The Commentariat -- May 7, 2014
Internal links, obsolete video & graphics removed.
Justin Gillis of the New York Times: "The effects of human-induced climate change are being felt in every corner of the United States, scientists reported Tuesday, with water growing scarcer in dry regions, torrential rains increasing in wet regions, heat waves becoming more common and more severe, wildfires growing worse, and forests dying under assault from heat-loving insects.... The study, known as the National Climate Assessment, was prepared by a large scientific panel overseen by the government and received final approval at a meeting Tuesday. The White House, which released the report, wants to maximize its impact to drum up a sense of urgency among Americans about climate change -- and thus to build political support for a contentious new climate change regulation that President Obama plans to issue in June." ...
... CW: Here's President Obama's "Climate Action Plan." Hmm, I wonder who is "contentious" about it. ...
... Kevin Liptak, et al., of CNN: "Republican critics immediately pounced on new report as a political tool for Obama to try to impose a regulatory agenda that would hurt the economy. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky mocked what he described as the hypocritical stance of 'liberal elites' who demand strong action on climate change while failing to reduce their own carbon footprint." ...
... Laura Barron-Lopez & Alexander Bolton of the Hill: "An impasse over amendments is threatening to scuttle a vote on legislation to build the Keystone XL pipeline, despite Sen. Mary Landrieu's (D-La.) insistence Tuesday that she is within two or three votes of a filibuster-proof majority. The deal offered by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) gave Keystone supporters a vote on their pipeline, but only if Republicans allowed an up-or-down vote on an energy efficiency bill now on the Senate floor. Republicans are now demanding votes on five GOP amendments to the energy efficiency bill, and Reid on Tuesday said he would not allow any of them."
Finally, Some Democrats Who Can Handle the Truth
Kathryn Wolfe of Politico: "Sen. Jay Rockefeller unloaded on lawmakers Tuesday, accusing some of blocking efforts to solve urgent problems during Barack Obama's presidency 'because he's the wrong color.' Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), who will retire at the end of the year, made his comments during a Senate Finance Committee hearing on transportation funding, saying he's confounded by the 'lack of will to keep ourselves from dropping into rivers and rolling over bridges that are no longer there.'" ...
... Jordan Fabian of Fusion: "Former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (D) said Tuesday that a 'big reason' why he left the Republican Party was because many in the GOP were hostile to President Obama due to his race. Crist, who is running for his old office against Gov. Rick Scott (R), said in an interview with Fusion's Jorge Ramos that he felt uncomfortable with his previous party affiliation. Republicans are perceived as 'anti-women, anti-immigrant, anti-minority, [and] anti-gay,' he said, and they refuse to compromise with Obama. The ex-governor said he feels, 'liberated as a Democrat.' ... [Crist] holds a double-digit lead in at least one poll over Scott, who suffers from poor approval ratings." With video.
Edward-Isaac Dovere of Politico: "Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday indicated he would comply with a House GOP subpoena to testify about Benghazi and other questions from the new select committee appointed by House Speaker John Boehner. But in his first comments on the topic since renewed attention to it began in the last week, Kerry batted away the inquiry into the September 2012 attack on the American consulate in Benghazi as a 'partisan' effort that won't bring forward anything that isn't already known."
Monica Lewinsky writes a (firewalled) piece for Vanity Fair, reflecting on her relationship with President Clinton, etc. The editors provide an overview here. ...
... The woman Lewinsky calls Moremean Dowdy is on the story. Natch. MoDo is fairly unkind to Lewinsky, but she sure jumped at the chance for yet another Return to ClintonWorld, a place she's never left behind. ...
... Ruth Marcus thinks Lewinsky did Hillary Clinton a favor by writing about the affair now, well before Clinton announces her candidacy for president & by disputing Rand Paul's criticism of Bill Clinton. ...
... The Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy. Josh Feldman of Mediaite: "With Hillary Clinton almost assuredly running for president in 2016, Monica Lewinsky's Vanity Fair piece ... set off a lot of people's conspiratorial alarm bells, with some suspicion anti-Clinton forces might have been behind it. But on The O’Reilly Factor tonight, Lynne Cheney suggested it might have actually been pushed by Clinton's team themselves.... She said, 'I really wonder if this isn't an effort on the Clintons' part to get that story out of the way. Would Vanity Fair publish anything of Monica Lewinsky that Hillary Clinton wouldn't want in Vanity Fair?'"
