The Commentariat -- Sept. 24, 2014
Internal links, illustration removed.
Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post: "U.S. military leaders said Tuesday their aerial bombardment of Syria was only the beginning of a prolonged campaign ... and will become more difficult as targeted militants seek refuge in populated areas. The United States is now attacking two sets of enemies in the region: the Islamic State..., and the Khorasan Group, a smaller network affiliated with al-Qaeda that officials say is plotting against Europe and the United States.... Whether the coalition's intervention in Syria will eventually help or hurt [Syrian President Bashar al]Assad represents one of the greatest unknowns in a military campaign filled with uncertainty." ...
... Rosie Gray & others at BuzzFeed try to explain who Khorasan is. ...
Somini Sengupta & Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "The United States said on Tuesday that the American-led airstrikes against the Islamic State -- carried out in Syria without seeking the permission of the Syrian government or the United Nations Security Council -- were legal because they were done in defense of Iraq. The American ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, officially informed the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, of the legal justification in a letter...."
... Hey, Kids! Let's get some perspective from Glenn Greenwald: "... Syria becomes the 7th predominantly Muslim country bombed by 2009 Nobel Peace Laureate Barack Obama -- after Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and Iraq. The utter lack of interest in what possible legal authority Obama has to bomb Syria is telling indeed: Empires bomb who they want, when they want, for whatever reason (indeed, recall that Obama bombed Libya even after Congress explicitly voted against authorization to use force, and very few people seemed to mind that abject act of lawlessness; constitutional constraints are not for warriors and emperors)." ...
... CW: Please don't bother to remind me I'm a jerk. I know that. Greenwald raises valid points here, but his overdramatization of everything makes it impossible for me to take him seriously. The imperial presidency, my ass.
President Obama made public remarks Tuesday at a meeting of Arab Coalition leaders in New York City:
Josh Lederman of the AP: "Ordinary citizens will often have a more lasting impact on their community than their presidents and prime ministers, President Barack Obama said Tuesday as he promoted civil society at the annual Clinton Global Initiative in New York." The video below includes President Clinton's introductory remarks:
Mark Landler & Coral Davenport of the New York Times: "President Obama, emboldened by the use of his executive powers to fight climate change at home, sought on Tuesday to marshal more than 100 world leaders behind a vast international effort to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and curb global warming. But Mr. Obama, in pledging that the United States would set ambitious new targets to cut emissions in advance of critical global climate talks next year, will leave much of the hard work to his successor, or even the president after that":
What Outrageous, Unpresidential Act Did Obama Commit Tuesday? Bomb Another Country? (See Greenwald.) Sign an Unconstitutional Executive Order? Nah. Devin Dwyer of ABC News: "Some are calling it the 'latte salute.' When President Obama stepped off Marine One at the Wall Street landing zone in New York City, en route the United Nations, he saluted two Marines at the bottom of the stairs as he held a coffee cup in the same hand." ..
... Steve M. "Coffee-cup-ghazi!"
Dana Milbank: "Friday's [White House] fence-jumping episode ... has the Secret Service considering extraordinary remedies.... The Secret Service is preparing to punish the public for the agency's mistakes.... A deeper problem may explain those mistakes. As The Post reported: 'Former agents said they fear the breach may be related to a severe staffing shortage the agency has struggled with in the last year in its Uniform Division.' To plug the holes, the Secret Service has been flying in agents from other locations who don't know the White House as well." ...
... CW: Yeah, this is why I especially enjoy it when Tea party Republicans like Jason Chaffetz (Utah), who proudly self-identifies as a budget-cutting phenom, turn around & blame President Obama for "perhaps failing to take security as seriously as it should." Chaffetz, BTW, is not one to learn from his egregious mistakes: Here's the little prick in 2012, post-Benghazi, self-righteously explaining why he voted to cut $300 million in funding for embassy security: "Absolutely. Look, we have to make priorities and choices in this country." Nonetheless, Chaffetz has made so many Benghaaazi! charges against the administration that I can't possibly link them.
Nate Raymond of Reuters: "Conservative author and filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza avoided prison on Tuesday when a U.S. judge sentenced him to serve eight months in a community confinement center after he pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance law. D'Souza, 53, was ordered by U.S. District Judge Richard Berman in Manhattan to live in a center, which would allow him to leave during non-residential hours for employment, for the first eight months of a five-year probationary period.... 'I'm not sure, Mr. D'Souza, that you get it,' Berman said before announcing the sentence. 'And it is still hard for me to discern any personal acceptance of responsibility in this case.'" ...
