Cogitamus

Bob Woodward - Liar or Fool? - Why Choose? and Open Thread

"Outside the Trains Don't Run on Time" - Gang of Four

[oddjob reminded me of this one in the previous comment thread.]

- Every time I have watched Bob Woodward on television over the last twenty or so years, my usual reaction has been "this idiot brought down a president?"  I then think either that Bernstein was grossly underrated or that this is the luckiest sonuvabtich in the history of journalism.  Because he seems exceedingly dense, credulous, slightly slow on the uptake, a guy whose ignorance is only exceeded by his undeserved sense of self-regard.    Woodward's claim that he was threatened by the White House for his ridiculous reporting on the sequester has been quite the amusing story.   But what really cracked me up was the right wingers who seem to think that Woodward is some sort of liberal hero and that only our blind loyalty for Obama is behind the denunciation of his epic dishonesty.  The man who wrote Maestro for fuck's sake.     And boy, that Gene Sperling knows how to deliver a blood-chilling threat:

But I do truly believe you should rethink your comment about saying saying that Potus asking for revenues is moving the goal post. I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim.

Really, how can anyone take seriously a man who claims that this is a threat?

- Erik Loomis is frustrated that the AFL-CIO and building trades unions are supporting the Keystone Pipeline. 

I understand the tough situation that Keystone creates for organized labor. A union’s job is to protect the interests of its members, including keeping them employed, all too rare today. But in the early 21st century, with organized labor in deep decline, does it make sense to promote short-term job growth at the cost of telling the thousands of people who care deeply about a variety of progressive causes, including climate change, that organized labor is not an ally?

Does he really not understand who elects the local and international (all of these unions have Canadian members) officers of these unions?  Hint -- the guys who are looking to work on the pipeline and thinking about their next job.  Local union officers by law must stand for election every three years, international officers every five years.  Can you imagine being the head of a building trades union and telling the members that the union is passing up on the opportunity for lucrative work in order to forge greater bonds with other progressives? -- all of whom no doubt show the same reciprocal respect for the concerns of union members by buying only union-made domestic cars (no Priuses kids), shopping at union grocery stores (stay out of Whole Foods), and hiring only union contractors in their homes.  [I keep thinking of one of my clients bringing one of our meetings to a quick close because he and his fellow union members wanted to get to a public hearing about a nuke plant "before the Sahara Club got there."]  If the AFL-CIO deserted the building trades unions in this cause, they would be risking further disaffiliations at a time of grave weakness.  This is a case of institutions being accountable to their memberships.  If other progressives can't understand that then there really isn't much hope of alliances.

What's going on with you?     

Tuesday Trivia and Open Thread

"Ceremony" - Dean Wareham

- Oscar, Oscar, Oscar - Roy has his way with the Zhdanovites of the right concerning the Academy Awards last night, but it's worth noting that the desire for propaganda is hardly the exclusive province of our right wing brethren.  Witness this trashing of Argo -- the movie is "reprehensible" -- evidently because it was not a documentary of U.S. perfidy in the 1953 coup that toppled Mohammad Mosaddeq.  And this one spreads the hate not only for Argo, but for Lincoln (which focuses far too much on the 16th President at the expense of Black abolitionists) -- not to mention Zero Dark Thirty.  I just keep thinking of the tag line to one of the horror films of the 1970s -- "it's only a movie, it's only a movie."  

- As for the ceremony itself, I wasn't too impressed.  I have a pretty broad and irreverent sense of humor, but Seth McFarlane is only funny if you have an IQ of about 100.  He's a smarmy, smug, self-satisfied mediocrity who seems to think boob jokes are cutting edge and daring stuff.  Oddly enough, I also think having the orchestra cut people off so quickly takes away some of the interest in the program.  I'd cut out a chunk of the awards (sorry sound guys) and loosen things up a bit.

- I assume that the right wing reaction to Michelle Obama's presentation of the Best Picture award is going to be worth at least a two-part series for Roy.

