The Commentariat -- August 27, 2015
Internal links & defunct video removed.
Afternoon Update:
Amy Tsang & Peter Eavis of the New York Times: "Every major stock market in the world surged higher on Thursday, helped by an unexpectedly strong economic report in the United States and a late rally in Chinese stocks."
CW: Jonathan Martin, et al., of the New York Times have a big story currently on the NYT's front page about how "Democratic leaders are increasingly frustrated by Hillary Rodham Clinton’s failure to put to rest questions about her State Department email practices and ease growing doubts among voters about her honesty and trustworthiness." Blah-blah. But a version of the AP story I linked below, which demonstrates that Clinton was treating classified documents the same way everyone at State did and had done in past administration, doesn't get a front-page link (I had to find it in a search) & doesn't appear to have made the print editions of the paper.
*****
Emily Rauhala of the Washington Post: "Chinese markets rose dramatically Thursday, with the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index soaring quickly in less than an hour of late afternoon trading to finish up a significant 5.3 percent. The Shenzhen Composite also closed up 3.58 percent."
Peter Eavis, et al., of the New York Times: "The United States stock markets surged late in the day [Wednesday], with the Dow Jones industrial average jumping more than 600 points after a late afternoon rally. Investors seemed to react to suggestions from a Federal Reserve official that policy makers may not raise interest rates soon." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
The market slide was the fault of Obama’s failure to get tough with China, but its rebound is probably due to the GOP Congress, or something. -- Greg Sargent
Carol Morello of the Washington Post: "A group of nearly 200 retired generals and admirals sent a letter to Congress on Wednesday urging lawmakers to reject the Iran nuclear agreement, which they say threatens national security.... The letter, addressed to Republican and Democratic leaders in the Senate and the House, is a response to one sent last week by three dozen retired senior military officers who support the nuclear deal.... The signatories include retired generals and flag officers from every branch of service, including a handful who were involved in some public controversies during their careers. One is retired Lt. Gen. William G. 'Jerry' Boykin, who was deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence under President George W. Bush and is now executive vice president of the Family Research Council. He had a history of making controversial speeches...."
Lisa Rein of the Washington Post: "The arrests this month of four young men on charges they hacked a fellow student to death in a federally funded job training center in Miami — and another murder in St. Louis this spring — are putting a spotlight on violence inside Job Corps. The antipoverty program born during President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty to give low-income teenagers free vocational training has been beset by violence for years, with lax enforcement of discipline policies set by the Labor Department, which runs the 125 job centers around the country."
Capitalism Is Awesome, Ctd. Ellen Brait of the Guardian: "Walmart will no longer stock AR-15 rifles and other semi-automatic weapons, saying the decision is because of less demand from customers and not continued political pressure in the wake of several mass shootings in the US."
Tim Wu of the New Yorker on some of the reasons better-paid white-collar workers work such long hours.
Nick Gass of Politico: "The White House fired back Wednesday at Charles Koch after a Politico article quoted him as saying he was 'flabbergasted' by a recent attack on him and his brother by President Barack Obama during an energy speech in Las Vegas earlier this week. In his Monday speech, Obama said that 'you start seeing massive lobbying efforts backed by fossil fuel interests, or conservative think tanks, or the Koch brothers pushing for new laws to roll back renewable energy standards or prevent new clean energy businesses from succeeding — that’s a problem.' 'It’s beneath the president, the dignity of the president, to be doing that,' Koch responded in a phone interview with Politico on Tuesday. On Wednesday, during the daily briefing, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Koch’s comments do not match with reality." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Here's the President's speech at the National Clean Energy Summit:
Ed Kilgore comments on Thomas Edsall's piece on Republicans' "conception of conception," linked yesterday in the Commentariat: "Edsall is fascinated, as I have been for some time now, by the orthodox RTL [right-to-life] position that fully-fledged human beings deserving legal protection are formed at the moment an ovum is fertilized by a sperm. Among other things, this means contraceptive methods that prevent (or may prevent) the implantation of fertilized ova in the uterine wall are morally indistinguishable from a late-term abortion—or for that matter, from killing an adult human being. Lest you think that’s an exotic position, it’s what was at the heart of the Hobby Lobby litigation, since the owners of that company professed a religiously-based belief that IUDs and Plan B contraceptives included in the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive coverage mandate are in fact abortifacients."
** "The Reactionary Soul." Paul Krugman: "Trump isn’t a diversion, he’s a revelation, bringing the real motivations of the movement out into the open." Read it.
CW: Michael "Heckuva Job Brownie" has a long whine in Politico Magazine decrying his unfair press treatment. But you should forget about the whining & read, especially, the first section, where he writes about the negligence of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin (D) (now residing in a federal pen) & Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco. My recollection is that Brownie is essentially correct about these two.
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. "The Trumpification of the News." E. J. Dionne: "Television is a business like any other, but journalism in a democracy is supposed to be about more than that. Nowhere is the tension between financial and public imperatives more obvious than in the massive coverage of the Trump spectacular and the parsimonious attention given to anything serious any other candidate might say. But hey, how often does a serious speech about our economic troubles win ratings for anyone?" ...
