The Commentariat -- April 13, 2014
Internal links, obsolete videos removed.
** David Sanger of the New York Times: "... President Obama has decided that when the National Security Agency discovers major flaws in Internet security, it should -- in most circumstances -- reveal them to assure that they will be fixed, rather than keep mum so that the flaws can be used in espionage or cyberattacks, senior administration officials said Saturday. But Mr. Obama carved a broad exception for 'a clear national security or law enforcement need,' the officials said.... The White House has never publicly detailed Mr. Obama's decision, which he made in January.... There is no evidence that the N.S.A. had any role in creating Heartbleed, or even that it made use of it.... But documents released by Edward J. Snowden ... make it clear that two years before Heartbleed became known, the N.S.A. was looking at ways to accomplish exactly what the flaw did by accident."
Oops. Missed This. Jennie Matthew of AFP: "US reporter Glenn Greenwald returned to his homeland Friday for the first time since he helped expose Washington's vast electronic spying network, warning that more revelations are yet to come. Greenwald, who maintains regular contact with fugitive former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, flew into New York with filmmaker Laura Poitras to receive a journalism award for their coverage. Greenwald and Poitras had feared they could be detained upon arrival but told reporters at a Manhattan hotel that, while US officials 'deliberately created' a sense of risk, they faced no problem."
Tom Hamburger & Matea Gold of the Washington Post: "... Google -- once a lobbying weakling -- has come to master a new method of operating in modern-day Washington, where spending on traditional lobbying is rivaled by other, less visible forms of influence. That system includes financing sympathetic research at universities and think tanks, investing in nonprofit advocacy groups across the political spectrum and funding pro-business coalitions cast as public-interest projects.... Nine years ago, the company opened a one-man lobbying shop, disdainful of the capital's pay-to-play culture. Since then, Google has soared to near the top of the city's lobbying ranks, placing second only to General Electric in corporate lobbying expenditures in 2012 and fifth place in 2013."
Justin Gillis of the New York Times: "The countries of the world have dragged their feet so long on global warming that the situation is now critical, experts appointed by the United Nations reported Sunday, and only an intensive worldwide push over the next 15 years can stave off potentially disastrous climatic changes later in the century. It remains technically possible to keep planetary warming to a tolerable level, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found, according to a report unveiled here. But even in parts of the world like Europe that have tried hardest, governments are still a long way from taking the steps that are sufficient to do the job, the experts found."
Breaking! Maureen Dowd has found someone to love: Stephen Colbert. It's uncanny -- not a dollop of snark for Colbert (but plenty for other late-nite comics). ...
... Here's Dowd on the "Colbert Report," ca. 2005:
... Okay, so Ben Collins of Esquire loves Colbert too.
Mary Walsh of the New York Times: "Multiemployer pensions are not only backed by federal insurance, but they also were thought to be even more secure than single-company pensions because when one company in a multiemployer pool failed, the others were required to pick up its 'orphaned' retirees. Today, however, the aging of the work force, the decline of unions, deregulation and two big stock crashes have taken a grievous toll on multiemployer pensions, which cover 10 million Americans. Dozens of multiemployer plans have already failed, and some giant ones are teetering -- including, notably, the Teamsters' Central States pension plan, with more than 400,000 members. In February, the Congressional Budget Office projected that the federal multiemployer insurer would run out of money in seven years, which would leave retirees in failed plans with nothing."
Harold Meyerson: "... if reciprocal credit is due for the landmark legislation of LBJ's presidency, so reciprocal blame should be placed for the tragedy of Vietnam. It's clear from the tape recordings that Johnson made of his private phone calls 50 years ago this spring that the new president viewed the prospect of going to war in Vietnam with trepidation.... And yet, many of the key players who had been with him on civil rights -- the Republicans, the AFL-CIO and his own advisers -- were urging him to plunge in.... In the end, of course, Johnson took just enough of their counsel to wreak havoc on Vietnam, the United States, his political party and his presidency. The blame is his but, as with the credit, there's plenty left over to go around."
Valerie Miller, et al., of the New York Daily News: The woman who threw a shoe at Hillary Clinton is extremely crazy. CW: But of course the Secret Service let her into a supposedly closed event.
As James Singer the Science Winger pointed out yesterday, the Earth is the center of the universe! Or so say some actual wingnuts who have produced a slick Bible-consistent "documentary" film -- with real scientists! (who are mortified they got suckered into the project). Steve Benen reports.
