;)
The Commentariat -- Jan. 21, 2014
Internal links removed.
Li Anne Wong of CNBC: "The combined wealth of the world's richest 85 people is now equivalent to that owned by half of the world's population -- or 3.5 billion of the poorest people -- according to a new report from Oxfam. In a report titled 'Working for the Few' released Monday, the global aid and development organization detailed the extent of global economic inequality created by the rapidly increasing wealth of the richest, warning of the major risks it poses to 'human progress.'" ...
... Rebecca Riffkin of Gallup: "Two out of three Americans are dissatisfied with the way income and wealth are currently distributed in the U.S. This includes three-fourths of Democrats and 54% of Republicans."
Nelson Schwartz of the New York Times: "Eric S. Rosengren, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, is ... pushing his branch of the central bank to get more involved in the New England economy..., spearheading an effort to turn around some of Massachusetts' most depressed cities. Last week, Mr. Rosengren and his team announced the winners of a Fed-sponsored competition that will funnel $1.8 million into innovative economic development projects in six medium-size cities.... It represents a new, untested approach for the Fed, which has been widely criticized for bailing out Wall Street in the wake of the financial crisis, but leaving Main Street to fend for itself." CW: Less than $2MM for Main Street, $700 billion for Wall Street. And the money is coming from private "donors."
Sabrina Tavernise of the New York Times: ObamaCare "is already having a profound effect on the lives of poor Americans. Enrollment in private insurance plans has been sluggish, but sign-ups for Medicaid, the federal insurance program for the poor, have surged in many states.... In West Virginia, where the Democratic governor agreed to expand Medicaid eligibility, the number of uninsured people in the state has been reduced by about a third.... "The men and women getting the coverage here say the mere fact of having it has drastically improved their mental health. Waitresses, fast food workers, security guards and cleaners described feeling intense relief that they are now protected from the punishing medical bills that have punched holes in their family budgets. They spoke in interviews of reclaiming the dignity they had lost over years of being turned away from doctors' offices because they did not have insurance." ...
... CW: Now say, "Thank you, Democrats & President Obama." Oh, never mind: "President Obama -- often blamed here in coal country for the industry's decline -- remains deeply unpopular.... Chad Webb, a shy 30-year-old who is enrolling people in Mingo County, said a woman at a recent [ACA sign-up] event used biblical terms to disparage Mr. Obama as an existential threat to the nation. Mr. Webb said he thought to himself: 'This man is not the Antichrist. He just wants you to have health insurance.'"
Alex Pareene of Salon on the newest Republican excuse for not passing immigration reform: ObamaCare! See, Obama screwed up the implementation of a major portion of the ACA, so he would screw up the administration of any immigration bill, too. The only solution for Latinos: elect a Republican president (someone like me, Marco Rubio!). As Pareene points out, Republicans had some other excuse to reject immigration reform when there actually was a Republican president -- Dubya -- who advocated for it. ...
... CW: As we have seen for the past five years, the basic Republican position is that they will enact no legislation in the national interest while a Democrat is president. Obstructionism is not a tactic; it's a goal. This is why the Healthcare.gov rollout was such a disaster: it didn't give Republicans just a weeks-long talking point; it bolstered their central theses that (a) government is the problem and (b) Democrats can't be "trusted" to do it well. (In the same way, the killing of Osama bin Ladin was a disaster for Republicans.)
Keystone XL Junior. Ned Resnikoff of NBC News: "A leak in one of the pump stations along Enbridge Energy's Line 67 pipeline caused about 125 barrels to spray across a rural area of Saskatchewan, Canada.... For over a year, environmental groups have been building the campaign against Line 67's expansion.... Environmental activists insist that accidents in general are the norm for Enbridge.... A report [PDF] from Canada's progressive Polaris Institute claim[s] that the company had accidentally spilled approximately 161,475 barrels of oil between 1999 and 2010."
