The Commentariat -- May 9, 2016
This is starting out to be a Slow Gnus day:
Presidential Race
George Skelton of the Los Angeles Times: "Bernie Sanders wants everyone to be offered a tuition-free college education and he's called crazy. America can't afford it, naysayers scoff.... But too many of us in California forget: This state did provide tuition-free college for generations. That helped California achieve greatness by broadening the middle class and providing opportunities for upward mobility not available in other states.... Now [California tuition is] ridiculous: roughly $14,500 at UC and $6,800 at the state universities.... To paraphrase Robert F. Kennedy, Sanders dreams of things the way they were -- at least in California -- and asks why not again? Actually, there's no good reason." -- CW
Ed Rendell Wishes to Remind You that Philadelphia Is a Stone's Throw from New Jersey & He Can Be Just as Rude as Chris Christie. Harper Neidig of the Hill: Ed Rendell, "the chairman of the Philadelphia 2016 Host Committee for this summer's Democratic National Convention said supporters of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders have to 'behave themselves' [and 'not cause trouble'] when the Vermont senator loses the nomination." -- CW
Desperately Seeking a "47-Percent" Moment. Jonathan Swan of the Hill: "Republican operatives are scouring the country for transcripts, notes or secret recordings of Hillary Clinton's paid speeches to Goldman Sachs in hopes of finding damaging material for the general election. Clinton has rebuffed calls from Bernie Sanders to release the transcripts of her three speeches to the Wall Street giant, which she delivered in 2013 to the tune of $225,000 per appearance. She has repeatedly said she will release the transcripts of her paid speeches when all the presidential candidates agree to do so." -- CW
CW: I suppose it bears repeating, since we are unlikely to hear much about this in the general election: both Hillary Clinton & Donald Trump use "tax havens" to protect themselves from paying taxes at the rate many of us do. Clinton has often suggested closing various tax loopholes, but she has never made any effort to do so; Trump is, of course, all over the place on this subject, but it is hard to believe he would ever move to normalize taxes for rich individuals & corporations. Nomi Prins, of TomDispatch, republished in Salon, reports.
Enough About You, Let's Talk About Donald! John Dickerson on CBS' Face the Nation had a sit down with Hillary Clinton that aired on Sunday: Joe Concha of Mediaite, this interview "...was not only profoundly disappointing, but even disgraceful.... particularly for someone as seasoned as the 47-year-old CBS political director and host. Never have there been so many questions to a presumptive presidential nominee that were so unfocused, so tilted, so teed-up, so non-probing than whatever that was Dickerson served up.... Eight of the first nine questions weren't about her. They targeted her competition instead. Not one policy question or clarification was asked." -- Akhilleus
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. The headline on the front page of today's WashPo is "Clinton's Wonky Plan for U.S. Contrasts with Rivals' Grand Ideas." On the story page itself "Grand" becomes "Grandiose," which is a slightly more fair characterization of Trump's "ideas," if not Sanders'. The story itself, by David Fahrenthold, comes off as critical of Clinton, IMO, for having actual plans as opposed to Trump's ever-altering "ideas." -- CW
Daffy or Demented? Alan Yuhas of the Guardian: "Donald Trump has called for the elimination of the federal minimum wage, as he retreated from primary promises and once again refused to release his tax returns because of 'a link' to an audit.... [Trump] repeatedly said he would support a higher minimum wage, a reversal from his position when he had conservative opponents. But he insisted on Sunday that states should decide such wages.... He said he hoped to release the returns before the general election, but would not pledge to do so." -- CW
Liar or Demented? Evelyn Rupert of the Hill: "Donald Trump threw a new claim Hillary Clinton's way at a Saturday rally, telling the crowd that the Democratic front-runner wants to do away with the Second Amendment."CW: Trump is probably unaware that a president can't just "abolish" a Constitutional Amendment. In fact, I have little doubt that President Trump would "abolish" -- and ignore -- every part of the Constitution that didn't suit him. That's what dictators do.
