The Commentariat -- May 9

See the post below for the full Steve Kroft "60 Minutes" interview of President Obama.

Paul Krugman: "... what I’ve been hearing with growing frequency from members of the policy elite — self-appointed wise men, officials, and pundits in good standing — is the claim that ... mass long-term unemployment ... is mostly the public’s fault. The idea is that we got into this mess because voters wanted something for nothing, and weak-minded politicians catered to the electorate’s foolishness. So this seems like a good time to point out that this blame-the-public view isn’t just self-serving, it’s dead wrong." This is Krugman's most explicit anti-Brooks column. ...

... I've posted comments pages on Off Times Square for Krugman & Ross Douthat. I've also posted my comments on each.

A friend sends me a link to this news item under the title "Salamander Declares Presidential Intentions." So you know what it's about. Kendra Marr of Politico: "The long wait for Newt Gingrich to say what everyone already knew is almost over."

Joann Lublin of the Wall Street Journal: "The median value of salaries, bonuses and long-term incentive awards for CEOs of 350 major [U.S.] companies surged 11% to $9.3 million, according to a study of proxy statements conducted for The Wall Street Journal by management consultancy Hay Group." ...

... What Lublin doesn't mention, but Marie Diamond of Think Progress does, is that "most American families continue to struggle with high unemployment and stagnant wages." CW: what could possibly be wrong with that?

Martin Crutsinger of the AP: "Five years and one financial crisis since the United States and China commenced regular high-level economic talks, fast-growing Beijing might have the upper hand this week in the latest round of discussions between the world's two biggest economies."

** "The Rules of Engagement." Raffi Khatchadouria of the New Yorker has the best answer I've seen anywhere to the question, "Was the killing of Osama bin Laden legal?" This should eliminate some of the hand-wringing by Noam Chomsky (here), et al. It won't. And it does pose a larger issue, as Khatchadouria acknowledges:

To be uncomfortable with such operations is, in a sense, to be uncomfortable with war itself. And to accept that the bin Laden raid was legal, is, in effect, to acknowledge publically that what we are actually conducting in Pakistan is a kind of war. In his death, bin Laden has forced this admission from us.

Jane Mayer has a pretty entertaining story in the New Yorker about "Junior, the clandestine life of America's top Al Qaeda source." She gives you a good look at what life in "an undisclosed location" is like -- for the agents who have to deal with these characters. Mayer's story sort of mirrors some of the film comedies about mobster informants.

David Remnick of the New Yorker has a fine commentary on President Obama's speech announcing the death of Osama bin Laden. CW: Here's one aside that struck me: "To some, it has seemed that Obama’s determination to avoid the vulgar and the cheap is a form of superiority, a bearing designed to make everyone else seem vulgar and cheap." A President gets criticism for almost everything, but this is the first time I've heard of a complaint that he's too serious. Is Donald Trump now going to blame Obama for making him (Trump) seem vulgar & cheap???

Eli Saslow of the Washington Post: "Ever since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, thousands of government employees ... have reshaped their careers and restructured their lives around the search for one man — a quest they sometimes referred to simply as 'the hunt.'” Saslow focuses on one former CIA counterterrorism officer, Michael Hurley.

Liz Sly of the Washington Post: "In his almost 11 years in office, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has brought about some remarkable changes to a country formerly run by his notoriously ruthless father, fueling perceptions that he is at heart a reformer, albeit one who has been held back by hard-liners intent on preserving the status quo.... Yet in all those years, the younger Assad has implemented not one measure that would relax the ruling Baath Party’s 48-year-long hold on power, lift the draconian laws that enable the security forces to operate with impunity or ease restrictions on free speech."

A Congressional Race Worth Watching. Raymond Herdandez of the New York Times: New York's 26th Congressional District, quickly vacated by Republican Chris "Craigslist" Lee, was assumed to be a shoo-in for popular Republican candidate Jane Corwin. But Corwin has been standing behind the Ryan/Republican gut-Medicare plan, and her Democratic opponent Kathy Hochul has been hitting her hard with it. It's not a shoo-in any more, as evidenced by Speaker Boehner's plans to campaign for Corwin today.

