The Commentariat -- March 13, 2014
** Joe Williams in the Atlantic: "My Life as a Retail Worker: Nasty, Brutish, and Poor." Via Charles Pierce. CW: Williams' story is not some isolated case. This is what life is like for workers in many, if not most, American retail establishments today. This pervasive horror, BTW, is brought to you by the systematic unfettering of the Gods of Capitalism, a feature presentation produced & directed by the Grand Old Party.
Peter Baker & Michael Gordon of the New York Times: "President Obama and Ukraine's interim prime minister opened the door on Wednesday to a political solution that could lead to more autonomy for Crimea if Russian troops withdraw, as the United States embarked on a last-ditch diplomatic effort to defuse a crisis that reignited tensions between East and West. The tentative feeler came as Mr. Obama dispatched Secretary of State John Kerry to London to meet with his Russian counterpart on Friday, two days before a Russian-supported referendum in Crimea on whether to secede from Ukraine."
Jonathan Landay, et al., of McClatchy News: "The White House has been withholding for five years more than 9,000 top-secret documents sought by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for its investigation into the now-defunct CIA detention and interrogation program, even though President Barack Obama hasn't exercised a claim of executive privilege. In contrast to public assertions that it supports the committee's work, the White House has ignored or rejected offers in multiple meetings and in letters to find ways for the committee to review the records.... The dispute indicates that the White House is more involved than it has acknowledged in the unprecedented power struggle between the committee and the CIA...." ...
... Jonathan Weisman & Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times: Sen. Dianne "Feinstein [D-Calif.] shocked her Senate colleagues, caught the [C.I.A.] flat-footed and forced a response from [C.I.A. Director John] Brennan on something he had hoped could be resolved without the rancor's becoming public. The 40-minute broadside by Ms. Feinstein, the normally circumspect chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has set up a showdown between the executive and legislative branches of government.... What ultimately pushed Ms. Feinstein to make her accusations public, according to congressional officials, were news media reports at the end of last week that contained anonymous accusations against the committee's staff."
Sari Horwitz of the Washington Post: "Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Thursday will urge reduced sentences for defendants in most of the nation's drug cases, part of his effort to cut the burgeoning U.S. prison population and reserve stiff penalties for the most violent traffickers. Holder's proposal, which is expected to be approved by the independent agency that sets sentencing policies for federal judges, would affect 70 percent of drug offenders in the criminal justice system, according to figures provided by Justice Department officials. It would reduce sentences by an average of nearly a year."
Igor Volsky of Think Progress: "House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) previewed his upcoming legislative proposals for reforming America's poverty programs during an appearance on Bill Bennett’s Morning in America Wednesday, hinting that he would focus on creating work requirements for men 'in our inner cities' and dealing with the 'real culture problem' in these communities. 'We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work, and so there is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with,' he said." ...
... CW: In case your GOPese is rusty, allow me to translate: Thesis: "Black men are lazy. Their fathers are lazy. Their grandfathers were lazy." Corollary: "I'm going to cure their lazy asses by kicking them off the dole." ...
... CW: Maybe the reason Republicans hate/fear President Obama so much is a kind of "secondary racism." Their core belief -- a belief on which they conveniently justify all their mean-spirited pro-poverty policies -- is that "black people are lazy." They may think this character flaw dates back to the days when slavery was legal & work slowdowns were a means of protest, or they may think it is genetic. Whatever. But these guys believe black people are lazy as surely as they believe in the Second Coming. And Obama just does not accommodate their stereotype. Ergo, he is not even a legitimate black man, much less a legitimate president. Everything Obama Does Is Wrong because that is as it must be: a lazy guy cannot be a good POTUS. ...
... Julia Azari, in the Washington Post, on President Obama's "Between Two Ferns" bit, & on presidential communications techniques: "Traffic appears to be up at the HealthCare.gov site, which, of course, was the immediate goal. In the long term, we may see whether a president has finally succeeded in changing what it means to 'look presidential.'"
