Monday
Apr252016
The Commentariat -- April 26, 2016
Presidential Race
Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania & Rhode Island hold presidential primaries today. See also Down-Ballot Races below.
Lisa Hagen of the Hill: "Hillary Clinton said Monday said if she's elected president, women would make up half of her Cabinet."
Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), at a Hillary Clinton campaign rally in Delaware, demonstrates how to sign off-key in every way:
... CW: So how hard did Clinton work for those big corporate speaking fees, which she then deposited in one of her tax-evasion Delaware corporations? (See yesterday's Commentariat.)
Get Over It, People. Brian Beutler of the New Republic: "... the level of fretting over Sanders's swipes at Clinton has been completely out of proportion to the actual damage done.... Compared to the 2008 Democratic primary -- and, more proximately, to the ongoing Republican primary -- Democratic infighting this year has been beanbag.... Clinton was far harder on Obama than Sanders is being on Clinton.... Even so, held up against the way Donald Trump is ingesting the writhing Republican Party in 2016, the 2008 Democratic primary was a model of civility." -- CW
Steve M. on the Koch announcement: "... they believe that if they can push a lot of economic and regulatory decisions down to the state and local levels, they'll win, because Kochite Republicans have done extraordinarily well in gubernatorial and legislative elections in the Obama years. The Kochs have accepted that they're not going to get a favorite into the White House in 2016, and yes, they might not be sad if they have Hillary Clinton as president -- because they intend to use her as a foil. If you want to know how they expect that to work, read the news from 2009." -- safari ...
... Andy Borowitz: "Charles and David Koch, the billionaire industrialists who have spent decades acquiring a world-class collection of Republicans, revealed over the weekend that they are considering purchasing their first Democrat.... 'It can't be worse than Scott Walker,' [Charles Koch] said." CW: See Sunday's Commentariat for context.
Teddy's & Johnny's Report Cards Revealed -- "Plays Well with Others: F." Alexander Burns, et al., of the New York Times: "The temporary alliance between Senator Ted Cruz and Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, formed to deny Donald J. Trump the Republican presidential nomination, was already in danger of fraying to the point of irrelevance on Monday, only hours after it was announced to great fanfare." -- CW ...
Gail Collins & Arthur Brooks have a "Conversation." Collins explains the Cruz-Kasich "alliance": "Yeah, the barbarian hordes are galloping down the mountain and the two towns at the bottom agree to work together on improved streetlights." -- CW
Lauren Fox of TPM: "Ted Cruz has no way to win the Republican nomination without a contested convention, but he's already busy scouting out his running mate. According to a report from the Weekly Standard, the Cruz campaign is vetting former Republican presidential candidate and Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina for vice president." -- CW
Alice Ollstein of ThinkProgress: "At a rally Monday in Rhode Island..., Donald Trump went after the governor of Virginia for signing an executive order that restores the voting rights of more than 200,000 ex-felons. 'That's crooked politics,' he told the booing crowd. 'They're giving 200,000 people that have been convicted of heinous crimes, horrible crimes, the worst crimes, the right to vote because, you know what? They know they're gonna vote Democrat. They're gonna vote Democrat and that could be the swing. That's how disgusting and dishonest our political system is.'" -- safari
Kenneth Vogel and Eli Stokols of Politico: "Donald Trump is bristling at efforts to implement a more conventional presidential campaign strategy, and has expressed misgivings about the political guru behind them, Paul Manafort, for overstepping his bounds...Now Trump is taking steps to return some authority to Manafort's chief internal rival, campaign manager Corey Lewandowski." --safari
Andy Kroll of Huffington Post: "Trump at War: Trump's pronouncements on foreign policy, combined with his years of broadsides, have set off a very real fear within military circles about what might happen were he to become president.... Never before, they say, has a candidate gotten so close to the White House with such little respect for the military." -- LT
Wherein Donald Trump Complains that John Kasich Has "Disgusting" Table Manners. Did you see him? He has the news conference all the time when he's eating. I have never seen a human being eat in such a disgusting fashion. This guy takes a pancake and he shoves it in his mouth. It is disgusting. Did you want that for your president? I don't think so. -- Donald Trump, in Rhode Island Monday
Wherein Trump Demonstrates the Meaning of "Projection." Jesse Byrnes of the Hill: "Donald Trump on Monday evening likened ... John Kasich to a 'spoiled brat' for staying in the GOP race on the eve of voting in five states." -- CW
