;)
The Commentariat -- October 10, 2015
Internal links removed.
White House: "In this week's address, the President spoke to the merits of the high-standards trade agreement reached this past week. The Trans-Pacific Partnership helps level the playing field for American workers and businesses, so we can export more Made-in-America products all over the world, supporting higher-paying American jobs here at home":
Francis Wilkinson of Bloomberg: "The difference between the Ultras in the House and the mainstream Republicans they delight in humiliating isn't so much about tactics as democracy. The Ultras bulk up on the former -- holding their leadership hostage, pushing the party to hold the nation's credit hostage, or government funding hostage -- but they have little use for the latter.... the Ultras are not big on ... democracy.... Their influence is not confined to the House or even the Republican presidential primary. When Republican legislatures enact voting restrictions expressly designed to keep Democratic constituencies away from the polls, they are ... fighting democracy. And they're winning."
Paul Waldman: "The most important thing to understand about what's happening now [in the House] is that this is a permanent rebellion.... That's why it doesn't really matter much who actually ends up in the Speaker's chair." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Gail Collins weighs in on the "speaker chaos inferno." Although not her top pick, Collins does consider a former speaker: "But there are other options -- like Newt Gingrich! It turns out you don't have to actually be in Congress to be elected speaker of the House. And Newt said in a radio interview that if the Republicans came and begged for his leadership, it would be like 'when George Washington came out of retirement, because there are moments you can't avoid.' Coming soon: Gingrich Crossing the Delaware." ...
... David Herszenhorm & Carl Hulse of the New York Times: "The courtship of Representative Paul D. Ryan to be speaker of the House escalated on multiple fronts Friday, and Mr. Ryan, the powerful chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, signaled that he was headed home to Wisconsin to reconsider his repeatedly stated position that he does not want the job. Even that thin reed of possibility seemed to only further fuel the ardor of Republicans, many of whom emerged from a conference meeting on Friday morning saying they saw no one else with the potential to bring the fractured party back together." ...
... Katherine Krueger of TPM (11:36 am ET): "Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) told NBC News through a spokesperson Friday that despite Republicans calling for him to enter the race for Speaker of the House, he's still not interested." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Dana Bash, et al., of CNN (12:15 pm ET): "Rep. Paul Ryan is telling House Republicans privately he is considering running for speaker, several members say." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Paul Krugman: "As the Paul Ryan clamor gets louder, a public service reminder: he's a con man.... His reputation as a serious thinker is based on deception.... Ryan is to budget analysis as Carly Fiorina is to corporate leadership: he's brilliant at self-promotion, but there's no hint that he's actually able to do the job. There is, in particular, no example I know of where he's actually been right about anything involving budgets or economics, and some remarkable examples -- like his inflation screeds -- of being completely wrong, and learning nothing from the experience. So is this really the GOP can do? And the answer, sad to say, is that it probably is." ...
... If Speaker Ryan, All Will Be Rosy. Peter Schroeder of the Hill: "While top House Republicans are trying to push a reluctant Ryan into the job, on the grounds that he alone can unify the conference, conservative lawmakers gave a decidedly cool response Friday when asked if they want him to be their new leader." ...
... Scott Wong of the Hill: "House GOP lawmakers this week confronted Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) about rumors they worried could have hampered his bid for Speaker. At a closed-door meeting on Tuesday with Texas's GOP delegation, members pressed McCarthy for reassurances." Wong doesn't say what the rumors were, but we spelled it out yesterday. Wong adds some details re: circulation of the rumors. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Ed Kilgore on why one can't "reason" with Second Amendment aficionados: "... to a remarkable extent, the default position of conservatives has less and less to do with arguments about the efficacy of gun regulation or the need for guns to deter or respond to crime. Instead, it's based on the idea that the main purpose of the Second Amendment is to keep open the possibility of revolutionary violence against the U.S. government." ...
... Tim Egan urges the mothers of the nation to do something about gun violence because politicians won't. Really, Tim?
Daniel Marans of the Huffington Post: "Guns don't kill people -- media coverage of mass shootings kills people. That's according to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who on Friday cited a common argument against journalists printing the names and other identifying details of shooters. 'Why do we have what we consider copycats of tragedies? Well, a lot of it is because this is plastered all over the news and these mentally ill, these sick people see it,' Johnson said in an interview on WRDN, a Wisconsin radio station.... But rather than call for the media to restrain itself, Johnson went on to argue that there's really no way to reduce gun violence through public policy." Via Greg Sargent.
