The Commentariat -- July 18, 2015
Internal links removed.
** Reliving the Past, Southern-Style. Harold Meyerson in the American Prospect: "... The South's current drive to impose on the rest of the nation its opposition to worker and minority rights -- through the vehicle of a Southernized Republican Party -- resembles nothing so much as the efforts of antebellum Southern political leaders to blunt the North's opposition to the slave labor system. Correspondingly, in the recent actions of West Coast and Northeastern cities and states to raise labor standards and protect minority rights, there are echoes of the pre-Civil War frustrations that many Northerners felt at the failure of the federal government to defend and promote a free labor system.... The South's aversion to both minimum-wage standards and unions is rooted deep within the DNA of white Southern elites, whose primary impulse has always been to keep African Americans down.... Never before have Northern-state governments (all of them Republican) sought so successfully to emulate policies of racial suppression and anti-working-class economics that the South originated."
If we keep taking steps toward a more perfect union, and close the gaps between who we are and who we want to be, America will move forward. -- Barack Obama, this week
** It's the perfect response to the Confederate flag wavers. -- Dana Milbank
White House: The President explains the comprehensive, long-term deal announced earlier this week that will prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon":
Arlette Saenz of ABC News: "President Obama welcomed the nation's oldest known veteran to the White House -- hosting the barrier-breaking 110-year Emma Didlake in the Oval Office Friday afternoon. The president lauded Didlake, an African American World War II veteran, for her service...."
NSA Summer Camp. Nicholas Fandos the New York Times: "Like the C.I.A. and other elite intelligence agencies, the N.S.A. has for decades recruited on college campuses and run collegiate programs, but this summer the agency is making sure that middle- and high-school-age students -- and some teachers, too -- are learning how to hack, crack and defend in cyberspace."
Richard Fausset, et al., of the New York Times: "The 24-year-old gunman who killed four Marines in an attack on two military sites here traveled to Jordan last year for about seven months, a senior intelligence official said Friday, one of several trips to the country in recent years. The official said that investigators were combing through the computer, cellphone and social media contacts of the gunman, identified as Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez, to determine whether he was in touch with any extremist groups in Jordan before or during this trip." (Also linked yesterday afternoon) ...
... This is slightly disturbing. WKYC (Knoxville): "FirstEnergy confirmed ... that [Abdulazeez] also worked at Perry Nuclear Power Plant from May 20 to May 30 of 2013. FirstEnergy[,which owns the plant,] said he left because he didn't meet the minimum requirements to remain employed. He worked as a electrical engineer right outside the nuclear reactor, which they say he did not have access."
Republican Men Find New Way to Punish Young Women Who Won't Have Sex with Them. Rachel Bade & Seung Min Kim of Politico: "Republicans on Capitol Hill are betting the secretly filmed Planned Parenthood video -- depicting an executive allegedly discussing the sale of fetal organs from terminated pregnancies -- will give them cover to more aggressively push abortion issues without the political ramifications that have haunted the party in the past." ...
... Amanda Marcotte in Rolling Stone: "... the ... allegation in the video -- that Planned Parenthood was caught selling fetal body parts -- was utter nonsense, plain and simple. Still, that didn't stop the right from acting like this was the greatest scandal since Monica Lewinsky's blue dress." Marcotte highlights some winger reactions. Via Paul Waldman. ...
... CW Note to Republicans: For many people who are not medical professionals, surgery of any kind -- from pimple removal to quadruple bypass -- seems "gross." You boys probably pass out when a technician takes a blood sample. Get over it. ...
... Heather Caygle of Politico: "Sen. Rand Paul is the latest lawmaker to throw a wrench into delicate transportation bill negotiations, suggesting he might hold up the legislation over the controversial Planned Parenthood video that surfaced this week.... [Paul] released multiple statements Friday promising to use 'all legislative vehicles' to 'defeat and defund Planned Parenthood' next week. The statements on his Senate and campaign websites don't directly mention the pending highway and transit legislation, but it is the next big-ticket item on the Senate's to-do list...." CW: True to his usual MO, Li'l Randy is pleased as punch to spew another lie: "The recent revelation that this taxpayer-funded organization is selling body parts of the unborn [blah-blah]...."
CW: I give up. I don't know what Steve King means here. As far as I can tell, Julian Castro's heritage is somewhere around 100 percent Hispanic/Latino. According to his Wiki-bio, King "has Irish, German, Welsh, and English ancestry." (The Wiki-link to this factoid is dead.) If the info is correct, none of King's recent ancestors is Hispanic or Latino. Usually even loons make some kind of sense, even if it's twisted. Steve King is the exception, as far as I can tell.
