The Commentariat -- March 19, 2014

Kathy Lally of the Washington Post: "Russian-backed forces broke into Ukrainian Naval headquarters in Sevastopol Wednesday and raised the Russian flag, a reminder of the potential for dangerous confrontation a day after Moscow declared the Crimean peninsula part of Russia. Apparently no shots were fired and it was difficult to identify the attackers, who one witness said numbered about 200 and rammed through the gate of the office complex in a truck. The individuals who stormed the base, however, were well-organized and carried off the takeover without incident. After it was over, soldiers wearing unmarked uniforms and holding automatic weapons were guarding the gate." ...

... Will Englund of the Washington Post: "Invoking the suffering of the Russian people and a narrative of constant betrayals by the West, President Vladimir Putin declared Tuesday that Russia was within its rights to reclaim Crimea, then signed a treaty that did just that." The New York Times story, by Steven Myers & Ellen Barry, is here. ...

... "Putin's Irony Curtain." Massimo Calabresi of Time: No, Vladimir, Crimea is not just like Kosovo.

... Matt Smith & Alla Eshchenko of CNN: "... after a member of its military was killed, another wounded and more captured when masked gunmen seized their base near the Crimean regional capital, Simferopol, Ukraine's defense ministry authorized its forces to open fire." ...

... Olesya Vartanyan & Ellen Barry of the New York Times: "If history is a guide, Crimeans' celebration may be short-lived." The reporters examine the desolation in the "tiny mountainous enclave of South Ossetia, who, five and a half years ago, were similarly ecstatic.... These days South Ossetia's economy is entirely dependent on budgetary funds from Russia. Unemployment is high, and so are prices, since goods must now be shuttled in through [a] tunnel.... Its political system is controlled by elites loyal to Moscow, suddenly wealthy enough to drive glossy black cars, though many roads are pitted or unpaved. Dozens of homes damaged in the 2008 war with Georgia have never been repaired." ...

... Katie Van Syckle of New York: "... one downside of being caught in an international power struggle, with the threat of U.S. sanctions rivaling those of the Cold War, is the death of tourism -- a main source of revenue for the region. On the eve of the summer season, flights to the area -- except for those to and from Moscow -- have been canceled, significantly limiting access to the Ukrainian coast, a historic getaway for czars like Nicholas II." ...

... Peter Beinart of the Atlantic: It's about the money. Unfortunately, "We're long past the era when America and its allies can spend vast sums to promote Western ideals and interests around the world. Except, of course, in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the U.S. is on pace to spend the equivalent of eight or nine Marshall Plans." Also Beinart explains the McCain Doctrine: "If only America were fighting more wars, Russia would never have taken Crimea." See also advice from foreign policy expert Mitt Romney linked below.

Barton Gellman of the Washington Post & Ashkan Soltani: "The National Security Agency has built a surveillance system capable of recording '100 percent' of a foreign country's telephone calls, enabling the agency to rewind and review conversations as long as a month after they take place, according to people with direct knowledge of the effort and documents supplied by former contractor Edward Snowden. A senior manager for the program compares it to a time machine -- one that can replay the voices from any call without requiring that a person be identified in advance for surveillance.... At the request of U.S. officials, The Washington Post is withholding details that could be used to identify the country where the system is being employed or other countries where its use was envisioned." ...

... Spencer Ackerman of the Guardian: "The Pentagon's intelligence watchdog said he was 'not aware' of the National Security Agency's bulk domestic phone records collection programs before the Guardian exposed it in June, nor does his office have investigations open into the controversial surveillance. The admission by Anthony C Thomas, the deputy Defense Department inspector general for intelligence and special program assessments -- who has oversight responsibilities on the National Security Agency -- comes despite months of public assurances that the NSA's vast surveillance activities are thoroughly overseen, including by the Pentagon inspector general."

Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post: "President Obama awarded the Medal of Honor to 24 veterans Tuesday, most of whom were initially passed over because they were Hispanic, Jewish or African American. The emotional ceremony marked the culmination of a 50-year campaign waged by Korean War veteran Mitchel Libman, now 83, who was convinced that his childhood friend from Brooklyn was denied the nation's highest commendation for combat valor because he was Jewish." ...

... Here's the very short version:

Elise Viebeck of the Hill: "Health industry officials say ObamaCare-related premiums will double in some parts of the country, countering claims recently made by the administration.... The industry complaints come less than a week after Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius sought to downplay concerns about rising premiums in the healthcare sector. She told lawmakers rates would increase in 2015 but grow more slowly than in the past.... Her comment baffled insurance officials, who said it runs counter to the industry's consensus about next year."

CW: What with positing that Maybe Everything Was God's Fault yesterday, I didn't have it in me to tell you that Mitt Romney said, "No, Everything Is Obama's Fault." Ari Berman had more fortitude & did a fine job of debunking Romney's Wall Street Journal op-ed:

Jonathan Cohn of the New Republic: Another clueless billionaire -- Home Depot founder Ken Langone -- compares leftish populism to Nazism. Cohn explains why Langone's analogy is far from apt. ...

... Ken Lovett of the New York Daily News: Langone says he might be sorry: "If my choice of words was inappropriate -- and they well may have been that -- I extend my profound apologies to anyone and everyone who I may have offended." CW: If you're offended I compared you to Hitler, then I apologize on the chance that maybe I should have thought of another more appropriate evil despot. Also, routers & table saws are on sale at Home Depot this week.

Adam Winkler, a constitutional law professor, in Slate: corporations are people, my friend, & that is why they should lose the Supreme Court case. "Religious liberty is certainly appropriate for some not-for-profit corporations, like churches or nonprofits with a religious mission. If Hobby Lobby's owners wanted to form such an organization, there was a convenient and readily available option: They could have incorporated as a nonprofit.... By asking the Supreme Court to let them enjoy all the protections of this corporate form, but not all of its duties, Hobby Lobby’s owners want to have their corporate cake and eat it, too."

James Fallows of the Atlantic, an experienced pilot with a deep interest in aviation, on one implausible and one plausible theory on what happened to Malaysia Air flight 370.

** Harold Meyerson has a long piece in the American Prospect on how to raise American workers' wages. He also knocks down the standard-issue claims about why U.S. workers are not getting their piece of the pie. (Hey, Tom The-World-Is-Flat Friedman, you should read this.) ...

... Ben Casselman of Nate Silver's new FiveThirtyEight venture susses out whether or not more Americans are trying to sustain themselves in minimum- & low-wage jobs. If Casselman's analysis -- which makes at least one ridiculous assumption & expresses complete ignorance of factors contributing to low wages ("Economists aren't sure"), then I am singularly unimpressed with Silver's product.

New Jersey News

William Rashbaum of the New York Times: "Federal prosecutors in New Jersey issued a subpoena last week to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey seeking records relating to its chairman, David Samson, and contracts on two bridge projects worth $2.8 billion that he voted to award to construction companies tied to his law firm, according to people briefed on the matter. The subpoena, which focused on Mr. Samson's potential conflicts of interest, was issued by the United States attorney's office in New Jersey, which along with the Federal Bureau of Investigation is conducting a criminal inquiry into the lane closings at the George Washington Bridge and other suspected wrongdoing by current and former aides, appointees and associates of Gov. Chris Christie, the people said."

Alec MacGillis of the New Republic discovers that Christie allies rigged the supposedly competitive bids for those "Stronger than the Storm" ads that featured the Christie family -- at state expense -- during his re-election campaign. The whole process was a sham; the fix was in from the get-go.

Erin O'Neill of the Star-Ledger: " A group of Rutgers University students, as well as union representatives, were kicked out of a town hall meeting with Gov. Chris Christie [yesterday]. The group rose up in unison after Christie finished answering a question about why parents who send their children to Catholic schools have to pay taxes to support public schools and started shouting at the governor, blasting him for his handling of Hurricane Sandy relief aid." ...

