The Commentariat -- October 10

Oops, I forgot, till a friend reminded me that today is Columbus Day.

Christopher Columbus Meets Some Native Americans. Or, as another friend writes, "Happy Anniversary of the Day Columbus First Spread Syphilis to the Arawaks."... So here's to Saint Brendan, an Irish monk who -- with his crew -- may have been the first Europeans to travel west to North America in the 6th century C.E.:

Also known as Brandan and Borodon, Brendan was born about 484 A.D. near Tralee in County Kerry. He ... sailed around northwest Europe spreading the Christian faith and founding monasteries — the largest at Clonfert, County Galway.... He died at the age of 93 and he was buried at the monastery in 577 A.D.

Brendan and his brothers figure prominently in Brendan's Voyage, a tale of monks travelling the high seas of the Atlantic, evangelizing to the islands, and possibly reaching the Americas in the 6th century. At one point they stop on a small island, celebrate Easter Mass, light a fire -- and then discover the island is an enormous whale!

Maps of Columbus’ time often included an island called St. Brendan’s Isle that was placed in the western Atlantic ocean. Map makers of the time had no idea of its exact position.... It was mentioned in a Latin text dating from the ninth century called Navigatio Santi Brendani Abatis (Voyage of Saint Brendan the Abbot). It described the voyage as having taken place in the sixth century.... It was an important part of folklore in medieval Europe and may have influenced Columbus.

     ... As the linked account details, Brendan's claims may not be as far-fetched as they at first seem.

The government is going broke, and who can trust the stock market? There’s not much left to rely on.... [President Obama is] the greatest disappointment of my life — and I’ve been divorced twice.... I'm 67. -- Brenda Barnes, an Occupy Wall Street protester from Santa Monica, California

... This Just in. Alexander Burns of Politico: "Long-shot presidential candidate Buddy Roemer will take his support for Occupy Wall Street to the next level Tuesday when he joins a demonstration in New York. Roemer has been the lone Republican to praise Occupy Wall Street as an expression of public anger against what he calls a 'government ... controlled by special interest money.'" ...

... Jesse LaGreca of Occupy Wall Street & Daily Kos appears on ABC News' "This Week." Luckily, we have Peggy Noonan to tell the kids what to do & George Will to sneer:

... Paul Krugman on the One Percenters' reactions to the 99 Percenters: "... wealthy Americans who benefit hugely from a system rigged in their favor react with hysteria to anyone who points out just how rigged the system is.... So who’s really being un-American here? Not the protesters, who are simply trying to get their voices heard. No, the real extremists here are America’s oligarchs, who want to suppress any criticism of the sources of their wealth." ...

... Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) in Nation of Change: "... the country's six largest financial institutions (Bank of America, CitiGroup, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs) now have amassed assets equal to more than 60% of our gross domestic product.... We should break up the giant financial institutions.... Wall Street reform also must address the powerful and secretive Federal Reserve.... Under emergency provisions already in law, the Fed has the authority to provide low-interest loans to small businesses that are starving for capital so that they can create the millions of jobs our economy needs. It should do so. The Fed also has authority to make credit card issuers stop bilking consumers with sky-high fees and interest rates of 30% or more." ...

... Bernie Becker of The Hill: "Both [Herman] Cain and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich ... blamed the [Occupy Wall Street] protests on 'class warfare' fomented by Obama." With video, if you can stand to watch two old farts telling lies. ...

... Blue Texan of Firedoglake: "One of the best byproducts of the Occupy Wall Street protests is that they’ve made Republicans show their true colors. America is watching as they cast off the faux right-wing populism of the Teabaggers — which was always a pose — and unabashedly embrace the monied oligarchy." ...

