The Commentariat -- Sept. 23, 2014

Valerie Volcovici of Reuters: "... the United Nations on Tuesday will zero in on climate change, giving leaders from 125 countries a platform to explain how they plan to address the issue.... The White House announced on Tuesday that Obama would issue an executive order to require federal agencies to ensure their international development programs and investments are designed to help communities adapt to the impacts of climate change." ...

... Jon Stewart explains climate change to Republican deniers. Thanks to P. D. Pepe:

     ... As Victoria D. comments, Stewart should have said "Republican" more because it's House Science Committee Republicans who need third-grade visuals to understand the obvious.

President Obama made remarks late this morning about strikes on ISIS. Politico has a brief report here:

     ... Update. The New York Times report, by Mark Landler & others, is here. ...

David Kirkpatrick & Omar Al-Jawoshy of the New York Times: "After six weeks of American airstrikes, the Iraqi government’s forces have scarcely budged the Sunni extremists of the Islamic State from their hold on more than a quarter of the country, in part because many critical Sunni tribes remain on the sidelines. Although the airstrikes appear to have stopped the extremists' march toward Baghdad, the Islamic State is still dealing humiliating blows to the Iraqi Army. On Monday, the government acknowledged that it had lost control of the small town of Sichar and lost contact with several hundred of its soldiers who had been besieged for nearly a week at a camp north of the Islamic State stronghold of Falluja, in Anbar Province." ...

... Loveday Morris of the Washington Post: An ISIS suicide attack on an Iraqi army base in Anbar Province -- the attackers arrived in bomb-rigged Humvees & hundreds of Iraqi soldiers may have died -- "has highlighted shortcomings in an army that the United States has spent billions of dollars training and equipping, and it has further undermined the force's reliability as a partner as President Obama expands airstrikes into provinces including Anbar.... 'There were no reinforcements, no food supplies, no medicine, no water, and then our ammunition began to run out,' said 1st Lt. Haider Majid, 28. 'We called our leaders so many times. We called our commanders, we called members of parliament, but they just left us there to die.'"

... Michael Hirsh in Politico Magazine on "America's new war president." Hirsh looks at the realities, including the political realities, that have led President Obama to begin what Hirsh calls a "new war" against ISIS. CW Note: Hirsh works for Politico now, but he has been a level-headed, nonpartisan reporter & opinionator for a long time. My one disagreement with Hirsh here is that he ignores conditions that invited an ISIS-type jihad, most notably Bush's Stupid War. Worth a read. ...

... Juan Cole: "Some 80% of Raqqah[, Syria]’s 240,000 inhabitants, i.e. about 190,000 people, are said to have remained after ISIL took over the city.... It is inevitable that US and allied bombing on important Raqqah military targets will kill a certain number of civilians.... The some 22 sorties flown on Monday will have killed some ISIL terrorists, blown up some weapons warehouses, and destroyed some checkpoints. But ISIL are guerrillas, and they will just fade away into Raqqah's back alleys. The US belief in air power is touching, but in fact no conflict has ever been quickly brought to an end where US planes have been involved." See also today's News Ledes.

Spencer Hsu of the Washington Post: "Federal prosecutors alleged Monday in federal court that a man who jumped a fence and ran into the White House's unlocked front door Friday night posed a threat to President Obama and was keeping 800 rounds of ammunition, two hatchets and a machete in his car, parked blocks away.... After a 15-minute hearing, [U.S Magistrate Judge John] Facciola ordered [Omar Jose] Gonzalez held until Oct. 1, pending revocation of bond by authorities in an unrelated July 19 incident in Wythe County, Va. In that case, he was arrested while allegedly carrying a sawed-off shotgun, two sniper rifles and several other firearms, as well as a map of the Washington area with the Masonic Temple in Alexandria, Va., circled and a line pointed toward the White House, a local prosecutor said. Earlier, on Aug. 25, Assistant U.S. Attorney David Mudd said, U.S. Secret Service officers saw Gonzalez carrying a hatchet in the back waistband of his pants along the south fence of the White House and questioned him." ...

