Tuesday
Aug252015
The Commentariat -- August 26, 2015
Internal links & defunct video removed.
Afternoon Update:
Peter Eavis, et al., of the New York Times: "The United States stock markets surged late in the day, with the Dow Jones industrial average jumping more than 600 points after a late afternoon rally. Investors seemed to react to suggestions from a Federal Reserve official that policy makers may not raise interest rates soon."
Nick Gass of Politico: "The White House fired back Wednesday at Charles Koch after a Politico article quoted him as saying he was 'flabbergasted' by a recent attack on him and his brother by President Barack Obama during an energy speech in Las Vegas earlier this week. In his Monday speech, Obama said that 'you start seeing massive lobbying efforts backed by fossil fuel interests, or conservative think tanks, or the Koch brothers pushing for new laws to roll back renewable energy standards or prevent new clean energy businesses from succeeding -- that's a problem.' 'It's beneath the president, the dignity of the president, to be doing that,' Koch responded in a phone interview with Politico on Tuesday. On Wednesday, during the daily briefing, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Koch's comments do not match with reality." ...
... Here's the President's speech at the National Clean Energy Summit:
Jenna Portnoy & Robert Costa of the Washington Post: "The Virginia Republican Party is considering requiring a loyalty oath from presidential primary contenders -- a move widely considered an early sign of GOP skittishness about Donald Trump's campaign. State party officials are debating whether to require candidates to pledge their support to the eventual nominee and promise not to run as a third-party candidate -- as Trump has hinted he might do.... Politico reported that North Carolina is considering a similar loyalty oath rule."
*****
Campbell Robertson & Richard Fausset of the New York Times: "The New Orleans of 2015 has been altered, and not just by nature. In some ways, it is booming as never before. In others, it is returning to pre-hurricane realities of poverty and violence, but with a new sense of dislocation.... Old inequities have proved to be resilient. The child poverty rate (about 40 percent) and the overall poverty rate (close to 30 percent) are almost unchanged from 2000. Violent crime remains a chronic condition, and efforts, both mixed results: While the city's jail population has been substantially reduced, the incarceration rate is more than twice the national average."
Ylan Mui & Jim Tankersley of the Washington Post: "Fed officials have signaled for months that they are getting closer to raising the central bank's target interest rate for the first time in nearly a decade. Many investors had anticipated the milestone would come when policymakers meet in September. But that timeline is now unlikely. Traders have slashed the odds of a rate increase next month. And a growing list of prominent economists say the central bank is not ready to let the American recovery stand on its own." ...
... Paul Krugman: "When thinking about the market madness and its possible real effects, here's something ... the Fed ... really, really need[s] to keep in mind: the markets have already, in effect, tightened monetary conditions quite a lot.... A Fed hike now looks like an even worse idea than it did a few days ago." ...
... Paul Krugman handily knocks down the reasons certain obsessive Very Serious People cite for raising interest rates. ...
... Everything Is Obama's Fault. Steve Benen: " In early 2009, with the Great Recession in full swing, Republicans blamed the faltering stock market on President Obama, just months into his first term. Soon after, Wall Street soared, sustaining a years-long hot streak, at which point the right quickly decided the major indexes weren't important anymore. That is, until yesterday, when Republicans decided to blame Obama all over again." Benen points out anew that Chris Christie " has the story exactly backwards."
David Lawder of Reuters: "The U.S. budget deficit is likely to fall by $60 billion in 2015 due to strong revenue gains, the Congressional Budget Office said on Tuesday, enabling the government to stave off default without a debt limit hike perhaps through early December. The CBO said it now estimates a $426 billion deficit for fiscal year 2015, down from its $486 billion forecast made in March. It also forecast a fiscal 2016 deficit of $414 billion, a reduction of $41 billion from the previous 2016 estimate. The new forecast would bring the deficit to its lowest dollar amount since 2007, and as a 2.4 percent share of U.S. economic output, it would be below the 50-year average." ...
... Rebecca Shabad of the Hill: "The director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), who was appointed by GOP lawmakers earlier this year, said Tuesday that tax cuts don't pay for themselves. At a press briefing, a reporter asked Keith Hall about that theory. 'No, the evidence is that tax cuts do not pay for themselves,' Hall said. 'And our models that we're doing, our macroeconomic effects, show that.'... Some conservatives argue that cutting taxes leads to more economic growth, and thus higher tax revenue from job and wage growth." ...
... CW: Some conservatives? I thought "Thou shalt cut taxes" was the first commandment in the Confederate Bible, followed by lots of illustrated Bible stories about the joyous wonders of supply-side economics.
