The Commentariat -- Nov. 18, 2012
Okay, by popular request, I wrote a column on Dowd for today's New York Times eXaminer. And I wasn't very nice.
Contributor MAG is right. Chris Christie's Got Talent!:
Peter Baker & Jane Perlez of the New York Times: "Mr. Obama will make a historic visit to Myanmar to mark the emergence of the long-isolated country and encourage its migration from China's orbit toward a more democratic future with the West. He will also stop in Thailand, America's longtime ally in the region as well as a friend of China's. And he will fly to Cambodia for a summit meeting of a Southeast Asian organization as the United States tries to increase its influence in that part of the region. With the election over, the White House has softened its language, and presents the trip not as an explicit attempt to contain China but as the next stage of its so-called pivot to Asia, reorienting American foreign policy after a decade of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan toward the economic and political future of the Pacific. On the cusp of a second term, Mr. Obama sees such a shift as a mission for the next four years and a possible legacy." ...
... Peter Baker: "The president's Kenyan grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, spent part of World War II in what was then called Burma as a cook for a British Army captain. Although details are sometimes debated, the elder Mr. Obama's Asian experience proved formative just as his grandson's time growing up in Indonesia did decades later." ...
Jim Kuhnhenn of the AP has more on the President's itinerary.
Reuters: "The White House did not heavily alter talking points about the attacks on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya, an official said on Saturday [aboard Air Force One]. 'If there were adjustments made to them within the intelligence community, that's common, and that's something they would have done themselves,' Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser, told reporters. 'The only edit ... made by the White House was the factual edit as to how to refer to the facility.'" ...
Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs: "Yes, the right wing is still trying to turn the Benghazi attack into a cut-rate Watergate scandal, despite David Petraeus's testimony backing up everything the administration said." CW: quite a good post.
... Mark Landler of the New York Times: "In her sure-footed ascent of the foreign-policy ladder, [U.N. Ambassador Susan] Rice has rarely shrunk from a fight. But now that she appears poised to claim the top rung -- White House aides say she is President Obama's favored candidate for secretary of state -- this sharp-tongued, self-confident diplomat finds herself in the middle of a bitter feud in which she is largely a bystander." ...
... Maureen Dowd peppers her usual snark with some relevant context about the Susan Rice talkshow brouhaha. CW: BTW, I'm not buying Dowd's catfight supposition, & if I have time (time is my enemy), I'll write a NYTX piece on Dowd's column. ...
... President Obama & McKayla Maroney are not impressed. Backstory here. ...
... Kathleen Geier of Washington Monthly: "It's maddening that this country is more or less run by old, white, out of touch, sexist, racist men like McCain and Mitt Romney, whose accomplishments, intellectual and otherwise, are dubious, and who would reaped [sic.] enormous unearned benefits from the wealth and connections they were born into. And yet these same people, rather than being humble about their own modest abilities and respectful of others [like Susan Rice & President Obama] who have accomplished so much in the world despite facing far more formidable obstacles, have the unmitigated call to question their credentials." ...
... BUT Michael Hirsh of the National Journal: Rice has other problems that dwarf the Benghazi flap.
Michael Fletcher & Zachary Goldfarb of the Washington Post: "AARP's rejection of any significant changes to the nation's safety net could be a major factor as policymakers seek a deal to put the government's finances in order through raising taxes and cutting spending on federal programs, possibly including popular entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security."
So Yesterday. Ben Smith of BuzzFeed: "Romney is being erased with record speed from his party's books for three reasons. First, many Republicans backed him because they thought he had a good chance of winning; that appeal, obviously, is gone. Second, Romney had shallow roots, and few friends, in the national Republican Party. And those shallow roots have allowed Republicans to give him a new role: As a sort of bad partisan bank, freighted with all the generational positions and postures that they are looking to dump."
It Ain't Your Pappy's Confederacy No More. Karen Cox in a New York Times op-ed: "THE coalition that voted for Mr. Obama nationally -- single women, minorities and young people -- is the same coalition that voted for the president in Southern states. Latino voters, for example, voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Obama, and they also represent the fastest-growing population within the South. Future elections will be determined by this expanding diversity in the region, much to the chagrin of conservative whites.... The Democratic Party and liberals north and west of us should put a lid on their regional biases and encourage the change that is possible here."
