The Commentariat -- May 17, 2014

Your Friday Afternoon News Dump. Richard Oppel of the New York Times: "One day after deflecting calls from unhappy senators to shake up his leadership team, Eric Shinseki, the secretary of veterans affairs, ousted the department’s soon-to-retire head of health care. The move came amid snowballing allegations that veterans hospitals manipulated waiting lists to hide long delays many patients faced to see physicians.... But ... Republican officials quickly pointed out that Dr. [Robert] Petzel’s retirement had already been announced last September — to take effect this year — and that two weeks ago President Obama nominated Dr. Jeffrey A. Murawsky, a senior department official, to replace him." ...

... Dana Milbank: Shinseki must go.

Julia Preston of the New York Times: "With border authorities in South Texas overwhelmed by a surge of young illegal migrants traveling by themselves, the Department of Homeland Security declared a crisis this week and moved to set up an emergency shelter for the youths at an Air Force base in San Antonio, officials said Friday. After seeing children packed in a Border Patrol station in McAllen, Tex., during a visit last Sunday, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on Monday declared 'a level-four condition of readiness' in the Rio Grande Valley."

** Women Are "Nice Enough," Just Not Too Bright. David Neilson of Newslo: "American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray -- who is an educational advisor to Republican governor candidate Greg Abbott, told an audience at the University of Texas this week that there is no 'evidence' showing that any woman has ever been a 'significant original thinker.' He then said the reason for this was the smaller size of the female brain. 'When you compare the size of a man’s brain with that of a woman, there’s no comparison,' explained Murray. 'It’s not that I have anything against women. They’re nice enough, but it’s just a physical fact that their brains have developed to the same degree that men’s brains have developed.'” Thanks to Julie L. for the link. ...

... CW: Let me just add here that Murray is NYT columnist David Brooks' favorite "scholar." Brooks has cited him extensively & approvingly in his columns (& in his books, I think), & -- if I recall correctly -- they have stroked each other on various Villager symposia & write lovely things about each other on book jacket blurbs. The Times may have fired the "pushy" broad, but Brooks would have to screw Pinch's lady friend at the entrance to 620 8th Ave. to lose his place on the op-ed page. ...

     ... CW UPDATE: Oh noes! I've been punked. See comment in May 18 Commentariat.

Marjorie Connelly of the New York Times: "In response to polling data showing that the Affordable Care Act has become more popular, a prominent Republican pollster said that he expected Republicans to change how they talked about the law. 'After the primaries, expect a shift in Republican candidates’ rhetoric against Obamacare,' said Bill McInturff, a partner in Public Opinion Strategies. 'Only [a] few want to repeal the law; most want to fix and keep it,' he added." ...

... "We Can't Pass Laws Because Obama Won't Enforce Them, Ctd." Kate Nocera of BuzzFeed: "An aide to House Speaker John Boehner rejected Obama senior advisor Valerie Jarrett’s comments that the administration has a 'commitment' from Boehner to pass immigration reform... "But as the speaker has said repeatedly, it’s difficult to see how we make progress until the American people have faith that President Obama will enforce the law as written,' [said Boehner spokesman Michael Steel]. ...

... CW: Here's an indication of Boehner's "commitment" to immigration reform. Seung Min Kim of Politico: "House Majority Leader Eric Cantor won’t allow attempts next week to include a measure on a must-pass defense policy bill that would legalize young undocumented immigrants who serve in the military. A spokesman confirmed Friday that the legislation, known as the Enlist Act, will not be among those debated with the National Defense Authorization Act, an annual bill that sets policy for the Pentagon. Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.), the Enlist Act’s chief sponsor, had pledged to bring it up as part of the floor battle over the defense bill."

David Dayen of the New Republic: "People power" has put true net neutrality back on the agenda. "The grassroots pressure got tech firms off the sidelines. Over 100 of them, including Google, Facebook and Amazon, publicly opposed [FCC] Chairman [Tom] Wheeler’s rules, arguing that the rules should not allow 'individualized bargaining and discrimination.'”...

... Lee Drutman & Zander Furnas of the Daily Dot have done an analysis of which companies have spent the most $$$ lobbying for & against net neutrality: The biggest oppo spenders: Verizon, AT&T & Comcast.

CW: Glad to read your differing takes yesterday on Tim Egan's column about preserving the "diversity" of commencement speakers. Could we agree that this is carrying political correctness too far?

Cindy Boren of the Washington Post: "Embattled Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling has no intention of accepting two-thirds of the punishment imposed upon him by NBA Commissioner Adam Silver. He may be staying away from his team and the league, but he will not pay the $2.5 million fine levied against him and he will sue the league to retain ownership of the team...."

Annals of Journalism, Ctd.

