Not Linking to This

I feel compelled to give New York Times columnist David French the first ever Richard Cohen award for complete failure as a human being. 

For those of you who don't remember the former Washington Post columnist, some of his greatest hits were:

• Saying that it was OK for vendors not to buzz black people into their stores.
• Sexually harassing his assistant.
• Demanding multiple black politicians explicitly disavow Farrakhan.
• Supported torture.
• Described the rape of a 13-year old as a, "Seduction," because Roman Polanski's wonderful mise-en-scène.
• Justified the cold blooded murder of Trayvon Martin.
• Was shocked to discover that slavery was bad.
• Said that interracial couples nauseate people.

And that is just a small list of Cohen's record of morally irredeemable OP/Eds, those that I could cull from my blog that had not suffered link rot.

There are so many things wrong with this OP/ED: 

• He is comparing incidents in 2021, when ridership was down because of Covid restrictions, and 2022, when these measures had been abandoned.
• The belief that people should be able to kill another human being when they are unpleasant to deal with (and black, but that part is unspiken).
• Ignoring the fact that the assailant had to choke him for at least 10 minutes to kill him.
• The more general view that the homeless are not people.

What a petty evil man.  No wonder he has a cushy sinecure at the New York Times.

Took Long Enough

After a half century of rat-f%$#ery and malice, Roger Stone has finally been convicted of lying to Congress.

Given the volume and intensity of his lies over the years, there is a certain symmetry to this:

For decades, Roger J. Stone Jr. played politics as a kind of performance art, starring himself as a professional lord of mischief, as a friend once called him. He tossed bombs and spun tales from the political periphery with no real reckoning, burnishing a reputation as a dirty trickster.

On Friday morning, a reckoning arrived, the consequence of his efforts to sabotage a congressional investigation that threatened his longtime friend President Trump.

Mr. Stone, 67, was convicted in federal court of seven felonies for obstructing the congressional inquiry, lying to investigators under oath and trying to block the testimony of a witness whose account would have exposed his lies. Jurors deliberated for a little over seven hours before convicting him on all counts. Together, the charges carry a maximum prison term of 50 years.

In a last-minute bid for salvation, prosecutors said, Mr. Stone appealed to Mr. Trump for a pardon on Thursday, using a right-wing conspiracy theorist who runs the website Infowars as his proxy. Mr. Trump attacked the guilty verdict against Mr. Stone in a tweet on Friday but made no mention of a pardon.

………

Mr. Stone joins a notable list of former Trump aides who either pleaded guilty or were convicted of federal crimes in cases stemming from Mr. Mueller’s work. It includes Mr. Gates; Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser; Michael D. Cohen, the president’s longtime fixer; George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign aide; and Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman and Mr. Stone’s onetime partner in a political consulting firm.

This is a guy who literally has a tattoo of Richard Nixon on his back, and now he is going to suffer the fate of Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Mitchell.

The Washington Post Just Got a Bit Better

OP/ED columnist Richard Cohen has left the Washington Post.

It appears that whatever happened, it was sudden.

My guess is that they discovered something bad, and had no choice.

Bad for him, good for the public discourse of the United States:

Richard Cohen will no longer write columns for the Washington Post, editorial page editor Fred Hiatt tells staffers in an unusually short email sent via editorial board executive assistant Nana Efua Mumford. Seriously, this is the whole thing:

After 43 years of writing a column for The Washington Post, Richard Cohen has decided to move on to other challenges. Whether he is writing about politics, movies, history or his glory days in the U.S. Army, Richard is a master of the form. Readers of The Post and the many other publications that carry his column will miss his insight, humor and occasional outrage. As Richard takes on new ventures, we wish him all the best and remain hopeful that he will come back to write for the oped page from time to time.
Fred

This was clearly sudden.

Just to remind you, some of Cohen's greatest hits:

• Suggesting that jewelry store owners are justified in not letting black people in his store.
• Sexually harassed a staffer.
• Suggested that interracial marriage made observing such couples ill.
• Lauded Trayvon Martin's murderer.
• Suggested that the Steubenville rape was not "real" rape. 

Even by the egregious standards of the Washington Post OP/ED pages under Fred Hiatt, he was a toxic and stupid man.

There is Bad, Really Bad, and ………

So egregiously bad that so bad that the Washington Post editorial board is forced to do the right thing.

It's Gina Haspel wot done it. Between her torture, her aggressive support of torture, and her oleaginous performance before the Senate Intelligence Committee, it was too much for the WaPo editorial board.

I would note that Fred Hiatt's merry band of psychopaths, cheered the invasion of Iraq, destroying Libya, the Whitewater investigation, Bush's purge of US attorneys, privatizing social security, supporting Trump's border wall even as they called it stupid, privatizing education, and letting Richard Cohen near a typewriter.

I had though that there was no limit to their stupid, but Gina Haspel is just a bridge too far for them:

Gina Haspel, President Trump’s nominee to head the Central Intelligence Agency, faced a clear test when she appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday. After a 33-year career at the agency, she may be, in many respects, the most qualified person ever nominated to the post, as one Republican senator contended. But she has a dark chapter in her past: her supervision of a secret prison in Thailand where al-Qaeda suspects were tortured, and her subsequent involvement in the destruction of videotapes of that shameful episode.

