The Commentariat -- June 14

I've posted an Open Thread on today's Off Times Square. Do read yesterday's reader comments, most of which are very good and/or challenging. ...

     ... Update: the comments on yesterday's thread go on to page 2; I just posted another response to Dr. Zee which I think is pretty good, but then I would think so, wouldn't I? You should be able to get to it directly by clicking on this link.

So long as we expect our presidential candidates to come up with the better part of a billion dollars to finance their campaigns, then like Willie Sutton, they’re going to have to go where the money is. And in our country, right now, the money is on Wall Street. If we don’t want them kowtowing before bankers and hedge-fund managers, well, we have to change the laws governing our elections.... -- Ezra Klein ...

... Glenn Greenwald elaborates. He's hoping Romney wins the Republican nomination: "Thus, what we would very possibly have in 2012 are two presidential candidates who endlessly tout their populist credentials while doing everything in reality to compete with one another over who can best serve the nation's oligarchs."

We’ll get rid of you. -- Tom Donohue, President of the right-wing U.S. Chamber of Commerce to members of Congress who vote against raising the debt ceiling

The New York Times Editors on Republican obstruction of qualified nominees to head financial regulation agencies. On the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, "Why go with a compromise candidate when Republicans have vowed to block any nominee? Mr. Obama and Senate Democrats should back Ms. Warren and expose to American voters just exactly whose interests the Republicans put first."

Aaron Wiener of TPM presents his "Chart of the Day," which speaks for itself, though Wiener elaborates here:

... So while we're charting stuff, let's see how things look for the financial industry:

... Now, isn't that special. Felix Salmon of Reuters, who provides us with the financial industry chart, & does some more numbers crunching, concludes, "Banks are still extracting enormous rents from the economy, and profits which should be flowing to productive industries are instead being captured by financial intermediaries. We’re back near boom-era levels of profitability now, and no one seems to worry that the flipside of higher returns is higher risk.... And the big rebound in corporate profits since the crisis turns out to be largely a function of the one sector which we didn’t want to recover to its former size." ...

... Jonathan Cohn: "Waiting for the national political conversation to 'pivot' away from deficits and towards jobs? It looks like President Obama wants to help." Please read Cohn's whole post. It might be the only encouraging note of the day, even if the evidence for his optimism remains somewhat slim. ...

... Meanwhile, the Congressional Progressive Caucus keeps on hammering its message that real people want to work:

Guess What Else Dubya Can't Find? Paul Richter of the Los Angeles Times: "despite years of audits and investigations, U.S. Defense officials still cannot say what happened to $6.6 billion in cash.... For the first time, federal auditors are suggesting that some or all of the cash may have been stolen, not just mislaid in an accounting error. Stuart Bowen, special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, an office created by Congress, said the missing $6.6 billion may be 'the largest theft of funds in national history.'"

Nelson Schwartz & Eric Dash of the New York Times: "Using the Citigroup customer Web site as a gateway to bypass traditional safeguards and impersonate actual credit card holders, a team of sophisticated thieves cracked into the bank’s vast reservoir of personal financial data, until they were detected in a routine check in early May. That allowed them to capture the names, account numbers, e-mail addresses and transaction histories of more than 200,000 Citi customers, security experts said, revealing for the first time details of one of the most brazen bank hacking attacks in recent years."

Pundits Pontificate on the GOP Show-and-Tell

Dana Milbank: "Eleven minutes into the debate, Michele Bachmann stole the show, and she didn’t return it in the subsequent hour and 49 minutes.... Bachmann was the one who emerged as the anti-Romney from the otherwise drab field." ...

... Dan Balz of the Washington Post: "Mitt Romney easily survived his first test of the 2012 campaign here Monday night, cruising through a debate with six Republican rivals who were more interested in attacking President Obama than in turning their fire on the former Massachusetts governor.... Through two hours of questioning, [Romney] delivered a steady performance, made no obvious errors and stuck to his campaign game plan of focusing his message on the president and the economy." ...

... Dan Amira of New York Magazine has a snarky rundown of the highlights you (and I) missed by not watching the debate. Here's a good one: "Time Rick Santorum Spent Looking Like He Was One Second Away From Snapping, Taking Out His Rage by Destroying the Podium With His Fists: The whole debate." ...

... Stephen Stromberg of the Washington Post also has a humorous take on elements of the proceedings. ...