Sex & the GOP
Scott Keyes, in the Washington Post: "In cooperation with the Family Research Council and the National Organization for Marriage, socially conservative politicians have been quietly trying to make it harder for couples to get divorced. In recent years, lawmakers in more than a dozen states have introduced bills imposing longer waiting periods before a divorce is granted, mandating counseling courses or limiting the reasons a couple can formally split. States such as Arizona, Louisiana and Utah have already passed such laws, while others such as Oklahoma and Alabama are moving to do so.... Making divorce less accessible harms women most.... Women today are twice as likely as men to ask for a divorce...." ...
... CW: The SOBs cannot stay out of your bedroom, even if that bedroom is occupied by two people in a miserable marriage. I think the high-minded moral principles behind this latest intrusive movement are (1) to hell with what the wife wants, & (2) married women vote Republican. Also maybe: if a couple is unhappy, they are less likely to have sex with each other, and sex is a dirty, dirty thing.
Elsewhere Beyond the Beltway
Freeeeedom! Liz Fields of ABC News: "A Nevada cattle rancher appears to have won his week-long battle with the federal government over a controversial cattle roundup that had led to the arrest of several protesters. Cliven Bundy went head to head with the Bureau of Land Management over the removal of hundreds of his cattle from federal land, where the government said they were grazing illegally." ...
... Here's some background from CBS Las Vegas/AP: "A group of Republican Arizona lawmakers are upset with a brewing showdown in Nevada between the federal government and a rancher who claims rights to graze his cattle in a remote area about 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas.... Federal officials say Bundy has racked up more than $1.1 million in unpaid grazing fees over the years while disregarding several court orders to remove his animals. [Rep. Bob] Thorpe says lawmakers aren't arguing over whether Bundy has broken laws or violated grazing agreements. They're more concerned with what they perceive as government heavy-handedness and how officials are restricting protesters to 'free speech zones' near the closed off federal land."
... Ian Millhiser of Think Progress: "Bundy, for his part, claims that 'our Constitution didn't provide for anything like the federal government owning this land.' He's wrong. The Constitution provides that '[t]he Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States.'" ...
... Digby weighs in. ...
... CW: As for me, I'm tired of subsidizing the methane-gas producers. Can't the government garnish Bundy's cattle sales?
Katie Fretland of the Guardian: "Oklahoma officials on Friday said the state had obtained manufactured pharmaceuticals from a secret supplier for use in the executions of two men later this month, avoiding concerns over the use of compounded drugs but leaving unanswered questions about how it obtained them."
Re: the discussion in today's & yesterday's Comments:
News Ledes
AP: "A man in his 70s opened fire Sunday outside of a Jewish community center [in Overland Park, Kansas,] and nearby retirement community, killing three people, authorities said."
Extremely Creepy News. ABC News: "A woman has been arrested on six counts of murder after authorities found the bodies of seven infants packed into separate cardboard boxes at a home in Utah, police said. Police arrested Megan Huntsman, 39, of Pleasant Grove, on Saturday following a gruesome discovery at a residence formerly occupied by the woman who they say moved out in 2011."
Washington Post: "Ukrainian authorities launched an 'anti-terrorist' campaign Sunday morning against pro-Russian gunmen who had occupied a police headquarters in a small city in the tense eastern part of the country. Simultaneous assaults on government buildings in several towns in the restive region on Saturday had led officials in Kiev to believe that a coordinated operation directed by Russia was underway." ...
It's professional, it's co-ordinated, there is nothing grass-roots-seeming about it. The forces are doing, in each of the six or seven cities they've been active in, exactly the same thing. Certainly it bears the tell-tale signs of Moscow's involvement. -- Samantha Power, US ambassador to the United Nations
... AP Update: "Ukrainian special forces exchanged gunfire with a pro-Russia militia in an eastern city Sunday, according to the interior minister, who said one Ukrainian security officer was killed and five others were wounded." ...
... Reuters: "U.S. Vice President Joe Biden will travel to Kiev on April 22, to demonstrate high-level U.S. support for Ukraine, the White House said on Saturday after expressing concern about escalating tensions in the eastern part of the country. The White House warned Russia against further military action in Ukraine...."
Guardian: "The war crimes trial of two sons of Libya's former dictator Muammar Gaddafi begins amid tight security in Tripoli on Monday, in a case causing sensation at home and controversy among rights groups. Saif al-Islam Gaddafi and his younger brother Saadi are accused of orchestrating a campaign of murder, torture and bombardment of civilians during Libya's eight-month civil war in 2011."