... Charlie Grapski of Firedoglake: immediately after wire services published stories of a scuffle and pepper-spray incident that ultimately led to a shutdown of Washington, D.C.'s National Air & Space Museum, Patrick Howley, an assistant editor of the right-wing American Spectator admitted boasted "that he had consciously infiltrated the group on Friday with the intent to discredit the movement." Howley describes the actual protesters as "lack[ing] the nerve to confront authority. From estimates within the protest, only ten people were pepper-sprayed, and as far as I could tell I was the only one who got inside.” As Grapski writes,

As a result of Howley’s activities a large number of people were subjected to pepper-spray attacks including journalists and tourists who had nothing to do with the protest. Given the negative light that the press is attempting to spin this incident with regard to the ongoing occupations, from Wall Street and D.C. and now spreading to Main Streets across the country, the presence and admitted activities of this self-proclaimed agent provacateur should be brought to the attention of federal law enforcement officials. ...

      ... Ali Gharib of Think Progress: "The American Spectator scrubbed the original piece [by Howley] and reposted it with the words 'in order to mock and undermine in the pages of The American Spectator' removed from a sentence where Howley described why he 'had infiltrated [the protests] the day before.'” ...

     ... Here's Suzy Khimm's lede in the Washington Post: "A conservative journalist has admitted to infiltrating the group of protesters who clashed with security at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum on Saturday — and he openly claims to have instigated the events that prompted the museum to close." ...

     ... Hey, It's What They Do. Phoenix Woman of Firedoglake: "According to a 2010 report from the National Lawyers Guild that examined [the Battle for Seattle in 1999, the RNC protests of 2008, and the G-20 protests of 2009], most if not all of the violence therein was committed by either the cops or people working against or otherwise hostile to the goals of the protesters."

Robert Pear of the New York Times: "In a grim sign of the enduring nature of the economic slump, household income declined more in the two years after the recession ended than it did during the recession itself, new research has found."

Bill Keller has a fine essay on the Tea Party and their most likely standard-bearer, Rick Perry. Here's a sample, but read the whole column:

Perry brings to the campaign, besides great posture and polished good looks, an economic record that looks like a vindication of Tea Party dogma, never mind that it was made possible by a quarter of America’s known oil reserves, a lot of low-wage immigrants, a reluctance to waste government money on frills like education and health care, and a tax and regulatory environment out of the Wild West....

To this Perry adds a damn-the-pointy-heads denialism — global warming is a hoax, evolution is just “a theory that’s out there” — as well as a wink to the evangelicals, a nod to the executioner, and an ardent defense of personal liberties for those who are heterosexual and don’t need an abortion. He may not believe in evolution, but his survival-of-the-fittest view of society is pretty Darwinian.

New York Times Editors: "It has been a record year for new legislation designed to make it harder for Democrats to vote — 19 laws and two executive actions in 14 states dominated by Republicans, according to a new study by the Brennan Center for Justice. As a result, more than five million eligible voters will have a harder time participating in the 2012 election. Of course the Republicans passing these laws never acknowledge their real purpose, which is to turn away from the polls people who are more likely to vote Democratic, particularly the young, the poor, the elderly and minorities.

William Broad & Scott Shane of the New York Times: "A decade after wisps of anthrax sent through the mail killed 5 people, sickened 17 others and terrorized the nation, biologists and chemists still disagree on whether federal investigators got the right man and whether the F.B.I.’s long inquiry brushed aside important clues.... The new paper raises the prospect — for the first time in a serious scientific forum — that the Army biodefense expert identified by the F.B.I. as the perpetrator, Bruce E. Ivins, had help in obtaining his germ weapons or conceivably was innocent of the crime.... Dr. Ivins, an Army anthrax specialist who worked at Fort Detrick, Md...., killed himself in 2008 as prosecutors prepared to charge him."

Kevin Soh & Aileen Wang of Reuters: "China's local governments have piled up a mountain of bad debt, some of it to finance bridges to nowhere and other white elephant projects, which now threatens to constrict growth at a time when the global economy is sputtering. It is adding to other systemic risks in China, including a sharp downturn in the property market and a rapid rise in problematic loans." ...