... Wave Buh-Bye, Sarah Palin. Nate Silver weighs in on several fronts. Here he is on Bachmann v. Palin: "If there is a constituency of voters trying to decide between the two, Ms. Bachmann has a lot to offer. She’s considerably sharper on her feet than Ms. Palin, and has more discipline. She does not have the baggage of 'blood libel,' a reality show, or having prematurely quit her term as governor. Her family story — a mother to 23 foster children, as she frequently reminded us — is every bit as compelling. She has considerably better favorability ratings — Americans who are familiar with her split about evenly on whether they like her or not, which is not true for Ms. Palin. She has a geographic advantage in Iowa, has devoted more time to her presidential campaign and has a reputation as a strong fundraiser." ...

... Lies, Lies and Damned Statistics. Glenn Kessler fact-checks a few of the candidates' well-worn lines which have already been discredited, a circumstance that does not dissuade them from repeating the lies in a nationally-televised forum. ...

... Ron Brownstein of the National Journal says the attractive gentleman on the right (way on the right) is the big winner of the debate: "... there may be only modest differences between the proposals of the major candidates; all of them are operating in a policy framework shaped by the tea party push to retrench government, as interpreted above all by the House GOP budget resolution authored by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis." ...

... Finally, James Barnes reports on the National Journal's poll of the pundits. Big winner -- Romney; big loser -- Pawlenty. So who cares what anybody else thinks. ...

... Why, Our Mister Brooks considers himself a "pundit under protest," held hostage by uinspiring candidates on both sides.

Dahlia Lithwick: "Today (Monday), a court in San Francisco heard arguments about one of the most contemptible legal claims advanced in decades: that Vaughn Walker, the federal judge who voted last spring to strike down California's ban on gay marriage, was too gay to decide the case fairly." CW: Lithwick makes the same argument I did some time back: that no judge is qualified to rule in this case because every judge has a sexual orientation & could potential "benefit" from her or his decision.

This is actually a pretty good discussion on "Morning Joe" about Anthony Weiner. Scarborough, a Republican, says Reince Priebus, the RNC chair, should "shut up," especially since Democratic party leaders have dealt much more quickly with Weiner than Republican leaders dealt with their own scandals (CW: as in -- in a number of cases -- not at all). One aspect that struck me about this was having Steve Rattner sitting their discussing Weiner's indiscretions. Rattner, formerly Obama's "car czar," has settled "pay-to-play" charges by the SEC by paying $6.2 million in disgorgement and penalties & $10 million in restitution in a deal with New York AG Andrew Cuomo. Rattner has vehemently maintained he is innocence.

... Peter Beinart in the Daily Beast: "We need a new rulebook. Credible allegations of nonconsensual sex—the kind of thing Dominique Strauss-Kahn is alleged to have done — are absolutely fair game. But when it comes to adultery and virtual adultery between consenting adults, it's way past time that prominent figures in the media loudly declare that it is none of their business, and they won't join the scrum." ...

... Josh Marshall agrees. ...

... CW: Neither of them seriously addresses the part that got my goat: Weiner lied to ME. Until I found out he lied to the public, I agreed with Marshall -- this was a non-story that the press was all over because it sold papers. But I trusted Weiner to tell the public the truth, and I defended him based on his false assertions. It's none of my business if a politician humiliates his spouse as long as the humiliating behavior is legal. It is my business when he humiliates me. Anthony Weiner humiliated me.

Right Wing World *

Ha Ha Ha. The Seven Dwarfs debate aside, my favorite candidate story has to be this one by Stephanie Mencimer of Mother Jones: Fred Karger, a "lesser-known" (CW: I'll say!) candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, AND the only openly-gay GOP presidential candidate (no kidding!), AND a long-time Mitt Romney tormenter, AND a veteran of oppo research -- has been sleuthing Mitt's voting history. Karger has now filed a complaint with the Massachusetts board of elections alleging Mitt violated state law (the crime can garner a $10,000 fine & up to five years in jail) by voting in Massachusetts local elections when he was not a resident. Karger is not buying Mitt's claim that multimillionaire Mitt & family lived in their son's Massachusetts basement, & Karger's investigation finds plenty of evidence that Mitt & family were not Massachusetts moles; rather, they were living it up in a La Jolla, California sea-front mansion so Mitt "could hear the waves." Read the whole story. 