Philip Klein of the right-wing Washington Examiner may employ some over-the-top rhetoric, but his underlying premise is right: "On Wednesday, America's Health Insurance Plans, the insurance industry's largest lobbying group, announced that it had elected Marilyn Tavenner as its chief executive officer. Before joining AHIP, Tavenner led the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under [President] Obama, where she was tasked with overseeing the implementation of Obamacare -- writing the rules regulating the same insurance companies that she'll now be representing as a lobbyist. Tavenner could be a poster child for the corrupting influences of the revolving door between industry and government that Obama once decried. A former hospital executive and lobbyist, she was appointed in 2006 by then Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine to serve as the state's health secretary before entering the Obama administration.
There's a reason why Tavenner is so valuable to AHIP -- and it's not for her role in the disastrous rollout of Obamacare's healthcare.gov website. She has a web of connections within the Obama administration and an intimate knowledge of how it works. But her being at AHIP is also valuable for the administration, because it means that the insurance industry's main lobbying group will now be headed by a cheerleader for Obamacare.
... Also via Waldman.
Timothy Cama of the Hill: "A federal judge on Friday dismissed Oklahoma's second lawsuit against the Obama administration's climate rule for power plants. Judge Claire Eagan of the District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma ruled that the state's attorney general cannot challenge the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) regulation until it is made final. It is the second case in as many months in which a federal court has dropped lawsuits against the Obama administration's signature climate change initiative, which is due to be made final next month."
Stephanie Clifford of the New York Times: "Michael G. Grimm, a former New York congressman who resigned from office after pleading guilty to tax fraud, was given an eight-month sentence on Friday. A federal investigation that initially focused on Mr. Grimm's campaign fund-raising turned into a 20-count indictment related to his running of a restaurant in Manhattan, Healthalicious. Prosecutors said he underreported wages and revenue to the government and filed false tax documents as a result.... [Now for a hilarious side-note:] He is now working as a consultant to start-up businesses." (Also linked yesterday afternoon) ...
... CW: What's your advice to start-ups, Mikey? To cut costs, pay employees under the table. AND If the building inspector gives you grief, tell him you want to show him something on the roof, then threaten to toss him off -- especially if you're way bigger than the inspector.
Former Fed chair Ben Bernanke, in a Brookings Institute post, explains how Europe -- i.e., Germany -- is fundamentally failing the Eurozone by not "delivering the broad-based economic recovery that is needed to give stressed countries like Greece a reasonable chance to meet their growth, employment, and fiscal objectives." [Bernanke asks this as a question, but his answer is "nope."] Germany's large trade surplus puts all the burden of adjustment on countries with trade deficits, who must undergo painful deflation of wages and other costs to become more competitive. Germany could help restore balance within the euro zone and raise the currency area's overall pace of growth by increasing spending at home...."
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd.
Danny Shea, Editorial Director of the Huffington Post: "After watching and listening to Donald Trump since he announced his candidacy for president, we have decided we won't report on Trump's campaign as part of The Huffington Post's political coverage. Instead, we will cover his campaign as part of our Entertainment section. Our reason is simple: Trump's campaign is a sideshow." ...
... CW: That's a lovely, principled idea, & I tried it myself for awhile. Until it quit working. As long as the GOP accepts Trump as a "legitimate" candidate, as long as other presidential candidates are responding to him & as long as pollsters are including him in their surveys, I think the media have to cover the Trump sideshow, too. Once these factors subside, then the rest of us can faggedaboud him.
Michael Calderone of the Huffington Post: "Gawker on Friday removed a controversial story about a media executive soliciting a male escort who later attempted to extort him, after the decision to post the piece received widespread condemnation on social media." ...
... The Gawker staff is upset about this. ...
... Mark Stern of Slate explains why removing the story was a good move legally, altho it might be too late to undo the damage. CW: I'm with Gawker CEO Nick Denton. The story was not newsworthy unless part of a piece on Excesses of the Rich & Unfamous.
Presidential Race
Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "The full field of candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination assembled for the first time [in Cedar Rapids, Iowa,] Friday night, with a trio of them giving fiery speeches sounding populist economic themes. Much of the focus was on Hillary Rodham Clinton, the dominant front-runner for the Democratic nomination, and two underdog candidates challenging her from the left, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley.... In a tough, partisan speech, Clinton looked past her primary opponents to go after the leading Republican candidates and brought Democrats to their feet.... Former Virginia senator Jim Webb and former Rhode Island governor Lincoln Chafee also spoke at the dinner." ...
... Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont edged closer on Friday to directly attacking Hillary Rodham Clinton, pointedly asking whether the Democratic presidential front-runner would support measures to break up the country's largest financial institutions and reinstate a firewall between commercial and investment banking.... He boasted that he had not received financial contributions from Goldman Sachs, which he said sought 'undue influence' in American politics, but stopped short of calling on Mrs. Clinton to reject the nearly $50,000 in donations she has received from employees of the Wall Street firm. 'That's her decision,' Mr. Sanders said, after pausing for a moment to consider the question." ...
... CW: Sorry, Jonathan, that's no attack; not even "edging close." We know you're itching for a knock-down/drag-out, NYT, but this is not your both-sides-do-it moment. Pretending "Ask her" is an attack is both untrue & defamatory. See Trump: "McCain is a dummy" below. That would be an attack. ...
... Martin, Ctd.: Clinton "added [a Cedar Rapids, Iowa, rally] to her schedule.... These gatherings ... represent an effort to show that Mrs. Clinton is herself capable of luring big audiences. But the rally served to highlight her inability for now to attract crowds on the same scale as Mr. Sanders, whose Iowa events have drawn more people than any other presidential candidate has in either party. Mrs. Clinton drew a few hundred people to her event here -- her campaign pegged it at 500 -- while Mr. Sanders was met by about 2,500 at an event in Council Bluffs this month."
Daniel Strauss of Politico: Speaking at the Netroots Nation convention Friday in Phoenix, Arizona, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sets out Warren's Rules for Presidential Candidates. "Clinton's decision to skip the convention did not go unnoticed.... Both Bernie Sanders & Martin O'Malley will address the group.
digby: In his column (linked here yesterday) Paul Krugman "hit upon something important in political coverage: when a politician takes a different position on policy from earlier positions (or, in [Hillary Clinton's] case, from her husband's positions) the press assumes that she's flip-flopped for political reasons. But it's always possible that she has changed her mind based upon new evidence. If reporters spent some time probing these differences instead of doing Trey Gowdy's wet work for him, they might learn something.... It's perfectly legitimate to ask what changed someone's mind --- and letting them explain it." ...
... CW: As both digby & Krugman point out, Republicans should try occasionally looking at evidence. The reason they don't, of course, is that facts usually prove inconvenient to the GOP. See, for instance, Li'l Randy's Lie o'the Day, linked above. How can a needy candidate fundraise off Planned Parenthood atrocities if the atrocities don't exist? Necessity is the mother of invention.
Tony Romm of Poltico: "Despite Republican candidates' high-profile outreach to the Bay Area, most tech industry bigwigs are throwing cash at Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.
Ken Vogel & Tarini Parti of Politico: "Republicans could barely contain their glee when the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision cleared the way for unlimited spending in political campaigns. But now -- headed into a crowded presidential primary that promises to be longer, nastier and more expensive as a result of the ruling -- some are having buyers' remorse. Concerns are mounting among top donors and party elites that an influx of huge checks into the GOP primary will hurt the party's chances of retaking the White House. Long-shot candidates propped up by super PACs and other big-money groups will be able to linger for months throwing damaging barbs at establishment favorites who offer a better chance of victory."
Wherein Jeb! casts himself as the only presidential candidate wearing big-boy pants. Eli Stokols of Politico reports.
Mark Hensch of the Hill: "Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) said on Friday that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R-) is 'vile' for using a speech earlier this week to talk about the violent death of one of Himes's former interns. Himes argued in a statement that Christie was politicizing the death of Kevin Sutherland to fit talking points on criminal justice reform, and that it was unethical of him to do so.... Sutherland was stabbed to death on D.C.'s Metro system in what police have described as a botched robbery.Christie referenced Sutherland's death during a campaign speech on Thursday in Camden, N.J. On Friday afternoon, Sutherland's parents, Douglas and Terry Sutherland, issued a statement protesting Christie's remarks."
Katie Glueck of Politico: "Donald Trump's turn in the national spotlight is mainly taking a toll on Ted Cruz.... That's the assessment of this week's Politico Caucus, our weekly survey of the leading strategists, activists and political operatives in Iowa and New Hampshire.... In New Hampshire, where Chris Christie's hopes are riding on a strong finish, roughly a quarter of Republicans believe the brash and straight-talking New Jersey governor is also put at risk by Trump's emergence in the field." CW: See, HuffPost, Trump isn't all bad. ...
... CW: Also, too, how could you call Trump a "sideshow," HuffPost? Why, just yesterday Trump called John McCain a "dummy," said Rick Perry "should be forced to take an IQ test before being allowed to enter the GOP debate," & backed off a feud with MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell. All very important to the future of the nation.
