The Commentariat -- August 18, 2015

Internal links removed.

Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "In an otherwise minor decision about a municipal sign ordinance, the [Supreme C]ourt in June transformed the First Amendment. Robert Post, the dean of Yale Law School and an authority on free speech, said the decision was so bold and so sweeping that the Supreme Court could not have thought through its consequences. The decision’s logic, he said, endangered all sorts of laws, including ones that regulate misleading advertising and professional malpractice. 'Effectively,' he said, 'this would roll consumer protection back to the 19^th century.'... There is little question that the decision, Reed v. Town of Gilbert, marks an important shift toward treating countless laws that regulate speech with exceptional skepticism. Though just two months old, the decision has already required lower courts to strike down laws barring panhandling, automated phone calls and 'ballot selfies.'”

Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: "The Internal Revenue Service said Monday that hackers had gained access to the tax returns of more than 300,000 people, a far higher number than the agency had reported previously. In the coming days, the I.R.S. will send 220,000 letters to taxpayers whose returns were probably viewed by the hackers, the agency said."

Michael Crowley of Politico: "Dozens of arms control and nuclear nonproliferation experts have signed a statement endorsing the Iran nuclear deal, the latest salvo in a lobbying campaign battle ahead of a congressional vote next month on President Barack Obama’s landmark agreement with Tehran. The Arms Control Association, a nonpartisan group based in Washington, will release the statement Tuesday morning. It declares the deal limiting Iran’s nuclear program in return for sanctions relief 'a net-plus for international nuclear nonproliferation efforts.'” ...

... CW: But, hey, what do "experts" know? ...

... Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, thinks up some excuses to oppose the Iran nuclear deal & writes them down, & the Washington Post prints them out.

Anna Palmer of Politico: Planned Parenthood is fighting back against Stupid Republican Tricks, partially by running ads targeting Republican Sens. Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, "Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire and Rob Portman in Ohio.... This week’s ads follow late-July ads by Planned Parenthood in West Virginia, Indiana and Washington, D.C. targeting key senators whose support for Planned Parenthood was seen as being in jeopardy. Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Joe Donnelly of Indiana broke with their Democratic colleagues and voted to defund Planned Parenthood before the August recess."

Jennifer Haberkorn of Politico: "The Obama administration ... wrote in a letter to Sens. Joni Ernst [RTP-Iowa] and Roy Blunt [RTP-Mo.] ... [that] there are no known violations of the country’s fetal tissue laws among government researchers or the companies that supply the tissue." ...

... Peter Sullivan of the Hill: "Republican leaders on the House Judiciary Committee are asking the Department of Justice (DOJ) for information on the enforcement of fetal tissue laws, as part of its investigation into Planned Parenthood. Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and subcommittee chairman Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) on Monday wrote a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, asking for the history of the enforcement of two laws banning profiting from fetal tissue sales and another law banning partial birth abortions. The lawmakers are looking for past instances in which violations of those three laws were alleged." ...

... Joan McCarter of Daily Kos: "There's no evidence whatsoever in these videos that Planned Parenthood violated the law ... so these guys are resorting to potential past violations. It's a fishing expedition.... They're treading a very thin line here of completely alienating not just women, but the entire population of patients and the medical community (minus Ben Carson )who are relying on fetal tissue research for critical therapies.... They're now getting into the whole arena of medical research and even of organ donation (and where were they when Dick Cheney was getting a heart?), dragging them further and further away from the political mainstream. All for the votes of religious extremists."

Capitalism Is Awesome, Ctd. Rank & Yank. Noam Scheiber of the New York Times: "... however much the most sought-after employers in the country may be changing their official policies — brutal competition remains an inescapable component of workers’ daily lives. In some ways it’s getting worse.... The basic problem is that the rewards for ascending to top jobs at companies like Netflix and Goldman Sachs are not just enormous, they are also substantially greater than at companies in the next tier down.... Grueling competition remains perhaps the defining feature of the upper echelon in today’s white-collar workplace."

Oops! J. K. Trotter of Gawker: "Earlier this year, Gawker Media sued the State Department over its response to a Freedom of Information Act request we filed in 2013, in which we sought emails exchanged between reporters at 33 news outlets and Philippe Reines, the former deputy assistant secretary of state and aggressive defender of Hillary Clinton. Over two years ago, the department claimed that 'no records responsive to your request were located' — a baffling assertion, given Reines’ well-documented correspondence with journalists. Late last week, however, the State Department [said] ... it had located an estimated 17,000 emails responsive to Gawker’s request.... These newly discovered records are from Reines’ government account, and are not related to the 20 boxes of government-business emails stored on his personal account that Reines recently handed over to the government...." ...

