling." (See my headline prediction in yesterday's Commentariat. Thanks, Margaret. ...

... Oliver Holmes of Reuters: "Syrian warplanes and artillery bombarded rebel suburbs of the capital on Sunday after the United States agreed to call off military action in a deal with Russia to remove President Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons." ...

... CW: forgot to run President Obama's weekly address yesterday. He follows up on his speech re: reaching a diplomatic solution. He cut it, of course, before the U.S. & Russia reached the above agreement:

Forget the Syria debate, we need a debate on why we're always debating whether to bomb someone. Because we're starting to look not so much like the world's policeman, but more like George Zimmerman. Itching to use force and then pretending it's because we had no choice. -- Bill Maher

... Actually, James Fearon, writing in the Monkey Cage, suggests a reason: "... where [Russia & the U.S.] have ended up should be starting to look familiar, and arguably tells us something about the structure of post-Cold War international politics.... Multilateral cooperation through the UNSC [United Nations Security Council] thus often take the form of the US, sometimes with allies, threatening to intervene without UNSC authorization. This is the 'outside option,' and it stands behind negotiations over whether there are terms for a UN resolution that both the US and the 'constrainers' would both prefer to its exercise. Usually this leads to intervention or multilateral action with UNSC authorization, as in Bosnia or Haiti. But sometimes not, as in Kosovo or Iraq."

Jim Kuhnhenn of the AP: "President Barack Obama is marking the fifth anniversary of the Lehman Brothers collapse by trying to lay claim to an economic turnaround and warning Republicans against moves that he contends would risk a backslide. His message to the GOP: Don't oppose raising the nation's debt limit, don't threaten to close down the government in a budget fight, and don't push to delay the health care law or starve it of federal money. The economic emphasis, after weeks devoted to the Syrian crisis, begins coming into focus in a series of events kicked off by a Rose Garden speech Monday." ...

... NEW. Economist James Galbraith in Al Jazeera America takes a realistic; i.e., pessimistic, view of our economic future. & provides quite a useful sketch of the last 100 years of economic history. Thanks to contributor Barbarossa for the link.

Bill Barrow of the AP: "Tea party activists, once unquestioned as a benefit to the Republican Party for supplying it with votes and energy, are now criticizing GOP leaders at seemingly every turn. A recent Pew Research Center survey found that more than 7 in 10 self-identified 'tea party Republicans' disapprove of the job performance of GOP congressional leaders. Many of the major tea party groups are backing 2014 primary challengers against Republicans the activists deem too moderate, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell." ...

... ** Thomas Mann & Norm Ornstein, from an update of their book It's Even Worse Than It Looks: "The old conservative GOP has been transformed into a party beholden to ideological zealots, one that sees little need to balance individualism with community, freedom with equality, markets with regulation, state with national power, or policy commitments with respect for facts, evidence, science, and a willingness to compromise. These two factors -- asymmetric polarization and the mismatch between our parties and governing institutions -- continue to account for the major share of our governing problems. But the media continues, for the most part, to miss this story." ...

... CW: I have been trying for a couple of days to get to Michael Tomasky's NYRB review of Mark Leibovich's Our Town, which is here. Contributor Ken Winkes, who cited the review, picked out the most interesting part: "Alan I. Abramowitz ... performs a multivariate analysis of the factors that are likely to make a citizen a Tea Party supporter. Conservative ideology matters most. But next -- ahead of demographic factors like age, gender, and income, ahead of church attendance and even party identification -- are 'racial resentment, and dislike of Obama.'" I do ask that you remember the right's antipathy for the Clintons, though. Wingers accused Hillary Clinton of being a socialist & a murderer & Bill Clinton of running drugs out of the Arkansas woods. Darrell Issa's hearings on the IRS & Benghazi look fairly tame compared to Congressional hearings & special counsel investigations of Watergate, Travelgate, Vince Foster, Hillary's missing billing records, etc.

** Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "Lawrence H. Summers's prospects of becoming chairman of the Federal Reserve have become murkier since three key Democratic senators signaled in recent days that they would oppose his nomination. Senator Jon Tester, Democrat of Montana and a member of the Banking Committee, said on Friday that he would vote against sending Mr. Summers's nomination.... Two of Mr. Tester's fellow Democrats on the committee, Senators Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Sherrod Brown of Ohio, have also signaled through their aides that they would vote no.... As skepticism grows..., the White House has made it clear to Democrats on Capitol Hill that Mr. Summers is Mr. Obama's choice. Republicans, too, are wary of Mr. Summers. Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Senate Republican, and Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas have both said that they would not vote for Mr. Summers. In August, Mr. Roberts said, 'I wouldn't want Larry Summers to mow my yard.'" ...

Gretchen Morgenson & Robert Gebeloff of the New York Times: big banks have been hoarding ethanol credits & selling them at prices 20 times the rates they sold for just 6 months ago as EPA regs force refineries to purchase them. "The market in ethanol credits is exactly the kind Wall Street loves: opaque, lightly regulated and potentially very lucrative." Oh, and they're not exactly regulated, but Scott Mixon, acting chief economist of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said the agency was thinking about thinking about it. Thomas "O'Malley, the chairman of PBF Energy, likens the outcome to a hidden tax on the public. Unlike other taxes, which go to the government, this one goes to the speculators. CW: of course the ultimate victim in this banking scam is the driving public, who will have to pay for the price-gouging. AND/OR our gas tanks will corrode thanks to too much ethanol in the mix. Simple solution: change the law to reduce the ethanol requirement. Oh. Congress.

Jackie Calmes of the New York Times: "Dan Pfeiffer, President Obama's 37-year-old chief strategist and one of his longest-serving advisers, was hospitalized twice last week after suffering 'stroke-like symptoms,' White House officials confirmed on Friday."

Missed this Friday afternoon news dump. Byron Tau & Jennifer Haberkorn of Politico: "The Obama administration on Friday told labor union leaders that their health plans would not be eligible for tax subsidies under Obamacare next year. A White House official said the Treasury Department has concluded that such an exemption is not possible under the Affordable Care Act. The labor unions have been asking that their union plans, known as Taft-Hartley plans, be eligible for premium subsidies the way plans on the new insurance exchange will be. A senior administration official said the White House looked at several ways to make the union plans eligible for subsidies but couldn't find one."

Maureen Dowd takes us on a field trip to the C.I.A.'s Langley HQ with actors Claire Danes & Mandy Potamkin, who star in "Homeland," a Showtime series about the C.I.A.'s complicated ops. CW: maybe MoDo thinks it's her job to give us little people thrilling peeks behind-the-scenes peeks at places we're not likely to go; otherwise, I don't know why she writes this stuff.

Local News

** Aaron Davis of the Washington Post: Washington D.C. "Mayor Vincent C. Gray's decision this week to veto a law requiring Wal-Mart to offer higher pay pitted support for a 'living wage 'against a desire to spur investment and job growth in the city.... Barring a last-minute change by one of five council members who voted against the measure in July, it appears likely to die during an override attempt on Tuesday... For ... thousands ... who cross the city line every day on their way to the Landover Wal-Mart, the battle was about something more basic: low prices. Gray's decision brought focus to the flipside of the living-wage debate: that Wal-Mart's customers are often as economically disadvantaged as those who scrape by on its hourly wages."

Mark Guarino of the Christian Science Monitor: "Marriage licenses will no longer be given out to same-sex couples in Pennsylvania, a state judge has ruled, putting into limbo the legal status of more than 100 couples who married recently despite a long-standing ban on same-sex marriage in the state."

Sarah Jones in Wall of Separation: Texas creationists are making new trouble for Texas schools. The Board of Education appointed several creationists to a panel to review biology textbooks, and -- surprise, surprise -- they're attempting to get the teaching of creationism into the kids' biology books. One reviewer wrote,

I understand the National Academy of Science's [sic] strong support of the theory of evolution. At the same time, this is a theory. As an educator, parent, and grandparent, I feel very firmly that 'creation science' based on Biblical principles should be incorporated into every Biology book that is up for adoption.

      ... Via Steve Benen.

Brinley Bruton of NBC News: "The Vatican's new secretary of state [Archbishop Pietro Parolin] has said that priestly celibacy is not church dogma and therefore open to discussion, marking a significant change in approach towards one of the thorniest issues facing the Roman Catholic Church.... He added that while it was not dogma, clerical celibacy was a deeply entrenched Catholic tradition." Also via Benen.

