The Commentariat -- Dec. 19, 2015
Internal links & defunct video removed.
Afternoon Update:
Amber Phillips of the Washington Post previews some of the issues that may come up in tonight's Democratic debate. Tops on her list: the voter data breach.
Eric Yoder of the Washington Post: "President Obama has finalized a pay raise for federal employees in January, the last step in a year-long process that started and ended at the same number, 1.3 percent. Obama issued an order Friday evening making the raise effective for most federal employees, as of the first full biweekly pay period of the new year, which will start Jan. 10 for most."
Dan Lamothe of the Washington Post: "In an interview with Foreign Policy magazine published Friday, [former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel] said he remains puzzled why [Obama] White House officials tried to 'destroy' him personally in his last days in office, adding that he was convinced the United States had no viable strategy in Syria and was particularly frustrated with National Security Adviser Susan Rice, who he said would hold meetings and focus on 'nit-picky' details." The interview is here.
Elahi Izadi of the Washington Post: "Old Dixie Highway is no more in Riviera Beach, Fla. Instead, motorists are driving on President Barack Obama Highway. Riviera Beach officials renamed the portion of the highway in their city limits, and the new sign carrying the name of the nation's first black president went up Thursday. Old Dixie, officials said, paid homage to an era that glorified slavery." CW: Old Dixie Highway is the main street of many towns along Florida's east coast. Here's hoping other towns get with the Riviera Beach program. (But I'm not counting on it.)
"My Fair Donald." Prejudice & vitriol sounds evah-so much more palatable when delivered with an upper-crust British accent. British English comedian and actor Peter Serafinowicz provides the voice. Thanks to MAG for the link:
*****
White House: "In this week's address, the President celebrated the end of the year tradition of list-making with a year-in-review list of his own":
Sarah Parvini, et al., of the Los Angeles Times: "During a stop on their way to Hawaii for the holidays, [President] Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama came to [San Bernardino to] meet privately with the families of the 14 victims killed two weeks ago in the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil since Sept. 11, 2001."
Camila Domonoske of NPR: "President Obama wrapped up 2015 by taking another round of questions from the press. At the traditional end-of-year news conference Friday afternoon, Obama began with a list of achievements, including the legalization of same-sex marriage across America and progress made toward addressing global climate change":
Sari Horwitz of the Washington Post: "President Obama commuted the sentences of 95 drug offenders Friday, more than double the number of commutations he granted earlier this year in July, in an effort to reduce prison crowding and give relief to drug offenders who were harshly sentenced in the nation's war on drugs." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Bill Chappell of NPR: "President Obama has signed a $1.1 trillion funding bill that will keep the federal government running until Sept. 30, 2016. Earlier on Friday, the Senate gave final congressional approval to the bill, which includes nearly $700 billion in tax breaks." ...
... David Herszenhorn of the New York Times: "Congress on Friday morning overwhelmingly gave final approval to a sweeping, year-end fiscal package that includes a $1.15 trillion spending measure as well as $620 billion in tax breaks for businesses and low-income workers. The bill now goes to the White House, where President Obama has said he will sign it." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post: Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) "said Friday that he would block the nomination of the Navy's second-ranking civilian leader until the service reconsiders its decision not to punish a prominent admiral accused of retaliating against several whistleblowers.... The move ... escalates the pressure on Navy leaders to take action against Rear Adm. Brian L. Losey, the commander in charge of the service's SEAL teams and other elite units.... Losey, a prominent figure in the military's secretive Special Operations forces, once commanded SEAL Team 6, the clandestine unit known for killing terrorist targets such as Osama bin Laden. He now leads the Naval Special Warfare Command and previously served as a top military aide to the White House."
Julia Preston of the New York Times: Rep. Robert Goodlatte (R-TP-Va,), "the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, is raising new questions about the fiancé visa granted to the Pakistani woman who with her husband carried out the massacre in San Bernardino, Calif., saying her application shows she may not have met a core requirement for the visa.... Mr. Goodlatte is a fierce critic of the Obama administration and has argued that visa vetting is lax."
