;)
The Commentariat -- Sept. 22, 2014
Photo removed.
Lisa Foderaro of the New York Times: "Climates marches were held across the globe on Sunday, from Paris to Papua New Guinea, and with world leaders gathering at the United Nations on Tuesday for a climate summit meeting, marchers said the timing was right for the populist message in support of limits on carbon emissions." ...
... Andy Borowitz: "A climate-change march that organizers claim was the largest on record is nevertheless unlikely to change the minds of idiots, a survey of America’s idiots reveals." CW: Unfortunately, too many of those idiots are in Congress. See, for instance, Emily Atkin's story linked in yesterday's Commentariat. ...
... Justin Gillis of the New York Times: "Global emissions of greenhouse gases jumped 2.3 percent in 2013 to record levels, scientists reported Sunday, in the latest indication that the world remains far off track in its efforts to control global warming. The emissions growth last year was a bit slower than the average growth rate of 2.5 percent over the past decade, and much of the dip was caused by an economic slowdown in China, which is the world’s single largest source of emissions." ...
... John Schwartz of the New York Times: "The [Rockefeller] family whose legendary wealth flowed from Standard Oil is planning to announce on Monday that its $860 million philanthropic organization, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, is joining the divestment movement that began a couple years ago on college campuses. The announcement, timed to precede Tuesday’s opening of the United Nations climate change summit meeting in New York City, is part of a broader and accelerating initiative. In recent years, 180 institutions ... as well as hundreds of wealthy individual investors have pledged to sell assets tied to fossil fuel companies from their portfolios and to invest in cleaner alternatives."
Eric Schmitt & Somini Sengupta of the New York Times: " will preside this week over an unusual meeting of the United Nations Security Council poised to adopt a binding resolution that would compel all countries to put in place domestic laws to prosecute those who travel abroad to join terrorist organizations and those who help them, including by raising funds. The resolution, proposed by the United States, would for the first time establish international standards for nations to prevent and suppress the recruiting of their citizens by terrorist organizations, and to bar the entry and transit across their territory of suspected foreign terrorists."
Dexter Filkins of the New Yorker: "Obama has spoken carefully in public, but it is plain that the Administration wants the Kurds to do two potentially incompatible things. The first is to serve as a crucial ally in the campaign to destroy ISIS.... The second is to resist seceding from the Iraqi state. Around Washington, the understanding is clear: if the long-sought country of Kurdistan becomes real, America’s twelve-year project of nation building in Iraq will be sundered.... But the Kurds’ history with the state of Iraq is one of persistent enmity and bloodshed, and they see little benefit in joining up with their old antagonists.”
Paul Waldman: The media have overblown the supposed rift between Obama & the brass over strategy to control ISIS. (CW: Pretty much what I suggested last week.) "... the fact that some in the military don’t agree with the President on strategy is not only a feature of pretty much every military conflict, it’s also an inevitable outgrowth of the American system. When we established civilian control over the military, the purpose wasn’t to make generals happy. Some of them will grumble sometimes, and that’s fine. But we shouldn’t make more out of those disagreements than they warrant."
Scott Wong of the Hill: "The U.S. is not teaming up with Iran in the fight against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorists, U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power said Sunday. 'Well, let me stress that we are not coordinating military operations or sharing intelligence with Iran,' Power said on CBS’s 'Face the Nation,' pointing out that Iran’s backing of Hezbollah and Syrian President Basar al-Assad’s regime has been 'very destructive.'” ...
... Jaime Fuller of the Washington Post has a very good overview of who-all said what-all on the Sunday shows. With video clips.
Here's a clip from Scott Pelley's interview of Leon Panetta where Panetta says, "President Obama should have done what I said." (Paraphrase.) This page has what appears to be the full transcript of the interview, as aired.
Jerry Markon, et al., of the Washington Post: "An exodus of top-level officials from the Department of Homeland Security is undercutting its ability to stay ahead of a range of emerging threats, including potential terrorist and cyber attacks, according to interviews with current and former officials. Over the past four years, employees have left DHS at a rate nearly twice as fast as the federal government overall, and the trend is accelerating, according to a review of a federal database. The departures are a result of what employees widely describe as a dysfunctional work environment, abysmal morale and the lure of private security companies...."
