The Commentariat -- June 6, 2012
My column in the New York Times eXaminer is titled "Of Sex, Love and the Inquisition." The NYTX front page is here.
Leeches!
Andrew Sullivan of the Daily Beast: a reader tots up PolitiFact's truthiness ratings (CW: no clue as to what calendar period the analysis covers). "Politifact picks and chooses what topics it covers; it itself is not unblemished in its impartiality.... Based on the following leaders - Romney, Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Gingrich, Perry, Santorum for the GOP and Obama, Biden, Reid, Pelosi, and Clinton (Hillary) for the Dems, we get this graph":
"Romney, for some reason, seems attached to the Big Lie":
Bill Clinton, Off-message Again. Jeff Cox of CNBC: "Former President Bill Clinton told CNBC Tuesday that the US economy already is in a recession and urged Congress to extend all the tax cuts due to expire at the end of the year. In a taped interview aired on 'Closing Bell,' the still-popular 42nd president called the current economic conditions a 'recession' and said overzealous Republican plans to cut the deficit threaten to plunge the country further into the debt abyss." With video clip. ...
... Lori Montgomery of the Washington Post: "While the year-end burst of tax hikes and spending cuts known as Taxmageddon promises to be messy, it would set the nation on a course to smaller budget deficits and lower debt, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday.... There is already talk of postponing a decision, perhaps by temporarily extending current tax policies. That would avoid a short-term fiscal shock that the CBO has said is likely to throw the economy back into recession during the first part of next year." ...
... Ezra Klein has the charts.
** Joe Stiglitz in the Guardian: "... the American dream is a myth. There is less equality of opportunity in the United States today than there is in Europe -- or, indeed, in any advanced industrial country for which there are data." Thanks to contributor Carlyle for the link. Update: sorry about the earlier link fail. Here's Terry Gross of NPR interviewing Stiglitz; thanks to Julie for the link:
... Here's the Stiglitz article in Vanity Fair, which Terry Gross mentions. It's an excerpt from his new book, Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%. "As the widening financial divide cripples the U.S. economy, even those at the top will pay a steep price."
Ben Geman of The Hill: "Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) is breaking with Mitt Romney and some Capitol Hill Republicans by expressing support for federal green-energy programs, including the one that provided loan help to the now-bankrupt Solyndra. Murkowski, the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said she supports continuation of the Energy's Department loan-guarantee program for green energy, and more broadly backs a federal role in boosting market deployment of alternative energy." CW: Murkowski should become a Democrat.
E. J. Graff of American Prospect: "When white men go into 'women's work,' they earn more money and move up more quickly, out-earning equally qualified women. Because, you know, white guys are just better at everything."
Jamelle Bouie: Republicans are holding the economy hostage until they get their way.
Laurie Goodstein & Rachel Donadio of the New York Times: "The Vatican's doctrinal office on Monday denounced an American nun who taught Christian ethics at Yale Divinity School for a book that attempted to present a theological rationale for same-sex relationships, masturbation and remarriage after divorce. The Vatican office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said that the book, 'Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics,' by Sister Margaret A. Farley, was 'not consistent with authentic Catholic theology.' ..." ...
... Maureen Dowd: "Just the latest chapter in the Vatican's thuggish crusade to push American nuns -- and all Catholic women -- back into moldy subservience." ...
... Michelle Boorstein of the Washington Post: "Twenty-four hours ago news broke that the Vatican had condemned the book 'Just Love:A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics' a publication by a prominent nun-theologian that disagrees with church teaching on same-sex marriage, masturbation and remarrying after divorce. Monday morning, the book's reported ranking on Amazon: 142,982. Tuesday afternoon, after a day of furious news coverage of the Vatican censure: It's at #16." CW: Thanks for the plug, Joe Ratzinger. And Oprah thought she could move books. Celibate thugs are just better at everything.
Pam Belluck of the New York Times: "Labels inside every box of morning-after pills, drugs widely used to prevent pregnancy after sex, say they may work by blocking fertilized eggs from implanting in a woman's uterus.... Such descriptions have become kindling in the fiery debate over abortion and contraception.... But an examination by The New York Times has found that the federally approved labels and medical Web sites do not reflect what the science shows. Studies have not established that emergency contraceptive pills prevent fertilized eggs from implanting in the womb, leading scientists say."
Steve LeBlanc of the AP: "It's the single most contentious element of President Barack Obama's health care law: the requirement that nearly everyone have insurance or face a financial hit. But in Massachusetts, the only state with a so-called individual mandate, the threat of a tax penalty has sparked little public outcry since the state's landmark health care law was signed in 2006 by the governor, Mitt Romney." CW: gee, sounds like a campaign line for Obama, doesn't it?
