The Commentariat -- October 15, 2015
Internal links removed.
Afternoon Update:
David Sanger of the New York Times: "The Obama administration is exploring a deal with Pakistan that would limit the scope of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, the fastest-growing on earth. The discussions are the first in the decade since one of the founders of its nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, was caught selling the country's nuclear technology around the world."
Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "An aide to Donald J. Trump has raised the possibility of the candidate not attending the next Republican presidential debate unless the criteria set by CNBC is changed, according to two people briefed on a conference call where the matter was discussed on Thursday."
Katherine Faulders of ABC News: "Republican presidential contender Dr. Ben Carson has put his public campaign events on hold for two more weeks to go on book tour for his new tome 'A More Perfect Union' and catch up on fundraising events." ...
... Ed Kilgore: "However you slice it, this development is going to remind the chattering classes of 2012 candidates Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich, who were frequently accused of using their campaigns to sell books and videos and so forth. Indeed, most candidates release their 'campaign books' either before or early in their candidacies, as appetizers, not ends in themselves." ...
... Laura Clawson of Daily Kos: "I'm not sure Sarah Palin could do any better at the GOP grifter act than this." CW: And you thought Donald Trump was the big publicity hound in this campaign.
Julie Davis of the New York Times: "Joe Biden is still playing coy with reporters on his political plans.
Scott Keyes of Think Progress: "The United States criminal justice system could be improved if we sell poor people convicted of crimes into slavery, according to Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee.... Huckabee's comments, which come 150 years after the 13th Amendment's adoption, appear to be the first time in modern history that a credible presidential candidate has joined the fringe call to reinstate slavery." CW: I've been ignoring Huckabee, & will continue to do so, but I thought endorsing slavery (because the Bible tells us so) was outrageous enough to link.
*****
... The Longest War. Matthew Rosenberg of the New York Times: "The United States will halt its military withdrawal from Afghanistan and instead keep thousands of troops in the country through the end of President Obama's term in 2017, Mr. Obama will announce on Thursday, prolonging the American role in a war that has now stretched on for 14 years."
Julie Bosman of the New York Times: "J. Dennis Hastert..., who rose to political power as the longest-serving Republican speaker of the House, intends to plead guilty as part of an agreement in a case where he is accused of skirting banking laws and lying to the federal investigators, according to proceedings Thursday in Federal District Court.... It was unclear what charges that Mr. Hastert would plead guilty to and what the sentence may be.... Mr. Hastert, 73, was charged in May with structuring cash withdrawals, totaling $1.7 million, in a manner intended to avoid detection by banking officials, and then lying about the withdrawals to the federal authorities.... Though the indictment did not say what the withdrawals were for, subsequent reports, citing unidentified government sources, said that they were 'hush money' to cover up allegations of sexual misconduct with a male student during Mr. Hastert's time as a high school teacher and coach in Yorkville, Ill...."
Robert Pear of the New York Times: "Congress and the Obama administration are frantically seeking ways to hold down Medicare premiums that could rise by roughly 50 percent for some beneficiaries next year, according to lawmakers and Medicare officials.... Aides to Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, and Speaker John A. Boehner are quietly exploring a possible deal that would limit the expected increase in Medicare premiums." ...
... CW: MEANWHILE, Social Security benefits will stay flat. Recently My Damned Cat has taken to rejecting the catfood pate that was her main staple. I still have half a box of cans. Looks like I'll be snacking on catfood canapes.
New York Times Editors: "It was impossible not to feel a sense of relief watching the Democratic debate after months dominated by the Republican circus of haters, ranters and that very special group of king killers in Congress. For those despairing about the future of American politics, here was proof that it doesn't have to revolve around candidates who pride themselves on knowing nothing or believe that governing is all about destroying government.... What stood out most was the Democratic Party's big tent, capable of containing a spectrum of reality-based views." ...
... CW: That's right, folks. We have only one political party in which candidates campaign on "reality-based views." And you read it in the New York Times.
... Frank Rich: On the Debate: "The morning-after consensus (left, right, and center) is correct: Hillary Clinton not only romped over the competition -- such as it was -- but could well have shut down the prospect of a Biden run. But if the Clinton revival sustains itself, the turning point will not have been last night's debate but Kevin McCarthy's September 29 public admission on Fox News that the House Benghazi committee's main motivation was to take her out rather than investigate the deaths of four Americans taken out by terrorists." On the Speakership: "Ryan seems to think everything is beneath him except his lofty engagement in policy as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee -- policy being defined as cutting taxes for the GOP donor class and cutting entitlements like social security and Medicare for everyone else." ...
... Gail Collins on Hillary's good month. ...
