The Commentariat -- October 7, 2015

Internal links removed.

Afternoon Update:

Anne Barnard & Andrew Kramer of the New York Times: "The Russian military, sharply escalating its military intervention in Syria, launched 26 medium-range cruise missiles on Wednesday from four warships in the Caspian Sea, while providing air support for a ground offensive by pro-government forces. Russian officials said the missiles [[ which traveled more than 900 miles, through Iranian and Iraqi airspace -- struck 11 targets in Syria, but they did not specify which groups were hit."

Ashley Parker & Amy Chozick of the New York Times: "Though [Donald Trump] ... still leads the Republican field in national polls, Mr. Trump's ability to command both voter and news media attention simply by being his outlandish, bombastic self is starting to wane."

Ben Adler of Grist, in the Washington Post: "The GOP's increasing preference for callow, reckless candidates represents a culmination of the anti-government, anti-politics, anti-intellectual direction of the conservative movement. Although it overlaps with the GOP's rightward shift, it presents a unique threat to American democracy because it espouses not mere preference for smaller government, but a visceral hatred of functioning government and the practice of politics. This mindset abhors concessions to objective reality, expertise or political adversaries domestic and foreign."

AND a note from Charles Pierce which I missed during my unintended stay in the Palmetto State: "... South Carolina's performance on dam safety [is] as leaky and unsafe as the dams themselves. I mean, 4.3 fulltime employees to monitor and inspect 550 dams, 162 of which were classified as 'high-hazard.'... Every single member of the South Carolina congressional delegation save one voted against a relief package for the victims [of Hurricane Sandy]. This list includes presidential candidate Lindsey Graham, lop-headed Benghazi gumshoe Trey Gowdy, and Joe (You Lie!) Wilson. And it's not difficult at all to summon up the fact that the entire Republican party denies that an increasingly deranged climate is causing increasingly deranged weather."

*****

I'm back in the saddle again. Thank you to those who filled in for me. -- Constant Weader

Sari Horwitz of the Washington Post: "The Justice Department is set to release about 6,000 inmates early from prison -- the largest one-time release of federal prisoners -- in an effort to reduce overcrowding and provide relief to drug offenders who received harsh sentences over the past three decades, according to U.S. officials. The inmates from federal prisons nationwide will be set free by the department's Bureau of Prisons between Oct. 30 and Nov. 2. About two-thirds of them will go to halfway houses and home confinement before being put on supervised release. About one-third are foreign citizens who will be quickly deported, officials said." ...

... CW: So that's the good news. Most of the rest of today's links are evidence of how fucked-up this country is. Quite discouraging. But, you know, have a nice day.

Tierney Sneed of TPM: "Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY), the ranking member of the House Rules Committee..., will offer an amendment to abolish Congress' special committee on the Benghazi, in a move that simultaneously hits Republicans on Planned Parenthood and on House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy's (R-CA) Benghazi 'gaffe.' According to a spokesperson for ... Slaughter, [she] will offer the amendment Tuesday evening while the committee debates a bill to form a special committee to further investigate Planned Parenthood." CW: Yeah, that should pass.

digby brings us up to speed on Jason Chaffetz: "The son of a man once married to Kitty Dukakis, wife of 1988 Democratic presidential nominee Michael, Chaffetz started off as a Jewish Democrat, then converted to Mormonism during his last year of college in Utah -- and Republicanism when former President Ronald Reagan was hired as a motivational speaker for Nu Skin, the 'multi-level marketing' company (think Amway) which employed Chaffetz for a decade before he entered politics. He worked as chief of staff for the famously moderate Gov. Jon Huntsman [who characterized Chaffetz as a "power-hungry" "self-promoter"] and then beat the very conservative Representative Chris Cannon by running against him from the right in the 2010 Tea Party electoral bloodbath." ...

... Josh Gerstein of Politico: "Heading off a potential Constitutional clash, a federal judge ruled Tuesday that anti-abortion activists can hand over unreleased undercover sting videos and outtakes subpoenaed by a House committee even though a court order remains in place barring those activists from releasing the materials publicly. U.S. District Court Judge William Orrick said Tuesday that he would not prevent activist David Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress from complying with the subpoena issued last month by House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz." ...

... In Other Important Judicial News.... Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "The [Supreme C]ourt announced on its first day of the new term Monday something that previously had seemed unnecessary to spell out: ... lawyers cannot pay someone to hold a spot for them [in the attendance line] when the court has a big argument -- or even send one of the firm's lowly associates." (No link.)

Erica Goode & Benedict Carey of the New York Times: "As mass shootings have become ever more familiar, experts have come to understand them less as isolated expressions of rage and more as acts that build on the blueprints of previous rampages. Experts in violence prevention say that many, if not most, perpetrators of such shootings have intensively researched earlier mass attacks, often expressing admiration for those who carried them out. The publicity that surrounds these killings can have an accelerating effect on other troubled and angry would-be killers...." ...

... Alan Berlow, in a New York Times op-ed: The National Rifle Associaton is a very effective advocate for gunrunner & other criminals.

James Surowiecki of the New Yorker: "Foreign competition has played a central role in holding down retail prices in industries ranging from automobiles to consumer electronics. It's time drug prices were subject to the same rules. [F.D.A. rules exploiter Martin] Shkreli[, the C.E.O. of Turing Pharmaceuticals,] has said ... that Turing will roll back the Daraprim price increase. But the fate of toxoplasmosis sufferers shouldn't depend on the egomaniacal whims of a 'pharma bro.'"