... AND, if one is to believe the soon-to-be-ex-Mrs. D'Souza, D'Souza is a serial liar & a wife-beater. ...
... The Smoking Gun: "During the sentencing hearing, [Judge] Berman read from a blistering letter submitted to the court by D'Souza's estranged wife. In the missive, Dixie D'Souza alleged that her ex-spouse forged her signature on one campaign contribution form, and that he had an 'abusive nature.'"
CW: Jonathan Chait writes what looks like a good takedown of Paul Ryan's New Fuzzy Math, but I didn't have time to read it.
CW: I keep missing Charles Pierce's posts because Wendy's, the wholesome place where I do most of my Internetting, has blocked that dirty publication Esquire. However, via Driftglass, I learn that Pierce did quite a number of Chuck Todd. Driftglass wraps Pierce's prose in a nice ribbon -- and also links to the original.
Senate Race
Does Pat Roberts Think Democrats Are Nazis? Ed Kilgore: "... Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, no ideological firebrand but rather the most hackish of time-servers, casually said that under Democratic governance 'this country is heading for national socialism'.... You have to wonder what Bob Dole, who was sitting nearby Roberts when he made this incredibly offensive remark -- and who fought against actual National Socialists in World War II -- thought of it." ...
... CW: It would appear, based on Philip Rucker's tweets added as updates to Dylan Scott's TPM post, that Roberts just has no idea who the National Socialists were. Rucker's tweets suggest Roberts is clueless & doesn't understand why Rucker asked him about the National Socialism question. ...
... Update: Robert's campaign tried to "clarify" his remarks without indicating the candidate is a dope.
Way Beyond the Beltway
Rowena Mason of the Guardian: British PM "David Cameron has been caught on camera talking about how the Queen 'purred down the line' after he phoned her to say Scotland had voted no to independence. The prime minister's remarks suggesting the Queen was pleased with the result are a rare, albeit accidental, breach of the convention that the prime minister never speaks about his conversations with the monarch. It also jeopardises her traditional neutrality.... Cameron's exchange with Michael Bloomberg, the former New York mayor, was accidentally picked up by Sky News as they walked through an office in the businessman's media empire."
Share Article
Reader Comments (14)
"(Quod erat demonstradumb)"
Superb line from Charlie Pierce's take down of Shuck Todd in his Gobshites post.
@ James Singer (from yesterday):
Yes, the "article" was from the AP. Here it is in a different paper:
http://www.journalnow.com/eedition/mapping/sequester-whatever/article_ad317a3b-ebe2-5eca-8839-fc72f9c0c709.html?mode=story
My local paper had it as a single big graphic, the text wrapped around the drone and the chart nice and large so everyone could see how much money they could make relative to the S&P 500 Index.
The headline: "Sequester? Whatever." was so crass I couldn't believe it. The defense contractors are making money hand over fist while the men and women who are serving in the armed forces are getting the shaft, see the article a couple of days ago about troop levels decreasing in various congressional districts.
Let's all go out and make lots of money. Pay no attention to where it comes from.
Well, well.
So Dinesh D'Souza can unwind his tighty-righties. He won't be getting punked in some federal prison, or kicked upside the head by some psycho inmate, you know, the way ol' Dinesh reportedly kicked his wife. He's getting the country club treatment, 8 months in a community center and able to leave during the day so he can continue his mission in life of spreading wingnut approved manure across the land.
So is D'Souza contrite about breaking the law, him being a vaunted member of the law and order party, and he having made statements in the past about the importance of the rule of law (when he was spreading his usual delusional bullshit about the president being from Kenya and wanting to blow up America)?
Fuck no.
Contrition, and even guilt, are not for such as he. And the judge who sentenced him sees that:
"I'm not sure, Mr. D'Souza, that you get it," [Judge Richard] Berman said before announcing the sentence. "And it is still hard for me to discern any personal acceptance of responsibility in this case."
Judge, judge, judge. Surely you know by now that wingers NEVER accept responsibility. It's all a conspiracy to keep him from telling the truth.
And no doubt the wingnuts are hard at work slobbering over this latest "proof" that "they're all out to get us!" "Obama sent in the black helicopters to get Dinesh and they'll be coming for us soon."
This might seem like an attempt on my part at sarcasm and satire. Well, it is a bit sarcastic, but it's not satire. This very statement is making the rounds of the tin foil hat sites. These people are certifiable. I mentioned the verdict to a red state acquaintance who first said he never heard of D'Souza but quickly followed that up with "Well, it looks like Obama's up to his usual tricks." People really think like this. This guy knew nothing about the case (which surprised me since he pretends to know everything), but was sure, in spite of the complete lack of information, that Obama must have been behind it.