Obama Derangement Syndrome, Ctd.
At a stopover on a fundraising trip to New York City, President Obama visited a Gap store to buy sweaters for his wife & daughters & to thank stores like the Gap & Costco for raising the minimum they pay their employees:
... Reuters: "Using a credit card to pay, Obama pretended that he did not know that he could sign his name on the credit card machine." ...
... This of course was not enough for wingers. All over the Internets yesterday, they were describing the President as "out of touch."
Gail Collins: "Most American mothers work, and they are already guilt-ridden over everything under the sun.... Most American mothers feel remarkably successful when everybody gets off to school with matching socks. Now Paul Ryan wants to tell them they've committed child abuse by failure to fill a brown bag." ...
... Philip Elliott of the AP: "Invoking fiery references to Satan, 'savagery' and a 'culture of death' to criticize their opponents, anti-abortion lawmakers on Wednesday insisted that Republican contenders keep an intense focus on social issues in the upcoming midterm elections and the 2016 presidential race." Among the headliners: Sens. Mike Lee (RTP-Utah) & Ted Cruz (RTP-Texas) & former Gov. Mike Huckabee (RTP-Ark.). ...
... Laura Stampler of Time: "When speaking at a gala funded by pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List Wednesday night, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee posed a question: if Americans condone abortion, then could the next step be killing people at the end of their lives for the sake of convenience? Huckabee named financial and social hardships as a popular justification for abortions, Politico reported, and said the very same justification could be used for ending the life of an elderly parent who has become a burden."
Alan Blinder & Richard Oppel of the New York Times: "The most important sexual assault prosecution in the military [-- that of Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair --] came apart on Monday. But cracks had appeared two months earlier in the same North Carolina military courtroom." CW: Fairly fascinating, and a good example of why the New York Times is an important newspaper: their reporters get the goods & know how to write 'em up.
Beyond the Beltway
"Rape Insurance." Laura Conaway of NBC News: "The Michigan state legislature yesterday finished passing a bill that requires women to buy separate coverage ahead of time for abortion if they want to have coverage for it at all. The measure applies to private health insurance, and it has no exceptions for rape or incest.... The final vote was 27-11 in the Senate, to go along with passage in the House of 62-47. Republican Governor Rick Snyder vetoed a similar bill last year. But because the bill this time arose as a citizens' initiative, it does not require a signature from the governor -- neither can he veto it. Had the Michigan legislature sent it on to the ballot, it faced a divided electorate, with voters opposed to it by 47 percent to 41 percent in a recent poll. The bill will take effect early next year." Thanks to Julie for the link. She says Rachel Maddow ran a segment on this new law Wednesday night.
Yvonne Sanchez of the Arizona Republic: "Gov. Jan Brewer announced Wednesday she will not seek another term in office, an effort that would have required a long-shot court challenge to the state's term limits."
Kelly Heyboer of the Star-Ledger: " The faculty at Rutgers-Newark's voted today to call for the university to rescind an invitation to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to serve as the university's commencement speaker. The Rutgers-Newark professors joined their counterparts on the university's New Brunswick campus, who last month called for Rice to be disinvited because of her role in the Iraq war and the Bush administration's approval of controversial prisoner interrogation techniques."
Florida Was Not Always Stupid
Robert McFadden of the New York Times: "Reubin Askew, a progressive 'New South' Democrat who promoted racial equality and ethics reforms as a two-term governor of Florida in the 1970s and campaigned briefly for the presidency in 1984 and for the Senate in 1988, died early on Thursday in Tallahassee. He was 85."
Congressional Race
CW: There's a lot of morning-after analysis on the Jolly/Sink/Other-Guy special election in Florida's 13th Congressional district, & a lot of it focuses on the ObamaCare factor. But I think Brian Beutler is one guy who gets this right: "Isolating an 'Obamacare effect' is pretty complex, and anyone claiming today that the Obamacare effect was huge or obviously decisive is probably peddling snake oil."