- And now, back to Washington's version of show business.  This post on No More Mister Nice Blog pretty much sums up the manner in which our elite media is so horrible and so inadequate to the challenges to truth and sanity posed by today's GOP.  Incidentally, for those of you concerned that Ezra Klein might be becoming a "courtier" I thought his absolute dismantling of David Brooks the other day was a reassuring sign to the contrary.   What was amazing to me is that I don't think Brooks had any idea that he had just been gutted in public.  God, he's a dumbass.

- Does anyone remember "Mission Accomplished?

Jump in.

Sunday Miscellany and Open Thread

As the sequester deadline approaches, there's been a lot of noise about 800,000 Defense Department furloughs, but on the civilian side of the government, it seems that most agencies are doing nothing.  The sequester officially starts on March 1 (next Friday), but they've got to give us Federal employees 30 days' notice of a furlough.

I can't help but notice that 30 days takes us until after the current continuing resolution expires on March 27.  Its successor will either include all, some, or none of the sequestration cuts.  And the Republicans have been very clear that they will not threaten a government shutdown this time

So I'm wondering if there's a bit of bluff and kabuki going on over the sequester, and that maybe the only thing that matters is the CR.  If the government doesn't really make any sequestration cuts until after March 30 anyway, whatever was in the CR would be the law, regardless of the sequester.

On edit: I just saw Oddjob's link in the previous thread about the threat of air traffic controller furloughs.  Under the sequester as written, of course that would have to happen: it's written so that agencies have little if any room to pick and choose what they cut. But it's one of those things that slips by you until someone points it out. 

But that might be the magic word that gets businesses leaning on the GOP to strike a deal.  Throwing a monkeywrench in business travel gets the boardroom's attention.  And the sweet part is that not even those with their own private jets would be immune.  There's no express lane in the air traffic control system for that Gulfstream.

Other stuff I've been thinking about:

Self-driving cars.  Though I haven't said much about it here, I've become mildly obsessed with the subject - and this was even before my Achilles tendon blew out, leaving me unable to drive for the time being.   (The recovery's going well, thanks.)  I've been hoping they'll be a legal and commercial reality in 10 years, which is about the time my son would be eligible to get his learner's permit.  But a self-driving car would have been very handy in recent weeks.  I can get around a store well enough if I can get there, but my wife has to drive me on even the simplest errands, plus to my physical therapist's and orthopedist's appointments.

The USPS.  Contra Matt Yglesias, whatever may doom the USPS, it won't be because nowadays everyone uses email instead*.  Personal correspondence hasn't been the bulk of the Postal Service's business for a long, long time.  The real question is, will businesses and nonprofits continue to send out unsolicited mailings via snail mail?  My guess is that they will, because it's really hard for them to get people's attention online.

Every business I order something from online asks me for an email address, ditto every nonprofit I contribute money to online. I've got a separate account on Yahoo mail to give to all of these outfits, which I generally ignore absent a particular need, because reading it would be like drinking through a firehose.  They can send out a hundred million emails for close to free, but those emails probably don't do much for them now, and the returns will only keep diminishing.

On the other hand, I get a half-dozen pieces of snailmail a day, more or less, and I actually see these.  I have to give them at least enough attention to decide whether to throw them away right away.  Even if I don't want to send any money to the League of Conservation Voters this month, their name has registered with me.

The truth is that any online medium gets overwhelmed very quickly - email, Facebook, whatever.  Snailmail may eventually go away, but it's going to take some time because it has that advantage of tangibility.

So, what's on your minds on this sunny (in the DC area, at least) Sunday afternoon?

*Yglesias' thought, not mine.  Even email is starting to become somewhat old-fashioned, as best as I can tell: the kids stay in touch with each other via text and Facebook.

The Man who Mistook his Girlfriend for an Intruder and Other Observations

"Girlfriend in a Coma" - The Smiths

- Can I just note that I find Oscar Pastorious's claims that he shot his girlfriend because he thought she was an intruder to be about the least credible thing I've heard since OJ dedicated himself to finding the real killers.  Jesus.  Maybe our defense lawyer friends can open my mind, but Christ this seems preposterous.

- I don't know about you, but I have this sense that Lindsey Graham is in the habit of acting out the flogging scene in Lawrence of Arabia with John McCain playing the Jose Ferrer role and that he uses "Benghazi" as his safe word. 

