The Commentariat -- February 9, 2016
Afternoon Update:
Jackie Calmes of the New York Times: "President Obama on Tuesday sent his final annual budget proposal to a hostile Republican-led Congress, seeking $19 billion for a broad new cybersecurity initiative and rejecting the lame-duck label as he declared that his plan 'is about looking forward.' The budget for fiscal year 2017, which starts Oct. 1, would top $4 trillion, although only about one-quarter of that is the so-called discretionary spending for domestic and military programs that the president and Congress dicker over each year. The rest is for mandatory spending, chiefly interest on the federal debt and the Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits that are expanding as the population ages."
Charles Pierce: "One thing about the Clinton team: because they've been the object of sophisticated (and well-financed) ratfcking for over 25 years, they've developed a real talent for opposition research their own selves." ...
... "Half a Dream." Charles Blow (Feb. 8): "... possibly the most damaging of Clinton's attributes is, ironically, her practicality. As one person commented to me on social media: Clinton is running an I-Have-Half-A-Dream campaign. That simply doesn't inspire young people brimming with the biggest of dreams. Clinton's message says: Aim lower, think smaller, move slower. It says, I have more modest ambitions, but they are more realistic. As Clinton put it Thursday in a swipe at Sanders, 'I'm not making promises that I cannot keep.' But the pragmatic progressive line is not going to help her chip away at Sanders's support among the young. That support is hardening into hipness."
*****
Presidential Race
CW: Might be the first time I've seen a guy wearing jeans & a bowtie. I'm kinda liking the look. That's Tom Tillotson, the "moderator" of Dixville Notch, New Hampshire. Photo via the Washington Post.It's a lovely, sunny morning in South Central New Hampshire, the temps are in the high teens & some schools are closed for election day. Get out & vote, people. ...
... Dan Balz, et al., of the Washington Post: "The first votes were cast Tuesday in New Hampshire following a final campaign blitz as candidates crisscrossed the state and leveled blistering attacks on rivals in a primary that appeared likely to set the tone for the wild nominating races ahead." ...
... Gail Collins & Arthur Brooks have a conversation about the New Hampshire primaries. Collins: "I was particularly offended by Marco Rubio's performance in Iowa. (That's a surprise, since I would have sworn nobody could top Ted Cruz.) He kept falling back on 'Jesus Christ who came down to earth and died for our sins.'... Marco Rubio instantly attacked the president [after Obama visited a Baltimore mosque] for 'pitting people against each other.' Now Marco Rubio is an all-purpose twit, but this was one of his worst moments. The guy who loves to wave his specific faith in the public's face. And he's shocked, shocked when the president demonstrates tolerance and compassion for an embattled religion."
Alan Rappeport of the New York Times: "With a snowstorm bearing down on [New Hampshire] and threatening to derail the final crush of campaign events on Monday, Republicans jockeyed for position in the hope of outperforming recent polls that suggest that Donald J. Trump is the favorite to win the state, with Senator Marco Rubio and a glut of establishment candidates locked in a battle for second place.... Hillary Clinton, speaking [Monday] morning to WBZ radio, a Boston station that reaches the voter-rich cities and counties of southern New Hampshire, said she was confident that her aides and volunteers were ready to help voters reach the polls on Tuesday no matter how bad the weather."
Contra Krugman & others, Citizens for Tax Justice, a progressive think tank, suggests Bernie Sanders' healthcare plan would be good for all but the wealthy: "A new analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders' recently released 'Medicare for All' tax plan finds that Sanders' health-related taxes would raise an estimated $13 trillion over 10 years. The analysis also finds that the plan would raise average after-tax incomes for all but the top income groups." CW: As Krugman has argued, the cost savings for average Americans wouldn't necessarily make Sanders' Medicare for All a Panacea for All: unless it is incredibly well-structured & -managed (think V.A. here), there would be tradeoffs. ...
... Dana Milbank: "Bernie Sanders is no revolutionary." CW: Yeah, & I noticed Bernie combed his hair for the last debate (or maybe had the assistance of a hairdresser!). What a sell-out. ...
... Paul Waldman, in the American Prospect, has a much better take on Sanders' & Clinton's relationships with "the establishment." Yes, Clinton is a member in high standing, but a President Sanders would certainly work closely with the Democratic "establishment," most of whom share his goals, if not his optimism that those goals might be achievable. Neither President Bernie nor President Hillary would be able to "change Washington" in any meaningful way.
