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The Commentariat -- January 8, 2014
Internal links removed.
In a moving op-ed in the New York Times, on the third anniversary of the day she was shot, former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.), writes: "Our fight [for sensible gun safety legislation] is a lot more like my rehab. Every day, we must wake up resolved and determined. We'll pay attention to the details; look for opportunities for progress, even when the pace is slow. Some progress may seem small, and we might wonder if the impact is enough, when the need is so urgent."
As I sat there, I thought: The president doesn't trust his commander, can't stand Karzai, doesn't believe in his own strategy and doesn't consider the war to be his. For him, it's all about getting out. -- Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, on President Obama's view of the war in Afghanistan in March 2011 ...
I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades. -- Robert Gates, on Vice President Biden
Thom Shankar of the New York Times: "President Obama eventually lost faith in the troop increase he ordered in Afghanistan, his doubts fed by top White House civilian advisers opposed to the strategy, who continually brought him negative news reports suggesting it was failing, according to his former defense secretary, Robert M. Gates." ...
... The Wall Street Journal has published an excerpt of Gates' book. ...
... Here's Bob Woodward, putting his own spin on the Gates memoir so as to make Obama look like a jerk & Biden a buffoon. ...
... Isaac Chotiner of the New Republic: "Unfortunately, Woodward's account of the book is as flawed and overly simplified as, er, Woodward's own books about the Obama administration.... It wouldn't be the first time that Woodward showed a strong dislike for the president, and allowed his opinions to get ahead of the facts." ...
... Digby: " It sounds as though Obama and Biden (who Gates loathed) were both skeptical of the military POV on this and that is to their credit. Civilian leadership should be skeptical of the military and challenge it to prove that what it says is necessary is actually necessary. They have many institutional and individual incentives to do otherwise." Digby covers a lot of ground, so it's well worth reading her whole post. ...
... Here's a more balanced Washington Post review, by Greg Jaffe. ...
... Max Fisher of the Washington Post: "... if Gates is going to take shots at Biden on this scale, it's worth asking how Gates would fare under similar scrutiny.... I can tell you how he performed on the single most important one he ever confronted: ending the Cold War. He was, quite simply, dead wrong." Via Digby. ...
... Oliver Knox of Yahoo! News: "The White House politely but firmly defended Biden. 'The President disagrees with Secretary Gates' assessment -- from his leadership on the Balkans in the Senate, to his efforts to end the war in Iraq, Joe Biden has been one of the leading statesmen of his time, and has helped advance America's leadership in the world,' National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said in a statement emailed to reporters. 'President Obama relies on his good counsel every day.' ... Shortly after the statement went out, the White House announced that news photographers would be allowed to snap pictures of Obama and Biden's regular lunch together on Wednesday -- a nearly unheard-of occurrence that will serve as a visual reminder that the two are close."
President Obama spoke yesterday about extending unemployment benefits:
... Jonathan Cohn of the New Republic: The unemployment extension bill has passed one 60-vote hurdle in the Senate but still has to pass another, & the House is the House. Republicans are saying they won't vote for the bill without Democrats conceding offsets to pay for it. "Paying for such extensions has not been a precondition for extending benefits in the past, on the very sound theory that temporary expansions of benefits don't significantly affect the long-term fiscal picture -- and that, if ever there's a time to borrow money without offsets, it's periods of economic hardship when deficits stimulate economic activity. The case for offsets would seem particularly weak now, since the deficit happens to be falling and falling fast." If Democrats agree to offsets, "to get the maximum effect, you'd want the offsetting cuts or revenue to take place in the future." But that, of course, is not what Republicans are asking. No, they want to take the money from (this will come as a big surprise to you) -- ObamaCare. ...
... Robert Costa publishes, in the Washington Post, the House GOP's talking point guidance to its members re: extended unemployment benefits. CW Short Version: "Sorry if you're broke & outta work, but unless Democrats will cut your neighbors' benefits and give more breaks to fat cats, get off your lazy ass & take a job at WalMart." ...
... Patricia Murphy of the Daily Beast describes Dean Heller (R-Nev.), who co-sponsored the Senate bill & for weeks was the only GOP senator to back it, as "the Senate's last compassionate conservative." ...