Andrew Kimbrell, writing in AlterNet, lists five right-wing lies President Obama doesn't bother to debunk, so they live on. Here are a couple: (1) government is the problem; (2) global warming is vastly exaggerated/doesn't exist. ...

... E. J. Dionne makes a similar point about "government is the problem," but he blames the media for skewing the narrative & dropping the ball: "Far too little attention has been paid to the success of the government’s rescue of the Detroit-based auto companies, and almost no attention has been paid to how completely and utterly wrong bailout opponents were when they insisted it was doomed to failure."

Right Wing World *

Watch Jim Bullshit, Kids. Jed Lewison of the Daily Kos. Republican Tea Party Sen. Jim DeMint (SC) loved the individual mandate when it was a Republican idea and said "we should do it for the whole country." Now he's claiming he had no idea Romneycare included an individual mandate; Lewison shows DeMint's labored attempt at an about-face is "bullshit." With video.

Jon Chait of The New Republic: GOP presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty has the Courage to Stand up and admit he made "a mistake" about taking a position in favor of cap-and-trade that is unpopular with today's righty-right Republican voters. "It would be interesting to see some reporters try to put pressure on Pawlenty's apology. What exactly did he get wrong? Does he believe that energy producers should be allowed to dump carbon into the atmosphere at no cost whatsoever in perpetuity? That line of inquiry could be illuminating, and probably fun."

* Where facts never intrude.

Local News

AP: "Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker and GOP leaders have launched a push to ram several years’ worth of conservative agenda items through the Legislature this spring before recall elections threaten to end the party’s control of state government."

"Florida Loses Its Mind. Again." Michael Grunwald of Time: "... the geniuses who run the state have decided that its economic distress is the result of overly strict growth management. So they’re wiping out three decades of growth management laws and making it even easier for developers to build.... It’s hard to imagine how any sentient being who’s visited Homestead or Cape Coral or any of Florida’s other boarded-up foreclosurevilles and seen all the vacant homes with unmowed lawns and mosquito-infested pools could conclude that the housing boom was insufficiently robust."

News Ledes

New York Times: "House Speaker John A. Boehner said on Monday that Republicans would insist on trillions of dollars in federal spending cuts in exchange for their support of an increase in the federal debt limit sought by the Obama administration to prevent a government default later this year."

AP: "Crew members and passengers wrestled a 28-year-old man to the cabin floor after he began pounding on the cockpit as an American Airlines flight approached San Francisco, the third security incident in a day on U.S. planes, authorities said Monday."

New York Times: "In an address to Parliament, Prime Minister Yousaf Gilani on Monday defended Pakistan’s spy agency and indirectly criticized the United States for Osama Bin Laden’s presence in Pakistan."

Politico: "The Obama administration will look at tightening security on trains if intelligence collected from Osama bin Laden’s compound about a rail plot is substantiated, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said Monday, as he also outlined plans to redirect $2 billion in rejected high-speed rail money from Florida to 15 other states."

New York Times: "A military crackdown on Syria’s seven-week uprising escalated Sunday, with reinforcements sent to two cities, more forces deployed in a southern town and nearly all communications severed to besieged locales, activists and human rights groups said. Fourteen people were killed in the city of Homs, they said, and hundreds were arrested."

Al Jazeera: "Pakistan's prime minister is set to brief parliament on the US operation that killed Osama bin Laden, his first public statement since the attack.... Yusuf Raza Gilani is expected to 'take the nation into confidence' in parliament on Monday, an official told the AFP news agency, amid deepening suspicion in the US that Pakistani officials may have had ties with the al-Qaeda leader." ...

... AP: "Pakistani media have reported what they say is the name of the CIA station chief in Islamabad — the second such potential outing of a sensitive covert operative in six months.... The Associated Press has learned that the name being reported is incorrect. Still, the publication of any alleged identity of the U.S. spy agency's top official in this country could be pushback from Pakistan's powerful military and intelligence establishment, which was humiliated over the surprise raid on its soil."