Health Day via the Philadelphia Inquirer: "Older adults who say they've had a life-changing religious experience are more likely to have a greater decrease in size of the hippocampus, the part of the brain critical to learning and memory, new research finds. According to the study, people who said they were a 'born-again' Protestant or Catholic, or conversely, those who had no religious affiliation, had more hippocampal shrinkage (or 'atrophy') compared to people who identified themselves as Protestants, but not born-again."
William Rashbaum of the New York Times: "Thomas D. Raffaele, a 69-year-old justice of the New York State Supreme Court, encountered a chaotic scene while walking down a Queens street with a friend: Two uniformed police officers stood over a shirtless man lying facedown on the pavement. The man's hands were cuffed behind his back and he was screaming. A crowd jeered at the officers." One of the officers -- for no apparent reason -- turned on the justice and "using the upper edge of his hand, delivered a sharp blow to the judge's throat that was like what he learned when he was trained in hand-to-hand combat in the Army." Read the whole story.
On Wisconsin
E. J. Dionne gleans some lessons from the exit polls.
Greg Sargent: "Scott Walker's victory in [Tuesday]'s recall battle is a major wake-up call for the left, Democrats, and unions about the true nature of the new, post-Citizens United political landscape, and it should force a major reckoning among liberals and Democrats about what this means for the future."
CW: I think Jamelle Bouie has the smartest take: "Where the conventional wisdom goes off the rails is in the attempt to draw broad lessons for November, and attribute motives to Wisconsin voters.... According to exit polls, Walker won 17 percent of Obama supporters in the state, and overall, last night's electorate favored the president over Mitt Romney by a significant margin, 52 percent to 43 percent.... For 60 percent of last night's voters, a recall is only acceptable in cases of official misconduct. For 10 percent, a recall is never acceptable. It's not that these voters are pro-Walker, pro-Obama as much as they are pro-Obama, anti-recall." Read the whole post.
Charles Pierce: "A star was born last night. You will now see Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to run their midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin, everywhere in the energetic precincts of the revived American right."
Presidential Race
David Graham of the Atlantic notices that Mitt Romney told the Detroit News that "... as president he'd prioritize the financial interests of General Motors, its employees, and its customers over the interests of the taxpayer. That's a statement that seems to play right into the hands of President Obama's argument about Bain Capital, which is that the interests Romney served in private equity, while perfectly defensible for a private citizen, are far removed from the public interest that the president of the United States must serve."
News Ledes
Yahoo! News: "Union groups and their supporters spent much of Wednesday castigating billionaire donors, Citizens United and corporate power in the wake of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's victory over the effort to recall him from office. 'Texas billionaires' and 'multinational corporations' can 'spend unlimited money to sway an election,' American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) president Richard Trumka told reporters on a conference call Wednesday afternoon."
Washington Post: "D.C. Council Chairman Kwame Brown resigned from his seat Wednesday night, hours after he was charged with bank fraud, plunging the city government into a leadership crisis."
AP: "A jury dominated by people with Penn State loyalties was selected Wednesday to decide Jerry Sandusky's fate in the child sexual abuse scandal that rocked the university and led to football coach Joe Paterno's downfall."
ABC News: "Anders Breivik, the right-wing extremist who has confessed to killing 77 people during a murder spree in Norway last summer, played the violent computer game World of Warcraft nearly seven hours a day for several consecutive months before his attack, prosecutors say. Breivik, 33, already known to have a long history with the online role-playing game, was particularly absorbed by it between November 2010 and February 2011...."
AP: "Reports of assaults on women in Tahrir [Square in Cairo, Egypt] ... have been on the rise with a new round of mass protests to denounce a mixed verdict against the ousted leader and his sons in a trial last week.... Protesters and activists met Wednesday to organize a campaign to prevent sexual harassment in the square.... The phenomenon is trampling on their dream of creating in Tahrir a micro-model of a state that respects civil liberties and civic responsibility, which they had hoped would emerge after Mubarak's ouster."
New York Times: "Leaders of the House Ethics Committee said Wednesday that they would move ahead with a long-delayed inquiry into allegations of impropriety by Representative Maxine Waters after concluding that committee missteps had not denied Ms. Waters a fair hearing in the case."
New York Times: "Syrian opposition activists reported a mass killing of villagers by pro-government militiamen and security forces on Wednesday — if verified, the fourth massacre in less than two weeks -- threatening to inject a new surge of angry momentum into the growing international effort to isolate President Bashar al-Assad and remove him from power."
New York Times: "Ray Bradbury, a master of science fiction whose imaginative and lyrical evocations of the future reflected both the optimism and the anxieties of his own postwar America, died on Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 91."
New York Times: "The Senate Banking Committee on Wednesday delved into the nuances of JPMorgan's trading loss, quizzing the bank's primary regulators about how the blunder would affect the outcome of Wall Street regulation."
