The Commentariat -- August 11, 2014
Internal links removed.
Lolita Baldor & Julie Pace of the AP: "The Obama administration has begun directly providing weapons to Kurdish forces who have started to make gains against Islamic militants in northern Iraq, senior U.S. officials said Monday. Previously, the U.S. had insisted on only selling arms to the Iraqi government in Baghdad, but the Kurdish peshmerga fighters had been losing ground to Islamic State militants in recent weeks. The officials wouldn't say which U.S. agency is providing the arms or what weapons are being sent, but one official said it isn't the Pentagon. The CIA has historically done similar quiet arming operations.... The administration is also very close to approving plans for the Pentagon to arm the Kurds, a senior official said." ...
... Spencer Ackerman of the Guardian: "The weaponry is said to be light arms and ammunition, brokered not through the department of defense -- which supplies Baghdad and its security forces with heavy weaponry -- but the Central Intelligence Agency, which is better positioned to supply the Kurdish peshmerga with Russian-made guns like AK-47s that the US military does not use." CW: It's unclear to me whether Ackerman has done additional reporting to confirm the CIA's role or whether he is interpreting the AP story. ...
... President Obama, Saturday, on the U.S. effort in Iraq:
... Terrence Mccoy of the Washington Post: Nuri al-"Maliki, critic& after critic says, has ... shown himself to be a bullish and sectarian political player, one who has alienated or ousted many Kurds and Sunnis from his Shiite-dominated government -- a move that contributed to the rise of the Islamic State. And even after Mosul's fall earlier this year, when such criticism intensified, Maliki didn't temper such unrest with Sunni appointments, soothing words or conciliation.... On Sunday night, the U.S. government announced it was done with Maliki, throwing its support behind President Fuad Masum." ...
Juan Cole, on al-Maliki's move, which looks suspiciously like the beginnings of an attempted coup. ....
We used to restrain Maliki all the time. U.S. Lt. Gen. Michael Barbero, deputy commander in Iraq until January 2011
... In this fascinating piece, Dexter Filkins of the New Yorker (April 2014) illuminates how an unnamed C.I.A. agent, with backing from Dubya's Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad, chose al-Maliki as Iraq's PM, & how the U.S., under both the Bush & Obama administrations, "created a dictator." ...
... Tim Arango & Eric Schmitt of the New York Times on "Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-appointed caliph of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and the architect of its violent campaign to redraw the map of the Middle East.... At every turn, Mr. Baghdadi's rise has been shaped by the United States' involvement in Iraq -- most of the political changes that fueled his fight, or led to his promotion, were born directly from some American action. And now he has forced a new chapter of that intervention, after ISIS' military successes and brutal massacres of minorities in its advance prompted President Obama to order airstrikes in Iraq." ...
... Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic: Hillary Clinton "outlines her foreign-policy doctrine. She says this about President Obama's: 'Great nations need organizing principles, and "Don't do stupid stuff" is not an organizing principle.... She used her sharpest language yet to describe the 'failure' that resulted from the [Obama administration] decision to keep the U.S. on the sidelines during the first phase of the Syrian uprising." ...
... CW: What Clinton, & millions of other people, BTW, fail to understand is that in 99 cases out of 100, there is not a "right answer," (though Clinton does admit she's not sure arming the rebels would have stopped ISIS, so she's not an imbecile of the McCain variety). One rare, obvious "right answer" is aiding the Yazidi. But helping Syrian moderates -- as Clinton wuld have done -- would not make ISIS extremists less extreme. You can of course suppress such extremism by various forceful means, as Saddam did for years (and as Clinton suggests doing here), but you have to win hearts & minds to effect lasting change. Force is seldom, if ever, the way to change opinion; rather, it solidifies the views of the opposition, giving them more weapons in their ideological arsenal & making them more extreme. Obama gets this. On the other hand, accommodating extremists doesn't help, either. Obama learned the hard way -- as he tried again & again to accommodate U.S. right-wing extremism. "Don't do stupid shit" is in fact both a strategy as well as a philosophy; it's a crude expression of political realism. ...
... Margaret Hartmann of New York: "... no Clinton interview would be complete without a vague admission that she's running in 2016.... When asked about her own 'organizing principle,' she unveiled a potential campaign slogan: 'Peace, progress, and prosperity.' ... That's definitely an old-fashioned idea. MSNBC notes that 'Peace, prosperity, and progress' was the slogan for Dwight Eisenhower's 1956 campaign, and 'prosperity and progress' was Al Gore's campaign slogan in 2000." CW: Hey, it nearly worked for Al. If only he had added "peace," those Nader voters in Florida probably would have gone for Gore.
