The Commentariat -- January 17, 2012

My column in today's New York Times eXaminer is on Joe Nocera's complaint that bank regulators are imposing too many complex and sometimes contradictory regs on Wall Street. Especially if you found Nocera's argument compelling, please take a gander at the caveats I've added to his "analysis." The NYTX front page is here. You can contribute here. ...

... Here's a terrific article by Russ Baker on how the Times slants -- or as he puts it, sugarcoats -- the news. He relies on just one day's main headlines. ...

... AND there's this from Gregory Harms: the New York Times is liberal (not leftist) on domestic social policies, but it is hawkish on American foreign policy, basically following Washington's lead. It defines and solidifies, in effect, "the liberal parameters of American political discourse: basically progressive on domestic issues; basically compliant on matters of statecraft and foreign policy." Well-worth a read.

Gene Robinson: "... capitalism means never having to say you’re sorry. Perish the thought that anyone would critically examine this ethos except in a 'quiet room' [according to Mitt Romney]. But to the horror of radical free-market ideologues, the myth of no-fault capitalism is under scrutiny.... What the ideologues ignore, however, is that workers also have 'capital' at risk — in the form of mind and muscle, creativity, loyalty, years of service. Why is this investment so casually dismissed?"

Robert Pear of the New York Times: "To head off medical conflicts of interest, the Obama administration is poised to require drug companies to disclose the payments they make to doctors for research, consulting, speaking, travel and entertainment. Many researchers have found evidence that such payments can influence doctors’ treatment decisions and contribute to higher costs by encouraging the use of more expensive drugs and medical devices."

Manu Raju of Politico: "Democratic candidate Elizabeth Warren and Republican Sen. Scott Brown on Monday demanded a cease-fire of the third-party spending that’s certain to play a major role in this state’s pivotal Senate race. Senior officials from Brown’s and Warren’s campaigns will soon meet to try to craft an unusual pact to curtail the influence of so-called super PACs.... Whether the talk amounts to anything more than public posturing to distance themselves from the millions of dollars in negative attacks launched by the groups remains to be seen. Experts are skeptical that groups will unilaterally disarm knowing that this race could tip the balance of power in the Senate."

Right Wing World *

Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post lists the 11 biggest whoppers and head-scratchers from last night's GOP presidential debate. ...

... Steve Benen elaborates on Romney's audacious lie that President Obama "doesn't have a jobs plan." ...

... Jordan Fabian of Univision on Romney's doubling-down on his opposition to measures favored by the Hispanic community. (Report is in English.) Read the whole story.

Major Garrett of the National Journal: "Republican front-runner Mitt Romney said Monday he might release his tax returns -- but not before South Carolina's primary on Saturday. Romney, who has said previously he had no intention of releasing tax returns, said if he becomes the nominee he may release them in mid-April." Romney didn't answer the question when Rick Perry posed it, but responded to the question when the Fox "News" panel asked it. ...

... The Democratic National Committee elaborates:

... Winners shoot big game:

... Losers shoot "varmints and small rodents." Here's Romney in 2007. He lost the primary race:

Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic: don't kid yourself, Mitt Romney is no moderate. "Romney's proposal to cap federal spending ... would result in harsher cuts to domestic spending than even Paul Ryan has embraced."

Jason Volack of ABC News: "Behind the scenes Campaign Manager Jesse Benton admits to ABC News that [Ron Paul's] team is plotting a back up strategy in case the congressman doesn't pull in enough delegates to become the nominee. If the campaign comes up short at the convention, Benton says the plan is to use all the delegates awarded to Paul as a bargaining chip to force the Republican Party to stick to its limited government platform."

The God Vote Gets Ugly. Ralph Hallow of the Washington Times: "In an evolving power struggle, religious conservatives are feuding about whether a weekend meeting in Texas yielded a consensus that former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum is the best bet to stop Mitt Romney’s drive for the Republican presidential nomination. A leading evangelical and former aide to President George H.W. Bush said he agreed with suspicions voiced by others at the meeting of evangelical and conservative Catholic activists that organizers 'manipulated' the gathering and may even have stuffed the ballot to produce an endorsement of Mr. Santorum over former House Speaker Newt Gingrich." CW: Sorry, I think preachers stuffing the ballot box is funny as -- hell. Isn't there some commandment against that? ...