William Broad & David Sanger of the New York Times: The U.S. has launched a "wave of atomic revitalization that includes plans for a new generation of weapon carriers. A recent federal study put the collective price tag, over the next three decades, at up to a trillion dollars. This expansion comes under a president who campaigned for 'a nuclear-free world' and made disarmament a main goal of American defense policy." CW: I expect the administration spoonfed this story to the Times in response to Putin's remarks last week about Russia's ability to crush former Soviet Union countries.
Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: "The is considering screening tourists and other visitors at checkpoints before they enter the public areas in front of the White House in response to the episode Friday in which a man with a knife managed to get through the front door of the president’s home after jumping over the fence on Pennsylvania Avenue.... As part of the screening, the Secret Service would establish several checkpoints a few blocks from the White House...."
In his column today, Paul Krugman expands on a blogpost on jobs linked here Saturday. "... the blame-the-victim crowd has gotten everything it wanted: Benefits, especially for the long-term unemployed, have been slashed or eliminated. So now we have rants against the bums on welfare when they aren’t bums — they never were — and there’s no welfare.... Strange to say, this outbreak of anti-compassionate conservatism hasn’t produced a job surge.... The right lives in its own intellectual universe, aware of neither the reality of unemployment nor what life is like for the jobless." ...
... Ed Kilgore: "... this ought to be a subject at least occasionally mentioned by Democratic politicians, too. A higher minimum wage isn’t of much use to people who cannot find work."
Tami Abdollah & Eric Tucker of the AP: "A Pentagon program that distributes military surplus gear to local law enforcement allows even departments that the Justice Department has censured for civil rights violations to apply for and get lethal weaponry.... The Pentagon, which provides the free surplus military equipment, says its consultation with the Justice Department will be looked at as the government reviews how to prevent high-powered weaponry from flowing to the untrustworthy." ...
CW: Apparently St. Louis-area police think the problem in Ferguson was just a little public relations problem. Dylan Stableford of Yahoo! News: "The St. Louis Police Academy [is] ... offering a new fall course that teaches 'tactics, skills and techniques that will help you WIN WITH THE MEDIA!' According to the Oct. 24 program's description, the 'highly entertaining' class will cover lessons learned from both Ferguson and Newtown."
Not a Parody. ESPN: "One of the chief arguments that Ray Rice will make in the appeal of his indefinite suspension is that the NFL extended his punishment on the basis of an edited videotape...." ...
... Carolyn Bankoff of New York: "TMZ responded to this news by calling Rice's supposed claim 'the dumbest defense ever.' ... TMZ has always been upfront about the fact that it smoothed out the surveillance camera footage of the couple's violent argument, and the unaltered tape was put online on the same day as the better-quality one. While the raw video is jerky and blurrier than TMZ's version, it still clearly shows Rice beating Palmer."
... CW: Within professional football culture, Rice's argument makes a lot of sense. Goodell claimed the NFL gave Rice a two-game suspension because they had no idea -- based on videotape showing Palmer walking into the elevator, then Rice dragging an unconscious Palmer out of said elevator, AND on Rice's confession he had KOed his wife -- that Rice had commited an aggressive, violent, criminal act. So a grainy, jerky surveillance cam video of the actual knockout punch would probably garner, say, another one-game suspension, not the banishment engendered by TMZ's slightly less grainy, jerky edit. Rice is playing Goodell's see-no-evil game, with heavy reliance on the popular NFL blame-somebody-else play.
Carl Hulse of the New York Times: The U.S. senator who squeezed Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand & told her he liked his "girls chubby” was "the late Daniel K. Inouye, Democrat of Hawaii, the decorated veteran and civil rights hero, according to people with knowledge of the incident.... In an all but forgotten chapter of his career, the senator had been accused of sexual misconduct: In 1992, his hairdresser said that Mr. Inouye had forced her to have sex with him. Her accusations exploded into a campaign issue that year, and one Hawaii state senator announced that she had heard from nine other women who said they had been sexually harassed by Mr. Inouye....” (CW: The Gillibrand story is way down the page.) ...
