The Commentariat -- May 3, 2016
Afternoon Update:
Paul Duggan & Lori Aratani of the Washington Post: "Throughout [Washington, D.C.'s subway system] Metro's 40-year history, the National Transportation Safety Board has repeatedly raised questions about the agency's safety culture that have not been adequately addressed, its three-jurisdiction governance model has proven 'uniquely dysfunctional' and the federal agency that sought safety oversight of the transit agency has made recommendations that are 'non-enforceable.' That summary, from NTSB Chairman Christopher Hart, came during his opening statement Tuesday at the meeting where the panel will present its findings about the probable cause of the Jan. 12, 2015, smoke crisis in a Yellow Line tunnel near Metro's L’Enfant Plaza station." -- CW
Presidential? Kyle Cheney of Politico: "Ted Cruz hurled every slight in the book at Donald Trump on Tuesday, but it might not be enough to stave off a debilitating defeat in Indiana. The Texas senator is bracing for a loss that could cripple his chances to block Trump's ascent to the Republican presidential nomination. He spent his morning skewering the New York billionaire -- 'utterly amoral,' 'a serial philanderer,' 'a pathological liar' and even ridden with venereal disease. ...
... Akhilleus: Liar? Check. Amoral? Check. Philanderer? Check. Venereal disease? Wow. Ted's hackers must be working overtime. Melania may want to visit the doctor. Is this the sort of temperament we need in a president? Cruz is a whiny, bullying, holier than thou hypocrite. But calling Trump a pathological liar is rich coming from a guy whose greeting "Nice morning, isn't it?" would have to be fact checked.
Benjamin Weiser and Vivian Yee of the New York Times: " Sheldon Silver, who rose from the Lower East Side of Manhattan to become one of the state's most powerful and feared politicians as speaker of the New York Assembly, was sentenced on Tuesday to 12 years in prison in a case that came to symbolize Albany's culture of graft. The conviction of Mr. Silver, 72, served as a capstone to a campaign against public corruption by Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, which has led to more than a dozen state lawmakers' being convicted or pleading guilty." Jeffrey Toobin in The New Yorker offers a history of Mr. Bharara's career. -- Akhilleus
*****
Presidential Race
Democrats & Republicans hold presidential primaries in Indiana today.
Philip Bump of the Washington Post: "With the Democratic presidential nomination system working the way it does, there are essentially two possible outcomes: A candidate will either win in a blowout, or he or she will need superdelegate votes to gain a majority.... 'It is virtually impossible for Secretary Clinton to reach the majority of convention delegates by June 14 with pledged delegates alone,' [Bernie Sanders] said [Sunday]. 'She will need superdelegates to take her over the top.... In other words, the convention will be a contested contest.' That's true -- mostly because, unlike in 2008, Sanders will contest it.... But that doesn't mean he has any real shot at winning." -- CW
** Ryan Cooper explains Bernie's "revolution" to boomers. CW: If you've been reading too much Krugman, this should help! -- CW
Amy Chozick of the New York Times: "Hillary Clinton came to campaign in coal country -- and she had her feet held to the fire. As Mrs. Clinton stepped onto the sidewalk on Monday to tour a health and wellness center [in West Virginia], a crowd of protesters stood in the rain, many of them holding signs supporting the leading Republican candidate, Donald J. Trump, and chanted, 'Go home!'" ...
... CW: This is pretty sad, as Clinton, to the best of my knowledge, is the only candidate who has a specific plan to help people who lose dirty-energy jobs. It didn't help her, of course, when she boasted in March, that "We're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business." OR, as contributor Gloria puts it, "Dilemma for [laid-off coal miner]: Vote for someone who has a plan to help transition the communities to a productive, modern economy, and offers a safety net on the way. Or vote for someone who wants to take away your food stamps, healthcare and social security." Sad thing is, a lot of the dimwits will go with Plan GOP. ...