Brad DeLong drunkblogs Jim Vandehei's wail for a third-party candidate -- like Mark Zuckerberg. There's a typo in the title, but that's what you get for drunkblogging. It is hard to be more shallow than Vandehei, who is about to leave Politico because it isn't fulfilling enough or something. To be fair to Vandehei, we should consider the possibility that he was drunkopinionating. -- CW
Down-Ballot Races
Burgess Everett & Rachel Bade of Politico: Democratic Senate primaries in Maryland and Pennsylvania are hotly-contested. -- CW
Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post: President "Obama has presided over a greater loss of electoral power for his party than any two-term president since World War II. And 2016 represents one last opportunity for him to reverse that trend.... The first big tests of the rebuilding efforts comes Tuesday in Pennsylvania, where Obama is taking the unusual step of wading into two ontested Democratic primaries, endorsing Senate hopeful Katie McGinty and Josh Shapiro, a Montgomery County official and early supporter of his who is hoping to become state attorney general." -- CW
The REDMAP ratfuck. David Daley of New York: "As written in the Constitution, every state redraws all of its lines every ten years. That means elections in 'zero years' matter more than others. Jankowski [a GOP tactician] realized it would be possible to target states where the legislature is in charge of redistricting, flip as many chambers as possible, take control of the process, and redraw the lines. Boom. Just like that -- if Republicans could pull it off -- the GOP would go from demographically challenged to the catbird seat for a decade. At least." Read on. --safari
Other News & Views
Michael Shear of the New York Times: During his European visit, President Obama, "recognizing the limitations [of foreign policy] aspirations, spoke in ... measured tones as he gently urged allies to do more to defend themselves and solve their own problems." -- CW
Sari Horwitz of the Washington Post: "U.S. District Judge Thomas D. Schroeder ... Monday upheld North Carolina's controversial new voting law, dealing a blow to critics who said the state's rules will discourage minorities from casting ballots during this fall's presidential election. The voting law, passed by North Carolina's legislature in 2013, is among the strictest in the country.... Richard L. Hasen, an election-law expert at the University of California at Irvine, said Monday night that the case will almost certainly be appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit...." CW: Schroeder is a Bush II appointee.
... Nelson Schwartz & Quoctrung Bui of the New York Times: "... research to be unveiled this week by four leading academic economists suggests that the damage to manufacturing jobs from a sharp acceleration in globalization since the turn of the century has contributed heavily to the nation's bitter political divide.... The researchers found that areas hardest hit by trade shocks were much more likely to move to the far right or the far left politically.... Voters in congressional districts hardest hit by Chinese imports tended to choose more ideologically extreme lawmakers." -- CW
No Bribes Required. Rick Hasen, in a Los Angeles Times op-ed, on how politicians' dialing-for-dollars affects their policies. "When you spend hours every day interacting with those wealthy enough to make four-, five-, six- and even seven-figure donations, you can't but help to have your priorities influenced by their concerns.... Money has influence even before it is donated.... Every senator from New York, including [Hillary] Clinton from 2001 to 2009, knows that staking out positions against Wall Street can close wallets or send money streaming to their opponents. This is a deeply troubling campaign finance system, one which is slipping dangerously toward plutocracy. But it doesn't take a bribe for money to matter, a lot." -- CW
Rep. Raul Grijalva [D-Az.] in The Nation: '"Fatal Neglect: How ICE Ignores Deaths in Detention' [by the ACLU] analyzes previously unpublished death reviews and demonstrates how egregious violations of medical standards by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) played a significant role in nearly half of the deaths for which the organizations were able to review documents. In three-quarters of deaths attributed to substandard medical care, the victims were held in for-profit prisons. Their deaths are tragic proof that profit motives have perverse and harmful effects on our judicial system."--safari
Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "As the [U.S. Supreme Court] justices are set to review ... former Virginia governor [Bob McDonnell]'s [R] conviction this week, other politicians will be watching for a decision on when a favor crosses the line into an 'official act,' an area that has become increasingly blurry in the world of campaign contributions." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Monica Davey of the New York Times: "A man who says J. Dennis Hastert, the former speaker of the House, molested him decades ago when the man was 14 filed a lawsuit against Mr. Hastert on Monday, saying he was owed $1.8 million of the money he had been promised as compensation for the abuse." -- CW ...