Matthew Rosenberg of the New York Times: "With the United States struggling to account for an airstrike that decimated a Doctors Without Borders hospital, the American commander in Afghanistan on Tuesday took responsibility for the sustained bombardment of the medical facility, which he said took place in response to an Afghan call for help. The commander, Gen. John F. Campbell, said the strike was the result of 'a U.S. decision made within the U.S. chain of command.' General Campbell, in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, offered few new details about the attack, which lasted for more than a half-hour and killed 22 patients and hospital staff members in northern Afghanistan on Saturday. He said the details of what took place would come out in an investigation now underway." ...

... Spencer Ackerman of the Guardian: "Shifting the US account of the Saturday morning airstrike for the fourth time in as many days, Campbell reiterated that Afghan forces had requested US air cover after being engaged in a 'tenacious fight' to retake the northern city of Kunduz from the Taliban. But, modifying the account he gave at a press conference on Monday, Campbell said those Afghan forces had not directly communicated with the US pilots of an AC-130 gunship overhead." ...

... ... Robert Burns of the AP: "The deadly U.S. attack on a hospital in Afghanistan, which U.S. officials have called a 'mistake,' leaves open the possibility that the decision to open fire exceeded the authority under which American forces have operated since their combat mission ended nearly a year ago, officials say." ...

... Deb Reichmann of the AP: Campbell "recommended on Tuesday that President Barack Obama revise his plan and keep more than 1,000 U.S. troops in the country beyond 2016, just days after a deadly U.S. airstrike "mistakenly struck" a hospital during fierce fighting in the north." ...

... CW: Would somebody please explain to Campbell that the more troops we have in Afghanistan (or anywhere), the more likely massive fuck-ups. Also too, history suggests concludes that no outsider military effort in Afghanistan will be successful. (Of course a ramped-up U.S. presence that does provide a nice career move for Gen. Campbell. He'd rather command 5,000 troops than 1,000.) I won't say wars are never won, but they seldom are. If you doubt that, look at the results of the American Civil War. Yeah, the North "won." That's why we have today's Republican Tea party, where an openly-racist candidate may become the GOP presidential nominee, a white nationalist is likely to become House majority whip & a political ideology that once might have been aptly called "conservative" is now more accurately called "confederate." ...

... Jon Lee Anderson of the New Yorker makes my point: "The victims of the hospital airstrike are only the latest casualties in an ongoing Afghan war in which the Taliban, once again, are major players, and now seem as likely to win back power as they once appeared to have lost it."

Craig Whitlock & Brian Murphy of the Washington Post: "Russia and the United States tentatively agreed Tuesday to resume talks on how to prevent conflicts between their warplanes in the skies over Syria, even as concerns mounted about the potential for a broader confrontation in the Middle East between the two powers. After days of complaints from U.S. and NATO officials about a lack of cooperation and risky maneuvers by Russian warplanes, Russia's Defense Ministry offered to hold another round of discussions with the Pentagon on avoiding a midair disaster or a hostile encounter involving their fighter jets, drones and other aircraft over Syria."

Desmond Butler & Vadim Ghirda of the AP: "In the backwaters of Eastern Europe, authorities working with the FBI have interrupted four attempts in the past five years by gangs with suspected Russian connections that sought to sell radioactive material to Middle Eastern extremists.... Criminal organizations, some with ties to the Russian KGB's successor agency, are driving a thriving black market in nuclear materials in the tiny and impoverished Eastern European country of Moldova, investigators say. The successful busts, however, were undercut by striking shortcomings: Kingpins got away, and those arrested evaded long prison sentences, sometimes quickly returning to nuclear smuggling...."

Presidential Race

Nate Cohn of the New York Times: "Vice President Joe Biden has less support in the polls than Bernie Sanders and hasn't raised a single dollar for a presidential campaign. Yet if Mr. Biden does decide to seek the presidency, he will pose a greater challenge to Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. In Mr. Biden, Mrs. Clinton would have an opponent who could threaten her hold on the coalition of moderate voters and party elites that seems to have the advantage in this race over the party's white, liberal activist wing, which now supports Mr. Sanders."

"Observers" upset NBC keeps putting Hillary Clinton on air. It's a conspiracy coordinated effort! ...

... Tom Hamburger & Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post: "The FBI's probe into the security of Hillary Rodham Clinton's e-mail has expanded to include a second private technology company, which said Tuesday it plans to provide the law enforcement agency with data it preserved from Clinton's account. The additional data, provided by Connecticut-based Datto Inc., could open a new avenue for investigators interested in recovering e-mails deleted by the former secretary of state ... that have caught the interest of GOP lawmakers." ...

... ** Matt Yglesias: Emailgate reminds us [linked fixed; thanks to Nancy] of Hillary Clinton's capacity to be an effective president. Yeah, she's a shady character -- we already knew that -- but that's what it takes to get one's way in Washington. ...

... The full interview is here. (It begins at 12:16 min. in [after lotsa ads].)

Michael Tomasky of the Daily Beast: "So in the past week or so, it seems that people [i.e., political junkies] have decided that Marco Rubio is going to be the GOP nominee. Tomasky assesses Rubio's perceived advantages & disadvantages & concludes the Democratic nominee can beat him handily. ...