AND Benen posts video the Christian Broadcasting Network tried to cover up of Pat Robertson's claim that AIDS-afflicted gay people in San Francisco go around spreading the disease by means of secret rings that cut the hands of those they shake hands with. CW: Robertson's theorizing begins at about 1:50 min. into the tape & is gratuitous; it has little to do with the preceding discussion.

News Ledes

AFP: "More than 500 stranded victims of major flooding in Colorado braced for a new round of heavy rain Sunday that is threatening to impede rescue efforts. Officials noted that many of those unaccounted for may simply not be able to telephone loved ones because of flood damage to many cell phone towers." The Denver Post's lede story is here. More stories linked on the Post's front page.

AP: "Tropical Storm Manuel churned very near to Mexico's southwest Pacific shoreline Sunday as thousands on the country's Gulf rim sought shelter from approaching Hurricane Ingrid....

The Commentariat -- Sept. 14, 2013

** Ann Gearan, et al., of the Washington Post: "The United States and Russia agreed Saturday on an outline for the identification and seizure of Syrian chemical weapons and said Syria must turn over an accounting of its arsenal within a week. The agreement will be backed by a U.N. Security Council resolution that could allow for sanctions or other consequences if Syria fails to comply, Secretary of State John F. Kerry said. Kerry said that the first international inspection of Syrian chemical weapons will take place by November, with destruction to begin soon after and be complete by the middle of next year." ...

... Conal Urquhart of the Guardian: "The United States and Russia have agreed that Syrian chemical weapons will be placed under international control and destroyed in a process that will begin with a week. International inspectors from the Organisation of the Prevention of Chemical weapons must be given 'immediate and unfettered' access to Syrian chemical weapons, said the US secretary of state, John Kerry, while Syria must give a 'comprehensive list' of its chemical weapons within one week."

... CW: So make that headline: "War Averted, Lives Saved, Obama Is a Weakling."

... Peter Baker of the New York Times: "President Obama will not insist on a United Nations resolution threatening to use force to ensure that Syria lives up to its commitment to turn over chemical weapons, but will seek other tangible consequences for Syria if it does not comply, senior administration officials said Friday. Although Mr. Obama reserves the right to order a punitive military strike on his own without United Nations backing if Syria reneges, the officials said he understood that Russia, because of its veto power in the Security Council, would never allow a resolution that authorized such a use of force." ...

... Ann Gearan & Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post: "A proposal for an international peace conference to end the brutal Syrian civil war could be revived if negotiations over ridding the country of chemical weapons succeed, top U.S. and Russian diplomats said Friday. The remarks by Secretary of State John F. Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov were the first explicit indication that the diplomacy begun this week to resolve the immediate crisis of threatened U.S. military strikes could be a gateway to a broader negotiation aimed at ending the 2¹ / ₂-year-old conflict." ...

... Thom Shanker of the New York Times: "The crisis in Syria is the most recent and most powerful example of how Mr. Obama, elected twice on a promise to disengage the United States from overseas conflicts, has moved the Pentagon to a back seat. In this case, it is Secretary of State John Kerry who is leading the charge, not the far less vocal [Defense Secretary Chuck] Hagel and General [Martin] Dempsey." ...

... John Rabe & Kitty Felde of KPCC Public Radio: Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) tells of his meeting with Vladimir Putin in the early 1990s. Humorous. ...

... Grumpy McCain Expands His Media Base. Dylan Byers of Politico: "The Russian newspaper Pravda has tentatively agreed to publish an Op-Ed by Sen. John McCain in which he will attack Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to an exclusive report from Foreign Policy. The piece would serve as a direct response to the New York Times Op-Ed Putin penned earlier this week." (CW: I'm not linking to the initial report, as I normally try to do, because Foreign Policy has a horrible sign-in system you have to go through before you can read any article.) CW: a spokesperson for McCain said the Senator was not content to dominate U.S. news shows & was reaching out to venues all over the world. ...

... CW: I missed this report by Tim Murphy & Tasneem Raja when Mother Jones published it last week. Fortunately, my favorite news source, Rand Paul, called it to my attention. "Over the last two decades, [John] McCain has rarely missed an opportunity to call for the escalation of an international conflict. Since the mid-1990s, he's pushed for regime change in more than a half-dozen countries -- occasionally with disastrous consequences." The story includes "a quick review of McCain's eagerness for military action and foreign entanglements." ...

