Wednesday
Sep242014
The Commentariat -- Sept. 25, 2014
Internal links removed.
Matt Apuzzo of the New York Times: "Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. will resign his post, the Justice Department said Thursday. Mr. Holder will remain in office until a successor is nominated and confirmed." CW: Good luck with that. See Justice Ginsburg's remarks below. Maybe Republicans senators would be okay with returning Ed Meese to the job. ...
... Charles Pierce: "There is a decent chance ... that his successor will have to be confirmed by a Senate with a Republican majority, at least some of whom, I suspect, would be perfectly happy if the president didn't have an Attorney General for the rest of his term. Which, it appears, would leave Holder in place. In any event, they're already erecting the big top and lining up the elephants for a three-ring confirmation process that will embarrass every enlightened political leader back to Pericles. I can't wait."
Mark Landler of the New York Times: "President Obama on Wednesday charted a muscular new course for the United States in a turbulent world, telling the United Nations General Assembly in a bluntly worded speech that the American military would work with allies to dismantle the Islamic State’s 'network of death' and warning Russia that it would pay for its bullying of Ukraine":
... Ed Pilkington of the Guardian: "The United Nations security council agreed on Wednesday to launch a concerted effort to staunch the flow of radicalised jihadists from around the world to the cause of Islamic State and other terrorist groups. In a rare session of the security council attended by heads of state – only the sixth of its kind in the organ’s 68-year history – all 15 member states voted for a US-backed resolution that seeks to step up the battle against 'foreign terrorist fighters', as US president Barack Obama described them":
... President Obama opens the special session of the U.N. Security Council:
... AND closes it:
... Karen DeYoung, et al., of the Washington Post: "U.S. missile strikes against an obscure al-Qaeda cell [Khorasan] in Syria killed at least one of the group’s leaders, [Mushin al-Fadhli,] delivering what U.S. officials described as a significant but not decisive blow to a terrorist group accused of plotting attacks against Europe and the United States." U.S. intelligence agencies have not yet confirmed the report. ...
... Michael Tomasky of the Daily Beast: "... in moral terms, [Obama's] war is nothing like [Bush's] war, and if this war doesn’t end up like Bush’s and somehow actually solves more problems than it creates, that will happen precisely because of the moral differences.... The first and most important difference, plainly and simply: Obama didn’t lie us into this war.... Difference number two: This war doesn’t involve 140,000 ground troops.... Difference number three: This coalition, while still in its infancy, could in the end be a far more meaningful coalition than Bush’s." ...
... CW: With Friends Like These. Here's something I learned in reading Tomasky's column. Amel Ahmed of Al Jazeera (September 11): "The beheading of Pakistani national Izzat Gul for drug trafficking was Saudi Arabia's 46th such execution for 2014, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW). In August alone, Saudi Arabia decapitated 19 people, eight of them for nonviolent offenses, including sorcery, the rights group added." ...
... John Cassidy of the New Yorker: Bombing terrorists is good politics!
CW: Thanks to the commenters to yesterday's Commentariat who provided links to good stuff. I'm relinking some here in case you missed them:
Frank Rich: "In truth, we already have boots on the ground [in Iraq] in the form of 'special forces' and 'advisers.' The moment they start returning to America in body bags, or are seen being slaughtered in ISIS videos, is the moment when the recent polling uptick in support for this war will evaporate. That support is an inch deep, and Congress knows it, which is why members of both parties fled Washington for the campaign trail last week rather than debate Obama’s war plan." Thanks to MAG.
Charles Pierce on why we should vote -- "every time and in every election, no matter how apparently minor the office or how apparently insignificant the issue." Thanks to James S. ...
... "The Arrogance of Ignorance." Pierce also links to Kurt Eichenwald's excellent Newsweek piece on Texas's "Textbook Case of Bad Textbooking": "Yes, professional historians know more than you about American history. Yes, professional biologists know more than you about evolution. Yes, professional climatologists know more than you about climate science. To argue otherwise is merely a reflection of the relentless self-worship of the untrained, a rapidly spreading malady that might best be called 'the arrogance of ignorance.'” ...