As Sen. Mark R. Warner (Va.), the ranking Democrat on the committee, made clear from the outset, Ms. Haspel needs to clearly repudiate that record. She must confirm that techniques such as waterboarding — now banned by law — were and are unacceptable, and she must make clear that she will never again accept orders to carry out acts that so clearly violate American moral standards, even if they are ordered by the president and certified by administration lawyers as legal.

Ms. Haspel did not meet that test. She volunteered that the CIA would not on her watch engage in enhanced interrogations; she said she supported the “stricter moral standard” the country had adopted after debating the interrogation program. Pressed by Mr. Warner and several other senators, she eventually said she “would not allow CIA to undertake activity that I thought was immoral, even if it was technically legal.” What she would not say was that the torture she oversaw was immoral, or that it should not have been done, or that she regretted her own role in it — which, according to senators, included advocating for the program internally.

That ambiguity matters at a time when the United States is led by a president who has cheered for torture, who lacks respect for the rule of law and who demands absolute loyalty from his aides. Unfortunately, it makes it impossible for us, and others for whom the repudiation of torture is a priority, to support Ms. Haspel’s nomination.

The Post's editorial page is the 2^nd most likely to be contradicted on the facts (a close race that the bat sh%$ insane Wall Street Journal editorial board won), but Gina Haspel is too much for them.

Honestly, I did not think that this was possible.

Linkage

• Wooden Shigir idol found to be over twice as old as Egyptian pyramids (Phys.org)
• When Milky Got His Money (Esquire) An Australian was allowed to overdraw his account to the tune of over a million Australian dollars. Much hilarity ensues
• 10 of the Most Sociopathic Washington Post Columns (FAIR) The only columnist with multiple cites is ……… wait for it ……… Richard Cohen!
• Neanderthals etched a message on this 36,000-year-old stone tool (Ars Technica) Just so cool
• Flirting with Liberals: A Critical Examination of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) (The Hampton Institute) A Marxist critique of DSA for not being Marxist enough. I disagree, but this should be read.
• Mystery pooper at N.J. high school's track turned out to be superintendent, cops say (NJ.com) It was on the rival school football field. That old school spirit.
• The coming media whitewash of John McCain’s career (Oliver Willis) Any obit should mention Sarah Palin and the Keating 5 prominently.
• One space between each sentence, they said. Science just proved them wrong. (Washington Post) I, a compulsive 2 spacer, find vindication.
• Gmail's 'Self Destruct' Feature Will Probably Be Used to Illegally Destroy Government Records (Motherboard) This is a feature, not a bug.
• Alan Turing’s chemistry hypothesis turned into a desalination filter (Ars Technica) Imagine what we would have learned if bigotry had not ended his life early.

Anyone remember transparent aluminum from Star Trek 4? (It's actually a ceramic in which aluminum figures prominently)

Tweet of the Day

I don't get the sense that Cohen and Hannity have thought this all the way through -- the impact of their positions on the attorney-client privilege, and how they may be waiving and/or undermining privilege.

They need to be playing chess. They're playing Hungry Hungry Hippos.

— TheNewNormalHat (@Popehat) April 16, 2018

It's important to remember how this is different from Watergate. One of the big ways is that regardless of a generally similar level of immorality, Richard Nixon and his evil minions^™ were not stupid people who unmoored from reality, and Donald Trump and his evil minions^™ are stupid people who are unmoored reality.

Popehat owes me a screen wipe for the "Hungry Hungry Hippos" comment.

Tweet of the Day

Democracy Dies in Derpness pic.twitter.com/otunUeS43a

— David V. Johnson 🌹 (@contrarianp) May 24, 2017

This is actually lamer than the tripe that oozes from the pens of Charles Krauthammer and Richard Cohen.

Oh, You Delicate Flower, You

It appears that the parasitic finance class are very upset that Elizabeth Warren does not kiss their ass:

In just three and a half years in the U.S. Senate, Elizabeth Warren has become one of the most polarizing figures in Congress and among the legislators most hated by members of the financial services industry.

An early proponent of creating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — even before she was elected to the Senate — the 67-year-old former Harvard professor also has emerged as one of the most ardent champions of the Department of Labor's fiduciary rule for retirement accounts. She has been a pit bull at congressional hearings, taking on Wall Street interests at every turn, and has had public run-ins with former Finra chief Richard Ketchum and SEC Chairwoman Mary Jo White.

“It is perfectly legal for some brokers and financial advisers to take kickbacks, prizes or even vacations for selling lousy products to unsuspecting customers,” Ms. Warren said at a congressional forum in March 2015, shortly before the DOL proposed rule was released. 

That's the kind of rhetoric Robert Braglia, president of American Financial & Tax Strategies Inc., a registered investment adviser, rejects.

“She's more anti-business than she is pro-consumer,” he said. “She's coming from a place that all “fill-in-the-blank” are bad. Every industry she goes after, she paints with the same broad brush, which is unfair.”

………

“I live here [in Boston] and can't name a single human being in my immediate or extended social circles that likes her, has or would vote for her, or who can even say that they don't loathe her,” Jeremy Cohen, a broker with the Independent Financial Group, wrote in the comments section of an InvestmentNews story the day Ms.Warren took on Mr. Ketchum in a congressional hearing.

………

“She's the bane of most brokers,” said Paul Auslander, director of financial planning at ProVise Management Group. “Most RIAs I talk to … have disdain for Elizabeth Warren, but they find it hard to argue with the fact that she's been a champion of this [fiduciary-duty] effort.”

