The Commentariat -- Nov. 25, 2012
My column for the New York Times eXaminer is elegantly titled "Pat Some Butts, Barry -- Maureen Dowd." Clearly, this is My Week of Going Classy.
Scott Shane of the New York Times: "Facing the possibility that President Obama might not win a second term, his administration accelerated work in the weeks before the election to develop explicit rules for the targeted killing of terrorists by unmanned drones, so that a new president would inherit clear standards and procedures.... The Defense Department and the C.I.A. continue to press for greater latitude to carry out strikes; Justice Department and State Department officials, and the president's counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan, have argued for restraint, officials involved in the discussions say. More broadly, the administration's legal reasoning has not persuaded many other countries that the strikes are acceptable under international law."
The Supreme Court on Monday ordered the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals to examine the constitutionality of the health reform law's employer requirements and mandatory coverage of contraceptives without a co-pay.
The move could open the door for President Barack Obama's health law to be back in front of the Supreme Court late next year.
Peter Whoriskey of the Washington Post: "Arguably the most prestigious medical journal in the world, the New England Journal of Medicine regularly features articles over which pharmaceutical companies and their employees can exert significant influence.... Over the past decade corporate interference has repeatedly muddled the nation's drug science, sometimes with potentially lethal consequences."
Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "The Senate -- the legislative body that was designed as the saucer to cool the House's tempestuous teacup -- has become a deep freeze, where even once-routine matters have become hopelessly stuck and a supermajority is needed to pass almost anything.... Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, says he will move on the first day of the 113th Congress to diminish the power of Republicans to obstruct legislation." ...
... Jonathan Bernstein in Salon: it will be difficult & complicated to fix the filibuster, but one part that should be relatively easy: confirmation of executive branch nominees. Both parties more or less agree that a President should get staff s/he wants. CW: another idea: the President is required under the Constitution to obtain the advice & consent of the Senate for a number of positions, including ambassadors, Cabinet members & Supreme Court justices. But there is no reason the Senate should be vetting lower-level appointees except perhaps judges to lower courts because they're lifetime appointments (which is a mistake, too) & a few security-related positions like NSA, CIA & FBI directors.
Steve Rattner, in a New York Times op-ed, proposes several sensible ways to raise taxes on the wealthy. He appears to be advocating for pretty much doing them all.
Adam Davidson of the New York Times: "The secret behind this skills gap [which both Obama & Romney complained about during the presidential campaign] is that it's not a skills gap at all." Manufacturers are just not willing to pay for the skills they require. CW: I don't usually link to Davidson's posts because he so often screws up the economics. ...
... But economist Dean Baker backs up Davidson on this one: "News stories have been filled with reports of managers of manufacturing companies insisting that they have jobs open that they can't fill because there are no qualified workers.... The real problem is that the managers don't seem to be interested in paying for the high level of skills that they claim they need."
Zaid Jilani writing for Bold Progressives: "Many progressives have been celebrating [Sen. Saxby] Chambliss's [R-Ga.] rebuke of [Grover "No-New-Taxes"] Norquist.... [But] the senator is not breaking from Norquist because he wants to raise taxes on the wealthy or big corporations.... Chambliss is willing to deal with closing small loopholes in the tax code in order to get to the wider goals of the Bowles-Simpson plan: cutting Social Security benefits by raising the retirement age, cutting Medicare benefits by capping overall spending, and dramatically lowering corporate tax rates." ...
... How Government Works. Digby: "Chambliss said nothing he hasn't said before. They set all this up so that we would have a number of arbitrary deadlines coming to a head at the same time. It's how we govern these days --- a bipartisan plutocratic centrist and conservative coalition comes together to do the bidding of the moneyed interests and betray their own constituents under a phony sense of crisis in a lame duck session. The details vary only slightly depending on who allegedly 'won' the recent election, but basically, this stuff is all baked in the cake long before any of us have a chance to vote." CW: There's a reason you can find the word SCAM in Saxby ChAMbliss." Let's just abbreviate to "SCAMbliss." ...
