Monday
Jul212014
The Commentariat -- July 22, 2014
Internal links, defunct video removed.
Leslie Larson of the New York Daily News: "President Obama blasted Russia on Monday for failing to yield influence over separaists who have violated the crash site of the Malaysia Airlines plane shot down in eastern Ukraine. 'This is an insult to those who have lost loved ones. This is the kind of behavior that has no place in the community of nations,' Obama said Monday in remarks from the White House."
... Here's the official White House statement. The President took questions from the press after he delivered his remarks (not included in the video above). ...
... Gene Robinson: "The most important lesson U.S. policymakers should learn from this terrible event, I believe, is that sophisticated weapons, once given to combatants in a civil war, are virtually impossible to keep under control. This is true whether those given the arms are Russian-backed rebels or 'moderate' Syrian freedom fighters." CW: Yo, John McCain, are you listening? Nope. ...
As I turned, I was this close to him. I said, 'Mr. Prime Minister, I'm looking into your eyes, and I don't think you have a soul.' ... And he looked back at me, and he smiled, and he said, 'We understand one another.' This is who this guy is! -- Joe Biden, recounting a 2011 meeting in the Kremlin with Vladimir Putin
... Julia Ioffe in the New Republic: "As the crisis surrounding the plane crash deepens and as calls for Vladimir Putin to act grow louder, it’s worth noting that they're not really getting through to Putin's subjects. The picture of the catastrophe that the Russian people are seeing on their television screens is very different from that on screens in much of the rest of the world, and the discrepancy does not bode well for a sane resolution to this stand-off." CW: Read the whole post. And we thought our media were mediocre. (Does the term "yellow journalism" come from "media-ochre"?) ...
... Alex Altman of Time: "Since a Malaysian jetliner crashed in a wheat field in eastern Ukraine last week, RT's pro-Putin packaging has been exposed in grim detail. In the aftermath of the tragedy, which killed all 298 souls on board, the outlet -- like the rest of Russian state media -- has seemed as if it were reporting on an entirely different crime. As the international media published reports indicating the plane was shot down by pro-Russian separatists, RT has suggested Ukraine was responsible, cast Moscow as a scapegoat and bemoaned the insensitivity of outlets focusing on the geopolitical consequences of the crime." ...
... Caitlin Dewey of the Washington Post: "In the agonizing quest to pin down exactly what happened when Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 went down over Ukraine last week, Web archivists and other digital sleuths are playing an unusual -- potentially pivotal -- role."
Jonathan Cook: "As we watch the horrifying slaughter unfold in Gaza, bear in mind the Israeli psychosis that fuels and justifies it.... Comments from three rightwing Israelis -- two leading politicians and a professor -- ... very much reflect a strain of mainstream thinking in Israel, one that the international media largely avoids noting. Each, in their different ways, is advocating a genocide of the Palestinians." Via Susie Madrak.
Paul Waldman: "Creative policy thinker Rick Perry has come up with a way to address the problem of those Central American kids coming to the border": he's sending 1,000 Texas National Guard to the border in a move he calls "Operation Strong Safety." "Why not just go ahead and call it Operation America Macho TestosteReagan? Perry seems unaware that the problem isn't one of insufficient strength -- as the head of the National Guard under George W. Bush has said, it's unclear what the Guard is supposed to do in this situation that others couldn't, particularly given the fact that these kids are walking up to Border Patrol agents to turn themselves in." ...
... CW: As you may recall, Fox "News"'s Britt Hume tried to explain this to Gov. Perry. His bumbling response: "It's the visuals." That's right, folks. Would-be President Perry needs "visuals" to convey to people that he is America Macho TestosteReagan. ...
... Manny Fernandez & Michael Shear of the New York Times: "The cost of deploying the National Guard was estimated at $12 million a month, a bill that he and other Texas Republicans vowed to send to the federal government." ...
... Christy Hoppe of the Dallas Morning News: "... sheriffs along the border said they have not been consulted and question the wisdom of sending military personnel who are not authorized to stop, question or arrest anyone." ...
... Jonathan Topaz of Politico: "Texas Rep. Joaquín Castro on Monday said Gov. Rick Perry is 'militarizing our border' with his reported decision to deploy state National Guard troops there. 'We should be sending the Red Cross to the border not the National Guard to deal with this humanitarian crisis,' the Democratic congressman said in an email. 'The children fleeing violence in Central America are seeking out border patrol agents. They are not trying to evade them. Why send soldiers to confront these kids?'"