... Just below the Gillibrand item, some good news for progressives: Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.), the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told Hulse that he didn't have the votes to move Michael Boggs -- President Obama's nominee for a U.S. District Court in Georgia -- out of committee & said Boggs should withdraw. As Jennifer Bendery of the Huffington Post writes, "Boggs ... has been under attack all year from progressive groups and Democratic lawmakers over his socially conservative track record as a former Georgia state legislator. Among other things, he voted to ban same-sex marriage, to keep the Confederate insignia on the Georgia flag and to require doctors to post online their personal information and the annual number of abortions they performed." Obama nominated Boggs as part of a deal with Georgia's GOP senators.
Rachel Bade has a long piece in Politico about former IRS offical Lois Lerner. Lerner -- in company of her lawyer-husband & two other lawyers -- agreed to a Politico interview. If Lerner was hoping for a sympathetic write-up, she must be disappointed. It's not a hit job, but Bade assemble d enough hoo-hah for a reader to be left with the impression that Lerner didn't know her job & didn't play well with others.
Andrew Gelman of the Washington Post responds to Matt Bai's NYT Magazine assertion that before the Donna Rice expose', Gary Hart "was close to a lock for the nomination — and likely the presidency — as any challenger of the modern era." Gelman writes, "This is just wrong. Whoever won the Democratic nomination was highly unlikely to win the presidency." Gelman goes on to explain that the "fundamentals" were not there for Democrats in 1988, no matter who the nominee. So everybody can quit being all sad about what-might-have-been. Because it wasn't gonna be.
... CW Note: Bai is an excellent prose writer. But his work tends to be "impressionistic," & he loves the "large narrative." I've caught him in some wild, unsupported assertions before. (Can't remember what.) In this case, by making the Hart episode into The Downfall of a President-in-Waiting, Bai aggrandizes what was a National Enquirer-type story. (In fact, it was the Enquirer that published the "Monkey Business" photo -- after Hart had left the race.) In his book on the same topic, out last week, Bai turns the Hart incident into a "grand narrative" about the "tragedy" of "the politics of personal destruction." The best writers are not necessarily the most reliable. (Worth mentioning, I guess: George H.W. Bush, who of course became president, reportedly had had a decades-long affair with his personal assistant.) ...
... CW: What most surprised me about Bai's story (also linked in yesterday's Commentariat) was that -- contrary to what most of us who were around then remember -- Miami Herald reporters did not go after Hart because he had challenged the media to "Follow me around." The paper's reporters had been on the Donna Rice story for weeks before E. J. Dionne's story with the famous quote appeared in the WashPo. The first Herald story on Hart's personal life appeared the same day the Post published Dionne's story.
Annals of "Journalism," Alaska Edition.
And as for this job, well, not that I have a choice but, fuck it, I quit. -- Charlo Greene, former KTVA reporter, on-air
Laurel Andrews of the Alaska Dispatch News: At the end of a report on the Alaska Cannabis Club, KTVA reporter Charlo Greene announced, "I, the actual owner of the Alaska Cannabis Club, will be dedicating all of my energy toward fighting for freedom and fairness, which begins with legalizing marijuana here in Alaska. And as for this job, well, not that I have a choice but, fuck it, I quit.
Mid-term Elections
Elections Matter -- Your True Horror Story for Today. Dave Weigel describes how Republicans will run the Senate if they take control. CW: Hope Weigel e-mails a copy to Chuck Todd, who suggested to President Obama that a GOP-controlled Senate wouldn't make much difference since Obama could just, ya know, veto everything.
Philip Rucker & Reid Wilson of the Washington Post: "In a midterm election year in which the political climate and map of battleground states clearly favors Republicans, many GOP candidates are nevertheless embracing some Democratic priorities in an effort to win over skeptical voters."
