;)
The Commentariat -- Dec. 28, 2012
Cliff Notes
Jennifer Steinhauer of the New York Times: President "Obama is expected to invite all four [Congressional leaders] to meet on Friday. In a related development, House Republicans were told to return to Washington on Sunday. Republican senators were planning to convene at the Capitol -- normally somnolent during Christmas week -- to strategize."
The Incoherent President. William Black asks President Obama, "given your warning that the fiscal cliff's austerity would cause a recession, why are you demanding a Grand Bargain (sic, actually the Grand Betrayal) that would inflict austerity for a decade and likely cause multiple recessions and larger deficits?" ...
... Let Them Eat Cake. Charles Pierce writes, not particularly well this time, on essentially the same subject. I'm linking the post for two reasons -- his coining (as far as I know)* of the term "courtier press," and the implied Marie Antoinettesque character of the "chained CPI," which relies on the assumption that if the masses can't afford beef, they'll buy chicken.
* Actually, the coiner may have been Robert Parry, in this 2006 piece "Colbert and the Courtier Press," on Stephen Colbert's performance at the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner. The courtiers were not amused when Colbert lampooned them:
The President makes decisions; he's the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Put them through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know --- fiction.
... And, yeah, I know Marie Antoinette did not actually say "Let them eat cake" or anything like it.
Abdication
Brett LoGiurato of Business Insider: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is really ticked off at Republicans, especially at Speaker John Boehner, whom Reid describes as running a "dictatorship." Here's Reid, on the Senate floor:
... Update: Reid is right. Boehner will not allow a vote on a middle-class tax-cut measure because he knows it will pass with Democrats & some Republicans voting for it. Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) repeated Reid's charge this morning. ...
... MEANWHILE. Lisa Mascaro of the Los Angeles Times: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is MIA. "In the Senate, any deal on taxes and spending would be impossible without at least tacit approval from McConnell, given the power afforded the minority under the chamber's complex rules. But an aide said Wednesday that McConnell had not been in contact with any top Democrats...." ...
... CW: so, a complete GOP abdication. Adios, MoFo, It's time that we lay low. As long as Republicans hold power in Congress -- whether by majority control in the House or minority control (filibuster) in the Senate, Congress will be 100 percent dysfunctional, unable to vote, even on bills that the majority of each house favors. (P.S. Seems to me Democrats have pulled this, too.)
Steve Benen notices how thought & "logic" work in Right Wing World.
Jonathan Bernstein accidentally explains why there won't be a budget deal: "... not only are Republicans unwilling to offer specific spending cuts, but they have spent the past two election cycles running against the cuts that Democrats have proposed. Democrats already know that they will be attacked in 2014 for supporting a large tax increase. They simply cannot also be the ones who proposed spending cuts to popular programs, knowing that they'll be attacked for that, too. And, for good measure, they'll surely be attacked for allowing large deficits, too, regardless of what happens now." In short, Republicans are conniving AND irresponsible, & Democrats are sick of playing Charlie Brown to the GOP's Lucy.
Winger Philip Klein of the Examiner has some news for his fellow wingnuts: "If the nation goes over the cliff, the most likely outcome is the worst of both worlds for Republicans. Once some sort of legislation eventually gets passed, taxes will still go up on higher income earners. But additionally, Democrats will appropriate much of Bush's tax policy and Obama will become the great middle class tax cutter." Via Jonathan Bernstein.
"Grande Confusion." In the wake of Mitt Romney's bid for the presidency it is a good idea to remind ourselves that business leaders don't understand government. At all. Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, may know how to turn java into gold, but he does not understand the first thing about the "fiscal cliff," -- which he has ass-backwards -- as Suzy Khimm of the Washington Post lays out. Khimm notes, "That's why Secretary Tim Geithner explained that going over the fiscal cliff would actually buy us more time before we hit the debt ceiling." Geithner's explanation, and every other accurate one, went right over Schultz's aerated grande noggin. But then Schultz gets his information from Washington's inflated boob jobs Bowles & Simpson. ...
... Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic: "Washington doesn't need two parties that can 'come together.' It needs one party to 'get it together.' Maybe Schultz should put that on a coffee cup." ...
... ** If Schultz wants to know why Congress won't "come together" -- he should quit forcing his baristas to inscribe his nonsensical political messages on coffee cups & read Nate Silver: "In 1992, there were 103 members of the House of Representatives elected from what might be called swing districts: those in which the margin in the presidential race was within five percentage points of the national result. But ... I estimate that there are only 35 such Congressional districts remaining, barely a third of the total 20 years ago. Instead, the number of landslide districts -- those in which the presidential vote margin deviated by at least 20 percentage points from the national result -- has roughly doubled.... Most members of the House now come from hyperpartisan districts where they face essentially no threat of losing their seat to the other party. Instead, primary challenges, especially for Republicans, may be the more serious risk."
AND Joe Lieberman is still is smarmy, lying SOB. Steve Benen: Lieberman is again blaming "both sides" for Congressional dysfunction. "... consider recent events: the fiscal talks have broken down because Republicans won't compromise and accept meaningful concessions; the farm bill and the Violence Against Women Act are stuck because Republicans won't vote on them; efforts to reduce gun violence face extremely long odds because Republicans are beholden to the NRA; a U.N. treaty on disabilities was killed because Republicans believed extremist conspiracy theories; the process of filling President Obama's second term cabinet is stalled because of Republican smear campaigns; and another debt-ceiling crisis is underway because Republicans are threatening to hurt Americans on purpose unless Democrats pay a steep ransom."
E. J. Dionne: "... given the conservatives' habit of walking away even from their own ideas (the [health insurance] exchanges, for example) and of rejecting progressive efforts to save money, is it any wonder that liberals suspect them of greater interest in dismantling programs than in making them more efficient? We won't find genuine common ground on deficits until we resolve this dilemma."
New York Times Editors: "New legislation proposed by Senator Dianne Feinstein in response to the Newtown, Conn., murders would provide a far more effective ban on military-style assault weapons than the loophole-riddled law that lapsed in 2004."
Alex Pareene of Salon: "Congressional dysfunction and extremism may yet plunge the nation into an entirely avoidable recession, but at least Americans will likely be able to sleep at night secure in the knowledge that our lawmakers at least sprang into action, at the last possible minute, to preserve the government's right to constantly spy on everyone without telling anyone about it. In all likelihood, the Senate will vote today to reauthorize the FISA Amendments Act for a few years, just before it was scheduled to expire. The House reauthorized it all the way back in September, but the world's most deliberative body likes to take its time (plus Ron Wyden placed a hold on the bill until Senate leaders agreed to at least have a debate on proposed amendments to the Amendments)."
Steven Rosenfeld of AlterNet, in Salon: "Days after California's liberal Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer gave an impassioned floor speech saying that big steps must be taken to stop gun violence that is killing 87 people a day across America, she proposed a bill to give governors power to deploy National Guard troops in public schools -- or assign them to local police departments, freeing them to put police in schools." CW: thanks, Sen. Boxer, for lending credibility to the NRA. ...
... Free David Gregory. For those of you who are deeply concerned that Greggers will wind up behind bars, Josh Voorhees of Slate has the latest on David Gregory's troubles over waving a gun magazine prop in front of the NRA's Wayne LaPierre. CW: Note how the conversation has shifted from LaPierre's crazy ideas to Gregory's run-in with the law & Barbara Boxer's crazy ideas. Don't say the right doesn't still know how to drive the conversation into the ditch. ...
... CW: we should be talking instead about posts like this one from Matt Gertz of Media Matters: "During that interview, LaPierre said that a major flaw in the background check system is that states have failed to input mental health records, allowing people who have mental health issues that would prohibit them from buying a firearm to nonetheless pass a background check. But moments later, he expressed opposition to extending the background check system to all gun sales, maintaining a loophole that would allow the mentally ill to continue to obtain firearms."