Hillary, Taking Credit Where Little Is Due. Mark Landler of the New York Times: "The Iran nuclear deal, signed last year after months of direct negotiations with Iranian officials, is likely to be remembered as Mr. Obama's most consequential diplomatic achievement. In [Hillary] Clinton's campaign to succeed him, she is claiming her share of the credit for it.... But ... interviews with more than a dozen current and former administration officials paint a portrait of a highly cautious, ambivalent diplomat, less willing than Mr. Obama to take risks to open a dialogue with Iran and increasingly wary of Mr. Kerry's freelance diplomacy.... The secret history of the Iran nuclear diplomacy, parts of which have never been reported before, lays bare stark differences between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama, going back to the 2008 campaign, over how to approach one of America's most intractable foes." -- CW
Steve Peoples & Jill Colvin of the AP: "... Donald Trump has so far ignored vital preparations needed for a quick and effective transition to the general election.... [He] has collected little information about tens of millions of voters he needs to turn out in the fall. He's sent few people to battleground states compared with likely Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, accumulated little if any research on her, and taken no steps to build a network capable of raising the roughly $1 billion needed to run a modern-day general election campaign. [This] leave[s] him with little choice but to rely on his party's establishment allies -- the Republican National Committee, above all.... That's even as he rails against his party's establishment daily as corrupt." -- CW
Shane Goldmacher of Politico: "The New Hampshire Republican Party, under pressure from Donald Trump's supporters, has canceled a controversial planned vote on a slate of delegate committee assignments that would have left Trump's supporters off all the influential committees at the national convention in July." -- CW
Surrogates Say the Darndest Things. If Donald Trump is going to win the general election, he's going to have to prove to the public that he's not Adolf Hitler, which is going to be easy for him to do. If Hillary Clinton is going to win the nomination, she's going to have to prove that she's not Hillary Clinton. That's going to be much harder to do. -- John Phillips, a radio host & Trump surrogate -- CW
Binyamin Appelbaum of the New York Times: "A range of experts agree that "Donald Trump's proposed punitive actions against the U.S.'s trading partners "are more likely to deepen [trade] problems, particularly if China or other targeted nations retaliate, rather than accept his demands. Starting a trade war might be cathartic for workers who have lost jobs, but it is unlikely to create a lot of factory work.... The removal of trade barriers has played a significant role in reducing global poverty and encouraging peace between nations, achievements that could be eroded by tit-for-tat backsliding." -- CW
Charles Pierce writes about what Donald Trump means to his supporters & suggests Trump doesn't get that. CW: It sure gave me that old fascist feeling. (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... AND, tho Pierce had something nice to say about Chuck Todd, I guess he missed the segment Driftglass illuminates. It sounds like one of those teevee-smashing moments, especially when you realize that folks out in the Heartland are nodding along with the Muzak. -- CW (Also linked yesterday.)
E.J. Dionne: "... a phony celebrity populism plays well on television at a time when politics and governing are regularly trashed by those who claim both as their calling. Politicians who don't want to play their assigned roles make it easy for a role-player to look like the real thing and for a billionaire who flies around on his own plane to look like a populist." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Jon Lee Anderson of the New Yorker: Like Donald Trump, Ronald Reagan was a cartoonish entertainer, but Trump is no Reagan. "As with his threats about the wall on the U.S.-Mexican border, Trump's main foreign-policy position seems to be about making other countries pay for things.... Thirty years after Reagan dared his greatest adversary to tear down the Berlin Wall, we have Trump boisterously claiming he wants to build a new one, not to keep out Communists, or even the ISIS terrorists he mysteriously claims to know how to eliminate, but people from Mexico, our closest neighbor to the south, a friendly nation, and one on which we rely for a significant percentage of our labor market, as well as our imported oil. If this is not a downsizing of history, then what is?" -- CW
Greg Sargent on why Trump will not be cake-walking to the White House, as he says he will. -- CW
Dana Milbank: "... if [Carly] Fiorina picked investments the way she picked her candidate, you can see why HP stopped requiring her services. She bought Cruz at the peak, when polls showed him close in Indiana. But an NBC-Wall Street Journal poll Sunday found [Donald] Trump up 15 points. And now Cruz and Fiorina have to explain all those [nasty] things she used to say about him.... Cruz now also has to defend Fiorina's record at HP, where she let go thousands and sent jobs to India and China." -- CW ...
