The Commentariat -- Sept. 16, 2013

President Obama on the fifth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers:

Buh-Bye, Larry!

** Annie Lowrey & Michael Shear of the New York Times: "Lawrence H. Summers, one of President Obama’s closest economic confidantes and a former Treasury secretary, has withdrawn his name from consideration for the position of chairman of the Federal Reserve amid rising opposition from Mr. Obama's own Democratic allies on Capitol Hill. In a statement released by the White House on Sunday afternoon, Mr. Obama said he had accepted the decision by his friend even as he praised him for helping to rescue the country from economic disaster early in the president's term." Thanks to contributor MAG for the heads-up. Update. The Times has since expanded its story & added Binyamin Appelbaum to the byline. ...

... Zachary Goldfarb of the Washington Post has much more: "... amid an intensifying uproar of liberal Democrats and left-wing groups opposed to his nomination, Summers decided to withdraw his name on Sunday, telephoning the president to tell him his decision. When word of Summers's candidacy first circulated, liberals erupted, furious at what they said was his record of supporting deregulation in the Clinton administration. Obama took to defending him when questioned on Capitol Hill.... In order to buy time and cool tensions, the White House announced that no decision would be made until the fall. But that gave only space for Summers's opponents to strengthen the opposition to his candidacy, with four of the 12 Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee, which would confirm Summers, signaling opposition." Here's Summers' letter to the President. ...

... CW: According to a Reuters report, published Friday, the four Democratic Senators on the banking committee who opposed Summers were Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Jeff Merkeley (Oregon), Jon Tester (Montana), AND "Colleagues of [Elizabeth] Warren, a Democrat of Massachusetts, expect her to vote against Summers if he is nominated.... Sources said she has expressed concerns about Summers to her colleagues and had raised them with people in the White House. She has stayed silent out of respect for Obama." CW: Maybe Sen. Warren, out of respect for her former Harvard colleague, told Larry there was no way in hell she would vote for his nomination. ...

... Update. Ben White of Politico: "During their [phone] call, Summers told Obama he believed there was now too much political opposition to his nomination to move forward, a person familiar with the phone call said. Summers told Obama that his nomination now would create too much political uncertainty for the Fed and could thus be damaging to the economy. Obama accepted Summers' rationale and did not attempt to convince him to continue as a candidate for the Fed job, the person said." ...

... Charles Pierce: "Senator Professor Warren was one of the driving forces behind a genuine populist uprising of liberal Democratic senators ... and that uprising has kicked Larry Summers to the curb. She has quietly carved out a leadership role in the one area in which she is an acknowledged expert.... Quite simply, she is doing what she said she would do when she was running for the Senate. She has enough allies to get done a lot of what she wants to get done. Anything this president -- or his successor -- wants to do as far as national economic policy now has to go through her, and through the coalition to which she belongs." ...

... Here's Elizabeth Warren's "thwacking speech" (September 9) to the AFL-CIO to which Pierce refers:

... ** John Cassidy of the New Yorker: "In recent weeks, numerous stories appeared that quoted White House and Treasury Department insiders saying how much the President respected Summers ... and how much he valued his advice. But we already knew that. The key question was ... how much political capital [Obama] would be willing to invest in landing him at the Fed. If you looked at the issue in terms of cold political calculus, which is how Presidential aides look at most things, it was pretty clear which way the cost-benefit analysis would come out.... It's only reasonable to speculate that the White House political shop prevailed upon the President to give up on nominating Summers, that he reluctantly agreed, and that somebody told Big Larry the news and gave him the option of withdrawing gracefully before another name was announced." ...

... Scott Lemieux in Lawyers, Guns & Money: "Now one has to hope that Obama will do the right thing and nominate Yellen rather than spitefully picking a white guy worse than Summers (such as Donald Kohn.)" ...

... Kathleen Geier of Washington Monthly: "Members of the Fed are mostly drawn from the pool of distinguished economists, so given women's agonizingly slow progress within the econ, it may be a long time before another woman is as well-positioned as Yellen to break the Fed's glass ceiling." ...

