The Commentariat -- October 5, 2015
Internal links & defunct videos removed.
Afternoon Update:
Matthew Rosenberg & Alissa Rubin of the New York Times: "The American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John F. Campbell, on Monday responded publicly to criticism over the American airstrike that destroyed a Doctors Without Borders hospital in the city of Kunduz, claiming that Afghan forces had requested the strike while under fire and conceding that the military had incorrectly reported at first that American troops were under direct threat. But General Campbell's comments, in a sudden and brief news conference at the Pentagon, did not clarify the military's initial claims that the strike, which killed 22 people, had been an accident to begin with. Doctors Without Borders has repeatedly said that there had been no fighting around the hospital, and that the building was hit over and over by airstrikes on Saturday morning, even though the group had sent the American military the precise coordinates of its hospital so it could be avoided." ...
... Thomas Gibbons-Neff of the Washington Post: "The airstrike that killed 22 people at a Doctor's without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan Saturday was requested by Afghan forces, not U.S. troops, according to the top U.S. general in Afghanistan."
*****
Ha Ha. The fates are laughing at me. I am lost & alone in South Carolina for the foreseeable future, on the best-forgotten Strom Thurmond Highway. The crack South Carolina Highway Patrol directed me right into the area most deeply affected by this 1,000-year flood. There is no way out! Not sure how long I'll have power. Here's the New York Times' story on the rains & flooding. The front page of the (South Carolina) State has links to many storm-related stories. -- Constant Wader
Jackie Calmes of the New York Times: "The United States and 11 other Pacific Rim nations on Monday agreed to the largest regional trade accord in history, a potentially precedent-setting model for global commerce and worker standards that would tie together 40 percent of the world's economy, from Canada and Chile to Japan and Australia. The Trans-Pacific Partnership still faces months of debate in Congress and will inject a new flash point into both parties' presidential contests."
Mike DeBonis & Elise Viebeck of the Washington Post: "The Republican chairman of a high-profile House committee on Sunday shook up the race to succeed outgoing Speaker John A. Boehner, launching a challenge to the heavy favorite, Majority LeaderKevin McCarthy. The bid by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (Utah), chairman of the Oversight ... Committee, comes amid unrest from conservatives driven by doubts that McCarthy (Calif.) will be any more inclined than Boehner to embrace the right flank of the House Republican Conference. Chaffetz said on 'Fox News Sunday' that he was 'recruited' by members displeased with McCarthy's ascent and that he would 'bridge the divide' in the House GOP." ...
... Rachel Bade & John Bresnahan of Politico: Chaffetz pans McCarthy, saying he -- Chaffetz -- is a better public speaker than McCarthy. CW: I don't think that's "panning" McCarthy; it's just stating a fact. ...
... Contributor MAG notes that, buried deep in her column yesterday, MoDo had a point:
Chaffetz (Crabbe), Gowdy (Malfoy) & Goyle (Chaffetz).... See today's Comments thread.
... Jake Sherman, et al., of Politico: "Speaker John Boehner is considering delaying the internal election for House majority leader and majority whip, leaving only the party vote for speaker to be decided on Thursday, according to multiple Republican sources with direct knowledge of the deliberations. Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.) and and Rep. Jim Renacci (R-Ohio) are circulating a letter requesting a delay in the elections for the No. 2 and No. 3 slots in leadership. There is also widespread interest in considering a change in internal party rules that would force candidates to resign chairmanships and leadership slots to run for new office." ...
... CW: Good. Let's drag out this stuff. I'd like to hear more about how well the white supremacist candidate for majority leader is doing: Scott Wong of the Hill: "House Majority Whip Steve Scalise said Sunday he has secured the votes to be elected majority leader, the No. 2 job in GOP leadership." CW: Also let's see if he's as good at whipping votes for himself as he's been at whipping votes for stuff Boehner has had to withdraw at the last moment because Scalise can't count. Should Scalise's auld acquaintances be forgot, Amanda Terkel of the Huff Post brings them to mind.
