;)
Monday
Sep232013
The Commentariat -- Sept. 24, 2013
Mark Landler of the New York Times: "Speaking to the United Nations General Assembly, [President] Obama sounded a cautiously optimistic tone about the prospects for diplomacy, saying he had instructed Secretary of State John Kerry to pursue face-to-face negotiations with Iran on its nuclear program":
... Jay Solomon, et al., of the Wall Street Journal: "Plans were set Monday for the highest-level engagement between the U.S. and Iran in more than 30 years, fueling cautious optimism about the prospect for progress in curtailing Iran's nuclear work after a decade of threats and stalled diplomacy."
Darlene Superville of the AP: "President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton ... are set to appear together Tuesday to discuss Obama's health care law at a session sponsored by the Clinton Global Initiative, the former president's foundation. The joint appearance comes exactly one week before people who don't have health insurance can start signing up on Oct. 1 for coverage plans through new insurance marketplaces. It also comes as the Obama administration and those who stand to benefit from the law's success, such as insurance companies, launch a campaign to inform consumers about their options under the law."
Ramsey Cox of the Hill: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) threw the first punches Monday in what is likely to be a weeklong slugfest over ObamaCare. Cruz asked for unanimous consent to pass the House continuing resolution that would fund the government while stripping money for ObamaCare, but Reid objected. Cruz then tried to call up the measure and hold all amendment votes to a 60-vote threshold -- and Reid objected to that as well." ...
... Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "Facing opposition from the Senate's most conservative hard-liners, [Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid has set up a series of procedural tallies, starting on Wednesday, that should culminate on Sunday in votes to remove language from the House spending bill that would strip funding from the Affordable Care Act and then to pass a spending measure to keep the government operating through mid-December. It would be up to House Republican leaders to accept that Senate bill or precipitate a shutdown. 'We will not bow to Tea Party anarchists,' Mr. Reid said Monday, denouncing what he called 'extremist Republicans' and 'fanatics.'" CW: Alexander Bolton of the Hill reported last Thursday that Reid would make these maneuvers. Reid's tactics are reliant, to a great extent, on the tacit cooperation of Mitch McConnell. Guess what? -- Weisman reports, "Signaling a serious split among Republicans, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, announced that he would not support efforts by the most conservative Senate Republicans to block consideration of the House bill in an effort to slow down the legislative process." ...
... CW: As Paul Kane of the WashPo reports (linked below), Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the minority whip, who often acquiesces to Cruz's crazy plans -- reputedly out of fear that a Friend of Ted will primary him -- is nixing this one. ...
... Dana Milbank: No, the Republican members of Congress are not insane for voting to shut down the government & preparing to cause the government to default on the debt; they are rationally following their own self-interest. "211 of the 234 Republican seats in the House are 'safe,' leaving only 23 even marginally competitive.... Many of them are safe because district lines have been drawn to make them uncompetitive. The only way these Republican lawmakers would lose their seats is if they were ousted by a challenger in a low-turnout primary dominated by conservative activists and distorted by an explosion of independent expenditures by ideological group."
Juliet Lapidos of the New York Times takes on the Koch-brothers funded group, Generation Opportunity whose Crazy Uncle Sam ads "perpetuate outright lies" bent on "sabotaging the Affordable Care Act by discouraging young people from signing up for health insurance exchanges." CW: unfortunately, this is post, which does not appear in the print edition, is an editorial. The paper's news story on the never-ending anti-ObamaCare ads, by Michael Shear, mentions the "creepy Uncle Sam ads," but does not identify them as Koch-funded & does not even hint that the ads "perpetuate outright lies." If you want to know how the New York Times aids & abets right-wing propaganda, there's your answer. ...
... It turns out the fine federal agencies leveled against JP Morgan Chase aren't as big a loss to the company as one would think. Andrew Sorkin of the New York Times writes that the money is not coming from the bank; it's coming from shareholders: "The same shareholders who were ostensibly the victims of the scandal that already cost them $6 billion. The victims, if you want to call them that, become victimized twice." ...