Let There Be Pollution. Timothy Cama of the Hill: "A federal court ruled Friday that President Obama's regulation to protect small waterways from pollution cannot be enforced nationwide. In a 2-1 ruling, the Cincinnati-based Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit delivered a stinging defeat to Obama's most ambitious effort to keep streams and wetlands clean, saying it looks likely that the rule, dubbed Waters of the United States, is illegal." Actually, the court imposed a temporary stay while they think about it.
Presidential Race
It's the Media's Fault. Jonathan Easley of the Hill: "... Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson admonished the Washington press corps Friday, calling the news media 'embarrassing' and 'insincere' and vowing to 'expose' the institutional bias he says runs rampant. Speaking at a gathering of reporters and communications professionals at the National Press Club in Washington, Carson lashed out at the press, citing several instances where he believes his views have been misrepresented." Also, too, because he's black. CW: That's right, Ben. You're not crazy. It's just that when the media quotes you verbatim, they make you sound crazy. Because they're biased. ...
After being pilloried in the press for not knowing what the debt limit means, Ole Doc Carson still doesn't know what the debt limit means. But he's against raising it. Jesse Byrnes of the Hill: "'It's the same crap every year. Why do we keep doing it?' Carson asked of the debt-limit showdown during an interview on MSNBC's 'Andrea Mitchell Reports.' 'If I was president we wouldn't be in this situation, OK, because long before we reached the deadline, I would have been saying we're not going to raise the debt number,' Carson said. 'I'm not going to sign anything that in any way increases our obligations.' Carson also penned a lengthy Facebook note late Thursday, saying a warning about the U.S. defaulting on its debt if the ceiling isn't raised is 'absurd Washington spin.'" Emphasis added. ...
... Here's part of Friendly Doc Ben's Facebook page where he "explains" the debt limit & "exposes" the media:
I was asked the other day if I would vote to raise the debt limit and I said No. Almost immediately, the leftwing media and the CNN pundits started losing their minds. I was called all kind of things but mainly they described how irresponsible I was for saying no more debt.
... CW: Raising the debt ceiling does not "increase our obligations" nor does it add "more debt." Rather, it provides the means to pay for obligations the Congress already incurred. Look at it this way, Ben: What you're saying is analogous to declaring that people need not pay their credit card debts, their mortgages, their medical bills, etc., if these payments kinda strain their bank balance. Or if they don't feel like it. Or something. Except if the U.S. government takes that 'tude, there could be world financial chaos, & the faith & credit of the U.S. dollar will definitely be kaput. You're an idiot. Now go ahead: "expose" me.
... P.S. Neurosurgeon or not, Ben Carson is not smart. I'm sure that between the time the "biased," mindless pundits exposed his ignorance of the debt ceiling, a staff member or a supporter tried to explain it to him in simple terms so he wouldn't embarrass himself again. It ain't brain surgery, but he still could not understand it. Yesterday, Kate M. speculated that Carson may be self-medicating. That seems a plausible explanation of his inability to comprehend fairly simple concepts. ...
... Nick Gass of Politico: "'Ben Carson has a right to his views on gun control, but the notion that Hitler's gun-control policy contributed to the Holocaust is historically inaccurate,' ADL national director Jonathan Greenblatt said.... 'The small number of personal firearms available to Germany's Jews in 1938 could in no way have stopped the totalitarian power of the Nazi German state.' Carson, speaking with George Stephanopoulos ABC's 'Good Morning America,' called the [Greenblatt] response 'total foolishness.'... 'There are many countries where that has occurred where they disarm the populous [sic.] before they impose their tyrannical rule,' he explained on MSNBC's 'Andrea Mitchell Reports.' 'That's not a rare situation and that's something that we don't want to ever even think about and that's one of the reasons that Daniel Webster said ... there will never be tyranny in the United States because the people are armed.'" (No link.) ...
... Steve Benen: "First, it was Noah Webster, not Daniel Webster. Second, Noah Webster was debating standing armies in the late 18th century, not consumers' access to deadly weapons in the 21st century. Third, plenty of countries have restricted consumer access to firearms without creating dictatorial dystopias. And finally, Carson really ought to scale back his frequent Nazi references. This is a subject he obviously knows very little about, and his frequent references to Hitler are both creepy and alarming." ...