- Roy has been cracking me up with his coverage of the "Downton Abbey" is the greatest conservative show ever meme in the right wing blogosphere.  Now I confess to being a Downton watcher and to also understanding that it is pretty much just a highfalutin' soap opera, so I won't make fun of its appeal.  But the idea that one could walk away from it thinking that it is somehow an affirmation of contemporary right wing values is a bit much.  Especially given the aristocratic disdain for hard work and capitalism portrayed throughout the series -- to be a "tradesman" is about as damning a sin as there could -- it is fascinating to see the wingers try to call this world their own.  They are strange little people.

- Speaking of BBC series, I did actually start watching the original House of Cards again and want to once again urge any of you who have not seen it to check it out.  It's absolutely fabulous as they say.  I'd like to see our winger friends claim it as a testament to conservative values. 

Time for bed.  Leave your defenses of Pastorius, Graham, and costume dramas in comments.

Consider it an open thread as well.

Not So Grand Old Party and Open Thread

"A-Punk" - Vampire Weekend

Wasting time at the office on this holiday weekend.  Need to clean the desk and tend to a few things so I can hit the ground running tomorrow.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it. 

- Ramesh Ponnuru has a piece in the New York Times today about updating the Republican Party's ideas to face the reality of today.  I say good luck with that.  Ponnuru largely echoes the kind of ideas put forth by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam in Grand New Party -- policies that are supposed to aid the American working class, the so-called "Sam's Club" voters, who are supposed to be the new face of the Republican Party.  Like Douthat and Salam, Ponnuru acknowledges that income tax cuts for the wealthy -- the north star of Republican policy for the last 35 years -- have done nothing for the white working class, the constituency upon which Republican success rests.  He argues for economic policies that do not fit within the current Republican mania for smaller government and deficit reduction (yes, we know this is a selective obsession). 

All three would like to see the payroll tax burden reduced -- which raises obvious questions about how to preserve the long term solvency of Social Security and Medicare, programs that are more important than ever to working class Americans, who by and large lack the traditional pensions and other resources for secure retirements.  They all argue, as well, for an expanded child tax credit -- in other words a wealth transfer that would favor married couples with children, an attempt to "nudge" people in the direction of stable family formation and to support "traditional" families.  This right wing social engineering will be paid for by not lowering taxes on the wealthy (and maybe even increasing them), a bit of a heresy in the era of Paul Ryan and Rand Paul and the heroic job creators of the upper class.  In other words it is a form of wealth redistribution on behalf of people who adopt a family structure of which Ponnuru, Douthat, and Salam approve.  (Along with a number of other social conservatives, all three are convinced that the sexual revolution has been disastrous for the working class -- one suspects that advocating for its repeal may prove less popular with its intended audience.)

It seems to me that Ponnuru and his allies are on to something in acknowledging that plutocratic economic policies aren't really going to deliver that which the working class needs.  However, I don't see how they can sell this sort of thing to a party that has fully committed itself to the notion that taxes must go down at all times and that government has nothing to offer to people.  

Similarly, the young Republicans portrayed in this lengthy New York Times Magazine piece, who are troubled by the GOP's hateful attitudes towards gays and immigrants -- which most Americans in the 18-29 demographic find to be at least puzzling if not abhorrent -- don't seem to have a very clear idea of how one does a 180 on these kinds of issues without alienating the folks who support you that very reason.  The Republican Party, minus its hater constituency, is a pretty small club.  (Of course a large number of the young right wingers interviewed in this article see the GOP's problems as more a result of bad messaging and technological backwardness rather than the Party platform.)  Can one really form a majority party based on cutting taxes and government spending rather than based on various forms of white resentment?  Color me skeptical.      

What's on your minds?   

Asteroids and Meteors from Space, Oh My! Open Thread

The cosmos is throwing rocks at us!

A couple of hours ago, an asteroid passed within about 17,000 miles of Earth - that's closer than the altitude our geosynchronous satellites orbit at.

And of course, early this morning, a meteor made life interesting for the residents of Chelyabinsk, Russia.

So what's on your minds?

Have a good weekend, but keep an eye on the sky!  Open thread.