... CW: One fairly humorous outgrowth of the "arrogance of ignorance" is Republican politicians' pained efforts to cater to their ignorant base: When asked if they "believe" in evolution or man-made climate change, the politicians' stock answer is, "I'm not a scientist." (Or the even more hilarious Bobby Jindal version: "I was not an evolutionary biologist.") So they are telling the same ignoramuses who think "experts" are suspicious librul propagandists that you have to be a highly-trained suspicious librul propagandist to know enough about evolution or climate change to form an opinion. Privileging the arrogance of ignorance requires a mastery of circular logical.
Here's the creepy ad that is going to make us "Democrat ladies" vote for Republicans this year. Thanks to Akhilleus:
... Joan Walsh of Salon: "Obviously [the ad's sponsors] think we’re idiots who put romance before reason, even in politics.... Maybe the worst thing about the ad is that its sponsors are utterly clueless about how demeaning it is. ...
The goal here is to communicate with women voters in a way that outside groups and campaigns haven’t. -- John Jordan, a wealthy California vintner who bankrolled the ad
CW: As several observers have pointed out, even that isn't true: "... the spot is very similar to a Web ad the Republican National Committee did in 2012 called 'The Breakup':
CW: It totally pisses me off when people like Joan Walsh suggest that John Jordan would produce a sexist ad that "demeans women." Jordan is the big blond guy in the sunglasses:
Capitalism Is Awesome, Ctd. Tom Edsall: "In developed countries like the United States, however, there are legitimate and growing doubts about the beneficence of the market and the ability of the system to distribute the rewards of growth to those who make growth possible." Thanks to Ken W. CW: Edsall would not be a good fit for the Jefferson County, Colorado, school board (see Charles Pierce's post, linked above) which "call[s] for teaching materials promoting patriotism, respect for authority and the free-market system."
Gail Collins: "Only 3 percent of current Republican members of Congress have been willing to go on record as accepting the fact that people are causing global warming.... That includes Representative Michael Grimm of New York, who while laudably open-minded on this subject, is also under indictment for perjury and tax fraud. So we may be pushing 2 percent in January." Collins prominently mentions Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who makes weekly speeches on the Senate floor about climate change. Here's one of Whitehouse's floor speeches, whacking today's Republicans, "who let pollutors cast their dark shadows over Republicans in Congress." President Reagan's views on conserving the environment, Whitehouse notes, "would make him a fringe liberal candidate in today's Republican party":
... CW: Whitehouse is my nominee for president. Has been for several years. Not a chance.
Sean Sullivan of the Washington Post: "Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says that if she steps down now, President Obama would not be able to appoint an acceptable replacement.... 'Who do you think President Obama could appoint at this very day, given the boundaries that we have? If I resign any time this year, he could not successfully appoint anyone I would like to see in the court,' she said. '[Senate Republicans] took off the filibuster for lower federal court appointments, but it remains for this court. So anybody who thinks that if I step down, Obama could appoint someone like me, they’re misguided.'" Excerpts of the Elle interview, by Jessica Weisberg, are here. ...
... CW: Sorry, Ruth. Thanks an excuse, not a reason to hold onto your seat. Assuming the next president is a Democrat, why would she have been luck with Senate Republicans. Because she might be white??? You blew a chance to preserve your legacy with a Democratic Supreme Court appointee. Souter & Stevens did the right thing. ...
... Liberal women disagree with me. This may be because they don't understand a basic human characteristic: even more than young people, who often think of themselves as immune from mortal danger, old people want to go on living & doing. The will to live can give them exaggerated views of their capacities. This is probably especially true of people who are extremely successful, like, say Supreme Court justices. I'm not saying Ginsburg is on death's door; I deeply hope she is not. But individuals, no matter how wise they may otherwise be, are not necessarily the best judges of their own mortality. ...
... AND Jon Walker of Firedoglake puts the Ginsburg debate in its larger context: the problem is lifetime appointments. "Ginsburg has been on the Supreme Court since 1993. That means she has already played a huge role in shaping American policy for over 20 years, but even that is not enough. Her lifetime appointment gives her the freedom to decide when to retire enabling her to play a massive role in determining who her replacement will be. This should easily extend her influence by another 30 years...."