... Digby in Salon: "Dennis Hastert has one man to thank for his career as speaker: former Texas congressman Tom DeLay, the Republican hatchet man who rammed the impeachment of Bill Clinton through the House and out-lasted Newt Gingrich in the GOP leadership...DeLay was the power behind Hastert's throne, the whip known as 'the Hammer' who preached and perfected the brand of take-no-prisoners politics currently practiced by the Tea Party and House Freedom Caucus. He was the man who made Ted Cruz possible." --safari
Sam Thielman of the Guardian: "The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is letting the third-largest cable company in the US buy the second-largest: chairman Tom Wheeler has recommended that the body approve TV and internet distribution giant Charter's plan to purchase Time Warner as well as the smaller Bright House Networks, so long as the new company abides by several conditions." -- CW
Beyond the Beltway
American "Justice," Ctd. Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post: Muskogee County, "Oklahoma police took $53,000 from a Christian band raising money for an orphanage. A Texas man who is a refugee from Burma was carrying the cash -- most of it from ticket sales for the band he managed -- in his car when officers stopped him and seized the money under the state's forfeiture law.... Oklahoma has some of the most permissive forfeiture laws in the nation, according to a 2015 report by the Institute for Justice, a civil liberties law firm." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Update. Sometimes Shaming Works. Samantha Vicent of the Tulsa World: "More than $50,000 seized by Muskogee County deputies in a traffic stop will be returned to a Dallas man and others who said the money was intended for a Thai orphanage and a Christian school in Myanmar. Eh Wah, who lives in Dallas and is originally from Myanmar, was pulled over on U.S. 69 for having a broken brake light about 6:30 p.m. Feb. 27. Authorities seized $53,000 they found in his car and indicated that it would not be returned. The Washington Post reported on the issue ahead of a press release issued by the man's attorneys Monday." CW: Hey, I wonder what would have happened if the money was collected for Muslim orphans.
Richard Fausset of the New York Times: North Carolina's "bathroom" "law, and the backlash against it, have introduced a ... volatile energy to state politics here, roiling a governor's race that could be the nation's most competitive. It is also affecting other crucial contests, including that of Senator Richard Burr, who hopes to fend off a vigorous Democratic challenge from Deborah K. Ross, a former State House member and former state director of the American Civil Liberties Union." -- CW
Roxana Hegemon of TPM: "Voting rolls in Kansas are in "chaos" because of the state's proof-of-citizenship requirements, the American Civil Liberties Union has argued in a court document, noting that about two-thirds of new voter registration applications submitted during a three-week period in February are on hold." --safari ...