... Tom Edsall turns to academic studies to try to figure out why some Republicans have suddenly become so compassionate. "... one of the ironies of political economy [is] that support for the liberal agenda declines just when the needs of the needy are strongest. Conversely, when the economy begins to expand and the spending cuts sought by conservatives would be least painful, support for conservative belt-tightening drops.... John Boehner ... knows that in order to protect his members who are running in battleground districts, he cannot afford to let the compassion gap get too wide. The Tea Party is the loser in this calculus and the long-term unemployed are likely to be the winners." CW: Bottom line (though Edsall doesn't say so): to Republicans, "compassion" = "helping the needy just enough to get re-elected."
Dana Milbank: "Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus on Tuesday outlined his party's priorities for 2014. They are, in ascending order of importance:
●Obamacare.
●Obamacare! Obamacare!
●OBAMACARE! OBAMACARE! OBAMACARE! OBAMACARE! OBAMACARE!!!
And Yet. And Yet. Steve M. at least partially explains why "voters will again vote for a party that promises to block everything they want."
Reed Abelson & Julie Creswell of the New York Times: "Although the federal government is spending more than $22 billion to encourage hospitals and doctors to adopt electronic health records, it has failed to put safeguards in place to prevent the technology from being used for inflating costs and overbilling, according to a new report by ... the Office of the Inspector General for the Health and Human Services Department...."
Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post: "The National Security Agency is exploring how it could relinquish control of the massive database of domestic phone logs that has been the focus of an intense national debate, according to current and former officials briefed on the discussions.... The intelligence community is motivated, in part, because Congress likely will not renew the NSA's bulk collection authority when the statute it is based on expires in June 2015. It is also possible that Congress ... could take action sooner."
"Too Big to Manage." Peter Eavis of the New York Times: "To settle a barrage of government legal actions over the last year, JPMorgan Chase has agreed to penalties that now total $20 billion, a sum that ... most of the nation's banks could not withstand if they had to pay it. But since the financial crisis, JPMorgan has become so large and profitable that it has been able to weather the government's legal blitz.... Breaking up the banks to make them smaller might improve their [ethical] cultures, some bank specialists contend."
Outline of a StoneWall. Hadas Gold of Politico: "The Unites States Navy inadvertently sent a memo to a local NBC News reporter this week detailing how it intended to try and deter requests he had filed under the Freedom Of Information Act. Scott MacFarlane, a reporter for NBC 4 in Washington, D.C., tweeted out a screenshot of a portion of the memo...." CW: You can bet this is SOP. ...
... Adam Weinstein of Gawker has more details.
Now Here, Dear Wingers, Is Religious Freedom. Sean Murphy of the AP: "A satanic group unveiled designs Monday for a 7-foot-tall statue of Satan it wants to put at the Oklahoma state Capitol, where a Ten Commandments monument was placed in 2012."
Senate Races 2014
John Bresnahan of Politico: "Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg donated $2.5 million to a super PAC aimed at helping Senate Democrats maintain their majority, a potentially significant development that could have a big impact in 2014. Bloomberg, one of the richest men in the world, made the donation to Senate Majority PAC, which is run by former aides to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and other top Democrats." CW: Does this mean Mike isn't a Republican any more?
Local News
William Rashbaum & James McKinley of the New York Times: "Eighty retired New York City police officers and firefighters were charged on Tuesday in one of the largest Social Security disability frauds ever, a sprawling decades-long scheme in which false mental disability claims by as many as 1,000 people cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, according to court papers.... The indictment, brought by the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., charges a total of 106 people.... Several people involved in the case said that it was likely that as many as 50 more people would be charged in the coming weeks with making fraudulent claims."
Charles Bagli of the New York Times: "A state judge on Tuesday unexpectedly blocked about half of New York University's large and hotly debated expansion plan to build four towers in the school's leafy and largely low-scale Greenwich Village neighborhood. The judge, Donna M. Mills, of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, ruled that the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg had wrongfully agreed to turn over three public parks to the university to enable construction without first obtaining approval from the State Legislature." CW: I know this isn't big news, but I have a degree from NYU & the Village -- specifically the part that belonged to NYU -- was my home for 15 years, so let's call it "Marie's Special Interest News."
