Wednesday
Oct142015
The Commentariat -- October 15, 2015
Internal links removed.
Afternoon Update:
David Sanger of the New York Times: "The Obama administration is exploring a deal with Pakistan that would limit the scope of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, the fastest-growing on earth. The discussions are the first in the decade since one of the founders of its nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, was caught selling the country's nuclear technology around the world."
Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "An aide to Donald J. Trump has raised the possibility of the candidate not attending the next Republican presidential debate unless the criteria set by CNBC is changed, according to two people briefed on a conference call where the matter was discussed on Thursday."
Katherine Faulders of ABC News: "Republican presidential contender Dr. Ben Carson has put his public campaign events on hold for two more weeks to go on book tour for his new tome 'A More Perfect Union' and catch up on fundraising events." ...
... Ed Kilgore: "However you slice it, this development is going to remind the chattering classes of 2012 candidates Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich, who were frequently accused of using their campaigns to sell books and videos and so forth. Indeed, most candidates release their 'campaign books' either before or early in their candidacies, as appetizers, not ends in themselves." ...
... Laura Clawson of Daily Kos: "I'm not sure Sarah Palin could do any better at the GOP grifter act than this." CW: And you thought Donald Trump was the big publicity hound in this campaign.
Julie Davis of the New York Times: "Joe Biden is still playing coy with reporters on his political plans.
Scott Keyes of Think Progress: "The United States criminal justice system could be improved if we sell poor people convicted of crimes into slavery, according to Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee.... Huckabee's comments, which come 150 years after the 13th Amendment's adoption, appear to be the first time in modern history that a credible presidential candidate has joined the fringe call to reinstate slavery." CW: I've been ignoring Huckabee, & will continue to do so, but I thought endorsing slavery (because the Bible tells us so) was outrageous enough to link.
*****
... The Longest War. Matthew Rosenberg of the New York Times: "The United States will halt its military withdrawal from Afghanistan and instead keep thousands of troops in the country through the end of President Obama's term in 2017, Mr. Obama will announce on Thursday, prolonging the American role in a war that has now stretched on for 14 years."
Julie Bosman of the New York Times: "J. Dennis Hastert..., who rose to political power as the longest-serving Republican speaker of the House, intends to plead guilty as part of an agreement in a case where he is accused of skirting banking laws and lying to the federal investigators, according to proceedings Thursday in Federal District Court.... It was unclear what charges that Mr. Hastert would plead guilty to and what the sentence may be.... Mr. Hastert, 73, was charged in May with structuring cash withdrawals, totaling $1.7 million, in a manner intended to avoid detection by banking officials, and then lying about the withdrawals to the federal authorities.... Though the indictment did not say what the withdrawals were for, subsequent reports, citing unidentified government sources, said that they were 'hush money' to cover up allegations of sexual misconduct with a male student during Mr. Hastert's time as a high school teacher and coach in Yorkville, Ill...."
Robert Pear of the New York Times: "Congress and the Obama administration are frantically seeking ways to hold down Medicare premiums that could rise by roughly 50 percent for some beneficiaries next year, according to lawmakers and Medicare officials.... Aides to Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, and Speaker John A. Boehner are quietly exploring a possible deal that would limit the expected increase in Medicare premiums." ...
... CW: MEANWHILE, Social Security benefits will stay flat. Recently My Damned Cat has taken to rejecting the catfood pate that was her main staple. I still have half a box of cans. Looks like I'll be snacking on catfood canapes.
New York Times Editors: "It was impossible not to feel a sense of relief watching the Democratic debate after months dominated by the Republican circus of haters, ranters and that very special group of king killers in Congress. For those despairing about the future of American politics, here was proof that it doesn't have to revolve around candidates who pride themselves on knowing nothing or believe that governing is all about destroying government.... What stood out most was the Democratic Party's big tent, capable of containing a spectrum of reality-based views." ...
... CW: That's right, folks. We have only one political party in which candidates campaign on "reality-based views." And you read it in the New York Times.
... Frank Rich: On the Debate: "The morning-after consensus (left, right, and center) is correct: Hillary Clinton not only romped over the competition -- such as it was -- but could well have shut down the prospect of a Biden run. But if the Clinton revival sustains itself, the turning point will not have been last night's debate but Kevin McCarthy's September 29 public admission on Fox News that the House Benghazi committee's main motivation was to take her out rather than investigate the deaths of four Americans taken out by terrorists." On the Speakership: "Ryan seems to think everything is beneath him except his lofty engagement in policy as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee -- policy being defined as cutting taxes for the GOP donor class and cutting entitlements like social security and Medicare for everyone else." ...
