The Commentariat -- Sept. 7, 2013

"In his weekly address, President Obama makes the case for limited and targeted military action to hold the Assad regime accountable for its violation of international norms prohibiting the use of chemical weapons." -- White House

... Secretary of State John Kerry makes the moral case for a limited Syrian strike in a Huffington Post op-ed. ...

... Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times: "Warning that President Bashar al-Assad of Syria has barely put a dent in his chemical weapons stockpile, President Obama's new envoy to the United Nations [Samantha Power] said on Friday that a failure to intervene in Syria would 'give a green light to outrages that will threaten our security and haunt our conscience' for decades to come." ...

... ** Mark Hosenball of Reuters: "With the United States threatening to attack Syria, U.S. and allied intelligence services are still trying to work out who ordered the poison gas attack on rebel-held neighborhoods near Damascus. No direct link to President Bashar al-Assad or his inner circle has been publicly demonstrated, and some U.S. sources say intelligence experts are not sure whether the Syrian leader knew of the attack before it was launched or was only informed about it afterward. While U.S. officials say Assad is responsible for the chemical weapons strike even if he did not directly order it, they have not been able to fully describe a chain of command for the August 21 attack in the Ghouta area east of the Syrian capital." ...

... Michael Gordon of the New York Times: "A senior State Department official said on Friday that the military strike the United States is planning would not fundamentally alter the military balance in Syria and would likely be followed by a prolonged 'war of attrition' among the Syrian combatants." ...

The fact is [Syrian President] Bashar Assad has massacred 100,000 people. The conflict is spreading.... The Russians are all in, the Iranians are all in, and it's an unfair fight. And no one wants American boots on the ground. Nor will there be American boots on the ground because there would be an impeachment of the president if they did that. -- John McCain, at a townhall meeting Thursday ...

... To Strike or Not to Strike...." Scott Wilson of the Washington Post: President Obama "wants an answer to his question: What, after nearly a dozen years of war, is the country willing to bear?" ...

... Chris Cillizza & Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "A majority of House members are now on the record as either against or leaning against authorizing President Obama to use military force against Syria, according to the latest whip count from the Washington Post." ...

... Dan Nowicki of the Arizona Republic: "Sen. John McCain felt the heat of opposition to U.S. military intervention in Syria on Thursday during a town-hall meeting in Phoenix that exposed the emotions and ethic and religious tensions connected to crisis in the Middle East." ...

... Charles Pierce has a good anti-war column masquerading as a grand slam against Michael Gerson, WashPo columnist & former Bush scribe. CW: One would think that Bushies would have the sense to keep their mouths shut about the wisdom of military intervention in the Middle East, what with how things turned out when they tried it. (In fact, Bush & Cheney have not commented on the plans to attack Syria.) But Gerson is of the impression that we should read & heed his words of wisdom & prognostications on the proposed strike against Syria. ...

Philip "Gourevitch and John Cassidy join host Dorothy Wickenden on this week's Political Scene podcast to discuss how we got to the brink of intervention and what other options might still be available to the President":

Mark Hosenball: "U.S. spy agencies said on Friday that the latest media revelations based on leaks from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden will likely damage U.S. and allied intelligence efforts." ...

... Margaret Sullivan, the New York Times' public editor: "The New York Times has come under fire in the past for agreeing to government requests to hold back sensitive stories or information, but it bucked such requests in publishing a front-page article in Friday's paper. The executive editor, Jill Abramson, told me that while she and the managing editor Dean Baquet went to Washington to meet with officials and gave them 'a respectful hearing,' the decision to publish was 'not a particularly anguished one.' ... The encryption article -- an important story, published courageously -- is a very welcome development." ...

... ** Kevin Drum: "Snowden Disclosures Finally Hit 12 on a Scale of 1 to 10.... [the Times decryption story] is truly information that plenty of bad guys probably didn't know, and probably didn't have much of an inkling about.... But now that's all changed. Now every bad guy in the world knows for a fact that commercial crypto won't help them, and the ones with even modest smarts will switch to strong crypto techniques that remain unbreakable. It's still a pain in the ass, but it's not that big a pain in the ass. For what it's worth, this is about the point where I get off the Snowden train.... It's not clear to me how disclosing NSA's decryption breakthroughs benefits the public debate much." ...

... BUT Ryan Cooper of Washington Monthly: "Instead of even a token effort to target their surveillance to suspected bad guys, [NSA personnel] just take as much as they can possibly get and say 'trust us.' As I said previously, most of these efforts involve weakening crypto implementation protocols throughout the entire internet and building backdoors into commercial software. People might believe the NSA won’t abuse that capability, but I think history shows no one is to be trusted with that kind of secret power. Furthermore, there's no reason in principle that the security holes the NSA is blasting everywhere will only be used by them.... So I think the tradeoff here was definitely worth it." ...

