The Commentariat -- April 22, 2015
Internal links removed.
Afternoon News:
Jennifer Steinhauer & Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "Responding to a series of computer security breaches, the House is expected on Wednesday to pass a bill, years in the making, that would push private companies to share access to their computer networks and records with federal investigators.... The cybersecurity bill, similar to a measure approved overwhelmingly by the Senate Intelligence Committee, would be Congress's most aggressive response yet to a burst of computer attacks...."
Missy Ryan & Adam Goldman of the Washington Post: "The Pentagon plans to move up to 10 detainees out of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, possibly in June, as officials scramble to reduce the prison's population before Congress attempts to stop future transfers and derail President Obama's plan to shutter the U.S. military facility."
Sarah Bailey of the Washington Post: "Pope Francis, who has taken a public role in U.S.-Cuba relations, will visit Cuba on the way to the United States this fall, the Vatican announced Wednesday."
Kevin Liptak of CNN: "President Barack Obama will venture into the South Florida Everglades on Wednesday to lend urgency to his environmental agenda, declaring the dangers of climate change an imminent threat to the state's economy." ...
David Nakamura & Anne Gearan of the Washington Post: "Hillary Rodham Clinton and other top Democrats began feuding over President Obama's trade initiative Tuesday as his bid for a major late-term win began tearing at the party's unity and threatened to expose old divisions ahead of the 2016 presidential election. The tensions broke into public view after Clinton hedged during her first remarks on whether she would support an Obama-backed trade package that is gaining traction in Congress but is opposed by some on the party's politically potent liberal wing." ...
... President Obama speaks with Chris Matthews about the TPP:
... Jordain Carney of the Hill: "Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid on Tuesday said he is emphatically against the new trade powers legislation that is moving through Congress. 'I have never, ever ... supported a trade agreement, and I'm not going to start now,' the Nevada Democrat told reporters. 'So the answer is not only no, but hell no.'" ...
... Kyle Cheney of Politico: "A coalition of labor, environmental and progressive interests is launching a seven-figure ad campaign aimed at pressuring congressional Democrats to block legislation that would expedite an Obama administration-backed trade deal with the United States' Pacific allies."
Dustin Volz of the National Journal: "Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced a bill Tuesday night that would reauthorize a controversial surveillance authority of the Patriot Act until 2020, a push that comes just as a group of bipartisan lawmakers is preparing a last-minute push to rein in the government's mass-spying powers. A McConnell aide said the majority leader is beginning a process to put the bill on the Senate calendar but said that the chamber will not take the measure up this week. That process, known as Rule 14, would bypass the traditional committee process. Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr is a cosponsor."
New York Times: The Senate has set the confirmation vote on Loretta Lynch for attorney general for Thursday.
Ben Jacobs of the Guardian: "Barack Obama has sent a clear signal to the Iranian government that further arms deliveries to Houthi rebels in Yemen would be unacceptable. '[The crisis will] not be solved by having another proxy war fought inside Yemen and we've indicated to the Iranians that they need to be part of the solution and not part of the problem,' the US president said on Tuesday night."
Eli Lake of Bloomberg: "The Barack Obama administration has estimated for years that Iran was at most three months away from enriching enough nuclear fuel for an atomic bomb. But the administration only declassified this estimate at the beginning of the month, just in time for the White House to make the case for its Iran deal to Congress and the public." ...
... Jim Snyder of Bloomberg: "Nuclear inspectors will need unfettered access in Iran as part of a deal to lift economic sanctions, U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said a day after an Iranian general said military sites must be off limits. 'We expect to have anywhere, anytime access,' Moniz, a nuclear physicist who negotiated the technical details of a framework nuclear accord, said Monday in a meeting with editors and reporters at Bloomberg's Washington office."
Michael Crowley of Politico: "President Barack Obama will not use the word 'genocide' to describe the massacre of up to 1.5 million Armenians in his annual statement commemorating the historic atrocity later this month."
Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post: "The head of the Drug Enforcement Administration is expected to resign soon, according to U.S. officials, following revelations about 'sex parties' involving prostitutes overseas and other misconduct among its agents. Michele Leonhart, who has served at the helm of the DEA since 2007, has come under heavy criticism on Capitol Hill since an inspector general report last month documented a series of episodes in which agents hired prostitutes. Agents were also found to have had sex parties with some women hired by drug cartels in Colombia." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
American Justice, Ctd. Mark Berman of the Washington Post: "The Justice Department said Tuesday it was launching a federal civil rights investigation into the death of Freddie Gray, who died after suffering a severe spinal cord injury while in the custody of the Baltimore police. Gray's death has sparked repeated protests in Baltimore, where six police officers have been suspended as authorities there investigate what happened."
Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that the police may not prolong traffic stops to wait for drug-sniffing dogs to inspect vehicles. 'A police stop exceeding the time needed to handle the matter for which the stop was made violates the Constitution's shield against unreasonable seizures,' Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the majority. The vote was 6 to 3.... Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined Justice Ginsburg's majority opinion." ...
... Ian Millhiser of Think Progress discusses the impact of the decision, which may be of little consequence, even for the plaintiff in the case. ...
... Noah Feldman in Bloomberg: "Are the past year's examples of racially charged police abuses from Ferguson to Staten Island to North Charleston affecting the U.S. Supreme Court?... It's possible to discern a subtly changing attitude on stop-and-frisk policing, the centerpiece of the broken-windows approach.... Tuesday's decision suggests that the judicial pendulum may be beginning to move. The first movement may seem small. But the pendulum tends to have momentum." CW: This was my first thought upon reading the decision. Read the whole post because Feldman explains why Ginburg concentrated on the time element.
Tim Devaney of the Hill: "Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) last week tweeted a picture of himself and Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), the leader of the House's Benghazi investigation, holding an AR-15. Having the AR-15 in the District could be a violation of the city's strict gun laws, and the city attorney general's office has referred the matter to police, a spokesman told The Hill."
The Thrill Is Gone. George Packer of the New Yorker: Politics isn't fun any more. Packer makes some suggestions that he thinks would enliven the moribund sameness of it all.
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Digby, in Salon, on the history of mainstream media's "eagerly chasing every shiny object that David Bossie [of Citizens United] and other right-wingers threw in their path.... The press's track record during [the 1990s] and into the 2000 campaign can only be described as malpractice. It's beyond belief that after all their failures and journalistic malfeasance they would formalize an agreement with a right wing operative to 'share' his information."
The Rich Man's Burden. Simon Miloy of Salon explains basics of the U.S. tax structure to Bill O'Reilly, whose ignorance thereof has led him to conclude that "the real inequality is found in the government's unfair taxation of wealthy people like himself."
Presidential Race
Amy Chozick of the New York Times: Clinton surrogates point out that Hillary Clinton has been a "populist" for decades. "Mrs. Clinton was the original Elizabeth Warren, her advisers say, a populist fighter who for decades has been an advocate for families and children; only now have the party and primary voters caught up.... A 16-page dossier, titled 'Hillary Clinton: A Lifetime Champion of Income Opportunity' and assembled by a close friend and adviser to Mrs. Clinton, calls Ms. Warren a 'footnote.' The document, provided to The New York Times, presents 40 instances in which Mrs. Clinton took the same stance as Ms. Warren on issues -- like organized labor and tax increases on the wealthy -- in some cases years before the senator's ascent in the national spotlight." ...
... Greg Sargent: "Clinton's agenda may end up looking a lot more like the Center for American Progress' 'Inclusive Prosperity' agenda, with its focus on boosting wages, workplace flexibility, and investments in education and the future, than like Warren's emphasis on the rigged,inequality-ridden rules that hold sway on the domestic and global economic playing field. But even so, Clinton will draw on Warren's repertoire, and the differences won't be all that vast."
Myth-Busting. Ed Kilgore in TPM: Their executive experience & outside-the-Beltway status "were supposed to make the rich bumper crop of GOP governors and former governors in the field this year the collective frontrunners. But in case after case, their records back home are undermining their credibility...."
