The Commentariat -- October 9, 2014
Internal links removed.
Paul Krugman in Rolling Stone: "Obama has emerged as one of the most consequential and, yes, successful presidents in American history." ...
... Contributor P. D. Pepe links Margaret Warner's interview of Aaron Miller, who argues that we should stop expecting another "great" president & be satisfied with a "good" one. CW: It is hardly surprising that all three "great" presidents Miller identifies -- Washington, Lincoln & FDR -- faced, in one capacity or other, transformational wars. One thing Miller didn't address in the interview, but perhaps does in his book on the subject, is that all three "great" presidents were subject to withering criticism during their presidencies. (Here's a summary, via the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, of press attacks on President Washington.) BTW, if you think the wars these presidents directed went swimmingly, get a history book.
Danny Volz of the National Journal: "A federal appeals court this week will review whether the government can secretly conduct electronic surveillance on Americans without first obtaining a warrant. The case, to be brought before a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit on Wednesday, could have sweeping digital-privacy implications.... At issue is whether the FBI can use so-called national security letters, or NSLs, to compel companies to hand over communications data or financial records of certain users for the purposes of a national security investigation.... Last year..., U.S. District Judge Susan Illston ... ruled that the FBI's use of NSLs represented an unconstitutional breach of the First Amendment.... But Illston allowed the government 90 days to appeal, and because of 'significant constitutional and national security issues at stake,' enforcement of her ruling was stayed. Illston's opinion ... came months before ... Edward Snowden leaked a trove of top-secret documents...."
Say What? Sahil Kapur of TPM: "Justice Anthony Kennedy issued an order to halt same-sex marriage in Idaho -- and apparently also Nevada -- on Wednesday after the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the states' bans one day earlier. Kennedy, who has jurisdiction over emergency appeals to rulings at the 9th Circuit, ordered that the lawyers for the same-sex couples suing to ax the ban respond to Idaho's appeal by Thursday, Oct. 9 by 5 p.m. Although Idaho asked for the injunction, Kennedy's order also halts the 9th Circuit ruling against Nevada's gay marriage ban -- the two cases were consolidated.... Kennedy's move on Wednesday doesn't necessarily mean the Court has had ... decided to review the issue. It's possible he's merely letting the process play out by giving Idaho a chance to appeal to the Supreme Court, and the gay couples a chance to respond, before the justices decide whether to take the case."
Julie Bosman of the New York Times: "Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Wednesday called for a wide-ranging review of police tactics and training, speaking to dozens of mayors and police chiefs who had gathered [in Little Rock, Arkansas,] to discuss race relations and policing in the United States in the wake of protests in Ferguson, Mo. 'The Justice Department is working with major police associations to conduct a broad review of policing tactics, techniques and training,' Mr. Holder said. The review is intended to 'help the field swiftly confront emerging threats, better address persistent challenges, and thoroughly examine the latest tools and technologies to enhance the safety and the effectiveness of law enforcement.'" Former President Bill Clinton also spoke at the event.
Weird Legal News. When Animal Cruelty Laws Are Not Enough. Alan Yuhas of the Guardian: "Tommy, a 26-year-old privately owned chimp in Gloversville, New York, is the plaintiff in a suit brought on his behalf by Steven Wise and the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP), a group of environmental lawyers who seek nothing less than to break through the 'legal wall ... erected between humans and nonhuman animals', as Wise told the Guardian." A New York State appellate court has "agreed to hear out his petition for a writ of habeas corpus -- an order demanding that the custodian of a prisoner prove a legally justifiable reason for detainment." CW: I suppose Tommy is more of a person than is Hobby Lobby, Inc.
John Kerry in a Washington Post op-ed: "We need more nations [to provide assistance in containing the Ebola virus] -- every nation has an ability to do something on this challenge.... Frankly, there is not a moment to waste in this effort." ...
... New York Times Editors: "Turkish troops and tanks have been standing passively behind a chicken-wire border fence while a mile away in Syria, Islamic extremists are besieging the town of Kobani and its Kurdish population. This is an indictment of [Turkey's President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan and his cynical political calculations. By keeping his forces on the sidelines and refusing to help in other ways -- like allowing Kurdish fighters to pass through Turkey -- he seeks not only to weaken the Kurds, but also, in a test of will with President Obama, to force the United States to help him oust President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, whom he detests.... Mr. Erdogan's behavior is hardly worthy of a NATO ally." ...