... Gail Collins on Hillary's good month. ...
... Patrick Healy of the New York Times: "All night, the debate played to Mrs. Clinton's advantage and to her opponents' limitations. From gun control and banking regulations to debt-free college and Social Security benefits, Mrs. Clinton positioned herself as a champion of liberals, young people, and the elderly -- the very voters who make up the Sanders coalition -- while also repeatedly reaching out to women, as an advocate for families and children (and as, potentially, the nation's first female president)." ...
... Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "Hillary Rodham Clinton's sure-footed performance in the first Democratic presidential debate did not just lift the spirits of her supporters and reassure nervous party officials about her candidacy, it also swiftly cooled talk about the need for Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to enter the campaign and offer Democrats an alternative." ...
... Matt Yglesias has an excellent analysis of the debate performances.* "The policy-heavy dynamic ultimately played directly into Clinton's hand. On a stage of earnest, policy-oriented pols, she was simply the best briefed and the best able to fluently address a seemingly endless array of issues." ...
* Pundit-wise, that is. See Adam Johnson's commentary, linked below. ...
... Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. CW: I'm with Nate Silver on this: "Before last night's debate, I suggested the media was likely to emerge with one of two narratives about the state of Hillary Clinton's campaign: Either she was mounting a comeback, or she was in a downward spiral.... Clinton gave about the performance that might reasonably have been expected from a frontrunner who gained a ton of experience as a debater during the 2008 Democratic primary: pretty good. Poised, polished and highly competent at appealing to various segments of the Democratic electorate. But also risk-averse and without all that many high notes.... The difference between FiveThirtyEight's view of the debate and Mark Halperin's or The New York Times' is that we've been skeptical of the 'Clinton in disarray' narrative for a long time." Krugman had a similar take in a post I linked yesterday. ...
... ** AND Adam Johnson of AlterNet: "Bernie Sanders by all objective measures 'won' the debate.... Sanders won the CNN focus group, the Fusion focus group, and the Fox News focus group; in the latter, he even converted several Hillary supporters. He won the Slate online poll, CNN/Time online poll, 9News Colorado, The Street online poll, Fox5 poll, the conservative Drudge online poll and the liberal Daily Kos online poll. There wasn't, to this writer's knowledge, a poll he didn't win by at least an 18-point margin. But you wouldn't know this from reading the establishment press.... This gap speaks to a larger gap we've seen since the beginning of the Sanders campaign. The mainstream media writes off Bernie and is constantly shocked when his polls numbers go up." ...
... Andy Borowitz: "In a major slip that may prove fatal to his Presidential ambitions, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont treated his principal opponent for the Democratic nomination with dignity and respect on Tuesday night. Calling it a gaffe of historic proportions, many political insiders were still scratching their heads Wednesday morning over Sanders's bizarre decision to act toward his opponent as if she were a fellow human being."
Amber Phillips of the Washington Post explains that grenade incident Jim Webb mentioned in his closing remarks. He received the Navy Cross for his actions.
Brian Stelter of CNN: "CNN's Tuesday night debate averaged 15.3 million viewers, easily making it the highest-rated Democratic debate ever."
Philip Rucker & Robert Costa of the Washington Post: "The Democratic presidential candidates have thrust gun control forward as a dominant issue for the national election, crystallizing a sea change in the politics of a controversial subject that recent Democratic nominees have often avoided. After years of deadly mass shootings across the country, and with President Obama voicing deep frustration with inaction by Republicans in Congress, the Democratic candidates led by Hillary Rodham Clinton vowed in a debate [in Las Vegas, Nevada,] Tuesday night to toughen restrictions on gun owners and gun manufacturers."
CW: Marco, whose campaign staff evidently didn't give him the memo about the perils of accusing Democratic candidates of giving away "free stuff" the first time (Mitt), or the second time (Jeb!), makes the claim about half a dozen times in the space of a minute. The Free Stuff Lament must be part of the Republican zeitgeist. (To Marco's credit, he did not associate free-stuff giveaways with black recipients, as did Mitt & Jeb!) If it bothers them so much, they should spend more time talking about the "free stuff" they're giving away to their billionaire buddies:
Mark Hensch of the Hill: "Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly says she was shocked by Donald Trump's reaction to her debate questions and that she never expected a feud with the GOP front-runner. 'It's clear we may have overestimated his anger-management skills,' she said ... on Tuesday. Kelly said she wasn't singling out Trump and had asked tough questions of all the candidates during the Fox News debate."