It's Always the Staff's Fault. Glenn Thrush & Annie Karni of Politico: "Hillary and Bill Clinton are so dissatisfied with their campaign's messaging and digital operations they are considering staffing and strategy changes after what's expected to be a loss in Tuesday's primary in New Hampshire, according to a half-dozen people with direct knowledge of the situation. The Clintons -- stung by her narrow victory in Iowa -- had been planning to reassess staffing at the campaign's Brooklyn headquarters after the first four primaries, but the Clintons have become increasingly caustic in their criticism of aides and demanded the reassessment sooner, a source told Politico."
... On Rachel Maddow's show, Hillary responds to the Politico story:
I have no idea what they're talking about or who they are talking to. We're going to take stock but it's going to be the campaign that I've got. I'm very confident in the people that I have. I'm very committed to them; they're committed to doing the best we can.... We're moving into a different phase of the campaign. We're moving into a more diverse electorate.... So, of course it would be malpractice not to say, 'OK, what worked? What can we do better? What do we have to do new and different that we have to pull out?' ...
... Paul Waldman: "You can take that one of two ways: 1) of course, they're going to continually assess how they're doing and make adjustments if necessary; or 2) holy cow they're freaking out and everyone will get fired!" ...
... Jennifer Shutt of Politico: "David Axelrod took to Twitter on Monday to criticize Hillary Clinton's political strategy in New Hampshire, following news that her campaign is considering shaking up its staffing after an expected loss there. 'When the exact same problems crop up in separate campaigns, with different staff, at what point do the principals say, "Hey, maybe it's US?",' the former top aide to President Barack Obama tweeted." ...
... Pete Williams of NBC News: "In a letter disclosed Monday in a federal court filing, the FBI confirms one of the world's worst-kept secrets: It is looking into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server." ...
... Hillary, Not Necessarily "Cozy" with Wall Street. Kevin Drum: "I think it's safe to say that Clinton has hardly been a scourge of the banking industry. Until recently, her main interests were elsewhere. But if there's a strong case to be made for 'coziness,' I've failed to find it." ...
... BUT. Ben White of Politico: "When Hillary Clinton spoke to Goldman Sachs executives and technology titans at a summit in Arizona in October of 2013, she spoke glowingly of the work the bank was doing raising capital and helping create jobs, according to people who saw her remarks. Clinton, who received $225,000 for her appearance, praised the diversity of Goldman's workforce and the prominent roles played by women at the blue-chip investment bank and the tech firms present at the event. She spent no time criticizing Goldman or Wall Street more broadly for its role in the 2008 financial crisis. 'It was pretty glowing about us,' one person who watched the event said. 'It's so far from what she sounds like as a candidate now. It was like a rah-rah speech. She sounded more like a Goldman Sachs managing director.'... Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon dismissed the recollections a[s] 'pure trolling,' while the Clinton campaign declined to comment further on calls that she release the transcripts of the three paid speeches she gave to Goldman Sachs, for which she earned a total of $675,000." ...
... Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post: Hillary "Clinton and her allies are making increasingly overt -- and clumsy -- appeals to feminist solidarity, as she struggles in her Democratic presidential primary battle against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. The reactions ... suggest that it could be backfiring, at least in New Hampshire, a state proud of its tradition of electing women.... The gender question was inflamed over the weekend, after [Gloria] Steinem and former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, both supporters of Hillary Clinton, made statements upbraiding women who are not.... Unlike in Iowa, where Clinton won women by 11 percentage points, she is struggling for their votes [in New Hampshire]." ...
... Roger Simon of Politico: "In Iowa, though Hillary won the women's vote overall, she lost women ages 30-44 to Sanders by a hefty 21 percentage points and women ages 17-29 by a stunning 70 percentage points.... Clearly, the Clinton campaign must now do something. So in order to win over women ages 17-29, it has brought out [Madeleine] Albright, age 78, and Gloria Steinem, age 81, as surrogates. And you can see why campaign consultants get the big bucks. The strategy? Shame women into voting for Clinton." ...
... Amanda Marcotte in Salon: "While it's always tempting to reach for cheap explanations when other women disagree, feminists need to resist the hags-vs-bimbos narrative with all our might.... Perhaps seeing a woman out there, every day, doing the hard work of being the President of the United States could go a long way towards showing that women really are more than these reductive stereotypes, that they are full human beings with the same complex, nuanced concerns that men are assumed to have without question." ...
