Monday
Nov172014
The Commentariat -- Nov. 18, 2014
Internal links removed.
Karen Tumulty & Katie Zezima of the Washington Post: "President Obama's expected action lifting the threat of deportation from millions of undocumented immigrants, which could come as early as this week, will expand the authority of the executive branch into murky, uncharted territory. The path is built on the long-accepted principle, going at least as far back as the 1970s, that any administration should have wide discretion over how it deals with those who are in this country illegally. However, Obama is poised to take that leeway significantly farther than before." ...
... Andrew Taylor of the AP: "Two presidents have acted unilaterally on immigration -- and both were Republican. Ronald Reagan and his successor George H.W. Bush extended amnesty to family members who were not covered by the last major overhaul of immigration law in 1986. Neither faced the political uproar widely anticipated if and when President Barack Obama uses his executive authority to protect millions of immigrants from deportation." ...
... Steve Benen: "Congress considered expanding the [Reagan-era] law, but the effort ended up failing, prompting Reagan to act on his own. Congress, rather than throwing a tantrum and impeaching the president, codified Bush's policy into law soon after.... While the narrow, limited orders related to Nicaraguan and Chinese immigrants are different from what Obama intends to do, these other measures from Reagan and Bush are actually quite similar." ...
... One Reason Republicans Oppose Immigration Reform. Simon Miloy of Salon: "The nativists of the conservative movement ... beliieve that birthright citizenship was never intended to be U.S. policy, and that the courts and the government have been misinterpreting the 14th Amendment these past 150 years. As you might have guessed, this is a radical idea that has little to no precedent or legal theory to back it up.... To address the problem of undocumented immigration, the base of the Republican Party and its loudest megaphone -- talk radio -- want to change the Constitution, dismantle a century and a half of citizenship policy, and alter one of the fundamental notions of American identity. This, in their minds, is a practical thing to do." CW: Perhaps worth noting, Laura Ingraham, radio host & ABC News contributor, who is a leading advocate of this view, clerked for Clarence Thomas.
Andrew Nikiforuk in a New York Times op-ed describes the devastation caused by & stupidity of mining tar sands for "garbage crude": "The reclamation of ... blown-up forests remains a nightmarish challenge. Nobody really knows how to put a boreal forest back together once it has been stripped of its trees, soil, wetlands and fish-bearing rivers."
Save Me! Save Me! (Screw the Planet.) Coral Davenport & Ashley Parker of the New York Times: "Senator Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana pushed hard on Monday to round up votes for the Keystone XL oil pipeline, part of a last-minute effort to help her survive a close runoff and one of the toughest battles of her political career. Even if the Senate supports building the pipeline in a vote on Tuesday night, President Obama is likely to veto the measure on the grounds that an environmental review of the process remains incomplete." ...
... Dana Milbank on "purity politics, Democratic style." CW: I'd love to know what readers think about this debate.
Johana Bhuiyan & Ben Smith of BuzzFeed: "The CEO of Uber said Friday that Obamacare has played a crucial role for his army of drivers, an unusual, partial endorsement of the president's signature policy from a man often cast as a hero of anti-government libertarianism.... 'It's huge,' Travis Kalanick, Uber's CEO and co-founder, said in response to a question about Uber and Obamacare at a dinner in Manhattan. Kalanick didn't comment on the specifics of the health care policy, but said he sees little sense in the traditional link between employment and health care; he said he believes all Americans should have access to some health care safety net, without losing the option of paying more money for private care. And he said the success of Obamacare's core goal -- creating a functioning individual market for health care -- is very much in sync with Uber's vision of a liberated work force. 'The democratization of those types of benefits allow people to have more flexible ways to make a living,' Kalanick said. 'They don't have to be working for The Man.'" ...
... CW: In other words, Kalanick makes mincemeat of the central GOP economic argument against ObamaCare. "Jobs killer?" Not hardly, as we say in Red State Country. ...