Kira Lerner of Think Progress: "At a campaign stop in rural Iowa on Wednesday, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz told ThinkProgress that activists with the Black Lives Matter movement -- people who have been peacefully protesting the murder of black men and women by law enforcement -- are 'literally suggesting and embracing and celebrating the murder of police officers.'... Despite a lack of evidence that Black Lives Matter has motivated any of the recent murders of police officers, conservative politicians have claimed that police officers are under attack thanks to Black Lives Matter's growing popularity. Meanwhile the number of police officers killed on the job has been steadily dropping for decades, with 51 officers killed last year." ...
... Jon Green of AmericaBlog: "Cruz knows as well as anyone that there's nothing but upside in going back to the race well in the Republican primary. Trump got plenty of lift going after Mexicans, Ben Carson with Muslims (plus his wink-and-nod to white voters on the Confederate Flag); and now Cruz with black people. As Cruz has positioned himself to be the 'Trump, but with an actual campaign infrastructure' candidate in the race, he's going to have to start peeling off the racist vote from the field's two front runners. And what better way to start than by implying that an explicitly anti-death movement is actually encouraging murder?"
Alan Steinweis, in a New York Times op-ed: "Ben Carson is wrong on guns and the Holocaust.... If the United States is going to arrive at a workable compromise solution to its gun problem, it will not be accomplished through the use of historical analogies that are false, silly and insulting." ...
... CW: The news media have a duty to ask Carson to defend his views against Steinweis's scholarship. Steinweis doesn't need to convince me. The issue is how Carson reacts when confronted with facts that rebut his loony remarks. Carson claims that his own profession -- unlike politics -- requires years of study. What about history? Is it, like politics, also gleaned intuitively? Or is Prof. Steinweis simply not privy to the CIA voices in Doc Ben's head? ...
... CW: I thought this was a Halloween joke or else an ad for some kind of paranormal institute's Ponzi scheme when I saw it in "Promoted Stories" (ads) at the bottom of Frank Rich's Q&A. But it's a link to Carson's campaign Webpage. It's still creepy.
Jeb! to Stay in Cheap Hotels to Please Billionaire Donors. Eli Stokols & Marc Caputo of Politico: "Although the Bush campaign has yet to release its fundraising numbers from the third quarter ahead of Thursday's deadline, the belt-tightening has already begun, at least around the margins with regard to travel.... Conceived as a fundraising juggernaut that would 'shock and awe' opponents into oblivion, Bush's campaign is suddenly struggling to raise hard dollars and increasingly economizing -- not because he's out of money, but to convince nervous donors, who are about to get their first look at his campaign's burn rate, that he's not wasting it."
** "It's Even Worse Than It Was When We Said It's Even Worse Than It Looks." Francis Wilkinson of Bloomberg discusses, via e-mail, the state of the Republican party with scholars Thomas Mann & Norm Ornstein.
** Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Jim Fallows of the Atlantic explains how the media -- have been enabling the Benghaaazi! committee & other partisan hackery. Fallows has a particular gift for putting together disparate events to demonstrate a trend &/or a cause-and-effect.
Jake Sherman & Anna Palmer of Politico: "House Speaker John Boehner is looking to move a bill to lift the debt ceiling before he leaves Congress, a tactic aimed at helping his successor, according to multiple sources with knowledge of internal party planning." ...
... Lauren French of Politico: "Republican leaders are formally asking their rank-and-file members to propose changes to the rules governing the House GOP conference. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the chair of the Republican Conference and Rep. Luke Messer, the chair of the Policy Committee, sent a letter to lawmakers Wednesday night saying that the House GOP will continue debate on overhauling the rules of the House - a key demand from conservative members who helped oust Speaker John Boehner." ...
... Jake Sherman of Politico: "Republican leaders see Freedom Caucus members as a bunch of bomb-throwing ideologues with little interest in finding solutions that can pass a divided government. But that's a false reading of the group, [Rep. Justin] Amash [RTP-Michigan] told his constituents. Their mission isn't to drag Republican leadership to the right, though many of them would certainly favor more conservative outcomes. It's simply to force them to follow the institution's procedures, Amash argued." CW: They're really just for a more democratic process. Okay.
