The Commentariat -- June 11, 2014

CW: Sorry, lost my Internet connection (I'm sitting in the parking lot of a local resort), so I probably won't be doing any more till this evening.

Congressional Races

God acted through people on my behalf. -- David Brat, to Fox "News," after defeating House Majority Leader Eric Cantor

God hates Mexicans. -- CW Translation

Holy Shit! Robert Costa of the Washington Post: " In a stunning upset propelled by tea party activists, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) was defeated in Tuesday’s congressional primary, with insurgent David Brat delivering an unpredicted and devastating loss to the second most powerful Republican in the House who has widely been touted as a future speaker." The New York Times story, by Jonathan Martin, is here. ...

... Ha Ha. Here's a WashPo story, posted by Sean Sullivan at 5:09 pm ET Tuesday: "A poll conducted late last month for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) shows him with a wide lead over challenger David Brat heading toward next Tuesday's Republican primary election. The poll, shared with Post Politics, shows Cantor with a 62 percent to 28 percent lead over Brat, an economics professor running to Cantor's right. Eleven percent say they are undecided." ...

... Nate Cohn, the New York Times' political statistician, can't explain how Cantor lost. "Mr. Cantor's loss is not likely to endanger the Republican hold on his district. Mitt Romney won the district by 15 points last November, and it is not at all apparent that Mr. Brat is the sort of fatally flawed candidate who could lose such a Republican district. After all, he defeated Mr. Cantor." ...

... Jonathan Chait: Brat teaches economics at Randolph-Macon college, and won a $500,000 fellowship funded by libertarian banking millionaire John Allison to spread the word of Ayn Rand to impressionable college students.... Brat was outraised by Cantor twenty-five to one.... The biggest issue by far was immigration reform. Cantor was no reformer, really. He rejected the bipartisan immigration reform deal that Marco Rubio and other Republicans had negotiated in the Senate. But he did hope to salvage some partial compromise.... Brat rejected even that. Any token of conciliation was too much.... Cantor went out the way he carried himself throughout his career: making comically disingenuous attacks.... Cantor was, finally, Cantor'd. He will not be missed." ...

... Joan Walsh of Salon: Cantor "is the first majority leader in history to lose in a primary in his own party since 1899. This is a huge victory for anti-immigration extremists, including Ann Coulter, Matt Drudge, Laura Ingraham and Mickey Kaus.... I it couldn't happen to a more deserving guy. Cantor is another conscience-free Republican leader who courted the Tea Party when it seemed politically advantageous and then tried to run from it when it was clear it was going to bite him in the ass.... [Cantor's defeat] of course means there will be no immigration reform at any time in the foreseeable future." ...

... John Judis of the New Republic: "Dave Brat's victory over House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has been widely attributed to Bart's [sic.] opposition to immigration reform. But in his campaign, Brat and his Tea Party backers gave equal weight to denouncing Cantor as a tool of Wall Street, the big banks, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable. Brat's campaign reflected an old strain of rightwing populism that continues to be an important part of our politics." Thanks to P. D. Pepe for the link. ...

... CW: Either way you look at it, I think what you see in Southern Republicans -- and these voters from Richmond & the D.C. exurbs are not backwoods bozos -- is out-and-out racism &/or religious bigotry. They voted for Brat because they don't want those Mexican/Catholic (tho many Central American immigrants are evangelicals) "illegals" in this country, AND/OR they have stereotyped Cantor -- the only Jewish Republican in Congress -- as a "Wall Street Jew." I don't deny that Cantor is thick with the moneylenders, but he is no more a tool of Wall Street & the big banks than are many (a majority??) of his fellow MOCs. Dave 'Mudcat' Saunders, a Virginia Democratic strategist, said Cantor was unpopular partly because "He was never in the district.... He was out gallivanting all over the country being a big deal and this is a lesson." One of the places Cantor "went out gallivanting" -- twice -- was on the annual Civil Rights Pilgrimmage organized by John Lewis, part of the purpose of which is to restore the Voting Rights Act. Cantor's participation -- and his promise to work with Lewis on the VRA -- received a lot of press. To recast a Tea Party "joke" Judis reports, "A politician, a Jew, and a civil rights activist walk into a bar, and you now what the bartender said? Good evening, Mr. Majority Leader."

... If You Think Cantor Is Bad ... Jim Dalrymple & Gideon Resnick of BuzzFeed: "... Meet the guy who beat" him. ...

... Al Hunt of Bloomberg: "... the remaining four months of this session will be dominated by internal jockeying for leadership posts among the majority House Republicans.... Emboldened by the shocking Cantor upset, the Tea Party caucus almost certainly will demand one of the top three leadership posts for one of their own."