Rachel Maddow in the Washington Post: "This year, in two marquee races already, and eventually perhaps in three or even four, Democrats and independents have decided to stop fighting each other and instead start pulling on the same side of the tug-of-war in an effort to unseat incumbent Republicans."
E. J. Dionne: "..a [Senate] election that once looked to be a Republican slam dunk has even Karl Rove worried, because many voters seem to want to do more with their ballots than just slap the president in the face."
Ed Kilgore provides a good lesson to red-state Democrats on why "defensive voting" on hot-button issues is useless. Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) "has actually been a conspicuously reliable vote against any sort of gun regulation." Still, his oppoent Dan Sullivan is running an ad (embedded in Kilgore's post) that hits Begich "since he voted to confirm 'anti-gun' Supreme Court nominees Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. And even if he hadn’t voted for these Justices, he votes 'with Obama' all the time, and we all understand Obama wakes up each morning scheming to vitiate the Second Amendment so he will not have to worry about armed patriot resistance when he snatches away America’s birthright of freedom."
Forget All That! Juan Williams in the Hill: "Get ready for bombs bursting in air and this election’s October Surprise – President Obama’s air strikes to 'degrade and ultimately destroy' ISIS.... The president’s leadership role during this fight has the potential to pump up his public approval and that will benefit several Democrats locked in close senate races.... The Republican response to the ISIS threat has been to criticize the president for not immediately putting U.S. forces on the ground.... Polls show voters, both Republicans and Democrats, consider that a step too far.... The Republican House narrowly voted to give the President authority to train and equip Syrian rebels to fight ISIS in a ground war.... Are they trying to create a situation in which American soldiers are once again at war in the Middle East?"
Presidential Race
The Headline Says It All. Margaret Hartmann of New York: "Rick Perry Cites Joan Rivers’s Death to Defend Restrictive Texas Abortion Law." ...
... Elsewhere in Texas, Texans can't decide which man with Texas roots should be our next president. Among those Texans who can't decide: Jeb Bush's son George PeeWee Bush, who is running for state land commissioner, whatever that is. The good news for Jeb: PeeWee is ready to affirm that he loves the old man. Awwww. CW: My pick: None O.T. Above.
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Reader Comments (11)
Sorry, but I have to say it. FUCK LEON PANETTA! ("We have to start somewhere.") He is a Neo Con flack and has no clue about what he really is saying. How can he, or any of us, possibly know what is best for another country with values far different from our own? Jeebus, we cannot even take care of our own people. Who are we to talk or to decide for anybody else?
Yes, I am bitter. Sad that Obama is not strong enough to hold his own against the Neo Con onslaught. I think he is just burned out. How will this end? Badly, I am sure. Read Robert Parry on the foolishness of what we are likely to do:
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/25999-focus-blocking-a-realist-strategy-on-the-mideast
As you noted yesterday (I think), Marie, Kansas is suffering mightily because of the policies of its governor. Today the Capital Times, ever optimistic, wonders if Wisconsin will see the light and dump Scott Walker because of his rightwing agenda.
http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/writers/paul_fanlund/paul-fanlund-might-wisconsin-mimic-the-political-shift-in-kansas/article_0ef96b1d-01cd-58af-ad03-08c4b48e0a4a.html
Walker will be hard to defeat, though. He --or the Kochs et al--has built an extraordinary machine to support him: he regularly emails talkingpoints to the rightwing radio squawkers (and has a telephone hotline when he wants to call in), the courts are stacked with sympathetic judges, new laws make it easier for him to bring lawsuits in blood red Waukesha County rather than Dane County where the capital is seated, and they managed, incredibly, to institute voter ID rules 7 weeks before the election.
Thanks Marie for mentioning the biggest citizen march against the devastating effects of climate change, but as you said as well, it's unlikely to change the minds of America's idiots.
And Corporate Media America wants it that way.
Via MediaMatters, "Sunday news shows on NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN and Fox failed to cover the People's Climate March, a massive protest against climate change being held September 21 in New York City in conjunction with events in more than 150 countries worldwide."
The plutocrats buy the politicians to ensure their minority interests are served, and then Chinese firewall the mainstream media into collective amnesia when enormous popular will surges against their minority interests.