... CW: I agree with Steve M. of NMMNB in his assessment of why Larry dropped out (and with contributor Kate M. who doesn't let us forget all the millions Larry will make "consulting" Wall Street firms), but I'm not sure President Obama will pass over Yellen for Alan Greenspan acolyte Donald Kohn, as Steve M. fears. As we found out this week, Obama is not afraid of "looking weak," & I don't want to think he would sink the economy just so his economic team could keep that "No Girls Allowed" sign on their club door. We'll see. ...

... Evan McMorris-Santoro: "... the end of Summers’ bid isn’t the end of progressive pressure on Obama. [Women's and] progressive leaders won't be happy until current Fed vice chair Janet Yellen has the Fed job."

NEW. Rick Gladstone & Nick Cumming-Bruce of the New York Times: "Rockets armed with the banned chemical nerve agent sarin were used in a mass killing near Damascus on Aug. 21, United Nations chemical weapons inspectors reported Monday in the first official confirmation by nonpartisan scientific experts that such munitions had been deployed in the Syria conflict.... The widely awaited report did not ascribe blame for the attack...." ...

... Reuters: "France, Britain and the US have agreed to seek a 'strong and robust' UN resolution that sets precise and binding deadlines on the removal of Syria's chemical weapons, the office of the French president, François Hollande, said, emerging from talks with John Kerry and William Hague in Paris." ...

... Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post: "According to a State Department official's account of the negotiations [between the U.S. & Russia] that began Thursday evening and ended Saturday afternoon with a framework accord to secure and eliminate Syria's chemical weapons, it was a deal that almost did not happen. In the end, the deal was written entirely by the U.S. side. The Russians agreed to it in an impromptu poolside conversation between Kerry, Lavrov and their deputies, who dragged over chairs to join them. Kerry made final edits to the draft on an iPad in his hotel room." ...

... Liz Sly of the Washington Post: "At the close of a week hailed in Moscow and Washington as a triumph of diplomacy over war, more than 1,000 people died in the fighting in Syria, the latest casualties in a conflict that has killed more than 100,000 people and can be expected to claim many more." ...

... Jason Easley of PoliticusUSA: "The notion that [Russian President Vladamir] Putin saved [President] Obama is political spin by his critics who are trying to tarnish his diplomatic victory in any way that they can. It is a display of how deeply Republicans hate this president that they are so willing to label Putin a hero, not even a year after their presidential nominee called Russia our biggest rival.... Making Russia shift from denying the existence of Syria's chemical weapons and Assad's responsibility for the attack in less than a week is a sign of presidential strength. To Republicans, diplomacy equals weakness. The right is trying to turn Obama's strength into a shortcoming, and sacrificing facts, the truth, and consistency while trying to score cheap political points." ...

... Anne Barnard of the New York Times: "Both sides in Syria's civil war see the deal to dismantle President Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons stockpiles as a major turning point. It left rebels deflated and government supporters jubilant. And both sides say it means the United States knows Mr. Assad is not going anywhere anytime soon.... Rebels and analysts critical of Mr. Assad's government say he has a well-established pattern of agreeing to diplomatic initiatives to buy time, only to go on escalating the fighting."

If we continue to set a precedent in which a president ... is in a situation in which each time the United States is called upon to pay its bills, the other party can simply sit there and say, 'Well, we're not going to ... pay the bills unless you give us ... what we want,' that changes the constitutional structure of this government entirely. -- Barack Obama, in an ABC News interview aired Sunday (see full interview in yesterday's Commentariat)

It has taken our President the Constitutional Scholar a full two years to figure that out. -- Constant Weader

Benghaaaazi! Karen DeYoung: "House Republicans will begin their promised fall assault on the Obama administration's conduct before, during and after the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, with the publication Monday of a report updating their investigation of the incident and a hearing Wednesday with testimony from a high-ranking State Department official. The report, prepared by majority staff for House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), focuses on what it calls 'shortcomings' in the Accountability Review Board investigation of the attack...."

