The Commentariat -- May 6, 2016

Afternoon Update:

ConservoHillary. Amy Chozick of the New York Times: Hillary "Clinton's campaign is repositioning itself, after a year of staking out liberal positions and focusing largely on minority voters, to appeal to independent and Republican-leaning white voters turned off by Mr. Trump.... Mrs. Clinton has broadened her economic message, devoted days to apologizing for a comment she previously made that angered working-class whites, and has pledged that her husband ... would 'come out of retirement and be in charge' of creating jobs in places that have been particularly hard hit. The effort is a striking turn after she spent the past year trying to to mobilize the liberal wing and labor leaders in the Democratic Party." -- CW

The Narcissist at Work. Jenna Johnson of the Washington Post: "During a joyful, victorious rally speech in West Virginia on Thursday night, Trump told his crowd of 13,000 that they no longer had to vote in Tuesday's Republican primary --even though there are still a number of contested local races on the ballot." -- CW

Scott Shane & Eric Lipton of the New York Times: "The anonymous source behind the huge leak of documents known as the Panama Papers has offered to aid law enforcement officials in prosecutions related to offshore money laundering and tax evasion, but only if he is assured that he will not be punished. 'Legitimate whistle-blowers who expose unquestionable wrongdoing, whether insiders or outsiders, deserve immunity from government retribution,' the source, who has still not revealed a name or nationality, said in a statement issued Thursday night." -- CW

*****

Sari Horwitz of the Washington Post: "President Obama commuted the sentences of 58 inmates Thursday as part of his ongoing initiative to release federal prisoners who have received severe mandatory sentences for non-violent drug offenses.... Obama [now] has granted clemency to a total 306 inmates, 110 of whom were serving life sentences. Obama has said he will continue granting commutations during his final months in office to inmates who meet certain criteria set out by the Justice Department." -- CW

Sabrina Tavernise of the New York Times: "The Food and Drug Administration made final sweeping new rules that for the first time extend federal regulatory authority to e-cigarettes, popular nicotine delivery devices that have grown into a multibillion-dollar business with virtually no federal oversight or protections for American consumers. The 499-page regulatory road map has broad implications for public health, the tobacco industry and the nation's 40 million smokers. The new regulations would ban the sale of e-cigarettes to Americans under 18...." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Shane Harrisof The Daily Beast: "Two senior U.S. intelligence officials said recently that defense and intelligence employees have an 'unbelievable' amount of child pornography on their work computers and devices, and that child porn has been found on the systems of the National Security Agency, the country's biggest intelligence organization. But the NSA, which is responsible for keeping tabs on its own computers as well as military and intelligence agency networks, cannot say...how many times such cases have been referred to law enforcement for investigation and potential criminal prosecution." --safari

"Jesus Didn't Wear a Rolex." Garrison Keillor, in a Washington Post op-ed: "Every time Bob McDonnell talks about his corruption conviction in Virginia, he mentions how Jesus Christ is sticking with him all the way, which surely is true.... The Lord has always been there for thieves and malefactors, but this is mercy; it doesn't mean that Jesus approves of taking more than $150,000 in gifts from a man cozying up to a governor, as Mr. McDonnell seems to suggest.... His mercy is everlasting; and His truth endures to all generations. And wherever two Corinthians are gathered together, there He is in the midst of them." -- CW

Lori Aratani & Paul Duggan of the Washington Post: "The commutes of hundreds of thousands of Washington-area residents will be upended when Metro General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld on Friday unveils his long-awaited plan for a massive overhaul of the struggling rail system." -- CW

Olga Oxman of the Guardian: "A group of more than 2,000 physicians is calling for the establishment of a universal government-run health system in the US, in a paper in the American Journal of Public Health. According to the proposal released Thursday, the Affordable Care Act did not go far enough in removing barriers to healthcare access. The physicians' bold plan calls for implementing a single-payer system similar to Canada's, called the National Health Program, that would guarantee all residents healthcare." CW: Hmmm. Sounds familiar.