... Amanda Marcotte, in TPM: "Donald Trump has reignited his sexist harassment campaign against Megyn Kelly, and the folks at Fox News are, in seemingly coordinated fashion, striking back. Fellow Fox News hosts and pundits are asking Trump to cool it, and even Roger Ailes has released a statement calling Trump’s abuse 'unacceptable' and 'disturbing.' It’s almost touching, watching all these conservative media people who usually profit at peddling sexism choose, this time at least, to join together in an effort to stop this one particular instance of it. It’s also going to backfire.... You can’t tell people, day in and day out, that nothing is more fun than putting some mouthy broad in her place and then get upset when they continue to think it’s fun, even when the mouthy broad is one of yours."
Presidential Race
John Wagner of the Washington Post: "... Bernie Sanders is about to make a direct pitch to the Democratic Party establishment: Consider me, not Hillary Clinton. Sanders huddled with advisers at his home [in Burlington, Vermont,] Wednesday to chart what he describes as the second phase of a campaign that has exceeded all expectations but still lacks the infrastructure and support from the party elites that could help him compete with Clinton on a national level."
Matea Gold of the Washington Post: "The possibility that Vice President Biden may jump into the 2016 presidential campaign is convulsing the network of wealthy Democrats that financed President Obama’s two White House bids, galvanizing fundraisers who are underwhelmed by Hillary Rodham Clinton’s performance. A wide swath of party financiers is convinced that Biden will make a late entry into the race, and a sizable number are contemplating backing him, including some who have signed on with Clinton, according to more than a dozen top Democratic fundraisers nationwide." ...
... Guardian: "Joe Biden confirmed he is considering whether to run for president in his first publicly aired comments on whether he would seek the Democratic nomination. The US vice-president, in a conference call with Democratic National Committee members, said he was trying to decide whether he could give 'my whole heart and my whole soul' to a run for the White House, but also alluded to the burden that had been placed on his family by the death of his son, Beau Biden." CNN has audio clips & remarks from Hillary Clinton:
... Arit John of Bloomberg: "... Vice President Joe Biden ... polls better nationally against the leading three Republican candidates than Hillary Clinton, and has a higher favorability rating, too." CW: I'd call these polls pretty meaningless. The press has not been hounding Biden nor pointing out his negatives, of which there are many; that would change if he ran for president, & his polling would plummet.
... Ed Kilgore: "The more you look at the Biden bandwagon, it looks more like a ghost ship being pulled through the mist by a combination of hungry political reporters, Hillary haters (including most of the conservative media), and Delaware-based Friends of Joe.... [Biden's] leaping into the race now would be not a rescue, but a demolition mission. For starters, it would be received bitterly by the many Democratic women who figured HRC’s final assault on the political glass ceiling was a natural follow-up to Obama’s historic presidency. And worse yet, it’s hard to imagine Biden would have any compelling rationale for a candidacy that did not depend on feeding MSM and GOP attacks on her character. ...
... Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "Former Senator Tom Harkin, a fixture in Iowa Democratic politics for over four decades, discouraged Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Wednesday from entering the presidential race, suggesting that Hillary Rodham Clinton, if elected, could name him to a top diplomatic post instead. Mr. Harkin, who served with Mr. Biden in the Senate for nearly 25 years and is now supporting Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, said the vice president should not risk ending his career with what would be a third bid for the presidency." ...
... ** Ken Dilanian of the AP: "The transmission of now-classified information across Hillary Rodham Clinton's private email is consistent with a State Department culture in which diplomats routinely sent secret material on unsecured email during the past two administrations, according to documents reviewed by The Associated Press. Clinton's use of a home server makes her case unique.... But it's not clear whether the security breach would have been any less had she used [the standard unsecured] department email. The department only systematically checks email for sensitive or classified material in response to a public records request.... In fact, the State Department's unclassified email system has been penetrated by hackers believed linked to Russian intelligence.... Clinton also had access to a classified messaging system, but it's not widely used at the State Department." (Emphasis added.) ...
... CW: If this report is correct, and I have no reason to think it isn't, it should put an end to all the breathless hyperbole (I'm talking to you, Michael Schmidt & Ron Fourier & every bozo personality at Fox "News"). But of course it won't. As Dilanian points out, "everybody does it" is not the optimal defense, but it surely puts Clinton's e-mail practices in context.
New York Times: "Priorities USA, the 'super PAC' supporting Mrs. Clinton, has released a digital ad that uses Mr. Trump’s statements to paint the entire Republican presidential field as hostile toward immigrants, focusing in particular on Jeb Bush and Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin. The super PAC will start airing the 30-second spot, titled 'This Is the Republican Party,' in Colorado, Florida and Nevada, states with large Hispanic populations":
... AND here's a long trailer to a documentary "abUSed: The Postville Raid," which contributor safari linked this morning. As safari writes, "... the documentary is a damning portrait of what reality would be like across this country if the Confederates were to assume the Presidency and enact their extremist policies":
Martin Pengelly of the Guardian: "Donald Trump has offered his strongest hint yet that he will not run as an independent in the 2016 US presidential election, saying 'it’s not something I want to do' should he fail to win the Republican nomination.... The Huffington Post, meanwhile, reported that Trump had told 'several top Republicans' he would swear off an independent run. It also reported a 'top Republican source' as saying the party would not necessarily regard such a move as the end of the matter, given the impulsive nature of Trump’s campaign." ...