Food Fight. David Rogers of Politico: "The farm bill is back....The final text of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's proposed cuts from nutrition spending is due out Monday. Floor votes could come this week in what remains a closely fought battle. Fox News has jumped in, distributing scores of videos to Capitol offices of last month's report featuring the surfer deadbeat [buying lobster with his monthly food stamps benefit]." ...

... Samantha Wyatt of Media Matters: "In reality, Greenslate [the surfer dude] bears no resemblance to the overwhelming majority of SNAP recipients, many of whom are elderly, children, or rely on the program for a short time while looking for work.... Fox's attempt to demonize food stamp recipients as a caricature of willful dependency ignores the fact that SNAP kept 4.7 million people out of poverty in 2011, many of whom are children or the elderly. Unlike Greenslate, the majority of these individuals relied on the program not because of laziness, but necessity."

Paul Krugman: "... while there is legitimate uncertainty about what the Fed should be doing, the costs of being too harsh vastly exceed the costs of being too lenient. To err is human; to err on the side of growth is wise." ...

... Emily Alpert of the Los Angeles Times: A "small but surging share of Americans ... identify themselves as 'lower class.' Last year, a record 8.4% of Americans put themselves in that category -- more than at any other time in the four decades that the question has been asked on the General Social Survey...."

Glenn Greenwald: NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander is an insane trekkie who, when he ran the Army Intelligence and Security Command, employed a Hollywood set designer to create (at taxpayer expense) an "Information Dominance Center" modeled after the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. CW: Greenwald's sourcing seems unimpeachable. Alexander strikes me as creepy, not someone you want to put in charge of anything.

Gubernatorial Race

Beth Reinhard of the National Journal assesses the Virginia race for governor: "Terrible candidates, awful campaign take Virginia from bellwether to sideshow." ...

... James Hohmann of Politico on why Ken Cuccinelli is losing to Terry McAuliffe. CW: The election is almost two months away. That gives Cuccinelli plenty of time to catch up. If Virginians care about policy, they'll vote for McAuliffe (though McAuliffe's performance before the Northern Virginia Technology Council, which Hohmann covers, doesn't speak well for McAuliffe in this area). If they care about ethics, they'll probably vote for Cuccinelli, the lesser of two evils.

Local News

Azi Paybarah of Capital New York: "Gov. Andrew Cuomo will hold an event with Bill de Blasio and Bill Thompson later this morning to help bring an end to the Democratic mayoral primary, according to multiple sources. De Blasio won Tuesday's primary with just over 40 percent of the vote, the threshold needed to avoid a run-off with the second-place finisher, pending a count of outstanding ballots." Via Joe Coscarelli of New York.

Photo below relevant to a comment I made in today's Comments:

News Ledes

Washington Post: "Police now believe two shooters, including one in fatigues, have killed four people and wounded eight others at the Washington, [D.C.,] Navy Yard on Monday, throwing the region into fear and chaos during the morning commute. At least one of the shooters is 'down,' police said mid-morning, but it was unclear whether that means the suspect has been arrested or shot. They said the other suspect remains at large, and police believe they have pinned down one between the third and fourth floors of one of the buildings on the installation in Southeast Washington." ...

     ... Here's the Post's liveblog of developments....

The Nation: Charlotte, North Carolina, police shot and killed "Jonathan Ferrell, a 24-year-old former football player at Florida A&M University [after he] crashed his car in Charlotte, North Carolina" & went to a nearby house for help. Officer Randall Kerrick has since been charged with "voluntary manslaughter." A CNN story is here.

The Commentariat -- Sept. 15, 2013

Devin Dwyer of ABC News: "President Obama says a tumultuous month as commander in chief, when his policy toward Syria took a number of unexpected turns, may not have looked 'smooth and disciplined and linear,' but it;s working." CW: Stephanopoulos says in his lead-in to the interview, "If it works, and that's big 'if' right now, the President may be able to claim a measure [a word he stretches out & delivers with a skeptical inflection] of victory for an approach that's brought him a mountain of criticism." That's George, perfectly playing one of the Village people, unhappy perhaps that Obama has deprived ABC News of increased ratings courtesy of war coverage. Schmuck. (For more on Village people groupspeak, see Michael Tomasky's review of Mark Leibovich's Our Town, linked below.)

