The Commentariat -- May 20

Paul Krugman writes that in the U.S., "Manufacturing is one of the bright spots of a generally disappointing recovery. Just look at the auto industry." CW Translation: low wages bring back lousy jobs. ...

... MEANWHILE, David Brooks touts British Conservatives' "Big Society" (which apparently no Brits have ever heard of) -- a program that Brooks claims is a great social engineering experiment to get the lazy poms off their asses and into some sort of happy, integrated society. CW Translation: Conservatives find an anodyne name for government cutbacks. ...

... I've set up a comments page on Off Times Square for Krugman & Brooks and have posted my comments.

Drip, Drip. Jake Tapper of ABC News: "ABC News' Luis Martinez reports:  CIA Director Leon Panetta sent a message Wednesday to CIA employees cautioning that there should be no more leaks about the bin Laden raid and how it was conducted. In the message, obtained by ABC News, Panetta acknowledges that it’s likely some of the classified information about the raid that has emerged in the press has come from beyond the CIA...." CW: Tapper doesn't specify the obvious: someone at the CIA leaked to ABC News Panetta's memo warning against leaking. 

This is about choice and we believe in the democratic process. This is about the personal and individual right to choose. -- Jim Skinner, McDonald's CEO, speaking of stockholders' decision not to assess the impact of its food on childhood obesity, as greedy stockholders cheered

It Isn't Just CEOs Who Exhibit Corporate Greed & Lack of Social Responsibility. Debra Sherman of Reuters: "McDonald's Corp spurned calls to assess the impact of its food on childhood obesity, and said its trademark clown Ronald McDonald would be hawking Happy Meals to kids for years to come.... Shareholders of the world's largest fast-food chain resoundingly rejected a proposal that would have required it to issue a report outlining its role in the childhood obesity epidemic, saying customers were free to make their own dietary choices.... Skinner defended McDonald's strategy, which has resulted in hefty sales and earnings for shareholders. McDonald's shares have gained nearly 12 percent in the last four months and rallied to a record high of $82.63 on Thursday." CW: too bad. I wish their goddamned stock would tank.

It is a flag we’ve planted that we will protect and defend. We have a plan. It’s called Medicare. -- Nancy Pelosi ...

... Digby: "Finally -- the Democrats have awakened to the fact that Paul Ryan's plan is the best thing that ever happened to them, a major overreach of the kind that perfectly characterizes the Republicans' greatest weakness: hubris." ...

... BUT Mark Schmitt, writing in The New Republic, thinks Pelosi's plan to center the 2012 campaign around defense of Medicare is a loser. As I said way last summer, the GOP's as-yet unspecified plan to impose Medicare cutbacks on Americans 55 and younger was a way to innoculate themselves against senior backlash. Schmitt writes, "If there was ever going to be a generational war in this country, that high school class of ’74 would be its Mason-Dixon line. It’s the moment when Bill Clinton’s promise — 'if you work hard and play by the rules you’ll get ahead' — began to lose its value. Today’s seniors and near-seniors spent much of their working lives ... with their incomes rising, investments gaining, their health increasingly secure, and their retirements predictable. Everyone 55 and younger spent his or her entire working life in an economy where all those trends had stalled or reversed." Schmitt says that concentrating on senior issues has much less impact in a Presidential election year because younger voters, who don't turn out at the polls in off-years, will be there in 2012, and they are indifferent to senior issues.

Ezra Klein: more stimulus spending could actually reduce the deficit by creating more jobs, which would lead to increased revenues. But it isn't going to happen because Democrats have let Republicans drive the conversation to deficit, deficit, deficit, and guess what? Republicans really don't care about reducing the deficit.

E. J. Dionne: "'At some point it’s clear to me that we have to increase the debt ceiling,' House Speaker John Boehner said Sunday on CBS’s 'Face the Nation.' Yet Boehner needs to push things to the brink because the Tea Party members of his caucus believe that last year’s election gave the GOP a 'mandate' to make their wildest small-government dreams a reality. Boehner is trying to appease the right with extended rounds of shadow-boxing and big slabs of anti-spending rhetoric." CW: read the whole column; there's more. ...

... AND Brian Beutler of TPM gets ratings agency Standard & Poors to go on the record: on what S&P would do if the U.S. defaulted on its debt:

A sovereign's failure to service its debt as payments come due is a default according to S&P's sovereign rating criteria. In that case, the rating would be lowered to 'SD' (Selective Default). -- John Piecuch, spokesman for Standard & Poors ...

