The Commentariat -- March 6

The Full Michael Moore -- Madison, Wisconsin, March 5:

... CW: this is a speech we would have expected Barack Obama to make. He has never & will never come even close. Update: Moore has the transcript here. ...

... Backfire. Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times: "Organized labor has been on a long decline, but the recent attacks against it in Wisconsin and elsewhere have had a surprising result — they have energized the nation’s unions." ...

... ** Kevin Hall of McClatchy News: "... there's simply no evidence that state pensions are the current burden to public finances that their critics claim." They amount to just 2.9 percent, on average, according to an independent research institution, or 3.8 percent according to another. "Though there's no direct comparison, state and local pension contributions approximate the burden shouldered by private companies.... Nor are state and local government pension funds broke. They're underfunded..., like ... plans by American private-sector employees — they sunk along with the entire stock market during ... 2007-2009. And like [private] 401(k) plans, the investments made by public-sector pension plans are increasingly on firmer footing...." ...

... Profs. Jacob Hacker & Paul Pierson, authors of Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer - and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class, explain in a Washington Post op-ed, that the Wisconsin fight isn't about benefits; it's about union influence. "Decades of research have shown that the economic pyramid is flatter in countries where unions are stronger.... A recent study ... suggests that ... labor's decline may account for as much as a third of the rise in American wage inequality since the 1970s."

Russell Berman of The Hill: "The White House is showing no signs of letting up on its campaign for Ambassador Jon Huntsman’s presidential prospects - if anything, it’s in pile-on mode. Chief of Staff Bill Daley on Sunday heaped praise on Huntsman (R), Obama’s ambassador to China who is resigning his post and is said to be mulling a challenge to his boss for the presidency."

Karen Garcia reflects on President Obama's flirtation with that progressive Bush Dynasty.

You probably never thought you'd hear this question coming from Tom Friedman: "What are we doing spending $110 billion this year supporting corrupt and unpopular regimes in Afghanistan and Pakistan that are almost identical to the governments we’re applauding the Arab people for overthrowing?"

Citibank repeated screwed up Dana Milbank's home mortgage: "... a simple refi became a months-long odyssey: rates misquoted, interest charged on a phantom account, legal documents issued in wrong names, a mortgage officer who disappeared for days at a time (first it was his birthday, then his laptop was in the shop), a bounced check from Citibank's own title company, and the freezing of our bank accounts.... It's a bad situation - and the new majority in the House is poised to make it even worse. Republicans are aiming to repeal the Home Affordable Modification Program...." ...

     ... David Dayan of Firedoglake on Milbank's column: "The past week has seen a pronounced evolution in the writing of Dana Milbank. Earlier in the week he severely criticized the incestuous relationship between the political and media culture in Washington – including engaging in a healthy dose of self-criticism -- revealed by the Kurt Bardella email scandal. Where did this newfound self-awareness come from? ... Milbank discovered that, regardless of his prominence in the DC journalism community or access to power, to the banks he was still nothing but a mark."

Bob Egelko of the San Francisco Chronicle: "... a set of WikiLeaks disclosures of confidential documents has caused an uproar in Europe by showing that U.S. officials pressured Germany and Spain to derail criminal investigations of Americans."

Jane Hamsher hears from Bradley Manning's attorney Dennis Coombs on the circumstances under which Manning, accused of leaking to WikiLeaks & imprisoned in a Quantico basement, is being "stripped each night and forced to report naked each morning in the same way prisoners were tortured at Abu Graib." Coombs details the events & writes,

Given these circumstances, the decision to strip PFC Manning of his clothing every night for an indefinite period of time is clearly punitive in nature. There is no mental health justification for the decision. ...

... Glenn Greenwald: "The treatment of Manning is now so repulsive that it even lies beyond what at least some of the most devoted Obama admirers are willing to defend." ...

... Digby -- by citing official documents -- implies Manning is being subjected to torture in an effort by the government to obtain a false confession. It could work. ...

... If you want an MSM report on Manning's treatment, Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post does a good job. ...

... Greg Mitchell, now of The Nation, has a brief report on the history of Manning's incarceration.

First, Fire All the Lawyers. John Markoff of the New York Times: "Now, thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, 'e-discovery' software can analyze documents in a fraction of the time for a fraction of the cost [of lawyers]."

Spoon Wars. David A. Fahrenthold and Felicia Sonmez of the Washington Post: House Republicans ditch the supposedly environment-friendly cutlery in the House cafeteria for plastic.