... The New York Times report, by Michael Shear & Michael Schmidt, is here. "Among the items found in Mr. Gonzalez's vehicle in July was a mini-arsenal of 11 guns including two shotguns and four rifles, some equipped with scopes and bipods that a sniper would use and 'a map of Washington, D.C., with writing and a line drawn to the White House,' law enforcement officials said. He also had four pistols, three of them loaded, and a revolver." ...

... CW: Only in America could a guy get away with carrying a "mini-arsenal" & a map to the home of the head of state. The only illegal item he was carrying, according to Virginia police, was a sawed-off shotgun. Everything else was cool. Instead of investigating Secret Service policies, we should be looking at our culture of violence, one in which the police "did not regard ... as dangerous or mentally unstable" a veteran carrying a mini-arsenal who led them on a high-speech chase. Apparently they took his word that he was a veteran & that made everything fine. ...

... AND, yes, this post is related. Charles Pierce: "I would wager that, in every state where there is a close election, and where open-carry laws of one kind or another are in force, you will see armed men at precincts 'protecting' the vote. It's the logical confluence of voter-suppression and unlimited gun rights.... And then, in 2016, there will be more guns at the polls. They really don't miss a trick." ...

... CW: I was thinking of observing that most of the country is becoming Dodge City. Then I remembered that Dodge City & other Western towns actually had strict gun control laws. Luckily, the Supreme Court of the day -- not exactly a bastion of liberal ideology -- did not pretend the Second Amendment expressed an individual's right to pack heat.

Gregory Korte of USA Today: "The Treasury Department will crack down on so-called tax 'inversions,' targeting companies that try to avoid taxes by moving their headquarters overseas. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said the new rules would help close what he called a 'glaring loophole in the U.S. tax code' in which U.S. companies acquire foreign businesses and then switch their citizenship to avoid paying U.S. taxes." Thanks to P. D. Pepe for the lead.

John Boehner Thinks the Jobless Are Lazy. But the House passed a "jobs" bill! Danny Vinik of the New Republic: "Last Thursday, House Republicans passed a 'jobs' bill that includes a smorgasbord of traditional conservative ideas. But it would also increase the deficit by $590 billion over the next 10 years, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. And these aren't temporary costs, like the stimulus (which wasn't that much larger, money-wise than this new GOP 'jobs' plan anyways). After the first decade, the costs will only increase.... It would make permanent a collection of tax breaks.... It would require Congressional approval for any regulation with estimated costs over $100 million. The bill would also change Obamacare's definition of a full-time employee from 30 to 40 hours and, oh yeah, repeal the medical device tax." Read the whole post.

Sam Farmer of the Los Angeles Times: "Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti said Monday that his biggest mistake in the handling of the Ray Rice situation is that he didn't get an earlier look at the surveillance video from inside the elevator -- and had no interest in seeing it. '"I lacked a whole lot of interest. Zero desire to see that tape,' Bisciotti said in a news conference called to address and dispute a lengthy story by ESPN's 'Outside the Lines' that said the Ravens knew the details of Rice striking his future wife inside the casino elevator within hours of the incident." A transcript of the full rebuttal, published in the Baltimore Sun, is here.

Josh Gerstein of Politico: "Sen. Rand Paul's lawsuit over National Security Agency surveillance was put on hold Monday, pending an appeals court ruling on a parallel case brought before the senator's. Judge Richard Leon did not explain the rationale for his ruling but granted a Justice Department motion to halt the case while the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit considers the NSA surveillance issue in separate lawsuits brought by conservative activist Larry Klayman." CW Working Theory: Leon just wanted to cut the billable hours of Ken Cuccinelli, who brought the suit on behalf of Paul & Freeeedom Works.

