;)
The Commentariat -- Oct. 29, 2012
CW: For those of you in or near the path of the storms, heed the warnings & stay safe. On the West Coast of Florida, I'm nowhere near the epicenter of Sandy, yet the wind has been blowing strongly & non-stop for at least four days.
... Patrick McGeehan of the New York Times: "In coping with Hurricane Sandy, New York metropolitan area utilities will be mindful that many in the region were left without electricity for a week or more after Tropical Storm Irene." CW: that would include Dave S. (not sure if he lives in New York) and me. I was without water & power for 5+ days at my Upstate New York cottage. ...
... Alan Boyle, the science editor of NBC News, explains the factors that made Sandy a superstorm.
Presidential Race
My column for the New York Times eXaminer is on the lead op-ed in Sunday's New York Times, a piece by Frederick Harris claiming that "the Obama presidency has already marked the decline ... of a political vision centered on challenging racial inequality." I guess picking on professors is my new thing.
Michael Shear & Mark Landler of the New York Times: "President Obama on Monday morning abandoned political campaigning in the face of the huge storm barreling down on the East Coast, canceling an event in Florida and quickly heading back to Washington to coordinate emergency response from the White House."
Scott Keyes of Think Progress: "The federal government's ability to respond to natural disasters, like Hurricane Sandy currently bearing down on the East Coast, would be significantly hindered under a Romney-Ryan administration. At least three times, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have publicly demanded that the federal government only disburse disaster relief funding if Congress agreed to offsetting budget cuts elsewhere. This would hold desperately-needed disaster relief funding hostage unless Congress agreed to cuts elsewhere in the budget, an extraordinarily difficult prospect even in normal circumstances." ...
... Ryan Grim of Huffington Post: "During a CNN debate at the height of the GOP primary, Mitt Romney was asked, in the context of the Joplin disaster and FEMA's cash crunch, whether the agency should be shuttered so that states can individually take over responsibility for disaster response. 'Absolutely,' he said. 'Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that's the right direction. And if you can go even further, and send it back to the private sector, that's even better.'" With video. CW: so next hurricane or tornado, we can all write checks to Disasters R Us & Survival Suppliers, Inc. & hope they save us. Say your neighbor's tree fell across the road & he won't pay up, so you can't get to your house. Too bad. At some point, "the market" will work things out. Ain't capitalism grand? ...
"The War on Objectivity." Paul Krugman: "... the right -- and ... we're talking about mainstream commentators and publications -- has been screaming 'bias'! They know, just know, that Nate [Silver] must be cooking the books. How do they know this? Well, his results look good for Obama, so it must be a cheat. Never mind the fact that Nate tells us all exactly how he does it, and that he hasn't changed the formula at all.... This is really scary. It means that if these people triumph, science -- or any kind of scholarship -- will become impossible. Everything must pass a political test; if it isn't what the right wants to hear, the messenger is subjected to a smear campaign." ...
... NEW. The latest from unreliable weasel Nate Silver: "The conventional wisdom about this year's presidential race is that it has broken out of stasis to become wildly unpredictable. And yet, after a period of polling turmoil following President Obama's convention in Charlotte, N.C., and Mitt Romney's sharp rebound after the first presidential debate in Denver, the polling in most swing states now looks very similar to the way it did for much of the late spring and summer." CW: thanks, Nate! ...
... NEW. ALSO from Silver: "Hurricane Sandy is just too large a storm to make reliable guesses about where the vote might be depressed. And academic studies on the effects of natural disasters upon elections produce somewhat ambiguous results." ...
... NEW. BUT Adam Serwer has some intelligent thoughts and data on weather effects on elections.
In his column, Krugman writes, "If [Romney] wins, Medicaid -- which now covers more than 50 million Americans, and which President Obama would expand further as part of his health reform -- will face savage cuts. Estimates suggest that a Romney victory would deny health insurance to about 45 million people who would have coverage if he lost, with two-thirds of that difference due to the assault on Medicaid."
Best Romney ad ever. Stephen Webster of Raw Story has the raw story:
Jeremy Peters, et al., of the New York Times: "Despite repeated warnings from President Obama and his party that a flood of unrestricted donations from conservatives to outside groups would swamp them, the White House and its allies are at least holding their own. Over the last month, the pro-Obama forces have run more ads and, more critically, have reached audiences in roughly the same numbers as Mitt Romney and the group of well-financed conservative super PACs working to elect him."