** Terrence McCoy of the Washington Post: How fast operators purchase structured settlements for a fraction of their face value from victims of lead poisoning -- like Baltimore resident Freddie Gray (killed in April by Balto police) & his family. CW: Notice how people destined for the Eighth Circle of Hell get away with their scams. Preying on the disadvantaged is about as depraved as it gets. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Mitch Smith of the New York Times: "F.B.I. agents have started a civil rights investigation into guards' use of force at a towering county jail in downtown Kansas City, Mo., federal officials said Tuesday. The local authorities have acknowledged four recent cases of 'possible use of excessive force' by corrections officers at the jail, the Jackson County Detention Center, and ordered a broader, independent review of conditions there. Just weeks ago, a former guard there was accused in federal court of kicking an inmate in the head in 2011. Prosecutors said the inmate had been restrained and posed no threat."
Paul Kane of the Washington Post: "Sen. Patty Murray (Wash.), an influential member of Democratic leadership, endorsed the Iran nuclear deal Tuesday in a lengthy statement that voiced some doubts of the plan's efficacy but gave a strong overall backing for the outline. Murray became the 29th Democrat in the Senate to back the plan, with only two Democrats declared in opposition, putting the White House on the cusp of ensuring President Obama can fully implement the pact lifting sanctions on Iran in exchange for limits on its nuclear development." ...
... More Saber-Rattling, Please. Dennis Ross & David Petraeus, in a Washington Post op-ed: "Compared with today, with an Iran that is three months from break-out capability and with a stockpile of 10 bombs' worth of low-enriched uranium, there can be little doubt that a deal leaves us far better off, producing a one-year break-out time and permitting the Iranians less than one bomb's worth of material for the next 15 years . We also don't believe that if Congress blocks the deal, a better one is going to be negotiated." They go on to argue that President Obama should talk tougher: "Now is the time for the Iranians and the world to know that if Iran dashes toward a weapon, especially after year 15, that it will trigger the use of force."
Mark Mazzetti & Matt Apuzzo of the New York Times: "The Pentagon's inspector general is investigating allegations that military officials have skewed intelligence assessments about the United States-led campaign in Iraq against the Islamic State to provide a more optimistic account of progress, according to several officials familiar with the inquiry."
Christian Davenport of the Washington Post: "Oshkosh Defense won a major contract to build the ground vehicle that could become a symbol of the U.S. Army for a generation and will eventually replace the Pentagon's storied but aging fleet of Humvees, the Army announced Tuesday. Under the contract, which could eventually be worth $30 billion or more, Oshkosh will build nearly 50,000 of the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle for the Army, and about 5,500 for the Marine Corps." CW: Count on Scott Walker to take credit for this.
White Girls Can't E-mail. Josh Gerstein of Politico: "The State Department's inspector general is faulting U.S. diplomats in Japan -- including U.S. Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy -- for conducting official business on private email accounts."
Presidential Race
Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling: "PPP's new New Hampshire poll finds Donald Trump in the strongest position of any poll we've done anywhere since he entered the race. Trump laps the Republican field with 35% to 11% for John Kasich, 10% for Carly Fiorina, 7% each for Jeb Bush nd Scott Walker, 6% for Ben Carson, 4% each for Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio, and 3% for Rand Paul. Candidates falling outside the top ten in the state are Rick Perry at 2%, Lindsey Graham, George Pataki, and Rick Santorum at 1%, and Jim Gilmore, Mike Huckabee, and Bobby Jindal all at less than 1%.... There's been a big shift on the Democratic side since April as well. Bernie Sanders now leads the field in the state with 42% to 35% for Hillary Clinton, 6% for Jim Webb, 4% for Martin O'Malley, 2% for Lincoln Chafee, and 1% for Lawrence Lessig. The main story in New Hampshire is how universally popular Sanders has become with the Democratic electorate." ...
... Ed Kilgore: "Keep in mind that NH has long been considered a more 'typical' state in terms of its Republican rank-and-file voters as Iowa with its heavy concentration of self-conscious Christian Right types. Yet [Trump is] at present leading the three presumed co-front-runners, Bush, Rubio and Walker, by three-to-two in head-to-head polling."
Daniel Drezner of the Washington Post: "... the scariest thing [about Black Monday] was how one day of financial volatility was enough to make four presidential candidates -- Christie, Sanders, Trump, and Walker -- say really stupid things about the Chinese economy and the Sino-American relationship. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Alan Rappeport of the New York Times: "Cornel West, the influential scholar and civil rights activist, has endorsed Senator Bernie Sanders for president, bolstering a candidate who has drawn huge crowds but also skepticism from black voters. Mr. West, a professor at Union Theological Seminary, explained in a series of Twitter messages on Monday night that Mr. Sanders, an independent from Vermont who is seeking the Democratic nomination, has been an ally in the fight for justice over the years and that his voice needs to be heard."