Steve Holland of Reuters: "President Barack Obama vowed on Saturday that Syria will be held to account if it fails to live up to its promises to surrender chemical weapons as he faced questions about how a deal brokered by U.S. and Russian diplomats would be enforced." Here's the "Statement by the President on U.S.-Russian Agreement on Framework for Elimination of Syrian Chemical Weapons." ...

... Here's the framework of the agreement between the U.S. & Russia for the elimination of Syrian chemical weapons, via the State Department. ...

... The AP summarizes the points of agreement & unresolved issues. ...

... NEW. Here is a transcript of remarks by Kerry & Lavrov, following the meeting in which they forged the agreement on Syrian chemical weapons, via the U.S. State Department. ...

... NEW. Right on cue, Margaret Wente of the Toronto Globe & Mail, writes a column that's getting a lot of Internet action titled, "Barack Obama, the 98-pound weakling." (See my headline prediction in yesterday's Commentariat. Thanks, Margaret. ...

... Oliver Holmes of Reuters: "Syrian warplanes and artillery bombarded rebel suburbs of the capital on Sunday after the United States agreed to call off military action in a deal with Russia to remove President Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons." ...

... CW: forgot to run President Obama's weekly address yesterday. He follows up on his speech re: reaching a diplomatic solution. He cut it, of course, before the U.S. & Russia reached the above agreement:

Forget the Syria debate, we need a debate on why we're always debating whether to bomb someone. Because we're starting to look not so much like the world's policeman, but more like George Zimmerman. Itching to use force and then pretending it's because we had no choice. -- Bill Maher

... Actually, James Fearon, writing in the Monkey Cage, suggests a reason: "... where [Russia & the U.S.] have ended up should be starting to look familiar, and arguably tells us something about the structure of post-Cold War international politics.... Multilateral cooperation through the UNSC [United Nations Security Council] thus often take the form of the US, sometimes with allies, threatening to intervene without UNSC authorization. This is the 'outside option,' and it stands behind negotiations over whether there are terms for a UN resolution that both the US and the 'constrainers' would both prefer to its exercise. Usually this leads to intervention or multilateral action with UNSC authorization, as in Bosnia or Haiti. But sometimes not, as in Kosovo or Iraq."

Jim Kuhnhenn of the AP: "President Barack Obama is marking the fifth anniversary of the Lehman Brothers collapse by trying to lay claim to an economic turnaround and warning Republicans against moves that he contends would risk a backslide. His message to the GOP: Don't oppose raising the nation's debt limit, don't threaten to close down the government in a budget fight, and don't push to delay the health care law or starve it of federal money. The economic emphasis, after weeks devoted to the Syrian crisis, begins coming into focus in a series of events kicked off by a Rose Garden speech Monday." ...

... NEW. Economist James Galbraith in Al Jazeera America takes a realistic; i.e., pessimistic, view of our economic future. & provides quite a useful sketch of the last 100 years of economic history. Thanks to contributor Barbarossa for the link.

Bill Barrow of the AP: "Tea party activists, once unquestioned as a benefit to the Republican Party for supplying it with votes and energy, are now criticizing GOP leaders at seemingly every turn. A recent Pew Research Center survey found that more than 7 in 10 self-identified 'tea party Republicans' disapprove of the job performance of GOP congressional leaders. Many of the major tea party groups are backing 2014 primary challengers against Republicans the activists deem too moderate, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell." ...

... ** Thomas Mann & Norm Ornstein, from an update of their book It's Even Worse Than It Looks: "The old conservative GOP has been transformed into a party beholden to ideological zealots, one that sees little need to balance individualism with community, freedom with equality, markets with regulation, state with national power, or policy commitments with respect for facts, evidence, science, and a willingness to compromise. These two factors -- asymmetric polarization and the mismatch between our parties and governing institutions -- continue to account for the major share of our governing problems. But the media continues, for the most part, to miss this story." ...