James Broder of the New York Times: "Lisa P. Jackson is stepping down as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency after a four-year tenure that began with high hopes of sweeping action to address climate change and other environmental ills but ended with a series of rear-guard actions to defend the agency against challenges from industry, Republicans in Congress and, at times, the Obama White House.... Ms. Jackson's departure comes as many in the environmental movement are questioning Mr. Obama's commitment to dealing with climate change and other environmental problems." ...
... Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post reviews Jackson's tenure at EPA.
Garrett Epps of the Atlantic: "... Common Cause v. Biden, was a constitutional challenge to Senate rules allowing a minority of senators to prevent a vote, or even a debate, on any measure they disagree with. Only a 'cloture' vote of 60 senators can move a filibustered measure forward.... U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ... slapped [it] down.... [The] lawsuit ... would have offered the Senate's majority an easy way out of its agonizing dilemma." ...
... AND Jonathan Bernstein really wants you to know that "Cloture votes do not equal filibusters."
Paul Krugman looks at the long-term prospects for economic growth & says -- stay tuned. He's thinking about it. Krugman's column -- titled "Is Growth Over?" conforms to my headline thesis: if the headline is written in the form of a question, don't expect a meaningful answer.
Mark Arsenault of the Boston Globe: "US Representative Edward Markey, dean of the state's Washington delegation, will run in 2013 for the US Senate seat expected to open with the nomination of US Senator John Kerry to head the State Department. Markey, 66, a Malden Democrat elected to the House in 1976, is the first prominent candidate to declare a run for Kerry's seat, which will be filled through a special election early next summer, probably in June." ...
... David Bernstein, writing before Markey's announcement, prognosticated on how the Senate election will go down. So far, so good.
LeAnne Gendreau of NBC Connecticut: "The FBI has arrested a woman, [Nouel Alba of the Bronx,] who was the subject of a Today Show story about alleged scams exploiting the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Last week, NBC's Jeff Rossen reported that Alba posted a solicitation on Facebook within hours of the shooting, identifying herself as an aunt of Noah Pozner, a 6-year-old victim. Later ... she asked for funds to pay for the funeral, Rossen reported."
Local News
Ignore the Voters. Paul Egan of the Detroit Free Press: "Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder has signed a new emergency manager law that will take effect in the spring for financially troubled local governments and school districts, his spokeswoman said today.Approval by the Legislature of the Local Financial Stability and Choice Act during the recent lame duck session was controversial because voters on Nov. 6 repealed the former emergency manager law, Public Act 4 of 2011. The new law continues one of the most controversial provisions of PA 4 -- the ability for emergency managers appointed by the state to amend or scrap collective bargaining agreements." ...
... "An Affront to Michigan Women." New York Times Editors: "Despite clear public support for women's reproductive rights, Michigan's Republican-controlled Legislature used the just-ended lame-duck session to ram through harmful measures eliminating insurance coverage of abortions and imposing medically unnecessary regulations on providers of safe and legal abortion care." The editors urge Gov. Rick Snyder to veto the anti-women bills. Good luck with that.
News Ledes
AP: Dawn Nguyen, "a 24-year-old woman, was arrested Friday and charged in connection with the Christmas Eve ambush slaying of two volunteer firefighters responding to a house fire in upstate New York.... The state charge is connected to the purchase of an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and a 12-gauge shotgun that William Spengler had with him Monday when firefighters Michael Chiapperini and Tomasz Kaczowka were gunned down."
New York Times: "Jean S. Harris, the private-school headmistress whose 1981 trial for the murder of a prominent Scarsdale, N.Y., physician galvanized a nation mulling feminist perspectives with its story of vengeance by an aging woman scorned, died on Sunday at an assisted-living facility in New Haven. She was 89."
AP: "As a the muted ends of a powerful winter storm that has killed more than a dozen people plodded through the Northeast, many in Arkansas were seeking warmth and shelter against the cold prospect of life without electricity into the new year."
AP: Russian "President Vladimir Putin on Friday signed a bill banning Americans from adopting Russian children, part of a harsh response to a U.S. law targeting Russians deemed to be human rights violators. Although some top Russian officials including the foreign minister openly opposed the bill and Putin himself had been noncommittal about it last week, he signed it less than 24 hours after receiving it from Parliament, where both houses passed it overwhelmingly."
