The Commentariat -- April 9, 2016
Wyoming Democrats caucus, & Colorado Republicans hold their state convention today. ...
... CW Update: Oops! Guess Colorado Republican delegates met yesterday have been voting all week. Partial results linked under Presidential Race below.
Your Tax Dollars at Work: Official Voter Suppression Commission. Michael Wines of the New York Times: "The federal Election Assistance Commission was formed after the disputed 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore and given an innocuous name and a seemingly inoffensive mission: to help state election officials make it easier to vote.... The election commission is in federal court this month, effectively accused of trying to suppress voter turnout in November's elections. The Justice Department, its nominal legal counsel, has declined to defend it. Its case instead is being pleaded by one of the nation's leading advocates of voting restrictions." -- CW
Ron Nixon of the New York Times: "Dozens of Transportation Security Administration employees in recent years have been reassigned, demoted, investigated or fired for reporting lapses or misconduct by senior managers, charges that were later upheld by whistle-blower protection agencies, records show.... The agency is troubled by internal problems.... Former and current T.S.A. employees said in interviews that they experienced a culture of fear and intimidation, where senior managers seemed more interested in targeting those who disclosed the agency's shortcomings rather than fixing problems." -- CW
Peter Hotez, in a New York Times op-ed: "If mosquitoes carrying the Zika virus reach the United States later this spring or summer, [Florida & Gulf Coast cities] are the major urban areas where the sickness will spread. If we don't intervene now, we could begin seeing newborns with microcephaly and stunted brain development on the obstetrics wards in one or more of these places." -- CW ...
... CW: Meanwhile, Congressional Republicans -- many of whom supposedly represent these Gulf Coast states -- refuse to fund R&D & other responses to the spread of the virus. These states' Republican leaders all have refused the Medicaid expansion under the ACA (The newly-elected Democratic governor of Louisiana has accepted it, but coverage is not yet in effect). While having health insurance obviously won't prevent mosquito bites, it would greatly increase the likelihood that pregnant women would get proper prenatal care & counseling on how to lower the risk of infection. ...
... CW: In what has to be the Comment of the Week, Victoria writes today that the Gulf states are "the exact areas where birth control and abortions are increasingly difficult to obtain. How will the evangelicals handle this disaster? Do chastity belts prevent mosquito bites?"
... more on the war on women - Amanda Marcotte of Salon: "The Missouri GOP wants a list of women who've had abortions in the state and is using the threat of jail to get it. While major anti-choice activists and politicians are rushing to microphones to disingenuously declare, contra Donald Trump, that they would never try to punish women for abortions, their true punitive and frankly creepy side is coming out in Missouri." -- LT
Seung Min Kim of Politico: "The GOP-led House of Representatives will be allotted 15 minutes of oral argument time to make its case against the Obama administration['s executive actions on immigration], according to a Friday order from the court. Overall, oral arguments will run 90 minutes, the order says." -- CW
Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times: "In the next battleground in the Justice Department's fight to unlock some of Apple's well-encrypted iPhones, the department on Friday pressed ahead with its efforts to get access to a locked phone linked to a methamphetamine ring in Brooklyn. Although the F.B.I. unlocked a phone last month, ending its prominent legal battle with Apple in the case involving the mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., the Justice Department on Friday told a federal judge in the Eastern District of New York that it still needs the technology giant's help to unlock the phone in the Brooklyn case." -- CW
The Party of Fear. Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "Vulnerable Republican incumbents are increasingly raising fears about Guantánamo Bay detainees, following a campaign strategy used by Scott Brown before his surprise victory in a Massachusetts special election for a Senate seat six years ago." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... CW: Never mind that we learned only yesterday that "Far more convicted terrorists are being held in federal prisons in the United States than in Guantanamo Bay." Reason seldom factors in to any Republican talking point.
