The Commentariat -- Feb. 4, 2013
The Inconsistent Client. Adam Liptak of the New York Times: President Obama's shifting stance on gay marriage creates challenges for his lawyer, U.S. Solicitor General Donald Virrelli, who must argue two cases on the issue before the Supreme Court this term.
Jodi Kantor of the New York Times: "... the release of her new memoir, 'My Beloved World,' suggests that [Justice Sonia Sotomayor] has broader ambitions than her colleagues, to play a larger and more personal role on the public stage."
Lindsey Bourma of CBS News: "President Obama said today there's 'no doubt' additional revenue is needed to bring down the U.S. deficit, but believes lawmakers can do it 'without raising taxes again'":
Republicans = "Friends of Fraud." Paul Krugman on GOP efforts to destroy the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: "... just four years after runaway bankers brought the world economy to its knees, Senate Republicans are using every means at their disposal, violating all the usual norms of politics in the process, in an attempt to give the bankers a chance to do it all over again."
Catherine Rampell of the New York Times: "... the Labor Department's latest jobs snapshot and other recent data reports present a strong case for crowning baby boomers as the greatest victims of the recession and its grim aftermath. These Americans in their 50s and early 60s -- those near retirement age who do not yet have access to Medicare and Social Security -- have lost the most earnings power of any age group, with their household incomes 10 percent below what they made when the recovery began three years ago, according to ... a data analysis company." ...
... Matt Yglesias of Slate: but, see, boomers' vulnerability is a big cost-savings for "entitlement" programs. "Failure to provide adequate social services to unemploy[ed] 61 year-olds not only saves money because you don't need to pay for the benefits, it saves even more money when it leads to that guy dying at 71 rather than 74." CW: it's the GOP Die Quickly Plan that Rep. Alan Grayson [D-Fla.] outlined about 4 years ago.
... Digby: "This is why I so love Pete Peterson and Alan Simpson for launching their generational war.... In fact, they should look at what happened to this baby boom generation as an object lesson in timing. You just never know when the bottom is going to fall out and all your best laid plans for saving and accumulating wealth are shot to hell because a bunch of greedy bankers and financiers decided to gamble with other people's money. Most of those who wind up depending on Social Security are hard-working people who did everything right. And that's why these millionaire plutocrats are such con artists. They are trying to preserve America for the young, alright. But it's for their own heirs. That's how moneyed elites turn themselves into Aristocrats."
** NEW. Jason Linkins of the Huffington Post: "Take a seat, balloon boy. Paul Krugman has become the first human I've ever witnessed escaping from the gravitational pull of something with black hole-like density: Joe Scarborough and his gang of deficit hacks.... This is not an issue of right-versus-left ideological conflicts. This is a right-versus-wrong conflict, pure and simple. It's a Beltway bubble versus real-world conflict. It's a data-tested versus magical-thinking conflict."
Cecilia Kang of the Washington Post: "The $178 billion wireless industry is fiercely lobbying against the federal government's plan to create powerful WiFi networks across the nation, but Google, Microsoft say a free-for-all WiFi service would spark major innovation."
David Sanger & Thom Shanker of the New York Times: The Obama administration is moving, "in the next few weeks, to approve the nation's first rules for how the military can defend, or retaliate, against a major cyberattack."
NEW. Steve Benen: "In LaPierre's mind, it doesn't matter what officials say their position is, and it doesn't matter what policymakers include in legislation. What really matters is the paranoid imagination of Wayne LaPierre -- who apparently can read minds and ascertain what Democrats secretly have in mind." ...
... Paul Krugman: "The NRA is now revealed as an insane organization." Krugman lets some GOP backbencher have it, & Carly Fiorina lies about what Krugman said less than 2 minutes after he said it. How can anyone abide her?:
... ALSO, Fiorina goes off on one of her myth-repeating rants, & Krugman calls her out for it:
... CW: Fiorina's smug girly-girl/schoolmarm demeanor is insufferable, especially because she adopts the pose to make her smoke-blowing seem like heart-rending truthtelling. Wouldn't it be nice if Snuffolopogus were able to fact-check her instead of sitting there mute while she spews disinformation? ...