Vann Newkirk of The Atlantic: "...Maybe some of the difficulty in talking about race today is attributable to the unhelpful euphemisms of 'racial conflict,' 'racial tension,' and other phrases that suggest an equal amount of instigation across racial groups, if not a perfectly balanced battle. But not all 'racial conflicts' or 'racially fraught' sentiments are the same. Equating them even via casual euphemism dilutes the potency of a truth that has undergirded every aspect of American society for as long as American society has existed." --safari

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. David Roberts of Vox: "... that whole superstructure of US politics built around two balanced sides, there will be a tidal pull to normalize this election.... So there will be a push to lift Donald Trump up and bring Hillary Clinton down, until they are at least something approximating two equivalent choices.... No institution needs a competitive election more than the media.... What's more, the campaign media's self-image is built on not being partisan, which precludes adjudicating political disputes.... To date, the anti-Trump position has been safely inside the Washington consensus. That will change once the GOP apparatus inevitably swings around behind Trump and begins accusing journalists who write critical stories of bias." -- CW ... (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Paul Krugman writes what Roberts writes, & adds a bit about the racism that drove the Tea Party & is the prime force behind Trumpism. "I can almost guarantee that we'll see attempts to sanitize the positions and motives of Trump supporters, to downplay the racism that is at the heart of the movement and pretend that what voters really care about are the priorities of D.C. insiders.... That is, after all, what happened after the rise of the Tea Party." -- CW

Presidential Race

Daniel Strauss of Politico: "Here's one reason Bernie Sanders is reluctant to give up the fight: May is shaping up to be a pretty good month for him. On the heels of his Indiana victory Tuesday, Sanders is well-positioned for wins in the upcoming West Virginia and Oregon primaries.... For Hillary Clinton, the prospect of additional Sanders wins is more headache than threat." -- CW

Yamiche Alcindor of the New York Times: "Senator Bernie Sanders on Thursday vowed to invest billions of dollars in coal-mining communities to create jobs, seizing on the issue as Hillary Clinton faces a backlash for promising to put coal companies out of business. The Vermont senator brought up the future of coal miners while campaigning across West Virginia, which holds its primary on Tuesday, and spoke about poverty at a food bank in Kimball." -- CW

The Los Angeles Times editors interviewed Hillary Clinton. Here's the transcript. -- CW

Matt Zapotosky of the Washington Post: "Prosecutors and FBI agents investigating Hillary Clinton's use of a personal email server have so far found scant evidence that the leading Democratic presidential candidate intended to break classification rules, though they are still probing the case aggressively with an eye on interviewing Clinton herself, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter." -- CW ...

... Del Wilber of the Los Angeles Times: "Huma Abedin, a close aide to Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, was questioned last month by FBI agents investigating whether classified material was mishandled on the private email server used by the former secretary of State and her aides, according to a person familiar with the investigation." -- CW

** How to Tank the Economy in One Idiotic Remark. Benyamin Appelbaum of the New York Times: "One day after assuring Americans he is not running for president 'to make things unstable for the country'..., Donald J. Trump said in a television interview Thursday that he might seek to reduce the national debt by persuading creditors to accept something less than full payment. Asked whether the United States needed to pay its debts in full, or whether he could negotiate a partial repayment, Mr. Trump told the cable network CNBC, 'I would borrow, knowing that if the economy crashed, you could make a deal.'... Such remarks by a major presidential candidate have no modern precedent. The United States government is able to borrow money at very low interest rates because Treasury securities are regarded as a safe investment, and any cracks in investor confidence have a long history of costing American taxpayers a lot of money." -- CW ..

... Unbelievably, this is from the same interview. Eric Levitz of New York: "Appearing on CNBC's Squawk Box, Trump reiterated his commitment to a massive increase in infrastructure spending. 'Maybe my greatest strength is the economy, jobs, and building,' Trump said. 'We do have to rebuild our infrastructure.'" CW: There will be no infrastructure spending if nobody will buy U.S. Treasury notes, you bonehead.

Benjy Sarlin of MSNBC: "Two days into his general election campaign, Donald Trump has already signaled he may abandon his positions on two major policy issues: a minimum wage increase and tax cuts for the rich.... Trump's willingness to blithely abandon past positions has made conservative activists deeply skeptical, but it also presents a general election challenge for Democrats: How do you hold a candidate accountable for his positions after he has looked Americans in the eyes during a debate and, with a straight face, denied he ever held contrary views?" ...

     ... CW: I'll tell you how: you just point out that the poor old codger suffers from dementia. Of course he can't remember what he said last month, & of course he imagines he saw things that never happened (like imagining New Jersey Muslims cheering the 9/11 terrorist attack). As you know, I'm serious about this. ...