Alex Roarty & Scott Bland of the National Journal: "When Chris Christie went to New Hampshire to propose the most sweeping set of changes to Social Security in recent memory last week, he set off a rush among top Republican contenders, including Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, to offer their own aggressive plans for the program. But according to many Republican strategists, Christie's dive into Social Security did more than that -- it pushed the party in a perilous direction ahead of the 2016 election. Because while 'entitlement reform' has become part of the Republican platform, Social Security, the strategists say, is a topic still too perilous to touch."
Koch Cattle Call. Jonathan Chait: "Mike Allen [of Politico] report[ed] that, per an unnamed 'top Koch aide'..., 'Jeb Bush will be given a chance to audition for the [Koch] brothers' support.' The Kochs seem to be hoping for a lead character who can play the role a little less patrician and a little more Middle America, but Jeb will be given an opportunity to show that he can stretch. So for anybody concerned that the democratic process might be short-circuited by the Kochs precipitously anointing a front man, rest assured. All the candidates will have the chance to curry their favor." ...
Fredreka Schouten of USA Today: "Charles Koch said he is considering throwing his political might into the Republican presidential primary for the first time and is likely to provide financial help to several contenders before settling on a single candidate." CW: Let's hope the Brothers Koch start feuding/brawling over which candidate to support. ...
... MEANWHILE, Andy Borowitz "reports," "Koch Industries is defending its acquisition of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker against charges that it overpaid for the Midwestern politician." ...
... Sam Brodey of Mother Jones: "Liz Mair, the GOP operative who resigned from Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's campaign-in-waiting after a day on the job, is in campaign mode again -- and this time, she's targeting her former boss. On Tuesday morning, Mair sent an email detailing Walker's 'Olympic-quality flip-flop' on the issue of immigration. On Monday, Breitbart reported that Walker is the only declared or likely GOP candidate so far to support rolling back legal immigration to the United States, including for highly skilled workers." ...
Actual immigration advisor to Scott Walker.... Sahil Kapur of TPM: "Top Republican senators criticized GOP presidential hopeful Scott Walker on Tuesday for casting doubt on legal immigration policies and echoing calls by outspoken restrictionist Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) for a discussion about whether immigrants harm wages for native-born American workers." ...
... Dave Weigel of Bloomberg: "Walker's statement [suggesting putting limits on legal immigration] puts him to the right of even Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who told New Hampshire voters this weekend that there was 'no stronger advocate' for legal immigration than him.... Just as surprisingly -- and just as impactfully -- Walker's dalliance with immigration limitation puts him at odds with the Koch networks, just a day after David Koch told reporters that he was inclined to back Walker. The Charles Koch Foundation has aggressively campaigned for immigration reform...."
Nick Gass of Politico: "Lindsey Graham and John McCain are 'lapdogs' for President Barack Obama's foreign policy, Rand Paul said Tuesday, at once firing back at recent remarks from the hawkish Republicans and seeking to distinguish his defense credentials. 'This comes from a group of people wrong about every policy issue over the last two decades,' the Kentucky Republican said in an interview with Fox News, touting his credentials as the 'one standing up to President Obama.'... On Monday, Graham said Paul is 'more wrong than right' when it comes to foreign policy and that the current president is stronger in dealing with overseas threats. McCain asserted that Paul 'just doesn't understand' and has carried a naïveté in the Senate." ...
... Ed Kilgore: "Putting aside any analysis of the truth or error of what Paul is saying here about Obama, Graham/McCain, or himself, what’s interesting here is that he's showing every sign of wanting a big debate within the GOP on foreign policy and national security; the 'lapdog' line is media-bait of the highest order."
Burgess Everett of Politico: "Running for president in New Hampshire over the weekend, Sen. Ted Cruz told a group of gun owners he's 'pressing' Sen. John McCain to convene hearings on whether soldiers should be allowed to carry concealed guns on military bases. McCain (R-Ariz.) says the request is news to him. 'I was fascinated to hear that because I haven't heard a thing about it from him. Nor has my staff heard from his staff,' McCain said of Cruz (R-Texas). 'It came as a complete surprise to me that he had been pressing me. Maybe it was some medium that I'm not familiar with.'"
