;)
The Commentariat -- Jan. 27, 2013
My column in the New York Times eXaminer is on a New York Times piece by reporters Jeff Zeleny & Jonathan Weisman in which the writers discuss how the GOP is doing some soul-searching. I zero in on Bobby Jindal's "soul."
Prof. Erin Hatton, in the New York Times, on "The Rise of the Permanent Temp Economy": "American employers have generally taken the low road: lowering wages and cutting benefits, converting permanent employees into part-time and contingent workers, busting unions and subcontracting and outsourcing jobs. They have done so, in part, because of the extraordinary evangelizing of the temp industry, which rose from humble origins to become a global behemoth.The story begins in the years after World War II, when a handful of temp agencies were started, largely in the Midwest."
Ethan Bronner of the New York Times: "In recent months, federal courts have seen dozens of lawsuits brought not only by religious institutions like Catholic dioceses but also by private employers ranging from a pizza mogul to produce transporters who say the government is forcing them to violate core tenets of their faith. Some have been turned away by judges convinced that access to contraception is a vital health need and a compelling state interest. Others have been told that their beliefs appear to outweigh any state interest and that they may hold off complying with the law until their cases have been judged. New suits are filed nearly weekly." The issue will most likely come before the Supreme Court.
Obama 2.0
Franklin Foer & Chris Hughes of The New Republic interview President Obama. The part of the interview that seems to be getting the most attention is this: "I'm a big football fan, but I have to tell you if I had a son, I'd have to think long and hard before I let him play football. And I think that those of us who love the sport are going to have to wrestle with the fact that it will probably change gradually to try to reduce some of the violence."
Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times: "By nominating [Mary Jo] White, a former federal prosecutor, to head the S.E.C. last week, President Obama appeared to send a message that Washington was finally going to get tough with financial wrongdoers. Tough enforcement has been pretty much AWOL on his watch. Maybe Ms. White can change that with a new, aggressive approach." Morgenson gives White a to-do list. For more on White, see links in yesterday's Commentariat. ...
... John Cassidy of the New Yorker: "While everybody deserves a proper legal defense, even overpaid Wall Street C.E.O.s, it seems a bit peculiar for a President who has repeatedly pledged to crack down on Wall Street wrongdoing to pick as one of his top financial cops a figure who has spent much of the last decade defending senior bankers.... But if White actually is the fearless and fearsome slayer of Wall Street wrongdoers that the White House and her old mentor Senator Charles Schumer are building her up to be, then she may well have been appointed to the wrong job.... The federal agency crying out for a big bad financial prosecutor is the Justice Department, which has yet to bring criminal charges against any senior Wall Street figures for anything having to do with the subprime blowup." ...
... Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in a Politico op-ed on the Wall Street-Washington revolving door: "Transition is afoot in Washington, and if the right people go back and forth, the country will develop smarter, stronger rules. But if the wrong people make the shuffle, then Washington will be rigged even more for Wall Street -- and every middle-class family will pay the consequences."
Wingers Find New Way to Waste Their Money. Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times: "A brand new conservative group calling itself Americans for a Strong Defense and financed by anonymous donors is running advertisements urging Democratic senators in five states to vote against Chuck Hagel, President Obama's nominee to be secretary of defense, saying he would make the United States 'a weaker country.' Another freshly minted and anonymously backed organization, Use Your Mandate, which presents itself as a liberal gay rights group but purchases its television time through a prominent Republican firm, is attacking Mr. Hagel as 'anti-Gay,' 'anti-woman' and 'anti-Israel' in ads and mailers. Those groups are joining at least five others that are organizing to stop Mr. Hagel's confirmation, a goal even they acknowledge appears to be increasingly challenging."
Noam Scheiber of The New Republic, writing in the Washington Post, has a balanced, informative take on "Five Myths about Tim Geithner." ...
... Scheiber has more in The New Republic, in a short article titled "Tim Geithner, A Good Hire -- Who Stayed about Three & a Half Years Too Long."
Jackie Calmes of the New York Times: Obama campaign guru David Plouffe left his White House job Friday. "And so it is now that President Obama has tapped as his new senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer," who has been Obama's communications director. ...
An ad from the online "Junior Shooters" magazine. Via the New York Times. I deleted the sales-contact info.Gunz 4 Kidz. Mike McIntire of the New York Times: "Threatened by declining participation in shooting sports, gun makers and sellers have poured millions into a campaign to get firearms into the hands of more, and younger, children. The industry's strategies include giving firearms, ammunition and cash to youth groups; weakening state restrictions on hunting by young children; marketing an affordable military-style rifle for 'junior shooters' and sponsoring semiautomatic-handgun competitions for youths; and developing a target-shooting video game that promotes brand-name weapons, with links to the Web sites of their makers."