... Ed Kilgore: Tomasky "might have added that the Marco Rubio we see today is not the Marco Rubio we could see in early March after a desperate Jeb Bush has unloaded about $30 million in vicious, hateful ads in Florida media markets just prior to the Sunshine State's winner-take-all primary. I don't know what if any dirt Team Jeb has on Rubio, but I have zero doubt they will use whatever they've got."

Second-Tier Bro. Tom McCarthy of the Guardian: "So seemingly uphill is the battle that Jeb Bush faces in [South Carolina], the third state to vote for president next year, that even an appearance by his brother, George W, who is still popular with Republicans across the country, may barely move the needle, said one senior political operative who spoke on condition of anonymity owing to ongoing work with multiple campaigns.

Alan Rappeport of the New York Times: "Ben Carson ... said on Tuesday that victims of mass shootings should not be timid during attacks, imagining that if he were facing a raging gunman, 'I would not just stand there and let him shoot me.'... Like many Republican presidential candidates who have sought to express sympathy for the victims while maintaining their support for gun rights, Mr. Carson appeared to struggle to address the issue with sensitivity." ...

... Jose delReal of the Washington Post: "... Ben Carson attracted criticism Tuesday for appearing to suggest in an interview that the victims of last week's tragic school shooting in Oregon should have acted more forcefully to prevent the attack." ...

... Charles Pierce: Of all the curious motivations on the modern American Right, the Imaginary Superhero Delusion is one of the most interesting. "'Fi were only there, with my trusty shootin' 'arn, there'd be dead crazy person all over the walls." This condition is usually manifest only among outlaw TV pundits and the comment sections of certain websites. It's truly weird to hear it coming from a guy who, right now, is chasing down Donald Trump in the backstretch. On almost any issue of public policy, Doctor Ben is about eight bulbs short of a chandelier. ...

... Pierce also called our attention to libertarian columnist (and she's not considered a nut case!) Megan McArdle's bright idea (enunciated in 2012) on how to stop gunmen with repeating guns: everybody rush at them! I can't link her original piece because the page keeps messing up my cheap laptop, but Jonathan Chait gave McArdle the "Worst Newtown Reaction Award." Pierce suggests her for Carson's running mate. Apparently, some school districts think rushing the shooter is an excellent idea & are teaching the kiddies to do just that. Un-fucking-believable. The trouble with the U.S. is Americans.

... Nick Gass of Politico: Carson used the same interview of slam President Obama for "politicizing" the Oregon shooting by visiting the families of the victims. Obama will meet privately with the families in a side trip to a previously-scheduled series of West Coast fundraising event. Carson's "posts on Facebook and Twitter holding a sign proclaiming '#IAmAChristian' went viral over the weekend, in reference to some witness accounts that the gunman asked victims to stand up and identify themselves if they were Christian before they were shot, though police did not confirm or deny the accounts." CW: Gosh, somehow I didn't catch the virus. ...

... On "The View," Carson doubled down on his assertion that "Hitler" could happen in the U.S. Ha ha. Carson's campaign manager says Carson should cut that out. ...

... CW: If you want to know how a guy with Carson's "gifted hands" could get so nutty, David Corn provides a clue: it's the reading list.

Donald Trump granted an hour-long interview to Robert Costa, Philip Rucker & Dan Balz of the Washington Post. CW: I suppose this is a must-read. I skipped it. ...

... Juan Cole explains to Donald Trump that dictatorship is not a stable form of government that makes nice neighbors & model citizens. ...

... Top Xenophobe Sez People in U.S. Should Stick to English. BUT His Backers Can't Master the Language. Eliza Collins of Politico: "Grammarly, a writing-enhancement website, looked at comments by the candidates' supporters on the official Facebook pages to find out who was making the most mistakes and who was making the fewest. The clear winner was Democratic contender Lincoln Chafee, who's barely registering at the polls, but whose supporters -- the small number of them that there are -- made just 3.1 mistakes per every 100 words. The clear loser? Donald Trump. His supporters registered a whopping average of 12.6 mistakes per 100 words, putting the Republican front-runner dead last among the 19 campaigns. Democrats fared better overall, with their backers making an average of 4.2 mistakes out of every 100 words. Republicans' supporters made more than double that with 8.7." The Grammarly report is here. ...

... CW: Hardly surprising when Trump himself has a great deal of difficulty putting together an English-language sentence:

     ... The full text of Trump's "sentence" is here. The GOP is now fully Palinized.

Beyond the Beltway

Tierney Sneed: "In a lengthy blog post published on his presidential campaign website Tuesday, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) claimed the father of Oregon gunman Chris Harper Mercer was a 'complete failure' and demanded that he apologize for the shooting. In the blog post -- titled 'We fill Our Culture With Garbage, And We Reap The Result' -- Jindal blamed the prevalence of mass shootings in America on 'deep and serious cultural decay in our society,' jumping from a condemnation of violence in media and a reference to abortion to a discussion of the reported absence of the father of ... Harper Mercer in the young man's life.... Jindal went on to call out 'shallow and simple minded liberals' for blaming 'pieces of hardware for the problem.'"