Scott Keyes of Think Progress: "A second House Republican has now conceded that the overarching purpose of the House Select Committee on Benghazi has been to attack former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.... 'Sometimes the biggest sin you can commit in D.C. is to tell the truth,' [Richard] Hanna [R-N.Y.] said in an interview on ... a radio show in upstate New York. The third-term congressman paused for a moment ... before going on to agree with [Kevin] McCarthy's original statement [about the purpose of the Benghaaazi! committee]. 'This may not be politically correct, but I think that there was a big part of this investigation that was designed to go after people and an individual, Hillary Clinton,' Hanna said.... 'I think that's the way Washington works. But you'd like to expect more from a committee that's spent millions of dollars and tons of time.'"
Linda Greenhouse: "... the future of the right to abortion once again -- still -- [is] in the hands of Justice Kennedy.... Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel A. Alito Jr. ... chose to go on the record as being willing to let three-quarters of the abortion clinics in Texas shut down without a Supreme Court hearing." ...
... Oops! Didn't Mean to Leave Those Aborted Fetuses in the Trunk of My Car. Samantha Allen of the Daily Beast on a Michigan doctor who is in custody under suspicion of performing illegal abortions in an upscale Detroit suburb. CW: Assuming the evidence & allegations pan out, this is the kind of doctor whose services are certainly becoming more & more in demand as states add restrictions to legal abortions under the guise of caring so much about women's health. And, yes, it is women in "upscale neighborhoods" who will have the "advantage" of receiving these excellent services. Less wealthy women will have to resort to even worse alternatives. Thanks, Supremes!
Russ Choma of Mother Jones: "Former GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul took the stand in an Iowa federal courthouse [Wednesday] afternoon in the trial of two of his top aides from his 2012 presidential campaign. The aides have been accused of paying for the endorsement of an Iowa state senator and then trying to cover it up. Paul blasted prosecutors and the media while still testifying that he abhorred the concept of paying for endorsements. Paul was called as a witness for the prosecution in the trial of Jesse Benton, his 2012 presidential campaign chairman who is also married to Paul's granddaughter."
Terrence McCoy of the Washington Post: "In February of last year, the Georgetown [Washington, D.C.] Business Improvement District partnered with District police to launch [an] effort, which they call a 'real-time mobile-based group-messaging app that connects Georgetown businesses, police officers and community members.' Since then, the app has attracted nearly 380 users who surreptitiously report on -- and photograph -- shoppers in an attempt to deter crime.... The result, critics say..., has [laid] bare the racial fault lines that still define this cobblestoned enclave of tony boutiques and historic rowhouses that is home to many of Washington's elite." What a surprise: it seems the vast majority of "suspicious" shoppers are black.
Beyond the Beltway
Dennis Overbye of the New York Times: "Geoffrey Marcy, the renowned astronomer who was found guilty of sexually harassing students in a campus investigation, is resigning from the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, where he has been a professor for 16 years.... The university placed Dr. Marcy on probation over the summer after the investigation but did not announce the decision. It became widely known only last week, when BuzzFeed News reported it." ...
... The BuzzFeed story, by Azeen Ghorayshi, is here.: "After a six-month investigation, Geoff Marcy -- a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who has been mentioned as a potential Nobel laureate -- was found to have violated campus sexual harassment policies between 2001 and 2010. Four women alleged that Marcy repeatedly engaged in inappropriate physical behavior with students, including unwanted massages, kisses, and groping."
Jogging While Black in Talladega, Alabama.
Julie Bosman: The Kansas Secetary of state, [the execrable] Kris Kobach, has set up another barrier to voting, requiring them to provide proof of citizenship within 90 days of trying to register to vote. It disproportionately affects young people. ...
... CW: How upset would you be if resident noncitizen adults were actually allowed to vote? Besides living here, most of them work, many own homes, & virtually all pay taxes here & have a stake in their communities. I don't think they have an "inalienable right" to vote, but if my state allowed noncitizens to vote, I would have no objection whatsoever. Were I a legislator, I would vote for a bill allowing noncitizen residents to vote.
... Today in Responsible Gun Ammo Ownership. So this guy in Missouri sets a trash fire in an open field. Then he lets the fire get out of control. Then he tries to put it out by repeatedly driving over the burning area with his truck. (Bet you never thought of that.) Then for some reason the truck's tires catch on fire. Then he thinks, "Wow! I've got a full tank of gas & a truckload of ammo in the back. I wonder what could happen next." In his first lucid moment of the day, he abandons the truck before ammo started exploding. No one was injured. Remember when you were a kid & you thought grown men knew what they were doing?
