The Commentariat -- April 16

President Obama's weekly address:

     ... Related AP story here. ...

... Richard Stevenson of the New York Times: "... the budget debate that became fully engaged last week is about far more than accounting and arcane policy disputes. What is under way now is the most fundamental reassessment of the size and role of government — of the balance between personal responsibility and private markets on the one hand and public responsibility and social welfare on the other — at least since Ronald Reagan and perhaps since F.D.R."

The first advice I'm going to give my successor is to watch the generals and to avoid feeling that, just because they are military men, their opinions on military matters are worth a damn.
-- President John F. Kennedy

** Filmmaker Oliver Stone & historian Peter Kuznick in the British New Statesman "on how the US president can learn from precedents for peacemaking set by Mikhail Gorbachev and John F Kennedy." Here, from the essay, is a pretty fine summary of the Obama presidency:

Surrounding himself with Wall Street-friendly advisers and military hawks, he has sent more than 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan; bailed out Wall Street banks while paying scant attention to the plight of the poor and working class; and enacted a tepid version of health reform that, while expanding coverage, represented a boondoggle for the insurance industry. And he has continued many of Bush's civil rights abuses, secrecy obsessions and neoliberal policies that allow the continued looting of the real economy by those who are obscenely wealthy.

Steve Kornacki of Salon: in voting to "end Medicare as we know it," as House Repubicans did Friday afternoon, they gave an election-year gift to Democrats. What's weirdest about it is that the bill has no chance of becoming law. "... this was a vote that Republicans insisted on -- but that will only help Democrats." ...

... Thursday, the House voted to permanently defund Planned Parenthood. Family planning expert & former Planned Parenthood executive Clare Coleman, in a Washington Post op-ed, debunks five myths about the organization. Happily, Coleman was able to include another reminder that Sen. Jon Kyl doesn't mind dissembling on the Senate floor; i.e., he says things that "are not intended to be factual."

** "A crime was definitely committed in this case, but not by me." CW: I've linked to several articles about the Supreme Court's egregious 5-4 decision in Connick v. Thompson, but I missed the most important one of all -- this April 9 New York Times op-ed by John Thompson himself. If you've read any of the articles I've linked, reading Mr. Thompson's story in his own words will make you angry all over again. 

Leslie Kauman of the New York Times: "In the past month, the nation’s focus has been on the budget battle in Washington, where Republicans in Congress aligned with the Tea Party have fought hard for rollbacks to the Environmental Protection Agency, clean air and water regulations, renewable energy and other conservation programs. But similar efforts to make historically large cuts to environmental programs are also in play at the state level as legislatures and governors take aim at conservation and regulations they see as too burdensome to business interests."

Scot Kersgaard of the Colorado Independent: "Today the Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength slammed Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) for comments he made Thursday ridiculing ‘rich liberals’ calls to raise taxes on millionaires like themselves." Includes the full statement from the Patriot Millionaires & related content. CW Note: I don't know & haven't been able to find out exactly what Hatch said. I'm still looking. Update: okay, I found Hatch's comments on "rich Democrats," which begin about 17:30 min. into this video. I had to listen to a lot of Orrin Hatch's bloviating to find this.

Joe Nocera is a friend of oil & gas billionaire T. Boone Pickens. If you read Nocera's second column touting the safety & wisdom of natural gas drilling, published in today's New York Times, please read some of the comments, too. Comment #1, by Steven from Texas, is particularly good.

Right Wing World *

Why punish the most productive people? The people who have resources create jobs, not poor people. -- Rick Santorum, on President Obama's budget plan and those nonproductive poor people ...

... Irony Alert! Speaking at a town-hall-style meeting in New Hampshire, anti-gay, anti-sex, anti-everything Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum "was tripped up a bit when a student * asked him if he knew that the choice of his slogan, 'Fighting to make America America again,' was borrowed from the 'pro-union poem by the gay poet Langston Hughes.' 'No I had nothing to do with that,' Santorum said. "I didn't know that. And the folks who worked on that slogan for me didn't inform me that it came from that, if it in fact came from that.' The student ... was referring to the poem 'Let America Be America Again.' When asked a short time later what the campaign slogan meant to him, Santorum said, 'well, I'm not too sure that's my campaign slogan, I think it's on a web site.' It was also printed on the campaign literature handed out before the speech." From Melanie Plenda of the Manchester, New Hampshire, Union Leader. Thanks to reader Haley S. for the link. Hughes' powerful poem stands as a perfect rejection of Santorum's Right Wing America:

     ... * Update: turns out that "student" was Lee Fang of Think Progress. CW: I love the kids at Think Progress.

