The Commentariat -- August 22, 2015

Internal links & defunct videos removed.

White House: "In this week's address, the President spoke to the economic progress that our country has made over the past few years, from over 13 million new jobs over the past five and a half years, to 17 states raising the minimum wage":

Capitalism Is Awesome, Ctd. Thad Moore & Drew Harwell of the Washington Post: "The Dow Jones industrial average capped a four-day losing streak by dropping more than 500 points to close at 16,459.75, sinking 10 percent from its May peak and following even steeper market declines in Asia and Europe. The rout will further rattle workers whose 401(k) retirement accounts have taken a troubling hit. Investors have lost billions in recent weeks and are flocking to safety-net Treasury bonds as they wait for the bleeding to stop."

Capitalism Is Awesome, Ctd. Joe Nocera of the New York Times: "A previous generation of Americans could count on a social compact; if you stuck loyally by a company, it would stick by you, providing you with a good job and a decent retirement. Long ago, loyalty fell by the wayside, and longtime employees learned that their loyalty meant nothing when companies 'downsized.' Amazon -- and, to be sure, any number of other companies as well -- has taken this idea to its logical extreme: Bring people in, shape them in the Amazon style of confrontation and workaholism, and cast them aside when they have outlived their usefulness.... [Founder & CEO Jeff] Bezos didn't have to build Amazon the way he did. He could have created a culture that valued employees and treated them well. But that would have required him to care about what somebody else thought. Fat chance."

Capitalism Is Awesome, Ctd. Michael Birnbarm & Carol Morello of the Washington Post: "The ink was barely dry on a landmark agreement with Iran to limit its nuclear program before a German government plane packed with the nation's economic elite touched down in Tehran. The trip was just the first in a rush of European ministers and business people flocking to a market that is poised to reopen after years of grinding sanctions." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... MEANWHILE. Thomas Erdbrink of the New York Times: "During the past decade, well-connected Iranian investors amassed undervalued assets in poorly executed and frequently corrupt rounds of privatization, buying insurance companies, hospitals, refineries and public utilities, among other things previously run -- usually poorly -- by the state.... [A] potential sell-off began to take shape in July, as the nuclear agreement began to move toward a conclusion...." (Also linked yesterday.)

Kevin Cirilli of the Hill: "Planned Parenthood Executive Vice President Dawn Laguens said she believes the videos are illegal and that her organization is 'considering everything' in going after the Center for Medical Progress, the group behind the videos. 'I absolutely do believe that they have violated laws in terms of how they secured these videos,' she said in an interview at the group's Washington, D.C., headquarters. "But the fraud is also in how they have presented them and in the editing." ...

... Eliza Collins of Politico: "Jindal trolls protesters with undercover Planned Parenthood videos.... The Louisiana governor on Thursday showed a series of undercover Planned Parenthood videos on a loop outside the governor's mansion to protesters who were demonstrating against the defunding of Planned Parenthood."

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Max Fisher of Vox has an update on the AP stories claiming that a U.N. "side deal" to the negotiated Iran nuclear agreement allows Iran to do its own testing of a military site known as Parchin. "On Thursday, as the AP came under increasing pressure, it published what it said was the full text of the draft IAEA agreement. The arms control experts were not convinced: Jeffrey Lewis, of Middlebury College, called the draft 'way too vague to support that story.' Cheryl Rofer, who has previously worked alongside the IAEA, tweeted that there were 'several things wrong' with the draft, for example that 'the whole thing is far too vague. It has no resemblance to a sampling plan.'... Tariq Rauf, the former head of verification and security policy coordination at the [IAEA] ... concluded that he suspected the draft may be fake..., in part on several odd errors in the draft..., but I suspect this may be because the AP reporter was required to copy down the draft agreement text by hand..., although it does raise questions about whether there could be more substantial errors as well." Thanks to Keith H. for the lead....

