The Commentariat -- July 21, 2014
Internal links removed.
Peter Beaumont & Harriet Sherwood of the Guardian: "US President Barack Obama has called for an 'immediate ceasefire' between Israel and Hamas as the death toll among Palestinians in the Gaza Strip reached 508. Israeli continued its assault on the neighbourhood of Shujai'iya on Monday, where bombardment and fierce fighting on the ground between Israeli troops and Hamas militants on Sunday left shattered streets littered with bodies after Israeli forces subjected it to an intense bombardment.... Obama's appeal came as the United Nations security council opened urgent talks on efforts to strike a ceasefire deal...."
It's a hell of a pinpoint operation. We've got to get over there. -- John Kerry, speaking ironically to an aide, regarding the deaths of hundreds of Palestinian civilians in an Israeli operation that was supposed to target militants ...
... Open Mic. Brian Knowlton & Michael Gordon of the New York Times: "Secretary of State John F. Kerry strongly criticized Palestinian leaders on Sunday for rejecting a cease-fire plan, but he also appeared -- in comments captured by a live microphone -- to express exasperation with the high cost in civilian lives as Israel pressed its ground attack on Gaza. ...
... David of Crooks & Liars: "National Review Editor Rich Lowry asserted over the weekend that Israelis were not at fault for the deaths of four boys who were killed while playing on a Gaza beach last week because Hamas should have told them to move out of the way." ...
... digby awards Lowry her "Loathsome Wingnut o'the Day" award. He earned it.
Michael Gordon & Brian Knowlton: "Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday that Russia had trained Ukrainian separatists in the operation of SA-11 antiaircraft missiles, the type of system that the United States said had been used to shoot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine.... 'There's enormous amount of evidence, even more evidence than I just documented, that points to the involvement of Russia in providing these systems, training the people on them,' he said":
... E. J. Dionne: Obama should be more like Kerry. And Republicans should stop making "every foreign policy crisis about him." Also, Dionne reminds us of this gem:
[Putin] makes a decision and he executes it, quickly. And then everybody reacts. That's what you call a leader. President Obama [has] gotta think about it, he’s got to go over it again, he's got to talk to more people about it. -- Rudy 9/11 Guiliani, March 2014
Let's ask Rudy about this assessment now that Putin's "leadership" got nearly 300 innocent people murdered. -- Constant Weader
... MEANWHILES, Charles Pierce reflects on the reflections of wingers who took to the Sunday shows to call Putin a thug, rather than a leader. Either way, Obama is a weakling, sez they of the Cheney wing of the Republican party. (CW: Pierce is put out by the National Journal's top Republican apologist Ron Fournier's describing GOP hawks as the "Cheney wing of the party." I think it's fucking perfect.)
Ben Birnbaum & Amir Tibon have a long piece in the New Republic on Kerry's efforts to negotiate a peace agreement between Israel & Palestine.
David Nakamura, et al., of the Washington Post: "Nearly a year before President Obama declared a humanitarian crisis on the border, a team of experts arrived at the Fort Brown patrol station in Brownsville, Tex., and discovered a makeshift transportation depot for a deluge of foreign children.... In a 41-page report to the Department of Homeland Security, the team from the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) raised alarms about the federal government's capacity to manage a situation that was expected to grow worse.... The administration did too little to heed those warnings, according to interviews with former government officials, outside experts and immigrant advocates, leading to an inadequate response that contributed to this summer's escalating crisis. ...
... Amy Davidson of the New Yorker on the GOP's dangerous anti-immigration stance(s). ...
... Ron Brownstein of the National Journal: "Regardless of how Congress handles his request for more border resources, President Obama is moving toward a historic -- and explosive -- executive order that will provide legal status to a significant number of the estimated 11.7 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S.... Though the administration is still debating the reach of Obama's authority, some top immigration advocates hope he could legalize up to half of the undocumented population.... Such a move would infuriate Republicans.... They would likely challenge an Obama order through both legislation and litigation. Every 2016 GOP presidential contender could feel compelled to promise to repeal the order. Those would be momentous choices for a party already struggling to attract Hispanics and Asian-Americans."
Paul Kane of the Washington Post: "The Senate went three months this spring without voting on a single legislative amendment.... Senators say that they increasingly feel like pawns caught between Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), whose deep personal and political antagonisms have almost immobilized the Senate." ...