... Alan Pyke of Think Progress: "... Gov. Sam Brownback (R[-Kansas]) came to Washington on Wednesday to discuss his poverty policies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. At one point, the embattled governor justified his policy of forcing people off of food stamps if they can't find a job by likening low-income and jobless people to lazy college students.... Brownback was the first of several governors to decide to reinstate a hard and fast 20-hours-per-week work requirement for able-bodied adults with no dependents." -- CW
Mark Berman of the Washington Post: "Joey Meek, a friend of the man accused of killing nine parishioners in Charleston, S.C., last year, intends to plead guilty to two charges related to the massacre, according to a court document filed Monday. Meek was indicted in September on counts of making false statements to the FBI and 'misprision of a felony,' which meant that he allegedly concealed his knowledge of the crimes. He had pleaded not guilty to these counts, which carry up to eight years in prison." -- CW
Mitch Smith of the New York Times: "The family of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old boy whose fatal shooting by the Cleveland police in 2014 prompted national outrage, is set to receive $6 million from the city in a settlement announced Monday in federal court records." -- CW (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Jeremy Stahl of Slate: "The head of Cleveland's police union used the occasion of the city's $6 million settlement with the family of Tamir Rice to blame the 12-year-old for his shooting death at the hands of police and to tell the victim's loved ones how to spend the money." -- CW
Larry Neumeister of the Boston Globe: "New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady must serve a four-game 'Deflategate' suspension imposed by the NFL, a federal appeals court ruled Monday, overturning a lower judge and siding with the league in a battle with the players union." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
AP: "A Pennsylvania appeals court has rejected Bill Cosby's attempt to throw out his criminal case because of what he called a decade-old deal not to prosecute him. The mid-level state superior court ruled Monday that the criminal sex assault case against Cosby can proceed, prompting the district attorney to press for a preliminary hearing date." -- CW
Way Beyond
Kirk Semple of the New York Times: "... an international panel of investigators ... ha[s] been examining the ... [disappearance of] 43 students ... in the city of Iguala[, Mexico] one night in September 2014 amid violent, chaotic circumstances.... The reason for the students' abduction remains a mystery. Despite apparent stonewalling by the Mexican government in recent months, the panel's two reports on the case, the most recent of which was released on Sunday, provide the fullest accounting of the events surrounding the students' disappearance, which also left six other people dead, including three students, and scores wounded." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
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Reader Comments (17)
Has the NRA seen this? Stephen Loomis, CPPA President says: “Something positive must come from this tragic loss” .... “That would be educating youth of the dangers of possessing a real or replica firearm.” I couldn't agree more.
Oh, the horror of seeing the sour puss faces of Cruz and Fiorina together in a photo. *shudder*
The story, posted above about the Missing Mexican Students, is exactly why the NYT and Big media is necessary: small time media will never be respected by governments until they can show audience. And this story highlights why Gannett should not be able to consolidate the media production place more by buying Tribune: if they don't tell the story then nobody who is respected will tell the story of how Mexican government operatives murdered somebody's children for what? The consolidation of editorial control of Gannett and Tribune will keep too many important stories in the hands of MBAs who have all metrics and no nuance beyond quarterly profits. And then those MBAs retire at 55 to Roche Harbor. Dead kids in Mexico will become something MBAs media-types talk about on a golf course. On a private golf course. In Georgia, perhaps. Near Augusta perhaps. While being served nice drinks. Pulitzer would probably roll over in his grave if he knew about such a bunch of defenestrated writers and their spineless administrators.
The Cleveland police union chief just couldn't contain himself. When wingers say they want more guns for everyone, they usually only say "except for Those people" with a wink and a nod.
The NewYorker article, linked yesterday, covering the atrocious and shameful state of the treatment (serial abuse, torture, beatings, starvation, murder) of mentally ill inmates in American prisons paints a depressing and rank picture of the consequences of right-wing social policy, and like so many contemporary ills in American society, can be traced back to Ronald Reagan.
Just before the 1980 election, then president Carter signed into law a comprehensive bill addressing the problems of caring for mentally disturbed Americans. Reagan, after taking office, declined to implement a single part of this bill but instead broke up the money set aside for the care of the mentally ill, block granted it to states with no mandate, then set about deinstitutionalizing tens of thousands of patients, just as he had done as governor of California, many of whom ended up untreated, homeless, or in prison. As the article mentions, prisons now house the vast majority of mentally ill Americans, most of whom get no treatment, or if they do, the treatments come with regular beatings.
Republicans don't do mental illness, despite the fact that so many seem thusly afflicted.
