The Commentariat -- May 13, 2014

Internal links removed.

Justin Gillis & Kenneth Chang of the New York Times: "A large section of the mighty West Antarctica ice sheet has begun falling apart and its continued melting now appears to be unstoppable, two groups of scientists reported on Monday. If the findings hold up, they suggest that the melting could destabilize neighboring parts of the ice sheet and a rise in sea level of 10 feet or more may be unavoidable in coming centuries."

And if That's Not Enough...

Conservative haters of science who have played a huge role in allowing the Let's Do Nothing Until the World Ends club to force everyone else to sit still while glaciers melt into the sea, has been apoplectic over a series on Fox, of all places, running for some weeks now. Neil De Grasse Tyson's resurrected Cosmos series has the religious right in an uproar, especially when he talks about scientists like David Faraday who was able to separate religion from science.

It's All Fun Until Someone Dies

If wingnut hatred of science could be quarantined to just the propeller heads, it would be all fine and dandy. But when the constant drumbeat sounded by conservatives and 24/7 on Fox, tries to convince low information citizens that not only is science not to be trusted, that it's bad for you, and, by doing so helps allow the resurgence of deadly diseases, then their stupidity crosses the line into outrageous criminality. Last year diseases thought long gone have started to return, notably measles and mumps. The anti-vaccination crowd is to blame, but so are the right-wing sites and media outlets that flog this stuff as if it were true. Reporter Russell Saunders at the Daily Beast has more, and he wonders what's next.

Jen Sorensen from Daily Kos.

Presidential Woes

Kevin Robillard of Politico: "The GOP shouldn't even field a presidential candidate in 2016 unless Congress passes immigration reform this year, U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue said Monday."

Michael Peterniti has a GQ profile of Glenn Greenwald, "The Man Who Knows Too Much." ...

... Something to like about Greenwald: He thinks Tim Russert was a joke -- an enabler of the status quo.

Congressional Races

Dana Milbank: "In a series of ads done by and for [Rep. Tom] Cotton [R-Ark.], the former Army Ranger's military career is the centerpiece of his Senate candidacy -- and yet that doesn't seem to be helping him, even though his opponent may be the most vulnerable Senate Democrat in the country."

Another reason Cotton may be experiencing rough going is his, and his party's, express desire to destroy Obamacare, in the face of what are becoming legions of stories trumpeting its success and wild acceptance among voters in states like Arkansas. Smart Democrats have begun to stop running from the ACA and running with it. Success stories like "....Eleanor Evans in Roger, Arkansas, who has gained coverage under the private option and, as it happens, used to go to church with Rep. Tom Cotton. Evans now is the primary caregiver for her mother Kaye, who happened to be Cotton's pastor when Eleanor and Cotton were kids. 'There's no place for me if I don't have this coverage," Evans said. "And I don't understand why they'd want to get rid of that place for me.'"

The ever observant Tom Toles.

Let the Conspiracy Theories Begin

Asheboro, North Carolina Courier-Tribune: "Asheboro businessman and congressional candidate, Keith Crisco, 71, died suddenly at his home today." Crisco was running in the Democratic primary against Clay Aiken.

Be Careful What You Wish For

The problems GOP establishment types have been having with the Tea Party monster created to help win elections are well known. The tin-foil hat crowd that stormed the capitol building a few years ago helped to put the pressure on the hated president, but they also propelled the party to its current state of obstreperous petrifaction. And now even party leaders like Eric Cantor are feeling the heat. The other day, in Virginia, Cantor's handpicked lackey, Linwood Cobb was beaten back by rabid tea partiers in the race for leadership of Virginia's 7th Congressional District Republican Committee. Tea Partiers who were bused in to vote, booed Cantor when he spoke. The reason? They consider him too liberal. It's a bit like complaining that Jackson Pollock was too occupied with realism. Cantor himself faces a challenge from another Tea Party candidate named Brat (I am totally not making that up). David Brat confided that god told him that Cantor had to go. Well, hey, why didn't you say so? Cantor, for his part, known for his scathing, arrogant, fact free attacks on the president and the Democratic Party generally, complained about "inaccuracies" and the lack of decency on the part of the TP.

Et tu brutes?