………

“If you only see the bad, you're going to think that all [advisers] are bad,” said Eric Bishoff, chief executive of Bishoff Financial Group. “To the people in the industry, that's insulting.”

The financial services industry is designed to reward deception and self dealing.

Its denizens see themselves as Galtian ubermenschen who defend capitalism against moochers.

They are the moochers, and they need to get over themselves.

It is Impossible to Avoid the Conclusion that Black Lives Didn't Matter Much at all to the Magazine.

This is an Actual TNR Cover

In case you haven't heard, there has been a kerfluffle at that bastion for white Ivy League affirmative action The New Republic, with the firing of  Franklin Foer as editor.

A significant portion of the deadwood on their masthead, along with other staff, resigned in protest.

While they consider it to be drawing an ethical line in the sand, it is, in fact, a mark of their missing ethics.

The fact that they were still on that masthead after years of racism and disregard for the minority community at TNR is how their stand should be viewed, as Ta-Nehisi Coates so ably states:

………

Earlier this year, Foer edited an anthology of TNR writings titled Insurrections of the Mind, commemorating the magazine's 100-year history. "This book hasn't been compiled in the name of definitiveness," Foer wrote. "It was put together in the spirit of the magazine that it anthologizes: it is an argument about what matters." There is only one essay in Insurrections that takes race as its subject. The volume includes only one black writer and only two writers of color. This is not an oversight. Nor does it mean that Foer is a bad human. On the contrary, if one were to attempt to capture the "spirit" of TNR, it would be impossible to avoid the conclusion that black lives don't matter much at all.

That explains why the family rows at TNR's virtual funeral look like the "Whites Only" section of a Jim Crow-era movie-house. For most of its modern history, TNR has been an entirely white publication, which published stories confirming white people's worst instincts. During the culture wars of the '80s and '90s, TNR regarded black people with an attitude ranging from removed disregard to blatant bigotry. When people discuss TNR's racism, Andrew Sullivan's publication of excerpts from Charles Murray's book The Bell Curve (and a series of dissents) gets the most attention. But this fuels the lie that one infamous issue stands apart. In fact, the Bell Curve episode is remarkable for how well it fits with the rest of TNR's history.

(emphasis mine)

I just need to note here, as I always do, that, in his late teens, the co-author of The Bell Curve, Charles Murray, burned a cross next to the local police station.

This event in his early life provides necessary context for the fact that most of his professional career has been about putting an academic gloss on racism.

Coates makes the point that the genteel racism of the magazine is not limited to the actions, and tenure, of the contemptible Marty Peretz:

Two years later, Washington Post writer Richard Cohen was roundly rebuked for advocating that D.C. jewelry stores discriminate against young black men—but not by TNR. The magazine took the opportunity to convene a panel to "reflect briefly" on whether it was moral for merchants to bar black men from their stores. ("Expecting a jewelry store owner to risk his life in the service of color-blind justice is expecting too much," the magazine concluded.)

TNR made a habit of "reflecting briefly" on matters that were life and death to black people but were mostly abstract thought experiments to the magazine's editors. Before, during, and after Sullivan's tenure, the magazine seemed to believe that the kind of racism that mattered most was best evidenced in the evils of Afrocentrism, the excesses of multiculturalism, and the machinations of Jesse Jackson. It's true that TNR's staff roundly objected to excerpting The Bell Curve, but I was never quite sure why. Sullivan was simply exposing the dark premise that lay beneath much of the magazine's coverage of America's ancient dilemma.

Read the rest.

BTW, after you read this, you might want to read Wonkette's Rebecca Schoenkopf's take on this.

While Coates' analysis is trenchant and thoughtful, Wonkette is just delightfully snarky and very funny.

F%$# the South

Michael Tomansky, writing for The Daily Beast, suggests that the Democrats are wasting resources trying to win in the South:

I don’t remember a much sadder sight in domestic politics in my lifetime than that of Mary Landrieu schlumpfing around these last few weeks trying to save a Senate seat that was obviously lost. It was like witnessing the last two weeks of the life of a blind and toothless dog you knew the vet was just itching to destroy. I know that sounds mean about her, but I don’t intend it that way. She did what she could and had, as far as I know, an honorable career. I do, however, intend it to sound mean about the reactionary, prejudice-infested place she comes from. A toothless dog is a figure of sympathy. A vet who takes pleasure in gassing it is not.

And that is what Louisiana, and almost the entire South, has become. The victims of the particular form of euthanasia it enforces with such glee are tolerance, compassion, civic decency, trans-racial community, the crucial secular values on which this country was founded… I could keep this list going. But I think you get the idea. Practically the whole region has rejected nearly everything that’s good about this country and has become just one big nuclear waste site of choleric, and extremely racialized, resentment. A fact made even sadder because on the whole they’re such nice people! (I truly mean that.)

With Landrieu’s departure, the Democrats will have no more senators from the Deep South, and I say good. Forget about it. Forget about the whole fetid place. Write it off. Let the GOP have it and run it and turn it into Free-Market Jesus Paradise. The Democrats don’t need it anyway.

Actually, that’s not quite true. They need Florida, arguably, at least in Electoral College terms. Although they don’t even really quite need it—what happened in 2012 was representative: Barack Obama didn’t need Florida, but its 29 electoral votes provided a nice layer of icing on the cake, bumping him up to a gaudy 332 EVs, and besides, it’s nice to be able to say you won such a big state. But Florida is kind of an outlier, because culturally, only the northern half of Florida is Dixie. Ditto Virginia, but in reverse; culturally, northern Virginia is Yankee land (but with gun shops).