... CW: Not fair, Steve. I believe Dr. Ben has been reading up on WWII, & he sees himself -- like Allied troops -- as a freeedom fighter against evil. Friday he kind of compared the trials of his presidential campaign to "our soldiers invading the beaches of Normandy [who] had seen their colleagues being cut down, a hundred bodies laying in the sand, a thousand bodies laying in the sand ... but they didn't turn back. They stepped over the bodies of their colleagues, knowing in many cases that they would never see their homeland or their loved ones again. And they stormed those Axis troops, and they took that beach, and they died." ...
... I think it would be a service to the nation if we all chipped in to buy Ole Doc a nice diorama & a bunch of toy soldiers so he can play with them instead of with real soldiers. Here's a nice starter kit ...
Pow! Pow! Ack-ack! Rat-a-tat-tat. Aaargh!
(BTW, if you missed it, D. C. Clark has a very nice remembrance of his meeting with John Wayne & Benjamin Vandevoort, an "old guy down the street." It applies here. [About 2/3rds of the way down the Comments section]).
... Even the WashPo's winger-blogger Jennifer Rubin has Ben Carson's number: "Donald Trump wants to round up 11 million people in two years for deportation. He approves of Russia’s incursion into Syria. He has a tax plan that adds at least $10 trillion to the debt. And with all that, he is not the most ignorant or unfit GOP presidential contender. That distinction goes to Ben Carson.... There is a Chauncey Gardner-like quality to Carson. He speaks softly, smiles a lot and lulls his audience into the belief he possess great insights and wisdom.... He is, however, entirely unfit for the presidency, seemingly oblivious to basic historical facts, constitutional concepts and world events."
After insulting Central Americans (anchor babies), Asians (the real anchor babies) & AfroAmericans (free stuff), Jeb! suddenly realized he had left out AmerIndians:
There was a big argument about the Washington Redskins, the 'Redskins' being a pejorative term. I think 'Washington' is the pejorative term, not the 'Redskins.' -- Jeb!
Jesse Byrnes of the Hill: The owner of the NFL team, Daniel Snyder, has stood firmly behind the Redskins name. He also donated $100,000 to the pro-Bush super-PAC Right to Rise earlier this year.
Beyond the Beltway
Alex Isenstadt of Politico: "A federal judge on Friday threw out four of five counts stemming from a campaign fraud case against Jesse Benton, a top political adviser to Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul. In August, Benton was indicted on charges of concealing payments to an Iowa state senator while working for Paul's father, Ron, during the 2012 presidential race. But John Jarvis, the chief judge for the southern district of Iowa, dismissed most of the charges against Benton, leaving one remaining count, alleging that Benton lied to federal investigators. Since his indictment, Benton has been on leave from America's Liberty PAC, a political action committee he helped to found that supports Rand Paul's presidential campaign."
Lori Aratani & Paul Duggan of the Washington Post: Washington "Metro will become the first U.S. subway system placed under direct federal supervision for safety lapses under a plan announced late Friday by Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx."
Greg Botelho & Sonia Moghe of CNN: "The family of the late Walter Scott and the city of North Charleston, South Carolina, have reached a $6.5 million settlement. The North Charleston City Council approved the settlement on Thursday night. Scott was fatally shot on April 4 by former North Charleston police officer Michael Slager after being pulled over, reportedly for a broken brake light, and later struck in the back as he was running away from police."
Charles Pierce on the shooting at Northern Arizona U. in Flagstaff: "So, the 'mental illness' dodge isn't going to work this time. This is an ordinary Thursday night campus brawl that escalated to homicide only because one of the participants had a gun which, I guarantee you, he did not have to work hard to obtain. Maybe we should look into why these things happen. No. Because we are free. One per week now. That's the American way." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
News Ledes
New York Times: "Two devastating explosions struck Saturday morning in the heart of Ankara, the Turkish capital, killing more than 80 people who had gathered for a peace rally and heightening tensions just three weeks before snap parliamentary elections. At least 86 people were killed and 186 were wounded, said the health minister...."
Washington Post: "Jerry S. Parr, the quick-thinking and fast-moving Secret Service agent who was credited with saving the life of President Ronald Reagan after the 1981 assassination attempt in Washington, died Oct. 9 at a hospice center near his home in Washington. He was 85."
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Reader Comments (15)
There's a condition I call The Phd's Disease. It's the delusion, common among people with advanced degrees, or highly specialized knowledge in a particular area, that they are experts on matters outside of their fields. I saw a lot of this in my career. Excellent scientists and engineers, promoted to managerial or administrative positions, often failed miserably. Those positions require entirely different knowledge and skill sets.