... CW: Also worth noting: some people who attend Christie town halls are incredibly stupid/selfish to think only people whose children are currently enrolled in public schools should pay school taxes.

Elsewhere Beyond the Beltway

Maureen Dowd likes "the soft-spoken" L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti, & contrasts him with the "abrasive" NYC Mayor Bill DeBlasio, who can't get along with that nice Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Gubernatorial Race

Rick Pearson & Bob Secter of the Chicago Tribune: "First-time candidate Bruce Rauner eked out a surprisingly narrow victory over state Sen. Kirk Dillard for the Republican governor nomination in Tuesday's primary as Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn launched an early TV attack ad against his wealthy challenger."

Congressional Races

Katherine Skiba & Kim Geiger of the Chicago Tribune: "Sen. Dick Durbin's run for re-election against Republican Jim Oberweis promises to be a costly, rough-and-tumble contest in which the longtime Democratic lawmaker has key advantages. In a closer-than-expected GOP primary race Tuesday, Oberweis emerged the victor, capturing 56 percent of the vote to Doug Truax's 44 percent, with 98 percent of the state's precincts reporting, according to unofficial returns."

Alex Roarty of the National Journal on David Jolly's win over Alex Sink in Florida 13th's special election: "... leaders at the NRCC [National Republican Congressional Committee] described a first-of-its-kind political operation deployed on behalf of a Republican congressional candidate. Led by Honeybadger, a continually updating system that integrates real-time data with existing voter files, they say they were able to track voters they had to target, discover what messages would motivate them to go to the polls, and project exactly how much ground Jolly had to recover when early absentee voting didn't swing his way.... And, NRCC officials say, none of it existed in 2012." ...

     ... CW: Unless I miss my guess, "Honeybadger" is named for Nancy Pelosi; data analysis showed that "urging [voters] to vote now or watch Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi move one step closer to reclaiming the speaker's gavel." Republicans will be disgusting as often as possible.

News Ledes

CNN: "The Justice Department is set to announce as soon as Wednesday a billion-dollar agreement with Toyota to settle a federal probe of the automaker's handling of customer complaints related to unintended acceleration...."

New York Times: "The authorities [in Malaysia] said Wednesday that they were trying to recover data deleted from a flight simulator custom-built by the pilot of the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, whose actions, along with those of his first officer, have fallen under growing scrutiny."

Comments

[Kate Madison]

PD-
Left over from yesterday, when I was out stalking cacti and unable to respond about Robert Parry. (Note: his name is PArry, not PErry.)

I do not know him personally, but heard him speak many times when I lived in Washington D.C. in the 80's and 90's. He is an investigative journalist for the AP, and received the Polk Award in 1984 for his ground-breaking work on Iran/Contra.

He exposed several other scandals involving the CIA that the MSM refused to follow or investigate--and, in fact, dismissed his idea about Oliver North and the US involvement in supplying Nicaraguan Contras. He lost several jobs and his credibility for his work on the Iran/Contra White House cover-up, but several years later was proved right in his writing and documentaries about the "October Surprise."

Parry is what I think an investigative journalist should be. He is neither rich nor famous, and researches thoroughly everything he writes--helped by a staff which includes Norman Solomon. Here is the Wikipedia link about Parry and his newsletter "Consortium:"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Parry_(journalist)

[safari]

That's a very interesting comparison that Olesya Vartanyan & Ellen Barry of the New York Times make between Crimea and Abkhazia/South Ossetia which needs further analysis given the current situation. Maybe Crimea will fade away from the collective minds and persist in a socio-economic limbo for the foreseeable future. However, I heard a different counter theory the other day while watching a show talking about the crisis.

On the show, one of the guests, Andreï Gratchev, proposed an interesting hypothesis.