"The Republican Conception of Conception." Thomas Edsall of the New York Times: "The battle for the Republican presidential nomination has produced an unexpectedly intense burst of attacks on women's reproductive rights, not only on the right to abortion, but also by implication on some of the most commonly used methods of contraception. The shift to an aggressively conservative posture stands in direct contrast to the party's previous five presidential nominees, all of whom sought during their campaigns to play down social issues.... A majority of the most prominent candidates -- Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Rand Paul and Mike Huckabee, for example -- have said at one time or another that they oppose abortion even in the case of rape or incest, a view rejected by all previous party standard-bearers from George H. W. Bush to Mitt Romney."
Ha! It's All Boehner's Fault. Greg Sargent: "... this whole Trump mess probably could have been avoided. If Republicans had simply held votes on immigration reform in 2013 or in early 2014, it probably would have passed. That likely would have made it harder for Trump-ism to take hold to the degree it has so far." ...
... Trip Gabriel of the New York Times: "Jorge Ramos, an anchor for Univision news shows..., who asked Donald J. Trump about immigration was mocked by the candidate, then escorted out of a news conference [in Dubuque, Iowa,] on Tuesday evening.... Mr. Ramos asked Mr. Trump about his call to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country and build a wall the length of the Mexican border. 'You haven't been called, go back to Univision,' Mr. Trump said.... About 15 minutes after his ejection on Tuesday, Mr. Ramos returned, and he and Mr. Trump engaged in a long back-and-forth about Mr. Trump's immigration proposals, frequently talking past each other." ...
... BTW, Politico has twice rated Ramos' claim that "40 percent of illegal immigrants come by plane" as "mostly true." The estimate, however, is based on a 1997 report, was shaky then & may have increased as immigration patterns have changed. Assuming the 1997 estimate is correct, "Since 2008, there are more immigrants overstaying their visas than crossing the border illegally, but there are fewer illegal immigrants in the country overall." ...
... Janell Ross of the Washington Post: "The lasting image will be that of Ramos -- who serves as Univision's lead anchor and is effectively one of the (if not the) most powerful newsmen on Spanish-language TV -- being hustled out of the room after trying to ask Trump a question.... In July, during his much-covered border visit, Trump cut off a reporter affiliated with the nation's second-highest rated Spanish language network, Telemundo, during the reporter's question about the language that Trump has used to describe those crossing the Mexican border." ...
... Ashley Parker of the New York Times: "... for the Spanish-language press, which has grown in size and influence in politics, the tense exchange [between Ramos & Trump] was a highly public flexing of muscle against a candidate who many outlets no longer pretend to cover objectively: They are offended by Mr. Trump's words and tactics -- and they are showing it.... About 58 percent of all mentions of Mr. Trump in mainstream news media -- broadcast, cable, radio and online outlets -- in the past month have focused on immigration, while on Spanish-language news programs, the proportion is almost 80 percent, according to an analysis by Two.42.Solutions, a nonpartisan media analytics company. The Spanish-language news media has also been more critical in its coverage of Mr. Trump's positions on the issue, with nearly all of it negative in tone." ...
... Hadas Gold: "On Tuesday, Fox News chief Roger Ailes said in a statement Donald Trump should apologize for a tirade of tweets aimed at Fox News host Megyn Kelly." Yeah, and Roger Ailes should apologize to journalism. ...
... Update: "In a statement, Trump said he 'totally disagrees' with Ailes and that he does not think Kelly is a 'quality journalist.'" ...
... Trump Expands Fan Club from Everyday Racists to Top Racist. Andrew Kaczynski of BuzzFeed: "David Duke, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and self-described 'racial realist,' says Donald Trump is the best Republican candidate for president because he 'understands the real sentiment of America.'" CW: Great base you've got there, Donald. ...
... Everyday White Supremacists for Trump. Catherine Thompson of TPM: "... a self-described white supremacist attempting for the second time to carve out an all-white enclave in remote North Dakota said he may name it after real estate mogul Donald Trump.... [Craig] Cobb, a hate crimes fugitive from Canada who is currently on probation for brandishing a gun at Leith[, North Dakota,] residents in 2013, joins a number of other individuals with known white supremacist leanings who've expressed their adoration for Trump.... The neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer posted an 'official endorsement' of Trump's candidacy while the Council of Conservative Citizen's Kyle Rogers encouraged his Twitter followers to purchase Trump 2016 T-shirts (his account has since been deactivated)."
Yeah But. Scott Clement of the Washington Post: "... a new Gallup poll casts doubt on Trump's damage to Republicans in a summer dominated by his candidacy; Hispanics clearly despise Trump, but they view other Republicans much more positively (or have no opinion at all).... These numbers back up other polling ... that shows, even as Trump has lost support among non-white voters in a potential general election matchup with Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush has actually gained ground." ...