Guns and Ammo. Josh Gerstein of Politico: "Four years after asserting executive privilege to block Congress from obtaining documents relating to a controversial federal gun trafficking investigation, President Barack Obama relented Friday, turning over to lawmakers thousands of pages of records that led to unusual House votes holding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt in 2012." -- unwashed
** Jeffrey Toobin of the New Yorker: "The Supreme Court Extremism of Clarence Thomas and Chuck Grassley.... The crudeness of Grassley's attack on [Chief Justice] Roberts, from a senator who claims to want to avoid a politicization of the court, is astonishing.... Thomas's blindness to the realities of American life -- and concomitant obsession with his understanding of the Framers' intent -- reflects his bizarre jurisprudential views." -- safari
Jennifer Bendery of The Huffington Post: "It sucks to be Merrick Garland right now...It's worth noting there are 46 other Merrick Garlands. That is, 46 other judicial nominees are in the same boat...who aren't getting votes ... because GOP leaders don't want to confirm judges until 2017." -- unwashed
Monica Davey & Mitch Smith of the New York Times: "Federal prosecutors on Friday for the first time provided details of sexual abuse allegations against J. Dennis Hastert, the former speaker of the House, asserting that he molested at least four boys, as young as 14, when he worked as a high school wrestling coach decades ago.... In a court filing late Friday, making suggestions for a judge who will decide Mr. Hastert's sentence, the prosecutors described specific, graphic incidents that they say occurred when Mr. Hastert was a popular, championship-winning coach in a small Illinois town in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. The 'known acts,' the prosecutors said, consisted of 'intentional touching of minors' groin area and genitals or oral sex with a minor.'" Story includes the prosecutor's filing document. -- CW
Presidential Race
Rob Krilly of The Telegraph: "Laura Bush, the former first lady, has hinted she would rather vote for Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump, saying she wants the next American president to be someone who cares about women in Afghanistan... she signalled she was among the growing band of establishment Republicans whose anyone-but-Trump stance extended to voting for Mrs Clinton in the general election." -- LT
Megan Carpentier & Laura Gambino of the Guardian: "Bernie Sanders returned to [Brooklyn] ... in a last-minute campaign rally..., in the middle of the street outside his childhood home off Kings Highway in Brooklyn to address supporters. Across the state, there was another homecoming of sorts for his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, who returned to western New York to once again ask the voters who helped launch her Senate career for their support." -- CW
BTW, Much Ado about Nothing. Both Bernie Sanders (here) & Hillary Clinton (here) have conceded that the other is qualified to be president. No kidding. CW: Still waiting for a Krugman apology.
Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone: "Bernie or no Bernie, 'Times' columnist Paul Krugman is wrong about the banks...The lessons of the crash era are that these megabanks have grown beyond the organic controls of capitalism. They were so big and so systemically important in '08 that the government could not let them go out of business.... This alone was an argument for breaking them up." -- LT
Gail Collins: "Have you noticed how Senator Sanders, former mayor of Burlington, Vt., is the glamour candidate while Clinton, former first lady, senator from New York and secretary of state, seems to follow an itinerary fit for a county commissioner? Welcome to the New York primary."
Philip Pullella & Alana Wise of Reuters: "... Bernie Sanders was invited to speak at an April 15 Vatican event by the Vatican, a senior papal official said on Friday, denying a report that Sanders had invited himself.... 'I deny that. It was not that way,' Monsignor Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo told Reuters in a telephone interview while he was traveling in New York. Sorondo, a close aide to Pope Francis, is chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, which is hosting the event.He said it was his idea to invite Sanders." Via Kevin Drum. -- CW
Ali Gharib of the Guardian: "New Yorkers got a chuckle on Thursday morning when Hillary Clinton rode the subway.... Clinton had a little bit of trouble swiping her MetroCard: it took five goes...." However, the bigger problem was that she broke the MTA's rules against campaigning on subways. "The incident is all the more galling because there are actual, regular New Yorkers ... who are arrested for violating the same rules that Clinton disregards with impunity." -- CW
Amy Chozick of the New York Times: "Former President Bill Clinton said Friday he regretted drowning out the chants of black protesters at a rally in Philadelphia the day before, when he issued an aggressive defense of his administration's impact on black families. His reaction thrust a debate about the 1990s into the center of his wife's presidential campaign, one that has focused heavily on issues of race and criminal justice."
Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "Senator Ted Cruz captured a majority of Colorado's delegates to the Republican National Convention on Friday, outmaneuvering Donald J. Trump, whose lack of an organized national campaign once again allowed Mr. Cruz to gain at his expense.... By Friday night, Mr. Cruz had taken 21 of the state's 37 national delegates. Mr. Trump and Gov. John Kasich of Ohio had none. Thirteen others will be decided on Saturday at the state convention." -- CW
Michael Cohen of the Boston Globe went to a Trump rally in Long Island: "There was an electricity and energy in the room that felt venomous, violent, terrifying -- like the political equivalent of parched kindling before a conflagration.... The more aggressive that Trump was in his comments, the more the crowd responded.... There's no poetry at Trump's events, no higher calling, no challenge other than to vote for Trump, no invocation of the 'better angels of our nature' -- it's just raw aggression, an animal, nationalistic spirit, us vs. them, zero sum game resentment politics." -- CW
...kind of like a frat party or hazing? Max Kutner of Newsweek: The Chalkening, a pro-Trump movement on campuses, ... "is likely a response to [college student populations being more liberal, diverse, and tolerant] especially for members of Greek life who are facing 'a crackdown on college campuses on fraternity culture' because some have said it promotes binge drinking and sexual assault." -- LT
Meet Trump's Mentor Roy Cohn. Michael Kruse in Politico Magazine: "That Roy Cohn..., the lurking legal hit man for red-baiting Sen. Joe McCarthy, whose reign of televised intimidation in the 1950s has become synonymous with demagoguery, fear-mongering and character assassination. In the formative years of Donald Trump's career..., Cohn was one of the most powerful influences and helpful contacts in Trump's life. Over a 13-year-period, ending shortly before Cohn's death in 1986, Cohn brought his say-anything, win-at-all-costs style to all of Trump's most notable legal and business deals."
David Graham of The Atlantic: "The breadth of Trump's controversies is truly yuge, ranging from allegations of mafia ties to unscrupulous business dealings, and from racial discrimination to alleged marital rape...This is a snapshot of some of the most interesting and largest of those scandals." --safari
...will he add bribery to the list? Philip Rucker of The Washington Post: "The swing voters of the GOP nominating contest, nearly 200 activists and elected leaders [are] beholden to nothing except their personal judgment... Campaign finance lawyers are divided over whether federal or state anti-bribery statutes would apply to delegates who are not elected officials -- and if so, what kinds of perks or inducements [like a weekend at Donald's] could be illegal." -- LT
Aaron Barlow of Salon: "Donald Trump has been a disaster for political journalists, but he has also been an incredible boon for those of us who teach journalism. Questions of ethics and practice, for instance, particularly in interview situations, are no longer simply academic."--safari
"New York Values." Katie Zezima of the Washington Post: "... with the delegate-rich New York primary looming, [Ted] Cruz must campaign in the Empire State -- a place known for its bare-knuckles approach to all things political, a propensity to hit back when slighted and residents who speak up when they disagree. "Take the F U train, Ted,' blared the cover of the New York Daily News Thursday, the day after Cruz was greeted by hecklers at a campaign stop in the Bronx. Cruz was swarmed by media as he walked into a Dominican-Chinese restaurant where he met with local and faith leaders. Two men were dragged out by police after they disrupted the gathering.... Despite the reception, Cruz refused to apologize for his 'New York values' criticism.... When asked by CNN if he regretted using the phrase, Cruz said, 'not remotely.'" -- CW
But Cruz Could Win the Big Prize. Steve M. "Hillary Clinton doesn't inspire much love; in that way she's like Gore and Kerry. She's not running on peace and prosperity. Her biggest advantage is the likely weakness of her opponent -- but Nixon, Reagan, and Poppy Bush have proved that you don't have to be loved to beat a Democrat." -- CW
Following up on Steve M.'s takedown (linked yesterday) of Time's fawning interview of Ted Cruz, Ed Kilgore patiently explains the obvious: "Ted Cruz is not an 'economic populist.'... It's hard to find a politician more inclined to get government off the backs of the very rich and the very powerful." -- CW ...
... Digby follows on, noting that the Time coverage is so Onion-esque that the Onion did indeed predict it. "... once you read the stories within, you'll have to conclude that the man whom virtually everyone with the misfortune of knowing him finds repulsive is terribly misunderstood. Where you might have thought the man was a doctrinaire rightwinger, steeped in religious fanaticism and radical free market extremism, you will find out that he's actually a good old boy, a salt of the earth populist." -- CW ...
... CW BTW: Digby describes Ted's portrait as "fetching." I find it standard-issue Cruz-creepy. If I were a crazed fundamentalist Christian who wanted to instill in my innocent children an abiding fear of the devil, I would show them photos of Ted.