... MEANWHILE, in Right Wing World. Danny Vinik of the New Republic: "Appearing on "On the Record with Greta Van Susteren," [Rep. Duncan] Hunter [RTP-Calif.] said, 'At least ten ISIS fighters have been caught coming across the border in Texas.' When Van Susteren asked how he knew that, Hunter replied, 'Because I've asked the border patrol, Greta.' ... 'The suggestion that individuals who have ties to ISIL have been apprehended at the Southwest border is categorically false, and not supported by any credible intelligence or the facts on the ground,' said DHS spokesperson Marsha Catron. 'DHS continues to have no credible intelligence to suggest terrorist organizations are actively plotting to cross the southwest border.'" Hunter is standing by his story & asserting that "the left hand of DHS doesn't know what the right hand is doing." ...
... Steve M. has more. Seems Hunter is backing off his story -- a little. He's now describing the "ISIS fighters" as "foreign nationals with IS associations." And he won't further describe who his "high-level source" might be. Steve thinks the source might be a former FBI agent/"conspiratorial lunatic" who earns a living making "outrageous" claims about "the dangers of Islamic jihad." ...
... Eric Bradner of CNN: "Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson blasted Rep. Duncan Hunter's suggestion that ISIS fighters have crossed the United States' southern border into Texas. 'Let's not unduly create fear and anxiety in the public by passing on speculation and rumor,' Johnson said Wednesday on CNN's 'Situation Room.'... He said public officials should 'be responsible in what we decide to share with the American public, so that the public is informed.'" With video. ...
We now know that it's a security problem. Groups like the Islamic State collaborate with drug cartels in Mexico who have clearly shown they're willing to expand outside the drug trade into human trafficking and potentially even terrorism. They could infiltrate our defenseless border and attack us right here in places like Arkansas. -- Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), speaking at a tele-town hall, Sept. 29, 2014 ...
At least [Rep. Duncan] Hunter made no mention of an Islamic State connection to Mexican drug cartels. As we've noted, just because something is on the Internet doesn't mean it's true. As a lawmaker, Cotton needs to be careful about making inflammatory statements based on such flimsy evidence. At the very least, he needs to expand on his sources of information. He earns Four Pinnochios for trying to turn idle speculation into hard facts. -- Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post
Choe Sang-Hun of the New York Times: Images of Kim Jong-un walking with a limp & his disappearance from public view for the past five weeks "have generated endless debate among foreign officials and analysts always on the lookout for upheaval in one of the world's most dangerous police states."
Carol Leonnig & David Nakamura of the Washington Post: "As nearly two dozen Secret Service agents and members of the military were punished or fired following a 2012 prostitution scandal in Colombia, Obama administration officials repeatedly denied that anyone from the White House was involved. But new details drawn from government documents and interviews show that senior White House aides were given information at the time suggesting that a prostitute was an overnight guest in the hotel room of a presidential advance-team member -- yet that information was never thoroughly investigated or publicly acknowledged." CW: You have to read the whole report, which is long, to get the gist of what happened & the cover-up -- and it does sound like a cover-up. ...
... Margaret Hartmann of New York points out, "In a wonderfully ironic twist, [the White House volunteer who allegedly brought a prostitute to his hotel room] now works in the Obama administration full-time as a policy adviser in the Office on Global Women's Issues at the State Department." CW: So should we assume that prostitute (the hotel has a record of her "visit") was part of the young man's "research" on global women's issues? Hartman adds, "It's unclear why we're just hearing the details now. It's almost like members of the Secret Service are suddenly eager to embarrass the White House."
SNAFU. Timothy Cama of the Hill: "The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) told a federal court that it may have lost the text messages[, which it was legally required to retain,] at the center of a lawsuit by a libertarian think tank."
Tom Edsall: "Democrats today convey only minimal awareness of what they are up against: an adversary that views politics as a struggle to the death. The Republican Party has demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice principle, including its historical commitments to civil rights and conservation; to bend campaign finance law to the breaking point; to abandon the interests of workers on the factory floor; and to undermine progressive tax policy -- in a scorched-earth strategy to postpone the day of demographic reckoning." Thanks to Ken W. for the link. ...
