;)
The Commentariat -- Jan. 14, 2013
Jennifer Epstein of Politico: "President Barack Obama on Monday repeated his call for deficit reduction but warned against the potentially catastrophic effect on the economy by tying cuts to raising the debt ceiling. 'While I'm willing to compromise and find common ground over how to reduce our deficit, America cannot afford another debate with this Congress over how to pay the bills they've already racked up,' Obama said in the East Room of the White House at what aides have billed as the final news conference of his first term. 'To even entertain the idea of this happening, of America not paying its bills, is irresponsible. It's absurd. They will not collect a ransom in exchange for not crashing the American economy,' Obama said. 'The full faith and credit of the United States of America is not a bargaining chip.'" The New York Times story, by Jackie Calmes & Michael Shear, is here. ...
... Here's a clip wherein Obama explains the debt limit. Pretty good:
... Update: here's the full presser, with a special babbling intro by Brian Williams, Greggers & Chuck Todd (so sorry, hadda lose the NBC video):
... Update. Boehner's Go-Fuck-Yourself Response. Andrew Taylor of the AP: "Speaker John Boehner says the GOP-controlled House will 'do its job' and pass legislation to lift the nation's borrowing cap and keep the government running, but will insist that Democrats accept new spending controls. [Emphasis added.] Boehner acknowledged Monday that failing to lift the so-called debt ceiling would have bad consequences. But he also said that 'allowing our spending problem to go unresolved' would be just as troublesome."
... Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic: re: the demise of the Great Trillion Dollar Platinum Coin:"... the White House doesn't think it's backing down. Administration officials believe they are standing firm -- that the coin option, if anything, was becoming a distraction.... Republican congressional leaders seem to recognize this, even if some of their members do not.... You can safely assume West Wing officials worried that a protracted debate about the coin's propriety was going to make their job more difficult, not less, by interfering with their ability to portray the debate in simple, straightforward terms."
As Josh Marshall wrote last Friday, before the Treasury Department announced it would not be minting any platinum coins, the platinum coin made it appear that the President was "the one doing something reckless and totally crazy rather than Congressional Republicans who are the ones really doing it." ...
Thanks to a friend for the cartoon.... CW: I continue to believe that the coin was a brilliant idea. If the White House had played it right, rather than making the President look crazy, it would have demonstrated how entirely trivial/unhinged the House was -- a gang of nutbags whose hostage-taking attempt could be foiled by a gimmick out of the comic books. I think it was Matt Yglesias who suggested that the coin should be rather large, but I would have made it teeny-tiny, to symbolize the teeny-tininess of the gnats it swatted back. (Krugman suggested, facetiously, I think, that Boehner should have been the face on the coin.)
CW: the best way for Obama to win this one is to demand Republicans allow Congress to raise the debt ceiling before Congressional Democrats & the Administration will sit down with Republicans to talk sequester. (Pundits keep scratching their head over how the President can possibly win with no tricks or gimmicks on the table; refusing to discuss the sequester has seemed to me like the obvious move all along.) Boehner himself could come out a big winner -- he won't because he's not that smart -- by abandoning House Teabaggers & forming an alliance with Pelosi. In that way, his footnote in history could have showed him to be a patriot first & a clever operator second, doing whatever possible to right the ship of fools; instead, the footnote will read Cap'n Boner went down with the ship. ...
... Update: during his presser today, President Obama suggested doing it Marie's way. I did not notice where he mentioned my name. ...
... Meanwhile, Andy Borowitz reports, "President Barack Obama was 'totally furious' he spent a week of his time posing for a trillion-dollar platinum coin that would never be minted, a White House source confirmed today."
George Packer of the New Yorker writes a cultural mini-history of the South, a region whose values -- ascendant in the late 20th-century -- now have less and less influence in the rest of the U.S. ...
... NEW. Driftglass: "The GOP cannot be saved, and our nation can no longer endure permanently half-Fox and half-free. The Republican Party must go."
Colin Powell defends Hillary Clinton, Chuck Hagel, rips GOP:
... Charles Pierce comments on Greggers-Powell non sequiters & denialism, then moves on to shenanigans on other riveting Sunday morning shows. Thanks to James S. for the link.