Paul Krugman: "Often -- not always, of course, but far more often than the free-market faithful would have you believe -- there is, in fact, a good reason for the government to get involved. Pollution controls are the simplest example, but not unique.... Commonly, self-proclaimed libertarians deal with the problem of market failure both by pretending that it doesn't happen and by imagining government as much worse than it really is.... You shouldn't believe talk of a rising libertarian tide; despite America's growing social liberalism, real power on the right still rests with the traditional alliance between plutocrats and preachers. But libertarian visions of an unregulated economy do play a significant role in political debate...." Krugman also provides reminders, as if we need them, that Almost-Veep Paul Ryan & Red State's Erik Erickson are always colossally wrong. ...
... Also, there are excellent comments in the August 9 Comments section -- too many to pull forward -- re: Krugman's thesis.
Adam Nagourney of the New York Times: "Republicans, who had appeared to hit a high-water mark in control of statehouses in recent years, are seeking to pick off another half-dozen chambers this year, taking advantage of President Obama's persistent unpopularity, anxiety about the economy, and a history of anemic turnout among Democrats in nonpresidential election years. In addition, the party that controls the White House almost always loses seats in statehouses in those years.... This looming battle is a reminder of the enduring political import of the 2010 midterm elections, in which Republicans, powered by the Tea Party and anger over Mr. Obama's health care program, picked up control of 23 state legislatures. These were the legislatures that oversaw redrawing legislative and congressional district lines in most states, typically in favor of the party in power, which has only enhanced their electoral prospects this year." ...
... ** Jason Zengerle of the New Republic writes a compelling, report that puts the GOP's Southern resurgence & ownership of state legislatures in its historical context.
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd.
Lame-Stream Media Rising. CW: For those of you holding out hope that any of the major teevee networks could restore some heft & credibility to the Sunday morning news desert, I have come to dash your dreams. Mike Allen (not exactly the pride of journalism himself, as he demonstrates once again in his "conventional wisdom" hat-tip to Russert) of Politico: "Chuck Todd, a political obsessive and rabid sports fan, is the likely successor to David Gregory as moderator of 'Meet the Press,' with the change expected to be announced in coming weeks, according to top political sources. The move is an effort by NBC News President Deborah Turness to restore passion and insider cred to a network treasure that has been adrift since the death in 2008 of the irreplaceable Tim Russert." ...
... AND, as reminder of what Todd thinks of journalism -- Tom Kludt of TPM (September 2013): "MSNBC host Chuck Todd said ... that when it comes to misinformation about the new federal health care law, don't expect members of the media to correct the record.... He disagrees with those who argue that the media should educate the public on the law. According to Todd, that's President Barack Obama's job." ... CW: Todd not only practices he-said/she-said "journalism," he embraces it. Letting "both sides" spin their spin is part of his credo. It's step-aside "journalism." In Todd's view, the Fourth Estate should act as mute observer-recorder, not as a vital check-and-balance to government actors. There has never been a time, of course, when supposed journalists didn't serve as lapdogs or mouthpieces for politicians, but for a major network news organization -- according to Allen -- to imply that such a practice would "restore passion and insider cred" to its news operation is pretty discouraging. And, no, I wasn't expecting them to tap Rachel Maddow. ...
... Update. Driftglass on the Ascension of Todd: "And so [NBC's] decision to stroll 90 feet past David Gregory's office to find another NBC Village-sanctioned 'Both Sides' delivery system for their weekly 'newsmakers and political junkies' Centrist porn makes perfect sense... The problem is that somewhere people with wealth and power -- the people who are footing the bill for all of this -- remain enthralled by the same, monstrous production of the same grotesque lie over and over and over again. The problem is that somewhere those people are still standing and applauding, and will go right on standing and applauding whether their 'Both Sides' fairy tales are reflected back to them through the lens of David Gregory or Chuck Todd or Joe Scarborough or a Pekingese riding a pachyderm." CW: Read the whole post for a fabulous demo of the "both sides" NBC "News" philosophy, as rendered by Poor Greggers in a "Press the Meat" dialog with Chuck hisself (Turness apparently likes to twist the knife. Poor Greggers).
Danielle Rhoades-Ha of the New York Times. Press Release: "The New York Times announced today that Maureen Dowd is joining The Times Magazine as a staff writer. The move will mark Ms. Dowd's return to her roots as a narrative journalist and is the first in a series of expected announcements regarding the magazine's major redesign, set for early 2015. Ms. Dowd will also continue to write her weekly Sunday opinion column." ...