... CW: Kane's article is one of the worst cases of both-sides-do-it-ism I've ever read. After going on for paragraphs on how senators are all frustrated & how former leaders from both parties have tried to intervene to restore function to the Senate, blah-blah, we finally get to the nitty-gritty of the standoff:
If Reid allowed the free-flowing give-and-take that defined the Senate of the past, his endangered Democratic incumbents would be forced to vote on carefully crafted GOP amendments designed to hurt them in November. He refuses to do that. If McConnell were to work with Reid to allow the Senate to function more smoothly and effectively, he would undermine a key component of the Republican campaign argument this fall: that Democrats have mismanaged the Senate and the GOP must take over.
... Excuse me. Just who's fault is that? Is it Reid's? Hell, no. Kane has buried deep in his story that the cause of the friction is McConnell's obstructionism. Have I mentioned that the Washington Post sucks?
Paul Krugman: "... it's hard to escape the sense that debt panic was promoted because it served a political purpose -- that many people were pushing the notion of a debt crisis as a way to attack Social Security and Medicare. And they did immense damage along the way, diverting the nation's attention from its real problems -- crippling unemployment, deteriorating infrastructure and more -- for years on end." ...
... Thomas Frank, in Salon, imagines the themes of the Obama Presidential Library: "The Obama team, as the president once announced to a delegation of investment bankers, was 'the only thing between you and the pitchforks,' and in retrospect these words seem not only to have been a correct assessment of the situation at the moment but a credo for his entire term in office. For my money, they should be carved in stone over the entrance to his monument: Barack Obama as the one-man rescue squad for an economic order that had aroused the fury of the world." Thanks to James S. for the link. ...
... CW: Frank is pretty snide, but I think he's right. Obama's reliance on the failed policies of the Clinton economic team is his Vietnam. I don't know how much expert advice LBJ got to pull out of Vietnam, but Obama got plenty of expert advice -- even from inside his administration (Christina Romer)-- to go big on the stimulus & go hard on the banks, and he ignored it. Similarly, he should have had the guts to fight for some form of the public option in his healthcare bill (and beat the pulp out of Joe Lieberman & ConservaDems); instead, he knuckled under to big PHARma & the Max Baucus crowd. He had a choice -- and a mandate -- to radically change policies, & he never seriously considered it. This might have been understandable if he had implemented his programs with GOP support, but only Democrats voted for his bills. ...
... CW: Sort of contra Frank, MAG recommends this piece on American optimism by Jonathan Chait. I recommend it, too, but I don't agree with it. I'll explain why in the Comments.
Evan Osnos has a nice, longish piece in the New Yorker on Joe Biden.
News Ledes
Governor Grandstand. New York Times: "Gov. Rick Perry of Texas was expected to announce on Monday the deployment of 1,000 National Guard troops to the border with Mexico to bolster security as the Border Patrol faces an influx of Central American immigrants."
Guardian: "As Dutch forensic experts arrived at the scene of the Malaysia Airlines crash on Monday and promised that the train being loaded with the victims' bodies would be moved before the end of the day, heavy fighting broke out between the Ukrainian army and rebels on the outskirts of Donetsk, the main regional city and the hub of the insurgency." ...
... New York Times Update: "After days of obstruction, Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine permitted Dutch forensics experts on Monday to search the wreckage of the downed Malaysia Airlines jetliner destroyed by a surface-to-air missile, allowed bodies of the victims to be evacuated by train and agreed to give the plane's flight recorder boxes to the Malaysian government."
New York Times: "President Vladimir V. Putin issued a brief statement early on Monday saying that Russia would work to ensure that the conflict in eastern Ukraine moves from the battlefield to the negotiating table, and he again said that a robust international investigating team must have secure access to the Malaysia Airlines crash site. He also accused unspecified nations of exploiting the disaster in pursuit of 'mercenary political goals.' The statement posted on the Kremlin website came a day after mounting international criticism and anger against Russia and specifically Mr. Putin for the chaotic, unsecured condition of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crash site and what some nations said was the desecration of the victims' bodies."
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Reader Comments (10)
Chait's thesis is this:
"I believe the evidence shows it does neither, that confidence breeds the courage necessary to move forward. But I also believe, utility aside, that optimism is analytically sound. Optimism is the most fundamental truth of American history."
I think that's fine. But he goes through a long history of red state/blue state U.S. politics & concludes with this:
"Obama has a single message he passes on to the young people who work in his administration. Its core is historical optimism:
"'We get White House interns to come in and they work at the White House, and they're there for six months, and then I usually speak to them at the end of six months. And I always tell them that despite how hard sometimes the world seems to be, and all you see on television is war and conflict and poverty and violence, the truth is that if you had to choose when to be born, not knowing where or who you would be, in all of human history, now would be the time. Because the world is less violent, it is healthier, it is wealthier, it is more tolerant and it offers more opportunity than any time in human history for more people than any time in human history.'"