News Ledes

New York Times: "The United States Coast Guard will suspend its search for survivors of the cargo ship El Faro at sunset Wednesday, officials told the crew's family members. The Coast Guard made the decision after searching six days for the 33 crew members of El Faro, a 790-feet commercial tanker that went missing last week during Hurricane Joaquin. The ship set sail on Sept. 29 and two days later reported that its engine had failed and that it was taking on water and listing 15 degrees."

New York Times: "Tomas Lindahl, Paul L. Modrich and Aziz Sancar were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday for having mapped and explained how the cell repairs its DNA and safeguards its genetic information."

The Commentariat -- October 6, 2015

Internal links & defunct video removed.

Likely no updates today; I'm on the road again -- with no assurance I'll get where I want to go. -- Constant Weader

Binyamin Appelbaum of the New York Times: "Congress is largely responsible for the incomplete recovery from the 2008 financial crisis, Ben S. Bernanke, the former Federal Reserve chairman, writes in a memoir published on Monday. Mr. Bernanke, who left the Fed in January 2014 after eight years as chairman, says the Fed's response to the crisis was bold and effective but insufficient."

Cristina Marcos of the Hill: "Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is postponing House GOP elections for majority leader and whip at the behest of conservatives. House Republicans had been scheduled to vote behind closed doors Thursday for the two positions, but will now just vote on electing a Speaker to replace Boehner at that time."

Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: "The inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security said on Monday that he had reopened an investigation into whether the Secret Service played a role in disclosing embarrassing information about a House committee chairman who had been critical of the agency. The inquiry will examine statements that the Secret Service's director, Joseph P. Clancy, had made about when he knew that Representative Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah and chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, had once applied to be a Secret Service agent but had been rejected, according to the inspector general, John Roth." ...

... CW: Good. Let's keep be reminded that Jason Chaffetz, who now aspires to be third in line to the presidency, could not get a job guarding the president or his pets. (In fairness, people get turned down for jobs all the time for reasons, quixotic or otherwise. Maybe the Secret Service thought Chaffetz was too smart to be a bodyguard. Or too old.)

Benghaaazi, Declassified. Paul Waldman: "Democrats on the Benghazi select committee are apparently fed up with the Republicans on the committee deciding that testimony is too sensitive to release, then leaking selective parts of it to journalists. So they took it upon themselves to release the testimony of former Hillary Clinton aide Cheryl Mills, with more presumably to come." Here's the letter from committee Democrats to Trey Gowdy, via Waldman, & it's a doozy.

Michael Shear of the New York Times: "President Obama will travel to Roseburg, Ore., on Friday to meet privately with the families of the people shot at a community college last week, the White House announced Monday." ...

... Suzy Khimm of the New Republic explains why individual state gun control laws cannot go far enough to ensure gun safety without federal laws to back up & coordinate them. ...

... AND then, There Are the Local Sheriffs. Here is "Sheriff Glenn Palmer, of Grant County, Oregon, tell[ing] the Oregon Senate judiciary committee that he will refuse to enforce new gun laws, namely the 'universal background check'/gun registry bill, SB941." Video. Palmer also called the gun control bill "borderline treasonous."

Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court did not seem inclined on Monday to let a California woman injured in an Austrian train accident sue in American court." ...

... Paul Waldman: "The Supreme Court ... is poised to deliver conservatives a string of sweeping, consequential victories on issues covering a wide swath of American life.... While a couple of [the cases the Court will hear] may be in doubt, it's entirely possible that by the time this term ends next June, the Court will have driven the final stake into affirmative action, struck a fatal blow against public-sector unions, enhanced Republican power in legislatures by reducing the representation of areas with large Hispanic populations, given a green light for Republican-run states to make abortions all but impossible to obtain, and undermined the ACA."

Art via the Week.Jeff Spross of the Week: "A dark and unpleasant truth is that many economic elites actually have a vested interest in anemic job growth and a slack labor market.... [With] full employment..., workers [have] much more leverage to demand wage increases, so they claim a bigger share of all the income generated in the economy. Which means, by definition, the elite's share must shrink.... Full employment also takes power over the business away from owners and management and gives more of it to workers instead.... The rising 'servant economy' rests on a wide relative gap between high and low incomes.... Elites obviously don't want to completely tank the economy. But it certainly works for them if it stays modestly stagnant, maximizing the growth of the pie while minimizing worker bargaining power."

The Longest War. Greg Jaffe & Missy Ryan of the Washington Post: "President Obama is seriously weighing a proposal to keep as many as 5,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan beyond 2016, according to senior U.S. officials, a move that would end his plans to bring U.S. troops home before he leaves office. The proposal presented in August by Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, would focus the remaining American force primarily on counterterrorism operations against the Islamic State, al-Qaeda and other direct threats to the United States."

Liz Sly & Brian Murphy of the Washington Post: "NATO warned Russia to stay away from Turkey on Monday after the Turkish Air Force intercepted Russian warplanes that strayed into its airspace from Syria, underscoring the heightened risk of a wider conflagration as Russia escalates its intervention in the Syrian conflict."