Brian Bennett of the Los Angeles Times: "The increasingly costly and divisive border crisis is pushing federal investigators to crack down on money-laundering schemes they say are being used to smuggle thousands of Central American children into the United States.Agents from the Department of Homeland Security and the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, are targeting suspicious patterns of deposits and withdrawals through "funnel accounts" held at U.S. banks, according to two federal law enforcement officials who were not authorized to speak publicly about the topic." CW: It might work, but it's not nearly as impressive as sending in armed soldiers to try to scare the kiddies. No "visuals."
Jonathan Topaz: "Vice President Joe Biden on Monday said the Obama administration would continue to press Congress on approving Veterans Affairs secretary nominee Robert McDonald and passing legislation to address problems at the VA. 'It's time to get it done now,' Biden, speaking at the Veterans of Foreign Wars conference in St. Louis, said of legislation on Capitol Hill to reform the VA. 'Stop fooling around.'"
I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades. -- Former Defense Secretary Bob Gates, on Joe Biden, in his memoir
Bob Gates is a Republican, with a view of foreign policy that is, in many fundamental ways, different from mine. Bob Gates has been wrong about everything! Bob Gates is wrong about the advice he gave President Reagan about how to deal with Gorbachev! That he wasn't real. Thank God the President didn't listen to him. Bob Gates was wrong about the Balkans. Bob Gates was wrong about the bombing. Bob Gates was wrong about the Vietnam War, for Christ's sake. You go back, and everything in the last forty years, there's nothing that I can think of, major fundamental decisions relative to foreign policy, that I can think he's been right about! -- Joe Biden
Mark Stern of Slate: "On Monday morning, President Obama signed an executive LGBT non-discrimination order, barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity among federal contractors.... Crucially, Obama did not include the broad religious exemption that some faith leaders had begged the White House for.... The executive order does, however, preserve a Bush-era exemption that allows religiously affiliated contractors to continue to preference workers of a certain religion":
CW: Kevin Drum disagrees with me (or, specifically, with Thomas Frank. See yesterday's Commentariat.): "Back in 2009, was Obama really the only thing that stood between bankers and the howling mob? Don't be silly. Americans were barely even upset, let alone ready for revolution.... Why were Americans so obviously not enraged? Because -- duh -- the hated neoliberal system worked. We didn't have a second Great Depression. The Fed intervened, the banking system was saved, and a stimulus bill was passed." Read his whole post. I'm not convinced, but since we can't know what might have been if Obama had asserted his inner LBJ, it's a moot point.
Jonathan Cohn of the New Republic: "Millions of Americans are getting health insurance because of Obamacare. But you're a lot less likely to be among them if you live in one of the 'red' states than if you live in one of the 'blue' states -- and there's no great mystery why. It's because the conservative officials who run most of the red states want it that way.... The states where officials are blocking expansion are the ones where residents need help the most, because they are poorer and more likely to have no insurance in the first place." ...
... Bruce Jaspen in Forbes: "While record numbers of Americans sign up for the larger Medicaid health insurance program for the poor, financial issues are emerging for medical care providers in the two dozen states that didn't go along with the expansion under the Affordable Care Act. The moves against expansion are 'beginning to hurt hospitals in states that opted out,' a report last week from Fitch Ratings said." CW: We know these redneck legislators & governors don't care about the poor. Let's see if they care about hospitals, which are businesses. ...
... Mario Trujillo of the Hill: "A federal judge in Wisconsin threw out Sen. Ron Johnson's (R-Wis.) lawsuit challenging an Obama administration rule that allows congressional staffers to continue to receive healthcare subsidies when signing up for ObamaCare. Judge William Griesbach did not rule on the merits of the case, instead dismissing the challenge because Johnson and another staffer on the suit lacked standing because they were not concretely injured by the regulation. The judge, appointed in 2002 by President George W. Bush, said not all disputes warrant a remedy by a federal court."
Maya Rhodan of Time: President "Obama will sign the first significant legislative job training reform effort in nearly a decade on Tuesday. The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act passed by Congress on July 9 will streamline the federal workforce training system, trimming 15 programs that don't work, giving schools the opportunity to cater their services to the needs of their region, and empowering businesses to identify what skills workers need for success and help workers acquire them."
