The Commentariat -- September 13
Joe Nocera recalls his reactions to 9/11. In his recollections, Nocera observes,
I remember something else about those initial days after the terrorist attack. I’d bump into friends, liberals like me — or so I thought — who were suddenly railing about Muslims, or how the police needed to start racial-profiling and locking up people who 'looked suspicious.'
After 9/11, we invaded Afghanistan — justifiably — to take the fight to our enemies. But we also invaded Iraq, an unjustified war for which 9/11 provided the cover. We have killed Osama bin Laden and many other Al Qaeda leaders, but 9/11 has also given us waterboarding, Guantánamo, and the gradual erosion of some of our civil liberties, which we foolishly accept in the name of security.
I've added a Nocera comments page to Off Times Square. Write about this or something else.
Stupid Econ 101. Shrink the Government because the Private Sector Is So Cost-Effective. Ron Nixon of the New York Times: "Despite a widespread belief that contracting out services to the private sector saves the federal government money, a new study suggests just the opposite — that the government actually pays more when it farms out work. The study found that in 33 of 35 occupations, the government actually paid billions of dollars more to hire contractors than it would have cost government employees to perform comparable services. On average, the study found that contractors charged the federal government more than twice the amount it pays federal workers."
UPDATE: Stupid Econ 102. Robert Pear of the New York Times: "... President Obama is expected to seek hundreds of billions of dollars in savings in and , delighting Republicans and dismaying many Democrats who fear that his proposals will become a starting point for bigger cuts in the popular health programs." A document by Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.) "criticizes the idea of raising the Medicare eligibility age to 67, from 65, and notes..., 'This policy does nothing to control costs; it simply shifts substantial costs from Medicare to other parts of government and to private and public employers.'”
Jesse Holland of the AP: "President Barack Obama is moving at a historic pace to try to diversify the nation's federal judiciary: Nearly three of every four people he has gotten confirmed to the federal bench are women or minorities. He is the first president who hasn't selected a majority of white males for lifetime judgeships. More than 70 percent of Obama's confirmed judicial nominees during his first two years were "non-traditional," or nominees who were not white males. That far exceeds the percentages in the two-term administrations of Bill Clinton (48.1 percent) and George W. Bush (32.9 percent)...."
A Protest Grows in Brooklyn. M. Powell (I guess) of the New York Times: since taxpayers/homeowners bailed out the banks, why won't the banks bail out homeowners? Some citizens are appealing to their municipalities to retaliate; and some town boards are doing just that.
"The Misuse of Life without Parole." New York Times Editors: "In the last decade in Georgia, one of the few states with good data on the sentence, about 60 percent of offenders sentenced to life without parole were convicted of murder. The other 40 percent were convicted of kidnapping, armed robbery, sex crimes, drug crimes and other crimes including shoplifting. Nationwide, the racial disparity in the penalty is stark. Blacks make up 56.4 percent of those serving life without parole, though they are 37.5 percent of prisoners in all state prisons.The overuse of the sentence reflects this excessively punitive era.... A fair-minded society should not sentence anyone to life without parole except as an alternative to the death penalty." (Emphasis added.)
Paul Krugman: "... the two years or so after 9/11 were a terrible time in America – a time of political exploitation and intimidation, culminating in the deliberate misleading of the nation into the invasion of Iraq. It’s probably worth pointing out that I’m not saying anything now that I wasn’t saying in real time back then, when Bush had a sky-high approval rating and any criticism was denounced as treason. And there’s nothing I’ve done in my life of which I’m more proud." ...
... AND this reader response to Paul Krugman's earlier blogpost, published under the title "A Furor over Paul Krugman's 9/11 Post." The post was link in yesterday's Commentariat. ...
... Greg Sargent provides some egregious examples of Karl Rove & Rudy Giuliani in 2004, & Charlie Black, a top McCain 2008 advisor, using 9/11 scare tactics for political gain. ...
... George Lakoff, in Nation of Change, writes a thoughtful piece explaining how conservatives -- led by the Great American Villain Dick Cheney -- used framing the 9/11 attack, the media and intimidation to consolidate power.
What conservatives really want is to run the country and the world on conservative principles: to control reproduction (no abortion); to control what is taught (no public education); to control religion (conservative Christianity); to control race and language (mass deportation of Hispanic immigrants); to guarantee cheap labor (no unions); to continue white domination (no affirmative action); to continue straight domination (no gay marriage); to control markets (eliminate regulation, taxation, unions, worker rights, and tort cases); to control transportation (privatize freeways); to control elections (institute bars to voting).
President Obama spoke to NBC News' Brian Williams over the weekend:
Jeff Zeleny & Michael Shear of the New York Times: "The decision on Monday by , a former Republican presidential rival, to support Mr. Romney’s campaign signals the beginning of an effort by some party leaders to try to slow the ascent of Mr. Perry — or to push him to explain positions that are considered provocative.... The endorsement was a visible marker in a quietly continuing battle for the soul and direction of the between traditional party leaders and grass-roots conservatives."
Right Wing World
The Candidates Debate
This is as much as I can tolerate:
Dan Balz & Nia-Malika Henderson of the Washington Post: "The debate helped to underscore divisions between the establishment and tea party wings of the party, and the battle for tea party support will continue to be an important subplot of the nomination fight."
Dana Milbank: "On the defensive from beginning to end, Perry resorted to the time honored tradition of making up stuff."
Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post reports on more instances of the candidates' "resorting to the time-honored tradition."