NEW. Matt Viser of the Boston Globe highlights some of the dramatic shifts in Romney's stated policy preferences.
** Penn Bullock of The New Republic on on Stuart Stevens, the unscrupulous thug who runs Romney's campaign. Romney boasts about Stevens' resume'.
Jesse Drucker of Bloomberg News discovers another tax dodge Romney uses which allows him "to take advantage of the exempt status of charities without actually giving away much money.... In 1997, Congress cracked down on" this popular tax shelter, but those who had already established them -- like Romney -- are allowed by the 1997 law to retain them. And he does.
Where's Willard? Bill Carter of the New York Times: President Obama has appeared on a number of late night and other talk shows, but Mitt Romney's campaign has refused to book the GOP candidate. Romney said Dave Letterman "hates me." "Since then Mr. Letterman has waged an on-camera campaign to get Mr. Romney onto his visitors' couch, at one point even telling his viewers not to vote for the Republican unless he turned up. He hasn't."
Pat Garofalo of Think Progress: "President Obama is far and away the best president for corporate profits since 1900." In addition, "... real GDP growth per capita is far higher under Obama than it was under either Bush administration."
Episode 1,397,426 of "Our Deplorable Mainstream Media." With extras Rachel Maddow & E. J. Dionne. In this fingernails-on-blackboard segment, David Gregory invites Carly Fiorina to appear on his gag-inducing show "Press the Meat" so he and his buddy David Brooks can look downright reasonable:
... Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic on Romney's "Desperate, Deceptive Gambit" in Ohio. ...
... Sam Stein of the Huffington Post analyzes Romney's totally misleading auto bailout ad.
Charles Pierce does just an excellent job of taking down the Des Moines Register's devil-may-care endorsement of the bullshitter guy, then goes on to eviscerate the Sunday morning talkshow crowd -- even tho this is not really necessary to do because this is a gang that is exceptionally adept at self-parody.
Our Well-Informed Electorate. Andrew Kirell of Mediaite: "According to a new Associated Press survey, more Americans believe President Barack Obama is Jewish than believe that the president is a Muslim; while a plurality of the surveyed individuals believe he has 'no religion.'"
You'll notice [President Obama] has canceling his trips over the hurricane. He did not cancel his trips over Benghazi. -- Newt Gingrich
Dear Newt: Shut the hell up. On September 20, 1984, there was a truck-bomb explosion at the U.S. embassy annex in Aukar, Lebanon, just outside Beirut. Twenty-four people were killed.... On September 21, 1984 [Ronald Reagan] made three campaign appearances in Iowa -- at an airport rally, a farm, and a church picnic -- despite the fact that a Des Moines Register poll showed him leading Walter Mondale in the state by 23 points.-- Steve M. of No More Mister Nice Blog
Expect an Election as Disastrous as the Storms. Peter Baker of the New York Times: "Early voting, which Mr. Obama has counted on to bolster his chances of a second term, will most likely grind to a halt in some places along the Eastern Seaboard, while power failures could last much of the week.... Virginia, among the most tightly contested states, may be among the most affected.... On Election Day, the winner may not be known right away; results in one or more states may be close enough to merit recounts. In Ohio, which could decide the election, so many provisional ballots may be cast -- and by law are not counted right away -- that it may be mid-November before a winner is declared." ...
... Susan Saulny of the New York Times: "Across Florida, black churches have responded with ferocity to changes that Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, and the Legislature made to eliminate six days of early voting this year -- including the Sunday before Election Day, which had been the traditional day to mobilize black congregations. In 2008, black voters cast early ballots at twice the rate of white voters, and turned out in significant strength on the Sunday before Election Day to help propel Mr. Obama to victory here.... Obama supporters are counting on a newly energized black base to put them over the edge despite the tighter window for early voting."
Other Stuff
Thomas Edsall has an interesting piece in the New York Times which highlights how the once-authoritarian, hierarchical Republican party is losing control to a few extremist billionaires.