Oops! Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) discovered secret documents revealing the names & level of contributions of corporate donors to the Republican Governors Public Policy Committee, a 501(c)(4) group "which is allowed to shield its supporters from the public." The documents also reveal the remarkable level of access to GOP governors the corporations have purchased with their "membership" in the committee. “'This is a classic example of how corporations are trying to use secret money, hidden from the American people, to buy influence, and how the governors association is selling it,' said Fred Wertheimer, the president of Democracy 21, a nonpartisan group that advocates more transparency and controls over political money." The documents CREW obtained are here (pdf).
Jay Michaelson of the Daily Beast: "The Gathering is a conference of hard-right Christian organizations and, perhaps more important, funders. Most of them are not household names, at least if your household isn’t evangelical. But that’s the point: The Gathering is a hub of Christian Right organizing, and the people in attendance have led the campaigns to privatize public schools, redefine 'religious liberty' (as in the Hobby Lobby case), fight same-sex marriage, fight evolution, and, well, you know the rest. They’re probably behind that, too." Among the speakers at this year's gathering of the Gathering: David Brooks of the NYT. Brooks makes a bundle on these speaking engagements, but lending the imprimatur of the New York Times to this gang is pretty unseemly. Thanks to Bonita for the link.
Sari Horwitz of the Washington Post: "In the largest settlement with a single American Indian tribe, the Obama administration will pay the Navajo Nation $554 million to settle claims that the U.S. government has mismanaged funds and natural resources on the Navajo reservation for decades. The settlement, to be signed in Window Rock, Ariz., on Friday, resolves a long-standing dispute between the Navajo Nation and the U.S. government, with some of the claims dating back more than 50 years."
Beyond the Beltway
Chris Caesar of the Boston Globe: "The trial of accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will stay in [Boston], a federal judge ruled Wednesday night. Lawyers for the 21-year-old man told the court last week their client wouldn’t receive a fair trial in Boston, and requested the case be moved to a Washington, D.C. courtroom. 'The defendant has not proven that this is one of the rare and extreme cases for which a presumption of prejudice is warranted,' the decision reads."
Jon Swaine of the Guardian: "Surveillance footage from an Ohio Walmart store, where police killed a young black man[, John Crawford III,] who was holding an unloaded air rifle and talking on his cellphone, shows he was was [sic.] shot from the side as he moved to run away from advancing officers.... A grand jury in Greene County declined on Wednesday to indict Sean Williams, the police officer who shot Crawford, on charges of murder, reckless homicide or negligent homicide.... An attorney for Crawford’s family described their decision as 'absolutely incomprehensible'. The US department of justice quickly announced that it would review the case with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to look into the possibility of federal criminal charges." CW: The video is embedded in the Guardian story. In addition to disproving the claim that Crawford was brandishing the airgun & walking around pointing it at other customers, the video appears to me to show that officers continued shooting him after he dropped the gun. It's sickening.
CBS News: "A former state trooper faces a felony charge in the shooting of an unarmed man during a traffic stop in Columbia earlier this month." Includes video of the shooting. CW: One striking thing: the victim Lavar Jones, who is black, knew almost reflexively to raise his hands in surrender -- after trooper Sean Groubert shot him without provocation. ...
... CW: When a cop stops me for an (alleged!) traffic violation & asks me for my license & registration, I always tell him (so far, it's always been "him") I don't have a weapon in the car & that I'm going to get the docs from my purse/glove box, but if he would feel safer in getting them himself or first checking out the place I keep them, he is free to do so. This means of course that I am ceding certain rights, but I'd rather be alive than constitutionally correct. P.S. If you do like to travel with a controlled substance, or if you keep a weapon in the glove box, plan ahead & keep your documents someplace else. ...
... Yes We Cam. Josh Marshall of TPM: "Would Groubert have lost his badge and be facing charges had there not been a dashcam video revealing the reality of what happened? Let's put that down as a rhetorical question."
John Schwartz of the New York Times: "The oil giant BP cannot recoup hundreds of millions of dollars it claims to have overpaid victims of a 2010 Gulf Coast oil spill, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. At a hearing in Federal District Court in New Orleans, Judge Carl J. Barbier rejected BP’s request that it be allowed to claw back the extra money paid out under an old accounting method."
Gubernatorial Race
Monica Davey of the New York Times: "A federal appeals court on Wednesday removed an injunction halting an investigation into whether the campaign of Gov. Scott Walker illegally coordinated with conservative groups on fund-raising and spending as he sought to overcome a recall effort two years ago. The decision by a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit raised the prospect that prosecutors could eventually resume the investigation even as Mr. Walker, who has been mentioned as a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2016, is engaged in a tight battle for re-election."