... CW: well, at least SCAMbliss has Grover's fat-boy (sorry) shorts in a knot:
Senator Chambliss promised the people of Georgia he would go to Washington and reform government rather than raise taxes to pay for bigger government. He made that commitment in writing to the people of Georgia. If he plans to vote for higher taxes to pay for Obama-sized government he should address the people of Georgia and let them know that he plans to break his promise to them. The Senator's reference to me is odd. His promise is to the people of Georgia. -- Grover Norquist
David Patterson, in a New York Times op-ed, on the confusing November 6 Puerto Rican ballot issue that appears to demonstrate that Puerto Ricans favor statehood, though because of the way the questions were presented, is not definitive. "The people ... deserve another, clearer, definitive ballot -- and soon."
Rick Pearson & John Byrne of the Chicago Tribune: "Cook County Democratic leaders plan to recommend a replacement for former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. in an effort to winnow a growing field of hopefuls looking to take over the congressional district stretching from the South Side to Kankakee. Gov. Pat Quinn was expected to decide by Monday on the early 2013 dates for the special primary and general elections, but already a swarm of has-been and wannabe political players are considering the rare opportunity to run in the suddenly open, solidly Democratic, black-majority 2nd Congressional District."
Lauren Neergaard of the AP: The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the nation's largest group of obstetricians and gynecologists, says birth control pills should be sold over the counter, like condoms."
"The Blue-Footed Booby." George Colt, in a New York Times op-ed: sibling rivalry, especially at the dinner table, is a Freudian thing.
CW: Just so I can foster my Petraeus Affair fix (see yesterday's Commentariat), Seth Meyers assesses the winners & losers in said five-way (the sketch news analysis is at least a week old, but that doesn't make it less funny):
Local News -- Right Wing World Edition
Laura Gottesdeiner in AlterNet: "In Kentucky, a homeland security law requires the state's citizens to acknowledge the security provided by the Almighty God -- or risk 12 months in prison. The law and its sponsor, state representative Tom Riner, have been the subject of controversy since the law first surfaced in 2006, yet the Kentucky state Supreme Court has refused to review its constitutionality, despite clearly violating the First Amendment's separation of church and state."
News Ledes
New York Times: "Syrian rebels seized a military airport and an air defense base about 10 miles east of Damascus on Sunday morning and drove off with a tank and other weapons, according to opposition activists and video posted online, demonstrating their ability to advance in areas around the capital despite facing withering aerial attacks."
ABC News: "A man suspected of shoplifting two DVD players from a Lithonia, Ga., Walmart today died after an altercation with two store employees and a contract security guard, prompting a police investigation."
Reuters: "Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi faced a rebellion from judges who accused him on Saturday of expanding his powers at their expense, deepening a crisis that has triggered violence in the street and exposed the country's deep divisions. The Judges' Club, a body representing judges across Egypt, called for a strike during a meeting interrupted with chants demanding the 'downfall of the regime' - the rallying cry in the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak last year." ...
... Al Jazeera: "Share prices on Egypt's stock exchange have plunged almost 9.5 per cent, days after President Mohamed Morsi assumed sweeping powers that sparked clashes and polarised the country's politics."
New York Times: "More than 100 people died Saturday and Sunday in a fire at a garment factory outside Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital, in one of the worst industrial tragedies in that country."
AP: "Lawrence Guyot, a civil rights leader who survived jailhouse beatings in the Deep South in the 1960s and went on to encourage generations to get involved, has died. He was 73."
Al Jazeera: "China has successfully landed a fighter jet on its first aircraft carrier, which entered service two months ago, the country's official news agency confirmed."
Guardian: "Police in Bangkok have fired teargas at thousands of anti-government protestors calling for the overthrow of the Thai government. At least 9,000 people attended the rally, organised by activists who believe the current prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, is the puppet of her brother, the deposed former PM Thaksin Shinawatra."
Reuters: The Rolling Stones take to the stage later on Sunday after a five-year hiatus to celebrate the golden jubilee of one of the most successful and enduring bands in rock and roll history. Now in their mid-60s to early 70s, lead singer Mick Jagger, guitarists Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood and drummer Charlie Watts will perform five concerts - two at the O2 Arena in London on November 25 and 29 and three in the United States next month."
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Reader Comments (17)
Please comment on the insulting Maureen Dowd's Sunday editorial. I can not perceive why she writes and the NYTimes allows her insulting editorials about our pragmatic President. I might understand if there was a political dissagreement but she goes after his personality. Does she have a degree in character assassination?