Geraldo tells "Fox & Friends" to STFU on Libya conspiracy theories. Of course then he gets it wrong about Ambassador Susan Rice. That's Geraldo. What a bunch of losers. Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link:
New York Times Editors: "In 2010, a group now called American Tradition Partnership brought a lawsuit against Montana, seeking to throw out the state's anticorruption law.... In June, the Supreme Court's conservative majority obliged and handed the group a big victory by blocking the state law. Now a report by ProPublica shows that this group, which supports development of natural resources, apparently misled the Internal Revenue Service when it applied for and received tax-exempt status as a 501(c)(4) 'social welfare' group. It said it would not try to influence elections for public office, yet it has done so repeatedly."
News Ledes
NBC News: "A search was under way Monday for two crew members of the stricken ship HMS Bounty, which sank off the coast of North Carolina, the U.S. Coast Guard said. Earlier Monday, two Coast Guard helicopters rescued 14 people from life rafts after they were forced to abandon ship.... It is unclear why the boat set out to sea with Sandy bearing down." The ship was built in 1962 for the film "Mutiny on the Bounty" & has been used in several films since.
President Obama spoke from the White House's Brady Press Room re: storm preparation:
New York Times: "Hurricane Sandy grew stronger before dawn on Monday as it churned northward through the Atlantic Ocean en route to what forecasters agreed would be a devastating landfall, possibly within 100 miles of New York City. At 5 am, the huge storm was producing sustained winds of 85 miles an hour after turning due north, according to the National Hurricane Center. It was expected to veer again to the northwest later Monday morning and take dead aim at the coastline of New Jersey." ...
... The New York Times has live updates for the New York area here. The Weather Channel has links to city-by-city impact forecasts here. Sandy is predicted to hit land at Southern New Jersey, but the effects will be greatest north of there. ...
... Not surprisingly, the Weather Channel seems to be overloaded this morning, & I got a lot of linkage errors. The New York Times has state-by-state updates here. The Times has more live updates here. ...
... New York Times: "All United States stock and options markets will close on Monday as Hurricane Sandy approaches, as Wall Street braces for the storm to barrel through the heart of the country's financial center." ...
... Update: the Washington Post now has a liveblog of the storms. ...
... Update: Daily Kos publishes this list of links to sites livestreaming Sandy coverage.
Share Article
Reader Comments (18)
Speaking as one directly in the crosshair of Sandy...it is a scary storm. The eye is predicted to pass over my house sometime late Monday night into early Tuesday morning. I've been monitoring it closely and so far the predictions aren't wildly worse than anything we've seen here..however I will say it is among the worst. And the pressure at the center is very low and expected to get lower. Still from what I've seen the danger is more from flooding than wind damage, much like we experienced from Irene last year. That storm caused widespread flood damage. Not sure which is worse wind or water.
My expectations with this storm are much the same as Irene but worse. I fear NE will again experience severe flooding and parts NYC may be underwater before its over. The last report I heard was for 8-11 foot storm surge in LI sound.
I'm prepared for (I hope) for a power outage..but I'm sure it won't be worse than what we went through here after the June 2 Derecho (for which we had no warning, and spent 5 days w/o power). Still I wish the best for all in the path of this storm. And I hope my friend who has decided to ride it out on an Ocean County barrier island has made a fortuitous choice.
Mitt Zomney! http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6TiXUF9xbTo#!
I hope all of my RealityChex chums on the East Coast (and inland) are safe and will not suffer undo damage from Hurricane Sandy! Less known is that here on the Left Coast we have--so far--had 5 tsunami advisories, based on 5 earthquakes! One in Alaska, 3 in British Columbia and one in CA in the last 24 hours. So far, there have just been advisories--not warnings--but that is as scary out here as a hurricane advisory is on the East Coast.
Fortunately, Obama is on top of things, and has cancelled campaign appearances in order to "be in charge." Go Barry! And, guess what, this would be a good time to talk about climate change (don't have to use that foul term, "Global Warming"). How could all of this severe climate unrest in almost the entire country be anything else? With so many scared and affected people, they might be more receptive to seeing what is happening as something other than same old, same old weather patterns. Or not. I am not hopeful about our blithely ignorant citizenry!
Anyway, all of you--stay safe!