………

 But it’s not just a question of numbers. The main point is this: Trying to win Southern seats is not worth the ideological cost for Democrats. As Memphis Rep. Steve Cohen recently told my colleague Ben Jacobs, the Democratic Party cannot (and I’d say should not) try to calibrate its positions to placate Southern mores: “It’s come to pass, and really a lot of white Southerners vote on gays and guns and God, and we’re not going to ever be too good on gays and guns and God.”

Charlie Pierce disagrees strongly:

I sympathize with Mike. I truly do. But I still will stand with Governor Dean and the 50-state strategy, at least applied judiciously. To me, the key to the problem is to break the stranglehold of the Washington-based consultant class over what candidates will be run in what places. It wasn't the Beltway crowd who found Jon Tester in Montana, or Jim Webb in Virginia. The national party should be involved in these races only as a means by which money can be shrewdly spread around, and as a means of employing some sense of party discipline. No, Mr. Breaux, we won't be following your easily rented ass any more. We will find progressive populists, white or black, and we will run them and support them, and maybe the first five tries won't work but, sooner or later, there will be a breakthrough, and it will not be led by the next Bill Clinton and the next DLC.

For example, Bernie Sanders is drawing big crowds in South Carolina and in Mississippi. He wouldn't come close to winning anything in either of those states, but there is a working-class audience there that is interested in listening to him, and that is worth respecting in our politics. There always has been a kind of working-class populism in the South, and it always came to grief over race. But it's 2014, and forging an actual alliance of working people, black and white, in the places that need it the most, is a worthwhile effort whether it fails initially or not. To abandon the people trying to forge that alliance -- and, therefore, to abandon the people on whose behalf that alliance is being forged -- would be political malpractice of the highest order. It would be an odd kind of confirmation of Willard Romney's first bumbling attempts to run away from himself on health care, whereby G.I. Luvmoney averred that what worked in Massachusetts would not work in Mississippi, as though Those People were expendable because the Mississippi Republicans would have them die by the side of the road. Sometimes, the fight alone is enough.

The problem is much like the supporters of Julian Schwinger's and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga's competing theories of quantum electrodynamics.

They are actually saying the same thing, but they are talking past each other and arguing about notation.^*

Neither one of them is actually suggesting that we not run candidates.

They are both asserting that the current campaign for seats in the south is being done by compromising Democratic Party values, and neither of them are suggesting that candidates not be run.

In order to support the clearly doomed campaigns of Landrieu in Louisiana and Pryor in Arkansas, Obama held off on an executive order to help illegal immigrants.

Over the past 6 years, Obama has engaged in the most aggressive deportation policies in our nation's history in an attempt to support southern candidates.

It's been bad policy and bad politics.

^*I am making no claims here to my having anywhere near the intellectual heft of the man who resolved this dispute, Richard Feynman. He is way out of my league.

Why Does Richard Cohen, and His Editor, Still Have a F%$#ing Job?

As if Richard Cohen had not jumped the shark before, he is now claiming that people are nauseated by the sight of an interracial couple: (No link to the original article, ever)

Today’s GOP is not racist, as Harry Belafonte alleged about the tea party, but it is deeply troubled — about the expansion of government, about immigration, about secularism, about the mainstreaming of what used to be the avant-garde. People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York — a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children. (Should I mention that Bill de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, used to be a lesbian?) This family represents the cultural changes that have enveloped parts — but not all — of America. To cultural conservatives, this doesn’t look like their country at all.

And Fred Hiatt, his editor?  The guy who let this through?  The guy who apparrently thinks that racism is OK at the Post?  His response is, "Oops!"

Editorial page editor Fred Hiatt took the blame for outrage, telling TheWrap: “Anyone reading Richard’s entire column will see he is just saying that some Americans still have a hard time dealing with interracial marriage. I erred in not editing that one sentence more carefully to make sure it could not be misinterpreted.”

Dude, this guy is the Racist Uncle who you have to tiptoe around every holiday season!

If you want him at the table, you need to figure out how to keeping him from sh%$#ing in the f%$#ing punch bowl?

And by the way, Richard Cohen has a sad about being called a racist bigot:

"The word racist is truly hurtful," he added. "It's not who I am. It's not who I ever was. It's just not fair. It's just not right."

Dude, you said that it was OK for merchants to lock blacks out of their stores. You said that Trayvon Martin to be shot for wearing a hoodie!

You are a f%$#ing bigot, even if your publisher, Katherine Weymouth, calls your column genius.

Jeff Bezos, I have three people you could fire and improve the paper.

Ezra Klein, who also works for the Post, and always gives me the sense that he is walking on egg shells, felt compelled to call Cohen's bigotry out, noting that 87% of the population approves of interracial marriage.

BTW, a quick examination of how this exploded across the Twitterverse is rather amusing and informative.

This one is my favorite:

Imagine how much Jeff Bezos would have had to pay for the Washington Post if Richard Cohen didn't work there.
— Matt O'Brien (@ObsoleteDogma) November 12, 2013

Linkage

Racism In White Americans Linked To Gun Ownership And Gun Control Opposition (Medical Daily) Rather unsurprising, my earlier posts on Reagan and gun control
Terrible Columnist Richard Cohen Shocked To Learn That Slavery Was Really, Really Bad (Wonkette) What a prat.