Travis Gettys at RawStory has more on the brutes. This Friday, self styled Tea Party "patriots" will descend on Washington to demand that a long list of hated, "disloyal lawmakers" stand down and surrender. Like most right-wing groups who claim the Constitution as the source of their authority, they have clearly not read that document. Otherwise, they would apply democratically, constitutionally approved methods of removing individuals from office. Like voting them out. Operation American Spring, as they call themselves, expects 10 to 30 million like minded "patriots" to join them on Friday in a fun afternoon of revolution and tar and feathering. Jesus is expected to show up to reprise that fishes and loaves thing when those 30 million are ready for lunch.

Clinton Conspiracy Machine in Excellent Working Order

A few years off has not corroded the sharpened gears and bile soaked workings of the right's Clinton Conspiracy Machine. And even though she has not even declared her candidacy, Hillary Clinton can expect much more of this type of evil crap. Karl Rove, looking relaxed, fit, and fiendish after a couple of years of shock therapy following his election night breakdown, is back to his mendacious best. Speaking at a conference last week, Rove, a well known brain surgeon when he's not torturing small animals in his basement, stunned the audience with news that Hillary Clinton was suffering from brain damage resulting from a fall a few months ago. Even though hospital officials reported a small blood clot, Rove doesn't believe it. "Thirty days in the hospital? And when she reappears, she's wearing glasses that are only for people who have traumatic brain injury? We need to know what's up with that." Yeah. It was three days. Not thirty. And the glasses were standard sun glasses. But no matter. The right is in high dudgeon over Hillary. Recently, a sour little man with a cheap toupée and way too much time on his hands, the junior senator from Kentucky, began huffing and puffing about a subpoena for Clinton, because Benghazi.

Update on Clinton Insanity

This morning in the WaPo, Karen Tumulty reports that Karl Rove is shocked to hear that anyone, anyone, would say that Hillary Clinton has brain damage. "Of course, she doesn't have brain damage" he said. How the hell did that get out there anyway? But Paul Waldman, also in today's Post, wonders whether Republicans will be able to rein in their hatred where Clinton is concerned. "It's almost inevitable that at some point during any campaign involving Clinton, the Republican crazy train will run off its rails. The hatred she inspires among the GOP base, and their willingness to believe almost anything about her, simply cannot be overestimated."

Conservatives Just Looooves Them Some Womens

On Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit will hear arguments on the legality of an Arizona law that limits the use of abortion-inducting medications and, according to advocates, threatens to end altogether the availability of medication abortion in the state. Meanwhile, back in South Carolina, Senator Lindsey Graham, needing to put on a show of strength for the anti-choice crowd, continues the GOP efforts to deny women the right to make choices that drastically affect their lives. Of course, father knows best. According to this article in Salon, Graham is demanding that his pseudo-science anti-choice bill be considered at the same time as Senator Richard Blumenthal's (D-CT) bill that would prohibit states from enacting burdensome and medically unnecessary regulations on abortion providers.

But Why Aren't Those Women More Confidant?

David Brooks (I know, I know) operating at his wonders about women and their apparent lack of confidence. But, he decides, maybe not being so all-fired confident about everything isn't a bad thing at all.

This Week in Stupid Red State Laws

Just when you thought you'd heard it all. According to Adam Weinstein in Gawker, "There are fifty states in our blessed union. There is only one state that holds an open election for the general who will command its National Guard forces. The reason is to keep black people from being too powerful. The result is that a convicted stalker may end up with all the tanks and guns." I know, it sounds too weird to be true, right? But one of only two candidates for General is one William James Breazeale, and this guy is a peach: "Breazeale is an Army Reserve field officer who has twice run unsuccessfully for Congress as a tea party-acceptable conservative and who is currently on probation after a stalking conviction and, according to one report, has "a lurid personal history which includes references to intimidation, aggravated stalking, criminal trespass, larceny, threats of suicide, and even threats of murder directed by Breazeale at members of his own family." Sure, let's give that guy tanks and guns. Why not?

Why Trey?

In case you were wondering why John Boehner picked do-nothing, loudmouth Tea Party twerp Trey Gowdy (R-Funny Hair on Fire) to lead the GOP Benghazi kangaroo court, The American Prospect has an answer. A video attached to the article shows Gowdy in full prosecutorial mode, banging the desk and yelling, demanding answers to questions that have already been answered. "Which tells you why Gowdy got picked for this job. John Boehner is doing this for the base, and the base wants someone who will channel the anger and contempt they feel for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and the rest of the administration. Gowdy, a former prosecutor, is already referring to this enterprise not as an investigation but as a "trial," making clear that he sees his job not as finding the truth but as convicting the accused." He's not interested in investigating anything. He's interested in a guilty verdict. Surprise, surprise. A Tea Partier not interested in the truth.