... CW: This was weird. Immediately after introducing Ted Cruz & family at an Indiana rally, Carly Fiorina fell off the stage. Boom! Heidi Cruz saw her fall & started to help her, but then decided it was better to wave to the crowd. Ted ignored Carly altogether. For a guy who claims to be such a big fan of "The Princess Bride," Ted is more the evil Prince Humperdinck that noble Westley. Not, of course, that Carly is any Princess Buttercup. (Come to think of it, Carly is more like actor Robin Wright's current character, the scheming Claire Underwood.):
... Lauren Fox of TPM: "'She fell off the stage the other day, did anybody see that? And Cruz didn't do anything. Even I would have helped her, okay?' Trump said on the stump Monday in Indiana. Trump kept criticizing Cruz, calling it the 'weirdest thing.' 'They just showed it to me coming in.... I said, "wow, that's really cruel,'" Trump said. 'She just went down. She went down a long way, right? And she went down right in front of him and he was talking, he kept talking.'" -- CW
A Vote for anyone other than Cruz is evil. ABC News: "Urging voters to pick him over rival and Republican front-runner Donald Trump, presidential candidate Ted Cruz framed the battle to win the Indiana primary as a choice between good and evil. 'I believe in the people of the Hoosier state. I believe that the men and women gathered here and the goodness of the American people, that we will not give into evil but we will remember who we are and we will stand for our values,' Cruz said at a rally in La Porte, Indiana"-- Akhilleus (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
I implore, I exhort every member of the Body of Christ to vote according to the word of God, and vote for the candidate that stands on the word of God and on the Constitution of the United States of America. And I am convinced that man is my son, Ted Cruz. The alternative could be the destruction of America. -- Rafael Cruz (The Body of Christ is apparently the creepy name of a Christian sect or denomination. -- CW) ...
... In response, Trump accused Rafael Cruz of being an associate of JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. CW: And, no, I didn't make that up. Here's Snopes on the veracity of Trump's claim. This might be a good time to retire your complaints about how the Democratic candidates are criticizing each other. ...
... Brendan O'Connor of Gawker has more, including video of the supposed "Rafael Cruz," who -- according to Snopes -- wasn't living in the Dallas area at the time. -- CW
Dave Weigel of the Washington Post: At a rally in Indiana Sunday, Ted Cruz suggested a 12-year-old heckler needed a spanking.: "'You know, in my household, when a child behaves that way, they get a spanking,' said Cruz." ...
... CW: Ted seems kinda invested in spanking his daughters -- and others. In January, he "said voters 'have a way of administering a spanking,' [to Hillary Clinton] similar to how he spanks his 5-year-old daughter."
Senate Races
Katie Zezima of the Washington Post: "... an advertisement in Arkansas' Senate race is a preview of how Democrats are likely to tie Republican opponents who support Trump's candidacy to incendiary remarks [Donald Trump] has made in the past":
Seung Min Kim of Politico: "Democrats are preparing another round of attacks against Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, releasing new poll numbers that show the veteran Iowa senator's favorability ratings are tumbling as he plays a key role in blocking Merrick Garland's nomination to the Supreme Court.... Grassley is still favored to win reelection, despite running in a purple state that President Barack Obama won in both 2008 and 2012." -- CW
Other News & Views
The Absent Congress. Rachel Bade & Colin Wilhelm of Politico: "When Puerto Rico took its first major step toward a catastrophic default on Monday, lawmakers on Capitol Hill -- where Puerto Rican officials looked for help -- were nowhere to be found, having gone home for a one week recess last Friday. The island began defaulting on most of a $422 million debt payment Sunday at midnight, but much bigger problems are just around the corner. Congress has just a handful of weeks to hammer out a legislative fix to save the island from financial ruin ahead of a second default on a $2 billion debt payment due in early July." -- CW
Carl Hulse of the New York Times: "Take ... together [Dennis Hastert's dubious actions as Speaker] with the shocking revelations of sexual abuse of youths placed in the trust of Mr. Hastert, a popular and successful coach, and he emerges as a deeply flawed figure who contributed significantly to the dysfunction that defines Congress today. Even his namesake Hastert rule -- the informal standard that no legislation should be brought to a vote without the support of a majority of the majority -- has come to be seen as a structural barrier to compromise.... His portrait has been removed from the speaker's lobby. But the impact of his reign lingers." ...
