The Commentariat -- Sept. 2, 2013
Carl Morris, 1942. Eugene, Oregon Post Office.... Paul Krugman: "... believe it or not, Labor Day actually had something to do with showing respect for labor.... Many of today's politicians can't even bring themselves to fake respect for ordinary working Americans.... There are evidently a lot of wealthy people in America who consider anyone who isn't wealthy a loser -- an attitude that has clearly gotten stronger as the gap between the 1 percent and everyone else has widened. And such people have a lot of friends in Washington." ...
... Pre-distribution: if the law required incomes to be distributed more evenly before taxes, fewer Americans would need the programs Krugman mentions. E. J. Dionne: "The genius of the labor movement has always been its insistence that if the law genuinely empowered workers to defend their own interests, the result would be a more just society requiring fewer direct interventions by government. This Labor Day could be remembered as the moment when that idea rose again."
AP: "The information the U.S. showed Moscow trying to prove that the Syrian regime was behind an alleged chemical weapons attack is 'absolutely unconvincing,' Russia's foreign minister said Monday." ...
... Steve Gutterman of Reuters: "Russia is sending a reconnaissance ship to the eastern Mediterranean, Interfax news agency reported on Monday, as the United States prepares for a possible military strike in Syria." ...
... Michael Gordon & Jackie Calmes of the New York Times: "The Obama administration launched a full-press campaign on Sunday for Congressional approval of its plan to carry out a punitive strike against the Syrian government." ...
... Bradley Klapper of the AP: "President Barack Obama is inviting former foe Sen. John McCain to the White House, hoping one of Congress' most intractable foreign policy hawks will help sell the idea of a U.S. military intervention in Syria to a nation deeply scarred by more than a decade of war." ...
... Paul Kane & Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: "Leading lawmakers dealt bipartisan rejection Sunday to President Obama's request to strike Syrian military targets, saying the best hope for congressional approval would be to narrow the scope of the resolution. From the Democratic dean of the Senate [Patrick Leahy] to tea party Republicans in their second terms, lawmakers said the White House's initial request to use force against Syria will be rewritten in the coming days to try to shore up support in a skeptical Congress. But some veteran lawmakers expressed doubt that even the new use-of-force resolution would win approval, particularly in the House." ...
... Ben Geman of the Hill: "Members of the Senate plan to narrow President Obama's authorization request for military action in Syria, Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said Sunday. Leahy told reporters about the planned rewrite of the resolution after attending a classified intelligence briefing on Sunday at the Capitol." ...
... Andrea Shalal-Esa of Reuters: "The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Nimitz and other ships in its strike group are heading west toward the Red Sea to help support a limited U.S. strike on Syria, if needed, defense officials said on Sunday." ...
... Steve Coll of the New Yorker: "President Obama, in fashioning a response [to the Syrian chemical attack], has been burdened by the United States' recent history with Iraq. The Administration of Ronald Reagan stood by as 'Chemical Ali' waged his campaign against the Kurds.... The Administration of George W. Bush infamously claimed that Saddam Hussein still possessed chemical and biological arms. It soon became apparent that Saddam had abandoned them.... Last Thursday Britain's Parliament, citing the West's failures in Iraq, voted to reject an attack on Syria for now, because a majority did not judge the available evidence of Assad's guilt to be definitive.... The Reagan Administration's decision to tolerate Saddam's depravities proved to be a colossal moral failure and strategic mistake; it encouraged Saddam's aggression and internal repression, and it allowed Iraq to demonstrate to future dictators the tactical value of chemical warfare. The consequences of similar passivity in Syria now are unknowable."
Carol Leonnig, et al., of the Washington Post: "The U.S. government suspects that individuals with connections to al-Qaeda and other hostile groups have repeatedly sought to obtain jobs in the intelligence community, and it reinvestigates thousands of employees a year to reduce the threat that one of its own may be trying to compromise closely held secrets, according to a classified budget document. The CIA found that among a subset of job seekers whose backgrounds raised questions, roughly one out of every five had 'significant terrorist and/or hostile intelligence connections,' according to the document, which was provided to The Washington Post by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden."