News Lede

New York Times: "Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli prime minister, was sentenced Tuesday to six years in prison by a judge who likened him to a 'traitor' for taking bribes while mayor of Jerusalem in connection with the construction of a luxury housing development."

The Commentariat -- May 12, 2014

Internal links, obsolete audio & video removed.

Paul Krugman: Ask any winger -- all attempts to mitigate climate change & reduce pollution are part of a tyrannical Marxist plot.

I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it And I do not believe that the laws that they propose we pass will do anything about it, except it will destroy our economy. -- Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who says he's ready to be POTUS

I do not believe Marco is ready for the fourth grade. -- Constant Weader

Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog, takes Krugman to task for not taking into account wingnut obsession with Ayn Rand bullshit. Krugman wonders what the problem would be for Republicans who believe that capitalism can handle any problem thrown at it, even climate change. This might be a reasonable question in a sane world where an entire party didn't base its policy decisions on a god-awful novel by a hypocritical ideologue, but not in Red State World. "Right-wingers love the notion that they're arrayed against what seems to be an all-powerful, seemingly unstoppable enemy; in the real world we all actually live in right now, capitalism has won everything, but right-wingers would rather believe it's under assault, because then capitalists (and, by extension, their champions) are superheroes." The problem with never really graduating from 9th grade.

Frank Rich, in the wake of an exhaustive climate change report released last week from by the White House, points out that Republicans have no intention of allowing the dire outlook from global warming to show up on conservative radars. Why? In his first sentence, Rich gives the game away: "The report confirms in no uncertain terms what sentient Americans already knew...". "nuff said.

Benjamin Wallace-Wells in New York: The popularity of Thomas Piketty's book reflects both a new national preoccupation with economics & the data-driven life. Thanks to MAG for the lead.

Fat & Jobless. Michael Rosenwald of the Washington Post: "A subject long ignored by policymakers, and one that unemployment counselors are too sheepish to raise with job seekers, the link between bulging waistlines and joblessness is now of intense interest to researchers studying the long-term effects of the country's economic malaise."

Adam Liptak of the New York Times on the ideologically & politically polarized Supreme Court: It's worse than ever. "The perception that partisan politics has infected the court's work may do lasting damage to its prestige and authority and to Americans' faith in the rule of law." Thanks to MAG for the link.

What to Do When Your Incessant Dire Predictions Don't Come True. Elise Viebeck of the Hill: "House Republicans have no scheduled votes or hearings on ObamaCare, signaling a shift in the party's strategy as the White House rides a wave of good news on the law. Not a single House committee has announced plans to attack the healthcare law in the coming weeks, and only one panel of jurisdiction commented to The Hill despite repeated inquiries." CW: So I guess it's all Benghaaazi! all the time. ...

And Andy Borowitz, in the New Yorker, says "Benghazi all the time, just in time!" According to Mr. Borowitz, out of work Americans and those needing serious answers to problems of jobs, housing, and other dire quality of life issues, are adamant that congress do nothing until every Benghazi question has been answered. And asked again. And again: "In the House of Representatives, Speaker John Boehner released the following statement: 'I want to reassure the American people that, until we have completed our Benghazi investigations, there will be absolutely no action on job creation, infrastructure, immigration, education housing, or food.'"

... Asked & Answered. Sam Stein of the Huffington Post: "Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said on Sunday morning that ... one of the biggest questions he would like to ask former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is why the United States was still there.... other members of Congress have asked [the questions Gowdy wants answered], and they've actually asked them of Clinton." With video & transcripts. ...

     ... CW: Apparently the purpose of the Gowdy hearings is to let Republicans do a replay. But, hey, somebody else is asking the questions so it's "news," a la Fox "News."

Lucy McCalmont of Politico: "Some clear tension arose between Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann during a segment Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union," as the two went head to head on a handful of issues, starting with the new Benghazi select committee in the House." ...