... Jonathan Chait elaborates: "What makes Kalanick's comments not just cutting but a knife thrust to the Republican heart is that Uber is the very model of the sort of firm the party covets. Republicans actually circulated a pro-Uber petition and sought to brand itself in general as the party of Uber."
... Related. Maya Kosoff of Business Insider (Nov. 14): "Members of Congress and their staffers use Uber to travel more than any other form of ground transportation, according to a study released this week...." ...
... CW: Maybe the most shocking part of Kalanick's remarks is that a billionaire actually suggests he gives a fuck about the health of the workers upon whom his business model depends. ...
... However, Kalanick's "interest" in ObamaCare is completely self-serving. Jason Millman of the Washington Post: "By not paying for employees' health insurance, Uber saves tons of money, just as it also cuts costs by putting the costs of car ownership onto its drivers. The whole issue of how Uber treats its drivers lies at the heart of class action lawsuits filed in California and Massachusetts courts over the summer. The suits argue that Uber improperly classifies its drivers at independent contractors, when they should be counted as full employees entitled to employer-provided benefits, including health insurance. It's pretty unclear how much money Uber's drivers actually make, but if they're on the lower end of the scale, taxpayers could be helping to cover their insurance under the health-care law.... The question is whether Uber should be providing drivers with health insurance in the first place -- and if not, whether American taxpayers should help cover the cost." ...
... New York Times Editors: "Jonathan Gruber, a health economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is a strong supporter of health care reform. But his careless comments at academic forums last year, caught on videotapes that surfaced recently, can only harm the reform cause.... [His] comments are doubly offensive. First, they insult ordinary Americans. And they're largely wrong.... His comments should not be taken as evidence that the reform law was hatched in secrecy and foisted on the public by trickery." ...
... AND I just came across this excellent new GOP plan to kill poor working people. Congressional Republicans have rendered rhetorical the question, "Have you no sense of decency, Sir?" ...
... ALSO, Chait takes down a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Tevi Troy, a former Dubya official, who's horrified by the ObamaCare "Cadillac tax." "Gruber, something, something, Gruber." (Paraphrase of op-ed.) CW: You don't need to read all the nitty-gritty of Chait's piece (or any of Troy's) to get the idea: When Republicans propose a plan, it's innovative & sensible; when Democrats institute the same plan, it's "the evilest, sneakiest, failing-est, and most unconstitutional assault of freedom ever" (Chait). Moreover, when Republicans make these charges, it is not necessary for the Wall Street Journal to reveal the opinionators' conflicts of interests. ...
... Steve Lemieux: "I could do without Gruber's condescension myself, but when it comes to insulting people's intelligence he's got nothing on the parade of hacks attacking him." ...
... Annals of "Journalism," Ctd.
... CW: I seldom read anything by Ron Fournier of the National Journal (& formerly the AP's top dog in Washington) because Ron Fournier is stupid. Last week, however, I linked to a column by Fournier in which he got something right, & I warned it wouldn't happen again this year. Sure enough, the next day he wrote something stupid about GruberGate. Not satisfied with standard stupid, Fournier wrote another column, the core of which Matt Yglesias argues, are "The worst two paragraphs about American politics you'll read today ... in which he explains that the big problem with Obama's approach was failing to take a page from the Massachusetts universal health care program that is in fact the model for Obamacare." You'll have to read Yglesias's full post to get how astoundingly stupid Fournier is. ...
... ** UPDATE. Better yet, Adam Weinstein of Gawker has written a masterful takedown of Fournier ("the Thomas Friedman of Helen Thomases") & a thorough but funny rebuttal to Fournier's ridiculous ObamaCare/RomneyCare column: "National Journal's editorial director and senior political columnist. Longtime AP politics guru. Author of Applebee's America. Honorable mention in a David Brooks essay contest. All of these are true statements about Ron Fournier, but none of them really captures his genius. Ron Fournier is America's palpitating heart, a folksy war addict who hates long wars, a critic of government spending who hates budget cuts, a squared circle who really gets your disgust with all these danged partisans, especially when you're voting for them en masse." ...