Have some music:

Signs of the Apocalypse, Richard Cohen Edition

I've been rather hard on him.

I've called him a sociopath, a racist, an idiot, and a bad writer.

I stand by these assessments, but in the same way that a stopped clock is right twice a day, he can't get everything wrong every time.

On the matter of Edward Snowden, he has admitted that he was wrong, and that Snowden is a whistle-blower, not a traitor.

What are we to make of Edward Snowden? I know what I once made of him. He was no real whistleblower, I wrote, but “ridiculously cinematic” and “narcissistic” as well. As time has proved, my judgments were just plain wrong. Whatever Snowden is, he is curiously modest and has bent over backward to ensure that the information he has divulged has done as little damage as possible. As a “traitor,” he lacks the requisite intent and menace.

But traitor is what Snowden has been roundly called. Harry Reid: “I think Snowden is a traitor.” John Boehner: “He’s a traitor.” Rep. Peter King: “This guy is a traitor; he’s a defector.” And Dick Cheney not only denounced Snowden as a “traitor” but also suggested that he might have shared information with the Chinese. This innuendo, as with Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, is more proof of Cheney’s unerring determination to be cosmically wrong.

The early denunciations of Snowden now seem both over the top and beside the point. If he is a traitor, then which side did he betray and to whom does he now owe allegiance? Benedict Arnold, America’s most famous traitor, sold out to the British during the Revolutionary War and wound up a general in King George III’s army. Snowden seems to have sold out to no one. In fact, a knowledgeable source says that Snowden has not even sold his life story and has rebuffed offers of cash for interviews. Maybe his most un-American act is passing up a chance at easy money. Someone ought to look into this.

………

Snowden is one of those people for whom the conjunction “and” is apt. Normally, I prefer the more emphatic “but” so I could say “Snowden did some good but he did a greater amount of damage.” Trouble is, I’m not sure of that. I am sure, though, that he has instigated a worthwhile debate. I am sure that police powers granted the government will be abused over time and that Snowden is an authentic whistleblower, appalled at what he saw on his computer screen and wishing, like Longfellow’s Paul Revere, to tell “every Middlesex village and farm” what our intelligence agencies were doing. Who do they think they are, Google?

But (and?) I am at a loss to say what should be done with Snowden. He broke the law, this is true. He has been chary with his information, but he cannot know all its ramifications and, anyway, the government can’t allow anyone to decide for himself what should be revealed. That, too, is true. So Snowden is, to my mind, a bit like John Brown, the zealot who intensely felt the inhumanity of slavery and broke the law in an attempt to end the practice. My analogy is not neat — Brown killed some people — but you get the point. I suppose Snowden needs to be punished but not as a traitor. He may have been technically disloyal to America but not, after some reflection, to American values.

Stopped clock, I guess.

I'll need to wait for a 2^nd non wanktastic article before I claim that we are seeing an actual learning curve here.

If the Washington Post Were to Replace Richard Cohen with Pat Buchanan………

No one could tell the difference, except that Pat is a more interesting writer.

So, it's OK to stalk a black boy in a hoodie because he's a black boy in a hoodie, just like when he said that it was OK for jewelers to refuse to allow black people into their stores.

He also decided that the Polanski child rape was no big deal, basically because he likes Chinatown.  (I would note that there are legitimate issues of judicial and prosecutorial misconduct, which are serious issues, but Cohen, and the almost as awful Anne Applebaum, are just horrible human beings.)

I do not understand why Cohen is not sweeping floors for a living.

Remember When I Called Richard Cohen a Sociopath?

I rest my case.

And I don't directly link to his column. He does not deserve my meager page hits.

Polanski Extradition Denied

Basically the Swiss government said that it would not extradite until and unless it got the details on the judicial and prosecutorial irregularities that occurred in the initial trial:

The justice ministry said that the US authorities had failed to provide confidential testimony about Polanski's original sentencing procedure.

"The reason for the decision lies in the fact that it was not possible to exclude with the necessary certainty a fault in the US extraditionary request."

So the prosecutors decided that covering their screw-ups, and their asses, was more important than a prosecution of someone who is a confessed child rapist.

I've always felt that the people, such as sociopath and Washington Post columnist^* Richard Cohen, who tried to excuse the rape because he was one of them, or worse, to cast the child as some sort of predator were repugnant.

But this was the right decision. There have always been alarming irregularities in the original case, ex-parte communications and other misconduct that should have seen most of the prosecuting team, as well as the judge, disbarred, and the information being withheld included testimony which might have shown that Polanski had actually served his complete sentence. (All of 42 days)

^*But I repeat myself.

Obey's Explanation

Yesterday, he announced his retirement, and today he explains himself.

Basically, he's sick and tired of the,"the ridiculous, accountability destroying rules of the Senate to confused, angry, and frustrated constituents," though he also mentions the recent deaths of the his former colleagues John Murtha and Charlie Wilson.

His full statement is below the break.

May 5, 2010

Statement by Congressman David R. Obey
In December I will have been in public service for 48 years – over 6 years in the Wisconsin State Legislature and almost 42 years in the U.S. Congress. I have served in the House longer than anyone in Wisconsin history. God and my constituents have been incredibly good to me.

