The Commentariat -- August 6, 2014

Internal links, photo, video & related text removed.

Manu Raju & James Hohmann of Politico: "Montana Sen. John Walsh is engaged in internal deliberations with his political team about whether to stay on the ballot this year, sources said Tuesday, in the wake of a plagiarism scandal that has tarnished the appointed Democratic lawmaker's standing. Senate Democratic leaders in Washington and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee are not playing an active role in the discussions, allowing the situation to be sorted out between Walsh and his Montana Democratic colleagues, according to people familiar with the matter."

Maureen Dowd: Impeach Obama! It's a win-win-win for Democrats, for President Obama & for President-by-Succession Biden. Plus, "It gives the [Republican] party, which is ripping itself apart trying to figure out what it stands for, a clear identity: You can count on Republicans to always impeach Democratic presidents in their second terms. G.O.P. will become short for Gratuitously Ousting Presidents."

Julia Preston of the New York Times: "After declaring the surge of Central American migrants crossing the border a humanitarian crisis, the Obama administration has shifted sharply to a strategy of deterrence, moving families to isolated facilities and placing them on a fast track for deportation to send a blunt message back home that those caught entering illegally will not be permitted to stay."

Julie Davis of the New York Times: "The Obama administration is weighing plans to circumvent Congress and act on its own to curtail tax benefits for United States companies that relocate overseas to lower their tax bills, seeking to stanch a recent wave of so-called corporate inversions, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew said on Tuesday." ...

... Lori Montgomery of the Washington Post: "Washington policymakers are bracing for a wave of corporations to renounce their U.S. citizenship over the next few months, depriving the federal government of billions of dollars in tax revenue and stoking public outrage ahead of the Nov. 4 congressional elections. So far this year, about a dozen U.S. companies -- including such well-known brands as Medtronic medical devices and Chiquita bananas -- have merged with foreign firms and shifted their headquarters offshore to avoid U.S. taxes, analysts say. Dozens of additional deals are in the works...."

Julie Pace of the AP: "Seeking to strengthen America's financial foothold in Africa, President Barack Obama announced $33 billion in commitments Tuesday aimed at shifting U.S. ties with Africa beyond humanitarian aid and toward more equal economic partnerships. The bulk of the commitments came from private-sector companies, including Coca-Cola and General Electric, underscoring Africa's growing appeal to businesses. The continent is home to six of the world's fastest-growing economies and a rapidly expanding middle class with increased spending power":

... Chris McGreal of the Guardian: "President Obama took a swipe at China in a speech to a summit of African leaders in Washington on Tuesday, claiming that the US is interested in the continent for more than just its minerals and oil." ...

Greg Miller of the Washington Post: "The planned release of a report by the Senate Intelligence Committee on the CIA's interrogation of terrorism suspects has broken down in a dispute between the committee and the Obama administration over how much of the document can be declassified. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the committee, said Tuesday that she had written a letter to President Obama raising objections to material that was stripped from the report by the CIA and the White House."

Neil Irwin of the New York Times: "Economists at Standard & Poor's Ratings Services are the authors of the straightforwardly titled 'How Increasing Inequality is Dampening U.S. Economic Growth, and Possible Ways to Change the Tide.' The fact that S.&P., an apolitical organization that aims to produce reliable research for bond investors and others, is raising alarms about the risks that emerge from income inequality is a small but important sign of how a debate that has been largely confined to the academic world and left-of-center political circles is becoming more mainstream." ...

... Peter Eavis of the New York Times: "Congres's overhaul of the financial system aims to reshape large banks so that if they get into trouble they can descend into an orderly bankruptcy that does not set off a wider panic. But on Tuesday, two regulators, the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, sharply criticized the plans that the banks have prepared for winding themselves down in a controlled fashion. The F.D.I.C. said that it had determined that the so-called living wills were 'not credible.'"