... Joe Coscarelli of New York runs down "Maureen Dowd's greatest hits (as a reporter).
Beyond the Beltway
AP: "A federal judge has extended a months-long moratorium on executions in Ohio into next year as questions mount about the effectiveness of a new, two-drug combination being used to carry out the death penalty."
The Washington Post liveblogs Day 11 of the corruption trial of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell & his wife Maureen.
News Ledes
Los Angeles Times: "Robin Williams, a comic and sitcom star in the 1970s who became an Oscar-winning dramatic actor, died Monday at 63 in Marin County. The Marin County Sheriff's Office said he appears to have committed suicide. The news of the beloved actor's death rocked the nation. Channels broke into their usual programming to make the announcement, and within minutes, he dominated online trending topics. Williams was hailed as a comic genius was a star of both movies and television for more than three decades. But he also suffered from substance abuse problems."
Wall Street Journal: "Islamist extremists who have overrun swaths of Iraq made a rare retreat in an area hit by U.S. airstrikes and gave up some territory they had won from Kurdish forces, in an early sign of impact from the three-day-old American campaign."
New York Times: "Iraq's president on Monday formally nominated a candidate to replace Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a political breakthrough that also seemed to take Iraq into uncharted territory, as Mr. Maliki gave no signal that he was willing to relinquish power. The nomination of Haider al-Abadi, who is a member of Mr. Maliki's Shiite Islamist Dawa Party, came hours after a dramatic late-night television appearance in which a defiant Mr. Maliki challenged the Iraqi president, Fuad Masum, and threatened legal action for not choosing him as the nominee."
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Reader Comments (11)
Thank you to New York magazine & Tim Murphy for "The Gaza Conflict Has Become New York’s Great Conversational Taboo" Though the lack of an open conversation/dialogue is not limited just to New York. I'm afraid I, too find myself treading carefully about this topic among certain friends and wish it could be discussed differently.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/08/gaza-has-become-the-great-conversational-taboo.html
Putting Dowd on the magazine signals, I guess, that the Times needs its own Sally Quinn and source of smart foof.
This is in regards to the discussions about Libertarianism prompted by the Krugman article.
Libertarian fantasies no more.
Thank you Dr. Krugman.
I appreciate the lure of Libertarianism. At one time I dabbled in it too, back when I was a sophomore in college. I had just read what became the philosophical bible of Libertarians, Robert Nozick's "Anarchy, State, Utopia". It was a fascinating tour along the fault lines of liberal democracy and it was, for me, my first deep submersion into a political philosophy. But even as as a slightly callow fellow, I had to reject Prof. Nozick's conclusions. Even after carefully following through the whole big megillah, I felt that the thing was either too arch or too artificial. Maybe both.
I felt it lacked, for want of a more accurate term, humanity, even though the stated goal was to provide absolute freedom for humanity. That freedom even extended to being free of that humanity itself. You wanna be a misanthropic dickhead? Go right ahead. This is the part of Libertarianism that so intrigued Ayn Rand and her blithering followers (lookin' at you Lyin' Ryan), the idea that you can make it all about yourself and to hell with everyone else. What Rand did was to make that sideline option the final goal.
Some years later I discovered that a prominent philosopher agreed with me. It was Robert Nozick himself. In an essay published in his collection "The Examined Life" (Nozick is nothing if not eminently interesting. His work is what I believe Stanley Cavell has always talked about when he refers to philosophy being explicated in "plain language"; worth more than a glance, if you're so inclined), called "The Zigzag of Politics". Nozick, recognizing the shortcomings of Libertarianism, regroups:
"The libertarian position I once propounded now seems to me seriously inadequate, in part because it did not fully knit the humane considerations and joint cooperative activities it left room for more closely into its fabric." He goes on to say "...the libertarian view looked solely at the purpose of government, not its meaning; hence, it took an unduly narrow view of purpose, too".
Nozick is getting at what government can do--necessary things--that none of us can do on our own, not even corporations. Krugman refers to such enterprises. This is perhaps a primary reason conservatives want the ACA abolished and Social Security turned over to their big banking buddies (who will, of course, run it into the ground after looting it for all it's worth). They want to kill anything that makes it look like government can do good things, necessary things, and do them well. This is why, for people like Ryan, government just HAS to be bad.
Nozick talks about the idea of the relational ties that joint political (governmental) action can bring about. He addresses the problem that certain approaches can have when faced with the need for addressing issues such as economic inequality and caring for those who cannot care for themselves. Ayn Rand and her sociopathic pupils would just as soon let them die (it's all about "me", remember?), but Nozick points out that even though citizens have the right not to give a shit about the poor (or medical care reform, or discrimination, or phosphates in the Great Lakes), that does not mean they don't have to help foot the bill (vis-a-vis paying taxes).