Gail Collins continues her book reviews of the writings of presidential candidates. Today she concentrates on Romney rewrites. Here's a sample:

'Despite my affiliation with the Republican Party, I don’t think of myself as highly partisan,' Moderate Mitt wrote toward the end. This comes after 300 pages of unrelenting attacks on Barack Obama and every member of his party since Andrew Jackson. He blames Bill Clinton for everything from cutting military spending to presiding over an administration during which 'birth to teenage mothers rose to their highest level in decades.' I’m sure this week’s Romney does not regard that as a partisan statement even though teenage birth rates actually fell spectacularly during that exact period.

Conservative Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker (late of "Parker-Spitzer") on Donald Trump:

In saner times, we’d recognize and dismiss the ravings of madmen, self-promoters and false prophets. Today, thanks to the democratization of the megaphone and the political bulimia we euphemistically call 'dialogue,” any old [birther] canard can enjoy 15 minutes of credibility. Sure enough, Trump’s challenge to Obama’s natural-born citizenship has gained traction among a disturbing number of believe-anythingers, outscoring others in GOP presidential preference polls.

* Where facts never intrude.

News Ledes

Washington Post: "The Federal Aviation Administration has suspended another air traffic controller allegedly caught sleeping on the job and is ending the scheduling system responsible for often putting sleepy controllers behind the microphone after just eight hours off duty. The FAA said a Miami-based controller who directs planes after they reach cruising altitude fell asleep on the job early Saturday. It was the seventh instance this year when FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt has suspended a controller for allegedly sleeping on the job." CW: does anybody think controllers suddenly started falling asleep on the job this year?

New York Times: Cuban President Raúl Castro," in a speech on Saturday heralding a battery of changes intended to lift the island out of economic despair and stagnant thinking, proposed that politicians be limited to two five-year terms in an effort to rejuvenate a political system dominated by aging loyalists of the revolution. At the top are himself and Fidel Castro, 84, who permanently gave up presidential power in 2008 and last month announced that he was no longer head of the Communist Party, either." AP story here.

AP: "An officer with Libya's rebels says after four days of holding back, his forces have advanced to a strategic oil town. Col. Hamid Hassy said Saturday that following scattered clashes with government forces, the rebels were now near the massive oil facilities of Brega. He said the rebels have brought with them engineers to repair any damage to the refineries and terminal which have already changed hands half a dozen times since fighting erupted a month and a half ago."

AP: "A suicide bomber disguised in an Afghan army uniform on Saturday detonated a vest packed with explosives at the entrance to a base in eastern Afghanistan, killing five coalition and four Afghan soldiers, officials said."

The Hill: "President Obama signed into law on Friday the hard-fought legislation to fund government and keep it running through the end of September.... But Obama took the key step of issuing a signing statement, a declaration of constitutional interpretation by a president of legislation he or she might sign into law. It essentially notified lawmakers that he would not abide by the section of the law defunding the establishment of so-called 'czars.'"

Eeeww. AP: "Los Angeles County health officials say the bacteria that causes Legionnaires' disease was found in a hot tub at the Playboy Mansion where scores of people became ill after attending a fundraiser in February. The Los Angeles Times says health officials presented their findings Friday at an annual conference at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta."

The Commentariat -- April 15

Art by Berkeley Illustration.David Cay Johnston in the Willamette (Oregon) Week: "Nine things the rich don't want you to know about taxes." Something to further raise your blood pressure during tax week. With charts and graphs! Thanks to one of my readers for providing the link. ...

... CW Note: Federal tax returns must be posted before the end of the day Monday, April 18. I don't know if any states are sticking to the traditional April 15 filing deadline.

Why Have No Banksters Been Prosecuted? This is not some evil conspiracy of two guys sitting in a room saying we should let people create crony capitalism and steal with impunity. But their policies have created an exceptional criminogenic environment. There were no criminal referrals from the regulators. No fraud working groups. No national task force. There has been no effective punishment of the elites here. -- William Black

     ... But was it two guys sitting in a room? And were those two guys Tim Geithner & Andrew Cuomo? Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times has background on this & other missteps of the Curiously Complacent "Regulators." ...

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase.     ... Karen Garcia reflects on "Bankers and Other Protected Species." It's bad news for the Wolves of Montana, but the Wolves of Wall Street remain free to roam. (Here's a link to an AP story: "The White House is poised to accept a budget bill that includes an unprecedented end-run around Endangered Species Act protections for gray wolves in five Western states — the first time Congress has targeted a species protected under the 37-year-old law.")