Here's the New York Times' report on the Wisconsin recall elections.
Not reported in the Times account (as of 7:15 am ET), the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports the one spot of light for unions and Democrats in the Wisconsin elections: "Democrats appeared to have assumed control of the state Senate with results posted early Wednesday showing former Sen. John Lehman (D-Racine) defeating incumbent Van Wanggaard in a tight race.... Results posted early Wednesday showed Lehman with 36,255 votes to 35,476 for Wanggaard with 100% of precincts reporting. The margin of 779 could bring a recount."
Washington Post: "Primary voters in California on Tuesday began to remake the face of Congress as a redrawn electoral map and new balloting rules promised a significant overhaul of the state's delegation, which accounts for about 12 percent of the House of Representatives."
More Blows to Unions. New York Times: "In both San Diego and San Jose, voters appeared to overwhelmingly approve ballot initiatives designed to help balance ailing municipal budgets by cutting retirement benefits for city workers." The San Jose Mercury-News story is here. The San Diego Union-Tribune story is here.
New York Times: "Greece is rapidly running out of money."
Share Article
Reader Comments (18)
It would be useful if someone provided a link to the Stiglitz commentary.
Interesting interview with Joseph Stiglitz on NPR today. Hope this link works. If not, google NPR interview with Stiglitz Fresh Air
Http://www.npr.org/2012/06/05/154345390/growing-economic-inequality-endangers-our-future
Walker wins. Money and dirty tricks trump democracy. GOP very pleased to see justice at the polls thwarted once again.
SOOOO.....Scott Walker-Balker wins recall-freefall in Wisconsin. What does this say besides dismay, disarray, gloomy day?
1) You got the money, honey, you got the WIN.
2) You got the rich (out of state donors), honey, you got the WIN
(and the creeps).
3) You got Citizens' United, honey; you got the WIN
(and the crooks).
4. Money talks; money walks; money sins. But money wins.
Every time.
We are a nation of greed, speed, need--and dumbed down motor- voters. Crooked, trumped up Tee Vee ads, show results, hurry the pulse. We don't get IT, we get FIT. Oh wait....no we don't. Obesity and stupidity WIN the day. A very sad Wisconsin day. Sadder for America. Barry not campaign for Tom, not want to risk--tsk tsk--own dancey chancey? Very tacky! And quite smacky. But just not funny. Honey.
Sigh--time to get high.
Wisconsin is just a disaster. Walker has succeeded in weakening labor enough that they couldn't strongly enough help the Democrats compete...at least that's my take on it. I do know there have been only two successful recalls of governors.
Romney seems to be following Tip O'Neill's maxim that "all politics are local." Perhaps in Tipper's youth, before the advent of mass media, they were. However, although today's mass media should be piling on Romney's equivocations, their coverage seems strangely quiet. What gives?
Re: dumb and dumber; yesterday I tried to convey in my simple way that Joe "the voter" Sixpack was dumber than a bag of hammers because he voted as he was told to vote. Today I ask; "How dumb are the folks that did not vote because a voice on the phone said they did not have to after signing the recall sheet?" How about anybody reading this? Have you ever been influenced by a political ad; regardless of the message? I have not.
According to the interviews by Edison Research re: the Wisconsin election the votes appear to be pretty evenly divided even with the independents, but with Walker's supporters, especially those with higher incomes having an edge. 84% of blacks voted for Barrett, however.
I listen to money singing. It's like looking down
From long French windows at a provincial town,
The slums, the canal, the churches ornate and mad
In the evening sun. It is intensely sad.
From Larkin's last lines of his poem "Money."
P.S. Charles Pierce's piece is terrific and his depiction of the Cock of the Walk is––can we say it?––RIGHT ON THE MONEY.
@JJG, you need to reword your question. Yes, I've been "influenced" by a political ad. I've been influenced to do more research on the issue, or I've been influenced to disgust at a negative message. Now, if you asked if a political ad had ever persuaded me to vote a certain way on something, then the answer is NO.
Thanks to the recently deceased Robert Adler, the inventor of the TV remote control, I never see a political ad on television.
Cakers Thanks, What you wrote was my intent.
So much opinion about what the Wisconsin debacle means for Democrats.
It's simple.
Money.
That's how Walker won. This is the apotheosis of the dream of the Five Little Dwarfs on the Supreme Court. Money purchases power. Unlimited money purchases a shitload of power. Will Republicans win all elections from now on? Probably not. But the big ones? It will take a lot more than just being right on the issues and telling the truth.
........................................................................................................