Jason Leopold of Al Jazeera: "Email exchanges between National Security Agency Director Gen. Keith Alexander and Google executives Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt suggest a far cozier working relationship between some tech firms and the U.S. government than was implied by Silicon Valley brass after last year's revelations about NSA spying."
So You Think You Want to Live in ... Russia. Neil MacFarquhar of the New York Times: "Russia has taken another major step toward restricting its once freewheeling Internet, as President Vladimir V. Putin quietly signed a new law requiring popular online voices to register with the government, a measure that lawyers, Internet pioneers and political activists said Tuesday would give the government a much wider ability to track who said what online. Mr. Putin's action on Monday, just weeks after he disparaged the Internet as 'a special C.I.A. project,' borrowed a page from the restrictive Internet playbooks of many governments around the world that have been steadily smothering online freedoms.... Besides registering, bloggers can no longer remain anonymous online, and organizations that provide platforms for their work such as search engines, social networks and other forums must maintain computer records on Russian soil of everything posted over the previous six months." ...
... ALSO, no dirty words.
Annals of American Journalism, Ctd.
The Liberal Media. Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post: "A majority of American journalists identify themselves as political independents although among those who choose a side Democrats outnumber Republicans four to one, according to a new study of the media conducted by two Indiana University professors."
This report drives wingnut paranoia. ...
... Steve M.: "Right-wingers don't go into journalism because they're propagandized to hate journalism. Don't blame liberals, or the 'liberal media,' for that."
Congressional Races
Margaret Hartmann of New York: "The Republican establishment scored a major win when North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis won the nomination for U.S. Senate with 46 percent of the vote. By avoiding a runoff election, he can focus on his campaign against vulnerable Democratic Senator Kay Hagan. House Speaker John Boehner easily beat his three primary opponents in Ohio, and tea party candidates were mostly unsuccessful in the two states' other House primaries." ...
... CW: Hey, let's see what kind of guy is an "establishment Republican":
... Greg Sargent: Tillis, an arch-conservative, has his vulnerabilities. Fer instance, in a 2011 video, being circulated today by Sen. Kay Hagan's campaign, "Tillis said we have to 'divide and conquer' those on public assistance, by getting those who really need it -- the sick -- to turn on and look down at those who 'choose to get into a condition that makes them dependent on the government.' Speaking of that latter category, Tillis added: 'At some point, you're on your own. We may end up taking care of those babies, but we're not going to take care of you.' ... Tillis not only opposed the Obamacare Medicaid expansion, which would have expanded coverage to 500,000 people he would represent; he also boasted in an ad that he was personally responsible for stopping that outcome 'cold.'" ...
... Ed Kilgore: "... what Tillis is talking about is pitting people with disabilities against those who can't find work or sufficient wages to live on -- getting the former, in fact, to look down on the latter. That's a new one, to me at least.... What a nasty, nasty piece of work. And this is the 'Republican Establishment' candidate for the Senate. Tells you a lot about them, eh?" ...
... Brian Beutler on the Tillis video: "Class warfare? Check. Racist dog whistle? Check. A belabored explication of the political utility of racist dog whistling? Check.... His statement is an implicit admission that the road to building majority support for a conservative policy agenda runs through the exploitation of white racial resentment":
... Kate Nocera of BuzzFeed: "Tillis, who has generally led in polling, has gotten enormous support from Karl Rove's group American Crossroads, the Chamber of Commerce, and Mitt Romney.... The notion that Tillis is just a part of the get-along establishment has baffled some in the state. When Tillis became speaker of the House, he passed sweeping conservative reforms to education, and blocked medication expansion in the state. He passed anti-abortion legislation and voting reforms that have enraged Democrats in the state, spurring large weekly protests known as 'Moral Mondays.'"