Local News
Scott Fallon of the Bergen Record: "A planning report heavily favored the politically connected builder of a $1.1 billion proposed development that is at the center of a dispute between the governor's office and Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer.... Of the 10 industrial and commercial properties that the report recommended for redevelopment, nine were owned by a subsidiary of the Rockefeller Group, records show. The Rockefeller Group is represented by the law firm of David Samson, a close Christie adviser whom Christie appointed as chairman of the Port Authority, which paid for the planning study." ...
... James O'Neill of the Record: "Amid the debate over the amount of Sandy recovery money Hoboken received, the Christie administration on Monday defended its decision to send significant chunks of federal Sandy aid to towns and counties that were minimally affected by the October 2012 storm. Counties largely unscathed by Sandy, including Warren, Morris and Burlington, received millions of dollars in aid for local resiliency projects, and dozens of individual communities barely grazed by Sandy were able to tap into a $25 million fund designed to help make local energy systems more resilient." ...
... Patricia McGeehan of the New York Times: "On Monday, [New Jersey Lt. Gov. Kim] Guadagno disputed [Hoboken Mayor Dawn] Zimmer's account of their meeting at a Shop-Rite supermarket in May. 'Mayor Zimmer's version of our conversation in May of 2013 is not only false, but is illogical and does not withstand scrutiny when all of the facts are examined,' Ms. Guadagno said at an event to commemorate Martin Luther King's Birthday. 'Any suggestion that Sandy funds were tied to the approval of any project in New Jersey is completely false.'" ...
... Star Ledger Editors: "Chris Christie's smear campaign [is] in full swing." Smearer-in-Chief: Rudy 9/11 Giuliani. ...
... Gov. Bipartisan, Ctd. Matt Friedman of the Star-Ledger: "Three years ago, a plan to make Carl Lewis a 'youth fitness ambassador' for New Jersey was scrapped by Gov. Chris Christie's administration when the Olympic track and field star decided to run for state Senate as a Democrat, Lewis said today. Now, with the George Washington Bridge scandal raging, the nine-time Olympic gold medalist says he sees a 'strong parallel' between his own interaction with Christie and what happened in Fort Lee, and that Christie is an 'insecure person.'" ...
If you run, we're going to have to cancel the program. -- Gov. Chris Christie to Carl Lewis, according to Lewis
... Pew Research Center: A majority of people who have heard about Bridgegate do not believe Chris Christie's story that he had no idea his aides caused the lane closures. ...
... MSNBC Civil War. Catherine Thompson of TPM: "'Morning Joe' hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, self-described fans of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), attacked [Dawn Zimmer,] the mayor of Hoboken, N.J., Monday for alleging Christie's administration shook her down for Hurricane Sandy relief funds.... 'Way Too Early' host Thomas Roberts, calling Zimmer a 'whistleblower,' accused Scarborough and Brzezinski of 'eviscerating' the mayor. Scarborough shot back, accusing Roberts of 'putting a halo' over her."
Right Wing World
Chutzpah. Catherine Thompson: "Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin seized Martin Luther King Day as an opportunity to lob vague criticism at President Barack Obama. 'Mr. President, in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. and all who commit to ending any racial divide, no more playing the race card,' Palin wrote Monday on her Facebook page...."
The Laws, the Prophets and Netanyahoo. I told [Netanyahu], and some people think this is crazy and meddling -- apparently from the reaction some of y'all actually know who I am -- but I told the prime minister, I said, 'I mentioned this to you in 2009 -- we met a couple of times since then, but anyway -- 'I mentioned this to you in 2009 and I want to reiterate it, I think, I'm not a prophet, I know the Old Testament, I know history, I think you've got a chance to be one of Israel's great leaders.' I said, 'I am talking about all time. The big ones. Going back to David, to Solomon, up through Josiah, Hezekiah until the end, on up through Ben Gurion.' -- Rep. Louie Gohmert (RTP-Texas)
... Linda Kintsler of the New Republic picks "the four craziest moments from South Carolina's Tea party convention." Gohmert's comparing Netanyahu to the Biblical kings doesn't make the cut, but his invoking Bluto does.
News Ledes
New York Times: "The mysterious mass die-offs of honeybees that have wiped out roughly a third of commercial colonies each year since 2006 may be linked to a rapidly mutating virus that jumped from tobacco plants to soy plants to bees, according to a new study."