... Here's how Paul describes the Murphy-Raja report:

There was a funny article the other day in Mother Jones.... It ranked the different countries on how eager Sen. McCain wanted to be involved [militarily]. So, like, for getting involved in Syria, there's five Angry McCains. For getting involved in the Sudan, there's two Angry McCains. And there's a little picture of him. You know, he was for getting involved to support Gaddafi before he was for overthrowing Gaddafi. He was for supporting Mubarak before he was for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood before he was for supporting the generals.

... MacKay Coppins of BuzzFeed interviews Paul about his views on war. Coppins writes, "... over the past two weeks, it has become clear that Paul's brand of Republicanism has spread deeply within his party. He successfully rallied a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers against a military intervention in Syria; thoroughly embarrassed Republican leaders who supported the air strikes; and temporarily elevated himself to the role of de facto foreign policy spokesman for the GOP." ...

... Ed Kilgore pushes back: "It is not at all clear that Paul was the central figure -- much less the organizer of 'bipartisan' opposition -- in the resistance to a use-of-force resolution on Syria. In his utterances on the subject, he frequently hinted at sympathy for Assad as the protector of Syrian Christians; few Republicans, and virtually no Democrats, Went There." ...

... AND Paul pissed off the jihadists of Christians United for Israel (founded by John Hagee, most infamous for opining that God caused Hurricane Katrina to prevent a planned gay parade, but an all-around offensive loon) in his Coppins interview when he scoffed at the militaristic policies promoted by "defenders of the promised land and the chosen people." ...

... CW: Here's a place I'm totally with McCain: Tim Molloy of the Wrap: "Would we be better off buying cable stations one at a time instead of in bundles? Sen. John McCain says yes, and has introduced legislation that would make it happen." I pay for perhaps 50 sports channels, none of which I ever watch.

Jonathan Cohn of the New Republic: "Lots of people think John Boehner has lost control of the House Republican caucus. Apparently John Boehner does, too." Cohn offers three theories of winger motivation: "They are delusional.... They are savvy.... They are selfish," any one or all of which may be true. ...

... Domenico Montanaro of NBC News: "Americans overwhelmingly do not think Congress should raise the nation's debt limit as President Barack Obama and Congress prepare once again to wage battle over the issue, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll." CW: Contributor P. D. Pepe MAG mentioned this (or a similar) poll in yesterday's Comments. These polls irritate me. Here's how the pollsters framed the question (it's Question Q 16 on the linked page):

As you may know the federal debt ceiling acts as a check and limit on the country's overall liabilities, including the federal deficit and other debts. When the U.S. Treasury needs to issue debt above the ceiling in order to avoid going into bankruptcy and defaulting on its obligations, Congress needs to vote to raise the ceiling. Congress is again currently considering whether and how much to extend the debt ceiling. Do you think Congress should or should not raise the debt ceiling? If you don't know enough to have an opinion, please just say so.

      ... My eyes glaze over just reading the question. Responders don't know WTF the debt ceiling is (nor should they be expected to), & the pollsters made it as difficult as possible for them to understand. The result was 44-22 percent said "no." That is, a third of the respondents declined to answer. Most of the 44 percent were just too proud to say they didn't get it. Had the pollster asked, "Do you think the government should pay its bills?" -- which is the vernacular form of the question -- the results would have been a helluva lot different. ...

... Brett Logiurato of Business Insider: "Friday's poll suggests that public ignorance over the issue could be a boon for Republicans in any negotiations." ...

... Also via MAG, Jon Chait of New York explains why "There's really only one answer Obama can give here [re: Boehner's recent 'request" to combine debt ceiling & budget negotiations]: Boehner can go fuck himself." ...

... To help you out with all this debt ceiling/government shutdown/defund ObamaCare stuff, Gail Collins provides a handy calendar, suitable for taping to your refrigerator, of upcoming events.

Scott Shane of the New York Times: "A judge on the nation's intelligence court directed the government on Friday to review for possible public release the court's classified opinions on the National Security Agency's practice of collecting logs of Americans' phone calls. Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV issued the opinion in a response to a motion filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, saying such a move would add to 'an informed debate' about privacy and might even improve the reputation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on which he sits." ...

