The Commentariat -- February 18

Times reporter Michael Slackman & his videographer are fired on by government forces in Manama, Bahrain:

... Slackman filed his story anyway. ...

... Nicholas Kristof reports from Bahrain: "To be here and see corpses of protesters with gunshot wounds, to hear an eyewitness account of an execution of a handcuffed protester, to interview paramedics who say they were beaten for trying to treat the injured — yes, all that just breaks my heart."

During House debate on a Republican-led amendment to defund Planned Parenthood, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) revealed that she had had an abortion necessitated by a physical anomaly. Here's a related story from The Hill. Thanks to Leader Pelosi for posting this video:

** New York Times Editorial Board: Justice Clarence Thomas' refusal to participate in oral arguments is related to his ethical problems regarding his participation in political events & his wife's income as a lobbyist for political causes.

Paul Krugman: "There are three things you need to know about the current budget debate. First, it’s essentially fraudulent. Second, most people posing as deficit hawks are faking it. Third, while President Obama hasn’t fully avoided the fraudulence, he’s less bad than his opponents — and he deserves much more credit for fiscal responsibility than he’s getting."

On the Budget. Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. … Is there no other way the world may live? -- President Dwight Eisenhower (formerly Supreme Commander of Allied Forces, European Theater), April 16, 1953

Erik Wasson and Mike Lillis of The Hill: "House Democrats [including Leader Nancy Pelosi] worried that a bipartisan group of six senators is making progress toward putting the recommendations of President Obama’s debt commission into legislation delivered a message Thursday: Take Social Security out of the mix."

CW: sorry, I love this behind-the-scenes stuff:

David Sirota in Salon: Americans really like government programs but they don't know, or at least don't acknowledge, that they are utilizing these programs. "Americans become more supportive of government after using 'visible social programs,' but they do not become more supportive of government after using submerged-state programs"; i.e., ones they don't "see." "Rather than champion those 'visible social programs' like a public healthcare option or a new Works Progress Administration that might broadcast government's intrinsic value, [President Obama] merely pushed to expand the submerged state with initiatives like private health insurance subsidies and business tax cuts..." Big mistake.

Elizabeth Drew, in the New York Review of Books, assesses Obama's presidency & his relationship wit Republicans in Congress: "the widespread idea that Obama has 'turned to the center' has been much overstated, a concept encouraged by the White House and aimed at independents: Obama has made some symbolic gestures..., but he was no flaming liberal in his first two years in office."

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi: "Show Us the Jobs":

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, talks to Cenk Uygur of MSNBC about false information Powell presented to the U.N. Wilkerson says he "absolutely" believes Vice President Cheney manipulated Gen. Powell:

Homeland Security muzzles 84,000 innocent bloggers, falsely accuses them of distributing porn. Jerry Brito in Time's Techland: "... last Tuesday ... DHS announced that it had seized 10 domain names allegedly involved in advertising or distributing child pornography. Caught up in that sweep, however, were 84,000 innocent domains, all of which were redirected to the imposing 'seized for child porn' banner.... Exactly how this happened is unclear, but one likely scenario could have been prevented with better due process."

Local News

New York Times Editorial Board: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker "decided a budget crisis was a good time to advance an ideological goal ...: eliminating most collective bargaining rights for public employees.... Meanwhile, the governor is refusing to accept his own share of responsibility for the state’s projected $137 million shortfall. Just last month, he and the Legislature gave away $117 million in tax breaks, mostly for businesses ... and for private health savings accounts.... Had it not been for those decisions and a few others, according to the state’s Legislative Fiscal Bureau, the state would have had a surplus." ...

... Madison, Wisconsin, Capital Times Editors: "Wisconsin ... had been managing better until Walker took over.... In its Jan. 31 memo to legislators on the condition of the state’s budget, the Fiscal Bureau determined that the state will end the year with a balance of $121.4 million.... [Then] Walker and his allies pushed through $140 million in new spending for special-interest groups in January.... Walker is manufacturing a fiscal 'crisis' in order to achieve political goals." ...

... You can join the campaign against this draconian legislation by signing this letter from Bold Progressives.org. (You need not be a Wisconsin resident.) ...