... Russell Burman of The Atlantic: "Trump's slipperiness on policy details has been a theme of his candidacy and, quite possibly, a core part of his appeal to voters. He's a dealmaker, and as he has said repeatedly when pressed about his positions, 'Everything is negotiable.'...Yet Trump's ability to be a political chameleon has significant implications for how Democrats go after him in the fall. 'This is what makes @realdonaldtrump an elusive target,' David Axelrod, President Obama's former top strategist, tweeted on Thursday. 'He believes in himself. Everything else is fungible.' --safari

Olivia Nuzzi of The Daily Beast: "For someone so inclined to overshare -- about his penis size, his sexual prowess, his wife's bathroom habits, her lack of cellulite -- Donald Trump is an intensely private person. He's so private that the privacy terms he forces those in his orbit to agree to verge on unconstitutional, and his opaque plans to enforce privacy measures of undisclosed range as President of the United States have potentially grave implications for the Republic." --safari

Tim Egan on the "new" Donald Trump. -- CW

Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: ""The Candidate": "What do we do now?" -- CW

Trump and the mob. Tom Robbins in The Marshall Project (April 27th): "...One helpful lens for determining Trump's views on crime and law enforcement is via his past encounters with those alleged to be on the wrong side of the law. That's his history with the mob. And for all of his tough law and order rhetoric, the record shows the GOP frontrunner has been remarkably tolerant. In the course of his forty years of business deals, Trump has encountered a steady stream of mob-tainted offers that he apparently couldn't refuse." --safari...

...If you prefer video, here is Tom Robbins explaining Trump's mob connections via Democracy Now! (The interview starts around 4:45)

Sam Thielman of the Guardian: "Donald Trump has named an ex-Goldman Sachs partner, Hollywood financier and former Hillary Clinton supporter as his national finance chairman. Steven Mnuchin brings with him an impressive list of contacts in Hollywood and Wall Street. The founder of film finance company Dune Capital, he backed action movies including the X-Men franchise and James Cameron's box office record-breaker, Avatar." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Click on photo to see larger image.Ashley Parker of the New York Times: "On his social media accounts, including Twitter, Mr. Trump shared on Thursday afternoon a photo of himself eating what he called a taco bowl and offering a thumbs up at his desk in Trump Tower, along with the message: 'Happy #CincoDeMayo! The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics!'... The Tower Grill does not, in fact, offer taco bowls, but the Trump Café has them on Thursday's Cinco de Mayo menu as a 'Taco fiesta!'" -- CW ...

... Chris Plante of the Verge illuminates "everything terrible about Donald Trump's taco bowl tweet." Here's one thing Plante learned on the Intertubes from a guy named Benny: "Donald Trump is eating a taco salad on top of a bikini-clad photo of his ex-wife, Marla Maples." (See circled area of photo.) CW: I'm pretty sure "taco bowls" (which I'll admit I never heard of) are more a Tex-Mex thing than a traditional "Hispanic" favorite.

Robert Costa of the Washington Post interviewed Donald Trump, who, you know, "said a lot of things." Like, Cruz & Kasich "did a great thing for the party because we can now start on all the things that we have to start on." -- CW

Greg Miller of the Washington Post: Donald "Trump will soon be getting briefings from U.S. spy agencies. It might not go well.... 'It beggars the imagination,' said former CIA director Michael V. Hayden, who was among those who briefed President Obama after the 2008 election. 'Given that [Trump's] public persona seems to reflect a lack of understanding or care about global issues, how do you arrange these presentations to learn what are the true depths of his understanding?'... The decision on how much to share and when are traditionally made by the sitting president." -- CW

Paul Ryan Not Yet Ready to Back Trump. Eric Bradner of CNN: "House Speaker Paul Ryan said Thursday he cannot yet support presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump's presidential campaign. 'I'm just not ready to do that at this point. I'm not there right now,' Ryan's position makes him the highest-level GOP official to reject Trump...Ryan's comments were striking because Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday night that he'd back Trump." ... (Also linked yesterday.)

... Akhilleus: There must be some kind of logical fallacy term for the situation in which one self-promoting fraud opts out of supporting another self-promoting fraud. Not to mention a situation in which a different self-promoting fraud DOES decide to support self-promoting fraud number one. Republicans are so confusing!. ...