Reuters: "Russia urged the Syrian government on Friday to act on its stated readiness for dialogue with its opponents, throwing its weight behind a diplomatic push to end a 21-month-old conflict in Syria."
AP: "North Korea has repaired flood damage at its nuclear test facility and could conduct a quick atomic explosion if it chose, though water streaming out of a test tunnel may cause problems, analysis of recent satellite photos indicates. Washington and others are bracing for the possibility that if punished for a successful long-range rocket launch on Dec. 12 that the U.N. considers a cover for a banned ballistic missile test, North Korea's next step might be its third nuclear test."
New York Times: "The Chinese government issued new rules on Friday requiring Internet users to provide their real names to service providers, while assigning Internet companies greater responsibility for deleting forbidden postings and reporting them to the authorities."
Worse than Bibi. Reuters: "Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party is set to win a parliamentary election on January 22 although the popularity of a far-right party opposed to Palestinian statehood is growing, polls showed on Friday. Two out of three surveys showed the right-wing Likud losing voters to political newcomer Naftali Bennett's religious party Bayit Yehudi (Jewish Home)and to a fractured center-left bloc."
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Reader Comments (12)
..."Aaron Miller interviewed Hagel, whom he described as “a strong supporter of Israel and a believer in shared values.” Miller also wrote, “Of all my conversations, the one with Hagel stands apart for its honesty and clarity.” He quoted Hagel saying that Congress “is an institution that does not inherently bring out a great deal of courage.” The American Israel Public Affairs Committee comes knocking with a pro-Israel letter, Hagel continued, and “then you’ll get eighty or ninety senators on it. I don’t think I’ve ever signed one of the letters”—because, he added, they were “stupid.” Hagel also said, “The Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here,” but “I’m a United States senator. I’m not an Israeli senator.”
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/12/chuck-hagel-and-his-enemies.html#ixzz2GJx7xTbQ
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This is the way it is in the United States--at least on Capitol Hill-- where AIPAC calls the shots. It would be a miracle if Chuck Hagel gets nominated as Secy of Defense with the Israeli Lobby trashing him--even with the senator from AIPAC, Joe Lieberman, out of the picture. This is sad. How many people even know how our government is influenced by its alliance with Israel? And that we give more in foreign aid to Israel than to any other country? More than to most countries combined?
I realize I will be targeted as an anti-Semite for this comment. It will not be the first (or the last time). Just want to add that my cousin is an Israeli and lives in a Kibbutz on the West Bank. He agrees with me--as do many citizens of Israel and the entire peace movement. We are dealing with Bibi, the Likud, and the extreme Israeli right wing when we kow-tow to AIPAC. Time to end this sick alliance.
P.S. I think Chuck Hagel would make a good (if not great) Secretary of Defense. A good example of sane bi-partisanship.
GreggerGate, the kerfuffle over what NBC knew and when they knew it and whether or not the ATF, the CIA, the FBI, the SEC, the ABC, or the XYZ gave them permission to allow that horrible David Gregory to flash that scary gun thingy in front of that nice Wayne LaPierre, when it's like against the law, or something, reminds us of how often the right simply changes the subject and turns themselves into victims whenever inconvenient facts become problematic in their never ending plot to infect all of America with the Stupid Wingnut Virus.
During the 2004 presidential campaign when the extremely embarrassing gap in George W. Bush's military service (that time he deserted, in the middle of a war, for over a year) rose up to bite the incumbent on his ass, the Bushies, along with the right-wing gag-o-sphere and the MSM, decided to attack the messenger (Dan Rather, a CBS producer, and a typewriter) rather than examine the message.
So once more Dubya escaped the consequences of a factual investigation of his desertion by making the story all about whether or not a typewriter of 1970s vintage could have made a certain impression. Rather was censured, his producer fired, the story buried and Dubya re-elected. Of course after it all died down, even the slimy bloggers who started the ball rolling on TypewriterGate admitted that they were wrong and that they pretty much just made shit up to deflect criticism from their idol, the incurious chimp-in-charge who was having so much fun shocking and aweing those little brown non-Christians in that far away land they could never quite pronounce correctly (eye-rack).