The Recession is God's Plan. Marie Diamond of Think Progress: Texas Gov. Rick "Perry twists a famous Biblical story into a bizarre anti-government tirade, comparing the U.S. government to slave masters in ancient Egypt. Skewing religion to reinforce his personal political ideology, Perry chastises people not to rely on government for help in hard times, and suggests those who are suffering have no one but themselves to blame for not making adequate preparations." Perry is flirting with a presidential run. With video. CW: so why are Republicans criticizing President Obama for the bad economy if the recession is "God's plan"? Under the Perry School of Theology, Obama is akin to the Prophet Moses. Republicans should be bowing down to him and asking him if he's got any commandments for them.

* Where facts seldom intrude, but if they do, they could leave would-be President Romney in jail.

News Ledes

President Obama arrives in Puerto Rico:

New York Times: "Pakistan’s top military spy agency has arrested some of the Pakistani informants who fed information to the Central Intelligence Agency in the months leading up to the raid that led to the death of Osama bin Laden, according to American officials. Pakistan’s detention of five C.I.A. informants, including a Pakistani Army major who officials said copied the license plates of cars visiting Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in the weeks before the raid, is the latest evidence of the fractured relationship between the United States and Pakistan."

ABC News: "The Senate Democratic leadership came out today and reaffirmed that Medicare cuts should not be on the table during the debt ceiling discussions."

New York Times: "David C. Baldus, whose pioneering research on race and the death penalty came within a vote of persuading the Supreme Court to make fundamental changes in the capital justice system, died on Monday at his home in Iowa City. He was 75." Read the story. It's more than an obituary.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "Acting with unusual speed, the state Supreme Court on Tuesday reinstated Gov. Scott Walker's plan to all but end collective bargaining for tens of thousands of public workers. The court found a committee of lawmakers was not subject to the state's open meetings law, and so did not violate that law when they hastily approved the measure and made it possible for the Senate to take it up. In doing so, the Supreme Court overruled a Dane County judge who had struck down the legislation, ending one challenge to the law even as new challenges are likely to emerge." CW: not surprisingly, one of those in the 4-3 majority was David Prosser, who won a close election in April. Elections matter.

Los Angeles Times: "A federal judge on Tuesday refused to invalidate last year's ruling against Proposition 8, deciding the gay jurist who overturned the same-sex marriage ban had no obligation to step aside because of a possible conflict of interest. The decision by Chief Judge James Ware of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco left the ruling by retired Judge Vaughn R. Walker in place. Walker’s decision remains on hold pending a separate appeal to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals." Includes link to Judge Ware's ruling. ...

... New York Times: "A bankruptcy court in California has declared that the 1996 law barring federal recognition of same-sex marriage [DOMA] is unconstitutional, increasing pressure against the law.

News You Can Use. New York Times: "After 33 years of consideration, the Food and Drug Administration took steps on Tuesday to sort out the confusing world of sunscreens, with new rules that specify which lotions provide the best protection against the sun and ending claims that they are truly waterproof."

Los Angeles Times: "Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi faced fresh political uncertainty Tuesday after suffering a crushing loss at the polls that will make it more difficult for the longtime leader to keep his fragile government intact."

Here's the New York Times report on last night's Republican debate in New Hampshire.

The Commentariat -- June 13

I've posted an Open Thread on Off Times Square. Even if you don't comment, the threads are worth reading, as at least a thousand readers a day have discovered.

Robert Reich: "We’re in a vicious cycle in which lower wages and net job losses and high debt are causing consumers to cut their spending — which is causing businesses to cut back on hiring and reduce pay. There’s no way out of this morass without bold leadership from Washington to rekindle consumer demand." Thanks to commenter Pam Criscione for the link.

Paul Krugman explains why Sen. Joe Lieberman's idea to raise the Medicare eligibility age is "so bad, so wrongheaded, that you’re almost grateful. For really bad ideas can help illustrate the extent to which policy discourse has gone off the rails." CW: The best thing about January 2013, no matter who wins the presidential election & who controls the House and Senate is that Joe Lieberman will be OUTTA THERE.

Here's our old friend Larry Summers giving another demonstration of how an economist admits he fucked up without admitting he fucked up. While he worked in the Obama Administration, Summers declared the 2008 stimulus package, like Goldilocks' porridge, "just right." (See, ferinstance, Summers' speech in July 2009, which Krugman highlighted in this blogpost.) But now, in a Washington Post op-ed, Summers finds that porridge was "too cold" & is promoting additional stimulus, mostly in the forms of a payroll tax cut to employers & infrastructure improvements. Oh, Larry, you are just too hot. ...