Presidential Election
Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: Jeb [Not His Real Name] Bush goes to North Carolina in support of Tea party Senatorial candidate Thom Tillis, & finds out Tillis & N.C. Republicans are not all that fond of Bush's supposed librul views on immigration & education. ...
... Ed Kilgore: "I betcha Tillis’ people were close to throttling Jebbie’s people backstage; the last thing they need right now is to have someone come into North Carolina and offend Tillis’ 'base.' One thing Bush should have learned from Mitt Romney’s travails in 2012 is that when you are stuck with an issue position at odds with the dominant sentiment in your party (as with RomneyCare), you really just have three choices: flip-flop, lie or simply don’t talk about it." ...
... Speaking of Mutt & Jeff Mitt & Jeb... Bryon York of the Washington Examiner: Mitt "Romney is talking with advisers, consulting with his family, keeping a close eye on the emerging '16 Republican field, and carefully weighing the pluses and minuses of another run. That doesn't mean he will decide to do it, but it does mean that Mitt 2016 is a real possibility.... Romney is said to believe that, other than himself, [Jeb] Bush is the only one of the current Republican field who could beat Hillary Clinton in a general election. If Bush jumps in the race, this line of thinking goes, Romney would not run."
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Reader Comments (13)
Yeah, the only problem with Pierce's riff on why we should vote is that if someone is stupid enough to ask that question, that person is probably a Republican and should be discouraged from voting.
@Nancy: Even in a presidential election year, 40 percent of eligible voters don't vote. That percentage is even higher in off-years like this one (and way higher in odd-numbered years).
As Scott Clement wrote in the WashPo last week, "Among all registered voters, more tend to favor Democratic than Republican candidates for Congress. But for several reasons (including age, race and political interest), Republican-leaning Americans are more likely to vote."
It isn't about being "stupid enough to ask that question"; it's about not having sufficient time or interest to make righteous decisions on how to vote & then go to the polls.
We have the government we do partly because conservatives/Republicans are more likely to vote. And that has nothing to do with Republicans' concerted efforts to further suppress the Democratic vote. (In fact, I think it's likely that the attention paid to voter suppression laws increases the likelihood Democratic-leaning voters will turn out.)
I have some anecdotal evidence that Democratic candidates themselves are part of the problem; A month or two ago, I called the Democratic congresscritter where I'm living & volunteered to do voter outreach. (She's in a close race, BTW.) The result: I get at least one e-mail a day asking me to send her money, but her office has never taken me up on my offer to actually get Democrats to the polls.
Marie
I've always thought electing Sheldon Whitehouse president would be great fun. Can you imagine the barely literate Foxbots trying to creat sentences about Whitehouse in the Whitehouse, and keeping straight which was the man and which the building?
Ditto for respect re: Sheldon Whitehouse. and yes, James, the Foxbots would indeed have a time of it.
Piggy backing on the piece by Kurt Eichenwald here is another Texas treat from Thomas Powers: Texas: The Southern Baptists in Power." worth the read, believe me.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/oct/09/texas-southern-baptists-power/?insrc=toc
Last night I watched a Great Performances program on the impact of Jewish influence in the development of the American Musical Theater, one of the brightest jewels in America's cultural crown.
At one point the discussion turned to the immigrant experience. It was pointed out that although immigration is perhaps the essential American experience, and I don't care if your family came over on the Mayflower, we're all immigrants after a fashion, the word "immigrant" has been made into something terrible and fearsome because of conservative hatred and Republican Party policies that target immigrants as something less than human.
One immigrant, a Jewish kid from Russia, who got off the boat in the early 20th century, went on to add more to American culture than hundreds of thousands of wingnut 'baggers who call immigrants murderers, drug dealers, and rapists. This kid, Israel Beilin, grew up to become Irving Berlin, who wrote several of the most popular American songs of all time, such as "God Bless America". And no Christian composers have come anywhere near the popularity of two of Berlin's songs celebrating Christian holidays, "White Christmas" and "Easter Parade". Berlin's daughter stated that the lyrics of "God Bless America" meant a lot to him because America had taken him in, given him safe harbor, and allowed him to grow up to pursue his dream, and he never forgot that.