... Need another example of Republicans' "struggle to the death"? Look no further. Niels Lesniewski & Steven Dennis of Roll Call: "A group of Senate Republicans have their eye on another Obamacare showdown in the lame-duck session. The 14 Republicans, led by Marco Rubio of Florida, wrote a letter urging Speaker John A. Boehner to 'prohibit the Obama administration' from spending money on an 'Obamacare taxpayer bailout.' They point to a legal opinion from the Government Accountability Office that said additional funding authority would be needed to make payments to insurance companies under the risk-corridor component of the Obamacare health care exchanges. The Republicans say taxpayers could be on the hook for bailing out insurance companies that suffer losses." ...
... CW: What makes this showdown/shutdown threat particularly ridiculous is that it's coming from the pro-business party, & explicitly nullifying a deal insurance companies (big business!) negotiated with the federal government to partially cover losses any of the companies experiences. What the GAO legal opinion says is that the Congress must expressly authorize "collecting and distributing the funds from the risk corridor" program. The opinion does not assert taxpayers are on the hook; it expresses no opinion here. We don't know -- and neither do the 14 die-hard senators -- what the final tally will be (i.e., collections vs. distributions), but the CBO projected that the government would actually make money over the course of the program (it ends in 2016) since it will ultimately collect more from insurers than it pays out. These senators don't care about the bottom line, which could favor the government; they just want another opportunity to grandstand the ACA.
Sam Harris reflects on his "conversation" with Ben Affleck & Nicholas Kristof on Bill Maher's show last Friday. CW: There were at least three outsized egos involved in that "conversation," so I don't think it was much of a way to learn anything. I did do some research as a result of watching the exchange, where I learned that (a) there is a vast difference in applications of Islamic beliefs from country to country (as of course there is within each country), & (b) most Muslim countries are majority fundamentalist. That is, instead of reading the Koran as a compelling story about a religious superhero whose teachings can be adapted to various times & places, as most Christians treat Jesus (whether they would admit it or not), the majority of Muslims have rigid, antiquated views about how Mohammed's teachings should be applied today. This will change over time, but not by much in the lifetimes of anyone living today. ...
ISIS couldn't fill a Double A ballpark in Charleston, West Virginia. -- Ben Affleck, in his argument with Harris & Maher
The minor league stadium in [Charleston] would not provide enough seating room for Islamic State fighters, even when using the U.S. government's outdated, low estimate of 10,000. The CIA now uses a much higher estimate of 20,000-31,500 fighters, and other reports indicate it could be even higher. The Islamic State is small, but not Double A-baseball park small. -- Katie Sanders of PolitiFact
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Gabriel Sherman in New York: "Before choosing [Chuck] Todd, NBC News president Deborah Turness held negotiations with Jon Stewart about hosting Meet the Press, according to three senior television sources with knowledge of the talks. One source explained that NBC was prepared to offer Stewart virtually 'anything' to bring him over." CW: Must make Chuck feel good to have this story splashing around. (I first saw the news in the Washington Post.) ...
Sounds like NBC eschewed the comedian and went for the joke. -- RC Contributor James Singer
November Elections
Gail Collins reviews some of the missteps of political candidates.
Tim Egan: "... voters are poised to give Republicans control of the Senate, and increase their hold on the House, even though a majority of Americans oppose nearly everything the G.O.P. stands for.... Before buyer's remorse sets in, voters should consider exactly what Republicans believe, and what they've promised to do. It ranges from howl-at-the-moon crazy talk and half-truths to policies that will keep wages down and kill job growth."
Harry Enten of 538: Despite a new Fox "News" report showing some Senate Republican candidates taking significant leads, "FiveThirtyEight's Senate forecast has Republican chances of taking back the Senate at 56.4 percent -- basically unchanged from the 56.5 percent we showed Tuesday."