... Alex Griswold of Mediaite: "Reines had something of a reputation of sending extremely confrontational emails to reporters telling them to “\'f*ck off,' and Gawker no doubt wanted to mine his emails for more gems. But to their surprise, the State Department responded that they couldn’t find a single email Reinnes had sent to any reporters, even though emails to those outlets were already known to exist. In response, Gawker took the State Department to court. Lo and behold, an August 13 filing by State Department lawyers announced that they had discovered '5.5 gigabytes of data containing 81,159 emails of varying length' written by Reinnes. Approximately 17,855 of those emails were considered to be responsive to the email request originally filed by Gawker." ...

... CW: Maybe Hillary used a personal server so her correspondence wouldn't get lost.

"The Center Cannot Hold." E. J. Dionne turns to Yeats to illuminate today's politics. "The center is under siege all over the democratic world.... In country after country, traditional, broadly based parties and their politicians face scorn.... The decay of middle-ground politics is a problem for both the center-left and the center-right, but it may be a bigger problem for the moderate left whose task, as the late historian Tony Judt put it, has always been to provide 'incremental improvements upon unsatisfactory circumstances.'... Political Establishments worthy of the name and middle-ground politicians who care about more than power understand the dangers of a Yeats moment — to social harmony, to tolerance and, if things go really badly, to democracy and freedom.” ...

... CW: Cheerful! We do have quite a few rough beasts slouching toward Bethlehem.

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Brian Flood of TV Newser: The Huffington Post is sticking to its decision to relegate cover of Donald Trump to its entertainment pages. In response to an inquiry by Flood, the Huff Post's Danny Shea & Ryan Grim wrote, "We’re more committed to the decision than ever. Over the last month, we’ve seen our central argument proven right: that Trump is nothing more than a sideshow and not a legitimate presidential contender with serious policy ideas for moving the country forward." ...

... CW: This is just stupid. None of the GOP candidates has "serious policy ideas for moving the country forward." Is Huff Post going to move its coverage of all the GOP candidates to the entertainment page? By their own standard, they should. The problem there is that most of the candidates aren't entertaining, either. Maybe the Huff Post needs a new page titled something like, "Boring, Ignorant, Reactionary Thugs Politico Covers." BTW, as of now (12:51 am ET), the photo blazoned across the Huff Post's front page is of the big boys' debate, with Trump front & center, the the accompanying article (also linked below) -- which appears under the HuffPost Politics section -- cites, first, "business mogul Donald Trump." The front page has at least four other stories about Trump, which appear in three different sections, none of them Politics.

Presidential Race

Alan Yuhas of the Guardian: "Hillary Clinton told Black Lives Matter activists her priority was to change laws, not hearts, after two confronted her at a campaign event with accusations that she was, in part, personally responsible for the mass incarceration of black Americans, footage released on Monday reveals." MSNBC aired a portion of the tape, which you can see in the video embedded in the Guardian story (begins at the 3:15 min.-mark). ...

... CW: I like the part where Julius Jones, one of the activists, asks Clinton to explain her actual feelings, "not what you're supposed to say." Everybody gets that candidates are pre-progammed phonies. The MSNBC discussion with Melissa Harris-Perry that follows the clip is illuminating. The BlackLivesMatter reps indicate the group will be a lot tougher on Clinton than it's been on Sanders because they hold the Clinton administration responsible for implementing mass-incarceration policies that have devastated the black community. ...

... Paul Waldman: "... in a race where there’s an obvious (if not quite certain) nominee, there will always come a point at which the press will decide that that candidate is spiraling downward, the cloak of inevitability is torn and tattered, the campaign is in crisis, the whispering from party loyalists is growing louder, and the scramble is on to find an alternative before the fall occurs. This is the moment we have come to with Hillary Clinton." It's all pretty much nonsense, promoted by a press corps in search of dramatic stories. ...

... Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda All Over Again. Gene Robinson: "Any public official’s work-related e-mails are the modern equivalent of the letters, memos and diaries that fill the National Archives. They tell our nation’s history and belong to all of us. Even if your name is Clinton, you have no right to unilaterally decide what is included and what is not. So I wish Hillary Clinton would be respectful enough to say, 'I’m sorry. I was wrong.'... If Clinton now has political problems because of the e-mails — or, potentially, even legal trouble — it’s her own doing.” ...

