Poets at the White House

Sometimes something for our selves.

The Commentariat -- May 12

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

E. J. Dionne: "As you watch the lawsuits against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act work their way through the courts, consider that what you are really seeing is a great republic tying itself into as many knots as possible to avoid facing up to a challenge that every other wealthy capitalist democracy in the world has met...." Read the whole column.

William Cohan, in his last New York Times op-ed page post, urges you to stay mad at the banksters who haven't paid for their likely crimes. And won't. Government agencies -- specifically the Department of Justice -- have not held them accountable.

Meredith Atwell Baker. Some sleazy operators wear pearls. Getty image.Revolving Door. Edward Wyatt of the New York Times: "Four months after the Federal Communications Commission approved a hotly contested merger of Comcast and NBC Universal, one of the commissioners who voted for the deal said on Wednesday that she would soon join Comcast’s Washington lobbying office. Meredith Attwell Baker, a former Commerce Department official who worked on telecommunications issues in George W. Bush’s administration, announced that she would leave the F.C.C. when her term expires at the end of June. At Comcast, she will serve as senior vice president for government affairs for NBC Universal, which Comcast acquired in January.... Ms. Baker can lobby members of Congress immediately upon beginning her new job."

Connections. Pete Lattman & Azam Ahmed of the New York Times: Raj Rajaratnam's "vast Rolodex of tipsters included former business school classmates, fellow hedge fund traders and technology industry executives whose origins, like his, were from the Indian subcontinent.... Mr. Rajaratnam, a ... Sri Lankan native, sought out information that was confidential, beyond the reach of research, and illegally traded on it, a jury in Federal District Court in Manhattan found on Wednesday, convicting him on all 14 counts of securities fraud and conspiracy." Includes video which explains the case.

Cantor, Boehner, Kyl, McConnell -- Not-Ready-for-Primetime Players. Photo via the Washington Post."Amateurs." David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post: "... professional [negotiators] ... have learned the rules that help resolve unsolvable standoffs: Don’t lie to a man on a high ledge. Don’t box yourself in with sweeping threats. Don’t tell your adversary to 'act like an adult.' Now, they have watched the two parties bend or break those three rules. They worry that the politicians’ mistakes might only prolong their dispute — at a moment where every day of delay adds to Wall Street’s worries."

Uh oh. The Maverick jumps the corral fence again. John McCain in a Washington Post op-ed: intelligence gained as a result of torture did not lead to the killing of Osama bin Laden, but "was obtained through standard, noncoercive means.... Much of this debate [over the means used to locate bin Laden] is a definitional one: whether any or all of these methods constitute torture. I believe some of them do, especially waterboarding, which is a mock execution and thus an exquisite form of torture. As such, they are prohibited by American laws and values, and I oppose them."

Fareed Zakaria in the Washington Post: "This is a time for action, to finally push [Pakistan] toward moderation and genuine democracy.... Having come to power hoping to clip the military’s wings, Pakistan’s democratically elected government has been reduced to mouthing talking points written for it by the intelligence services.... Pakistan’s civilian government, business class and intellectuals have an ever-larger role in this struggle. They should not get distracted by empty anti-American slogans or hypernationalism. This is Pakistan's moment of truth.... The opportunity might not come again."

David Corn of Mother Jones offers up an amusing bedtime story about Newt & Callista. Bedtime is the key word here. As Corn writes, "there must be dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of stories like this one. Many will seep out, as long as Gingrich is a candidate for the highest office in the land...." CW: As I commented on the Collins-Brooks "Conversation" yesterday, "I'm definitely going with Newt in 2012" because his campaign will be so amusing -- for Democrats.

Right Wing World *

Paul Krugman: forty-two Republican Congressmen write to President Obama to ask him to get Democrats to quit "trying to use issues to win votes." The issues they don't want Dems to talk about about are ending Medicare & increasing the deficit as does the Ryan budget they all voted for. ...

     ... Steve Benen reminds us that "... the criticism of the GOP plan from Democrats and the left has been accurate.... In 2010 — just last year — many of these same freshmen managed to get elected by using wildly misleading attack ads accusing Democrats of hurting seniors and 'cutting' Medicare."

"Reading, 'Riting and Revenues." If you were wondering why public education in the U.S. is becoming a national embarrassment, Gail Collins has a few answers, and they all center around "the craze for privatization." Collins makes a dull subject irritate the hell out of you. ...