... CW: This might be a good place to post a reminder of the homoerotic thrill that comes with contact sports. Love that football pile-on! Wrestling has to be at the top of the thrill list. It was not by accident thatHastert made his mark as a wrestling coach, nor is it an accident that Donald Trump is one of pro wrestling's biggest boosters -- he even has a place in the WWE's Hall of Fame.
Matt Apuzzo of the New York Times: "In a scathing rebuke of [South Dakota]'s health care system, the Justice Department said on Monday that thousands of patients were being held unnecessarily in sterile, highly restrictive group homes. That is discrimination, it said, making South Dakota the latest target of a federal effort to protect the civil rights of people with disabilities and mental illnesses, outlined in a Supreme Court decision 17 years ago." -- CW
Erik Eckholm of the New York Times: "A doctor who performs abortions at a hospital in Washington, D.C., filed a federal civil rights complaint on Monday, charging that the hospital had violated the law by forbidding her, out of concerns for security, to speak publicly in defense of abortion and its role in health care. The doctor, Diane J. Horvath-Cosper, 37, an obstetrician and gynecologist, has in recent years emerged as a public advocate, urging abortion providers not to shrink before threats." -- CW
Voter Suppression Laws Work the Way They're Intended. Michael Wines & Manny Fernandez of the New York Times: "As the general election nears -- in which new or strengthened voter ID laws will be in place in Texas and 14 other states for the first time in a presidential election -- recent academic research indicates that the requirements restrict turnout and disproportionately affect voting by minorities. The laws are also ... reshaping how many campaigns are run -- with candidates not only spending time to secure votes, but also time to ensure those votes can be cast." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Brian Beutler: "The successes of the Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump campaigns have revealed large cross-ideological constituencies that are hostile to existing free trade regimes and suspicious of American military adventurism. They have additionally served as reminders that universal benefit programs, like Medicare and Social Security, are overwhelmingly popular.... [So] why do experienced political journalists so often peer into the heart of whatever they think of as 'real America' and come away with the sense that real America is clamoring for entitlement reform and new trade deals?" Beutler tries to answer the question. -- CW
Beyond the Beltway
Alanna Richer of the AP: "Republican lawmakers in Virginia will file a lawsuit challenging Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe's decision to allow more than 200,000 convicted felons to vote in November, GOP leaders said Monday. Republicans argue the governor has overstepped his constitutional authority with a clear political ploy designed to help the campaign of his friend and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in the important swing state this fall." -- CW
Alan Feuer of the New York Times: Paul "Gatling's exoneration [for a murder for which he served nine years but did not commit] will be the 20th time in the last two years that the [Brooklyn district attorney's] Conviction Review Unit has helped to clear defendants found guilty in Brooklyn of crimes they did not commit.... [Mr. Gatling's request for a review of his case] his request began an inquiry that led investigators into a tale of legal malfeasance...." -- CW
When a "hero" with a gun intervened in a violent domestic dispute in Arlington, Texas, he wound up dead. -- CW
News Ledes
AP: "Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Tuesday that an American serviceman has been killed near Irbil in Iraq. 'It is a combat death,' Carter said at the outset of a news in Stuttgart, Germany where he has been consulting with European allies this week."
New York Times (May 2): "A historic Serbian Orthodox church in Manhattan that plays an important role in New York's Serbian community was gutted by flames on Sunday, just hours after parishioners had filled its pews for Easter services. The New York Fire Department said it received the first report of the blaze at the Serbian Orthodox Cathedral of St. Sava, on West 25th Street between Fifth Avenue and Avenue of the Americas in the Flatiron district, shortly before 7 p.m.... The church, which has served for decades as the backbone of New York's Serbian Orthodox community, was previously known as Trinity Chapel, an Episcopal church that was sold to its current owners in 1943." ...
