The Commentariat -- May 20, 2013

Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "President Obama on Sunday summoned the graduates of historically black Morehouse College to 'transform the way we think about manhood,' urging the young men to avoid the temptation to make excuses and to take responsibility for their families and their communities. Delivering a commencement address at the all-male private liberal arts college in Atlanta, Obama spoke in deeply personal terms about the 'special obligation' he feels as a black man to help those left behind":

CNN: "President Barack Obama comes out of what was arguably the worst week of his presidency with his approval rating holding steady, according to a new national poll.... According to the survey, which was conducted Friday and Saturday, 53% of Americans say they approve of the job the president is doing, with 45% saying they disapprove. The president's approval rating was at 51% in CNN's last poll, which was conducted in early April."

Meghashyam Mali of the Hill: "White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer on Sunday defended the White House handling of the Internal Revenue Service scandal, saying the legality of the political targeting was 'irrelevant' and vowing the administration would ensure it 'never happens again.' Pfeiffer, who made the full round of Sunday talk shows, as the administration seeks to calm anger over the IRS, the Justice Department’s seizure of reporters phone records and lingering GOP questions about the Benghazi attacks, vowed that the administration would act quickly to address the tax scandal."

Igor Volsky of Think Progress: "On Sunday, during an appearance on Meet The Press, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) — the GOP leader in the senate — distanced himself from Republican efforts to portray the Obama administration’s response to the attacks on a U.S. diplomatic issue in Benghazi, Libya as a Watergate-level scandal that should result in impeachment." ...

... MEANWHILE ... Zack Colman of the Hill: on "Face the Nation," "Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said the Obama administration owes its recent troubles and controversies to a 'culture of cover ups and intimidation' within the White House." CW: both McConnell & Cornyn are up for re-election in 2014 & both face the prospect of winger primary challenges.

CNN: "Jonathan Karl, chief White House correspondent for ABC News, addressed criticism of his reporting on the Benghazi talking points controversy, saying in a statement to CNN that he regrets the inaccuracy of his report. 'Clearly, I regret the email was quoted incorrectly and I regret that it’s become a distraction from the story, which still entirely stands. I should have been clearer about the attribution. We updated our story immediately,' he said in the statement to Howard Kurtz, host of CNN's 'Reliable Sources.'" CW: yeah, the story still stands; it's just substantially different from what you wrote. Jerk. ...

... John Cole of Balloon Juice: "I guess when it is someone as ethically challenged as Howard Kurtz holding your feet to the fire, you probably just think you can tell people to piss off and be done with the whole matter.... Karl lied to us because he trusted his source. His source, however, burned him, and Karl’s lie was exposed.... If the editors at ABC News had any damned integrity, Karl would be forced to expose his source, apologize, and then take a couple weeks off. Maybe some summer school ethics course." ...

... Just Who Is ABC News's Chief White House Correspondent? Peter Hart of FAIR says he's "a right-wing mole at ABC News": "Karl came to mainstream journalism via the Collegiate Network, an organization primarily devoted to promoting and supporting right-leaning newspapers on college campuses ... such as the Rutgers paper launched by the infamous James O’Keefe .... The network, founded in 1979, is one of several projects of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, which seeks to strengthen conservative ideology on college campuses. William F. Buckley was the ISI’s first president, and the current board chair is American Spectator publisher Alfred Regnery.... He was a board member at the right-leaning youth-oriented Third Millennium group and at the Madison Center for Educational Affairs — which ... seeks to strengthen young conservative journalism. After moving to ABC in 2003, Karl contributed several pieces to the neo-con Weekly Standard." Read on.

CW: a couple of weeks ago I wrote that doctoral committees of most major universities would not approve a doctoral dissertation built on discredited assumptions that intelligence is race-based. Well, a thousand-plus Harvard students are wondering why their particular university isn't up to snuff. Jeff Spross of Think Progress: "Over 1,000 Harvard students delivered a petition to Harvard University’s JFK School on Saturday, demanding an investigation into how and why the school approved a 2009 doctoral thesis arguing that Hispanics have lower IQs. The thesis was written by Jason Richwine, a co-author of a paper by the conservative Heritage Foundation that argued immigration reform would cost taxpayers $6.3 trillion. The discovery of Richwine’s paper by the Washington Post sparked a firestorm around the Heritage study, and several days later Richwine resigned from the think tank."