... Ha Ha. Eric Lach of TPM: "File this one under: brevity win. Wisconsin State Senator Lena Taylor (D) is one of the 14 Democrats who staged a walkout Thursday, and who no one seems to be able to locate. But that doesn't mean she has been in total hiding. [Thursday] afternoon, Taylor posted the following message -- which TPM is reproducing in its entirety -- on what appears to be her Facebook page":

brb

     ... CW: for those of you who, like me, aren't up on techspeak, "brb" is "be right back."

Right Wing World

Gene Robinson: Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a likely Republican candidate for president, once again shows his indifference to black Americans; he says he will not denounce a group that has proposed a state license plate honoring Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, whose troops murdered black Union soldiers trying to surrender & who became a founding member & the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Barbour has a history of dismissing sensitive racial issues -- like, oh, segregation! -- as inconsequential.

When Karl Rove Is the Voice of Reason.... Jennifer Epstein of Politico: "Former Bush adviser Karl Rove is calling on GOP politicians to avoid falling into the 'birther' movement trap and to stop fueling rumors that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States."

News Ledes

President Obama at Intel on Friday:

Al Jazeera: "The US has vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that would have condemned Israeli settlements as "illegal" and called for an immediate halt to all settlement building. All 14 other Security Council members voted in favour of the resolution, which was backed by the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), on Friday." With video.

New York Times: "The fight over a bill to slash collective bargaining for Wisconsin’s public workers came to a standstill on Friday, as Democratic state senators refused to appear at the Capitol, members of the State Assembly delayed a vote until next week and thousand of protesters, their numbers still growing, marched, screamed, sang and sat."

New York Times: "Jeff Bingaman, a Democratic senator from New Mexico, will retire at the end of his term in 2012, adding to the growing list of open seats the party will have to defend next year."

President Obama spoke at Intel in Hillsboro, Oregon, this afternoon. AP Related: "... President Barack Obama is naming [Intel Corp. CEO Paul Otellino,] one of his critics, to an advisory council responsible for finding new ways to promote economic growth and bring jobs to the U.S...." ...

Washington Post: "The widened unrest in the Middle East took a more violent turn Friday as U.S.-allied governments in Yemen and Bahrain opened fire on their citizens, prompting Britain and France to announce a halt in arms sales. The use of live ammunition against pro-democracy protesters also triggered sharp criticism from President Obama, who urged authorities in Yemen, Bahrain and Libya to show restraint and 'respect the rights of their people.'"

** New York Times: "Government forces opened fire on hundreds of mourners marching toward Pearl Square [In Manama, Bahrain] on Friday, sending people running away in panic amid the boom of concussion grenades. But even as the people fled, at least one helicopter sprayed fire on them and a witness reported seeing mourners crumpling to the ground." See Times video in left column. ...

... New York Times: "Security forces and government supporters attacked protesters on Friday — using tear gas, batons, shotguns and grenades — in pitched street battles in Libya, Bahrain and Yemen."

... New York Times: "At least 24 people have died in protests in Libya against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, according to Human Rights Watch, and demonstrations were reported to have continued into Friday in what appeared to be the most serious challenge in his 41-year rule."

AP: "Thousands of mourners called for the downfall of Bahrain's ruling monarchy and worshippers at Friday prayers chanted against the king as anger shifted toward the nation's highest authorities after a deadly assault on pro-reform protesters that has brought army tanks into the streets of one of the most strategic Western allies in the Gulf." ...

... Washington Post: "The state of emergency imposed Thursday over .. [Bahrain] followed a crackdown by a police force heavily composed of foreign nationals and controlled by a widely despised prime minister."

AP: "Rivaling the biggest crowds since their pro-democracy revolt began, flag-waving Egyptians packed into Tahrir Square for a day of prayer and celebration Friday to mark the fall of longtime leader Hosni Mubarak a week ago and to push their new military rulers to steer the country toward reform." ...

... New York Times: "(1) Hundreds of workers went on strike on Thursday along the Suez Canal, one of the world’s strategic waterways, joining others across Egypt pressing demands for better wages and conditions.... (2) Critics have questioned why the military has refused to free thousands of political prisoners and lift the Emergency Law...."