Beyond the Beltway
Craig Patrick of Fox 13 Tampa: Florida GOP legislators opposing the Medicaid expansion locked reporters out of a meeting in violation of Florida's sunshine law. Something about "liberty." "But they may not have realized a veteran Associated Press reporter was listening through the door." Via Greg Sargent. ...
... Jonathan Cohn on why Rick Scott, et al., are "throwing an ObamaCare tantrum": "The level of hostility to Obamacare makes very little sense -- unless it's about something beyond the policy particulars. It could be the fact that Democrats finally accomplished something big, for the first time in several decades, thereby expanding the welfare state at a time when conservatives thought they were on their way to shrinking it. Or it could be the idea that, on net, the Affordable Care Act transfers resources away from richer, whiter people to poorer, darker people. Or it could be the fact that 'Obamacare' contains the word 'Obama,' whose legitimacy as president at least some conservatives just can't accept."
News Ledes
Hartford Courant: "Mary Doyle Keefe, the model for Norman Rockwell's iconic 1943 'Rosie the Riveter' painting that symbolized the millions of American women who went to work on the home front during World War II, has died. She was 92."
Slate: "A federal appeals court on Wednesday overturned Barry Bonds' obstruction of justice felony conviction related to performance enhancing drugs, undoing the only criminal conviction to come from the years-long investigation of the former slugger. The 2011 conviction grew out of answers Bonds gave to a grand jury in 2003."
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Reader Comments (14)
I can't pretend to keep up with Scott Walker's shifting stances on immigration, but I can think of one reason he may be in favor of limiting legal immigrants in order to "protect American wages."
That is that in Wisconsin, his template for how he wants to run the country, our minimal job growth is dominated by low-wage jobs. He needs to save those for "folks", as he now calls us, and immigrants might get in the way. Besides, immigrants can't vote, but they might have children who can, eventually.
Also, Walker has a complete inability to think in terms of broad issues, and he very likely had a Pavlovian response to Sessions' proposal--"limit immigration, good!" And just hooked it in with his talking points--"American workers!"-- which have nothing to do with reality.
He's gotten a great hubris boost from David Koch's recent remarks and despite wishing he would just implode soon, I think it will be amusing to watch puff himself up for the next few oaths.
@Nadd2: Excellent point. However, immigrants can & do become U.S. citizens with full legal rights of citizenship, including of course the right to vote. (About the only restriction I can think of is that they can't become president or vice president.) Many immigrants become (legal) voters long before their children do.
Marie
Yesterday in the mail: A long white envelope with my address and above in bold: PHYLLIS, THIS IS OUR MOMENT...ARE YOU WITH ME? The sender: Hillary Clinton also in bold. Inside a two page (both sides) message outlining her positions, telling us about that ONE immigrant grandfather who believed in the American Dream––a theme she has throughout––she needs my help she says and enclosed is , of course, a separate "Yes, Hillary, I am with you and ready for a better future ..." along with the donation brackets starting at $30. Attached to this is : Send a Personal Message to Hillary. I'm pondering on what I want to say to Mrs. Clinton–––am leading toward you, but it's too early to commit? I am not sending you money because you do not need it and maybe I'll give a sum to my local food bank in your name? As I said, I'm thinking on it.
I am confused about the TTP––here is Bernie Sanders bash about it, yet we have Obama extolling it.
http://www.sanders.senate.gov/download/the-trans-pacific-trade-tpp-agreement-must-be-defeated?inline=file
No live feed of POTUS' Earth Day speech in Florida? Makes sense.
Since speaking of climate change is now illegal in Florida and Wisconsin, POTUS is simply being careful. No live broadcast; likely no recordings...no proof. If pictures not yet proscribed, maybe he'll just stand knee deep in water, pointing down but saying nothing...
No Florida jail time for him...
Canny guy, that President.
@P.S. Pepe: I totally share your confusion about the TTP. I watched a good deal of Obama's presentation of his case on Chris Matthews yesterday and he seemed as impassioned as I've ever seen him in claiming this was the right path. On the other side are some Democrats I really respect who are dead set against it.
