The Commentariat -- February 6, 2016
Norman Schwartz of the New York Times: "After years of scant real gains despite steadily falling unemployment and healthy hiring, wages picked up significantly last month, a sign the job market could be tightening enough to force companies to pay more to attract and retain employees. The half a percentage point increase in average hourly earnings in January was the brightest spot in a generally positive Labor Department report on Friday, which showed job creation slowing from the white-hot pace of late 2015 even as the unemployment rate fell to an eight-year low of 4.9 percent.... President Obama ... said the jobs numbers were further signs of progress":
I know that's still inconvenient for Republican stump speeches as their doom and despair tour plays in New Hampshire. I guess you cannot please everybody. -- President Obama, during yesterday's White House press briefing ...
Sarah Wheaton of Politico: "The White House delivered a low blow on Friday, accusing congressional Republicans who are denying the president a chance to pitch his budget of pulling a 'Donald Trump.' The raw feelings stem from the House and Senate Budget committees' announcement on Thursday that they won't invite Obama's budget director to Capitol Hill to discuss the administration's final several-hundred-page proposal, which is to be released on Tuesday. White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Republicans' refusal to play ball was just as bad as Trump's refusal to take part in the last GOP debate after getting into a nasty spat with Fox News. 'They're just not going to show up,' Earnest said during the daily briefing, adding that the maneuver smacked of a 'Donald Trump approach' to the debate over spending priorities."
An Extraordinary Friday Afternoon Docu-dump. Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "The Pentagon on Friday released 198 photographs from detainee abuse investigations in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. The pictures, taken more than a decade ago during the Bush administration, consist largely of close-up views of scrapes and bruises on detainees' bodies. However, the military is continuing to block the disclosure of about 1,800 other photos from the same criminal investigations, saying that their release would endanger American service members serving abroad. The photographs are a focus of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed in 2004 by the American Civil Liberties Union in the wake of the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal." The photos are here (slow-loading pdf).
Capitalism Is Awesome, Ctd. Hey, remember how the WalMart behemoth killed off local businesses, especially in small towns? Well, now, with its mass closings, Lydia DePillis of the Washington Post reports, there's a realistic fear the loss of revenue & convenience will shut down the towns themselves. "A Washington Post analysis of the stores on the closure list shows that they are in relatively lower-income, less dense census tracts.... Most of the Walmart locations being shuttered are in the Southeast." CW: So screw you, Real America.
Krishnadev Calamur of the Atlantic: "Twitter says that since the middle of last year it has suspended 125,000 accounts 'for threatening or promoting terrorist acts, primarily related to ISIS.'... Twitter added it works with law-enforcement agencies when appropriate and partners with groups that work to counter extremist content online...." Twitter's announcement is here.
Mitch Smith of the New York Times profiles the Virginia Tech team whose persistence helped expose the toxicity of Flint, Michigan's, city water supply.
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Liberals Should Not Be Debate Moderators. Howard Kurtz of Fox "News": "Rachel Maddow did a pretty good job in questioning Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders at MSNBC's Democratic debate last night. But she shouldn't have been on that stage as a moderator, sitting next to Chuck Todd, NBC's political director and moderator of 'Meet the Press.'... She is an unabashedly liberal commentator who rips the Republicans every night on her program. She should not have been put in that position." CW: But IOKIYAR. Every single Fox "News" moderator of every Fox debate has been a conservative, except all the ones who are ultra-conservatives.
Weird Headline of the Week: "Wife crashes her own funeral, horrifying her husband, who had paid to have her killed. Sarah Kaplan of the Washington Post: "The husband, Balenga Kalala, ultimately pleaded guilty and was sentenced to nine years in prison for incitement to murder, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corp. (the ABC)." The hitmen Kalala hired kidnapped his wife but let her go.
Presidential Race
Politico photo.... This Poitico slide show, titled "Bernie's Vermont," is kind of amusing. CW: I like the guy who says, '"I don't agree with handouts. Except for veterans. People have to work for what they get. Veterans can get whatever they want, but that's all I'll give.' [He] is a Vietnam vet who ... frequently visits the White River VA Medical Center...." He sells maple syrup at a roadside stand. I doubt he's "giving" much to federal coffers today. Everybody's a special interest.