... CW: Here's something I find particularly troubling, tho Fisher doesn't mention it. The AP reporter George Jahn did a follow-up story reporting on reactions to his original, oft-altered story. In a section titled, "What Does the IAEA Say?", he quotes IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano: "'The arrangements are technically sound and consistent with our long-established practices. They do not compromise our ... standards in any way.' He says agreements with Iran on clearing up the nuclear arms allegations 'are confidential and I have a legal obligation not to make them public - the same obligation I have for hundreds of such arrangements made with other IAEA member states.'" That's it. BUT Jahn omitted this part of Amano's statement, which appeared in a fuller Reuters report (linked in the Commentariat yesterday): "I am disturbed by statements suggesting that the IAEA has given responsibility for nuclear inspections to Iran. Such statements misrepresent the way in which we will undertake this important verification work." Reuters called Amano's remark "an unusually strongly worded statement." In other words, Amano directly & strongly criticized Jahn's report, calling it a "misrepresentation," and the AP chose not to print that part of the statement. That's just crap "journalism." News media regularly report denials or refutations by the subjects of their stories. The AP's decision to truncate Amano's remarks to eliminate his criticism of the gist of its story is cowardly &, well, misleading.

Presidential Race

Jonathan Martin & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "As Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign struggles with sliding poll numbers, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s exploration of a presidential candidacy is taking on a new seriousness.... Some Democrats supporting Mrs. Clinton have quietly signaled that they would re-evaluate their support if Mr. Biden joined the race."

Alan Rappeport of the New York Times: "Hillary Rodham Clinton pleased progressives this week when she came out in opposition against drilling in the Arctic Ocean. Now they want to hear from her on Social Security. Former Gov. Martin O'Malley of Maryland announced a proposal on Friday to expand Social Security, enhancing its benefits while holding the retirement age steady. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has expressed a similar view, leaving the ball in Mrs. Clinton's court.... The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Democracy for America and MoveOn.org all pressed Mrs. Clinton on Friday to join her rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination in promising to protect Social Security...." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Jonathan Allen of Reuters: Reuters disputes Clinton's claim that she did not send classified material over her private e-mail account. Reuters has found at least 30 threads which it identifies as "so-called 'foreign government information,' information that is automatically classified. "The State Department disputed Reuters' analysis but declined requests to explain how it was incorrect." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

This is supposed to be a straight report. So Wow! Ben Schreckinger of Politico: "It was immigration, not segregation, that brought some 20,000 southerners -- far fewer than predicted -- out for Donald Trump on Friday night, but the ghost of George Wallace loomed large. Wallace, an avowed segregationist, was the last presidential candidate to win electoral votes as a third-party candidate. The threat of Trump doing so, propelled by a hardline immigration stance that many have condemned as racist, looms over the Republican Party now as it did over the Democratic Party then, even as the enthusiasm of his following, for once, fell far short of expectations.... Trump invited Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, one of Congress's most ardent immigration hardliners who helped the businessman craft his immigration plan, to the podium, where the two embraced." ...

... Robert Costa & Dave Weigel of the Washington Post: "Trump's flashy performance was about more than showmanship. His visit to Alabama was coolly strategic, touching down in the heart of red America and an increasingly important early battleground in the Republican nominating contest.... On the street, Olaf Childress, a neo-Confederate activist, gave out copies of 'The First Freedom' newspaper, which had headlines about 'Black-on-white crime,' 'occupied media' and 'censored details of the Holocaust.'" ...

     ... Steve M. assesses Costa & Weigel's "love letter" to Trump: "Clearly the earth moved for Costa and Weigel."

... The New York Times report, by Alan Blinder, is here.

John McCormick of Bloomberg: "A day after Jimmy Carter appeared on national television to talk about the cancer that's ravaging his body, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz criticized the former president's administration in a speech in Iowa. 'I think where we are today is very, very much like the late 1970s,' the senator from Texas said on the Des Moines Register's political soapbox stage at the Iowa State Fair. 'I think the parallels between this administration and the Carter administration are uncanny: same failed domestic policies, same misery, stagnation and malaise, same feckless and naïve foreign policy,' Cruz said. 'In fact, the exact same countries -- Russia and Iran -- openly laughing and mocking at the president of the United States.'" ...