New York Times Editors: "New rules to regulate derivatives, adopted last week by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, are a victory for Wall Street and a setback for financial reform. They may also signal worse things to come." CW: Read the whole editorial. I think the fix is in -- and it's another swell career move for Barack & Michelle Obama.

Paul Krugman: "In elite mythology, the origins of the [economic] crisis of the 70s, like the supposed origins of our current crisis, lay in excess: too much debt, too much coddling of those slovenly proles via a strong welfare state. The suffering of 1979-82 was necessary payback. None of that is remotely true.... It would be bad enough if we were basing policy today on lessons from the 70s. It’s even worse that we’re basing policy today on a mythical 70s that never was."

Steve M. of No More Mister Nice Blog has a good critique of MoDo's latest advice for Obama. Dowd has "written thirty columns so far this year, but hasn't once published the same kind of 'smackdown' of the Republicans that she's recommending to the president."

Local News

Nicole Flatow of Think Progress: "The Virginia Republican Party this weekend nominated for lieutenant governor [E. W. Jackson,] a minister who has a history of virulent anti-gay statements, accuses the Democratic Party of enslaving African Americans, and criticized President Obama for having 'Muslim sensibilities.' The former Senate candidate ,who in 2012 garnered less than 5 percent of the vote in the Republican primary, bested six other candidates during the Virginia GOP convention, and will join conservative Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli on the Republican ticket. He is the first black candidate the state party has endorsed since 1988."

The Commentariat -- May 19, 2013

Scott Wilson of the Washington Post: "President Obama will deliver a speech Thursday at the National Defense University in which he will address how he intends to bring his counterterrorism policies, including the drone program and the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in line with the legal framework he promised after taking office." CW: but can substance beat scandalmania?

Nicholas Confessore of the New York Times has a very good report on how the Cincinnati IRS office got into trouble, and the answer is -- quite innocently. ...

... Justin Elliott & Kim Barker of ProPublica have another excellent take on the makings of a mess. They also answer the question that may have been floating int the back of your mind -- why Cincinnati? ...

... CW: the real culprits here are not IRS bureaucrats but Congressional Republicans, President Obama & the Supreme Court, who have (1) cut funding for the IRS, (2) cut staffing, (3) increased the IRS workload, & (3) failed to write laws that provide clearcut guidelines. Needless to say, this was not an entirely innocent series of errors on conservatives' part; they have long tried to prove that government doesn't work by setting it up for failure. What better agency to hold up as a nest of vipers than the IRS? Naturally, Obama & Congressional Democrats fell into the GOP trap. Again. ...

     ... Update. Oh, pretty much what I said. Robert Reich on "the real IRS scandal," a short post that gets to the heart of it. ...

... But Seth Meyers & Amy Poehler are still really pissed off:

CW: Reading a Maureen Dowd column on Obama almost always makes me want to defend Obama.

At some point obstruction becomes ... treason. -- Bill Maher

James Dao of the New York Times: Members of Congress -- and more importantly, Jon Stewart -- are holding Secretary of Veterans of Affairs Eric Shinseki responsible for the huge and growing backlog of unprocessed veterans' claims for disability compensation. CW: to me, failing to process 600,000 veterans' claims is a much bigger scandal than making a few phonies sweat over their claimed "social welfare" tax exemption.

Lincoln Caplan of the New York Times: "There is little doubt, statistically, that the Supreme Court presided over by Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. has been more sympathetic to corporate interests than any court since World War II. A comprehensive study of more than 1,750 decisions from 1946 to 2011, published recently in the Minnesota Law Review, found that the Roberts court has repeatedly shielded business from lawsuits involving class actions, workplace disputes and consumer complaints.... There are few better (and more outrageous) examples of this pro-business bias than Genesis HealthCare Corp. v. Symczyk." CW: read the post. Kagan (in her dissent) lets Thomas have it, saying flat-out that the majority opinion is the product of fantasyland & bears no relation to reality. "By taking a fallacy as its premise, the majority ensures it will reach the wrong decision." The Court's conservatives are dumber than first-year law students, she implies. The decision & dissent are here (pdf). Kagan's dissent starts on the 14th page. She knows how to write!

Local News

Laura Vozzella of the Washington Post: " Thousands of Virginia Republicans on Saturday picked a slate of statewide candidates who vowed to stay true to conservative principles, resisting calls to remake the GOP message after losses in 2012. At the top of the ticket is gubernatorial hopeful Ken Cuccinelli II, the attorney general. Known for high-profile battles against “Obamacare,” abortion and a university climate scientist, Cuccinelli stood by what detractors have called an out-of-the-mainstream agenda."