The full consequences of a default — or even the serious prospect of default — by the United States are impossible to predict and awesome to contemplate. Denigration of the full faith and credit of the United States would have substantial effects on the domestic financial markets and the value of the dollar in exchange markets. The Nation can ill afford to allow such a result. -- President Ronald Reagan, 1983

Congress consistently brings the government to the edge of default before facing its responsibility. This brinksmanship threatens the holders of government bonds and those who rely on Social Security and veterans benefits. Interest rates would skyrocket, instability would occur in financial markets, and the Federal deficit would soar. -- Ronald Reagan, 1987

This country cannot be allowed to default on its financial obligations for the first time in history. This would be unthinkable. -- Ronald Reagan, 1987

[Holders of U.S. government debt would be willing to miss payments] for a day or two or three or four. That's what I'm hearing from most people. What is more important is that you're putting the government in a materially better position to be able to pay their bonds later on. -- Paul Ryan, repudiating the GOP Gipper God

Reid & Boehner to Hold Stealth Votes on the Patriot Act. AP: "Top congressional leaders agreed Thursday to a four-year extension of the anti-terrorist Patriot Act, the controversial law passed after the Sept. 11 attacks that governs the search for terrorists on American soil. The deal between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker John Boehner calls for a vote before May 27, when parts of the current act expire. The idea is to pass the extension with as little debate as possible to avoid a protracted and familiar argument over the expanded power the law gives to the government."

Friend of Barack (Enemy of Unions). Karen Garcia: "Only in a banana republic can a CEO of an anti-union corporation just found criminally responsible for polluting the earth with radioactive waste suddenly become a government-appointed expert on waste in health care spending. David Cote has jumped on board yet another Obama Administration PR initiative...."

Josh Rogin of Foreign Policy: "President Obama ... announced several incremental shifts in U.S. policy on the Israel-Palestinian conflict.... Former Congressman Robert Wexler, now the president of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, told The Cable that Obama's announcement was a bold step toward Middle East peace that alters U.S. policy in a fundamental way.... There's also evidence that the decision [to base negotiations on the 1967 borderlines, with swaps] went down to the wire."

Dorothy Parvaz, an Al Jazeera reporter, tells of her harrowing 19 days in captivity, first in Syria, then in Iran. The Iranians, whe she said treated her well, in contrast to the Syrians, released her after a judge ruled that she was not a spy. ...

Jon Stewart on the strained relationship between the U.S. & Pakistan:

... BUT John Hodgman has the solution for repairing the rift:

Risque Business. Binyamin Appelbaum & Sheryl Gay Stoldberg of the New York Times: "Interviews and documents paint a picture of the [I.M.F.] as an institution whose sexual norms and customs are markedly different from those of Washington [where its headquarters are located], leaving its female employees vulnerable to harassment. The laws of the United States do not apply inside its walls, and until earlier this month the I.M.F.’s own rules contained an unusual provision that some experts and former officials say has encouraged managers to pursue the women who work for them: 'Intimate personal relationships between supervisors and subordinates do not, in themselves, constitute harassment.'”

Right Wing World *

Gingrich Press Release, Illustrated by Jon White:

CLICK ON CARTOON TO SEE LARGER IMAGE.

Flashback to 2005:

The Constitution of the United States is at stake. Article II, Section 2 clearly provides that the President, and the President alone, nominates judges. The Senate is empowered to give advice and consent. But my Democratic colleagues want to change the rules. They want to reinterpret the Constitution to require a supermajority for confirmation. -- Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)

I would never filibuster any President’s judicial nominee, period. I might vote against them, but I will always see they came to a vote. -- Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.)

It would be a real constitutional crisis if we up the confirmation of judges from 51 to 60, and that’s essentially what we’d be doing if the Democrats were going to filibuster. -- Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa)

Every judge nominated by this president or any president deserves an up-or-down vote. It’s the responsibility of the Senate. The Constitution requires it. -- Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) & Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.)

... Back to the Present ...

... All of these Republican senators -- and more -- who declared the Constitution would crumble, the nation would fall & Armageddon would come if Democrats filibustered a Republican president's judicial nominee -- filibustered President Obama's nominee Goodwin Liu yesterday. The Senate voted 52-43 not to allow Liu's nomination to receive a full Senate vote. Thanks to Matt Yglesias for collecting this rogues gallery of hypocrites. His post contains more similar End-of-Civilization Republican predictions. ...

... ** Dahlia Lithwick: "... the judicial confirmation détente of 2005, when the so-called 'Gang of 14' pledged that honorably fulfilling its constitutional responsibilities meant that 'nominees should only be filibustered under extraordinary circumstances,' is over. The era in which the self-styled grownups on both sides agree that the judicial vacancy rate represents a national crisis, and that the Senate's responsibility to advise and consent does not extend to delaying and distorting, is over, too." Henceforth, Lithwick suggests, the only "qualified" nominee will be "someone who has spent their whole public life sitting in a cave watching cartoons." (CW: e.g, Elena Kagan.)