Just gentle rain here in the Northwest but the deluge of misinformation, a primary weapon in the media's war on objectivity, continues. Here my son's comment on a recent Washington Post so-called fact check. I provide it because it's another fine example, better than many, of how untrustworthy even those who purport to check facts, in fact, are.
Source: My family doctor son who was kind enough to forward to me a copy of what he sent to the Post.
"My comment on this fact check. By the time you get this, I'm sure the comment will be buried in the usual vituperative cavalcade of the WA post comments section:
Obama’s ‘Tonight Show’ remark: Planned Parenthood provides mammograms
Rated as "3 pinnochios" by the WA Post.
"I hate to actually offer up a fact here to the fact checker, but I work with low-income patients in a clinic (not Planned Parenthood) and I suspect that Planned Parenthood, like my clinic, provides a great deal of its well-woman care through the National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program (http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/nbccedp/), which is a program that covers the cost of cervical and breast cancer screening for women without insurance (which, by the way, saves lives). When a patient comes to my clinic, she is enrolled in the program, and if a mammogram is indicated, I order the mammogram by filling out the order, then my staff completes the referral and the woman gets the mammogram (at the radiologist's office, which is not where I work). When the results comes back, we discuss them with the patient and provide for proper treatment and follow-up. Did I provide the mammogram? Not directly, no. Did my clinic provide access to the mammogram? Yes. If I didn't order the mammogram, would the patient get the mammogram? No, not unless she went to Planned Parenthood, or another provider in the NBCCEDP. So, is my role an important part of women getting mammograms? Yes, it certainly is. Can a woman walk up to a radiologist and get a mammogram? No, because the value of well-woman exam and cervical cancer screening at the primary care provider (myself or Planned Parenthood), and the subsequent referral for a mammogram, is part of what the NBCCEDP pays for. Parsing words, as this fact checker does, over the 'providing' of mammograms in this system demonstrates a deep ignorance of how this portion of medical care actually works. I was trying to think of how to rate this 'fact check. I don't think Pinnochios reflect ignorance well enough to used here, maybe 'dodos" would be better. I'd give it 2 dodos for ignorance and add 2 more for representing the blind ignorance of the beltway insider, for a full score of 4 dodos."
Clearly, the dynamic of "fact checking," the urge or mission to catch out equally each side of an argument or political debate so as to seem unbiased has often little to do with the facts.
Ken: your son is a terrific writer; he laid out the problem with the f act check and his analysis beautifully. I bet he's a fine doctor, too!
P.S. PP not providing mammograms is a right wing talking point which shows a gross ignorance of how the system works, as your son points out.
@Ken Winkes: Thanks. I couldn't readily find Josh Hicks' e-mail address, so I sent the body of your son's comment -- along with an explanation of how I came by it -- to the WashPo corrections desk. I doubt that will help, but it might.
It's bad enough when fact-checkers are inaccurate, but Hicks' "fact-check" could dissuade women from going to Planned Parenthood to get check-ups because they might think something like, "I'm 42, I'm on a tight budget, I should probably have a mammogram, but Planned Parenthood doesn't do mammograms." Hicks is practically giving medical advice without a license. I think his "fact-check" is a serious lapse that could have consequences.
Marie
Ken, I want your son for my doc! Take care of yourselves over there on the East Coast.
Charles Pierce at Esquire was in fine form today. May be the best descriptor of Lord SB yet....
"One party is insane and has forced its candidate to act like the lead act in a $50 donkey contortionist show in a Tijuana brothel. The other candidate is forced to point this out. So it's everybody's fault."
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/des-moines-register-endorses-romney-14210493#ixzz2AhMh8rM9
Kate, I heard about the earthquakes in your part of the world and the tsunami advisories. I think it is worth noting that since both political campaigns have refused to discuss climate change, that the Climate decided to say something.
Here in Connecticut we are in total shut down. The governor said in his last press conference that the last time we saw anything like this was NEVER.
I am sending positive thoughts to the Earth and to all of us who are affected by these dramatic indications of climate change.