Greg Sargent: "Gallup finds that three of the largest drops in the rate of the uninsured just happened to take place in states with the most hard-fought Senate races": Kentucky, Arkansas & Colorado. ...

... Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar of the AP: "President Barack Obama's health care law has become a tale of two Americas. States that fully embraced the law's coverage expansion are experiencing a significant drop in the number of uninsured residents, according to a major new survey released Tuesday. States whose leaders still object to 'Obamacare' are seeing much less change."

** Edward Snowden, 2.0! Evan Perez of CNN: "The federal government has concluded there's a new leaker exposing national security documents in the aftermath of surveillance disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, U.S. officials tell CNN. Proof of the newest leak comes from national security documents that formed the basis of a news story published Tuesday by the Intercept, the news site launched by Glenn Greenwald, who also published Snowden's leaks.... The article cites documents prepared by the National Counterterrorism Center dated August 2013, which is after Snowden left the United States to avoid criminal charges. Greenwald has suggested there was another leaker. In July, he said on Twitter 'it seems clear at this point' that there was another." ...

... BUT. The AP scooped the Intercept. Ryan Grim of the Huffington Post: "The government, it turned out, had 'spoiled the scoop,' an informally forbidden practice in the world of journalism. To spoil a scoop, the subject of a story, when asked for comment, tips off a different, typically friendlier outlet in the hopes of diminishing the attention the first outlet would have received. Tuesday's AP story was much friendlier to the government's position, explaining the surge of individuals added to the watch list as an ongoing response to a foiled terror plot.... The government's decision to spoil a story on the topic of national security is especially unusual, given that it has a significant interest in earning the trust of national security reporters.... [intercept editor John] Cook told the [government] official [at the National Counterterrorism Center] that in the future the agency would have only 30 minutes to respond to questions before publication." ...

... Peter Foster of the Telegraph: "Speculation that there was a second source grew last month after the German magazine Der Spiegel published two articles containing apparent NSA leaks that were not, as in the past, explicitly sourced to Mr Snowden...." ...

... The piece by Jeremy Scahill & Ryan Devereaux, published in the Intercept, relies on classified intelligence documents date subsequent to Snowden's leaving the NSA: "Nearly half of the people on the U.S. government's widely shared database of terrorist suspects are not connected to any known terrorist group, according to classified government documents obtained by The Intercept." ...

... In addition, this article by Greenwald is based on an April 2013 top secret document, which Greenwald does not source to Snowden (who left the agency in June 2013). I read the piece yesterday & thought Greenwald didn't add anything to Juan Cole's post on the U.S.'s aid to Israel's war efforts, which I did link. Guess I was a teensy bit wrong. ...

... Finally, here's the AP story, which government officials fed to Eileen Sullivan.

Kim Barker of ProPublica: "Move America Forward[, a Tea party-backed 'charity,'] calls itself the nation's 'largest grassroots pro-troop organization,' and has recruited a bevy of Republican luminaries, including former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney, to support its efforts. Yet an examination of its fundraising appeals, tax records and other documents shows that Move America Forward has repeatedly misled donors and inflated its charitable accomplishments, while funneling millions of dollars in revenue to the men behind the group and their political consulting firms.... The charity's funds and other assets also appear to have been used to subsidize three conservative political action committees, records show." Plus, their fundraising claims are fake or stolen from actual charitable groups. Also, they're a tax audit waiting to happen. CW: Luckily for scammers like this, Republicans keep cutting IRS funds so the IRS has limited resources to conduct audits. ...

     ... CW: Hard to believe that astroturfers would do anything so dishonorable, isn't it? ...