"60 Minutes" -- The New Fox "News"
Joe Strupp of Media Matters: "A 60 Minutes segment claiming that federal government efforts to encourage clean tech ... have failed drew some harsh disagreement among reporters covering the energy beat who say the negative report ignored many successes and focused too narrowly on a few unsuccessful companies.... [Lesley] Stahl's segment has drawn criticism from observers who have noted that 60 Minutes focused on Solyndra and a handful of other failed companies whose loans made up a tiny fraction of federal loans and ignored the clean tech breakthroughs and the explosive growth in the sector that have occurred."
J. K. Trotter of Gawker took a look into the military record of Dylan Davies, the main source of "60 Minutes'" discredited Benghaaazi! story. Despite the reportorial expertise (they worked on the story for a year!) of the "60 Minutes" staff, it turns out Davies is an even bigger liar than other media have discovered. He most likely was a corporal, not a sergeant as he claimed, in the British Army, and his length of service was apparently shorter than he alleged on account of his taking a brief, unsuccessful foray into the gutter-cleaning business. An hour after Trotter published his post, An hour after this article was published, Davies' publisher Simon & Schuster (which withdrew his book after the "60 Minutes" scandal) "deleted Davies' bio from its website." Via Media Matters.
News Ledes
New York Times: "... the Federal Trade Commission ... charged four companies with deceptively marketing weight-loss products, asserting they made 'unfounded promises'.... The four companies -- Sensa Products, L'Occitane, HCG Diet Direct and LeanSpa -- will collectively pay $34 million to refund consumers. They neither admitted nor denied fault in the case. The case is part of a broader crackdown on companies that the government says 'peddle fad weight-loss products.' ... The settlements made clear that the commission would accept only double-blind, placebo-controlled studies to document the medical effectiveness of diet regimes."
Reuters: "The Dutch foreign minister signed an agreement on Tuesday with his Cuban counterpart to engage in political consultations, breaking ranks with the European Union which limits high-level visits and talks with [Cuba]."
Guardian: "India has ratcheted up the pressure on US diplomats in Delhi as the deadline nears for the indictment of an Indian envoy in New York charged with visa fraud and underpaying a maid. Washington has been told that restaurants and other facilities at the social club in its Delhi embassy will have to close to non-diplomats and that inquiries into the tax affairs of US staff will be pursued aggressively."
Al Jazeera: "Syria has started moving chemical weapons materials out of the country in a crucial phase of an internationally backed disarmament programme that has been delayed by war and technical problems. The joint mission overseeing the disarmament, the UN and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), said on Tuesday that the materials had been moved from two sites to the port of Latakia and then loaded onto a Danish commercial vessel."
AP: "Syrian rebels on Wednesday seized control of a hospital in the northern city of Aleppo that was used as a base for the area by their al-Qaida rivals, activists said."
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Reader Comments (16)
It sounds like Gates' memoir is more personally cathartic than instructive. It would be interesting to see him revisit his tenure a decade from now when he has taken time to examine the contradictions and his guilt has quieted.
Bob Woodward and Maureen Dowd are both driven by similar deficits. He wants to be revered and celebrated and she wants a daddy. It makes their opinions little more than neurotic ramblings.
As for Obama not trusting his Commander, Petraeus, perhaps he was correct. Jaffe's book "The Fourth Star" captured Petraeus' arrogance and blinding ambition way before any scandal blew up. Its well worth reading.
Recently RC has included stories about the encroachment of religious beliefs in a number of contexts, including the issue of Catholic-run hospitals and their trend of expanding through mergers. In my state of Washington this is a big issue; in the county where I reside the Catholic hospital bought up the independent hospital some years back and now it's all we have. One of the first things you see when you walk into the lobby is a statue of Jesus Christ.
The Catholic hospital has continued its expansion by buying up many of the local medical practices. Today I found myself in the waiting room of one of these formerly independent medical offices as I had accompanied a relative to an outpatient procedure. I was happily reading a magazine when all of a sudden a voice came over the intercom and recited a prayer. I was dumbfounded initially but collected myself enough to write down the final sentence, "May God strengthen your day."
