The Commentariat -- June 1, 2015
Jennifer Steinhauer & Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times (7:11 pm ET Sunday): "In a rare Sunday night session, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to begin a debate on a bill passed by the House to curtail a national security surveillance program approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But the law that authorized the program was set to expire at midnight in the face of continuing opposition from Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky. The 77-to-17 vote was a remarkable turnabout -- grudgingly approved by the majority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell, a fellow Kentucky Republican -- just a week after the Senate narrowly turned the bill away at his behest. Mr. McConnell, in a desperate attempt to keep the surveillance program going, encouraged senators to vote for a bill that he still found deficient.... Mr. Paul ... said he would decline to let Mr. McConnell move to a rapid passage of the bill, which requires the consent of every senator, before midnight." ...
... New Lede (12:10 am ET today): "The government's authority to sweep up vast quantities of phone records in the hunt for terrorists expired at 12:01 a.m. Monday after Senator Rand Paul ... blocked an extension of the program during an extraordinary and at times caustic Sunday session of the Senate. Still, the Senate signaled that it was ready to curtail the National Security Agency's bulk data collection program with likely passage this week of legislation that would shift the storage of telephone records from the government to the phone companies. The House overwhelmingly passed that bill last month. Senators voted, 77 to 17, on Sunday to take up the House bill." ...
... Ellen Nakashima & Mike DeBonis of the Washington Post (7:19 pm ET Sunday): "The legal authority underpinning several national security programs appeared all but certain to expire at midnight Sunday, with Senate Republicans unable to maneuver around ... Rand Paul, who has pledged to block efforts to extend the law. After emerging from an evening caucus meeting, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the majority whip, said he did not expect the Senate to approve the only legislation that could avoid a lapse in the authority -- a House-passed bill that would provide for an orderly transition away from the most controversial program authorized under the current law, the National Security Agency's bulk collection of call records from telephone companies." ...
... New Lede (12:01 am today): "The legal authority for several national security programs expired at midnight Sunday and will not be renewed for at least two days, after Senate Republicans leaders were unable to maneuver around Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a presidential candidate who followed through on a pledge to block an extension of the law." ...
... Lisa Mascaro of the Los Angeles Times (7:44 pm ET Sunday): "The National Security Agency's once-secret program for collecting the records of millions of Americans' telephone calls is on the verge of ending after running for most of the last 14 years, as the Senate seems all but certain to fail to renew the spy agency's legal authority by a midnight deadline. ...
... New Lede (12:00 am Sunday): "After 14 years and hundreds of millions of records of Americans' telephone calls, the National Security Agency stopped bulk collection of phone data Sunday, officials said, as legal authority for the once-secret program expired."
... The Guardian has a liveblog here. ...
... Dan Roberts, et al., of the Guardian: "Sweeping US surveillance powers, enjoyed by the National Security Agency since the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks, shut down at midnight.... Almost two years after the whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed to the Guardian that the Patriot Act was secretly being used to justify the collection of phone records from millions of Americans, critics of bulk surveillance went further than expected and forced the end of a range of other legal authorities covered by the Bush-era Patriot Act as well. The expired provisions, subject to a 'sunset' clause..., are likely to be replaced later this week with new legislation -- the USA Freedom Act -- that permanently bans the NSA from collecting telephone records in bulk and introduces new transparency rules for other surveillance activities. The USA Freedom Act, once passed, will be the first rollback of NSA surveillance since the seminal 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act." ...
... Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "For the first time since the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Americans will again be free to place phone calls ... without having logs of those contacts vacuumed up in bulk by the National Security Agency. And for the first time in nearly 14 years, if government agents identify new phone numbers that they suspect are linked to terrorism, they will have to subpoena phone companies for associated calling records.... The N.S.A. can no longer simply query its database for the information. This unusual situation may last only a few days, until Congress can reach an accommodation over three counterterrorism laws that expired at 12:01 a.m. Monday.... But interviews with law enforcement and intelligence officials about what they will do in the interim suggest there are multiple workarounds to the gap." ...