... Alexander Burns of Politico: The Republican State Leadership Committee "was implicated in a risky campaign finance scheme that an internal report warned could trigger 'possible criminal penalties' and 'ultimately threaten the organization's continued existence,' according to a confidential document Politico obtained...." Led by Ed Gillespie, former Republican party chairman, lobbyist, co-founder (with Karl Rove) of the super-duper PAC American Crossroads & now candidate for the Senate in Virginia, the RSLC leaders engaged in activities its own lawyers said were "improper" -- "essentially laundering 'toxic' money from the gaming industry by routing it out of [the] state [of Alabama] and then back into Alabama." The leaders all deny the charges & say the legal report was the product of "internal" conflict. Gillespie was apparently not party to the pass-through scheme which involved, amonth others, "one of the Christian groups through which Jack Abramoff funneled Choctaw Indian-money."

Tom Edsall of the New York Times more-or-less asks the philosophical question, what is corruption? ...

... This sort of question comes to mind when you read Ross Douthat, who imagined that "a creative White House lawyer -- a John Yoo of the left" -- could come up with "legal justifications" for the President's committing "an extraordinary abuse of office: the granting of temporary legal status, by executive fiat, to up to half the country's population of illegal immigrants." While I'll admit the relative value of the goals is in the eye of the beholder, it's hard not to notice that Douthat is comparing a justification for torture to a justification for clarifying the status of millions of people living in Limbo America. (It is fair, I think to compare Yoo to David Barron, who wrote the so-called justifications for using drones to kill Americans abroad. [President Obama rewarded Barron with an appointment to the U.S. Court of Appeals.]) In defining "corruption" or "abuse of power," one really has to look at the merits of the action &, specifically, how the actor benefits.

Congressional Races

Dave Helling & Steve Kraske of the Kansas City Star: "Kansas Republicans Tuesday appeared poised to nominate Pat Roberts for a fourth term in the U.S. Senate -- a victory claimed after the toughest race of his decades-long political career. Incomplete returns showed that the Kansas GOP picked Roberts, 78, over insurgent tea party challenger Milton Wolf, a 43-year-old Leawood radiologist."

Sean Sullivan of the Washington Post: "Rep. Kerry Bentivolio (R-Mich.) lost his primary to businessman Dave Trott on Tuesday, becoming just the third sitting member of Congress to lose in a primary this year. Bentivolio, who has frequently clashed with GOP leaders, entered the day as an underdog."

Jay Newton-Small of Time writes a brief rundown of these & other results from yesterday's primary races.

Alexandra Jaffe of the Hill: Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) faces his toughest race yet. "The focus from McConnell’s campaign on the GOP leader's influence is also an attempt to mitigate some of the damage it privately admits has been done by [Alison] Grimes [D] hammering McConnell on job creation. It acknowledges his comments, as quoted by a local paper, that economic development in the state is 'not my job' have been a thorn in the senator's side."

Presidential Race

Today in Rand Paul. Two Headlines to Remember:

... Brian Beutler: "Watch Rand Paul Run for His Life Before Steve King Insults an Immigrant in Iowa." Video & commentary. ...

... Jeremy Stahl of Slate: "Rand Paul Takes Bite of Burger, Hears Questioner Is a DREAMer, Flees While Still Chewing.... He actually leaves the table after having taken a bite of what appears to be a hamburger, seems to almost do a spit-take, getting up from his seat midchew, and leaving behind the half-eaten sandwich." Video & commentary." ...

... NEW. Here's Li'l Randy's excuse for cutting & running. As Akhilleus lays out in the Comments, & as a couple of stories linked below demonstrate, one should not credit much Rand Paul says, especially when he's trying to get out of a jam.

... "You're Very Good at English." Dave Weigel comments on Steve King's response to the DREAMers. CW: I thought King was very gallant. He asked the young woman if she was a drug smuggler rather than checking out her calves to see if they looked like cantaloupes. ...

... OR, as digby puts King's remarks, "And now a word from the GOP's leading strategist on immigration policy."