You can watch it here, if you care to practice your français
http://28minutes.arte.tv/blog/emission/pollution-de-lair-qui-la-faute-apres-le-referendum-en-crimee-poutine-ira-t-il-plus-loin/

First of all, it's hard to argue that Crimea isn't more significant than the South Ossetia event in Georgia. Geopolitically, Ukraine is a much bigger piece of the strategic pie (both physically and figuratively). Given this reality, Gratchev envisioned Crimea becoming a new sort of a 21st century Berlin, with Russia pumping it up to show off the new splendor that is the Russian federation and with western nations pouring aid into Ukraine to pull it farther towards the West. This hypothesis would be even more intriguing if Russia did indeed annex the East of Ukraine as well. In that case the country would become a pseudo Berlin but on the scale of the size of France!

But even if that doesn't happen, as it's pure speculation for the moment and I'm not convinced Putin's closest advisors really truly know what he'll do next, I find this hypothesis of Crimea plausible as the entire international community has their eyes on Ukraine and Crimea right now and I believe IMHO that this story will stick better in the mass media and it's complexities will be followed longer and more closely than the Georgian issue which, frankly, hardly anyone cared about (sorry John McCain). Putin knows he took a huge gamble on this, and judging by his death smirk (how else do you describe that face?) he's enjoying this and wants to play an international power move to restore the status of Russia to the glorious Soviet Union days.

I don't think he'll let Crimea wither under the sun....

[Patrick]

Excerpted from Mitt Romney's WSJ opinion on failed leadership:

"Able leaders anticipate events, prepare for them, and act in time to shape them. ...

... Part of ... (President Obama's and Secretary Clinton's) ... failure, I submit, is due to their failure to act when action was possible, and needed."

Before 1914, German military planners and leadership considered that, by 1916, Russia's armaments and infrastructure (railroads) buildups would have tipped the strategic balance of military power in Europe to a Russia-France alliance. When Austria sought German support to invade Serbia (expected to draw in Russia to Serbia's defense), under the excuse of retaliation for the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, German leadership saw it as a timely opportunity. They had prepared for a war with Russia, and believed that it was to Germany's advantage to take the opportunity to prevent Russia from achieving strategic superiority, by suckering Russia into a short, localized, Balkan war. Germany exercised Romney's principle of acting "when action was possible, and needed." We all got WW I for that masterful businesslike German decision. And then, WW II, because Versailles didn't really end the first war. (I know -- it's more complicated. But it does sort of boil down to this German decision-optimization delusion.)

Here is a good reason not to let amateurs, or vulture capitalists, run countries. "History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes."

And guess whose sons would not serve in an adventure where Mitt's mouth wrote checks his ass would not be cashing?

[Marie Burns]

@safari: I tend to think you're right about Russia's willingness to try to make Crimea a showcase. However, if Russia's idea of a showcase is East Berlin, pity Crimea. I was in East Berlin the year after reunification, & it was a miserable place: most people lived in horrible gray concrete towers (mostly of the same design) which made our miserable public housing look comparatively palatial. The "parks" attached to these huge complexes were tiny patches of grass sporting a single swing set & jungle gym each. Everything else was in disrepair, & the cars were two-cycle jokes that went 50 mph tops. (My husband & I stayed in an "upscale" hotel in Dresden, which was a version of the housing complexes, & the staff were shocked that we wanted a "French bed" [double bed]; they didn't have any. They treated us licentious Westerners with the utmost suspicion & disdain.)

I sneaked into rural East Germany the summer before the wall fell, & the whole countryside was also awful. I went into a grocery store where women began lining up an hour before it opened so they could get first dibs on a bit of fatback or a moldering can of Russian peas. The shelves were mostly empty. Capitalism may suck, but the Russian version of communism was a terrible economic model. (In fairness, I don't think any economic model works well where there's repression & force, which is the primary reason the U.S. system of capitalism is faltering now: our laws now force people to take unappealing jobs where they're treated like shit, don't receive adequate pay & can't fight back.)

Marie

[PD Pepe]

@Kate: Thank you for the clarification on Parry with an A and not an E. I'm afraid I might have jumped the gun and was too dismissive, but that happens from time to time. I do apologize. No wonder I had trouble looking him up if the "e" was there, but not the "a" even though Marie had used the proper spelling. Blame it on the eyes or the fact that the Texas governor's name has seeped into my brain cells and taken over. It appears my comment about Parry's tooting of his horn was ignorant of his actual reporting acumen. Again I thank you for this information.

