Wednesday
May022012
The Commentariat -- May 3, 2012
Bill Clinton reviews Robert Caro's Passage of Power, part of his biography of Lyndon Johnson.
Julian Brooks of Rolling Stone interviews Paul Krugman on how to fix the economy.
Cloak & Dagger
Josh Rogin of Foreign Policy: "The Chen case is an opportunity for the United States to reposition itself on the issue of human rights in a way that aligns American foreign policy with the Chinese people," said Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch. "'Chen is more than a dissident; he's a folk hero,' Malinowski said. 'This is someone who the Chinese people are rooting for. The fact that the only power in Beijing willing to protect him was the U.S. gives the U.S. government the moral high ground in this drama in the broader Chinese public.'"
Joseph Goldstein of the New York Times: "On Monday, the sent its warrant squads after an unusual set of suspects: people who had old warrants for the lowliest of violations.... But those who were questioned by the warrant squads said the officers had an ulterior motive: gathering intelligence on the Occupy Wall Street protests scheduled for May 1, or May Day. One person said he was interviewed about his plans for May Day. A second person said the police examined political fliers in his apartment, and then arrested him on a warrant for a 2007 open-container-of-alcohol violation."
Declan Walsh of the New York Times: "In the shadows of the American operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the fate of a small-town Pakistani doctor [Shakil Afridi] recruited by the C.I.A. to help track the Qaeda leader still looms between the two countries, a sore spot neither can leave untouched." CW: quite an interesting story, it involves Save the Children & other charitable groups operating inside Pakistan, some of whose personnel can't get out.
... David Caruso of the AP: "Last August, a retired Teamster from Boston stepped off an Amtrak train in New York City and collapsed on the platform at Pennsylvania Station. As medics tried to revive him, police searched his backpack for identification. Inside, they found the stuff that 'Law & Order' episodes are made of: $179,980 in cash, bundled with rubber bands and tucked inside two plastic bags..
Linda Greenhouse: in oral arguments before the Supreme Court in U.S. v. Arizona, no one in the courtroom made any mention of the people who would be affected if the Court decides Arizona's S.B. 1070 is Constitutional, as likely it will. CW: I've got news for Greenhouse. That's the way the law is, & the higher in the court system you go, the more true that is. The Supremes don't give much consideration to the individuals whose lives they affect with their decisions; they care only about "principle."
Our Beautiful Third-World Country. Donald McNeil of the New York Times: According to a report by the World Health Organization, "... the United States is similar to developing countries in the percentage of mothers who give birth before their children are due.... It does worse than any Western European country and considerably worse than Japan or the Scandinavian countries. That stems from the unique American combination of many pregnant teenagers and many women older than 35 who are giving birth, sometimes to twins or triplets implanted after in vitro fertilization.... Also, many American women of childbearing age have other risk factors for premature birth, like obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure or smoking habits. And the many women who lack health insurance often do not see doctors early in their pregnancies...."
Hillary Chabot of the Boston Herald: "Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, fending off questions about whether she used her Native American heritage to advance her career, said today she enrolled herself as a minority in law school directories for nearly a decade because she hoped to meet other people with tribal roots."
Presidential Race
Genevieve Cook, Barack Obama's girlfriend when he lived in New York City. Excerpts of her diary appear in Maraniss's biography of Obama.Here's an excerpt/adaptation from David Maraniss's biography of Barack Obama. The excerpt covers the period when Obama lived in New York City & is published in Vanity Fair. Steamy stuff! ...
... James Barron & Peter Baker of the New York Times on a Park Slope row house: "Barack Obama Slept Here."
Greg Sargent responds to the New York Times story (which I linked yesterday) that looks at Wall Street's disaffection with Obama & his populist message. Sargent zeroes in on the part where Wall Streeters wanted Obama "to make amends with a big speech -- like his oration on race -- designed to heal the wounds of class warfare in this country.... One wonders if there is anything Obama could say to make these people happy, short of declaring that rampant inequality is a good thing, in that it affirms the talent and industriousness of the deserving super rich. It certainly seems clear that they won't be satisfied until he stops mentioning it at all." ...