Senate Race

Charles Pierce comments on Rep. Tom Cotton's (RTP) challenge to Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) CW: It's a great commentary, but I do wish to warn readers of the foolishness of the idea that we all would be living in the Kingdom of Heaven if only So-&-So had won/lost a particular election. I suppose this view is an offshoot of the "great man" theory of history, infused with wishful thinking/I-told-you-to-vote. Obviously, elections matter, but the dynamics that tip the balance one way or the other don't vacillate all that much. Voters are still conservative or liberal, dumb or dumber, etc. To assume that defeating Newt Gingrich -- as Pierce does -- would have radically changed history is a mistake. We'll never know but -- more than likely House Republicans, whose makeup would have remained essentially the same, would have chosen another jerk for Speaker. The show goes on no matter the players.

Presidential Election

Steve M.: "... the Washington Free Beacon wants you to realize that ... Hillary Clinton's youthful correspondence with Saul Alinsky proves that she's an unreconstructed radical leftist.... Let's see: Hillary Clinton was a top adviser to her husband, the governor of Arkansas, for twelve years; she was America's First Lady (and a top adviser to the president) for eight years; she was a U.S. senator for eight years; and she was secretary of state for four years -- and in all that time she's been a Third Way left-centrist and a relatively hawkish Democrat. But she was just fooling us! She knew that, one day, the full flower of her evil leftist scheme to communize America would bloom, because ... she knew her time would come." ...

... CW: I'll admit I ignored this shocking story; I'm grateful to Steve M. for explaining it. It isn't just that the right lives in an "intellectual closed loop," as Krugman wrote in his column yesterday, but also that within that loop, the loopy do not adhere to basic logic thinking or simple common sense. ...

... Like Every Lefty, Clinton Is a Party Animal. Anne Gearan of the Washington Post: "... the Clinton Global Initiative now outshines the U.N. gathering, at least when it comes to star wattage. It also serves as an annual company picnic and convocation of the faithful for the Clintons' far-flung political and business networks." CW: I find the Clinton conglomerate extremely creepy. I suppose to some extent most of us are phony self-promoters, but the Clintons have carried vainglory to a mawkish, tawdry extreme. ...

... Molly Ball of the Atlantic, last week: "Everywhere Hillary Clinton goes, a thousand cameras follow. Then she opens her mouth, and nothing happens."

News Ledes

Der Spiegel: "German-American journalist Michael Scott Moore has been freed two-and-a-half years after he was kidnapped in Somalia. German officials received Moore, who worked for Spiegel International years before his abduction, on Tuesday afternoon local time." Via Gawker.

New York Times: "The United States and five Arab allies launched a wide-ranging air campaign against the Islamic State and at least one other extremist group in Syria for the first time early Tuesday, targeting the groups' bases, training camps and checkpoints in at least four provinces, according to the United States military and Syrian activists. The intensity of the attacks struck a fierce opening blow against the jihadists of the Islamic State, scattering its forces and damaging the network of facilities it has built in Syria that helped fuel its seizure of a large part of Iraq this year." ...

... AP: "Syria said Tuesday that Washington informed President Bashar Assad's government of imminent U.S. airstrikes against the Islamic State group, hours before an American-led military coalition pounded the extremists' strongholds across northern and eastern Syria."

New York Times: "The Israeli military said Tuesday morning that it had shot down a Syrian fighter jet that had 'infiltrated into Israeli airspace,' the first such incident in at least a quarter of a century."

New York Times: "Israeli forces early Tuesday killed the two men they suspected of abducting and murdering three Israeli teenagers from the occupied West Bank in June, according to a military spokesman, closing a crucial chapter in what became the bloodiest period of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in decades.Lt. Col. Peter Lerner of the Israeli military said Marwan Qawasmeh, 29, and Amer Abu Aisha, 33, 'came out shooting' around 6 a.m. as troops breached a two-story structure in Hebron where the suspects had been holed up for a week."

The Commentariat -- Sept. 22, 2014

Photo removed.

Lisa Foderaro of the New York Times: "Climates marches were held across the globe on Sunday, from Paris to Papua New Guinea, and with world leaders gathering at the United Nations on Tuesday for a climate summit meeting, marchers said the timing was right for the populist message in support of limits on carbon emissions." ...