AP: "A Pennsylvania congressman's press secretary has pleaded not guilty to a weapons charge after Capitol police say he carried a gun into a federal office building in Washington. An attorney for Ryan Shucard says he entered the plea Saturday in D.C. Superior Court. Lawyer Jason Kalafat called the gun incident unintentional.... Shucard was charged with carrying a pistol outside a home or business, which is a felony." ...
... CW: Because if there's anything more responsible than carrying a Smith & Wesson (& ammo) into a restricted area, it's forgetting you're carrying a handgun & magazine into a restricted area. "Oh, I must have left my pistol in the cloakroom. Or maybe it fell out of my jacket when I dropped my daughter off at school."
When is "I have no idea" news? When it's about a Darrell Issa investigation. Here's another extremely useless IRS "scandal" story.
Thanks to P. D. Pepe for this link:
Senate Races
Chris Good of ABC News: "Two months of Republican-on-Republican badmouthing will finally come to an end in Georgia on Tuesday. Either Rep. Jack Kingston or former Dollar General CEO David Perdue will become the GOP candidate for the state's open Senate seat, to be vacated by retiring GOP Sen. Saxby Chambliss, kicking off what's expected to be one of the most hotly contested elections in the country." ...
... The Atlanta Journal-Constitution story, by Greg Bluestein & Dan Malloy, is here.
PetKoch. Kate Sheppard of the Huffington Post: Rep. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), who's running for Michigan's open Senate seat, takes on the Koch brothers, who already have run a massive ad campaign against him.
I think that, for both Joe and for Hillary, they’ve already accomplished an awful lot in their lives. The question is, do they, at this phase in their lives, want to go through the pretty undignifying process of running all over again. -- President Obama
Beyond the Beltway
The Poor Door Is Around Back, Jack. Even if you're not extremely wealthy, you too might be able to live in an upscale Manhattan condo! But you'd have to enter through the "poor door." And maybe you won't be swimming in the pool & working out on the gym equipment with your rich neighbors.
Brent Snavely & Matt Helms of the Detroit Free Press: "The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department is suspending its water shutoffs for 15 days starting today to give residents another chance to prove they are unable to pay their bills.... The decision comes after the city has put into national spotlight for a policy that has been framed as a human rights issue for low-income residents who can't afford to pay their bills. It also was announced on the same day that a group of Detroit residents filed a lawsuit in the city's bankruptcy case asking U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes to restore water service to residential customers."
News Ledes
Washington Post: "The Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday afternoon ordered U.S. carriers to stop flying to or from Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv, prohibiting them from traveling through Israel's largest airport after a rocket landed nearby."
Reuters: "Israel pounded targets across the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, saying no ceasefire was near as top U.S. and U.N. diplomats pursued talks on halting fighting that has claimed more than 500 lives. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry held talks in neighboring Egypt, while U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was due to arrive in Israel later in the day. Both have voiced alarm at mounting civilian casualties."
New York Times: "A train carrying the bodies of victims from the Malaysia Airlines jet downed by a missile last week arrived Tuesday morning in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv after a 17-hour journey out of lawless territory controlled by pro-Russian rebels." ...
... New York Times: "A piece of wreckage from the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200 that was shot down in eastern Ukraine last week bears telltale marks of small pieces of high-velocity shrapnel that apparently crippled the jet in flight. Riddled with these perforations and buffeted by a blast wave as it flew high above the conflict zone, the plane then most likely sheared apart."
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Reader Comments (15)
John Oliver calls out America's racist, broken prison system.This is worth watching not only for its messages, but for its creativity. Catch the bit where Al Frankin is questioning the director of prisons about the size of a confinement cell–-it's hilarious as well as infuriating. Oliver, in his HBO once a week show is tackling some good stuff and doing it remarkably well.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/21/john-oliver-broken-prison-system-last-week-tonight_n_5605366.html
For the love of whatever you think is holy, please, please, please stop mentioning the governor of Texas, R---- P----. I live in Texas. If you lived here you would realize most people here think of him as a joke, a tool, an embarrassment. He's the neighborhood crazy guy that makes sure you don't step on his lawn. If he weren't bother-governing all day, he'd be walking around Target open-carrying asking someone to take his picture. He's that insignificant and inadequate. A dick swinger, to put it crudely. The sooner we ignore him, the sooner he'll go away. Please, I'm begging you.
@Nancy: One thing I think is holy is information. I'm not going to stop linking to news stories because the offenders are offensive. You may think Perry is a joke, but a lot of those neighbors of yours voted for him over a respectable, qualified Democratic candidate.