... Paul Krugman: "I guess being that rich means that you can surround yourself with people who never tell you how ridiculous you sound."
... Comes Now Adam Davidson of the New York Times to introduce you to Romney BFF and & BFB (Big Fat Benefactor) Edward Conard. Conard has spent the past 4 years writing a book, to be published next month, which "aggressively argues that the enormous and growing income inequality in the United States is ... a sign that our economy is working. And if we had a little more of it, then everyone, particularly the 99 percent, would be better off. This could be the most hated book of the year." And it gives you a damned good idea of the kind of nonsense coming from the minds of people who influence Romney. Wait till you read how Conard chose his wife! ...
... Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism does a fine job of critiquing Davidson's fairly credulous take on Conard's thesis. She begins, "Adam Davidson is moving up in the world. He has gone from fellating the 1% to the top 0.1%." And concludes, "Conard at first seems to yet another evangelist of a hopelessly flawed and dangerous orthodoxy, and the more he speaks, the more he seems to be deeply imbalanced, so intensely invested in his distorted personal mythology that he is driven to make the world at large reflect it back. It would be far better for Davidson and the New York Times to treat people like Conard as epitomes of deep-seated cultural pathologies, rather than promote them." ...
... David Atkins: "It's hard to overstate the degree to which the top 0.1% in this country is completely disconnected from the experience of the broader public, to the extent that it's difficult to tell the difference between cloistered cluelessness and rank sociopathy.... No, there's nothing the President can say to make them happy. There are only three choices here: 1) accept the system as is and give in to complete plutocratic rule; 2) try to win elections with the full measure of their spending against us and see what happens; or 3) Fight like hell to change the campaign finance system. The fact that these people can buy elections is one of the few things saving them from the pitchforks." ...
... Jamelle Bouie of the American Prospect: "There is a disturbing corollary to Conard's worldview...: if the wealthy are supremely virtuous for their pursuit of wealth, then those who reject that choice ... are unworthy of our respect or admiration.... Judging from [Romney's] domestic policy plans -- huge income tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, combined with tax cuts on investment income, and a dramatic reduction in social services..., Romney's thinking has more in common with his friend than it does with any of us." ...
... CW: I think these little windows into Tagg Romney's amazing business success and Conard's views give us a real sense of Romney's own worldview. If Romney is awkward with ordinary people it is because he has a big, dark secret that he's afraid will get out -- in fact, he often accidentally reveals little bits of it. The big, dark secret is The Real Romney -- a monster of arrogance with an incredible sense of entitlement. When Ann Romney said "It's our turn," she really meant it.
Nice Shirt! Erin Ryan of Jezebel: Ann Romney wore a $990 tee-shirt when she appeared on CBS's "This Morning" show to tell folks what a regular guy Willard is.
Steve Benen: apparently Mitt Romney wants to be president so he can ruin the economy again. ...
... The Obama campaign has a new interactive tool that shows how Obama policies would help a woman throughout her life & how Romney policies would reverse that assitance. Via Greg Sargent. ...
... Jessica Yellin & Paul Steinhauser of CNN: "The Obama campaign renewed its focus on women voters Thursday with a stepped up attack on Mitt Romney. A data-filled memo alleges the budget cuts, tax reform and social policy Romney supports will disproportionately hurt middle- and low-income women. The campaign is releasing the tool [linked above] and memo on the same day Romney plans to appear with Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, who is widely believed to be among the top contenders for the GOP vice presidential slot. McDonnell has become something of a lightening rod among left-leaning women's groups after he supported -- then modified -- legislation that would have required women seeking abortion to submit to an invasive ultrasound before the procedure."
Michael Barbaro, et al., of the New York Times on the shortlived career of Ric Grenell, Romney foreign policy advisor. ...
... Jon Stewart on the shortlived career of Ric Grenell, Romney foreign policy advisor:
Quinnipiac University: "Riding the voter perception that he is as good as or better than President Barack Obama at fixing the economy, Republican challenger Mitt Romney catches up with the president in Florida and Ohio, two critical swing states, while the president opens an 8-point lead in Pennsylvania, according to a Quinnipiac University Swing State Poll released today."