... Ginger Gibson of Politico: "While continuing to identify as a Republican, former Secretary of State Colin Powell on Sunday criticized the GOP for a series of racist attacks against President Barack Obama. 'There's also a dark vein of intolerance in some parts of the party,' Powell said on NBC's 'Meet the Press.' "What do I mean by that? What I mean by that is they still sort of look down on minorities."
Obama 2.0
Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times: "The campaign now being waged against [Chuck] Hagel's nomination as secretary of defense is in some ways a relitigation of that decade-old dispute [over Iraq]. It is also a dramatic return to the public stage by the neoconservatives whose worldview remains a powerful undercurrent in the Republican Party and in the national debate about the United States' relationship with Israel and the Middle East." ...
... Jennifer Steinhauer of the New York Times: "In what could be a crucial moment in the Obama administration’s efforts to advance the nomination of former Senator Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense, he will meet this week with Senator Charles E. Schumer [D-N.Y.], the most influential Jewish member of the Senate, who is expected to press Mr. Hagel on issues concerning Iran and Israel."
Anne Gearan of the Washington Post: "A poisonous unraveling of U.S. relations with Russia in recent months represents more than the failure of President Obama's first-term attempt to 'reset' badly frayed bilateral relations. It threatens pillars of Obama's second-term foreign policy agenda as well. From Syria and Iran to North Korea and Afghanistan, Russian President Vladimir Putin holds cards that he can use to help or hurt Obama administration objectives."
Lydia Saad of Gallup: "In the aftermath of the Newtown, Conn., school shootings, and as Vice President Joe Biden leads a federal task force that will recommend ways to curb gun violence in the U.S., 38% of Americans are dissatisfied with the nation's gun laws and want them strengthened. This is up from 25% who held this set of views a year ago, and is the highest since 2001. Still, more Americans are either satisfied with current gun laws, 43%, or think they should be loosened, 5%." ...
... David Jackson of USA Today: "Vice President Biden, poised to propose new gun violence legislation this week, meets Monday morning with Democratic lawmakers who will consider the administration's plans. Biden sits down with members of the House Democratic task force on gun violence, as the Obama administration is marking the week of its second inaugural with a robust debate on guns. Biden says he wants to present a gun package to President Obama by Tuesday...." ...
... Aaron Davis & John Wagner of the Washington Post: "Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley will seek to institute some of the nation's strictest gun-licensing requirements, ban assault weapons and restrict visitor access to schools in one of the most expansive government responses sought to last month's school shooting in Newtown, Conn. Perhaps most controversially, O'Malley (D) will ask the General Assembly to force prospective gun owners to provide fingerprints to state police, complete a hands-on weapon-familiarization and gun-safety course, and undergo a background check to be licensed." ...
... Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: "Nearly 80,000 Americans were denied guns in 2010, according to Justice Department data, because they lied or provided inaccurate information about their criminal histories on background-check forms. Yet only 44 of those people were charged with a crime. The staggeringly low number of prosecutions for people who 'lie and try,' as it is called by law enforcement officials, is being studied by the Obama administration as it considers measures to curb gun violence after the Connecticut elementary school shootings in December." ...
... Will Dunham & David Brunnstrom of Reuters: "Gun rights groups on Sunday forecast that bids to ban assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips would fail in Congress, as Vice President Joe Biden prepares this week to give President Barack Obama proposals to curb gun violence. Even some congressional Democrats indicated that a bill to revive the U.S. assault weapons ban that expired in 2004 would have a difficult time winning passage in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and Democratic-led Senate." ...
... Igor Volsky of Think Progress: "Gun advocate Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners Of America, spoke out against expanding background checks for gun purchases during an appearance on Fox News Sunday, arguing that the proposal would provide Americans with a 'false sense of security' and waste time. Instead, Pratt encouraged lawmakers to eliminate gun-free zones in schools and self defense." With video. ...