David Chen of the New York Times: "When Hunter College High School announced in March that it had received a $1 million donation -- the largest ever in its century-long history -- from a member of the Class of 2001, many graduates were stunned to learn who the young donor was: Martin Shkreli, a multimillionaire pharmaceuticals executive.... If the charges against Mr. Shkreli are true, his flunking out of Hunter, the prestigious Upper East Side school known for its Ivy League-bound students, was just the first in a series of failures that he would try to overcome with money, his own or other people's.... When asked this week whether Hunter was considering returning the money, a press officer declined to comment." ...
... Guardian: Community Solutions, a homeless charity "that was given a donation worth thousands of dollars by notorious pharmaceuticals entrepreneur Martin Shkreli has said it is giving the money back on moral grounds." ...
... Sarah Karlin of Politico: "Martin Shkreli, who became a lightning rod for criticism about drug price gouging, resigned as CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, the company announced this afternoon, a day after he was charged in a multi-million-dollar fraud scheme unrelated to the company." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Reuters: "After deliberating for most of the year, Isis Pharmaceuticals has announced it will change its name to avoid being confused with the militant group Islamic State, also known as Isis. The biotechnology company said it will be called Ionis Pharmaceuticals starting 22 December and also changed its stock exchange ticker symbol to 'IONS' from 'ISIS'."
Christian Davenport of the Washington Post tells the story of Blake Percival, the whistleblower who exposed USIS for doing background checks on only a portion of the federal government hirees the company had contracted to vet. "USIS, the government contractor that had done the background checks on Edward Snowden and Navy Yard shooter Aaron Alexis, filed for bankruptcy and went out of business." After four-and-a-half years, Percival just received a $6 million award for reporting USIS, which had fired him for trying to end their practice of dumping cases the company was hired to investigate. "After the attorneys' cut, Percival's share before taxes would be $3.3 million, he said." (Also linked yesterday.)
Liberals Can Be Creeps, Too. Anna Merlan of Jezebel: "Major progressive public relations firm FitzGibbon media abruptly shut down [Thursday] amid numerous allegations that its founder Trevor FitzGibbon sexually harassed and sexually assaulted female staffers. One woman who says she was harassed during a job interview said Friday that FitzGibbon obliquely propositioned her for sex and demanded nude photos of her, and when she declined, the job offer disappeared." ...
... Here's an earlier, related story by Merlan.
Somini Sengupta & David Sanger of the New York Times: "For the first time since the nearly five-year-old Syrian civil war began, world powers agreed on Friday at the United Nations Security Council to embrace a plan for a cease-fire and a peace process that holds the distant prospect of ending the conflict. A resolution adopted unanimously by the Security Council reflected a monthslong effort by American and Russian officials, who have long been at odds over the future of Syria, to find common national interests to stop the killing, even if they cannot yet agree on Syria's ultimate future."
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd.
James DeHaven, et al., of the Las Vegas Review-Journal: "Just over a month before Sheldon Adelson's family was revealed as the new owner of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, three reporters at the newspaper received an unusual assignment passed down from the newspaper's corporate management: Drop everything and spend two weeks monitoring all activity of three Clark County judges. The reason for the assignment and its unprecedented nature was never explained. One of the three judges observed was District Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez, whose current caseload includes Jacobs v. Sands, a long-running wrongful termination lawsuit filed against Adelson and his company, Las Vegas Sands Corp., by Steven Jacobs, who ran Sands' operations in Macau." ...
... Ravi Somaiya & Barry Meier of the New York Times: "The assignment was handed down by corporate management over the objections of the newsroom, the paper reported. No reason was specified for the assignment, the paper's editor, Michael Hengel, said in an interview on Friday, and the material, which the paper said amounted to 15,000 words, was never published."