... Rachel Weiner of the Washington Post: "When he steps down in October, Boehner will leave a legacy not just in official Washington but in the city itself, thanks to a private school voucher program he helped create and keep alive over the past 12 years.... Like his legacy inside Congress, Boehner's legacy in the District is divisive. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) has opposed the voucher program from the start. She has argued that it's both unaccountable and has been unfairly thrust upon the District, whose Democratic leaders bristle at congressional intervention and -- for the most part -- have objected to using public funds for private school tuition.... A 2013 Government Accountability Office report found that the voucher program was poorly managed. A 2012 Washington Post investigation found that hundreds of students were going to uncredited or unconventional schools.... Tuition at most participating private schools is too high to be covered by the vouchers.... (Catholic schools are popular choices for voucher recipients, in large part because tuition there is often lower.) The program is opposed by teachers unions, who want to preserve public dollars for traditional public schools. And a 2010 study found no statistically significant improvement in math or reading skills for voucher recipients...." ...
... Jonathan Chait: how a "sting operation intended to expose the alleged depravity of social liberalism instead wound up exposing the fragile psyche of the American right, which remains unable to handle the realities of holding partial power in a divided government without regularly freaking out."
Lauren Carroll of PolitiFact: "Critics of the House of Representatives’ Benghazi investigation have recently begun to make a strong claim -- that it is officially the longest congressional investigation in history.... In recent days, the claim that this is the longest-running investigation ever has gone somewhat viral. We saw it in The Hill, Salon, The New York Times, Esquire, MSNBC, ABC News and, notably, a Twitter account belonging to [Hillary] Clinton's campaign.... However, we found numerous examples of congressional committee investigations that have lasted much longer than the Benghazi panel's 17 months."
Capitalism Is Awesome, Ctd. When the Golden Boys of Our Gilded Age Dance at the Charity Ball. Paul Theroux, in a New York Times op-ed: "When [Tim] Cook of Apple said he was going to hand over his entire fortune to charity, he was greatly praised by most people, but not by me. It so happened that at that time I was traveling up and down Tim Cook's home state of Alabama, and all I saw were desolate towns and hollowed-out economies, where jobs had been lost to outsourcing, and education had been defunded by shortsighted politicians.... Mr. Cook, investor in and benefactor of China, is not only the guiding hand at Apple, but he is also on the board of Nike, which makes virtually all its products outside the United States.... To me, globalization is the search for a new plantation, and cheaper labor...."
Susan Page of USA Today: "'I think there was a reasonably good chance that, barring stabilization of the financial system, that we could have gone into a 1930s-style depression,' [former Fed chair Ben Bernanke] says now in an interview with USA Today. 'The panic that hit us was enormous -- I think the worst in U.S. history.' With publication of his memoir, The Courage to Act, on Tuesday..., Bernanke has some thoughts about what went right and what went wrong. For one thing, he says that more corporate executives should have gone to jail for their misdeeds. The Justice Department and other law-enforcement agencies focused on indicting or threatening to indict financial firms, he notes, 'but it would have been my preference to have more investigation of individual action, since obviously everything what went wrong or was illegal was done by some individual, not by an abstract firm.'"
Still Awesome. Charles Pierce: The absence of those "jobs-killing regulations" is killing workers: "It is the opinion of virtually every Republican presidential candidate -- and far too many 'moderate' Democrats -- that controlling predatory, murderous industry is a job best left to the states, like Texas. Apparently, just as the semi-monthly massacre is the price we pay for having a Second Amendment, the occasional loss of a town to preventable industrial accidents is the price we pay for having a Tenth. Freedom is a tough room."
Michael Shear of the New York Times: "On Monday, a group whose goal is to prevent gun violence will release a report urging the administration to issue a series of regulations that would clarify existing laws in an effort to reduce gun-related crimes. The group, Everytown for Gun Safety, writes that Mr. Obama could help protect potential gun victims from attackers, especially in cases of domestic abuse, by encouraging five relatively small changes to the way the federal and state governments interpret laws that are already on the books." See also stories on Hillary Clinton's gun safety proposal linked under Presidential Race. ...
... Scott Keyes of the Guardian: "After Thursday's mass shooting in Oregon -- the 45th school shooting in the US this year..., attention has focused on the state's policy of allowing guns on college campuses.... Oregon is one of fewer than a dozen states, along with more conservative counterparts like Mississippi and Utah, which allow concealed carry on college campuses.... A frequent refrain among conservatives is that violent rampages happen in places like college campuses and movie theaters precisely because guns are banned there.... (There is no evidence of a shooter ever selecting a target precisely because it is a gun-free zone.) In the Umpqua case, though, at least one student (and likely others) was carrying a concealed weapon during the massacre.... An armed Umpqua student, John Parker Jr, explained just how difficult, if not impossible, it would have been for an armed bystander to stop the attack."
Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The new [Supreme Court term], which opens on Monday, marks the start of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.'s second decade on the court and will reveal whether the last term's leftward drift and acrimony were anomalies or something more lasting. The court will decide major cases on politically charged issues, including the fate of public unions and affirmative action in higher education. It will most probably hear its first major abortion case since 2007 and revisit the clash between religious liberty and contraception coverage." ...
... Nina Totenberg reports for NPR.
Alissa Rubin & Ashley Southall of the New York Times: "Doctors Without Borders said Sunday that it was withdrawing from Kunduz, a day after its hospital there was hit by what appeared to be an American airstrike, leaving the remaining residents in the embattled northern Afghan city even more vulnerable. The aid organization also raised the death toll in Saturday's airstrike on the hospital, saying that three more patients had died, raising the total fatalities to 22 -- 10 patients and 12 staff members. The charity has said that at least three of the dead patients were children, and that 37 people were wounded in the attack.... The charity, known internationally as Médecins Sans Frontières, or M.S.F., called on its Twitter feed for an independent investigation, 'under the clear presumption that a war crime has been committed.' 'Not a single member of our staff reported any fighting inside the hospital compound prior to the US airstrike on Saturday morning,' it said. 'The hospital was repeatedly & precisely hit during each aerial raid, while the rest of the compound was left mostly untouched.' The Pentagon said in a statement on Sunday that an investigation of the episode under the auspices of the NATO military headquarters in Afghanistan would be completed in a matter of days. The United States military has also opened 'a formal investigation to conduct a thorough and comprehensive inquiry,' it said in the statement. The Afghan government has also vowed to investigate the airstrike." ...
... Emma Graham-Harrison of the Guardian: "The attack that killed at least 19 people at an Afghan hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is the latest in a long line of bloody misjudgments by foreign forces in Afghanistan. Deaths from Nato airstrikes, which at their worst point killed hundreds of Afghan civilians a year, were a key factor in turning Afghan sentiment against foreign troops during more than a decade of war." ...
... Eric Schmitt & Tom Arango of the New York Times: "With alarming frequency in recent years, thousands of American-trained security forces in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia have collapsed, stalled or defected, calling into question the effectiveness of the tens of billions of dollars spent by the United States on foreign military training programs, as well as a central tenet of the Obama administration's approach to combating insurgencies.... The Pentagon-trained army and police in Iraq's Anbar Province, the heartland of the Islamic State militant group, have barely engaged its forces, while several thousand American-backed government forces and militiamen in Afghanistan's Kunduz Province were forced to retreat last week when attacked by several hundred Taliban fighters. And in Syria, a $500 million Defense Department program to train local rebels to fight the Islamic State has produced only a handful of soldiers." ...
... Phillip Carter, in a Washington Post op-ed, on why the U.S.'s "security assistance" programs don't work: "It fails first and most basically because it hinges upon an alignment of interests that rarely exists between Washington and its proxies.... Second, the security-assistance strategy gives too much weight to the efficacy of U.S. war-fighting systems and capabilities.... The third problem with security assistance is that it risks further destabilizing already unstable situations and actually countering U.S. interests."
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd." Charles Pierce: "Politico Finds a New Way to Call President Obama Uppity." ...
... CW: I had to fact-check Driftglass because of his seemingly-preposterous claim that Tuck Chodd had not only Rich Lowry & Ruth Marcus ("when you can't get David Brooks, David-Brooks-in-a-dress-will-do") on his Press the Meat panel of expert journalists, he added "Amy Holmes (of Glenn Beck's The Blaze) to bring in the unhinged, the shut-in and the doomsday preppers." Driftglass was right! Go to the videotape! Next week, how about Crazy Internet Guy? AND his cat?
Presidential Race
John Wagner of the Washington Post: "Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) drew a crowd of more than 20,000 [in Boston, Mass.] on Saturday night, building on the momentum of a week during which he posted a quarterly fundraising total that nearly matched that of Hillary Rodham Clinton, his chief rival for the Democratic presidential nomination. The boisterous turnout at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center appeared to far exceed a previous record for a primary candidate in Massachusetts: a crowd of about 10,000 that came to see then-senator Barack Obama eight years ago as he campaigned for the presidency, according to the Boston Globe." ...
... Margaret Talbot of the New Yorker profiles Bernie Sanders & discusses his popularity among younger voters.
Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "On the heels of the nation's latest mass shooting, Hillary Rodham Clinton will issue proposals on Monday to curb gun violence, including holding out the potential of using executive actions. Mrs. Clinton ... will announce the new proposals in separate town-hall-style events in New Hampshire, a state with a Democratic senator who has voted for some gun-control measures but where there is a thriving gun and hunting culture." ...
... Greg Sargent: Clinton's proposal challenges President Obama to do something and Bernie Sanders (& all Republican candidates) to address gun policy issues.
Worse than Cheney. Paul Krugman: "... you might expect people like [Marco] Rubio, who says he wants to 'unleash our energy potential,' and [Jeb] Bush, who says he wants to 'embrace wind and solar as engines of jobs and growth.' But they don't. Indeed, they're less open-minded than Dick Cheney, which is quite an accomplishment. Why?... Follow the money. We used to say that the G.O.P. was the party of Big Energy, but these days it would be more accurate to say that it's the party of Old Energy."
"Operation Wetback," Redux. And Yuuuge. William Finnegan of the New Yorker: Donald Trump's "political shortsightedness is astounding, and the idea that we would revert to the unsuccessful immigration-control methods of a dubious 1954 campaign is absurd and depressing."
News Ledes
New York Times: "An American Airlines jetliner with 147 passengers onboard made an emergency landing in Syracuse on Monday after the pilot fell ill and died, aviation officials said. The aircraft's co-pilot took control of the plane after the captain became incapacitated, and landed safely at Syracuse Hancock International Airport shortly after 7 a.m."
New York: "The Coast Guard believes that the cargo ship El Faro, which has been missing since Hurricane Joaquin struck the Caribbean, sank in the storm. The ship had a crew of 33, and 28 Americans were aboard."
New York Times: "Henning Mankell, the Swedish novelist and playwright best known for police procedurals that were translated into a score of languages and sold by the millions throughout the world, died Monday morning in Goteborg, Sweden. He was 67.
New York Times: "Three scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering 'therapies that have revolutionized the treatment of some of the most devastating parasitic diseases,' the Nobel Committee announced on Monday. William C. Campbell and Satoshi Omura won for developing a new drug, Avermectin, which has radically lowered the incidence of river blindness and lymphatic filariasis (elephantiasis). They shared the prize with Youyou Tu, who discovered Artemisinin, a drug that has significantly reduced death rates from malaria."
Guardian: "Islamic State militants have destroyed the Arch of Triumph in the ancient city of Palmyra, a monument that dates back to the Roman empire, Syria's chief of antiquities told the Guardian. Maamoun Abdulkarim said sources in the city, which was conquered by Isis after a week-long siege in May, had informed him the arch was destroyed on Sunday in the latest act of vandalism against Syria's cultural heritage perpetrated by Isis."
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Reader Comments (8)
Jason Chaffetz' rationale for running against Kevin McCarthy is that he's a better public speaker? Big deal. So is Porky Pig. I suppose a more golden tongued devil would be able to spit the lies out faster, so there's that.
How about "I have a vision for making the House of Representatives a more efficient body that works towards addressing the nation's many serious issues in a spirit of cooperation rather than the kind of poisonous rancor that has ground our work to a halt; rancor introduced and inflamed almost entirely by my party, sad to say."
No?
Didn't think so. Then I vote for Porky Pig. He may not be as eloquent, but at least he's not a malevolent, lying asshole.
Great article from Paul Theroux: here's another: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/15/opinion/the-rock-stars-burden.html. At the heart of this article, to me, is the question if we take the best and the brightest immigrants who is going to uplift those left behind? So for Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan migrants who's going to help back home? Migration and immigration are human constants, yet this current capitalism is just looking for cheaper plantation workers without respect for existing local communities that need assistance. Does socializing the costs of migrants to benefit the plantation system really make sense when their is so much assistance necessary for local communities here at home?
Marie,
Strom.Thurmond.Highway.
Sounds like the road AC/DC used to sing about.
Well keep yourself safe. The news reports sound alarming, officials going house to house, presumably in motor boats, looking for people stranded by the flood.
Hang tight and stay dry.
I had to check out the article in Politifact Marie had mentioned that recalls a number of special congressional committee investigations lasting longer than the benghazi-Benghazi-BENGHAZI burlesque (where committee members (R) regularly show their asses).
It appears that this latest exercise in wingnuttery is not the longest running special committee after all. But it is the longest running congressional investigation dedicated purely to oppo ratfucking.