... BUT even Collins, whose examples of Republican-led legislatures' dubious efforts to privatize K-12 education are sickening, can't beat a virtual sample of what the right has in mind when it comes to an appropriate course of study for the kids in a privatized venue. As Evan McMorris-Santoro of TPM reports, popular presidential non-candidate Mike Huckabee is selling for the paltry sum of about $15 per video, what he calls "unbiased" American history lessons for the kids, produced by Learn Our History. First video? "The Reagan Revolution." Here's a preview. Look out for the scary black gang member at the top of the video whom we assume Reagan will vanquish:

What does it mean that Learn Our History is "unbiased"?

Learn Our History's products have been developed to correct the 'blame America first' attitude prevalent in today's teaching. While we recognize that America is not perfect and has never been perfect we celebrate our incredible history with a balanced account of the events that created this great nation. We don't feel bad about the great things America has achieved -- we celebrate our success!

Matt Miller of the Washington Post on "Boehner's awe-inspiring hypocrisy on the debt limit: ... How can a [Republican] party that just passed a budget blueprint with historic new levels of debt and virtually no middle-class entitlement reform in the next decade try, with a straight face, to pin the blame for a debt-limit increase on the president?"

Jed Lewison of Daily Kos finds Mitt Romney touting the individual mandate in December 2007. (RomneyCare includes an individual mandate; i.e., Massachusetts residents must purchase health insurance):

... AND, via Greg Sargent, here's Romney in 2008 explaining to voters in easy-to-understand, logical terms why the individual mandate is a good idea:

... Ya know what? He's right. But that's the Old Romney. Steve Benen translates the New Romney's position du jour: "That radical, communistic, freedom-killing health care policy you hate so intensely? Don’t worry, I only support that at the state level.” ...

... BUT Romney was for a federal mandate before he was against it, as Dave Weigel reports: "... running uphill against Ted Kennedy, Romney said he'd support the health care compromise introduced by Sen. John Chafee. That compromise included a mandate to buy health insurance, something Democrats never tired of pointing out in 2009 and 2010 when the Affordable Care Act's compromise was characterized as tyranny or socialism." ...

... OR, As The Onion put it in an April headline, "Mitt Romney Haunted by Past of Trying to Help Uninsured Sick People." The article is a spoof, but the headline is too true. ...

... Michael Shear of the New York Times: "On Thursday, Mr. Romney will make his most direct effort yet to explain why he really wants to kill sick people find a politically safe middle ground, saying in a speech that he doesn’t regret his actions as governor, while vowing that, if elected, he would begin efforts to repeal Mr. Obama’s heath care law on his first day in the Oval Office."

* Where facts never intrude.

Local News

N. C. Aizenman of the Washington Post: Florida legislators passed a drastic Medicaid "reform" bill mimicking a pilot program that was an apparent disaster. It will go into effect if the Obama Administration approves it. ...

... AND Oops! As of October 21 of this year, having sex will be illegal in Florida. However, there's a ray of hope, according to the blogger officially known as the Southern Fried Scientist, who discovered that Florida's poorly-written anti-bestiality law prohibits sex between (or among, I guess) humans:

... if you’re living in Florida on October 1, 2011 and would like to have sexual intercourse with a consenting adult, please check with your veterinarian or local livestock breeder first to make sure you abide by 'accepted animal husbandry practices, conformation judging practices, or accepted veterinary medical practices.'

News Ledes

CBS News: information from Navy SEALs helmet-cams provides more details of the operation in which Osama bin Laden was killed:

... The print story is here.

New York Times: "The Senate Ethics Committee on Thursday asked the Justice Department to reopen its investigation of former Senator John Ensign, saying it had found evidence that he had conspired to help a former aide violate a lobbying ban, had broken campaign finance laws and had obstructed an investigation into wrongdoing, which began after he admitted having had an affair with the aide’s wife." Washington Post story here.

Washington Post: "President Obama announced Thursday that he is seeking a two-year extension of Robert S. Mueller III’s term as FBI director, saying he cannot afford to lose the longtime FBI chief at a time of terrorist threats. The request for Congress to extend Mueller’s 10-year term comes as the White House had been searching for a candidate to succeed him."

