The Commentariat -- Feb. 16, 2013
My column in the New York Times eXaminer is on the limits of mainstream journalism, as evidenced by some New York Times reporting -- or not.
The President's Weekly Address:
... The transcript is here.
Your Democratic Scandal du Jour: Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: "The Justice Department filed fraud and conspiracy charges on Friday against former Representative Jesse L. Jackson Jr., saying that he used about $750,000 in campaign money for personal expenses that included a Michael Jackson fedora and cashmere capes." You can read the charges here. ...
... Katherine Skiba of the Chicago Tribune: "Jesse Jackson Jr. and his wife Sandi intend to plead guilty to federal charges alleging the former congressman misused $750,000 in campaign funds while she understated their income on tax returns for six years, their lawyers say."
Tabassum Zakaria of Reuters: "President Barack Obama's pick for CIA director, John Brennan, promised senators who will vote on his nomination more openness about U.S. counter-terrorism programs, saying the closely guarded number of civilian casualties from drone strikes should be made public, according to his written responses to questions released on Friday."
... When One Democratic Scandal a Day is Not Enough. Carol Leonnig & Peter Wallsten of the Washington Post: "A team of FBI agents has been conducting interviews in recent weeks in the Dominican Republic and the United States, looking into allegations that Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) patronized prostitutes in the Caribbean nation, but has found no evidence to support the claim, according to two people familiar with the investigation."
Jonathan Bernstein, in the Washington Post: the Hagel filibuster "shows the need for Harry Reid to revisit, or at least threaten to revisit, filibuster reform.... Hagel or no Hagel, we're going to keep seeing more of these 'nullification' filibusters: GOP efforts to keep agencies [like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau] from functioning as required by law by refusing to allow anyone at all to be confirmed.... Perhaps the one thing that was made very clear ... is that Republicans indeed believe in that 60 vote standard, and are willing to extend it to every single nomination.... That’s just not how the constitutional 'advise and consent' responsibility is supposed to work, and it's not how it ever worked before 2009." ...
... ** Traitors! Steve Benen: "In American history, a Senate minority had never blocked an up-or-down vote on a cabinet nominee -- until [Thursday]. Republicans broke new obstructionist ground by filibustering a Defense Secretary nominee during a war.... I remember the Bush/Cheney era pretty well.... Americans were told pretty consistently for seven years that to publicly question the Commander in Chief or stand in the way of his national security agenda was offensive, if not outrageous ... because to question the president, when al Qaeda might hear you, was to put America in danger."
... Jim Inhofe Has Kind Words for Terrorists. Alex Seitz-Wald of Salon: Jim Inhofe, the stupid old goat who is the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, "told Foreign Policy's Josh Rogan that [Chuck] Hagel's relatively soft stance on Hamas, among other things, meant that Inhofe could not support him.... [But] using his current standard, Jim Inhofe might have a hard time voting to confirm Jim Inhofe.... In 2006, after Hamas won the Palestinian elections, Inhofe did not seem concerned. Hamas has done 'some good things, even as a terrorist group,' he told the Oklahoman. He compared the group to one of the country's largest charities, saying Hamas is like 'the Salvation Army with loaded guns.'" ...
... Dana Milbank: First, "Lindsey Graham ... opposed Chuck Hagel's nomination ... because of Hagel's foreign policy views. Then he argued that Hagel had not produced sufficient background material. Now he's arguing against Hagel because of the administration's handling of the attack on U.S. diplomats in Benghazi, Libya, last September -- when Hagel was a professor at Georgetown University.... Graham's antics have as much to do with events in Columbia, S.C., as with events in Washington.... In order to survive the Republicans' backward primary system, Graham needs to de-emphasize anything that might make him appear to be reasonable." ...
... In a pretty hilarious column, Gail Collins compares the Senate to "a bad Carnival cruise. They're dead in the water, nothing's working and the chief engineer is Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.... If we were on a Carnival cruise, [John McCain] would be the captain. A captain who got on the P.A. and announced that the ship was going to Mexico. No, Alabama! No, in a circle! Or maybe we'll just stay dead in the water until a week from Tuesday and see what happens." ...
... Robert Burns of the AP: "Republicans have found a boatload of reasons to try to sink Chuck Hagel's hopes of becoming the next defense secretary. But the issue they used this week to stall his nomination -- the White House's handling of last September's deadly Benghazi attack -- may seem entirely unrelated to Hagel's qualifications because, well, it is." CW: it's good to see the AP writing a serious piece that casts Graham & McCain as political opportunists & crybabies.