Matthew Rosenberg & Alissa Rubin of the New York Times: "The American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John F. Campbell, on Monday responded publicly to criticism over the American airstrike that destroyed a Doctors Without Borders hospital in the city of Kunduz, claiming that Afghan forces had requested the strike while under fire and conceding that the military had incorrectly reported at first that American troops were under direct threat. But General Campbell's comments, in a sudden and brief news conference at the Pentagon, did not clarify the military's initial claims that the strike, which killed 22 people, had been an accident to begin with. Doctors Without Borders has repeatedly said that there had been no fighting around the hospital, and that the building was hit over and over by airstrikes on Saturday morning, even though the group had sent the American military the precise coordinates of its hospital so it could be avoided." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Thomas Gibbons-Neff of the Washington Post: "The airstrike that killed 22 people at a Doctor’s without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan Saturday was requested by Afghan forces, not U.S. troops, according to the top U.S. general in Afghanistan." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

     ... New Lede: "A heavily-armed U.S. gunship designed to provide added firepower to special operations forces was responsible for shooting and killing 22 people at a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan over the weekend, Pentagon officials said Monday. The attack occurred in the middle of the night Saturday, when Afghan troops -- together with a U.S. special forces team training and advising them -- were on the ground near the hospital in Kunduz, the first major Afghan city to fall to the Taliban since the war began in 2001. The top U.S. general in Afghanistan said Monday the airstrike was requested by Afghan troops who had come under fire, contradicting earlier statements from Pentagon officials that the strike was ordered to protect U.S. forces on the ground."

Presidential Race

Vicki Needham of the Hill: "Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) labeled a new trade deal finalized by the Obama administration on Monday as 'disastrous,' and said he would work to defeat it. Sanders ... said the Trans-Pacific Partnership will lead to the loss of U.S. jobs, adding he was 'disappointed but not surprised' by the decision to complete it."

Hamlet on the Potomac. Dana Milbank: "Joe Biden is running for president, unless he isn't. He will announce his decision this weekend, unless he doesn't. Furthermore, Biden is approaching important deadlines for declaring his candidacy, unless those deadlines don't matter. His advisers really want him to run, except those who don't, and he has been sounding out potential staffers, or perhaps not. He finds the opportunity irresistible, except when he lacks the passion for it."

Anne Gearan of the Washington Post: Ahead of her testimony before the Benghaaazi! committee next week, Hillary Clinton's campaign is running a new cable TV ad highlighting House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy's boast that Republicans set up the committee as a political ploy to undermine Clinton's candidacy & that the scheme had worked.

Eun Kyung Kim of NBC News: "Hillary Clinton, in an interview Monday with Today's Savannah Guthrie, voiced her frustration with the process surrounding the Benghazi committee, lambasting the panel for turning the hearing into a 'partisan political issue.'"

Occasionally, I'd call and tell her she should pay them. She just wouldn't. -- Martin Wilson, Carly Fiorina's 2010 campaign manager

If we didn't win, why do you deserve to get paid? If you don't succeed in business, you shouldn't be the first one to step up and complain about getting paid. -- Jon Cross, Fiorina’s operations director for her Senate campaign

Right. Because a guy who fills a print order for mailers is responsible for a candidate's loss. -- Constant Weader

... Robert Samuels of the Washington Post: "In more than two dozen interviews, staff members, friends, contractors and operatives who worked on [Carly] Fiorina's 2010 campaign singled out one big problem: how the team managed its cash. Many said Fiorina spent too much on television ads with narrow appeal, while others said she was an anemic fundraiser who did not keep close enough tabs on her coffers. There also were concerns that some events were too lavish.... [Early on,] Fiorina reimbursed herself nearly $1.3 million she lent the campaign.... Those who waited the longest to be paid were small businesses with a few dozen employees who did the grunt work of the campaign...." (No link.)

... CW: Fiorina responded to Samuels' article by saying that "I don't think the Washington Post has much credibility anymore. They also said I wasn't a secretary." Fiorina also claimed her 2010 campaign had paid all its debts, which according to some of her creditors -- as Samuels reported -- is not true. As I recall, it also is not true that the Post reported Fiorina "wasn't a secretary." Various reporters, including some at the Post, have written that she worked as a secretary during a college break but that she didn't work her way up from the secretarial pool to the board room, as she likes to pretend. It's always rich when Fiorina questions someone else's credibility, especially when she does so while telling more fibs.

... CW: To be fair, Hillary Clinton didn't fully settle her 2008 campaign debts till 2013, & she had a guy to help her. However, it appears that the main person who didn't get payment for all his billed hours till years later was Mark Penn, whom Hillary had no doubt previously paid much more than he was worth.

Beyond the Beltway

Tim Ghianni of Reuters: "An 11-year-old eastern Tennessee boy was in custody for murder on Monday for shooting and killing an 8-year-old neighbor girl with a shotgun because she would not show him her puppies, authorities said."

News Ledes

New York Times: "A former top United Nations official and a billionaire real estate developer from the Chinese territory of Macau were accused on Tuesday of engaging in a broad corruption scheme, according to federal prosecutors in Manhattan. The former president of the United Nations General Assembly, John W. Ashe, a diplomat from Antigua, was one of six people identified in a criminal complaint outlining a bribery scheme that involved more than $1 million in payments from sources in China for assistance in real estate deals and other business interests. The case is highly embarrassing to the United Nations, which has vowed to act with greater transparency and accountability after past scandals."

New York Times: "Takaaki Kajita of the University of Tokyo and Arthur B. McDonald of Queen's University were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday for their discovery of neutrino oscillations, which show that neutrinos -- a kind of subatomic particle -- have mass.