Eliana Dockterman of Time: "Former American Idol contestant Clay Aiken was ahead in the North Carolina Democratic congressional primary by a slim margin Wednesday morning. The former singer led his opponent, former state Commerce Secretary Keith Crisco, by only 372 votes with all precincts reporting, making the race too close to call according to the Associated Press."
Give Me My Shoes or Give Me. Death. Now this is going to sound outrageous, I'd rather see another terrorist attack, truly I would, than to give up my liberty as an American citizen.... And as a Constitutional conservative, it angers me that we are giving up our liberty to the bureaucratic TSA and spying on our own people in the name of false security and that has to stop. -- Bob Johnson (R), Georgia Congressional candidate (the primary is May 20)
Beyond the Beltway
Daniel Bice & Patrick Marley of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: "A federal judge ordered a halt Tuesday to the John Doe investigation into campaign spending and fundraising by Gov. Scott Walker's campaign and conservative groups, saying the effort appeared to violate one of the group's free speech rights. In his 26-page decision, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Randa in Milwaukee told prosecutors to immediately stop the long-running, five-county probe into possible illegal coordination between Walker's campaign, the Wisconsin Club for Growth and a host of others during the 2011 and 2012 recall elections.... The plaintiffs have been shut out of the political process merely by association with conservative politicians,' wrote Randa, who was appointed to the bench in 1992 by President George H.W. Bush. 'This cannot square with the First Amendment and what it was meant to protect.' ... Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, a Democrat," plans to appeal. Thanks to Nadd2 for the link.
News Ledes
Washington Post: "Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared to take steps Wednesday to pull Ukraine back from an escalating cycle of violence, asking pro-Russian separatists in the country to postpone a Sunday referendum on independence and indicating that he may be willing to recognize a national election later this month. The effort marked a significant shift in tone from the hard line that Putin and other top Russian officials have taken for months toward the acting government in Kiev...."
New York Times: "Islamist insurgents have killed hundreds in a town in Nigeria's northeast this week, the area's senator, a resident and the Nigerian news media reported on Wednesday, as more than 200 schoolgirls abducted by the militants, known as Boko Haram, remained missing."
Washington Post: "The man arrested Tuesday afternoon when he followed the Obama daughters' motorcade made a mistake and was simply confused about D.C. roads, the U.S. Secret Service confirmed Wednesday. An Internal Revenue Service computer worker, the man does not come to downtown Washington often and did not realize he was trailing a Secret Service motorcade."
New York Times: "A Thai court on Wednesday ordered Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra removed from office, a highly divisive move and a victory for the powerful antigovernment movement that has sought to overthrow the government in Bangkok for the last six months."
AP: "Access to the White House complex was halted for about an hour Tuesday after a vehicle followed a motorcade carrying President Barack Obama's daughters through the gates. Uniformed agents immediately stopped the vehicle after it trailed in behind the motorcade at about 4:40 p.m. EDT, the Secret Service said. The driver, identified as Mathew Evan Goldstein, 55, was arrested and charged with unlawful entry."
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Reader Comments (12)
The irony about climate change deniers (that would be, for one, my brother), is that THEY will suffer, and possibly die, along with the rest of us. Nobody will be spared!
Living in a high risk tsunami zone for the past ten years, I have decided if the "big one" hits, it is my dramatic farewell to the world. I do not, however, feel that way about global warming, since there are things each of us can do do postpone the worst effects. Except, of course, the Republicans, who can only piss, moan and deny! Mitch Mitchell and 'Lil Randy (as Rachel Maddow pointed out tonight) seem obsessed by the idea of low flush toilets--which makes me wonder how they developed "flushing toilet syndrome?" Must have been overly severe toilet training, or maybe a low flush just cannot handle their monstrous crap!
Having to suffer with low-flush toilets should be the least of concerns for these shitheads. They will freeze, drown, starve, or roast to death--just like the rest of us. Truth to tell, we are all living on the death row of their denial.
Let's see now. I need to mull this over.
Talk of climate change is "political." I gather from Mitch McConnell's remarks that means such talk is "bad." But voting to repeal the ACA fifty plus times or the next round of House committee hearings--the fourth?-- on Benghazi are not political at all. That must mean those empty repeal votes, the filibusters that block legislation and appointments, and the interminable Benghazi hearings are good.