Not Too Big to Wail. Waaaa! Waaaa! Waaaaaaa! Luke Johnson of the Huffington Post: Sen. Elizabeth Warren's (D-Mass.) questioning of bank regulators Thursday hurt bankers' feelings & made them angry. CW: (See yesterday's Commentariat for video.) I'll bet she feels terrible about that.
Howard Dean tells Sam Stein of the Huff Post that he hopes the sequester happens as it's a once-in-a-lifetime chance to cut Pentagon spending. CW: I could not disagree more, but the sequester -- with accompanying recession -- is beginning to seem inevitable, at least Dean points to (what I expect would be a short-term) upside.
Republican Bruce Bartlett, in the Fiscal Times: "... politically, supporting a higher minimum wage is a no-brainer for Democrats. In fact, the last time it was a political issue, during the 2006 campaign, it was a major factor in Democratic gains, helping them take control of Congress. Democratic insiders believe it could help them do the same in 2014.... In a head-to-head fight with Democrats on raising the minimum wage, Republicans will lose." P.S. to Marco: "Latinos support a higher minimum wage by an 85 percent to 12 percent margin."
Frank Rich on the national circus. AND on the former Cardinal Ratzinger., soon-to-be the former Pope.
E. J. Dionne: "... handing leadership [of the Roman Catholic Church] to a woman -- and in particular, to a nun -- would vastly strengthen Catholicism, help the church solve some of its immediate problems and inspire many who have left the church...."
Michael Stone of the Examiner: "In a perverse display of religious narcissism, the pedophile enabling Cardinal Roger Mahony is finding 'inner peace' in the humiliation and disgrace he now faces for his role in the sexual abuse of children. In a deplorable and insensitive blog post, the disgraced Catholic leader laments the fact that he is 'humiliated, disgraced, and rebuffed by many' for his part in the rape and sexual assault of children, without once lamenting the fact that his despicable actions are directly responsible for the unspeakable suffering of those same children.... In his blog post Mahony compares himself to Jesus, implying that he is emulating Jesus 'in rejection, in humiliation, and in personal attack.'" ...
... Michelle Smith & Nicolle Winfield of the AP: "Newly unsealed documents in a lawsuit brought against the Roman Catholic order Legion of Christ show the group's former second-in-command testified he discovered the order's founder, the late Rev. Marcial Maciel, had fathered a daughter in 2006, but never confronted him about his double life and didn't share the news with the group's broader membership." CW: what an odd thing -- about the only people these old boys expose or discipline for breaking some RC rules are liberals, like nuns helping the poor.
Right Wing World
Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: newly-minted Sen. Ted Cruz (RTP-Texas) is a real asshole, and proud of it. (Or something like that.) Weisman's piece is worth a read. ...
... Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post: Ted Cruz is a real asshole: "One Republican senator described Cruz to me as 'Jim DeMint without the charm,' referring to the rigidly conservative South Carolina Republican ... who was not exactly renowned for being warm and fuzzy."
Bill Maher on The Citadel. Thanks to James S. for the link:
Local News
Ivan Moreno & Kristen Wyatt of the AP: "A package of gun control measures won initial approval in Colorado's Democratic-controlled House Friday night, with Vice President Joe Biden personally phoning four lawmakers from his ski vacation in the state to speed along the emotional debate."
News Ledes
AP: "On Friday, San Bernardino County investigators revealed [suspected murderer Christopher] Dorner died from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head and defended tactics used during their search before a fiery gun battle ended an exhaustive manhunt. Dorner, 33, is believed to have entered the condo through an unlocked door sometime Feb. 7, soon after he arrived in the resort area of Big Bear Lake after killing three people. He locked the door and hunkered down until the condo's owners came to clean it, said San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon."
Reuters: "U.S. securities regulators filed suit on Friday against unknown traders in the options of ketchup maker H.J. Heinz Co, alleging they traded on inside information before the company announced a deal to be acquired for $23 billion by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc and Brazil's 3G Capital.The suit, in federal court in Manhattan, cites 'highly suspicious trading' in Heinz call options just prior to the February 14 announcement of the deal. The regulator has frequently in past filed suit against unnamed individuals where it has evidence of wrongdoing, but is still trying to uncover the identities of those involved." Probably John & Teresa Heinz Kerry.
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Reader Comments (7)
Re: Cruz. "You're no Lloyd Bentsen."
Senator Cruz had better be careful. There are several large military bases in Texas. If the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq end, the size of the military will have to be reduced. For instance, Fort Hood would be a juicy target. I'm sure Mr. Hagel won't forget Cruz' behavior when he's SecDef.
Oh, a bunch of Texans wth flintlocks should fill in nicely when places like Kileen (outside Fort Hood) dry up and blow away. If you go to Central Texas, take away the bases, there's nothing else out there.