AFP: "Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are to convene on Sunday in the latest attempt to save teetering peace talks, a Palestinian official told AFP."
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Reader Comments (15)
Dowd: "Colbert has lived the life of a suburban soccer dad and Catholic Church-going Sunday school teacher in Montclair, N.J., with a beautiful wife he’s nuts about, Evie McGee, and three kids."
It speaks volumes. Or maybe pints and quarts.
If only the trouble pensions are in were a surprise.
That many employer supported pensions have been underfunded for years is common knowledge, with the difference between a reasonable investment and barebones contributions taken as profit. Nor have all unions been aggressive enough in their bargaining or careful enough in their fund management to guarantee solvency over the long haul. The aging of the baby boomers, for one large instance, should not have come as a surprise to any private employer or union official beyond the age of a young invincible....and those so young are not the ones in charge.
Fundamentally, though, our pension problems are another instance among many that our economic system fails, time and again, at long term planning. It does so, because capitalism--the ultimate Rube Goldberg device for resource distribution--does not reward a view that peers very far into the future. In essence, pensions offered or bargained as a benefit, as an ancillary and deferred reward for our work, are akin to the mess we've arrived at when we get seventy percent of our health insurance through our employers.
Expecting a corporation to take the obligation to provide a social benefit seriously is naive at best. It's a bedtime story we continue to tell ourselves, and though we're always shocked when it turns out to be the fairy tale it obviously is, we have no rational right to be.
And a broken pension system affecting millions ought to go well with Ryan's Medicare voucher plan, don't you think?
I have just returned from seeing Errol Morris' documentary on Donald Rumsfeld: "The Unknown Known." I am terminally depressed, especially when I add this to Charlie Pierce's, "Now We Know What Is Being Done in Our Name."
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/23092-now-we-know-whats-being-done-in-our-name
I am thinking that we have narcissistic, unempathetic, small thinking, militaristic people leading our sad little country, and have for a long time--Jimmy Carter being a unique exception. I think Obama is better than this, but he was young, inexperienced and intimidated early--and is too late recovering. I do not feel hopeful about Hillary. She seems to see war as inevitable--just as Rumsfeld does. Jeebus, how that man disgusts me! He is so not bright! And so not in touch with himself--or any other human being. He should be in prison--along with Dubya, Darth Cheney and the banksters!
Enough! I am going to bed and hope not to have nightmares~!
Kate - I haven't seen "The Unknown Known" yet but did hear Errol Morris on the NPR comedy show "Wait, Wait Don't tell Me" yesterday and one thing is clear - Morris really hates Rumsfeld. He did not equivocate on this point, and I found his candor refreshing.
Re: Blame it on the flickers; We all play a part on this stage but most of us don't have staff writers. I think Stephen Colbert is perfect for Ms. Dowd; she still confuses reality with "make believe". My generation is chock full of people that make that same mistake. Ronald Raygun is Stephen Colbert's theatrical grandfather. John Wayne was a theatrical warrior. Real heroes die. Our reality is being shaped by fiction. Having Stephen Colbert as host of a soft information show is another step towards "realfiction". I would rather have Kermit the Frog take over the Tonight Show; Ms. Piggy is every bit entertaining as Ms. Dowd and a good deal more attractive. The 'real' in reality is disappearing as fast as a quirk in the dark.
Re: the Stewart/Sebelius exchange. After I read yesterday's comments I found the video, watched it again, and came to the same conclusion I did at the outset: Unlike Dan, I did not find that Jon "beat up on her mercilessly," in fact thought Jon's frustration and questions were the same as mine as were some of the other R.C.'s views at the time. As to the gender to and fro, I doubt seriously Jon would have conducted the interview any differently if it had been a male in the chair opposite him. The people that DID beat her up mercilessly were the Republicans during all the hearings on this. I liked what Haley had to say––thought she summed it up pretty well, but liked the fact that Dan has such empathy for women.
The other video today of Dowd was fun to watch. I was struck by how she seems to have trouble moving her mouth or was it because of botox's freezing elements. Instead of conversing with Colbert comfortably, she appeared stilted and coy–––maybe because she's actually stilted and coy? Meow~~~~~~~~
Thanks, Marie, for the replay of the Jon Stewart, Sebelius interview;
it's even worse than I remembered. It's obvious that Stewart had an agenda which was to try to get Sebelius to agree that Obamacare was a ridiculous program when we should have had a single payer system. We have been through this so many times over the past 5 years; it's time to get over it. Yes, isn't too bad that we're not Canada, or France, or the UK. It's Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady: "Why can't she more like a man?" We got the health plan that the GOP couldn’t block in Congress, and that’s the plain truth of it. We can't even get the GOP to allow food stamps to continue, or unemployment benefits; how in the hell could we have gotten a single payer system passed?