** Trevor Potter, a former FEC commissioner & chairman, whom you know best as Stephen Colbert's SuperPAC lawyer, blames the moribund, deadlocked Federal Elections Commission for failing to rein in SuperPACs, not the Supremes' Citizens United decision. CW: I found this quite enlightening. I hope the President gets around to reading this Washington Post op-ed because he can do something about this.
Igor Volsky of Think Progress: "A little more than a week after Mitt Romney lost his bid for the presidency, [former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt], the prominent Republican tapped to head his transition is encouraging states to implement the Affordable Care Act, a law which Romney had pledged to eliminate on 'day one'" during the 2012 campaign." Leavitt, "who also served as Health and Human Services Secretary under President George W. Bush..., is heavily invested in the law's state-based exchanges." CW: That's okay, Mike. When there's money in it for you, forget loyalty to the loser.
Your Tax Dollars at Play. Rajiv Chandrasekaren & Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post: "The commanders who lead the nation's military services and those who oversee troops around the world enjoy an array of perquisites befitting a billionaire, including executive jets, palatial homes, drivers, security guards and aides to carry their bags, press their uniforms and track their schedules in 10-minute increments. Their food is prepared by gourmet chefs. If they want music with their dinner parties, their staff can summon a string quartet or a choir.... The amenities afforded to today's military leaders are more lavish than anyone else in government enjoys, save for the president." CW: this makes the proverbial $400 hammer look like a bargain.
Greg Miller & Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post: The FBI's probe of the Petraeus Affair reveals its nearly unfettered access to electronic communications. "Law enforcement demands for e-mail and other electronic communications from providers such as Google, Comcast and Yahoo are so routine that the companies employ teams of analysts to sort through thousands of requests a month. Very few are turned down."
Agence France Presse: "In March, a Florida radio talk show host named Todd Alan Clem but known as Bubba the Love Sponge said he was going to 'deep fat fry' a copy of the Koran as a stunt, the reports said. Gen. John Allen ... and CIA director David Petraeus, both asked Kelley, who lives in Tampa, to try to intervene and stop the radio host by contacting the city's mayor, Bob Buckhorn. 'I have Petraeus and Allen both emailing me about getting this dealt with,' Kelley wrote to the mayor, according to NBC News.... Kelley's emails were released by the mayor." CW Note: AFP is, of course, basing its assertion on Kelley's claim to the mayor, and Ambassador/Consul General Kelley has been known to exaggerate.
Congressional Races
Emma Fitzsimmons of the New York Times: "The former district director for [Rep. Gabrielle] Giffords [D-Az.], Ron Barber, had enough votes on Saturday to win the race for Arizona's Second Congressional District. Mr. Barber won a special election to fill Ms. Giffords's seat in June. But on Nov. 6, he barely eked out a victory over the Republican candidate, Martha McSally, a retired Air Force colonel, in an election for a full two-year term."
Right Wing World
No comment necessary.
News Ledes
President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton tour the Viharn of the Reclining Buddha with Chaokun Suthee Thammanuwat, the Dean of Buddhism of Wat Phra Chetuphon at the Wat Pho Royal Monastery in Bangkok, Thailand, Sunday. AP photo.Washington Post: "President Obama on Sunday defended his trip to Burma, insisting that the visit Monday is 'not an endorsement' of the nation's long-repressive leadership but rather an acknowledgment that the country is making progress toward reform."
President Obama on Israel's right to defend itself:
Space: "A veteran astronaut crew representing the United States, Russia and Japan is returning back to Earth aboard a Soyuz capsule today (Nov. 18) to wrap up a four-month mission to the International Space Station."
New York Times: "Israel pressed its assault on the Gaza Strip for a fifth straight day on Sunday, deploying warplanes and naval vessels to pummel the coastal enclave and striking at two media offices here as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned of a possible 'significant' expansion in the onslaught." ...
... Al Jazeera: "Israel is continuing its assault on the Gaza Strip for a fifth straight day, bombarding the Palestinian enclave from both the air and sea. Medical sources said at least three children and two women were killed on Sunday.... Meanwhile, fighters in Gaza fired rockets into Israel. Two of them, aimed at the commercial hub of Tel Aviv, were shot down by Israel's anti-missile system, police said." ...