Lindsey Graham has won the South Carolina Senate primary. One of seven candidates, Graham has a lead of 59.5 percent, with about half the precincts reporting. If his lead holds at above 50 percent, he will have avoided a runoff.

Ben Giles of the Arizona Capitol Times: "Cesar Chavez, formerly GOP candidate Scott Fistler, is making a blatant attempt to confuse and mislead voters in Arizona's 7^th Congressional District and should be tossed off the Democratic primary ballot, according to a challenge to Chavez's candidacy filed Tuesday. The challenge alleges that Chavez, who changed his name in December and his party affiliation in April following two unsuccessful bids for elected office as a Republican, did so in an effort to interfere with the CD7 election by confusing voters.... Attorney Jim Barton ... filed the challenge on behalf of strong> Alejandro Chavez, the grandson of the Hispanic labor icon Cesar Chavez." Via Catherine Thompson of TPM.

Bradley Clapper of the AP: "Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel will face angry lawmakers as he becomes the first Obama administration official to testify publicly about controversial prisoner swap with the Taliban. Hagel was scheduled to appear Wednesday before the House Armed Services Committee, which is investigating the deal that secured the end of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl's five-year captivity. In exchange, the U.S. transferred five high-level detainees from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the Gulf emirate of Qatar."

Jessica Pressler of New York: Robert Benmosche, the colorful, self-described 'in-your-face' CEO that brought insurance company AIG back from the brink of collapse (with a heavy assist from the Treasury, the Federal Reserve, and of course the American taxpayer), has announced his retirement.... The CEO threatened to resign multiple times after the government, in their parsimony, gave him a hard time for vacationing at his Croatian villa two weeks after taking the high-profile job, the size of his salary and his insistence on taking a private flight to a family affair on the taxpayers' dime. 'I'm going to go and see my granddaughter, and I'm going to take that plane and shove it up your fucking ass,' Benmosche recalled he told the Treasury when interviewed by New York in 2012." CW: What a lovely, civic-minded person.

Beyond the Beltway

Trip Gabriel of the New York Times: Virginia "Gov. Terry McAuliffe has lost his battle with the legislature over Medicaid expansion, an enormous retreat from the high expectations he set for a liberal agenda. However, he is thought to be studying how to press the issue by executive action -- a legally and politically uncertain course.

The Commentariat -- June 10, 2014

Internal links removed.

Josh Hicks of the Washington Post: "The Department of Veterans Affairs on Monday shed light on the depth of the VA scheduling scandal and substantiated claims that rank-and-file employees were directed to manipulate records. The agency said more than 57,000 new patients have waited at least 90 days for their first appointments and that about 13 percent of VA schedulers indicated they were told to falsify appointment-request dates to give the impression that wait times were shorter than they really were. The information comes from the agency' s internal audit of 731 VA medical centers, which the VA released Monday." ...

... Thomas Burton of the Wall Street Journal: "The Department of Veterans Affairs stopped sending teams of turnaround experts to underperforming hospitals at the same time a growing number of VA facilities showed consistently high death and complication rates, internal agency records and interviews reveal.... Current and former VA doctors say the lag in scrutiny came at a time of turmoil when top managers of the agency, some of whom since have been ousted, played down the utility of measuring specific medical outcomes." CW: The article is firewalled. To access it, if you're not a WSJ subscriber, copy & paste a portion of the lede sentence into Google or another search engine. ...

... Stacy Kaper of the National Journal: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid vowed Monday to take action imminently on expected reforms to the Veterans Affairs Department. The legislation, which was agreed to in principle last week, is still being drafted by Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Arizona Republican John McCain. But Reid promised Monday to bring the bill to the floor as soon as it's ready." ...

     ... CW Note: Alex Rogers of Time: Sanders & McCain introduced the bill yesterday. I can't find any other stories on the status of the bill.

Mark Landler of the New York Times: "President Obama signed an executive order on Monday intended to lessen the college loan burden on nearly five million younger Americans by capping repayments at 10 percent of the borrowers' monthly income. Joined by indebted graduates in the East Room of the White House, Mr. Obama said the spiraling cost of higher education had put 'too big a debt load on too many people'":

Ian Lovett of the New York Times profiles the Las Vegas killers, who were antigovernment extremists "along the lines of militia and white supremacists." Here's a key sentence: When the two began shooting up the WalMart, "One man at the checkout area who was carrying a handgun tried to stop Mr. Miller, but did not notice that Ms. Miller was working in concert with her husband; she shot the man dead." CW: This entire episode is about what is wrong with the right wing. ...