Tom Benning of the Dallas Morning News: State "Rep. Jason Villalba (R) is standing by a Tweet he made during Tuesday's Democratic debate that included an image connecting presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders' standing as a 'Democratic socialist' to Nazism." The Nazi party referred National Socialists, not Democratic socialists. CW: But, hey, close. Why not tweet it out? And there's nothing slightly offensive about calling a Jew a Nazi, although in fairness, Villalba may not be well-enough informed to know Sanders is Jewish. Also too, doesn't this sound ridiculous: "I stand by my tweet"?
News Ledes
Thursday, October 15, 2015.
;)
Click on map to see larger image.
... NOAA: "Forecasters at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center issued the U.S. Winter Outlook today favoring cooler and wetter weather in Southern Tier states with above-average temperatures most likely in the West and across the Northern Tier. This year's El Niño, among the strongest on record, is expected to influence weather and climate patterns this winter by impacting the position of the Pacific jet stream."
New York Times: Germany's automobile regulator on Thursday ordered Volkswagen to recall 2.4 million vehicles with diesel motors carrying software intended to manipulate emissions test results."
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Reader Comments (19)
Ak
Forgot one other thing on Obama's non-stasis list. Cuba - ending an idiotic 50 year policy.
I just might be able to explain it.
That is, the yawning gap Johnson notes between the post-debate poll results showing Sanders winning by wide margins and the pundit-class opinions that Clinton dominated. Might, I say. Maybe.
As Johnson says, pundits are our culture's designated interpreters and mouthpieces, the people with the talent to formulate our incoherent thoughts for us and tell us what we think (on the increasingly rare occasions when they are not simply paid hacks, anyway, doing their master's bidding). We pay to read and listen to them because they make sense for us, so we don't have to go to the trouble of making it for ourselves.
In this case the pundits who got it "wrong" were wrong simply because they did not successfully speak for their audience. They and the debate audience were looking at different things. The divergence between the pundits' debate opinions and those of the audiences lay not so much in the debate's substance and performance (which by those measures I, along with the pundits, thought Clinton "won"), but in understanding the audience was seeking a candidate willing to make a sharper break with the past than Clinton offered.
Chris Hayes talked last night about the reborn progressive spirit that seems to have infused the Democratic Party. Sanders' campaign has been buoyed by it to a degree that might have surprised even him.
I suspect it was that spirit the pollsters encountered, a relatively recent phenomenon that has left the pundits behind. The public is ahead of them on this one and they have some catching up to do.
I had to listen to Rubio's rant twice to make sure I heard him correctly. All that "free stuff" business that was going on in the eighties? And who would have been at the helm during that time––Reagan!!!! Yowza! So what we have here is a candidate for president using a phrase--"free stuff" that one of his opponents just got skewered for and criticizing a decade whose president at the time was/is the Republican's king of kings. Nice move, Marco.
Rachel Maddow accentuated Hillary's many negative references to Republican gridlockers, something Obama refused to do until he finally realized it was for naught. Anything "Obama" was verboten––this hopeful scenario that SOMEHOW the right could compromise and work together with the left is over. If Hillary gets her way we can be pretty sure she's gonna get her way one way or another with these miscreants––she CAN be the angry white lady in the White House and she won't be the worse for wear because of it.
Re: the abortion issue which will, I imagine, be something our Democratic candidates will be discussing in future debates. Back in 2005 Hillary's characterization of abortion was " a sad, even tragic choice." I worry that we are still looking at this issue, not from the woman's point of view with freedom of choice, but from the unborn's. This is what is tragic. Politicians––especially from a party that espouses a strong moral center should be proud to make these women part of that strong moral center in their arguments. They should be advocating for abortion as a fundamental safe, and accessible medical option. They need to make clear that the immorality is not in ending pregnancies, but in deepening inequality by denying poor women access to abortions and contraception.
A film showing the horrors of yesteryears botched abortions and endless tribulations women had to endure might be a nifty thing to show just in time for halloween. Margaret Sanger's mother, for instance, might be mentioned (along with many, many other women) who bore eleven children and seven miscarriages before she died of tuberculosis and cervical cancer at the age of 50.
During a discussion I was having with my husband about the debates I started to mention the fact that we might be getting our first female president in the history of this country, but I couldn't finish. Speaking is difficult when you are crying.