Demented! Glenn Thrush of Politico: "Mark Salter, the most prominent and most defiant Republican to announce his support of Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, thinks the 2016 campaign could literally -- no joke -- drive the billionaire developer insane.... 'He's going to lose, and I think he's got kind of an unstable personality to begin with,' Salter told me last week.... 'I think he could come apart, you know, in some kind of visible way,' ... Salter said. 'I think that's quite possible.... I'm not a psychiatrist, but there is something wrong with [the] guy.'" -- CW
Paul Krugman: "Truly, Donald Trump knows nothing. He is more ignorant about policy than you can possibly imagine, even when you take into account the fact that he is more ignorant than you can possibly imagine. But his ignorance isn't as unique as it may seem: In many ways, he's just doing a clumsy job of channeling nonsense widely popular in his party, and to some extent in the chattering classes more generally."
Greg Sargent: "There's a lot of chatter out there to the effect that Donald Trump is shifting his stances on taxing the rich and on the minimum wage. He's moderating his positions for the general election! He's going to get to Hillary Clinton's left on economic issues! The only problem with this reading -- which is based largely on what Trump said on the Sunday shows yesterday -- is that it didn't actually happen.... Given that his plan cuts [upper-income] taxes dramatically, this supposed 'openness' to a shift is meaningless.... Trump is not proposing to raise taxes on the rich." -- CW
Rebecca Savransky of the Hill: "More than 50 veterans released a statement Sunday calling on presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump to show respect for the country's veterans and donate the millions of dollars he allegedly raised during a fundraiser several months ago.... Earlier this year, Trump skipped the seventh Republican presidential debate over disagreements with the host network, Fox News. Instead, he held a fundraiser for raise money for military veterans. A report in March said Trump had donated less than half of the $6 million he raised for military veterans during the late January fundraiser. About $3 million was given to 24 charities the presumptive nominee chose, according to the report." -- CW
Jake Tapper of CNN: "Top officials of the Cruz campaign are convinced there is one specific step that could have stopped Trump -- [a Cruz-Rubio ticket --] and they blame Sen. Marco Rubio for not taking that step." CW: So this is the Cruz team saying, "Carly Fiorina, you're no Marco Rubio."
Sycophancy Works! Russell Berman of The Atlantic: Donald Trump on Monday made perhaps the most important hire of his presidential campaign to date, choosing Chris Christie to lead his transition team if he wins the White House in November. -- Akhilleus ...
... Akhilleus: Berman goes on to assert that Christie appears to be operating "...pretty independently from the campaign." But then reports that "A Trump spokeswoman directed questions about his role to Christie's gubernatorial office, which promptly referred those queries back to Trump's campaign." Errr....doesn't sound all that independent. It's also worth noting that the last Confederate to run a White House transition team was Dick Cheney.
Other News & Views
Beyond the Beltway
Jenn Abelson, et al., of the Boston Globe: "... a growing number of former students at New England private schools ... are breaking their silence about sexual abuse by staffers. They are emboldened by a cascade of recent revelations about cases -- many of them decades old -- that were often ignored or covered up when first reported, and that school administrators still struggle to handle appropriately today." This is a long, investigative piece. -- CW
Science or Sciencey? John Oliver, reviewed in Salon, expounds on the danger of sciencey sounding studies that purport to offer serious information to the public. "'Not all scientific studies are equal..Some may appear in less-than-legitimate scientific journals. And others may be subtly biased because of scientists feeling pressure to come up with eye-catching positive results.'" As a case in point, the Salon article highlights advice provided by NBC Today Show personality, Al Roker. "I think the way to live your life is you find the study that sounds best to you and you go with that." -- Akhilleus
Akhilleus: Of course I get all my health advice from Al Roker. Just another example of the astonishingly irresponsible bullshit passed on by TV personalities. "Find the study that sounds best and go with it". What if the study suggested that hunkering over a highway overpass with a rifle and shooting at passing cars was a good way to relieve tension? Morons.
Way Beyond
Alison Smale of the New York Times: "Austria's chancellor [Werner Faymann] resigned abruptly on Monday after nearly eight years in office, throwing his country into deeper political uncertainty after a first round of presidential elections last month in which the two governing establishment parties failed to muster even a quarter of the popular vote. The resignation occurred amid a rightward shift in Austrian politics, fueled by anxieties over the migration crisis." CW: Not a good sign, is it?
