The Commentariat -- May 31

I have an Open Thread up on Off Times Square. Sorry, I'm having connection problems with my new, useless iPod. ...

     ... Update: Karen Garcia has a terrific comment on Nocera's column, which as of this writing, the Times moderators have chosen not to publish. Wait, wait; the Times just plunked Garcia's comment in at #51 & mine at #53. ...

     ... Also, if you'd like to know "Why I Bother to Write about Brooks," see my response (#6) to Anonymous Adam (#5).

Creeps on Parade. CNN: "Hours before President Barack Obama led the nation's Memorial Day observances at the Tomb of the Unknowns, three members of the Westboro Baptist Church were challenged by others who disagreed with them -- including members claiming to be from the Ku Klux Klan." Here's the video. See, I didn't make this up:

More later. No, actually, I'm just not posting a thing until I can get my damned Internet service working properly again. Arrrgh! I hate technology.

Okay, here are a few links:

Gene Robinson: "My advice to Sarah Palin, not that she would take it, is that she’d better be careful. If she keeps pretending to run for the presidential nomination, people might take her seriously.... The fact that Palin’s ego trip so easily stole the spotlight from the actual Republican candidates shows what a challenge the party faces in trying to deny President Obama a second term." ...

... Jason Horowitz of the Washington Post: profiles Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain: "... it is far too early to accept [Herman] Cain’s typically brash view of himself as a serious contender. History says he isn’t. But while his supporters like to talk about 'Raising Cain,' his momentary blip is, more than anything, raising some serious questions for the GOP. Who’s calling the shots in the Republican Party — the elite establishment or the grass-roots activists?"

A Republican You Can Love. Really. Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "Justice John Paul Stevens is 91, and he retired from the Supreme Court last year. But he seems to be more active than ever. He is making speeches, writing a book and commenting on the news. He is telling people how he would have voted in recent cases, and he is singling out former colleagues for praise and criticism."

David Rogers of Politico: "House Democrats are showing real unity for the first time in pressuring President Barack Obama on Afghanistan — with influential moderates now expressing their impatience alongside the anti-war left that drove the early Iraq war debate. There’s no immediate threat to war funding, but the shift in the president’s party can’t be ignored by the White House going into the 2012 elections."

Jared Berstein, late of the Obama Administration, explains why there aren't any serious jobs programs -- it's the politics, stupid. CW: as I did in my comment to Krugman's column, Bernstein gives Krugman a homework assignment. But Bernstein emphasizes the "could's," while I think Obama should shoot for the "should's," which will never pass but will be winners in the political season.

Tom Dickinson of Rolling Stone has another fascinating profile of Roger Ailes, the despicable head of Fox News. Even Rupert Murdoch thinks Ailes is crazy. Ailes makes the Hearst character is "Citizen Kane" look like a choir boy.

News Ledes

President Obama announces John Bryson will be his nominee to replace Gary Locke as Secretary of Commerce. The President is nominating Locke to be Ambassador to China:

Washington Post: GOP House leaders timed a vote for tonight on raising the debt ceiling to prove that raising the debt limit will never pass ... just "before all 241 members of the Republican conference visit Obama on Wednesday."

AP: "Angered by civilian casualties, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Tuesday he will no longer allow NATO airstrikes on houses, issuing his strongest statement yet against strikes that the military alliance says are key to its war on Taliban insurgents. The president's remarks follow a recent strike that mistakenly killed a group of children and women in southern Helmand province. He said it would be the last.... NATO says it never conducts such strikes without Afghan government coordination and approval."

Reuters: "Pakistani warplanes attacked Taliban positions in the northwestern Orakzai region on Tuesday, killing 17 militants, a senior regional government official said.... The strike came a day after a local newspaper reported that Pakistan will launch an offensive in North Waziristan, a known sanctuary for al Qaeda and Taliban militants."

New York Times: "A Spanish judge issued arrest warrants on Monday for some of the top military leaders of El Salvador’s civil war, accusing them of meticulously planning and carrying out the killings of six Jesuit priests in 1989."

I Guess He Doesn't Read the Papers. AP: "A former chairman of one of Egypt's major banks faces charges of sexually abusing a maid at a luxury Manhattan hotel.... Mahmoud Abdel Salam Omar was arrested on Monday and is accused of sexually abusing the maid at The Pierre, a luxurious hotel near Central Park and Fifth Avenue on the Upper East Side, police said."

The Commentariat -- May 30

Memorial Day, May 1, 1865. Art by Owen Freeman for the New York Times.Historian David Blight, in a New York Times op-ed on the first Memorial Day, which took place on May 1, 1865, and was organized by freed slaves in Charleston, South Carolina. It has long, and no doubt purposely, slipped from the nation's memory.

I've posted an Open Thread for today's Off Times Square. ...

... Krugman says it's time to come up with a jobs program, and Douthat says it's time to whack businesses who employ illegal immigrants. Write whatever moves you. ...