CW: I will say that Alex Sink is one of the most boring candidates imaginable. She makes Bill Nelson (that's our Democratic Senator, in case you -- understandably -- never heard of him) seem exciting. The only Democratic Florida politician I can think of off the top of my head who is a vaguely interesting person is Charlie Crist, and he was a Republican not so long ago. The 2008 Democratic primary gave the state's party a chance to recruit really good local candidates. But the party, which is moribund, either could not be bothered or is so ossified the group-think is that Alex Sink -- a former Bank of America executive -- is fun & delightful.
News Ledes
New York Times: "As lawmakers press General Motors and regulators over their decade-long failure to correct a defective ignition switch, a new review of federal crash data shows that 303 people died after the air bags failed to deploy on two of the models that were recalled last month."
New York Times: "Four years after the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion, BP is being welcomed back to seek new oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico. An agreement on Thursday with the Environmental Protection Agency lifts a 2012 ban that was imposed after the agency concluded that BP had not fully corrected problems that led to the well blowout in 2010 that killed 11 rig workers, spilled millions of gallons of oil and contaminated hundreds of miles of beaches."
Guardian: "Malaysian authorities have said reports that the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 may have flown for an additional four hours beyond its last sighting are inaccurate, and that the final information received from its engines indicated everything was operating normally. Sources described as familiar with the details of the missing Boeing 777's data had told the Wall Street Journal that US investigators believed the plane had flown for a total of five hours, indicating that the plane may have been diverted 'with the intention of using it later for another purpose'." ...
... Washington Post Update: "The search for a missing Malaysian jetliner with 239 people on board could expand west into the Indian Ocean based on information that the plane may have flown for four more hours after it dropped from radar, U.S. officials said Thursday. A senior American official said the information came from a data stream sent directly by engines aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. If the two engines on the Boeing 777 functioned for up to four additional hours, that could strengthen concern that a rogue pilot or hijacker took control of the plane early Saturday over the Gulf of Thailand." ...
... The New York Times update is here.
Reuters: "The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly fell and hit a fresh three-month low last week, suggesting a strengthening in labor market conditions."
Share Article
Reader Comments (11)
How low can the GOP go? Tonight on Rachael Maddow she talked about a new bill that recently passed in Michigan: "rape insurance".
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/michigan-the-meaning-rape-insurance
Last night while surfing C-Spans I came upon an impressive, young fellow giving a speech on the floor of the House supporting The People Act, the bill John Sarbanes (D-Maryland) is introducing which changes campaign finance––bringing it back to the citizens themselves. This young man, 42, is Beto O'Roarke (D-Texas-El Paso, 16th district) has the makings of a political figure that might just rattle some sabers. I liked what he had to say and I liked the way he said it–––"I did not come to Congress to spend my time on the phone raising money"–––"The people I represent deserve someone who will work for them and not cowtow to some corporate moguls who give me lots of money." Listening to him was a pleasure and shook the shackles of skepticism off just a bit. Anyway––a guy to keep an eye on.
The other C-Span had Sebelius in the hot seat again. You would think the ACA was some nefarious plot to destroy the medical profession, hospitals, and of course the people themselves. How this poor woman takes the vitriol that she gets thrown at her from mostly Republican holier than thou arrogant bastards is a mystery. She keeps her cool, tries hard to hide her distain and carefully tells someone who is dumber than a post the correct way of understanding something. At the end of the session she leaves exhausted and this time I noticed a distinct air of anger. What, I wonder, has happened to decorum when questioning someone like Sebelius. I imagine the room had the stink of shark.
"CW: Maybe the reason Republicans hate/fear President Obama so much is a kind of 'secondary racism.'"
Ain't nothin' secondary about it. The way they see it, he's black and dares to equate himself with the white man, much less call himself President.
Marie, I love it that you don't have a Facebook option, but I am curious why.