Jenna Johnson of the Washington Post: "Six ways Scott Walker has become more Trumpy."
Me Too, Me Too. Something Something. Mark Hensch of the Hill: "Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) late Tuesday became the latest GOP presidential candidate to criticize Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly. Cruz rebuked Kelly for questioning him about deporting illegal immigrants during an appearance on 'The Kelly File.' 'If you have a husband and wife who are illegal immigrants, and they have two children here who are American citizens -- would you deport all of them? Would you deport the American citizen children?' Kelly asked. 'Megyn, I get that that's the question you want to ask,' Cruz said after repeatedly listing the steps Congress should take for addressing the issue. 'That's also the question every mainstream media liberal journalist wants to ask. They focus exclusively on 12 million people.'" ...
... CW: It's down to 11 million now, Teddie, but who's counting? AND the U.S. does deport parents of U.S. citizens. Raul Reyes of CNN (Aug. 21): "In the first six months of 2011, for example, parents with U.S.-citizen children constituted 22% of deportees. Between 2010 and 2012, the United States deported nearly 205,000 parents of citizen kids. And in 2013, more than 72,000 were deported, according to The Huffington Post. (President Barack Obama's executive action plan, which is tied up in the courts, would grant temporary deportation relief to parents of children who meet certain requirements.)" ...
... Greg Sargent: "Kelly is absolutely right to note, in the context of the birthright citizenship debate, Trump has answered questions 'explicitly,' while Cruz won't. This illustrates, once again, that Trump's immigration plan, if you can call it that, has had the effect of making GOP evasions on the overall immigration issue much harder to sustain."
New York Times Editors: Jeb!'s visit to the border town of McAllen, Texas on Monday provided "a chance to see how the supposed expert on this fraught subject handled [the immigration issue]. Short version: He was awful. In less than 15 minutes, Mr. Bush managed to step on his message, to give Mr. Trump a boost, and to offend Asian-Americans, a growing population that is every bit as important as Latinos in winning presidential elections. And he failed to give Latino voters any persuasive evidence that he had anything better to offer them than his opponents in a revoltingly xenophobic Republican campaign." CW: Read the whole post. Whoever did the actual writing of this editorial had some fun. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
Amanda Sakuma of MSNBC: Bush said that he used the term specifically to refer to fraud -- sometimes called 'birth tourism' – in a 'specific, targeted kind of case' involving mothers who travel to the United States only to win citizenship for their unborn children. 'Frankly, it's more related to Asian people coming into our country, having children in that organized effort taking advantage of a noble concept which is birthright citizenship,' Bush told reporters...." ...
... Steve Benen: "Part of the problem here is that Bush simply isn't telling the truth. We've heard the recording -- when the Florida Republican used the term 'anchor babies' last week, he wasn't talking about Asians and 'birth tourism.' He very specifically referred to Mexico, border enforcement, and 'our relationship with our third largest trading partner.'" ...
I, for one, don't think Planned Parenthood ought to get a penny, though. And that's the difference, because they’re not actually doing women's health issues. They are involved in something way different than that. -- Jeb Bush, townhall meeting in Englewood, Colo., Aug. 25, 2015
Planned Parenthood clearly provides an array of women's health services, including Pap tests, female sterilization, contraception and urinary tract infection treatments.... Planned Parenthood clinics serve a disproportionate share of uninsured women who rely on publicly funded family planning centers, according to the Guttmacher Institute.... -- Michelle Lee of the Washington Post
... Heckuva Job, Jebbie -- Another Jeb! Ad Fail. Tal Kopan of CNN: "Jeb Bush's campaign on Tuesday put out a video highlighting his hurricane response record as governor of Florida as the nation marks the 10-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. But at one point, the campaign spot features Bush standing next to then-Federal Emergency Management Agency head Michael Brown, one of the most infamous figures of the George W. Bush administration's widely criticized response to the disaster."
Beyond the Beltway
Stephanie Clifford of the New York Times: "The terms of service on the website Rentboy.com said that people could not use it to exchange money for sex. But federal authorities, who called it the largest online male-escort service and arrested the site's chief executive and several other employees on Tuesday, said that was exactly what was happening. The chief executive, Jeffrey Hurant, 50, and six other current or former employees appeared in Federal District Court in Brooklyn on Tuesday afternoon on charges of promoting prostitution."
The Napa White Wine Train. Dayna Evans of New York: "On Monday morning, we told you the story of eleven black women and one white woman who were escorted off the Napa Valley Wine Train this past weekend after staff said they were 'laughing and talking too loud.' After one member of the ejected group, Lisa Renee Johnson, began sharing details of what had happened to them over social media, their story and the hashtag #LaughingWhileBlack went viral. Later that day, the Wine Train's chief executive, Anthony Giaccio, met with a member of the group (a book club called Sistahs on the Reading Edge) to give a full apology for what he claimed was insensitivity on the part of his staff." ...