... Simon Romero of the New York Times: "President Obama said Friday that he was seeking to ease tensions with the leaders of Latin America's two largest nations, Brazil and Mexico, over reports that the National Security Agency had spied not only on their nations, but on them and their inner circles as well." ...

... Craig Timberg of the Washington Post: "Google is racing to encrypt the torrents of information that flow among its data centers around the world in a bid to thwart snooping by the NSA and the intelligence agencies of foreign governments, company officials said Friday. The move by Google is among the most concrete signs yet that recent revelations about the National Security Agency's sweeping surveillance efforts have provoked significant backlash within an American technology industry.... Google's encryption initiative, initially approved last year, was accelerated in June as the tech giant struggled to guard its reputation as a reliable steward of user information amid controversy about the NSA's PRISM program...."

Ylan Mui & Amrita Jayakuma of the Washington Post: "Americans are participating in the workforce at the lowest level in 35 years..., as lackluster job growth fails to offset the droves of people who have given up looking for work. According to the Labor Department, the economy added a disappointing 169,000 jobs in August. In addition, the government lowered its estimate of the number of jobs created in June and July by 74,000 positions.... Government data showed that only 63.2 percent of working-age Americans have a job or are looking for one, the lowest proportion since 1978. Nearly 90 million people are now considered out of the labor force, up 1.7 million from August 2012." ...

... Neil Irwin of the Washington Post: "Ignore the headlines...; in almost all the particulars, you can find signs that this job market is weaker than it appeared just a few months ago, and maybe getting worse." ...

     ... CW: if you didn't read Krugman on this yesterday, read his column now: "... U.S. economic policy since Lehman has been an astonishing, horrifying failure." (BTW, I see a "Stop Summers" subtext here.) ...

... ** Joe Stiglitz, in a New York Times column, does not rely on subtext when he explains why President Obama should nominate Janet Yellin as Fed chair instead of Larry Summers. Read this. Send it to Obama (I think it appears only in the Times online). Obama may not know much about economics (and really, he doesn't), but he can grasp the compelling case Stiglitz makes.

Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times: "Richard L. Trumka, the president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., has a bold plan to reverse organized labor’s long slide: let millions of nonunion workers -- and perhaps environmental, immigrant and other advocacy groups -- join the labor federation."

New York Times Editors: "The Group of 20 nations on Friday took an important step toward curbing tax avoidance by committing to exchanging information automatically on tax matters by the end of 2015."

The more I read and the more I listen, the more apparent it is that our society suffers from an alarming degree of public ignorance. -- Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (thanks to James S. for the link)

... CW: There is a simple partial solution to this, & I don't know that anyone has ever suggested it: require students to pass the same test non-citizens must pass to become citizens. (ironically, the current test has mistakes in it -- a few "correct" answers are actually incorrect, but you would still pass with flying colors if you got these questions "wrong.") Many states require students to take competency tests in several fields -- math, reading comprehension, writing, etc. -- to graduate from high school. Just add civics. ...

... OR, the kids could watch "Law & Order" ...

The Fourth Amendment protects you from unreasonable search & seizure. It doesn't say anything about being neat. -- Det. Joe Fontana (a/k/a Dennis Farina, RIP), in an old episode of "Law & Order," to a suspect complaining about the mess detectives were making during their search of his home

Of course Fontana's signature line -- 'We're authorized' -- just might give the kids the wrong impression. -- Constant Weader ...

... Maryclaire Dale of the AP: Justice Ruth Bader "Ginsburg said equality has always been central to the Constitution, even if society has only applied it to minorities -- be they women, blacks or gays -- over time. 'So I see the genius of our Constitution, and of our society, is how much more embracive we have become than we were at the beginning,' Ginsburg said in a far-ranging discussion of her work at the National Constitution Center ..." in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Andrew Kaczynski of BuzzFeed: "Texas Republican Rep. Bill Flores said at a town hall forum Thursday that if the House of Representatives had an impeachment vote, President Obama would be impeached. Flores said such a vote would be futile because it would fail in the Senate." ...

... Hunter of Daily Kos: "If this sounds very familiar it's because it is: Texas (of course) Republican (duh) Blake Farenthold said much the same thing only a few weeks ago. Since then we've had Rep. Kerry Bentivolio saying that he's held meetings with lawyers about impeachment and is all set to go, except for the knowing what to impeach him for part, eternal crackpot Sen. Tom Coburn ... has told voters that Obama is 'getting perilously close' to impeachment, and Canadian man with obvious presidential ambitions Sen. Ted Cruz mused that it is 'a good question.' If only there weren't so many pesky Democrats who wouldn't vote for it, and so many damn members of the press asking what exactly was the impeachable part, they would have this in the bag." (Links, expect the first, are original.)