... In a story related to Douthat's column, Julia Preston of the New York Times writes, "Obama administration officials are sharpening their crackdown on the hiring of illegal immigrants by focusing increasingly tough criminal charges on employers while moving away from criminal arrests of the workers themselves.... In a break with Bush-era policies, the number of criminal cases against unauthorized immigrant workers has dropped sharply over the last two years." CW: coincidentally, this is what I advocated for in my comment on Douthat (#3). I just posted the comment on Off Times Square.

Gardiner Harris of the New York Times: "There are no national surveys that track doctors’ political leanings, but as more doctors move from business owner to shift worker [and are no longer almost all male], their historic alliance with the Republican Party is weakening.... That change could have a profound effect on the nation’s health care debate. Indeed, after opposing almost every major health overhaul proposal for nearly a century, the American Medical Association supported President Obama’s legislation last year...."

Ariel Levy of the New Yorker writes a long article on Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's prime minister. Her story also details the status of women in Italy: "According to the World Economic Forum’s 2010 Global Gender Gap Report, Italy ranks seventy-fourth in women’s rights, between the Dominican Republic and Gambia." Berlusconi's remarks about women are appalling. Here's one, his answer to complaints about sexual assaults: "We don’t have enough soldiers to stop rape because our women are so beautiful."

Graham Bowley of the New York Times: "At the International Monetary Fund, there is one set of ethics guidelines for the rank-and-file staff and another for the 24 elite executive directors who oversee the powerful organization.... The fund’s board members remain largely above controls [imposed on staff]. The ethics adviser, for example, is not able to investigate any of them."

Karen Garcia is incensed by the Sheryl Gay Stolberg's New York Times article on Elizabeth Warren's "breach of Congressional etiquette," which I linked yesterday. Garcia suspects a White House set-up. Plus she has the goods on Rep. Patrick McHenry, the perp in this matter. CW: For the record, Stolberg's article didn't bother me at all. I always think it's great when somebody gives back as good as she gets, and I thought Warren came out smelling like a rose. Who the hell is horrified -- other than the blowhard -- by somebody dissing a blowhard? Just for the fun of it, in case you missed it, here's the video of the final exchange between McHenry, who accuses Warren of lying, and Warren. As Stolberg says, it was, "depending on one's point of view, delightful":

Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post: not everybody was thrilled to see Palin at the Rolling Thunder rally for veterans & MIAs. With video. ...

... Running for president is not 'American Idol.' -- David Brooks, on Sarah Palin ...

... BUT ... Where's Waldo David?

Sarah Palin and admirers at the Rolling Thunder rally.     ... Photo via Joshua Green of The Atlantic.

Do Not Let Sarah Palin Near a Nuclear (Nuke-U-Lar) Weapon:

Local News

Ben Thrush & Byron Tau of Politico: President "Obama’s biggest asset in [Florida,] a critical swing state he won by a mere 2.8-percentage-point margin in 2008, might be Rick Scott, the wildly unpopular Republican governor Democrats are casting as Lex Luthor to Obama’s Clark Kent.... Broward County, Fla., political blogger Brandon Thorp summed it up this way: 'If presidential and gubernatorial elections were held in Florida today, no declared Republican presidential candidate could unseat Obama, while Rick Scott would have a hard time beating [Cuban President] Raul Castro.'”

News Ledes

President Obama participated in a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknowns this morning & spoke at a Memorial Day remembrance at Arlington National Cemetery:

President Obama made an announcement about Defense Department personnel this morning. The Washington Post has a related profile of Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, whom the President will name as chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Politico Update: "President Barack Obama said Monday that he is nominating Army Gen. Martin Dempsey as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.... The president also nominated Adm. James 'Sandy' Winnefeld, the commander of Northern Command, as the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of the Joint Forces Command, to replace Dempsey as Army chief of staff":

New York Times: "President Obama has decided to send [Michael McFaul,] the architect of his so-called Russia reset policy, to Moscow as the next United States ambassador there, seeking to further bolster an improved relationship as both countries head into a potentially volatile election season."

AP: "Endeavour and its crew of six left the International Space Station and headed home to close out NASA’s next-to-last shuttle flight, pausing just long enough Monday to perform a victory lap and test equipment for a future interplanetary ship."

AP: "Yemeni warplanes carried out airstrikes Monday on a southern town seized by hundreds of Islamic militants over the weekend, witnesses said, as the political crisis surrounding the embattled president descended into more bloodshed."

AP: "Germany’s coalition government agreed early Monday to shut down all the country’s nuclear power plants by 2022, the environment minister said, making it the first major industrialized nation in the last quarter century to announce plans to go nuclear-free.... Energy from wind, solar and hydroelectric power currently produces about 17 percent of the country’s electricity, but the government aims to boost its share to around 50 percent in the coming decades." ...