Ravi Somaiya of the New York Times: "The controversy over the firing of Jill Abramson, the former executive editor of The New York Times, continued on Friday as the company’s chief executive [Mark Thompson] sent a letter to senior editors in an effort to further address the reasons for her dismissal." ...

... Here are the New Yorker articles, by Ken Auletta, which Somaiya refers to in his piece linked above: Part 1 and Part 2 of why Pinch fired Jill. Very interesting, if this is the kind of gossip that interests you. CW: Bottom line, I think: the principals are all people who don't play well with others, so firings are hardly surprising. Add to that the Times' long history of misogyny, & Abramson's ouster seemed nearly inevitable. ...

... Catherine Thompson of TPM: "A New York Times spokeswoman demanded on Friday morning that the New Yorker magazine correct a report about the newspaper's firing of executive editor Jill Abramson. The magazine, however, responded by saying its original report was accurate." ...

... Michelle Dean of Gawker: It's the old "If X = Y, then woman = pushy/man = bold" equation. ...

... Lloyd Grove of the Daily Beast: "When they tell you it’s not about the money, it’s about the money. In Abramson’s case, it’s about the money and a lawyer. It’s also about being, to put it politely, less than forthcoming with Dean Baquet, her deputy and now successor, regarding her plan to hire Guardian journalist Janine Gibson to be Baquet’s co-managing editor in charge of digital journalism."

A Big Day in Pretend Journalism:

Gail Collins: Everybody's talking about Hillary.

The Commentariat -- May 16, 2014

CW: I'm baaaack! Sort of.

Paul Krugman: The Republican "party's intellectual evolution (or maybe more accurately, its devolution) has reached a point of no return, in which allegiance to false doctrines has become a crucial badge of identity."

Tim Egan: Political correction, from the left & right, is depriving grads "of hearing something that might spoil a view of the world they've already figured out."

News Ledes

AP: "Jeb Stuart Magruder, a Watergate conspirator-turned-minister who claimed in later years to have heard President Richard Nixon order the infamous break-in, has died. He was 79."

New York Times: "The Indian National Congress, which has headed India's government for nearly all the country's post-Independence history, conceded defeat to the opposition leader Narendra Modi on Friday, as voters rendered a crushing verdict on their country's flagging economic growth and a drumbeat of corruption scandals. Election officials had not yet finished counting the 550 million votes cast in the five-week general elections, but the contours of Congress's defeat quickly became clear."

The Commentariat -- May 15, 2014

Internal links removed.

The Jill Abramson Problem

Well, problem, I suppose, if you're Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., who gave Jill Abramson the heave-ho as New York Times executive editor. According to Dylan Byers in Politico and quite a few others who all seem to have spoken to the same sources, Abramson was "difficult to work with", "condescending and combative", and, heavens to betsy! "brusque" (not BRUSQUE!). So, the business of journalism has become a namby-pamby, white glove, tea and crumpets at 3:00 sort of business. In addition to it sounding pretty much like a griping, gossipy, back-stabbing kind of piece, Byers's writing also demonstrates that he seems not to have access to a dictionary or spell check app. He writes that yet another "problem" with Abramson was that the Times CEO, Mark Thompson, had been taking an "unprecedently hands-on approach" to the day to day editorial affairs which seems to have pissed off Abramson (it would me, too). I don't know about you, but I don't think "unprecedently" will show up in a dictionary search. Maybe he meant "unprecedentedly".

Ken Auletta in the New Yorker has a more measured, researched piece on the whole kerfuffle and also explores what may have been the tipping point for Punch Jr., Abramson's inquiry into why her compensation package was so out of line with other Times executive editors, notably Bill Keller.

Sheila Kohlhatkar on Bloomberg Businessweek, has more on this particular aspect of L'Affaire Abramson. She points out that, helpfully for Sulzberger, " In April, Republican Senators voted down the latest bill that was meant to address this disparity: The Paycheck Fairness Act would have made it illegal for employers to retaliate against employees who discussed their compensation, and would have allowed for more government monitoring of what workers are paid." How nice for the Times.

And Olga Khazan at the Atlantic, reminds women to play nice and not make waves with the boys, because studies have shown that there is a "narrow band of acceptable female behavior". Abramson must not have read those studies.

Outbreak of Sanity. In Georgia?

Aviva Shen, at Think Progress, reports on an interview in the Macon Telegraph wherein David Perdue, Republican candidate for the Senate, seems to have lost, er, found his mind. Asked about what he considered more important for economic recovery, cutting spending or raising revenue, he answered "'Both'... Perdue laughed and explained, 'Well here's the reality: If you go into a business, and I keep coming back to my background, it's how I know how to relate is to refer back to it -- I was never able to turn around a company just by cutting spending. You had to figure out a way to get revenue growing. And what I just said, there are five people in the U.S. Senate who understand what I just said. You know revenue is not something they think about.'" (Pretty sure not a one of those five people has an R after their name.)