Senatorial Race

Raymond Hernandez of the New York Times: "Mayor Cory A. Booker of Newark, the Democratic candidate for United States Senate in New Jersey, is cutting all ties to an Internet start-up that he founded with money from well-connected figures in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, his campaign announced on Friday. Mr. Booker's association with the Internet firm, Waywire, had become an embarrassment for him even as he seems poised to capture the Senate seat in a special election next month."

News Ledes

New York Times: "Voters on Saturday delivered a stinging defeat to the Labor Party, led by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, bringing an end to six tumultuous years of leadership and ushering into power a strong conservative Liberal-National coalition. The opposition leader, Tony Abbott, who made his name as a relentless critic of the policies of Mr. Rudd and his predecessor, Julia Gillard, is now in line to become Australia's 27th prime minister when he is sworn in next week...."

Washington Post: "Rochus Misch, who spent five years as Adolf Hitler's square-jawed bodyguard, courier, telephone operator and all-around attendant and was widely believed to be the last surviving veteran of the Nazi leader's bunker as the Soviet army closed in on Berlin, died Sept. 5 at 96."

Washington Post: "NASA's newest robotic explorer rocketed into space late Friday in an unprecedented moonshot from Virginia. The LADEE spacecraft soared aboard an unmanned Minotaur rocket a little before midnight." ...

     ... Space.com Update: " After a near-perfect launch late Friday (Sept. 6), NASA's newest moon probe has encountered its first glitch on the road to Earth's nearest neighbor.... Although the launch was nearly flawless, LADEE ran into some trouble right after its separation from the Minotaur V. The probe's onboard computer shut down LADEE's reaction wheels, which are used to stabilize the attitude of the probe in space, after noticing that they were drawing too much current. But there's no reason to panic, NASA officials said."

Comments

[Ken Winkes]

Possible good news on the union front from AFL-CIO President Trumpka...but two obvious caveats:

First, the AFL--must get its own house in better order before or while it attempts to expands its tent. A first step might be to stop approving contracts that require some union workers to cross picket lines established by other unions, a practice now common and surely one of the root causes of Labors' splintering; witness the Longshoremens' recent disaffiliation from the AFL over precisely this matter, something the article does not mention. Some would say the AFL-CIO is talking about expanding its tent while its behavior is sure to shrink it.

And where in the political world have we seen that before?

Second, commercial interests often have and will make strange and strained bedfellows of workers and environmentalists. Unions want jobs for their workers. Environmentalists often just want projects, particularly in the extraction industries, stopped. Among other things, it's a tussle between short and long-term thinking. If unions and greenies can create and implement strategies and mechanisms to create jobs in sufficient numbers through projects that will not degrade the environment, Trumpka's rhetorical reach may not exceed his grasp, but it won't be easy, particularly when a large number of second generation of Nixon hard-hats still vote Republican.

On social justice issues, though, the unions have a better chance; and if they are seen in communities as real leaders in the struggle for justice for all, union and non-union workers and their families alike, they have a chance to do some good for themselves while they do the nation proud.

[MAG]

Go Joe! Stiglitz brilliantly sums up who is best to lead the Fed with a point by point analysis in today's NYT:

"The choices have seldom been so stark, the stakes so large. No wonder that the choice of the Fed leader has stirred such emotion. Ms. Yellen has a truly impressive record in each of the jobs she has undertaken. The country has before it one candidate who played a pivotal role in creating the economic problems that we confront today, and another candidate of enormous stature, experience and judgment."

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/why-janet-yellen-not-larry-summers-should-lead-the-fed/?hp&_r=0

[PD Pepe]

Wow! Larry sure as heck isn't going to invite Joe for tea after this article which spells out beautifully and cogently the reasons for picking Yellen and against picking Summers. To date I have not read anything positive about a Summers' appointment. Scanning many of the comments under the Stiglitz article confirms this view. So we wait with baited breath and hope that the Financial Fairy, the one that has the good sense, will whisper some of that into the large ears of Obama who at the moment is struggling with that damned Red Line.

@Ken: Enjoyed reading your post–––good run down on the subject.

[Diane]

Strictly my opinion, but Cory Booker is self serving and not a little cringe worthy. At the risk of offending Clinton devotees, Booker seems to have been schooled in the mode of Bill Clinton, snake oil salesman. Booker has a lower quotient of what is touted as Clinton's "charisma", which has always felt more like slime to me. As with most things in life, he's neither completely positive or negative. I would characterize him as untrustworthy.

[PD Pepe]

Hey Diane––here's a bit of the skinny on Booker:

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114547/cory-booker-inside-mind-new-jerseys-next-senator

[Diane]

@PD Pepe. Thanks for the link. To Scheiber and The New Republic - Exactly!