... Andy Borowitz: "A climate-change march that organizers claim was the largest on record is nevertheless unlikely to change the minds of idiots, a survey of America’s idiots reveals." CW: Unfortunately, too many of those idiots are in Congress. See, for instance, Emily Atkin's story linked in yesterday's Commentariat. ...

... Justin Gillis of the New York Times: "Global emissions of greenhouse gases jumped 2.3 percent in 2013 to record levels, scientists reported Sunday, in the latest indication that the world remains far off track in its efforts to control global warming. The emissions growth last year was a bit slower than the average growth rate of 2.5 percent over the past decade, and much of the dip was caused by an economic slowdown in China, which is the world’s single largest source of emissions." ...

... John Schwartz of the New York Times: "The [Rockefeller] family whose legendary wealth flowed from Standard Oil is planning to announce on Monday that its $860 million philanthropic organization, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, is joining the divestment movement that began a couple years ago on college campuses. The announcement, timed to precede Tuesday’s opening of the United Nations climate change summit meeting in New York City, is part of a broader and accelerating initiative. In recent years, 180 institutions ... as well as hundreds of wealthy individual investors have pledged to sell assets tied to fossil fuel companies from their portfolios and to invest in cleaner alternatives."

Eric Schmitt & Somini Sengupta of the New York Times: "President Obama will preside this week over an unusual meeting of the United Nations Security Council poised to adopt a binding resolution that would compel all countries to put in place domestic laws to prosecute those who travel abroad to join terrorist organizations and those who help them, including by raising funds. The resolution, proposed by the United States, would for the first time establish international standards for nations to prevent and suppress the recruiting of their citizens by terrorist organizations, and to bar the entry and transit across their territory of suspected foreign terrorists."

Dexter Filkins of the New Yorker: "Obama has spoken carefully in public, but it is plain that the Administration wants the Kurds to do two potentially incompatible things. The first is to serve as a crucial ally in the campaign to destroy ISIS.... The second is to resist seceding from the Iraqi state. Around Washington, the understanding is clear: if the long-sought country of Kurdistan becomes real, America’s twelve-year project of nation building in Iraq will be sundered.... But the Kurds’ history with the state of Iraq is one of persistent enmity and bloodshed, and they see little benefit in joining up with their old antagonists.”

Paul Waldman: The media have overblown the supposed rift between Obama & the brass over strategy to control ISIS. (CW: Pretty much what I suggested last week.) "... the fact that some in the military don’t agree with the President on strategy is not only a feature of pretty much every military conflict, it’s also an inevitable outgrowth of the American system. When we established civilian control over the military, the purpose wasn’t to make generals happy. Some of them will grumble sometimes, and that’s fine. But we shouldn’t make more out of those disagreements than they warrant."

Scott Wong of the Hill: "The U.S. is not teaming up with Iran in the fight against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorists, U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power said Sunday. 'Well, let me stress that we are not coordinating military operations or sharing intelligence with Iran,' Power said on CBS’s 'Face the Nation,' pointing out that Iran’s backing of Hezbollah and Syrian President Basar al-Assad’s regime has been 'very destructive.'” ...

... Jaime Fuller of the Washington Post has a very good overview of who-all said what-all on the Sunday shows. With video clips.

Here's a clip from Scott Pelley's interview of Leon Panetta where Panetta says, "President Obama should have done what I said." (Paraphrase.) This page has what appears to be the full transcript of the interview, as aired.

Jerry Markon, et al., of the Washington Post: "An exodus of top-level officials from the Department of Homeland Security is undercutting its ability to stay ahead of a range of emerging threats, including potential terrorist and cyber attacks, according to interviews with current and former officials. Over the past four years, employees have left DHS at a rate nearly twice as fast as the federal government overall, and the trend is accelerating, according to a review of a federal database. The departures are a result of what employees widely describe as a dysfunctional work environment, abysmal morale and the lure of private security companies...."