AP: "House Republicans on Thursday moved to block the Federal Communications Commission from enforcing new rules that prohibit broadband providers from interfering with Internet traffic on their networks. With a 244-181 vote, Republican leaders succeeded in attaching an amendment to a sweeping spending bill that would bar the FCC from using government money to implement its new 'network neutrality' regulations."

Bloomberg News: "President Barack Obama dined with a dozen leaders of the U.S. technology industry including Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs and Facebook Inc. founder Mark Zuckerberg as he sought support for his education and innovation agenda and discussion on promoting growth."

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "Schools in Madison, [Wisconsin,] will be closed a third day Friday, as teachers continue to call in sick to protest a bill taking away union rights." ...

... Washington Post: President Obama has mobilized Organizing for America in Wisconsin & Ohio in support of public employee unions. Politico has more on the participation of OFA, an arm of the Democratic National Committee.

New York Times: Fed Chair Ben Bernanke told the Senate Banking Committee today "that banking regulators would be better able to deal with the failure of a large bank today than they were two years ago, thanks in part to the Dodd-Frank Act, which overhauled financial regulation after the crisis of 2007-8."

The Commentariat -- February 17

Wisconsin teachers, other state employees, protest in Madison, Wisconsin's capitol building. AP photo.Here's the above photo, in motion:

Everybody's got to make some adjustments to new fiscal realities. But some of what I've heard coming out of Wisconsin, where you're just making it harder for public employees to collectively bargain generally, seems like more of an assault on unions.
-- Barack Obama, today ...

... Jennifer Epstein of Politico: "Teachers unions, historically one of the most powerful interest groups in American politics, are being besieged like never before – under attack from conservative GOP governors with a zeal for budget-cutting even while taking fire from some Democrats, including President Barack Obama, who has suggested he agrees that unions can be an impediment to better schools.... The backlash threatens to undercut one of the Democratic Party’s most stalwart backers — and upset a mutually beneficial relationship where the unions provided financial support and foot soldiers for Democratic campaigns, in return for political cover to protect their prerogatives in the U.S. Congress and state capitals across the nation."

Illustration for Rolling Stone by Victor Juhasz.** Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone: "... the entire system set up to monitor and regulate Wall Street is fucked up.... Not a single executive who ran the companies that cooked up and cashed in on the phony financial boom — an industrywide scam that involved the mass sale of mismarked, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities — has ever been convicted.... When it comes to Wall Street, the justice system not only sucks at punishing financial criminals, it has actually evolved into a highly effective mechanism for protecting financial criminals." Read the whole article. ...

... Shahien Nasiripour of the Huffington Post: "The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which oversees lenders like JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America..., is pushing for a quick and modest settlement to the months-long federal and state probes into abusive mortgage practices, frustrating other federal agencies and state egulators and raising questions over President Barack Obama's delay in naming a pro-consumer chief to head the agency.... The agency is negotiating an agreement that would cost the industry less than $5 billion in fines and mortgage modifications." By contrast, "in 2008, state attorneys general reached an $8.4 billion agreement with just one company -- Countrywide Financial -- to settle predatory lending accusations. The money was used to aid distressed homeowners." ...

Simon Johnson in Bloomberg News: the too-big-to-fail banks are the biggest government-sponsored entities today. And "top bankers are ... pressing hard for the right to increase dividend payments. That’s effectively a transfer from creditors and taxpayers tomorrow (because of the guarantee) to shareholders today."

Michael Grunwald of Time: the Obama Administration is using the stimulus bill to reform the Washington bureaucracy by diverting "funds into competition-based, peer-reviewed, results-oriented grant programs that reward only the worthiest applications."

Mark Landler of the New York Times: "President Obama ordered his advisers last August to produce a secret report on unrest in the Arab world, which concluded that without sweeping political changes, countries from Bahrain to Yemen were ripe for popular revolt, administration officials said Wednesday.... The administration kept the project secret, officials said, because it worried that if word leaked out, Arab allies would pressure the White House, something that happened in the days after protests convulsed Cairo." ...