The Commentariat -- October 5, 2015

Internal links & defunct videos removed.

Afternoon Update:

Matthew Rosenberg & Alissa Rubin of the New York Times: "The American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John F. Campbell, on Monday responded publicly to criticism over the American airstrike that destroyed a Doctors Without Borders hospital in the city of Kunduz, claiming that Afghan forces had requested the strike while under fire and conceding that the military had incorrectly reported at first that American troops were under direct threat. But General Campbell's comments, in a sudden and brief news conference at the Pentagon, did not clarify the military's initial claims that the strike, which killed 22 people, had been an accident to begin with. Doctors Without Borders has repeatedly said that there had been no fighting around the hospital, and that the building was hit over and over by airstrikes on Saturday morning, even though the group had sent the American military the precise coordinates of its hospital so it could be avoided." ...

... Thomas Gibbons-Neff of the Washington Post: "The airstrike that killed 22 people at a Doctor's without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan Saturday was requested by Afghan forces, not U.S. troops, according to the top U.S. general in Afghanistan."

*****

Ha Ha. The fates are laughing at me. I am lost & alone in South Carolina for the foreseeable future, on the best-forgotten Strom Thurmond Highway. The crack South Carolina Highway Patrol directed me right into the area most deeply affected by this 1,000-year flood. There is no way out! Not sure how long I'll have power. Here's the New York Times' story on the rains & flooding. The front page of the (South Carolina) State has links to many storm-related stories. -- Constant Wader

Jackie Calmes of the New York Times: "The United States and 11 other Pacific Rim nations on Monday agreed to the largest regional trade accord in history, a potentially precedent-setting model for global commerce and worker standards that would tie together 40 percent of the world's economy, from Canada and Chile to Japan and Australia. The Trans-Pacific Partnership still faces months of debate in Congress and will inject a new flash point into both parties' presidential contests."

Mike DeBonis & Elise Viebeck of the Washington Post: "The Republican chairman of a high-profile House committee on Sunday shook up the race to succeed outgoing Speaker John A. Boehner, launching a challenge to the heavy favorite, Majority LeaderKevin McCarthy. The bid by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (Utah), chairman of the Oversight ... Committee, comes amid unrest from conservatives driven by doubts that McCarthy (Calif.) will be any more inclined than Boehner to embrace the right flank of the House Republican Conference. Chaffetz said on 'Fox News Sunday' that he was 'recruited' by members displeased with McCarthy's ascent and that he would 'bridge the divide' in the House GOP." ...

... Rachel Bade & John Bresnahan of Politico: Chaffetz pans McCarthy, saying he -- Chaffetz -- is a better public speaker than McCarthy. CW: I don't think that's "panning" McCarthy; it's just stating a fact. ...

... Contributor MAG notes that, buried deep in her column yesterday, MoDo had a point:

Chaffetz (Crabbe), Gowdy (Malfoy) & Goyle (Chaffetz).... See today's Comments thread.

... Jake Sherman, et al., of Politico: "Speaker John Boehner is considering delaying the internal election for House majority leader and majority whip, leaving only the party vote for speaker to be decided on Thursday, according to multiple Republican sources with direct knowledge of the deliberations. Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.) and and Rep. Jim Renacci (R-Ohio) are circulating a letter requesting a delay in the elections for the No. 2 and No. 3 slots in leadership. There is also widespread interest in considering a change in internal party rules that would force candidates to resign chairmanships and leadership slots to run for new office." ...

... CW: Good. Let's drag out this stuff. I'd like to hear more about how well the white supremacist candidate for majority leader is doing: Scott Wong of the Hill: "House Majority Whip Steve Scalise said Sunday he has secured the votes to be elected majority leader, the No. 2 job in GOP leadership." CW: Also let's see if he's as good at whipping votes for himself as he's been at whipping votes for stuff Boehner has had to withdraw at the last moment because Scalise can't count. Should Scalise's auld acquaintances be forgot, Amanda Terkel of the Huff Post brings them to mind.

... Rachel Weiner of the Washington Post: "When he steps down in October, Boehner will leave a legacy not just in official Washington but in the city itself, thanks to a private school voucher program he helped create and keep alive over the past 12 years.... Like his legacy inside Congress, Boehner's legacy in the District is divisive. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) has opposed the voucher program from the start. She has argued that it's both unaccountable and has been unfairly thrust upon the District, whose Democratic leaders bristle at congressional intervention and -- for the most part -- have objected to using public funds for private school tuition.... A 2013 Government Accountability Office report found that the voucher program was poorly managed. A 2012 Washington Post investigation found that hundreds of students were going to uncredited or unconventional schools.... Tuition at most participating private schools is too high to be covered by the vouchers.... (Catholic schools are popular choices for voucher recipients, in large part because tuition there is often lower.) The program is opposed by teachers unions, who want to preserve public dollars for traditional public schools. And a 2010 study found no statistically significant improvement in math or reading skills for voucher recipients...." ...

... Jonathan Chait: how a "sting operation intended to expose the alleged depravity of social liberalism instead wound up exposing the fragile psyche of the American right, which remains unable to handle the realities of holding partial power in a divided government without regularly freaking out."