Live Blogging the State of the Union

Alright, it's about that time.  Time for future President Rubio to wow us all.  But first, we have to hear from the Kenyan usurper.

(How Obama resists the urge to pop Eric Cantor with an elbow in this setting [walking in with Cantor immeidately behind him] is beyond me.  So much self control.)

You know for a guy who is supposed to be all aloof and shit, Obama really seems to enjoy pressing the flesh at these things. 

Come home America.  (That's the first time I've ever seen the Supreme Court justices stand up -- I guess the mention of the troops makes that okay.) 

"We've cleared away the rubble of crisis." 

Ah, the middle class.  Time to drink if you're playing along at home. (Actually Atrios somehow left that one out of his drinking game word list.)

He's explaining the sequester in a very fine fashion I think.

And one of those Sorenson type sentences about keeping promises.  

"Bipartisan tax reform."  I think you have to do a jello shot. 

Replace "wreckless cuts" with "smart savings."  Who could argue?

"Defict reduction alone is not an economic plan." 

Three questions we need to ask every day.  1) "Does this make my ass look fat?"

Climate change gets mentioned.  And some facts: the twelve hottest years have happened in the last 15. "The overwhelming judgment of science."  He gets a smile out of angry gramps with a shout out.

 "Self-healing power grids."  But they have to want to heal themselves. 

"Grow our middle class."  Drink children, drink.

"Comprehensive immigration reform."  Shot of tequilla. 

Huckleberry Closet Case is applauding.  I am opposed to whatever it is he is in favor of.

Raise the minimum wage to $9 an hour.  "No one who works full time should have to live in poverty".  What a radical notion.

Why the fuck does Boehner look like he's crying?

Isn't it too soon to end the war in Afghanistan?

Having a hard time staying awake -- not a commentary on the speech, but a little too much cold medication and a warm lap top. 

"Burma."  I wonder when the last time Burma was mentioned in a SOTU?  It probably was followed by the word "shave."

Man, nodded off in the chair here and missed the end. 

Seemed like a pretty solid effort.  What did you all think?

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for.  Marco Rubio. American exceptionalism includes the right to be an upwardly mobile fetus. He's a lot better than Governor "Kenneth the Page."  Just as fundamentally dishonest, but a lot more telegenic.  He really is a lying sack of shit.  (If we can get the economy to grow at 4% per year -- yeah, and if pigs could fly.)     

Weird water bottle moment.  Very poor bit of stage craft there. 

The wing nuts will like the speech.  Not too sure about the general public.

Monday Miscellany and Open Thread

"Shuggie" - Foxygen

My neglect continues -- travel, Amtrak's incredibly bad wifi on Friday, the lad came to town for the weekend (to attend some conference that featured Yglesias) and I had to pull a few hours time at the old firm on Saturday.  So I feel a little out of it.  

- I've been watching a little bit of the new netflix production of House of Cards with Kevin Spacey.  I am afraid it pales in comparison to the original British series from 1990 with the incomparable Ian Richardson. (If you have not seen it, by all means do so -- all three seasons of it are superb.) There are two problems I see with the series -- one is that Spacey's Francis Underwood lacks the humor and joire d'evil that made Richardson's Francis Urquhart irresistible.  The other is that what works in a parliamentary system -- the idea of a skilled legislative maneuverer rising improbably to power -- just does not really translate into the American system of government.  It is not unusual for someone to rise to Prime Minister in a parliamentary system without facing the voters as the party standard bearer -- think of John Major, Gordon Brown, and Julia Gilliard for example.  All simply needed to convince enough members of their caucus that they were the ones to lead their government going forward.  In the U.S., legislative skill have seldom translated into capturing the presidency.  (No one could have ever imagined Tom DeLay becoming president.)   Other than Lyndon Johnson, I can't really think of someone who was a major leader in Congress capturing the presidency.  (I guess Gerald Ford's unique path to the top could also be considered, but Ford was never really a powerhouse as the head of the GOP minority.)  I am trying to think who else managed to obtain the presidency after being a major congressional power?  Maybe James Madison, but his service was short in the House and it was hardly his claim to fame.  Other than him, I can't come up with anyone.