... And here's why Larry proposed primarily tax cuts instead of a more targeted & effective stimulus: E. J. Dionne of the Washington Post: "Last Thursday, Senate Democrats devoted their weekly policy lunch to a simple question: What proposals to spur job-creation have any chance of passing Congress, given Republican control of the House and the effective veto power the GOP has in a Senate where a simple majority no longer rules? ... The senators concluded that the only stimulative measures with any chance of getting Republican votes involve tax cuts. That’s why you’re hearing a lot of talk about extending the payroll tax cut another year, and perhaps extending it to the part of the tax that employers pay."

Felix Salmon of Reuters can't see much daylight between the testimony of JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. When the views of a Democratic Secretary of the Treasury are indistinguishable from those of a big bank CEO, we no longer have to wait for the oligarchy to begin. It is here.

Big Brother, Chapter 'Leventy-'Leven. Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "The Federal Bureau of Investigation is giving significant new powers to its roughly 14,000 agents, allowing them more leeway to search databases, go through household trash or use surveillance teams to scrutinize the lives of people who have attracted their attention."

David Hilzenrath of the Washington Post: "Regulators are having such a difficult time translating into action the Wall Street overhaul Congress ordered last year that they are cutting the investment industry-- and themselves-- some slack. New requirements governing certain financial instruments are scheduled to take effect on July 16, almost a year after enactment of the Dodd-Frank Act. But the Securities and Exchange Commission said Friday that it is providing 'temporary relief' from some of the provisions. With the deadline looming, the SEC said it will extend some temporary rules and offer relief from others that predated Dodd-Frank. At issue are 'security-based swaps,' a form of derivative."

For the New York Times, Scott Turow favorably reviews Tangled Webs, "James B. Stewart’s engrossing re-examination of a quartet of celebrated federal investigations, all of which culminated in convictions for lying: the insider-trading probe that ultimately ensnared the homemaking diva Martha Stewart; the complex inquiry to determine who leaked to reporters the identity of the former C.I.A. covert operative Valerie Plame Wilson, which led to the perjury conviction of the ex-vice-presidential chief of staff I. Lewis Libby; the long-running San Francisco grand jury probe into steroid use by athletes that implicated the sprinter Marion Jones and (after the book was finished) the home-run king Barry Bonds; and the Securities and Exchange Commission inquiries in which the reigning king of swindlers, Bernard L. Madoff, managed to gull overworked young investigators and keep his Ponzi scheme alive, prior to his ultimate undoing in 2008."

Darryl Fears of the Washington Post: "With wildfire season starting early and fires already raging across Arizona, the U.S. Forest Service is confronting a longtime problem that many inside and outside the agency think needs an immediate fix: The large tanker planes leased by the agency to fight such blazes have been flying, on average, about 50 years and are rapidly becoming unsafe to deploy. As worries deepen, the Forest Service is preparing — finally, critics say — to ask Congress this summer for money to replace its fleet of 18 large air tankers.... Owners and operators of private aviation companies that lease air tankers under contract or on a call-when-needed basis have been pressing for this kind of action since two air tanker crashes in 2002."

Right Wing World *

Steve Benen on the double standard Republicans apply to sex scandals: Weiner must go and it's "a failue of Democratic leadership" that they took two or three days to call for his resignation; but Republican leadership has never called for the resignation of Sen. David Vitter, who broke the law by making dates with prostitutes five years ago, or Sen. John Ensign, who probably broke the law by paying off his mistress's husband two years ago. (Vitter is still serving; Ensign quit to avoid having to testify before the Senate Ethics Committee.)

Ian Millhiser of Think Progress: Presidential candidate & former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Penn.) says doctors who provide abortions to rape & incest victims (or any other woman) should be criminally charged. With video, in case you can't believe anyone would say such a thing.

* Is a dangerous place for reasonable, responsible people.

Local News

Eric Kleefeld of TPM explains how Wisconsin Democrats are countering the Republican dirty trick of running Republican challengers (that is, fake Democrats) to force Democratic primary recall elections.

News Ledes

New York Times: "President Obama said on Monday that if he were in Representative Anthony D. Weiner’s position, 'I would resign,' according to NBC, which conducted an extensive interview with him."

New York Times: "The Supreme Court on Monday unanimously rejected a First Amendment challenge to a Nevada law that barred officials there from voting on matters in which they had a conflict of interest. Such legislative recusal laws are common, and a decision striking them down or even subjecting them to strict First Amendment scrutiny would have reshaped politics across the nation." You can read the decision, written by Justice Scalia, here.