Bill Maher discusses Republican electoral strategy: "Long lines are the new poll tax"--safari
Beyond the Beltway
Scott Bauer & Todd Richmond of the AP: "Wisconsin's right-to-work law, championed by Republican Gov. Scott Walker as he was mounting his run for president, was struck down Friday as violating the state constitution. Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel, also a Republican, promised to appeal the decision and said he was confident it would not stand." -- CW
... The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel story, by Patrick Marley & Jason Stein, is here. -- CW
Soumya Karlamangla of the Los Angeles Times: "Officials announced Friday that women in California can now drop by their neighborhood pharmacy and pick up birth control pills without a prescription from a doctor. It's not technically over-the-counter, but you can get them by talking to a pharmacist and filling out a questionnaire.... State legislators originally passed the law in 2013 but it was held up in regulatory discussions until Friday." -- CW
Mark Berman of the Washington Post: "The backlash against North Carolina's law banning anti-discrimination ordinances kept going unabated Friday, as Bruce Springsteen announced that he was canceling a weekend show in the state in solidarity with those protesting the bill." -- CW
...Brian Tashman of Right Wing Watch: "Rep. Louie Gohmert, R[nutcase]-Texas, defended North Carolina's new anti-LGBT law...Citing his own childhood, the congressman said that boys would be unable to resist the temptation to see girls while they are in the bathroom." -- unwashed
Arturo Garcia of Raw Story: "A new online campaign is targeting North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) for mockery concerning his state's new anti-trans legislation. The #PeeingForPat tag has already started circulating around Twitter, with various users posting pictures of urinals or toilets."--safari
Steve Reilly of USA Today: "A USA Today analysis ... found that both Nevada and Wyoming have become secretive havens much like Bermuda and Switzerland have long been. And at least 150 companies set up by Mossack Fonseca in those states have ties to major corruption scandals in Brazil and Argentina. The corporate records of 1,000-plus Nevada business entities linked to the Panamanian law firm reveal layers of secretive ownership, with few having humans' names behind them, and most tracing back to a tiny number of overseas addresses from Bangkok high rises to post offices on tiny island nations. Only 100 of the Nevada-born corporations have officers with addresses in this country...." -- CW
...Eric Ortiz of Truthdig: "No high-profile Americans have been implicated in the Panama Papers, but various sources are reporting a Clinton connection to the leaked documents....Sberbank (Savings Bank in Russian) engaged the Podesta Group to help its public image....Tony Podesta is a super fundraiser, or bundler, for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, and John Podesta is the chairman of her 2016 campaign." -- LT
Samantha Masunaga & Geoffrey Mohan of the Los Angeles Times: "SpaceX successfully landed its Falcon 9 rocket's reusable first-stage booster on a drone ship stationed in the Atlantic Ocean on Friday. It was the Hawthorne[, California,] company's fifth attempt at a sea landing and first successful one." -- CW
Thomas Gibbons-Neff of the Washington Post: "Robert James O'Neill, the former member of SEAL Team 6 who claimed to have shot and killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden..., was charged with DUI on Friday in his home town of Butte, Mont." -- CW
Amanda Terkel of The Huffington Post: "Florida Gov. Rick Scott's [Rwhackjob-FL] political action committee has put out a new ad that goes after Cara Jennings, the woman who confronted him at a Starbucks and called him an 'asshole.'" What a guy. -- unwashed
Way Beyond
strong>Souad Mekhennet, et al., of the Washington Post: "Belgian officials have arrested a key suspect from last year's terrorist attacks in Paris, a senior official said Friday, and investigators also explored possible links to the deadly bombings in Brussels last month. The suspect, Mohamed Abrini, was the subject of a massive manhunt since November's rampage in Paris...." -- CW
Kristen Hall-Geisler of Tech Crunch: "The interest in Tesla vehicles has done the electric car market a lot of good, according to [Nick] Sampson... head of the startup electric vehicle company Faraday Future...'It opens people's minds to the possibilities.'" -- unwashed
...Paresh Dave and Charles Fleming of the LA Times: "Electric car start-up Faraday Future Inc...[is] poised to receive millions of dollars in state tax breaks over the next five years if they can hit hiring and investment goals...[FF] would get a total of $12.7 million in credit toward corporate income taxes for meeting requirements set with the state, including adding almost 2,000 workers in Gardena and elsewhere in California by 2020." -- unwashed {Disclaimer: I have a minor role in the development of this new product. From my experience it's truly a multi-cultural, muli-national endeavor. However, if I write anything more I'll need to chop off my own fingers.}
Share Article 