CNN: "A gunman shot and killed another man Tuesday inside Purdue University's electrical engineering building, spurring worried students to scramble into the bitter cold outside for safety. The Indiana school's police chief said that the suspect appeared to have had just one target in mind. He left the building right after the shooting, and a city police officer arrested him."
AP: " Another batch of heavy snow and frigid temperatures is forecast from Virginia to New England as a winter storm bears down on the Mid-Atlantic and northeastern U.S. The National Weather Service says the winter storm could bring 10 inches of snow to Philadelphia and New York on Tuesday and bitterly cold air with wind chills as low as 10 degrees below zero later in the day." ...
... Update: "A swirling snowstorm clobbered parts of the mid-Atlantic and the urban Northeast on Tuesday, grounding thousands of flights, closing government offices in the nation's capital and making a mess of the evening commute. The storm stretched 1,000 miles between Kentucky and Massachusetts but hit especially hard along the heavily populated Interstate 95 corridor between Philadelphia and Boston, creating perilous rides home for millions of motorists."
USA Today: "President Obama will meet with Pope Francis on March 27, capping a European trip that will take him to the Netherlands, Belgium, and Italy."
AP: "A Vatican monsignor already on trial for allegedly plotting to smuggle 20 million euros ($26 million) from Switzerland to Italy was arrested Tuesday in a separate case for allegedly using his Vatican bank accounts to launder money. Financial police in the southern Italian city of Salerno said Monsignor Nunzio Scarano had transferred millions of euros in fictitious donations from offshore companies through his accounts at the Vatican's Institute for Religious Works. Police said millions have been seized and that other arrest warrants were also issued."
CNN: "A team of internationally renowned war crimes prosecutors and forensic experts has found 'direct evidence' of 'systematic torture and killing' by the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime, the lawyers on the team say in a new report. Their report, based on thousands of photographs of dead bodies of alleged detainees killed in Syrian government custody, would stand up in an international criminal tribunal, the group says."
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Reader Comments (9)
What was the name of that woman McCain wanted as VP; what's her name?
I'd appreciate it if a few of you would comment on this piece by Isaac Chotiner in the New Republic. I thought it was the most nitpicking piece of crap I've read in a long time. I had no problems at all with Obama's responses. This might be because my own responses -- were I in his shoes -- might be similar. Like Obama, I make an effort to see the other guy's POV. And I know that complex issues seldom have simple solutions.
Marie
Marie, after reading Chotiner's piece I'd have to agree with you. Chotiner wants controversy where there is none. If you want a smart president instead of one who cuts brush with a chainsaw, you'll probably get a president who can string together grammatically correct sentences into grammatically correct paragraphs. I'd say the tone of Chotiner is one of the pedantic young fart. It was my humble opinion that my time would have been better served vacuuming the house instead of reading Chotiner.
The Chotiner article, purporting to be a commentary on Obama's talking to us as "adults", is really a commentary of how much he dislikes the fact that Obama in smarter than him. The entire piece is a tortured attempt to say that without just coming out and saying it.
The meme of "talking to us like adults" is getting awfully tedious. Many of the adults in Congress aren't adult nor would they understand complexities and nuance. Cave drawings with the accompanying groans and bits of mastodon steak would be more appropriate. In the end, Chotiner seems to be looking for something he is unwilling to admit to himself. He would much more comfortable with a Christie-like manufactured cartoon who was the product of ambition and entitlement. You can then substitute "talking to us like adults" with "no thinking isn't required."
I also think there is a distinct flavor of trying to find something, with which to impugn Obama's character. Witness the belaboring of the devil weed. God, can't this guy cheat on his wife, be a cross dresser, be nasty to his kids.....anything. Isn't it ironic that much energy has always been spent covering up the shoddy behavior of presidents and now, searching for digressions that Obama apparently hasn't committed, requires the same energy.
Obama is process over content, which I prefer. Understanding process gives you a deeper understanding of an individual - not merely his actions but his character. It requires some analysis and worse yet, engagement. Chotiner's piece is more about his process and deficits than Obama.