Watching this, I could only imagine all the Irving Berlin's being turned aside by the current immigration policies. Would Berlin himself be allowed in? Let's see, poor, Jewish, from Russia (probably a Commie)...Nope. Because this is no longer a welcoming country. No longer a safe harbor for poor immigrants who might one day contribute immensely to the intellectual, spiritual, and general wealth of this nation. They are sent back to uncertain fates while those who would "protect our borders at all costs" add not a thing but only detract from the spirit that once made this country so different from all others, so special, a place that attracted so many from all over.
Emma Lazarus' poem should be chiseled off that Statue. Maybe it can be replaced by something much more representative of today's Right-Wing America, like "Corporations are people, too, my friend".
If you're interested, you can see the program online. I promise you won't stop smiling for 90 minutes. Very funny anecdotes. Wonderful performances. Great stuff about the Gershwins, Julie Styne, Yip Harburg, Rodgers and Hart, Berstein, Berlin, Cole Porter (how'd he get in here?), and a nice bit on how Sondheim changed the rules for musicals. I never realized how much summer camps in the 20's and 30's meant to the American Musical Theater. Now I know.
Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy
Akhileus: thank you for your post about the program on Jewish influence on American musical theater, and for the link. I can't wait to see it!
@Akhilleus:
Ode to Immigrants
By Mitt Romney
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning for handouts,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, the lazy layabouts,
Send them, the homeless, to self-deport.*
*Deport, with a silent “t” as in “Colbert.”
That Broadway musical link is an interesting show; thanks AK. Some of the clips (West Side Story) included family, and it's nice to see him at that age again. And Adoph Green--man, I've watched "Simon" I don't know how many times to enjoy his sect singing "Umm, umm good. That's what Campbell's Soups are...".
James,
We are completely simpatico on Adolph Green. He was an amazing guy and I always got the sense that the person you saw onscreen was not far from how he was in real life.
His characterization of a 50's TV producer in "My Favorite Life" ("Stan, that is a cashmere coat!") is one of MY favorites.
I don't know why no one has seen fit to put the lives of (Betty) Comden and Green into cinematic or Broadway form; they were an amazingly talented and loving couple. They were represented in "The Bandwagon" (I will arm wrestle anyone who says this isn't one of the three or four greatest American movie musicals, to death. Or at least until one of us develops an arm cramp) by Nanette Fabray and the wonderfully and weirdly nonpareil Oscar Levant, as Lilly and Lester Marton ("More Beer!").
I have a recording of Bernstein's "Candide" (the famous "final" version) from the late 80's with Green as Voltaire's crinky philosopher, Dr. Pangloss, along with the transcendent Christa Ludwig, the great German mezzo, as the Old Lady. Adolph and Lenny were best friends from way back (as you know after watching the GP program) and he makes a unique Pangloss.
A very great talent. I'm always thrilled to hear that he's appreciated still.
@AK: I watched that program some time ago and was in heaven. I'm an old theater–-song-–dance buff from way back. Thanks for the memories. Porter was featured because he was such an integral part in "all that jazz, and because he was a shining star among all those others––wrote not only the lyrics, but the music and his songs have never lost their purchase.
It amazes me that the Jewish immigrants not only transformed the American music, theater and Hollywood scene, but they were excellent tailors and went on to excel in clothing corporations. And then we have the bankers––at that time there was a Yiddish phrase for those that made the big money––"A gontser macher" which translates roughly as "a real operator."
Such real operators came to this country and transformed it. Now there are those that want to shut the door–––for fear of––oh, let me count the ways!
Marie,
Love that silent T, in your poem.
Makes all the difference. Or, as the French might say, "Vive la différence!"
They also say "Fuck the begrudgers", like Romney, but we'll let that go for now.
Casse-toi, Mittens,
PD,
Glad you liked the program, and glad you're one of the musical buffs abroad in the world.
It's funny how certain phrases come to be understood in a second and third hand way by people (like me) who didn't grow up with them.
My Jewish friends typically use the word "macher" as a pejorative to mean something like someone who thinks they're a big shot but who are really something more like a schmuck.
Yiddish is a wonderfully resonant source for such expressions.
L'chaim, right?
Tailors, you say? I hope you are including Levi Strauss.