Washington Post: "... the Senate Finance Committee grilled senior executives of the five biggest oil companies Thursday about whether they really need tax incentives that some Democrats on the panel said the nation can no longer afford." New York Times: "Executives of five of the largest oil companies, under heavy fire over near-record gasoline prices and their high first-quarter profits, pushed back on Thursday against calls for cuts in tax subsidies benefiting the industry."

New York Times: in a speech in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Mitt Romney tries to distinguish RomneyCare from ObamaCare, which he says should be repealed.

President Obama & Vice President Biden honored the National Association of Police Organization's top cops this afternoon.

Wall Street Journal: "Sixty-two business groups ... urged congressional leaders on Wednesday to raise the federal debt ceiling amid fears that political brinkmanship could lead to another financial crisis. The letter comes less than one week before the U.S. government is expected to hit the $14.294 trillion debt ceiling. Treasury has already taken steps to avoid defaulting on its obligations, but officials believe it will run out of maneuvers on Aug. 2." ...

... The Hill: "A bill to raise the debt limit without spending cuts attached would not get a single Republican vote in the House, the GOP’s top vote-counter [Kevin McCarthy]said Wednesday."

New York Times: "Two men who the authorities said intended to carry out a terrorist attack in New York City were arrested late Wednesday, two law enforcement officials said with knowledge of the matter. The two men had sought to purchase hand grenades and guns. They were arrested after what one law enforcement official described as a sting operation, saying that their aims appeared 'aspirational.' The identities of the men were not released but another official characterized the suspects as 'homegrown' and another said one of the young men was of Moroccan descent."

Washington Post: "The Pentagon is considering allowing the families of detainees at Guantanamo Bay to visit them, an unprecedented step to ease the isolation of inmates who in some cases have been held at the U.S. facility for close to a decade, according to congressional aides."

New York Times: "In what has emerged as one of the most brutal waves of repression since the Arab Spring began, the Syrian military shelled Homs, the country’s third-largest city from tanks on Wednesday, forcing hundreds to flee and detaining hundreds more."

Al Jazeera: "At least ten people protesting the rule of Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen's president, have been killed and 226 injured after security forces opened fire on thousands of anti-government demonstrations in several cities across the country." With video.

AP: "Though hunted and in hiding, Osama bin Laden remained the driving force behind every recent al-Qaida terror plot, U.S. officials say, citing his private journal and other documents recovered in last week's raid...."

New York Times: "Administration officials said the president was eager to use Bin Laden’s death as a way to articulate a unified theory about the popular uprisings from Tunisia to Bahrain.... The first sign of this 'reset' could come as early as next week, when Mr. Obama plans to give a speech on the Middle East in which he will seek to put Bin Laden’s death in the context of the region’s broader political transformation."

Washington Post: "Flood the farms to save the cities. That’s the trade-off staring at the Army Corps of Engineers in Louisiana this week as a historically high Mississippi River rolls south, flooding towns in Mississippi on Wednesday, prompting evacuations farther south, and threatening the heavily industrialized petrochemical corridor running from Baton Rouge to New Orleans and beyond." With video.

AP: "Retired U.S. autoworker John Demjanjuk was convicted of thousands of counts of acting as an accessory to murder at a Nazi death camp and sentenced on Thursday to five years in prison — closing one chapter in a decades-long legal battle."

The Banality of MoDo

Maureen Dowd writes about how much Osama bin Laden reminds her of Norma Desmond, one of the major characters in "A Star Is Born." Or something.

Following is an e-mail a friend sent to Kate Madison, Karen Garcia & me this morning re: his thoughts on some of the comments to MoDo's column. I have the writer's permission to share the letter with you. I've redacted a few personal notes, including the opening paragraph in which the writer briefly mentions the banality of Dowd's column.

Kate did a nice job of calling out MoDo on her use of the "Bin Laden Slipped Away" meme, trotted out by the MSM, the Neo-cons and just about, well, everyone. He didn't, as Kate declares, "slip away". The Bushies took their eyes off the ball because they were too busy plotting world domination. Bush wasn't kidding when he said he really didn't think much about Bin Laden after the initial furor. He was thinking of blood and glory and killing brown people and re-making the Middle East in his own stunted, half-thought out image. Maybe that's why it's so fucked up now.