... Maggie Haberman: "Donald J. Trump said on Friday that he was 'surprised' by the rebuke from Representative Paul D. Ryan..., on Thursday, and added that the party needed to come together.... He confirmed that there were efforts to broker a meeting between the two men next Wednesday in Washington, although he cautioned that there are 'a lot of days' from now till then." CW: It is somewhat surprising that Short Fingers didn't know how many days there are between now & Wednesday, because you can count five days on one hand, no matter how stumpy the fingers. Trump should consider "a lot of days" to be six or more. ...

... Dana Bash of CNN: "Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry told CNN Thursday he will support Donald Trump as the Republican presidential nominee and will do everything he can do to help him get elected.... When Perry was a candidate for president earlier in the 2016 cycle, he was the first to come out and criticize Trump and question his conservative credentials, calling his candidacy a 'cancer on conservatism.'" --safari

... BUT. David Sanger & Jim Yardley of the New York Times: "Alarmed by Donald J. Trump's grip on the Republican presidential nomination, world leaders are wrestling with the possibility that, even if he loses the general election, his ascent reflects a strain of American public opinion that could profoundly reshape the way the United States addresses security alliances and trade. From Beijing, Tokyo and Seoul to the headquarters of NATO in Brussels and the vulnerable Baltic nations along Russia's western border, officials and analysts said in interviews that they saw the success of Mr. Trump's 'America first' platform as a harbinger of pressure for allies to pay up or make trade concessions in return for military protection." -- CW

Dahlia Lithwick remembers Ted Cruz from their days on the college debate circuit & from his turn as Texas solicitor general. Entertaining. -- CW

Beyond the Beltway

Alan Blinder & Richard Fausset of the New York Times: "The Republican leaders of North Carolina's General Assembly defiantly announced Thursday that they would not meet a Monday deadline to suspend or repeal a state law limiting bathroom access for transgender people, setting up a potential legal showdown over what has become one of the nation's most explosive cultural issues. 'We will take no action by Monday,' said Tim Moore, the speaker of the State House of Representatives, referring to the deadline the Justice Department gave the state to tell federal officials whether the law would stand." -- CW

Mark Berman of the Washington Post: "On Thursday, the Florida Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that could lead to nearly 400 death-row prisoners receiving life sentences, a move experts say could be the country's single biggest jettisoning of death sentences in decades.... The uncertain situation dates back to January, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Florida's unique system of imposing death sentences as unconstitutional because it let judges, rather than juries, make the final call. Florida promptly revamped its death penalty, which Gov. Rick Scott (R) said at the time would 'allow families of these horrific crimes to get the closure they deserve.' Left unanswered, though, was whether this Supreme Court ruling was retroactive...." -- CW

Charles Thompson of Pennlive: "A new bombshell dropped in the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal Thursday. It came in the form of a single line in a court order on a related insurance coverage case involving Penn State.... The line in question states that one of Penn State's insurers has claimed "in 1976, a child allegedly reported to PSU's Head Coach Joseph Paterno that he (the child) was sexually molested by Sandusky." --safari

Way Beyond

Tim Arango & Ceylan Yeginsu of the New York Times: "In pursuit of more power, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has purged the judiciary of enemies, jailed journalists and crushed anti-government protests. Now, he has ousted his closest political ally, the country's prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, whose modest effort to check Mr. Erdogan’s ambition was too much for the president. Mr. Davutoglu, publicly loyal to Mr. Erdogan even as he pushed back privately on some of his excesses, said Thursday that he would step aside as the leader of the Islamist Justice and Development Party, or A.K.P., and give up his position as prime minister." -- CW ... (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

... Dexter Filkins of the New Yorker: "Erdoğan is well on his way to becoming a dictator, if he isn't one already.... [President] Obama and Erdoğan are supposed to meet today in Washington. Let's hope President Obama skips the diplomatic language and goes straight to the point: that any leader who jails journalists -- and arms Al Qaeda and bombs the Kurds and jails his opponents -- is no friend of the United States." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

News Ledes

Washington Post: "Police said three people have been shot at Westfield Montgomery Mall at 7101 Democracy Blvd. in Bethesda on Friday morning and that a suspect is at large. Soon after, a woman was fatally shot at a grocery store several miles away, and authorities are investigating whether the incidents are linked." -- CW ...

