;)
The Commentariat -- March 2, 2013
The President's Weekly Address:
... The transcript is here.
... Ewen MacAskill of the Guardian: "Barack Obama signed an order on Friday night to implement $85bn in spending cuts, a move he described as 'dumb' and 'arbitrary' and that he blamed on the intransigence of Republicans in Congress." ...
... Michael Shear of the New York Times: "President Obama and Congressional leaders emerged from a White House meeting on Friday without resolution to the budget impasse, meaning that the across-the-board spending cuts that take effect Friday could remain in place for weeks if not months. Speaking to reporters after the hourlong meeting, Mr. Obama called the cuts 'just dumb,' and criticized Republicans for their refusal to negotiate a package that includes some new revenue to balance those cuts. 'The only thing we've seen from Republicans so far in terms of proposals is to replace this set of arbitrary cuts with even worse arbitrary cuts,' said Mr. Obama":
... Here's a transcript of the President's remarks & the Q&A. ...
... David Firestone of the New York Times: "President Obama is obviously sick and tired of the widely peddled notion that the sequester and all other budget failures are ultimately his fault because he's the president. His frustration made for a surprisingly lively news conference this morning... The Constitution always envisioned Congress, not the president, as the real locus of government power, particularly with regard to the budget. For any voter who doesn't like it, the entire House of Representatives will be up for election in just 20 months." ...
... ** David Atkins of Hullabaloo: "The idea that spending cuts are morally and politically superior to revenue increases is so ingrained the Village political press that to even put the shoe on the other foot creates an unthinkable scenario. This is one of Ronald Reagan's most baleful legacies: a Washington establishment that can't stop believing it's the 1980s or early 1990s." BUT, in his deficit reduction proposal, Obama "advocates lots of cuts and a few tax increases. The other side advocates only cuts. It's hard to blame just the press for implicitly placing cuts on a higher moral pedestal." ...
... CW: one thing nobody ever mentions is the fact that the Village People are all financially comfortable. We tend to think of journalists as underpaid idealists, but the syndicated columnists, the think tank boys, the "influential Washingtonians" are all well-to-do, & they all have (or had) jobs with benefits. If taxes go up, if loopholes are closed, their taxes will go up & their loopholes will close. And if government services decrease, so what? They do not, for the most part, think Social Security & Medicare are crucial to their retirement years, & they do not qualify for most of programs that benefit children. They are a natural low-tax constituency. ...
... Steve Benen Tries to Explain Governance & Compromise to John Boehner: As he left the meeting with President Obama, Boehner said (hardly for the first time):
Let's make it clear, the president got his tax hike on January 1st. The discussion about revenue, in my view, is over.
... Which, Benen notes, "makes exactly as much sense as this sentence":
Let's make it clear, Republicans got their spending cuts in 2011. The discussion about spending cuts, in my view, is over. ...
... New York Times Editors: "House Republicans were elated this week when their leader, John Boehner, made it clear that deep, automatic spending cuts would begin as scheduled on Friday. Incredibly, some consider the decision a victory.... Some Americans will be hurt more than others, and the people who will be hurt the most are those who are already struggling.... Why are the Republicans are so happy when they should be ashamed?" ...
... Why, just look across the page, NYT Editors. There's brilliant macroeconomist Joe Scarborough saying the sequester isn't so bad & President Obama overplayed his hand. CW: why the New York Times gives this lunkhead -- who already has a huge soapbox at MSNBC & another at Politico -- is beyond me. ...
... Dorothy Wickenden of the New Yorker talks with Ryan Lizza & Rick Hertzberg about "the budget fiasco":
... Robert Kuttner of the American Prospect has an excellent retrospective on What Obama Did Is Doing) Wrong. ...
... CW: The Two-Step Obama Can't Master. It has seemed to me for a long time that the only way Obama could self-correct would be to make a huge I-Wuz-Wrong confession & renounce deficit hawkery, Simpson-Bowles, & all that other belt-tightening crap. But politicians, much more presidents, have prohibitively powerful egos, so I don't think that (1) even if his deficit-cutting faith could be exorcised, (2) he could say I Wuz Wrong.
Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker: " That the free market won't work for medicine is an economic truth by now ancient and undisputed." But for conservatives, "the market becomes not an instrument of prosperity but, rather, an icon of piety...." Therefore, when private service costs more & delivers less than can the government, well -- God bless private enterprise!
Pedro Nicolaci da Costa of Reuters: "Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, said on Friday that pulling back on aggressive policy measures too soon would pose a real risk of damaging a still-fragile recovery."
Scott Shane of the New York Times: "Military prosecutors announced on Friday that they had decided to try Pfc. Bradley Manning on the most serious charges they have brought against him and seek a sentence that could be life without parole, despite his voluntary guilty plea to 10 lesser charges that carry a maximum total sentence of 20 years."
Friday Afternoon News Dump. Juliet Eilperin & Steven Mufson of the Washington Post: "The State Department released a draft environmental impact assessment of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline Friday, suggesting the project would have little impact on climate change. Canada's oil sands will be developed even if President Obama denies a permit to the pipeline connecting the region to Gulf Coast refineries, the analysis said. Such a move would also not alter U.S. oil consumption, the report added."
Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times: researchers from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum "have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler's reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945. The figure is so staggering that even fellow Holocaust scholars had to make sure they had heard it correctly when the lead researchers previewed their findings at an academic forum in late January at the German Historical Institute in Washington."
Right Wing World
Do Not Challenge "Washington's Reporter Emeritus." Kathleen Parker, one of the many conservative columnists for the Washington Post, is just as apoplectic about White House muscle as is Bob Woodward: "... the Obama administration has demonstrated its intolerance for dissent and its contempt for any who stray from the White House script.... But no president since Richard Nixon has demonstrated such overt contempt for the messenger."
News Ledes
AP: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has arrived in Egypt to press bickering Egyptian leaders and opposition politicians to forge a political consensus that will allow the country to emerge from economic crisis. Kerry meets Saturday with a number of opposition figures along with Egypt's foreign minister before seeing President Mohammed Morsi on Sunday. U.S. officials say Kerry is particularly concerned that Egypt takes the reforms necessary to qualify for a $4.5 billion IMF loan package."
Washington Post: "Bonnie Franklin, the spunky, ginger-haired stage performer who became best remembered as the independent-minded divorcee with two teenage daughters on the long-running sitcom 'One Day at a Time,' died March 1 at her home in Los Angeles. She was 69."
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Reader Comments (13)
Long time reader, first time poster. Love your work. But I have to take exception to this "one thing nobody ever mentions is the fact that the Village People are all financially comfortable." I see this mentioned quite often, driftglass for one - and really what more do you need?
Racer, if Driftglass were read nearly as widely as Brooks and Friedman, we wouldn't need to have this discussion. The lies the village elders tell each other about the economy are satisfying in the same way that those preceding the rush to war in Iraq were. The very serious people nod their heads and worry about 2050 while not retaining any accountability for the fibs they told ins 2005.
@Jack: My thoughts exactly.
Yesterday Marie mentioned Joan Dideon apropos of her essay on Woodward some years back, and how her writing resembles Henry James which I think accurate. If we had a scenario where someone kills their loved one in small poisonous increments James would take most of the novel to unravel method and means down to the intricacies of the poison itself, unlike say Raymond Carver who would tell the tale in four pages flat. I appreciate both kinds of styles and have been a follower of Dideon for decades, but I must agree with Marie that her piece on Woodward begs for a good weeding; by the time you get to the end you have to ask yourself what exactly was she saying. There was a piece she did for TNYRB about a decade ago about how Christianity affects the political system in this country that I thought brilliant. I grieve for her and her losses of both husband and daughter; her frame, always thin, now looks emaciated. I miss her voice.
On Ryan Lizza's article in the New Yorker which I finished last night: It is crystal clear that the House is not only divided, but pretty damn well dysfunctional. Lizza points out the Tea Party members whose heads seem to be stuck in sticky stuff and refuse to even negotiate. There were twelve Republicans who did not vote for Boehner––a historically high vote of no confidence.I love the fact that when these twelve, coined the Keystone Coup, got together to plot their takedown they met at BULLFINGERS––a Capitol hill bar frequented by congressional staffers," some of whom overheard the details and leaked them to Bloomberg Businessweek."
I was also amused by the fact that Cantor lied about a meeting he said he had with Boehner pretending he and John hold hands and are on the same page. He appears to be the reason that the deal that Boehner made with Obama fell through. But Cantor brags that he's the kind of fella that knows how to "get along" because by gum he's living with two Jewish women–-wife and her mother–-and if you can manage that, you can manage anything. Good lord!
PD: Read the Cantor piece in the New Yorker last night, too.
Am a bit ashamed to say my reaction to it was far more small-minded. along the lines of:
"Wouldn't want to cause a rift in the Cantor household where all seems so Father Knows Bestish, so let's keep these whispers within the confines of the Reality Chex faithful, but am thinking the real question is how two LIBERAL (or so reported) women could live with him! Seems meeting that insufferably smug soulless politico half way would be an abyss too wide to bridge for any but the oblivious. Makes me wonder about them! Just sayin'."
P.S. It's Didion––no "e" but then I see I seem to misspell a lot these days––is it the eyes or merely the haste? How about, Phyllis, fess up to the fact that you are a lousy speller, I say to myself branding a great big smile.
Tim Noah in the New Republic acknowledges Jonathan Chait's premise that Republicans don't really care about tax reform and gives us four facts to back that up. He ends with this:
"Inescapable conclusion: The GOP is not interested at all in tax reform, and it's only mildly interested in deficit reduction. It is mainly interested in tax reduction. All you need to do is look at the history of the past thirty-two years. The GOP has intermittently been interested in lowering the deficit whenever a Democrat was in the White House, but it has always been interested in lowering taxes. It has never not wanted to lower taxes. That's how they got so low!
The sequester can't be stopped because John Boehner thinks taxes are too high. But as we have seen, America's real problem is that taxes are too low. Historically low tax receipts go a long way toward explaining why the federal government is so broke right now. The Republicans' refusal to acknowledge this is pretty much the whole problem."