New York Times reporters fact-check Perry's claims about Social Security, his fact-free attacks on the 2009 stimulus law, his fast-changing views on troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, Bachmann's distortions about Medicare & the ACA, Romney's version of death panels and more.
Andy Kroll of Mother Jones on Perry's great idea of "freeing up" Wall Street to create jobs and grow the economy -- because that has worked so well in the past:
Let's not forget, it was all those 'freed,' under-regulated banks, mortgage companies, and investment firms that imploded the economy. Years of deregulatory policy under Democratic and Republican presidents — including tearing down the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, which walled off commercial banking from more risky investments and speculation, and passing the Commodity Futures Modernization Act in 2000, which essentially transformed Wall Street into a casino — helped bring the financial markets to their knees in 2008.
Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post: "For all their promises to put the nation’s books back in order, the candidates offered little that would suggest that Americans might actually have to give anything up to do it. Instead, they repeatedly insisted that economic growth could take care of the problem or that — in the hoariest of all political claims — rooting out waste is the answer."
Tom Curry of NBC News: "A Republican debate that was expected to be a showdown between the two heavyweights, Rick Perry and Mitt Romney, turned into something resembling a football pile-on with five of the GOP contenders swarming over the Texas governor. What’s emerging from the GOP presidential debates is a portrait of Perry — painted by his opponents — as one scary guy, a threat both to young and old."
Charles Babington of the AP: Rick Perry's "rivals attacked [his Texas] record as never before, led by a newly energized Mitt Romney and hard-charging Michele Bachmann."
Greg Sargent: Rush Limbaugh warns Republican presidential candidates, specifically Mitt Romney & Michele Bachmann, for all candidates "that it’s politically risky to protest the claim that Social Security is a criminal enterprise"; i.e., a Ponzi scheme, as Rick Perry has called it.
News Ledes
NY1 has updated results for the New York 9th Congressional District special election. In this solidly Democratic district the Republican candidate Bob Taylor is leading Democrat David Weprin 11:30 pm ET. ...
... BTW, Glenn Thrush of Politico writes in a tweet that (despite Republican hype), "Not to dismiss the NY special: But any race that includes David Weprin -- for a seat that will soon disappear -- is a bellwether of nuthin'"
No Surprise Here. New York Times: "Three officers have been charged with accepting bribes to let couriers smuggle painkillers and cash undetected through security checkpoints at airports in New York and Florida, federal prosecutors said Tuesday."
Boston Globe: "After weeks of testing the political waters, Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard Law School professor and Wall Street critic, will officially announce her run for the US Senate tomorrow morning against Republican incumbent Scott Brown."
President Obama on how the American Jobs Act will modernize America's schools:
President Obama spoke at the Fort Hayes, Ohio, Arts & Academic High School this afternoon. AP: "President Barack Obama is visiting a school undergoing a multimillion-dollar renovation to sell his proposal for creating more jobs. And it's no coincidence that the school is in Ohio, the home state of House Speaker John Boehner, a critic of the president's proposal to tax the rich to pay for his plan."
New York Times: "Democrats on Tuesday sought to avoid a jolting upset in a heavily Democratic House district last represented by , dispatching hundreds of volunteers around Brooklyn and Queens in an effort to turn people out to vote. The Republican candidate, Bob Turner, who held a six-point lead in a poll released on Friday, expressed confidence that victory was within reach, and that the city’s Democratic machine would not be able to overcome his momentum and push his opponent, Assemblyman David I. Weprin, to victory."
New York Times: "The Republican presidential candidates aggressively confronted Gov. at a debate here on Monday night, and pressed him to explain his views on and his decade-long record in Texas, including an effort to require the vaccination of schoolgirls and granting children of illegal immigrants a college tuition break."
Guardian: "Rockets are being fired at the US embassy in Kabul, say police in Afghanistan. The Taliban has claimed responsibility and says the attackers are armed with rocket-propelled grenades, AK-47s and suicide vests." This page is a liveblog. AP story here.
NBC News: "Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told NBC News Tuesday that two Americans given eight-year prison sentences for spying and entering the country illegally will be released 'in a couple of days' in what he called a 'humanitarian gesture.'” Includes video. ...
... AP: "An Iranian court Tuesday set bail of $500,000 each for two American men arrested more than two years ago and convicted on spy-related charges, clearing the way for their release a year after a similar bail-for-freedom arrangement for the third member of the group, their defense attorney said. Lawyer Masoud Shafiei said the court would begin the process to free Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal after payment of the bail, which must be arranged through third parties because of U.S. economic sanctions on Iran." CW: is this paying ransom for hostages, or what?
AP: "German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday sought to calm market fears that Greece is heading for a chaotic default on its debts as Europe struggles to contain a crippling financial crisis. Her comments come a day after her deputy raised the possibility of a default, and come ahead of another telephone discussion between Greece's finance minister and his German counterpart." ...
... Bloomberg: "Greece has a 98 percent chance of defaulting on its debt in the next five years as Prime Minister George Papandreou fails to reassure investors his country can survive the euro-region crisis."
Politico: "The national poverty rate in 2010 hit 15.1 percent — the highest level since 1993, according to a report Tuesday from the Census Bureau.The report also indicated that median household income, adjusted for inflation, was lower last year than any year since 1997."
New York Times: "A parliamentary panel investigating the within the British outpost of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire said on Tuesday that it would recall his son, , to answer more questions about his knowledge of the affair. Guardian story here.
The Hill: "Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) endorsed Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) for president on Monday."
Share Article