... Fareed Zakaria in Time: "The central, underlying feature of the Middle East's crisis is a massive youth bulge. About 60% of the region's population is under 30. These millions of young people have aspirations that need to be fulfilled, and the regimes in place right now show little ability to do so." ...

... Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times profiles Gene Sharp, an 83-year-old American intellectual whose "practical writings on nonviolent revolution — most notably 'From Dictatorship to Democracy,' a 93-page guide to toppling autocrats, available for download in 24 languages — have inspired dissidents around the world, including in Burma, Bosnia, Estonia and Zimbabwe, and now Tunisia and Egypt."

Ed Pilkington, et al., of the Guardian: "Colin Powell, the US secretary of state at the time of the Iraq invasion, has called on the CIA and Pentagon to explain why they failed to alert him to the unreliability of a key source behind claims of Saddam Hussein's bio-weapons capability. Responding to the Guardian's revelation that the source, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi or "Curveball" as his US and German handlers called him, admitted fabricating evidence of Iraq's secret biological weapons programme, Powell said that questions should be put to the US agencies involved in compiling the case for war." CW: see yesterday's Commentariat for video & a link to the original Guardian story.

Steven Mufson of the Washington Post: "Interest payments on the national debt will quadruple in the next decade and every man, woman and child in the United States will be paying more than $2,500 a year to cover for the nation's past profligacy, according to figures in President Obama's new budget plan." ...

... E. J. Dionne of the Washington Post: "I hope [President] Obama has the spine to keep calling the bluff of the deficit hawks until they get serious about changing the politics of deficit reduction. We can't afford another 30 years of fiscal evasion."

Mark Arsenault & Christopher Rowland of the Boston Globe: "Senator Scott Brown reveals in his soon-to-be-released autobiography that he was sexually abused by a male camp counselor and suffered repeated beatings at the hands of a stepfather. His book, to be released on Monday ..., vividly details a childhood in Wakefield and other Massachusetts towns that was punctuated by violence, family strife, and petty crime":

Former Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold founded "Progressives United" yesterday:

... You can join up by going to his site, which is at least partially down because it got so many hits.

Local News

Gail Collins: Former First Lady Barbara Bush pleads against spending cuts to education in Texas, which has fallen to "47th in the nation in literacy, 49th in verbal SAT scores and 46th in math scores," but Gov. Rick Perry & Republicans in the state legislature have no intention of heeding Bush's warnings. "Besides reducing services to children, Texas is doing as little as possible to help women — especially young women — avoid unwanted pregnancy."

Right Wing World

Forget Motherhood & Apple Pie. Jay Newton-Small of Time: "This morning, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) told George Stephanopoulos on Good Morning America that the tax code needs to be changed – citing the example that the Internal Revenue Service recently deemed breast pumps a valid medical deduction. (This is related to Bachmann's assertion that First Lady Michelle Obama's encouragement of mothers to breast-feed in order to prevent childhood obesity is the latest example of the “nanny state,” though the IRS and Obama acted independently of one another.)" With video.

A. G. Sulzberger of the New York Times: "A state bill to expand the definition of justifiable homicide in South Dakota to include killing someone in the defense of an unborn child was postponed indefinitely Wednesday after an uproar over whether the legislation would put abortion providers at greater risk."

Dave Leach, an Iowa anti-abortion activist, praised the bill, saying it could end abortions in South Dakota by scaring away doctors or by establishing grounds for someone to kill those who stay. 'There may be something I'm overlooking, but from all appearances, this bill would certainly justify an individual taking the life of an abortionist in order to save human lives,' he said. ...

... As Amy Sullivan of Time points out, "... whether or not the bill actually would permit such acts hardly matters if anti-abortion activists think that it does. "

News Ledes

Undisclosed Locations. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "... law enforcement officers are searching for Democratic senators boycotting a Senate vote on Gov. Scott Walker's budget-repair plan Thursday in an attempt to bring the lawmakers to the floor to allow Republicans to act on the bill. One Democratic senator said that he believed most of the members of his caucus have gone to another state...."...