... CW: Yup. Looked how well this worked out for black people. Finally racism is over. Probably Donald Trump will take today off from the campaign trail so he call attend a black history seminar & work on his proposed legislation for slavery reparations. Kum. Bye. Yaaaaaah!
CW: Here's one thing you can count on: every vote in the GOP primaries will be a vote against climate change abatement. Jeremy Schulman of Mother Jones on the Republican presidential candidates' opposition to climate science. Includes data about New Hampshire voters' views.
Elevating a Conversation about Torture. Jesse Byrnes of the Hill: "Donald Trump echoed a supporter during a rally on the eve of the New Hampshire primary Monday night who called his Republican presidential rival Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) a 'pussy.' Trump was touting his hardline stance against terrorists from the Middle East when he mentioned Cruz's response during the debate Saturday on the use of waterboarding. 'Honestly I thought he'd say, "absolutely" -- and he didn't,' Trump said.... 'She just said a terrible thing,' Trump said, stopping his own remarks at the arena in Manchester and pointing out a woman in the audience, beckoning her to raise her voice. 'You know what she said? Shout it out, 'cause I don't want to,' Trump continued. 'OK, you're not allowed to say -- and I never expect to hear that from you again -- she said ... he's a pussy.'" ...
... CW: See, if you even hint at exercising caution before torturing prisoners, you're a pussy. Cruz, BTW, is not opposed to waterboarding; he says it does not meet the legal definition of torture, but that h'd use it sparingly. During the last GOP debate, Trump said, 'I'd bring back waterboarding, and I'd bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.'"
Could you let go of my breast, please? -- WCBS reporter Marcia Kramer, to a Secret Service agent protecting Donald Trump, at a Manchester, New Hampshire, hotel
... Bad News, Good News. Jeremy Diamond of CNN: "'I can look at their faces and say, "Look, you can't come here,'" [Donald] Trump said after 30 year-old Darren Ornitz of Greenwich, Connecticut, asked the billionaire businessman -- who owns a home there -- whether he would be willing to personally bar Syrian children from resettling there." But he said it nicely. Because "I have a bigger heart than anybody in this room."
Shakezula (how I wish professional pundits would use their real names!) of LG&M: "A gay voter took Rubio to task for being a homophobic weasel.... 'A middle-age gay man confronted Senator Marco Rubio here on Monday over his opposition to same-sex marriage, pointedly asking, "Why do you want to put me back in the closet?" "I don't," Mr. Rubio replied. "You can live any way you want."' Provided that way you want to live doesn't involve the state recognizing your marriage, giving you the same benefits as opposite sex couples or you know ... being treated like a human being, whaddya complaining about?" BTW, Marco approached the voter in a diner; the guy didn't accost him. ... Also, too, at the same diner, Marco told a 92-year-old woman that Sen. Lindsey Graham (a "bachelor"!) isn't gay. Because that would be too horrible to contemplate. ...
... Ashley Parker & Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: Oooh! Marco Rubio & MSNBC host Joe Scarborough are having a feud! "In an election season marked by animosity, egos and insults, this feud ... follows two men from the swamps of Florida politics to a presidential cycle in which Mr. Rubio, 44, has emerged as a leading candidate, and Mr. Scarborough, 52, as one of his fiercest critics.... In an interview Saturday, Mr. Scarborough could not hide his disapproval of Mr. Rubio, describing him as 'programmed' and 'risk averse.' And after Mr. Rubio's debate performance on Saturday appeared to validate his critique, Mr. Scarborough took something of a victory lap. 'I've been criticized for saying Marco looks too robotic, too prepackaged, and too young,' he wrote in a text message. 'But everything I've said alone for months is now being repeated this morning by everyone else in the political world. My critiques weren't personal: they were right.'"
Paul Waldman in the Washington Post: "What's missing from much of the discussion [about Marco Rubio] is that Rubio is embracing some of the most lunatic ideas on the right -- and he's managing to do so without most in the media hearing the dog whistle.... [Rubio's] real message goes ... into the dark heart of the conspiracy theories and twisted loathing of Obama that has persisted on the right for the last seven years.... And there's no escaping the racial undertones of this argument, because that's where so many on the right find the explanation for Obama's supposed hunger to bring woe and misery down upon us.... In some of the debates it has become almost comical, as every question Rubio gets on any subject is answered with a diatribe about Obama's malevolent schemes.... Rubio was going to be the candidate of the future, yet he's presenting himself as the candidate who is as disturbed, as unsettled, and as angry as you are that the past is slipping away." ...