Yeah, that's true of the world. But I don't think it's true of the U.S. All you have to do is listen to an Elizabeth Warren speech to figure that out. The Golden Age this country experienced -- beginning roughly with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 & ending with the election of Reagan -- has passed. Yes, there was the Vietnam War, but there was also tremendous resistance to that war, & the resistance was the direct result of democratic policy: we had a draft. Now we don't, & as a result we conduct our wars under the direction of an elite military establishment out of West Point, etc., with foot soldiers akin to the French Foreign Legion -- kids (often kids in trouble) recruited from that "other country" called the Inner City &, yes, even foreigners.
Otherwise, policies were becoming more & more egalitarian during this period. A good student from a poor family could get into a good university & come out with no worse than a manageable debt & good prospects for a satisfying career which would give him/her the ability to live well & retire in comfort. Unions afforded non-college grads the same opportunities. Civil rights expanded for everyone but the LGBT community, & even there movement was brewing. Yes, there was still racial, religious & gender discrimination -- just as there is today -- but there was progress against it. Rights expanded under not just Democratic presidents by Republicans Nixon, Ford (& later, Bush I).
Now we're seeing those rights contract dramatically & our form of government morphing into oligarchy. You might argue that the difference is just one Supreme Court justice (O'Connor/Alito), but it's also coming from state & local legislatures & of course from Congressional Republicans. It's also coming from the POTUS -- as Frank mentioned, he stood up to the American people to save the bankers' asses. All indications are that Hillary Clinton will be worse than Obama. The backwards-looking are winning major battles & they're very effectively impeding progress in areas where they don't outright win: the economy & the environment would be much healthier, immigration reform would have happened, economic inequality would have been marginally reduced, educational opportunities would have improved, we'd have an assault weapons ban, the social safety net would have been strengthened, we'd have meaningful campaign finance reform, etc.
That doesn't mean the pendulum can't swing the other way. I'm encouraged (you might say "optimistic") that it can. Poll after poll indicates that even now the general public is far more progressive than the Congress & it will likely become more so.
In the meantime, Denmark.
Marie
The pendulum always swings the other way. Sometimes smoothly, sometimes not.
One thing from Rev. Barber's speech that stuck with me: "Our Constitution doesn't stand for Freeeeedooom, it stands for Justice."
Of course, the current SCOTUS are doing their best to dismante that idea.
RE: the Frank/Chait articles and discussion: (and this is the same Thomas Frank who has emphasized over and over the Republican's monkey wrenches that prevent the Obama administration's accomplishments). Back in 2012 Jams Fallows wrote a brilliant piece on Obama and the presidency itself. He wondered whether Obama was a chess player or a pawn and posits that all presidents are unsuited to office and therefore all presidents fail in certain aspects of the job. Below is the link to said article that offers another perspective and to my mind, the correct one.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/03/obama-explained/308874/
Correction: Sorry it's James, not Jam, although James might be fond of Jam and some might call him that––just for fun.
Marie,
Excellent synoptical review of America before and after Reagan.
The flight towards oligarchy he triggered and heartily supported is fueled by the wingnut/Republican diminution of education and rationality. Stupidity serves them well.
Both Plato and Aristotle discuss the importance of rational actors on a political state. Aristotle, in "Politics", distinguishes between citizens with varied levels of rational ability. His example is that of a child who has the ability to make some logical connections but whose judgment and rational competence can be lacking, the natural conclusion of which is the placing of children under the supervision of those whose skills at critical thinking are well developed (adults).
He goes on to say (or maybe it's Plato who says this, I forget exactly) that, in the case of two rational adults, a system which placed one under the control of the other would be untenable (an argument for democracy, which makes me think, upon further consideration, that it was Aristotle).
The problem we have currently is that virtually one half of our body politic is not just irrational, but unsoundly so. The other problem is that they want to be the ones making the decisions, a complete upending of Aristotle's directive that places those whose skills at ratiocination are wanting under the direction of those who base their decisions on logic, facts, and critical thought.
And speaking of the irrationality of the right (one doesn't have to search far for examples of illogicality and dimwittedness), I give you Rich Lowry, who, one supposes, based on his estimation that Palestinian children killed by Israeli bombs have only themselves and their families to blame, might have censured European Jews for allowing themselves to be sent to the camps. "They should have known better and gotten out of the way".
I was tempted to suggest a large dollop of disingenuousness, but I think people like Lowry are just that stupid, making their fervent desire to be in charge of everyone else frightening in the extreme.