... Ben Protess & Jessica Silver-Greenberg of the New York Times: "JPMorgan Chase ... is bracing for a lawsuit from federal prosecutors in California who suspect that the bank sold shoddy mortgage securities to investors in the run-up to the financial crisis, according to people briefed on the matter. The case, expected as soon as Tuesday, could foreshadow other actions stemming from the bank’s crisis-era mortgage business. Federal prosecutors in Philadelphia, the people briefed on the matter said, are also investigating JPMorgan's sale of mortgage securities."
Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "A former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent has agreed to plead guilty to leaking classified information to The Associated Press about a foiled bomb plot in Yemen last year, the Justice Department announced on Monday. Federal investigators said they identified him after obtaining phone logs of Associated Press reporters. The retired agent, a former bomb technician named Donald Sachtleben, has agreed to serve 43 months in prison, the Justice Department said. The case brings to eight the number of leak-related prosecutions brought under President Obama's administration; under all previous presidents, there were three such cases."
Charlie Savage: "The military on Monday effectively pronounced the end of a mass hunger strike among detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba -- a six-month protest that at one point swept through a majority of the inmate population, refocused global attention on the prison, and pushed the Obama administration to revive the effort to shutter it." The number of prisoners on strike is now 19, down from 106 at the height of the strike. "David Remes, a lawyer for several Guantánamo detainees, said participation had fallen off because detainees had largely achieved their goals."
** Joe Nocera: "What has been most stupefying about the reaction to the Navy Yard rampage is how muted it has been. After the horror of Newtown, people were galvanized. This time, the news seemed to be greeted with a resigned shrug. 'Is this the new normal?' David Gregory asked Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association on Sunday on 'Meet the Press.'.... It's sure starting to feel that way." ...
... Becca Clemmons of the Los Angeles Times: "Washington Navy Yard shooter Aaron Alexis obtained a secret-level security clearance after a federal personnel report failed to mention that a 2004 arrest involved a firearm, the Navy said Monday." Although the Navy learned of the altercation thru a fingerprint check (Alexis failed to report it on his app), their report states that Alexis was arrested for "deflating the male person's tires." But "the Seattle police report says Alexis shot out the tires and was charged with malicious mischief.... The personnel office said Seattle police would not provide records on the 2004 incident. The office interviewed Alexis, who did not say that a weapon was involved. The personnel office said it could not force police departments to cooperate."
... CW: sounds like a bullshit excuse to me. The NSA can read my e-mails, but the Navy can't get a police report for the purposes of a security clearance? News reporters get them all the time.
Paul Kane of the Washington Post with the next installment of the Nobody Likes Ted Show. Kane brings us up-to-date on Cruz's antics in yesterday's brief Senate session. ...
... Far-right Wall Street Journal editors write a withering critique of Ted & Mike's Excellent Adventure:
When Mr. Cruz demands that House Republicans "hold firm," he means they should keep trying to defund ObamaCare even if it results in a shutdown that President Obama will blame on Republicans. It's nice of him to volunteer House Republicans for duty. The supposedly intrepid General Cruz can view the battle from the comfort of HQ while the enlisted troops take any casualties.
The Lee-Cruz strategy, to the extent it's about more than fund-raising lists or getting face time on cable TV, seems to be that if the House holds "firm" amid a shutdown, then the public will eventually blame Mr. Obama and the Democrats, who will then fold and defund ObamaCare.... Miracles happen, but it would rank as one for the ages if Mr. Obama agreed to defund his signature Presidential achievement.
... Jason Zengerle profiles Ted Cruz for GQ. Cruz is one arrogant dick. "He has come to the reluctant but unavoidable conclusion that he is simply more intelligent, more principled, more right -- in both senses of the word -- than pretty much everyone else in our nation's capital." Zengerle provides plenty of examples & testimonials. ...
... Frank Bruni piles on. Here's the Chris Wallace interview (conducted this past Sunday), which Bruni recommends. Wallace reminds Tailgunner Ted of Senate Rule 22, which he says has been around for years:
... Catherine Thompson of TPM: "Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Monday wasn't rattled by news that some of his fellow Republicans encouraged a Fox News anchor to trash him on air, and instead called his detractors 'fearful' of him for not following 'the clubby way Washington does business.'" ...