[JJG]

Re; Maybe they don't want to be like us. Ever wonder if all the world's people want to be just like us? Just like us. No, you have to be just like us. US; we'll make you like us, us, you know, exceptional, like us. You don't like us?

[Ken Winkes]

Religion, racism and, though I should have noticed it before, I left out foreign foreign policy, and oh yeah, economics.

Though they cast themselves as hard-headed problem solvers, practical businessmen, pragmatic leaders, the ones who really understand how things work, always ready to roll up their sleeves, get down to the nitty-gritty and fix all that ails us, the evidence is the Right just has a hard time with reality. Even the best-intentioned can't fix a problem if they don't know or admit what it is.

I'd like to think that at least some on the Right are sincere, not all cynical manipulators of the weak and ignorant. But as someone once said about Hitler, "He was, at least, sincere." If you truly believe that in 2014 you can solve an international problem rooted in ethnic and religious differences that have taken thousands of years to develop and then fester by brandishing a sword, by raining "shock and awe" on a hunk of geography half a world away, you do belong to the same group that is convinced the Rapture is just around the corner, that Blacks just came out of the trees, that trickle down economics is really the best plan for all.

These people think and write on what Harlan Ellison once called a Whatever-I-Type (or believe)-Is-True machine, and putting then in charge of anything of consequence--the economy, the courts, foreign policy-- is akin to NASA employing engineers who in their heart of hearts believe the sun still circles the earth.

[Akhilleus]

Patrick,

Excellent point. You may recall that in September of 2012, the Rat opened his mouth and inserted both feet when he puffed out his chest and made stupid declarations about American Exceptionalism and how badly Obama had handled the situations unfolding in Cairo and Libya (as if any president could have controlled either). He not only broke protocol by criticizing a sitting president in the middle of an ongoing situation of which he had no actual knowledge, he looked like the asshole that he still is today. Just the guy you want playing GI Joe with the country's military. A guy who knows nothing about it except what he sees in gung-ho, America, right or wrong, war movies.

The situation at the beginning of WWI was made much worse, just as you suggest, by another GI Joe culture (more like a GI Josef) created among the ruling military classes from Prussia which held preeminent positions of authority in 19th and early 20th century Germany.

Prussian militarism and a sense of military excellence and the supposed superiority of judgement of the wealthy and privileged officer classes led them to expect a quick strike. Not much different, I suppose from the officer classes of Britain (and the US at the beginning of the Civil War) who expected a two or three month war followed by parades with people tossing bouquets in their direction. Sounds like the same kind of mindset that infected Bush and Cheney at the outset of the decade plus war they started, a war they both declared would be over in a matter of weeks.

The idea that the sons of wealth and privilege, or those, like Cheney, who believe in their own innate superiority, are best suited for making life and death decisions of this nature has not had the best track record on the world stage.

And that world is a safer place with Mittens riding up and down on his garage elevator rather in Air Force One.

[Akhilleus]

Say that again...

Marie's link to the story about a Russian military assault at Sevastopol reminded me of something I wanted to bring up last week.

So I'm listening to the coverage of the Crimean clusterfck and some reporter refers to the naval base at Sevastopol, but she pronounces it sev-a-STOE-pull. Really? I always thought it was pronounced se-VAS-ta-pole.

How do you guys pronounce this?

I remember that during the Bosnian wars back in the 90's, there was some elocutionary re-jiggering with the pronunciation of Bosnia-Herzegovina from hertza-GO-vinha to hertza-go-VEE-na.

But the variances could also reflect the way the locals pronounce these names. As a kid I was surprised to learn that the river Thames was not pronounced at all the way it looked, and how you pronounce "Oregon" is a pretty good indicator of whether or not you grew up there. The problem extends, weirdly sometimes, to people as well as places.