@Ken Winkes: Quite right. The "expert witnesses," i.e., the pundits, are looking at performance, not content. Many of them, in fact, are supposed to be "neutral" observers; they're not supposed to evaluate the policy & ideological differences among the "performers." So they are, one & all, primarily critics of performance art. Not that they see themselves as such.
Here's another aspect of it. Bernie Sanders didn't say much I haven't heard him say before. But most of those "focus" group members were probably "focusing" on the candidates for the first time. Therefore, Bernie's message was fresh for them, & it resonated. If his delivery -- i.e., his performance -- was less than euphonious, so what? His ideas were in sync with their frustrations.
Moreover, he stated his proposals in clear, simple terms rather than in the more obscure policy-oriented terms that Clinton & O'Malley tended to use. Pundits would appreciate Clinton's & O'Malley's specifics; ordinary voters, not so much. Clinton's more nuanced approach may or may not be correct in terms of effective policy, but it is harder for voters to grasp -- even though she did make a fair attempt at using understandable language, which sometimes backfired:
How well do you think it went over when she began a sentence, "I represented Wall Street"? You'd have to check the focus-group meters, but I'll bet the voters didn't even hear the rest of her sentence.
By contrast, Bernie responded, to great effect, with a chiastic rhetorical master stroke: "Congress doesn't regulate Wall Street; Wall Street regulates Congress."
Marie
Haley,
Good catch. Along with healthcare reform and saving the economy, establishing the conditions for defusing two long-standing sore spots on the world map (for the US, anyway), Iran and Cuba, ensures that history will look kindly on the Obama administration.
I forgot to mention a couple of other things about this president's term in office. The ACA may very likely become the Social Security Act of this century. In addition to providing affordable healthcare for millions who have never had it (unless you count The Decider's plan: "they can go to the emergency room"), the ACA is already saving money and helping to control health costs which in turn helps drive down the deficit.
If only he had recognized that not a single Republican would ever be responsive to rational engagement he may have started some of these initiatives earlier. As it is, he has to be the most, if not one of the most effective "lame duck" presidents in history.
I think that's the result of two things. One, he finally realized that he can just go ahead and do the right thing without worrying about what Republicans will say because two, they're dysfunctional idiots who don't have anything useful to say anyway, don't know the law, know only two sections of the Constitution, neither of which they really understand, don't really care about governing and couldn't do it if they wanted to, and are too busy investigating fairy tales and tripping over their floppy shoes.
But you're right. Opening up Cuba is huge. It is the exact opposite of what David Brooks in his glorious wisdom predicted. I wonder if the New York Times will ever decide to withhold his check because of intellectual stasis?
Prob'ly not.
Apropos of what Ken and Marie have been discussing, it strikes me that Bernie Sanders represents a response based in frustration and anger to whatever slings and arrows have been flung at the body politic by oligarchs and Wall Street that is the polar opposite of that adopted by Confederates.
Wingers rail and scream and cry and gnash their teeth in response to their own frustration and anger. But a lot of what they're angry at are fantasy demons whipped up by their own "expert witnesses" and Confederate politicians who have left the world of fact and reality far behind. They respond with hatred and vitriolic bombast, wasting enormous amounts of energy attacking invisible monsters. Their response is that of two year olds whose diapers need to be changed and who can't get their way. Even if you handed them a clean diaper they would have no idea of what to do with it.
Bernie's response is much more measured--passionate, surely--but aimed at finding collective and rational solutions based in the real world.
It's the difference between a dyspeptic toddler and a responsible adult.
Akhilleus and Haley,
As I've said, I just got back from a long absence and haven't followed all of the discussion about Obama's accomplishments, so might have missed mention of some, but would add the over 300 federal judicial appointments and the reconstituted NRLB, which is now actually doing something for workers for the first time in decades.
The federal bureaucracy is an iceberg, most of it far out of sight, so I don't have a good sense of how successful Obama has been in making the various departments more functional, actually meeting people's needs, not responsive only to business interests, but I have the sense he has been in office long enough to have weeded out many of the Bush era deadbeats and obstructionists. We hear of the problems (like those of the Veterans' Administration, mostly another Bush era legacy, of course) but the successes don't make news.
Presidents change but their legacy in their appointments does live on...
Ken,
I've only been vaguely aware of the advances by the NLRB but it's good news. Labor has been hectored and harried incessantly by the oligarchs and businesses big and small to the point where many employees are little more than indentured servants with few benefits and practically no rights. Voters in states like Texas and Oklahoma routinely vote in Confederates who look at labor the way people used to look at someone with AIDS but these people are often stunned when they discover that they've voted for people who will allow businesses to get away, practically, with murder. At their expense.