The fix is in.
But another example that, thanks to our global titans of industry, any change of course combatting climate change is very likely to be coming too little AND too late. Butttt good for them. They can all hire themselves some schmuck to manage the family fortune they've amassed and their grandkids can all live in fortified gated-communities while they play inside in their purified air with their mountains of toys and eat soylent green.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/09/21/sunday-news-shows-ignore-historic-climate-march/200839
Marie,
Thanks for the links and the clarification concerning Matt Bai's Gary Hart story.
It demonstrates, at least for me, that it can be a dangerous thing to rely solely on memory. We tend, over time, to conflate certain facts, overlook others, and blend elements together into a story that seems less chaotic, more ordered, more memorable, as it were. It's good to be reminded that life can be very messy; lots of loose ends and puzzle pieces that don't seem to belong to the picture we have in our heads, but with which we must deal if we hope realize a more authentic recounting.
I still take issue with the contention that Bush would have won no matter who the Demcratic candidate was. According the NY Times, as of July 26, 1988, Dukakis had a pretty significant lead over Bush. I realize that conventions provide candidates a good numbers bump, but 55 to 38 is a more than decent lead. Had Hart not been a knucklehead, I think it's not unreasonable to assume that he could have beaten Dukakis. That doesn't mean, necessarily, that he would have had that kind of a margin in late July, but it also doesn't mean that Bush was a lock.
I also stand by my assertion that egregiously arrogant of Hart to challenge reporters to come after him, given the fact that he most certainly did have something to hide, whether or not they had already gotten the goods on him.
The idea of a Big Narrative can be difficult to avoid when reconstructing history. We naturally seek elucidation of the elusive and a story to hang our historical hats on, something compelling that satisfies our craving for historical drama and the all important moral. Sometimes that Big Narrative is there, but sometimes it's much more complicated.
At home I have, still only partially read, a gigantic boulder of a book by Sean Willentz, "The Rise of American Democracy". It's well written and absurdly well researched, and it does include a sense of some kind of historical arc, but not the kind of facile Big Narrative you'd find in one of Bill O'Reilly's faux history books (it wasn't written with pablum caked hands, in other words). But the amount of detail is a constant reminder that history is not linear, not easy, and not easily dealt with.
So thanks for the corrective. Less reliance on memory and historic-esque-ness (Holy awkward neologism, Batman!) is the order of the day from now on.
So the Department of Homeland Security is hemorrhaging employees and influence?
Big surprise.
The DHS is a perfect example of a government agency cobbled together with spit and baling wire, by people who hate government and have no idea how to do much of anything within it, except maybe to start wars and enrich their buddies.
Bush tossed it together and probably believed, like magic, that it would work. I mean, he was the Decider, after all, right?
It was a joke then and it's not much better now. The idea of combining a number of agencies that perform often overlapping or parallel duties is a good one. But it's the kind of thing that has to take into account the histories, cultures, missions, and personalities involved and plan accordingly. You can't wave your Playskool wingnut wand and make it happen. It requires patience, intelligence, diligence, and perspicacity.
Anyone think those were stellar Bush Administration traits?
The Obama Administration hasn't fared much better, but, in fairness, they've been beset from day one with trying to clean up all of Bush's other messes and having to do it with one of two parties spitting on the floor as soon as the mop goes by.
The DHS may have done some good things behind the scenes. I don't really know. I remember Cheney routinely asserting that every day they stopped 3,567 terror plots. Before lunch. It seems unlikely though, from an agency most famous for its multicolored "Danger, Will Robinson" alert schemes, which were used by Bush and Cheney, apparently, whenever critics came too close to revealing them for the naked emperors they were.
Holy crap! It's a Burnt Sienna Alert day! Oh, shit, Wait. It's just been changed to Mango Tango Orange Alert!
Oh, mother. Pass the chloroform.
http://www.salon.com/2014/09/21/the_politics_of_pretending_are_killing_us_why_we_cant_ignore_the_truth_any_longer_partner/
Re: climate change. Rebecca Solnit writing in Tom Dispatch about why it may be too late. If not too late, very late.