** Roger Cohen of the New York Times: "In his victory, a triumph over the slurs that tried to tie him to Islamist extremism, [London Mayor-Elect Sadiq] Khan stood up for openness against isolationism, integration against confrontation, opportunity for all against racism and misogyny. He was the anti-Trump.... Sadiq Khan's victory is reassuring because he represents currents in the world -- toward global identity and integration -- that will prove stronger over time than the tribalism and nativism of Trump." -- CW ...
... Juan Cole: "The press is declaring Sadiq Khan, victor in the electoral contest for mayor of London, the 'first Muslim mayor of a major European city.' They mean of course, something like 'the first Muslim mayor of a really big Western European city in the modern period (say the past two centuries).'... Islam is a major European religion and is a nearly 1300 year old tradition there." -- CW
Jonathan Kaiman & Sunshine de Leon of the Los Angeles Times: "Filipinos flocked to polling stations Monday to elect their 16th president in one of the most closely watched and emotionally charged elections in recent memory.... The presidential race has a clear front-runner: Rodrigo Duterte, 71, a tough-talking city mayor from the country's south.... Critics have raised concerns about his many profane comments and his alleged human rights violations. Duterte has joked about rape and infidelity, and promised to clean up crime by killing thousands of criminals and dumping their bodies in Manila Bay." CW: Sound familiar?
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Reader Comments (12)
I believe that we make a mistake when we allow incremental steps towards extremism to pass. I understand the pressures on the members of the EU to succumb to Turkish belligerence and ignore Erdogan's descent into cronyism (the new PM may well be his son-in-law), sectarianism, and dictatorship. I realise the price several European countries would have to pay is very, very high. The world, not just the EU, needs to work to ameliorate the refugee crisis. If we learn anything from history, we see that we all pay a high price in the end. I have spent time in Turkey, and am distressed to see Ataturk's remarkable legacy being destroyed in this, I believe, geopolitically pivotal country.
@Gloria: Right you are. I wanted to learn what Obama & Erdogan talked about in their scheduled meeting earlier this month & couldn't find a thing. I just discovered the meeting was cancelled after Erdogan ousted Turkey's prime minister. Not clear who did the cancelling.
Marie
Marie, The White House I believe. President Erdogan was rescheduled with VP Joe Biden.
Arbitror
(A few observations)
A couple of tidbits in yesterdays RC caught my attention but only now have I the time to jot them down.
First--and the multiple, criss-crossing layers of hypocrisy, ignorance, ineptitude, and sanctimony of the current goings on in Wingerville, each demanding its own barbative pasquinade, would require a socio-political geologist to parse their lineation, making the term "first" woefully inadequate--there is a pronouncement from the Trumpistas that Paul Ryan is not up to the job of being Speaker of the House as long as he is unwilling to scrape and bow before Herr Drumpf. Where to start with that one?
Well, I'll forgo the opportunity to piñata-tize Donaldo. Plenty of chances for that. Let's talk about Lyin' Ryan, for just a sec. Is Ryan a fraud? A Speaker manqué? Hell, a US Rep manqué? Of course he is. This jerk, who presents himself to the media as a Very Serious Person, couldn't create a workable budget for a household of one supported by Social Security checks. (Yeah, the same Social Security that put him where he is today). But he's just the latest in a long line of frighteningly horrible Confederate speakers. A reminder:
Ryan: fraud and liar
Boehner: drunken coward
Hastert: child molester
Gingrich: serial adulterer, hypocrite, fabulist, and nihilistic bomb thrower
And if Trump supporters in the House force Ryan out? Who's next? Betcha can't even come up with one name, can you? And that's the problem. The Republican contingent is so painfully bereft of anyone who knows shit about anything that a lying fraud is the best they can do. And this is across the board, everywhere. Confederates have succeeded in ridding the party of anyone with a brain, a heart, and courage. At least the lion, the tinman, and the scarecrow had two out of three.
Moving on...
Laugh? I thought I'd die. KKK whiners (sadface with hood) are crying because people are portraying them as racists. Boo-hoo-hoo, white boys. Isn't this a little like jackals complaining because evolutionary biologists classify them as scavengers? The racism, for the KKK, is what Kant would have called "ding an sich", his famous noumenon, the thing in itself. The absolute, final essence of a thing.
So there. Go argue with Kant. Put your metaphysical hoods on and good luck with that shit.