CW: Yesterday I linked a story by Chris Moody of Yahoo! News which pointed out that Rand Paul not only has changed his position on U.S. aid to Israel, he lied & said he never "really proposed that in the past," (which he did in 2011). Kevin Drum: "This is starting to become one of Paul's distinguishing features. He's also done the same thing regarding the Civil Rights Act. Instead of simply saying that his thinking has evolved in some way or another, he aggressively denies he ever held his previous position and then pretends to be outraged that some liberal shill of a reporter is deliberately misrepresenting his position. How dare he?!?" ...

... CW: I think we can conclude that Rand Paul is very good at running away from unpleasantness. ...

NEW. Sarah Smith of Politico: "Democrats seized on Rand Paul's comments over foreign aid to Israel on Tuesday, adding to a growing chorus of criticism from those on the left who say the Kentucky senator wants to 'rewrite history.'" ...

... Sarah Smith: "It's not just the left: Some on the far right are hitting Rand Paul over inconsistencies between his past and present policies. 'I think it's a little like a compass,' conservative columnist Ann Coulter said Tuesday night on CNN. 'It used to be whatever would please 15-year-old Ayn Rand readers was his position. Now, it's whatever will please basically the mainstream media.'" ...

... NEW. AND the annoying Mike Allen of Politico reports that Rand Paul is going to give "a major foreign policy speech" next month. Video report. Probably won't be a repeat of those 2011 anti-foreign aid speeches. Paul has removed the copies of those remarks from his "Everybody Loves Randy" scrapbook & run them through the shredder. He thought reporters did, too. ...

... Simon Maloy of Slate: No matter how many times Rand Paul accuses Hillary Clinton of dereliction of duty over Benghazi, the media report it as big news.

Beyond the Beltway

Rosalind Helderman, et al., of the Washington Post: "Just six minutes after former Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell emailed a wealthy businessman about getting a $50,000 loan, he sent a note to a staffer asking to discuss state university studies of the man's new dietary supplement." AND there are more "coincidences." It doesn't look good for Transactional Bob. ...

     ... CW: And another thing. A lot of these big shots get in trouble because they're surrounded by yes wo/men who tell them they can do no wrong. But McDonnell's aides are testifying they told him not to do some of this stuff to help Williams, & Bob pretty much did it anyway or found some workaround.

Tom Dart of the Guardian: "The first US execution since the drawn-out death of Joseph Wood is scheduled for Wednesday in Missouri, where Michael Worthington is set to die for the 1995 murder of a college student."

Lillian Cunningham of the Washington Post: "Raymond Burse..., the interim president at Kentucky State University..., announced that he would take a 25 percent salary cut to boost [the] wages [of school employees earning less than $10.25/hour].... He has pledged to take further salary cuts any time new minimum-wage employees are hired on his watch, to bring their hourly rate to $10.25." ...

... CW: Virtually every CEO of a major American corporation could & should do the same.

Way Beyond the Beltway

Terrence McCoy of the Washington Post: A mysterious crater that "suddenly appeared, yawning nearly 200 feet in diameter in Siberia's Yamal Peninsula may have been caused by methane gas "related to Yamal's unusually hot summers in 2012 and 2013.... As the Associated Press put it in 2010, the melting of Siberia's permafrost is 'a climate time bomb waiting to explode if released into the atmosphere." CW: But never mind. Climate change is a myth or an Obama plot to undermine God's plans for Alabama coal or something.

News Ledes

Reuters: "Russia has amassed around 20,000 combat-ready troops on Ukraine's eastern border and could use the pretext of a humanitarian or peace-keeping mission to invade, NATO said on Wednesday."

Washington Post: "Politicians appealed Wednesday for emergency aid for thousands of minority Iraqis who have been stranded with little food on a mountaintop in the country's north, surrounded by al-Qaeda-inspired rebels."