A depressing read.
Barbarossa,
Something even more depressing?
Picture climate denial avatar, Jim "Clear Cut" Inhofe, if the senate falls into the hands of the brigands, beginning an accelerated extirpation of all--that's right--ALL EPA rules. He has stated that this is his goal. He is determined that all pollution controls, all environmental protection, be torn out of the books. His plan is to use the Congressional Review Act to expedite the process of environmental rape and pillage beloved by the GOP dogs and their corporate leash holders.
There is a glimmer of hope here because the troglodytes using the CRA can do whatever they want, but for their malicious intent to become law, changes to regulations must be signed by the president, or must be passed over any presidential veto by a two-thirds vote in both houses.
Still, it doesn't change the fact that the intent, and the fervent hope and desire of many aligned with the forces of destruction and defilement, is to do exactly as Inhofe and his mad dogs wish. To negatively impact the planet's future in order to line their pockets.
This morning, airhead wingnut Fox-bot Elizabeth Hasselbeck and her cohort on Fox and Fiends decided that the answer to unsavory types dirtying up All-American polling places who refuse to vote Republican, is to begin using a variety of literacy and citizenship tests to prove the voter's intellectual ability to exercise his or her franchise.
Sounds pretty fucking nefarious and slimy, right?
I say, bring it on, assholes. But let's insist that everyone in the country, even sacred cow 'baggers and mouth-breathing conservatives be given these tests.
It's possible that such tests could disenfranchise voters who might pull the lever for Democrats, but my sense is that millions of ignorant-as-dirt wingers would have to be turned away (although you know they wouldn't be in red states) as well.
Here are some of the questions they'd have to answer. How many do you think the average 'bagger who flaps around signs reading "Get a Brain, Morans" and "Obama, Half-breed Muslin" would be able to ace?
1. How many changes, or amendments, to the Constitution are there?
2. What is the Bill of Rights?
3. Who becomes president if both the president and vice president die? (hint, it's not Al Haig.)
4. What was the last state admitted to the union and in what year?
5. Name the amendments that address voting rights.
6. Which amendment guarantees the right to a fair trial?
7. In what year was the Constitution written?
8. What is the number of terms a congressman or senator may serve?
9. What were James Madison, John Jay, and Alexander Hamilton called?
And how many of those wingnut sign makers referenced above could pass the following literacy test given only to African-Americans in Louisiana? The questions, of course, are designed to be purposefully misleading.
Circle the first, first letter of the alphabet in this line.
My guess is that millions of wingers would be told to tell their story walking after being kicked out of the voting booth.
Ooops....sorry Fox bots. One more epic fail. In fact, I'm not sure Hasselbeck could pass these tests.
Bring it on, morans.
"The Obama Administration hasn't fared much better,[re: DHS] but, in fairness, they've been beset from day one with trying to clean up all of Bush's other messes and having to do it with one of two parties spitting on the floor as soon as the mop goes by." (AK)
Best ever image of Republican's spit and polish tactics that keep the Congressional floors slick with their salacious salivating.
Dave Weigel's gloomy piece is not only pretty depressing, but downright scary––like a bad dream or a page out of some Sci-Fi story where demon aliens take over the country.
RE: yesterday's discussion on Hart and other males whose urges cause problems politically and my question why women in politics don't seem to have this problem. Some of you said women are just smarter which may be true, but I'm wondering whether it's because running for any political office takes so much effort, so much stamina, and given that most women have their hands full with family, homes, etc, more so than the men, they wouldn't have the energy for any extra curricular activities. They be jest too tired.
But shucks, on second thought––I think I'll go along with smarter.
Smarter is a good option, PD.
But they're not all just housewives who, sitting around the kitchen table decided to run for president. Some even have supportive partners. And that helps, regardless of sex.
I notice that this website published from time to time the false belief that air power alone has never won a war. Are you forgetting Kosovo? President Clinton brought Serbia to heel with nothing but bombs, no boots on the ground. Could we win a war with nuclear bombs?