Scott Shane & Colin Moynihan of the New York Times: "For at least six years, law enforcement officials working on a counternarcotics program have had routine access, using subpoenas, to an enormous AT&T database that contains the records of decades of Americans' phone calls -- parallel to but covering a far longer time than the National Security Agency's hotly disputed collection of phone call logs.... The government pays AT&T to place its employees in drug-fighting units around the country. Those employees sit alongside Drug Enforcement Administration agents and local detectives and supply them with the phone data from as far back as 1987."
Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "Justice [Anthony] Kennedy has emerged as the most important judicial champion of gay rights in the nation's history, having written three landmark opinions on the subject, including this summer's Windsor decision, which overturned a ban on federal benefits for married same-sex couples. Those rulings collectively represent a new chapter in the nation's civil rights law, and they have cemented his legacy as a hero to the gay rights movement." CW: Evidently Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor & Kagan, not to mention gay rights advocates, don't count.
Jeffry Rosen in the New Republic: "Eric Holder's Suit Against Texas Gives the Supreme Court a Chance to Gut Even More of the Voting Rights Act."
Local News
Florida -- Home of America's Worst Mayors! Nick Madigan of the New York Times: "On Wednesday, Steven C. Bateman, 58, the mayor of Homestead, was arrested. He is accused of accepting under-the-table payments from a health care company that sought to build a clinic in town, the state attorney's office for Miami-Dade County said. Mr. Bateman was turned in by City Council members and staff, said employees interviewed Friday at City Hall. On Aug. 6, Manuel L. Maroño, 41, the mayor of Sweetwater and president of the Florida League of Cities, and Michael A. Pizzi, 51, the Miami Lakes mayor, were picked up along with two lobbyists. The United States attorney's office has accused them of involvement in kickback and bribery schemes concerning federal grants." CW: Yeah, I know, it's hard for three crooks to make up for one Bob Filner, but we're trying.
News Ledes
Wall Street Journal: "A collection of pro-Syrian government hackers apparently defaced a Marine Corps recruitment website Monday. The Syrian Electronic Army, which has hacked a series of websites, posted a letter on the Marines.com website arguing the Syrian government is 'fighting a vile common enemy.'"
AFP: "US Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday the evidence for climate change was beyond dispute but it was not too late for international action to prevent its worst impacts.... [Kerry] was addressing climate experts meeting on the eve of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) in the Marshall Islands, a low-lying nation where rising seas threaten to swamp many atolls."
AP: "Germany put a 92-year-old former member of the Nazi Waffen SS on trial Monday on charges that he executed a Dutch resistance fighter in 1944. Dutch-born Siert Bruins, who is now German, volunteered for the SS after the Nazis conquered the Netherlands in 1941. Bruins served as a member of the Sicherheitspolizei, or Security Police, in a unit looking for resistance fighters and Jews."
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In early modern England while the men rested up for the next battle, their women were working to keep the community fed. Women, in those days, shared most trades with men, and their wage labor was usually necessary for a poorer family to survive, but their work was less skilled and more casual and seasonal and much more poorly paid. No one saw anything wrong in unequal pay for equal work at all, and housework and child– rearing, of course, didn't count as work at all. Labor freely chosen––like the work a gentleman put in to run his estates––was more honorable than the grubbing of a living.
Today we celebrate Labor Day––hey, hey, big difference between now and then?
Been a slow day today, right? It’s all second-day news, mostly about the big dicks trying to figure out how to start the next war so no one will notice. And they’ll succeed, you know, because they always succeed—nothing succeeds like success. Or money. So we’ll fuck around pretty much destroying Syria until the next president swears to get us out of there so we can kick the shit out of Iran. Quite a treadmill, ain’t it? Been running on it, off and on, since the summer of 1950… one fucking war after another for more than 60 years. And none of them—not one—for any good purpose.
Yeah. Slow news days are a downer. Especially when no cats have been rescued from burning buildings.
Can Nobel Prizes be rescinded ?
How about that Diana Nyad! Cheers to her and all she represents!