Josh Elveer of WMUR Manchester: "A new poll shows that U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., has increased her lead over Republican challenger Scott Brown, but the race remains tight. he WMUR Granite State Poll shows Shaheen leading Brown 47-41 percent among likely voters who have definitely made up their minds or are leaning toward a candidate. In August, Shaheen led Brown 46-44 percent. The poll also shows that Shaheen's favorability ratings have improved, while Brown has become increasingly unpopular." Via Greg Sargent ...
... CW: Maybe Scotty will have to move to yet another state to get back in the Senate. As a reader pointed out to me earlier this week, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development rated New Hampshire overall the most livable U.S. state; the OECD ranked Mississippi the worst. So I'd suggest Mississippi, Scott. I doubt Thad Cochran -- who will almost certainly retain his seat this year -- will run again.
Here's a video American Bridge is running against Georgia's GOP Senate nominee David Perdue. Greg Sargent: "This has not been put in ads yet, but you can be sure it will be soon enough":
James Hohmann & Manu Raju of Politico: "The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee plans to drop $1 million into South Dakota in a last-minute effort to put a four-way race in play and scramble Republicans' calculus to win back the Senate. The committee hopes to be on TV by Monday with attack ads against GOP front-runner Mike Rounds that are likely to focus on his role in an immigration visa scandal. That could boost either Democrat Rick Weiland or former GOP Sen. Larry Pressler, who is running as an independent and told Politico on Wednesday that he hasn't decided which party he would caucus with if elected."
Eric Bradner & Dana Bash of CNN: "Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts has galvanized enough rank-and-file Republican voters to close the gap with independent challenger Greg Orman in one of the nation's hottest races, a new CNN/ORC poll has found. Roberts leads Orman, 49% to 48%, according to the survey of 687 likely voters that was conducted October 2-6."
Bruce Alpert of the New Orleans Times-Picayune: "Facing the toughest battle of her political career, Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., is replacing her campaign manager and bringing in experienced hands from her previous three successful Senate runs to help with the final push for the Nov. 4th open primary."
CW: Andrew Cuomo wrote a memoir, which I can't imagine anyone would want to read. According to New York Times reviewers Thomas Kaplan & Susanne Craig, Cuomo repeatedly writes about his own "political courage." Also, he doesn't like "extreme liberals," & his father didn't go to his ball games like the other dads, which is what scarred him for life or something. My sympathies to Kaplan & Craig. I wonder if they both read the whole book or if they reduced their suffering by each reading/skimming one-half. The book is scheduled for release Tuesday, three weeks before the election.
Beyond the Beltway
Margaret Gillerman of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "Another police-involved fatal shooting of a teenager, this time in south St. Louis not far from the Missouri Botanical Garden, led to hours of protests overnight Wednesday and into Thursday morning as an angry crowd gathered quickly when news spread across social media. St Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson said the officer was off-duty, working a secondary job for a private security company, when he fatally shot an 18-year-old male Wednesday night. Police say the teen had opened fire on the officer. The officer was unhurt. Relatives of the teen who came to the scene said the victim had been unarmed. They identified him as Vonderrit Myers Jr., 18." The witnesses' accounts are impossible to square with the detailed police story. ...
... Josh Marshall: "... everything here should be taken as tentative and subject to change as more becomes known. But we do appear to have the kernel of two very different accounts of what transpired."
American "Justice," Ctd. Ed Pilkington of the Guardian: Manuel Velez, "a building worker from Texas, who was sentenced to death for a murder he did not commit, was released on Wednesday after spending nine years in prison, four of them on death row.... Over the years the conviction unravelled. Tests on the victim's brain showed that Velez could not have caused the child's head injuries. Further evidence revealed that the defendant, who is intellectually disabled, had suffered from woeful legal representation at trial, and that the prosecutor had acted improperly to sway the jury against him." Read the whole story. ...
... Richard Luscombe of the Guardian: "Corrections officials in Florida have launched an investigation into the case of a female inmate who died days after she told her family that a prison guard had threatened to kill her. Latandra Ellington's body was found in her cell at Lowell correctional institution, Ocala, on 1 October, 10 days after she wrote to her aunt to tell her of being 'terrorised' by a guard known only as Sgt Q, and less than 24 hours after worried family members called the prison and were assured she was safe. A private postmortem concluded that Ellington, 36, a mother of four who was serving a 22-month sentence for grand theft, suffered 'haemorrhaging caused by blunt force trauma consistent with punches or kicks to the lower abdomen.'"
