The Commentariat -- August 16, 2015
Internal links removed.
AP: "Julian Bond, a civil rights activist and longtime board chairman of the NAACP, died Saturday night, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. He was 75. Bond died in Fort Walton Beach, Florida after a brief illness, the SPLC said in a statement released Sunday morning." (Link updated.) ...
... Update. Mr. Bond's New York Times obituary is here.
Julia Angwin, et al., in the New York Times: "The National Security Agency's ability to spy on vast quantities of Internet traffic passing through the United States has relied on its extraordinary, decades-long partnership with a single company: the telecom giant AT&T. While it has been long known that American telecommunications companies worked closely with the spy agency, newly disclosed N.S.A. documents [from the Ed Snowden cache] show that the relationship with AT&T has been considered unique and especially productive. One document described it as 'highly collaborative,' while another lauded the company's 'extreme willingness to help.'... AT&T's 'corporate relationships provide unique accesses to other telecoms and I.S.P.s,' or Internet service providers, one 2013 N.S.A. document states."
Jodi Kantor & David Streitfeld of the New York Times: Amazon ... "is conducting a little-known experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers, redrawing the boundaries of what is acceptable. The company, founded and still run by Jeff Bezos..., has ... designed what many workers call an intricate machine propelling them to achieve Mr. Bezos' ever-expanding ambitions.... At Amazon, workers are encouraged to tear apart one another's ideas in meetings, toil long and late..., and held to standards that the company boasts are 'unreasonably high.' The internal phone directory instructs colleagues on how to send secret feedback to one another's bosses. Employees say it is frequently used to sabotage others." ...
... CW: How refreshing to know that Bezos is as cruel to white collar personnel as he is to factory workers.
Nahal Toosi of Politico: "On Saturday, Sen. Jeff Flake [Az.], possibly the only Republican in Congress open to supporting the agreement, said he won"t."
Vicki Needham of the Hill: "Sen. Sherrod Brown(D-Ohio) said Friday that he will block a trade nominee's Senate floor vote until the Obama administration makes the text of a sweeping transpacific agreement available to eligible staffers. Brown said he put a hold on the Marisa Lago, whose nomination for deputy U.S. trade representative cleared the Senate Finance Committee earlier this month but awaits a final confirmation vote from the full Senate."
Lawrence Hurley of Reuters: "A U.S. federal appeals court on Friday threw out a lawsuit brought by an Arizona sheriff who argued that President Barack Obama's executive actions on immigration were unconstitutional. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld a district court judge's finding that Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio did not have grounds to sue."
** Esther Allen in the New York Review of Books: "... the United States is already part of Cuba, embargo or no embargo, and has been for a long, long time."
** Margo Kaplan, in a Washington Post op-ed: "Fertility clinics destroy embryos all the time.... The disparity between how the law treats abortion patients and IVF patients reveals an ugly truth about abortion restrictions: that they are often less about protecting life than about controlling women's bodies. Both IVF and abortion involve the destruction of fertilized eggs that could potentially develop into people.... Abortion restrictions use unwanted pregnancy as a punishment for 'irresponsible sex' and remind women of the consequences of being unchaste.... IVF patients make less-attractive targets because we don't challenge the expectation that women want to be mothers. Abortion, on the other hand, thwarts conservative ideals about a woman's proper role as a wife and mother.... Unlike IVF patients, who are primarily wealthy and white, women who have abortions are disproportionately poor and women of color, groups it has always been popular to condemn and regulate."
Kristina Wong of the Hill: "Vice President Joe Biden on Saturday gave a moving tribute to the four Marines and one sailor killed last month in the Chattanooga attack, drawing upon the experience of the loss of his own late son Beau, an Army major. 'I wish I were not here, for I have some sense of how hard it is for you to be here,' Biden said to their families at a memorial service in Chattanooga, Tenn., for the troops."
Ali Breland of Politico: Presidents Barack Obama & Bill Clinton "golfed with [Vernon] Jordan, the financier and lawyer, and Ambassador Ron Kirk at the Farm Neck Golf Club, according to pool reports, playing a leisurely foursome ahead of Saturday night's festivities, which will see the Obamas and the Clintons cross paths at Jordan's 80th birthday celebrations." ...
... Mark Hensch of the Hill: Presidents Obama & Clinton also had a chance meeting at the golf club on Friday.
Presidential Race
Ben Jacobs of the Guardian: Both Hillary Clinton & Bernie Sanders "appeared at the [Iowa State F]air.... But only Sanders ... held a formal event. Appearing on the Des Moines Register soapbox, he addressed a crowd of approximately a thousand.... In marked contrast, Clinton spent about an hour walking the fairgrounds, without making a speech.... Both Democratic contenders also had to contend with ... Donald Trump, complete with helicopter, [who] made a campaign appearance. The chopper buzzed over Clinton, who looked up as people shouted 'Trump!' Sanders had to contend with more noise [from Trump's helicopter] as he spoke." ...
... Video of Sanders' speech is here. ...
... Bernie's Challenge. John Cassidy of the New Yorker: "... one of the most surprising things about Sanders's rise is how little impact it appears to be having on Clinton's base.... While the former Secretary of State's popularity among the electorate at large has fallen recently, the vast majority of Democrats still think positively of her, surveys suggest.... Sanders will struggle mightily once the first two primaries are out of the way and attention switches to places like South Carolina, Nevada, and the twelve states -- eight of them in the South -- that will vote on 'Super Tuesday,' March 1st.... In trying to move beyond his white liberal base, Sanders faces a huge challenge, but it would be folly to underestimate him." ...