... Patrick Healy of the New York Times: "All night, the debate played to Mrs. Clinton's advantage and to her opponents' limitations. From gun control and banking regulations to debt-free college and Social Security benefits, Mrs. Clinton positioned herself as a champion of liberals, young people, and the elderly -- the very voters who make up the Sanders coalition -- while also repeatedly reaching out to women, as an advocate for families and children (and as, potentially, the nation's first female president)." ...
... Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "Hillary Rodham Clinton's sure-footed performance in the first Democratic presidential debate did not just lift the spirits of her supporters and reassure nervous party officials about her candidacy, it also swiftly cooled talk about the need for Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to enter the campaign and offer Democrats an alternative." ...
... Matt Yglesias has an excellent analysis of the debate performances.* "The policy-heavy dynamic ultimately played directly into Clinton's hand. On a stage of earnest, policy-oriented pols, she was simply the best briefed and the best able to fluently address a seemingly endless array of issues." ...
* Pundit-wise, that is. See Adam Johnson's commentary, linked below. ...
... Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. CW: I'm with Nate Silver on this: "Before last night's debate, I suggested the media was likely to emerge with one of two narratives about the state of Hillary Clinton's campaign: Either she was mounting a comeback, or she was in a downward spiral.... Clinton gave about the performance that might reasonably have been expected from a frontrunner who gained a ton of experience as a debater during the 2008 Democratic primary: pretty good. Poised, polished and highly competent at appealing to various segments of the Democratic electorate. But also risk-averse and without all that many high notes.... The difference between FiveThirtyEight's view of the debate and Mark Halperin's or The New York Times' is that we've been skeptical of the 'Clinton in disarray' narrative for a long time." Krugman had a similar take in a post I linked yesterday. ...
... ** AND Adam Johnson of AlterNet: "Bernie Sanders by all objective measures 'won' the debate.... Sanders won the CNN focus group, the Fusion focus group, and the Fox News focus group; in the latter, he even converted several Hillary supporters. He won the Slate online poll, CNN/Time online poll, 9News Colorado, The Street online poll, Fox5 poll, the conservative Drudge online poll and the liberal Daily Kos online poll. There wasn't, to this writer's knowledge, a poll he didn't win by at least an 18-point margin. But you wouldn't know this from reading the establishment press.... This gap speaks to a larger gap we've seen since the beginning of the Sanders campaign. The mainstream media writes off Bernie and is constantly shocked when his polls numbers go up." ...
... Andy Borowitz: "In a major slip that may prove fatal to his Presidential ambitions, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont treated his principal opponent for the Democratic nomination with dignity and respect on Tuesday night. Calling it a gaffe of historic proportions, many political insiders were still scratching their heads Wednesday morning over Sanders's bizarre decision to act toward his opponent as if she were a fellow human being."
Amber Phillips of the Washington Post explains that grenade incident Jim Webb mentioned in his closing remarks. He received the Navy Cross for his actions.
Brian Stelter of CNN: "CNN's Tuesday night debate averaged 15.3 million viewers, easily making it the highest-rated Democratic debate ever."
Philip Rucker & Robert Costa of the Washington Post: "The Democratic presidential candidates have thrust gun control forward as a dominant issue for the national election, crystallizing a sea change in the politics of a controversial subject that recent Democratic nominees have often avoided. After years of deadly mass shootings across the country, and with President Obama voicing deep frustration with inaction by Republicans in Congress, the Democratic candidates led by Hillary Rodham Clinton vowed in a debate [in Las Vegas, Nevada,] Tuesday night to toughen restrictions on gun owners and gun manufacturers."
CW: Marco, whose campaign staff evidently didn't give him the memo about the perils of accusing Democratic candidates of giving away "free stuff" the first time (Mitt), or the second time (Jeb!), makes the claim about half a dozen times in the space of a minute. The Free Stuff Lament must be part of the Republican zeitgeist. (To Marco's credit, he did not associate free-stuff giveaways with black recipients, as did Mitt & Jeb!) If it bothers them so much, they should spend more time talking about the "free stuff" they're giving away to their billionaire buddies:
Mark Hensch of the Hill: "Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly says she was shocked by Donald Trump's reaction to her debate questions and that she never expected a feud with the GOP front-runner. 'It's clear we may have overestimated his anger-management skills,' she said ... on Tuesday. Kelly said she wasn't singling out Trump and had asked tough questions of all the candidates during the Fox News debate."
Kira Lerner of Think Progress: "At a campaign stop in rural Iowa on Wednesday, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz told ThinkProgress that activists with the Black Lives Matter movement -- people who have been peacefully protesting the murder of black men and women by law enforcement -- are 'literally suggesting and embracing and celebrating the murder of police officers.'... Despite a lack of evidence that Black Lives Matter has motivated any of the recent murders of police officers, conservative politicians have claimed that police officers are under attack thanks to Black Lives Matter's growing popularity. Meanwhile the number of police officers killed on the job has been steadily dropping for decades, with 51 officers killed last year." ...