Lauren Carroll of PolitiFact: "Critics of the House of Representatives’ Benghazi investigation have recently begun to make a strong claim -- that it is officially the longest congressional investigation in history.... In recent days, the claim that this is the longest-running investigation ever has gone somewhat viral. We saw it in The Hill, Salon, The New York Times, Esquire, MSNBC, ABC News and, notably, a Twitter account belonging to [Hillary] Clinton's campaign.... However, we found numerous examples of congressional committee investigations that have lasted much longer than the Benghazi panel's 17 months."

Capitalism Is Awesome, Ctd. When the Golden Boys of Our Gilded Age Dance at the Charity Ball. Paul Theroux, in a New York Times op-ed: "When [Tim] Cook of Apple said he was going to hand over his entire fortune to charity, he was greatly praised by most people, but not by me. It so happened that at that time I was traveling up and down Tim Cook's home state of Alabama, and all I saw were desolate towns and hollowed-out economies, where jobs had been lost to outsourcing, and education had been defunded by shortsighted politicians.... Mr. Cook, investor in and benefactor of China, is not only the guiding hand at Apple, but he is also on the board of Nike, which makes virtually all its products outside the United States.... To me, globalization is the search for a new plantation, and cheaper labor...."

Susan Page of USA Today: "'I think there was a reasonably good chance that, barring stabilization of the financial system, that we could have gone into a 1930s-style depression,' [former Fed chair Ben Bernanke] says now in an interview with USA Today. 'The panic that hit us was enormous -- I think the worst in U.S. history.' With publication of his memoir, The Courage to Act, on Tuesday..., Bernanke has some thoughts about what went right and what went wrong. For one thing, he says that more corporate executives should have gone to jail for their misdeeds. The Justice Department and other law-enforcement agencies focused on indicting or threatening to indict financial firms, he notes, 'but it would have been my preference to have more investigation of individual action, since obviously everything what went wrong or was illegal was done by some individual, not by an abstract firm.'"

Still Awesome. Charles Pierce: The absence of those "jobs-killing regulations" is killing workers: "It is the opinion of virtually every Republican presidential candidate -- and far too many 'moderate' Democrats -- that controlling predatory, murderous industry is a job best left to the states, like Texas. Apparently, just as the semi-monthly massacre is the price we pay for having a Second Amendment, the occasional loss of a town to preventable industrial accidents is the price we pay for having a Tenth. Freedom is a tough room."

Michael Shear of the New York Times: "On Monday, a group whose goal is to prevent gun violence will release a report urging the administration to issue a series of regulations that would clarify existing laws in an effort to reduce gun-related crimes. The group, Everytown for Gun Safety, writes that Mr. Obama could help protect potential gun victims from attackers, especially in cases of domestic abuse, by encouraging five relatively small changes to the way the federal and state governments interpret laws that are already on the books." See also stories on Hillary Clinton's gun safety proposal linked under Presidential Race. ...

... Scott Keyes of the Guardian: "After Thursday's mass shooting in Oregon -- the 45th school shooting in the US this year..., attention has focused on the state's policy of allowing guns on college campuses.... Oregon is one of fewer than a dozen states, along with more conservative counterparts like Mississippi and Utah, which allow concealed carry on college campuses.... A frequent refrain among conservatives is that violent rampages happen in places like college campuses and movie theaters precisely because guns are banned there.... (There is no evidence of a shooter ever selecting a target precisely because it is a gun-free zone.) In the Umpqua case, though, at least one student (and likely others) was carrying a concealed weapon during the massacre.... An armed Umpqua student, John Parker Jr, explained just how difficult, if not impossible, it would have been for an armed bystander to stop the attack."

Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The new [Supreme Court term], which opens on Monday, marks the start of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.'s second decade on the court and will reveal whether the last term's leftward drift and acrimony were anomalies or something more lasting. The court will decide major cases on politically charged issues, including the fate of public unions and affirmative action in higher education. It will most probably hear its first major abortion case since 2007 and revisit the clash between religious liberty and contraception coverage." ...

... Nina Totenberg reports for NPR.

Alissa Rubin & Ashley Southall of the New York Times: "Doctors Without Borders said Sunday that it was withdrawing from Kunduz, a day after its hospital there was hit by what appeared to be an American airstrike, leaving the remaining residents in the embattled northern Afghan city even more vulnerable. The aid organization also raised the death toll in Saturday's airstrike on the hospital, saying that three more patients had died, raising the total fatalities to 22 -- 10 patients and 12 staff members. The charity has said that at least three of the dead patients were children, and that 37 people were wounded in the attack.... The charity, known internationally as Médecins Sans Frontières, or M.S.F., called on its Twitter feed for an independent investigation, 'under the clear presumption that a war crime has been committed.' 'Not a single member of our staff reported any fighting inside the hospital compound prior to the US airstrike on Saturday morning,' it said. 'The hospital was repeatedly & precisely hit during each aerial raid, while the rest of the compound was left mostly untouched.' The Pentagon said in a statement on Sunday that an investigation of the episode under the auspices of the NATO military headquarters in Afghanistan would be completed in a matter of days. The United States military has also opened 'a formal investigation to conduct a thorough and comprehensive inquiry,' it said in the statement. The Afghan government has also vowed to investigate the airstrike." ...

