The Commentariat -- Sept. 6, 2013
Peter Baker & Steven Myers of the New York Times: "President Obama ran into an impasse in his bid to rally international backing for a military strike on Syria as world leaders wrapped up a summit meeting here Friday deeply divided over the right response to what the Americans have called the deadliest nerve gas attack in decades." ...
... ** In his news conference, President Obama said he would be addressing the American people from the White House re: Syria. Sounds as if he's planning a strike sooner rather than later. ...
... Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "President Obama met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit here Friday, as the U.S. leader used the final day of the summit to seek broader international support for a U.S.-led military strike on Syria, backing that he hopes would help legitimize military action in the minds of U.S. lawmakers and the American public."
No Surprise Here. Nicole Perlroth, et al., of the New York Times, with ProPublica & the Guardian: "The National Security Agency is winning its long-running secret war on encryption, using supercomputers, technical trickery, court orders and behind-the-scenes persuasion to undermine the major tools protecting the privacy of everyday communications in the Internet age, according to newly disclosed documents. The agency has circumvented or cracked much of the encryption, or digital scrambling, that guards global commerce and banking systems, protects sensitive data like trade secrets and medical records, and automatically secures the e-mails, Web searches, Internet chats and phone calls of Americans and others around the world..." ...
... James Ball, et al., of the Guardian: "US and British intelligence agencies have successfully cracked much of the online encryption relied upon by hundreds of millions of people to protect the privacy of their personal data, online transactions and emails, according to top-secret documents revealed by former contractor Edward Snowden." ...
... Worse than the NSA. Martha Mendoza of the AP: "Attorneys suing Google say the firm violates privacy and takes personal property by electronically scanning the contents of people's Gmail accounts and then targeting ads to them." CW: Plus, I see I'm a co-conspirator in this scam as Google g-mails the comments to Reality Chex. Yesterday P. D. Pepe wrote, in part, "@Unwashed: It's from the Latin which literally means to whom (is it) a benefit? Let's all take a guess at whose wheels would be greased." So I guess she should expect to start getting ads for bar soap, Berlitz, tires & STP. Sorry.
David Sanger & Eric Schmitt of the New York Times: " has directed the Pentagon to develop an expanded list of potential targets in Syria in response to intelligence suggesting that the government of President Bashar al-Assad has been moving troops and equipment used to employ chemical weapons while Congress debates whether to authorize military action. Mr. Obama, officials said, is now determined to put more emphasis on the 'degrade' part of what the administration has said is the goal of a military strike against Syria -- to 'deter and degrade' Mr. Assad's ability to use chemical weapons. That means expanding beyond the 50 or so major sites that were part of the original target list developed with French forces...." ...
... Update: President Obama said in his presser of this piece, "That report is inaccurate." ...
... Stuart Williams of AFP: "World leaders at the G20 summit on Friday failed to bridge their bitter divisions over US plans for military action against the Syrian regime, as Washington slammed Moscow for holding the UN Security Council 'hostage' over the crisis. Despite not being on the original agenda of the summit hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin outside Saint Petersburg, the leaders discussed the Syria crisis into the early hours of the morning over dinner amid the splendour of a former imperial palace." ...
... Peter Baker of the New York Times: "President Obama arrived at the Group of 20 summit [in St. Petersburg, Russia,] on Thursday on the defensive as he sought international support for a strike on Syria and confronted the meeting's host and chief skeptic, President Vladimir V. Putin, after a period of deepening tension between the two." ...
... Philip Rucker & Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: President "Obama will be doing outreach to key lawmakers on Capitol Hill during his two-day visit to Russia for the Group of 20 summit, deputy national security adviser Benjamin J. Rhodes told reporters here Thursday. On Wednesday, during his visit to Sweden, Obama made five calls to a bipartisan group of senators as part of the administration-wide effort to lobby lawmakers on Syria, Rhodes said." ...
... Richard Simon of the Los Angeles Times: "President Obama's hopes of winning congressional approval for a U.S. military strike on Syria could come down to the persuasion skills of House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, a San Francisco liberal who was a leading critic of the war in Iraq." ...
... Kasie Hunt of NBC News: "Lawmakers were shown a gruesome video depicting dozens of people killed by nerve gas as part of a classified, closed-door briefing Thursday laying out the Obama administration's case for action against Syrian President Bashar Assad." ...
... ** Tim Egan: "You may think George W. Bush is at home in his bathtub, painting pictures of his toenails, but in fact he's the biggest presence in the debate over what to do in Syria." Read the whole post.