     ... CW: Cruz's remarks about Carter struck me, too. This is what happens when a politician is a complete narcissist; he lacks normal awareness of common civility. Cruz, unsurprisingly, defending his remarks about Carter. As McCormick points out, Cruz did apologize for making a "joke" about Vice President Biden days after the death of Biden's son Beau. But Cruz can't help himself; he doesn't care about or even recognize other people's feelings. No doubt a staffer urged Cruz to apologize about his Biden "joke."

Josh Haskell & Jennifer Hopper of ABC News: "While Sen. Ted Cruz was grilling pork chops at the Iowa State Fair today, actress Ellen Page, wearing a hat and sunglasses, snuck her way up to the grill and asked the GOP presidential candidate about 'the persecution of gays in the workplace and LGBT rights.' ABC News caught the exchange." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Joseph Voorhees of Slate: Cruz repeatedly tells Page that "a Mennonite couple who agreed to pay a $5,000 fine late last year after they refused to provide service to a gay couple ... owns a church.... In reality they own a former church that they converted into an art gallery, flower shop, and bistro that they then ran as a wedding venue. So the Texan's taking some rather large liberties when he suggests that requiring the [couple] to allow a gay couple to wed in their for-profit business would be the same as 'forcing a Muslim imam to conduct a Jewish wedding ceremony.'" ...

... Cruz says his kind of birthright citizenship is cool -- he was born in Canada to an American mother & Cuban father -- but birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented residents is terrible. He says Jeb! is confused. Katie Glueck of Politico: "A day earlier, Bush suggested in New Hampshire that Cruz was the beneficiary of the broader birthright citizenship protection clause of the 14th Amendment. Bush opposes altering that language." (Also linked yesterday.)

Flip-Flop. Esther Lee of Think Progress: "Scott Walker was tired from 'hours' of interviews when he said that fellow contender Donald Trump's plan to end birthright citizenship was 'very similar' to the immigration position that Walker supported as Wisconsin governor, according to an interview on Friday with CNBC correspondent John Harwood. Now, Walker says he doesn't have a stance on the topic. 'I'm not taking a position on it one way or the other,' Walker told Harwood, when questioned about ending birthright citizenship, a centerpiece demand that Trump laid out in his immigration policy plan...." ...

... Kasie Hunt of MSNBC: "Asked directly by msnbc if birthright citizenship should be ended, the Wisconsin governor replied: 'Yeah, to me it's about enforcing the laws in this country. And I've been very clear, I think you enforce the laws, and I think it's important to send a message that we're going to enforce the laws, no matter how people come here we're going to enforce the laws." Watch the video. Hunt asks the question twice, & twice Walker says, "Yeah," or "Yeah, absolutely," even invoking Harry Reid, who two decades ago introduced legislation to eliminating birthright citizenship for children of undocumented mothers, a position which years later he called a "travesty" & the "low point" of his legislative career. So Walker only favors this "travesty" when he's "tired"? Has he no principles? (Rhetorical question.) ...

... digby: "Walker, being the rank amateur he is, jumped on the Jeff Sessions/Donald Trump train automatically without thinking through whether or not that's what a serious frontrunning grown-up would do. He made a mistake." ...

... Hunter of Daily Kos: "There are flip-flops, and there are flip-flops. After leaping to support Donald Trump's far-right birthright-citizenship-ending proposal immediately after it was released and apparently agreeing that birthright citizenship needs to be repealed when asked by a reporter he now says ... he has no opinion on it?... Not only does Scott Walker walkback his own previous position, but he's apparently vowing to not have a position on one of the hot-button topics roiling the Republican presidential campaign.... Walker's unwillingness to state actual policy positions seems at this point less campaign strategy and more personal pathology."