... Jeremy Stahl of Slate: "Norma Ruiz, a graduate student in the University of California -- San Francisco's nursing program, [says that in April] a woman from the train company approached their party, which at this point had quieted down to below the noise level of the dining car, and told them if they didn't 'control [their] level of noise' they would be kicked off the train. 'We were not making noise, we felt very uncomfortable the way we were being approached and [they were] embarrassing our group in front of everyone,' Ruiz says. Ruiz described the group as being made up of 'all Latino individuals,' the majority of whom were local University of California -- Berkeley graduates."
Way Beyond
Parade of Misery. Michael Birnbaum of the Washington Post: "Thousands of refugees, most fleeing wars in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, have been snaking northward through the Balkans in recent days, confronting a Europe woefully unprepared to deal with them at every step. Most endured a perilous crossing to Greece aboard rafts and boats, some barely fit to sail. They traversed Greece, a nation paralyzed by economic crisis and too poor to handle a flow of people that in July hit a record high. At the border with Macedonia late last week, they trudged through a wall of riot police, who fought them back with tear gas before relenting. Now, the asylum-seekers, thousands a day, are racing into Hungary, which is rushing to complete a barbed-wire border fence by the end of the month to force them to seek other routes. It is a long parade of misery unparalleled in Europe in recent years."
News Ledes
New York Times: "Amelia Boynton Robinson, who was called the matriarch of the voting rights movement -- and whose photograph, showing her beaten, gassed and left for dead in the epochal civil rights march known as Bloody Sunday, appeared in newspapers and magazines round the world in 1965 -- died on Wednesday in Montgomery, Ala. She was 104." ...
... President Obama's statement is here.
New York Times: "Frank E. Petersen Jr., who suffered bruising racial indignities as a military enlistee in the 1950s and was even arrested at an officers' club on suspicion of impersonating a lieutenant, but who endured to become the first black aviator and the first black general in the Marine Corps, died on Tuesday at his home in Stevensville, Md., near Annapolis. He was 83."
New York Times: "... Judge Carlos A. Samour Jr. on Wednesday issued 12 life sentences in prison to James E. Holmes, who fatally shot 12 people in a movie theater in the Denver suburb of Aurora three years ago and wounded 70 others. The judge also imposed 3,318 years in prison on Mr. Holmes for his nonlethal crimes, including attempted murder."
CBS News: "A gunman killed a reporter and videographer for a CBS affiliate in Virginia in a shooting that was broadcast live Wednesday morning. Alison Parker, 24, and Adam Ward, 27, a reporter and cameraman respectively for CBS Roanoke affiliate WDBJ-TV, died in the shooting, the station's general manager, Jeff Marks, said during a live broadcast later in the morning." ...
... Washington Post Update: "Vester Lee Flanagan II, 41, of Roanoke -- who also goes by the name Bryce Williams -- ... the suspect in the fatal shooting of two television journalists..., died Wednesday afternoon at a Washington area hospital after reportedly shooting himself during a chase on a highway west of the city.... Flanagan was a former employee of the station and had worked with the victims. He was fired in 2013, the station's manager said.... Flanagan is believed to have posted on social media videos showing him shooting the two television reporters.... A man who claimed to be the gunman sent ABC News a 23-page letter on Wednesday morning saying he was motivated by the mass shooting at a Charleston, S.C., church last month...." ...
... The New York Times has more on this maniac, who "used the tools of social media to ensure that his crime was broadcast live, recorded from multiple angles and posted online."
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Reader Comments (18)
Marie,
In an item yesterday you appeared to equate military pay and benefits with entitlements. Some of us who served, in and out of uniform, felt that we earned our compensation -- such as it was. Never thought of myself as 'entitled'.
Oh well, I am entitled to be buried in Arlington Cemetery, along with a few dozen of my friends and relatives. I guess that counts. And then I will certainly have STFU.
re 'Anchor Babies'
Interviewed on PBS Newshour last night:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/widespread-u-s-births-foreign-tourists-undocumented-migrants/
former INS Commissioner Doris Meissner makes the following point:
"... it is a very pejorative term. It suggests that people are coming here in order that these children born here have a way of allowing their parents to be here legally. That is not the case. A child cannot sponsor a parent or a family member for immigration until the age of majority, 21 years of age."
This detail seems to have escaped the notice of the GOP candidates.