Margaret Sullivan, the New York Times' public editor: "A Times article Sunday reported that the U.S. government had missed something that was right out there in the open: the jihadist social-media posts by one of the San Bernardino killers.... It was certainly damning -- and it was wrong.... The executive editor, Dean Baquet ... said that some new procedures need to be put in place, especially for dealing with anonymous sources, and he said he would begin working on that immediately.... He said [the reporters'] sources apparently did not know the difference between public and private messages on social-media platforms.... The Times need to fix its overuse of unnamed government sources. And it needs to slow down the reporting and editing process.... If this isn't a red alert, I don't know what will be." (Emphasis added.) (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... CW: Excellent. The Times is relying on anonymous sources so ignorant don't know the difference to a private e-mail & a public Facebook post. And nobody at the Times thought even to ask for the URLs of the alleged public postings to see for themselves that they actually existed (which they didn't). This is incredible. I've been a source for reporters at less prestigious newspapers than the Times, & the reporters always check out my tips or allegations. I would be horrified if they didn't. ...
... digby: "'Mr. Baquet rejected the idea that the sources had a political agenda that caused them to plant falsehoods. "There's no reason to think that's the case," he said,' [citing Sullivan]. That ... is just absurd. There is every reason to think that law enforcement sources who consistently leak erroneous information that is politically harmful to one party might have a political agenda. It's certainly happened before." ...
... Hunter of Daily Kos: "... the New York Times helped lead the nation to war by promoting false stories from 'anonymous' sources that merely sought to use the paper as an influential mouthpiece for their own claims -- an effort the Times eventually, begrudgingly itself admitted the error of -- and for us to be back in that same position now, with editors still quite certain in multiple front-page stories that their 'sources' didn't mean any harm by passing on the incendiary-but-false information -- suggests that such editorial skepticism is remarkably difficult to come by." ...
... Gary Legum of Salon: The Times story "feeds the general climate of paranoia and fear of Muslims that has taken hold in the country, particularly on the right wing.... Mistakes of this sort are like tossing gasoline on a fire." ...
... Erik Wemple of the Washington Post: "The New York Times has attached a three-paragraph editor's note to a front-page Sunday story on the abilities of the U.S. government to surveil the online communications of the San Bernardino, Calif., assailants, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik.... There's a problem here.... The New York Times is attempting to preserve the structure and feel of a story about federal government misfeasance in a world where there appears to be little or no misfeasance. Consider the new-look lede: It appears to fault immigration officials for failing to uncover Malik's online views on jihad. Well of course they failed in that pursuit: Those views were expressed in private -- and quite possibly encrypted -- communications. There should be no expectation that they would be uncovered by immigration officials.... This is an attempt to retrofit a factually poisoned article with replacement parts that don't fit." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Presidential Race
Alvin Chang of Vox: "'Tis six days before Christmas and at 8 o'clock at night, Democrats have a debate -- and viewership may be light. But seriously, folks, debates have never been scheduled like this before.... Usually the national parties want people to see their candidates onstage, which is why we've never had a debate this close to Christmas, much less on a Saturday. It is free media.... Republican debates are garnering record viewership, and it's paying off as far as engaging their party." The most charitable explanation is that the DNC is incompetent. "But there's some speculation that the Democratic National Committee scheduled debates on times people don't watch specifically to protect frontrunner Hillary Clinton." ...
... Deck 'em All with Boughs of Holly (or other available bludgeons). CW: Yes, but tonight, maybe Hillary & Bernie will get in a fight! ...
Ben Jacobs & Dan Roberts of the Guardian: "Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign has regained access to the Democratic party's master voter file after a day of conflict and litigation between the insurgent Vermont senator and the Democratic National Committee (DNC).... In a statement, the campaign announced that the DNC 'capitulated' and expressed its confidence that it would be able to return to normal by Saturday morning.... The lawsuit filed with a federal court in Washington reveals that the agreement to use a shared computer system for voter registration and supporter data included a provision for a 10-day notice period for any changes to access." ...