Screenshot of NRA app via Think Progress.... Bambi Gets a Break as NRA Turns Focus to Killing People. Annie-Rose Strasser of Think Progress: "... over the weekend [the NRA] released a shooting app, called 'NRA: Practice Range.' ... It allows players practice shooting at targets -- coffin-shaped targets, with red bullseyes at head-and heart-level."
... Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "The Center for American Progress is recommending 13 new gun policies to the White House -- some of them executive actions that would not require the approval of Congress -- in what amounts to the progressive community's wish list. CAP's proposals ... include requiring universal background checks, banning military-grade assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, and modernizing data systems to track gun sales and enforce existing laws...." ...
... Rahmbo's Back. Daniel Strauss of The Hill: "Rahm Emanuel, who put the brakes on gun control in the Obama White House, is now pushing for broad changes to firearm policies in Chicago.... Emanuel wants to strengthen Chicago's gun laws to address an alarming increase in homicides. In late December, Chicago attracted national attention when law-enforcement officials confirmed the city's 500th homicide in 2012." ...
... Digby is not impressed: "Until we racked up a huge body count of innocent people, it was best to STFU and elect as many government officials of both parties who would oppose any kind of gun control. That's what people in the beltway call 'pragmatism.' I call it immoral." ...
... CW: I hope you all had a chance to read at least one of the "history of gun laws" pieces I linked over the weekend, one from the Atlantic by Adam Winkler & one by several Wash Po reporters. They are both fascinating. One thing that struck me is that a big impetus for gun control legislation in the late '60s, early '70s was fear of black men; now a big impetus for lax guns laws is fear of a particular black man. We-all of the Great Melting Pot never do seem to melt, do we? Plus read George Packer, linked today.
New York Times Editors: "Until now, the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, has not seen a single member of his caucus dare to buck his fierce opposition to a law requiring fuller disclosure of campaign contributions. But last month, Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, broke through the partisan wall to propose a badly needed mandate for [campaign finance] transparency.... The measure, co-sponsored by Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, would require any campaign organization spending $500 or more on federal political activity to disclose who its donors are, and to do so in 'real time' at every point, from 'candidacy to advocacy.'"
Noam Cohen of the New York Times: Aaron "Swartz was a flash point in the debate over whether information should be made widely available. On one side were activists like Mr. Swartz and advocacy groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Students for Free Culture. On the other were governments and corporations that argued that some information must be kept private for security or commercial reasons. After his death, Mr. Swartz has come to symbolize a different debate over how aggressively governments should pursue criminal cases against people like Mr. Swartz who believe in 'freeing' information."
Ginger Gibson of Politico: "Newark Mayor Cory Booker on Sunday continued to teeter the line about whether he will run for the U.S. Senate and potentially challenge incumbent Sen. Frank Lautenberg to a primary. 'That's my intention, but it's over a year away,' Booker said when asked if he's going to run. 'A lot could change between now and then.'"
Paul Krugman: Shinzo Abe, the new Prime Minister of Japan, "returned to office pledging to end Japan's long economic stagnation, and he has already taken steps orthodoxy says we mustn't take. And the early indications are that it's going pretty well.... While getting out of a prolonged slump turns out to be very difficult, that's mainly because it's hard getting policy makers to accept the need for bold action. That is, the problem is mainly political and intellectual, rather than strictly economic."
News Ledes
New York Times: "At least two deadly explosions, possibly caused by aircraft missiles or bombs, devastated the campus of Aleppo University in Syria on Tuesday as students were taking exams, a major escalation of the violent struggle for control of the country's largest city. The opposition and government blamed each other for the blasts, among the worst since the Syrian conflict began nearly two years ago."
AP: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's office said Monday he was never involved in a deal to have a Utah businessman pay the senator to make a federal investigation disappear. St. George, [Utah,] businessman Jeremy Johnson, who's accused of running a $350 million software scheme, said a top official in the Utah attorney general's office orchestrated an agreement in 2010 to pay $600,000 to someone connected to Reid. Johnson told The Salt Lake Tribune over the weekend that he believed Reid would intervene in the Federal Trade Commission's investigation into his business."
NBC News: "Former President George H.W. Bush will be released Monday from a Houston hospital after nearly two months of treatment for a bronchitis-related cough and other health issues...." ...