... CBS/AP: "Investigators in three cities are looking into large fires at Orthodox churches that occurred around the religion's Easter celebrations and caused widespread damage. The blazes in New York City, as well as Melbourne and Sydney in Australia, caused only minor injuries, according to multiple reports."
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Reader Comments (15)
Following Akhilleus' comment regarding punditry and Oligopolists United, I think about whether CU would have been lauded in the decades when labour unions were large, powerful and wealthy. Were labour to have such a voice now, would the Famous Five Men in Black have thought so highly of their concomitant right to purchase speech?
@Gloria: I was thinking exactly the same thing Monday morning. Confederates didn't decide money was speech until they had effectively broken the unions, & the only people who had money/speech were their wealthy buddies.
The right glorifies freeeedom as a way of keeping ordinary people from organizing & of discouraging them from working for the common good. Unions, which require their members to pay dues, are curbing individual freeedoms. You don't want your taxpayer dollars to go to blah people, so end all government programs except military adventurism. (Never mind that more white people receive government benefits than do minorities.) Everything that isn't rugged individualism is socialism or communism.
Marie
Have a good friend in Oregon, a HRC supporter, who has been on Bernie's case for weeks now, while I've stood mostly on the sidelines, telling him from time to time that although Sanders says much that I believe to be true about our economy and the nation's course, I remained cool about his chances, and since all I want is to win the fall election, I didn't think Sanders is the better candidate.
I admit I could have been wrong about who is "better," but now that Sanders has re-defined "contested," I confess I'm beginning to share my friend's anti-Bernie grouch. I don't think he's helping the cause. I fear that by prolonging the party's division, he's instead helping the other side.
Wish I could get inside his head, but I can't. I've heard the words, but they don't seem sufficient. Does anyone have a good take on what is really motivating him?
Backatya, Marie, especially your last point. Which is encompassed in the NYT Coal article linked above. People who have already lost their jobs, need welfare and healthcare from the gubmint, and whose best interests are served by voting D, are cranky with HRC. Beggars belief. The Bo of the article is typical of coal workers - what does he think the crumps will do for him? These dirty, dangerous jobs are both disappearing forever and moving to countries where costs are lower and life is cheaper. I wonder if the kids of the old Welsh coal miners wish they could go down the mines like their forefathers. Transitions are painful, but it's happening anyway.
Dilemma for Bo: Vote for someone who has a plan to help transition the communities to a productive, modern economy, and offers a safety net on the way. Or vote for someone who wants to take away your food stamps, healthcare and social security.
Yo, Ken. Your memory is short. Here's what NBC wrote June 4, 2008, a full month from now in campaign life:
"Clinton told supporters in a rally at Baruch College that she would consult party leaders in coming days on how to move forward, but that, 'I will be making no decisions tonight.'
"'A lot of people are asking, 'What does Hillary want?'" Clinton said. 'I want what I have always fought for: I want the nearly 18 million people who voted for me to be respected and heard.'
"Clinton told the crowd she would consult in the coming days with advisers about the fate of her moribund candidacy."
Hillary eventually conceded, tho not particularly graciously.
Marie
Embedded within the Arlington, TX story of the man who was shot dead while intervening in a domestic fight, is another story I had not seen, in which a concealed-carrier argued with a man over pew rights in church, and shot him dead.
Although it is manifestly true that "people kill people", it is hard not to think that anyone who carries a gun in public is either looking for reasons to use it, or is susceptible to the delusion that he/she is capable of just and effective action because of carrying it. This vigilantism is getting scarier every day.
@Ken: Here is Hillary's concession speech where she not only endorses Obama but urges her followers to make him their president.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHxPHKM6sPE
To understand Bernie's stance listen to Jane. She has been on the tube touting the message, strongly believing her husband will win the nomination. From what I've heard from her, any concession will be hard fought. The overwhelming numbers of people "feelin the Bern"need to be convinced that voting for a democrat in the end is crucial. I have not heard this from Jane who appears to be Bernie's spokesperson.
