The Commentariat -- January 31, 2012

The Commentariat, as usual, is open for comments. I've brought these three links forward from yesterday, as I posted them fairly late in the day:

     ... My column, "Tom Friedman on How the 99 Percent Can Best Serve the One Percent, Corporate Edition," is now up on NYTX. That twerp is really starting to irritate me. ...

     ... Prof. William Black: "Apple overwhelmingly purchases components from Asian suppliers that are criminal enterprises." P.S. You'd never know this from reading the New York Times. ...

      ... CW: This article by Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism on Apple's use of Chinese slave labor is excellent, but then she agrees with me, so I would think so.

Zeke Emanuel & Jeffrey Liebman in the New York Times: "Here’s a bold prediction for the new year. By 2020, the American health insurance industry will be extinct. Insurance companies will be replaced by accountable care organizations — groups of doctors, hospitals and other health care providers who come together to provide the full range of medical care for patients."

Keith Bradsher of the New York Times: "As the White House prepares for a Washington visit by the man who is expected to run China for the coming decade..., a coalition of big American labor unions, Democratic politicians and trade advocacy groups plans to start campaigning for the Obama administration to file a series of trade cases against China in the auto industry. They accuse Beijing of unfairly subsidizing Chinese auto parts makers and illegally restricting the exports of crucial raw materials that foreign parts makers need to stay competitive. The group says a 900 percent increase in auto parts imports from China over the last decade, to nearly $12 billion a year, is to blame for job losses in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania — three swing states that the administration cannot easily ignore in a presidential election year."

Greg Sargent: key unions are unhappy with a Senate Democratic "compromise" with House Republicans on the FAA reauthorization bill and are demanding Democrats pull out of the deal. 

Alex Isenstadt of Politico: "Democrat Suzanne Bonamici holds a comfortable lead over Republican Rob Cornilles in public polling heading into the last day of balloting in the vote-by-mail special election to replace disgraced former Democratic Rep. David Wu [D-Oregon]. Republicans glumly acknowledge there’s little reason to expect the kind of upset the GOP scored last fall.... If Bonamici does come out on top, it will be largely thanks to a Democratic Party-led onslaught targeting Cornilles. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has spent more than $1.2 million on TV ads slamming the Republican as a tea-party-aligned conservative who is far out of step with the liberal-leaning, northwest Oregon-based 1st District, which has sent only Democrats to Congress since 1974."

Right Wing World

The New York Times Editors Love Those Debates: "... the [GOP presidential] debates have shown the complete lack of interest by all the Republican candidates in the issues of economic fairness. While the candidates argue over their investments and their complex tax returns and who can cut taxes for the rich the most, the contrast to Mr. Obama’s newfound voice on shared responsibility could not be more clear. The long series of debates are an open window onto the failed policies and dubious values of the Republican Party. No wonder some people want to close it."

Sam Youngman of Reuters: "A confident Mitt Romney solidified his lead in Florida polls and ridiculed Republican rival Newt Gingrich on Monday, calling his opponent's attacks 'sad' and 'painfully revealing' the day before the state's crucial presidential primary." ...

... Philip Rucker & Amy Gardner of the Washington Post: "With Mitt Romney appearing poised to win a commanding victory in Florida’s GOP presidential primary on Tuesday, the candidates repositioned themselves on Monday for a series of unpredictable contests to follow, with no end in sight to the rift within the Republican Party. Romney and his chief rival, Newt Gingrich, hurled personal barbs at each other in a final burst of campaigning here, signaling that they will remain at their battle stations as the nomination fight quickly pivots to Nevada, Maine, Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri...." ...

... But if this makes you think Romney is really, really popular with Florida wingnuts and Gingrich is not, consider this report from the Wesleyan Media Project: "Romney ... and [his] allies have dominated the airwaves in Florida, airing almost 13,000 ads on broadcast television across the state, as of Wednesday, the 25th (Table 3). Gingrich and his interest-group allies have aired only about 200 spots, with Paul and Santorum out of the broadcast television game." That would be 65 Romney ads running for every Gingrich ad (and zero for Paul & Santorum). Thank you, Citizens United. You guys on the Supremes are geniuses.