On another matter, I loved the Politico piece linked above that contained McCain's dry comment regarding Cruz's alleged push to expand gun rights on bases: "It came as a complete surprise to me that he had been pressing me. Maybe it was some medium that I’m not familiar with.” You just know that he was dying to call Cruz a lying sack of sh-t.
So smarmy degenerate Mitch McConnell has finally agreed to allow an eminently qualified nominee for Attorney General (not at all an important position, at least not for felonious, amoral Republicans) to have her day.
The Loretta Lynching (sorry, couldn't let it go) by McConnell is outrageous in so many ways and the press has played right along with him. This morning on NPR, I heard another he-said, she-said description of this latest Republican affront in which the reporter merely regurgitated GOP talking points. Rather than tell listeners that Republicans had been unconscionably holding up the appointment of a black woman, because black, never their favorite color in the past, has become their most hated color since 2009, the report simply mentioned that Democrats say this but Republicans say that it was all the fault of Democrats who were dragging their feet on human trafficking legislation. No mention of the abortion problem, or the fact that the Lynch nomination had nothing to do with the trafficking bill--it's like saying we're canceling our picnic in the Catskills because it's raining in Oregon.
Can't begin to tell you how much I despise that rat bastard McConnell.
California's most paranoid citizens have now come up with a ballot initiative that would provide no less than $4,000 to people who catch a transgender person using the appropriate bathroom.My question: How would they know? Would they peek over the stall?
Some years ago I went to a wedding/reception at a tony hotel in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The only bathroom adjacent to the ballroom was gender neutral which I was not aware of when going in. Imagine my surprise when coming out of the stall I see a man standing over the sink washing his hands. Wow, I murmured, you gave me a shock. "Would I wish that would happen more often," he said with a wink and a smile. After he told me this was a gender friendly deposit station I put on fresh lipstick while he patted down his hair and we chatted about the couple we had both come to celebrate. Throughout the evening I made several more trips to the bathroom encountering both sexes mingling merrily–-no one got pissed. I thought it was great!!
Marie--right, eventually many immigrants can vote. What I was trying to sat was that neither they nor their children would be likely to vote for Walker.
PD,
Just imagine all the energy, thought, and angst poured into issues surrounding sex, sexuality, and gender by Confederates, who lie awake at night worrying that someone, somewhere, somehow is having the "wrong kind of sex" or peeing into the "wrong toilet". Then think of all the effort they expend on protecting the wealthy from the "wrong sort of people". After that, add in all the creativity, and zealotry required to make sure the "wrong types" don't vote. Add it all up and you'd have enough energy to create a mini big bang.
Oh wait. But that never happened, right? Something to do with "let there be light". More energy wasted making sure the "wrong theories" aren't taught in schools.
Oh well, I suppose if we have to expend time, money, and legislative initiative to turn citizens into bathroom snitches, might as well make it an even ten grand for ratting out pissoir scofflaws.
Hey, it's the important things in life, right?
That picture of Jeff Sessions is something else, eh?
For some people, that sort of thing, playing dress up, is a hobby. Not for Confederates.
So along with the official GOP stiff arm to Loretta Lynch, we find several other current events, which in no way can or should be used to create some sort of pattern. Like all those killings of unarmed black men, there's no pattern. There are only single, unconnected, isolated incidents. Hundreds of them.
So in addition to the systemic racism in places like Ferguson, we can now add the example of Parma, Missouri, where, last week, a new mayor was sworn in. And as she comes in, most of the town's officials and almost all the members of the police department, quit. Why?
Two words: Black and woman. Put 'em together and it's an easy call for Confederates to reel in the welcome mats. But don't say it's racism, 'cause it ain't. Just ain't.
Chris Matthews begs to differ. Here's what he thinks about recent statements and inferences by travelers in the GOP presidential Clown Car on issues having to do with Obama, none of which, of course have to do with race: “Some of these guys talk like they think the base is wearing sheets."
News flash Chris. A lot of them are. Or should be.