Whoa. A Republican talking sanely about raising taxes. What's next? Voting rights for blacks?

Once Upon a Time in Arkansas

Mark Pryor has been crossing the state, at least with new videos, and using truth to get out the vote. For once, a Democrat is telling voters the truth about the GOP, Medicare, and Social Security. They hate both and plan to kill them if at all possible. The GOP is constantly using scare tactics to rouse voters, but mostly they drum up some fabricated nonsense to do it. Informing Arkansas residents that vote for Tom Cotton is a vote against Medicare and Social Security is no fabrication. Joan McCarter at Daily Kos has the lowdown.

Idiots and Their Guns

From Travis Gettys at Raw Story: A South Carolina woman shot and accidentally killed a friend while testing out his bulletproof vest. Sheriff's deputies in Anderson County said the victim, 26-year-old Blake Wardell, had been hanging out in a garage with about eight to 10 friends early Wednesday when they decided to try out the Kevlar vest.Investigators said 18-year-old Taylor Ann Kelly fired a shot at Wardell's chest but missed the Kevlar.

Oops. Chalk up another victory for the NRA and FREEDOM.

Who Are You Again?

Chris Christie (remember that guy?) is in a pickle. According to Star-Ledger reporter Salvador Rizzo, Christie's Gravy Train to the White House plan seems to have hit a bad patch. "Another Wall Street rating agency -- Moody's Investors Service -- has downgraded New Jersey's debt and is sounding the alarm about the state's 'lagging economic performance.' It was the third ratings cut this year for New Jersey, the sixth downgrade [my emphasis] since Gov. Chris Christie took office, and the latest sign that the Garden State's ailing fiscal condition is taking a turn for the worse. Moody's action comes two weeks after the Christie administration disclosed an $807 million shortfall in the state budget, which the Republican governor is scrambling to plug before the fiscal year ends June 30."

So what does Christie intend to do about it? Why, make the little guy pay for it, of course: "Administration officials responded to the Moody's downgrade by saying that the high cost of retirement and health care benefits has to be tackled anew." Attaboy, Chris.

Think that $2 billion stimulus money he rejected (because it came from the hated Kenyan) could have helped?

Just Plain Idiots

Maggie Haberman on Politico, reports that Jeb Bush was in New York this week selling rich conservatives what they wanted to buy. "Bush mocked 'Mayor [Bill] de Blasio, Barack Obama, Elizabeth Warren, all your favorite progressives' as unable to raise taxes to a level that would be sustainable in terms of growth. He praised Ryan, who was the evening's first speaker, saying, 'When it comes to the American family, Paul Ryan has it right...A loving family taking care of their children in a traditional marriage will create the chance to break out of poverty far better, far better than any of the government programs that we can create,' Bush said".

More right-wing religious claptrap. Man goes to work, woman stays home, has kids, cooks, cleans, doesn't complain, traditional, traditional, traditional, everyone ends up rich and, like Ryan, never, ever, positively, I mean, never, (did I say never?) takes help from the government.

And this guy is supposed to be the "smart" Bush? I guess that's like being the tallest pygmy. Anyone who uses the phrase "Paul Ryan has it right" without totally cracking up in the next breath is an idiot. Not even a special idiot. Just a plain, everyday, ordinary idiot. An idiot who may be running for president soon.

Of Pots and Kettles

This is rich. One of the chief peddlers of the lies leading up to the worst foreign policy debacle in US history, and a prime apologist for the wretched, murderous, traitorous work of the Bush administration is joining the Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi chorus. According to Sean Sullivan, in the Washington Post, "Former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice says she still has questions about the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya that claimed the lives of four Americans." Oh wait, Condi, what about all the unanswered questions surrounding the 100,000 Americans killed or wounded in a decade long war that you helped to gin up with your lies? Huh?

Could I have a Living Wage With Those Fries, Please?

Steve Greenhouse in the Times reports that fast food strikes are going global. "Even though fast food workers have staged several one-day strikes in the last 18 months, the protests have not swayed McDonald's or other major restaurant chains to significantly raise their employees' pay.

So on Thursday, the fast food workers' movement wants to broaden its reach as it pushes for a $15-an-hour wage that restaurant companies say is unrealistic. In addition to one-day strikes in 150 cities across the country, the movement's leaders hope to take their cause global."

McDonald's, among many other fast food chains regards the $15/hr demand as outrageous. Given the fact that Donald Thompson, McDonald's CEO, according to the Christian Science Monitor, makes nearly 1,200 times the hourly rate of his average employee, $7.73/hr versus $9,247/hr, I can see their concern.