... Spencer Ackerman of the Guardian: "The court that oversees US surveillance has ordered the government to review for declassification a set of secret rulings about the National Security Agency's bulk trawls of Americans' phone records, acknowledging that disclosures by the whistleblower Edward Snowden had triggered an important public debate."

** Peter Beinart of the Daily Beast predicts that millenials will usher in a new age of liberalism, & he thinks Elizabeth Warren would be a a compelling presidential candidate: "The door is closing on the Reagan-Clinton era. It would be ironic if it was a Clinton herself who sealed it shut." Beinart makes a compelling case, but bear in mind he completely omits such phenomena as the yahoo factor that dominates the Republican party. His assessment of Obama's politics is, I think, exactly right.

Local News

Rod Bastanmehr of AlterNet: "Dr. Shiping Bao, the Volusia County medical examiner who was in charge of handling ... Trayvon Martin's body in February 2012, has come out and claimed that the prosecution team was biased against [Martin]..., and intentionally lost the case. According to Bao's attorney, Willie Gary, the medical examiner's office, the state attorney's office and the Sanford Police's 'general attitude was that [Martin] got what he deserved. He was in essence told to zip his lips.... Dr. Bao is speaking out in the wake of having been fired from the m.e.'s office, and is planning a $100 million lawsuit against the State of Florida." CW: I would tend to dismiss Bao's assertions as representative of "vengeful fired employee" syndrome but for this: "According to the former assistant coroner, the results of Martin's autopsy clearly showed that, despite Zimmerman's statements regarding their altercation, there was no feasible way for Martin to have been on top of Zimmerman when the gun was fired,  because the bullet entered Martin's back." Shot in the back??

News Ledes

Reuters: "More heavy rain is expected on Saturday in Colorado where rescue workers are battling to reach residents cut off by the worst floods in decades, which have killed at least four people and left 172 still unaccounted for.... The flooding began overnight Wednesday. It was triggered by unusually heavy late-summer storms that soaked Colorado's biggest urban centers, from Fort Collins near the Wyoming border south through Boulder, Denver and Colorado Springs." The Denver Post has a liveblog here. The Post's main story is here.

AFP: "Four Chinese ships entered waters around islands at the centre of a bitter dispute with Japan on Saturday with no sign of a compromise seen between Asia's two largest powers."

The Commentariat -- Sept. 13, 2013

Obama 2.0. Jackie Calmes of the New York Times: "President Obama has chosen Jeffrey D. Zients, an entrepreneur who twice was the president's acting budget director and a past candidate for two cabinet positions, to succeed Gene B. Sperling as the chief White House economic adviser.The shift, which was confirmed by several administration officials and will be announced on Friday, does not portend change in the president's economic agenda."

Kim Hjelmgaard of USA Today: "The White House is disputing a Japanese newspaper's report that former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers will be named the next chairman of the Federal Reserve by President Obama. The Nikkei newspaper, which did not publicly name its sourcing for its story, said Obama was "set to" name Summers to the position, possibly as early as next week." ...

... ** Michael Hirsh of the National Journal makes the case against Summers. If you don't have time to read it today, read it tomorrow. Hirsh essentially calls Summers a fuck-up, a liar & an arrogant SOB. And he gives examples. Hirsh's piece is the NJ's cover story.

Adam Entous, et al., of the Wall Street Journal: "A secretive Syrian military unit at the center of the Assad regime's chemical weapons program has been moving stocks of poison gases and munitions to as many as 50 sites to make them harder for the U.S. to track, according to American and Middle Eastern officials." ...

... Robert Worth of the New York Times: "In exchange for relinquishing his chemical arsenal, [Syrian President] Assad said Thursday, he will require that the United States stop arming the Syrian opposition.... Mr. Assad outlined his demands on Thursday...."

Michael Gordon & Steven Myers of the New York Times: "Starting a second day of negotiations on Syria's chemical weapons, Secretary of State John Kerry had a three-way meeting Friday morning at the Palais de Nations here with his Russian counterpart, Sergey V. Lavrov, and Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations envoy on the Syria issue." ...