... CW: I have been trying for a couple of days to get to Michael Tomasky's NYRB review of Mark Leibovich's Our Town, which is here. Contributor Ken Winkes, who cited the review, picked out the most interesting part: "Alan I. Abramowitz ... performs a multivariate analysis of the factors that are likely to make a citizen a Tea Party supporter. Conservative ideology matters most. But next -- ahead of demographic factors like age, gender, and income, ahead of church attendance and even party identification -- are 'racial resentment, and dislike of Obama.'" I do ask that you remember the right's antipathy for the Clintons, though. Wingers accused Hillary Clinton of being a socialist & a murderer & Bill Clinton of running drugs out of the Arkansas woods. Darrell Issa's hearings on the IRS & Benghazi look fairly tame compared to Congressional hearings & special counsel investigations of Watergate, Travelgate, Vince Foster, Hillary's missing billing records, etc.

** Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "Lawrence H. Summers's prospects of becoming chairman of the Federal Reserve have become murkier since three key Democratic senators signaled in recent days that they would oppose his nomination. Senator Jon Tester, Democrat of Montana and a member of the Banking Committee, said on Friday that he would vote against sending Mr. Summers's nomination.... Two of Mr. Tester's fellow Democrats on the committee, Senators Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Sherrod Brown of Ohio, have also signaled through their aides that they would vote no.... As skepticism grows..., the White House has made it clear to Democrats on Capitol Hill that Mr. Summers is Mr. Obama's choice. Republicans, too, are wary of Mr. Summers. Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Senate Republican, and Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas have both said that they would not vote for Mr. Summers. In August, Mr. Roberts said, 'I wouldn't want Larry Summers to mow my yard.'" ...

Gretchen Morgenson & Robert Gebeloff of the New York Times: big banks have been hoarding ethanol credits & selling them at prices 20 times the rates they sold for just 6 months ago as EPA regs force refineries to purchase them. "The market in ethanol credits is exactly the kind Wall Street loves: opaque, lightly regulated and potentially very lucrative." Oh, and they're not exactly regulated, but Scott Mixon, acting chief economist of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said the agency was thinking about thinking about it. Thomas "O'Malley, the chairman of PBF Energy, likens the outcome to a hidden tax on the public. Unlike other taxes, which go to the government, this one goes to the speculators. CW: of course the ultimate victim in this banking scam is the driving public, who will have to pay for the price-gouging. AND/OR our gas tanks will corrode thanks to too much ethanol in the mix. Simple solution: change the law to reduce the ethanol requirement. Oh. Congress.

Jackie Calmes of the New York Times: "Dan Pfeiffer, President Obama's 37-year-old chief strategist and one of his longest-serving advisers, was hospitalized twice last week after suffering 'stroke-like symptoms,' White House officials confirmed on Friday."

Missed this Friday afternoon news dump. Byron Tau & Jennifer Haberkorn of Politico: "The Obama administration on Friday told labor union leaders that their health plans would not be eligible for tax subsidies under Obamacare next year. A White House official said the Treasury Department has concluded that such an exemption is not possible under the Affordable Care Act. The labor unions have been asking that their union plans, known as Taft-Hartley plans, be eligible for premium subsidies the way plans on the new insurance exchange will be. A senior administration official said the White House looked at several ways to make the union plans eligible for subsidies but couldn't find one."

Maureen Dowd takes us on a field trip to the C.I.A.'s Langley HQ with actors Claire Danes & Mandy Potamkin, who star in "Homeland," a Showtime series about the C.I.A.'s complicated ops. CW: maybe MoDo thinks it's her job to give us little people thrilling peeks behind-the-scenes peeks at places we're not likely to go; otherwise, I don't know why she writes this stuff.

Local News

** Aaron Davis of the Washington Post: Washington D.C. "Mayor Vincent C. Gray's decision this week to veto a law requiring Wal-Mart to offer higher pay pitted support for a 'living wage 'against a desire to spur investment and job growth in the city.... Barring a last-minute change by one of five council members who voted against the measure in July, it appears likely to die during an override attempt on Tuesday... For ... thousands ... who cross the city line every day on their way to the Landover Wal-Mart, the battle was about something more basic: low prices. Gray's decision brought focus to the flipside of the living-wage debate: that Wal-Mart's customers are often as economically disadvantaged as those who scrape by on its hourly wages."