The Short Life of Umbrella-Gate

An Investigative Report

President Obama & PM Erdogan of Turkey at a joint presser Thursday.

Mr. President, when it rains it pours, but most Americans hold their own umbrellas. -- Sarah Palin

Rachel Weiner of the Washington Post elaborates on conservative outrage over President Obama's elitist, unamerican activity. (The true challenge of the conservative life is that one must exist in a perpetual state of outrage. It seems likely that the only reason liberals are liberals is that they are too lazy & irresponsible to live in a constant cloud of fury and existential indignation.)

Hawaii, Birthplace of Umbrella-Gate. Not surprisingly, then-Vice President Richard Nixon began the tradition of having retainers hold the umbrellas of Presidents & presidential hopefuls. Nixon began this practice in Hawaii, of all places, a year before President Obama was allegedly born there. The obviously similarities between the Nixon & Obama scandals are stunning & incontrovertible:

Update. Contributor Dan Sheerin adds this excellent image of President Gerald Ford one-upping the guy who handed him the top job. Ford's umbrella-holding serviceman is Lt. Col. Robert Blake, a military aide with a chestful of medals. AND, as Sheerin points out, you can purchase the photo on ebay. Buy It Now for $23.88! Like Obama, Ford was hosting foreign dignitaries, among them West German President Walter Scheel. Unlike Obama, who called for the umbrellas specifically for the benefit of PM Erdogan, Ford did not bother to protect his distinguished guests from the rain. A shocking diplomatic catastrophe made all the more curious by Scheel's apparent indifference (he's smiling in the photo) to the affront. Not to mention, Col. Blake, the Umbrella Man, looks pretty content, too.

President & Mrs. Reagan greet guests while scandalously standing under an umbrella which a retainer holds:

Carrying on the grotesque tradition which Nixon & the Reagans firmly established, Reagan's successor George H. W. Bush stands beneath an umbrella held by a Marine. Note how the Marine has to hold his arm WAY UP because the upper-crusty Bush has placed himself on a pedestal. Not surprisingly, Bush lost his re-election bid. Later, combat veteran Sgt. Randolph C. Bumbershoot told reporters that holding an umbrella for a tall guy standing on a pedestal was the most difficult mission of his military career.

     Update: Commenter DTA1401 has assumed that Marine means "U.S. Marine." As s/he says, "those are not American military uniforms." I think Sgt. Bumbershoot is a Maltese Marine.

Campaigning in 2012, Palin's hapless running-mate John McCain stands under an umbrella which an aide is holding:

When asked why he couldn't hold his own umbrella, McCain apologized, explaining he has difficulty raising his arms as the result of injuries sustained while in captivity during the Vietnam War. But his real reason was likely a fear of looking like this:

Update. Commenter American Vet observes, "Not one picture you posted, shows any American Military Personnel holding an umbrella for any leader. Investigative report indeed, big difference." Howz this? The man to the left of Bush Pere appears to me to be an "American Military Person" as does the man to the right of Bush Fils. Each of these apparent American Military Personnel is holding an umbrella for the President:

OOPS! Palin herself is not like "most Americans" who "hold their own umbrellas":

Ever:

-30-

The Commentariat -- May 18, 2013

The President's Weekly Address:

     ... The transcript is here.

... Christi Parsons of the Los Angeles Times: " President Obama said Friday he wanted to put more Americans to work by slashing the amount of time it takes to grant federal approval for big job-creating projects. But Obama's choice of venue for his remarks — a Baltimore company that makes mining and pumping equipment — provided fodder for Republicans. They noted that the company president had, just the day before, testified on Capitol Hill in support of the Keystone XL pipeline, which the Obama administration has delayed for years over environmental concerns. Ellicott Dredges President Peter Bowe said the pipeline ... would pour money into his business. 'For us, it's all about jobs,' Bowe told members of the House Committee on Small Business on Thursday." ...

... CW: this is a good example of how second-term controversies develop. Odds are that if President Obama faced a re-election bid, his crack staff would have vetted Bowe & his business and would not have sent the President to Ellicot Dredges. Whether this oopsie was the result of B-team incompetence, laziness or political staff attrition, it is representative of second-term carelessness. ...

Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post: "Two senior military officers ... Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Air Force Gen. Mark A. Welsh III, the service’s top commander ... said for the first time Friday that they were 'open' to proposed legislation that would overhaul military law in response to an epidemic of sexual assaults, acknowledging that victims lack faith in commanders to handle the problem.... A bipartisan group of lawmakers announced Thursday that they support a bill from Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) that would force the most significant changes in military law in 30 years by giving prosecutors, instead of unit commanders, the power to open investigations into serious crimes and send the cases to trial.... The Pentagon has resisted taking such power away from military commanders.... Ten days earlier, [Welsh] testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that he was opposed to the idea.... Although neither Dempsey nor Welsh endorsed the proposal, their comments aligned them with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who has said he is willing to discuss it with lawmakers."

Brendan Nyhan, in the Columbia Journalism Review: "... media scandals are a 'co-production' of the opposition party and the press.... Reporters [should take] more responsibility for their role in creating and sustaining the media narratives that they are covering."

It's They're Obama's Watergate! Or Worse! Steve Benen makes a list of some of the nothingburgers Republicans have compared to Watergate. (Links are Benen's):

* Benghazi is "worse than Watergate." [Update: this argument comes up quite a bit.]

* The IRS controversy carries "echoes of Watergate."

* National security leaks are "worse than Watergate."

* A job offer for former Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) might be "Obama's Watergate."

* "Fast and Furious" might be "Obama's Watergate."

* Solyndra "makes Watergate look like child's play."

* The White House's relationship with Media Matters might be "Obama's Watergate." ...

... Overreach? What Overreach? Dana Milbank on "Thursday morning’s circus on the east lawn of the Capitol, where Republican lawmakers gathered with tea party leaders to declare their thoughts on the IRS scandal." CW: do read the quotes. And check out Ted Cruz's "sourcing." Milbank calls Cruz the "leader of the neo-McCarthyite wing of the GOP," a moniker that is precisely accurate. ...

Gail Collins reprises Friday's Congressional hearing on the IRS in which all the members of the committee expressed outrage. CW: maybe some of them will explode. ...

... For a more detailed retelling of the hearing, here's the final effort of Jonathan Weisman & Jeremy Peters of the New York Times. Also, Republicans are expanding the IRS scandalette into an attack on -- ObamaCare! ...

... John Cassidy of the New Yorker: "If there are any conservatively minded Inspector Clouseaus out there who would like to take the probe further, I suggest you get in touch with Committee chair Dave] Camp’s office, or with [Paul] Ryan’s. They need your help." ...

... Nice to see AP stories like this one by Ken Thomas & Steve Peoples. I hope a lot of local newspapers pick it up: " There's an irony in the Internal Revenue Service's crackdown on conservative groups. The nation's tax agency has admitted to inappropriately scrutinizing smaller tea party organizations that applied for tax-exempt status. But the IRS largely maintained a hands-off policy with the much larger, big-budget organizations on the left and right that were most influential in the 2012 elections and are organized under a section of the tax code that allows them to hide their donors.... Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS and the Koch brothers' Americans for Prosperity were among those that spent tens of millions of dollars on TV ads and get-out-the-vote efforts to help Republicans. Democrats were aided in similar fashion by Priorities USA, made up of former Barack Obama campaign aides, and American Bridge 21st Century Foundation, an opposition research group led by a former adviser to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid." ...

... The Stupidest Part of the IRS Story. Bernie Becker of the Hill: "Steven Miller, the acting IRS commissioner, said Friday that last week’s revelation that the IRS gave special scrutiny to Tea Party groups came from a planted question. Lois Lerner, an IRS official with oversight of tax-exempt groups, disclosed the scrutiny at an American Bankers Association conference last Friday after a question from a lawyer who has served on IRS advisory boards." ...

... David Kay Johnston calls on Lois Lerner to resign for multiple offenses. ...

... Garance Franke-Ruta of the Atlantic points out another lie Lerner told. ...

... Good piece by Lisa Rein & Dan Zak of the Washington Post: IRS personnel in Cincinnati -- the center of controversy -- are mystified by claims they are Nixonian political hacks out to get honest, law-abiding, tax-averse yahoos in tricorns. ...

... Nate Silver: Peggy Noonan is of the impression that the IRS is targeting conservatives for audits because she heard of four -- that's right, four -- conservatives who were audited last year. Noonan's storied "impressions" are absolute bunk. She doesn't have the barest understanding of the difference between an anecdote & statistical significance. CW: Here's the "logic": My rich Uncle Moe got audited right after he gave $2,500 to the Romney campaign. I dont' vote & didn't get audited. Ergo, the IRS is targeting Republicans. So Obama can take away our guns & become dictator for life.