... CW: One thing to always bear in mind about arguments from the denizens of Right Wing World -- you cannot win because they always grossly distort what their opponents say, whether they're pulling a Fiorina & arguing against something you didn't say or pulling a LaPierre & "reading your mind" and/or calling you a duplicitous liar. Combine this with their uncanny ability to make up "facts" & "statistics" that suit them, & it is pointless to speak to these people.
Law Prof. Shirley Katzen has a very good op-ed piece in the Washington Post on the faulty reasoning behind the recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to void President Obama's recess appointments to the NLRB. For one thing, the Court has no business interfering at all.
Please, Moroni, Let This Be True. Kevin Cirilli of Politico: "Tagg Romney, son of former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, is considering a Senate run in Massachusetts's upcoming special election, according to the Boston Herald." ...
... UPDATE: Crap, there is no Angel Moroni. Shushannah Walshe of ABC News: "Two sources close to both Tagg and his father Mitt tell ABC News it's not going to happen. One consideration for Tagg Romney may be that his father lost the Bay State in last year’s presidential election by 23 points."
Right Wing World
Trouble in Right Wing World. Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times (and Fox "News"): "The biggest donors in the Republican Party are financing a new group to recruit seasoned candidates and protect Senate incumbents from challenges by far-right conservatives and Tea Party enthusiasts who Republican leaders worry could complicate the party's efforts to win control of the Senate.The group, the Conservative Victory Project, is intended to counter other organizations that have helped defeat establishment Republican candidates over the last two election cycles. It is the most robust attempt yet by Republicans to impose a new sense of discipline on the party, particularly in primary races." ...
... Alexander Burns of Politico: American "Crossroads president Steven Law told the New York Times that Crossroads allies are creating the new organization to oppose candidates such as former Missouri Rep. Todd Akin, who lost a once-competitive Senate race last year. Both the Club for Growth and the Senate Conservatives Fund -- two of the most prominent groups that have boosted candidates on the right -- mocked the new initiative as yet another hapless establishment-side attempt to muzzle the GOP base. Matt Hoskins, executive director of the Senate Conservatives Fund, branded it the 'Conservative Defeat Project.'" ...
... AND Steve Kornacki of Salon: "... it's possible the Conservative Victory Fund could save the GOP a few seats in 2014, [but] there's also the potential that its existence will only strengthen the right's resolve to fight the party establishment -- and to help the very candidates it's designed to stop."
Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs finds "an absolutely blatant, in your face example of how the right wing blogs tell each other lies, circulate them, and turn them into unquestionable articles of faith. It's a microcosm of the reality-denying reactionary sickness at the heart of the conservative movement." No Defense Secretary Leon Panetta did not say waterboarding led to the capture of Osama bin Laden.
Michael Harlin of the right-wing American Thinker (a blog name apparently not meant to be comedic) in a post titled "Seven Reasons Why It's a Photoshop." CW: Right Wing World is so predictable, their "journalists" could save a lot of trouble by hiring liberals to write parodies of what they are definitely going to write themselves, then publish the parodies as straight copy & call it a day. ...
... AND Daniel Halper of the Winger Weekly Standard had the Scoop of the Day: the White House released the photo with this caveat: "This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House." ...
... CW: Yo, Danny Boy, that standard copyright language goes on every photo the White House makes available for publication. But great catch anyway. Asshole. Apparently Halper has never sought out a depiction of President Obama that doesn't look more-or-less like the WS's "official" portrait. ...
... P.S. Halper's revelation was such big news over there In Right Wing World that -- as is common practice -- it made the rounds. Assholes. ...
... P.P.S.: of course the law-abiding, Constitooshun-loving denizens of Right Wing World couldn't wait to violate the copyright, which -- on accounta they're violating a specific government regulation -- is a federal offense. Instead of throwing 'em all in Club Fed, let's send them to those re-education camps that concerned Michele Bachman. I'll be the teacher. ...
... Michael Shaw of Bag News points out a delicious irony re: the photo release: "... critics and conservatives short-sightedly forced Obama into releasing one of the most advantageous photos of his presidency. We know, of course, that such a photo, unilaterally released by the White House, would have been skewered as an epic example of pandering, in the caliber of 'Dukakis in the tank,' with skeet shooting sure to be derided by NRA-types as sissy stuff. Instead however, forced into releasing the photo as a STFU and evidence he's inhaled fired, the Administration, with absolutely no negative consequence, has inserted this amazing visual into the public record."
