The Commentariat -- Nov. 8, 2015
Internal links removed.
Washington Post Editors: The House's transportation bill robs the Federal Reserve's piggy bank. That's a banana-republic move. And Paul Ryan is proud of it.
Who could have guessed this was coming? Maureen Dowd: "I am here, my puzzled readers, to help interpret the latest Oedipal somersaults of our royally messed up Republican royal family. Like many uptight, upper-class families, the Bushes seem oddly unable to directly confront tensions and resentments and talk to each other candidly.... It's remarkable that two presidents who went to war with the same Iraqi dictator can bluntly talk to each other only through a biographer."
Gail Collins: Women running for elective office have to be more qualified & more "likable" than men who run.
Jack Ewing of the New York Times: "Volkswagen is expected to offer cash to the owners of diesel cars in the United States this coming week as it steps up an effort to recover some of the good will it lost after admitting in September that the vehicles were programmed to cheat on emissions tests."
Eric Schmitt & Michael Gordon of the New York Times: "As the United States prepares to intensify airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria, the Arab allies who with great fanfare sent warplanes on the initial missions there a year ago have largely vanished from the campaign.... Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have shifted most of their aircraft to their fight against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. Jordan, reacting to the grisly execution of one of its pilots by the Islamic State, and in a show of solidarity with the Saudis, has also diverted combat flights to Yemen. Jets from Bahrain last struck targets in Syria in February, coalition officials said. Qatar is flying patrols over Syria, but its role has been modest."
Presidential Race
Liar, Liar, Liar, Liar. Michael Barbaro of the New York Times: "Deep disregard for the news media has allowed candidates to duck, dodge and ridicule assertions from outlets they dislike and seek the embrace of those that are inclined to protect them. Today, it seems, truth is in the eyes of the beholder -- and any assertion can be elevated and amplified if yelled loudly enough.... In many ways, Mr. Trump has set the tone for the embroidery: His grandiose and sweeping claims have generated an entirely new category of overstatement in American politics. Several of his statements are so outlandish that they cannot even be disproved.... Mr. Trump, to be sure, utters plenty of refutable claims. (PolitiFact has rated 40 percent of his statements 'false.')"
"Gifted Grifter," Ctd. Kevin Drum on why Ben Carson tells those whoppers: "He needs to exaggerate how violent he was when he was young. And after he finds God, he needs to exaggerate how great everything turned out. This culminates in the absurd story about his psychology class [detailed in Drum's post, in the Wall Street Journal & elsewhere]. No one who's not an evangelical Christian would believe it for a second. But evangelicals hear testimonies like this all the time. They expect testimonies like this, and the more improbable the better. So Carson gives them one.... Not all of Carson's deceptions follow this pattern. But several of them do. And they were far from unnecessary. Carson needed to sell his story to evangelicals, and that required a narrative arc as formulaic as any supermarket romance novel. So he gave them one." CW: It was all a con to sell books; now it's a con to sell himself as POTUS. ...
... That Time I Saved the White Kids. Emma Margolin of MSNBC: "As Republican presidential front-runner Dr. Ben Carson plays defense on accounts that he was offered a full scholarship to West Point and had been a youth so troubled that he once tried to stab a friend, new reports of biographical inaccuracies are coming to light and threatening to undo the core of his campaign. During the aftermath of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, for example, Carson -- then, a junior at Detroit's Southwestern High -- claims to have heroically protected a few white students from anger-fueled attacks by hiding them in the biology lab, where he worked part time. But The Wall Street Journal could not confirm the account through interviews with a half-dozen of Carson's classmates and his high school physics teacher. All of the students remembered the riot, but none could recall white students hiding in the biology lab." And so forth. ...