Gail Collins with a few of the things we can all agree on; for instance, "Rick Santorum is the worst friend in the world.... We are enjoying the idea that Donald Trump screwed up the deal.... Hillary Clinton should not have given those speeches for Goldman Sachs.... Jeb Bush is the worst campaigner in the history of campaigns." ...
... CW: Collins also thinks "It's kind of pathetic they're not letting Carly Fiorina into the Republican debate." I disagree. Her exclusion (because of her low polling) is a reminder that half of the candidates in the Democratic race are a woman & none of the viable candidates on the Republican side is. And the little kerfuffle that surrounded Fiorina's exclusion is a reminder that (a) female Republican candidates suck ( Michele Bachmann), & (b) even the Republican base has figured that out.
Eliza Collins of Politico: "The Democratic race has dramatically tightened, according to a new Quinnipiac University national poll out Friday that shows Hillary Clinton with a razor-thin lead over Bernie Sanders. Clinton leads Sanders 44 percent to 42 percent, well within the margin of error of the poll, which was conducted after the Iowa caucuses." CW: Remember that national polls aren't particularly dispositive. In October & November, Ole Doc Ben was leading in some GOP national polls. Last heard from, he was in Florida darning his socks & comparing Ted Cruz to Hillary Clinton.
Yamiche Alcindor of the New York Times: "Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont plans to travel to New York this weekend to appear on 'Saturday Night Live,' interrupting his campaign in New Hampshire for some national television exposure, according to a senior campaign official. Larry David, who has played the senator several times on the show to wide acclaim, will host the episode and interview Mr. Sanders." ...
... This is worth reprising (except for the faggy portrayal of Anderson Cooper, which is both insulting & inauthentic):
Philip Rucker, et al., of the Washington Post: Hillary "Clinton is using the closing days of the New Hampshire campaign to set the tone for the contests in Nevada and South Carolina, as well as the dozens of big-state primaries and caucuses that follow in March and beyond."
Steven Myers & Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times: "... a battle has played out between the State Department and the intelligence agencies -- as well as Congress -- over what information on Mrs. Clinton's private server was classified and what was the routine business of American diplomacy.... At the center of that argument ... is a 'top secret' program of the Central Intelligence Agency that is anything but secret. It is the agency's long effort to track and kill suspected terrorists overseas with armed drones, which has been the subject of international debates, numerous newspaper articles, television programs and entire books. Obama administration's decision to keep most internal discussions about that program -- including all information about C.I.A. drone strikes in Pakistan -- classified at the 'top secret' level has now become a political liability for Mrs. Clinton's presidential campaign." ...
Senator Sanders is the only person who I think would characterize me, a woman running to be the first woman president, as exemplifying the establishment. -- Hillary Clinton, during Thursday's Democratic debate ...
... Danielle Allen of the Washington Post: "The problem with the remark is obvious. Clinton does not merely exemplify the establishment. She and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, are the Democratic Party establishment. We're in the realm of description, not characterization. That candidate Clinton could deliver her line with a straight face goes to the heart of her trustworthiness problem." ...
... In her column, Allen refers to this New York Review of Books article by Simon Head. Head details, based largely on previous reporting, some of it linked on the Commentariat contemporaneously, the Clintons' web of financial contributors.
Jennifer Jacobs of the Des Moines Register: "Iowa Democratic Party officials are reviewing results from the Iowa caucuses and making updates where discrepancies have been found. Party Chairwoman Andy McGuire the day after Monday's caucuses said no review would be conducted, and that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's narrow victory over Bernie Sanders was final. But as errors are being discovered, the final tally is being changed, party officials confirmed to the Des Moines Register on Friday." ...
... Ben Jacobs of the Guardian: "In the Iowa Democratic party's chaotic attempt to report caucus results on Monday night, the results in at least one precinct were unilaterally changed by the party [from Sanders to Clinton] as it attempted to deal with the culmination of a rushed and imperfect process overseeing the first-in-the-nation nominating contest.... The shift of one delegate at a county convention level would not have significantly affected the ultimate outcome of the caucus, but rather, it raises questions about the Iowa Democratic party's management of caucus night. The Iowa Democratic party had long been plagued with organizational issues around the caucus and failed to find hundreds of needed volunteers to oversee individual precinct caucuses just over a week before Monday.... Although Andy McGuire, the chair of the Iowa Democratic party, is a longtime Clinton supporter whose license plate once read HRC 2016, no one familiar with the issue has accused the error of being a partisan process. Instead, they have blamed simple mismanagement." ...