... Dan Froomkin of the Intercept has quite a fine rant on the "parliamentary farce." ...
... Lauren Fox of the National Journal: "In the last hours before key provisions of the Patriot Act were expected to expire, there were few senators who could deny the role that one man -- Edward Snowden -- had played in the law's demise." ...
... Manu Raju & Burgess Everett of Politico: "Behind closed doors in the Senate's Strom Thurmond Room, Republican senators lashed out at [Rand Paul]'s defiant stance to force the expiration of key sections of the PATRIOT Act, a law virtually all of them support. Indiana Sen. Dan Coats' criticism was perhaps the most biting: He accused the senator of 'lying' about the matter in order to raise money for his presidential campaign, according to three people who attended the meeting.... [Paul] skipped the hour-long meeting. That only infuriated his colleagues more." ...
... (CW: How lovely that the leaders of the American confederacy meet in the Strom Thurmond Room. The South has indeed risen again.) ...
... Alex Rogers of the National Journal: "Rand Paul got what he wanted -- expiration of the Patriot Act -- but he alienated a lot of people along the way." ...
... Charles Pierce offers his usual (and appropriately) cynical take on the show. ...
... AND of course Li'l Randy gets carried away. Alex Byers of Politico: "Sen. Rand Paul said Sunday evening that some people in Washington are 'secretly' hoping for a terrorist attack to hit the U.S. to make him look bad.... 'People here in town think I'm making a huge mistake,' Paul said [on the Senate floor]. 'Some of them, I think, secretly want there to be an attack on the United States so they can blame it on me.'" ...
... FINALLY, Andy Borowitz: "The National Security Agency is compensating for the expiration of its power to collect the American people's personal information by logging on to Facebook, the agency confirmed on Monday." Thanks to contributor D. C. Clark for the link.
Michael Shear of the New York Times: "In a town [-- Washington, D.C. --] where few events ever truly break through the thick layer of partisanship, the death of Joseph R. Biden III on Saturday night unleashed an outpouring of sorrow."
Capitalism is Awesome, Ctd., Corporate Welfare Edition. Jerry Hirsch of the Los Angeles Times: "Los Angeles entrepreneur Elon Musk has built a multibillion-dollar fortune running companies that make electric cars, sell solar panels and launch rockets into space. And he's built those companies with the help of billions in government subsidies. Tesla Motors Inc., SolarCity Corp. and Space Exploration Technologies Corp., known as SpaceX, together have benefited from an estimated $4.9 billion in government support, according to data compiled by The Times. The figure underscores a common theme running through his emerging empire: a public-private financing model underpinning long-shot start-ups." CW: So glad I could help.
Nirvi Shah of Politico: "Indicted former House Speaker Dennis Hastert's Illinois alma mater, [fundamentalist Christian] Wheaton College, said Sunday that it is stripping his name from a center on economics and public policy 'in light of the charges and allegations that have emerged,' the college said in a statement." CW: The real scandal is that the college named a center for him in the first place.
Celebrity Justices. Adam Liptak of the New York Times: Supreme Court justices "seem to like the acclaim and influence that come from appearances before friendly audiences. But many of them appear wary of more general public scrutiny.... The recent flurry of public appearances is part of a trend that has been decades in the making. As the court's workload has dropped, the justices have found time for more outside appearances.
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Brian Stelter of CNN: "Brian Williams may lose his seat as anchor of the 'NBC Nightly News,' but executives are looking for a way to keep him at the network in a new role." CW: One possibility: he could host a prime-time reprise of Johnny Carson's old daytime show "Who [sic.] Do You Trust?" Other suggestions welcome.
Charles Pierce bids a fond farewell to Bob Schieffer. ...
... Driftglass's tribute to Schieffer is far nicer. ..
... AND here's what Schieffer said to us:
MEANWHILE, Cardinal Ross Douthat, the Vatican's Principalis Emissarium de Sexualem Habitus, is weighing in on the prospects for polygamy in the U.S.