... Houston Chronicle: "Former President George H.W. Bush was discharged from Methodist Hospital on Monday after being treated for bronchitis, a bacterial infection and a lingering cough during his seven-week stay."
Reuters: "U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay called on Monday for an international investigation into what she said were decades of serious violations in North Korea, including torture and executions of political prisoners held in shadowy camps."
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Just a few comments on the Greggy-Powell chat:
Ruling out the military option against Iran? Preposterous! I love the quick exchange: What is the military option?
"Are we going to 'blow up' Teheran or are we gonna go after some hidden facilities?" "Any military option is feasible in terms of 'dropping bombs'"
I love how, on national teevee, we talk about exploding other countries' citizens on a whim. Democracy Delivered. Powell (and maybe Greggy) knows damn well that in international relations there's this thing called "respect of national sovereignty", and it's kind of an international law and included in the UN Charter chapter 1 article 2 line 4 and I quote:
"All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations." but...f*ck it. We're 'murica!
I realize we've been undermining countries since our inception (like all other powerful states in history) and IR is governed by a Realist approach, but maybe I'm too Kantian when I believe that maybe one day we'll evolve as a species and step out of the self-constructed Leviathon.
On another note, I find it rich that Greggy points out that after a visit to Israel in 1998! Hagel criticized Netanyahoo for 'stone-walling' the peace process. Well that was what, roughly 14 years ago? And it's the same asshole doing the same thing? Neither one has the balls to say it, but that's EXACTLY WHAT BIBBY HAS BEEN FUCKING DOING! No mention of the thousands of illegal settlements (internationally condemned!) built since then nor the plans in the works to supposedly block off Palestinians from East Jerusalem with more illegal developments, which will literally stone-wall the peace process to its death.
Oh yeah, and then Powell ducks and covers from the Iraq war scandal blaming 'faulty intelligence' when at the UN nearly every serious ally told us we were insane because of this shoddy "evidence" cooked up by Cheney et al. So we said screw international law and invaded the country illegally (see UN charter above) and no one will ever be held accountable.
Good for Powell to rip the Repugs, but I only see this act as a sort of character cleanse for his inevitable date with fate.
You fucked up Colon, and your legacy will be butt a shit stain on history.
... and in Right Wing World
Double trouble: House GOP eyes default, shutdown
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/behind-the-curtain-house-gop-eyes-default-shutdown-86116_Page2.html
"Obama assumes Republicans would never be so foolish as to put the economy at risk to win a spending fight. Conservatives say he’s definitely wrong on that score. They say he’s the foolish and reckless one for piling up $6 trillion in debt on his watch."
While big numbers are in the wind these days, what with trying to figure out exactly how big a trillion dollar coin would have to be, I wanted to take a moment to comment on the unsurprising antipathy that conservatives are now displaying towards algebra, or at least to algebra as a tool of the world wide liberal conspiracy to steal their FREEEEDOOOMMM.
(Sometime in the near future I think it would be instructive for us to consider the concept of “Freedom” in its many incarnations including the Platonic ideal of that quality that Fox--just kidding--employs to frighten its more unstable and erratic viewers, which means most of them.)
So, anyway, now that the left-wing bias of algebraic problem solving has been uncovered, right-wingers can go whole hog on that science denial thing. “Hey! Algebra is phony…it was used by ACORN, fer crissakes, while they were stealing the election for that awful nee-gro who’s STILL in the White House! You can’t trust it."
So everything supported by algebra must now come into question, fruit of the poison tree, and all that. Kepler, Newton, Galileo, all those dirty atheists, they’re all in on it too! Commie bastards. Even batting averages must be wrong!! So Babe Ruth is still the batting champ after all. Those pretenders like Hank Aaron were getting their supporters to use ALGEBRA. Holy shit! Not to mention that the creative accounting used on Wall Street must be okay since it doesn't rely on algebra!!
Okay, we could have monkey barrel fun with this for a long time, but don’t think some in Tinfoilhatistan won’t see it like this. Dirty science. It’s a all a liberal hoax!