... Mollie Reilly of the Huffington Post: "Bob Woodward, the Washington Post reporter who famously helped break the news of the Watergate scandal, said Hillary Clinton's private email server reminds him of Richard Nixon's secretly recorded Oval Office conversations. Appearing on MSNBC's 'Morning Joe' Monday, Woodward compared the controversy over the former secretary of state's emails to Nixon's cover-up of Watergate." ...

... CW: Other things that remind Woodward of Watergate: (1) the actual Watergate complex, (2) Monica Lewinsky, who lived briefly therein, (3) anything that begins with "water," like waterboarding, water crackers & water-on-the-brain, & (4) really anything that begins with the letter "W," including Dubya. Couldn't Congress just pre-impeach Hillary & save us all a lot of time?

That Was Then. I have such great admiration and empathy for Hillary Clinton.... She is obviously incredibly intelligent, focused, tough, determined, empathetic of all the tens of millions of people that she was trying to represent in her quest to become the first woman president of the United States. And as a woman, I take great pride in the fact that Hillary Clinton ran for president. And I also watched with a lot of empathy as I saw how she was scrutinized, characterized, talked about as a woman. -- Carly Fiorina, 2008 ...

... Brad DeLong: Actually, way up until last year, many of today's GOP presidential candidates had really nice things to say about Hillary.

Sam Stein & Amanda Terkel of the Huffington Post: "A Good Chunk Of GOP Field Wants To Repeal The 14th Amendment..., which grants everyone born in the United States of America the right of citizenship."

This Time Trump Is Finished for Sure. Jennifer Agiesta of CNN: "Donald Trump has won his party's trust on top issues more than any other Republican presidential candidate, and now stands as the clear leader in the race for the GOP nomination, according to a new CNN/ORC poll.... Trump is the biggest gainer in the poll, up 6 points since July according to the first nationwide CNN/ORC poll since the top candidates debated in Cleveland on Aug. 6…. Trump has also boosted his favorability numbers among Republicans, 58% have a favorable view of Trump now, that figure stood at 50% in the July survey." ...

... Citizen Trump. James McKinley & Andy Newman of the New York Times: Donald Trump spent yesterday as a prospective juror at the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan. "Calling jury service 'an interesting process,' he spoke as if it were less a legal requirement than a charitable act: 'People are surprised I agreed to do this,' he said. 'I’m not surprised. I think it’s the right thing to do.' He had previously failed to respond to at least five jury summonses, going back to 2006. He never received them, his lawyer said, because they went to the wrong address.... Court officers had told him, he said, that it was the biggest media scrum on the courthouse steps they had seen. 'I love records!' he said."

** The Awesome Truth. Ezra Klein: Here's "what makes a candidate like Trump potentially dangerous [to the GOP establishment]. On immigration, Trump holds a hard-line position that the Republican Party establishment has tried to mute, and so far Republican voters are loving it. On Social Security and Medicare, Trump — who opposes cuts — is closer to Republican voters than the party establishment is. On free trade deals, Trump shares a skepticism held by about half of Republican voters, but that's usually suppressed by the party's powerful business wing. Most candidates who tried to stack this many heterodoxies would be quickly squelched by the party establishment. But Trump isn't beholden to the GOP for money, staff, power, or press attention. That frees him to take positions that Republican voters like but Republican Party elites loathe." ...

This is an impressive crowd — the haves and the have-mores. Some people call you the elites; I call you my base. -- George W. Bush, Al Smith dinner, 2000 ...

... ** Paul Krugman: "Ezra is ... a little vague about who he means by the Republican establishment; I argue that we’re really talking at this point about a small group of very wealthy donors.... As the old joke by W indicates, these donors actually constitute a sort of different base. And what we’re seeing here is a stark conflict between the two bases.... Everyone still says that DT can’t win this thing, and they may be right. But who, exactly, is supposed to come out on top and how? The money seems to have lost its knack for hoodwinking the voters." CW: Read Klein and Krugman. They're both right. And I love the part of Krugman's post about Bro! & Jeb! ...