William Broad & David Sanger of the New York Times: The U.S. has launched a "wave of atomic revitalization that includes plans for a new generation of weapon carriers. A recent federal study put the collective price tag, over the next three decades, at up to a trillion dollars. This expansion comes under a president who campaigned for 'a nuclear-free world' and made disarmament a main goal of American defense policy." CW: I expect the administration spoonfed this story to the Times in response to Putin's remarks last week about Russia's ability to crush former Soviet Union countries.

Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: "The Secret Service is considering screening tourists and other visitors at checkpoints before they enter the public areas in front of the White House in response to the episode Friday in which a man with a knife managed to get through the front door of the president’s home after jumping over the fence on Pennsylvania Avenue.... As part of the screening, the Secret Service would establish several checkpoints a few blocks from the White House...."

In his column today, Paul Krugman expands on a blogpost on jobs linked here Saturday. "... the blame-the-victim crowd has gotten everything it wanted: Benefits, especially for the long-term unemployed, have been slashed or eliminated. So now we have rants against the bums on welfare when they aren’t bums — they never were — and there’s no welfare.... Strange to say, this outbreak of anti-compassionate conservatism hasn’t produced a job surge.... The right lives in its own intellectual universe, aware of neither the reality of unemployment nor what life is like for the jobless." ...

... Ed Kilgore: "... this ought to be a subject at least occasionally mentioned by Democratic politicians, too. A higher minimum wage isn’t of much use to people who cannot find work."

Tami Abdollah & Eric Tucker of the AP: "A Pentagon program that distributes military surplus gear to local law enforcement allows even departments that the Justice Department has censured for civil rights violations to apply for and get lethal weaponry.... The Pentagon, which provides the free surplus military equipment, says its consultation with the Justice Department will be looked at as the government reviews how to prevent high-powered weaponry from flowing to the untrustworthy." ...

CW: Apparently St. Louis-area police think the problem in Ferguson was just a little public relations problem. Dylan Stableford of Yahoo! News: "The St. Louis Police Academy [is] ... offering a new fall course that teaches 'tactics, skills and techniques that will help you WIN WITH THE MEDIA!' According to the Oct. 24 program's description, the 'highly entertaining' class will cover lessons learned from both Ferguson and Newtown."

Not a Parody. ESPN: "One of the chief arguments that Ray Rice will make in the appeal of his indefinite suspension is that the NFL extended his punishment on the basis of an edited videotape...." ...

... Carolyn Bankoff of New York: "TMZ responded to this news by calling Rice's supposed claim 'the dumbest defense ever.' ... TMZ has always been upfront about the fact that it smoothed out the surveillance camera footage of the couple's violent argument, and the unaltered tape was put online on the same day as the better-quality one. While the raw video is jerky and blurrier than TMZ's version, it still clearly shows Rice beating Palmer."

... CW: Within professional football culture, Rice's argument makes a lot of sense. Goodell claimed the NFL gave Rice a two-game suspension because they had no idea -- based on videotape showing Palmer walking into the elevator, then Rice dragging an unconscious Palmer out of said elevator, AND on Rice's confession he had KOed his wife -- that Rice had commited an aggressive, violent, criminal act. So a grainy, jerky surveillance cam video of the actual knockout punch would probably garner, say, another one-game suspension, not the banishment engendered by TMZ's slightly less grainy, jerky edit. Rice is playing Goodell's see-no-evil game, with heavy reliance on the popular NFL blame-somebody-else play.

Carl Hulse of the New York Times: The U.S. senator who squeezed Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand & told her he liked his "girls chubby” was "the late Daniel K. Inouye, Democrat of Hawaii, the decorated veteran and civil rights hero, according to people with knowledge of the incident.... In an all but forgotten chapter of his career, the senator had been accused of sexual misconduct: In 1992, his hairdresser said that Mr. Inouye had forced her to have sex with him. Her accusations exploded into a campaign issue that year, and one Hawaii state senator announced that she had heard from nine other women who said they had been sexually harassed by Mr. Inouye....” (CW: The Gillibrand story is way down the page.) ...