Gail Collins is great. I read her every chance I get and so I read this piece about Paul Ryan and the school lunch sh*t. Here's what gets me, though. Why is the reporting and the reaction all about the guilt of mothers who work and school lunches and kids who want homemade lunches when it should be about Paul Ryan is a liar, Paul Ryan is a liar, Paul Ryan, why did you just pull something out of your ass to make a point? Why? When are we going to start making the news about their lies instead of their message? Hm? Somebody tell me, please, because I don't get it.
Looking, but not seeing what's there is bad. Worse yet is replacing what's there with what you believe it should be. This is the right-wing way. Neither facts nor reality matter. Only ideology. Only what you think it should be.
Thus we have the chronic liar, Paul Ryan, who has been taking "fact finding" trips to inner city neighborhoods to discover the "real reasons" for poverty. Although these trips were not supposed to include members of the Fourth Estate, unending streams of information about them have somehow (go figure!) found their way into the press. Glowing stories of Paul Ryan's (Saint Ryan?) missions of compassion into the dark, dangerous jungles of urban America (like he's fucking Albert Schweitzer) have clogged internet pipes over the last few months. And what, after his brave forays into the jungle, is his considered opinion about the truth concerning poverty in America?
Lazy black men, lazy black fathers, lazy black grandfathers, not enough Jesus, too much help from the government, and too many food stamps. His solution? More prayer. More exposure to "good" (ie, white Christian, right-wing) culture, no food, no help. Do it yourself, lazy blahs because you don't deserve shit.
Any mention of improved education? Access to better jobs? More opportunity? Importance of nutrition and healthcare, better living conditions? Better schools?
Nope. Just sermons and lectures.
The right-wing way. The Paul Ryan way.
Compare the sanctimonious Passion of Saint Ryan with a trip Bobby Kennedy took to the south in 1967 to check on the progress of the War on Poverty. He visited Mississippi (among other states) accompanied by Marian Wright Edelman, a civil rights activist and later founder of the Children's Defense Fund, and Charles Evers, brother of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers (murdered by the same type of people who now vote for Saint Ryan). What he saw shocked him. Evers later described him sitting in a urine soaked hovel holding a baby on his lap, rubbing the child's belly, distended from hunger, tears streaming down his face. He was angry and he came back to Washington ready to do more than cut food stamps and tell those lazy blacks to get them some Jesus and straighten up and fly right.
And unlike Ryan with his self-serving, phony humility (no press, please, we'll leak it all to you later), Kennedy wanted the press there. He wanted people to see what he was seeing. He didn't want it all to devolve into a momentarily touching anecdote at some haut monde Georgetown cocktail party, or as fodder for sycophantic Fox profiles, like Ryan. These were suffering human beings and they needed help, not Pecksniffian homilies.
The idea that anyone enjoys living in squalor and poverty--Ryan describes the life of poor, disadvantaged, unemployed, hungry people as "living in a comfortable hammock"--who wish to remain there, is one of the most vile and persistent of right-wing delusions. "Of course these lazy people want to stay that way and take hand outs and enjoy life in the hammock. They're black. What do you expect?" So no amount of facts, no amount of real world evidence can change the way people like Ryan think. I'm tempted to say, "Congressman, you're no Bobby Kennedy" but that doesn't even come close.
In the wake of Kennedy's visit, with increased visibility for the plight of poor people of all races, Edelman and others formed the Poor People's Campaign. By the late 70's as she says, hunger in America had been dramatically reduced through efforts like school breakfast and lunch programs, WIC and food stamps.
Today, thanks almost entirely to unceasing efforts by people like Saint Ryan, hunger is back. Poverty is increasing, education is worse. There is today a Campaign Against Poor People and it's being led by Ryan who, at every opportunity, spreads lies about people he knows nothing about, piously burnishing his image as a compassionate conservative while others suffer.
When he bats his eyes, puts on his sincerity mask and talks about ending poverty by making sure the poor have more Jesus, no help, less food, and do what they're told, I think about sin. Seeing what you want in spite of what's really there is one thing. Putting plans in motion to hurt people based on your own perverse fantasies is much worse.