... Jon Green of AmericaBlog: "Cruz knows as well as anyone that there's nothing but upside in going back to the race well in the Republican primary. Trump got plenty of lift going after Mexicans, Ben Carson with Muslims (plus his wink-and-nod to white voters on the Confederate Flag); and now Cruz with black people. As Cruz has positioned himself to be the 'Trump, but with an actual campaign infrastructure' candidate in the race, he's going to have to start peeling off the racist vote from the field's two front runners. And what better way to start than by implying that an explicitly anti-death movement is actually encouraging murder?"
Alan Steinweis, in a New York Times op-ed: "Ben Carson is wrong on guns and the Holocaust.... If the United States is going to arrive at a workable compromise solution to its gun problem, it will not be accomplished through the use of historical analogies that are false, silly and insulting." ...
... CW: The news media have a duty to ask Carson to defend his views against Steinweis's scholarship. Steinweis doesn't need to convince me. The issue is how Carson reacts when confronted with facts that rebut his loony remarks. Carson claims that his own profession -- unlike politics -- requires years of study. What about history? Is it, like politics, also gleaned intuitively? Or is Prof. Steinweis simply not privy to the CIA voices in Doc Ben's head? ...
... CW: I thought this was a Halloween joke or else an ad for some kind of paranormal institute's Ponzi scheme when I saw it in "Promoted Stories" (ads) at the bottom of Frank Rich's Q&A. But it's a link to Carson's campaign Webpage. It's still creepy.
Jeb! to Stay in Cheap Hotels to Please Billionaire Donors. Eli Stokols & Marc Caputo of Politico: "Although the Bush campaign has yet to release its fundraising numbers from the third quarter ahead of Thursday's deadline, the belt-tightening has already begun, at least around the margins with regard to travel.... Conceived as a fundraising juggernaut that would 'shock and awe' opponents into oblivion, Bush's campaign is suddenly struggling to raise hard dollars and increasingly economizing -- not because he's out of money, but to convince nervous donors, who are about to get their first look at his campaign's burn rate, that he's not wasting it."
** "It's Even Worse Than It Was When We Said It's Even Worse Than It Looks." Francis Wilkinson of Bloomberg discusses, via e-mail, the state of the Republican party with scholars Thomas Mann & Norm Ornstein.
** Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Jim Fallows of the Atlantic explains how the media -- have been enabling the Benghaaazi! committee & other partisan hackery. Fallows has a particular gift for putting together disparate events to demonstrate a trend &/or a cause-and-effect.
Jake Sherman & Anna Palmer of Politico: "House Speaker John Boehner is looking to move a bill to lift the debt ceiling before he leaves Congress, a tactic aimed at helping his successor, according to multiple sources with knowledge of internal party planning." ...
... Lauren French of Politico: "Republican leaders are formally asking their rank-and-file members to propose changes to the rules governing the House GOP conference. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the chair of the Republican Conference and Rep. Luke Messer, the chair of the Policy Committee, sent a letter to lawmakers Wednesday night saying that the House GOP will continue debate on overhauling the rules of the House - a key demand from conservative members who helped oust Speaker John Boehner." ...
... Jake Sherman of Politico: "Republican leaders see Freedom Caucus members as a bunch of bomb-throwing ideologues with little interest in finding solutions that can pass a divided government. But that's a false reading of the group, [Rep. Justin] Amash [RTP-Michigan] told his constituents. Their mission isn't to drag Republican leadership to the right, though many of them would certainly favor more conservative outcomes. It's simply to force them to follow the institution's procedures, Amash argued." CW: They're really just for a more democratic process. Okay.
Scott Keyes of Think Progress: "A second House Republican has now conceded that the overarching purpose of the House Select Committee on Benghazi has been to attack former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.... 'Sometimes the biggest sin you can commit in D.C. is to tell the truth,' [Richard] Hanna [R-N.Y.] said in an interview on ... a radio show in upstate New York. The third-term congressman paused for a moment ... before going on to agree with [Kevin] McCarthy's original statement [about the purpose of the Benghaaazi! committee]. 'This may not be politically correct, but I think that there was a big part of this investigation that was designed to go after people and an individual, Hillary Clinton,' Hanna said.... 'I think that's the way Washington works. But you'd like to expect more from a committee that's spent millions of dollars and tons of time.'"
Linda Greenhouse: "... the future of the right to abortion once again -- still -- [is] in the hands of Justice Kennedy.... Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel A. Alito Jr. ... chose to go on the record as being willing to let three-quarters of the abortion clinics in Texas shut down without a Supreme Court hearing." ...