Ron Charles of the Washington Post: "Best-selling author Stephen King has just released a passionate call for greater gun control, titled 'Guns.' In a coup for Amazon, the essay is available only through its Kindle Store for 99 cents." the Amazon page for "Guns" is here.
Tweedle-Dee & Tweedle-Dumb
Art by DonkeyHotey.Samuel Knight in the Washington Monthly: "... neither the President nor any other Democrats need to portray [Paul] Ryan as 'cruel and unyielding' [as Ryan claims] because his policies do a fantastic job of that on their own. Ryan has time and time again demonstrated that he isn't interested in paying down the national debt or in 'reforms to protect and strengthen Medicare and Medicaid,' as he claimed on Saturday. He's interested in turning Medicare into a voucher program and in slashing Medicaid's budget by over a trillion dollars." And he's still talking about "keep[ing] the bond markets at bay" even though "interest rates are about as low as they can be and aren't expect to rise, and demand for U.S. Treasury bonds is robust." CW: Ryan either really has no idea what he's talking about or he's just making up more excuses for cutting social safety programs.
Art by DonkeyHotey.Boehner Sorry He's Not More of a Jerk. Russell Berman of The Hill: "Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is sharing his regrets about his 'fiscal-cliff' strategy, less than a month after the House bitterly swallowed a last-minute deal hatched in the Senate."
Scott Keyes of Think Progress: "Former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell (R), who was the chief elections officer when the state experienced massive voting problems in 2004, is planning to lead a national effort to rig the electoral college in favor of the 2016 Republican presidential candidate." CW: sounds sensible. Blackwell already has excellent state-level experience in election-rigging. ...
... Keyes, again: "In 2004, Republicans fervently opposed manipulating the Electoral College when the Democratic candidate stood to benefit. A decade later, after Obama won his second term and pundits discuss a long-term electoral realignment, Republicans are abandoning that principled stand in an attempt to rig future presidential elections."
Hania Mourtada & Anne Barnard of the New York Times on the tensions and disputes between (and among) Syrian secular activists & jihadists. CW: The post-Assad period is going to be a mess.
News Ledes
New York Times: "Egypt's new government lost control of a major city, Port Said, on Saturday as rampaging soccer fans attacked the main jail, drove police officers from the streets and cut off all access to the city.... By evening, fighting in the streets had left at least 30 people dead, mostly from gunfire, and injured more than 300."
Washington Post: "The United States is significantly expanding its assistance to a French assault on Islamist militants in Mali by offering aerial refueling and planes to transport soldiers from other African nations, the Pentagon announced Saturday night." ...
... New York Times: "French special forces took control of the airport in the Islamic rebel stronghold of Gao, the French government said Saturday, meeting 'serious resistance' from militants even as they pressed northward. Gao is one of three main northern cities in Mali that has been under rebel control for months, and the capture of the main strategic points in Gao represents the biggest prize yet in the battle to retake the northern half of the country." ...
... Al Jazeera: "Mali forces backed by French troops are advancing towards the northern key town of Timbuktu after seizing the rebel stronghold of Gao, French officials have said. French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault issued the statement on Sunday after French airstrikes forced out the al-Qaeda-linked fighters from northern areas, clearing the way for the ground offensive."
Al Jazeera: "At least 200 people have been killed in a nightclub fire caused by a pyrotechnics show in the southern Brazilian city of Santa Maria, local media reports. Bodies were still being removed from the Kiss nightclub in the southern city of Santa Maria, according to Major Gerson da Rosa Ferreira, who was leading rescue efforts at the scene for the military police. Ferreira said the victims died of asphyxiation or from being trampled, and there were as many as 500 people inside the club when the fire broke out."
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Reader Comments (5)
Marie, great column on Jindal. My hair has been on fire since Jindal became the poster boy for "reasonable" on the right. Your column acted as somewhat of a fire extinguisher for me. The standard in much main stream journalism has become a piece of used toilet paper stuck to the heel of a shoe. It continues to be shredded and pick up more filth as it is dragged along thoughtlessly.