... Paul Krugman: "I've know for years that many political pundits don't think that understanding policy is part of their job. But this is still extreme. And I'm sorry to go after an individual here -- but for God's sake, don't you have to know something about the actual content of a policy you critique? And what's actually going on here is worse than ignorance. It's pretty clear that we're watching a rule of thumb according to which if Republicans are against a proposal, that means it must be leftist and extreme, and the burden on the White House is to find a way to make the GOP happy. Needless to say, this rewards obstructionism...." Thanks to Nisky Guy for the link. ...
... CW: There is no greater facilitator of the Republican party than the mainstream media's adherence to he-said/she said "journalism." Here's Jay Rosen (in 2011) trying to explain to NPR what he-said/she-said reporting is, and the NPR people just don't get it. They really can't (or won't) understand the difference between editorializing & facts-gathering, the latter of which is apparently too hard to do.
... BTW, Rosen wrote a good piece last week on the "Republicans have to show they can govern" wish that reporters & some pundits accept -- and write -- as fact. Read to the bottom to see who agrees with him. CW: I didn't link to any of the opinion pieces or reports (with the possible exception of Jeremy Peters' NYT report, which I might have thought included some useful info) which Rosen mentions, because I believe that Republicans, unlike Democrats, are immune from results tests.
Capitalism Is Awesome, Ctd.
David Gelles of the New York Times: "Stocks are surging, corporate executives are ambitious and debt is cheap. The result is one of the biggest booms ever in mergers and acquisitions. Mergers worth $100 billion, made on Monday, put Wall Street on pace for a year of deal-making rivaling those during the dot-com bubble and the private equity upsurge just before the financial crisis."
David Dayen in Salon: "... you would be wrong to assume that anything has changed in our foreclosure courts. New evidence over the last month shows that [bank loan] servicers employ virtually the same improper techniques when foreclosing. Instead of robo-signers, they use robo-witnesses, or robo-verifiers; more on them in a moment. Regardless, they are breaking laws and degrading the integrity of the courts to kick people out of their homes, a sad and enduring legacy of the destruction of the nation's property system during the housing bubble years."
FINALLY, Another Super-Uber Plan. Ben Smith of BuzzFeed: Emil Michael, "a senior executive at Uber, suggested that the company should consider hiring a team of opposition researchers to dig up dirt on its critics in the media -- and specifically to spread details of the personal life of a female journalist who has criticized the company.... Michael was particularly focused on one journalist, Sarah Lacy, the editor of the Silicon Valley website PandoDaily, a sometimes combative voice inside the industry. Lacy recently accused Uber of 'sexism and misogyny' ... after BuzzFeed News reported that Uber appeared to be working with a French escort service." One way Uber has already tracked a BuzzFeed reporter's personal activities, despite a stated policy against it: "looking at journalists' travel logs." See Nixon, Richard.
Beyond the Beltway
Mike Levine, et al., of ABC News: "As the nation waits to hear whether a Missouri police officer will face charges for killing unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., the FBI is warning law enforcement agencies across the country that the decision 'will likely' lead some extremist protesters to threaten and even attack police officers or federal agents. Peaceful protesters could be caught in the middle, and electrical facilities or water treatment plants could also become targets. In addition, so-called 'hacktivists' like the group 'Anonymous' could try to launch cyber-attacks against authorities." ...
... Virginia Young of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "Citing 'the possibility of expanded unrest,' Gov. Jay Nixon on Monday declared a state of emergency and prepared to send the Missouri National Guard to help maintain order in the St. Louis region when a grand jury decision is announced in the Michael Brown case." ... CW: I had an awful time getting this page to load; it presented every kind of mess. The Reuters story, by Scott Malone, is here. ...