... CW: As I wrote some while back, Trump is staking out a platform that appeals to ordinary GOP voters. The product Trump is selling is Trump. So aligning himself with voters is, obviously, good salesmanship & good politics. It is often horrible policy, of course. ... Will the day come that some of the "party establishment" decides that Trump is the one candidate who could beat Hillary? i wonder how the Grand Old Boys will deal with that. ...

... David Fahrenthold, et al., of the Washington Post: Trump's deportation proposal "would require a massive extension of federal authority into maternity wards and Western Union offices, tracing the parentage of children and money to deny illegal immigrants a comfortable spot in U.S. society.... The American Action Forum, a conservative research organization, estimated that deporting all of the country’s undocumented immigrants would take 20 years and cost between $420 billion and $619 billion. It also found that the move would hurt the economy as workers vanished and would put a vast new strain on the U.S. legal system.... Other strategies laid out by Trump seek to lower legal, as well as illegal, immigration." ...

... Washington Post Editors: Donald Trump's deportation plan is a monumental loser: "What Mr. Trump proposes is nothing less than manufacturing a humanitarian upheaval on a scale rivaling the refugee crisis in Syria." ...

... Since Trump's plan is so stupid. nasty & irresponsible, Scott Walker is taking credit for it. Esther Lee of Think Progress: "... Scott Walker wants credit for fellow contender Donald Trump’s harsh immigration position, saying it’s 'very similar' to the immigration position that Walker supported as Wisconsin governor. 'It’s similar to what I brought up about four or five months ago,' Walker said Monday on Fox News’ 'Fox and Friends' when host Steve Doocy asked whether he supported Trump’s plan. 'Earlier in the year, I was on Fox News Sunday and laid out what I think we should do, which is to secure the border, build the wall, have the technology, have the personnel to make sure it’s safe and secure, enforce the law… and make sure people are here legally. I don’t believe in amnesty.'” ...

... Ed Kilgore: "It would seem that Donald Trump is no longer alone in the GOP presidential field in openly calling for the deportation of all 11 million undocumented people in this country. Scott Walker, who’s gyred and gimbaled on immigration policy for quite some time, is now echoing The Donald in saying they must all be deported before we can even think about letting some of them stay."

I was in Israel earlier this year, they built a 500-mile fence and they have it stacked and it’s lowered terrorist attacks in that region by about 90-plus percent. We need to do the same along our border, -- Scott Walker, Monday

Not too many people visit the West Bank and say, 'You know, I wish America could be more like this.' -- Paul Waldman

Charles Pierce: "... alone among the crowd of candidates, Walker most clearly is running on his record of being a complete prick to the right people – which include teachers and nurses and the people who clean up after Alzheimer's patients in group homes. Running against the right people is a staple of all campaigns, right and left, but it's rarely as clear the raison d'etre of one as it is the raison d'etre of the Walker campaign. It is a toxic combination of belligerence and aggressive victimhood." ...

That's Walker on the left (a position he rarely takes). The other guy in the photo appears to have a full head of hair; he's probably an elite snob who won't stoop to plumb.... Jenna Johnson of the Washington Post: Scott Walker enjoys fattening food. Because it's manly. Also, Our Man of Science claims that "his bald spot ... is the result of having bumped his head while fixing a sink years ago and not natural aging." CW: That bump on the head may explain a lot about Scottie, but not his bald spot. ...

... Turns out this is not the first time Scottie has told this ridiculous whopper. Also, it's his wife's fault for making him try to fix the plumbing. ...

... This gives me an excuse to repost one of my favorite photos. Equality is fundamental:

Photo by Pete Souza, 2009.

Sen. Marco Rubio claims in a Politico Magazine essay, to have a swell plan to fix ObummerCare. CW: Haven't read a word of it. ...

... So Me-First Scottie today "will become the first top-tier candidate to deliver a detailed blueprint on what would come next," according to Jennifer Haberkorn & Kyle Cheney of Politico, after he voids ObamaCare on Day One or whatever. As governor of Wisconsin, "Walker used the Affordable Care Act to cut approximately 60,000 people from the state’s Medicaid plan, moving them to subsidized private plans offered through the state’s Obamacare exchange instead. He then used the state’s Medicaid savings to add more of the state’s poorest residents to the Medicaid program." CW: Huh? And you thought the ACA was convoluted. Anyhoo, Haberkorn & Cheney seem to be underwhelmed by Marco's effort, or maybe he's lost his "top-tier" status.