When I was a kid growing up in Wausau I never dreamed that I would have even one-tenth of the opportunities that have come my way. I hope that I have used those opportunities to do the most that could be done for the causes I believe in: fairer taxes; greater economic opportunity; better schools; affordable health care; expanded education and health care benefits for veterans; research that will help us fight diseases like cancer, diabetes and Parkinson’s; better health, safety, and economic security for workers; cleaner air; and water and preservation of National Parks and public places.

The people of Northern Wisconsin have given me the honor and the privilege of representing them on the great issues of our times, ranging from Vietnam to Watergate, the Iranian hostage crisis, the Reagan deficits, Iran-Contra, the collapse of communism, two Gulf Wars, the economic and budget reforms of the early 1990s, the government shut down, 9/11, and the economic meltdown of the past decade.

For a decade, as Chairman of the Foreign Operations Subcommittee, I had the privilege of helping lead the effort to meet our responsibilities to our fellow human beings around the globe who share this planet with us, but do not share our same good fortune. During that time, we consistently moved foreign aid money away from support of military dictators to the expansion of long-term development activities and through programs like UNICEF contributed to saving millions of children’s lives.

I’m especially proud of the role I paid in resisting American colonialism in Central America, working with people like James Baker, Dave Bonior, Jim Wright, Lee Hamilton, Matt McHugh, Joe Moakley, and Tom Foley to end the Contra War in Nicaragua. Probably, the most important historic role the committee played was the bipartisan work we did with the George H. Bush Administration and officials like Secretary Lawrence Eagleburger in helping Eastern European countries to transition from communist authoritarianism to Western capitalist democracies after the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Although it happened a long time ago, I am especially proud of the losing fight that I helped wage with Congressmen Henry Reuss and Mo Udall to prevent the passage of the fiscally irresponsible Reagan budgets, which at a time of devastating inflation cut taxes at the same time the defense budget was being doubled, all paid for with borrowed money, more than tripling the long-term budget deficit picture. The Obey-Udall-Reuss alternative budget was a progressive alternative to the budgets of both parties, which spent less, borrowed less, and produced smaller deficits than either the Democratic or Republican base bills, and won the support of a majority of Democrats. At the time our actions were hugely unpopular. About 70% of the voters in my district supported Reagan’s budget, but time has proven us right.

Today, I am similarly proud that I was the principle author of the much maligned but absolutely essential Economic Recovery Act of 2009, which in the midst of the deepest and most dangerous economic catastrophe in 70 years, has pumped desperately needed purchasing power into the economy to cushion the fall and reduced the number of families whose breadwinners were thrown out of work. When it was passed last year, the American economy was losing 750,000 jobs per month. Last month, by contrast, the economy added 162,000 jobs, the largest increase in three years. That corner could not have been turned without the Recovery Act. My only apology is that it should have been larger, but it was the most that the system would bear at the time.

I am especially pleased to have had the privilege of presiding over the House when it passed the historic health insurance reform legislation three weeks ago. I have been waiting for that moment for 41 years and its arrival – finally – made all the frustrations of public life worth it.

During my Congressional service, I have also tried to do what I could to keep us out of misguided wars and I have fought to reform the political institutions – especially, the Congress – to improve the quality of their work and to strengthen public confidence in them. And despite the misguided and disastrously destructive decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court that have put the system of American elections on the auction block, I have worked to limit the influence of private money in elections that by definition should be public events.

I think that along the way I have made a difference for the district and state that I represent and for the country.

But there is a time to stay and a time to go. And this is my time to go. I hate to do it. There is so much that needs to be done. But, frankly, I am bone tired. When I first put my name on the ballot for the State Assembly in 1962, I was 23 years old. Now, 48 years later, I will soon be 72. When I went to Congress in 1969, I was the youngest member of the House of Representatives. I’m not anymore. Since that first day in 1962, I have gone through 25 elections and engaged in countless battles.

I’m ready to turn the page, and I think, frankly, that my district is ready for someone new to make a fresh start. Not someone who poses as a fresh face, but would in reality take us back to the “good old days” of Bush tax cuts for the rich and a misguided Iraq war. Not someone whose idea of a fresh idea is to say: “Let the market do it,” which translated means: “Let the corporate elites, big banks, and Wall Street big shots and insurance company CEO’s do anything they want with no regulation to protect investors and consumers.” There is nothing fresh about that. No, what the 7th district deserves and what the country deserves is for someone to step up who can be counted on to put working people first, someone who will bring fresh eyes and fresh energy to the battle, someone who won’t use slick words and an actor’s ability to hide the fact that he is willing to gut and privatize Social Security and Medicare and abandon working people to the arbitrary power of America’s corporate and economic elite.

When I first ran for Congress I wanted to do three things:

1) The first was to help make our economic system more fair for the poor and for middle class working families. Unfortunately, powerful economic and political forces have largely frustrated that effort. Over the last 30 years we have seen the largest transfer of income up the income scale in history. In fact, for six straight years under George W. Bush, over 90% of all the income growth in the country went into the pockets of the wealthiest 10%. The other 90% of the population – the regular people of the country – got table scraps. I regret not being able to do more to turn that around. That, and the inability of the political system to achieve the public financing of political campaigns, represent the biggest disappointments of my public life.

2) My second goal was to expand federal support for education in order to expand opportunity for every American. That has been a hard slog, but, especially in the last three years, we have been able to move a large amount of federal resources to do just that. Just this last year, we were able to greatly enhance federal support for student aid. It is not enough, but it makes a difference.