... Charles Pierce recaps some other Sunday shows. Bill Kristol stands by his "guess" that Hillary Clinton engineered the Monica Lewinsky Vanity Fair piece.

Los Angeles Times: "L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling on Sunday broke his silence, apologizing for racial comments that prompted the National Basketball Assn. to ban him for life. 'I'm a good member who made a mistake and I'm apologizing and I'm asking for forgiveness," he told CNN's Anderson Cooper. 'Am I entitled to one mistake, am I after 35 years?' ... In [an] ABC interview [with Barbara Walters], Shelly Sterling also suggested Donald is suffering from dementia, which she said could explain comments caught on tape. (Donald Sterling did not address his health in the interview material CNN released Sunday.)"

Boer Deng & Dahlia Lithwick of Slate: "... the reason lethal injection has become more gruesome and violent in recent years is at least partly a result of opposition to the death penalty.... As American physicians sideline themselves and European pharmaceutical firms (and American ones wit global ties) decline to supply the most known and efficacious lethal injection drugs, corrections officials have been pushed to use inferior methods and substandard providers. In other words..., the real culprit in the death of Clayton Lockett is opposition to the death penalty. In pushing for outright abolition of capital punishment, we have undermined the counterveiling effort to make it as clean and painless as possible. The perfect has become the enemy of the good-enough execution."

Haley Edwards of Time: Sen. Al Franken on the FCC's proposed rules governing/destroying net neutrality & the proposed Time-Warner/Comcast merger -- he's against 'em.

James Hamblin in the Atlantic: Something else to worry about: artificial intelligence may take over the Earth. And climate change. And biological warfare. And asteroids.

Conservatives and Those Pesky Poors.

In 1919, as the leaders of the allied powers sat down to decide the fate of nations after WWI, it was brought to their attention that the French were still blockading food and supplies to help 20 million civilians, mostly women and children, starving in Germany. Georges Clemenceau's response was that that was 20 million Germans too many. This is pretty much how right-wingers seem to feel about poor people in this country. But they're trying to change. Oh, not their policies, just the message. The Kochs are on top of this problem: "They're still firmly wedded to their beliefs that government assistance programs engender laziness and that the federal government should be slashed down to just the army and the patent office. What they're trying to do is find a way to convince the less fortunate that cutting taxes for billionaires and blocking minimum wage increases will lead to the sort of shared prosperity that will lift them out of economic hardship." Because this has always worked before. And less than two weeks ago, Republicans demonstrated their concern for poor people in the way they know best. Killing a minimum wage increase. But it's all of a piece with Paul Ryan's "concern" for the poor: 'I want to figure out a way for conservatives to come up with solutions to poverty. I have to do this.' In the meantime, there are still a few social programs left to cut. Republican senate candidate in North Carolina, Tom Tillis has an answer if Paul Ryan doesn't: "...you’re on your own." His plan is to divide and conquer those pesky poors.

Construction on a Maginot Line to keep those poor people at bay and away from decent hard working wingnuts begins any day now.

GOP Heroes.

By way of Tom Tomorrow from Daily Kos.

Congressional Race

Philip Rucker & Dan Balz of the Washington Post: Joni Ernst's "edgy"/(CW: stupid-disgusting) ads have made her a contendah in the Iowa GOP Senate race, despite her relatively meager spending & lack of name recognition. (Obsolete video removed here.)...

... And if Joni Ernst's request to "give me a shot" isn't enough, there are plenty more ads like this out there in Right-Wing World. Dave Weige' at Slate offers a full clip of videos of Republicans shooting at shit to prove their worthiness to lead. Or something.

Presidential Election

Jonathan Chait: "Ben Highton, a political scientist at the University of California-Davis, has identified a trend that hardly anybody in Washington has noticed yet. In a pair of blog posts, Highton persuasively makes the case that the Electoral College has taken on a strong pro-Democratic tilt. That is, the states in the center of the Electoral College distribution lean more strongly Democratic than the electorate as a whole." CW: Well, let's hope that's true.

Amy Davidson of the New Yorker on why the Monica Lewinsky scandal is still relevant. "We seem doomed to repeat our decades, even when they were farcical the first time around. But is Lewinsky the problem? Or is it, as Barbara Bush said recently, that 'if we can't find more than two or three families to run for high office, that's silly.' She had been asked about her son Jeb, and the possibility of four out of five Presidents in a row being named either Bush or Clinton. It's our apparent poverty of political choices, not our taste for scandal, that has us caught in an endless loop."