D'Souza is a microcosmic example of a larger malady among wingers. The idea that their wildest assertions are absolutely correct, the idea that they can't be wrong, and that they are being chased down by shadowy forces who are out to get "real Americans", are all expressed daily in the work and words of the right-wing in this country. The GOP is a magnet for delusional paranoids like D'Souza who, not very long ago, would have been pointed out and laughed at by any reasonable conservatives.
But there's the problem, isn't it? People like D'Souza and those who follow his every drool. They're deranged. And they are most definitely not conservative. They're radical lunatics who believe they are above laws and morality. And their every word, their craziest claims, are taken as gospel by rank and file wingers.
Prior to being sentenced, D'Souza whined to the judge that there was no good reason to lock him up. He truly believes he did nothing wrong and is being unfairly punished.
Maybe his good buddy Bill O'Reilly can send his new army in to break him out of stir.
The Steve M. link Marie posted above is worth a quick peek if only to gather a little bit of historical information surrounding the sanctified presidential salute to marines when getting off the White House helicopter.
It is not, as wingnuts and Fox would have us believe, a time honored acknowledgment of the sacrifice made by men and women in uniform (shit, didn't George Washington salute when he disembarked from the White House helicopter?--I'm almost sure he must have!).
It was begun by Reagan, who felt the need, since his "wartime" experience was spent on a backlot in Hollywood, and not, as he later claimed, rescuing prisoners of war from Nazi concentration camps, to bolster his status as Commander in Chief.
According to Garry Wills, quoted in the piece, Reagan was wrong to do so (big surprise). Also according to a real as opposed to faux military man, President and former General Eisenhower, who knew that the salute is something given to and returned by officers in uniform.
As a civilian, Eisenhower never returned a salute from anyone in uniform as it would have been incorrect and disrespectful of military protocol.
But, as we've seen way too often, wingnuts make their own rules. If Saint Ronnie had ever unzipped his fly and exposed himself at state dinners, the wingnuts would see this as the mark of a true leader and demand that every president thereafter waggle his privates at guests and assorted heads of state. And idiots on Fox would be calling Obama a disrespectful commie bastard for not giving the Penis Salute.
Whoa...
Have you guys seen this new Republican ad aimed at telling women how to vote in the upcoming elections? (Because you know...women...they don't know how to do anything for themselves.)
Creeee-py.
A woman who could be white but might not be, wearing a pearl necklace and lounging in her upscale living room (because all Democratic women live this way) and complaining that the dreamy guy she met online a few years ago (Obama) turned out to be a jerk.
At first you're thinking "Hmm....Obama is not running again, what's the point?" and, of course, at the end, the disgruntled former girlfriend says she's going to dump her ex-boyfriend's friends as well. Oooooh. Cle-ver.
She even makes a snide reference to birth control, saying that Obama thinks it's a big deal, but obviously she doesn't and, so neither should you.
This is some creepy shit.
Do they really think this stuff works? Seems like it's treating women as unhappy teenage homecoming queens who were dissed at the prom by the captain of the football team who turned out to be an asshole.
It's the work of one more of those predictably named GOP shill groups, Americans for Shared Prosperity.
Ladies, check it out and see what you think.
How do they do it?
How do Republicans keep getting such imbeciles elected?
In a few weeks Kansans will have to decide if they still wish to be represented by a guy (Pat Roberts, R-State of Stupidity) who not only doesn't know the difference between fascism and socialism, he doesn't know what either of those terms means on its own.
And he's back at it with the old "Obama is a fascist AND a socialist", at least that's what his statements about National Socialism and regular Socialism (two sugars, extra cream), seem to be saying.
Whatever happened to Zoroastrian Utilitarian with a side of Anarcho-Syndicalism and a twist of Autocratic Despotism?
Twain was right.
@Ak--Okay, I took the challenge, which I had resisted a few days earlier when I saw the post on Daily Kos about the new "Vote Republican" ad from Americans for Shared Prosperity. My initial instinct not to watch was the right call. What an annoying woman. I really don't care about her love life--and that is exactly what I thought she was talking about for the first 3/4 of the ad. By the time she got to the point of her disappointment, I thoroughly disliked her and had no intention of taking her advice. It didn't help that a woman wearing a pearl necklace, with all that well-tended hair in that spacious living room, tried to seem like she was still suffering financial setbacks from 2008. I mark the ad as a failure.