I found this offensive, the idea of a corporate entity imposing its version of religion on me, a captive audience at a public facility.
Further investigation revealed that this same prayer ritual is performed at the hospital .
This really sticks in my craw. I keep wondering how the religionists would like it if a message with an atheist creed was foisted upon them. Actually , I know the answer: they wouldn't like it one bit.
If this is happening in a blue city in a blue state, I shudder to think what goes on in the Bible Belt.
Rumsfeld's conduct of the war in Iraq was a disaster spread over ten years. In all of that time, no American General protested the incompetence of our military operation. All general officers have time and grade to retire and sacrifice only the accolades and perhaps the last star if they retire in protest. We had an Officer Corps dedicated to going along and getting along
Teetering on the edge of failure with no long term solution to the disasters of Iraq and Afghanistan would cause any President, not a fool, to question his Generals abilities.
@Re: Petraues: IMO the President was right not to trust him. He first made national news as a two-star commanding the 101st Airborne in Iraq. After several news stories lauding him, I realized we've seen this act before: a "Grandstander"-- an officer (usually a general) who is always available to the press for them to publish stories burnishing his image. My wife and I both said "Uh oh, a Grandstander." Sure enough, he climbed the ranks, always positive press. The President would have been a fool not to have been skeptical, and I don' think the President is anybody's fool.
Secretary Gates got the feeling that President Obama's priority was getting out of Afghanistan, rather than embracing the war? Sec Gates is a perceptive guy.
The term "war" is inapt for Afghanistan -- it is part military occupation, part nation-building, part maintenance of a cross-border staging base. We can continue to invest in that as long as we want. I think the President early on realized that we would not want to do that for very long, but we owed the Afghanis a chance, and a reasonable amount of time, to show that they could make something of our investment. But I don't think that any military commander thought that we could "win" Afghanistan by military means ... and I don't think anyone in DOD thinks it in the US, DOD or services' interests to remain there at a high military investment rate for a long period. So I conclude that Secretary Gates is offloading his frustration at the nature of the problem.
Also ... yes, the White House National Security Staff is overcontrolling and arrogant. Has been since 1961. No news there.
Yesterday I read the long, and very good, I thought, interview with David Brooks. I also read Alan Simpson's looong take on his encounter with his best friend's Missus. What a hoot! What do we take away from both these reads? Besides being privy to insider information we get a rounder sense of the persons involved and realize once again of the pettiness and puniness of the lives of these kinds of figures. Then today another important figure's memoir is critiqued and all the sharks are out to grab the bait. Such fun.
And of course Obama should be wary of anything the military proposes––history backs us up on that one. Brooks, by the way, in the interview cited above said how little power presidents have. Really? For one they are Commander in Chief and can mess with generals who overstep and under value.
@Marie: I am sympathetic to your concern about the NYU expansion, although I couldn't tell whether you are for it or against. Some years ago when we lived a hop skip and jump from Quinnipiac U., a small college that gradually and then suddenly became a huge monstrosity that took over neighborhoods, land, not only in the vicinity, but throughout the town itself, we organized and formed a neighborhood group that fought like hell to keep our bucolic surroundings intact. We won few battles. Today the large homes, including ours, that were nestled underneath the Sleeping Giant (Donald Hall has a poem about that hill) have all been abandoned and sold to Q. U. It's a sad tale–-reminds me of the tentacles of the Kochs and the Popes.
Re: You don't know what you got till it's gone;
@Marie's special news; In my town I recently watched the big D-9 Cats demo a group of dusty old California bungalows making way for another set of "Spanish style open courtyard townhouses". I made a living changing out the old for the new so "progress" has always been a double edged saws-all for me. I recall the empty fields that ran down to the ocean and the beaches that only the seabirds called home. Now Southern California is blanketed with housing and the developers are nashing at the bit to tear down the old and sell off the new.
"Progress" is tough on old memories but change is the only constant.
I think I would rather have the old Mexican billiard parlor than the two story parking lot that replaced it.