Politics is weird and creepy -- and now I know lacks even the loosest attachment to anything like reality. -- Shep Smith:
Local News
Rudi Keller of the Columbia (Missouri) Tribune: "A Kirksville Republican lawmaker announced publicly he is gay [Wednesday] at a news conference opposing a bill that has gained national attention for its proposed restrictions on in-school discussions of sexuality. Rep. Zach Wyatt, who is leaving the House after a single term to study marine biology, said during the news conference that he could no longer keep his sexual orientation to himself in the face of what he considers an example of bigoted legislation."
News Ledes
USA Today: "Another former close aide to John Edwards testified Thursday about bungled efforts to keep the former presidential candidate's affair hidden from staff members, including an awkward encounter when she showed up at a hotel weeks after her work filming Edwards had ended."
Washington Post: "The number of people applying for jobless benefits declined sharply last week, the government reported Thursday, providing a surprisingly upbeat signal leading into Friday’s jobs report. The drop in applications for unemployment assistance fell by 27,000 to a seasonally adjusted 365,000, the largest weekly drop in nearly a year...."
Politico: "Opponents of the GOP [version of the Violence Against Women] bill say that the legislation needs special protection for gay, immigrant and Native American victims. Republicans say VAWA should deal squarely with the issue of violence against women regardless of their ethnicity or sexuality, noting that their legislation doesn't weaken protection for any segment of the population."
New York Times: "On Thursday, Facebook set the estimated price for its initial public offering at $28 to $35 a share, according to a revised prospectus. At the midpoint of the range, the social networking company is on track to raise $10.6 billion, in an debut that could value the company at $86 billion."
Guardian: "Chen Guangcheng, the Chinese activist at the centre of a growing international storm, has said he wants to leave the country on Hillary Clinton's plane when she flies out of Beijing at the end of this week. There has been mounting concern over his future amid confusing accounts, including from Chen himself, on his decision to leave US diplomatic protection and remain in China, and his subsequent desire to leave." ...
... New York Times Update: ", the blind dissident lawyer at the heart of a diplomatic crisis between and the United States, telephoned in to a Congressional hearing on Thursday to plead for help in leaving his country."
Guardian: "Dozens of documents taken by US special forces from Osama bin Laden's compound during the raid in which the al-Qaida leader was killed are to be released by American authorities. Though tens of thousands of documents, videos and computer discs were seized, only a handful are to be made public on Thursday, in the original Arabic and in English translation along with a commentary from experts at the Combating Terrorism Centre at the US Military Academy at West Point." ...
... Voice of America Update: "A selected set of documents seized from the compound of Osama bin Laden last year sheds new light on the terrorist leader. The documents highlight what was, at times, an apparently difficult relationship between al-Qaida's core group, headed by bin Laden, and its affiliates." ...
... You can view a pdf of the documents, with English translations, here.
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Reader Comments (10)
Someone in Romney's campaign hired to take care of all things superficial evidently was asleep at the wheel. Ann's tee shirt––amazing we could call a shirt that is a tad short of $100 a tee––is emblematic of what we could call a BAD CHOICE in political circles. I am also amused that the duck's eye looks like a misplaced breast and the shirt itself a Trojan breast plate. Funny, though, how the females in our political circles are the ones who get scrutinized, clothes wise, while we are mute on males.
@ P. D. Pepe: good point about how women get so much more scrutiny of their appearance than do men -- a holdover from those days long past (ha ha) when men valued women more for their appearance than for their brains or character.
Nonetheless, I have noticed quite a bit of coverage of Willard's coverage. Kurt Soller of Esquire, for instance, seems obsessed with dressing down the Mittster for dressing down.
If Ann Romney is shown to have ever donated any of her substantial free time to worthy causes to help the poor and afflicted, I will refrain from mentioning what a horribly, hideously, supremely ugly shirt she is wearing.