** David Roberts of Vox: "Katie Couric recently interviewed Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, and the subject of climate change came up. They discussed it for over four minutes, likely marking the longest any national GOP political figure has spent talking about climate change in the past five years.... After acknowledging the science at the outset, literally everything Fiorina says subsequently is false or misleading. And yes, I know what 'literally' means.From the dazzling array, I have chosen a representative (but not exhaustive) sample of 10 misleading or false statements." CW: This is almost fun reading, Fiorina's claims & excuses are such nonsense. Unless you're already well-read on energy sources (and cats), you'll probably learn something. I did.

The Black Hand. Zeke Miller of Time: Jeb!'s superPAC "Right to Rise USA tweeted a picture of the inaugural mailing, which appears to show Bush posing in front of a bridge in what appears to be Cedar Rapids, the second largest city in Iowa. But a closer look at the photo seems to show that Bush was actually superimposed on a a stock image of the city, while his left hand appears to belong to someone else." CW: That "someone else" is a black person, so this must be Right to Rise's left-handed compliment to Iowa's huge black Republican base. The Photoshop fail has caused a lot of haw-hawwing on the Internets, but I'd say the biggest fake on the flyer is the candidate himself. ...

... ** IMPORTANT UPDATE: Chas Danner of New York: "... if you look at his other (right) hand, you can see that it was digitally colored white as well, as the awkward supposed shadows are the same color as the black hand." CW: Great catch, Chas!

Beyond the Beltway

Jonathan Katz of the New York Times: "A jury [in Charlotte, N.C.] said ... Friday that it was unable to decide whether a white police officer was guilty of manslaughter in the 2013 shooting death of an unarmed African-American man, but the judge ordered jurors to continue deliberating. The jury of eight women and four men -- seven are white, three African-American and two Hispanic -- said that it had taken three votes and was deadlocked on the fate of Officer Randall Kerrick. He is accused of using excessive force in the shooting of Jonathan Ferrell, 24, a former college football player who died early on Sept. 14, 2013. Jurors told the judge that the three votes split 7 to 5, 8 to 4 and 8 to 4, but gave no indication of which way they are leaning." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

News Ledes

AP: "... three Americans are being hailed as heroes for tackling and disarming a gunman they happened to encounter on a high-speed Amsterdam-Paris train. Air Force serviceman Spencer Stone remained hospitalized Saturday after being stabbed, though the Pentagon said the injury was not life-threatening. Another passenger was wounded by a handgun in the attack Friday night, according to a police union official. It's unclear whether there was a political motive to the gunman's actions. French authorities are questioning the attacker, identified by police as a 26-year-old of Moroccan origin, and are expected to speak to at least one of the Americans on Saturday about what happened. Counterterrorism police are leading the investigation, according to the Paris prosecutor's office." ...

     ... New York Times Update: "The two American service members who tackled a gunman on a high-speed train traveling from Amsterdam to Paris rushed him even though he was fully armed, then grabbed him by the neck and beat him over the head with his own automatic rifle until he was unconscious, one of them said in television interviews [in Paris] on Saturday."

Comments

[Nadd2]

I am happy to see the national press stepping up to question Walker on his "stands". Last night on the Newshour, Michael Gerson mentioned Walker's being all over on the immigration issue and said it shows that Walker's not playing in the big leagues.

An hour later, a (usually good) anchorwoman on Wisconsin Public TV lobbed sycophantic questions to Walker's campaign spokeswoman about his "Day One Freedom" health plan, and about his "dominating" the republican primary in Wisconsin. No mention of his support plummeting from 40% to 25% since April.

Walker has benefitted in Wisconsin from a lapdog press. Since his campaign is known to screen questions, and since WPT has taken big budget cuts and could face more, I'm now concerned about their coverage "going forward."

[D.C.Clark]

Thank you Marie, for the links to discussions of "bias free language".

A while ago I posted comments on funeral practices and disposal of medical waste. I now realize that I was insensitive in using such terms as: stiffs, corpses, or dead bodies. The preferred locution is, of course: 'non-living persons'.

To any persons, living or non-living, who may have been saddened by my usage: I am as remorseful as possible.