The special committee investigations lasting longer than Benghazi ran longer for good reasons (reality for one). One was a special investigation into the assassinations of JFK and MLK. No big deal. Another dealt with connections of organized crime to labor unions, best remembered as the Jimmy Hoffa or Rackets investigation. Yawn.
And if neither of those seem more important than spending a few years investigating the nothing-burger Benghazi bullshit, then the other two long lasting committees probably don't seem worthy of lengthy investigations either, the conduct of the Civil War, and a look at defense contractor improprieties during WWII.
Clearly Trey Gowdy and his band of hyper partisan fishing enthusiasts are doing much more serious work than any of those, and we can expect their investigation *cough-cough* to last right up til election day, whereupon they will suddenly see no reason to continue their noble efforts.
Funny how that works, in'it?
Those Republicans. They sure are some fine public servants.
Trey Gowdy's obvious clone...brought to my attention in MoDo's column, just Google "Draco Malfoy" and click on images.
"Draco Lucius Malfoy is a character in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. He is a student in Harry Potter's year belonging in the Slytherin house. He is frequently accompanied by his two cronies, Vincent Crabbe (Jason Chafetz) and Gregory Goyle (also played by Jason Chaffetz), who act as henchmen." Life imitates art!
MAG,
If only we could command the proper Hogwarts spell to admit Draco Gowdy into the dustbin of muggles history.
Confederates and the Bright Shiny Object Problem.
Look over here! Planned Parenthood! Baby parts. Aiiieeeee! No, over there, Donald Trump! Git those dirty Mexicans! OMG, that delicious Vladimir Putin is dropping BOMBS!!! Bad Obama, bad, Obama. No bombs. Bad! The old speaker is dead, hail the new speaker. But which one. Gowdy! No. McCarthy! Not evil enough. Chaffetz. Secret Service wouldn't take him...
It never ends. They go from pillar to post like deranged children, no one's in charge, no one has a whisper of an idea beyond "NO, NO, NO, and NO!!"
They are the textbook definition of immature and ADHD impaired adolescents, running from one shiny object to the next.
Supposed serious person Carl Cannon, who believes Karl Rove to be a genius of the ages, is now calling Putin Vladimir Patton, in a piece in Real Clear Wingnuts, for his weekend of bombing raids in Syria. If shit is blowing up, Confederates lose their little minds. Of course Obama, because he isn't storming Syrian beaches and racing full speed ahead to Damascus at the front of a tank battalion, like Patton's Third Army across Europe during the Big One, is a wimpy, namby-pamby FUBAR type. Oooooh. Don't they love saying stuff like that? FOOOOBAR. Just like real army guys.
Of course no one stops to consider how things went for Russia the last time they went full bore Patton on a country in the Middle East. Nonetheless, people like Cannon congratulate themselves on clever analogies that don't make any sense. Putin is Patton because he bombed some villages? Seriously? Read a fucking history book, numbnuts. But expect to see this wildly exciting analogy giddily bandied about the Confederate echo chamber.
Poo-tin is Paa-ton, Bambi is Foooobar.
Very nice. Time for your nap now.
These people are fucking dangerous. Nuance, details, history, complexities, hold no interest for these idiots. But never fear, the next shiny object that arrests their attention will send them all scurrying off in another direction.
Is this what Confucius meant by living in interesting times?
Update on the Glorious Displays of General Vladimir Patton, so Beloved by American Wingers Whose Heads Are Up Their Asses. As usual.
I can't link this, but there's a story in the WaPo outlining the concerns of NATO that Russia has been cavalierly flying through Turkish airspace on their way to bombing innocent civilians. Yup. They bombed the wrong place. They aren't anywhere near ISIS strongholds. Russians are saying "Oops. That was a mistakeski. Soooory."
Don't think that Patton, at his most off the chain, ever attacked a village where there were no Nazis. , just innocent men, women, and children. Tsk, tsk, sneer the Conferderate supporters of shooting and bombing anything that moves. A mere technicality, likely the fault of Fubar Obama.
Putin is not in Syria to right wrongs or fight for a better world. He's there to prop up a punk ass butcher so's he
can say he's got an in in that part of the world. But Assad's position is shaky. If his government collapses, he'll be on a plane to safe harbor in minutes . And Vladimir Patton? Well, he can tuck tail and run, or he can go straight to the quagmire, do not pass GO, do not collect $200.
Like the man in the expensive pottery store says to clumsy customers: "You break that thing, you bought it."
What will the bomb-crazy wingnuts say then?