Mark Guarino of the Christian Science Monitor: "Marriage licenses will no longer be given out to same-sex couples in Pennsylvania, a state judge has ruled, putting into limbo the legal status of more than 100 couples who married recently despite a long-standing ban on same-sex marriage in the state."

Sarah Jones in Wall of Separation: Texas creationists are making new trouble for Texas schools. The Board of Education appointed several creationists to a panel to review biology textbooks, and -- surprise, surprise -- they're attempting to get the teaching of creationism into the kids' biology books. One reviewer wrote,

I understand the National Academy of Science's [sic] strong support of the theory of evolution. At the same time, this is a theory. As an educator, parent, and grandparent, I feel very firmly that 'creation science' based on Biblical principles should be incorporated into every Biology book that is up for adoption.

      ... Via Steve Benen.

Brinley Bruton of NBC News: "The Vatican's new secretary of state [Archbishop Pietro Parolin] has said that priestly celibacy is not church dogma and therefore open to discussion, marking a significant change in approach towards one of the thorniest issues facing the Roman Catholic Church.... He added that while it was not dogma, clerical celibacy was a deeply entrenched Catholic tradition." Also via Benen.

AND Benen posts video the Christian Broadcasting Network tried to cover up of Pat Robertson's claim that AIDS-afflicted gay people in San Francisco go around spreading the disease by means of secret rings that cut the hands of those they shake hands with. CW: Robertson's theorizing begins at about 1:50 min. into the tape & is gratuitous; it has little to do with the preceding discussion.

News Ledes

AFP: "More than 500 stranded victims of major flooding in Colorado braced for a new round of heavy rain Sunday that is threatening to impede rescue efforts. Officials noted that many of those unaccounted for may simply not be able to telephone loved ones because of flood damage to many cell phone towers." The Denver Post's lede story is here. More stories linked on the Post's front page.

AP: "Tropical Storm Manuel churned very near to Mexico's southwest Pacific shoreline Sunday as thousands on the country's Gulf rim sought shelter from approaching Hurricane Ingrid....

The Commentariat -- Sept. 14, 2013

** Ann Gearan, et al., of the Washington Post: "The United States and Russia agreed Saturday on an outline for the identification and seizure of Syrian chemical weapons and said Syria must turn over an accounting of its arsenal within a week. The agreement will be backed by a U.N. Security Council resolution that could allow for sanctions or other consequences if Syria fails to comply, Secretary of State John F. Kerry said. Kerry said that the first international inspection of Syrian chemical weapons will take place by November, with destruction to begin soon after and be complete by the middle of next year." ...

... Conal Urquhart of the Guardian: "The United States and Russia have agreed that Syrian chemical weapons will be placed under international control and destroyed in a process that will begin with a week. International inspectors from the Organisation of the Prevention of Chemical weapons must be given 'immediate and unfettered' access to Syrian chemical weapons, said the US secretary of state, John Kerry, while Syria must give a 'comprehensive list' of its chemical weapons within one week."

... CW: So make that headline: "War Averted, Lives Saved, Obama Is a Weakling."

... Peter Baker of the New York Times: "President Obama will not insist on a United Nations resolution threatening to use force to ensure that Syria lives up to its commitment to turn over chemical weapons, but will seek other tangible consequences for Syria if it does not comply, senior administration officials said Friday. Although Mr. Obama reserves the right to order a punitive military strike on his own without United Nations backing if Syria reneges, the officials said he understood that Russia, because of its veto power in the Security Council, would never allow a resolution that authorized such a use of force." ...

... Ann Gearan & Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post: "A proposal for an international peace conference to end the brutal Syrian civil war could be revived if negotiations over ridding the country of chemical weapons succeed, top U.S. and Russian diplomats said Friday. The remarks by Secretary of State John F. Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov were the first explicit indication that the diplomacy begun this week to resolve the immediate crisis of threatened U.S. military strikes could be a gateway to a broader negotiation aimed at ending the 2¹ / ₂-year-old conflict." ...