@D.C. Clark: Re: "entitlements." I entirely agree that those who serve in the military earn their pay & benefits. But so do a majority of the rest of us earn our "entitlements": we pay into Social Security & Medicare & we pay taxes to cover other social services. Even most of those who get more than they pay in kind of "earn" their social welfare payments by working in crappy jobs often for an unfairly low compensation. No, it never is going to come out "even," and it isn't supposed to.
My point was that people who live off the government -- especially people who directly live off the government -- shouldn't bitch & moan about other people who partially live off the government. But neither should civil service employees, government contractors, people who work for government contractors, people who work for or own companies that get huge tax breaks, people who get farm subsidies, people who get personal tax deductions, people who get the earned income credit, etc., etc. In other words, practically everybody.
Are there abuses? Of course. But there probably aren't many "welfare queens" driving around in pink Cadillacs, & much of the abuse is government incompetence rather than outright fraud.
A WashPo report I linked here recently said that 4 out of 5 people experience poverty or near-poverty at some time in their lives. Right now I'm one of the lucky duckies who pays in more than I get back (but I also get generous tax breaks). At one time (for about two years, as I recall) when I was a young mother, I got a partial earned income credit & my kids took advantage of a federal school lunch program. I'm grateful for that help. I had paid it forward by then, & I've paid it back many times over. Again, that's how it's supposed to work.
We should all get over the idea that people don't earn their "entitlements." Most of us do. Resenting people who receive "entitlements" is almost always stupid, selfish & hypocritical.
Marie
@D.C. Clark: Amber Phillips of the WashPo has more on the history of the term "anchor babies." Many people object to the term, & it is usually described as pejorative. When you think of how you've heard it used, it's is generally an implied or direct slur, linked to an attack on undocumented immigrants.
Marie
"40 percent of illegal immigrants come by plane."
Hoo-boy. Somebody better tell Trumpy.
He's gonna need a much taller wall.
I've been seeing numerous puff pieces across the internets regarding the damage Trump has been doing to the crucial Latino vote for the GOP. While it's impossible at this point to make the case that he's making positive headway, I've noticed other pundits claiming that Latinos largely only detest Trump and once he fizzles and melts away (a considerable if at this point) they'll forget all about that bad apple and start considering the new, fresh faces of the GOP whine train.
I'm sure those rooting for a GOP victory would love for that to be the case, but this non-stop immigrant bashing, slowly cooking itself into the GOP central discourse, is surely going to have some serious sticking power on the entire party establishment, as it should. Trump is essentially tarring and feathering their proverbial piñata, and beating it senseless across the campaign trail.
To further the detioration of the GOP brand, he's purposefully sabotaging the party over a personal vendetta. For being a man built as a teevee personality and knowing the power of a well managed image, I'm surprised at how unabashedly dickish he has been with Jorge Ramos and Univision. If Trump were serious about rounding out a winnable coalition, he'd make sure his image would be well-molded and presented to his cherished 'Mexicans.' Instead, he's doubling down on the Southern Strategy, rounding up the white folks and everyone else can go shove it in Trump Land. I've seen some of Jorge Ramos's broadcasts and he doesn't mince words when calling out lies and bullshit, and the immigration question seems to be especially close to his heart. Hopefully he brings down the hammer on Trump and all the subsequent wannabes who will inevitably refuse to sufficiently walk back the debate to civility for fear of losing the unhinged base.
And now we have Jeb! knocking on the Asians. Talk about foot in mouth disease.
@Akhilleus: Somebody (Jorge Ramos) did tell Trumpy, & Trumpy responded, "I don't believe it." Twice. So that takes care of that.
Marie
Safari's comment raises an interesting point, one I've been considering.
For a guy who is supposedly savvy about branding and building a marketable image, Trump often displays the savoir faire of a drunken sailor. So the question is, is it an act or is it the real Trump?
I think a bit of both. Trump realizes that he who shouts loudest often appears to be the winner. His exchange last weekend with George Stephanopoulos is instructive. Replying to numerous variations of a question about what kind of plan he had to round up and summarily deport 11 million illegal immigrants, Trump simply kept repeating "Management. It's management George" which is a classic begging the question fallacy. Trump's answer assumes that his management abilities cannot be questioned, therefore all he has to do is match the premise (Trump is a great manager) with the conclusion (therefore anything Trump manages will turn out splendidly) and the answer is obvious and need only be repeated to dullards. And insufferable reporters.
This assumption of a conclusion embedded within the premise is SOP for Trump. But he's never called on it. And he should be because it's the key to much of his thinking.