3) My third goal was to help move this country into the ranks of civilized nations by making it possible for almost every American to receive quality health care without begging. For years I despaired of ever getting that done. But last month, I had the great privilege of presiding over the House of Representatives as it finally completed action on historic health insurance reform legislation.

Over the past few years, whenever a member of the press asked if I was contemplating retirement, I would respond by saying that I did not want to leave Congress until we had passed health care reform. Well, now it has. And I can leave with the knowledge that thanks to Speaker Pelosi and President Obama and so many others, we got the job done. I haven’t done all the big things that I wanted to do when I started out, but I’ve done all the big things I’m likely to do.

Frankly, I had considered retiring after the 2000 election, but I became so angered by the policies of the Bush administration that I decided to stick around as long as he was here. In 2002, after a year-long reapportionment struggle, which devoured my time and the time of my colleague Jim Sensenbrenner, I publicly stated I would not be around for another one. That is exactly what I would face if I returned to Congress next year. I simply don’t want to do it.

Many years ago, in an interview with Richard Cohen, I told him that the way I looked at public service, I believe the job of a good politician was to be used up fighting on behalf of causes you believed in, and when you are used up, to step aside and let someone else carry on the battle. Well, today I feel used up.

In the last months, two colleagues, Charlie Wilson and Jack Murtha, have died. Both were 76. For me, that is only four years away. At the end of this term I will have served in the House longer than all but 18 of the 10,637 men and women who have ever served there. The wear and tear is beginning to take its toll. Given that fact, I have to ask myself how I want to spend the time I have left. Frankly, I do not know what I will do next. All I do know is that there has to be more to life than explaining the ridiculous, accountability destroying rules of the Senate to confused, angry, and frustrated constituents.

I absolutely believe that, after the economy returns to a decent level of growth, we must attack our long-term budget deficit. But, perhaps I expect too much because, in addition to an attack on the federal budget deficit, I also want to see an equal determination to attack the family security deficit, the family income deficit, and the opportunity deficit which also plague the American people.

I am, frankly, weary of having to beg on a daily basis that both parties recognize that we do no favor for the country if we neglect to make the long-term investments in education, science, health, and energy that are necessary to modernize our economy and decline to raise the revenue needed to pay for those crucial investments. I do not want to be in a position as Chairman of the Appropriations Committee of producing and defending lowest common denominator legislation that is inadequate to that task and, given the mood of the country, that is what I would have to do if I stayed.

I am also increasingly weary of having to deal with a press which has become increasingly focused on trivia, driven at least in part by the financial collapse of the news industry and the need, with the 24-hour news cycle, to fill the air waves with hot air. I say that regretfully because I regard what is happening to the news profession as nothing short of a national catastrophe which I know pains many quality journalists as much as it pains me. Both our professions have been coarsened in recent years and the nation is the loser for it.

Let me close by thanking some people.

First, let me thank my wife, Joan, who has put up with so much and endured so much so that I might follow my dream of public service. When she agreed to marry me, she thought she was getting a college teacher. Instead, she got stuck with the “charms” of political life. Whatever good I’ve done, I could not have done without her.

Let me also thank my two sons, Craig and Douglas, who have also shared in the burden of public service. Craig has spent his adult life trying to bring health care to people who needed it, trying to protect workers in the work place, and trying to protect our precious public lands from abuse by special interests and their mouthpieces in government. Doug has spent his life as a working journalist, first covering Capitol Hill, and then informing his readers about the realities of the politics of environmental protection and the interaction between science and politics on the profoundly important issue of global climate change.

Let me thank all those who have worked with me as staff through the years – those who have worked in my district offices in Wisconsin, in my personal office in Washington, my Joint Economic Committee staff, and my Appropriations Committee staff. Your ability, your decency, and your fierce loyalty to me are gratefully appreciated. You have been not just my counselors, but my protectors, and my understanding friends.

Let me thank those special friends who have helped me get through 25 elections and everything that has happened in between. You know who you are. By giving me your political and emotional support, you have sustained me through the pressures and the ups and downs of political and public life. I will not forget. I hope you feel that your support helped to make possible whatever good I have done through the years.

Let me thank Bob Huber, Frank Nikolay, Dick Bolling, and Gaylord Nelson for teaching me how to be a legislator – in Madison and in Wisconsin. And let me express a special thanks to Speaker Nancy Pelosi whose heart, guts, and soul have provided the steel necessary to accomplish some extraordinary things.

Let me also thank so many of my Congressional colleagues, past and present, who have worked shoulder to shoulder with me in pursuit of so many causes – some won, some lost, and who have on occasion forgiven me for my excessive passion. It has been said that in life our strength can also be our weakness as I have demonstrated on more than one occasion.

And let me profoundly thank everyone who has ever cast a vote for me for the privilege of representing you in Madison and Washington all these years.

I hope that in whatever years I may have remaining, I will still find occasion to help move the needle forward. But for now, after 48 years, it is time to pass the torch.

It Appears that I Was Premature in My Praise for Eugene Robinson

While his position on Roman Polanski's fugitive status, and his apprehension in Switzerland, in his condemnation of people who support the incarcerated film director is laudable, just look at who he is condemning, "some of Hollywood's most prominent luminaries," who suggest that, "whatever sins Polanski may have committed are outweighed by the brilliance of his art."

Let's make it clear, I think that the arguments of his supporters in Hollywood are repulsive, but there are people out there who are suggesting that the, "bitch was asking for it," like Anne Applebaum and Richard Cohen, who suggest that this was consensual or perhaps even encouraged by the girl.