So is it any wonder that wingnuts return to playbooks of yore and pull out the old end-around with the double-back misdirection in hopes of avoiding further scrutiny and turning those asking serious questions into criminals who should be hoosegowed?
What I think is hilarious about this is the fact that the NRA, who despises any laws even vaguely connected with owning, selling, carrying, or discharging weapons anywhere at any time, is so up in arms about demanding swift and draconian punishment for David Gregory. Even funnier is the fact that Greggers, chronic right-wing ball washer, is now being portrayed as a gun-hating, tree-hugging, tax-loving liberal.
The cry from the right now is that if it were anyone else who had waved that magazine around, they'd already be doing hard time in a salt mine in Syria, taken down to the torture chambers every three hours or so for some fingernail plucking, but since it's a member of the weepy, liberal MSM, nothing happens. What they really mean is that if Greggers had pulled that stunt on a Democratic lawmaker, a liberal, or a progressive commentator, there'd be no problem. The problem is that he dared to embarrass Wayne-O and the NRA.
How dare he question whether or not the NRA is serious about stopping gun violence, 'cause as the Media Matters article linked above shows, Wayne-O reversed himself almost immediately on questions about background checks on those with mental health issues.
Fuck it. Why not just hand out weapons to the mentally unstable with their meds. Better yet. Guns but no meds.
There ya go. And whatever else you do, NO FACTS, fer chrissakes. That shit gets you into a heap-o trouble.
@Akhilleus: Precisely....and did you smile just a bit as you typed on your later than 1970's vintage keyboard, "the NRA....up in arms?" I didn't type it, but I did smile. Thanks.
On a completely different topic, the American Dialect Society gathers in Boston next week to determine the Word of the Year for 2012. Anyone can submit their favorite word (or phrase) that meets the ADS criteria:
— demonstrably new or newly popular in 2012
— widely and/or prominently used in 2012
— indicative or reflective of the popular discourse
— not a peeve or a complaint about overuse or misuse
There are some obvious choices but some of them, such as "legitimate rape" while new to most of us are probably not very new amongst those (wingnut fundamentalists) who have been using them or other phrases connoting a similarly misogynistic world view for their entire lives.
So I'm going with another one whose misogyny is expressed in a more creative way, Willard's famously stupid lexical concoction "Binders full of women".
Former winners are "app", "tweet", "occupy", and "truthiness".
Any other suggestions?
I think "Lord Small Balls" might make the cut hereabouts but it might not make it on a national scale. Too bad.
Ken.
Ya got me, man.
In fact, it was only after I typed "up in arms" that I noticed its pertinence. I try to avoid too many raggedy-ass cliches but this one seemed to fit so it lived.
And I still have a vintage 1970s typewriter. A Royal electric that got me through grad school. I never used it to write any queries about a certain AWOL Texas Air National Guard puke though, so I guess I can't be brought up on any charges of bias against the great right-wing machine and their sacred leaders.
@Marvin Schwalb wrote yesterday, in a longer comment, "I will never be able to understand how so many human live in this delusional world." This is something I too have given a lot of thought, & I think I get it. It ties into something @Raul wrote in commentary (to which I objected) criticizing my damned music choices. He noted that in the U.S., Christmas stories tend to carry hopeful messages, whereas in England, they are more prone to be calls for social justice (or something like that). I think that difference in outlook explains -- or is at least consistent with -- the wider belief here in a fundamentalist god who is paying attention to what each of us does, says & even thinks -- and the notion that, even if god doesn't always mete out earthly justice, we "know" there will be appropriate repayment in an afterlife that will be nirvana for some & hell for others.
Religion allows people with these beliefs, no matter how dismal their own lives, to be optimistic -- which is, after all, supposedly an "American" trait.