But allow me to drift back to the real world for a moment. Some of you may recall an intriguing article in the Times Sunday Magazine last summer in which a PoliSci professor from Queens College, Andrew Hacker, took a run at algebra, questioning why it needed to be taught at all, declaring that mathematics causes kids to drop out and handicaps students whose talents lay elsewhere. At one point he makes the somewhat alarming claim that “Many of those who struggled through a traditional math regimen feel that doing so annealed their character.” Yikes. Really? I wasn’t Mr. Applied Mathematics at any level in school but I don’t feel as though my very character was plunged into the fiery furnace and remolded by exposure to quadratic equations.
But anyway, I had put the algebra question on the back burner for the nonce until running across a rebuttal of sorts in the latest issue of The Philosophers’ Magazine, from Wendy Grossman, former editor of the British magazine The Skeptic. Grossman’s defense of algebra is simple. It makes you think. It forces you to deal with stuff you wouldn’t ordinarily have to consider. You may not have any need for Fermat’s Last Theorem once you’re out in the world but during those years in which your mind is being honed to figure out problems tougher than why John McCain won’t support a ban on assault weapons, anything that stretches and adds to your mental mechanics is probably a good thing, which may be why wingnuts hate it.
Thinking is bad, bad, bad, which gets us back to the old epistemic closure debate to which Marie alluded this weekend.
Besides if one is never exposed to algebra or higher levels of mathematics, perhaps one might never decide to follow a career in math or science. Perhaps another reason for conservative attacks on science (and now, algebra) in the first place. I mean, just think of all the energy they wasted attacking Nate Silver during the last election. If it wasn’t for his algebra chops, they could have lived happily, in their fantasy bubble.
Until election day, that is.
But if conservatives had had their brain pans stretched a bit more, maybe they wouldn't be running around with their hair on fire about the problem of the trillion dollar coin. Or at the very least, they'd be able to mathematically reckon exactly how big that coin should be.
Go figure.
I used it as a throwaway in the previous post but to get back to John McCain...
WTF Johnny, assault weapons need to be available to everyone? No need to ban assault weapons? Fucking ASSAULT WEAPONS?
I didn't think Arizona had made marijuana legal, but this guy has been puffing on some good shit. Either that or it's all that plaque building up around his synapses. His neural nodes must be locked in by Gothic flying buttresses complete with leering gargoyles.
Marie, I heartily concur with your assessment of Boehner's best move, which he won't take. Lack of smarts and the fact that his balls are stored in a whiskey bottle will be his legacy downfall. Short of dissolving into uncontrollable blubbering and hospitalization, I still think he's stuck with the Speakership. I suspect a small bit of self preservation will prevail even among the terminal fool contingent and no one truly wants the job.
Duriing the press conference, the President said clearly several times - The Republicans are consciously and deliberately pushing the country into the deep end of the ocean. Finally. I liked his answer in re: the diversity of his appointments - the assessment is premature. Also the "why don't you schmooze", answer - didn't help with the last debt ceiling fiasco and my favorite - some Republicans don't want to be seen socializing with me, not good for the optics. Favorite line " I assure, Michelle and I are nice to them", referring to Congress people, especially Republican, who come to a WH social function. There's something very satisfying about an African American president referring to a bunch of old white guys as "Them".
Charled Pierce has a interesting take on the Greggers-Powell lovefest.
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/sunday-talk-shows-on-guns-011413
A bit of whimsy on the subject of algebra by Seamus Deane whose fictional character Father Gildea always opened his Maths Class by citing these words:
"Mental algebra. Ground rules. Well known but must be repeated––first, for the sake of the brain-dead and the memoryless, who are in the usual staggering majority; second, as a warning to those more fortunately endowed but who take a litigant's pleasure in claiming that they had not been told, that they did not know, that the rules were not clear. I lie awake at night, imagining for these creatures a condign punishment; yet I have failed. does this bespeak in me a failure of imagination or in them an unanswerable corruption? you may answer the question, McConnellogue."
"I'm afraid I cannot, Father..."
"Your sorrow is touching. Perhaps you do not realize the importance of the question. Harkin, be so good as to inform McConnellogue what a litigant is."