Tom LoBianco & Ashley Killough of CNN: "Despite being backed by the monumental Right to Rise super PAC, Jeb Bush said Monday he would 'eliminate' the Supreme Court decision that paved the way for super PACs." CW: Oh, wow. Jeb! is practically a librul. Oh, wait, read on: "'If I could do it all again I'd eliminate the Supreme Court ruling' Citizens United, Bush told CNN's Dana Bash. 'This is a ridiculous system we have now where you have campaigns that struggle to raise money directly and they can't be held accountable for the spending of the super PAC that's their affiliate.'" So, um, the problem with Citizens United is that it doesn't give the politicians enough control over their big-bucks supporters.
Contributors today persuaded me to read David Brooks' column: President "Obama radiates an ethos of integrity, humanity, good manners and elegance that I'm beginning to miss, and that I suspect we will all miss a bit, regardless of who replaces him."
Senate Race
Phil Willon of the Los Angeles Times: "Republican Senate candidate Rocky Chavez, an Oceanside assemblyman and former Marine colonel, abruptly dropped out of the race Monday evening just as the first GOP debate was about to begin.... He said it was crucial for a GOP candidate to survive the June 7 primary, and he insinuated that the top three Republicans in the race could splinter their party's vote and allow Democratic hopefuls Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris and Rep. Loretta Sanchez of Santa Ana to have the ballot to themselves in November. '... I think the best role I can fill for the Republican Party and moving the agenda forward ... is to run for my Assembly seat, since I'm not going to be running for the United States Senate,' Chavez said. With that, Chavez walked off the debate stage and out of the studio. Under California's top-two primary system, the two candidates who receive the most votes in the June primary, regardless of party, will face off in the general election."
Other News
Jackie Calmes of the New York Times: "President Obama sends Congress his eighth and last annual budget proposal on Tuesday, a lame-duck executive's accounting of national priorities that Republican leaders have branded sight unseen: dead before arrival.... Breaking with a 41-year-old tradition, the Republican chairmen of the House [Tom Price (Ga.)] and Senate [Mike Enzi (Wy.)] budget committees announced that they would not even give the president's budget director, Shaun Donovan, the usual hearings in their panels this week.... But some new ideas that the administration previewed in recent weeks, including on cancer research, opioid abuse and military projects, could have more life than Republicans care to admit." CW: This is Joe Wilson's "You lie" on steroids. It's premeditated & institutional. This isn't John Boehner refusing to go to state dinners; it's top members of Congress refusing to perform the fundamentals of the people's business because the president comes from the other party is black.
Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times: "In the latest cyberattack targeting the federal government, an intruder gained access to information for thousands of employees at the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security, but officials said Monday that there was no indication that sensitive information had been stolen."
Ekow Yankah in a New York Times op-ed: "White heroin addicts get overdose treatment, rehabilitation and reincorporation, a system that will be there for them again and again and again. Black drug users got jail cells and 'Just Say No.'" CW: The contrast is stark, but Yankah has unwittingly written into his essay one reason for the different responses that transcends racism: because of the economic disparity between black & white, crack use led to violent crime in way that, as far as I know, today's heroin epidemic has not. People of every race had more reason to fear black users than white.
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Nigel Duara of the Los Angeles Times: Reporters at the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Nevada's highest-circulation newspaper, are beginning to feel the heavy hand of its new owner, casino magnate & serious winger Sheldon Adelson.
Beyond the Beltway
Rob Kuznia of the Washington Post: "In California, once a national innovator in draconian policies to get tough on crime, voters and lawmakers are now innovating in the opposite direction, adopting laws that have released tens of thousands of inmates and are preventing even more from going to prison in the first place. The most famous is a landmark ballot measure called Proposition 47, which in 2014 made California the first state in the nation to make possession of any drug -- including cocaine and heroin -- a misdemeanor. More astonishing is the state's decision to show leniency toward violent offenders...." ...
... Mark Berman of the Washington Post: "Officials say that Washington [state] accidentally released as many as 3,200 prisoners earlier than scheduled over a period of more than a decade.... The early releases[, first caused by a coding error,] date as far back as 2002, but even though the Department of Corrections learned about the issue years ago, a fix wasn't made and the public wasn't notified until recent weeks.... according to corrections officials, dozens of the inmates released early in recent years committed crimes while they were out.... Questions remain about the sheer number of inmates involved, the length of time this error continued and why it kept happening long after authorities were alerted."