... Charles Pierce: "Make no mistake. This is a threat, pure and simple, and it is not aimed at people on both sides of this issue. In fact, it is a rather clear indication that Nixon feels that the grand jury is going to no-bill Wilson, and that Nixon is telling anyone who may be angered by that development that he is willing to do almost anything to keep their responses in check." Also, St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar, channeling Joe McCarthy, is "concerned" about "Black Panthers or communist activists."
... Adam Weinstein of Gawker: "Spurred on by a Tennessee resident who is "concerned" about the Ferguson protesters and their catchy chants, supporters of police officer Darren Wilson have donated more than enough money to post a billboard in the heart of the St. Louis suburb reading '#PantsUPDontLoot.' The phrase and hashtag, popularized by pearl-clutching National Review conservatives as a retort to the protesters' 'Hands up, don't shoot' rallying cry, apparently seeks to redirect attention from alleged excessive police force to alleged 'violence and mayhem' by demonstrators." ...
... AND Brandie Piper of KSDK-TV: "A 29-year-old Ferguson corrections officer is accused of having sex with an inmate at the city jail, whom he later allegedly allowed to escape. Jaris Hayden is charged with public servant acceding to corruption, two counts of sexual contact with an inmate, and permitting escape.... The inmate has not been identified, but filed a lawsuit against Hayden, alleging he raped her and forced her to give him oral sex after she was taken to jail for giving an officer a false name after she was pulled over for driving a vehicle with an expired license plate."
Mike DeBonis of the Washington Post: "D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray rejected a proposal by federal prosecutors in September that he plead guilty to a single felony count in connection with their long-running investigation of his 2010 campaign, a person with knowledge of the talks said. Prosecutors have also re-interviewed key witnesses in recent weeks, several individuals familiar with the case said -- a further indication that authorities are marching toward an indictment of the outgoing mayor."
Way Beyond the Beltway
Amy Davidson of the New Yorker on ISIS's murder of American humanitarian Peter Kassig: "Conversion [to Islam] was never protection. It was not ISIS's goal to make Kassig a Muslim, nor was it in its interest to acknowledge him as one. They wanted to murder an American, and they did."
November Elections
Chris Moody of CNN: "Republicans and outside groups used anonymous Twitter accounts to share internal polling data ahead of the midterm elections, CNN has learned, a practice that raises questions about whether they violated campaign finance laws that prohibit coordination.... A typical tweet read: "CA-40/43-44/49-44/44-50/36-44/49-10/16/14-52-->49/476-10s." The source said posts like that -- which would look like gibberish to most people -- represented polling data for various House races.... Groups ... [that] had access to the information posted to the accounts ... include American Crossroads, the super PAC founded by Karl Rove; American Action Network, a nonprofit advocacy group, and the National Republican Congressional Committee, which is the campaign arm for the House GOP." Via Paul Waldman.
Presidential Election
"The New Clinton Map." Dylan Scott of TPM writes a piece on the geniuses who are mapping out Hillary Clinton's Electoral College Path to Victory! They're planning to pick off some red states that Obama lost by appealing to working-class whites. "Clinton has already been testing a 2016 message that heavily emphasizes wage growth and expanding the middle class." CW: Mind you, neither Hillary nor these savants give a fuck about workers; they just think Clinton can "appeal" to them rubes by knocking down a few beers & repeating her "test message." You know, maybe voters aren't as stupid as Jonathan Gruber thinks & will sense that Hillary is as authentic as Mitt Romney.
News Ledes
New York Times: "Two assailants armed with a gun, knives and axes stormed a synagogue complex in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of West Jerusalem on Tuesday morning, killing at least four worshipers during morning prayers, according to the police. The attack was one of the deadliest in the city in several years."
Guardian: "American and Iranian negotiators have arrived in Vienna at the start of the last scheduled week of talks on Iran's nuclear programme with the outcome still in the balance."
New York Times: "With his once-vaunted plan for reviving Japan's economy now faltering, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declared on Tuesday that he would dissolve Parliament and hold national elections next month, saying he wants a new mandate from voters."
Share Article
Comments for this entry have been disabled. Additional comments may not be added to this entry at this time.