"Dust to dust, we all fall down" G D
Say what you will about the demise of our political system of late, but what we can be thankful and certainly joyful about is that we have some pretty nifty reporting––I can't recall anything like this years ago. The above piece by Media Matters and Gawker are examples as is this reporting by Steve Benen re: our favorite at large New Jersey governor. I've kept an eye out for this story which I think extremely important and if I were one of those drivers that experienced the horrific traffic calamity because of the bridge closing, I'd be out for blood.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/revelations-connect-christie-bridge-scandal
You must remember this...
But then again, maybe not. Political memoirs, with some notable exceptions, are tough sledding. What with self-aggrandizement (Bush), score settling (Nixon), complete rewrites of history favorable only to the memoirist (Rove), or attempts, whether successful or not, at candor (Ted Kennedy), political memoirs serve mostly to remind us of what was left unsaid. And failing that can be used as handy door stops.
Last night, not even thinking about the publication of Bob Gates' latest addition to the already groaning shelf of remembrances, I watched Roman Polanski's 2010 film, "The Ghostwriter", a clever story based on a book about a Tony Blair type former PM who was trying to get his version of history on record before being hauled before the Hague for war crimes (for helping Bush with his war crimes).
One comes away with the impression that many politicians writing their memoirs work at a distinct disadvantage from legitimate biographers: they don't know exactly who or what they are or what they've been involved in. Not the whole story, anyway. And they have little interest in additional research to discern fact from poor recall, ergo the difference between biography and memoir.
One of the points made by the author of the original book, Robert Harris, is that politicians, once they reach a certain level, become so insulated that they don't have much purchase on the real world. Some, like Bush, were minus that long before admittance to the inner sanctum. So political memoirs have to be taken, like large unpleasant pills, with lots of water.
They've been around practically since there was something to write on (I bet we just haven't found Hammurabi's memoirs..."When I was a little Babylonian...") and the thing you can't forget is that they're written by politicians (yes, I know, Gates was not elected but anyone in his position is a politician too--"Oooh that Hillary Clinton! Soooo po-lit-i-cal!") for political purposes. Even Caesar's Commentaries had an ulterior political motive (establishing his bona fides as a consul and one-upping his enemies). He refers to himself in the third person so as to give the impression of objectivity ("At this point, Caesar had no alternative but to kick serious Gallic ass").
But Caesar, like practically every other memoirist, leaves out plenty of juicy stuff readers would love to hear them weigh in on. Henry Adams' "Education" must be considered a political as well as personal memoir (it's borderline, but it can't really be called an autobiography) due to his close proximity to the seats of power in the 19th century, but the guy never once mentions his wife's suicide. Kind of an important thing to leave out, doncha think, especially as it affects all the decisions he makes later in life.
LBJ's memoir was so boring that, to swipe a line from the ever quotable Clive James, "If you were to recite even a single page in the open air, birds would fall out of the sky and dogs drop dead." The old Master of the Senate was so appalled at the attempt by his ghostwriters to spice up the book with quips done in Johnson's folksy Texan patois that he clear-cut the manuscript leaving only nouns, verbs and the occasional dangling modifier. The thing is unreadable. Perhaps LBJ was afraid of anyone, even himself, getting to know too much about him.
Bush, in his memoir, decided to burnish his reputation as The Decider (one can imagine little King George picturing himself as a Marvel superhero with cape, costume and "The Decider" plastered across his bulging pects) by declaring that he was the guy who signed off on the torture of prisoners ("You betcha, and whadaya gonna do about it, huh?"). But a new memoir by the CIA's top lawyer, John Rizzo, claims that Dubya was in the dark. About pretty much everything.
So I'm not going to get too worked up about Gates' book. In fact, like the denizens of Plato's Cave, it's probably more instructive to watch the gyrations of everyone else, all at several removes from Gates' imagination and memory, to see what can be gleaned from their reactions. Maybe not all that instructive, but entertaining as hell.
Until then, I'll be writing my own memoirs.
Let's see now, "When I was a little Democrat...."