- I enjoyed reading this article in the New Republic about the GOP as the party of white people, but found its attempt to intellectualize the racism that has driven a great deal of the Republican Party's electoral strength over the last fifty years to be a bit much.  I don't think it was John Calhoun's ideas of limited federal power that appealed to the new conservatives. 

- And please read this New Yorker piece by Jill LePore on the defense budget that bbw pointed out to me.  It's really well done and has a very informative historical aspect to it.

Alright, time to call it a night.  Hope all of our New England friends have dug out.

Jump in.

 

 

Thursday in the Airport Open Thread

"Going to Georgia" - Mountain Goats

What with seeing a sign to Macon on my way to the airport today and all of the madness about guns, this song naturally came to mind.  Well worth listening to the monologue that John Darnielle gives -- he is a hilarious story teller -- as to what inspired the song.

Anyway, stuck in Charlotte, but now my flight is less late than previously predicted.  These are the small victories of today's air travel.

- I recommend this piece by Duncan Black in USA Today -- I know -- on the failure of the 401(k) experiment.  It makes me think Atrios should stretch out and write from time to time.  The guy's good.

- All we need is more good guys with guns folks.  What could go wrong?  The panicky shooting of innocent newspaper deliverers by the cops pretty much shoots that argument in the head, as it were. 

Alright, make your own fun.  I'll be in NYC in a couple of hours.

Gun Nuts is Nuts and Open Thread

 

"Blues from a Gun" - Jesus and Mary Chain

It seems that nearly every day now since Newtown some fresh evidence of the insanity of our gun culture comes our way.  I can only conclude that we share our country with a lot of truly pathetic, deluded individuals, people who live in the grip of overwhelming fear, hatred, and paranoia that would seem to make life a living hell.  Think about what it must be like to be a civilian who carries every day, someone who basically feels like they need to be able to deal death as part of their daily routine.  How fucking sick and sad is that?

Even seemingly sane and "liberal" proponents of gun culture strike me as sad and fearful.  This piece in the Times a few weeks ago, "Confessions of a Liberal Gun Owner" made me shake my head.    Basically the author decided he needed a gun following the somewhat chaotic (and unnecessary) evacuation of Houston for Hurricane Rita during which nothing happened to him but some nasty traffic.  But the "experience" made him feel like he needed a gun.  Jesus, I'm glad this guy didn't live in DC in the 80s and early 90s -- he would have bought a tank.  This was followed by a piece by Walter Kirn in the New Republic in much the same tone -- a man needs guns to face danger and believe me I've faced danger so shut up you liberals who don't understand things.  Kirn once nursed a shotgun all night while a teenager, holed up in his family home while an escaped convict was on the loose.  (No the ex-con did not show up at his house.  No Kirn did not heroically save his family by blowing away the con.  Nope -- nothing happened.)  But then a number of years later a meth-addled fellow in Montana hissed that he was going top kill Kirn, who in turn showed him his concealed .22 and the tweaker ran away.  Here's Kirn's version of events:

I also know the opposite feeling, of outmanning someone else, because I pulled a gun on a guy once. It happened outside of the building where I live in downtown Livingston, Montana, a town of 7,000 that I moved to from New York City 23 years ago, back when New York was still considered dangerous. I was in the cab of my Ford pickup after a trip to a mini-storage locker with my two children, who were nine and six. Right across the street was the Mint Bar, a cavernous old brick hideout for midday tipplers in front of which was standing a lean young man who'd glared at me with a manic, feral focus the moment I'd parked and opened the truck door. He seemed high, not just drunk, with that toxic aura of meth, and when our eyes met, he bared his teeth and hissed that he was going to kill me, that I was dead, shifting his weight toward the curb at the same time. Somehow my kids didn't hear him as they climbed out, nor did they see my reaction to his threat: I opened the glove compartment and removed a long-barreled .22 target pistol that was there by chance, as part of the move. Its rubber grip met my hand and melded with it in a smooth, reflexive motion. I held the gun across my belt line, displaying its silver profile as I turned. The scary young man was about ten yards away by then, but when he saw the gun, his body rocked backward as though in a cartoon. I watched his flushed face drain pale as he backed off, one shoe untied and dragging a long, loose lace. He vanished around the bar's corner, a full retreat that left me presiding over a total victory that no one, because the street was empty, had witnessed.