Today, I was reading a fascinating (and horrifying) story recommended by my favorite critic David Brooks, about a man falsely convicted of murder in Texas. (The first part is here; the second part is here.) The sheriff who essentially framed him was beloved by the locals, & the prosecutor who convicted him was so respectable that Rick Perry made him a judge. The falsely convicted man, Michael Morton, was in jail for a quarter of a century; during the last several years, the Innocence Project fought & eventually succeeded in obtaining his exoneration, stymied all the way by the Texas "justice" system, of course. Here's the part that of the story that is germane to this discussion:
Of all of the hardships of jail, for Morton the hardest part was not seeing his son, & when he did, watching his son slip away from him. When his son said he no longer wanted to see him, Morton became, by his description, "nearly catatonic."
"'I literally cried out to God, "Are you there? Show me something. Give me a sign." I had nothing. I was spent, I was bankrupt. It was the most sincere plea I have ever made in my life. And I got nothing. A couple weeks went by and . . . nothing. No response.
“'I was lying in my bunk one night listening to the radio on my headphones, and I ran across a classical station. I heard something you rarely ever hear: a harp. There was no slow buildup, no preamble to what happened next. I was just engulfed in this very warm, very comforting blinding light. I don’t know what to call it — an ecstatic experience? a revelation? — because it was indescribable. Any words I use to explain it will fall short. I had this incredible feeling of joy. There was an overwhelming sense of this unlimited compassion aimed right at me. Then I heard my alarm go off and it was over, and I sat up in bed. Outwardly, everything was still the same. But I knew that I had been in the presence of God.'"
So here is this guy, framed by the system, his wife (whom he was supposed to have murdered) dead, his only son estranged, & his entire future a tiny prison cell. But his mind allowed him to find "hope" in what was literally a delusion. He went on to reading the Bible & becoming active in a Bible study group. The Lord was his salvation.
To me, this sort of delusion seems pretty natural. We get all of these external stimuli that when all else fails, Jesus is on our side. Finally, we succumb to the suggestion. This delusion, as it did for Morton, is apt (1) to be triggered by some specific stimulus -- the harp -- (2) to come when we're not fully awake so it's our subconscious that takes the bait, & (3) to come when we are invested in actively seeking a sign of hope, and (4) to come when reality promises no or few ways out of whatever traumatic event has hit us. Delusion is a coping mechanism, and I don't think a person has to be wacky to experience it; he does have to be susceptible, though.
I have long treated religion as I treat my friends' falling in love with unsuitable partners (and these two phenomena are more alike than most people realize): it's fine with me, none of my business, if it works for them, & they can count on me to be there if/when it doesn't work out.
Marie
Marie I agree with your view about religion being a coping mechanism and for many it is just life's nice warm bath. For some it becomes a resource for making a positive difference in their lives and others. It is a cultural binder for many. But then there is the other part. The excuse to take no responsibility for anything, for treating others, especially women as garbage to protect their poor egos. And of course for some the excuse to behave badly, you know, like murder. My guess is that the problem part is not the belief in a god, but in that god's story, the one that has too many words so that it can be made to say whatever you want. In other words, religion. It is always a practical problem for me. I have religious friends who are really good people. But they are not the majority.
@Akhilleus
My nomination for Word of the Year 2012, for my favorite newsletter, Reality Chex, is "Refucklicans".
I was so angry at one of many of their egregious actions my words became jumbled. We liked the accidental confabulation.
Janet,
An excellent choice. It paints an accurate picture of a party that routinely fucks one over. Again and again, and again.
"I have long treated religion as I treat my friends' falling in love with unsuitable partners (and these two phenomena are more alike than most people realize):..."
This first occurred to me when I saw the film with Burt Lancaster and Jean Simmons––name escapes me––about the evangelical tent preachers during the twenties. Their message was seeped in sexual tension along with that euphoria when falling in love.
@Kate: I'm with you on this and it's something I addressed some weeks back.
@PD Pepe "Elmer Gantry." Sinclair Lewis. Ought to be required reading in 9th grade english.
@PDPepe. I think you're referring to "Elmer Gantry" based on the novel by Sinclair Lewis. The Jean Simmons character was based loosely on Aimee Semple McPherson.f