Michael Moore has a terrific letter to the President in the Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-moore/obama-second-term_b_2158845.html
Comments on Dowd were cut off at 41 by the time I read them around 4.a.m. Nearly all were written in utter disgust, some lol funny for her idiotic thoughtlessness. Unless my computer went a bonkers, they did not allow comments on her last column. I wonder if they weren't deleted.
Maggy
Maggy
Here's my comment (unpublished) on the Dowd column:
snark, snark, snark, snark,
snark, snark, snark, snark,
snark, snark, snark, snark, snark, snark, snark, snark.
etc. etc.
In re Dowd's column. Same old same old. I am mightily sick of the pundits, Dowd included, that insist Obama must schmooze as a way to achieve votes. How about you just vote the constituents' interests instead of your own ego and lining your pockets? Can you imagine the exterminator bills for a house that big?
Since 2008, the President and the 1st Lady have emphasized that the WH house is the "People's House" not the Congresscritters' bar and schmooze lounge. Even though Congress is overrun with lounge lizards.
As I recall there has been some flack around what "kind" of people, that have been invited to the WH are acceptable. I have no idea what the answer is, but I wonder how many events there have been when regular people have attended. From my seat, the President has been much more engaged with my issues than the self serving Congresscritters. As it should be. Take a lesson asswipes.
I for one will never forgive Scambliss for the dirty underhanded way he got his seat running against Max Cleland
@ Barbarossa. Me neither. The other day I linked to a column (without comment) about Chambliss's disgusting campaign. Even fellow Republican John McCain said, "Putting pictures of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden next to the picture of a man who left three limbs on the battlefield — it’s worse than disgraceful. It’s reprehensible." As late as 2008, Chambliss was still defending the ad, calling it "lightweight" and "very fair." Chambliss makes even Mitt Romney look like a Boy Scout. It isn't just his ads that are reprehensible. He is.
Marie
On yesterday's comments alphonsegastion wrote this:
"Just a word about religion and education. A bit ago, Marie corrected the assumption that Marco Rubio's Catholicism explained his anti-science attitude. There seems to be some agreement here that children cannot get rigorous educations if they are brought up in dogmatic faiths. This contradicts the excellent students (all male, alas) who came to my university courses from the Cathedral Latin Catholic schools in the large Ohio cities. These young men saw no problems believing every word in their catechisms, yet doing very well in their science and math courses."
If I recall correctly Marie said that Rubio was educated in the same school system that she had been and knew better––was just blowing smoke, I think was her term. When you say there seems to be an agreement here––meaning I assume on this site––that one cannot get a rigorous education from religious institutions I'm wondering how you came to that conclusion. I would agree with you that one could get an excellent education from any number of these schools, but I would think that if these students, as you say, believed every word in their catechisms it would either encourage a whole lot of questioning or a conflict in grasping certain scientific and historical facts. What do you think?
@alphonsegaston, from late yesterday.
On dogmatism, faith, education and science. It's another "it depends" set of cases, of course. Some religious beliefs fly so directly into reality's face that the only reasonable response is the kind that Charles Pierce is so good at: scorn on steroids. See his IDIOT AMERICA for a stable of hilarious examples. Others allow reality more room and don't smother it with fantasy. The Catholic Jesuitical tradition is one of them, allowing, even encouraging the disciplined exploration of the physical world and rewarding those who do it well. That's why the Catholic Church, for one, uneasy with some of evolution's implications as it is, has still tentatively embraced it. Of course, more fundamentalist, literalist dogmas don't, which is where we get the absurdities depicted in INHERIT THE WIND, a Creation Theme Park, where one can view the fractured reality of dinosaurs with saddles, and an Eden in Missouri.
My own sense is that when we look at the panoply of responses to science, to taking our world as it is and trying to understand it on its own terms, we're best served by looking inside, not outside, at the psychology of the perceiver rather than at the arguments that get batted back and forth, accepted by some, discounted by others, not because the evidence on the other side is underwhelming but because it doesn't comply with their beliefs. And for many, often Republicans, as their psychology demands it is the belief that counts.
