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The Commentariat -- Jan. 19, 2013
The President's Weekly Address:
... The transcript is here.
My column in the New York Times eXaminer, linked yesterday, is on Paul Krugman's takedown of Tom Friedman.
To find out how you can participate, CLICK ON THE IMAGE.Today is a National Day of Service honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Click on the image to get to a site that will help you find a place to serve locally. There's more information at serve.gov
If you're looking for something patriotic & fun to do on Monday, the National Park Service is waiving entrance fees to all national parks across the country on the official holiday commemorating Dr. King's birthday.
How to Nickel-&-Dime a Trillion-Dollar Deal. Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "Backing down from their hard-line stance, House Republicans said Friday that they would agree to lift the federal government's statutory borrowing limit for three months, with a requirement that both chambers of Congress pass a budget in that time to clear the way for negotiations on long-term deficit reduction. The agreement, reached in closed-door negotiations at a party retreat in Williamsburg, Va., was a tactical retreat for House Republicans.... House Republicans will include a provision in the debt ceiling legislation that says lawmakers will not be paid if they do not pass a budget blueprint." The Washington Post story, by Rosalind Helderman & Lori Montgomery, is here. ...
... Natalie Jennings of the Washington Post: "The White House is 'encouraged' by House Republicans' decision to hold a vote next week to raise the debt ceiling for three months and wants to see a 'clean debt limit increase,' Obama administration spokesman Jay Carney said Friday." ...
... The Markets Are Encouraged. Rita Nazareth & Sarah Pringle of Bloomberg News: "U.S. stocks rose, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average to a five year-high, as House Republicans plan to vote next week on a temporary increase in the debt-limit and investors watched corporate earnings." ...
... Darrell Issa, Not So Encouraged. Igor Bobic of TPM: "Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, on Friday poured cold water all over the GOP's newly announced plan to raise the debt ceiling. 'That's unconstitutional,' Issa told Roll Call's Jonathan Strong." ...
... Update. More Encouraged than He Was an Hour Earlier. Sahil Kapur of TPM: Constitutional scholar & "House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA), after initially declaring the GOP's debt limit plan 'unconstitutional,' clarified to TPM late Friday that he 'strongly support[s]' the proposal, which would withhold lawmakers' pay if their chamber does not pass a budget." Thanks to Jeanne B. for the links to this hilarious story. ...
... Well, Constitutionality Is Optional. Jonathan Chait: "Also, the part about making Congress go without pay turns out to violate the Constitution ('No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened'). The Constitution used to be a really big theme to the House Republicans, who have been regularly accusing Obama of violating their oddball interpretations of it and even, as recently as last week, reading it aloud on the House floor to demonstrate that they are its sole vigilant guardians, but whatever. The 27th Amendment is obviously not a real part of the Constitution, like the 2nd Amendment or the three-fifths clause." ...
... What's the "Logic" Here? David Firestone of the New York Times: "If forcing the nation into financial chaos is a terrible political option now -- as Republicans have obviously come to recognize -- then it will remain so in 90 days. Following through on this threat will always be impossible, so postponing its use, instead of abandoning it, makes little strategic sense.... Until the Republicans formally reject the use of chaos as a governing technique, it will be hard for Democrats to negotiate seriously with them." ...
... Still Crazy. James Downie of the Washington Post: "... underneath the gestures toward less brinkmanship, Republicans remain committed to the same extreme policies. It would be silly, of course, to expect Republicans to cave to all Democratic demands, but to continue to refuse to raise revenue in any meaningful amount means that any talk of moderation remains just that." ...
... David Atkins of Hullabaloo: "... the momentum of negotiation is now ... with Democrats [who are] now demanding a clean debt ceiling hike with no funny business attached. This would force Boehner to come up with at least a Hastert Rule majority of Republicans for the three-month extension, which will be no easy task with the rabid Tea Party faction demanding immediate default absent spending cuts. After the Plan 'B' fiasco, it's not clear that Boehner could achieve that. The two major concerns at this point are 1) whether Boehner can maintain his leadership position while constantly undercutting the Tea Party crowd; and 2) what sort of concessions Democrats will be tempted to make in order to take the sequester off the table."