Greg Sargent: "... a new partisan breakdown of some numbers from the new NBC/WSJ poll ... [shows] Romney’s unfavorability rating among independents has spiked 20 points in the last two months.... Pollster Peter Hart, a Democrat, tells me Romney’s multiple gaffes and revelations about his taxes and Bain background have led independents to start making a choice between Romney and Obama, rather than merely looking at Romney as a generic opponent of the President."

Michael Cooper of the New York Times: "A year after a coterie of new Republican governors swept into the statehouses and put in place aggressive agendas to cut spending and curb union powers, sparking strong backlashes in many places, many of them are adopting decidedly more moderate tones as they begin their sophomore year in office."

Michael Gerson, former Bush II speechwriter & Washington Post columnist, writes a column which is slugged on the front page, "Obama declares war on religion." Yeah, right. The Post editorial page remains manned by radical loons. ...

     ... Update: here's Andy Rosenthal David Firestone of the New York Times ridiculing the Newt for "reaching deep into his bag of bizarre accusations" to make charge against President Obama that Gerson makes, then leveling a similar charge against Romney. And Newt didn't even accuse Obama of "war"; only a mere "attack on religion." Michael Gerson is insane. ...

     ... AND consider this: could Rosenthal Firestone be pushing back against the views his own columnist -- one Ross Douthat -- expressed just this weekend? I think maybe so.

News Ledes

New York Times: "Mitt Romney rolled to victory in the Florida primary on Tuesday evening, according to early returns and exit polls, dispatching an insurgent threat from Newt Gingrich and reclaiming his dominant position in the race for the Republican presidential nomination." Page includes updated Florida totals. The Times has live, updated coverage here. ...

... The New York Times has a page here where they are updating superPAC disclosures. The deadline for filing is midnight.

New York Times: "The battle over Syria moved to the United Nations on Tuesday as Western powers and much of the Arab world confronted Russia and its allies in the Security Council over their refusal to condemn the Syrian government for its violent suppression of popular protests."

New York Times: "In an effort to regain public trust, the Senate voted Monday to take up a bill that would prohibit members of Congress from trading stocks and other securities on the basis of confidential information they receive as lawmakers. The vote was 93 to 2.... At the same time, Democratic senators moved to tap into concerns about comparatively low tax rates paid by some of the nation’s top earners, introducing a bill that would require households with more than $1 million of adjusted gross income to pay at least 30 percent of it in taxes." Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) introduced the bill, known as the "Buffett Rule"; for billionaire Warren Buffett. Republicans are not interested.

New York Times: "President Obama on Monday defended the use of drones to strike suspected terrorists in Pakistan and elsewhere, saying the clandestine program ... enabled the United States to use 'pinpoint' targeting to avoid more intrusive military action. Mr. Obama, in an unusually candid public discussion of the Central Intelligence Agency’s covert program, said the drone strikes had not inflicted huge civilian casualties. 'We are very careful in terms of how it’s been applied,' he said. 'It is important for everybody to understand that this thing is kept on a very tight leash.' The president made the remarks in answer to questions posed by people during a live Web interview sponsored by Google Plus...." See video in yesterday's Commentariat.

New York Times: "Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Tuesday are expected to publish a report on the disputed gun trafficking investigation called Operation Fast and Furious, concluding that agents in Arizona — not Obama administration officials — were responsible for the tactics used in the inquiry and for providing misleading information relayed to Congress."

AP: "... for the first time since they started shaping this campaign in earnest, many ... 'super' political action committees are set to disclose just who is financing their pseudo-campaign operations. Many took advantage of a change in federal rules that essentially let them shield their donors' identities until after key primary elections in January. But they still must submit their financial reports to the Federal Election Commission by Tuesday."

Reuters: "A retired general who portrayed the U.S. fight against Muslim radicals as a battle with Satan has withdrawn from speaking to the West Point military academy after a veterans' advocacy group objected, the military academy said on Monday. Retired three-star general William Boykin was invited to speak at a February 8 West Point prayer breakfast."