John McKinnon of the Wall Street Journal: "Critics are seizing on the current U.S. deficit debate to urge a new crackdown on offshore tax havens, which have long benefited American and foreign corporations." Democracy Now! News covers this subject with an interview of Nicholas Shaxson, author of Treasure Islands: Uncovering the Damage of Offshore Banking & Tax Havens. CW: I had trouble getting the video to load on their site, but you can watch the interview, in two parts, here and here. Thanks to reader Deborah K.

Hawaii-Born & Hornless. I think a problem for [the Republicans is] when they want to actually run in a general election where most people feel pretty confident the President was born where he says he was, in Hawaii.  He -- he doesn't have horns ... we're not really worrying about conspiracy theories or -- or birth certificates.
-- Barack Obama to George Stephanopoulos of ABC News

Put it in a separate bill. We'll call it up. And if you think you can overturn my veto, try it. But don't try to sneak this through.
-- Barack Obama, relating at a campaign fundraiser what he told Speaker Boehner about the Republican attempt to defund Planned Parenthood in a rider to the budget bill. Via CBS News

I said, 'You want to repeal health care? Go at it. We'll have that debate. You're not going to be able to do that by nickel-and-diming me in the budget. You think we're stupid?' -- Barack Obama, relating what he said to John Boehner during budget negotiations. Via CBS News. CBS has the audio here.

President Obama on his 2006 Senate vote against raising the debt limit:

     ... Harry Reid says he's "embarrassed" by his 2006 vote against raising the debt ceiling:

... Jonathan Chait of The New Republic on "Obama's Insane Hostage Bargaining Strategy: ... If Obama is going to begin by saying he'd like a straight vote on the debt ceiling but is willing to make policy concessions, what do you expect the Republicans to do? Keep in mind, the assumption that the Congressional minority can use the debt ceiling as a hostage to win substantive policy the president opposes is entirely novel. Obama has introduced this new development." ...

... ** Dana Milbank: since Barack Obama broke up with Nancy Pelosi, he is drifting, principle-free, to the center. ...

... AND Pelosi talks to bloggers about taking a hard line on entitlement programs.

Paul Krugman on competing budget proposals: "What happened over the past two weeks, then, was more about staking out positions than about enacting policies. On one side [Ryan] you had a combination of mean-spiritedness and fantasy; on the other [Obama] you had a reaffirmation of American compassion and community, coupled with fairly realistic numbers. Which would you choose?"

The debate on deficit reduction is all over the map. Mike Lillis of The Hill: "Predicting the next big budget battle will center on taxes on the wealthy, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) floated a plan Thursday to raise rates only on incomes above $1 million a year. The offer came just one day after President Obama endorsed a broader revenue-raising strategy that would hike taxes on those earning more than $250,000 annually, beginning in 2013." Meanwhile ... Peter Wallsten & Lori Montgomery of the Washington Post: "Republicans are feuding over whether to abandon the party’s long-held opposition to higher taxes in pursuit of a deficit-cutting deal with Democrats. The rift in the Republican ranks has surfaced in a bitter back-and-forth between two heroes of the conservative movement: Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who has been working with a bipartisan group of senators on a compromise to reduce government borrowing, and Grover Norquist, author of the no-tax-increase pledge that has become a rite of passage for GOP candidates." THEN ... there's "the People's Budget" promoted by the Congressional Progressive Caucus that reduces the deficit by increasing taxes on the rich, cutting defense spending & maintaining or increasing jobs-creating and entitlement programs. CW Note: Karen Garcia (#10) & I (#20) promoted the CPC budget in our comments on Krugman's column today. ...

... AND ... When Is a Tax Increase Not a Tax Increase? Ezra Klein notes that the tax "increases" in President Obama's budget proposal are not increases at all -- he's simply proposing to let the "temporary" Bush tax cuts on the wealthy expire, but he's extending the cuts for the middle class, which -- when the numbers are tallied -- means that the Obama plan actually represents a tax cut -- for the middle class.

How big is that FY 2011 budget cut? Obama, Boehner & Reid say its $38 billion. The CBO says it's less than one percent of that: $352 million. Ezra Klein explains why it's really neither, & is closer to $20 - $25 billion.

Tim Egan: why are Republicans determined to end funding for NPR when out in the hinterlands of Red America, conservatives rely on public, federally-funded radio stations as a sole source for news and other programming?

Viveca Novak & Fred Schulte of the Center for Public Integrity, in Politico: White House "logs are missing the names of thousands of ... visitors to the White House, including lobbyists, government employees, campaign donors, policy experts and friends of the first family, according to an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity.... The Center’s analysis shows that the logs routinely omit or cloud key details about the identity of visitors, whom they met with and the nature of their visits. The logs even include the names of people who never showed up. These are critical gaps that raise doubts about the records’ historical accuracy...."