Beyond the Beltway
Alice Barr of KHOU-TV, in USA Today: "A trooper who pulled over and later arrested a woman found dead in her jail cell was put on desk duty Friday for violating procedures, the Texas Department of Public Safety said. Sandra Bland, 28, was arrested July 10, and after spending the weekend in the Waller County jail, she was found hanged in her cell Monday. Harris County's medical examiner said the death was a suicide, but Bland's family disputes the finding. The FBI has joined the Texas Rangers in investigating the circumstances surrounding her death. The state Public Safety Department and Waller County district attorney have requested that the FBI conduct a forensic analysis on video footage from the incident." ...
... St. John Barned-Smith of the Houston Chronicle has more on the Bland story.
News Ledes
New York Times: "Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, voiced support on Saturday for his country's nuclear deal with world powers while emphasizing that the agreement did not signal an end to Iran's hostility toward the United States and its allies, especially Israel."
New York Times: "A petty officer wounded in Thursday's attacks at two military facilities [in Chattanooga] succumbed to his injuries on Saturday, according to members of his family and the Navy. Petty Officer Second Class Randall Smith of the Navy, 26, became the fifth service member to die as a result of the shootings at a military reserve center and a nearby recruiting center."
Washington Post: "Three U.S. admirals were censured for dining at 'extravagant' banquets in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore and accepting other gifts from an Asian defense contractor at the center of a bribery scandal that continues to rattle the highest ranks of the Navy, according to documents released late Friday.... The incidents occurred nearly a decade ago, while all three officers -- Vice Adm. Michael H. Miller, Rear Adm. Terry B. Kraft and Rear Adm. David R. Pimpo -- were assigned to the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier strike group. Each was forced to retire this summer."
Share Article
Reader Comments (8)
Thinking about the Donald taking the wind from Ted Cruz's sails I remembered something Cruz said in a speech in 2013 that left me open mouthed muttering WHAATT?? He was talking about Jesse Helms:
"We should have a hundred more here in Congress just like him."
For those of us who remember Helms, this remark should have sent shivers down the spines of most liberals and quite a few conservatives, I would think. Below a link to a Mother Jones article from 1995 on Helms that reveals the evil weevils he harbored in his bosom. That Cruz connects with all things Helmsian is something his opponents should seize and use to their advantage even though their own rhetoric has the faint strains of the same messages. The Donald is a cartoon character and will implode in time; Cruz is here to stay and is in a position to cause great damage.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/1995/05/what-you-need-know-about-jesse-helms
Regarding the shooter, Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez:
Greetings, All.
Seems I'm a bit slow on the uptake for not grasping the following (or is this merely illustrative of unlettered "journalism", withheld information and/or needless rumination on my part?).
"FirstEnergy said *he left* (italicizing, mine) because he didn't meet the minimum requirements to remain employed."
Am I to understand that, as a result of frank soul-searching & self-evaluation, he charitably removed himself from this position after ten days?
Caffeinated-Yet-Unclear
Ophelia,
NPR and others are reporting that First Energy says he was employed for 10 days and dismissed after failing a background check.
Thank you, kindly, D.C. Clark! My 'inquiring mind' needed to know. Of course - and please forgive my running on - but . . . The bloke was *first* hired and *then* background-checked?
Laughing & Crying
I see Le Donald has stepped in it again -- suggesting that McCain's service was less than heroic because he was captured. I only hope that Donald doesn't peak too soon, blowing up before he inflicts maximum damage on the Republican brand.
Good point Ophelia,
To give First Energy benefit of the doubt, one could suppose that it was a probationary hire pending results of the check.
I do know that once upon a time, most nuclear power plant workers were veterans of the U.S.Navy. That was about the only place in the world where an 18 year old high school grad, or recent college grad, could walk in off the street and begin training on reactors. And they all got background checks and clearances before being placed in a position of trust.
@All: Just speculating, but Abdulazeez's father was checked & cleared twice for the possibility that he was funding terrorist groups. It's possible that one of these investigations was ongoing at the time the son applied for the job at First Energy, & the investigations came up as a background disqualifier for the son. First Energy might have received minimal info; just that there was some kind of red flag involving a relative. The background check results could have had nothing to do with the son.
Marie
@Marie: <<The background check results could have had nothing to do with the son.>>
Indeed - That may well have been the case.
Non-Sequitur / If of Interest:
I came across the Raw Story link via TPM's July 15th coverage of Huckabee's "Disingenuous" finger-pointing at Obama on CNN, which can be found here:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/mike-huckabee-obama-cosby-rape
The Schadenfreude quotient inflates whenever a Family Values proponent's family's values go public. (Warning: Language & Content may prove offensive . . . but any more so than what spills forth from Mikey's maw?)
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/06/watch-mike-huckabees-son-work-up-a-sweat-in-raunchy-low-budget-film-he-doesnt-want-you-to-see/
Not Far From The Tree