... Just below the Gillibrand item, some good news for progressives: Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.), the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told Hulse that he didn't have the votes to move Michael Boggs -- President Obama's nominee for a U.S. District Court in Georgia -- out of committee & said Boggs should withdraw. As Jennifer Bendery of the Huffington Post writes, "Boggs ... has been under attack all year from progressive groups and Democratic lawmakers over his socially conservative track record as a former Georgia state legislator. Among other things, he voted to ban same-sex marriage, to keep the Confederate insignia on the Georgia flag and to require doctors to post online their personal information and the annual number of abortions they performed." Obama nominated Boggs as part of a deal with Georgia's GOP senators.

Rachel Bade has a long piece in Politico about former IRS offical Lois Lerner. Lerner -- in company of her lawyer-husband & two other lawyers -- agreed to a Politico interview. If Lerner was hoping for a sympathetic write-up, she must be disappointed. It's not a hit job, but Bade assemble d enough hoo-hah for a reader to be left with the impression that Lerner didn't know her job & didn't play well with others.

Andrew Gelman of the Washington Post responds to Matt Bai's NYT Magazine assertion that before the Donna Rice expose', Gary Hart "was close to a lock for the nomination — and likely the presidency — as any challenger of the modern era." Gelman writes, "This is just wrong. Whoever won the Democratic nomination was highly unlikely to win the presidency." Gelman goes on to explain that the "fundamentals" were not there for Democrats in 1988, no matter who the nominee. So everybody can quit being all sad about what-might-have-been. Because it wasn't gonna be.

     ... CW Note: Bai is an excellent prose writer. But his work tends to be "impressionistic," & he loves the "large narrative." I've caught him in some wild, unsupported assertions before. (Can't remember what.) In this case, by making the Hart episode into The Downfall of a President-in-Waiting, Bai aggrandizes what was a National Enquirer-type story. (In fact, it was the Enquirer that published the "Monkey Business" photo -- after Hart had left the race.) In his book on the same topic, out last week, Bai turns the Hart incident into a "grand narrative" about the "tragedy" of "the politics of personal destruction." The best writers are not necessarily the most reliable. (Worth mentioning, I guess: George H.W. Bush, who of course became president, reportedly had had a decades-long affair with his personal assistant.) ...

     ... CW: What most surprised me about Bai's story (also linked in yesterday's Commentariat) was that -- contrary to what most of us who were around then remember -- Miami Herald reporters did not go after Hart because he had challenged the media to "Follow me around." The paper's reporters had been on the Donna Rice story for weeks before E. J. Dionne's story with the famous quote appeared in the WashPo. The first Herald story on Hart's personal life appeared the same day the Post published Dionne's story.

Annals of "Journalism," Alaska Edition.

And as for this job, well, not that I have a choice but, fuck it, I quit. -- Charlo Greene, former KTVA reporter, on-air

Laurel Andrews of the Alaska Dispatch News: At the end of a report on the Alaska Cannabis Club, KTVA reporter Charlo Greene announced, "I, the actual owner of the Alaska Cannabis Club, will be dedicating all of my energy toward fighting for freedom and fairness, which begins with legalizing marijuana here in Alaska. And as for this job, well, not that I have a choice but, fuck it, I quit.

Mid-term Elections

Elections Matter -- Your True Horror Story for Today. Dave Weigel describes how Republicans will run the Senate if they take control. CW: Hope Weigel e-mails a copy to Chuck Todd, who suggested to President Obama that a GOP-controlled Senate wouldn't make much difference since Obama could just, ya know, veto everything.

Philip Rucker & Reid Wilson of the Washington Post: "In a midterm election year in which the political climate and map of battleground states clearly favors Republicans, many GOP candidates are nevertheless embracing some Democratic priorities in an effort to win over skeptical voters."

Rachel Maddow in the Washington Post: "This year, in two marquee races already, and eventually perhaps in three or even four, Democrats and independents have decided to stop fighting each other and instead start pulling on the same side of the tug-of-war in an effort to unseat incumbent Republicans."