Ken: I saw your son's comment on the WaPo site,, and it inspired me to ask the E.D. Of our local PP for her tale. Here is what she said:
"Not only do we fund mammograms, but many PPs actually have the travelling mammography units come to their health centers to provide that service. The “controversy” here is that the anti-abortion folks are involved and they are doing their spin to try to make it look like PP has nothing to do with a woman access a mammogram. If you listen again to what Obama said on the Tonight Show, he didn’t actually say you can get a mammogram at PP but “they rely on it (PP) for mammograms …” which is absolutely true. We provide the clinical breast exam, then refer and pay for the mammogram through a CDC project. We are also responsible for making sure the patient gets linked to additional care if her mammogram has any abnormality. "
Re: a decent response to decent people. If you have any friends or in-laws or out-of-laws that still cling to the idea that the Republican Party stands for something decent;(I do) Ask them if they believe that one's character is reflected in the company one keeps. And then show them the article about Romney's man Stuwart Stevens. Then ask them how on God's green earth they consider themselves decent. "You walk in pig shit and you are bound to get some on your shoes." quote from JJG's father.
JJG,
Quite so. More on the chronic insanity and criminality of the Modern GOP in a bit, but for now, with Sandy bearing down on the east coast, I'm wondering what forms of skullduggery (and assorted aforementioned criminality) might right-wing election officials call into play to take advantage of a natural disaster.
Does one believe that while people struggle against the forces of nature to (in some cases, no doubt) stay alive, that GOPers would use the cover of such human tragedy to try to game the upcoming election?
Fuck yeah! Does the Pope condone child rape?
What about power outages that last more than a week, or that could be fixed by election day, especially in Democratic districts, but aren't. Oops, we forgot! Sorry about that Democrat voters...
No doubt the political machinery on the right is going around like a demented washing machine with its spin set on "ludicrous speed" trying to figure out how to play the storm. On the surface, it will be touted as a Sign From God that he is not happy with a black Kenyan Muslim/Jew/No Religion guy (according to recent polls of the highly informed American Voter), but underneath, in the pus filled rat holes, the apparatchiks are already trying to see what they can do to add to whatever schemes are currently in place.
Creeps never sleep.
On NPR this am I heard a snippet from Lord SB on the campaign trail in Iowa. He suggested that people do whatever they could to assist storm victims, including the suggestion that they donate to the Red Cross for disaster relief. Haven't his supporters already donated to a disaster? Why doesn't he kick that off with a small donation of say... a couple million if he is so f-in concerned. The reporter also stated that Lord SB's campaign bus would be used to deliver emergency supplies to people in Virginia. Photo op! Photo op! Craven son-of-a-bitch.
He's making the John McCain move and suspending is campaign as "leaders" should be dealing with the crisis. Oh, then crack on buddy, the donkeys are waiting in Tijuana.
Ken, what a fine young man you raised and good for him for providing insight and truth on a contentious issue.
For all in harm's way, my heartfelt best wishes that you stay safe and the damage is minimal. I, like Akhilleus, believe this tragedy will be fully exploited for political gain and not in Democrat's best interests. Let's hope the better angels prevail.
This is a website my husband and I use to watch whatever wicked this way comes toward our home in Okinawa. Click on the storm you want to view and it will load the data. From that point, clicking on the different categories shows interesting views of the storm; and for those of you who like science-y stuff, you might enjoy it.
http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/#
@Akhilleus while it is too soon to tell how it will play out, i was thinking this mess could play for the Dems since there is much more likely to be power outages in the Republican burbs than the Democratic cities. And how will people be allowed to vote if they can't get to their homes to get the proper ID or if the local polling place is under water? We will see.
Comments made recently by Paul Krugman and Frank Rich concerning the extreme rightward lurch of the Republican Party have me thinking about an expedition that set out from England in 1845 to find the Northwest Passage.
Krugman and Rich depict a party that has lost its way, been completely taken over by strict, extremist, ideologues whose view of the world is so convoluted as to deprive not just themselves, but--should they truly gain complete power--all the rest of us, and a good portion of the rest of the world, of any realistic map of the world, or appreciation for reality, hence no way to provide serious answers to the most dangerous and important questions of our day.