... Republican strategist Steve Schmidt "deeply regrets" his part in aiding & abetting the winger "freak show," which he did by giving Sarah Palin a national presence:
Gubernatorial Race
Ben Pershing & Peyton Craighill of the Washington Post: "Democrat Terry McAuliffe has vaulted into the lead over Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II..., according to a new Washington Post/Abt SRBI poll. McAuliffe leads 47 percent to 39 percent among likely voters, with Libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis's 10 percent suggesting an unrest among voters not satisfied with either major-party contender.... The shift in the race has come almost exclusively from female voters, who prefer McAuliffe by a 24-point margin over Cuccinelli. The candidates were effectively tied among women in a Washington Post poll in May."
News Ledes
AFP: "The Israeli delegation will boycott Iranian President Hassan Rowhani's address to the UN General Assembly later Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office announced."
Chicago Tribune: "Two men in their 20s opened fire into a park on the South Side -- wounding a 3-year-old boy and 12 other people -- after one of the men had been grazed by a bullet hours earlier, police said today. They did not aim at anyone in particular but 'just shot into the park' because they believed it was controlled by a rival gang, Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy told reporters. Police identified the gang member[s] out for vengeance as Bryon Champ, 21..., [and] Tabari Young, 22. Kewane Gatewood, 20, supplied the high-powered gun Champ used, while Brad Jett, 22, acted as a lookout, police said."
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Reader Comments (18)
Progressives should reuse and turn those "creepy Uncle Sam" ads against the Right. The voiceover should state Uncle Sam is really Uncle VA and Uncle Texas and is there to do a transvaginal ultrasound.
My friends in Northern VA--my home for 35 years, eeeek!--tell me that "the Cooch" is rapidly losing ground. He is too stoopid to keep his misogynistic ideas to hisself, and he lives in a main suburb of Northern VA, which is full of educated women, not necessarily Democrats.
I am hoping against hope that Bob ("the trans-vaginal guvnor crook) will be indicted before his term ends, and that will kill off what little hope is left for Kenny Baby Cuccinelli! My NoVA friends are beyond embarrassed about what is happening, and are rethinking strategies to secede from Virginia. (Good Luck!) BTW, that really should happen, because NoVA is a cosmopolitan area--more like D.C. and the Maryland suburbs than like the rest of this pathetic former slave state. A few creepy Neo-Cons and Bushites (and Newt Gimme-a Blow-Job Gingrich) but they are heavily outnumbered!
It is beyond me how Virgina--with its heavily populated librul suburbs in NoVA--could have voted into office Bob McDonnell and Kenny the Cooch in the first place. The only explanation I can find is the western suburbs--Leesburg, Ashburn, Herndon, Manassas--and the growing populations there. Conservative, small-minded, religious retirees, in the main. Sigh.
After my husband and I retired from teaching we were asked by the President of our town's historical society to take over the job of archivist in the history room at our main local library currently being run by an older woman who had been there from the very beginning and was going to step down, but stay on for another year in order to teach us the ways and means. Some months into this job I announced one day how I thought the cataloging of the many books on our shelves could be better placed. At the time the soon-to-be retired archivist and her two assistants, also older women, were sitting all in a row at a long table working on some papers. My back was to them while I went on and on about my idea of re-organizing the bloody bookshelves. When I turned around these three women never said a word, but glared at me with such intensity I felt their scorn down to my fingertips. How insensitive of me––how utterly callous to come off as some new whipper snapper who was going to change their whole system, something they all had worked on for years. I was humbled and humiliated and spent many months trying to rectify my mistake. In the end we all grew to grow very fond of one another and after these women left––two died––my husband and I reorganized the room to our liking.
I thought of this after I read the profile of Cruz in GQ. This freshman senator rushing in like a hurricane, taking over and not giving a damn how he effects others or his party. He may be the smartest guy in the room but he lacks humility, lacks empathy, and his arrogance may just be his downfall. Let's bet on it.
