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."