Okay, so Isaac Chotiner wants Obama to speak to us like we're adults. I would ask the same of him. Or at least ask him to try to leave his personal pique at the door. It's very useful for punchy comments but sometimes gets in the way of a reasoned argument.
He complains that the president too often looks at both sides of an issue. This is a bad thing? After eight years of The Decider? I have to admit that I do get annoyed at times when the president basically hands the other side a playbook to defeating his proposals. This is especially true when you know that the other side will not be playing fair and will take every opportunity to twist everything he says to fit their own byzantine pretzel logic. But this fact may account, in part, for his carefully crafted positions.
Plus, let's not forget that the guy is, as Chotiner grudgingly admits, pretty cerebral. He's a law professor, not the host of a panel of Fox headbangers or a comedian like Stewart or Colbert. And unlike the Previous Occupant, he is the president of all Americans, not just the ones who voted for him (as Romney would have been--maybe Chotiner would have preferred the clear-cut, take no prisoners partisan patois that assigns half the population to the dumpster) and as such, he tries to demonstrate his awareness of both sides of an issue. They'd kill him if he didn't.
Well, they kill him even when he does, but it seems to be part of his personality to parse problems in such a careful way.
Plato, in numerous Dialogues goes on at length in his descriptions of Socrates' attempts to get his charges and acquaintances to know themselves, to attain a level self-awareness. It's a good thing, and I don't feel it's as big a fault as Chotiner seems to think. But Chotiner wants it both ways. He says the president's discussions with Remnick show us how he thinks, which is a fair statement. He also says at one point that, after Bush, it was a relief to have a president who could demonstrate such self-awareness and appreciation for complexity. But now he's bored with all that. So, what, should the president hand down folksy aphorisms and backporch bromides à la Saint Ronnie, or maybe learn to stutter like Dubya?
He faults the president for mentioning the difficulties surrounding issues like marijuana and raising children. You know what, pal? These ARE difficult issues. He says, "oh we all know how difficult these things are, we don't need him to tell us that", but you know what? Not everyone does. Or even thinks about that. If they did, he wouldn't have to repeat things like "healthcare is not bad for you" a hundred million times, because sometimes he IS talking to children. Or at least voters with the attention span and intellectual capacity of children.
He seems to be demanding talking points and definite proposals, with plenty of details, but this is not a campaign interview or a state of the union speech. I'm sure Remnick told him that this would be a long, leisurely interview and he'd give the president plenty of time to set out his thoughts. This apparently infuriates Chotiner, however.
At one point Chotiner, in response to the president's second thought on marijuana legalization, asks, agitatedly, "... who exactly thinks marijuana legalization is a "panacea" for solving 'all these social problems'?" Well, there are, in fact, quite a few who feel that ending the war on drugs would be exactly that, that a whole battery of social problems would fall by the wayside, and the president here is simply pointing out that it might not be that easy. Maybe Chotiner just hasn't been paying attention to this issue.
But as the piece goes on, his exasperation is pretty clear and the whole thing starts to dissolve into a hissy fit ("...his own hallowed mental process"--oh please). The whining really starts to get annoying when, responding to Obama's thoughts on how he and his wife are working together to monitor what the kids watch on TV, Chotiner throws his hands up and says something like "What does a structured family life have to do with that?" Seriously, Isaac? Do you have kids? Do you let them watch and do anything they like? Kids are typically better off WITH structure. Sheesh. What's his problem with that?
He's just totally annoyed with this interview and can't help himself I guess. But ranting and whining and hissy fits are not the way to convince anyone of the seriousness of your position.
Especially not adults.
(Oh, and one final word. It would really help if he payed as much attention to good writing as he does to grinding about the president's mental habits: "Obama's intellect—well caught by Robert Gates...", and "The president is like a novelist who demands on telling you the motivation of every character, except he is the only character." aaaah...what was that?)
One of life's many puzzles:
Yes, the R's do make political hay depicting the government as inefficient and ineffective, while doing all they can (animated by both cynical disregard for the public good and by a generous component of genuine and honestly earned boobery) to give life to their cartoon version of reality, but the D's seldom counterattack, citing the many horrendous private sector fubars the could choose from.