RE: Carley's fall. Where did she go? How far did she fall? Did anyone help her? I agree, Marie, very weird.
And spanking? Cruz spanks his daughters? In this day and age when we know spanking is one of the worse things you can do to your children. Good heavens, this creep keeps getting creepier as time goes by.
@Patrick: In November 2014, I heard a teenager, whom minutes before I had seen ice-skating on the lake across the road from me, yelling for help. The ice was thin; he had fallen through. It was dark, he was out of view, & by the sound of it, he was several hundred yards from my house. All I could do was call 911 -- the fire & rescue station is right across from the lake -- & shout encouragements to the teen. There was no way I could have bounded out into the night & saved him. As traumatic as it was for the young man -- who managed to pull himself to safety before fire & rescue showed up -- it was terribly unsettling to me to be so helpless.
This morning when I was hunting around for stuff to pack for my trip back to New Hampshire, I came upon a flotation cushion I didn't know I had. "Better pack that," I thought. I decided to buy a sturdy rope, fasten it securely to the cushion & keep the contraption on my front porch. Did I imagine myself being prepared to save the next dopey kid who goes skating alone on thin ice? Yes, I did.
Of course I'm not so stupid as to head for the lake before calling the pros, but the cushion & rope are my back-up plan. Say, maybe there will be a story in the Concord Monitor: "Quick-thinking old woman saves local teen from drowning."
The point is that even people whom some might classify as "normal" or "sensible" have delusions of heroism, even to the point of making preparations to carry them out. My delusions don't happen to involve shooting any bad dudes, but I have at least one, all the same.
The difference between the dead guy -- who as an ex-Marine probably knew his way around a gun -- & me is that I'd call the pros first & play hero second.
Marie
Marie, I do remember 2008 when I was an unabashed Obama supporter. My support for HRC then was, as it is now, tepid. I didn't think then that HRC is a model of gracious behavior and that feeling hasn't changed since then.
Don't think, though, that 2008 is precisely congruent with 2016, so am not applying the same standards this time around. We don't have an almost universally despised sitting President and so far at least no financial meltdown or major terrorist attack to hurtle the voters toward change.
I see this election year as far more fluid than 2008. It's harder than any time in the last forty years to tell who the Republicans are, because they have finally jettisoned rational policy entirely, even on the national security front, and replaced it with the mess of raw emotions that has animated their coalition since Reagan. On the left we are having the long overdue discussion of economics and class the like of which we haven't seen (in my memory) since the 1930's, but since it's so new to most of this generation of voters, I have the sense that other than Sanders' supporters, even many of those supporters in fact, most voters don't know what to think of it.
As a relevant aside, I have heard from local Democratic Party officers (most Sanders adherents themselves) of the frequent loud, rude, ungracious and downright discourteous behavior of Sanders supporters at local and county caucuses. Not all of the emotion is on the Trump side. I don't report this to criticize Sanders, just to point out that the Right doesn't have a monopoly on the irrational. Sanders has succeeded in part by tapping into some of our own.
I see that irrationality as as expression of generalized economic angst whose effects are hard to predict. That unease has moved many toward Trump's tough guy stance (he'll build a wall and put China in its place) and many of the more thoughtful who share some of the same fears toward Bernie. But with HRC's and Trump's negatives, Cruz' outlier status, and Sanders' less than overwhelming support, I don't think any candidate alone can win.
I don't see an effective coalition rising on the Right this year. But the Dems do have the potential to create one. That's what I'm relying on.
As I said, I do want to win, and as PD notes above, Sanders himself and his spokesperson wife are saying too many of the wrong things at this late point of the campaign to forge that coalition.
The Dems can't afford a divided party. That's the source of my angst.
Gloria and Marie,
I did mean to add a bit about the unions to my rant but it was already long, even for me. But the point is an important one and Kinsley, in classic punditocratic fashion, brings it up in order to maintain his status as a "balanced" observer. Oh sure, giant corporations can now unleash unlimited funds to influence any election they choose. But (sniff, sniff) so can unions.