It's probably a Post Hoc fallacy to pin the Reagan assassination attempt on his deinstitutionalization policies and his willful ignoring of the problems of the mentally ill, but the fact that he was shot by a mentally disturbed man clearly pointed to a huge problem the new administration tried to pretend did not exist.
And today, a generation later, the mentally ill are still living in Right Wing World. It's really not a whole lot different from Red China where mental illness is considered shameful, something to be hidden from view and never acknowledged, although in this country, wingers are just as likely to paint the mentally disturbed as just another bunch of lazy moochers.
Now we hear GOP front runner Herr Drumpf decrying the restoration of voting rights to former prisoners who have served their time, because the observance of human rights is not part of the Confederate DNA.
Unless you're talking about their rights, which are legion and sacrosanct. Responsibility toward and for others? Not so much.
The Republican Way.
Absolutely! I'm all for more women represented in government positions and elsewhere, but upon reading the above linked (The Hill) article, where this quote appeared: “Hillary Clinton said Monday said if she's elected president, women would make up half of her Cabinet.” —took me back to when we finally got our first female AG (courtesy Clinton, the Bill's Cabinet), Janet Reno.
That was an exercise with one disastrous headline after another that we followed for weeks through the failed nominations of Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood. If Clinton, the Hillary is choosing this time...hope the vetting process has improved.
Another NPR mini-rant.
Not about NPR per se, but about some idiots interviewed in Connecticut about the Sanders/Clinton candidacies.
The reporter, talking to a number of Sanders supporters, asked them if they would throw their weight behind Clinton were she to win. Nearly all gave out with a categorical "no". They want a third party candidate. Yeah, and I'd like a unicorn to show up in my front yard with a leprechaun on his back carrying a pot of gold.
PD, don't you live in Connecticut? Talk to some sense into these kooks, willya?
Jeez.
These people are gonna Ralph Nader us. Again!
@AK:
Check out the article linked above about immigrants also dying off in occulted corners of the American justice system. That dead cold reality, coupled with the shameful treatment of the mentally ill highlighted yesterday, are two amazing sources of national disgrace as the scandelous acts carry on while those invested with the power to stop them are too busy hussling for campaign contributions to notice a few of society's most vulnerable disappear from this Earth.
Donaldo's latest kvetch, kvetch no. 3,567: John Kasich's eating habits.
"This guy takes a pancake and he shoves it in his mouth. It is disgusting."
Is it just me or does this remind you of a "Seinfeld" trope? Remember all the weird things that used to irritate "Seinfeld" characters? Close talkers, low talkers, sponge-worthiness, man hands, double dipping, shrinkage, whether someone had actually picked their nose or not, it was a never ending litany of stupid tics.
This is Trump!
And remember what they used to say about "Seinfeld"?
A show about nothing.
Which brings us to kvetch no. 3,568: Looking presidential.
It appears, according to a Politico piece linked above, that Donaldo is pee-ohed that his new vizier, Paul Manafort is trying to make him look (gasp!) respectable! This will not do, dammit! After all, he doesn't need to look presidential, he has the best words! So it now seems that most favored thug-boy Lewandowski is back in. Looks like Don Donaldo is tiring of his slick mafia consigliere, Manafort, and prefers the company of very unslick street muscle, the leg breaker Lewandowski.
Can you just picture what a complete Bizzaro fire drill his administration would be? This guy's out, that guy's in. Someone picked his nose at a cabinet meeting. Disgusting! You're fired! Another advisor suggests a conference call with European heads of state over trade negotiations. Fuck no! You tell them they do what I say or they're out! And you're fired too. Where's my MAGA baseball hat? I'm on GMA in five minutes.
Can't say it wouldn't be riveting. Kinda like watching a train wreck in slow motion with bodies flying out the windows.
So the Kochs are sitting out this Presidential election. They may be evil, but they are not dumb. They can do the math and that math (and their experience in the last two elections) tells them it's much easier to control elections within states than it is to influence them on a national level.