Greg Sargent: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is increasingly focused on the month of July as the time to exercise the so-called 'nuclear option' and revisit filibuster reform, and he has privately told top advisers that he’s all but certain to take action if the Senate GOP blocks three upcoming key nominations.... Reid is eyeing a change to the rules that would do away with the 60-vote threshold on all judicial and executive branch nominations...." Read the whole post. ...

... Jonathan Bernstein: "... Reid is doing an excellent job at this complex game; leaking this threat now and generally upping the ante on nominations in general seems to be exactly the way to go." ...

... Kevin Drum: "I think it's unlikely that Republicans will allow [Richard] Cordray's nomination [to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau] to go forward, since they're blocking him mainly as a way of blocking the operation of the CFPB itself. More than likely, then, they'll call Reid's bluff. Then we'll find out just how serious he is." ...

... Justin Green of the Daily Beast: "... there's something not quite right about requiring a 3/5 majority for a duly elected President to appoint a cabinet. In a perverse way, if Republican intransigence on appointments finally persuades Reid to embrace filibuster reform on the limited scale Sargent describes, they'll have done the entire country a favor. I strongly believe in the filibuster for the legislative process. Permanent changes to law should not be able to sail through on a majority vote. But a circuit court judge and the head of the EPA are not permanent legislative decisions, and they deserve a simple majority vote." (Green favors the 60-vote rule for Supreme Court justices.)

Jed Lewison: Congressional Republicans are changing their debt-ceiling/hostage-taking strategy: now, instead of trying to convince voters that raising the debt ceiling is the end of civilization as we know it, they'll try to convince voters that their way of raising the debt limit is a must-do -- a tactic that clearly undercuts their ability to wage "economic terrorism."

Jeffrey Nugent, formerly the head of Revlon, says in a Washington Post op-ed that his wacko little brother Ted & the NRA are wrong about gun registration: "I believe strongly that expanding and improving mandatory background checks will keep a lot of people who aren’t entitled to Second Amendment rights from having easy access to guns. As of today, a convicted felon can find a gun show or a private seller and buy a firearm without a background check. That loophole should be closed.... Why would responsible gun owners want to protect people who threaten not only our safety but our gun rights? The NRA has it wrong: Irresponsible gun owners are bad for everyone."

Unbelievable. No, Really. Unbelievable. Will Englund of the Washington Post: "All that low-tech equipment that Russian security officers displayed for the TV cameras after detaining Ryan Fogle, American diplomat and alleged spy, made it look as though he stepped right out of the annals of 1980s Cold War espionage. Now, the Interfax news agency is reporting that the wigs he allegedly had with him match a wig seized from Michael Sellers, a U.S. diplomat kicked out of the Soviet Union back in 1986. That wig is in the archives of the FSB, Russia’s Federal Security Service.... It all looked a bit goofy. A compass? A street atlas? And the whole sequence of events is reminding some Russians of a popular Cold War miniseries here, about KGB agents dramatically thwarting Western spy plots....” CW: Rachel Maddow has a segment on this, which I'll put up tomorrow.

Local News

Rosalind Helderman & Laura Vozella of the Washington Post: "While it’s illegal for [Virginia] politicians to accept a gift in direct exchange for official acts, gifts often arrive from those who have sought or will seek some benefit from state government. In addition, the wording on the disclosure forms is so vague that it’s difficult to discern any details about what the gift is for and about.... In Virginia, many members of the state legislature take gifts from people or firms with something to gain from government action. [Gov. Bob] McDonnell’s predecessors, former Democratic governors Mark R. Warner and Timothy M. Kaine, took similar gifts.... But McDonnell’s $19,000 gift [from the Redskins] last year was by far the largest reported by a Virginia governor in recent years." The Redskins' gift directly followed McDonnell's decision -- which was opposed by the state legislature -- to give the team $4 million of public money. Another shocker: Virginia AG & former Kate Madison ward Ken Cucchinelli -- who is running for governor -- has taken large gifts that suggested a direct conflict-of-interest, at least one of which he failed to disclose.

Erik Eckholm of the New York Times: "A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked enforcement of one of the country’s most stringent abortion laws, an Arkansas ban on the procedure at the 12th week of pregnancy, saying the law was likely to be declared unconstitutional."