... Charles Pierce: "In the old days, when Democrats knew how to do politics right, a change like this would have required a substantial bribe of whiskey and strippers, as well as a decent county job for the idiot nephew of the county chairman."
Jack Shafer of Politico Magazine: The press should stop treating Chelsea Clinton as if she's still the teenaged daughter of the POTUS. "Today, Chelsea serves as vice chair of the politically controversial Clinton Foundation, which has raised $2 billion since 2001. She's a board member at Barry Diller's IAC (paid a reported $300,000 a year, plus stock awards). She charges $65,000 per speech."
The Swindler. Nicholas Confessore & Sarah Cohen of the New York Times: "Donald J. Trump once boasted that he could someday be the only person to turn a profit running for president. He may be closer than anyone realizes. Mr. Trump's campaign spent just $12.4 million in 2015, according to disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission, millions less than any of his leading rivals for the Republican nomination. More than half of Mr. Trump's total spending was covered by checks from his supporters, who have thronged to his stump speeches and bought millions of dollars' worth of 'Make America Great Again' hats and T-shirts. About $2.7 million more was paid to at least seven companies Mr. Trump owns or to people who work for his real estate and branding empire, repaying them for services provided to his campaign." ...
It's very important. February 9. You've got to get out and vote. Don't think we're going to win, don't think we're going to win. Just go out... No matter how you feel, I don't give a damn. You've got to go out, you've got to get out of bed, you've got to vote. -- Donald Trump, Thursday, at a Portsmouth, New Hampshire rally ...
... The Great White Wimp. Mr. Trump Regrets He's Unable to Rally Today. Charles Pierce: "As unexpectedly heavy snow hit southern New Hampshire [Friday] morning, Trump's campaign sent out this release: 'Due to the weather and the airports being closed, Mr. Trump is unable to attend today's Town Hall at the Londonderry Lions Club.' Understandable, except for the fact that the airports weren't closed this morning.... The man who has promised to 'beat the shit' out of anyone who attacks America has been shovel-whipped by six inches of snow." ...
... CW: Not only that, the snowstorm had been predicted for at least a week. Londonderry is in the populous southeastern part of the state. There are hotels around those parts, & the roads were open.
... Scott Bronstein & Drew Griffin of CNN: "New Hampshire voters may be stunned to hear the latest robocall asking for their vote; it's from white nationalists with a simple, disturbing message. 'We don't need Muslims. We need smart, educated, white people,' according to the male voice on the calls, which began Thursday night and urge voters in New Hampshire to vote for Donald Trump. Three white nationalist leaders have banded together to form their own super PAC in support of Trump, even though Trump doesn't want their support."
Dana Milbank rips Ted Cruz, beginning with convincing evidence that Cruz's dismissive term "New York values" is an anti-Semitic dog-whistle. "Cruz has Joe McCarthy's knack for false insinuation and underhandedness. What sets Cruz apart is the malice he exudes." CW: I would add to Milbank's evidence. Cruz's campaign manager Jeff Roe used the same tactic against Democrat Kay Barnes in a Congressional race: Barnes favored same-sex marriage; Roe's candidate Sam Graves (who won the election in a landslide) accused Barnes of having "San Francisco values," though Barnes (as far as I know) had no connection to San Francisco. ...
... BTW, Arlette Saenz of ABC News reported earlier this week that "Sen. Ted Cruz's attack on Donald Trump's 'New York values' helped secure him a victory in the Iowa caucuses Monday...." ...
... Looks Like Ted Is the Most Hated Man in His Hometown, Too. Mary Jordan of the Washington Post: "... in the city where Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas was born [Calgary, Alberta], many Canadians give less than a hockey puck about whether their native son is eligible to be the U.S. president. Many of them are just glad he's not running for anything in Canada.... Many here are bingeing on the U.S. election as if it were an addictive TV drama.... Harry Sanders, a local historian in Calgary, said if Cruz ever comes back to see where he was born, he should know that his big show of renouncing his Canadian citizenship in 2014 as he prepared for his presidential bid is remembered. 'He treated it like some stain that he had to get removed,' he said. 'That got Calgarians' attention.'" CW: I doubt if the mayor of Calgary, who is Muslim, will be giving Ted a key to the city. ...