Right Wing World

The President is going to be king of the world before this is all said and done and he is most likely the Beast spoken of in the Revelation. -- Margie Phelps, speaking on Fox "News" ...

... Ian Millhiser of Think Progress: Fox "News" invites Margie Phelps, an attorney for & daughter of the founder of the Westboro Church, to discuss the Supreme Court's decision supporting Westboro's right to express hate speech. Millhiser writes, "It's telling that in a week which featured deeply manipulative anti-worker tactics by the Ohio GOP, growing unrest in the Middle East, a court decision allowing implementation of the Affordable Care Act to move forward, and the Main Street Movement’s first steps to recall eight anti-worker lawmakers in Wisconsin, Fox decided to ignore these stories in order to focus on the important question of whether President Obama is the Antichrist." With video.

George Will: "... the [Republican] nominee [for president] may emerge much diminished by involvement in a process cluttered with careless, delusional, egomaniacal, spotlight-chasing candidates to whom the sensible American majority would never entrust a lemonade stand, much less nuclear weapons." The candidates to whom the ultra-conservative Will refers are Mike Huckabee & Newt Gingrich.

The New Mitt. Paul West of the Los Angeles Times: "... in each of his runs for public office, [Mitt] Romney has remade himself." Now he's a man of the people. He wears jeans! He shops at fucking Wal-Mart!

A Wal-Mart shopper sorta wearing jeans who may or may not be Mitt.

Fox "News" is now reporting on alien life. It is now virtually impossible to parody Fox. But it's okay; they have tacitly agreed to do it for us so we don't have to. ...

... We Are All Space Aliens. Ken Layne of Wonkette sees the upside to the story: "

According to a distinguished scientist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, a whole bunch of bacterial life arrived here on Earth inside a rare kind of meteorite that just happens to break apart on contact with water.... We might just be the worst space aliens in the universe. This, at least, explains Mitch McConnell. Anyway, it seems we have something close to proof that life is not unique to Earth.... Now, we can all acknowledge that we are descended from common alien space bugs — barnacles on the Ship of Existence — and we don’t ever have to talk about any of this ever again, right?" ...

... Unfortunately for Layne & Fox "News," Adrian Chen of Gawker pretty much -- though not entirely -- debunks the story, which in any event is at least seven years old. Not exactly "news." Nonetheless, "The article is now the most-read on Foxnews.com." CW: Fox knows its audience.

News Ledes

Washington Post: "Moammar Gaddafi's loyalists escalated a lethal counterattack on Sunday, heightening assaults on rebel-held cities near his western stronghold of Tripoli and pushing back opposition forces attempting to advance toward the capital." ...

... Al Jazeera: "Sustained gunfire has erupted in the centre of Libya's capital, Tripoli, an area that has so far been relatively free of violence. It was unclear who was carrying out the shooting, which started at about 5:45am (0345 GMT) on Sunday...." ...

... AP: "Libyan helicopter gunships fired on a rebel force advancing west toward the capital Tripoli along the country's Mediterranean coastline Sunday and forces loyal to leader Moammar Gadhafi fought intense ground battles with the rival fighters."

McClatchy News: "Trudging through dungeon-like cells and mounds of shredded documents, hundreds of Egyptians on Saturday surged into the Cairo headquarters of the dreaded State Security apparatus for an unprecedented look inside buildings where political prisoners endured horrific torture.... Some activists also were looking for evidence related to Egypt's role in the U.S. government's longtime practice of extraordinary rendition.... Protesters carted off armloads of files and turned them over to a prosecutor who arrived on the scene.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "Buoyed by filmmaker Michael Moore's fiery speech and energized by the stand of 14 Democratic state senators who remained in Illinois, thousands of pro-labor demonstrators converged on the [Wisconsin] state Capitol on Saturday to protest against Gov. Scott Walker's budget-repair bill." See video under today's Commentariat, plus brief AP video above.

Poison Pen Prize

Gail Collins riffs on the bad writing of politicians. My bad writing did not make it past the Times moderators,* so here it is:

If you're going to go as far as Europe looking for politicians who plagiarize, include Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, Germany's defense minister who is/was the country's most popular politician. He resigned earlier this week amid allegations that he plagiarized parts of his doctoral dissertation. One imagines that his resignation is a subtle admission of guilt. That's Guttenberg, not Gutenberg, which without that extra "t" would have been funnier.