E. J. Dionne: "..a [Senate] election that once looked to be a Republican slam dunk has even Karl Rove worried, because many voters seem to want to do more with their ballots than just slap the president in the face."

Ed Kilgore provides a good lesson to red-state Democrats on why "defensive voting" on hot-button issues is useless. Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) "has actually been a conspicuously reliable vote against any sort of gun regulation." Still, his oppoent Dan Sullivan is running an ad (embedded in Kilgore's post) that hits Begich "since he voted to confirm 'anti-gun' Supreme Court nominees Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. And even if he hadn’t voted for these Justices, he votes 'with Obama' all the time, and we all understand Obama wakes up each morning scheming to vitiate the Second Amendment so he will not have to worry about armed patriot resistance when he snatches away America’s birthright of freedom."

Forget All That! Juan Williams in the Hill: "Get ready for bombs bursting in air and this election’s October Surprise – President Obama’s air strikes to 'degrade and ultimately destroy' ISIS.... The president’s leadership role during this fight has the potential to pump up his public approval and that will benefit several Democrats locked in close senate races.... The Republican response to the ISIS threat has been to criticize the president for not immediately putting U.S. forces on the ground.... Polls show voters, both Republicans and Democrats, consider that a step too far.... The Republican House narrowly voted to give the President authority to train and equip Syrian rebels to fight ISIS in a ground war.... Are they trying to create a situation in which American soldiers are once again at war in the Middle East?"

Presidential Race

The Headline Says It All. Margaret Hartmann of New York: "Rick Perry Cites Joan Rivers’s Death to Defend Restrictive Texas Abortion Law." ...

... Elsewhere in Texas, Texans can't decide which man with Texas roots should be our next president. Among those Texans who can't decide: Jeb Bush's son George PeeWee Bush, who is running for state land commissioner, whatever that is. The good news for Jeb: PeeWee is ready to affirm that he loves the old man. Awwww. CW: My pick: None O.T. Above.

The Commentariat -- Sept. 21, 2014

Internal links removed.

On "60 Minutes" this evening, Leon Panetta will severely criticize President Obama's past decisions re: Iraq & Syria.

CW: I wasn't going to read Matt Bai's piece in the New York Times Magazine on Gary Hart. But I did. It's pretty good. See MAG's related comment in yesterday's Comments section. Also James S.'s follow-up comment. Bill Clinton, whose tawdry escapades probably made Hart look like a comparative paragon of probity, knew exactly how to handle the issue -- with an overt hypocrisy that would satisfy any Church Lady. He learned from Hart's mistakes. ...

... AND, since we're traveling down Memory Lane, Philip Shenon, in the Washington Post: "... when it comes to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the list of important, seemingly credible public figures who count themselves as conspiracy theorists is long and impressive." CW: I'm a halfhearted conspiracy theorist myself, but to those who more-or-less buy the Warren Commission findings, it is certainly reasonable to believe that Oswald acted alone. One need look no further than Friday's breach of the White House to see than one resolute person can get pretty far.

David Atkins in the Washington Monthly: "Steve Koonin has an obfuscatory piece in the Wall Street Journal today claiming that the science of climate change isn't settled. But it's not the usual radically ignorant posturing. As with much of the evolution of the conservative 'debate' over climate, it represents another move in the shifting ground of conservative chicanery intended to paralyze action to solve the problem.... His position is that because we don't fully understand all of the complex reverberating effects of climate change, we can't make good climate policy yet.... Of all the cynical arguments against action on climate change, Koonin's ranks among the most disturbing because it's so obviously calculated by a very smart person to make a radically irresponsible conclusion just to protect a few entrenched economic elites." The Koonin piece is here.

Dear Mister Presidint, Thank you for sending my teacher the tanks, grinaid launchers and cool army rifles. Recess used to be boring. Now its not. Joey S. 5fh grade.