... Thom Shanker of the New York Times: "The crisis in Syria is the most recent and most powerful example of how Mr. Obama, elected twice on a promise to disengage the United States from overseas conflicts, has moved the Pentagon to a back seat. In this case, it is Secretary of State John Kerry who is leading the charge, not the far less vocal [Defense Secretary Chuck] Hagel and General [Martin] Dempsey." ...

... John Rabe & Kitty Felde of KPCC Public Radio: Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) tells of his meeting with Vladimir Putin in the early 1990s. Humorous. ...

... Grumpy McCain Expands His Media Base. Dylan Byers of Politico: "The Russian newspaper Pravda has tentatively agreed to publish an Op-Ed by Sen. John McCain in which he will attack Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to an exclusive report from Foreign Policy. The piece would serve as a direct response to the New York Times Op-Ed Putin penned earlier this week." (CW: I'm not linking to the initial report, as I normally try to do, because Foreign Policy has a horrible sign-in system you have to go through before you can read any article.) CW: a spokesperson for McCain said the Senator was not content to dominate U.S. news shows & was reaching out to venues all over the world. ...

... CW: I missed this report by Tim Murphy & Tasneem Raja when Mother Jones published it last week. Fortunately, my favorite news source, Rand Paul, called it to my attention. "Over the last two decades, [John] McCain has rarely missed an opportunity to call for the escalation of an international conflict. Since the mid-1990s, he's pushed for regime change in more than a half-dozen countries -- occasionally with disastrous consequences." The story includes "a quick review of McCain's eagerness for military action and foreign entanglements." ...

... Here's how Paul describes the Murphy-Raja report:

There was a funny article the other day in Mother Jones.... It ranked the different countries on how eager Sen. McCain wanted to be involved [militarily]. So, like, for getting involved in Syria, there's five Angry McCains. For getting involved in the Sudan, there's two Angry McCains. And there's a little picture of him. You know, he was for getting involved to support Gaddafi before he was for overthrowing Gaddafi. He was for supporting Mubarak before he was for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood before he was for supporting the generals.

... MacKay Coppins of BuzzFeed interviews Paul about his views on war. Coppins writes, "... over the past two weeks, it has become clear that Paul's brand of Republicanism has spread deeply within his party. He successfully rallied a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers against a military intervention in Syria; thoroughly embarrassed Republican leaders who supported the air strikes; and temporarily elevated himself to the role of de facto foreign policy spokesman for the GOP." ...

... Ed Kilgore pushes back: "It is not at all clear that Paul was the central figure -- much less the organizer of 'bipartisan' opposition -- in the resistance to a use-of-force resolution on Syria. In his utterances on the subject, he frequently hinted at sympathy for Assad as the protector of Syrian Christians; few Republicans, and virtually no Democrats, Went There." ...

... AND Paul pissed off the jihadists of Christians United for Israel (founded by John Hagee, most infamous for opining that God caused Hurricane Katrina to prevent a planned gay parade, but an all-around offensive loon) in his Coppins interview when he scoffed at the militaristic policies promoted by "defenders of the promised land and the chosen people." ...

... CW: Here's a place I'm totally with McCain: Tim Molloy of the Wrap: "Would we be better off buying cable stations one at a time instead of in bundles? Sen. John McCain says yes, and has introduced legislation that would make it happen." I pay for perhaps 50 sports channels, none of which I ever watch.

Jonathan Cohn of the New Republic: "Lots of people think John Boehner has lost control of the House Republican caucus. Apparently John Boehner does, too." Cohn offers three theories of winger motivation: "They are delusional.... They are savvy.... They are selfish," any one or all of which may be true. ...