"A litigant is a person who creates disturbances by abuse of the rule of law, Father."
"Do you agree with that superb definition, McConnelleogue?"
"Absolutely, Father."
"You are not litigious are you?"
"No, Father."
"I shall test you in that statement. Are you more literate or more numerate as a consequence of my loving care five times a week, forty minutes per time, McConnellogue?"
"I am equally blessed in both respects, Father."
"Good, then let's begin."
I read the George Packer piece in the New Yorker linked by Marie, above. It offers an overview of the demise of Good Ol' Southern America as the one and only valid impression of the United States, you know, god, guns, Nascar, and barbecue...you get it.
All of which is a good thing, not because any of those things by themselves are intrinsically bad or dangerous to the nation, but because the southern gestalt, the good along with the bad, but mostly the bad, including the reactionary elements that wish to hold the rest of us accountable to their social rules and their religious beliefs, throws a stifling blanket over a country that used to pride itself on its forward thinking.
The influence of southern political cultures and strategies may be on the wane outside of the South, but not deep in the heart of Dixie. In Alabama, the guy who is again in charge of Justice (sort of) in that state is Roy Moore, the religious nut who once spent public money enshrining the Ten Commandments in front of a building dedicated to American law. The same guy who threw out that law when confronted with certain issues on the bench and ruled according to his interpretation of a religious book, the Bible. The guy who wants every public school kid to pray to Jesus and considers evolution an abomination.
So this sort of thing is not really on the run everywhere.
The other day I popped into a local bookstore and passed a display for a book called "Proof of Heaven" written by a neurosurgeon who claims to have visited heaven and talked to angels and god, thus the "proof" of the title.
So, okay, there are lots of books like this out there. The thing that really got me was the category it was filed under.
Non-fiction.
@ Akhilleus, et al. When you boil it down, a lot of what the South is "about" -- gun, god & NASCAR, etc. -- is anti-intellectualism. I am not a fan of Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or the Facebook kid, but I was glad to see these & other tech whizzes become zillionaires because, even though I would not call them intellectuals, it is clear that they had to use their heads to get started. (True, they all turned quickly into mostly bullying &/or cheating the other guy.) I hoped the successes of the techies would encourage anti-intellectuals to at least see the value in applying themselves to subjects like algebra, subjects which force a person to think rationally, at least during class. Evidently, my hope wuz dashed. And I am resl, real sorry if the kids feel victimized, marginalized & otherwise bummed because they can't bother to pay attention in algebra class. So Freedom from Math! The next civil rights movement. X x Y = (oppres)sion
Topic of next week's Eric Bolling show: Al Gebra was invented by A-rabs. It is even an A-rab word. The Al is for Allah. Sub-topic: Our continuing series -- another Obama-Muslim plot to destroy America.
Marie
PD,
I will have to read more about your Fr. Gildea whose pedagogical demeanor evokes memories of teachers past who gleefully indulged in a catholic (small c) application of finely tuned classroom sadism.
Marie,
I have to concur in your diagnosis of anti-intellectualism.
Richard Hofstadter had it down a half century ago. And you've got it down now.
Just think of what would have become of us had this sort of hatred and suspicion of intellectuals been allowed to mold us from the first.
Thomas Jefferson, Madison, Jay, and Hamilton, would have been tied to the stake and pelted with rocks by the teabaggers of their day.
But today's anti-intellectualism has become so ingrained that television narratives that typically eschew a right-wing embrochure, such as the Good Wife, have no problem holding up the French as reprehensible toads that simply don't understand American superiority.
Tinfoilhatistan does a good job of exporting its ignorance.
Stupid and Ignorant are the new Gargantua and Pantagruel.
@Akhilleus: The Deane piece is from a June 26th, 1995 , NewYorker piece. I looked up the link for you: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1995/06/26/1995_06_26_100_TNY_CARDS_000370098
As far as I know Deane has written only one novel, "Reading in the Dark," which is a shame because he's a gorgeous writer. There's something about so many of these Irish writers––a humor that is laced with heartbreak. One of my favorites is Jamie O'Neill's, "At Swim-Two Boys."