... Greg Sargent figures Scottie's big speech -- wherein he will blame Congress (so a few of his rivals) for failing to stand up to ObamaCare &, in general, President Obama. Walker "seems to have decided that Trump’s surge is rooted partly in those voters’ frustration with the failure of GOP leaders to stop Obama."

The War Party. Brian Beutler: Jeb "Bush has now rolled out, and adhered to, a tangle of views that could be mistaken for his brother’s — void the Iran agreement and possibly attack Iran, rescind President Barack Obama’s 2009 executive order banning torture, and possibly send thousands of U.S. troops back into Iraq—and none of them is even remotely controversial among his co-partisans.... Ripping up the global powers agreement [with Iran] is the predicate for the 'pretty good deal' Republicans have in mind. It’s the whole show."

Steve Benen: "... can we please abandon the myth that [John] Kasich is some kind of 'moderate'? Four years ago, much of the political world agreed that the Republican presidential field looked like crackpots when they said they’d ignore a 10-to-1 budget deal in their favor. Four years later, Kasich is reading from the exact same script.... He doesn’t want to deal with the climate crisis; he opposes marriage equality; he opposes the bipartisan plan on comprehensive immigration reform; and he sees even more tax breaks as the key to economic growth. As a governor, this candidate curtailed voting rights, imposed new restrictions on reproductive rights, and tried to bust labor unions." CW: And crackpot crusade for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.

Kitty Bennett of the New York Times: "A New York cellphone executive has emerged as a mystery megadonor behind the presidential campaign of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.... But records tie the donation to Ben Nash, the chief executive of PCS Wireless, and a spokesman acknowledged that Mr. Nash was behind the donation."

Andrew Sorkin of the New York Times is baffled as to why Carly Fiorina, who "presided over such a sharp decline in one of America’s great companies," would "promote her business experience on the trail." CW: Fiorina is counting on the ignorance of the GOP voter. Should she become a serious contender for the top job -- which isn't likely -- her opponents will have to tread lightly or be accused of leading yet another battle in the War on Women. (It's okay to attack Hillary Clinton, because she is a certified witch.) ...

... Charles Pierce: "If you don't count Ben Carson, and I don't, the two candidates who have made the greatest strides in the past two months are both people who have bragged about what titans of the American corporate universe they are, as though the American corporate universe hasn't been exposed over the past three decades as a marvelous environment for greed, solipsism, and incompetence; the land of the leveraged buyout, the Cayman bank account, and the credit default swap. When people say that government should run like a business, are they talking about Countrywide? AIG? Lehman Brothers? (Hi, John Kasich!)" ...

... CW: On that Lehman Brothers thing? Also, Hi, Jeb!

This is a little odd. How come Bobby Jindal, whose salary is $130,000/year. has "assets between $3.79 million and $11.3 million"? His wife Supriya runs a children's foundation (that for some reason keeps getting big donations from corporations who have business before the state), but it's not clear how much she contributes financially to the family coffers. (She's a chemical engineer & has worked in the chemical industry in the past. Maybe she still does.) Anyway, the Jindals' financial picture looks awfully good for a young family of five in which one of the spouses has been a career public official & the other heads a foundation which "spends almost all of the money it takes in to buy" stuff for schoolchildren.

Beyond the Beltway

Fracked Lettuce. Clint Rainey of New York: California "Assemblyman Mike Gatto has introduced a bill that would introduce the label, 'Produced using recycled or treated oil-field wastewater.' California's epic drought apparently has hard-up farmers using recycled fracking water for lack of better (i.e., pretty much any other) options...."

Justin Jouvenal & Tom Jackman of the Washington Post: "A former Fairfax County police officer was charged with second-degree murder Monday, nearly two years after he shot and killed an unarmed Springfield[, Virginia,] man as he stood with his hands raised in the doorway of his home. The charge against Adam D. Torres in the killing of 46-year-old John Geer, who had a holstered gun at his feet when he was shot, mark the first time in the 75-year history of the Fairfax County police department that an officer will face criminal prosecution in connection with an on-duty shooting."

Michael Rosenwald & John Cox of the Washington Post: "Lenny B. Robinson, a Maryland man better known as the Route 29 Batman, died Sunday night, when a passing motorist struck his "Batmobile," which had broken down near Hagerstown, Maryland. The black Lamborghini slammed into Robinson, who had exited the vehicle to check the engine. Robinson "spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, his brother said, on his ’60s-style Batmobile, a costume that seemed more real than those in the movies, and the trinkets he handed out to children[, often kids in hospitals], always autographed 'Batman.'... He first started wearing the costume because one of his sons, Brandon, was obsessed with the character.... Video of his [2012] encounter in Silver Spring with police, who had stopped him because of a problem with his plates — emblazoned with the Batman symbol — made him an instant Web sensation.”