This morning I listened to a combined NPR/Pro Publica piece on the many companies that are ditching workers' comp for something far more amenable to their bottom lines but nearly useless to employees who are hurt or killed on the job.
"State laws in both Oklahoma and Texas allow employers to opt out of workers' compensation and develop their own workplace injury plans. Those plans generally cover fewer injuries, cut off benefits payments sooner, control access to doctors and even impose mandatory settlements...In Oklahoma, we found that most plans blatantly violate the law, yet regulators say they are powerless to respond."
These opt-out laws, instituted by winger pols to help businesses, reduce workers to replaceable cogs. The wife of one Texas man who was killed on the job was handed a pittance after his death. Had that company kept worker's comp, the woman and her daughter would have received over a million dollars. That money was transferred to the company's profit margin instead.
Some companies, like Sears, require employees to complete a detailed injury report before their shift is over or they get nothing. Other companies now force injured employees to visit physicians only in the presence of a company representative.
According to the authors, Rick Levy, a Texas AFL-CIO attorney says that companies have been handed total control. "No negotiation. No compromise, No standards. No due process."
This is life in Right Wing World and many denizens who put these assholes in office discover too late that it's not just the blah people and brown people who are getting screwed. It's them too.
Another case of "What's the matter with Kansas?"
But wingers realize that they can get away with stomping on employees even if it severely damages their own supporters. These voters are prisoners of the ideology they cling to. They have nowhere to turn and realize only after the fact that their lives could have been much different.
It's a pretty stunning story. A perfect example of the kind of world the Confederacy wishes to force us all to inhabit. For many living in pain because of work related injuries that employers refuse to pay for, the way to opt out of the Confederacy is at the ballot box. Another reason the right is making sure that elections are rigged.
Only oligarchs get to opt out.
Fallows eliminates anyone's rose colored glasses as well as scoffs at the media villagers with pitchforks. In short, it's a smart balanced approach in analysis of Clinton.
From the beginning of her candidacy, I think Clinton has had a laser focus on being elected. Sanders has been a great ally in scooping up the more progressive Democrats, which he'll deliver to her at election time. She'll need to think carefully about the VP. With her political acumen, it shouldn't be a problem.
I think she has been right in largely ignoring the mental defects on the other side. They are exposing themselves. As the election grows closer, she can hone in on the GOP candidate. No need to waste face time on issues that are going to be self destructive to most of the mental defects anyway. I know politics abhors a vacuum, but the GOP hopefuls are currently filling it with ignorant nonesense.
I believe one of the smartest thing she's done so far is minimize Bill's exposure (tee hee). Surprising that the media has cooperated so well.
@Akhilleus: Thank you for bringing to our attention the NPR/ProPublica story on workers' comp. It's shocking. I'll link it again in tomorrow's Commentariat.
Marie
Dear Marie,
Regarding My Damn Cat- when I had same problem with my 3 cats, the vet sternly told me to 'close the cafeteria'.
Put food down for 20 minutes, then take it up for the day. Keep water available.
It took 3 days, but it worked.
Good luck.
mae finch
As Diane mentions the Fallows piece does an excellent job of deconstructing the "gentlemanly" rules operational within much of the mainstream press that hands the worst liars on the right a free pass (funnily though, such accommodations are hardly ever accorded to the president) which has in turn allowed such embarrassing displays of naked partisanship--paid for by the public--as the shameful Benghaaaazi "Investigation".
In fact, if you don't read anything else today, read Fallows and, linked right above it, the interview with Norm Ornstein and Tom Mann. You may recall the piece they wrote a while back that stated right up front that the problems in Washington are nearly all the fault of the Republican Party. If you haven't heard about it, I'm not surprised since practically none of the Villagers bothered to reference it or even acknowledge it, such thinking being heretical and anathema to both-siders like Upchuck Todd and much of the Washington Post.
It's helpful to keep repeating this truth but every day I read in the so-called respectable press items that refer to the "crazies" on both sides. The fact is there are no crazies on the left. At least not in the public eye and none who wield any influence. People who declare that Rachel Maddow is as bad as Ann Coulter and that Michael Moore is the left's Rush Limbaugh are flat out liars. Rachel Maddow has never, to my knowledge, demanded that conservatives be shot and that Supreme Court justices she disagrees with should be poisoned, or that an entire population group (women) be disallowed from voting because they put people like Obama into office. And those are the nice things Coulter has said.