... Maggie Haberman & Nick Corasantini of the New York Times: "A fight between the campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders and the Democratic Party's leadership went public on Friday, on the eve of the year's final primary debate, as the Sanders camp accused the party of actively trying to help Hillary Clinton." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... New Lede: "A fight between the campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders and the Democratic leadership went public on Friday as the party punished the campaign over a data breach and the Sanders camp sued the party and accused it of actively trying to help Hillary Clinton.... Late Friday night, the national committee and the Sanders campaign said they had come to an agreement to restore the campaign's access to the voter file by Saturday morning. The D.N.C., however, will continue to investigate the breach, according to a statement from the chairwoman, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida." ...
... Josh Feldman of Mediaite: "Brian Fallon, a Clinton campaign spokesman, called into CNN [Friday] night, very angry about the reported 24 separate intrusions by the Sanders campaign. He said this was a clear 'act of theft, stealing data from the Clinton campaign,' and Sanders isn't living up to that 'different kind of campaign' he promised. 'They were very productive,' Fallon told Wolf Blitzer. 'They were like kids in a candy store, Wolf. They had about 40 minutes where they ran wild.'" ...
... Ruby Cramer of BuzzFeed: "Hillary Clinton’s campaign is calling for rival Bernie Sanders to undergo an 'independent review' following the data breach that her top officials described on Friday evening as theft and a possible 'violation of the law.' Clinton's campaign manager, Robby Mook, and spokesman, Brian Fallon, laid out the demands in a conference call with reporters on Friday...." ...
... Gabriel Debenedetti of Politico: "Bernie Sanders' campaign on Friday threatened to sue the Democratic Party for suspending its access to the national voter database, saying the move threatens to undermine the Vermont senator's presidential run. Jeff Weaver, Sanders' campaign manager, held a press conference on Friday in which he described how the Democratic National Committee was unfairly choking off the 'lifeblood' of the campaign." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Maryalice Parks, et al., of ABC News: "Now, it has come to light that the Sanders staffer may have downloaded and exported the Clinton campaign's data, and it may have been more than one Sanders staffer that accessed the information, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said today. Sanders campaign officials defended themselves during a news conference today, saying they are running a 'clean' campaign and that they in fact 'alerted' the DNC two months ago that campaign data was available to others." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Greg Sargent: "... based on what we know at this point about what happened, preventing the Sanders camp from accessing voter data for any meaningful length of time is not tenable.... One point that can be made right now is that the DNC needs to restore Sanders' access to the data as quickly as possible." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling: "PPP's newest national Republican primary poll finds Donald Trump holding his largest lead yet in the wake of Tuesday night's debate. He's at 34% to 18% for Ted Cruz, 13% for Marco Rubio, 7% for Jeb Bush, 6% for Ben Carson, 5% for Chris Christie, 4% each for Carly Fiorina and Mike Huckabee, 2% each for John Kasich and Rand Paul, 1% each for Lindsey Graham and Rick Santorum, and less than 1% each for Jim Gilmore and George Pataki.... To put some of these findings about real modern day issues and Trump voters in context, 41% of his voters think Japanese internment was a good thing, to 37% who don't. And 41% of his supporters would favor bombing Agrabah to only 9% who are opposed to doing that. Agrabah is the country from Aladdin." ...
... Elizabeth Brown of Reason suggests six other fictional countries "we should bomb once we're done with Agrabah." Ferinstance, Candyland: "Obesity epidemic, hello." ...
... Eric Peoples: "We should set up a no fly(ing carpet) zone at least." Via Daily Kos.
** Dana Milbank cites some horrible, bigoted messages he received from Trump backers after he wrote that Trump was a bigot & a racist. And, no, his mail wasn't all against "Mo-slimes," as some writers called Muslims. Because Milbank is Jewish, he was treated to many slurs of Jews, too. "... the Trump-backers' venom is without precedent. His supporters surely aren't all bigots -- but he is bringing the bigoted in from the cold.... Is this what Republicans stand for? Is this conservatism?" ...