... Speaking of Rick Santorum, he approved this message:

... Your Fun Scandalette of the Day. Nancy Hass of the Daily Beast: Before she was Karen Santorum, anti-abortion zealot, she was Karen Garver, and "her live-in partner through most of her 20s was Tom Allen, a Pittsburgh obstetrician and abortion provider 40 years older than she, who remains an outspoken crusader for reproductive rights and liberal ideals. Dr. Allen has known Mrs. Santorum ... her entire life: he delivered her in 1960."

Stephen Colbert drives Jon Huntsman from the GOP presidential race:

... AND Colbert figures out how to get on the South Carolina ballot. Sort of:

Tanya Somanader of Think Progress: Rep. Steve Womack (RTP-Ark.) is proud that the government paid for his college education (he served in the National Guard to get his grant) -- except that he doesn't seem to understand the government paid for his education -- but he voted to cut 100,000 low-income students from Pell Grant funding. And he was really nasty to a college student when she asked him about it.

* Where "I got mine; to hell with you," is the rule.

News Ledes

** Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: "Democrats and organizers filed petitions Tuesday afternoon with more than a million signatures as they sought to force a recall election against Gov. Scott Walker -- a massive number that seems to cement a historic recall election against him for later this year. It would mark the first such gubernatorial recall in state history and would be only the third gubernatorial recall election in U.S. history. Organizers Tuesday also handed in 845,000 signatures against Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch as well as petitions against four GOP state senators including Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald of Juneau."

New York Times: "Mitt Romney withstood forceful attacks during a debate here on Monday evening, with his Republican rivals lining up to question his job-creation record, wealth and character, as they implored voters to scrutinize his candidacy more deeply before allowing him to sail to the party’s presidential nomination." The Washington Post story is here.

AP: "A French judge is seeking U.S. permission to visit the Guantanamo prison camp to investigate claims by former French inmates that they were tortured."

ABC News: "Search-and-rescue divers today blasted holes in the hull of the Costa Concordia cruise ship that ran aground off Italy's Tuscan coast as they accelerate a frantic search for 29 missing passengers and crew members, as well as a second black-box recorder."

AP: "Strikes and demonstrations against Greek austerity measures hit the capital Athens on Tuesday, as international debt inspectors returned to decide whether the country's reforms are strong enough for it to secure a vital bailout. The officials from the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund, which are lending money to Greece to keep it from bankruptcy, are expected to press the government for faster cost-cutting reforms."

Los Angeles Times: "Israel's top justice authorities began a two-day hearing Monday for one of the government's top officials, foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman. The proceedings move a years-long legal case closer to the end and signal what could also be the end of the current chapter in Lieberman's politicalcareer -- and eventually the government too. For more than a decade, Lieberman has been under investigation for a wide range of suspicions."

Haaretz: "A recent string of cyber attacks against Israeli credit card companies, banks, and government websites was aided by thousands of Israeli computers operated by remote assailants, a top Israeli software security expert on Tuesday. Hackers shut down both the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) and El Al’s respective websites on Monday, one day after a hacker network threatened to carry out attacks on both sites."

AP: "British scientists have found scores of fossils the great evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin and his peers collected but that had been lost for more than 150 years. Dr. Howard Falcon-Lang, a paleontologist at Royal Holloway, University of London, said Tuesday that he stumbled upon the glass slides containing the fossils in an old wooden cabinet that had been shoved in a 'gloomy corner' of the massive, drafty British Geological Survey."

Comments

[Zee]

People change. I like to think that at age 61 I'm changing too, hopefully for the better in at least a few ways.

Still, of the transmogrification of Karen Garver--20-something companion to a much older abortion provider over a period of six years--into Karen Santorum--wife of a raving anti-choice crusader--I can only say "Strange."

[Akhilleus]

There is no dearth of hypocritical high points in Right Wing World. This morning is no exception.

I'm not sure the Karen Santorum metamorphosis falls into that category. It may be that she is one of these people who adopts the mores of whomever she is with at the time. In the absence of some kind of startling epiphany it's hard to envision a move from casual sex with a liberal women's rights supporter and health care provider to a pinched, conservative zealot for denial of women's rights who considers sex outside (and probably inside) marriage for anything other than deity-approved procreation disgusting and sinful.

But moving on...