     ... Washington Post Update: "A frantic 22 hours of mayhem at a school, a mall and a grocery store jolted two counties as it left three dead and three wounded before a suspect was captured Friday afternoon in a Maryland parking lot near the scene of the final killing. The arrest of Eulalio 'Leo' Tordil, a 62-year-old federal law enforcement officer, followed a manhunt that forced Montgomery County schools, government buildings and retail establishments to lock down." -- CW

New York Times: "After months of gravity-defying gains, the American jobs machine cooled slightly in April, as employers took their cue from other signs that economic growth was slowing by easing up on new hiring. The 160,000 increase in payrolls in April reported by the Labor Department on Friday comes after the best two-year stretch for the job market since the tech-fueled boom of the late 1990s. The unemployment rate stayed at 5 percent." -- CW

Comments

[Marie Burns]

@Kate Madison: For Pete's sake, vote for Bernie! Show Hillary what kind of Democrat you are!

Marie

[Dan Lowery]

Kate
I feel your pain. What to do?
Take a stand on what I truly believe and vote for Bernie?
Or?
Vote to save the Republic from a mad man and an electorate that has gone collectively insane?
I'll stick with Sanders until after the convention. If he doesn't get the nomination, I can't say how I'll vote until I'm in the voting booth.
You can "Hold Your Nose for Hillary" until it turns blue, but it still stinks.

[Victoria]

I have wondered why the MSM have not really gotten "close" to the Alberta wildfire. Wildfires are terrifying to anyone. Juan Cole has a post on how canadian syrian refugees are helping out, but the accompanying video is the first that shows what it looks like to narrowly escape the wildfire. The map also shows how very far north the fire is. This is the great northern woods. It's hotter that summer in early May there. Family in Regina, Saskatchewan, say the smoke is oppressive. Regina is a 9 hour trip away from Ft. McMurray.

http://www.juancole.com/2016/05/wildfire-refugees-donating.html

[Marie Burns]

@Dan Lowery: As Kate often says, "Remember the Supremes."

Of course it isn't just the Supremes. Obama has been in office long enough -- & thanks to Harry Reid's blowing up the filibuster on lower court judges -- to profoundly change the character of district & appellate courts. Another eight years of Democratic control could turn the federal court system back into one where "justice" was more than a name. Long gone are the days when we had Republican presidents appointing relatively enlightened justices like John Paul Stevens & David Souter.

The same with regulatory agencies: all these new rules we're seeing -- and that usually don't get much press -- are the result of Democratic appointees being put in place in key regulatory agencies. Want to save the earth? Better vote for Hillary; she isn't going to put climate deniers in charge of the EPA.

Also, despite what Karl Rove thinks, there's not much evidence she is demented.

Marie

[PD Pepe]

Trump's new finance chair, Steven Mnuchin, led a bank that made millions off taxpayer bailouts, cost the government around 13 million and left many homeowners out in the cold due to foreclosures. This guy is some wheeler dealer and just the kind of smart crony that corresponds to the Trump triumph.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/05/trumps-new-top-money-man-led-bank-profited-bailouts

I found Dahlia Lithwick's piece on Cruz such a hoot besides being fascinating. I just wish she had come out with all this sooner––now that he's dropped out it lays there whimpering. However––he'll still be with us senate wise and as much as we hope his loss makes him more reflective and humble, I betcha we is gonna see the same old Ted debating his way through issues in Congress when , as Dahlia tells us, he would fare much better arguing before the S.C. where he was forced to stay within the lines of decorum.

[Dan Lowery]

Marie
Thanks for some sound reasoning. I'm always critical of hard core never give an inch conservatives who could give-a-shit about the common good. I need to apply the same standard to myself.
You bring up a good point on lower level appointments. I still remember "W" and Bremer's confederacy of dunces in post war Iraq. Especially the replacement of a medical professional initially put in charge of rebuilding Iraq's health care system. His replacement was a rabid anti-abortion zealot who thought the first priority was anti-abortion counseling centers. We won't even mention "heckuva job" Brownie.
As with Hillary, one would hope we can collectively keep her on a short leash.

[Akhilleus]

Marie wrote: "Also, despite what Karl Rove thinks, there's not much evidence she is demented."

Absolutely correct. Besides, as with most of the other Confederate liars, if Rove told you it was a nice day, you'd better be near a window before signing off on that statement.

There's not much evidence that Clinton is demented, but there is documentary evidence of Rove's tentative grasp on reality. Remember election night 2012?

And speaking of the change in the judiciary, now that insane people, pettifoggers, and disreputable ideologues are not being appointed any longer, that adjustment, the arc of the universe bending (back) toward justice, as one might say, would be much further along had it not been for the inveterate and intolerable intransigence of Confederate caballers and hacks in the senate who have been blocking Obama judicial nominees as if they were illegals with cantaloupe-sized calves sneaking over the border to rape white women.