News Ledes
Lavonne Paire Davis, known as Pepper Paire. Photo from the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.New York Times: "Lavonne Paire Davis, a star in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League of the 1940s and 1950s and a consultant for the hit movie 'A League of Their Own,' died on Saturday in the Van Nuys section of Los Angeles. She was 88.... Davis, who was known as Pepper Paire in her playing days, entered the league in 1944..."
AP: "President Barack Obama has signed into law a bill raising the government's borrowing limit, averting a default and delaying the next clash over the nation's debt until later this year."
ABC News: "A week-long Alabama standoff in which a retired trucker held a 5-year-old boy hostage in an underground bunker has ended with the kidnapper dead and the child safe, according to law enforcement. 'FBI Agents safely recovered the child who's been held hostage for nearly a week," FBI Special Agent Steve Richardson said at a news conference. The agent said negotiations with the suspect Richard Lee Dykes "deteriorated" in the past 24 hours."
New York Times: "Edward I. Koch, the three-term New York City mayor..., was celebrated on Monday as a transformational figure in the city's history and a quintessential New Yorker."
New York Times: "New Secretary of State John Kerry reported for duty Monday, acknowledging that as Hillary Rodham Clinton's successor he has 'big heels to fill' and promising to protect U.S. foreign service workers from terrorist attacks overseas."
AP: President "Obama will pitch his proposals to stem gun violence Monday in Minnesota, a Democratic-leaning state where officials have been studying ways to reduce gun-related attacks and accidents for several years."
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Reader Comments (15)
Marie: All 13 episodes of "House of Cards" are up on Netflix.
For those who haven't bothered to check Salon's gun-death tally of deaths since the Newtown massacre:
total-1496
adults-1,386
teens-87
children-23
My condolences. While politicians talk another classroom of children has been buried..... but too dispersed to be noted.
Curses!! The tally is posted in Slate, not Salon. It's a problem with posting when, while the body is here, the brain has gone to bed. My apologies.
ODE TO MS FIORINA
Who's the guest that does her best
to show us her bona fides?
With her careful cadence and her ginger (new cut-new color) hair
She showers us with nonsense on guns, money and treaties.
Oh, Carly Fiorina, we are sick and tired of seeing ya
No more at Hewlett Packard
No Senate seat for you either
So why not get a real job like being a Girl Scout leader
Where you can talk, & hike & bike
and learn some lessons in life
rather than troll the Sunday shows
where you pretend to speak the truth
whose stink you can cut with a knife.
Come on, Carly, do us a favor
Just think how it will ease Krugman's labor
at trying to instruct you––he has enough on his plate.
I didn't recognize Carly Fiorina. Unfortunately, the lovely reworking and shoring up of her features didn't help her annoying holier-than-thou demeanor. Its like frosting a cake that keeps cracking and the filling oozes out.
I know Krugman is promoting the paperback version of his book, which accounts for trying to break the talk show appearance record ( sorry Paul, the dementia toddler has that one locked). However, he seems to be less able to hide his frustration and disdain for the talking dead on these panels. Perhaps Sunday a.m. talk shows could be the exception to the assault weapon ban.
Well, with the Super Bowl behind us and the Oscars straight ahead, Frank Rich has a great analysis of the four 'bloody' contenders, with his preference for Tarantino's "Django Unchained" in the latest New York magazine feature.
http://nymag.com/news/frank-rich/django-unchained-oscar-race-2013-2/
"Let us not forget: Hardly had Obama been elected for the first time than the apartheid political philosophy of John C. Calhoun started making an unlikely comeback and talk of secession bubbled up from Rick Perry’s Texas through Dixie."
He tackles the myth of bipartisanship emanating from the Beltway crowd, which leans toward "Argo" and" Lincoln." The VSP taking from the films what supports their views. What's new?
Since I don't watch the Sunday talk shows...I was grateful to watch the Carly Fiorina clip! Looks like we've got a Peggy Noonan-Lite out there! Or make that Peggy Noonan-Lite Lite!