... Charles Pierce: "... these two jamokes allegedly marinated themselves in the stew of guns and paranoia that bubbles daily in the conservative media from fringe radio hosts and chain e-mails all the way up to the polite precincts of the National Review Online and the Fox News Channel. That shouldn't surprise us any more. The enabling of dangerous loons and the empowerment by firearms thereof is simply a staple of conservative politics in this country, yet another fetish object, yet another set of conjuring words for the conservative priesthood, which (always) deplores the activity of a few while realizing in its heart of hearts that it has no political future at the moment, no real substantial constituency, without people like this...." Read the whole post. ...

... Paul Waldman in the Washington Post: "... there are some particular features of conservative political rhetoric today that help create an atmosphere in which violence and terrorism can germinate. The most obvious component is the fetishization of firearms and the constant warnings that government will soon be coming to take your guns. But that's only part of it. Just as meaningful is the conspiracy theorizing that became utterly mainstream once Barack Obama took office.... In our recent history, every election of a Democratic president is followed by a rise in conspiracy-obsessed right-wing populism." ...

     ... CW: The difference here is that in the past, few federal officeholders have fully embraced the insanity. Now, there's a large contingent in the House & some in the Senate who are -- or claim to be -- true believers.

... Adam Weinstein of Gawker features some of the Millers' right-wing Facebook remarks & "likes." A commenter notes that Jerad Miller wrote he would rather die than go to a "fema re-education camp." Thank you, Michele Bachmann and Glenn Beck, et al. ...

... BUT if you are a regular reader of Right Wing News, you will already know that these crazed killers were socialists. (They get this insane rationale from the fact that the original Nazi party was officially the Socialist Democratic party [Sozialdemokratische Partei].) So now every super-crazed winger who does bodily harm is a socialist. Just like Obama. This, then, is the way the "respectable people" of Winger World will try to duck responsibility for their anti-government, anti-Obama, gun-worshipping fascism. The capacity for self-delusion is a bottomless pit. Via Rebecca Schoenkopf of Wonkette, via Charles Pierce. ...

     ... UPDATE: ALSO, they were leftists. "... someone waving around a gun yelling 'this is a revolution' is the very definition of a leftist." CW: This claim is equally absurd. See, for instance, J. J. MacNab's May2014 report on the right-wing Sovereign Movement, which she wrote to help explain the Cliven Bundy standoff with the Bureau of Land Management.

Gregory Korte of USA Today: "Public opposition to the exchange of five Taliban prisoners for captive Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl has less to do with Bergdahl himself and more with how President Obama handled the transfer, according to a new USA TODAY/Pew Research Center poll. The poll shows 43% of Americans say it was wrong for Obama to make the deal, compared with 34% who say it was the right thing to do." Those "Republican strategists" (see Helene Cooper remark below) are doing their jobs, & the "liberal media" have dutifully obliged. ...

... Lauren French & John Bresnahan of Politico: "House Republicans came out of a more than hour-long classified briefing by top national security officials on Monday complaining they'd learned nothing new about the incident that has't already been disclosed in the news media. GOP lawmakers, in particular, were upset that an estimated 80 to 90 executive branch officials in the Pentagon, White House and the intelligence agencies, but no members of Congress were informed beforehand, including the chairs of the House and Senate intelligence panels." CW: For why that might be, see Sen. Saxby Chambliss's comments, highlighted in yesterday's Commentariat.

Stupid Congressman of the Week (So Far). Emily Atkin of Think Progress: Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.) argues that humans can't cause climate change because dinosaurs became extinct before people were driving around in cars. CW: As Skeptical Science wrote some while back this argument is, "equivalent to seeing a dead body with a knife sticking out the back, then arguing the death must be natural because people died naturally in the past." Also, Miller in the past has blamed God for climate change. Atkin notes, "Miller's home state of Florida also happens to be one of the places in the United States that is most vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change."

Simon Shuster of Time: "Ukraine's new President Petro Poroshenko wants to see Russia punished for what he calls the 'tragedy' that befell his country this year. But even as Russia has annexed one region of Ukraine and encouraged a violent rebellion in two others, Ukraine does not have the option of breaking off ties with the Kremlin, Poroshenko told Time in his first interview since taking office. His government has no choice but to seek 'an understanding' with Russia, he says, even if for no other reason than the hard reality of Ukraine’s geography."

Ron Fournier of the National Journal claims: "In the 18 months since I began writing columns focused on the presidency, virtually every post critical of Obama has originated from conversations with Democrats. Members of Congress, consultants, pollsters, lobbyists, and executives at think tanks, these Democrats are my Obama-whispers. They respect and admire Obama but believe that his presidency has been damaged by his shortcomings as a leader; his inattention to details of governing; his disengagement from the political process and from the public; his unwillingness to learn on the job; and his failure to surround himself with top-shelf advisers who are willing to challenge their boss as well as their own preconceived notions." ...