Reader Comments (26)
Milbank is an infuriating centrist nitwit who tries endlessly to create a political reality out of Beltway gossip, ill-informed pundit blogs, and peanut butter snacks. Landrieu is going to lose with or without the support of 50 sodden L-word activists on her front lawn. (Incidentally, Nebraska farmers want to know: Were they deemed L-word activists because they were protesting the KXL or did their T-shirts give them away?) Louisiana has never had a role in KXL, and Landrieu jumping on it as a cause celebre was an idiotic attempt to pander to the worst elements in her state. And she’s going to lose big time; count on it.
Read it and weep:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/17/a-pundit-explains-whats-wrong-with-washington/
I did follow the link to the Fournier column. Both sides do it. "The president has been unable and unwilling to peel off pragmatic Republicans."
Weep, I say.
A week or so ago, I wrote that I admired Charles Pierce's writing skills, & a reader interpreted that to mean that I love the dirty words.
Here's part of a sentence in Pierce's post on Romney's appearance Sunday on "Face the Nation": "... former Umayyid diplomatic correspondent Bob Schieffer went shopping in the remainder bin again."
That's a part of what I mean by excellent writing. Funny, biting, original metaphors. No dirty words in this example, though I don't mind them, either.
Marie
My two cents on Cosby...
I think the guy who first called 'rapist', Hannibal Buress, was also motivated and annoyed by Cosby's constant moralizing over the past several years about the failures of African American kids. Cosby's hectoring grew tedious and finally allowed a black comedian the opportunity to point out the hypocrisy of kindly Dr. Huxtable.
Well the House found an attorney. Jonathan Turley is taking the case. I think it is limited to the ACA. I guess his Fox gig is paying off. I wonder if he is on the fast track for the Supremes. BTW - he favored Citizens United.
http://jonathanturley.org/2014/11/17/the-house-hires-turley-as-lead-counsel-in-constitutional-challenge/#more-85392
More BTW. His site has been overrun by the right. All the liberals have left.
Milbank trots out more false equivalency and mistakes it for an argument.
Just like the tea party he says. Granted the Landrieu protestors make themselves an easy target for simplistic punditry, and if purism is the only measure, maybe, but to what should be apply the purity test? If reality is the yardstick, purity doesn't measure much.
The tpers who spent six years jumping on the austerity bandwagon clearly don't understand the difference between a household and a national budget. On the other hand, those who oppose the Keystone do have some grasp of the nation's (not merely LA's) economic and environmental reality. Landrieu, tho', is basing her behavior on her political reality; she's a Dino in a red, oil-dependent state, who feels she must wave a pipeline vote in the face of her own state's voters if she is to have a chance in the upcoming run-off. I don't blame her, but on the issue that doesn't make her right or the protestors wrong.
Milbank goes on:
". This will be seen with immigration and other issues, too. President Obama has shown little interest so far in compromise, and Harry Reid, becoming Senate minority leader, is a former boxer who still loves to brawl."
Pleeese...if the immigration bill passed in the Senate was not compromise, if deporting hundreds of thousands of immigrants, if building hundreds of miles of fences and doubling the Border Patrol and ICE in the last six years is not compromise, please, Dana, tell us what is.
As for Harry the boxer, boxers the size of Mr. Reid don't brawl. Even a columnist who never looks at the sports page ought to know that.
If you're going to play the just-like-the-other-guy game, it would seem you should take the trouble to describe both guys more accurately.
Otherwise, I'm just like Superman, with a few exceptions.
I was going to comment on Milbank, but I think Ken nails it.
My only concern is that there should be some place a politician can call home and not be inundated with noise and invective. However, let's be clear that the Louisiana protesters do not represent the sleepy passivity of the majority on the left who would really prefer that good things happen and toward that end gave $25 to SPLC last August, and really, who can do more?