... Emma Graham-Harrison of the Guardian: "The attack that killed at least 19 people at an Afghan hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is the latest in a long line of bloody misjudgments by foreign forces in Afghanistan. Deaths from Nato airstrikes, which at their worst point killed hundreds of Afghan civilians a year, were a key factor in turning Afghan sentiment against foreign troops during more than a decade of war." ...

... Eric Schmitt & Tom Arango of the New York Times: "With alarming frequency in recent years, thousands of American-trained security forces in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia have collapsed, stalled or defected, calling into question the effectiveness of the tens of billions of dollars spent by the United States on foreign military training programs, as well as a central tenet of the Obama administration's approach to combating insurgencies.... The Pentagon-trained army and police in Iraq's Anbar Province, the heartland of the Islamic State militant group, have barely engaged its forces, while several thousand American-backed government forces and militiamen in Afghanistan's Kunduz Province were forced to retreat last week when attacked by several hundred Taliban fighters. And in Syria, a $500 million Defense Department program to train local rebels to fight the Islamic State has produced only a handful of soldiers." ...

... Phillip Carter, in a Washington Post op-ed, on why the U.S.'s "security assistance" programs don't work: "It fails first and most basically because it hinges upon an alignment of interests that rarely exists between Washington and its proxies.... Second, the security-assistance strategy gives too much weight to the efficacy of U.S. war-fighting systems and capabilities.... The third problem with security assistance is that it risks further destabilizing already unstable situations and actually countering U.S. interests."

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd." Charles Pierce: "Politico Finds a New Way to Call President Obama Uppity." ...

... CW: I had to fact-check Driftglass because of his seemingly-preposterous claim that Tuck Chodd had not only Rich Lowry & Ruth Marcus ("when you can't get David Brooks, David-Brooks-in-a-dress-will-do") on his Press the Meat panel of expert journalists, he added "Amy Holmes (of Glenn Beck's The Blaze) to bring in the unhinged, the shut-in and the doomsday preppers." Driftglass was right! Go to the videotape! Next week, how about Crazy Internet Guy? AND his cat?

Presidential Race

John Wagner of the Washington Post: "Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) drew a crowd of more than 20,000 [in Boston, Mass.] on Saturday night, building on the momentum of a week during which he posted a quarterly fundraising total that nearly matched that of Hillary Rodham Clinton, his chief rival for the Democratic presidential nomination. The boisterous turnout at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center appeared to far exceed a previous record for a primary candidate in Massachusetts: a crowd of about 10,000 that came to see then-senator Barack Obama eight years ago as he campaigned for the presidency, according to the Boston Globe." ...

... Margaret Talbot of the New Yorker profiles Bernie Sanders & discusses his popularity among younger voters.

Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "On the heels of the nation's latest mass shooting, Hillary Rodham Clinton will issue proposals on Monday to curb gun violence, including holding out the potential of using executive actions. Mrs. Clinton ... will announce the new proposals in separate town-hall-style events in New Hampshire, a state with a Democratic senator who has voted for some gun-control measures but where there is a thriving gun and hunting culture." ...

... Greg Sargent: Clinton's proposal challenges President Obama to do something and Bernie Sanders (& all Republican candidates) to address gun policy issues.

Worse than Cheney. Paul Krugman: "... you might expect people like [Marco] Rubio, who says he wants to 'unleash our energy potential,' and [Jeb] Bush, who says he wants to 'embrace wind and solar as engines of jobs and growth.' But they don't. Indeed, they're less open-minded than Dick Cheney, which is quite an accomplishment. Why?... Follow the money. We used to say that the G.O.P. was the party of Big Energy, but these days it would be more accurate to say that it's the party of Old Energy."

"Operation Wetback," Redux. And Yuuuge. William Finnegan of the New Yorker: Donald Trump's "political shortsightedness is astounding, and the idea that we would revert to the unsuccessful immigration-control methods of a dubious 1954 campaign is absurd and depressing."

News Ledes

New York Times: "An American Airlines jetliner with 147 passengers onboard made an emergency landing in Syracuse on Monday after the pilot fell ill and died, aviation officials said. The aircraft's co-pilot took control of the plane after the captain became incapacitated, and landed safely at Syracuse Hancock International Airport shortly after 7 a.m."

New York: "The Coast Guard believes that the cargo ship El Faro, which has been missing since Hurricane Joaquin struck the Caribbean, sank in the storm. The ship had a crew of 33, and 28 Americans were aboard."

New York Times: "Henning Mankell, the Swedish novelist and playwright best known for police procedurals that were translated into a score of languages and sold by the millions throughout the world, died Monday morning in Goteborg, Sweden. He was 67.

New York Times: "Three scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering 'therapies that have revolutionized the treatment of some of the most devastating parasitic diseases,' the Nobel Committee announced on Monday. William C. Campbell and Satoshi Omura won for developing a new drug, Avermectin, which has radically lowered the incidence of river blindness and lymphatic filariasis (elephantiasis). They shared the prize with Youyou Tu, who discovered Artemisinin, a drug that has significantly reduced death rates from malaria."

Guardian: "Islamic State militants have destroyed the Arch of Triumph in the ancient city of Palmyra, a monument that dates back to the Roman empire, Syria's chief of antiquities told the Guardian. Maamoun Abdulkarim said sources in the city, which was conquered by Isis after a week-long siege in May, had informed him the arch was destroyed on Sunday in the latest act of vandalism against Syria's cultural heritage perpetrated by Isis."