In 2015, Confederates approved 9 appointees. That was the smallest number since 1960. They claim that Democrats did the same to The Decider, but once again, they lie. In 2007, according to Mother Jones, a Democratically controlled senate approved 34 of Bush's judges.

I don't expect Hillary's appointees to be a long series of Bill Brennans or Thurgood Marshalls, but I'm pretty sure we won't be getting a raft of Scalias and Alitos either.

So vote for Sanders in the primary if you're so disposed, but pull that lever for Clinton in the general. Otherwise you'll see Trump appointing shysters, jacklegs, mouthpieces for the mob, and god knows what else to the courts.

(By the way, not to devolve into any reductio ad Hitlerum (oh, go ahead; devolve already), but when considering Karl Rove's relative cogency, it is instructive to recall his erstwhile declaration that the country, under his "leadership", natch, had moved into an age of a "permanent Republican majority", a state which would guarantee Confederate dominance far into the future. Not unlike the promises of a thousand year Reich. How'd that work out? Still waiting for Rove to join Bush in a bunker somewhere...)

[Akhilleus]

Dan,

There was so much incredibly bad shit coming at such a high rate of defecation during the Decider's Iraq Debacle that most Americans simply couldn't keep track of it all. Add to that we had Ari Fleischer, one of the most unscrupulous hacks ever to darken the White House doorways, warning Americans to "be careful what you say" and a supine press eager to get them a big piece of shock and awe for the evening news and their names above the fold, and you had a recipe for a perfect (shit) storm.

As bad as Bush's mismanagement of the military aspects of the war was, as bad as his domestic horror shows were, as bad as his criminal negligence and willful lack of oversight of the economy, leading to a world wide market crash were, as bad as his incurious approach to the human disaster of Katrina was, I believe that Bush's bungling of the Iraq domestic scene, which has led directly to a dramatic worldwide increase in terror attacks and the rise of ISIS, is still one of the great, largely unreported and unacknowledged catastrophes of an astonishingly catastrophic administration. Think about it. Had any one of those events beset any other presidency, it would have been considered one of the great political failures in world history. Bush had dozens of terrible, self-created disasters. And here he is, lolling in his hammock, painting pictures of his toes instead of scrounging for cigarettes with drug dealers in a prison yard.

The Green Zone clusterfuck was abominable. Kids just out of some hack evangelical school, as long as they swore a loyalty oath to Bush, prayed to Jesus, and promised to work on The Decider's reelection campaign, were sent over to oversee immensely important systems: "A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance -- but had applied for a White House job -- was sent to reopen Baghdad's stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget, even though they didn't have a background in accounting."

Most of the hacks spent their time in the Baghdad Green Zone working on Bush's campaign. Being paid a lot of money by US taxpayers.

It was, and still is, one of the great scandals of incompetency and criminal mismanagement in US history but hardly anyone talks about it because the biggest thing today is the fact that a smirking orange headed clown eats a "taco bowl" and "likes" Hispanics.

Fuck me.

[Ken Winkes]

Definition of "demented" from Merriam-Webster: "1 : mad, insane. 2 : suffering from or exhibiting cognitive dementia." and I would add losing or never having the ability to mentate or think--considerations always relevant here on this premier political site.

Kate posted a link late last night to a Dean Baker article pointing out the obvious holes in Milton Friedman's nitwit economics, so revered by the Right. And I never fail to wonder at the fawning reverence the Right still accords Reagan, much of whose Presidency ran directly counter to all they claim to hold dear.

How can that be? How can those on the Right miss so much?

Clearly dementia is not the only answer. The monied class benefits directly from adherence to Rightist economics. They know it and spend millions touting its purported benefits. They just fail to say whose benefit they care most about. That's understood. Reprehensible as it is, greed is easy to comprehend.

But for the majority of those who carry the Right's water, the only explanation may be dementia, a word which covers all the contorted mental territory from deluded to dumb.

What are they thinking?

They may be finding excuses for their own worst impulses but they're surely not thinking. Rationalists and rationalizers. A critical distinction.

On the other hand, thanks to Marie for the realistic (what else?) assessment of the Obama legacy. As bad as things are, I shudder to think where the nation would be now if we had not had those eight years of relative sanity.