Paul Krugman: "There's a definite 1914 feeling to what's happening [to the European economy], a sense that pride, annoyance, and sheer miscalculation are leading Europe off a cliff it could and should have avoided.... Some major players seem strangely fatalistic, willing and even anxious to get on with the catastrophe -- a sort of modern version of the 'spirit of 1914.' in which many people were enthusiastic about the prospect of war. These players have convinced themselves that the rest of Europe can shrug off a Greek exit from the euro, and that such an exit might even have a salutary effect by showing the price of bad behavior." ...
... Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the Telegraph: "Greek premier Alexis Tsipras has accused Europe's creditor powers of issuing 'absurd demands' and come close to warning that his far-Left government will detonate a pan-European political and strategic crisis if pushed any further."
Presidential Race
Trip Gabriel & Patrick Healy of the New York Times: "The first evidence that Mrs. Clinton could face a credible challenge in the Iowa presidential caucuses appeared late last week in the form of overflow crowds at Mr. Sanders's first swing through that state since declaring his candidacy for the Democratic nomination. He drew 700 people to an event on Thursday night in Davenport, for instance -- the largest rally in the state for any single candidate this campaign season, and far more than the 50 people who attended a rally there on Saturday with former Gov. Martin O'Malley of Maryland." ...
... CW: That could be because the O'Malley campaign is not exactly reaching out to voters. When I tried to find out when & where O'Malley would appear in New Hampshire Sunday, the campaign site gave no information, I couldn't find it via Google & the campaign did not respond to my phone call or e-mail. ...
... E. J. Dionne: "The senator from Vermont has little chance of defeating Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination. But he is reminding his party of something it often forgets: Government was once popular because it provided tangible benefits to large numbers of Americans.... He wants government to do stuff, and the sort of stuff he has in mind is potentially quite popular." ...
... Ben Schreckinger of Politico: Many of Bernie Sanders' "scary," radical "communist schemes" of 1981 have become mainstream. CW: My compliments to Politico & Schreckinger. Really.
David Sirota in Salon: "While [Hillary] Clinton was secretary of state, her department approved $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to Clinton Foundation donors. That figure from Clinton's three full fiscal years in office is almost double the value of arms sales to those countries during the same period of President George W. Bush's second term. The Clinton-led State Department also authorized $151 billion of separate Pentagon-brokered deals for 16 of the countries that gave to the Clinton Foundation. That was a 143 percent increase in completed sales to those nations over the same time frame during the Bush administration. The 143 percent increase in U.S. arms sales to Clinton Foundation donors compares to an 80 percent increase in such sales to all countries over the same time period.... Lawrence Lessig, the director of Harvard University's Safra Center for Ethics, says they 'raise a fundamental question of judgment' -- one that is relevant to the 2016 presidential campaign."
Beyond the Beltway
Michael Specter of the New Yorker: Vermont "has now become the first to remove philosophical exemptions from its vaccination law.... Perhaps because the debate over removing the philosophical exemption has been rancorous and long, the governor [Peter Shumlin (D)] first opposed the legislation. More recently, he suggested that he was neutral. On Thursday, possibly sensing the political peril involved in siding with the anti-vaccine movement, Shumlin signed the bill without much publicity."
Janet DiGiacomo & Jethro Mullen of CNN: "Highway patrol troopers in Oklahoma fatally shot a man whom they had been trying to get out of high water, authorities said." ...
... Michael Miller of the Washington Post reports the family's side of the story.
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Reader Comments (12)
And that's why Musk styles himself a libertarian...one of the latest in a long line of this patented American political mutation which brings liberal taxpayers together with "mefirstarians" like Musk, all of whom built the whole thing themselves.
No hypocrisy here, of course. To detect any, Musk would have to look in a mirror and examine what he sees beyond ego and money.