CW: Re: the WashPo story I linked yesterday on "The Daily Show"'s Redskins segment, Zara Golden of Gawker: "The segment was bumped for Bill Clinton but will air this week."

Justin Huggler of the Telegraph: "President Vladimir Putin privately threatened to invade Poland, Romania and the Baltic states, according to a record of a conversation with his Ukrainian counterpart. 'If I wanted, in two days I could have Russian troops not only in Kiev, but also in Riga, Vilnius, Tallinn, Warsaw and Bucharest,' Mr Putin allegedly told President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine, reported Süddeustche Zeitung, a German newspaper. If true, this would be the first time that Mr Putin has threatened to invade Nato or EU members." CW: Doesn't sound like a threat to me. Just a bully boasting his is bigger than yours.

... CW: I do love it when scientists talk to the nitwits. Here Emily Atkin of Think Progress provides some outtakes of "White House Science Advisor Dr. John P. Holdren..., a lauded theoretical physicist, appear[ing] before the Republican-led House Committee on Science, Space and Technology on Wednesday to testify about the Obama administration's plan to fight climate change." ...

     ... The problem is that these representatives operate under a belief system -- bolstered by their biggest contributors -- which always trumps facts. The members are not only ignorant, some say they believe that ignorance is superior to knowledge: climate scientists cannot be trusted because they are, you know, paid for studying climate change. Worth noting: those House members are paid for being dumb as dirt. Next time any of them need some surgery, I'd be happy to do it for free. I am completely ignorant of how to perform any medical procedures. But I'm sure a knife will come in handy.

God News

Here's your Sunday Bible story. Michelle Boorstein of the Washington Post (September 12): Steve Green -- the son of the founder of Hobby Lobby -- is building a massive Bible museum two blocks from the Washington Mall. He also amassed a huge collection of valuable Biblical artifacts after the global financial crisis left owners in need of cash. The question now is whether the museum is going to be a Noah's Ark-type joke or a center for scholarly research. Via Steve Benen.

Rachel Zoll of the AP: "On Saturday, Pope Francis named [moderate Bishop Blase] Cupich as the next archbishop of Chicago, sending a strong signal about the direction that the pontiff is taking the church. Cupich will succeed Cardinal Francis George, 77, an aggressive defender of orthodoxy who once said he expected his successors in Chicago to be martyred in the face of hostility toward Christianity." ...

... The Chicago Sun-Times story, by Francine Knowles, is here.

Gubernatorial Races

Lizette Alvarez of the New York Times assesses the Florida gubernatorial race, which polls show as nearly tied up up between Democrat (& former Republican governor) Charlie Crist & the current govenor, Rick Scott. ...

... Jonathan Chait takes another look at "What's the Matter with Kansas?" Answer: Gov. Sam Brownback.

Beyond the Beltway

Playing in Peoria. Ed Pilkington of the Guardian: "... can a citizen be prosecuted for dope possession when the police were raiding his home looking for a fake Twitter account?" CW: Answer so far: Yup. This story sounds like an outtake from some half-assed 1980s comedy. Peoria definitely needs a new mayor.

News Ledes

New York Times: "Afghanistan's election commission on Sunday pronounced Ashraf Ghani the winner of the country's presidential election, but it withheld an announcement of the total votes won, despite an exhaustive and costly audit process overseen by the United Nations and financed by the American government. The suppression of the vote totals was apparently the final step necessary for the two presidential candidates to sign an American-brokered agreement to form a power-sharing government, giving the runner-up, Abdullah Abdullah, substantial powers in what is, in effect, the post of prime minister."

New York Times: "NASA’s latest Mars spacecraft, Maven, arrives Sunday evening [link fixed] to study the mystery of what happened to the planet's air. A 33-minute engine firing, beginning at 9:37 p.m. Eastern time, will put Maven in orbit around the planet. Acknowledgment will reach mission controllers 12 1/2 minutes later, the time it takes for a radio signal to travel to Earth from Mars. NASA’s website will provide a live broadcast beginning at 9:30 p.m."