And anyone interested in jaw dropping GOP hypocrisy and shamelessness has only to compare and contrast their many recent love letters to Vladimir Putin with the current chest thrusting and demands for action against that KGB "thug" once his true nature came into focus. ("He seemed like such a nice boy" everyone says about the serial killer next door.)
Remember, this is the guy the Decider declared a stable, sincere, and honest partner in world affairs with that "I have looked into his soul" bullshit. Another accurate gut decision by King George.
While we're comparing and contrasting, it might be useful to compare Russian separatists in Ukraine, idiots and malcontents who have been provided with money and support for unleashing their worst instincts with teabaggers and wingnuts who have been supported and egged on by conservative powers in this country. They haven't shot down any jet liners, but right-wing policies being set by conservative imbeciles, directed and backed by insidious forces affect far more people than the families of those killed by Putin's pals on the ground in Ukraine, and may prove to be much more toxic.
A couple thoughts arising from CW's comments: does anyone seriously think 2014 Republicans would let Jerry Ford, and certainly not Betty, into the Republican tent? Or discuss the ERA? That is the quintessence of the pendulum swing. Or is the quintessence of the pendulum swing the fact that older Americans are holding onto and not sharing with the younger generations the benefits and rewards the "greatest generation" fought and struggled to achieve? They "struggled all of their lives to get by" (Lennon/McCartney); the generation of Reagan droids reiterates their self dealing each election as their numbers inexorably dwindle. These people epitomize the classist, sexist, agist blather that 'rich old daddy' knows best. Smart enough to breed, too dumb to think.
"policies were becoming more & more egalitarian during this period". Yup. There is no greater fear that the Kochs, Cheneys, major religions, ALEC and Republicans in general all share than the fear of more egalitarian politics. If the news is to be believed, Brownback in Kansas is having to wallow through the mire of egalitarian politics in response to his masters' self-dealing policies he pushed through as their agent. Trust ALEC to think up new ways to deny more people and more groups the right to vote in response to the rumblings of democracy in Kansas.
Hillary found out about the limits and her desire to limit egalitarian politics when Barry O swooped in an took 'her' prize. Do you think she, or Bill (or Chelsea), will let that happen again? Even though she has spent a lifetime what for her is 'fighting the good fight', Hillary hasn't been a normal person since she was appointed to the WalMart board in 1986. Normal people don't populate boards of directors. She, like Bill, is a creature of power. She's not as evil as Cheney, not as liberal as Nancy Pelosi, certainly not as dumb as George W. and she is simply not as bright as Obama. Obama has IT, Hillary has to work smarter and harder to stay ahead, hence her need to solicit and stroke the powerful, big money men wherever they may be. Her network is the backbone of her strength; her network is also, I'd say, her greatest liability.
With respect to the pendulum swinging back toward liberal/progessive notions of right and wrong: my twenty year old doesn't understand why we need to always be at war with somebody;
and Republicans are more accountable for the war mongering than the Democrats. There are plenty of younger people to swing the pendulum away from the Republicans and their opiate like addiction to power and religion. What I will note: the twenty-somethings I see, don't read so many newspapers or watch/care about Sunday news talking heads. Hopefully Rove is sputtering inanities again this November on the teevee. One thing that Rove and most Republicans don't have is "historical optimism". They are the party of NO! Young people have the innocence to be both optimistic and hopeful. Seldom do you hear, "young foagy" or "young curmudgeon". The pre-responsibility world is a great sentiment to tap into and that's Obama's strength. Hopefully 2010 was the maximum extent of the rightward swing of the pendulum.
More reflections on Marie's synopsis:
The movement toward government by oligarchy is a reflection and expansion of the corporate model into the sphere of government. As corporations, with undemocratic, autocratic management have become more powerful, controlling more and more of the country's resources, since the 1980's shifting a growing portion of the nation's wealth into corporate and private hands, their direct and indirect influence on they way we govern ourselves has also increased. Today the parallels between corporate organization and the real, not rhetorical, governing principles of our polity are more than metaphorical.
Limiting the franchise has its counterpart in corporate-world where only those with controlling interests are heard. As long as the Walton family controls the majority of Walmart stock, for instance, protests against their employment practices amount to little more than noise at the outer edges of their empire. Likewise with the Supreme's gift of rights once reserved to individuals to giant entities whose use of those same rights on a larger scale inevitably tramples the individual's exercise of them.
Rights of Speech? Privacy? Voting? All are foreign to the corporate model and to no surprise are becoming increasingly so in the way we govern ourselves.
Turns out that what's good for GM is NOT good for the country, after all. At least not the country I would like to like, the one I thought I was living in.
Really astute summary, Ken. Thanks for posting it.