... Kevin Drum of Mother Jones: "... watching Republican pols and conservative pundits get on their high horses about Syria has been pretty nauseating. These are guys who mostly have never met a war they didn't like, and until a few months ago were practically baying at the moon to demand that that President Obama stop diddling around and get serious about aiding the rebels and taking out the monstrous Bashar al-Assad. But now? ... They talk piously about the value of multilateral support; the need to give diplomacy a chance; the perils of regional blowback; the lessons of Iraq; and the fear of escalation if Assad retaliates. You'd think they'd all just returned from a Save the Whales conference in Marin County."
... AFP: "Three Russian warships crossed Turkey's Bosphorus Strait Thursday en route to the eastern Mediterranean, near the Syrian coast, amid concern in the region over potential US-led strikes in response to the Damascus regime's alleged use of chemical weapons. The SSV-201 intelligence ship Priazovye, accompanied by the two landing ships Minsk and Novocherkassk passed through the Bosphorus known as the Istanbul strait that separates Asia from Europe, an AFP photographer reported."
... Michael Holden of Reuters: "Britain has new evidence that chemical weapons were used in an attack on the Syrian capital Damascus, Prime Minister David Cameron said on Thursday. Cameron said scientists at Britain's Porton Down military research facility had analyzed samples taken from an alleged gas attack on a rebel-held Damascus neighborhood on August 21 and concluded they had tested positive for the sarin nerve agent." ...
** Paul Krugman: "Right now, Washington seems divided between Republicans who denounce any kind of government action -- who insist that all the policies and programs that mitigated the crisis actually made it worse and Obama loyalists who insist that they did a great job because the world didn't totally melt down. Obviously, the Obama people are less wrong than the Republicans. But, by any objective standard, U.S. economic policy since Lehman has been an astonishing, horrifying failure."
If you want to know the real reason Republicans oppose ObamaCare, Charles Pierce will enlighten you. It's an existential threat! ...
... Stephen Stromberg of the Washington Post: "As new analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation" finds that under the ACA insurance exchanges, 'premiums will vary significantly across the country..., [but] they are generally lower than expected.'"
CW: I know it's difficult to win the prize for Biggest Hypocrite in Congress, but I'd give it to Stephen Fincher (RTP-Tenn.), a strong opponent of food stamps, which are authorized via the omnibus farm bill, because -- sez he -- lazy people who "are unwilling to work" shouldn't eat, and "The role of citizens, of Christianity, of humanity, is to take care of each other, not for Washington to steal from those in the country and give to others in the country." Steve Benen: "Fincher collected nearly $3.5 million in taxpayer-financed farm subsidies from 1999 to 2012, including roughly $70,000 just last year in the form of direct payments from Washington."
Presidential Election 2012
Mitt Romney Was Right about Everything! McKay Coppins of BuzzFeed: "... Republicans are suddenly celebrating the presidential also-ran as a political prophet. From his widely mocked warnings about a hostile Russia to his adamant opposition to the increasingly unpopular implementation of Obamacare, the ex-candidate's canon of campaign rhetoric now offers cause for vindication -- and remorse -- to Romney's friends, supporters, and former advisers." ...
... Jed Lewison of Daily Kos lays to rest the Romney-Was-Right meme. CW: In addition, I'd ask -- Who besides the Voice of the Angel Moroni could possibly have predicted that Putin would continue to be an asshole, that there would be trouble in the Middle East & Africa or that ObamaCare would be difficult to implement? ...
... "Mitt the Prophet." Ed Kilgore: "... please, don’t pretend that the heavily financed mendacious shuffle which the Romney campaign represented from beginning to end was in fact some sort of prophetic stance." CW: Yeah, if you flip-flop on every issue, some of your flips or flops are bound to be right. "All of the above" does not a soothsayer make.
Rose-Colored Ronnie
I know that President Reagan would have never let this happen. He would stand up to this. And President Obama -- the only reason he is consulting with Congress, he wants to blame somebody for his lack of resolve. We have to think like President Reagan would do and he would say chemical use is unacceptable. -- Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), former chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee ...
... Steve Benen: "... Reagan ... did largely the opposite of what Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said he did with regards to the use of chemical weapons.... Indeed, after Saddam Hussein gassed his own people, Reagan dispatched ... wait for it ... Donald Rumsfeld to help solidify the relationship between the Reagan administration and the brutal, murderous Iraqi dictator. Rumsfeld gladly shook hands with Hussein after he used chemical weapons to kill Iraqi dissidents." Read the whole post for a recap of Reagan's looking the other way when our Friend in Baghdad used chemical weapons to commit genocide.
One Way to Get Paid Vacations. Ann Marimow & Lenny Bernstein of the Washington Post: "Over the past 12 years, John C. Beale was often away from his job as a high-level staffer at the Environmental Protection Agency. He cultivated an air of mystery and explained his lengthy absences by telling his bosses that he was doing top-secret work, including for the CIA. For years, apparently, no one checked. Now, Beale is charged with stealing nearly $900,000 from the EPA by receiving pay and bonuses he did not deserve. He faces up to three years in prison."