Of more interest to me is the long-overdue calling out of the media referees who have determined beforehand that both sides will make equally valid arguments, which then absolves said media from actually vetting or even understanding those arguments. They have taken a page from the Lee Atwater playbook that says that one emotionally disturbing anecdote about a possibly real person can trump empirical research and even a witness's eyesight.
Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact.
Unsupported assertion illustrated with an inappropriate analogy.
Both sides do it, folks.
And those Americans who don't make it their hobby to follow these things nod and say, "I guess."
"If you want to know what’s happened to the American economy, follow the money. That will lead you to the richest .01 percent.
And if you want to know what’s happened to our democracy, follow the richest .01 percent. They’ll lead you to the politicians who have been selling our democracy."
I know we on this forum all know this, but Robert Reich lays it out well in his latest blog post. What I don't understand is why the remaining 99.99% don't put an end to this, though I suspect we're just too busy trying to keep ourselves and our children afloat, and have little energy left to turn the tide. (Not to mention all the "journalistic" shenanigans noted in The Commentariat, that serve to muddy the waters.) http://robertreich.org/post/102926070780
On a different note, the Hartford Courant today profiles the life of America's longest held POW, John T. Downey, who, following his release after 20 years of imprisonment in China, eventually went on to become a Connecticut state judge in the juvenile system. http://www.courant.com/politics/hc-judge-downey-flag-half-staff-20141117-story.html . . . . What a contrast to the lives of the rich and famous in Reich's column.
This comment from Weinstein's piece on Ron Fournier is just too good not to pass on:
"Writing this column every so often used to be David Broder's job, but he died. Now it's Ron Fournier's job. One day, I suppose, it will devolve to Chuck Todd, or someone very much like Chuck Todd. In any event, rest assured: there will always be someone to write this column. It will never not be written. On the last day of Earth, amidst bombs or drifting toxic clouds or mutated survivors looking like Picasso drawings, or whatever dire fate and mischance await us all at the end, a man like this will be writing a column like this. It's kind of comforting, in its own way."
@ Realitychex readers and Marie; I figure I'm one of a few "white guys with pick-ups and no collar" that reads this site. I have wanted to express how I think about the recent elections and the Democratic Party's seemingly lost connection with people like me. Now I don't have to.
"CW: Mind you, neither Hillary nor these savants give a fuck about workers; they just think Clinton can "appeal" to them rubes by knocking down a few beers & repeating her "test message." You know, maybe voters aren't as stupid as Jonathan Gruber thinks & will sense that Hillary is as authentic as Mitt Romney."
Thanks Marie.
Signed, Just another Dumb fuck in a pickup. PS. I don't know a guy or gal that wants to have a beer with ANYONE from the government. Maybe that Warren gal.
Pardon my French, but fuck Mary Landrieu and her desperate attempt to save her golden throne in the government. Trying to ram through the Keystone XL pipeline to maybe, possibly, but probably not, win reelection is absolutely despicable. Climate change is so much bigger than her political fortunes. She should be ashamed of herself.
It seemed to me that the Karen Tumulty article (linked above) came down fairly hard on Obama's possible use of executive action to alleviate the situation of some undocumented residents. But then I read the NYT piece by Michael Shear.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/18/us/by-using-executive-order-on-immigration-obama-would-reverse-long-held-stance.html?ref=us
It also paints the use of executive authority in the situation in negative light. What was really striking were the readers' comments which were overwhelmingly negative toward the proposed action and the President. Some of them were from obvious wingnuts; many were not so obvious (some even claiming to be liberals).
Few, if any, acknowledged the bi-partisan bill that passed the Senate. A convenient oversight. Still, if the comments reflect the public view accurately (a big if), it is troubling.
I thought that some of those people protesting on Mary's well tended lawn were many Indians from the Lakota Nation who have vehemently opposed the pipeline. From what I understand they have a well organized group determined to fight, if necessary with the blocking of their bodies, any pipe that comes across their land.
Dana, Dana, Dana,
My fellow RCers have done an excellent job of pointing out the holes in your most recent Both-Siderama spectacle, but let me add a few additional obvious points of contention.