The Commentariat -- January 30, 2012

My column on David Brooks' last effort is up on the New York Times eXaminer front page. I ran it on Reality Chex last Friday, so you may already have seen it. I will have a column on Tom Friedman's latest malarkey up later this morning. The NYTX front page, which features my columns today, is here. You can contribute here.

Eric Schmitt & Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: "A month after the last American troops left Iraq, the State Department is operating a small fleet of surveillance drones here to help protect the United States Embassy and consulates, as well as American personnel. Some senior Iraqi officials expressed outrage at the program, saying the unarmed aircraft are an affront to Iraqi sovereignty.... [A State Department report] foreshadows a possible expansion of unmanned drone operations into the diplomatic arm of the American government; until now they have been mainly the province of the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency."

E. J. Dionne, a Roman Catholic, thinks the Obama Administration "threw his progressive Catholic allies under the bus" when Health & Human Services issued a rule -- which is the same as an interim ruling it made last August -- that "required contraceptive services to be covered by the insurance policies that will be supported under the Affordable Care Act." The ruling essentially exempts churches but not RC hospitals & universities. CW: I disagree with Dionne, who also writes about an alternative policy that he thought should have been applied.

Lawrence Wright of the New Yorker: quite a few Mormons have run for POTUS, including Joseph Smith, the founder of the faith. Here's how that worked out: "As mayor of Nauvoo, Illinois (his only political office), Smith ordered the destruction of an opponent’s newspaper. For that, he was jailed and ordered to stand trial. Before that could happen, a mob burst into the jail and killed him."

Right Wing World

In a New York Times post, Prof. Tom Edsall argues that the country is turning more liberal, so Newt Gingrich and the desperate, angry loons he appeals to are going the way of the Studebaker (well, he couldn't write, "Edsel"). Or something like that.

Justin Sink of The Hill: "Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.) said that her Republican counterpart Reince Priebus showed a 'dramatic level of insensitivity' in comparing President Barack Obama to the disgraced captain of the Italian cruise ship that ran aground earlier this year, killing at least 16 people." CW: I could not agree more with Wasserman Schultz. Priebus said, in part, "... we're going to talk about our own little Captain Schettino, which is President Obama...." I am positive this is a further attempt to characterize Obama as "foreign" and a foreign coward, to boot. Even the name "Schettino" sounds to an English-speaker like a derogatory foreign word -- "little scooter," or something, tho my husband -- who is an Italian-born linguist -- says the name has no meaning; it's just a name.

Stephanie McCrummen of the Washington Post: "As the Republican establishment mounts attacks denouncing him as too erratic to be president, [Newt] Gingrich has seemed only more energized. Despite slipping in Florida’s polls, he has vowed a 'wild and woolly' primary battle that will end with his victory. And on Sunday, he and Mitt Romney traded their harshest attacks yet, with Romney telling Gingrich to 'look in the mirror' if he wants to understand his slide in the polls, and Gingrich slugging back, calling Romney a 'pro-abortion, ­pro-gun-control, pro-tax-increase moderate.'” ...

... Sam Youngman & Steve Holland of Reuters: "Republican Newt Gingrich struggled to halt surging rival Mitt Romney's momentum on Sunday, accusing him of launching false attacks as polls showed Romney widening his lead two days before Florida's presidential primary. Romney, who has battered Gingrich in a flood of television ads and two debates in Florida last week, opened a double-digit lead over the former House of Representatives speaker in four polls released on Sunday." ...

... Nate Silver seems to think Gingrich is a dead duck in Florida. ...

... Evan McMorris-Santoro of TPM: Mitt Romney & his allies are outspending Newt Gingrich & Co. five-to-one in Florida. "The Dems think ... it’s not Romney who’s winning votes in Florida, but the size of his wallet." Thanks to Kate M. for the link. ...

... So it appears Gingrich is threatening a brokered convention. Oh, the fun of a nasty GOP free-for-all.