... Washington Post Update: "Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip on Sunday killed at least 10 members of one family, including a mother and her four children, and struck two buildings used by journalists, inflicting the heaviest toll on civilians since fighting began Wednesday. Militants in Gaza continued to lob dozens of artillery rounds toward Israel, including two powerful long-range rockets that burst over Tel Aviv on Sunday after Israel's antimissile system intercepted them in mid-air." ...
... AP Update: "The U.S. and Britain on Sunday warned about the risks of Israel expanding its air assault on the Gaza Strip into a ground war, while vigorously defending the Jewish state's right to protect itself against rocket attacks. The remarks by President Barack Obama and Britain Foreign Secretary William Hague were part of a diplomatic balancing act by the West as it desperately seeks an end to the escalating violence without alienating its closest ally in the region."
AP: "Divers hired by the owner of an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico that caught fire recovered a body in the waters near the site Saturday evening, according to the U.S. Coast Guard and the rig's owner." ...
... AP: "The company that owns an oil platform that caught fire in the Gulf of Mexico has vowed to continue searching for a second missing worker after a body was recovered in the waters near the site."
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Reader Comments (23)
@Marie: Would love to fly to Florida, cook dinner and do the dishes so that you can have some time to do your Dowd column!
Lewis Carroll must have had the red head in mind when he wrote the poem the "Hunting of the Snark". However, Ms. Dowd behaves more like the Queen of Hearts character in "Alice in Wonderland," who shouts "off with their heads" ad nauseum. She can never give a compliment without adding a snippy, snarky retort.
I look forward to your NYTX piece.
PS. Calyban if you need help drying the dishes I can add my supple digits.
@Janet You beat me to it! So how about I dust and vacuum while you and Calyban Occupy the kitchen?
I *really* want to read that well-deserved takedown of The Dowdy One!
So Dowd's point is? Other than the clever "cooked Rice" and my Rice is better than yours business, I fail to understand her column unless she has put on her hunting gear, orange suit and is stalking her prey of pretty women in high places to shoot down. "The reason for Susan's talking points" has already been established, yet Dowd seems to delight in some inside Washington flim-flam in order to get out a column. I'm awaitin on Marie jest like the above three and if I could I'd join you readily–––but me wings at the moment are still wet, so flying is out of the question.
Another thought here. Isn't it grand that women ARE in those high profile positions? From what I have read Susan Rice has been doing a damn good job. Seems to me Maureen some years ago wrote a column about rich white guys running the country––seems to be she done forget bout dat.
I have this vision of we commenters as little birds helping Snow White clean her house and bake her pies as cheerful music plays. But who is that at the door? A sweet little old lady with tea bags dangling from her peaked hat selling apples?
I hope you find the time Marie. I have to admit that when you're not contributing to NYTX I can go for weeks without reading it. Someday, historians will judge David Brooks a little more favorably because of how he inspired Marie Burns and Charlie Pierce.
Though in the past I haven’t been a huge fan of AARP, primarily because the organization sells insurance, and their magazine articles often reflected this interest, I was nevertheless heartened by the Fletcher/Goldfarb Washington Post article. I do hope AARP digs in its heels, and opposes benefit manipulations in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. These programs are going to be even more vital in years to come as pensions and benefits are quickly becoming a thing of the past. The article Death by Twinkie, linked in yesterday’s Commentariat, states that the private equity firms that took over Hostess dumped the pensions and discontinued pension payments in order to feather their own nests. People are pointing fingers at the unions, yet good full-time employment with benefits is becoming scarcer and scarcer as corporations and hedge funds become greedier. Thursday’s On Point with Tom Ashbrook, painted a dismal future of workers stuck in part-time positions, and treated more or less like indentured servants, at the beck and call of their employers. One statistic mentioned in the show was that the previous ratio of 70% full-time/30% part-time employees generally found in companies has now flipped. http://onpoint.wbur.org/2012/11/15/part-time
So will current 40-60 year olds be able to afford to retire, and if they can’t do so, when will the jobs free up for the younger generations? Won’t the safety net be even more necessary then than ever? These aren’t mere numbers we’re talking about – they’re peoples’ lives.