... Sarah Posner of Religion Dispatches: "Carson seems certain that using the 'secular progressive' straw man to insulate himself from criticism will work with voters.... It may work with a Republican base conditioned to distrust the media as shills of the left and enemies of religion.... As Ed Kilgore and David Corn have documented, many of Carson's beliefs have long roots in the conspiratorial American right dating back to the Cold War, so he's tapping into a deep well. But as Heather Parton [digby] has repeatedly pointed out, Carson's method of attacking his perceived enemies (even the National Review!) undermines his reputation as a soft-spoken, reliably nice guy, the crucial underpinning of his candidacy." ...
... Dave Weigel ... in defiance of the facts, [Ben] Carson professed ignorance on the debate stage about any 'relationship' with [Mannatech, a snake-oil "dietary supplement" company]. He spent two days following the debate denouncing the questions about Mannatech as 'propaganda.' And his most ardent supporters don't care.... The commercial breaks on talk radio and the sidebars of conservative Web sites brim with products that promise life without diabetes, memory improvement and the elimination of stubborn belly fat. Some companies, like Mannatech, come off as merely overzealous in the promise of what some nutrients can do. Others spin amazing yarns about cures foretold in the Bible or suppressed by the government." Meanwhile big PhARMA & "secular progressives" are "suppress[ing] the truth about medicine." CW: Neither logic nor reason, neither facts nor scientific evidence will stop Doc Ben. He & his followers do not live in the same world I do.
Here's Trump's SNL monologue. CW: Couldn't stand to listen. I'll wait till next week when SNL invites Ole Doc to host. He'll probably tell Bible stories instead of delivering a regular monologue; then appear in a skit where he plays Jeremiah Wright predicting the End Times & condemning Barack Obama to hell; then in another where he plays a grizzled old codger sitting out on his rocker (or off his rocker, whatever) & blowing up at all the liberal lies he's reading in his daily newspaper: climate change, ObamaCare is working, the old folks love their Medicare. I'm pretty sure he could pull it all off & still be standing to smile that creepy benign grin of his at sign-off. Meanwhile, thanks, SNL, for giving the Donald more publicity. He really needed it:
... This seems to be the media critics' a/k/a political reporters', consensus: Michael Barbaro & Emily Palmer of the New York Times: "... it was a stilted and sometimes unfunny performance, suggesting Mr. Trump is most at ease when hosting his own, seemingly never-ending TV show, rather than appearing as a guest host on somebody else's."
Jeremy Peters, et al., of the New York Times: "Newly released credit card statements from the years when Senator Marco Rubio was a young Florida legislator on the fast track to leadership show a pattern of falling behind on payments while mingling personal and political spending, disclosures that reinforce the image of a politician who has long struggled with messy finances, at home and in his career." ...
... Marc Caputo of Politico: "On Saturday, [Marco] Rubio released his 2005 and 2006 [American Express] statements that showed he only spent $65,000 on party business. That's far less than other Republican leaders who succeeded him in the Florida House. And it's just about half of the $117,000 Rubio himself charged on his party credit card after he became Florida House speaker in 2007-08.... Including that previously leaked batch of charges and the $65,000 worth of expenses Rubio disclosed today, he spent a total of $182,000 over the four years he had the card from January 2005 until November 2008. From swank Las Vegas hotel rooms to Disney World conferences to pricey dinners, the charges show the perks of professional politicking as well as the pitfalls encountered by the at-times financially careless young legislator during a boom-time economy." ...
... Michelle Lee of the Washington Post: Rubio's credit card "scandal" isn't much of a scandal.
Callum Borchers of the Washington Post: "Entertainment shows are usually a safe haven for presidential candidates .... That's not exactly how it went for Republican Carly Fiorina on ABC's 'The View' on Friday. Fiorina got major pushback from the show's all-female cast when responding to a question about how she can be both pro-women and anti-abortion rights...." Video segments are embedded in yesterday's Commentariat.