... Paul Krugman: "When you're wrong, you're wrong. I thought that by ruling out any way to bypass the debt limit, the White House was setting itself up, at least potentially, for an ignominious cave-in. But it appears that the strategy has worked, and it's the Republicans giving up. I'm happy to concede that the president and team called this one right." CW: I still love the coin. ...
... However, I must concede that Michael Cohen of the Guardian is right: "... while liberals, mostly, have been pushing for Obama to mint a platinum coin, or invoke his executive powers to raise the debt limit, these scenarios would be dreams come true for Republicans: they wouldn't have to vote on the debt limit, and they could launch a political attack on Obama for making a power grab and bypassing Congress." This worked:
Molly Hooper & Russell Berman of The Hill: "Coming off what many viewed as a defeat in the fiscal cliff deal, and with Obama adopting a hardline position on fiscal matters, Republicans have diminished hopes of what they can force Democrats to accept."
Joe Nocera exposes a number of public pension funds which invest in Cerberus, "the fund that bought Bushmaster Firearms, the company that made the assault weapon used by Adam Lanza to massacre 20 children and seven adults in Newtown, Conn., last month. It bought Remington Arms, the maker of the pump-action shotgun that was among the guns James Holmes used to kill 12 people and wound 58 in Aurora, Colo. It bought a handful of other firearms companies, which it then merged into a new parent company, Freedom Group. At which point, Cerberus was the largest manufacturer of guns and ammunition in the country." When he called "these investors to ask their rationale for investing in a fund that financed a gun 'roll-up,' as the Cerberus strategy is called," they came up with a bunch of lame excuses." CW: I was not happy to see that one of the funds that has a chunk o'Cerberus is TIAA-CREF, my husband's major pension fund. ...
... Andrew Kaczynski of BuzzFeed finds that the false claim in the extended NRA ad "of armed guards at Obama's school ... came from the Weekly Standard's blog. CW: Are we surprised that the NRA gets is "facts" from right-wing blogs?
Erik Wemple of the Washington Post: "The Journal News has taken down its controversial gun databases, which carried the names and addresses of gun-permit holders in Rockland and Westchester counties. The move represents a reversal of its position that the databases provide a public service, as well as a capitulation to weeks and weeks of negative publicity, threats and pressure from gun owners, lawmakers and media types over the maps."
"Days Before Housing Bust, Fed Doubted Need to Act." Binyamin Appelbaum of the New York Times: "... the transcripts of the 2007 [Federal Reserve] meetings, released after a standard five-year delay, provide fresh insight into the decisions made at the outset of its great intervention [in the economy]. They show that [Fed Chair Ben] Bernanke and his colleagues continued to wrestle with misgivings about the need for action, because at the time there was little evidence of a broader economic downturn. Several officials worried that the economy would instead overheat, causing inflation to rise. By December, as the Fed began to act with consistent force, the economy was already in recession." ...
... Neil Irwin of the Washington Post: with a few exceptions, Tim Geithner among them, members of the Fed showed little or no foresight or "understanding the possibility that the entire financial system had become a house of straws built on mortgage securities that were anything but secure...." ...
... CW: the release of the transcripts are really good for Geithner's career prospects. It's almost as if he planned to leave government service just as the meeting minutes became public & showed him to be the sharpest tack in the box. (True, he reportedly wanted to quit his job earlier.) ...
... AND we see here why Wall Street considers Geithner to be "Our Man in Washington": Alister Bull of Reuters "In the summer of 2007, as storm clouds gathered over the world's financial system, then-New York Federal Reserve President Timothy Geithner allegedly informed the Bank of America and other banks about the possibility the U.S. central bank would lower one of its critical interest rates, according to a senior Fed official, [Jeffrey Lacker, head of the Richmond, Virginia, Fed].... Private disclosure of confidential, market-sensitive information by the central bank would be highly unusual, but it was not immediately clear if it would be illegal."