Depressed, Ladies? Have Unprotected Sex with a Potent Man to Cheer Yourself Up! Dr. Paul Chen in the New York Times: "A Valentine’s Day editorial in the official newspaper of the American College of Surgeons has set off a firestorm of controversy that has divided the largest professional organization of surgeons in the country and raised questions about the current leadership and its attitudes toward women and gay and lesbian members. The editorial, written by Dr. Lazar J. Greenfield, an emeritus professor of surgery ... and president-elect of the American College of Surgeons, extols the mood-enhancing effects of semen on women. It begins with a reference to the mating behaviors of fruit flies, then goes on to discuss studies on the menstrual cycles of heterosexual and lesbian women who live together." Here's a link that includes the text of Greenfield's editorial.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is no match for Rep. Dennis Kucinich. During a Congressional hearing, Kucinich forces Walker to admit that some anti-union provisions in his infamous "budget repair bill" did not save the state any money:

     ... As Zaid Jilani of Think Progress writes, "Walker’s admission is crucial because he had long claimed that his anti-union 'budget repair bill' was designed to save the state money, not bust unions." ...

... AND David Dayan of Firedoglake has more on Scott Walker's Bad Day. For instance, during the hearing, Dem Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia got Walker to admit that he didn’t campaign on stripping workers of their collective bargaining rights, which directly contradicts previous assertions that he did." Update: here's the video:

Nate Silver handicaps the GOP's chances of taking control of the Senate in 2012. The odds are in their favor, but not so much as some prognosticators suspect.

 Right Wing World *

Mrs. Alan Greenspan discusses the budget & debt ceiling with Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Penn.). The whole discussion is fascinating in a perverse way, but my favorite bit has to be at about 3 minutes in when Toomey relates the federal debt to a typical family budget:

So what I am saying is, the better form of the analogy is the family that has been living beyond its means and run up huge debt, would have to make some tough decisions like maybe laying off the nanny, maybe not going on an expensive vacation, maybe discontinuing the gardeners who come and cut their grass. Maybe they would have to make some cuts. -- Pat Toomey

     ... Heather of Crooks & Liars wonders, "I've just got to ask, in what America does Pat Toomey think he's living in these days if those are the things that pop into his head when talking about what most Americans would have to give up if they have to tighten up their household budgets?" ...

I have a great relationship with the blacks. I've always had a great relationship with the blacks. -- Donald Trump

     ... And what better person to defend a white guy against charges of racial insensitivity than Mr. Racist himself, Pat Buchanan? who says Trump has a great relationship with "black folks." Watch the whole video via David at Crooks & Liars:

** Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post: "One of the more comical features of the budget debate is to watch the ways in which Republicans refuse to engage on the issue of economic fairness. When pressed, they deny, dissemble and throw out poll-tested phrases such as 'class warfare' and 'opportunity society.' And if that doesn’t work, they begin to spin an elaborate fiction about the absolutely devastating impact that any tax increase will have on international competitiveness and job creation, as if that settles the issue completely.... It’s looking less and less .. like Paul Ryan will emerge as the hero."

* Where facts never intrude.

Local News

New York Times Editors: the Arizona Senate, controlled by Republicans, "just passed a bill that would bar presidential candidates from the ballot in Arizona unless they submitted extensive paperwork proving they were natural-born Americans." The editors think all the Republicans who voted for this bill, an intended -- though denied -- bow to birthers, should be ready to "post their sworn affidavits along with their birth certificates, baptismal and other records online for the world to see." ...

     ... AP Update: both houses have now passed the bill. It goes to Gov. Jan Brewer (Super R) for signature. ...

... Baja Arizona. The Economist: the Arizona state legislature & the aging, white, nativist population of Phoenix that backs it have so alienated many Pima County (Tucson) residents that there is a viable movement for the county to secede from the state.

News Ledes

President Obama kicks off his 2012 presidential campaign:

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "State Supreme Court Justice David Prosser emerged as the winner Friday over challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg in a heated election that drew national attention because of the fight over collective bargaining and a ballot reporting error in Waukesha County. A canvass of vote totals from the state's 72 counties finalized Friday afternoon shows Prosser beating Kloppenburg ... by 7,316 votes. Initial results in the election had showed Kloppenburg leading the race.... The margin - 0.488% - is within the 0.5% limit that would allow Kloppenburg to request a statewide recount at taxpayers' expense."

Washington Post: "The House on Friday passed a Republican budget plan for 2012 aimed at privatizing Medicare and dramatically scaling back the size of the federal government. Voting along party lines, the House approved the $3.5 trillion GOP blueprint 235 to 193 after final debate was repeatedly interrupted by protesters chanting and singing in the gallery. Four Republicans joined all Democrats in voting 'no.'”