@P.D. Pepe: That's a lovely -- and instructional -- anecdote, but suggesting a reorganization of the bookshelves in hardly the equivalent of calling your new colleagues "squishes" & "the surrender caucus" & otherwise repeatedly disparaging them in public. Ted now says -- accurately enough -- that his fellow Republicans are "fearful" & "clubby." Democrats disagree with each other, but they seldom call each other names.
If you had wanted to do a Ted Cruz, you would have had to call the historical society ladies sticks-in-the-mud, old biddies, & lamebrains, etc., while threatening to sell off the book collection the minute you put them out to pasture. And you would have had to maintain an obnoxious smirk the whole time.
Marie
PD,
And something else would have been required to put you into Cruzing territory in that library's history room. Not giving a tinker's damn about it in the first place.
New members of certain professions can come in and make an immediate impact. A rookie pitcher (19 year old Dwight Gooden, let's say), a new cinematic star (25 year old Orson Welles), certain writers (19 year old Mary Shelley), performers (17 year old Taylor Swift), mathematicians, programmers, or tech gurus (Zuckerberg, Jobs, Gates, et al). But most professions require a period of learning the ropes, making one's bones, so to speak, and acquiring experience from which, one hopes, expertise and, if all goes well, wisdom, may spring; professions such as teaching, medicine, law, general contracting (how can you watch This Old House and not be impressed week after week?), engineering, firefighting, and so on.
One of these, one would assume, is the job of legislator. The ins and outs of crafting laws, writing reasonable, responsible, and necessary legislation and having the know how to shepherd it through the various committee rooms, garnering public and congressional support, and seeing it through passage to become a law of the land require consummate skill and experience.
But not if you're a teabagger. And especially not if you're Ted Cruz.
Remember the stink made a number of years ago about term limits? The idea that regular Marys and Joes would quit their day jobs, do their public service in congress then leave after one term was 100% pure poppycock (and many who screamed loudest about term limits back during the Gingrich insurrection are, funnily enough, still at it).
But the larger point is that it takes time to develop the contacts, skills and expertise to be good at that job. It's no surprise that some of the most important people on the Hill are congressional chiefs of staff. They've been around long enough know how it all works. Who to call, where to bury the bodies, and how to give and get favors. This is how it works. Ideology can underpin a legislative agenda but it shouldn't be the sole factor in arriving at the best outcome for constituents.
It's doing the business of the people and the people are many and varied. EXCEPT, if you are a teabagger whose district, thanks to Republican gerrymandering, now looks like a pretzel.
The other exception is that you just don't give a shit about the whole enterprise. This is why tyros like Cruz and Rand Paul can give out with such unadulterated bullshit. And this is what people don't get about Cruz. "What's his plan? What is he driving at? How can he get his ideas to work?" They're all forgetting the most important thing about guys like Cruz.
He DOES NOT CARE if it works or not. That's all beside the point. In fact, it isn't within a jumbo jet's flight plan of the point.
He's there to make trouble. To gum up the works. To make himself famous and important. That's the goal. People shouldn't be scratching their heads. They should be looking for ways shut him down. Hard. Guys like Cruz only succeed if they are feared. He knows this.
Reading Frank Bruni's piece in the Times (linked above), I was suddenly struck by a connection between Cruz and the loathsome egotistical country singer, Lonesome Rhodes in the film "A Face in the Crowd". A bumpkin pulled from a jail cell is pushed through guile, PR skill, and personal ambition to national prominence. He has no soul, no moral code, nothing but an ambition to be famous and important. And he tumbles back to earth like and Icarus with a guitar.
Cruz, with his scorched earth attitude towards colleagues, friends (if he has any) and foes alike may suffer the same fate.
But not before he diminishes further the profession he has chosen as his platform to stardom.
So Cruz wants to filibuster the Repblican's own bill? Only problem, Mitch McConnell apparently doesnt't think that's such a greaat idea.
@Ak: You're correct. Tail Gunner Ted DOES NOT CARE, as lonng as he's the center of attention, for any reason no matter how outrageous.
Here's a companion piece to the GQ profile Cruz; it's from TPM:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/me-ted
So the Navy gave this guy (Alexis) a "secret-level security clearance" (whatever the hell that is--might just mean he had the key to the refrigerator where they kept Captain Queeg's frozen strawberries) because they neglected to fully investigate a police arrest report?