Rachel Bade of Politico: "... Clinton put herself out at the Iowa State Fair Saturday, embracing the masses that engulfed her. The 2016 Democratic contender shook hands and took selfies with total strangers, listened to Iowans' personal stories of struggle and even met a young boy's show cow. She gave people hugs, patted babies on the head, munched on a grease-dripping pork chop and waved to cheering crowds on balconies as they called out her name. It's a world of difference from Clinton's last White House bid, when she was criticized here for seeming too-cool-for-school to mingle with what she now calls 'everyday Americans.'" ...
... Amy Chozick of the New York Times: "Hillary Rodham Clinton hit back at Jeb Bush on Saturday over his accusation that the Obama administration's handling of the withdrawal of 10,000 troops in Iraq had facilitated the rise of the Islamic State now sweeping violently through Syria and Iraq." ...
... John Wagner of the Washington Post: "Hillary Rodham Clinton picked up an endorsement Friday from the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, the third union to weigh in on a Democratic primary fight in which labor finds itself divided. The decision by the union, which represents 600,000 members, came just days after National Nurses United, the country's largest nurses union, sided with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)...."
MEANWHILE, Edward-Isaac Dovere, et al., of Politico: "With his blessing, confidants to Vice President Joe Biden have begun strategizing about travel to early primary states and identified potential donors who could bankroll a campaign even as he remains undecided about whether to pull the trigger on a late-entry 2016 run for president. The moves are a sign that after months of speculation, Biden is taking a few significant if small steps toward a presidential campaign, according to sources familiar with the discussions. Biden's strategy, the sources say, would be to focus on South Carolina while almost writing off New Hampshire, where both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have considerable footholds."
David Sanger of the New York Times: "If the diverse group of candidates competing for the Republican presidential nomination agree on one thing when describing how they would engage with the world if they made it to the White House, it is this: If only the United States were stronger, and more feared, the country would not feel threatened by the Islamic State, manipulated by Iran or challenged by a rising China.... But after that, finding any consensus on how they would exercise American power differently from President Obama, or a Democratic opponent in 2016, much less how they would define an alternative Republican foreign policy, gets a bit messy."
... Jesse Byrnes of the Hill: "Billionaire businessman Donald Trump offered kids helicopter rides in a show of wealth as he bragged Saturday that he is willing to spend $1 billion on his presidential campaign. 'I'm turning down so much money,' Trump said at a press conference kicking off his weekend trip to Iowa to visit the State Fair, with his black helicopter emblazoned with 'Trump' and children standing in the background." ...
... Maureen Dowd interviews Donald Trump. ...
... Trump shares his thoughts about his rivals -- Republican & Democratic -- with MoDo.
... Dave Weigel of the Washington Post: Donald "Trump's rise and persistence as a presidential candidate has been credited to name recognition, to voter anger and to a specific contempt for the Republican Party establishment. But he is also the candidate talking most directly about the loss of manufacturing jobs to foreign countries." This makes him attractive to working people, among them some Democrats.
Mahita Gajanon, et al., of the Guardian: "Jeb Bush has come under fire from human rights groups after declining to rule out the US resuming the use of torture if he became president. '[Bush is] wrong, and he's perpetuating a myth that torture works,' aid Sarah Dougherty, a senior fellow at Physicians for Human Rights. 'We have a very large, thoroughly exhaustive research report saying that torture did not work.'"
Beyond the Beltway
Matt Zapotosky of the Washington Post: "Federal prosecutors on Friday said former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell should be sent to prison while he pursues a challenge before the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that his public corruption convictions had 'withstood searching and exhaustive review' and that he no longer deserved bail.... Prosecutors [said] that McDonnell's most significant argument -- that he neither performed nor promised to perform any so-called official acts for [Jonnie] Williams -- had been rejected 19 times and that the Supreme Court was unlikely to agree to review his case."
News Ledes
New York Times: "The United States said Sunday that it would withdraw two Patriot missile-defense batteries from southern Turkey this fall, a sign that the Pentagon believes the risk of Syrian Army missile attacks has eased since the Patriots were deployed in 2013. Officials said the antimissile systems would be needed elsewhere to defend against threats from Iran and North Korea.... If needed in a crisis, the batteries and their 250 troops could be rushed back to Turkey 'within one week' to fulfill an American and NATO commitment to Turkey's air defenses."
New York Times: "The Obama administration has delivered a warning to Beijing about the presence of Chinese government agents operating secretly in the United States to pressure prominent expatriates -- some wanted in China on charges of corruption -- to return home immediately, according to American officials. The American officials said that Chinese law enforcement agents covertly in this country are part of Beijing's global campaign to hunt down and repatriate Chinese fugitives and, in some cases, recover allegedly ill-gotten gains."
AP: "An Indonesian airliner carrying 54 people went missing Sunday after losing contact with ground control during a short flight in bad weather in the country's mountainous easternmost province of Papua...."
AP: "Authorities pulled more bodies from a massive blast site at China's Tianjin port, pushing the death toll to 112 on Sunday as teams rushed to clear dangerous chemicals and prosecutors prepared an investigation into those responsible for the disaster. More than 700 people were injured and 95 people, including dozens of firefighters, are missing after a fire and rapid succession of blasts late Wednesday hit a warehouse for hazardous chemicals in a mostly industrial area of Tianjin, 120 kilometers (75 miles) east of Beijing."
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Reader Comments (1)
The Amazon story was so depressing I couldn't finish it. Amazon's ethos (if that's not an oxymoron) actually is the opposite of much current thinking on best management practices. Bezos sounds like a real dick.
It was striking how many of the commenters vowed to stop or reduce shopping at Amazon.