There has to be a lesson in here somewhere, but to find it demands some thought.
Maybe I get it: talking about real problems with the intent of doing something about them is bad, but making stuff about something that never happened in order to fix nothing at all (beyond the next election) is good.
Ahhh...Enlightenment! I feel better now, and I needed it.
As one of those liberal elitists McConnell was complaining about I was downright despondent there for a while.
Re: "President Obama's Climate Action Plan". One only needs to
read the paragraph near the end of the plan, Phasing Out Subsidies,
calling for the phase out of fossil fuel subsidies which amount to
$500 billion annually. President Obama is calling for elimination
of fossil fuel tax subsidies in his Fiscal Year 2014 budget, to know
precisely who will be fighting this tooth and nail. Billionaires surely will be loathe to lose that extra pocket change of $500 billion.
Re: Are you going to drink that water or put it on your lawn? Out here in SoCal our problem is going to be (IS) water. Tradition demands a English style landscaping with most square footage given over to growing some type of Kentucky Blue grass. I know of homes that are very attractively landscaped with native plants that are drought tolerant. So there is no reason for the water sucking lawns that number in the millions in SoCal. But we as a species live for "No Reason" or as the general public states it; "I don't know and I don't want to."
I like the bumper sticker that says "Water is life" but I am beginning to like "Are you going to drink that grass?" Or maybe "You're fucking your grandchildren." That last one might be a little harsh.
I've been saying all along Mother Nature will correct herself and us puny humans will all pay the price. Seems like the bill is coming due sooner than I thought.
In a stunning decision that relies heavily in Citizens United and McCutcheon, a federal judge has stopped a John Doe investigation into the activities of groups alleged to have illegally coordinated during the recall campaigns of Scott Walker and others in Wisconsin.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/federal-judge-halts-john-doe-probe-into-walker-recall-b99264341z1-258209431.html?ipad=y
The republicans in this state really are above the law now.
Forrest,
The 'garchs are already working hard to ensure that nothing remotely resembling attention to environmental issues will cost them a penny.
The Koch Demons spend like drunken sailors to kill any alternative energy initiatives that might impact, however incrementally, their oil and gas empires. As usual, the Demons play the political game like humans are nothing more than dominoes to be knocked down if they get in the way of profits.
And considering the horrific history of Koch Industries' environmental disasters (hundreds of oil spills and leaks, a butane gas leak in Texas that killed two people when their truck exploded as they tried to drive through the cloud of Koch poison to call 911, leading to a 97 count indictment, and hundreds of millions in fines) they're not going to accept any kind of regulations that could impede their further ability to destroy the environment for their personal gain.
And that's just two assholes. Add to that the combined wealth and political pull of the entire oil and gas industries, the Republican party, the right-wing media machines, and the rest of the 'garchs...
Well, it don't look good. But we gotta start somewhere. As Bobby Kennedy once said about another issue hated by the right (civil rights), "If not now, when? If not us, who?"
It strikes me that this subpoena business related to Benghazi!! is a variation on the misdirect, confuse, confound plays Republicans have used in the past to cause the gears of governance to ground to a halt.
The right has lost a lot of battles over the years, essentially because of crack pot, discredited ideas and a warped, racist, misogynistic, unwelcoming, scorched earth ideology. But that has not stopped them from finding other ways to gum up the works and try, by any means necessary, legal or not, moral or not, ethical or not (almost always "not"), to ram their values (if you can call them that) down everyone's throat, even if those values have been roundly rejected at the voting booth.
The ACA battles were an example of that. Confuse, confound, and misdirect. Do anything to keep something from happening. Will of the people? Fuck that. Will of the wingnuts is all that matters. And it doesn't matter if they represent a tiny minority. They find ways to make sure their goals and desires are kept front and center. And one of their dearest desires it the evisceration of government. During the Clinton administration, they brought the country to a standstill because of a stained dress.
Why not try the same thing now? Every administration official sitting before them for hours answering questions like "Why do you hate America?" means less actual work gets done. I mean, just look at the Party's representatives in congress. They don't do shit. They scream a lot but they don't do a lick of work. And haven't for decades. But they have an enormous media wing of the party who will call them heroes not matter what.