The Sirota piece about the dramatic increase in State Department approval of arms sales to countries which donated to the Clinton Foundation disturbs me greatly. It would have been far better for Hilary's credibility if, as Richard Lugar suggested during her confirmation hearings, the Foundation simply stopped accepting foreign donations during her tenure. That didn't happen, but it raises this question: what information did Mrs. Clinton have about the donations? Were they publicly acknowledged by the Foundation? If not, did she take any steps not to receive actual information about them?
I have to confess, if I read the same scenario about a Republican I would be appalled, rather than willing to keep an open mind on the chance there is a credible explanation. It will be interesting to see what the Clinton response to this article will be.
I share Victoria D.'s concerns about arms sales/Clinton Foundation donations while Hillary was Sec. of State. If these kinds of revelations continue the polling place will stink so badly I'm not sure I will be able to hold my nose and breath long enough to vote for her without puking. I sure hope them furriners ante up enough billions to get her elected. Oh, you say that's illegal.
Marie, I know it was an oversight on your part so I'll jump in. Thank you Edward Snowden and, since I missed Mother's Day, thank you Mrs. Snowden.
@David Feldman. Ha ha. Actually, no. I have said all along that Snowden -- indirectly, by his choice -- did a service in revealing the extent of what I would consider unconstitutional surveillance of us all. But his method of dumping thousands of pages of unedited docs on a number of news agencies around the world was completely irresponsible.
Inevitably, some publications have published stories that were of no benefit to American citizens & may have been harmful. Do we really need to know, ferinstance, the details of the NSA's spying on German leaders? Everybody who thinks about it already kind of knows that, just as they know Germans are spying on our leaders. But it's impolitic to put it on the front page of the paper. Or that "the NSA had led more than 61,000 hacking operations worldwide, including many in Hong Kong and mainland China"? No kidding. I'd be way more surprised if they weren't.
Let's put it this way: if I did 9 very bad things & one very good thing, would you call me a hero? I doubt it. You have to look at the bad along with the good.
Marie
Someone should tell Brian Williams that there's hope yet for his flailing career. Word is there's a killing to be made in infomercials hawking cinnamon rolls as a cure for diabetes.
I think he'd be good at it.
I see the NYTimes in its aptly named Retro feature happily jumps on the pile of Ehrlich's "Population Bomb" discreditors.
(Sorry I can't find the link to yesterday's story, but the video report is on the Times online front page.)
The Times is indeed looking backward.
While the consequences of the world's growing population may not be a bomb, rather a slow smolder, they should nonetheless be obvious to even an newspaper editor.
Instead of looking backward, a glance outside the editorial office window would show he Colorado and other rivers drying to a trickle, clearly unsustainable agricultural practices, more resource wars, mass movements of unhoused and unassimilated refugees, changing and disruptive weather patterns, often more severe, and the whole planet's atmosphere choking on fossil fuel pollutants.
Can't wait for the next Retro feature. Maybe a nostalgic look at the wonders and glories of the Vietnam War.
Borowitz Reports:
N.S.A. Compensates for Loss of Surveillance Powers by Logging on to Facebook
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/n-s-a-compensates-for-loss-of-surveillance-powers-by-logging-on-to-facebook
Ken,
I've been reading a wonderful book on the last year of the war in the Pacific, "Retribution", by the British historian Max Hastings. Hastings has a word of caution for anyone looking for lessons from the past. The short version is Don't Trust Anyone. Memories can be faulty or people can construct new memories based on fantasy versions of what they wished they had said or done. And even official reports often misstate or never mention the failures, the setbacks and the bad decisions. The point is to use multiple sources and try to triangulate your historical narrative.
This is useful information even when the events have taken place fewer than 20 years ago (the furious rewriting of the Bush Debacle is exhibit number one; Jeb Bush now says it's all Obama's fault).
Elon Musk, self-promoter extraordinaire, after becoming a billionaire thanks to ungodly sums in help from you and me, has been busy, along with his "libertarian" fans, rewriting his own history and after benefiting from public largesse, now declares, à la Paul Ryan, that government subsidies are a bad idea and no one else should benefit from them.