CW: Didn't have time to read it all, But Glenn Thrush's account of his covering the Hillary Clinton primary campaign of 2008 looks like a promising light read.

"Run, Joe, Run." Peter Beinart of the Atlantic: "While a[n Elizabeth] Warren candidacy would spark one valuable debate inside the Democratic Party -- about government's role in the economy -- a Biden candidacy would spark another: about America's role in the world."

The Commentariat -- May 11, 2014

Graphic removed.

Ezra Klein on wealth inequality. Thanks to Ken W. for the link:

Jenna Portnoy of the Washington Post: "Just a few miles from his family home, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) felt the wrath of the tea party Saturday, when activists in his congressional district booed and heckled the second-most powerful House Republican. They also elected one of their own to lead Virginia's 7th Congressional District Republican Committee, turning their back on Cantor's choice for a post viewed as crucial by both tea partyand establishment wings in determining control of the fractured state GOP."

Russell Berman of the Hill: "Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is stacking the House select committee on Benghazi with lawyers as he looks to demonstrate that the panel will be a serious investigation and not a partisan exercise." ...

... CW: Uh-huh. I guess that's why the Orange Man announced the names of the members of the so-called select committee in a Twitter image. What could be more serious than a Twitter image?

Maureen Dowd: "Pope Francis appears guilty of condoning that most base Vatican sport: bullying nuns.... Women, gays and dissident Catholics who had fresh hope are going to have to face the reality that while this pope is a huge improvement on the last, the intolerance is still there."

Carol Leonnig of the Washington Post: "Top Secret Service officials ­ordered members of a special unit responsible for patrolling the White House perimeter to abandon their posts over at least two months in 2011 in order to protect a personal friend of the agency's director [Mark Sullivan], according to three people familiar with the operation." CW: Apparently protecting this particular president & his family is not all that important.

Presidential Race

Peter Hamby of CNN: "Vice President Joe Biden appeared at a closed-door fundraiser in South Carolina Friday and delivered what one attendee called 'an Elizabeth Warren-type speech' about the struggles of America's middle class, remarks that were well-received by a room full of influential primary state Democrats.... Another Democrat in the room said the vice president 'talked about how the system was rigged against the middle class....' Biden did not mention his own White House ambitions. But several Democrats at the event were struck by one remark he made about Bill Clinton's presidency: Three sources there told CNN that Biden said the fraying of middle-class economic security did not begin during President George W. Bush's terms, but earlier, in the 'later years of the Clinton administration.'" ...

... James Hohmann of Politico: "GOP leaders reconsider Rand Paul."

Jonathan Alter on the five Roman Catholic justices who think explicitly Christian prayer in public meetings is constitutional: "With judicial temperaments abstracted to the point of indifference, they seem incapable of imagining themselves even in the shoes of their own grandparents, much less people different from themselves. This is among the worst judicial traits imaginable."

Beyond the Beltway

Christina Huynh of the AP: "Two women were married on a sidewalk outside a county courthouse in Arkansas on Saturday, breaking a barrier that state voters put in place with a constitutional amendment 10 years ago. A day after Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza said the ban was 'an unconstitutional attempt to narrow the definition of equality,' Kristin Seaton, 27, and Jennifer Rambo, 26, exchanged vows at an impromptu ceremony, officiated by a woman in a rainbow-colored dress."

Matt Lee-Ashley of Think Progress: "An illegal all-terrain vehicle (ATV) ride planned this weekend through Recapture Canyon in Utah is ... is already drawing criticism from the Navajo Nation, putting American Indian burial sites and cultural resources at risk.... Yet San Juan County Commissioner Phil Lyman (R-UT) and his supporters appear determined to defy federal law by riding their ATVs through Recapture Canyon, an area of southeast Utah known as a 'mini-Mesa Verde' because it contains one of the highest densities of archaeological sites in the country. Cliven Bundy ... has reportedly urged his supporters -- who include armed militia members -- to join Lyman in Utah this weekend."

News Lede

Washington Post: "Residents of two regions of eastern Ukraine turned out in significant numbers Sunday to vote in support of self-rule in a referendum that threatens to deepen divisions in a country already heading perilously toward civil war."