The Commentariat -- May 9, 2014

Internal links removed.

Paul Krugman: "Last year..., 25 hedge fund managers made more than twice as much as all the kindergarten teachers in America combined.... The vast gulf that now exists between the upper-middle-class and the truly rich didn't emerge until the Reagan years.... The evidence suggests that hedge funds are a bad deal for everyone except their managers they don't deliver high enough returns to justify those huge fees, and they're a major source of economic instability.... Next time you hear someone declaiming about how cruel it is to persecute the rich, think about the hedge fund guys, and ask yourself if it would really be a terrible thing if they paid more in taxes." ...

A little twerp -- Andrew Sorkin -- interviews a little twerp -- hedge fund manager private equity executive Tim Geithner. CW: I didn't read it; if anybody finds anything interesting, please share. ...

... Sahil Kapur of TPM read it: "Bill Clinton told former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner that nothing would appease the populist 'blood lust' for bankers -- not even slitting the throat of Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein in a dark alley." CW: According to Sorkin, Geithner's telling this story is evidence he has "personality." As far as I'm concerned, it's (even more) evidence that Clinton & Geithner were always in the tank for rich Wall Streeters. ...

... Hunter Walker of Business Insider also read it: "Geithner also told Sorkin he began asking Obama to let him leave Treasury in 2010. He said he even proposed alternative options [for Treasury secretary,] including Hillary Clinton and Erskine Bowles." CW: Fucking twerp. This is precisely why progressives give up & vote for Nader. (And, no, I'm not recommending that! But President Hillary will be President Mitt, minus the horrifying judicial appointees.) ...

... Do you think Hillary reads Krugman? Ha!

Tim Egan: The Koch brothers "have used a big part of [their] fortune to attack the indisputable science on climate change, to buy junk scholars, to promote harmful legislation at the state level, to go after clean, renewable energy like solar, and to try to kill the greatest expansion of health care in decades.... Yet, while these billionaire industrialists may win in the short term..., in the larger fight against progress and modernity the Kochs have already lost. Clean energy is here to stay, and no sane political party would try to take away the health care of eight million fellow Americans." ...

... Catherine Thompson of TPM: "Charles Krauthammer believes climate change is a mere superstition, just like the 'rain dance of Native Americans.'" The logic here? Sometimes meteorologists inaccurately predict the next day's weather, so they can't possibly know anything about climate trends over multiple years or decades. CW: Inexplicably, Krauthammer forgot to wear his Koch Industries T-shirt while delivering the billionaires' message.

CW: I Believe I'll Have a Subway Sandwich. Alan Pyke of Think Progress: Fred DeLuca, "the founder and CEO of Subway, says a minimum wage increase wouldn’t be such a bad thing for his stores and workers and believes it should be changed so that wages rise automatically with inflation. DeLuca's support is noteworthy in part because of the size of his business. Subway has the most locations of any fast food chain. While a majority of small business owners support a $10.10 wage hike, major corporations of that scale typically oppose raising wages.:

Julia Preston of the New York Times: "Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and Education Secretary Arne Duncan issued a strong warning on Thursday to public school districts nationwide not to deny enrollment to immigrant students in the country illegally."

Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "A new pre-publication review policy for the Office of Director of National Intelligence says current and former employees and contractors may not cite news reports based on leaks in their speeches, opinion articles, books, term papers or other unofficial writings.... It says, 'The use of such information in a publication can confirm the validity of an unauthorized disclosure and cause further harm to national security.'"

New GOP Talking Point: Boko Haram abducted 200 Nigerian schoolgirls because Hillary Clinton is soft on terrorism. CW: If only those schoolgirls were white, this scandal could be the new Benghaaazi! ...

... Here's the old Benghazi. Dave Weigel: "Trey Gowdy is precisely the person the White House doesn't want investigating Benghazi.... To conduct hearings that may lead to impeachment, Republicans needed a leader who seemed unimpeachable." ...

... Ed Kilgore: "That congressional Republicans are contemplating [impeachment] so seriously when Barack Obama is already heading towards the exit -- and given the vast evidence a similar move backfired decisively in the 1990s -- shows how much pressure they are under from 'the base,' and how deranged the supposed Great Big Adults of the Republican Establishment have become. Maybe the glittering prospect of impeaching Obama while disqualifying HRC is just so bright that they aren't thinking straight." ...

... Brian Beutler: Nah, Boehner & company are just faking their Benghaaazi! (or #Benghazi) outrage. ...

... BUT Jonathan Bernstein in Bloomberg News: Yeah, Republican legislators really do believe their own hype. "A party incapable of seeing outside of its own propaganda bubble is unlikely to be able to govern competently.... Republicans have [built] an extensive aligned media that has all sorts of incentives to cocoon itself, while also building an extensive ideology of opposition to the 'neutral' media and, at times, to facts."

Annals of American Journalism, Ctd.

Amanda Hess in Slate: "While [Monica] Lewinsky expresses regret for her ill-fated relationship with [President] Clinton -- and many Americans have come to realize that Lewinsky got a raw deal -- [Maureen] Dowd is not yet ready to assume responsibility for her own role." AND the Pulitzer committee gave Dowd the prize for trashing Lewinsky.

And now that Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi, has become topic one--again--for the GOP, the sycophants, the lackeys, the lazy, and the ideologues in the fourth estate, it's worth reviewing one of the earlier bungled attempts to remake a bad turn of events into a scandal of historic proportions. Reporter Joe Hagan, in NY Magazine earlier this week published an extensive look at the rise and fall of Lara Logan, disgraced CBS journalist whose highly questionable Benghazi report on 60 Minutes created a furor, a retraction, and a leave of absence. Logan's rise, attributable, says Hagan, to CBS's desire to balance its image on the right as a "liberal" organization, was aided by a need to look tough and amenable to conservative viewpoints. "'She got everything she wanted, always, even when she was wrong, and that's been going on since the beginning,' says a former CBS News producer who worked with her." ...