Marie also points out that right wing evangelicals on the fence about the above mentioned Mr. Santorum were outraged at the possibility of a stolen election. Do tell. Voter fraud. Really? And not perpetrated by Democrats? Is that possible? In fact, the biggest voter fraud of the last two centuries can only be laid at the feet of Republicans. Sucks when it happens to you, doesn't it?

Then we have one of the more risible examples of hypocrisy this morning, emanating from the scared-stiff campaign of Scott Brown. Big money buying elections is A-OK as long as it's in your favor. When your opponent's fundraising is leaving you in the dust and even Citizens United style Super PAC dough may not be enough to purchase your re-election, it's time to call foul and decry all that big money in politics.

Boo-fucking-hoo.

Finally, this morning, what would a review of stinking hypocrisy be without a gander at David Brooks' latest steaming stool mound? It's interesting that Brooks occasionally seems to be the Man With Two Brains: the standard right-wing mass of congealed cells and broken synapses, and a much more normal brain, the thoughts of which poke up like tiny flowers through the snow in early March. Like the flowers, these small flourishes of rationality don't last long but they are indicative of the fact that somewhere deep down, Brooks, on a subconscious level, realizes that his entire life amounts to a full-body immersion in excrement.

So this morning Brooks, trying to burnish his "journalist" credentials, regales us with tales of the campaign trail (can you picture Brooks with a "Press" badge hanging around his neck, a notepad in his hand?).

He's quick to point out that everyone wants a return to the old values that those nasty hippies in the sixties eviscerated. But he also, inadvertently, outs himself as a huge part of the problem with the way social and political discourse in this country has been dumbed down and bludgeoned to within an inch of its life. This momentary glimpse of life outside the Republican echo chamber also denotes his tenuous understanding of the power of propaganda which, repeated endlessly, can warp and twist voters' thinking.

Here's Brooks' condescending description of the thought processes of the lower forms of life he's forced to engage with at political rallies:

"Then you ask them about what they think of the issues and candidates (they generally repeat the banalities they have heard one of us pundits utter on TV the day before)."

There ya go. Voters repeat what they've heard. And not just anything. They repeat Brooks-fed banalities.

Earth shattering? No. Not really. But it does point up the effectiveness of endless banging away by right-wing shills like Brooks and the Fox crew and just about every Clear Channel station in the country. And "liberal media" me no liberal media. There IS no such animal. There hasn't been any liberal media of real consequence in this country since the demise and co-opting of sixties style underground journalism a generation ago. There are a few lonely voices out there but none with the bang of a single half hour on Fox, or a Brooks column in the New York Times.

Brooks however was being far too nice to himself. In order to appreciate the full magnitude of this kind of media indoctrination, you need to replace the word "banalities" with "outright lies".

At the very end, wasn't it sweet that Brooks, with no hint of irony, relates the almost-anecdote of that venerable scholar and man of wisdom Rick Perry, admonishing Brooks' kid to study hard?

Good advice. Unless you're stuck in one of Perry's schools where you'll be learning that Jefferson Davis was a hero greater than (what was his name, Abe Lincoln?), that George Washington was an evangelical, that Native-Americans, Mexican-Americans, and African-Americans are just freeloaders and bums, who previously had taken up way too much space in American history books that could be better handed over to the stories of decent white Christians battling evil liberals, and that Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs to the gun store to re-up their ammo.

One could keep at this all day but there will be more atrocious crap by this time tomorrow.

[DaveS]

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/01/16/v-print/136053/billionaire-wyoming-investor-backs.html

"Our government is strangling our workers with a foot on their throats," Friess fumed.

Friess indicated that even if Santorum doesn't get the nomination, he's going to help underwrite other big outside GOP groups that intend to spend hundreds of millions to ensure that the party defeats President Barack Obama and wins control of the Senate.

"If we don't replace Obama and win the Senate, we're looking at a one-party system for the next 30 or 40 years," Friess said. "It's the death knell of the two-party system."

Of course a one party system would be just fine if it was his party. The hard right attacking Romney from the left is really an amazing sight to behold.

[Kate Madison]

My comment to Nocera--of course, not published.

Comment:
I hope you will read Marie Burns' critique of your doublespeak in today's edition of the NY Times Examiner (NYTX). I could not clearly understand what you were trying (not) to say until I read her article.

Really, Mr. Nocera, you can run--but you cannot hide! You are truly an apologist for the banksters. Sigh.