News Ledes
Bloomberg News: "Payrolls in the U.S. climbed less than projected in August after smaller gains the prior two months, indicating companies are being deliberate in their hiring as they wait for a pickup in demand. The unemployment rate unexpectedly fell as more people left the labor force. The gain of 169,000 workers last month followed a revised 104,000 rise in July that was smaller than initially estimated, Labor Department figures showed today...."
AP: "An Arizona woman who has spent more than two decades on death row after being convicted of having her 4-year-old son killed for an insurance payout is expected to be released on Friday while she awaits a retrial of the case that made her one of the state's most reviled inmates. Judge Rosa Mroz of Maricopa County Superior Court set Debra Milke's bond at $250,000 a day earlier, saying there's no direct evidence linking her to her son's death other than a purported confession to a detective. And, the judge said, the validity of that confession is in doubt."
AFP: "Suspected Taliban in Afghanistan shot dead Indian author Sushmita Banerjee, whose book about her dramatic escape from the militants in the 90s became a Bollywood film, police said on Thursday. Police in insurgency-hit Paktika province, in the east of Afghanistan, said they found the body of the 49 year old on Thursday morning, after the militants dragged her out of her husband's home late in the night and shot her repeatedly."
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Reader Comments (12)
This Syria thing is so-o-complicated. Sunnis, Shiites, Christians, Moslems, and our never-ending thirst for oil. Surely a missile strike or six will simplify it all sufficiently for the hawks to understand.
See a recent Reuters report on the geopolitics of Syria and--oil, the Middle East's most powerful chemical weapon:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/30/us-syria-crisis-oil-idUSBRE97T00
"We have to think like President Reagan would do." Ain't that a nifty sentence! And this person–––and from Florida no less (maybe it's the oranges), this Ileana Ros-Lehtinen who chaired the House Foreign Affairs Committee appears to be ignorant of historical facts about her darling Ronnie, and I bet a whole lot of other things. The question is, of course, once corrected, will she hide her head under a bushel, be embarrassed, say she "misspoke"? One wonders at the wonder of people like this who chair committees and don't know squat.
@ Thanks Marie for the heads up. So far no soap ads, or tire promos––just a call from someone named Rosetta Stone wanting to know if I'd like to learn a little German.
Mitt the Prophet reminds me of George Carlin's Hippy Dippy Weatherman; "ahhhh continued dark tonight." Who knew a KGB thug would continue to act like a KGB thug?
Reagan’s legacy and the use to which the right puts the image of the fictional/fantasy Ronald Reagan have been primary catalysts in the victory of economic royalists and those who see nothing wrong in employing illegal, even treasonous actions as long as it improves their chances of gaining and maintaining power and control.
These activities are typically undertaken under a variety of benevolent public faces (such as those seeking to control women’s reproductive rights in order to “protect” or “save” them, and killing food stamps, curtailing unemployment assistance, health care, education, and even social security in an effort to “free” Americans from the “smothering hand of government”, to use one of Reagan’s favorite phrases) which are at extreme odds from the actual goals. This kind of shit has been around forever but Reagan and his acolytes crystallized and refined these strategies in ways that make old fashioned, garden variety political liars look like George Washington at the cherry tree.
The image of Reagan as supporter of the little guy is completely at odds with the facts. His career as a politician was kick started by General Electric who sent him on speaking tours of the country to pimp for corporate ideology and rail against unions and pro-worker groups. Reagan spit on the little guy.
And it’s entirely true that Saint Ronnie, in spite of what any wingnut ignoramus might claim, was a big fan of despots and dictators, as long as he could justify his support for genocide, poison gas use, rape, torture, mutilation, selling of weapons to terrorists and other fun right-wing state actions by claiming he was doing it to save the world from the commies. Just like he did as a McCarthyite secret informer for the FBI when he handed over lists that would destroy people’s lives but preserved his own starched white image.
And white it was.
He was a staunch opponent of any move to stem the rule of apartheid in South Africa. His corporation gene kicked in when he read the Sullivan Rules and that was it for sanctions. In this country, in addition to giving campaign speeches in southern locations sacred to the memory of savage, murderous racism, he once declared, while running California as a police state, that should Eldridge Cleaver be allowed to teach, his students would come home at night and slit their parents’ throats. Oh and don’t forget his attempts, while president, to reward Bob Jones University, a.k.a. Klan Kollege, with special tax breaks. So much for his legacy as a uniter and all around nice guy.