Cardinal Mahony sort of reminds me of being the Ted Cruz of the religion business: they both completely lack perspective or class. They both encapsulate the notion that the most obnoxious get promoted just so their bosses don't have to work with them any longer.
And just like I think the religion businesses should be taxed like any other business, so too should government services removed from the fiefdom of Cruz. Barbabossa's idea of removing the military bases from Texas is perfect. Texas has been too reliably Republican only since the infusion of federal dollars post-LBJ. Ironic. Talk about all hat and no cattle Republicans. And has the village idiot returned any time recently to Crawford? Cruz the debate champion from Princeton needs a dose of the material world; deny him resources, that ought to do making him think before he speaks.
McCain's apparent fury with Hagel may be because back in 2008 Hagel refused to endorse him. A turncoat! Our Republican patriots who seem willing to embrace any bomb of ours going off anywhere are in a tizzy about giving a yea, thumbs up to a man who hates the thought of another quagmire anywhere.
Collin's cruise ship analogy was apt. Those ship of fools [read Republicans] floundering around full of poo. You would think Carnival would have had a back-up plan just in case...Years ago when my husband and I lived in a town where losing electricity was the norm, we bought a generator. It's called preparing for an outcome that could happen. Isn't that what a government, in part, is designed to do? Why do we continue to do the quick fixes and think our ship will never run out of anything?
Tough choice: which would/should we prefer? The inflated self-regard of the Democratic Party's knaves, like that of Jesse Jackson, Jr. or Bob Menendez, who have apparently used their office to enrich themselves at the expense of those they claimed to represent or the antics of McCain, Graham and other Repug pygmies whose frail egos were large enough to run for public office but not healthy enough to tolerate anyone who pointed out their obvious, massive foreign policy mistakes and have therefore placed salving their bruised egos ahead of the welfare of entire country.
Reminds me of the late night bull sessions of 60's college years: the question de jour, as I remember, was not just about those over thirty, but whether anyone with the qualities that allowed or impelled him--there were no hers in those days--to seek positions of power could or should be trusted at all.
I'm still asking that question and I fear coming up with the same answer.
Much has been written about Ted Cruz of late and Barbarosa's mention of the bases in Texas is noteworthy. Some weeks ago I first described his stance during the gun hearings where he was obviously grandstanding, presenting charts along with his gun-loving rhetoric. Since then the comparison to that Wisconsin darling of yore, Joe McCarthy, has been bandied about. There certainly is a scent of that stink in the air around Cruz, but let's remember that Joe was an alcoholic and none too bright. Cruz is smart like a wily fox and could be much more dangerous.
Back in those red baiting days some of Eisenhower's trusted assistants resigned after McCarthyism had taken its toll (Ike was reluctant to confront McCarthy) one of them saying, "A Party which relies upon these untrustworthy men (Republican Senators) makes me sick at heart." Even Foster Dulles who usually exuded an air of unquestioning devotion to Ike thought his "exaggerated desire to have everybody happy, everybody like him, prevents him from making clean cut decisions and forces him to play ball with the last person he has listened to." So let's cross our fingers and hope for another Joseph Welch (have you no shame?) or another Murrow to expose, sooner than later, those like Cruz whose ideology prevents this country's progress for the better.
Absolutely uncanny! Something kept bugging me upon reading the HuffPost's headline: "THE NEW MCCARTHYIST: Cruz Rocks The Senate" and studying the photo of Cruz made me do an immediate Google image search of both Cruz & McCarthy.
Cruz not only sounds as wacked-out as McCarthy, but facial recognition software would probably have trouble separating these two—who appear to share a similar physiognomy as well as the intellectual DNA.
Cruz looks like he gets an enormous amount of sadistic pleasure in vicious attacks. Doesn't seem to matter who is the target. I believe he will attack other Republicans(in addition to Hagel), just as vigorously as Dems. Cruz has a Messianic belief in self, his own superiority and infallibility. Cruz embraces risk taking and has few boundaries. His extensive education probably taught him not to violate boundaries by committing crimes. He is very intuitive and fearless, like most sociopaths. Like most sociopaths, he at least appears to be smart. The Democratic Senators are constrained by a dangerous nostalgic belief that the Senate is "above" the fray and the fact that they are generally fearful of their own shadows. In other words, he will continue to dominate unless he is publicly diminished and formally censored as was McCarthy.
The task will be to destroy his delusion of "self" in a public forum. I'm pretty sure Senator Warren could do it, but unfortunately there isn't a forum for her to do so. Must be others. I've written to Levin again asking for censure in re: his committee conduct - I know useless.
@Barbarossa. Great suggestions - close those bases. Payback is bitch.