... Domenico Montanaro of NBC News: "Americans overwhelmingly do not think Congress should raise the nation's debt limit as President Barack Obama and Congress prepare once again to wage battle over the issue, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll." CW: Contributor P. D. Pepe MAG mentioned this (or a similar) poll in yesterday's Comments. These polls irritate me. Here's how the pollsters framed the question (it's Question Q 16 on the linked page):

As you may know the federal debt ceiling acts as a check and limit on the country's overall liabilities, including the federal deficit and other debts. When the U.S. Treasury needs to issue debt above the ceiling in order to avoid going into bankruptcy and defaulting on its obligations, Congress needs to vote to raise the ceiling. Congress is again currently considering whether and how much to extend the debt ceiling. Do you think Congress should or should not raise the debt ceiling? If you don't know enough to have an opinion, please just say so.

      ... My eyes glaze over just reading the question. Responders don't know WTF the debt ceiling is (nor should they be expected to), & the pollsters made it as difficult as possible for them to understand. The result was 44-22 percent said "no." That is, a third of the respondents declined to answer. Most of the 44 percent were just too proud to say they didn't get it. Had the pollster asked, "Do you think the government should pay its bills?" -- which is the vernacular form of the question -- the results would have been a helluva lot different. ...

... Brett Logiurato of Business Insider: "Friday's poll suggests that public ignorance over the issue could be a boon for Republicans in any negotiations." ...

... Also via MAG, Jon Chait of New York explains why "There's really only one answer Obama can give here [re: Boehner's recent 'request" to combine debt ceiling & budget negotiations]: Boehner can go fuck himself." ...

... To help you out with all this debt ceiling/government shutdown/defund ObamaCare stuff, Gail Collins provides a handy calendar, suitable for taping to your refrigerator, of upcoming events.

Scott Shane of the New York Times: "A judge on the nation's intelligence court directed the government on Friday to review for possible public release the court's classified opinions on the National Security Agency's practice of collecting logs of Americans' phone calls. Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV issued the opinion in a response to a motion filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, saying such a move would add to 'an informed debate' about privacy and might even improve the reputation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on which he sits." ...

... Spencer Ackerman of the Guardian: "The court that oversees US surveillance has ordered the government to review for declassification a set of secret rulings about the National Security Agency's bulk trawls of Americans' phone records, acknowledging that disclosures by the whistleblower Edward Snowden had triggered an important public debate."

** Peter Beinart of the Daily Beast predicts that millenials will usher in a new age of liberalism, & he thinks Elizabeth Warren would be a a compelling presidential candidate: "The door is closing on the Reagan-Clinton era. It would be ironic if it was a Clinton herself who sealed it shut." Beinart makes a compelling case, but bear in mind he completely omits such phenomena as the yahoo factor that dominates the Republican party. His assessment of Obama's politics is, I think, exactly right.

Local News

Rod Bastanmehr of AlterNet: "Dr. Shiping Bao, the Volusia County medical examiner who was in charge of handling ... Trayvon Martin's body in February 2012, has come out and claimed that the prosecution team was biased against [Martin]..., and intentionally lost the case. According to Bao's attorney, Willie Gary, the medical examiner's office, the state attorney's office and the Sanford Police's 'general attitude was that [Martin] got what he deserved. He was in essence told to zip his lips.... Dr. Bao is speaking out in the wake of having been fired from the m.e.'s office, and is planning a $100 million lawsuit against the State of Florida." CW: I would tend to dismiss Bao's assertions as representative of "vengeful fired employee" syndrome but for this: "According to the former assistant coroner, the results of Martin's autopsy clearly showed that, despite Zimmerman's statements regarding their altercation, there was no feasible way for Martin to have been on top of Zimmerman when the gun was fired,  because the bullet entered Martin's back." Shot in the back??

News Ledes

Reuters: "More heavy rain is expected on Saturday in Colorado where rescue workers are battling to reach residents cut off by the worst floods in decades, which have killed at least four people and left 172 still unaccounted for.... The flooding began overnight Wednesday. It was triggered by unusually heavy late-summer storms that soaked Colorado's biggest urban centers, from Fort Collins near the Wyoming border south through Boulder, Denver and Colorado Springs." The Denver Post has a liveblog here. The Post's main story is here.

AFP: "Four Chinese ships entered waters around islands at the centre of a bitter dispute with Japan on Saturday with no sign of a compromise seen between Asia's two largest powers."