... CW: Milbank's column puts the lie to the notion that fear is the basis for Republicans' "unease" with a pluralistic society in which they are about to become a minority. Milbank's "correspondents" are consumed with hatred for all manner of people they perceive to be somewhat unlike themselves. No one who can be "otherized" -- and almost all of us can be -- is immune to their animosity. Trump -- and to only a slightly lesser extent, the entire Republican establishment -- has made hatred of "others" not just acceptable but desirable. It's "traditional." Republicans are "real Americans." The party has been running on bigotry for decades. All Trump has done is more clearly expose the twisted soul of the party.
Gail Collins: "Modern tradition holds that you can't win Iowa (first in the nation!) without selling your soul on ethanol.... This season, the trick for Republicans is to oppose the ethanol program on principle, while simultaneously making it clear they don't intend to do anything about it.... The most hard-core anti-ethanol candidate is Ted Cruz.... 'Oil companies give him a lot of money,' [Donald] Trump sniped.... The Cruz campaign says its man is a principled enemy of 'all energy-specific subsidies.' This is arguably true if you buy the extremely convenient theory that humongous tax breaks don't count."
David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post: For a "consistent conservative," Ted Cruz changes his mind a lot.
Sean Sullivan & David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post: Marco Rubio "often seems to advocate two positions at once. He tells voters that he has a personal view on the subject -- whether abortion, immigration, Syrian refugees or gay marriage. But he also has a view of what is politically possible. Which, usually, is not what he personally wants. That tactic allows Rubio to offer two right answers to the same question, and lets him carve out wiggle room on topics where none seemed possible.... But the extent of his equivocation on key issues has left many Republicans, including his supporters, wondering what he really believes." ...
... CW: Besides, it doesn't matter too much what Marco thinks, because as a senator, half the time he doesn't vote anyway. No, that's not an exaggeration. ...
... Jordain Carney of the Hill: "Sen. Marco Rubio missed Friday's Senate vote approving a massive $1.8 trillion end-of-the-year spending bill and tax package -- a day after he suggested that he could try to slow the legislation down. The Florida Republican ... was the only 2016 contender to miss the vote, which is the Senate's final vote of the year. Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), three other presidential candidates, all voted against the legislation. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a fourth GOP presidential candidate from the Senate, backed the bill.... [Rubio] has missed more than half of the Senate's votes since October." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Rebecca Shabad of CBS News: "Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, on Friday defended his decision to skip a major vote in the Senate that afternoon to fund the government through September, and he took a swipe at a GOP rival [Rand Paul] who called on him to resign from Congress.... 'Here's the other point about Senator Paul.... He's the only person running who likes politics so much, he's running for two offices at the same time. I mean he wants to be a senator and president,' Rubio said."
Beyond the Beltway
Lisa Foderaro of the New York Times: "... some critics [of Donald Trump's] are demanding that his name be removed from ... a state park. The park is in Westchester and Putnam Counties in New York, straddling the Taconic State Parkway. Called (no surprise) Donald J. Trump State Park, the property was donated to the state in 2006 after Mr. Trump's plan to develop a golf course there was derailed by environmental and permitting roadblocks. Since then, the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation has made virtually no investment in the 435-acre park, which has no dedicated maintenance staff and, unlike most Trump properties, exudes a feeling of decay and abandonment."
Matt Grubs & Chris McKee of KRQE Albuquerque: Gov. Susana Martinez (R-N.M.) told a 911 dispatcher to "call off" the cops who were responding to a noise complaint at a Santa Fe hotel where the governor was holding a staff party. "On several occasions, Martinez pressures the dispatcher and hotel staff to reveal the identity of who made the complaint. The dispatcher and hotel staff refuse." Martinez later apologized for her "mistake." "The Governor also denies that she was intoxicated during the incident."