The New York Rangers hockey team, back in the 70s, had a center, Walt Tkaczuk, whose name, when I first heard about him, was pronounced TAY-chuck, but after a few years it became ka-CHOOK, or something like that. And the Boston Red Sox had a utility infielder back in the day, Jerry Adair, whose name was pronounced variously Jerry AY-dare or Jerry a-DARE.

When Ndamukong Suh started kicking guys in the face in the NFL a couple of years ago, I had no idea how to pronounce his name so I just went with "Bob".

He's still Bob.

Bob from sev-a-STOE-pull, I suppose.

Anyway, when we were kids, my sibilings and I were board game fanatics. One of our favorites was Risk, a game of world domination (I bet Romney cheated at this if he ever played; Bush too.) in which you have to successfully deploy armies around the globe. It always struck me as funny the place names they chose for the various regions (there was no USSR or Russia on the board, for instance), but it gave us a chance to have fun with tongue-twisty names like Yakutsk (which we thought it funny to pronounce "Yak-tusk"), Irkutsk, and Kamchatka (a good place for your armies in case you want to invade Asia from the east).

A fairly eccentric way to learn about place name pronunciations. I guess I'm still learning. Just call me Bob from Yak-tusk.

[Jack Mahoney]

AK,

My thoughts exactly. In days of yore, those who wanted war led the troops into battle. I would like to see Senators Grumpy and Huckleberry, along with Mittens the Rat, in the vanguard.

Jack

[Akhilleus]

Ken,

Love the Harlan Ellison reference. Too many people in positions of power have that machine.

The great Isaac Asimov tells a funny story about Ellison. It seems that as a precocious teenager, Ellison would show up at Sci-Fi writers conferences and grill the established authors on what he considered to be flaws in their stories. He was known widely in that domain as that pain-in-the-ass kid. Years later, after Ellison had himself become an established writer, and began upending many sci-fi narrative conventions, another precocious pain-in-the-ass teenager started showing up at the writers' gatherings. Asimov recounts that a group of them got together and said.."Oh my god! He's another Harlan Ellison. Let's kill him NOW."

[Akhilleus]

Jack,

Another reason Shrub chose to lead in a war he supported from discos in Dallas, rather than the front lines, and why Cheney chose to send other people's kids to fight and die in a war he lied to start, from the safety of his undisclosed hidey-hole.

But can't you just see Romney leading soldiers into battle? At least he'd have a custom tailored uniform and a good looking dressage horse to sit on while calling his broker on a military sat-phone reminding him to buy Halliburton.

[Haley Simon]

I heard a terrific interview this morning on a local NPR show with Stephen Walt of Harvard and Foreign Policy mag. Unfortunately, no audio link is yet available but here is a link from something he wrote for FP.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/03/18/the_solve_everything_do_nothing_obama_white_house

It is a little wider ranging than just Crimea, but I thought it was very enlightening. There are a couple more Walt articles available that I will post after I have a chance to read them.

Anybody have some thoughts on Walt?

[Patrick]

Jack, Akhilleus: Looking back, I am quite content that Mitt, Dick, W, Bill Kristol, Lindsey, et al were not among those on whom I had to depend in combat. Just personal, nothing business.

[Haley Simon]

Here is another excellent Walt FP article on political power and national security in Ukraine/Crimea.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/03/03/no_contest_ukraine_obama_putin

[Barbarossa]

As car as I'm concerned, March 19, 2003 will forever stand as a "Day of Infamy." And we have to listen to one of the architects of the Iraq War, Five Deferment Cheney. He says he'd do it again., given the chance, which we hope he never does. As Rachel Maddow made clear in "Why We Did It", it was always about the Iraqis' temerity for sitting on OUR oil under their sand.

Like overthrowing the government of Guatemala because United Fruit might lose a little land on which to grow bananas. BANANAS! Seriously?

Or the Sioux sitting on the white man's gold. The list goes on. There's a line in the Army song about being proud of everything we have done. I'm not. I'm proud to have served for 22 years, but there are things I wish we hadn't done.