His suggestion is that lesser mortals should not be given subsidies since that is not the best use of taxpayer money (unless, as with Paul Ryan, that money is going to him). Instead they should be given carbon emission credits if their ideas are as good as his.
So, two things about this. First, carbon credits are only good after the fact. If you have a good idea and can demonstrate that it's worthy of some kind of investment, that idea will require the necessary upfront R&D cash to get it off the ground, just the way Musk did it. Carbon credits aren't worth diddly if you have no product.
Second, Musk has been working on rewriting his own history to make him the sole genius behind multiple successful ventures. He looks upon himself, as do his Ayn Randian supporters, as a combination of Thomas Alva Edison and John Galt. The guy who did it all by himself. Edison, by the way, is still thought of as the guy who invented the modern world all by his lonesome. In fact, he had a factory of technologists, scientists, and researchers creating most of these marvels to which he appended his name. And if you don't think Musk views himself as a modern Edison, check out where is Tesla operation is located: Menlo Park, CA.
This plays perfectly into the right-wing, Wall Street, Great Man Theory. The Confederates who were so outraged that Obama dared to suggest that No, You Didn't Built That (by yourself) are prime targets for this sort of narrative, and so government (ie, our help) has to be written out of the story, or minimized, as much as possible.
Another reason for this revision is that it appears the investors and VC types who wish to benefit from a great idea, especially one that has already had a proof of concept, look askance at government funding, thinking it not the best model for sustainability. They too miss the point, which is, there are some things government investment will do that they refuse to. Thus, the hero capitalist storyline is damaged, something no winger--or investment banker--wants to believe.
Musk is often referred to as having made his fortune by creating PayPal. This is only partly true. Another group of developers at a company called Confinity, created Paypal. Musk came long later when a company he worked for merged with Confinity. Now he's famous for Tesla, a company using a propulsion system that he claims was his idea, a proposition that is disputed by the co-creator whom Musk forced out. But according to Wired, neither of these guys are responsible for the idea or the basic underlying scientific work in the first place. Another company had the original idea and plan for the type of system Musk is now touting as his very own.
Musk has been touted as a kind of John Galt figure who will create his own Galt Gulch on Mars one day when he flies away there to lord it over the canals. That'll show everyone, dammit.
It appears that he's been reading his own press releases, in addition to enjoying the same diet of superiority and disdain for lessers approved by the Paul Ryans of the world. Addressing the problem of poor people, Musk, from the luxury of his California mansion, declares poverty no big deal:
“I’m not sure poverty is such a problem. I grew up in South Africa and now live near Beverly Hills. The housewives in my neighborhood are certainly more miserable than the kids I saw playing in the townships growing up. It’s relative.” Well, that takes care of that problem, right? It's their own fault if they don't live in Beverly Hills. And besides, those Beverly Hills ladies have it waaaay worse than kids who were being beaten in Soweto. (Where the fuck do these people come from?)
Of course Musk himself didn't grow up in poverty, but he kinda sorta saw it now and then, and well, how bad could it be? Musk suggests that we all have to live in a market economy and strive to make it on our own.
Just like he's doing with his billions in government assistance.
This is one of the essential flaws with the myth of libertarianism, the idea that people go it alone and that's how it should be.
But these people, the ones who shove their way to the public trough and pig out, are the first to declare poor people nothing but lazy shirkers and sniff that government assistance to anyone is a bad thing. As long as they've already got theirs.
This is not to say that people like Elon Musk don't do important or valuable things. They do. My problem is with the reverse-engineered story that goes along with the egotism and heroic narrative of the Capitalist Genius who did it all himself, so I read about Musk with Max Hastings' words echoing in the background.
Well, I was waiting for it, the outpouring of hatred from the right upon news of the passing Beau Biden. I was hoping they would give it a pass. I don't think Beau Biden has been in Sarah Palin's famous crosshairs, but alas, twas not to be.
If you ever want to get a ground level sense of the nastiness and essential malignity of right-wing ideology and how it affects people, how it removes even the idea of humanity, check out the comments left by some of these appallingly awful people.