I did notice an interesting strain running through several comments, specifically, Marie's and Gemli's. They both refer to the banality of evil. It's funny, I was reading an essay in Hannah Arendt's Life of the Mind the other day. Arendt sat in on the Eichmann trial. She coined that phrase “banality of evil” to describe what Marie notes as Eichmann's seemingly innocuous and pleasant nature. How could such a nice little man be responsible for so much horror? You can say almost the same thing about Bush, except I don't think anyone would describe him as all that pleasant and polite (he's an arrogant, snotty little shit) but his public demeanor is one of good ol’ boy, back slapping, joke telling, occasionally pain in the ass frat boy. But here he goes, in full sociopath mode, initiating not one, but TWO, count 'em, TWO wars. You have to go back to FDR for that kind of two-fer (at least he didn't start the actions in the European and Pacific theaters).

But even closer to home, Gemli's comment called to mind that we are very close to that sort of thing (total evil in a “guy next door” package) right here in the US of A. Karen mentioned the Frontline piece “Capture/Kill” and right at the end there's an interview with an up and coming killer. This guy is the real deal. A hater, a murderer, a guy who made his bones by blowing up scores of civilians with a pipe bomb; someone to whom reason, hope, love, political expediency, national pride, money, power -- nothing -- matters. Only killing. He says that there can be no discussion, no negotiation. He says, revealingly, that this war that Bush started (and Obama continues) is like a sweet dessert for him and his kind. If a day or two go by and they haven't killed someone, they're antsy and restless. Ready for more blood.

It's not a stretch to take that checkered scarf off his head and put on a greasy trucker's cap with NRA or NASCAR stitched on the front, and put him in the mountains of Colorado ready to start a-shootin' guvmint men comin' to steal his freedoms!

I remember that I was reading Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1975 when I heard that Arendt had died. I was just getting into hard core philosophy and I distinctly recall a passage talking about Eichmann discussing his love of Kant and relating that he tried to live his life according to Kant's moral philosophy. Arendt of course rips him a new one for only reading one sentence and ignoring the rest of the 467 pages in the book, but I was struck at how dangerous philosophy could be to lamebrains, or smart, canny, unscrupulous people like David Brooks or Glenn Beck who can use it to provide support for the insupportable, cover for what should never be covered up. Eichmann focused on Kant's rejoinder to the rest of us to obey the law (he was specifically referring to the moral law). But think for a minute. Why did Bush and his legal assassins like Yoo and Gonzalez and Cheney's bully boy Addington, work so fucking hard for so long to provide legal cover that would allow them to attach electrodes to a man's testicles, pour water on him and turn on the juice. They were OBEYING THE LAW.

This is part of Brooks' obsession with those in the Baby Boom generation who (like all of us) questioned authority. A while back Brooks quoted from the work of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, specifically a book called Metaphors We Live By. Brooks, of course, didn't read it all the way through, probably only scanned for quotes so he could look smart. Unfortunately, I don't have that gene. I actually read the fucking thing. If Brooksie HAD read it, he would have come across the primary, seminal metaphors that describe the way the right and the left work politically, in this country. I believe it has gotten much worse since L and J wrote their book, but the gist of it is that the right wants a patriarchal society in which the Daddy calls the shots and we all dance. He dishes out assignments as quickly as punishment and we all have to take it. This goes along with the idea of why so many on the right (a total puzzlement to most lefties) so frequently vote against their own best interests. They are happy suffering as long as their enemies (mostly, us) suffer too. As long as Daddy spanks us hard, they'll take the lash too. The defining metaphor for the left tends to be much more matriarchal, nurturing and supportive. This, of course, drives the right to distraction.

Anyway, the point here is that there is so much going on under the hood that remains barely noticeable and certainly not thought out. Our news cycle (Marie and Karen, you both must feel the stress of getting things out there in a timely fashion in order to remain relevant -- the other day Marie sent a link to a piece about the disclosure of the Bin Laden killing. Ten minutes made the difference between a scoop and a left-in-the-dirt, also-ran condition) does not allow for thoughtful analysis of what's happening to make us this way. Granted, plenty of people who are making things happen don't have anything close to the type of analytical skills necessary to do more than celebrate surface victories.

But we are getting further and further away from any kind of thoughtful consideration of where we're headed and why or, more to the point, WHO, is pointing us there.