Sunday morning for secularists with all that time on their hands. What to do? Oh, what to do?
How about an easy riposte to the latest Douthat, that belligerently churched yearner for simpler times whose reaction to the center left's recent victory was a mournful cry for a return to the more civilized, more moral past, a time before the barbarians coalesced into another Obama victory?
"Do I have this right, Mr. Douthat?
Elated Democrats mistakenly believe that their electoral victory places them at the right hand of God? Setting aside for the moment the odd logic of why you think the right hand of God is the place to which all those secular, skeptical Democrats would aspire, I wonder why you yearn for an America you surely never experienced, which in fact never existed in the way you think it did and why, even if that period of rising church attendance, marriages and births, of civic renewal and engagement (whatever that is) that social conservatives fondly remember were real, how it would be better able to deal with the world of 2012 than the coalition you deride.
I did experience those days. We had simple problems and simpler solutions. We were taught to hate Godless Commies. We feared the bomb. We built shelters in our backyard and learned to hide under school desks. We segregated the pre civil rights Negroes. Except to feel superior or fear an enemy, we seldom looked beyond our borders. We overthrew democratically elected governments in the Middle East and Central America and hardly noticed, but we did go to church on Sunday.
Are you seriously suggesting that simplistic mindset has any hope of dealing with the complexities of a global economy, a Mid-East that is flexing its muscles in unpredictable ways, or significant climate and environmental issues that span borders?
It's a nice dream, Ross, but that's all it is. A dream that's not even yours."
Re: What I'd like to see. A few days past there was a picture of the general and his mistress in flight. (not the mile high club, perverts) What caught my eye besides the sly glance the mistress was shooting at the general was the very nice cabinet work in the background. Very nice cabinet work on jets costs big money. Big money that you and I pay for. Today Marie linked a story on the military elite and their lavish life styles. Nothing like spending other people's money.
The Republicans are demanding cost cuts to save us from the cliff. Wouldn't it be nice to start with the military? Then on to Congress and all of their perks. Somehow or another we the people just accept the excesses of the country's management class. I guess it's just human nature to arrogantly express ones status with a show of material consumption and waste.
Think of the outcry if the step-children of the government; social services and public welfare, had the similar top down spending freedom that the military and Congress has.
Socialism is alive and overly healthy in this land of ours it's just not available for those that pay for it.
And Ken, may I suggest that "those good old days" that we muddled through with closed eyes and fervent hearts led to the furies of the 1960's and would not have been so rage filled had the false rhetoric of American unity been so glibly enforced in the years preceding it; that some of the 1960s anger and violence was a return of what America had repressed.
I had in those days a stern Lutheran minister who taught us children the ways of the Lord otherwise known as Catechism. When I would raise my hand to question––If god made us, who made god?––If all people come from Adam and Eve how could that have happened since there were just the two of them?––and so on, and he always dismissed my questions as not relevant or something of that sort––but the message he gave us about Catholics going to hell did it for me––my father was a lapsed Catholic and there was no way in hell HE was going there––and from that time on I paid no mind and was on the road to question and rejection.
re:"A phony hero for a phony war" by Lucian K. Truscott IV in today's NY Times--
This article says it all for me. Forget about the brazen hussy (or hussies). Petraeus was always a phony; it was inevitable that he would have that sort of downfall.
As someone interested in pop culture history, I happen to know that there's everything ancient about the ritual of employing the recent, popular past as a foil for what's hip and modern in the now (a.k.a., "in the noo," as the Scots say). It's soldered into our human nature. In the 1920s and 1930s, people were laughing at the "Gay 90s." Then the ultra-modern Twenties became a joke; then the rock culture of the late Sixties and early Seventies denounced the Fifties, forcing marketers to rebrand the pop culture of that period as something classic and seminal ("Roots of...."). It's a pop continuum, this notion that we're some vast improvement over the under-evolved goons of the recent past. It's kind of a variation on, "Our parents had sex?" or "Victorians had their own pop entertainment?"
How long before our age of PCs, foul-mouthed humor, thumpa-dump pop music, and data-based reality becomes the laughing stock of future folk who view us precisely as we view, say, the Eisenhower Era? (My prediction: fifteen years.) There's nothing to stop people to come from rewriting the history of our era so that all the progressive happenings of today are retroactively reassigned to, say, the 2020s. After all, school desegregation and the entry of rock and roll into the American pop charts were both Eisenhower-era events, but they're associated with the next decade. There's no reason to think pop history will be any nicer, or more honest, in dealing with us.