His embrace of the white supremacist movement uses this same kind of logic (logical to white supremacists, that is). The conclusion "white people are best" is embedded in the premise "Mexicans are rapists and stealing our jobs". Some of this may be opportunistic on Trump's part. He's decided that in order to demonstrate his unique position on the political stage, he has to forego all semblance of polite behavior. I suppose this appeals to the most vulgar of adolescent instincts, Trump's included. But he also demonstrates clear attachment to embedded racial stereotypes that I don't think are put on. After having Jorge Ramos ejected from his royal presence, Trump went on to inform the other reporters that he ( Ramos, i.e., one of those people) is a very emotional guy, a stereotype that many Latins find offensive, same as many find the term "anchor babies" offensive. It's no different than an assumption that all black people are great athletes or good singers or love watermelon (because black).
Also, Trump continues to demonstrate an odd disjunctive psychology as he states repeatedly that groups he disparages in the most hateful ways "love him", as in "the blacks love me" and "don't you realize how many Mexicans love me?" This is more than just narcissism, although there's enough of that to make Narcissus drown himself again, this time out of embarrassment. Clearly, there are other pathologies at work here.
As with all of us, there is no simple answer. He's a human being (at least I think so) whose wiring is just as screwed up as many others'. So perhaps his racism is both real as well as opportunistic. As I've said before, I don't think anyone could be that adept at employing racist subtexts if one was not a racist oneself. There are racial animosities built into all of us. The difference is some of us see that as a fault and try to overcome it. Others see it as the natural order of things and see their public proclamations exalting that racism as "telling it like it is".
The really bad thing is when one of the latter group decides they should be in charge.
I'm not sure that Trump puts much thought into his actions and rhetoric let alone a defined ideology. He ticks all the boxes for the clinical definition of a narcissistic personality disorder. Trump gets an enormous amount of positive reinforcement everyday for his grandiosity and his belief that he is special and powerful. Narcissistic personality disorders are virtually untreatable.
He is in full bloom right now. Unfortunately, he's tapped into a thick ribbon of hate and stupidity that will continue to fuel his disorder. He isn't going away anytime soon. Frankly, the other idiots are doing all the wrong things to defeat him. His sense of self is thriving. I think the power of the GOP faithful at the polls will eventually diminish as the scope of their frustration and hate increases.
Me next! Me next! or The Murdoch Prometheus.
In Mary Shelley's dream fable, a doctor pulls down fire from heaven, subverts nature and creates a patchwork monster that strangles people and drowns small children. In Roger Ailes' dream, he pulls up fire from hell and creates his own horrific monster. Shelley's monster pursues his creator and they both float off on ice floes to a mutually assured destruction. It remains to be seen whether the Murdoch-Ailes monster will do in its creator in similar fashion, but already it's begun bucking.
Trumpy the Trumpet continues to say two things about Ailes' proclaimed superstar and most valued protégée, Megyn Kelly: "I don't care a bit about Megyn Kelly" followed immediately by "That Megyn Kelly person is awful. Just terrible. She's a bad journalist. Bad, bad, bad, and she owes me an apology." but...."I really don't care about her. I never even think about her. But she owes me an apology, dammit!"
More weird pathologies at play.
And now Little Teddy Cruz, not used to being in the shadows, wants to bite the hand that has fed his rise for the last few years and so he pipes up and is now calling Kelly a "liberal" hack for asking him questions.
Who's next? I can see it now. Scottie Walker will want to go on and won't even be able to wait for a question (he'll be peeing his pantaloons) before calling her names. Then Jindal will have to go on and insult her. Huckabee will call her a Nazi and Christie will tell her she needs a punch in the nose. Jeb(!) will go on and tell her she's a disgrace to Asian Americans. What? She's not Asian? Never mind.
It's follow the leader and let's all kick a FoxBot.
Do it today!
Now where are those ice floes? Oh shit. Global warming. Never mind.
Duh....whaddawe do now?
The GOP's big brains (heh-heh) in the House and Senate decided last year that they didn't like how math works. 2+2=4? Unh-unh. That can't be right. They want 3-4 to equal 12,578. That's more like it! But how to do that?
Dynamic Scoring! Yeah, that's the ticket.
But people who live in the real world and distrust magical thinking when applied to economic projections based on sketchy policy proposals were skeptical. To say the least:
"For Republicans, the virtue of dynamic scoring is that it allows them to claim that, say, a tax cut will spur so much economic growth that it will end up producing more revenue, not less -- that it will pay for itself.
Distilled to its essence, this argument is represented by the notorious 'Laffer Curve,' Art Laffer's assertion that lowering taxes is so stimulative that the tax base expansion more than makes up for the tax reduction."
So they brought in their own guy to make sure Republican Math was the order of the day. But now...oh-oh. Even after all the mathematical magical thinking and fudging of the figures, their new guy says "Sorry, boys. It ain't workin'"
Keith Hall, brought in to replace economist Douglas Elmendorf, the guy whose claims that 2+2=4 so incensed the GOP big thinkers, says that despite Paul Ryan's nightly prayers and live sacrifices of starving grannies to Mammon,"...tax cuts do not pay for themselves." (see Marie's link, above)
Oops. When the guy you bring in to cook the books tells you they're uncookable, then what do you do? Outlaw mathematics altogether?