     ... CW: I'd be surprised if Fournier had any real Democratic contacts. This just sounds like some nobodies griping & Fournier loving it. The "charges" are pretty vague. As for this being some sort of "news," progressives -- myself included -- & some Democratic officials have been criticizing Obama since the transition.

Helene Cooper, who reported last week on the men in Bowe Bergdahl's unit who came to the Times via "a Republican strategist" to accuse Bergdahl of deserting said the men "had clearly been coached." The original report, by Cooper & others, is here. CW: Nice use of the passive voice there, Helene. Whoevah do you supposed coached the men? Let's see. As Rosie Gray & Kate Nocera of BuzzFeed reported last week, the guy hooking up the soldiers with the media was Richard Grenell, a Crazy John Bolton protoge' & former Romney campaign aide.

CW: It's true that the Washington Post editorial pages serve as a retirement home for ex-Bush aides & other riffraff. Still, isn't it time to retire George Will? In a column last week he complained that "... capacious definitions of sexual assault that can include not only forcible sexual penetration but also nonconsensual touching," and that universities are encouraging women to make false claims of sexual assault by "mak[ing] victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges."

All Hillary All the Time, Ctd.

Alexandra Jaffe of the Hill: "Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton aggressively defended her handling of the 2012 Benghazi attack and declined to offer any evaluation of what, if anything, she would've done differently. 'No,' Clinton said, when asked by ABC's Diane Sawyer if she 'missed the moment' to prevent the attacks."

Alexandra Jaffe: "Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is pushing back on former Defense Secretary Robert Gates' assertion that her opposition to the 2007 Iraq troop surge was politically motivated. 'I think he perhaps either missed the context or the meaning because I did oppose the surge,' Clinton told ABC's Diane Sawyer in an interview that will air Monday night. 'The public had given up,' she added. 'This is not politics in electoral, political terms. This is politics in the sense of the American public has to support commitments like this. I opposed the surge.'" ...

... Chris Good of ABC News runs down "21 revealing quotes from the Sawyer interview.

Noam Scheiber of the New Republic describes Hillary & Barack's "marriage of convenience." CW: This is politics as usual, even "normal human relations" as usual, & is the way most reasonable officials negotiate disagreements with members of their own party. (Do you publicly rebuke your spouse or your good friend when s/he says something you disagree with? Probably not.)

Joni Ernst's Husband Is Just as Classy as She Is. Evan McMorris-Santoro of BuzzFeed: "Last year, the husband of Iowa Republican state Sen. Joni Ernst, her party’s nominee for Senate made his opinion known about Hillary Clinton on Facebook. 'Truly more of a hag now than when she was 1st Lady!” Gail Ernst wrote, sharing a Benghazi-related image." The Ernst campaign has criticized her Democratic opponent for "using imagery that ... 'degrades and insults Iowa women.'"

Congressional Races

Cameron Joseph & Alexandra Jaffe of the Hill: "Voters go to the polls on Tuesday in Arkansas, Maine, Nevada, North Dakota, South Carolina and Virginia. Tea Party challenges to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) are the marquee contests, and no federal races are on the ballot in North Dakota or the Arkansas runoffs."

Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina was once thought to be among the Republican incumbents most vulnerable this year to a Tea Party challenge. But the most pressing question on Tuesday is not whether he will finish first in the party primary, but whether he can avoid a runoff by capturing more than 50 percent of the vote in a seven-person field."

Beyond the Beltway

Laura Vozella & Michael Laris of the Washington Post: "Virginia Republicans snatched control of the state Senate on Monday, immediately ending a budget stalemate by pushing Democrats to agree to pass a spending plan without Medicaid expansion, Gov. Terry McAuliffe's top priority. The power shift forced Senate Democrats to yield after a protracted standoff that had threatened to shut down state government in less than a month, according to several lawmakers with direct knowledge of the deal. Democratic negotiators agreed in a closed-door meeting Monday to pass a budget without expanding health coverage to 400,000 low-income Virginians." ...

... CW: David Firestone of the New York Times is as pissed at the Virginia state senator who quit the senate so Republicans would have the majority they need to stop Medicaid expansion in the state: "Phillip Puckett, resigned today, paving the way for his daughter, Martha Puckett Ketron, to win an appointment as a domestic court judge..., proving yet again that personal ambition and venality often outweigh political principle.... Until earlier this afternoon, it looked as though Mr. Puckett would take a job as deputy director of the state's tobacco commission, which is led by a Republican legislator. But he ultimately walked away from the offer after furious Democrats accused him of accepting a bribe." ...