... Oops! Didn't Mean to Leave Those Aborted Fetuses in the Trunk of My Car. Samantha Allen of the Daily Beast on a Michigan doctor who is in custody under suspicion of performing illegal abortions in an upscale Detroit suburb. CW: Assuming the evidence & allegations pan out, this is the kind of doctor whose services are certainly becoming more & more in demand as states add restrictions to legal abortions under the guise of caring so much about women's health. And, yes, it is women in "upscale neighborhoods" who will have the "advantage" of receiving these excellent services. Less wealthy women will have to resort to even worse alternatives. Thanks, Supremes!
Russ Choma of Mother Jones: "Former GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul took the stand in an Iowa federal courthouse [Wednesday] afternoon in the trial of two of his top aides from his 2012 presidential campaign. The aides have been accused of paying for the endorsement of an Iowa state senator and then trying to cover it up. Paul blasted prosecutors and the media while still testifying that he abhorred the concept of paying for endorsements. Paul was called as a witness for the prosecution in the trial of Jesse Benton, his 2012 presidential campaign chairman who is also married to Paul's granddaughter."
Terrence McCoy of the Washington Post: "In February of last year, the Georgetown [Washington, D.C.] Business Improvement District partnered with District police to launch [an] effort, which they call a 'real-time mobile-based group-messaging app that connects Georgetown businesses, police officers and community members.' Since then, the app has attracted nearly 380 users who surreptitiously report on -- and photograph -- shoppers in an attempt to deter crime.... The result, critics say..., has [laid] bare the racial fault lines that still define this cobblestoned enclave of tony boutiques and historic rowhouses that is home to many of Washington's elite." What a surprise: it seems the vast majority of "suspicious" shoppers are black.
Beyond the Beltway
Dennis Overbye of the New York Times: "Geoffrey Marcy, the renowned astronomer who was found guilty of sexually harassing students in a campus investigation, is resigning from the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, where he has been a professor for 16 years.... The university placed Dr. Marcy on probation over the summer after the investigation but did not announce the decision. It became widely known only last week, when BuzzFeed News reported it." ...
... The BuzzFeed story, by Azeen Ghorayshi, is here.: "After a six-month investigation, Geoff Marcy -- a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who has been mentioned as a potential Nobel laureate -- was found to have violated campus sexual harassment policies between 2001 and 2010. Four women alleged that Marcy repeatedly engaged in inappropriate physical behavior with students, including unwanted massages, kisses, and groping."
Jogging While Black in Talladega, Alabama.
Julie Bosman: The Kansas Secetary of state, [the execrable] Kris Kobach, has set up another barrier to voting, requiring them to provide proof of citizenship within 90 days of trying to register to vote. It disproportionately affects young people. ...
... CW: How upset would you be if resident noncitizen adults were actually allowed to vote? Besides living here, most of them work, many own homes, & virtually all pay taxes here & have a stake in their communities. I don't think they have an "inalienable right" to vote, but if my state allowed noncitizens to vote, I would have no objection whatsoever. Were I a legislator, I would vote for a bill allowing noncitizen residents to vote.
... Today in Responsible Gun Ammo Ownership. So this guy in Missouri sets a trash fire in an open field. Then he lets the fire get out of control. Then he tries to put it out by repeatedly driving over the burning area with his truck. (Bet you never thought of that.) Then for some reason the truck's tires catch on fire. Then he thinks, "Wow! I've got a full tank of gas & a truckload of ammo in the back. I wonder what could happen next." In his first lucid moment of the day, he abandons the truck before ammo started exploding. No one was injured. Remember when you were a kid & you thought grown men knew what they were doing?
Tom Benning of the Dallas Morning News: State "Rep. Jason Villalba (R) is standing by a Tweet he made during Tuesday's Democratic debate that included an image connecting presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders' standing as a 'Democratic socialist' to Nazism." The Nazi party referred National Socialists, not Democratic socialists. CW: But, hey, close. Why not tweet it out? And there's nothing slightly offensive about calling a Jew a Nazi, although in fairness, Villalba may not be well-enough informed to know Sanders is Jewish. Also too, doesn't this sound ridiculous: "I stand by my tweet"?
News Ledes
Thursday, October 15, 2015.
... NOAA: "Forecasters at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center issued the U.S. Winter Outlook today favoring cooler and wetter weather in Southern Tier states with above-average temperatures most likely in the West and across the Northern Tier. This year's El Niño, among the strongest on record, is expected to influence weather and climate patterns this winter by impacting the position of the Pacific jet stream."
New York Times: Germany's automobile regulator on Thursday ordered Volkswagen to recall 2.4 million vehicles with diesel motors carrying software intended to manipulate emissions test results."