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The Commentariat -- May 23
Today, the 44th President of the United States comes home.
-- Teoiseach Enda Kenny
President Obama's speaks in Ireland:
... Here's the full text of his remarks, from the White House.
I've added an Open Thread for today on Off Times Square. Karen Garcia & I posted our comments on Ross Douthat's column.
No predictor of the future — not even Orwell — has ever been as right as Chayefsky was when he wrote ‘Network.’ ... If you put it in your DVD player today you’ll feel like it was written last week. The commoditization of the news and the devaluing of truth are just a part of our way of life now. You wish Chayefsky could come back to life long enough to write ‘The Internet.’ -- Aaron Sorkin ...
... Dave Itzkoff of the New York Times examines Paddy Chayefsky's notes for his screenplay "Network." ...
...Gabriel Sherman of New York Magazine profiles Fox "News" chief Roger Ailes. "The circus Roger Ailes created at Fox News made his network $900 million last year. But it may have lost him something more important: the next election." The wacko Republican "leaders" in Ailes' employ are, well, wackos, and Ailes knows it. Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link. ...
... Digby properly couples the Itzkoff & Sherman articles. ...
... As If Feeling Poor Roger's Pain -- Jeff Zeleny & Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times: "The announcement Sunday by Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana that he would not run for the Republican presidential nomination ended one major chapter of uncertainty in the race but ignited new debate over whether the current field contains a candidate capable of beating President Obama next year." ...
... Meanwhile, Jason Zengerle of New York Magazine writes a companion piece for the Ailes profile: a profile of David Brock, former conservative media whiz kid who now heads up Media Matters -- the Anti-Fox -- and three liberal PACs.
Officer X in Time looks like an interesting blogger to follow. He is a gay, still-closeted (within the military only) officer who is following the procedure of ending Don't Ask, Don't Tell. This is an insider's look at how the post-DADT world of the military is evolving. Here's Officer X's first post.
Eric Dash of the New York Times: "The nation’s biggest banks and mortgage lenders have steadily amassed real estate empires, acquiring a glut of foreclosed homes that threatens to deepen the housing slump and create a further drag on the economic recovery."
Steve Coll of the New Yorker on "The Syrian Problem": "American policy toward Syria presents mainly a record of failure.... The Obama Administration should press hard ... to hold Syria’s regime accountable. Syria’s future is pivotal to the future of the region, and the country requires credible leadership. The time for hopeful bargaining with Assad has passed."
Tim Mak & Tessa Berenson of the Frum Forum: "After Obama’s address to the AIPAC policy conference Sunday, attendees generally thought the president left the building with more friends than when he walked in." CW: Mak & Berenson betray a misunderstanding of Obama's Middle East speech on Thursday, but so do 3/4ths of the pundit class, so who's surprised? ...
... The Atlantic's Israel advocate -- conserative Jeffrey Goldberg -- liked Obama's AIPAC speech, too, and he's still troubled by Bibi Netanyahu's scolding of President Obama: "... it is still off-putting for many Americans to watch their president being lectured by a foreign leader in his own house.... The Prime Minister desperately needs President Obama to defend Israel in the United Nations, and even more crucially, to confront Iran's nuclear program...; angering him constantly doesn't seem to be an effective way to marshal the President's support." ...
... Rick Hertzberg on the whole charade: "... a chess game ... has been going on for more than a month, beginning when Netanyahu’s office arranged for the House Republicans to invite Bibi to the Capitol to address Congress. This outrageous (some might say) collusion between the right-wing parties of the United States and Israel was designed to box in the President by having Bibi set the stage for the next round of Israel/Palestine/U.S. diplomacy by using the pomp of a joint session to seize control of the agenda. CW: I've got news for all the wingers -- Israel is a foreign country with its own interests -- interests that do not always coincide with our own; you don't support it the way you do Kansas, not that Kansas ever gets the kind of support Israel does. ...
... Glenn Greenwald on the same: "It is ironic indeed that the same GOP members who will stand and cheer wildly for this foreign leader in conflict with their own country's President are typically the first to scream 'unpatriotic!' accusations at others." This is an update to Greenwald's post; the whole column is worth reading.
Raffi Khatchadourian of the New Yorker on "Manning, Assange & the Espionage Act": "As simple as Manning’s indictment appears to be, the legal case against Assange, if there even is one, is murky, with potentially lasting and harmful repercussions to civil liberties in this country."
Sen. John Tester (D-Mont.): "Before politicians in Washington try to cut spending by breaking the promises made to our seniors, we ought to be looking at ways to cut the number of unnecessary Cold War-era installations overseas while keeping our armed forces the strongest in the world." Thanks to Jeanne B.