... Jamelle Bouie in Slate: "Puckett didn't just sell out his Democratic colleagues, he sold out thousands of his constituents -- indifferent to their health and well-being -- for little more than some cheap nepotism. No, the Republicans he helped aren't much better; they would rather wage an ideological crusade against Obama than aid the voters who support them. Still, say what you will about right-wing extremism, at least it's an ethos. And given the choice, I would rather have an opponent with conviction than an ally who couldn't be bothered to care."

AP: "U.S. Sen. Harry Reid has sold his home in Searchlight and several mining claims to a gold mining company."

News Ledes

AP: "Israel's parliament on Tuesday chose Reuven Rivlin, a veteran nationalist politician and supporter of the Jewish settlement movement, as the country's next president, putting a man opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state into the ceremonial but influential post."

New York Times: "Martha Hyer, an Oscar-nominated movie actress who starred alongside Humphrey Bogart, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and Shirley MacLaine in the 1950s and 1960s, died on May 31 at her home in Santa Fe, N.M. She was 89."

Washington Post: "Five American troops were killed in southern Afghanistan in a rare friendly fire airstrike that struck a team of Afghan and U.S. troops conducting a security operation ahead of Saturday's presidential runoff vote, U.S. and Afghan officials familiar with the incident said Tuesday."

It's Their Money

Yesterday in a Comment, contributor Ken W. wrote,

Collecting signatures for Washington State's counter to Citizens United, our own initiative, I-1329, I met a young man, I'd guess about 23, who wanted to set me straight. He described himself as a libertarian, told me that everyone had the right to spend his money the way he wished, that the word liberal was purloined from the good, right-thinking people of his own persuasion and said that the current Democrats were in fact Communists. Signature gathering is not a time to engage.

While I agree that a signature-gatherer doesn't have time to argue with every loon who disagrees with his purpose, there are often short, nonconfrontational answers to the usual right-wing bullshit.

So let's address the young man's main objection to Ken's effort: that "everyone has the right to spend his money the way he wishes."

Short response:

(1). To get the little fucker on your side, you agree with him. Up to a point. "Well, yes, you're right. At least for most people."

(2) Appeal to his self-interest & vanity. "But don't you think the government should treat you as well as it treats super-rich people? In a democracy, you're as good as they are. But you sure as hell are not getting equal treatment today."

(3) Wrap up. "That isn't fair. It violates the bedrock principles of American democracy. And it violates your rights as an American." (Whip out tiny American flag & wave it vigorously.)

Longer response:

Explain that the rich are not just buying access to politicians with their campaign contributions.  They're buying the politicians themselves. They're buying the people who write the laws that govern us all. The politicians who get big contributions from the rich are passing the laws those rich contributors want them to pass. They're passing laws that specifically benefit the rich -- at the expense of the rest of us. The rich are making themselves richer -- and they're making you poorer.

"Think about it," you say. "Suppose you write a check to your favorite candidate -- for whatever you can afford -- say, $100. Do you think your $100 would buy you a law that specifically profited you? Of course not. But that's what happens when rich people get to corrupt the system by financing politicians. They get special favors -- big favors that hurt the rest of us. That's why I'm supporting this initiative -- that's why everyone who believes he too should get a fair shake will want to support it. This initiative isn't Democratic with a big 'D.' It's Democratic with a small 'd.' It's American." (Flag.)

If he gives you the line about how we're not really "created equal," again you can agree. Up to a point. "Sure, you & I might not be able to buy all the Rolls & Rolexes the rich can. And that's all right. Maybe we didn't inherit as much as they did. We didn't make as much money as they did, however they made it. But there's a big difference between some people having more to spend & some people getting a better shake from the government. We expect people to have unequal wealth. That's cool. But we all deserve equal protection under the law. It's in the Constitution. And we won't get it as long as the rich are writing the laws, as they can & do today. It's not fair. It's anti-American. (Flag.)

This is all pretty simplistic, but not any more simplistic than that stupid kid's stupid "political philosophy." I find that most people who preach the stock right-wing talking points '-- i. e., "it's their money" -- have never thought past the Fox-supplied talking points.

A few days ago a young man told me that he thought everyone who "gets welfare" should have to pass a drug test. I said that "sounded sensible," but it wasn't always that easy. "Are you going to deny food or medical care to the children of a mother who flunks the pee test?" Uh, well, no. Sometimes that's all it takes. I have these little Setting Strangers Straight sessions quite often without noticeably pissing off the other party.