Scary thought, isn't it? The near future treating our present like we treat the recent past. Brrrr!
"Too much issimoing and not enough generaling," someone once wrote (Russell Baker, maybe?) of some peacock generalissimo of the past.
Never thought I'd say this, but "Chris Christie can be goood..." i.e., on SNL. Great bit with Seth Meyers! Verry, verry funny!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/18/chris-christie-drops-by-snl-weekend-update_n_2152906.html
@Ken Winkes--I get the point about all those secular Democrats, but what about all those Latinos (Catholic or evangelical) and blacks (church buses to the polls) who vote Democratic? We have been congratulating ourselves on our diversity, so we really should not diss them.
@PDPepe--Not all Christians were raised in dogmatic or fundamentalistic churches. I was raised in the Social Gospel teaching of upstate New York, centering in Rochester, where some Christians were trying to take back the Burnt Over District reputation the area had earned. Unfortunately, we did nothing to halt the rise of Mormonism, the most successful of the cults rising in the area. Not only was hellfire never mentioned, but neither was male dominion over female, white over black, or Anglo over Italian/Polish, for example. One of the pioneers of the Social Gospel was the father of the poet Adelaide Crapsey, Algernon Crapsey, whose book, The Last of the Heretics (1924) narrates his inevitable progress from popular Episcopal priest to heretic (found guilty at an actual trial). Other pioneers were Washington Gladden of First Congregational Church in Columbus, Ohio, who was brought up in the Burnt Over District, and Walter Rauschenbusch. Thus, while I do not agree with Douthat and other golden agers, I did not have quite the same experience in church that many of you write about. Far from it. And I am not thrilled with today's "growing" churches such as Vineyard, which, although they embrace the social gospel, also preach Bible literalism. But they are a step up from Billy Graham and his ilk.
@Doug Connah: Close. From a 1994 Russell Baker column: "Senator Tom Connally of Texas blamed Chiang Kai-shek. The trouble with the Generalissimo, he said, was too much issimo-ing and not enough generaling.'"
Marie
Good column on MoDo, Marie. It's why I quit reading her--sloppy, lazy writing.
I haven't time to construct and deliver proper ripostes and kudos for this weekend's RC commentary except to note that it feels as if I had wandered into an aggregation of smart, literate, funny, iconoclastic ex-pats in Les Deux Magots or Harry's New York Bar with our beloved Marie as a combination of ringmisstress Gertrude and muse Zelda.
Had I the wherewithal, I would surely spring for a colloquy of our band of brothers and sisters beginning at McSorley's in NYC, migrating to Harry's and ending at the People's Republic in Cambridge, MA.
@alphonsegaston: Apologies. Ran into the NYTimes word limit. Hope you understand that by not mentioning the churchgoers you bring up I did not intend to diss them by missing them. I had one particular sanctimonious pundit in mind, Mr. Douthat himself, who in his arrogant narrow-mindedness fails to understand both the essence of Christianity and the place of religion in our democracy.
@Akhillius: Sound like a plan but when you arrange the proposed party, hope you'll consider a satellite get-together for those of us who live on the Left Coast. We'd hate to miss the fun.
@Marie: Thank you for a clearly reasoned and (as always) beautifully written column! I only wish the Queen would read it!
On second thought, maybe the U.S. should encourage mass Israeli settlements throughout Palestine, up into Lebanon and even into Syria.
Then we'll really cut off Iran's route to the sea.
Great takedown of The Dowd, Marie. When she began her column, I thought I was just missing Anna Quindlen, but by now I know better. She is a snarky princess.
Ever since I first heard her mousey, submissive voice on NPR, I knew Dowd was trouble.
This is just a thank you for your wonderful website. I discovered you from reading comments to NYT articles - and have followed you ever since. As a news junkie, now retired, you are my first "go-to" site every morning. I love the wealth of information and the intelligent commenters. This is my first post to any online entity - but I wanted to express my appreciation for your efforts. I suspect there are countless others in my situation.