If you read Julia Ioffe's post linked above, or 95 percent of what I link that contains the words "Fox 'News'" (the Hume interview of Perry, linked above, being an exception), you'll understand why familiarity with facts is crucial to responsible citizenship & has an impact on our lives.
Perry is not only the governor of an important state, he is pulling this stunt to bolster his likely bid for POTUS. If I didn't link pieces that essentially ID him as a "dick swinger," readers might assume he was just sitting back there in his office doing his regular administratin' duties, like signing off on a few more death-row executions.
I do pass on a lot of superfluous stuff that others find newsworthy (Bill Clinton has a mistress! She has breast implants!) because I don't think the stuff would have any impact on most of us. But when a national figure does something really stupid -- or terrific -- it's worth knowing.
In fact, sometimes when I take a pass, it's a mistake. For instance, when Perry wrote an op-ed for the "Washington Post" on Rand Paul's "isolationism," I thought his opinion was self-evident, & I didn't bother to link it. But when Paul responded, he gave the Perry op-ed legs, & I had to go back & link the Perry piece a day late. What potential presidential candidates think about foreign policy can have an impact on us all, & the differences between Perry's & Paul's POVs could matter in the 2016 race.
You have urged me to STFU in the past, & I thought I explained then why I link stories about newsmaking morons. Evidently I didn't do a very good job. So this is my second stab at it.
Marie
Update: Not just you Texans will be paying for Gov. Grandstand's border extravaganza; the rest of us likely will, too, as Perry is sending the bill to the Feds. So, thanks again, Texas!
I suspect "yellow journalism" derives from William Randolph Hearst's "yellow peril" crusade.
Re: yellow journalism. I had always thought the term came from the slightly yellow color of the newsprint these early rags were printed on but, looking it up now, I find it comes from a cartoon, the Yellow Kid, published by both the Hearst and Pulitzer papers which both tended towards an early version of Faux News.
And speaking of Faux News, last week in the aftermath of the rocket attack on Malaysian Air by those nice friends of Vlad over in Ukraine, I happened to flip on MSNBC. Chris Hayes was interviewing several thoughtful, well spoken individuals. The discussion was measured and informative (as informative as it could be within a day of the attack), but most of all, sober and balanced.
Then I flipped over to Fox, just for...well, you know.
Holy Christ. What a horror show. They were freaking out, hosts, guests, everyone. Talking about sending war ships over and doing bomber runs over Russian separatists (just to show 'em whose boss). It was hysterical, in both senses of the word. Talking about another reason to impeach Obama because he should be flexing muscles and jumping on Putin and god knows what else. Just ridiculous.
But it's another indication that, for conservatives in the Teabag Era, it's mostly about show, like Perry calling in the National Guard, who don't have any power and won't do anything but cool their heels. It looks good. Like Bush in the flight suit and Ronald Reagan clearing brush in his cowboy hat. It's all about how it looks.
Substance? Sober consideration of the facts? Rational plans based on realpolitick and national interests?
Fuck that shit. Bring in the Marines! Bombs away. Let's blow stuff up. And right now!
Sorry...shoulda been "who's" boss. Flying fingers got me again.
"whose" boss has an interesting double entendre.
While I can understand and sympathize with Nancy's detestation of anything Perry (I could add a catalog of names to her list of possible proscriptions), and might want him banished from the country, I wouldn't want him erased from RC reports.
In addition to agreeing with Marie that information, whether it's something we want to hear or not, is and should be sacred, I'd suggest that it's possible to soften the unpleasant by viewing it as unintended and sometimes delicious humor. Yes, Perry is a buffoon, an exemplar of Boobus Americanus, but he is a definite, distinct and disturbing part of who we are, and history has proved that ignoring the species does not make it go away. Boobery a congenital condition we have to deal with.
So when I hear of Perry's latest antics I shake my head, and to make me feel better sometimes summon a superior smile. I recommend the smile, but suspect it does come easier if one does not live in Texas.
I think it's time I looked at that Mencken biography that's been sitting on the shelf, too long unread.
Ken,
Speaking of Mencken and Perry, your apt example for Boobus Americanus, one can only recall that Henry Louis may have described those who voted for Perry, as Marie noted earlier, in place of a qualified and respectable Democratic candidate, as members of his famous "Booboisie".