Oregonian: Militants are still holed up in the Malheur Wildlife Refuge. Here's a roundup of the latest developments.
News Lede
New York Times: "Artur Fischer, a German inventor who registered more than 1,100 patents, including the first synchronized camera flash and an anchor that millions of do-it-yourselfers use to secure screws into walls, died on Jan. 27 at his home in Waldachtal, in southwestern Germany. He was 96."
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Reader Comments (22)
Re AK's "rant" against NPR reporting on the Snyder lack-of-guilt: I have told numerous local NPR fund-raising callers that I will no longer support NPR monetarily, even though I only have minimal beefs with the local station. (Well, they did clean house a couple of years ago, so I suspect they are no better than their larger outfit--) Last week alone they featured chats with Jonah Goldberg and Erick f*cking Erickson, to add comments about the political news of the day... We should not trust NPR in any way to be unbiased. The folks there are as seriously unbalanced as Fox babes and baboons. I'm sure Snyder has an army of people working furiously to scrub the airwaves of any notion that he is a criminal of breathtaking scope. Our country is so f*cked...
In other news, I can't even read comments on my favorite blogs anymore, because of the hatred shooting out to HRC from other Democrats. I have always loved Bernie (one of my big three: Sheldon Whitehouse, Bernie, and that sweetheart in Ohio with the journalist wife, whose name just left my brain--) but his followers have lost their minds. I can't even...
@Jeanne Pitz: Sherrod Brown. :-) I agree with your comment; I like Sanders and am dismayed by the actions of some of his supporters.
Also, Snyder did hire a team of spin doctor advertising people to manage his brand. So you are probably on to something.
Sorry Paul Waldman, Rubio is not "embracing some of the most lunatic ideas on the right". He gets paid to say them. The only thing he embraces is himself.
Morning Joe's delight in that he "was right" all along about Rubio is superficial at best. The person who plums the depths of Rubio's message is Paul Waldman in his excellent piece linked above. I found it amazing that the media concentrated on the repetition aspect of Rubio's speech rather than the content which is horrific.
Today David Brooks tells us he's gonna miss Obama and lists the reasons why. But here is what HE says about Rubio and some of the other candidates:
"Fourth, grace under pressure. I happen to find it charming that Marco Rubio gets nervous on the big occasions — that he grabs for the bottle of water, breaks out in a sweat and went robotic in the last debate. It shows Rubio is a normal person. And I happen to think overconfidence is one of Obama’s great flaws. But a president has to maintain equipoise under enormous pressure. Obama has done that, especially amid the financial crisis. After Saturday night, this is now an open question about Rubio.
Fifth, a resilient sense of optimism. To hear Sanders or Trump, Cruz and Ben Carson campaign is to wallow in the pornography of pessimism, to conclude that this country is on the verge of complete collapse. That’s simply not true. We have problems, but they are less serious than those faced by just about any other nation on earth."
Oh, David, David , David...
The nostalgia for America's past––I must get at least one a month of these "The Good old Days" kinds of crap from my brother––the "do you remember when" this was better and that was cheaper and skies were blue a lot longer and people were kinder and all white and not gay. Waldman addresses this ––these are the people Rubio's message reaches and that particular message is the conservative one, but Rubio takes it to a whole level higher by painting Obama as the "Other" who has destroyed that blue sky world you once knew. By repeating it he hopes it will resonate––like time tables learned by rote it seeps into those brain cells and takes hold.
@Marie: Seems to me I remember Arthur Schlesinger who always sported a bow tie at some talk wearing jeans. Jaunty!
"You're gonna miss me [before] I'm gone." David Brooks is surprised to find himself sad that Obama is leaving office. He refers to the current field of candidates as engulfed in a "pornography of pessimism" and flawed in countless other ways. David, you've wasted seven good years attacking this man who you now find commendable. You should have been reading RC!
David Brooks (paraphrasing) "I'm such a reasonable man, with few if any flaws, and I always see the merits of both side. If I wasn't already me, I'd want to be me."
From the full front view, Brooks can appear to be seating firmly on the fence. From the back, his butt cheeks have always been completely on the wingnut side of the fence. Now that he's feeling that fence slipping into his crack, its a tad uncomfortable.
Erratum.