Comments

[Forrest Morris]

After Donald Trump exports 11 million illegal immigrants, I wonder
who he plans to have do the dirty work in his hotels and restaurants,
and all of the other labor intensive jobs. My partner and I do
stonework and landscaping. The immigrant workers look at us in
wonder. Wondering why two old white men would do that kind of
labor. We like it, plain and simple, but most people we know shun
anything that creates sweat or pain.

[Akhilleus]

What can be said about someone who makes up such a bizarre story to explain away a bald spot? I know narcissism is a prime mover for many politicians, but this febrile fable is so weird and nakedly stupid that it begs for some kind of interpretation.

So, the elements of this fairy tale:

Brave and intrepid man's man, Scottie Walker.
Task set for him by his wife, similar to the Labors of Hercules:
1.The Nemean Lion
2. The Augean Stables
3. The Cretan Bull
4. The Clogged Pipe.
Massive injury resulting from manly-man attempt at plumbing task.
Wife is to blame (Eve and the apple separating Scottie from flowing mane paradise?).
Permanent scarring (the sign of the Warrior).
Loss of hair (manhood) ensues.
Regular Guy Martyrdom.
Ascension into Hairy Heaven.

I've thought about trying a semiotic analysis on this mess but I'm afraid this modern myth of the Confederate Warrior Martyr requires significant psychiatric skills to properly parse.

But this is only one guy in a field of losers all with their own whacko pathologies. This batch of loonies is the gift of movement conservatism. Basket cases who all want to be able to step on people they don't like and drop bombs on someone.

The Modern GOP.

[Marie Burns]

@Forrest Morris: Exactly right. Reuters: "Trump owns companies that have sought to import at least 1,100 foreign workers on temporary visas since 2000, according to U.S. Department of Labor data reviewed by Reuters. Most of the applications were approved, the data show."

And of course that doesn't include all the rapists, killers & other criminals undocumented workers who somehow manage to find jobs in Trump facilities & on Trump projects, as this Wash Po article on Trump's big D.C. project made pretty clear.

I don't take seriously anything Trump says & that includes his claimed-$2MM bout of concern over President Obama's birth certificate or his antipathy for Mexicans. I don't doubt that Trump is a real sexist, because he has been consistently demeaning women for decades. But I think his is a racism of convenience. If Barack Obama asked Trump to build his presidential library, Trump would discover that the birth certificate had been hiding in plain sight all along.

Marie

[MAG]

@Akhilleus—some days (weeks) ago I remarked in a comment about Scott Walker's 'strange' hair blob on the left side. I had no idea of the bald spot. Know what I think, he needs to talk to The Donald and learn how to do a proper comb over and stop blaming his wife and plumbing projects!

[Akhilleus]

Bob Corker lies. The Washington Post sees what it can do to help.

First, a couple of things about Corker's dissension regarding the proposed Iran deal, and just two, because we'd be here forever trying to cut through the weeds of Confederate intransigence and outrageous mendacity about this thing.

Corker suggests that the entire agreement rests on our trusting Iran: "For a deal that must be built on verification and not trust..." This is a blatant lie. There are multiple mechanisms in place for inspections should there be some suspected funny business. We're in no way simply trusting the Iranians to be good boys and not try to screw us.

Then, as so many on the right have been doing, he ascribes a much broader goal to the deal than anyone ever considered and finds it not only lacking in its ability to achieve goals that have never been part of the agreement, but deems this deal to be the last word on the US's Middle East policy.

This is like saying that radio is bad because it doesn't allow for pictures, or for an exhaustive system of communications, and will be, by default, made to stand in for any comprehensive approach to communications ranging from telephone to internet to television to satellite up and down links, and whatever revolutions in communications may come along in the future, and because it can't do any of those things, it's bad, bad, bad.

This is pure stupidity. The deal was never meant to do anything more than create a structure upon which Iran could develop domestic nuclear technologies while agreeing to forgo creation of weapons technologies that would destabilize the region, and agreeing to regular inspections for validation of the terms of the deal. It was never designed as a comprehensive Middle East policy instrument.