[PD Pepe]

"The candidates, particularly Trump and Cruz, have built entire stump speeches around bringing back high-paying jobs that have been lost to Mexico and China. They’re presuming two things: that these jobs would indeed be high-paying and that the American economy could even reabsorb them in the first place. But by and large, the manufacturing sector has only grown more skilled through the cutbacks of the last decade; the positions America has lost were positions it outgrew. A presidential candidate who promises to claw back the careers of 1979 is probably making a promise they can’t keep. They would do better to find jobs that fit this decade’s economy instead." Andrew McGill–-Atlantic

[Akhilleus]

Ken,

It's true. Much of what Reagan did ran counter to purported winger goals. So what to make of that? It's simple. Pundits make a huge mistake when they think that Confederate voters really care about policy goals and Heritage white papers outlining strategic plans for accomplishing the political and social ambitions of thinky-tanky types.

They don't.

They do care about image. How does it look? How does a candidate present himself (and those few herselves)? Hard? Lean and Mean (accent on mean...especially towards the hated and undeserving others)? Tough talking? Plenty of "Straight talk"? No namby-pamby coddling of "urban" or "lazy" people? Back of the hand to those who aren't Christian or the right kind of Christian? All in for war? All in for "Law and Order"? All out on food stamps, tree hugging, feminazis, climate change, pointy-headed atheistic scientists, and anything smacking of "progressive" politics and especially pesky facts? Doubly all in on "taking back the country"?

As long as you hit your mark and say your lines, they don't give two shits about policy. And Reagan was a sure bet for tough talking and hitting his mark. He was a guy who never went to church but said "god" a lot. So he must be a good Christian, right? And he called the Soviet Union "evil". Great! Good job, Ronnie! Give 'em hell, boy. So he could cut and run in Lebanon after getting 200 marines killed, he could raise taxes a bunch of times. He could hand out amnesty for illegals. It didn't matter. It's Ron, dude! He's awesome. He kicks hippie ass!

Bush was a moron. A complete idiot. But he was a "reg'lar guy" not an " effeminate elite" like Gore and Kerry (even though both went to Vietnam while Bush was snorting coke in Houston discos. They didn't LOOK the part). And he talked war, war, war, "with us or agin' us" and "dead or alive" Hoo-wee...a regular John Wayne. The new sheriff is in town terrorist scum! Better look out.

No. The veneer is all most of them need. They don't read George Will or Bill (always wrong) Kristol or AEI Hayek wannabes. Supply side? They couldn't explain it if you threatened to sell their kids.

It's not that they're stupid, most of them are not. They just don't care about that stuff. They care about looking tough and being hard on those who, unlike themselves, are undeserving.

Here, a Republican woman goes off on a man using food stamps at Walmart. How dare he! Her extended attack and attempt to humiliate him seems largely to fail, but this is the mindset of millions of these people. She knows nothing about this guy or his circumstance but assumes he is ripping her off. I'd like to know if she has ever gotten any government breaks or "handouts". Of course, if she or her family ever needed them, it would be a different story because they are deserving. Unlike this guy. And all the others she has been taught to hate.

I don't know, but I wouldn't be a bit surprised if this lady sits right up front in church every Sunday and sings "This Little Light of Mine" with great gusto.

These people operate from the gut. Facts and policy are irrelevant.

And now they have the perfect candidate. A guy for whom facts and policy are equally irrelevant. If not more.

[Marie Burns]

@Akhilleus: We all get government handouts, including that lovely lady in the WalMart. Let's just assume she's a middle-income person.

If she's a homeowner, she probably gets a homeowners' exemption tax break from her state. If she has a mortgage on the house, she gets another big ole tax break: one from the feds & one from her state (probably). If she has children, she gets a big ole tax break. If her family income is low enough & she has children, she gets an extra big ole tax break. If she pays for child care, she gets a big ole tax break. If she's sending any of those kids to college, she gets a big ole tax break. If she's gone back to school herself, she gets a big ole tax break. If she has a husband, she gets a big ole tax break. If she has a pension plan, like an IRA, she gets a big ole tax break. If she has some other kind of stock & bonds, she gets a big ole tax break.

Odds are if Mrs. WalMart there toted up the government handouts the guy she berated is getting vs. the government handouts she's getting, she would be getting more than he. But then, as you say, she's deserving.

Marie

[Akhilleus]

Marie,

Yeah...what she said...