Yesterday, in full rant mode over a story about Rick (Toxic Man) Snyder whose name was completely protected from any kind of nasty aspersions for his role in poisoning the water of Flint, MI, I made a reference to this being somewhat like talking about Watergate without mentioning Nixon, then tossed out characters who might in his stead have been blamed for the break-in and subsequent cover up. One of those names may have made for a few seconds of head scratching: Margaret Mitchell.
Clearly I meant Martha Mitchell, so if you were wondering that perhaps I had some inside information about how the author of "Gone With the Wind" could have been involved with G. Gordon Liddy, et al, a quarter century after she had gone to Tara in the Sky, wonder no more. Just me being stupid. Fingers in drive, mind in neutral.
The moral: Edit ye your comments ere pressing send, or to the gods of errata ye shall bend (over).
Diane,
Many thanks for the Image of the Day: Our Miss Brooks, ass-impaled on a nice white suburban picket fence post. Maybe while he's trying to keep his balance, he can write another faux sociology tome about the vicissitudes of fence sitting and how his current discomfort is all the fault of hippies, rock and roll, and the cool kids, like Obama, who didn't have anything to do with him when he was a little winger turd.
Jeanne,
I do still listen to NPR (obviously), in large part because there are still some people there I consider worth the time (Nina Totenberg's SCOTUS coverage is routinely excellent). And I certainly have no expectation nor hope that they become some raging liberal outlet (even though all Republicans consider them the equivalent of Radio Moscow), but I would dearly like to have a little balance and not have to shake my head the same as I do when I listen to ABC or CBS or CNN, or Fox, fer crissakes, paper over obvious misdeeds and resort to careless writing and editing.
This morning I heard someone mention the unrest that has fueled the Sanders and Trump campaigns, referring to the Occupy Movement and Teabaggers (this sloppy comparison carves its way into a mountain of recent reporting). First, Sanders is a serious person. Trump is a dangerous douchebag. And Occupy is concerned with income inequality for all and the obscene control of banks while Teabaggers are concerned with taking care of themselves while at the same time screwing anyone who doesn't look and think like they do.
There is no comparison here and this is the sort of shit that drives me up the fucking wall. This is just slipshod journalism. If you want to note that turmoil and discontent are at the heart of both campaigns, fine, but if you're going to then reference Occupy and the Teabaggers, at least mention that they have vastly different origins and solutions. I'd be fine with that.
Too picky? I don't think so. It's just one of those "both sides" things that has become a default metaphor to too many writers who should know better and take the time to make these very important distinctions clear.
Now to more important things. I see that you mentioned Sherrod Brown and his wife, Connie Shultz, a writer I don't get to read nearly enough. Anyway, here's something you might find amusing, a comment to Shultz from some witless winger blogger, ripping her for consorting with a politician, and her pithy response.
A dearth of morons, there is not.
For any RC readers still interested paradoxical "freedoms" of wearing a head scarf, this from the Feb 1 "New Yorker."
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/08/cover-story-personal-history-elif-batuman
Apologies to any who might have already have seen it, but this old, bald man with a sister who converted to Judaism because she "liked the rules" found it interesting...
Many lessons here. One of them: freedom is very easy to give up because it is plain hard to make all those choices on one's own.
As I type this in the Puget Sound early morning fog, suspect that's exactly what's happening in the minds of many on the other side of the country .
@AK: No need for corrections––I think we all knew you meant Martha––she of the outings of secrets after her usual drinks before dinner––But for just a moment it was fun to imagine Margaret, all tuckered out from writing that great Southern tome, hop back into the 20th century and take up with those Watergate rascals. And Pleeese––I had Milton Freidman in a congressional hearing not too long ago when unwashed kindly reminded me that he had died some time ago. So mistaking Martin Feldstein for Milton Freidman is very different than a blip of your fingers. Doncha love mistakes?
Question.
Did Hillary Clinton just think about running for president last year? Did she wake up one morning and say "Oh, what the hell, give it a shot"?
Of course not. Hillary has been running for the White House for years. Her loss to Obama in '08 had to sting given that she was supposed to be a lead pipe cinch. She's been obsessing about this for a loooong time.
Second question.
Is she stupid?
Well.....
I suppose the question should have been directed toward the apparent Clinton solipsistic view of the world. There's us, and then there's everyone else. Our view is really all that matters.
How else to explain the obvious stupidity of aligning yourself so closely with big bankers, giving speeches to Goldman and the like for which she was paid ungodly amounts of money? Did she think no one would find out about it? Couldn't someone have told her to take the long view here and don't do anything, at least for a few years, that could make a convenient cudgel for opponents on either side?