So the Keystone Pipeline demonstrators are just like the Tea Party? Is that what you're saying? Both sides do it? Democrats are insisting on ideological purity just like the Tea Party?
Ah....let's see. Let me think about this for a second.
No. No. And....um, no.
First, did you see anyone strutting around outside Mary Landrieu's house armed to the teeth, daring the police to do something to stop them, threatening bystanders and onlookers with loaded weapons, and wearing T-shirts with violent expressions of imminent bloodletting, or waving flags demonstrating fealty, not to the United States, but to some slave-owning country that hasn't existed for 150 years?
I'm gonna guess that's a no.
Were any of them holding up signs stating outright that she would lose more than just her senate seat if she crossed them?
I'm pretty sure they didn't.
Have those 20 or 30 protesters in their zeal for "purity" caused the rest of the party to shiver in their nightclothes as they hide under the bedsheets and hope those Keystone people will let them win just one more election, pretty please with a hollow point on top?
Nope.
You do realize, Dana, that you write for the Washington Post, not the Greenview Hill High School Gazette. And yes, I know that it's fun to run down your nice easy and easily digestible bon mots, "Democratic Tea Party" sounds oh so clever and it does serve the gods of Both Sides, but, dude, trust me; it just ain't so. Both sides are not the same. And if you think that, you're no more accurate in your assessment of the current scene than Rush Limbaugh is about what women really want.
There's a lot of interesting things that can be gleaned from the Keystone protest: whither the Democratic party, whither the country, the crucial distinctions between progressive protesters--these people, civil rights protesters in St. Louis, the Occupy protesters, and the Teabaggers, in substance, style, make-up, origin, and support; the very real impact of big oil and gas, which you seem to see as innocent bystanders in all this. But not a one of those enormously interesting points seems to interest you.
Instead, you go for the easy jab, the token tap. Harry Reid is a boxer who likes a good brawl? Zzzzzzz. Wake me when the real writing starts. Okay, that might be acceptable in a profile on Reid's style and life in politics, but here it's just fluff that doesn't advance your point or enlighten your readers. It's like a hollow log. It looks sturdy until you stand on it. Likewise the point of your entire piece.
It's a cobbling together of tired tropes, devoid of genuine insight.
The verbal equivalent of empty calories.
Too much time on my hands this AM, enough to respond thusly to the NYTimes Uber article:
"There would be no tempest and no teapot if the "journalism" on either side of an issue always hewed to fact. Fact by itself has no axe to grind and no point of view.
High school logic tells us that the person and the issue should never be conflated, and that "he said-she said" and "both sides do it" have never been arguments worth a sou.
The only test of truth is whether something is true or not. Even a mass murderer might get something right--might even go out on a limb and acknowledge there is such a thing as global warming because the numbers say there is-- and denying what he said about it because of his heinous behavior makes no sense at all.
If the person is the story, then personal details, even those that might be judged to be negative, seem reasonable. If business practices are the story, journalism should report on those practices, leaving as the only acceptable counter other facts that contradict the reporting.
Attacking the reporter instead instead of offering fact in rebuttal is hardly an answer.
And childish, to boot."
Reading over what I wrote, it seems that the last line might have said more than I intended.
Both our politics and our journalism suffer from a playground mentality we can't seem to grow out of: shouting everywhere and the unchecked urge to personalize everything.
Unintended Surrealism.
Those Republicans; they must have been comedians in another life. No, seriously.
This morning I heard a quick newsflash about the coming immigration reform conflagration (reform from Obama, conflagration from you know who).
The reporter solemnly noted that he had been informed of the threat by Republican leaders that should the president move ahead on immigration, the time for bipartisanship would be over and the gloves were coming off.
The purity of the surrealism rivals the Pythons at their best.