... David Barboza of the New York Times: "Under an economic system that favors state-run banks and companies over wage earners, the government keeps the interest rate on savings accounts so artificially low that it cannot keep pace with China’s rising inflation.... Economists say this nation’s decade of remarkable economic growth ... has to a great extent been underwritten by the household savings — not the spending — of the country’s 1.3 billion people. This system, which some experts refer to as state capitalism, depends on the transfer of wealth from Chinese households to state-run banks, government-backed corporations and the affluent few who are well enough connected to benefit from the arrangement. Meanwhile, striving middle-class families ... are unable to enjoy the full fruits of China’s economic miracle." Hmm. Why does this sound so familiar?

CW: I have no way to verify this figure, & one should bear in mind that during these Republican Administrations, Democrats often controlled Congress, which holds the purse strings even if the president signs the checks. Thanks to Doug R. for the link:

Right Wing World

Politics of the Absurd. David Catanese of Politico: "Fifteen minutes was not long enough to satisfy Joe 'The Plumber's' appetite for political glory. Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher has now filed for Congress to run in Ohio's 9th District.... 'The Plumber' could benefit from a Democratic primary face-off between [Rep. Marcy] Kaptur, [the Democrat who currently holds the seat,] and Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who may end up running against each other because of the loss of two congressional seats in Ohio following redistricting."

The Plutocrats Divide? Ken Vogel of Politico: "Karl Rove’s team and the Koch brothers’ operatives quietly coordinated millions of dollars in political spending in 2010, but that alliance, which has flown largely under the radar, is showing signs of fraying. And with each network planning to dwarf its 2010 effort, Republicans worry that the emerging rivalry between the two deepest-pocketed camps in the conservative movement could undercut their party’s chances of taking the Senate and White House in 2012."

As if to hammer down Krugman's point (see link above), E. J. Dionne writes that when Democratic senatorial candidate Elizabeth Warren made "a proper case for liberalism," Dionne's WashPo colleague & leading conservative pundit George Will went into full attack mode. Devoting a whole column to Warren's thesis that "there is nobody in this country who got rich on his own," Will "demonstrates his debating skills by first accusing Warren of being 'a pyromaniac in a field of straw men,' and then by conceding the one and only point that Warren actually made.... On the core point about the social contract, George Will and Elizabeth Warren are in full, if awkward, agreement."

Captain of the Clueless Club. CW: one of the many reasons I never cite Robert Samuelson, the Washington Post economics op-ed columnist, even when he might be correct about something: here he defends the rich against unfair attacks by people who "resent and envy" them.

Lindsey Boerma of CBS News: "Rep. Ron Paul scored a decisive victory Saturday in a mock presidential election at the Values Voter Summit, trouncing fellow Texan, Gov. Rick Perry, but an organizer of the straw poll suggested ballot-stuffing may have skewed the results.... The victory for the longtime congressman and three-time presidential contender over his Republican rivals in the presidential contest was ... surprising because Paul's principled libertarianism sometimes puts him at odds with the views of social conservatives on issues such as gay marriage and drug laws." CW: somehow I don't think this means Values Voters are suddenly in favor of free & fair elections. See New York Times editorial linked above.

Rick Perry attacks RomneyCare:

News Ledes

Wall Street Journal: "Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Monday that he’ll allow the Wall Street protesters to stay indefinitely, provided they abide by the law, marking his strongest statement to date on the city’s willingness to let demonstrators occupy a park in Lower Manhattan."

New York Times: "Thomas J. Sargent and Christopher A. Sims, two Americans, won the Nobel economics prize on Monday “for their empirical research on cause and effect in the macroeconomy,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said."

AP: "Clashes over the weekend between Syrian soldiers and army defectors and a shooting at a funeral have killed at least 17 members of the military and 14 civilians, the latest sign of the militarization of the uprising against President Bashar Assad's regime, a human rights group said Monday."

Washington Post: "The trial of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the al-Qaeda suspect who allegedly tried to bring down a Northwest Airlines plane with a bomb hidden in his underwear in December 2009, will open Tuesday in Detroit amid some uncertainty about whether the Nigerian, who is representing himself, will offer a vigorous defense or attempt to use the courtroom as a political stage."