Perhaps his fondness for the use of gas by leaders to harm their own people came from his days as governor, especially when he declared that Berkeley was a hotbed of commie professors and hippie radicals intent on..well, something (a useful wingnut trope still in use today by dickweeds like Rick Santorum). He sent in a helicopter to inundate the campus with tear gas to teach those dirty commies and hippies a lesson in good ol’ American macho scumbagism. While they were at it, they also gassed an elementary school, a couple of neighborhoods, and a hospital, because, you know, FREEDOOOOM.
Despite the fake Morning in America optimism bullshit, he was a dangerous, dark-side asshole. He spread doomsday scenarios like Johnny Appleseed in an open field. He believed, apparently, at least so he said, that the Armageddon predicted in the less salutary books of the Bible would come to pass and those not on his side (the right side, of course) would all be shitcanned to hell. This put him in solid with religious right kooks who finally found someone just as crazy as they were. Republicans' unholy alliance with wild-eyed Bible beaters is one of his great gifts to the country. Something that still spreads hate and division wherever it slithers. Good ol’ Ron.
He was the primary supporter and enabler of some of the worst, most lethal dictators across the globe during the 80s, especially in South and Central America where hundreds of thousands of innocents were murdered, tortured, and disappeared with his direct aid and support. One of his good buddies, Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt, was, just a few months ago, convicted of genocide by his own people. El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua as well as Guatemala, all have felt the generous hand of Saint Ronnie crushing their attempts to rise up against his murderous pals. Human rights? What the fuck are they?
But Ronnie is still coveted as a symbol of righteous Christian behavior, a bulwark against hippies, commies, liberals, and others who refuse to knuckle under to Reagan’s police state mentality and economic royalism.
But hey, those are facts. As most Hollywood actors might tell you, they should never be allowed to get in the way of a good story.
And whenever you hear more wingnuttery about doing What Ron Would Do, you can appreciate why the right hates education so much.
Ignorance: the right-wing's BFF.
Jumping Joseph Smith!
The Rat was right all along? Is it true?
Women DO come in binders?
@Ak: Would Ronnie Do? Why he'd say "As long as you gas the correct people, it's OK with me"
Interesting take on the future of the Washington Bezos:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/09/05/sorry-jeff-bezos-the-news-bundle-isnt-coming-back/
And then there's O'Connor blowing off on public ignorance:
http://www.sacbee.com/2013/09/06/5712771/retired-justice-sandra-day-oconnor.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/05/opinion/kristof-the-right-questions-on-syria.html
Nicholas Kristof has another take on Syria. He argues that it's wrong to do a Reagan; i.e., look the other way.
"Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing." - John Stuart Mill
@Ak: For those of us whose stomachs rumble at the mere mention of Mr. Morning in America it's a double trouble in those nether regions whenever he appears as THE beloved president of the Right who always shines so brilliantly with that Irish twinkle in his eye (thanks to General Electric). After reading your piece today I thought of Anthony Lewis ( such a shame to lose a good man like that) who was one of the best legally trained journalists ever and in 1987 condemned the Reagan administration for attempting to deport Margaret Randall, an American-born citizen who had taken Mexican citizenship, for advocating "the doctrines of world communism" in her poetry and oral histories. That same year he revealed that the immigration service arrested seven Palestinians and a Kenyan woman in L.A. for distributing magazines which had affiliations with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The Reagan administration wanted all of them deported. That case, according to Lewis, wasn't settled until 2008 (no one was deported).
The difference between the stories Reagan told and wanted to believe, and those of Lewis who believed "that by telling stories he could appeal to the nation and its leaders to live to our highest ideals" is one is from the Hollywood studios and one is REAL.
Marie, I think you were right the other day when you suggested intervention on behalf of the refugees. I don't know why this idea has not gained traction (except there's no bang-bang or $-$ in it). There's a hugh international love-bubble at the end of that path.
PD,
Your post demonstrates the moral dissolution and degeneracy of the Reagan administration. Anyone who disagreed with his view of the world was automatically considered (very much like the entirety of the Dubya group) anti-American and unquestionably subject to incarceration, murder, torture, and rape.
The interesting thing about the drooling anti-communists in this country is that most of the people who dabbled in communism, especially in the 30s and 40s, did so because they saw basic Marxism as a way to beat back the worst elements of unbridled corporatized capitalism in an effort to help average workers. Certainly there were those who were bereft of an accurate view of the vicissitudes of Communism as the informing ideology of Stalinism, but most of them saw Communism as a way out of poverty, degradation, and a-humanistic mortification impelled by Koch style capitalism.
But to destroy people, like Reagan did, and Nixon, and McCarthy, and Bush, simply because they hoped for a better life for average Americans was, and still is, the essence of warped right-wing world ideology.
Fuckers. Every. Single. One.