New York Times: "Lulz Security, a group of hackers who have claimed responsibility for a number of recent online data breaches, claimed two more victims on Monday, including Bethesda Softworks, a gaming company, and the Web site of the United States Senate."

After meeting with his Jobs & Competitiveness Council (CW: which is a cruel joke on the American people) in Morrisville, North Carolina, President Obama will make remarks at 1:45 pm ET. Politico: "President Barack Obama heads to an energy plant in North Carolina on Monday to talk once again about the job-creating power of a green economy. The catch? Nearly three years into Obama's presidency, the White House can't point to much solid evidence that significant numbers of Americans are scoring the green jobs the president has been touting." ...

     ... Updates: Washington Post follow-up story here. The transcript of the President's remarks is here.

AP: Republican presidential candidates will debate this evening at St. Anselm's College in Manchester, New Hampshire. It's the first debate in which usual frontrunner Gov. Mitt Romney will participate. ...

     ... The Hill Update: "Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) announced during Monday evening's presidential debate that she'd filed paperwork to run for president." AND here's the Washington Post story on the debate: "Given opportunities to critique one another’s stances, the seven competitors repeatedly deflected the questions to attacks on the president."

Reuters: "Rerouting ambulances away from overcrowded emergency rooms may be costing patients their lives, U.S. researchers say. For patients with heart attack, high levels of rerouting are tied to a three percent higher risk of death, they report in the Journal of the American Medical Association." CW: this is another consequence of people not having access to health insurance. Even though you yourself may have insurance, people who have no insurance are crowding the emergency room. They could kill you.

Off-Topic

Professor of Philosophy Costica Bradatan has an interesting essay in the New York Times "The Stone" on "philosophy as an art of dying." We're not talking batik here; Bradatan examines the famous death of a few famous philosophers, centering on the most famous of all -- Socrates. Bradatan posits, "Perhaps that to be a philosopher means more than just being ready to 'suffer' death, to accept it passively at some indefinite point in time; it may also require one to provoke his own death, to meet it somehow mid-way." Undeterred by the seriousness of the subject, I dashed off a comment, which at this writing has not been published. Here ya go:

Dying is just half of the job; the other half is weaving a good narrative of martyrdom and finding an audience for it.
-- Costica Bradatan

Quite right. Of course most people's favorite martyr-philosopher is the Jesus character of the gospels. The narrations are superb! I don't think there's any question but that the story of Jesus's death, particularly as told by the author of Mark, who wrote the first gospel (no, really, it wasn't Matthew!), is based in part on Plato's narration of Socrates' death. 

But I should say my favorite martyr-philosopher's death was that of the Roman Seneca (the Younger). Philosophers & theologians of the day were much enamored of the idea of the "noble death." In the Socratic tradition, Cynic and Stoic philosophers began to see political martyrdom as a sort of bona fide for philosophers.  Persecution and execution, they reasoned, were proofs that the victim had sought justice and was righteous to the end.  Persecution was a badge of honor.  Martyrdom became the equivalent of a Ph.D. in philosophy. Using this "logic," a person didn’t even have to be very smart or very thoughtful to become a philosopher. Seneca saw the athletes' and gladiators' suffering and deaths as moral triumphs: a "reward [that] is not a garland or palm or a trumpeter ... but rather virtue, steadfastness of soul, and a peace that is won for all time...."

 Seneca also saw brotherly love as an incentive for a noble death.  Here he is in De beneficiis [7.12]:

But my end of friendship is to have one dearer to me than myself, and for the saving of whose life I would cheerfully lay down my own....

If you think that sounds an awful lot like a saying by the subject of the later-written gospels, you'd be right. (See John 15:13.) Presuming Seneca wrote "Hercules at Oeta" (scholars debate the authorship), he also wrote a play which not only extolled the noble death but also hypothesized that a resurrection might ensue if the dying philosopher were noble enough.

So how did Seneca himself die? In 65 C.E., Seneca earned his badge of courage in a personal tragicomedy.  The Roman Emperor Nero, whom Seneca had taught and counseled, accused Seneca of conspiring to kill him. Nero ordered Seneca to commit suicide. Eager to oblige, Seneca first tried slitting his wrists, but that didn’t kill him. Then he drank hemlock a la Socrates. That didn’t work, either. He finally succumbed in what may have been the original accidental hot-tub death: He jumped into a hot pool in an attempt to make the blood from his slit wrists flow faster, but instead he suffocated from the hot steam rising from the pool.

Noble deaths really are not that good an idea. Or else Seneca needed a better narrator than I.