Thanks for the list. She seems to be one of those "We DID build it ourselves" types. It just seems in-fucking-comprehensible to me that someone would assault a perfect stranger like that without knowing jack about their circumstances, especially the way she got into it by saying to her kid "See, that's why you go to college so you don't have to take handouts". What an asshole. Are there people who abuse the system? I have no doubt about it. So what do we do? Kill all assistance programs so no one but corporations gets anything? But then, as you say, people like this woman will still get all those handouts from the hated government.

I noticed on the youtube page where that clip came from, there were links to plenty of fodder for winger outrage with titles like "Scumbag learns that his food stamps have been cut!", and "Woman begging drives off in Mercedes", offering plenty of material for Confederate schadenfreude and indignation. What I would really like to see would be a clip of any of these people who, after going in to H&R Block at tax time, learned that burn-it-all-down ideologues had killed every single IRS loophole and they would not, after all, be getting a tax break on their mortgage payments, or for their kids, or tuition, or investments, or child care, or pension plan, or any other fucking thing.

Neither Milton nor Homer could not do justice to the wails of distress and outrage that would convulse the firmament.

[Akhilleus]

Kiddie porn at the NSA? Unpossible!

But it is possible that the writers and producers of "The Good Wife" made some very good guesses to that end.

Regular viewers know that Alicia Florrick, the eponymous woman of the title, has been routinely monitored by pimply-faced NSA hackers--"...Big Bang Theory T-shirt wearing, screaming-goat-video-watching, Thai-porn-loving kids"--who dip into her private phone calls and, should she, or the other party, use one of the hot button words on the NSA hit list, trigger massive surveillance of anything and everything she does.

A couple of quick examples are here, and here.

The fact that the writers use these voyeuristic assholes for comic effect doesn't soften the fact that, for the tiniest of reasons, they appear able to disrupt an American's entire life for their personal amusement.

That is, when they're not indulging their taste for the worst sort of salaciousness. At least the real ones, if not the ones on TV. So glad our taxes are going to good use.

[PD Pepe]

We can end the day with something to shout about: A brave black woman stands alone against hundreds of marching Neo-Nazis:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/black-woman-vs-neo-nazis-tess-asplund_us_572c186be4b016f378955060

[Gloria]

Reading the linked Appelbaum article, I see that trump really does plan to run the United States as he does his businesses - milk it, tank it, declare bankruptcy, and walk away with no personal responsibility. Sweet!

[Kate Madison]

'... CW: I'll tell you how: you just point out that the poor old codger suffers from dementia. Of course he can't remember what he said last month, & of course he imagines he saw things that never happened (like imagining New Jersey Muslims cheering the 9/11 terrorist attack). As you know, I'm serious about this. ...'

I know you are serious about this, Marie, but I must disagree with you. Trumpster may indeed have serious brain damage, but not dementia. He shows none of the behavioral symptoms of a dementia sufferer--i.e., erratic behavior that is quickly forgotten, extreme short term memory loss, issues with mobility--to name a few.

What I do think, and have said before, is that The Donnnnnnald is a narcissistic psychopath. He knows whereof he speaks, but cares not. He takes no responsibility for his speech or his grandiosity, and has no empathy. To add to this terrible diagnosis, I am thinking more and more that he has a delusional disorder. That is: he has a belief system that relies completely on emotion and he continues to hold on to it (i.e. 9/11 truther craziness) in spite of all evidence to the contrary. People who are delusional gravitate to conspiracy theories and are unable to abandon their mistaken beliefs--even when presented with incontrovertible evidence. I worked with several delusional people and the most I ever could do was to convince them not to talk about their "ideas" in public--for their own protection.

My favorite delusional patient "escaped" from the inpatient facility where he was hospitalized for treatment and called me from countries all over the world. I kept a map in my office and tried to keep track of him by pinning everyplace from which he called. At one point, he called to tell me that he had gotten married by the Pope on the Good Ship Pope. I should add that he was a "trust fund kid," from a wealthy family, so he did not have to resort to stealing. This was before the days of GPS tracking, so the police were never able to find him. I always secretly hoped they would not. And, as far as I know, they did not! It has lately occurred to me that this young man had a kinder heart and better brain than The Donnnnald!
He never tried to screw over anybody, and he was always respectful.

[Dan Lowery]

Kate
Nice post. If you left out the phrase "old codger and dementia", I would swear you were referring to Martin "Pharma Dude" Shkreli.
Narcissistic psychopath apply to both.