But never mind.

Oh, and just a word about editorial mischief. Every time you watch television news and see an edited package or read a newspaper or magazine article, don't forget that every aspect of their presentation is freighted with meaning. Perhaps the meanings gleaned from these presentations were not entirely purposeful, but many times they are.

So what am I getting at here? Right at the top of this article is a picture of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Is this bad? Not necessarily. Is it germane. Certainly the agreement under consideration wouldn't discount adding a picture of an Iranian official. So what's the problem? First, they chose a picture of Rouhani--alone--with a sly little smile and, naturally, he is wearing traditional Iranian garb including the head dress. This seems to be, or at least could be translated as a coded message saying "Look, this fucking guy is laughing at us. He's already got a plan to bomb Israel and the US. Fucking towelhead!"

Why not a picture of the negotiators? Why not choose a picture of Rouhani with Kerry and the Russian and Chinese and German diplomats?

Most people probably don't think this stuff is much of a big deal. But it is. Because even people who don't read the piece will see this picture, see the headline noting that this deal with Iran is bad, bad, bad. And then look at this guy with his cat who ate the canary smile, and conclude that we're being screwed by evil Mooslims and we're too stupid to see it, but look, you can see it right here in this here picture!

It's an editor's job to put some stuff in and leave other stuff out, and to move things around to convey information and provide the story with narrative logic. Video and picture editors can, by the smallest shift in perspective, effect an enormous change in how stories are received and interpreted.

So I, for one, don't believe that this was just one picture out of many that someone just grabbed from the pile and attached to this story.
And context matters. If this were a story about Rouhani's birthday or about him opening a medical center, this smile would positively avuncular. But attached to a screed by a Republican opposed to the deal, it carries a much different message. This stuff matters. I'm not suggesting that news outlets don't get to have an editorial slant, I'm just pointing out that the slanting can be done in sly, nearly invisible ways that allow the editors to deny any slant at all. They're just "...telling it like it is. What's the problem?"

And I'm just saying take note of how news is presented. There's a lot more going on than one might think. And it can be done for a myriad of reasons, to amp up a burgeoning story, revitalize a dying one, or impose a partisan interpretation while never admitting that that's the case.

But what can you expect from the Home for Retired Bush War Criminal Supporters and Speechwriters?

[Akhilleus]

MAG,

I know what he'll do. He'll hold a press conference and confess that he came up with the idea for that combover many years ago and Donald stole it from him.

[Marie Burns]

@Akhilleus: Excellent point on the artwork. I guess the WashPo didn't have this picture of Rouhani in their file.

Corker's larger point -- that lifting the sanctions will give Iran access to more money to control the region -- is a kind of straw man. It ignores the reality that if the U.S. did not agree to a deal of some kind it could not hold together the coalition of nations that have imposed sanctions. This would have been just as true if U.S. diplomats walked away from the table & never agreed to the deal. The U.S. was not just negotiating with Iran; it was also negotiating with an unstable coalition of its "partners." If Corker, et al., prevail, Iran will have access to more assets (minus some but not all [see Koch brothers] U.S. markets) AND it will be free to continue its nuclear arms project.

Leaving out this itty-bitty detail amounts to a lie.

Marie

[Akhilleus]

Marie,

Thanks for that Bloomberg piece on the Koch Method (lying, cheating, stealing, and generally acting like scum of the earth). It's an eye opener even for those of us who wouldn't trust the Kochs to pass the salt.

But making money off trading with entities forbidden by congressional sanctions or being in business with bad actors seems to be a Confederate specialty.

Koch père made his money working for Soviet tyrant and mass murderer Josef Stalin, improving the Soviet war and terror machines' efficiency.

Jeb(!) Bush's grandfather was still doing business with Hitler well into WWII. Congress finally had to pass a law to get him to quit.

Reagan sold missiles to our sworn enemies and now the Koch Kidz are doing business with the same bunch. Money is money, after all; ethics, morality, legality are for lesser beings.

And I guess I knew this already, but I still find it darkly humorous that the Kochs own "Dixie" paper products.

Funny how Confederates are always looking for Democratic perfidy, and lawlessness and for cheating by everyone else but have, as their main political power brokers, a couple of guys who have won numerous Olympic Gold Medals in cheating and law breaking.

I guess when they're up on the podium receiving their medals, they give the Filthy Rich White Guy Power salute.