@P.D. Pepe: the modern RC Church, & indeed, often the ancient RC Church as well (see, e.g., Augustine of Hippo, Irish monks) does not exist in opposition to science. Even the Catechism, which you mention, says,
"Methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of the faith derive from the same God. The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are."
Sensible Christians & Jews of all sects get that the Bible stories are sort of illustrative mythology. Stephen Hawking belongs to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, for God's sake.
Marie
To change the subject: the NYT's, the Newark Star Ledger and all sorts of newspapers are bringing up lots of op-ed and letters about global warming. Serious concerns and serious consequences. Still, not one politician has said a word. In other words, the people responsible for the future ignore it. There is serious prediction that much of NYC and just about everything else that touches the ocean will disappear in perhaps 50 years. Not a word. There is serious concern that much of the world will be unable to produce enough food to sustain the population. Not a word. Then there is the worst nightmare, that the increase in population will make any changes that are in process impossible to stop. Not a sound.
So lets focus on more coal, oil and more people and the hell with the future of the children that were born yesterday and today.
And if there is a god, I suspect he is seriously disappointed at the mistakes he made in creating the human race.
@Marvin Schwalb. See Noah, Flood.
Marie
Not to speak for alphonsegaston (though I knew her quite well), I'm almost sure she was addressing the very popular, Dawkinseque notion that the human brain somehow can't simultaneously house untrue and true information (read: scientific fact and religious myth) without conflict, eventual shutdown, conversion to tea-party behavior, etc. She gave a great example to the contrary.
I personally think of myth as preceding objective knowledge, i.e. as part of a continuum. If, as the ancients did, we mythologize creation as something fixed (stationary stars, a single sun, a host of gods in their various, permanent stations), then there's no need to ask questions or to presume we even have the right to. If we mythologize creation as something subject to change (eternal, magnificent, mysterious, etc., and with everyone a part of that amazing whole), then a scientific approach becomes not only permissible but sort of mandatory. Reality becomes democratic and participatory, rather than a locked, hierarchical, Republican-style thing.
The recent film, "Chasing Ice," directly addresses the catastrophe of global warming which is happening right now. I recommend seeing it. The visuals are stunning. I hope it will not be ignored.
Religion was the poor man's club. Poor men got together and worshipped a God. While they were together they helped each other. Worshippers that helped each other survived and prospered. Heathens, that did not have a meeting place perished because they faced all the primative dangers alone.
Surviving religious people populated the earth and prospered They call this process evolution. The faith of the evolved makes anti intellectual positions safe from reason.
There's something about Maureen Dowd's columns (particularly today's) that reminds me of something that one high school English teacher used to have us do. Write short stories using five disparate elements such as: seriously ill grandmother + broken attic window + overcooked rice + strip club raid and a stranded harbor seal. In 700-words or less, come up with a common thread to weave it into a coherent tale! Right. Make it touching, funny, serious or philosophical.
So, Ms. Dowd combines a rising sports star + a movie he can't remember + whiny Congressperson + a hodgepodge of football trivia + 50 eggs — all to put down the President she snidely continues to refer to as 'Barry.'
As Marie's excellent column over on the NYTimes eXaminer points this out so well with: "Dowd’s column is nonsense, just one more of her running effort to cut every president down to size. "
As one commenter, Jonathan E. Lewis, on the NYTimes site said: "What does this column even mean?"
Agree. And my English teacher would probably have asked Ms. Dowd to stay after class for a talk.
"The faith of the evolved makes anti intellectual positions safe from reason."
Faith vs. reason is, to say the least, a a flawed dichotomy for predicting human behavior. For instance, per the currently fashionable belief in the debilitating effect of faith "on" reason, my evangelical Republican friend who picks up artifacts from river beds and instantly i.d.'s type and age (fossil, arrowhead, etc.) should logically be unable to do so, because the science-proven age of the Earth should not compute in his brain. Yet it does, and spectacularly so. Of course, I'm making alphonsegaston's point all over again.
This rational (but nearsighted) liberal Democrat, on the other hand, can't tell a rock from a fossil from an arrowhead.
In our current pop culture, we insist on using the cliche (I hate "meme") of faith vs. rationality as our basis for judging--and, hence, predicting--the behavior of fellow humans, but does it work adequately? I don't think so.