The Democratic National Committee whacks T-Paw, who last week said he had no idea why he was running for president:
... Pawlenty figures out some reasons to run, but he doesn't know why he might be better than Mitt Romney:
Right Wing World *
Andy Borowitz: "In what some fundamentalist preachers are calling a 'partial Rapture,' all credible candidates for the 2012 Republican nomination have mysteriously vanished from Earth."
Karen Garcia: "Confronted by David Gregory over poll results that show 80 percent of Americans don't want Medicare touched, [Paul] Ryan replied that he doesn't listen to polls. 'Leaders are elected to lead and are supposed to change the polls because that's what the country wants,' he said. Ryan was essentially making the outrageous claim that once politicians are elected, they no longer need listen to the will of the people.... Moreover, it is Ryan's job to change what people only imagine they are thinking." Of course Gregory didn't bother to follow up. ...
... Here's Gregory's "Press the Meat" interview of Ryan:
... Meanwhile, over on "Fox 'News' Sunday," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell chokes on Paul Ryan's Medicare plan. After serious haruumphing, McConnell refuses to say he'll support the Ryan plan, which he claims will "empower" seniors:
... BUT Republican Sen. Scott Brown (Massachusetts) pens a Politico op-ed in which he says he will not vote for the Ryan plan: "I fear that as health inflation rises, the cost of private plans will outgrow the government premium support — and the elderly will be forced to pay ever higher deductibles and co-pays. He goes on to blame Democrats for cutting Medicare Advantage & other stuff (tho he says this is no time for finger-pointing), but still concludes with a Democratic talking point: "I do not think it requires us to change Medicare as we know it." Funny, Brown doesn't see the Ryan plan as "empowering seniors," Mitch.
Paul Krugman's column today is kind of a bore which I didn't previously link, but this blogpost is a winner:
... the hermetic nature of movement conservatism — its loyalty tests, its closed intellectual world where you get all your alleged facts from Fox News and the Heritage Foundation, the 'wingnut welfare' that ensures that defeated politicians always have a cushy job waiting at a think tank somewhere, always made it vulnerable to this kind of spin into policy craziness. The Bush debacle undermined the control once exercised by the establishment, which tried to keep up the appearance of reasonableness; and now people like Pawlenty and Romney need to sound crazy even if they (possibly) aren’t. The 2010 election may, in retrospect, turn out to have been a disaster for the GOP: it empowered the extremists, leading them to believe that they could go the whole way...." ...
... Michael Grunwald of Time: "The most important political story of the Obama era has been the Republican Party’s growing defiance of reality — its denial of climate science, its denunciations of Medicare cuts while proposing Medicare cuts, its denunciations of debt while proposing debt-exploding tax cuts, its resistance to financial regulation in the wake of a financial meltdown, and so on."
This is fun. Newt says he and his wife "are very frugal people," um, who just happened to owe Tiffany's half a million dollars. Bob Schieffer calls the bill "bizarre":
* Where facts never intrude.
News Ledes
Fox "News" has details of the Sofitel housemaid's account of her rape by Dominique Strauss-Kahn. They are horrifying.
AP: "New tests have found that the DNA of the former International Monetary Fund leader [Dominique Strauss Kahn] matches material found on the shirt of a hotel maid who says he attacked her."
Des Moines Register: "Minnesota Republican Tim Pawlenty made his presidential bid official this morning in a speech in Des Moines with sharp criticism of the current president and a call for less spending, saying 'there are no longer any sacred programs.'”
New York Times: "Conditions in California’s overcrowded prisons are so bad that they violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, the ruled on Monday, ordering the state to reduce its prison population by more than 30,000 inmates. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority in a 5-to-4 decision that broke along ideological lines, described a prison system that failed to deliver minimal care to prisoners with serious medical and mental health problems and produced 'needless suffering and death.' Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel A. Alito Jr. filed vigorous dissents. Justice Scalia called the order affirmed by the majority 'perhaps the most radical injunction issued by a court in our nation’s history.' Justice Alito said 'the majority is gambling with the safety of the people of California.'” Washington Post story here.
NBC News: "Volcanic ash blowing toward Europe caused a change of travel plans for President Barack Obama and spurred one airline to cancel most of its flights."
President & Mrs. Obama are in Ireland today.
AP: "A massive tornado that tore through the southwest Missouri city of Joplin, Missouri, killed at least 89 people, but authorities warned that the death toll could climb Monday as search and rescuers continued their work at sunrise." New York Times story here -- story has been updated. NBC News has more here, including photos of the devastation. Earlier MSNBC report above. ...
New York Times: "The Syrian government is cracking down on protesters’ use of social media and the Internet to promote their rebellion just three months after allowing citizens to have open access to and , according to Syrian activists and digital privacy experts."
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