... Reuters: "Ratings agency Standard and Poor's cut its credit rating on Tokyo Electric Power (9501.T) to junk status on Monday, saying the utility's bank lenders were more likely to be forced to write off debt as part of a restructuring scheme to compensate victims of an ongoing nuclear crisis."

The Commentariat -- May 29

I've posted an Open Thread on Off Times Square.

Maureen Dowd has a pretty good column on Christine Lagarde, the French Finance Minister, whom the IMF is likely to tap as its new chief.

If you're thinking of becoming something as mundane and quintessentially American as an anti-war activist, you might want to read this story by Colin Moynihan & Scott Shane of the New York Times, which details the extraordinary F.B.I. investigation of self-described Austin, Texas anarchist Scott Crow, who has never been convicted of anything more serious than trespassing during demonstrations. As the authors write, "Other targets of bureau surveillance, which has been criticized by civil liberties groups and mildly faulted by the Justice Department’s inspector general, have included antiwar activists in Pittsburgh, animal rights advocates in Virginia and liberal Roman Catholics in Nebraska." ...

... Speaking of FBI investigations, David Willman of the Los Angeles Times profiles Bruce Ivins, whom the FBI suspected of being the anthrax killer. Ivins died several days after taking an overdose of Tylenol, and before he could be charged. Especially if you are a woman, I think you'll find this just about the creepiest profile of anyone you've ever read. The FBI's investigation by many accounts was sub-par. Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.), who was a target of the anthrax attacks, thinks there's more to the story, & Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), a physicist who represents the district from which the anthrax letters were mailed has called for a 9/11-style commission to conduct an independent investigation.

The most important rule [for Congressional witnesses] is the 80/20 rule: If they’re talking 80 percent of the time and you’re talking 20 percent, you’re winning. If it’s 60/40, it means you’re arguing, and if it’s 50/50, it means you’ve lost and you’d better throw in the towel. -- Tom Korologos, a Washington éminence grise, on how to get through a Congressional hearing ...

... Congressman, you are causing problems. -- Elizabeth Warren, to House Oversight Committee Chair Patrick McHenry (R-NC) ...

... Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times on the insult/breach of protocol heard 'round the Beltway.

I posted a link to Bob Reich's essay on the Senate spending cap bill (Corker-McCaskill) some while back, but if you didn't feel like reading it, maybe you'd like to watch the video where he says the same thing:

Nicholas Kristof's column on the economic ascendance of India is popular among Times readers.

Dog Pee Can't Stop Santorum:

We're not political. This is not a political event ... Maybe she's coming because she knows we have a half a million people in town and thinking she can start her [campaign]? -- Ted Shpak of Rolling Thunder, on Sarah Palin's surprise announcement that she would participate in a Washington, D.C. Rolling Thunder motorcycle rally intended to highlight veterans' & MIA issues

You might not get a promotion if you ... are a British immigration official who puts his wife on the terror watch list while she's in Pakistan so she can't get back into the U.K. & leave her there for three years while you live it up. 

Right Wing World *

Another Republican says he thinks he could have beat President Obama in the general election had he bothered to run -- former Bush budget director & anti-union, anti-family-planning Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels.

For an excellent commentary on Texas Gov. Rick Perry's coyote-shooting incident, see Gingia's comment (# 82 -- highlighted) here. Short version: didn't happen, or if it did was illegal & irresponsible.

This article by David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post slants right; that is, it contrasts the Tea Party with Democrats in the typical he-said/he-said fashion. But I'm linking it because of this assertion by Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.): "They are lying. We've got facts." I'm going to give this guy the benefit of the doubt and take it he really drinks the Kool-Aid, which shows you how scary the Tea Party is. I'm thinking I'll take a liar -- McConnell, Boehner, most of 'em -- over a faith-based zealot -- Huizenga, maybe Paul Ryan. You can't reason with either group, of course, but you may be able to horse-trade with the liars.

* Where facts never intrude.

Local News

More on America's Worst Governor from the St. Pete Times "The Buzz": "... the Republican Party of Florida is robo-calling voters to drum up support for Gov. Rick Scott, who might be America's most-disliked governor.... The automatic, pre-recorded calls feature Scott's voice derided the hometown projects he vetoed from the budgets as 'special interest waste.' Not the kind of message that fellow Republicans, who crafted the budget, wanted to hear. Especially when those special interests included hungry and needy seniors, homeless veterans, paralysis victims, etc." Before his speech announcing the budget vetoes of "special interest waste," Scott "was preceded by representatives of some heavy-hitting special interests:" real estate development and business lobbyists. "Not every interest was represented at the event. Scott's office and RPOF staffers used sheriff's deputies to block Democrats from the event...."

News Ledes

The President speaks at a memorial service in Joplin, a week after the tornado:

President Obama visits Joplin:

AP: "Face to face with the legions of homeless and the bereaved, President Barack Obama on Sunday toured the apocalyptic landscape left by Missouri's killer tornado, consoled the community and committed the government to helping rebuild shattered lives." New York Times story here.