Can't tell if this is Huck or Pinocchio, but as they say in Arkansas, "same difference."But I would leave the worst literary crime to our own Mike Huckabee. I refer to a section in one of his many heartwarming books that you must have somehow skipped over last week in your exhaustive study of the vast body of Works of Huckabee. (At least one of the literary works explains why Huck no longer has an actual vast body.)

Our Huck tried a Tom Sawyerish sidestep to get out of what very charitably can be called the Whopper of the Week in which he said that "one thing that I do know is his having grown up in Kenya." "His" being "Barack Obama's." At least he properly used the possessive. Still, since we all know that Obama was reared in Hawaii & Indonesia, Huck implies that he doesn't know anything. I think you said as much yourself last week.

In his radio interview with some right-wing host, Huck went on to elaborate on Obama's jaded view of the Mau Mau Revolution against British rule, a bloody affair which no Brit today would attempt to defend. (In fact, neither did Winston Churchill -- he opposed the British abuse of the Mau Maus. More on Sir Winnie below.)

It turns out this imaginary Mau Mau-Obama connection is something Huck has given a lot of thought. In fact, he wrote about it. In a book titled Simple Government (probably should have had a subtitle For the Simple-Minded and Credulous), Huck expressed his displeasure at Obama's having removed a bust of Churchill from the Oval Office. Here's part of the offending passage:

The British newspaper the Daily Telegraph explained Obama's strange behavior: 'Churchill has less happy connotations for Mr. Obama than for those American politicians who celebrate his wartime leadership. It was during Churchill's second premiership that Britain suppressed Kenya's Mau Mau rebellion. Kenyans allegedly tortured by the colonial regime included one Hussein Onyango Obama, the President's grandfather.'

Every president is the keeper of our American narrative, 'our story.' He is the commander in chief, yes, but he is also commemorator in chief....

President Obama's emphasis on his story rather than history has become symptomatic of his tenure. He is going to impose his agenda on Americans, and he doesn't care if we don't share it, don't believe in it, or don't want it.

First, Huck did not mention in his well-researched masterpiece that Obama replaced the Churchill bust with one of Abraham Lincoln, one of Obama's heroes.

Second, according to British historian David Anderson, whom Justin Elliott of Salon interviewed, Obama's grandfather could not have been tortured by the Brits in the Mau Mau Revolution, because he lived in another part of Kenya where there was no rebellion. The scholarly Anderson said of Huckabee's assertion, that it was "stir-fry crazy."

Third, the whole point of Huck's cloying, totally inaccurate passage is the standard right-wing meme: "Obama is not one of 'us.'"

So I'm giving Mike Huckabee, potential presidential candidate, my Poison Pen Prize for the week. Or month.

* Update: my comment showed up this morning on the second page of comments, but this version has a few fewer typos. And it comes with links!

The Commentariat -- March 5

CW: Michael Cooper of the New York Times has a mini-profile/interview of David Koch, who was in Cambridge, Massachusetts yesterday to open a cancer research center at MIT for which he has contributed $100 million to get his name on the building. Oh, and he has/had prostate cancer, so he says he's much more interested in cancer research than in politics, had no idea who Scott Walker was, yadayadayada. My favorite paragraph in an article about a guy who has spent millions in support of candidates who promise to cut government spending on poor & middle-class people & of course on those nasty EPA regulators:

In his speech at the opening ceremony, Mr. Koch warned that government spending cuts could impede cancer research. And he urged donors to fill the gap.

     ... No shit.

It's a pleasure to be with you in San Francisco. But then, I have to confess, it's a pleasure to be anywhere but Washington, D.C. -- a place where so many people are lost in thought because it is such unfamiliar territory. -- Defense Secretary Robert Gates, at an event in September 2010

Thom Shanker of the New York Times: "Even for a particularly outspoken defense secretary, [Robert] Gates has reached a new level of candor.... He sharply criticized members of the House of Representatives this week for spending money on Humvees that the Army did not want instead of buying surveillance systems needed to protect troops. In recent speeches, he has rebuked military leaders for clinging to ancient concepts of war — and by ancient he means before Sept. 11, 2001. And he has cited the painful experiences still unfolding in Afghanistan and Iraq to warn of grave risks if the military again intervenes in the Muslim world, this time in Libya, using tones far more grim than others in the Obama cabinet."