@AK: Years ago I read U.L. Grant's memoirs which I found compelling honest and surprisingly well written. The one that touched my heart though, was Susan Cheever's, "Home Before Dark"––a brave book about her father and her family. (I know, C.W. stick to...) I think, Akhilleus, you have rendered a fine essay on the negative aspects of the memoir, especially ones of the political bent–-always all those asses that need to be cleaned up. I do, however, recall some British writers that did a pretty bang up job––it's their wry humor that makes them palpable.
Yes, "When I was a little Democrat" floundering around in the sea of uncertainty along came clarity riding in on a wave of...and so on and so forth. Aargh!
PD,
Thanks for the piece on Gov. Vengeance. It's one thing to exact some form of personal payback for real or perceived slights from the individual you believe has wronged you, however small and petty such actions might be. But to make average citizens, who had nothing to do the original slight, pay as well is a bridge too far. And then to chuckle about the chaos. This guy is a blowhard and a bully, but plenty of politicians abuse their power. Christie is just one more. Hopefully NJ (and national) voters will remember what a scheming little prick this guy is next time his name is on a ballot.
PD,
I purposely left out the Grant memoir because it is a bit of an exception, but it has its own flaws. As I recall he does some considerable glossing over of personal life and includes nothing about his presidency (probably for good reason). The book is heavy on his military service and his tenure as Civil War general.
I do recall thinking that his recollections of various Civil War battles and infighting among northern military brass were first rate. One can only wish that General Washington had written something similar about all his "allies" who had the long knives out for him at every turn during and after the revolution.
And speaking of political infighting and backstabbing, can you imagine what Elizabeth I's memoirs might have been like? "That Mary! What a bitch!"
At the risk of CW's wrath, I feel compelled to stick up for Grant. Yes, the book does emphasize the Civil War, but Grant was dying of cancer while he wrote. He set out to write a best seller, and the buying public was clamoring for his take on the war. He succeeded. He left his widow well off. So, it's no wonder Grant didn't mention his presidency; he didn't have time.
I live in North Carolina so I was really interested to see that last talking point on the GOP's list.
Here's the truth as to what is really happening here (hat tip to the Raleigh newspaper - The News and Observer):
McCrory cited the 2 percentage point drop in the state's unemployment rate since he took office last January as evidence of the success of his administration's agenda.That state's 7.4 percent unemployment rate is still higher than the national average, which has also declined in the past year. The size of the state's total labor force has also declined as economists have said many unemployed people gave up looking for jobs, while the number of people actually employed has grown very modestly by about 6,100 workers.
McCrory expressed no regrets about his decisions last year to eliminate financial assistance to the long-term unemployed and the refusal to expand Medicaid coverage to hundreds of thousands of low-income workers under the federal Affordable Care Act. Both decisions have been criticized by economic and health policy experts, who say the loss of billions in federal spending in the state has slowed, not aided, North Carolina's economic recovery
Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/01/06/3510005/nc-gov-bbt-ceo-to-speak-at-economic.html#storylink=cpy
Speaking of books, just out in paperback according to: http://www.tomdispatch.com/ is Nick Turse’s New York Times bestselling book "Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam."
From Tom: "The ambitiousness of the creeping decision to bring every inch of the planet under the watchful eyes of U.S. military commanders should take anyone’s breath away. It’s the sort of thing that once might only have been imaginable in movies where some truly malign and evil force planned to “conquer the world” and dominate Planet Earth for an eternity. "
Brings to mind some of the jabs in Charlie Pierce's "Some Things To Remember About Robert Gates" re the end of the Cold War, views on Gorbachev, and Iran/Contra. Let's hope when the Gates book tour starts the reporters are ready with some sharp questions. Dream on,huh?
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/robert-gates-book-010814
@Ak...think you could start your memoirs with "It was a dark and stormy night when I was a little Democrat..." for far too long we've waited for Snoopy to finish that memorable line—somebody use it, pleez!
MAG,
I've always wanted to enter the Bulwer-Lytton contest for terrible fiction. Maybe now's the time. All I need to do is work in "teabaggers", "horrible lies", "simpletons", "religious right", "Ayn Rand, Paul Ryan, Rand Paul", "bigotry unmolested by rationality", "perversely erotic love of Big Banks", and "loofah".
A snap!