Danielle Douglas of the Washington Post: "Starting next January..., brokers' and loan officers' compensation will no longer be based on the terms of the mortgages they originate, according to new guidelines released Friday by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.... In the past eight days, the agency has handed down a series of guidelines that include requiring mortgage servicers to provide struggling homeowners with options to avoid foreclosure and curtailing harmful practices such as interest-only payments.."
Buh-bye.Ron Nixon of the New York Times: "After years of complaints by passengers and members of Congress, the said Friday that it would begin removing the controversial full-body scanners that produce revealing images of airline travelers beginning this summer. The agency said it canceled a contract, originally worth $40 million, with the maker of the scanners, Rapiscan, after the company failed to meet a Congressional deadline for new software that would protect passengers' privacy."
Brian Sonenstein of Firedoglake: "Former CIA officer John Kiriakou, who helped expose the Bush administration's torture program, recently plead guilty to sharing the name of a colleague to journalists to use as a source. He is expected to receive a sentence of 30 months in prison. It's a cruel irony that the first agent connected to the CIA torture program to go to prison is the whistleblower who spoke out against the heinous practices of our government."
"The Girl of My Dreams." Gail Collins on the Manti Te'o fake girlfriend thing.
Joshua Prager in Vanity Fair: Norma McCorvey, a/k/a "Jane Roe" of Roe v. Wade "is a phony." Prager traces the life of McCorvey & provides evidence that she has long been an opportunist. A cynic might conclude that McCorvey converted to the anti-abortion cause because it paid better. Thanks to contributor MAG for the link.
Congressional Race
Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "Stephen Colbert may have 'run for president,' but his sister is actually going to run for Congress. Elizabeth Colbert-Busch's soon-to-be-official campaign has informed South Carolina Democratic Party executive director Amanda Loveday that it will file Tuesday for the special election for appointed Sen. Tim Scott's (R-S.C.) old House seat, Loveday has told the Washington Post."
News Ledes
New York Times: "Stan Musial, one of baseball's greatest hitters and a revered figure in the storied history of the St. Louis Cardinals -- the player they called Stan the Man -- died Saturday. He was 92."
New York Times: "The four-day hostage crisis in the Sahara reached a bloody conclusion on Saturday as the Algerian Army carried out a final assault on the gas field taken over by Islamist militants, killing most of the remaining kidnappers and raising the total of hostages killed to at least 23, Algerian officials said." ...
... AP: "Faced with international outrage over the killing of hostages at a sprawling gas plant in the middle of the Sahara desert, Algeria was under pressure to bring an end to a four-day standoff with Islamist extremists that has killed at least 12 captives and left dozens unaccounted for. The standoff has put the spotlight on militancy plaguing the region and al-Qaida-linked groups roaming remote areas from Mali to Libya, threatening vital infrastructure and energy interests." ...
... Reuters: "Algerian special forces on Saturday found 15 burned bodies at the desert gas plant attacked by al Qaeda-linked fighters, a source familiar with the unfolding hostage crisis there said." ...
... The Guardian has a liveblog here.
AP: Part 2 of "Confessions of Lance," wherein Lance Armstrong says stuff to Oprah Winfrey, who is hoping to get even richer off Lance's saying stuff. ...
... Reuters has "key quotes" from among the stuff Armstrong said.
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Reader Comments (8)
NRA getting its facts from right wing blogs?
No, no surprise at all, especially since the impecunious Weekly Standard is supported by wealthy conservatives, including Rupert Murdoch and his News Corp company, who can afford to prop up TWS because once they clothe those same "facts" in enough anger and resentment they can and do sell them in their string of tabloids or on Faux News to the fact-deprived for oodles of money.