Time: "Federal health officials are facing a surge in reports of possible Ebola cases from hospitals and health departments, none of which have been confirmed but which highlight a moment of growing domestic concern about an outbreak that has claimed over 800 lives in Africa. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told TIME on Tuesday that it's received several dozen calls from states and hospitals about people who are ill after traveling in Africa. 'We've triaged those calls and about half-dozen or so resulted in specimen coming to CDC for testing and all have been negative for Ebola,' CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said...."

Guardian: "Formal negotiations to secure a lasting ceasefire in the Gaza Strip are expected to begin in Cairo on Wednesday, as a temporary truce between Israel and Hamas enters a second day."

AP: "A U.S. drone fired two missiles at a sprawling compound in a northwestern tribal region of Pakistan on Wednesday, killing seven militants, two Pakistani intelligence officials said."

Comments

[James Singer]

Was glad to see Coca-Cola jump on board the African initiative. That continent is running behind in the obesity and diabetes races.

[Akhilleus]

Rand Paul: Man of Courage.

One more reason I routinely refer to this pretender as The Little One.

Now Randy. Don't bolt your food; chew slowly and swallow. S'matter? Something stuck in your craw?

Seriously, if this jackanape doesn't have the sand for a dignified, respectful encounter with this woman how in the hell will he make it through 12 months of a national campaign? Oh yeah, he'll do what all the other Republicans do: avoid anyone who is not your race and political persuasion, and failing that either insult them like Steve King, or tuck your tail between your legs, spit your lunch, and run like your microscopic ball sack was on fire.

Be a pretty small fire.

Everytime some knucklehead tells me they're voting for this loser I'm gonna make them watch this clip.

A tower of Jello.

[PD Pepe]

Stellar reporting by Pro Publica on the Move America Forward scam. How despicable! People giving money to this outfit thinking it was going for something that was worthwhile and noble. Hate to be influenced by a name, but someone called Sal Russo (the architect of this organization) has the ring of good fellas all over it. Steve Cornacke covered this fully on the Maddow program last night and mentioned that Joe Biden and his daughter had endorsed this program early on. When I looked into this I couldn't find a thing about the endorsement, but what I did find was Obama and Biden's speeches on the road entitled "Moving America Forward" so I imagine Sal cleverly stole that phrase to make it sound more legitimate.

Gary Sinese's involvement in this wasn't surprising–-he's at quite a few right wing circus's standing next to the Sarah Palin person calling for, yup, you guessed it–––moving America forward or in their case the "for" really means"back." and when I think of Gary he will always remain George Wallace––a role he played so well, he received an Emmy for it.

[Akhilleus]

Re: the Little One's problems with the truth.

How can anyone nowadays think they can get away with disavowing things they've said, statements that have been recorded and reported somewhere, sometime, likely by multiple sources? It's either some kind of magical thinking, "If only I say it over and over, it will be true..." or it's yet another example of a conservative mystified by anything vaguely scientific (it's a wonder they don't avoid cameras thinking that the mechanism will steal their souls).

Whatever it is, it's nice to have regular confirmation that Li'l Randy is both a coward AND a liar.

The fact that he's still riding in the front seat of the GOP presidential clown car says a lot more about the party and the media than it does about his leadership bona fides (of which there are none).

What does it take for a Republican to be counted out as a possible presidential candidate? Is anything short of kiddie diddling and murder okay with wingnut voters? Oh wait. Coming out for gun controls would do it. Also being pro-choice. And anti-death penalty. Not being a misogynist. Being pro-environment. Not fearing science. And being for the voting rights act.

Or simply being a decent human being.

Okay, answered my own question.

[Marie Burns]

@Akhilleus: I was aghast when Li'l Randy won his Senate race, but I'll have to admit the upside to his win is that he is a constant source of amusement -- from the top of his head to his bermuda shorts. I laughed out loud at his hasty exit from the lunch table, & the headlines on it are hilarious!

Of course it won't be so funny if he's the next POTUS.
Marie

[Akhilleus]

Update on Randy the Cowardly Rabbit:

It may look like Li'l Randy was skedaddling to save his ass from answering a question off the top of his crudely upholstered head, and from one of those nasty immigrant types too, eewww, but he has an excuse, er, ah, um, an explanation.