** "Existential Otherness." Frank Rich sees Mitt Romney as "the white shadow," someone nobody -- even his close associates -- know nothing about.

James Surowiecki of the New Yorker: A "curious reality of this year’s election: ... the same party that loves to inveigh against the dangers of excessive borrowing is now likely to nominate for President a man whose entire career, and entire fortune, was built on debt. Leveraged-buyout firms like Bain Capital, which Mitt Romney ran between 1984 and 1999, routinely borrow massive sums in order to make their acquisitions, leaving companies with debt loads equal to twice their annual sales or more.... The implicit message [the Republican party will' send by nominating Romney is ...: Debt for me, but not for thee."

Jonathan Chait of New York magazine: Romney has grabbed some of Newt's far-right language about President Obama. Also, in Right Wing World, the proletariat truly believe that Obama is an idiot who can't speak in full sentences without a teleprompter.

Buh-bye, Voting Rights Act; Adios, Latinos. Adam Serwer of Mother Jones: "As Republican primary voters head to the polls in Florida on Tuesday, both GOP front-runners have endorsed a policy that would contradict existing law and could disenfranchise millions of voters across the country. During a recent debate, both Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney supported getting rid of bilingual ballots when the topic was brought up by the moderator."

The deficit hawks that are the Washington Post editorial board are still on the warpath, but they're right about this much: "The Republican presidential candidates claim to abhor debt, yet propose tax cuts that would add trillions more.... It makes no sense to further benefit the wealthiest taxpayers at a time when spending programs for the most vulnerable would be on the chopping block — of necessity, given the candidates’ pledges to cap spending. In their fiscal consequences these cuts would be disastrous; as a matter of fairness, even more so.

CW: Steve Benen, who is now a producer on the Rachel Maddow show, blogs that my very senator, Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) doesn't understand the economy. inasmuch as Marco claims jobs growth & economic growth are "worse" than jobs losses & economic contraction. Actually, I think Marco is just a liar. Don't know which is worse, especially if I try to apply Marco's definition of "worse."

News Ledes

President Obama answered questions at a Google Plus event this afternoon:

New York Times: "All but two European Union countries agreed Monday to new and tougher measures to enforce budget discipline in the euro zone, but the bloc still showed few signs of producing a comprehensive solution for the sovereign debt crisis or a credible plan to revive fragile economies across Europe's weakened Mediterranean tier."

New York Times: "As Syrian forces pushed rebels back from strongholds near Damascus on Monday, some of the world’s top diplomats converged on the United Nations to try to press President Bashar al-Assad to leave office through a Security Council resolution." ...

... Washington Post: "Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton condemned 'in the strongest possible terms' the escalation of Syrian government attacks on opposition protesters and said she would voice American concerns at a U.N. Security Council meeting on the subject Tuesday."

Washington Post: the Park Police sort of closed down the Occupy Washington encampment at McPherson Square today, allowing tents to stay up -- as symbols of protest -- but forcing protesters to remove camping equipment & stuff. The ban is the result of "pressure from Republican congressmen."

Reuters: "House Republicans will propose legislation on Tuesday calling for $260 billion in spending on transportation infrastructure for up to five years, an election-year proposal touted as a job creator in a tough economy.... Additional elements could be tacked on by other committees in coming days, including a plan to authorize the Canada-to-Texas Keystone XL oil pipeline despite the refusal of President Barack Obama to advance the project."

Reuters: "Ratings agency Standard & Poor's warned it may downgrade 'a number of highly rated' Group of 20 countries as of 2015 if their governments fail to enact reforms to curb rising health-care spending and other costs related to aging populations. Developed nations in Europe, as well as Japan and the United States, are likely to suffer the largest deterioration in their public finances in the next four decades...."

New York Times: "Claremont McKenna College, a small, prestigious California school, said Monday that for the past six years, it has submitted false SAT scores to publications like U.S. News & World Report that use the data in widely followed college rankings."

Reuters: "Crews cleaned up Oakland's historic City Hall on Sunday from damage inflicted overnight during violent anti-Wall Street protests that resulted in about 400 arrests, marking one of the largest mass arrests since nationwide protests began last year." The San Francisco Chronicle story is here.