So there you have it. One of the leading intellectual lights of the Libertarian movement recants. And a Nobel economist declares it unworkable as an economic theory. A fantasy.
Libertarianism is still a nice pipe dream, but that's about it. It doesn't work in the real world. Gene Rodenberry's idea of a Federation of Planets is a more realistic political system, and that was on a sci-fi TV show.
Ohhhh Noooo....Tuck Chodd to replace Fluffy Greggers? Just another arrogant, obnoxious white guy who desires above all to be verrry important, and schmooz with the big guys--but doesn't know shit about responsible journalism. And why another "fair and balanced" centrist (read Republican)? Do the suits at NBC, including Deborah Turness, really think the public is so stupid and uninformed that all we want is a little play date with the pols every Sunday? Dumb question, I know. We are not amused!
David Gregory vs. Chuck Todd: Imbecile vs. Asshole.
Is one really any better than the other? We really don't lose much with Greggers' demise. And, for his part, he can now cross off a line item in his budget: weekly rental fees for tiny testicles. Dave, you was overcharged, dude. Those little things weren't worth shit.
As for Chuck Todd, as an inveterate BothSider, he'll be a much more aggressive pusher of that particularly hallucinogenic political drug than Greggers who simply let viewers come in, take a hit, then fall into a somnolent stupor. No toking for Todd. He'll insist that viewers mainline that Both Sides shit. And he'll make sure the addicted ones come back begging for more.
So, what's better? A ball-less sad sack or an arrogant pusher?
I guess we'll find out. And hey, NBC, thanks a bunch. Chuck Todd for David Gregory? Mighty white of you.
"The move is an effort by NBC News President Deborah Turness to restore passion and insider cred to a network treasure that has been adrift since the death in 2008 of the irreplaceable Tim Russert."
For some reason "the irreplaceable Tim Russert" has achieved sainthood among the B-team pundits and prevaricators and hangers-on. I'm sure it's not rocket science, but I can't figure it out.
PK's reference to "plutocrats and preachers" reminded me that the current pseudo-libertarians have read little or nothing of Ayn Rand in detail. She attacked statist religion in Galt's big speech with "Attila and the Witch Doctor" and in her sophomoric essays nonetheless followed a claim of a right with "at whose expense?" Ryan et al would throw Karl Hess off the train.
"For some reason "the irreplaceable Tim Russert" has achieved sainthood among the B-team pundits and prevaricators and hangers-on." So says James. And looking back as we are wont to do and remembering how Tim Russert actually interviewed I understand how he has become one of the saints of certain parties–-the ones that have put the crown on Ronnie Reagan. In the days when I actually watched those shows (not a whole lot to choose from in them days) I became increasingly frustrated at how Tim never went in for the kill––pussy footed around issues so as not to offend whomever was sitting at the table. The guy was lovable–-all his stories about Big Russ–-the whole good feeling family thing and I always thought he needed to maintain a semblance of that on his shows. The need to be liked is strong and potent medicine for many of these pundits–- and depending who your boss is you are wary and reluctant to rock too many boats. And yes, Marie mentions they certainly would not choose Maddow––one day on the show and there would be pandemonium; the lady doth speak her mind which is one of the rare glittering ones on the whole bloody media.
I may have hit rock bottom today after reading Hillary's comments on the Middle East. If the election were today and Clinton was the nominee, I would not vote. I've never missed ANY election and I'm in my eighth decade.
Haley: I feel your pain, but would submit that now is not the time to skip elections, or to vote for Nader. I'd rather be voting for a Warren/Sanders ticket but we know that's not gonna happen. Save us from President Paul, or worse: Perry. I'm in my seventh decade and have never missed an election either. This is a record worth preserving.
Victoria and Haley-
I never much liked or respected Hillary Clinton ("I am no Tammy Wynette," but respect her even less than I did previously. Now I see really why so many of us chose Obama over her. He's flawed, for sure, but a Neo-Con he is not. That said, I plan to vote for the Democrat, even if it be Hillary, for the same reason I got behind Obama in 2012. Two words: SUPREME COURT! Just think if Kerry had whipped Dubya's slimy ass. No John Roberts or Sammy Alito and we would have had a mostly sane Court. True, Tonio and Clarence-baby would still be there, but they would be seen more as the creeps and wing nuts they truly are.
The Supreme Court, IMHO, is the most important branch of our pathetic government. Without more liberal, thoughtful and non-ideological justices our geese are microwaved!