Beyond the Beltway
Laura Vozzella of the Washington Post: "Gov. Terry McAuliffe [D-Va.] intends to make another push for Medicaid expansion despite intense opposition from Republicans, who retained full control of the General Assembly in elections last week.... When asked if his plan involved a new hospital tax, McAuliffe said it was too soon to share details. But he indicated that it would require hospitals to contribute money in some way, which would then be leveraged to bring a larger amount back to the hospitals."
Campbell Robertson of the New York Times:Mississippi Confederates are still loving their Confederate state flag.
News Lede
New York Times: "After five decades of military rule and a series of rigged or canceled elections, voters in Myanmar took part in what many described as their first genuine election."
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Reader Comments (7)
Here's a piece in the NYT today by my good friend, Ann Altman, on the Holocaust and her parent's suicide.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/11/07/casualties-of-war/?ref=todayspaper&_r=0
I am looking forward to Paul Ryan's nemesis Paul Krugman's take on the "flim-flam" man's transportation bill ("my way or the high way"). And why can't we raise the gas tax?–– since gas is cheap now and will be for some time (or so I've read) why not raise it.
Re: women who run for office need to be more qualified than their male counterpart: you bet your bippy, sweeties, cuz most womens is not cut out for high office given their propensity for empathy, tears, being able to multi task like crazy, and having had to deal with those male counterparts that aren't half as smart as they are. There was a time when all those womens were relegated to the back of the bus to hand out cupcakes and coffee––(I once heard a man refer to his wife as "cuppy-cakes) –-so yeah, wees comes a long way, but boy, oh, boy do we still have so much to prove. We have some very talented and intelligent women now in Congress and I'm hoping in the future we will see more of them run for the Presidency and by then it will be a regular procedure––six women candidates standing next to the men whose number perhaps has reduced to two.
And watching another VIEW (above) with Carly via screen shot (who won't shut up once she gets talking) was much more gratifying than yesterday's. Joy B. is not to be fucked with. However, concentration just on anti-abortion ––-Carly not wanting to fund Planned Parenthood –-is only one of the issues–-the former is certainly the GOP message but the latter is something women who care for women's health would not do, I would think. Carly has also said she is not for paid family leave––how is that being pro-women--pro family as Carly proposes she is.
Want to know what is really wrong with America? NJ has the statistic.
20.8% of voters went to vote last week. A record low.
Marvin,
It's always a good question whether low voter turnouts are due to apathy, ignorance, or disgust with the ballot choices. One proposal is to require all ballots to include "none of the above". If "none" receives the majority of votes cast, the election must be held again with none of the losing candidates permitted to be on the ballot.
Pop over to Huff-Post today and take a peek at the front page photos of eight candidates: Bad photos of all but Carly and Ben––HELLO! Who in hell picked these?
D.C.Clark, it's apathy and ignorance because another poll showed that about 3/4 of voters did not even know the NJ Assembly was up for election. In summary, most 'voters' pay no attention at all.
In America we spend our time keeping up with the Kardashians.
BTW I have to admit I don't understand the new life. I spend 2-3hrs twice a week walking around NYC. Sometimes I am the only one on the street looking at the street. Everyone else is looking at their Iphone.
@Marvin Schwalb:
I know exactly what you mean. Pardon me for sounding like Old Mrs. McCrotchety, but I think people are way too tied to their phones, & that includes old codgers like me. Whenever I go into a nice restaurant, I marvel at the couples, many of them my age, who sit together at a table but never speak to each other or enjoy their meals. Instead both are on the phone, each speaking to a different person. And it isn't a momentary thing; they engage in long conversations about nothing.
The other day I took a friend to lunch because it was his birthday. During the course of the meal, he took at least seven phone calls, only one of which was from someone he really cared about. & that call was not even slightly urgent. Even when he & I were talking, he'd have to look up things on his iPhone related to what we were discussing. Google & other strangers were my lunch guests. I'll go out to lunch or dinner with my friend again, but I'll be damned if I'm going to make it a threesome with his phone. Let's live in the moment sometimes, people.
Marie