This even extended to the shop floor. When a section head position became available, it was usual to promote the most skilled machinist, thinking to reward his service. Thus the section lost the it's best machinist, and gained a section head neither competent nor happy in that position.
Another example would be to promote the most skilled surgeon to Hospital Administrator -- or some other executive position.
Last night watched what I hope is the last hearing on Planned Parenthood. I have watched a lot of hearings where "crazy" stuff goes on, but last night took the cake. It appeared that the Republicans in charge were many from the House Freedom Caucus (thems that are causing all this bellicose hyperbole in the House). At one point early on one of the Democrats called for a vote to ban the bogus video (cutting up of fetal tissue) because it was not part of Planned Parenthood. The chair refused––the democrat insisted and a vote was taken after a loooong period of stalling. Very few of the Republican members were present so the yays got it. Suddenly the doors opened and in walked a large group of Republicans that should have been there, but weren't, but now suddenly appeared. A new vote was taken: Nay won the floor. The rest of the hearing consisted of the right side of the isle going on and on about the sanctity of life, how millions of poor little babies are "killed" every day, etc; and the left counteracting with furious voices calling the hearing a crock and listing all the important items this committee should be taking up, but refuses to do so. The right even had one witness who had had four abortions (only one, her first, at Planned Parenthood) who went on and on about the evils of abortion, how it ruins lives, makes women suicidal and leaves their bodies deformed for life. It was great theater except it was real and smacked of a desperate attempt to try once again to put women back in the good old days without legal abortion available and contraception hard to get.
Today I got to thinking about the House Freedom Caucus–-wanted the names of the members (Wiki gives a listing) because it looks to me like the word "compromise" isn't part of their lexicon and without compromise there remains the gridlock we are witnessing. Below is a link to a Vox piece of the HFC that I found helpful in trying to understand these members.
http://www.vox.com/2015/10/9/9488835/house-freedom-caucus-explained
Ben Carson was on Charlie Rose last night and good ole Charlie leaned in close and said, "Tell me about who you are?" At the end of the segment Charlie looked perplexed and for good reason: Ben Carson doesn't want anyone to get to know how little he knows and he knows how to fudge it to fool his followers and confuse those who want to get his number.
I was curious as to why he would retire at such an early age so I dug around some and found evidence of quite a few law suits he's had to contend with and John Hopkins picking up the tab. All surgeons, especially brain surgeons have procedures going awry, but Carson seems to have had a whole lot of them. And last night he told Charlie John Hopkins wasn't democratic–-didn't play fair or something like that–-I wasn't sure what he was talking about.
Damn, I miss the pope. Since he's left, WaPo and/or the NYT are back to featuring Le Donald on the front page nearly every damn day. And its not even news -- just the sort of crap I associate with People magazine and supermarket tabloids.
DOUBLE U TEE EFF!!!??? over. Today's WaPo is especially egregious:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/inside-the-fabulous-world-of-donald-trump-where-money-is-no-problem/2015/10/09/e51ae0fc-6161-11e5-8e9e-dce8a2a2a679_story.html
It's my understanding that Le Donald has spent hardly a dime on advertising. Why would he? Any other candidate would kill (or at least expose themselves) for this kind of free exposure. But WaPo and the Gray Lady just keep shoveling it out ad nauseam. What in the name of sanity are they thinking?
@D.C.Clark: Like you, I've had first-hand experience dealing with people with Ph.D. disease. But I get how they caught it. Most, when they were in K-12 school & undergraduate school got very good grades in all subjects, even tho they may have struggled in some classes & breezed through others. They know their strengths & interests, but they have personal experience being at the head of their classes in areas outside the field of expertise they later chose.
For all I know, Ben Carson got an "A" in high-school biology AND in 9th-grade civics class. Ergo, in his mind, he's good at government stuff, too: "'And as someone who has performed brain surgery thousands of times, I can assure you that the Constitution isn't brain surgery,' Carson writes on his website."
(Besides telegraphing his naivete about the complexity of Constitutional interpretation, he just insulted every U.S. judge, Constitutional scholar & not a few lawyers. And the rest of us, too. Donald Trump often tells people, "I'm a very smart guy." Carson implies he's not just smart; he's smarter than you are, even if you're a recognized expert at something, like Constitutional law or economics.)