Sure they can. If there are any left.
We are long past the days when George Meany and his cigar decorated the cover of Time magazine, when an AFL-CIO endorsement was a big deal in a presidential campaign, when union support went a long way in any big election.
The other day I watched "The Big Short". A great movie, by the way, if you haven't seen it. I didn't read the book when it came out but it's now on my list. At the end of the film, one of the characters, after the bailout, offers a sadly, all too accurate reminder:
"I have a feeling, in a few years people are going to be doing what they always do when the economy tanks. They will be blaming immigrants and poor people" to which another character adds "Only this time they blamed the teachers too."
And they did. The teacher's union was blamed, by the same Wall Streeters who benefit most from the CU decision, for the crash of the world economy. And they were largely powerless to deflect that attack. So now tell me, Mr. Kinsley, in that instance we had a perfect one on one, a big union and corporate oligarchs going at it, mano a mano. Do you think it was a balanced fight?
Fuck no. But does Michael Kinsley care? More to the point, did the Supreme Court? As Marie pointed out, once unions were largely shunted aside and the only real players were on Wall Street, Little Johnny and the Dwarfs discovered, mirabile dictu! that money was speech! Who knew?
Last night I went back and read through the CU opinions. It seems that the rationale they claimed for the decision to "release the Kraken" was not directly to carve out new rights for those lovely people known as corporations. Nooooo....they would never do such a thing, right? No...the excuse was that letting corporations "speak" through the medium of money, money, money, would enable voters to "hear all sides". So really, the CU decision, according to SCOTUS Confederates, was to "help" the voters make better decisions. And what's more democratic than that, right?
Right.
So here's my question. If Little Johnny and the Dwarfs were so all-fired concerned about voters being able to enjoy democracy and hear all sides and make good decisions and go to the polls to act on those decisions and all that happy horseshit, why is it that they then went out of their way to make sure fewer and fewer of them could actually vote? Because if they did that, if they ensured that as many Americans as possible could vote, and could do it without handing over their first born, jumping through more hoops than a circus lion, and having to walk a gauntlet of armed hooligans when going to exercise their franchise, if they did that, then I wouldn't be so exercised about CU.
Or assholes like Michael Kinsley who think it's just the fucking grandest decision since humans started to walk and talk.
@PD Pepe: Thanks. Clinton's concession speech was indeed much more gracious than I recalled.
Marie
Preparations for thin ice and a political party on same.
Ted Cruz, as impenetrably dim, as always, was surprisingly, if inadvertently, truthful for once:
"We are not a country built on hatred. We are not a country built on anger, built on pettiness. We are not a country built on bullying. We are not a country about selfishness. No country in the world has spilled more blood saving the lives of others than America. We are not a petty, bigoted, angry people. That is not America."
Bullying, selfishness, pettiness, bigotry, anger.
If this isn't the best short list of the qualities that comprise the modern Republican Party, the party that sent this bigoted, selfish, angry, petty bully to the senate and has been considering him as presidential material, I'll sell my Captain Marvel secret decoder ring on E-Bay for thousands less than it's worth.
(And let's not overlook another of Lyin' Ted's many, many lies: "No country in the world has spilled more blood saving the lives of others than America." Wrong, Ted--his guy gets away with murder. He just makes shit up off the top of his head. Accounts of US deaths in all wars since the Revolution put the figure at somewhere around 1.2 million. Conservative estimates of Soviet dead during WWII alone are close to 9 million and perhaps as high as 20.)
Then Cruz went on to ask another stultifyingly stupid question.
"Do we get behind a campaign that is based on yelling, and screaming, and cursing, and insults?"
Dear Ted, have you never been to a Teabagger rally? Ya know, those yelling, screamin, cursing, insulting bags of doucheness who voted you into office?