@Victoria D. According to this Wikipedia page, Ann Romney has been involved in a number of children's charities. It looks like she took up an interest in charitable work at about the time her husband decided to seek public office; i.e., when he took over the Olympic games in Utah.
To see the hollowness of Conard and Romneys arguments about the value of a few ultra rich controlling most of the resources of a country, one only needs to look south to Mexico. Abject poverty and rising killings and kidnappings.
About Mr. Conard:
Spelled a bit differently, Conard (Connard) but here
is the French translation for 'Connard.'
Quel connard What a dumb ass
Quel connard That fuckin´ guy
After reading the NYTimes article...the translation works for me!
Re: the Chen case" Robert Sheer on TruthDig has an interesting take on all this––here's a bit:
"Secretary of State Hillary Clinton performed the expected diplomatic dance around the latest flare-up of pretend concern, involving a blind lawyer suddenly made world-famous when he escaped from house arrest in rural China. The fact that Chen Guangcheng was targeted by Chinese authorities because of his opposition to his nation’s oppressive population control policies added the United States’ “pro-life” lobby to the army of morally subjective China watchers. Now if we can get the pro-lifers to care about the human rights of fetuses after birth, the condition of the millions of severely exploited Chinese workers who float U.S. consumption and our national debt just might stand a chance of improvement."
You knew it would happen quickly, right?
A 30 year old kiss and tell story by a former girlfriend of Barack Obama has opened the flood gates on the Right for all kinds of stupidity and racism.
One site declares breathlessly that the word is out that not only is the president a Kenyan and a socialist, but he also has had PRE-MARITAL SEX!! Holy shit! Not pre-marital sex. I bet Romney never did that! I bet Santorum never had pre-marital sex. I bet Gingrich never had...oh...wait. Gingrich has nothing BUT pre-marital sex. With women he's not married to.
One comment declares the story a hoax on the part of "Big Media" because it makes Obama look like a real person as opposed the insidious force of evil he really is.
Another site speculates that the story is a plant because, according to some self appointed right-wing soothsayers, Obama has never had a girlfriend and is therefore, GAY. Get it? So this must be a false story.
Somewhere else we learn that this particular woman is the same one who, until just the other day, had a personal website (mysteriously taken down by shadowy liberal traitors) on which she moaned about how much she wanted to learn Arabic so she could properly read the Koran.
Others are calling her a slut trying to make money, and then there are the sites trumpeting their discovery of Obama's four point plan for seducing and using white women. They'd call it 'miscegenation but they can't spell it so they're resorting to fantasy scenarios that make it sound like Obama enters a room and asks "Where all de white womens at?"
Can't wait to hear Rupert Murdoch's take on all of this, he being such a model of propriety and probity. He's probably too busy hacking Genevieve Cook's cell phone.
So the collective view of the right on Obama having had a girlfriend in college is:
Colored boy from Kenya stalks slutty white woman and seduces her into having pre-marital sex with him in order to hide the fact that he was gay, encouraging her along the way to learn Arabic so she could pray from the Koran with him, and every day he remains in the "WHITE" house is a sin against god and all decent (white) folks in the good ol' US of A.
Hey, at least he wasn't jumping on blow-up dolls like Ross Douthat or resorting to self abuse like Turd Blossom Rove.
@ PD Pepe: The tee actually costs $990.00, just shy of a thousand dollars. The point she was trying to make was, Willard and I are
just your average run of the mill working Americans and Willard has
this great sense of humor, if he could just get it out. He probably
lost his sense of humor when Ann bought a $990.00 tee shirt that
looks like shit. Anyway, my point is that this tee shirt will be in
a Goodwill store soon, so look for it on the $3.95 rack, cause that's
what these people do. I once got a bronze that originally cost over
$500.00 from a clients trash, and a beautiful sweater with a Beverly
Hills store label which appeared to never have been worn. Actually,
I don't think they really are just like the rest of us (working people)
who never throw anything away that could be donated to a charity
cause, or could be worn for 20 or 30 years. Just sayin'.
Perhaps the U.S. would like to swap high profile whistleblowers with China?