This is a whole world worse than anything that has come out of Hollywood, or, for that matter, out of France.

Let's be clear that there are in fact ethical arguments against the imprisonment or trial of Roman Polanski. Jeralyn of TalkLeft, for example, has been making highly cogent arguments about the legal process that deserve serious consideration, and this a valid, and I would argue essential part of the dialogue, but Robinson's covering up for his colleagues is beneath contempt, particularly when one, Applebaum, explicitly called him out on her page.

Eugene Robinson, you sir, are a coward.

H/t Atrios.

Speaking of Sociopaths at the Washington Post.....

In addition to Richard Cohen saying that there should be no consequences for people of consequence in the case of Roman Polanski, we have Anne Applebaum suggesting that the 8^th grader was really asking for it (link to Paul Campos at LGM, I will not generate hits to Applebaum):

Of course, there were some very legitimate disagreements, including two excellent ones from my colleagues Gene Robinson and Richard Cohen, and I take some of their points. But to them, and to all who imagine that the original incident at the heart of this story was a straightforward and simple criminal case, I recommend reading the transcript of the victim's testimony (here in two parts) -- including her descriptions of the telephone conversation she had with her mother from Polanski's house, asking permission to be photographed in Jack Nicholson's jacuzzi -- and not just the salacious bits.

So, how is this repulsive?

Because she is implying that the girl asked permission from her mom to have sex with Roman Polanski, and because the grand jury transcript does not show her asking about the Jacuzzi, it shows her asking to stay late for the photo shoot, and neither her nor Polanski ever talking about the Jacuzzi.

But Apple Applebaum, as Mr. Campos so ably notes, thinks that the slut was asking for it, which is a hell of a thing to say about a 13 year old rape victim, and it's even worse, because Applebaum is also lying to smear said 13 year old rape victim:

Here's the relevant part of the transcript:

Q. What happened out there after he indicated he wished to take pictures of you in the jacuzzi?

A. We went inside and called my mother.

Q. When you say “we called,” did you call or did Mr. Polanski call?

A. He told me to and I talked and then he talked and then I talked again.

Q. What did you tell your mother?

A. She goes, “Are you all right?

I went, “Uh-huh.”

And she says, “Do you want me to come pick you up?”

And I went, “No.”

And he said that we’d be home kind of late because it had already gotten dark out.

Q. When you said “he said,” did he tell you or did you hear him tell your mother on the phone?

A. He told my mother.

Q, Did he tell your mother any other things?

A. Not that I was listening to.

Q. After talking to your mother on the telephone, what happened?

A. We went out and I got in the jacuzzi.

Applebaum can't even read 20 lines of a trial transcript accurately (the victim never asked her mother for permission to be photographed in the jacuzzi). But that idiocy pales to insignificance in comparison to the moral blindness involved in suggesting, as Applebaum clearly does, that if the 13-year-old victim had in fact asked her mother's permission to be photographed in a jacuzzi by a 44-year-old man that would somehow transform the man's subsequent drugging and raping of the girl into something other than a "simple and straightforward criminal case."

We can add to this that her husband is Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, and as such, he is aggressively working toward Polanski's release,^* because they consider him a national treasure (even if he does not live there), and she thinks that she had no need to disclose this, because she, "Mentioned my husband's job in a column as recently as last week"

No, it does not work that way. You are married to a high government official for a foreign government. When you are writing about issues that are part of the direct and explicit policy of that government, you disclose that you share a bed with the foreign minister, each and every time.

I will say that not all Postie pundits are Sociopaths, though Applebaum and Cohen clearly are, as is, of course, Krauthammer, though he may simply be insane .

For example, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson nails it when he says, "That is grotesque. In general, I agree with the European view that Americans tend to be prudish and hypocritical about sex. But a grown man drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl? That's not remotely a close call. It's wrong in any moral universe -- and deserves harsher punishment than three decades of gilded exile."

(emphasis mine)

Your mouth to God's ear. I cannot speak to the finer points of the trial, and there are likely issues there, but the enthusiasm with which the people who seek to excuse this away on the feeling that somehow Polanski is "people like them", is truly revolting.

^*I do not blame Sikorski for doing his job here. It is his job to execute the policy, however immoral and venal (it's about playing to the Polish electorate^† by embracing a rapist). Pity your wife is a sociopath though.
^†As to what this says about the Polish electorate, it either means that their leaders underestimate them, or that they are not underestimating them. One hopes for the former.

Before I Put Polanski on My List of

They Who Must Not Be Named, like he cares about whether or not I write about him, let me repeat what Atrios Said:

I really was going to try to avoid Polanski blogging, but then Richard Cohen referred to drugging and raping a 13 year old over clear objections as her being 'seduced.'

What is wrong with these people?"

This was never seduction.

You can argue that he is a talented artist, and he is, Chinatown is brilliant.

You can argue that his trial was ineluctably tainted, by virtue of prosecutorial and judicial misconduct, and the trial was ineluctably tainted by those actions..

You can argue that the time has passed for this, as the victim has.

But the coercion, drugging, and penetration of a 13-year old girl is not a "seduction," it's a rape, and the only reason that moral pygmies like Richard Cohen call it seduction is because they profoundly believe that there should be no consequences for people that they deem consequential.

I do now know whether Roman Polanski is a monster, or a sick victim, but I do know that Richard Cohen is a monster.