Scott Brown's ads don't impress me either. I rarely watch TV and don't listen to the radio, so I don't know what's filling the airwaves up here in NH. However, the day after the primary, two weeks ago, I went on my Facebook page to find an ad from Scott Brown. Huh? Why my page, in which the only political things I click on are posts from liberal friends? Same for another friend of mine, who was baffled to find an ad from the carpetbagger on her FB page. I'm not sure what logarithm the Brown campaign is using, but in my case, he's not even getting close to a receptive audience. Likewise, when my son listened to rap music on his YouTube account the other day, nearly every song was preceded by an ad for Scott Brown--"We must protect our border!" he declares, which this far north would make most people think, "What's going on in Canada?" Can't see that those ads are going to hit a receptive audience either.
I'm sure there are poor ads for Democratic candidates as well. But these seem particularly tone deaf.
"There’s a touch of panic in his (Karl Rove's) tone as he points out that Democrats are leading in fund-raising this year, and acknowledges that the “anti-women meme” is not so easily escaped by a party fielding candidates whose anti-choice extremism includes endorsing “personhood”
Frank Rich's adds bite in his weekly New York mag interview re How Republicans (and Democrats) are doing : http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/09/frank-rich-americas-new-quagmire.html
"... Should Rove’s doubts prove justified, we can only hope that he will be spending election night at Fox News so we can be treated to an encore of his 2012 on-camera meltdown. That remains the most memorable bit of political theater so far this decade."
Yeah, even I might watch Fox on election night for an encore performance!
Elizabeth,
Maybe Bqhatevwr Boy Brown is afraid some crafty Quebecois will sneak over the border, take up residence in some little town upstate, pretend, like Brown, that he's always somehow been a Granite Stater, and run against him as an independent. Now that's terrorism!
His new ads touting his expertise in international affairs, at the expense of Jeanne Shaheen and Barack Obama, who apparently are lucky if they can spell "international", stems, it would seem, from Brown's former delusion that he was a renowned figure of importance, sought out by prime ministers, monarchs, and mucky mucks the world over for his keen insights. Maybe they wanted advice on good Twitter strategies.
As for his interest in rap music, who can say? Lyin' Paul Ryan, trying to appear cooler than a plastic pocket protector, declared that the rap/metal group Rage Against the Machine is his favorite band (but he only likes the music, not the lyrics--bqhatevwr).
This was a surprise to Tom Morello, guitarist for RATM who wondered, in Rolling Stone "...what Ryan's favorite Rage song is? Is it the one where we condemn the genocide of Native Americans? The one lambasting American imperialism? Our cover of "Fuck the Police"? Or is it the one where we call on the people to seize the means of production? So many excellent choices to jam out to at Young Republican meetings!"
Just so!
Those crazy Republicans. "Hip" is not their middle name. Neither is "smart".
Reverand Charlie's sermon on voting is here. It's wonderful.
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/History_On_Trial
Edsall says it again:
Capitalism in its current form is indeed efficient. It very efficiently moves wealth and power to the top. No trickle down, just a flood upward. Some of the boneheaded comments on the article are worth reading, too, as a reminder (I've been gone for two weeks) of how effective ideologic blinders can be...
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/24/opinion/america-out-of-whack.html?hp
@AK: Re: the Republican ad: To equate a dating service with voting is the kind of leap that only small minds of little insight produce. Its message, being of a romantic nature, reduces women's ability to choose wisely and logically. And of course Obama as the love object that disappoints is key. Ugh!!!!
Another example of the grab of anything to display the awfulness of anything that smacks of the left: Cass Sunstein in one of his essays in "Conspiracy Theories" argues that people should have the right to sue in behalf of animals that are being cruelly mistreated. Along comes our favorite lady from the Tundra, supercilious Sarah who tried to saddle him with "the wacko belief that animals should have the right to sue the court."
We are living in a world where "armies crash by night," the ebola virus is catastrophic, where climate change needs addressing and immediate attention, where a guy can jump over the fence and enter the White House (slashed budgets for secret service) and yet our right thinking politicians and pundits diddle and dawdle over things like the President saluting with a coffee cup and spend huge amounts of energy thinking of ways to bring the democrats down.
Your penis measurements, AK, is, I suspect, exactly what is going on in the sacred circles of "mine is bigger than yours" business. The old metaphor that's older than dirt.
@AK:
OLD is their middle name. Not in the chronological sense as far as I can tell, since there are many people out there older than me whose minds are far more agile. Rather in the "out of date" sense. They don't realize that MEEEEEEEEEEEEE is not a sustainable economic model.
Regarding the Republican ad aimed at women:
What made me to a double take and went unmentioned by other commenters is that this aired on MSNBC. I guess they are hoping to convert some of us liberal Rachel Maddow watchers.