As for raising employees to their level of incompetence, I hope that's less of a management practice today than it has been in the past. I was impressed with IBM -- 30 years ago -- when I learned their promotion & compensation practices were much different from that. They did not promote their top software analyst to manage the other analysts; they brought in someone, almost always from outside the group, to manage all the analysts at a particular location. That manager, BTW, probably did not earn as much as the top analysts s/he managed because the analysts' billable hours was where the money was. She got the job not because she was a great software guru but because she presumably knew how to get the most out of the gurus who reported to her. I hope most companies use that method today.
Marie
@PD Pepe: I just don't think, based on the information available, that you can tell whether or not Carson had an excessive number of "dissatisfied customers," or if it's even fair to judge his expertise if he did. According to a Guardian report from earlier this year, since Johns Hopkins insures all of its doctors, oftentimes the doctors themselves are not named in malpractice suits. Carson was personally named in a few suits, but particularly since he performed an extraordinary number of surgeries in peak years, the number of suits against him is not surprising. My guess is that he was quite a good doctor. But he definitely does have that doctor=god problem.
I watched a clip of the Charlie Rose show, where he explained why his job required years of training but politics does not. His "logic" was nonsensical. And here again, he fails to appreciate the complexity of politics. Eventually, I think even Carson's fan are going to get sick of his telling them "I can do anything better than you."
Marie
@Marie. Given the make-up of the GOP faithful, I think Carson's downfall may be as much related to his race as his arrogance.
I'm reminded of Ross Perot's knee jerk response to most questions of governance: "It's simple."
Anyone who says governing the wealthiest, most powerful nation the world has ever known, populated by 320 million diverse and contentious individuals, in a world filled with strife, is simple; is either a damn fool, a damn liar, a damn charlatan, or some combination of all three.
Yet at one point, Perot led the polls with 40% and in the end got 19% of the popular vote in the general election. We can only hope that history repeats itself re Doc Ben or Le Donald. (Especially the winner being named Clinton.)
I'm a bit befuddled by Ryan turning down the Speakership. It's as close as he'll get to the Presidency. Is he waiting for a guarantee from the psychopath wingers? He can't be thinking of challenging Johnson for the Senate seat what with Feingold in the picture. Way too risky. I'm betting he's waiting for confirmation that he'll sail to victory as the Speaker. He was clearly burnt by his VP defeat.
@Marie and @ D.C. Clark: Amen to your take on the complexity of governing a nation as large and diverse as the United States. Recognition of that complexity is to me one important sign of a flourishing democracy.
Because of the fortunes of war, I happen to live in a small, flourishing democracy with roughly two percent of the population of the United States. The complexity here reaches all the way down to small local communities.
The root causes of this healthy complexity seem to me to be to the free educational system Bernie Sanders recently praised, flourishing locally owned local newspapers and publicly subsidized, advertisement free, local television stations.
All this comes at a hefty price, as the income and sales tax rates
are exceptionally high. But most residents, including me, are satisfied that we are getting value for our investment via those taxes.
I've got an outrageous idea - maybe most will call it an outrageously offensive idea. Here goes:
I think I know a good way to stand a chance of passing some gun control laws. Pictures. Pictures of dead victims taken at the crime scene. And yes, I mean Sandy Hook. Most certainly Sandy Hook. I think we'd have new gun control laws in a NY minute.
Nothing else will do it. Today I heard (an admittedly crazy) woman say the two campus shootings this week and Sandy Hook were hoaxes.
We're screwed without some radical tactic.
Hope I haven't made anyone sick.
Haley,
It's worth noting that prime time TV coverage of Americans wounded and dying in Vietnam is widely considered to have turned public opinion against that war.
There would probably be some legal issues with your suggestion, though -- to do with the victims, survivors, their families, and even the accused rights to privacy.
DC: thanks for the sickening update on Tramp/Trump: nowhere does it say in that article that all that stuff is a tax deductible business expense. Every time his stuff is mentioned, the tax deductible tag should along for full disclosure.
DC
I hadn't thought of the Vietnam parallel, but of course you're right. I know permissions must be sought, but there may be some parents who are so offended by their child's cruel death and America's seeming indifference that something could be released. I can't figure that out but what else will stop this craziness?
Another inventive strategy to combat the gun nuts... With dildos. Maybe not going to sway the public, but I like the initiative nonetheless. Absurdity abounds.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/10/11/3711527/cocks-not-glocks-university-of-texas-students-plan-provocative-protest-of-new-campus-carry-law/
Thanks Safari,
Kinda gives a new dimension to an old chestnut:
"Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?" ~ Mae West