... Gordon & Myers of the Times (published yesterday): "Secretary of State John Kerry and a team of American arms control experts began talks with Russian counterparts Thursday on a plan to secure and dispose of Syria chemical arsenal, and he set an early test for the Syrian leader by insisting on quick disclosure of the weapons as the country announced it had joined a treaty banning their use." ...

     ... The Washington Post story, by Ann Gearan & Karen DeYoung, is here. The Guardian's report, by Paul Lewis & Dan Roberts, is here. ...

... Al Jazeera America: "The United Nations said Thursday that Syria's President Bashar al-Assad has signed a legal document confirming that his government will comply with an international ban on chemical weapons. But the announcement came just hours after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had rejected Assad's earlier pledge to sign the agreement and begin submitting data on his chemical weapons one month later, in keeping with the usual practice under the pact. Kerry said the usual rules cannot apply to the current situation, and he demanded speedier compliance." ...

... Margaret Sullivan, the Times' public editor, explains how the Times received & published Putin's op-ed. ...

... Max Fisher of the Washington Post annotates & fact-checks Vladimir Putin's New York Times op-ed, linked in yesterday Commentariat. Here's one entry: "... what rankles many analysts about this paragraph is that it ignores Putin's own role in enabling the already quite awful violence, as well as the extremism it's inspired. Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad's regime has killed so freely and so wantonly in part because it knows Putin will protect it from international action. Putin has also been supplying Assad with heavy weapons. It's a bit rich for him to decry violence or outside involvement at this point." ...

... Political scientist Erica Chenowith does the same in the Monkey Cage. ...

... J. K. Trotter of Gawker: "Conservative writers are very upset that The New York Times published an op-ed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.... 'It looks like those pro-Assad Syrians didn't need to hack the New York Times website after all,' National Review columnist Charles C.W. Cooke tweeted. 'They could have just asked nicely.' Commentary editor John Podhoretz mused this morning: 'So it's LITERALLY Pravda-on-the-Hudson.' ... In fact, Putin has placed op-eds in nearly every major U.S. paper, including the right-leaning Wall Street Journal and Washington Times." ...

... Edward-Issac Dovere of Politico: "Vladimir Putin got his op-ed on Syria in the New York Times. Now Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) thinks it's only fair for a Russian daily newspaper to run his response. The DCCC chair on Thursday submitted a rebuttal article to Kommersant, a major Russian magazine, that he's calling 'An Open Letter to the People of Russia,' to explain the situation he and other members of Congress are in as they weigh whether to authorize the military strike which Putin argued in the Times should only happen with Security Council approval -- which Russia would be able to veto." No word yet on whether or not Kommersant will run Israel's letter. Israel's full letter is here. ...

... CW: I'm flummoxed by the apparent naivete of certain writers who are far more expert on Russia than am I. Take, ferinstance, Steven Myers, the New York Times' Moscow bureau chief, who writes that Putin has "boxed in" President Obama. Or Russia specialist & Moscow-born Julia Ioffe of the New Republic, who concludes, "... if you're keeping score this week, here's the tally: Putin 2, Obama 0." Really? The U.S. begs Russia for a year to do something it doesn't want to do. So the U.S. threatens to use force. And Russia says, "Well, okay then, have it your way." (Meanwhile, as of Monday this week, Assad wouldn't even acknowledge that he possessed chemical weapons & his government was one of the few holdouts refusing to sign the international treaty banning the use of chemical weapons; as of Thursday afternoon, his regime acknowledge possession of the chemicals & Assad signed the treaty.) You're not seeing Putin outsmarting or dominating Obama. You're seeing the way a strongman blinks. It's true that Putin's blink may be a feint, but even if it is, it's a welcome one because Assad has desisted from gassing Syrians & won't likely embarrass his benefactor Putin by doing so again in the near future. How can "experts" be so blind to a blink? ...

... Here's why Stewart & Colbert are important -- they highlight ignorance & hypocrisy that gets past people who don't read stuff. Contributor Barbarossa links to Colbert's piece -- which ran Monday -- on "Hypothetical Reagan":

... National Memo: "The reality is the United States didn't even impose sanctions on Iraq -- likely because the Reagan administration sold Hussein chemical weapons throughout the 1980s as part of an alliance to prop up Iraq against Iran. But that was the real Reagan -- not hypothetical, contemporary Super Reagan, who is headed to Syria right now on his raptor."