... AP: "Wisconsin lawmakers are prepared to pass a momentous bill that would strip government workers of nearly all collective bargaining rights over the loud objections of thousands of teachers, students and prison guards who packed the Capitol for two days of protests. The nation's most aggressive anti-union proposal has been speeding through the Legislature since Republican Gov. Scott Walker introduced it a week ago." CW: also, see yesterday's ledes.

Al Jazeera: "Troops and tanks have locked down the Bahraini capital of Manama on Thursday after riot police swinging clubs and firing tear gas smashed into demonstrators in a pre-dawn assault, killing at least four people. Hours after the attack on Manama's main Pearl Roundabout, the military announced a ban on gatherings, saying on state TV that it had 'key parts' of the capital under its control." ...

... AP: "The Obama administration is expressing alarm over a violent crackdown on anti-government protesters in key U.S. ally Bahrain and urging authorities there to use restraint. The State Department said Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called Bahrain's foreign minister on Thursday to register Washington's 'deep concern' about overnight developments." ...

... New York Times: "Without warning, hundreds of heavily armed riot police officers rushed into Pearl Square [in Manama, Bahrain] early Thursday, firing shotguns, tear gas and concussion grenades at the thousands of demonstrators who were sleeping there as part of a widening protest against the nation’s absolute monarchy. At least five people died, some of them reportedly killed in their sleep with scores of shotgun pellets to the face and chest, according to a witness and three doctors who received the dead and at least 200 wounded at a hospital here."

AP: "Libyan protesters seeking to oust longtime leader Moammar Gadhafi defied a crackdown and took to the streets in four cities Thursday on what activists have dubbed a 'day of rage,' amid reports that at least 14 demonstrators have been killed in clashes with pro-government forces."

New York Times: "A provincial court gave the Pakistani government three weeks on Thursday to decide whether the American official in custody for killing two Pakistanis has diplomatic immunity, a decision that amounts to a slap to the United States.... The decision came a day after a whirlwind visit by Senator John Kerry who tried to find a quick resolution to the case which has severely damaged relations between the two countries and exposed the weakness of the pro-American government headed by President Asif Ali Zardari."

Washington Post: "CIA Director Leon Panetta told Congress on Wednesday that if Osama bin Laden or his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri is captured they will be held by the military and probably will be sent to Guantanamo Bay, the first time any senior administration official has outlined a detention plan for al-Qaeda's top leadership."

"The Great Game"

Maureen Dowd goes to the theater to see “The Great Game,” a seven-hour play that uses "real and fictional characters, actual transcripts and imagined scenes, to trace the trellis of foreign involvement in Afghanistan from 1842 to the present."

Here's my comment, scotched again by the Times moderators:

Herman Melville saw the folly of outsiders trying to take Afghanistan. Early in his most famous book, Moby Dick, published in 1851 (nine years after the 16,000 Brits & Indians lost their lives near Jalalabad), there is a scene in which the narrator Ishmael takes account of his place in the world:

 And doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run something like this:

Here, Ishmael imagines the headlines:

     Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States

     Whaling Voyage by One Ishmael

     Bloody Battle in Affghanistan

Only the headline that describes Ishmael's whaling voyage is fictional. Throughout recorded history, many have tried to conquer Afghanistan, and many have taken it for a short time -- from Darius I in about 550 B.C.E., to Alexander the Great (probably the greatest military leader in history, Alexander took three years to conquer Afghanistan) to various Eastern tribes, to the Moors in the 7th century C.E. to the Turks in the 10th century C.E., etc., etc., to the British in the 19th century to the Soviets in the 20th. The Afghans usually just wait 'em out & commit sabotage & other mayhem in the waiting. They'll do the same with us.

I'm aware that the justification for continuing the Longest War in Afghanistan is our fear of a nuclear Pakistan. But might I suggest that subduing Afghanistan & propping up one more hated dictator (who is stealing millions of U.S. tax dollars) is not the best foreign policy strategy for deterring Pakistani nukes? Let's save our soldiers' lives and direct our attentions, through diplomatic negotiations and other means, to the source of the problem.

The Graveyard of Empires is not the best place for the United States to die.