Just this morning I received notice of a meeting where the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board will present its report on the seven Tesaro workers killed in a local refinery explosion over three years ago. The report was delayed because the Board has been overwhelmed by responsibility in that period: the mine disasters and Gulf oil spills we all remember and many we don't.
Now I'm thinking of the four killed in plant explosions yesterday and the significant problems with the production and performance of the 787 brought to to us by the company that loves to lecture teachers about the poor job they are doing in the classroom. Then there was something about a chemical spill in W. Virginia that might have affected the water supply as far away as Cincinnati. If you want ammunition for a counterattack, it's everywhere.
So why don't the D's more aggressively point out the shortcomings of the profit-driven world?
Couldn't be because they, too, need the money, could it?
Chotiner wants to be talked as an "adult," which is hard to do when you come across as an immature child. Apparently, he wants everything packaged with a bow on it. No nuance. Remick's piece was an interview, not a laundry list of neat solutions. I suspect envy that someone else got to interview the President, not Chotiner. If HE had interviewed the President, by gum he'd show us how it's done!
Sometimes the web of malevolence on the right is so tightly woven it's hard to see where the bull stops the shit starts. Their litany of hatreds all come together to form one gigantic interconnected, bilious mass of malice and ill will.
So I was going to write something snarky about Sarah Palin criticizing the president, basically, for being black. There's really no other way to interpret it, except that she also wants him to shut up about it because, you know, we're beyond all that racial stuff, right? I mean, didn't MLK say we should be color blind?
But then I thought, nah, Palin is too easy a target. A half term ignoramus governor who quit on her constituents and sold them out for dreams of money and power, but who lingers on in the public nostrils like a fart under the sheets.
But Palin is a pretty good barometer of wingnuttiness and 'bagger sensibilities (such as they are). For instance, when A&E gave the Duck patriarch a couple of days off for spouting hatred and stupidity, she was there like a shot for a photo op with the bearded bigot, basking in their homophobic glory and applause from the right. Like any serial opportunist, she shows up on cue, a vulture on road kill. And MLK day was no exception.
See, if wingers had any real respect for Dr. King, they wouldn't be using him, now that he seems to have attained a certain level of moral authority for most Americans, claiming him as one of theirs and using his legacy to sow hatred. Of course all that finger-wagging about how Dr. King said we should all be color blind is no different than John Roberts saying we can gut the Voting Rights Act because racism and discrimination are things of the distant past (hey, Haley Barbour and Duck Bigot can't even recall a time when there were problems with them nigras).
What they really mean by waving Dr. King around is "Enough with this crap about black people. We're tired of this shit and ends now. So consider that problem fixed. Now we can move on and white people are still in charge, thank god."
Well, I notice that Marie made a comment about the absurdity of Republicans addressing immigration reform and how slippery and weasely they are about the whole topic, and here's where that spidery interconnection comes in.
A virulent anti-immigration hate group in CA, Californians for Population Stabilization (great name, no?) which offers gainful employment to white supremacists, are running TV ads telling African-Americans that immigrants are responsible for them not having jobs. Those nasty immigrants take all the good jobs from good, law abiding 'mericans (but what they really think is that African-Americans don't have jobs because they're all lazy moochers. And black.). AND they call on the memory of Martin Luther King to try to seal the deal.
KKK types use MLK to stoke immigrant hatred
The Denver Post, today, reports that RNC honcho Reince Priebus admits that his call a year ago to Republicans to be more open to things like minorities and immigration reform, has been completely ignored. What.Did.He.Think?
So much for all that newfound love for MLK. I guess whatever slimy trick they can use to disguise their fundamental hatreds is useful as long as it helps them stick it to the people to whom they are appealing.
GOP gives up even thinking about changing its image as the Party of Hate
The spider keeps a-spinnin' and the right keeps on a-crawlin' and a-snarlin'.
Ken,
The short answer is "very likely".
I'd hate to think that they were just lazy or still in fear of what Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly might say about them. Heaven forfend!
The moral high ground is costly real estate.