Here's a short line from the rightfully famous Piranha Brothers sketch (based on the real life exploits of the notoriously violent psychopaths, the Kray Brothers, who terrorized the London underworld in the 60's):
"So I'm sittin' 'round one day when Dinsdale [Piranha] comes in and says to me 'You've been a naughty boy, Clement.' Then he splits me nostrils, saws off me leg, and pulls out me liver. And I says 'But my name's not Clement' and then he reeeeaally gets mad.'"
Gloves are coming off? When were they on? Oh, that must have been those times they tried to blackjack the president and didn't want any fingerprints to give them away. Unfortunately, they forgot to wear masks.
Oh, please, Johnny and Mitch! Don't give up on bipartisanship! It's been working so well!
JJG: As a guy with a pickup truck, " I don't know a guy or gal that wants to have a beer with ANYONE from the government. Maybe that Warren gal." Luckily I didn't have any beer in my mouth or it would have come up through my nose!
I don't want to beat the Cosby dead horse, but to expand on Marie and PD: http://www.vox.com/2014/11/18/7236263/bill-cosby-rape-allegations. The travesty is that the women aren't listened to until legitimized by a guy. No, I don't get that with acuity until I read it several times and think about it for a while. If I was a woman, that would definitely beyond piss me off.
I am curious about whether any of my brilliant RC commentator friends are gung-ho (even mildly so) about Hillary Clinton. I already know that I am not, and JJG and our fearless leader, Marie, have declared themselves.
What say? I say only: SUPREME COURT.
@Kate. If Hillary's the nominee, I'll vote for her. Because I always vote. Making her the nominee, however, is another question.
Meant to add this to my comment: do ya think there is another Democratic candidate who can win the nomination--and then the election?
Kate,
I am most definitely not jumping up and down about a Clinton candidacy. The inevitability factor (nothing is inevitable!) weighs heavily on me as does her bet hedging across the spectrum. No one questions her smarts or her ability, but I have to say I'm not overly sanguine about her constancy. I think Hillary has lived through some pretty tough times, politically, what with the Escapades of Bill and the vast right-wing conspiracy, of which she was--and is--absolutely correct.
But I think she has adopted a by the numbers, safety in political pragmatism philosophy that has adulterated (an unfortunate word to apply to HC, but there ya go) whatever might be left of her idealism where progressive causes are concerned.
I don't doubt that, if you got her one on one, many of her positions might ring true, but her family has been so tied up with influential donors and, after watching Republicans run the table with unlimited funds, she might lean much more heavily towards big donors than average citizens, causing those positions to shift, borne away by the tectonic drift of big money.
I'll agree with James that, should she be the candidate, she'll get my vote. I've held my nose and voted for a Clinton before, and I'll do it again. Especially if the alternative is Rug Man or Mirror Man or yet another Bush.
I don't know who could give her a run for her money, on the Democratic side, but I'd love to see someone jump in, if only to keep her honest and sharpen her for whatever may come.
The other downside (there are quite a few) is that voters may not be keen on another Clinton presidency, especially after the wingnut media is through and we might see the White House linens darkened once again by some propeller hat wearing shithead.
And that would be all she wrote.
@Kare @Akileus: good question, good answer.
We make fun of the Republican "bench" all the time, but ours isn't very deep either. It would be great to see a viable governor but Democratic guvs are in short supply and I can't think of a viable one. It occurs to me that my own governor, Inslee, has many attractive attributes. But he has no name recognition, and as far as I can tell, no desire.
Gardian just reported that the Senate just kicked the KXL down the stairs and that some Native Americans in the gallery were escorted out for whooping it up.
That should be Guardian. Sorry. Fat fingers.
NYT calls it a "narrow" defeat. I'd call 18 percent a landslide, but what do I know.
Oops. Sorry again.
@Re: Keystone XL and "job creation."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/11/18/how-the-50-long-term-jobs-keystone-xl-would-produce-compares-to-the-rest-of-the-economy/
Philip Bump writing in WaPo: compared to the rest of the economy, pretty poor. The Koch brothers want it, ergo Mitch McConnell does too.
I'm glad it was rejected. Lanndrieu can get her resume drawn up for K Street.