Ultra-conservative Dr. (& Sen.) Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) had a prescription for Newt Gingrich: "Keep your mouth shut." ...

... BUT, after several days of getting hammered like this, after blaming the elite Washington liberal media, after retracting his "inaccurate," "unfortunate" remark "that was a mistake," after saying he had apologized to Paul Ryan for dissing the Ryan plan, etc., Newt has come up with Plan F or so. Chris Good of The Atlantic: "Newt Gingrich said today that he wasn't referring to Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-Wisc.) Medicare plan when he uttered the words 'right-wing social engineering' last Sunday...." CW: This is way past comical.

Doublethink. def.: The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them....To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary. -- George Orwell, 1984 ...

... Driftglass calls doublethink "Ronald Reagan's most potent and vile political legacy." CW: It most certainly is an essential tool in the Right Wing World toolbox.

* Where facts never intrude & it's okay if Republicans do it.

News Ledes

President Obama thanks the intelligence community for its role in locating Osama bin Laden:



New York Times: "As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel heads to the White House on Friday for the seventh meeting since President Obama took office, the two men are facing a turning point in a relationship that has never been warm." AP story here. ...

     ... New York Times Update: "After a meeting at the White House that was far longer than scheduled, [Obama and Netanyahu] sought to paper over what is by all accounts a frosty relationship, pleading mutual support for the enduring bonds between their countries. Mr. Netanyahu, however, bluntly rejected compromises along the lines outlined by Mr. Obama in a speech the day before in hopes of reviving a moribund peace process, looking directly at the president in the Oval Office to warn against 'a peace based on illusions.'” Video of the Obama-Netanyahu public statements is in the May 21 Commentariat.

New York Times: "NATO officials expressed increased confidence Friday that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s military position was weakening, and that allied airstrikes had prevented his forces from making sustained attacks on rebel forces and had driven him into hiding."

New York Times: "Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota who has been exploring a presidential candidacy for months, will formally announce his intention to join the Republican field on Monday during a visit to Iowa, an adviser said."

New York Times: "Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former managing director of the International Monetary Fund, must find another place to stay when he leaves his Rikers Island jail cell because the Upper East Side building where his wife had rented an apartment will not accept him, a court official said on Friday. Instead, Mr. Strauss-Kahn will be staying at a corporate-housing building used by the security company, Stroz Friedberg, which has been hired to guard him while he remains under 24-hour home confinement...."

Negligent Homicide. New York Times: "In the first comprehensive state report on the 2010 coal mine disaster in West Virginia, an independent team of investigators has put the blame squarely on the owner of the mine, Massey Energy, concluding that it had 'made life difficult' for miners who tried to address safety and built 'a culture in which wrongdoing became acceptable.'”

Washington Post: "The president of Japan’s embattled Tokyo Electric Power Co. resigned Friday, taking responsibility for a nuclear crisis that forced 80,000 to evacuate, caused record fiscal losses and left the country with a long-term energy shortage. Masataka Shimizu’s decision to step down came as the giant utility company announced losses of $15 billion for the fiscal year that ended in March."

Boston Globe: "President Obama lost his first vote on a judicial nominee yesterday, as Senate Republicans derailed the nomination of a liberal professor who leveled acerbic attacks against two conservative Supreme Court nominees — both now justices. Democrats fell short of the 60 votes they need to end a filibuster and give Goodwin Liu an up-or-down vote on his nomination to the San Francisco-based US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit."

Doping. New York Times: "The cyclist Tyler Hamilton, one of Lance Armstrong’s former teammates on the United States Postal Service team, said he saw Armstrong inject himself with the banned performance-enhancing drug EPO to win the Tour de France, according to a report on CBS’s '60 Minutes' that will run Sunday.... Hamilton, the 2004 Olympic champion in the time trial, who has been sanctioned for doping twice, is the latest Armstrong teammate to say he saw Armstrong use performance-enhancing drugs.... A year ago, Floyd Landis, who was stripped of the 2006 Tour de France title for doping, shook the world of cycling by saying he and Armstrong were part of a systematic doping scheme while racing for the Postal Service team." ...

     ... Update: "The American cyclist Tyler Hamilton, the 2004 Olympic gold medalist in the time trial, has voluntarily surrendered his gold medal to the United States Anti-Doping Agency after admitting to doping during his cycling career, the International Olympic Committee said Friday."