What else? Oh yeah. So this morning, NPR is doing their Monday morning politics thing and I hear some lamebrain cracking on about how Trump is showing a "new way" and really giving it to the establishment and connecting with real people. Any mention of racism. hatred, misogyny, idiocy? Nope. Then I hear who it is. Tucker Carlson.
Tucker fucking Carlson? Really? NPR couldn't find anyone else? Someone who isn't a world class asshole?
Probably not. Like the Paul Ryan conundrum, there just are not many options when you're talking about Wingerville. People who don't drink the Kool Aid have been shown the road out of town.
But having this puerile popinjay on to talk about what a fabulously great guy Trump is continues the now vital media job of domesticating and normalizing Trump, making him seem like a good dog who won't crap on the kitchen floor, hump Aunt Ginny's leg, then pee on your vintage opera records.
Any day now, we'll see Trump being praised for his kinder, gentler nature and Clinton pilloried as (as Marie once put it) the mean old lady down the street who'll stuff your kids in the oven if she catches them in her yard.
Fuck the Poor, pt. 324
Marketplace Morning Report today provided a brief look at the effects of welfare "reform" 20 years down the road.
According the report, and contrary to the narrative still being sold with immense success by Confederates, that millions of moochers are living a life of luxury by sticking it to the rest of us, life is not a bed of roses next to the hammock for the poor. The fact? It is much harder to receive assistance these days, to the extent that only three out of ten households under the poverty line are on welfare. The rest are left hanging out to dry. Why? Punishment. Punishment for being poor, being black, not being born into the right kind of family, or being Democrats.
Assistance today comes with a wealth of preconditions and attachments to the program, requirements added on by wingers to aid in the proselytizing for Confederate ideology, abstinence, promoting Republican ideals for marriage, and helping wingers patch up state budget problems. In addition, Confederates have been wildly successful at achieving two intertwined goals that guarantee the replication of the cycle of poverty, but without any state involvement. First, the work requirement that demands that welfare recipients have a job, any kind of a job, but at the same time, ending re-training and education programs designed to help welfare recipients get better paying jobs.
The reasons? Hatred of recipients of state assistance and punishment for having the temerity to need help getting going in their lives, bolstered by the assurance, heard daily on Fox and repeated by every winger pol worth their KKK hood, that poors are moochers, destroying the country.
Unlike deserving types, however, like Paul Ryan. This is why Scott Walker is working overtime to make sure he fucks the poor as much and as often as he can.
And make no mistake about it, ask any winger if he or she is happy that seven families under the poverty line can no longer receive any help from state.
You know the answer. And these people will all be lining up to vote for Trump.
I'm all for supporting wounded service members, and I think that bringing them together through sport is a very positive cause, but I really don't feel comfortable at all with the idea of "promoting" the games with a bomb-dropping "boom". Firstly, it was those real-life explosions that wounded the service members in the first place. I can't speak from experience but I do recall a family friend who had his leg ripped up by a land mine in Vietnam and didn't want to discuss it nor be around any type of loud bangs because of the recurring images. Seems quite insensitive to me.
Secondly, it comes across IMO as distasteful and disrespectful to have Western heads of state essentially "joking" about dropping bombs on others. Those bombs have real consequences and shouldn't enter into such high levels of discourse being used as a laughing matter.
I'm a political realist and realize that military means can become inevitable, yet I'm a bigger believer in diplomacy and soft power mechanisms. Pushing back against sterilizing military use should be constant.
@safari: Point well-taken. In fact, I hadn't even thought of it myself. But Boom! means Boom!
Marie
@safari-
..." I'm a bigger believer in diplomacy and soft power mechanisms. Pushing back against sterilizing military use should be constant."
Thanks for this! What a perfect way to conceptualize and describe realistic peaceful beliefs!
@safari: What games? What story or article is your comment directed at? I'm obviously obtuse, but I've scrolled today's Commentariat several times and haven't found a piece about wounded warriors that would tell me more.
@ MAG
Play the 2 videos right after the "Other News and Views" heading
@safari: Doh! now I get it! You are right, the promotional aspect using 'boom' is tone deaf.
Agggggh! even worse, my unintended seeming pun-like two words at the end. Didn't mean it like that! Will go and remove foot from mouth now...