Matthew Stanmyre for NJ.com: In Sayerville (New Jersey) War Memorial High School, almost daily hazings of freshman players went like this: "In the darkness, a freshman football player would be pinned to the locker-room floor, his arms and feet held down by multiple upperclassmen. Then, the victim would be lifted to his feet while a finger was forced into his rectum. Sometimes, the same finger was then shoved into the freshman player's mouth." After police began investigating the hazings, the school superintendent cancelled the weekend games. "Then, on Friday, an attorney for assistant coach Charles Garcia said his client had resigned after details of his arrest for steroids possession surfaced. On Monday, [Superintendent Richard] Labbe announced he was canceling the rest of the season."
Presidential Election
The great thing about not being president anymore is you can say whatever you want, unless your wife might run for something. -- Former President Bill Clinton, yesterday
Peter Hamby of CNN: Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley is doing what presidential candidates do -- crisscrossing the country to help Democratic candidates.
News Ledes
New York Times: "Jan Hooks, an actress whose flair for comedy and ability to inhabit a character was showcased during her five years on 'Saturday Night Live,' died on Thursday. She was 57."
Market Watch: "The number of people who applied for U.S. unemployment benefits in the first week of October was basically unchanged at 287,000, reflecting a labor market that's experiencing an exceedingly low rate of layoffs and probably will continue to do so for months."
New York Times: "Patrick Modiano, the French writer whose novels center on topics like memory, identity and guilt, won the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday."
Reuters: "Islamic State fighters launched a renewed assault on the Syrian city of Kobani on Wednesday night, and at least 21 people were killed in riots in neighboring Turkey where Kurds rose up against the government for doing nothing to protect their kin."
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Reader Comments (8)
Sounds like NBC eschewed the comedian and went for the joke.
I find it strange that the mainstream media elite tried to pick off both Colbert and Stewart from their established seats on Comedy Central and bring them into the sterile world of conventional talkinghead boredom. Maybe Colbert will indeed bring a breath of fresh air, but I frankly can't see the execs of Meet the Press giving Stewart the liberty of expression and the ability to call bullshit as he currently enjoys it on the Daily Show. As the RC commentators mentioned recently, the "liberal mainstream media" a.k.a. talking head central is mysteriously conservative in the ideas and opinions it actually promotes.
Call it paranoia, but i see this attempted purge of the two most influential, truly liberal comedians as a strategy to rein in the incessant critiques aimed at the VSP fan club/status quo centrists.
Besides some off the beaten path blogs like here, you can't find that type of criticism anywhere else. Especially not on cable teevee. Surely replacements coule be found but their influence and experience bring with them notoriety and a mass of followers. Their counter-narrative is important, even while done in jest.
After having been inundated with Panetta's appearances on every bloody show on the Teevee––last night he was on Stewart, Monday on Charlie Rose who said at the very end of the interview: "Some have said you might have waited until the president was out of office before you criticized him." Leon looked serious, hesitated and then very profoundly said, "We can't hold back history." Good lord!
So––it was with much pleasure that I read Krugman this morning to put things in perspective. Another perspective that I found interesting is from Aaron David Miller, a middle east diplomat, has worked for four administrations and has now written a book: "The End of Greatness: Why America Can't Have (and doesn't want) Another Great President." His three great presidents are Washington, Lincoln and FDR; his three criteria are: Crisis, Character & Capacity. He wants his book to start a conversation, not end it.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/stop-expecting-american-presidents-great-allow-good-says-historian/
PD,
"We can't hold back history."
You can say the same about diarrhea.
What a load of crap. Literally. So in Panetta's slimy little self-serving mind history is a like some kind of tsunami? You just get out of the way? Or it's some sort of implacable, unstoppable thing that rolls over and engulfs you, like the giant balloon thing in the old Prisoner TV show?
No, Leee-on, history is not written half an hour after something happens. That's called a Dear Diary entry, usually reserved for 12 year olds and Bob Woodward.
History is written after enough data has been collected, collated, sifted through and thoroughly and carefully reconsidered (unless you're writing something for Regnery). If your estimations are accurate and useful, there's no timeline on them. It's not as if the world has been holding its breath, panting for the chance to find out "What Leon Thinks."