As if we needed more evidence the right wing echo chamber is also an intellectual circle jerk.
Perhaps I'm slow on the uptake, as my Dad used to say, but your item about now the NRA got its "facts" from one of the right-wing fantasy sites and Ken's comment caused me to flash on why our political opponents seem to truly believe that the "lamestream" media, which relies all too often on what actually has happened, is "lib'rul."
"How could this have happened?" I imagine many cry. "How could this broad swath of our population have decided to believe fantasies rather than truths that are self-evident?" Again, I go back to childhood training. I was told that there was this fellow out there who created me, loves me, and via his guardian angel judges the crap out of every action I take, and if I'm lucky, I'll get to spend eternity in the presence of this codependent. I was also told that there was a tooth fairy, but those doing the indoctrination backed off about that one when I was about 9.
So, while it took me a while to get how people who should know better don't know better, I have understood for a while why it is they might not know better. Every day they're told that something they can't see, hear, or touch is more real than the world in which they live. In essence, their reality each day is imbued with what they believe their reality to be. Is it any wonder that such training and self-hypnosis can be used by merchants of deceit?
As Vice President Quayle once said, "What a waste it is to lose one's mind--or not to have a mind is very wasteful. How true that is."
@Jack
They still believe in the tooth fairy over in Right Wing World!
Re: He ain't my brother, he's heavy; As I try and compose a pithy little prose concerning something of impact I am sharing the page with Padre Georg. I don't know how other's screens lay out but I'm side by each with the the good looking private secretary and his smile is starting to unnerve me. Doesn't he look just like the Hollywood priest in "Boy's Town"? Or Sylvester the cat who just ate Twiddy Bird? CW claims she's no expert on priestly affairs but has some doubts about the Rev's seccc-retarial skills. What else is he good at; handball? OK, that's mean and I'm off to Confession.
@Jack Mahoney, et al. I would add to the mix that a number of academic studies have demonstrated what you would intuitively suspect: that conservatives are more willing than liberals to trust authority. So if their favorite right-wing rag presents some fantasy as fact, they are more inclined to accept it as fact than a liberal would accept as fact something s/he read. Hey, they read it in the Weekly Standard, so it must be so. They heard it on Fox "News," so it's a fact.
In addition, studies show -- again, not surprisingly -- that conservatives are less able to change their views than are liberals. So if I believe something is a fact, then read something half-way credible that contradicts that "fact," I'll weigh the conflicting information, or maybe look into the subject further if I can't decide on my own which is the more likely interpretation. Conservatives are more apt to dismiss new information that doesn't fit into the scheme of what they already "know."
Another study showed that conservatives were more apt to interpret contradictory facts in ways that fit into their moral worldview than were liberals. In other words, they massage new facts to fit their own convictions.
We all find new, contradictory information destabilizing (i.e., it creates "cognitive dissonance"), but liberals -- in general -- are much better able than conservatives to process or to cope with that new information & "re-stabilize" by updating their understanding of what is.
I remember when Reagan criticized his own Vice President -- Bush Pere -- as someone who "doesn't seem to stand for anything" (or words to that effect). That's because Reagan had the "moral certainty" of a conservative & didn't let facts get in his way. The Iran-Contra thing was really destabilizing for Reagan, & he testified that "My heart tells me X, but the facts say Y." He just couldn't quite give up his "beliefs," even in sworn testimony. Of course what Bush "stood for" was realpolitik; he stood for whatever he & his elite cadre could get away with. Bush wasn't a liberal, but he "got" facts. Reagan found that reprehensible.
Marie
There is something especially riveting about the photo of Padre Georg. You can't look away. I think he has an almost perfect enigmatic gaze. Handsome, knowing, but what is his secret??? He invites us to write his story.
Diane:
Padre Georg's secret is that he knows what Ratzinger was doing in the Hitler youth back in the day.
Interesting take on the 2nd Amendment: http://www.theroot.com/blogs/2nd-amendment-protected-slavery