Is (because we can't use "was" yet) it just venality and greed? Make the moolah while we can? Everyone else does?
Same thing with this e-mail bullshit. WTF, Hillary? Seriously, you take away the enormous payouts for her cheerleading of big banks while Mr. and Mrs. Everyperson were still burning, and get rid of the digital sword of Damocles hanging over her head in the form of those furshlugginer e-mails, (Benghazi is a made up scandal; she couldn't have headed that off if she wanted to), and she's halfway home.
I just don't get it.
But if it really is a sort of solipsism problem, "I know best", sort of thing, then I'm not jumping for joy about the next Clinton presidency.
Talk about rocks and hard places.
Sheesh!
PD,
Yeah. Poor Martha. Nixon and his band of pernicious pricks really laid into her, and her rat bastard husband let them. Fuckers, all.
And I suppose, if it weren't for mistakes, we'd be perfect. How monotonous would that be? No opportunity to imagine Margaret Mitchell, dressed in black, wearing a ski mask, helping Howard Hunt jimmy a lock, making mint juleps for everyone after the heist. Liddy of course, refuses. He takes out his stock of five year old rubbing alcohol and gulps it down right out of the bottle. A manly man. Afterwards she corrects Donald Segretti's spelling for one of his dirty tricks in her most courtly manner "No Donald, dear boy, I believe that word is spelled m-o-t-h-e-r-f-u...."
@Ken Winkes: As Batuman suggests, going with the flow is always a temptation. We all do it all the time in our daily lives. It's a survival mechanism. At the same time, conformity has consequences.
At some point, if we are to maintain any personal integrity, we have to stand up & be ourselves. I tend to do that sooner rather than later, which naturally has made my life more difficult than it would have been had I made more of a habit of sitting down & shutting up. Most people are probably better at drawing the line than I am. But as did Batuman, one does have to draw that line. Thanks for sharing her essay.
Marie
@Akhilleus: In 1992, Jerry Brown made a comment in a debate about how Bill Clinton was "funneling" state business to Hillary's law firm, calling the practice "corruption" & a "conflict of interest." Bill Clinton responded, "You ought to be ashamed of yourself for jumping on my wife. You're not worth being on the same platform as my wife. I never funneled any money to my wife's law firm. Never."
Look who won that debate. The Clintons think this still works. Just this weekend, Bill made similar remarks about Sanders & his supporters.
I don't know whether or not Bill Clinton is really a chivalrous guy, but I will bet that he advised his wife to take those Goldman Sachs, et al., gigs. He thinks IOKIYHillary. Or if you're Bill. The Clintons believe, based on past experience, that they can brazen out anything. And anyone who disagrees "ought to be ashamed" of herself.
Because of the Brown-Clinton exchange, I was wary of Bill Clinton in 1992. I'm wary of both of them now.
Marie
Marie's afternoon update includes a link to a timely piece about the president's budget which dutiful and responsible GOP lawmakers (breakers?) have already said they're not even going to consider. Doing the people's business, right, boys?
Well, included in that budget is a pretty hefty line item ($19B) for improving cybersecurity in the US. The very real threat of cyber warfare has become a significant consideration for Defense, as it should be. A few years ago, Steve Coll, in the New Yorker, pointed out the vulnerabilities of the US to cyber attacks, especially to reprisals from nations against which we may be thinking of pursuing such a course.
"Iran is one of two-dozen-plus countries believed to possess an explicit cyber-warfare capability, akin to America’s Cyber Command. Russia is highly effective; China is active and capable. Specialists do not rate the United States as especially dominant on offense, but the country looks strikingly weak on defense."
But guess who wants to start cyberbombing the shit out of our "enemies"? No, not Trump, although I wouldn't put it past him. One of the other idiots, Carson. In direct contradiction of what experts in the field have said, Carson declares "We have excellent offensive cyber capabilities," and he wants to use them to show our enemies who's the boss.
He does have some rational things to say about net neutrality, but here again, his logic simply doesn't hold up when matched with his desire to cyberbomb the shit out of enemies:
"I want the government out of everything," Carson said. "The last thing we need to be doing is stifling the use of the internet."
We'll leave aside the fact that there would be no internet without the government, and also the fact that removing the government from everything means also crippling cyber defense systems.