Wow.  That's some high drama.  I am sure but for the firearm, the unarmed meth head would have no doubt killed Kirn and his whole family with his bare hands.

These "scary" stories make me laugh a bit.  I lived through years in DC where there was better than a murder a day -- I lived for a while two blocks from an open air drug market and a block from where a quadruple homicide occurred in 1989.  I later lived in another neighborhood a few blocks from a crack house and where another murder occurred early in my residency.  It just never occurred to me though that getting a gun was any answer to this sort of thing -- what was I going to do, carry it around loaded every day just waiting for menace to befall me?  As it turns out, I was never victimized in any of the marginal places I've lived -- although I suppose in my posher surroundings I could always be surprised.  The bottom line though is that one has to put fear into reasonable perspective and live life with a certain level of fatalism.  (Like a man, I'm tempted to add but won't.)  The truth is that "stranger" murders remain rare even in highly violent places.  The overwhelming majority of killings here were due to the drug trade.  That, and, of course, crimes of passion.  The world is, generally speaking, not out to get you. 

- Speaking of paranoia and stories that make clear that being extraordinarily proficient in firearms is no guarantee of safety, this story of the murder of former Navy Seal sniper Chris Kyle is a chilling one.  I would submit that if a weapon didn't make Chris Kyle safe, it isn't going to do much for anyone else's sorry ass.  Seriously though -- take a few minutes to read the comments to this story, most of which center on the claim that Kyle was obviously killed by the Obama Administration for some nefarious reason.  These are your fellow citizens, friends.  (Especially you bbw. :-) ) 

What's up? 

 

Thank You Scott Brown and Open Thread

"Cool Jerk" - Human Sexual Response

- Well I turn 53 today -- what an utterly inconsequential number -- but I got an early brithday present from Scott Brown when he decided not to run for the Senate again.  Now maybe Brown knows something we don't know and he would not be as formidable as I feared in a special election.  Or maybe the prospect of running in 2031 and then again in 2014 after having run in 2010 and 2012 was unappealing -- and frankly who could blame him on that score.  Standing for election four times in five years for the same seat would be a pretty unappetizing prospect for almost anyone. And in a state in which the sort of everyday forces arrayed against him meant each election was likely to be a pitched battle -- probably attracting national money as well -- I can see where taking a little time off and then running for governor -- something which historically has been easier going for Republicans in Massachusetts -- might be appealing.  Finally, I think Brown probably understood that one more loss would likely consign him to the electoral scrap heap and although he led in the early polls, my sense is that someone like Ed Markey, once he consolidated his position, would likely be formidable.

Anyway, it made me happy as can be, both because I think each Senate seat is likely to prove crucial in 2014, and, because I really dislike Brown and am offended at the prospect of him occupying a Massachusetts Senate seat.  It's just wrong. 

- Speaking of 2014, I was also quite pleased to see Mark Begich polling well in Alaska.  I have assumed that Begich was going to be quite vulnerable, running in a Republican state for a seat that he only won due to the extraordinary legal difficulties that Ted Stevens was facing and the fact that it was a Democratic wave year.   His favorable rating of 48%, while not overwhelming, is pretty good in a right wing state.  He crushes Joe Miller in a prospective match up by 20 points.  I wonder if the grifter from Wasilla is thinking about this race.  It seems to me that she needs to undertake some electoral activity in order to assure the gravy train keeps running.  

- Chaka Khan?  I feel for them.

- Always a sucker for demographic stories.  This one on why Obama seems more liberated in his post-electoral victory mode.

- A good piece by Amanda on the gun in the home for safety delusion -- this time as it applies to women.

Okay, house cleaning to celebrate the birthday.  It's too damn cold for other diversions right now.  Will head out for a fine dinner at the unfashionable hour of six tonight.  That way I won't miss the Matlock reruns.

What's going on with all of you?

Groundhog Day Open Thread

 

Let's do this day just once, though.