... MEANWHILE, Ellie Shechet of Jezebel went looking for Friends of Ted from his undergraduate days. She didn't find many, but most of those she interviewed were horrified by the idea of a Cruz presidency.
Way Beyond the Beltway
Esther Addley, et al., of the Guardian: "A UN panel may have found that Julian Assange is subject to 'arbitrary detention' and called for him to be allowed to walk free, but the WikiLeaks founder remains ... inside Ecuador's London embassy and locked in a three-nation war of words. Britain and Sweden immediately rejected the UN report.... The British foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, described the findings as 'ridiculous' and the Australian as a 'fugitive from justice'.... The Swedish government ... has insisted the report changes nothing, and that it cannot interfere in an independent prosecutor's ongoing attempt to extradite Assange for questioning over an allegation of rape dating from 2010, which he denies. Meanwhile, for Ecuador ... the findings meant it was time for the two countries to allow Assange to walk free, and to compensate both him and them for the lengthy period he has been holed up in one of its [embassy's] few rooms."
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Reader Comments (9)
Marie -
Thank you for calling attention to SNL's 'insulting and inauthentic' representation of Anderson Cooper. (Haven't viewed SNL in ages, so I "missed" this one. Are they now attempting to draw a wider - bible-pumping/fair-and-equal audience?)
Likewise, for posting Milbank's piece RE the (high-decibel, IMO) "dog whistle" of 'New York Values', and for offering its equivalent in 'San Francisco Values' (Kay Barnes' support of same-sex marriage).
The hatred has become so commonplace and blatant (Down With Political Correctness!), while the impoverished brains of the bigots remain convinced that their "covert" biases and their code-words are cleverly invisible to all but them.
(Huh . . . Maybe that should've been "low-decibel"? At any rate,
time for coffee & good morning to all.)
Henry Waxman and Sander Levin penned an OpEd in the Washington Post outlining the extreme challenges of getting the ACA enacted (they respectively headed relevant committees) and suggesting it is much more sensible to try to build on it than demolish it and start over. The article is called," Hillary Clinton Will Help Democrats Move Obamacare Forward."
There has been a lot written about Hillary Clinton's speeches, with undoubtedly more to come. I came across this speech from March 2007 where she sounds the alarm about the impending subprime mortgage crisis as well as the effects of income inequality. She takes the Bush administration to task for ignoring the looming crisis and for its tax cuts for the wealthy.
@Victoria D.: I look at most of Sanders' proposals as aspirational rather than near-future possibilities.
Could the U.S. have some form of single-payer? We came close in 2009-10, but Joe Lieberman & a couple of Democratic senators put the kibosh on a plan to allow Americans 55 & older to opt in to Medicare (something Lieberman had previously said he supported). The only way even that could happen now is that if candidate Bernie were so popular he turned Congress bright blue.
I find Bernie's aspirations both reasonable & desirable. A strongly Democratic Congress would pass many of them. But that isn't going to happen because voters don't understand the issues. At all.
This week I went for a blood test, & the technician for some reason that fit into our small talk asked me how ObamaCare was working. This is an intelligent young woman who works in the medical profession. She thought ObamaCare was a form of public insurance; that is, there are two kinds of insurance: private insurance, like the one she gets through her employer, and public/ObamaCare insurance. She was shocked -- and skeptical -- when I told her that ObamaCare wasn't a government insurance company -- that it just provided a way for people to hook up with private insurance, & provided some help with insurance premiums for people who couldn't otherwise afford to pay the full premiums.
Then she said she was healthy & it wasn't fair for people like her to have to buy insurance. When I explained how people who get sick (which could happen to her or anyone) & don't have insurance cause everybody else's premiums to go up, it was clear this had never occurred to her.
Not sure if she's voting for Donald or Ted. But I'm pretty darned sure she won't be voting for Hillary or Bernie.