The world we live in now, I believe, has gone beyond an exaggeration of itself. Reading/watching the news fatigues me to the point of numbness so that I can ingest only so much each day. Realty Check is the first source I check every morning and, if the gods allow, the last source each evening. I hoard my energy for sources that do not deplete me (Rachael, for example).
Sometime, though, a news piece magnifies exaggeration. Today, this headline in Advertising Age caught my eye: “Rich Ladies Need $200-An-Hour Nanny Whisperer to Talk to The Help, Says NYT” with the subhead of: “Congratulations, Sunday Styles Section, You're Our Troll of the Month!”
The article’s author, Simon Dumenco, was motivated after reading an article by his colleague Ken Wheaton, (which is linked in the article):
“Ken's column inspired me to keep an eye out for masterly trolling -- with the intention of naming a Troll of the Month at the close of each month as a sort of catharsis. And... we have a winner. And... damn it, it's The New York Times again. Honestly, I didn't plan this. But a Times piece titled “Smoothing the Frictions Between Parent and Nanny” simply has no equal. A Sunday Styles section piece that appeared in print on Feb. 24 (linked in his article), it tells the tale of a Los Angeles psychologist, Lindsay Heller, who calls herself the Nanny Doctor -- though I prefer to think of her as the Nanny Whisperer. Dr. Heller, the Times reported, has carved out a niche for herself by serving as ‘a consultant for an age of anxious parenting, acting as a mediator of sorts for parent and caretaker, at a rate of $200 an hour.’”
Several years ago, I would be outraged and, now I feel both pity and indifference. sigh.
Here is Dumenco’s article: http://adage.com/article/the-media-guy/rich-rich-problems-nyt/240076/?utm_source=daily_email&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=adage
Have to shake my head at Americans. All this liberal brouhaha over the possible end of the Voting Rights Act! So what? You only use it to rap the knuckles of counties or cities, the tiniest of political subdivisions, for disenfranchising the dark complected citizenry. Meanwhile its perfectly acceptable to disenfranchise on a statewide basis. Just call it gerrymandering.
@Mushiba: But what if the nanny whisperers don't succeed? Could there be a niche for nanny whisperer whisperers in the offing? Anyone interested?
@ PDPepe: I also believe Noah and Chait have it right. Strip away the verbiage and keep lowering taxes is the fundamental mantra. But would recommend a look at Michael Hudson's "The Financial War Against the Economy At Large"(http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/12/31/the-financial-war-against-the-economy-at-large) for a view of the other half of the package deal they're pursing: in short, starve it, THEN sell off the carcass, thereby moving ever more wealth away from common citizens into the hands of the few, the same people pundits like Brooks and Will may be--I'd like to think, for the alternative is simply "evil"-- too naive to realize they represent.
@Ken, love your question ~ thanks for the lighthearted touch.
Re: Scalia (Scalawag).
Cynthia Tucker has it right: http://www.nationalmemo.com/debate-over-voting-rights-act-shows-resentment-still-exists/
Scalia showed what a bigot he is. He's following the tradition of Roger Taney ( Dred Scott decision). I'm with Marie. If he got on the bus, I'd get off.
For a supposed "intellectual" He makes Huh? statements. He stated that Mississippi had registered more blacks than almost any other state. That might be true, but the case before the court is about Shelby County, which is in Alabama. Bush vs. Gore showed what twisted reasoning he uses.
How do we go about impeaching him? When I was a kid, "Impeach Earl Warren" billboards put up by the Birchers were all over the West.
Its clear most people who have 5 or more brain cells that the repetitive chorus of deficit, deficit, deficit has put the economy in quicksand. Its equally obvious that reason and logic are not even in the Congressional room anymore. The feral children (to steal from Pierce) are running naked through the halls flinging shit and waving their grubby little fingers in our faces while the monied hand out candy bars nonstop. The feral children are not especially cognizant nor do they care about shit blowback.
Like Obama observed in his presser, he hasn't mastered the Jedi mind meld. Anyway, doesn't there have to be an available mind for melding? The only avenue to accomplishment is public pressure. As Obama observed, elections in 20 months. That’s tenuous given the interest span of the public and a long way off. If Obama acknowledges any error in his approach it would just expose another flank for attack. I'm afraid it wouldn't gain anything but to make some of us feel vindicated. I believe he is well aware of what is correct as much as he is aware of what little is achievable. Nothing is gained in a straightforward, reasonable manner. Everything has to be a persistent indirect hard fought long game and unholy as it is, terrible tragedy, provides a small opening.
Ingrained bias against people of color, especially Obama, and disdain for the democratic process will soon be given a full throated endorsement by the Court. The Court will nullify the role of Congress and 5 of them will declare themselves the most reverent and infallible in all things. There won’t be a Congressional outcry because crazy and ignorant is ordinary. The Devil has not had to move from his easy chair at the Crossroads for many years. I bet you have to take a number now.
Is anyone else having a hard time with George W. Shrub's feet naked in a bathtub...?