If your Mencken bio is the Terry Teachout book, it's worthwhile. I was mostly curious to read the take of a conservative writer on a guy who was, if not a movement conservative, at least, no friend to liberals or progressives (he despised FDR and wrote a kind review of "Mein Kampf" when it came out in the US).
Teachout has also written a bio of Louis Armstrong, which I find interesting. I don't question that he's a fan of the music, I just wonder that a guy who publishes most of his stuff in conservative outlets (WSJ, National Review), fonts of great enmity towards African-Americans and the civil rights movement, chooses to write about a black man who grew up in the racially charged years of the early to mid 20th century. I haven't read it yet, so it may actually be pretty good. He's written some insightful stuff about music. Just an observation.
We are, none of us, black and white. Mencken was an anti-Semite who went out of his way at times to help young Jewish writers. He was often an astute literary critic (a big fan of Twain), but also thought "Jennie Gerhardt", a dreadful slog of a book, by Theodore Dreiser, was the greatest novel ever written. (I couldn't even finish the thing. I skipped to the end to see who dies.)
Go figure.
Akhilleus,
It is the Teachout book. I did remove it from the shelf this morning, but I might have made an empty threat. The stack of books on hand to read is far deeper than the expected span of my retirement is long.
Currently reading a biography of James Wilkinson, the early American head of the US Army--late 17 and early 1800's-- who was for decades a paid spy for Spain. As is most often the case, his story, too, is complicated by circumstance and conflicting personal and political exigencies. The only simple personal and political history is the history we have simplified and sugar-coated for mass consumption.
That's why a grain or tablespoon of salt is always recommended and why taking the wide view and seeing humor where we can find it--often in RC; thank you Marie and her extended family-- is the only sane choice in a wacky world.
That and frequent consults with the nearest mirror.
Kunstler has a provocative piece on Israel:
http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/war-zones/
in which he writes this compelling paragraph:
"Luckily for the West, there is enough animosity between the Islamic factions to distract Islam from its mission to defeat all the great-and-small Satans cluttering up their world. All this is happening as that world lurches into the twilight of the oil age, which until lately had given so much financial leverage to Islam. Really, the entire Middle East, including Israel, has overpopulated itself so severely that the only plausible outcome is the desperate fight over what’s left. A hundred and fifty years ago a mere half million people inhabited the place that is now Israel, and more than 90 percent of them were Arabic. Then came the great Industrial explosion of activity, migrations, and soaring birth rates thanks to fossil fuels. When that phase of history concludes, the population there will go down accordingly."
Re: What a long strange trip it's been; went north for a while. Canadians are just like the Americans I grew up with. The experiment has gone terrible wrong. We are sugar fed-junkies on a ride to nowhere. And what else? besides everything, I got a brother-in-law and niece in the Palestine visiting her husband's family and guess what RC readers? The shit we read in the MSM about the Palestine is worse than what the Ruskies read about the shot down jet liner. My brother in law is a Vietnam vet who don't lie; He calls them as he sees them and his call is that the Israelis are liberating villages same way the US armed forces brought freedom to the hamlets in Vietnam; destroy them to save them. By the by, my niece is married to a Christian Palestinian. The Stars and Stripes are bleeding all over the place, and I cry. WTF.
NYTimes header:
"Turkey’s Culture Wars
By ELIF SHAFAK
The battle between religious conservatives and secularists is fought most fiercely over women’s bodies."
Welcome to Turkey!
@CW: Looks as though Charlie Pierce is leaning in with your take of the Frank, (Chait optional), vs Drum articles! http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Obama_Paradox
"However, "looking forward, not back" on many issues was a conscious governing strategy. To say that the president did more than he's given credit for is not to say that he did everything that he could."
Really liked the 2012 article by James Fellows that PD Pepe linked yesterday that preceded all this. Like to hear Fellows weigh in on things now.
(Also, the John Oliver clip...PD, you're on a roll!)
PD,
Hear, hear on the Oliver clip.
The fact that we imprison more people than totalitarian states like China and a larger percentage of our population than Iran turns the prison spotlight on the vicious vengefulness of the conservative ideology that values punishment over more beneficent, and positive solutions for social ills (better education, healthcare, housing, employment opportunities, eg).
Oh, but no punishment for the wealthy, for corporate and banking overlords whose hubris, entitlement, illegal machinations, and irresponsibility sow the seeds of so many social ills.
Why, that wouldn't be American, would it?