Sorry, both sides are not the same. It really is the right that is to blame for the dysfunction and maniacal hatred abroad in the country. The Kochs might claim that they get death threats from liberals every day but liberals aren't helping to pass laws that really CAN inflict hardship, pain, suffering, and death like the Kochs and their water carriers in congress.
Oh, and, by the by, the lede in Marie's link to the Ornstein/Mann piece, "It's Even Worse Than It Was When We Said It's Even Worse Than It Looks" comes straight from none other than Barney Frank. Yesterday I mentioned how much I missed his wit, and today, voila.
I love this site!
Love that story about the idiot who tried to put out a fire he had started by repeatedly driving over it with a fully gassed up van full of live ammunition. Eureka! Such an idea! Had the guy not jumped out before the thing exploded, he would have been a lock for this year's Darwin Award (chlorinating the gene pool, as they like to say). An honorable mention is all but assured.
As it is, this stellar example of critical thinking and logical problem solving having occurred in Brownbackistan, the owner of the newly crispified van and expended ammo will very likely end up in congress, because there aren't enough creative thinkers representing the Jayhawk State.
Can't wait for his first crack at lawmaking.
Diane, concerning HRC's laser-focus on doing what it takes to win the general:
This was, of course, Lenin's keen insight in 1917, between the revolutions (Feb & Oct), when the other socialist, Marxist and democratic social parties were trying to create some kind of democratic government to succeed the monarchy. Lenin persuaded the Bolsheviki that the only immediate task was to acquire power, no matter what that took; and that afterwards the only important job was to retain power, no matter what that required. All the details were flexible, in the process, since if you achieved the two primary goals, you got to decide the rest later - "Kto, ktom?" - "Who does what to whom?"
Wait, that was also Mitt Romney's plan. And countless others, including our current Krazee Kaukus in the House. So maybe it is not really Alinsky-Leninism, but just the basic imperative of politics ... if you don't win, you don't get to have the catbird seat.
I think HRC has pretty much figured out what she has to say and do to get the majority of electoral votes, and is acting accordingly. Which just means that she is a professional politician (i.e. not an amateur hack or demagogue -- a pro). It's good to see someone good at her profession, going about it.
Ooops. Looks like the Ammo Van Moron incident took place in Missouri, not Kansas. I noticed it on the Kansas Star site and was laughing too hard to get the salient facts, it was such an explosive story.
No matter, he'll probably be invited to move to Kansas and run for office there.
Hey kids! Look who pulled his head out of his ass and said something stupid. Our old pal Bad Toupée.
Haven't heard from this little guy in some time. I read that he was doing some kind of thing during the Democrats' debate but I figured there would be enforced worship of watery Asian religious figures along with bong smoking and kidnapping. Didn't sound very wholesome so I passed.
But anyway, back to Li'l Randy's latest Proclamation of Stupid.
In answering a question about whether it would be cool to fire someone who was, ya know, GAY, just because GAY, or something, the Littlest Misanthrope showed why he will never be president. Of anything.
Randy Solomon's answer? “I think, really, the things you do in your house, just leave those in your house, and they wouldn’t have to be a part of the workplace, to tell you the truth."
In other words, keep all that gay stuff at home, don't radiate gayness, don't tell anyone you're gay, don't look overly fashionable, don't stand up in the lunchroom and belt out show tunes, and don't give anyone a reason to fire your ass, because GAY.
Simplicity itself, in'it?
Don't be gay in public and you might be able to keep your job. Isn't that what most gays and lesbians have been forced to do, pretty much fucking forever??
I dunno about you guys, but I'm convinced.
Rand Paul really IS as big an asshole as I've always thought.
Here is a damned interesting Rolling Stone article on the Freedom Caucus
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/meet-the-right-wing-rebels-who-overthrew-john-boehner-20151006?page=4
It is light on easy insults and may be valuable for finding the caucus something more than just crazy people and presents their views and actions in a more studied way.
Well THAT comment was badly stated. Disclaimer: Yes, they are crazy people and rain down chaos on democracy. Rolling Stone was just taking a more studied view...or something.
@Patrick. I appreciate your perspective. Of course you're right, others are and have been similarly focused. Focus is just a trait, not inherent to positive or negative outcomes. In comparing Clinton to the GOP candidates, I mistook their ignorance for lack of focus and her political acumen for a heightened focus.