Here are shocking statistics from Michael Greenstone & Adam Looney of the Brookings Institution: "... there has been a sharp decline in employment rates for men, particularly lower-skill men with less than a college degree. Today, only 66 percent of American prime-aged men hold full-time jobs, down from 80 percent in 1970. Further, the reduction in work is greater for the less-educated (79 percent of high-school graduates held a full-time job in 1970 versus 57 percent today.) ... Earnings have not stagnated but have declined sharply. The median wage of the American male has declined by almost $13,000 after accounting for inflation in the four decades since 1969. This is a reduction of 28 percent!"

Fareed Zakaria will host Hans Rosling this Sunday at 8:00 pm ET & PT to discuss world economic growth. Late last year, we ran Rosling's compelling four-minute video on the same subject: Here's a preview of the CNN show:

     ... You can see Rosling's BBC video here on YouTube.

Thursday, President Obama talked to the crew of Discovery aboard the International Space Station. Includes a joke:

     ... Here's a related story from space.com.

Local News

"Wisconsin Wobblies." Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal: "... three Republican state senators may defect on the collective-bargaining reform vote.... Democrats remain in exile to prevent the necessary quorum. But Republicans in the Senate hold a 19-14 majority, so GOP Gov. Scott Walker can afford to lose no more than two Republican senators on this pivotal vote. On Wednesday, Republicans held a 'unity' press conference that was attended by all but one senator, Dale Schultz. But a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll showing that 62% of respondents oppose curtailing collective-bargaining rights for public-sector workers ... suggests that the GOP position may be losing some support among independent voters. Meanwhile, the unions have turned up the heat by launching recall efforts against at least five of the GOP senators."

Welcome to Louisiana, 1935. Campbell Robertson of the New York Times: "A 78-year-old Louisiana state prisoner was surgically castrated this week at a hospital in Baton Rouge as part of a plea deal in a child molestation case.... [Francis Phillip] Tullier was back in prison recuperating and was scheduled to leave prison next week. He will be registered as a child sexual predator. In 2008, Gov. Bobby Jindal signed a bill authorizing judges to order chemical or surgical castration on the first offense of certain sexual crimes, and mandating it on the second offense, but so far there is no record of such a sentence being handed down under the new law...."

Jon Ralston of the Las Vegas Sun: "In one of the most brazen schemes in Nevada history, gubernatorial candidate Rory Reid’s campaign formed 91 shell political action committees that were used to funnel three quarters of a million dollars into his campaign, circumventing contribution limits and violating at least the spirit – and maybe the letter – of the laws governing elections. Reid, who was fully aware of what was done, essentially received more than $750,000 from one PAC – 75 times the legal limit -- after his team created dozens of smaller PACS that had no other purpose other than to serve as conduits from a larger entity that the candidate funded by asking large donors for money." Reid, a Democrat, is Sen. Harry Reid's son. He lost the election.

News Ledes

AP: "Alberto Granado, who accompanied Ernesto 'Che' Guevara on a 1952 journey of discovery across Latin America that was immortalized in Guevara's memoir and on-screen in 'The Motorcycle Diaries,' died in Cuba on Saturday. He was 88." Update: the New York Times has an obituary here.

New York Times: "Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s militia stormed the rebels controlling the town of Zawiyah on Saturday morning in what two residents described as a 'massacre.'” ...

... AP: "Moammar Gadhafi's forces on Saturday broke through rebel lines at [Zawiya,] an opposition-held city that is closest to Tripoli, in a dawn attack that could prove crucial to the regime's defense of the Libyan capital, witnesses said."

... Washington Post: "Massive crowds turned out across the Arab world for a Friday of mostly peaceful protests, although the Iraqi government responded with a forceful crackdown and at least three people were killed in Yemen. In Egypt, the huge crowd that had gathered in Cairo's Tahrir Square cheered as the country's newly appointed prime minister [Essam Sharaf] waded into throngs of protesters and asked for their support and help."

St. Petersburg Times: "After the state Supreme Court ruled in his favor and the federal government begrudgingly accepted his refusal, Gov. Rick Scott emerged victorious Friday in his effort to kill high-speed rail in Florida. The death knell came when the court turned down a last-minute lawsuit from two state senators to save the Tampa-Orlando line and U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced he would send $2.4 billion earmarked for Florida to other states."

New York Times: "House Republicans quietly moved Friday to uphold the Defense of Marriage Act, the 1996 law that bans federal recognition of same-sex marriages, saying they would step in to argue for the measure’s constitutionality after the Obama administration’s decision to stop defending it."

AP: "The United States is increasing pressure on Sri Lanka to investigate the deaths of thousands of civilians at the end of its civil war. Rights groups contend a Sri Lankan government commission has demonstrated no intent of doing it."