Doncha just love hearing poor Ted talk about decency and truth and kindness and responsible governance? The guy who shut down the government to make himself famous? The guy who, when he was solicitor general of Texas, went to argue before the Supreme Court for Texas' right to renege on a promise to help improve health care for poor children. The guy who demanded that the Supremes let him execute a paranoid schizophrenic, to whom treatment had been denied, and the guy who demanded that a man who swiped a calculator from Wal Mart be kept in prison for 16 years for a crime that warranted only a two year sentence, so that he could bolster his credentials as a Confederate hard ass.
Oh yeah, and this is also the guy who watched his choice for VP take a fall after announcing his royal tailgunnyness--plummeting right in front of him!-- and did nothing to help her. Watch the tape. It's amazing. He glances at Fiorina on the floor, looks away quickly and keeps shaking hands. He's also the guy who lied to a sick man about health insurance. To his face.
Would this be the guy who would keep a life preserver on his front porch in case a non-observant skater encountered thin ice?
No. Cruz's party is exactly the way he describes it and he's a big part of it. They are self-centered, egotistical, paranoid, bullying, hateful, and resentful of anyone they consider enemies. Cruz, if he did deign to help that kid Marie saw and worried over, like any decent human being, would demand to know his party affiliation first and if he heard "democrat" uttered between spluttering cries for help, would take a seat and watch him drown, because, if nothing else, Cruz is a sadistic bastard.
So it's with great pleasure that I hope to watch his party suffer the same fate and he himself to crash through the ice he and his party have been weakening for a generation.
And all this would come to pass except for Citizens United, a congress full of bug-eyed Confederate ignoramuses whose seats were stolen and now guaranteed by gerrymandering, and a media more concerned with who got kicked off Dancing With the Stars last night.
So I guess the thin ice is for the rest of us. Marie, I hope you have a pile of life preservers and a shitload of rope.
Apologies. The Cruz statement referenced in my comment, above, appears in the organ of the Home for George W. Bush Speechwriters and Neocon Hacks, aka, the Washington Post.
"Would this be the guy who would keep a life preserver on his front porch in case a non-observant skater encountered thin ice?" Akhilleus asks in reference to Cruz. But in reference to the person who actually does keep that life preserver AND rope in case someone else falls in the water, I say, surely you not only prepare for the worst, you are a compassionate human being and we wish there were more like you.
The guy in question above is himself skating on thin ice––he won't drown––people like him come up for air and paddle along to the shore, shoring up more of what makes them operate.We'll see tonight if Indiana buys what he's selling.
The Russian suffering during the two world wars always overwhelms. So I toted up the deaths from a much reviled country, France, from Wikipedia. I know there have been other tragic wars. France suffered about 1.5 million military deaths, and for USA about .5 million. For UK, there were about 1.2 million military deaths. Many countries suffered a much higher percentage of their populations killed than did USA. France suffered about 4% of its population lost in WW1, USA about .1% in WW1 and .3% in WW2, UK about .4% and .8%. Sorry about all the numbers, but I wanted to put things in perspective. So, yes Ak, you are right about that lying sack o' shit.
I occasionally see a T shirt, worn by American tourists: "America - Back to back WW Champions". So offensive on so many levels, to exhibit one's ignorance to the world. The Krazen is no outlier there.
Gov McAuliffe's move to re-enfranchise released felons allows Virginia to join many countries and US states . Why can't Dems just keep reinforcing that they are trying to join the modern world? I hold the view that no citizen should be denied their voting rights.
Before The Krazen came out with his latest attack on trump, I was thinking about the Woman Card, and that HRC could not stand for public office of dog catcher, for the opprobrium she would receive if she had led trump's life. Imagine a female public figure who's slept with as many people, given the Stern interviews, and discussed men as he has women. Talk about playing the Man Card. I hope the Dems, and HRC's campaign in particular is putting some thought into a "Trump Card", because, what a gift! There are so many card playing analogies that HRC needs to hook into in the upcoming general. My imagination goes into overdrive. Perhaps they could get John Oliver thinking about it, he is really good at keeping messages simple and tight. Which the DNC is not.
PS: I know it is childish and petty to satirise people's names. I shall be off to the thinking chair. Again.