... Ann Friedman writing in the Columbia Journalism Review, considers the problems news operations get themselves into when they tie their brand too closely to personalities like Logan who have their own brand and their own following.

He meant well...

The re-imagining of George W. Bush continues apace. Matt Bai, writing on Yahoo, wants everyone to quit being mean. In his opinion, The Decider was actually a nice, sincere guy who meant well. All that business of thousands being killed, millions dispossessed and trillions wasted was just unfortunate. Steve M., at No More Mister Nice Blog begs to differ: " If you accept Bai's characterization of Bush -- that he was a decent guy who got in over his head, y'know, the way people do -- the point is that he's like a guy who sets up a storefront medical clinic in an underserved area even though he has no medical training and botches most of his procedures, often killing his patients or doing them some other form of permanent harm. Who the hell cares if someone like that is sincere? He's a menace." In fact, Bush really, really, really cares about all those people he sent to die for a made up war. Well, shit, I feel so much better about that now.

He goes on to review Peggy Noonan's latest delusion that Benghazi was much worse than Iran-Contra. (Her fever dream piece is behind a Wall Street Journal firewall. But...well, you know...) Why? Because Reagan meant well too. Sincerity must be the new route to a re-jiggered legacy. These people really do inhabit a different universe.

Senate Race

Tuck Chodd gives GOP Senate nominee Thom Tillis a hard time:

Beyond the Beltway

Mark Berman of the Washington Post: "Oklahoma's attorney general has agreed that the state's next execution should be delayed for six months following the botched execution last week."

Right Wing World: Haters Unite

There's no live and let live in Right Wing World. And there certainly is no golden rule. Or anything vaguely resembling comity. It's not enough for wingers to be against something. If you cross whatever Cloud Cuckoo Land line in the sand they draw, they will go after you. Today is the second day of the NFL draft and the wingnuts are ready to pounce. Jack Burkman, head of the Washington, D.C. lobbying firm J.M. Burkman & Assoc. who is seeking to ban gays from the NFL, says he intends to build a national coalition to boycott any football franchise that picks openly gay football player Michael Sam in the NFL Draft. Burkman promises that his attack will be "relentless". According to a call to arms on the Christian Post website, "The NFL, like most of the rest of American business, is about to learn that when you trample the Christian community and Christian values there will be a terrible financial price to pay," said Burkman.

Sam, who came out in February will be the first openly gay player in the NFL if drafted. Luckily, some businesses, Visa, for one, are not too concerned about Burkman's threats.

Comments

[Ken Winkes]

And more bad news for readers who first learned to decipher those funny squiggles in the 1950's. As arithmetic would have it, most who produced the works we read were twenty or thirty years older than we were, so it's no surprise they are now passing in bunches.

The latest? Farley Mowat. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/08/world/americas/farley-mowat-canadian

Not a Nobel winner or even pretender, but dozens of fine books, fiction and fact. Good tales all, each with an active moral compass pointing the in right direction. No wonder he got under the skin of so many.

[PD Pepe]

From yesterday: For Kate and other cynical optimists (sort of like being cautiously optimistic) : If I could I'd play you Big Head Todd & the Monsters' "Broken Hearted Savior"–––I think we all share a bit of the brightness along with the gloom. I've often said when I stop being angry I'll have given up.

[PD Pepe]

What's the story about Krauthammer? Isn't he supposed to be Fox's intellectual?

Have you noticed that Trey Gowdy has slicked back his hair. Apparently someone must have told him he looked like a character from the "Walking Dead" series. This little prick is finally getting his day in the sun playing Joe Friday––dragging once again after how many bloody hearings, Benghazi into his Dragnet. He's taking a chance here because he could become another Issa and make a fool of himself. Some, of course, say he accomplished that some time ago.

[Barbarossa]

Notes to Krauthammer: Tomorrow's weather is a FUTURE event. Weather does NOT equal Climate.

Climate history deals with PAST events.

Is this guy stupid? Or does he think we are?

[Dede C]

Krauthammer should visit SIO (Scripps) and get a lecture about all their ice cores etc.. Then he could go to NCAR and get a lecture on all the data that they have collected world wide. Bush censored that immediately and put a politician in charge of vetting all their scientific papers as soon as he came in office. (actually I bet it was Cheney).

[MAG]

Over at http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/05/krauthammer-george-will-attack-climate-science.html , Jonathan Chait has a take down on "...Esteemed Fox News Panel" with George Will and Charles Krauthammer.

Chait sums up these men of science quite well, i.e., :

"The analogy Krauthammer suggests of the rain man — an authority figure possessed of commanding prestige despite lacking even rudimentary analytic powers — turns out to be apt; only he is describing himself."

[PD Pepe]

Thanks MAG for the link. So it's not only Charles K., but George W. that appear to be somewhere back in the days when we prayed to rain gods and slaughtered virgins for the Corn Kings. I liked Chait's last paragraph:

"To watch Will and Krauthammer grasp for rationales to cast doubt on an established scientific field merely because its findings pose a challenge to their ideological priors is a depressing, and even harrowing, study in the poisonous effects of dogma upon a once-healthy brain. They have amassed an impressive array of sound bites and factoids, and can render them with convincing gravitas, and yet their underlying reasoning is absolutely bonkers. The analogy Krauthammer suggests of the rain man — an authority figure possessed of commanding prestige despite lacking even rudimentary analytic powers — turns out to be apt; only he is describing himself."

And you always have to ask: What's THEIR skin in the game?

[Barbarossa]

@PD: As Marie said: Koch Industries. 'Nuff said.