Stewart set the trap by asking all the known problems, which, by the way, Sebelius had answers to, only to be bush whacked by his agenda point, i.;e., ‘why didn’t you get us a single payer system, stupid?’ Then, he rose grandstanding to take a bow from the adoring audience by proving the woman a dunce because she had no comeback. No, no; not for me; I don’t think it’s funny.
Dan, she did have a comeback and it was kinda "plucky". She spoke about having to face the collapse of our entire civilization by going with a free market reform. I understood her "poke" and I think it was valid. You saw "traps" and "stupid" - I saw questions that millions were asking. Seeing the clips a second time, it didn't seem so bad to me. I don't think she should have to worry if her grandkids google the interview.
Oh great. Greenwald is back. Surprise, surprise! "More revelations to follow". It's been almost a year since he started this gig. Anybody else think he's happier if the story is about Greenwald than it is about the NSA? It must have broken his heart that he wasn't met by a SWAT team.
@Dan, et al.: I guess it's in the eye of the beholder. When I saw the Stewart segments last year, I thought Sebelius's performance was cringe-worthy as she was unable to answer Stewart's questions. Upon listening again, I realize that she did answer the questions, but she answered in a way that was incomprehensible to anyone who didn't already know "the right answers." "Anecdotal folks"??? WTF? Her answer to "why not single-payer?" -- Stewart's big wind-up -- was dishonest. She said it was because Obama didn't want to disrupt the current employer-based system. But there's absolutely no reason single-payer couldn't supplement employer-based insurance (just as the individual market & Medicare do now), even if single-payer did eventually largely supplant the current system.
The only excuses for Sebelius's performance are (a) I was tired, (b) I had a head cold, (c) I thought Stewart would be nicer, (d) I had no idea Healthcare.gov was such a clusterfuck.
Sebelius -- who was an elected official & therefore should know how to talk to regular people -- should have been able to answer Stewart's questions -- none of which hadn't already been churning about in the media -- in plain English. If she tried, I couldn't tell. Nearly everyone who comments on Reality Chex expresses himself more articulately in a dashed-off comment than did Sebelius. And you do it in rebuttals, too. You know how to get across your point. Sebelius didn't. She was prepared with talking points about the beauties of ObamaCare & nothing else.
I don't blame Stewart for asking the same questions that many Americans were asking. He wasn't being mean; he was either (a) genuinely puzzled &/or (b) giving Sebelius a chance to answer the critics, an opportunity she didn't take.
Marie
P.S. I'm a feminist. I don't think Stewart was any tougher on Sebelius than he is on male politicians. I think those of you who thought he was nasty to Sebelius were swayed not by Stewart but by Sebelius. We tend not to remember substantive questions when people answer them satisfactorily. If you ask me, "Why not single-payer?" & I say, "Joe Lieberman," you say, "Oh, yeah" & move on. (And no, Lieberman is not the whole answer either.)
@CW: I agree with much of your post, and thank you for the faith in our comments, but some of us spend a significant amount of time editing and making use of the "Preview Post" button before submitting. I like to think that I could go toe to toe with Jon Stewart or that Colbert dreamboat guy, but I regularly have feelings of: "I wish I had said..."
I am grateful to all of the commenters at this site. They all seem to be people who want to leave the world a better place than they found it. Isn't that how life should be lived?
Nisky Guy,
I think we all, those of us who attempt to stave off the fell effects and invidious
Damn...hit the post button by accident.
So...as i was saying...
Those of us who attempt to stave off the fell effects and invidious inveigling of partisan interlocutors routinely suffer the inexpression depression that is l'esprit de l'escalier, but, barring the truly decrepit in mind and spirit (the Gohmerts, eg), career politicians whose job it is to cogently convince, should not be so easily recruited into that bunch.
Just my opinion.
It'd be like a surgeon unable to adequately explain an appendectomy.
"Please, ma'am, could I have a second opinion, please?"
Seems that the situation with Bundy--not Ted, the other one, Cliven--is heating up. Now he wants the Feds to surrender their firearms to him. So maybe CNN has found a replacement for that hapless Malaysian airliner. Time to pop some popcorn and watch it unravel.
@ AK
Cheers.