A small sampling of comments attached to a story about Biden's passing on (where the fuck else) Fox "News":
"Looks like Obamacare didn't work."
"Michelle just put out a statement blaming all white people."
"Look on the bright side Libbies--he'll still vote in 2016! LMFAO.
You can try to read these on the Fox site but someone there must have realized how depraved their vicious fans sound and took down the comments. And Fox was not the only site to attract these nice Christians. It appears that the Hill had its own attack of the subhumans. Plenty of comments have been removed but you can still read the appalled reactions of normal people.
This is not a both sides do it. I'm sure there are liberals and hard core lefties who say terrible things about wingers, but to cheer at the news of someone's death from brain cancer is just despicable. There is just something at the core of Confederate ideology that promotes a vicious inhumanity, that allows a pass for treating anyone who doesn't agree with them as less than human. Just look at the routine calls for people they don't agree with to be shot.
Left wing commentary at such moments (and I might be wearing slightly rose colored glasses here) tends to be far less monstrous. Every group has its outliers, but there seem to be so many on the right that those who aren't vicious scumbags seem to be the minority.
Back when online services were still relatively new, I used to enjoy logging on to AOL to indulge in very unscientific studies of anonymous group engagement. If you remember, AOL had a chat room area. Anyone could create a chat room and give it a name. I'd create rooms with whacko names to see what kind of responses I got, rooms with names like "Squirrel in Microwave". Some visitors to the room were outraged, others got the joke. I was working late the night news came through that Richard Nixon had passed away. I had just created a chat room called "The Road to Mordor" (the epicenter of darkness in Middle Earth) wondering if I'd attract some Lord of the Rings fans. The first comment I got was "Seen Nixon yet?" Not exactly the embodiment of hatefulness.
I prefer not to even try to imagine what gets said during intramural group conversations in today's confederacy. One only has to read these comments about the death of Beau Biden to get an idea of how truly loathsome these people are.
And don't forget: when Republican presidential candidates slide even further to the right, these are the idiots they're trying to attract.
Oh, and while I'm thinking about the effusion of clownishness that is the ever burgeoning crop of Republican presidential hopefuls, here's something I missed.
On his Facebook page a couple of weeks ago, Marco (Young Earth) Rubio made this startlingly ahistorical announcement:
"The world has never been more dangerous than it is today, but in the New American Century, a stronger America will make the world safer."
Wow.
Really, Marco? I know you weren't around during things like the Black Death, WWI, and the Holocaust, but Jesus! Don't they have history books in Florida? You can hardly turn on the History Channel without seeing an endless stream of documentaries about Nazis and death camps and buzz bombs and Hitler shit, all day and night practically. Guess WWII was a walk in the park.
So, as usual with Rubio he's either lying to appeal to the loons, or he really believes this crap. Presidential timber?
@Akhilleus: As much as I dislike certain politicians, I have to admit they are far from the worst of the lot of humanity. There are contemptible people out there, & yes, politicians pander to them.
For anybody to make fun of a young man's death is, as you say, inhuman. Even Palin, whom you mention, had kind words for Beau & the Biden family. We live in a country full of creepy people.
Marie
Akhilleus,
Thanks for the Musk elucidation. Very glad you took the time. Haven't had a high opinion of the man since an "Esquire" profile a few years ago. Despite the author's evident awe, I was put off by both Musk's self-congratulatory air and what the article said of his politics. The reek of smug doesn't half cover it.
I did come up with another "libertarian" synonym this morning while mowing a small lawn, dodging raindrops. Who's not for liberty? Hard to argue with it, it's so like "freeedom." So how about "egotarian?" Has the advantages of accuracy and near euphony, I think.
Another short comment on a NYTimes header: Why so few GOP women in Congress?
"Duh" seems the obvious response. The article and graph that follow say much the same thing at greater length. Must have taken a lot of diligent research to come up with the answer...The increasingly hidebound Koch-Confederates don't care much for women.
But we knew that, didn't we? And thank goodness, so do the women.