New York Times: "Military forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, who have surrounded this city and vowed to crush its anti-Qaddafi rebellion, have been firing into residential neighborhoods with heavy weapons, including cluster bombs that have been banned by much of the world and ground-to-ground rockets, according to the accounts of witnesses and survivors and physical evidence on the ground."

AP: "Activists and witnesses says thousands of people are demonstrating in several Syrian cities."

... Washington Post: "... five Western journalists ... have been missing and remain unaccounted for" in Libya. "Although the news is scant and sketchy, three of them ... have been spotted by Western sources in a government detention camp in Tripoli."

Atlanta Journal Constitution: "Complaining the federal government has failed to secure the nation’s borders, Georgia’s Legislature followed Arizona’s lead Thursday and approved an aggressive crackdown on illegal immigration." ...

... Birther Bill. AP: "The Arizona Legislature gave final approval late Thursday night to a proposal that would require President Obama and other presidential candidates to prove they are U.S. citizens before their names can appear on the state’s ballot.

AP: "The operator of Japan’s tsunami-damaged nuclear plant said Friday it would pay an initial $12,000 for each household forced to evacuate because of leaking radiation — a handout some of the displaced slammed as too little."

Los Angeles Times: President Obama kicked off his 2012 campaign with fundraisers in Chicago where he spoke of "'a caring America....' By night's end, Obama had collected more than $2 million, on the way to a fundraising haul that some advisors say could eventually hit a record-setting $1 billion." See video above.

Republicans v. Women

Gail Collins: The Republican attack on Planned Parenthood "is a wide-ranging attack on women’s right to control their reproductive lives that the women themselves would strongly object to if it was stated clearly." It is not, as Republicans pretend, an anti-abortion crusade. And it all "makes sense, as long as you lay off the factual statements." Collins highlights Sen. Jon Kyl's Senate floor speech in which he asserted that "over 90 percent" of Planned Parenthood's services were abortions. The actual percentage is closer to three. Here's a clip from Kyl's floor speech:

A Kyl spokesperson later put out a statement in which he said Kyl's "...remark was not intended to be a factual statement, but rather to illustrate that Planned Parenthood, an organization that receives millions of dollars in taxpayer funding, does subsidize abortions." Here's Don Lemmon of CNN reporting on that:

The New York Times moderators have scrambled out my comment (see Update 2 below), so here it is, and it's probably worth reading:

Let's face it: Jon Kyl is anti-woman. Not only is he unconcerned about women's ability to obtain contraceptive and other reproductive-related services, he doesn't even care if they get proper care AFTER he makes sure they become pregnant if they're going to indulge in sex.

Second only to his fact-free attack on Planned Parenthood last week is his indifference to maternity care. During the healthcare debate, Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) said during a committee hearing that insurers should be required to cover basic maternity care. Kyl sneered: "I don't need maternity care. So requiring that on my insurance policy is something that I don't need and will make the policy more expensive." Stabenow replied: "I think your mom probably did." (The amendment went down to defeat anyway.) Here's the videotape:

It isn't just Republican men who so vehemently oppose contraception that they're willing to lie about it. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) asserted on Monday, "The executive director of Planned Parenthood in Illinois said they want to become the LensCrafter of BIG ABORTION in Illinois."

This wasn't the first time she had made such a statement, either. Of course, it wasn't true, but in fact-free Right Wing World, that doesn't matter. As Anderson Cooper of CNN laid out, it turns out that the CEO of Planned Parenthood Illinois said, "I like to think of Planned Parenthood as the LensCrafters of FAMILY PLANNING."

In other words, just as Collins lays out, to Bachmann, "big abortion" and "family planning" are the same thing. And they're both really bad. (Bachmann has promised to quit spreading this disinformation, not because Planned Parenthood complained it was untrue, but because LensCrafters asked her to knock it off!)

The party that claims it wants to "get us our freedoms back" does not include a women's right to personal privacy among those "freedoms." It's hard to imagine any law that is much more intrusive than one that comes between a woman and her health provider. "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"? Not if they in any way involve sex.

Republicans really want to make sure that girls who just wanna have fun -- don't.

Update: Rachel Maddow weighs in:

     ... Maddow's interview of Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood, who is -- you know -- factual, is here.

Update 2: you can find my comment at #235 & Karen Garcia's at #234. The reason we were pushed off the front page? As nearly as I can tell, it's because we both used the word "sex" in our comments. Oh, horrors! And in response to a column about -- sex!