Reuters: "Republican lawmakers will try to force the Obama administration to approve the Canada-to-Texas Keystone XL pipeline by attaching it to a highway bill that Congress will consider next month, House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner said on Sunday."

AFP: "Iran could develop a nuclear bomb in about a year and create the means for delivery in a further two to three years, the US defense chief [Leon Panetta] said Sunday, reiterating President Barack Obama's determination to halt the effort." ...

... New York Times: "Iran’s foreign minister was reported on Monday to have offered to extend a three-day visit to his country by United Nations inspectors in what seemed a further attempt to lower the strident tone of a crisis with the West over Tehran’s nuclear program following the imposition of new economic sanctions."

Washington Post: "The Food and Drug Administration secretly monitored the personal e-mail of a group of its own scientists and doctors after they warned Congress that the agency was approving medical devices that posed unacceptable risks to patients, government documents show. The surveillance — detailed in e-mails and memos unearthed by the scientists and doctors, who filed a lawsuit against the FDA in U.S. District Court in Washington this week — took place over two years as the plaintiffs accessed their personal Gmail accounts from government computers. Information garnered this way eventually contributed to the harassment or dismissal of all six of the FDA employees, the suit alleges."

Reuters: "China intends to establish Shanghai as the global centre for yuan trading, clearing and pricing over the next three years as part of broader plans to make the commercial hub an international financial centre by 2020."

<>AP: In Kingston, Ontario, Canada, "a jury on Sunday found three members of an Afghan family guilty of killing three teenage sisters and another woman in what the judge described as 'cold-blooded, shameful murders' resulting from a 'twisted concept of honor,' ending a case that shocked and riveted Canadians. Prosecutors said the defendants allegedly killed the three teenage sisters because they dishonored the family by defying its disciplinarian rules on dress, dating, socializing and using the Internet."

Two Rights Don't Make a Wrong

In the last 22 months, businesses have created more than 3 million jobs. Last year, they created the most jobs since 2005. -- President Obama, SOTU

Last Week PolitiFact rated these statements "half-true" because they decided that the President was "crediting his policies for the jobs increase." After an uproar -- I linked Paul Krugman's rebuttal -- PolitiFact backed down and deemed the statements "'mostly true' ... because [President Obama] was not making the linkage as strongly as we initially believed." Akhilleus wrote a good philosophical rebuttal to PolitiFact in comments to the Commentariat. Here's a letter I wrote to Bill Adair, the editor of PolitiFact, which is way less esoteric than Akhilleus' discourse but is something I think maybe a logic-challenged newspaperman can comprehend:

Shortly after we started PolitiFact, the housing bubble burst. -- Bill Adair

I would rate that statement as "true."

Whatever inference I derive from such a remark would be my doing, not yours. I may think that you are holding PolitiFact responsible for tanking the economy, that you are simply noting a coincidence, or that you are complaining that the mortgage on the house you bought in 2007 is underwater.

Two proximate true statements don't "merge" to constitute a "half-true" or "mostly true" statement. They remain two true statements. So if the president says, "When my stimulus program kicked in, the economy started creating jobs," each of those statements is true. Economists will argue whether or not there was a causal relationship, but the president would merely be making two proximate accurate observations.

What President Obama actually said was this: "In the last 22 months, businesses have created more than 3 million jobs. Last year, they created the most jobs since 2005." There is nothing even slightly untruthful about either of those statements. I may infer President Obama single-handedly saved the economy, or I may infer that market forces independent of any government (or Federal Reserve) action caused the slight improvement in the jobs figures. It's not for PolitiFact to tell me what's on my mind -- or to impugn the President for what you infer is on his mind. That's what your rating does, whether you make it "half-true" or "mostly true." Get real. The statements are true. Period.

Time for another upgrade. And time for you to do some Reality Chex there at PolitiFact. Not for the first time, you're letting your success undermine your mission. When you become less truthful than the politicians you "fact-check," you become part of the problem, not part of the solution.