Authentic history also isn't written as a way of saving your ass and making yourself look good while tossing others under the bus. That's called writing with a poison pen.
So let's see, if history, for Panetta, is like diarrhea, that must mean the author of that history is.....an asshole!
@Akhilleus & @P.D.Pepe: "We can't hold back history."
Funny, but one of the little "history" facts that Panetta hasn't mentioned in his magical election-eve criticize-the-President tour is that Panetta's advice to bomb Syria re: its use of chemical weapons was, um, really bad advice. As it turned out history-wise, it looked like a majority of Congress was opposed to the move. THEN as it turned out history-wise, John Kerry, with a little help from Brother Putin, was able to solve the chemical-weapons crisis diplomatically. No, Leon, you can't hold back history. But you can tell the truth when history suggests your advice sucked.
As for when we "should have" gone on the ISIS attack, we ain't even ready yet, as "NATO ally" Turkey's refusal to do its bit shows. Moreover, it took shocking events -- the isolation of the religious group in the mountains & the beheadings of Westerners -- to assemble any kind of meaningful coalition to fight ISIS. All this "should have" crap is just that -- crap.
Marie
In Fear We Trust.
One motto of the Modern GOP.
If you can't do anything about it, if you have no ideas, if you have nothing to offer, at the very least, you can try to scare the ever-lovin' shit out of people by telling lies and spreading scary stories.
I caught the headline about ISIS terrorists crossing the border the other day. This shows you just how far lies can go in the internet age. My first thought was "Is that true? Why isn't this a huge story?" Well, it wasn't true. Someone made it up. But if you google "ISIS fighters cross in Texas" you'll get almost 4 million hits. It's everywhere.
And now that it's been debunked, the wingnut sites are doing their usual "It's a COVERUP!!" tango.
Go to the Faux News site. And this is where things really get insidious. And downright evil. The headline is "Congressman: ‘At least 10 ISIS fighters’ caught trying to cross into US"
Geez Louise! Did you see this? Terrorists streaming across our borders???
But read on. Blah, blah terror, blah, blah, holy shit! more terror, blah blah, well if they caught 10 that means there must be dozens drinking in some border town this very minute, planning to unleash bombs; oh yeah, and speaking of bombs, another site mentions that these ISIS super terrorists will begin bombing American cities any day now from the air.
Finally, in the 6th graf, we learn that everything we've been reading so far is a lie. At least according to DHS. The Faux piece goes on and on about how we still have to be very afraid.
So....if you didn't bother to read past the headline, which communicates untrue information, or the first 5 paragraphs, which do likewise, you figure, wow, Faux is saying there are terrorists streaming across the border. And it's all Obama's fault (they make sure to get in the required Obama dig as well). If you do continue to read, it seems that while the bit about the 10 ISIS fighters is not true, it could very well be true in the next day or so.
As I've said before, this is beyond, way beyond, mere irresponsibility.
This shit is evil.
And now that the "ISIS terrorists coming from Mexico" meme is out there, ain't no pulling it back. Anytime the knuckleheads and 'bagger morons hear disclaimers or corrections, they are dead sure that this is a conspiracy to keep them in the dark coming straight from.....you know who.
The framers must be very happy.
Tom Edsall's catalogue of Republican machinations and infamy stands in stark contrast to the soporific maunderings of Democrats. It certainly doesn't help that you have the mainstream as well as the gargantuan, perpetual motion wingnut media apparatus aligned against you, but no one is going to help you if you don't stand up for yourself.
Bringing a knife to a gunfight is bad enough. The Democrats have been showing up, unarmed, with Sarah Palin autographed targets pinned to their backs (that being the preferred part of the anatomy at which those stand-up Republicans like to shoot).
@Marie: I want to thank you for covering the "Real Time" brouhaha and for posting Sam Harris's response. I was troubled by that exchange and thought Affleck's very emotional response heartfelt, but wrong. I understood his frustration, clearly from a lack of knowledge, but found his treatment of Harris extremely rude.
I recall when I first heard Sam Harris speak some decades ago and it was like thunder and lightning and clarification all at once–– I bought his book the next day.