Hey, they've done worse.
Lindsey Graham, during an interview on CNN admits "25%" of GOP voters, including his own electorate, are delusion idiots (that's maybe a little on the low side). I wonder how they could have cooked up their coordinated conspiracy theories about Obama's Islamic Kenyan past by the way? After trying to skewer Trump on all the issues he finishes saying if Trump comes to S. Carolina he'll "beat his brains in."
Let the cannibalism commence!
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/08/25/politics/lindsey-graham-donald-trump-idiot-2016/index.html
"Go back to Univision!" show such shocking disrespect. I just can't wrap my head around it nor how Trump's fans could accept it.
A couple thoughts about Trump: http://www.newsleader.com/story/opinion/columnists/2015/06/16/trumps-timing-good/28825705/. My particular thought is how, 14 months before the election, this Trump character fills up the summer news vacuum during the slowest news-cycle time of years. And I like this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silly_season: "typified by the emergence of frivolous news stories in the media". What the hell else do you call a guy with a big trumpet and no ideas or solutions except "frivolous"? The scary thing is the aura of legitimacy that hangs around this sad policy sack called Trump when there are real issues that need addressing. Clearly the real-time ability to disseminate vital information that the internet provides has not matured to cover the shortfall of the "Silly Season". Is reportage about this carnival barker Trump just the same sort of thing that the news organizations engaged in when the Malaysian Air flight disappeared and there was nothing new to report? How mind-numbing must it be to be a reporter assigned to cover this barker and his equally dumbed down supporters seriously? I know what I feel like just reading about him.
Another Banner Day for the NRA
Yet another unrelated, totally random, will never happen again in a million years shooting. This time of a TV reporter, Alison Parker, and her cameraman, Adam Ward, live on air (that must give the gun knobbers a serious woody). The shooter even took the time to snap a cellphone pic of his gun pointed at the reporter seconds before murdering her.
The killer later shot himself.
And to prove how completely random and unrelated this shooting was and how stuff like this never happens and will never happen again, the cameraman, Adam Ward, attended Virginia Tech. I don't know this for a fact, but based on his age, 26, it's likely he was attending VT when a disturbed student, in another completely random, totally unrelated to anything mass murder, shot 49 people, killing 32.
Oh joy, to be an NRA puke today. Another banner day! Three more bodies on the altar of FREEEDOM.
Can't you already hear the calls for more guns??
re Airborne Aliens:
I live next to a very large, multi-generational family farm. They have for many years employed a large number of seasonal Agricultural Guest Workers from Central America. They are in strict compliance with all relevant immigration, tax, and employment regulations.
They have told me that their workers would prefer to drive here because traveling together in a large van is cheaper than combined airfare, and they would have transportation while here.
The workers say they cannot do this because they are afraid to drive through Mexico. That many Mexicans are extremely hostile to Central Americans passing though on the way to legal work. Combined with drug gang violence makes it worth their lives to try.
That this is true for workers coming legally, would seem to also apply to anyone else. Including those intending to stay without work visas.
Given the large number of guest workers that Le Donald employs, it's hard to believe he doesn't know this.
In 1948, a plane carrying mostly immigrants being forced back to Mexico crashed, killing all aboard. The folksinger Woody Guthrie was outraged that news reports didn't include a single name, simply referring to them as "deportees".
He wrote this song.
Almost 70 years later, we have a presidential candidate who still thinks of these people as future deportees, still thinks of them as cattle and dismisses even those here legally with a snide "Go back to Univision".
Prick.
So Obama's remarks were unPresidential?
Too bad the Koch lackeys don't remember (or failed to Google) the two Presidents Roosevelts' comment on excessive wealth. If they had, they might have sent our gentle President a card, thanking him for his unwarranted civility.
(Or they might have consulted this short piece from the Roosevelt Institute recounting one of business' anti-Roosevelt efforts in the run-up to the 1936 election. In it historian David Woolner says,
"A few months before.... a group of prominent public officials and wealthy businessmen (including former Democratic Party Presidential nominee Al Smith) formed an organization called the American Liberty League. Billed as a research and opinion organization, the Liberty League’s primary focus was to attack FDR and the New Deal. Accusing the president and his recovery programs of being — at various times — fascistic, socialistic or communistic, the real goal of the League was to return the country to the rule of unfettered and unregulated free enterprise à la the 1920s.")
Guess those Rightwing "thinktanks" have been around for a long time, doing the same dirty.