Marie
Lots of Walmart closings are in the oil patch, so they clearly don't care about their local, base customers. It is doubtful when the cost or lack of availability of groceries that the people will reassess their voting choices. I think lots of the Republican majority are de facto monarchists at heart. It seems to be that the Republicans act like the rich and powerful can do most anything because they're god's chosen lucky ones; the rest of us be damned. I started looking up Iowa's governor Branstad and found that his son Eric was involved in a car accident in 1991 where 2 people died. For all the stuff in the news, I never heard that story. After a quarter century in power in Iowa, Branstad keeps a tight lid on things affecting his brahmin life.
All the talk about Bernie and Hillary, sounds like some media inspired beginnings of a circular firing squad to boost media sales. Having voted for Barry Commoner (or was it John Anderson?) once upon a time, I got that people are perturbed. Democrats don't need to do stupid like they did to Gore. Imagine if John Roberts wasn't Chief Justice?
Just finished reading Simon Head's piece in the NYRB that is linked into D. Allen's article above. Great investigative journalism, but one is winded after reading. The Clinton system: we should not be surprised by all the dealings and the huge amounts of $$$ flowing in and out and the rubbing of backs and getting back the best possible outcomes. These people have connections–-no argument there and along with all the shades of green, there are many positive things that are being accomplished via the Clinton Foundation. But now of course the question is this:
"The record of the Clinton System raises deep questions about whether a Hillary Clinton presidency would take on the growing political influence of large corporate interests and Wall Street banks..."
So to break it down simplistically: I truly believe that Hillary wants to change the system, but has never been able for many reasons to do this. Could it be possible that if she is elected President she can finally do and say what she has wanted to do and say all along? What has she got to lose except perhaps a second term, but if she plays her hand cleverly (As Obama had to do) by the second term we may find she is the most progressive President we've ever had. The Clintons are rich enough not to have to worry about bread on the table so why not give it a shot.
Head said Hillary has refused to commit herself to addressing the reintroduction of Glass-Steagall. During the debate this week, she did just that.
P.S. and Howard Kurtz is a DUMMKOPF!
@PD Pepe wrote: "Head said Hillary has refused to commit herself to addressing the reintroduction of Glass-Steagall. During the debate this week, she did just that."
I don't think so. I didn't remember her saying that, so I checked the debate transcript. As Clinton has said before, reinstating Glass-Steagall "is not enough." But that doesn't mean she would urge Congress to reinstate it. She has said the opposite: that Sanders doesn't understand Wall Street & is unaware that reinstating Glass-Steagall is unnecessary. Her argument is that Dodd-Frank covers what Glass-Steagall solved, but it doesn't cover enough ground (e.g., AIG, Lehman Bros.), & that's what she proposes to try to fix.
I can't find any evidence, in the debate transcript or elsewhere, that Clinton would favor reinstating Glass-Steagall-type prohibitions against big banks.
A couple of decades back, I read David Maraniss's biography (at least I think that's where I got my info) of Bill Clinton. In it, he wrote that the Clintons had been collecting a Rolodex since they were in college of friends they could tap for favors. According to Maraniss they had something like 10,000 names & numbers on it. The concept both shocked me & opened my eyes. Everyone's heard of or knows people who used connections to get ahead, but I'd never heard of anyone who so systematically used "friends" as favor-giving machines. To me, that's the "Clinton System," as Head calls it. Now the transactions involves big bucks, too, but she and Bill have been transactional animals for decades.
When I wrote the other day that Clinton was "better than I am," this is part of what I meant. She figured out when she was young how to game the system. I'll admit I didn't figure it out when I was green, but I can tell you that if I had, I wouldn't have done it. I still don't. So I could never have matched Clinton's success because I think her methodology is essential, & it's not one I would employ. It's a polite form of sleaze, but it's still sleaze.
Marie
@Marie: So she did address it which doesn't mean she would reinstate it. Perhaps the word "commit" meant she agreed with Sanders, but I didn't read it that way.
Yes, it IS a polite form of sleaze but then you, or so I gather, have not been on the same trajectory nor would you be–––cut from a different cloth, you are, and proud of it I would assume. Hillary was on a march from the get-go and she's determined to GET it one way or another. You, and again I'm being presumptuous, have already GOT it !