If you believe in the concept of mortal sin, evil, willful transgressions against others, then this is one.
This is from the Think Progress piece on Rep. Ryan's plans to motivate the poor:
"Ryan also cited Charles Murray, a conservative social scientist who believes African-Americans are, as a population, less intelligent than whites due to genetic differences and that poverty remains a national problem because “a lot of poor people are born lazy.”
Ryan purports to be Irish (one big fightin' family), but seems oblivious that such an attitude was pretty much that of the landlord class in Ireland, and the Tories in the UK parliament, back in the mid-19th century and especially during The Famine. Their answers were to turn the poor off the land and to the roads, and to deny welfare to any who would not turn themselves into the workhouse. A requirement of the workhouse was that you had to divest of any asset -- you had to be totally destitute to receive help. Many thousands starved, millions emigrated, and that seemed like an acceptable solution to most of the (absentee) landlords and MPs.
Anyone named Ryan should be shamed for suggesting a repeat of that solution.
Oh, and the Brits of the time thought the same of the Irish as Mr. Murray thinks of the blacks. No hope for savages.
And a happy St. Paddy's day to all March 17.
http://consortiumnews.com/2013/12/22/trumans-true-warning-on-the-cia/
The current kerfluffle between Sen. Feinstein and the CIA, brought to mind Harry Truman's regrets about ever forming the CIA. The above links to an article by Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst who has often criticizes his old agency. The article uses Truman's Dec 1963 op-ed in WaPo, in which he laments that the CIA has strayed from its original mission and gotten into things which were none of its business.(Bay of Pigs).
McGovern goes on to say that things went wrong when Eisenhower appointed Allen Dulles head of the CIA. Dulles thought he could trap JFK into using American military support for the fiasco that was unfolding surely the President wouldn't allow the operation to fail by saying no? He could and did and sent Dulles packing.
Very interesting reading.
Barbarossa,
Good story.
New York Times reporter Tim Weiner wrote a compelling account of the CIA several years ago, "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA". The phrase in the title was used by Ike when rebuking Allen Dulles who, after eight years of fucking around, had left the president and the country a legacy of ashes rather than a useful, productive, and necessary agency for intelligence analysis.
The problem stems largely from the origin of the agency. The Wild Bill Donovan types who came out of the OSS disdained intelligence analysis for cloak and dagger operations aimed at upending various parts of the world. They were cowboys who were dangerously wrong much more often than they were right (Iran, Bay of Pigs, Tet, Afghanistan, Indian nukes, 9/11....).
The Bay of Pigs fiasco is just one of their more public failures. That Dulles would try to bully JFK into calling out the Marines to pull his fat out of the fire after a disastrous and poorly planned and researched operation (1,600 mercenaries will defeat Castro's army of 60,000 in 48 hours? Seriously?), in short, inviting a potential world war to save his face, is just one more indication of the reckless nature of the CIA which, at many points in its history, has felt that it was beyond the law (lookin' at you, George Tenet).
The cowboy/James Bond mentality is largely responsible for the atrophying of the agency's analysis wing, analysis being for sissies who can't get into the field and blow up the bad guys, one reason we are so often caught flat footed on the intelligence side while screwing up the operational side.
Legacy of ashes, indeed. Good book.
Hey! Brooks, Dowd, Friedman, Douthat, et ilk...you hedgehogs better listen up!
Over on New York Magazine: "Nate Silver on the Launch of ESPN’s New FiveThirtyEight, Burritos, and Being a Fox
—By Joe Coscarelli
Coscarelli: So if you all are the foxes, who’s a hedgehog?
Silver: "Uhhhh, you know … the op-ed columnists at the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal are probably the most hedgehoglike people. They don’t permit a lot of complexity in their thinking."
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/03/nate-silver-interview-fivethirtyeight-espn.html
Thanks to the link to the Silver interview, MAG. Have to say, though, that I came away from it feeling he's creating one of the most trivial "news" sites in Webdom.