A couple other things about Jindal that will never allow him to make a successful run at either the Presidency or Vice Presidency - likely not even a cabinet position. He is not only aesthetically displeasing to look at, he has a decidedly "foreign" appearance. He could easily pass for middle eastern in the world of stereotypes. I've hardly ever seen him when he isn't speaking angrily either. He will be a victim of his own party's xenophobia, which in his case, is an appropriate outcome for his outrageous cruelty. He is also, what his party calls an "anchor baby".
Still his breathtaking hypocrisy shouldn't be celebrated by the MSM.
There are lots of reasons why the post Assad Syria will be a mess. The Alawi, who have a bad name in the western press, are probably more able to govern more people than, say, the Muslim Brotherhood. The cultural, ethnic, and religious complexity in Syria is simply ignored in the west. This means that when, not if, chaos happens, the press will not understand why. As a result, we will be fed confused lies or, at best, miscellaneous undigested facts.
For instance, a recognized religious minority, the armenian christians, are now physically located near the Alawi and are sort of protected by Assad's power. If Assad falls, what happens to the Alawi? And what happens to the Christians? Do the "armenian" christians flee to Armenia? Well, in Syria, they are and have been in a compatible ethnic arab culture. If they go to Armenia, they will be in a christain culture - a total culture shock.
I won't even talk about the Kurds in the east.
Yah, it will be a mess; but we will have no idea exactly what sort of a mess unless culturally and religiously sophisticated reporting comes out of Syria.
Americans have no real experience with this kind of cultural, religious and ethnic complexity.
There is a good documentary called, "Forget Baghdad," which addresses the total culture shock Iraqi jews had when they were forced out of Baghdad and were relocated to Israel, in - I think - about 1950. Those jews had been in Baghdad for 1,000 years. Imagine their sense of shock at the Israel of the time: full of ethnically eastern european jews. It's worth watching.
Re: And then give'm a twist; It's early and I see Marie has written a new column and I love a good read so I turn to the article at once, even before the coffee has kicked in and I read this; "Zeleny and Weisman write that “others in the party latched on to Mr. Jindal’s entreaties”, but I read "entrails" for "entreaties" and I'm thinkin', "well good, this is going to be even better than I thought."
Then I do a re-read and the excitement is tempered. But somebody could latch onto Bobby's entrails, right? Rusty the Pit for one...
Marie's point being the NYT is skirting "Fair and Balanced" for what cause we don't know except maybe the greater good of the National Republican Party which needs a greater good in the worse way.
What chaps me up up about a guy like Booby is that is his family arrives on these shores, takes full advantage of the great freedoms and opportunities this country offers and then does his damnest to suppress the freedoms and opportunities for the rest of us.
His record must have Huey Long snickering as he shovels coal into the boiler down in hell, at least Huey spread out crumbs for some people. Wonder if there's another shovel for Booby?
Today we have in the NYT three Op/ed pieces that in one way or the other have to do with the control of women: Douthat on abortion; Bruni on the curse of Catholicism; and Kristof on reasons why women aren't becoming more like the male leaders of the world. The first two present the tired but volatile arguments (Ross, however has his stats wrong re: the percentage of pro-choice women) linking the religious hold on female fecundity which has more legs than most right-wing advocates who use the case of abortion as a red herring for simply preventing women from even having sex––"We are against abortion, but we are also against women attaining birth control and we are closing as many Planned Parenthood facilities as possible––or something as screwed up as that. I've practically given up trying to understand.
Kristof's column, on the other hand, quotes Sheryl Sandberg:
"“We hold ourselves back in ways both big and small, by lacking self-confidence, by not raising our hands, and by pulling back when we should be leaning in,” Sandberg writes in the book, called “Lean In.”
“We internalize the negative messages we get throughout our lives, the messages that say it’s wrong to be outspoken, aggressive, more powerful than men. We lower our own expectations of what we can achieve. We continue to do the majority of the housework and child care. We compromise our career goals to make room for partners and children who may not even exist yet.”
Now I ask you––in your teaching experiences––and many of you have been or are teachers––were/are the females you encountered silent, passive and pulled back? I found in my experience just the opposite, not only in elementary school but on the college level females were much more aggressive than males, more loquacious and usually the ones who were the organizers when put into study groups. And I would also say that most of the women I have known in my life have been far from shrinking violets. When we opt for marriage and family and want to continue pursuing a demanding career then you betcha we have to compromise––both men and women. Sandberg's premise above strikes me as insufficient and wrong-headed––we have been raising our hands for eons and with each decade we have become more powerful, something obviously the Church and the Republicans have known forever.
@PD Pepe-
I agree completely with what you have written. What I would add is:
"At a very big price....."