Surely they jest.
A good friend of mine was recently denied a job because he forgot to include to note that he had been arrested for a DUI thirty years ago. This company had no problem digging up everything and telling my friend "Thanks, but no thanks" but the Navy can't check out a very recent arrest report with the world "malicious" attached to it?
Part of this, I believe, is a holdover from the Bush Debacle, one of the many, many ways the Bush legacy continues to fuck us. I remember reading reports, as Mission Accomplished turned to Mission Never Ending, that the military was so desperate for cannon fodder in Iraq (where the people were waiting to throw flowers at them) that they'd hire just about any warm body that stumbled through the door.
Veterans out here can correct me, but I seem to recall that the services, at one point, would not take just anyone. Guys (at the time it was mostly guys) with criminal backgrounds or those who raised red flags were routinely crossed off. But in our Brave New World, if the national security people who came to interview Kate were happy to sign up a drug addict for a delicate posting, why would the Army care about signing up violent gangbanging alcoholics to shoot Mooslims?
Anyone who remembers Arlo Guthrie's famous "Alice's Restaurant" routine can recall the situation he describes in which he was denied the opportunity to burn hooches, kill women and children and inflict general mayhem on the local populace because he had been arrested for littering.
But in the world wrought (and broken) by Bush and his neo-con war criminal cronies, the Army was taking guys who weren't just litter bugs, but guys with backgrounds of serious violence. Could be one reason for some of the out of control viciousness in Iraq. I don't know.
In any event, I'm inclined to agree with Marie's assessment of the Navy's excuse; bullshit.
A pretty consistent portrait of Cruz emerges in both the articles linked today. His character (or character disorder as I maintain) has been thoroughly discussed. It seems like Cruz's daddy may have a dose of the same grandiosity as sonny. Daddy's story seems a bit overdone. In Bruni's article there is a link to a Weekly Standard profile /article on Cruz.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/washington-builds-bugaboo_753924.html
I thought it was really interesting. Sure there's some love but really, its more dislike of Democrats. There's several spots where Anderson drifts into "telling" on Cruz, then has to scamper back to laboriously attempt to shine him up. Bruni quoted a bit of this paragraph in Anderson's piece, here's some of the rest;
"I made a quick calculation of how many vertebrae I would damage if I slipped the lock, opened the door, and did a tuck and roll onto the passing pavement. The answer was: too many. So I contented myself with looking out the window at the Houston exurbs until the speech wound down and I could ask another question, after which the speech resumed and I watched the endless series of tire stores and taco stands and Jiffy Lubes roll by." There's more. The article is well worth the read.
@Ak: FYI: there are three levels of security clearance: Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret. There is another level for Top Secret, called Sensitive Compartmental Information or SCI. Not many get SCI.
This link will help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_clearance.
AA sure as hell shouldn't have received a clearance of any kind.
If you want to know why it seems so easy for wingers to spread fear and paranoia, the best answer seems to be their affinity for and expertise in ignorance.
In Hendersonville, TN, a high school field trip to a mosque has sent the stepfather of a student over the edge, complaining that, teachers are--horror of horrors!--"pushing Islamic tolerance!" Holy shit! Not tolerance. What will these Jesus hating teachers think of next? Brotherly love?
Part of the course (an elective course, by the way) was a field trip to a Hindu temple and a mosque. So what did the school do after parents whipped up the frenzy of Sharia law's imminent arrival in Hendersonville? Canceled the trip, natch.
In place of the field trip, I'd suggest that students and their parents, including the stepfather, read John Locke's Letter Concerning Religious Toleration.
Or would that be considered "pushing tolerance"? Better to push fear and intolerance, doncha think? Poor Locke. He's better off dead.
Let's have a round of ignorance and paranoia for everyone, bartender.
What's next? Burqas?
All this talk about "The Cruzer" has me thinking that others may find this article http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/21/american-bile/ of interest. I can't help but think that we have carved out a state of existence where we have a consequences-free zone for a select few people. And Cruzer is the example of the day.