On firing guns, photographing of said firing, complaining about said photograph, and setting one's hair on fire.
So the president fired a shotgun. Someone took a photograph of him doing this. The White House releases the image and wingnuts lose their minds. Sorry…new metaphor required; minds already lost.
The caterwauling on the right about the details, origin, and authenticity of the picture is an excellent reason, albeit not the best, for its release. As so often happens, wingnuts are beside themselves with conflicting theories and commentary and additional reasons for everyone to be outraged:
“Obama doesn’t own a gun. He must have borrowed it or stolen it or confiscated it from a real American”, “It’s a Cytonic X-Gold blah, blah shotgun, very expensive, over $5,000, which he bought with taxpayer money”, “It’s a cheap knockoff which he bought because he doesn’t know any better”, “He’s shooting at a picture of Sarah Palin which the Secret Service use for target practice”, “His form is all wrong, he needs lessons”, “He must have had some Marine give him lessons before the picture was taken so he looks like he knows what he’s doing” “He’s getting the press to promote this” (even though it’s the right-wing press that’s doing all the promoting)….and on and on.
Roland Barthes would be amused by all the amateur analysis.
And Errol Morris would be amused as well, but for different reasons. Morris, you may recall, wrote a series of photographic analyses in the Times Opinionator column over the last year or so in which he considers the truth value of photographs and the effect of problematic and staged photographs on the viewer and the public.
Barthes, a visionary semiotician who spent years investigating the processes of cultural icons, myths, photographs, and texts, once said that photographs have an insidious power because they appear to be analogs of the world, that is, pure representation unburdened by ideology; texts without a message. The message is persuasive because it’s delivered almost subcutaneously, as it were. It comes wrapped inside the picture, tickling the ganglia on the way in and embedded as truth.
Most presidential photographs designed for maximum propaganda are staged (think Reagan on horse back, Bush 41 at the flag factory, Bush 43 in the jump suit) but some casual pictures such as this one (unless Obama had the foresight to realize he might need a picture of him shooting at something one day) become important only in the right context, in this case, the battle for reasonable, moderate controls on gun violence in the face of batshit crazy intransigence.
So what is the truth of this photograph? Obama can shoot a gun?
Wingnuts are beside themselves with critiques of his shooting style, his stance, what he may or may not be aiming at, someone even complained that his shirt was tucked in (seriously). All of which points to the real truth of this image, or at least one truth (does that sound appropriately, academically relativistic? Ha!).
He’s fucking with them. And it’s working.
If his goal was to throw the right-wing blogo-bozos into stumbling, mumbling, falling down chaos, this picture has done a creditable job of it. A secondary effect may be to communicate to the non-nuts that the president wasn’t kidding about not being against the use of firearms for sporting purposes (skeet and target shooting I buy as sports. Hunting, I don’t) which may give his stance for reasonable controls more weight with anyone who might fall into that category.
But the use of photographs for political ends has been going on since Daguerre. And Barthes’ observation about the ideological and political messages embedded in those images and how they are interpreted by the public still holds true. The right, so easily coaxed around the mazes in their booby hatch, are once more the victims of their own insular and vermin-infested world views.
But really, I think he was just fucking with them.
Why? Because he can.
And because they deserve it.
No truly serious or thoughtful person could be so quickly encouraged to set their hair on fire and run around the yard hitting themselves in the head with a shovel.
M O R O N S.
Hope I don't show up twice! Inadvertently, I think that instead of clicking on Create Post, earlier I hit Preview Post and than left the site!
My thoughts were on now that we are beyond the Super Bowl and with the Oscars straight ahead, Frank Rich has a superb analysis of the four top 'bloodiest' contenders. He takes apart the Beltway preferences ("Argo" and "Lincoln"), which the VSP tend to use for their arguments of "torture works and/or...we just need more bipartisanship" in the newest issue of New York magazine.
http://nymag.com/news/frank-rich/django-unchained-oscar-race-2013-2/index3.html
Sounds like Tarantino's film takes us back to a reality that has simmered underground, but...
Rich: "Let us not forget: Hardly had Obama been elected for the first time than the apartheid political philosophy of John C. Calhoun started making an unlikely comeback and talk of secession bubbled up from Rick Perry’s Texas through Dixie."