According to Politico, the Little One scampered onto Fox News just as fast as his little bunny tail could go and claimed "...that just minutes before that video began, a reporter asked him for an interview while he was eating. 'And I said, I need to take a couple more bites and we’ll do an interview,'"

He described the what was happening back where he left his barely gnawed burger as a "kamikaze interview". Not really sure what a "kamikaze interview" is. Is that where the interviewer asks a few questions then dives to the ground killing everyone in sight? I hate those kind! I think maybe Li'l Randy meant something more like a guerrilla interview. I wonder though, if some whitebread, red-state reporter from, say, Breitbart or Fox wandered up to his table unannounced, would he describe that encounter in such panicky, scaredy-cat tones?

But back to the excuse. I know you don't need this but, truth to tell, it's awfully fun. As Marie notes, this guy is a knee slapper.

First, he didn't forget to grab his beer. Does the senator always consider media interviews BYOB events? Or did he need some fortification after narrowly having to answer a question from an immigrant? Second, he's a fucking senator. I don't care who was waiting for an interview. They'll hang around until he gets his lunch down. Can you imagine him leaping out of his seat like he was shot out of a cannon to answer questions from Rachel Maddow? Not to mention that the whole reason he was there was to lick Steve King's balls. Who thinks he would leave King sitting there while he gave an interview?

As before: a coward AND a liar.

Oh, and I take that back about rabbits being cowardly. Next to Li'l Randy, a cuddly baby bunny looks like Hercules slaying the fucking Nemean Lion.

[Akhilleus]

Now a word about wars.

Wars are pretty horrible things. Only people who have actually been in one can say how horrible. The rest of us can only imagine.

But the term has been used metaphorically to describe all-out attacks on certain parties or groups or ideas. Used appropriately it underscores that not only are attacks being perpetrated, but that people are hurt by those attacks.

So lets compare four Wars currently underway, two actual and two fantasy.

Rep Mo Brooks (R-AL-natch), has informed everyone who hasn't been noticing that there is a War on White People. (I sure as hell haven't noticed that one.) I won't waste time on this ridiculous claim, the idea being that Democrats are siding with non-whites to take away white privilege. Chris Rock did a bit once about white people who complain that they're "losing everything, man". "We're fuckin' losin'" "Oh really? Well if you losing, who's winning? Cause it sure ain't us!" Evidence of the War on White people? Some Americans are not happy with being kept out of the electoral process by whites who think they should rule everything. This, in conservative lizard brains, constitutes deadly combat.

On the other side we have the War on Women. Evidence for this? Just look around. Women's health clinics forced to close all over the country because of right-wing hate policies, right-wing assaults on equal pay as well as freedom of choice. Talk about "legitimate" rape by wingers making laws. These actions seriously impact not just quality of life, but put women's health at risk. This is a real war that creates the conditions for more than just hurt feelings.

Back to the right now. The ever popular War on Christmas. The evidence for this conflict? Christians are told they can't shove their religion down the throats of everyone else. OMG! The horror! Is anyone hurt by this? Anyone can't get health care or has freedom of choice taken from them? No. Another bullshit use of the term.

The War on Science. This is a big one. It includes, of course, climate change denial which will end up hurting billions of people. This is a real war with real consequences. Much more dire than not being able to put a Christmas tree up in front of the fucking town hall.

So there are wars and there are WARS.

Unfortunately, for all of us, conservatives can't tell the difference. That's why they didn't see the problem with lying to get us into a shooting war. Few of them had ever been shot at. Fewer still saw the problem with us killing foreigners if it made certain neocon war criminals feel manly.

There are plenty more wars, but the only ones that count are the ones that materially change how people live and die. Sorry, wingnuts, Christmas trees and white privilege don't make the cut.