His voters don't care that he doesn't legislate and merely poses; his funders support him with money. He spews shit and then he and his family have an easy life free of financial travails. He could be a Wall Street banker/insurance salesman. He has been paid by the government most of his professional life and he is held to no account how that doesn't jive with his political ideas. So, yes, I'm left to think that if Rick Perry left any doubt, Texas voters are dumb as a bag of hammers. And I say that with no personal disregard.
We can only wonder how long it will take before Cruz is the Herman Cain of the Senate, a footnote for trivia sponsored by Faux.
Akhilleus, you asked for correction, here's a bit ("Veterans out here can correct me, but I seem to recall that the services, at one point, would not take just anyone.")
Services would take just about anyone, throughout our history. The Navy and Air Force can be picky fro time to time, but not the Army or Marines.
When in the Army, I had a co-pilot who said he was there because the judge gave him the choice, and I understand that was pretty common in lots of places during the draft. During basic training we had men who were enlisted under a program called "Project 100,000" (you can look it up), a Great Society program that sought to improve men with little education, low IQs and sorry records, by drafting them rather than rejecting them. The ones in our basic training unit were seriously challenged people.
During the Civil War you basically just had to be body temperature and vertical to enlist; afterwards, lots of men joined up to stay a step ahead of the sheriff and "get West."
For some people that hitch is an opportunity to grow, or put the past behind them and earn a new life; for some it is just another place to be what they have been; for a few it presents the opportunity to indulge in legal sociopathic behavior.
I think it was the Duke of Wellington who referred to his private soldiers at one time as "... the scum of the earth, but they're OUR scum ..."
Patrick,
Thanks for the clarification. Love the Wellington quote.
I'm reminded of a scene in the mini-series The Pacific. On Guadalcanal, Chesty Puller, then still a colonel, regales his men with the translation of a flyer found in possession of dead Japanese soldiers. The flyer stated that the American soldiers landing on the island were not regular soldiers. They were Marines, thugs and rapists let loose from prison cells, blood thirsty monsters.
I guess we weren't the only ones indulging in a little free ranging demonization of the enemy. And I suppose if you're going to send a group of former civilians into a place where the order of the day is to kill as many of the enemy as possible, sociopaths are probably not out of order. The problem in places like Iraq and Afghanistan (I suppose, many theaters of war), military personnel might be called on to kill the enemy one day and interact, politely, with the locals the next. Harder to do, I would imagine, with psychos in your midst.
One of the provisions of Project 100,000 was that they were NOT supposed to be assigned to combat. Ha! What happened when replacements got in short supply? Assignment as riflemen in the infantry. Contrary to popular belief, infantrymen in modern war have to be resilient and intelligent.
When I was a kid, we used to play "Guess who gets killed?" at the WWII and western flicks. Only in my infantry company (I was the CO) in 1970. We were playing it for real with live soldiers. I sometimes wonder how many names on the Wall are Project 100,000. Sadly, too many.
With all the Obamacare bullshit now clogging the national discourse, I can't help but wonder why Baucus and the other geniuses didn't just open up Medicare for all. That was, after all, Wilbur Cohen's grand plan for it. And if they had opened it up, the new pieces would likely have been up and running a year or so ago. I know: Coulda, woulda, shoulda.
Gentlemen don't win wars. Thru out history those who hesitated to kill, were killed. Call it psychopathic, sociopathic or whatever, the ability to focus on one outcome, the destruction of your enemy has separated those who prevailed from those who were crushed.
This focus begins with securing the most technically advanced weapons of the time in superior numbers to accomplish the destruction of your enemy and 75% of those supporting your enemy.
It is horrifying to us, but history is not civilized or pastural.
I knew a young man during the Vietnam War who knew any day he would be called up so he feigned homosexuality in order to be rejected. Does anyone know if this was the process––no gays allowed to sign up and kill?
AK: Your "So the Navy gave this guy (Alexis) a "secret-level security clearance" (whatever the hell that is--might just mean he had the key to the refrigerator where they kept Captain Queeg's frozen strawberries) because they neglected to fully investigate a police arrest report?
Surely they jest." made me laugh out loud. Loved it!