Once Obama came into office, the gloves came off. Confederates were willing to put up with having Africa Americans eat at the same lunch counters and sit anywhere they wanted in movie theaters, but having "one a them" in their White House was just too much. In an AP poll taken in 2012, it was discovered that anti-black sentiments had risen three points just since Obama was first elected:
"In all, 51 percent of Americans now express explicit anti-black attitudes, compared with 48 percent in a similar 2008 survey. When measured by an implicit racial attitudes test, the number of Americans with anti-black sentiments jumped to 56 percent, up from 49 percent during the last presidential election. In both tests, the share of Americans expressing pro-black attitudes fell."
Of course, 24/7 screaming from real and almost racists helped spur the idea that blacks were, again, a big problem for white America and something had to be done about them.
And if you're still not buying it, there's Jeff Sessions with a long history of antipathy to blacks and civil rights, and people like KKK panderer Steve Scalise in a leadership position with the GOP.
And if you're STILL not buying it, how 'bout a word from an insider, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to the Secretary of State under George Dubya Bush hisself:
"Let me just be candid: My party is full of racists. And the real reason a considerable portion of my party wants President Obama out of the White House has nothing to do with the content of his character, nothing to do with his competence as commander in chief and president, and everything to do with the color of his skin."
So when you see an asshole like Jeff Sessions dreaming about wearing Confederate gray and ordering his troops to kill the Yankees come to free the slaves, don't forget that it ain't a dream to many of these people. It's every day life.
Thanks for the update on the live feed of the President's Florida remarks. Guess he's not just canny; he's also courageous. Will have to check later to see if he really dared to utter the dreaded words, "clim**e ch**ge."
Oops. Li'l Randy is stealing other people's stuff again.
Not plagiarism this time, but for a guy who claims to be libertarian supporter of free market entrepreneurial spirit, he doesn't seem to be too up on definitions.
For example, free market doesn't mean "free" as in someone has an idea or product and you can grab it without approval, or some kind of, you know, business agreement. I think that self-certified nonsense has gotten the Little One's rug twisted around a bit.
So you may recall that Bad Toupée will provide you with a flip-flop of your very own for the bargain basement price of twenty smackers. A little higher up the list you can buy your very own Randy Paul sunglasses made by the Rand Paul, er Ray Ban company. Oh, but look, it has a cute little Rand Paul logo on it.
Unfortunately, Ray Ban doesn't like the idea of Aqua Buddha Boy using their merchandise free of any licensing agreement or their, you know, approval. So that $150 you're charging people for merchandise owned by someone else doesn't make your pile of loot bigger, it makes you a crook.
Sorry, Randy. It must really suck that people don't get that it's your understanding of words and laws that count, and only yours. This guy should think about running for president again when he's out of adolescence.
Douchebag.
One more thought about how low journalism has stooped.
This "exclusive" deal entered into by the Washington Post and the New York Times to spread wingnut manure about the Clintons across the landscape (yet again) is better than ipecac.
I recall reading a book by one of the prime inventors of fabricated Clinton "news", David Brock, who, in his book "Blinded by the Right" at one point (and I don't have the book in front of me so I'm going by memory, but it's pretty close) says something to the extent that once he stopped writing hit pieces for winger publications and began getting jobs in the mainstream press, he was reminded that there are still organizations that will make writers back up their assertions with facts and make them corroborate their claims, something Confederate publications never required.
I guess they've all gone Confederate now, eh? If the Times and the Post start regurgitating unsubstantiated bullshit and fabrications from a Breitbart hack, they'll be no better than some Richard Mellon Scaife newsletter.
Real journalism still matters. If it didn't Breitbart wouldn't have had to have hidden the fact that when the president announced his nominee for Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, they published an outraged screed about the wrong Loretta Lynch, a white lawyer who was once involved in a Whitewater investigation.
Exclusive my ass. This is nothing but a fishing expedition in which they're letting a well known Confederate hit man invent shit that they can then reprint with the usual "But then again, So and So says.....blah, blah, blah Hillary, blah, blah, horrible, murderer, terror loving....we haven't been able to independently corroborate this crap, but there ya go."
Expect Vince Foster and Travelgate to make a reappearance any day now.