If one considers such things omens, I just read that Ray Bradbury died. The author of Fahrenheit 451 feared the future. His vision of a dystopic future controlled by a totalitarian government, is pretty close to what many conservatives would love to see, a world in which books are burned and information is only available through approved outlets like Fox which spout the ideological party lines and do not allow such ideas that are considered dangerous to gain purchase.
That might seem like a paranoid vision, but Bradbury's worst fear has already come true and is on view in plenty of conservative enclaves around the country where education, knowledge, intellectual pursuits, and love of truth are considered with great suspicion.
"The only thing worse than burning books is never reading them."
RIP, Ray. Thanks for the magic.
Typing this just to the left of the Right's Presidential smirk, but will try to avoid its distraction long enough to say something positive about yesterday's Wisconsin loss, difficult as that may be.
First, the state senate is no longer under the Right's control, I understand. That means Walker won't call the legislature back into session to do more dirty because he now has a senate he can't trust to do the Right thing. Small victory but significant, I believe. Some Wisconsinites were thinking.
Second and more nebulous but also hopeful, while it was a definite loss for what remains of the Left, when I look at the national context, I can summon pale optimism. Stipulated: the country has an extremely well-funded hard Right but only an impoverished, energetically, intellectually and monetarily, Left. In fact, American liberalism itself, in its best sense of being open to new ideas, to social and cultural experiment, to the welcoming of "The Other" with open arms, has been moribund for a long time, since the late 70's I would say. As a social experiment, we've settled in; we're comfortable, and the ferment is gone. Look at the electoral map. The home of early twentieth century populism has become blood red and not likely to change in the near future, as the have-nots have become the haves.
BUT there are signs that social, economic and cultural ferment is beginning to bubble again and it will be hard, and I would predict, impossible, for the Right's top down strategy to work much longer, especially if they get all that they seem to wish for. Lower wages and more poverty, a shrinking social safety net, higher and higher prices for the necessities, a continuing war against women and minorities--who won't be in the minority for long, and increasingly blatant voter suppression. Even the most cynical would say that those at the top can't stay in power with bread and circuses....and more and more of the little people are losing their bread.
Here in Washington State, they've even lost one of their circuses. Our citizens voted to privatize liquor sales last year, to scrap the state stores and their workers' union jobs....and the prices went up. Serves 'em right, I say, but I suspect it will even make a few tipplers think a bit between belts about the advantages of privatizing everything.
So, while yesterday's events could get our dauber down, a larger view still offers me some hope here on the date of Ray Bradbury's death. Yes, he could be dystopian but his writing was equally given to uplifting nostalgia. Between bouts of pessimism about the future, Bradbury often hearkened to the Good Old Days. I'm suggesting that despite all the Right can do, there may well be some good ones ahead.
Wonderful video from the Brits: Krugman holds his own quite well against John and Andrea who simply cannot accept Paul's take on the economy. I love the Leech analogy: when I was a girl our family would take vacations in upper Michigan or Wisconsin on one of the many inland lakes these states provide. On one of these lakes there was a plethora of leeches that would adhere to the underside of boats in the early morning hours, so we, my brother and I, would have to wade carefully before going into the water every day. Once a few of these creatures adhered onto my legs and to this day I can still recall the trauma of this. But I digress. Back to Krugman who, and I howled at this, replied to Andrea's insistence that he was dead wrong, "Well, there are several ways to respond to that," yeah––like "you are full of it, lady!" But he finally had to say, "There is NO market there!" Suddenly, after a possible comparison to the Estonian economy, the host cut it off, leeches and all.
That portrait is indeed disturbing. It's not just that its of the smirking decider. It's the fact that it will hang with the likes of Lincoln, both Roosevelt's, Truman, JFK, and yes even LBJ, (who despite getting the country firmly mired in Viet Nam), passed more legislation than any other president and did much to build his vision of a "Great Society", which on balance provides a positive counterbalance to the disastrous south east Asia adventure. It is the fact that the smirker in chief was appointed to his position, and passed legislation aimed at creating an "Ownership Society", all the while starting two unpaid for and unnecessary wars. We all now know who and what are owned. After 10 years and a new president his the foreign policy messes he created are finally being unwound. Interesting parallels: LBJ retired depressed and remorseful for his foreign policy, and died a broken man; GWB went into hiding unrepentant, unprosecuted, and waiting for us all to forget what he did so he can take his place in history. I dislike that portrait as much as I dislike the man.
Re: my last comment (see above), thanks.
In other news: I am so saddened by Bradbury's death; his grace was genuine, and I tried without success to emulate it all my life. There was talk here some time ago of Hemingway. I always admired Ernest and his economy of words, but I agreed with Kenneth Patchen, who wrote Hemingway writes like a bull "big chest, spindly legs." Patchen's Journal of Albion Moonlight was my epiphany; life hasn't been the same since.