News Ledes
New York Times: "Kurt Masur, the music director emeritus of the New York Philharmonic, who was credited with transforming the orchestra from a sullen, lackluster ensemble into one of luminous renown, died on Saturday in Greenwich, Conn. He was 88."
New York Times: "An airstrike that mistakenly killed Iraqi troops on Friday was carried out by an American plane, United States officials said on Saturday. Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said he had expressed his condolences to the Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi. Mr. Carter did not offer a detailed explanation for the errant airstrike, which the Iraqi government said killed at least nine Iraqi soldiers, but said, 'It seemed to be a mistake that involved both sides.'"
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I'm a few days late in reporting this, but wanted to let everyone know that the Kohler strike has been settled after several weeks. Over 90% of Union members voted for the new contract. Stories are available at jsonline.com, but if you value your peace of mind, never read the comments on that site.
"UNITED NATIONS — For the first time since the nearly five-year-old Syrian civil war began, world powers agreed on Friday at the United Nations Security Council to embrace a plan for a cease-fire and a peace process that holds the distant prospect of ending the conflict."
This is such a big deal. As David Remnick reports in his New Yorker coverage on Kerry, the farrago of competing national interests, the legacies of historical blunders, the fantastical cast of characters, the sheer bloodlust, the prospect of regional if not global conflict––all conspired to make Kerry's task in Syria nearly impossible. The trick, of course, will be working with the Russians in this endeavor. But we got Iran to the table and that in itself is a feat, so maybe we can pull together and begin to pull Syria out of the rumble. Everyone involved has a dog in the game––and not everyone's dog will be a winner. At this point I wouldn't place my bets on any hound ––bound to lose.
@Nadd––thanks for the info.
From a friend posting on Facebook: "2/3 of Trumps wives were immigrants.... Proving once again that we need immigrants to do jobs most Americans won't do."
When you read Dana Milbank's article you learn two things: the piece of America hiding under the trash and how ISIS gets it's followers.
The Milbank piece, although not surprising, is tough to read. We "kind of figured" that Trump's majority of followers must be people who rank low on the intelligence scale and/or are racist, bigoted––fill in the blanks...
Richard Dawkins has a video out where he reads–-in that proper British tone––hate letters he receives daily from various and sundry. It's very funny, but again, like Milbanks', incredibly pathetic.
Brilliantly hilarious!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-british-accent_56752c2ce4b0b958f656ddc5
"Donald Trump Sounds Weirdly Sophisticated With A British Accent"
Computer has been slower than usual lately, so wondered if the R's had managed to instantaneously kill net neutrality with one of their poison pill budget riders (not that I don't trust those R's to look out for my best interests).
Hadn't seen any mention of the matter in standard news reports of the budget deal, so Googled it (slowly) this AM, and the news is good. No net neutrality poison pill in the final language.
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/republicans-fail-to-kill-net-neutrality-in-budget-bill
So another win for the good guys in the mixed mess of last minute budget stew.
Maybe my computer is, just like me, more given to sleep in these short and dark winter days.
Interesting article in Friday's NYT Business section:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/18/business/dealbook/a-missed-opportunity-of-ultra-cheap-money.html
Thank you, Republicans for spending the last eight years resisting attempts to invest in our infrastructure when money was cheap.
Also, I thought the banks were the ones steadily urging the Fed to raise interest rates. After the initial bump, bank (and many other) stocks took a tumble. I'm going to wait to see if this is just a downward glitch, and see what more knowledgeable heads say about it, but the first impression is, once again: Be careful what you wish for!
I am very skeptical that the same two NYTimes reporters who relied upon anonymous sources for two stories that turned out to be completely false could simply have lapsed badly twice in six months. Vetting anonymous sources is Journalism 101, and The Times does not hire raw rookies who have not taken that course. There needs to be a thorough investigation into whether these reporters have their own agenda or worse been infiltrated into the Times as a part of a dirty tricks campaign.