Consider the voter limitation laws and gerrymandering they have supported at the state level. There you can limit and isolate the voting power of people you don't wish to have a voice effectively enough to affect the results of local and state elections. Of course, many of those elections have national consequences. Witness our current witless House and Senate. But the effect of those measures cannot be extended so easily to Presidential elections.
When it comes to Presidential politics, those people you don't like can still coalesce in large enough numbers to control the outcome. The larger states, those with the bigger popular and electoral numbers, have not adopted the same voter restrictions that many smaller states have put in place, which leaves millions who would not support Koch measures still enfranchised. Additionally, many national hot-button issues like abortion rights and the rampant economic inequality apparent even to dummy Trumpsters, but which I don't imagine bothers the Kochs at all, are national losers for the Right.
As it is, our Federal Senate and House, whose members are elected state by state, act effectively as a minority government, where the popular will is repeatedly ignored, blunted or deflected, in other words the kind of government that serves the Kochs and their fellows far better than it does the majority. For Koch people, smiles all around.
But the Kochs have figured out that at the national Presidential level, our system still almost approaches democracy....and since they haven't yet found a way to eliminate that, they'll focus on the states where their money is better spent and they're more like to get what they want.
@Akhilleus: Take your pick:
Supreme Court Nominee: Trump: some New York lawyer who is not on the list Trump said his nominee would come from. Clinton: Chelsea Clinton.
Chief of Staff: Trump: Lewandowski. Clinton: Sid Blumenthal.
Cabinet: Trump: all-male, everyone inexperienced & incompetent except Fla. Gov. Rick Scott, who will head up the runt EPA. Clinton: All super-wealthy people, most with shady backgrounds, but half of them women.
Impeachment: Trump: will be impeached for cause. Senate will remove him from office unless Cruz is his veep. Clinton: Impeachment on Day One.
Foreign policy: Trump: Build a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border; bomb some places. Clinton: Bomb some places.
Domestic policy: Trump: Repeal ObamaCare, copy it except eliminate healthcare perks for women, call it TrumpCare; repeal Dodd-Frank; remove every piece of office equipment from EPA except erasers, ban use of term "climate change." Clinton: cut Social Security, give speeches favoring equal pay.
White House Decor: Trump: raid Fort Knox to gold-plate everything. Clinton: more tasteful & expensive than last Clinton administration, will be one of 361 excuses for impeachment.
Marie
More sadness--not the political variety. It seems that Prince's use of opioids was not limited to Percocet--which is hardly a surprise. Most celebrities who are able easily to get drugs have a veritable pharmacy at their disposal, along with highly unethical doctors.
Here is the latest, written by Stanton Peele, a well known expert in drug addiction.
http://www.alternet.org/drugs/while-tests-are-still-pending-it-possible-draw-some-conclusions-about-princes-drug-issues?akid=14195.220009.bgekYz&rd=1&src=newsletter1055261&t=16
Marie,
Don't worry, Confederates are already making plans for Hillary. They wanted Obama to be a one term president. They'll want Hillary to be a one year president. In which case she should pick Elizabeth Warren for her VP. They'll never impeach her then.
@Akhilleus: Now that is one excellent plan.
Marie
Marie,
I sent it off to Hillary's campaign with a consultancy bill for $225,000. I figure if Goldman can pay her that much for a half hour of soothing forget-me-nots, she can fork over that amount for an impeachment-proof plan.
Haven't heard back yet.
@Akhilleus: Hillary should be happy to give up a whole hour's working hard for the money for the Warren Job Security Program. I'll be the check is in the mail.
Marie
I don't think prisoners should lose the right to vote, let alone ex-prisoners. Perhaps I have just lived in too many pinko places where they can and do vote, and where their voting rights are automatically returned once they are released from prison, and it hasn't brought the end of civilisation. And, you know, Democracy and all. There are no reasonable arguments for preventing citizens (even crazy ones!) from voting. Not that confederates ever rely on reasonable argument.