Bread and circus brought to you by the Half baked wingnuts and Republican clowns.
Newsflash!
John (Cheeto Man) Boehner lets American people know that BENGHAZI!! hearings led by wingnut poster boy Trey (new hair gel or have you been getting electro shock therapy?) Gowdy, (R-Confederacy), will NOT be a circus sideshow. Not at all, Cheeto Man. They will be in right the center ring. Don't forget your top hat.
And what are the qualifications of Mr. Gowdy to lead a search for "truth", GOP style (meaning truth not required as long as we can substitute wishful thinking) in a circus sideshow that will not be a circus sideshow?
He's been in congress since 2010, works only a third of the year, or less, gets paid $174,000, and in all that time has only sponsored only one bill. One. As in less than two.
And that was? (Great legislators of the past, hold on to your hats...)
HR4138, which says that the president must obey the law.
No kidding. That's what it says. Really.
When I get to congress I'm gonna sponsor a bill that says "It must be lighter during the day than it is at night."
The senate is now considering using Mr. Gowdy's bill to catch overspray under the men's room urinals.
This is the kind of guy who passes as a heavyweight in the Modern GOP. I suppose he's better than Issa. At least he wasn't arrested numerous times (that we know about) for things like car theft and gun charges and investigated for arson in an insurance scam.
(But seriously. Can you imagine Sam Rayburn, John McCormack, Tip O'Neil, or Nancy Pelosi calling a press conference to assure the American people that an upcoming hearing was not just going to be about how many clowns the party could fit into a circus car and would be run by a guy whose only legislative claim to fame was that he sponsored a bill--which never actually passed--saying that laws must be obeyed? These people are a fucking disgrace.)
Today in history, for what it's worth.
On April 7th, in 1824, Beethoven's ninth symphony had its premiere in Vienna.
On this day in 1945, Germany signed terms of unconditional surrender ending the war in Europe.
April 7th, nine years on, the Battle of Dien Bien Phu ended when French forces were overrun.
21 years later, years after the US decided that what happened to the French was an aberration and jumped in with both feet, President Gerald Ford formally declared an end to the Vietnam era. Celebrations erupted in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon).
Nine years after that, on this day in 1984, a class action suit connected to the use of Agent Orange was settled out of court for $180 million. (By 1993, of the nearly 40,000 vets who filed Agent Orange related claims, only 486 had been compensated).
20 years later, on this day, in the midst of another war, this time one cooked up by an idiot and his crew of sociopaths, Army Pfc. Lynndie England was selected as one of the few fall guys connected to the outrages perpetrated at Abu Ghraib. One of the aformentioned
sociopaths, Donald Rumsfeld, found himself and his war criminal buddies not guilty of....well, of anything.
What does it all mean? Maybe nothing, but it sure seems like a looooong slide downhill.
Think I'll listen to some Beethoven tonight.
More history: Two months ago one of my high school classmates who had a distinguished military career died suddenly in his sleep. A highly decorated veteran of the Vietnam war, he will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. A military helicopter pilot for many years, in his retirement he traveled, ran marathons and continued to be sought out as an expert in the tactical use of helicopters.
Otherwise healthy in all respects, according to his surviving wife, the cause of his death? Agent Orange.
As for us all, history in the form of our fathers' sins continues to bite us in the ass.
The man's name was Jim. He will not be present for his 50th high school reunion.
As I've said before, Tom Leher's song "We'll All Go Together When We Go" seems appropriate. Although the song is about nuclear war, climate change will do, too. It just takes longer, but in the end, the results will be the same!
Mother Earth really doesn't give a fuck about humanity. It just rolls on, in spite of Rick Perry's plea to pray for rain. E
CW: is it possible to post the article by the woman who video taped her abortion procedure on the right hand side? That way I can easily find it for later reference when I have more bandwidth. And the doings of David Gregory and his shrink (or no) are depressing as far as what perfectly able people do with perfectly good opportunities. Thanks. Her pluck is worth repeated views!