** Paul Krugman: "... whatever is causing the growing concentration of income at the top, the effect of that concentration is to undermine all the values that define America. Year by year, we're diverging from our ideals. Inherited privilege is crowding out equality of opportunity; the power of money is crowding out effective democracy."

Nicholas Confessore of the New York Times on the Koch brothers little campaign-money-laundering scam, Freedom Partners. Oh, what a surprise: it's a tax dodge for many of the "partners." CW: The real scandal: it's all legal. Maybe. "The center faces an inquiry by California election officials over allegations that it broke disclosure rules in funneling millions of dollars into state ballot initiatives in 2012." And here's a funny thing: Court stenographers Jim Vanderhei & Mike Allen of Politico, who first reported on Freedom Partners (linked in yesterday's Commentariat), didn't mention the tax dodge part.

I had to be very candid with [John Boehner] and I told him directly, all these things they're doing on Obamacare are just a waste of their time. Their direction is the direction toward shutting down the government. I like John Boehner. I do feel sorry for him. -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) ...

Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "In meetings with Democratic and Republican Congressional leaders on Thursday after a session with Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew on Wednesday, Mr. Boehner sought a resumption of negotiations that could keep the government running and yield a deficit-reduction deal that would persuade recalcitrant conservatives to raise the government's borrowing limit.... But a bloc of 43 House Republicans undercut the speaker's deficit-reduction focus, introducing yearlong funding legislation that would increase Pentagon and veterans spending and delay President Obama's health care law for a year -- most likely adding to the budget deficit.... Mr. Lew and Congressional Democrats held firm that they would no longer negotiate on raising the debt ceiling.... And they made it clear to the speaker that they would never accept Republican demands to repeal, defund or delay Mr. Obama's signature health care law." ...

... Today's Crime Spree Brought to You by the GOP. Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: "After months of agonizing about how to deal with the effects of government spending cuts, senior F.B.I. officials in Washington have decided how they will reduce the bureau's spending: they will shut down its headquarters and offices across the country for roughly 10 weekdays over the next year. The F.B.I.'s plans mean that on those days, the bureau will have only a skeleton crew on hand, which raises questions about how effectively it can respond to crime."

Julia Preston of the New York Times: "More than 100 women were arrested on Capitol Hill on Thursday after they blocked a busy intersection to press the House of Representatives to move on immigration legislation in a protest that rallied national women's groups to the cause."

Another Wingnut Governor Sees the $$$. Karen Shuey of the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Intelligencer Journal: "Gov. Tom Corbett intends to announce he will accept federal funds to expand medical coverage to an estimated 682,000 more Pennsylvanians in a Medicaid-like program, according to sources close to the governor. The Republican was among a small group of governors resisting calls to expand the federal-state health entitlement for the poor under the Affordable Care Act." ...

... Josh Barro of Business Insider: "Corbett, who faces his own uphill battle for re-election, seems to understand that he can't afford to take the blame for needless hospital closures next year. The remaining question is whether Republicans in the state House of Representatives will allow him to move to safer political ground."

Obama 2.0. Christine Haughney of the New York Times: "Richard Stengel, the managing editor of Time magazine, is leaving to become under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs at the State Department, according to people with knowledge of the appointment."

Local News

Kate Taylor & Michael Barbaro of the New York Times: New York City "Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said on Friday morning that he had decided not to make an endorsement in the general election for mayor, a surprise announcement in a campaign that has become something of a referendum on his legacy."

Judd Legum of Think Progress: "Police Chief Steve Bracknell, who is responsible for the Florida town where George Zimmerman resides, agreed in a series of emails that Zimmerman is a 'ticking time bomb' and another 'Sandy Hook' waiting to happen." CW: look for Zimmerman to file a defamation-of-character suit on this one. Not sure who will represent him since his trial lawyer quit -- um, except for representing him in a defamation suit against NBC.

News Lede

New York Times: "The investigation into what sparked a devastating fire that destroyed dozens of businesses along one of the most famous boardwalks on the Jersey Shore has not yet determined a cause, Gov. Chris Christie said on Friday." The New Jersey Star-Ledger has extensive coverage of fire-related stories here.