According to Coll, "The militarization of cyberspace has been under way for more than a decade, but only in the last few years have the telltale signs appeared suggesting that the United States is erecting a new digital wing of its permanent national-security state. Three years ago, for example, came the birth of the 24th Air Force, at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, and Robins Air Force Base, Georgia."
Hmmm....Air Force? Isn't that the government?
These people have no idea what they're talking about most of the time. Even vaguely good ideas are surfeited with delusion and goo-goo talk. It's like the teabagger who complained about her taxes being used to fix potholes. "Shouldn't the government be paying for that?"
And Carson is not an outlier. A few short weeks ago, the rest of the Bozos were smacking each other upside the head to see who could out-Carson Carson for the crazy crown.
But don't worry. Their allies in Congress are getting ready to kill any proposed funding for increased cyber security. Because black guy.
Hey, at least they have a real reason.
Marie,
Thanks for that anecdote.
It does zilch for allaying my concerns. I can't just be wary of the nuts, I have to be wary of the person most likely to represent my party.
Christ.
Jeans, jacket, and tie is known around here as a "West Virginia Tuxedo."
Another Capitalism is Awesome (but sometimes a bit too greedy for their own good--is that an oymoronic statement?) installment.
Good news, kids. If you've been sending a hefty check to Warner/Chappell every time your family gets together to sing "Happy Birthday to You", you can rest easy. Pocket that check book and save your dough.
A court has found that publisher Warner/Chappell's claim on the song written by Mildred and Patty Hill, kindergarten teachers in Louisville, Ky., in 1893, is invalid as in "tell your story walking, assholes". Warner/Chappell has been making an amazing $2M a year(!) on this song, mostly from movie, TV, and stage productions (and many other public uses) and at one time told the Girl Scouts of America to knock off singing "their" song or they'd be sued. The Girl Scouts?? Nice guys, eh? They thought they were going to be able to continue to stack up the filthy lucre until 2030 but a nice judge told them to fuck off.
If you've ever been sitting in a restaurant and heard the staff sing some lame-ass, weirdo, juiced up jingle to a patron celebrating their birthday, this is why. Warner/Chappell would have come after them, hammer and tong, for their pound of birthday flesh.
The song is now in the public domain so expect all the Confederate candidates to start screaming that "Happy Birthday" has been co-opted by SOSHULISTS because a great 'merican corporation can no longer gouge anyone wanting to sing this wonderful little ditty in public (estimates of payouts range from $5K to $30K) without paying through the nose to do so.
I know, I know, we all suck because we're all devotees of Lenin.
So, Happy Birthday товарищ.
And to the suits at Warner/Chappell...this for you / and this for your horse --.
If the lines I encountered at the school where I vote are any indication--line of cars waiting to get into the parking lot, lines of people divided alphabetically, line of new voters waiting to register, line of people changing back to "independent" after voting--my little town is doing itself proud with getting out the vote. We did not attract many campaign workers willing to hold signs, however. Maybe three for Hillary, two or three for Bernie, the same for the Trumpet, and two for Carly. But again, Carly wins the "my signs are bigger than your signs" battle. But the funnest part of that was one of the sign holders--a woman in her sixties, fur-trimmed hat, LL Bean boots, and a calf-length fur coat. I can count on one hand the number of fur coats I've seen in the 20 years I've lived in NH--and one of them was worn by a friend of mine from NYC.
Careful! @Elizabeth...just can't predict by those silly yard signs! Remember how Charlie Pierce took Peggy 'Peggars" Noonan to task on using that as meaningful criteria...back an election ago?
Or am I hoping that your yard signs are not harbingers of the crummy news likely to headline media sites by morning. Geez, who is the best of the worst men and one woman left on the Republican side?
Happened to stumble upon a county-by-county report on political contributions to various candidates. It was with names, occupation, and amounts contributed. Many have contributed multiple times, from $10 to $25 each time (adding up to hundreds of dollars) and other single check-writings in larger amounts up to $2,700. Among the high (R) recipients, were Carson, Cruz, and Fiorina. From my own yard sign calcutations, I have to wonder why is it that someone who is unemployed, low income, retired would faithfully send money to obvious losers? Good lord, don't you have better things to do with your money? Carson isn't going to win. Neither is Carly! (Saw one local businessman (where I shop, hmmmm!) gave her $2,700 in support)...
How does one justify quid pro quo in giving to LOSERS? (sorry, to use a Trumpism). Nothing for your money!