As Rich points out, there is little hope that any sane (or objective) voice will arise from within the party, should Obama win, to point out the (many, many) errors that have brought them to this impasse. No one. When David Brooks passes for your sane person, you’re in up to your eyeballs already. But when you have the Roves and Kochs and the multitude of sick, stupid, imbecilic, shady, criminal, rat-fuck types that populate the party and much of its voter support, help will not be on the way any time soon. What we face is what happened to Lord Franklin.
In 1845, Franklin, with two ships, departed the Royal Navy docks at Greenhithe, in the south of England and headed for the Arctic Circle in Canadian waters. Within a short time their ships became locked in the ice. Both the food and water on board both ships created dementia in the captain, the officers, and the crew as lead poisoning set in. A purchasing agent for the Navy handed the provisioning contract to the lowest bidder who, in an effort to fill the order quickly, used heavy lead solder which seeped through all the canned food. A new water filtration system infused the drinking water with high contents of lead as well. As the months wore on, orders became erratic, clear, rational thought processes were impossible, and the men, deprived of any realistic idea of their straits or of how to deal with this desperate situation, set out to find help.
Instead of a stripped down party in need of moving quickly in the right direction, they loaded the sleds with things like heavy writing desks and unnecessary personal belongings. Then, they went in exactly the opposite direction from any help. Had there been a few men able to remain sane, they would have figured out that help and fresh provisions lay only a hundred miles or so away. Instead, they set off on a thousand mile journey the wrong way. They all died.
This is the Modern GOP. Insane people doing exactly the wrong things and going in the wrong way. Loaded down with ideological baggage (hatred of immigrants, arrogance on women’s rights, permanent slavery to the religious right and Wall Street oligarchs) that will never allow them to change course.
If they win, it won’t just be objectivity that is lost. We will be ruled by bug-eyed insane pig people, crazier than shit-house rats.
Chances of survival?
Don’t answer that. But hey, they wrote songs about Lord Franklin. Maybe they’ll write some about Lord Romney.
It doesn’t have to go that direction, but if I were a lifelong Republican (with a brain), I’d be seriously worried about the GOP poison passing as the lifeblood of the party.
No Northwest Passage, but maybe a passage up Karl Rove’s asshole, where everyone will asphyxiate. A worse death I couldn’t imagine.
I will never understand the attraction of political apparatchiks to political talk show hosts unless they really like people who are only able to parrot the party line and thus add nothing to the discussion. Maddow seems to throw David into a panic that she will destroy any right winger who can think. This sunday Fiorina.. the business world's raison d'etre for the glass ceiling... and the last time Rachel appeared her foil was one of those Republican human recorders that play the same old tune over and over and...
Pierce wrote a believable explanation for Des Moines to endorse Mitt but that explanation doesn't work for the other papers supporting him. In the comments section is an explanation that does cover all. Someone recommends watching Moyers instead of the Meet the Press types. I watched the show on which his guests were Katherine Jamieson and another media critic. During the show Moyers said that he thought that during the presidential debates Mitt showed he had moved to the center since the Republican debates and demonstrated his intelligence. God help us!! As though choosing Ryan as running mate was the bona fides of moderate Mitt! It must be something conservatives add to the water.
@Victoria D: Don't you realize that as surely as Pepsi leads to heroin so mammograms lead to abortion?
Marvin,
I considered that too, but then you have think of coastal states with Modern GOP governors. I can easily see Chris Christie declaring martial law in the cities (same in PA and VA) due to potential rioting and opportunistic looting by Blah people that will keep National Guard troops in city neighborhoods as a deterrent on election day. Really, these fucking people would shove yams up their grannies' asses for a single stolen vote.
Diane,
So silly. Mittens, he of the negligible testicular matter, doesn't give a 20 year old IPO brochure for the lives of people in the path of natural disaster (*sniff* no really important people, the Rat's 1% buddies need worry, they simply fire up the Gulfwing and zoom off to the house in Acapulco). His Royal Dickness has already declared that the guvmint should not help any (except the pants-pissingly wealthy) in the crosshairs of imminent disaster. Call your local Baptist or LDS church and they'll pray for your worthless heathen-ass soul. If you die, the Rat's mormon zombies will give you a retro baptism whether you want one or not.
Also, you need to be more respectful of His Royal Ratness. Mittens doesn't suck off just any equine species in Tijuana. He only blows dressage horses.
C'mon, willya?