Since I don't watch the Sunday talk show, I was grateful to see Ms. Carly in action. She comes across as Peggy Noonan Lite...or let's make that Peggy Noonan Lite Lite! How does Krugman put up with this inanity?
Diane,
"Talking dead."
Very nice.
And about La Fiorina, just another muddled, right-wing whack job whose total lack of knowledge and fearsomely ineffective forensic style would have gotten her kicked off all but the most incompetent high school debating teams.
People of Massachusetts (and the rest of you simple, salt of the earth moochers and takers) rejoice.
The Queen may return once again to the national stage.
M'Lady Ann, of the clan Romney, is being touted by that diligent flogger of all things wingnutty, The Boston Herald, as a good person to steal John Kerry's newly vacant senate seat.
Now that Scott (racist beefcake boy) Brown has stepped aside due to being caught TWD (tweeting while drunk) and has given the standard excuse of so many partisan fuck sticks ("Washington is too partisan! Wah-wah-wah), the golden door of millionairess opportunity has been flung aside for her royal person and, ostensibly, her horse (do they have stables at the Senate? But, of course, mademoiselle. Where do you think Lindsey Graham gets all that horse shit?). Anyway, plenty of pants-shitting among Bay State GOPers now that the aforementioned fuck stick Brown (Bqhatevwr) is out.
So anyone with an (R) after their name, including, presumably, dead people, those serving time, and Combat Zone hookers (conservative hookers only, please) are being considered.
The Herald, always a bastion of unvarying truth and exactitude in its reporting, proclaims that Lady Ann, during the recent run of her husband, the Rat, for Leader of the Free Market, became a figure beloved by Americans, especially women in Massachusetts. Naturally no numbers accompany or support this amazing claim, but hey, right-wing jouralism's motto is "Trust Us" which translates as "Fuck you, you're all assholes".
But don't take my word for it. Horse's mouth...or perhaps some other equine anatomical source can be found here:
You people may now vote for me if I deign to run
@Akhilleus. I was surprising you were spreading the rumor that Scott Brown had been caught TWD. So I thought I'd write a correction. Well, here it is!
Sorry I missed this one. Your brilliant Ak. Whatever. Bqhatevwr.
Marie
@Barbarossa: okay, I watched all 13 episodes of "House of Cards." Unfortunately, I did not read the fine print. It seems "House of Cards" is not a 13-episode show but a 26-episode series. The next 13 episodes aren't going to air until "Winter of 2014."
The series is pretty good; the last episode is terrific -- if you like cliffhangers.
Marie
@Akhilleus: "...set their hair on fire and run around the yard hitting themselves in the head with a shovel." Verrry good! The wit on RC is one of the reasons I never have liquids such as coffee in my mouth when reading it for fear of spewing it all over my keyboard.
@Diane: Excellent poem on LaFiorina. I always wondered how someone with a Medieval History Degree could run a Fortune 500 company, the MBA and MS in management not withstanding. Maybe CW or Akhilleus could explain. Her management of HP indicates she didn't pay attention in class for her two master's degrees. I will say fucking up enough to be paid $20 million to hit the road isn't bad. I'd surmise her "I'm right and everyne who disagrees is wrong, no matter what their qualifications are." manner had something to do with being told "Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out."
I know it's bad form for men to hit women, but I admire Krugman's restraint in not doing so. Or in not throwing up listening to her pontificate.
Marie,
Hey, I only spread the best rumors. It started long ago after reading that famous Utilitarian philosopher John Rumour Mill.
Ba-dum-bum.
From senator to dipso laughingstock in a couple of weeks.
Heckuva job, Brownie.
Barbarossa,
Clearly the Fiorina neglected to pay attention to medieval history while getting that degree (I must have missed it but are there Cliffs Notes for the Hundred Years War?).
She should have taken notice of another group of "Do what we say or we'll fry your bacon" oligarchs, namely the French nobles who rode up on their armor plated horses to the field at Agincourt. They began the day outnumbering Hank Cinq and his Brits about 2 to 1 and finished face down in the mud, their asses porcupined with arrows from Welsh longbows.
Lesson? Know what you're talking about, beeyotch.