... Jenna Portnoy & Robert Costa of the Washington Post: "The Virginia Republican Party is considering requiring a loyalty oath from presidential primary contenders — a move widely considered an early sign of GOP skittishness about Donald Trump’s campaign. State party officials are debating whether to require candidates to pledge their support to the eventual nominee and promise not to run as a third-party candidate — as Trump has hinted he might do.... Politico reported that North Carolina is considering a similar loyalty oath rule." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Dana Milbank: "Wednesday was Women’s Equality Day, the anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which gave American women the right to vote 95 years ago. And how have Republicans marked this egalitarian milestone? Why, with another bimbo eruption.... More telling than [Donald] Trump’s latest disparagement of women [-- in this case, his latest attacks on Fox 'News' host Megyn Kelly --] or his flip rejection of [Fox 'News' chief Roger] Ailes’s demand for an apology, is the reaction from the rest of the Republican presidential field: virtual silence.... Trump is acting like a sexist and a bigot — and the rest of the candidates are, with occasional exceptions, too timid to call him what he is. Over the weekend, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus even praised the contribution made by Trump’s candidacy. 'I think it’s a net positive for everybody,' he said in a radio interview."
Clash of the Titans! Philip Rucker & Robert Costa of the Washington Post: "The 2016 campaign is only the latest manifestation of decades of discord between Trump and the Bush family. Since the gilded 1980s, when Trump and George H.W. Bush rose as forces in their respective spheres, the relationship between Trump and the Bushes has been a melodrama — veering between displays of public affection and acerbic insults. At the core, there are clashes of style, manner and class between the Bushes — a patrician clan of presidents, governors and financiers who have pulled the levers of power for generations — and Trump, a hustling New York City deal-maker who turned his father’s outer borough real-estate portfolio into a gold-plated empire." CW: This is actually a fun read, if you enjoy trash-talking the Bushes.
Carrie Dann of NBC News: "Jeb Bush says that Univision anchor Jorge Ramos, who was escorted out of a press conference held by Donald Trump on Tuesday night, should have been 'treated with a little more respect.'" ...
This guy is now the front-runner. He should be held to account just like me. He should be asked — as he was yesterday — how are you going to pay for it? Why do you think this is not going to be — prove to me that it's not impractical. Explain to me how you're going to stop all the remittances without violating peoples' civil liberty. Go through these questions and what you'll find is that this guy doesn't have a plan. He's appealing to peoples' angst and their anger. I want to solve problems so that we can fix this and turn immigration into what it's always been: An economic driver for our country.... There are some people running, they're really talented about filling space. About saying big things. They think that volume in their language is a, some kind of a version of leadership. Talking is not leadership. Doing is leadership. That's what we need. -- Jeb Bush, at a townhall meeting in Pensacola, Florida, Wednesday
Katie Zezima of the Washington Post: "Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), told pastors Tuesday that he would do his best to make sure the government could not be funded if that funding included any taxpayer support for Planned Parenthood -- but that any attempt to blame him for a government shutdown that could result would be 'nonsense.'"
Senate Race
Mary Pols of the Portland (Maine) Press Herald: "Gov. Paul LePage has again told a Boston radio host that he is considering a run for the U.S. Senate in 2018 against incumbent Angus King.... During Tuesday’s taping, LePage donned a hat bearing Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s slogan, 'Make America Great Again.' He also referred to himself as 'Baby Donald.'... He also got in a jab at the press corps: 'The daily newspapers in Maine are so bad you can’t even believe the obituaries,' LePage ... [said].” CW: What a card! Disappointed there were no more "jokes" about how stupid the French are.
Beyond the Beltway
Erik Eckholm of the New York Times: "The Mormon Church announced Wednesday that it would continue its close association with the Boy Scouts for now, ending speculation that it would sever ties because of the Scouts’s decision last month to let openly gay men and women serve as leaders.... 'At this time, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will go forward as a chartering organization of B.S.A. and, as in the past, will appoint scout leaders and volunteers who uphold and exemplify church doctrine, values and standards,' the statement said.... In July, bowing to growing legal and public pressures, the governing board of the Boy Scouts of America voted to permit openly gay adult leaders.... But in a compromise aimed at preventing defections by religious conservatives — including the Mormons, who are the largest single sponsor of Boy Scout units — the board said that local sponsors with religious objections could select volunteer leaders in accordance with their own beliefs. At the time, the response from the Mormons was unexpectedly sharp and included a threat to leave the Scouts anyway." CW: So now they've calmed down a tad, & they're just going to go on excluding gay leaders. Special.
Way Beyond
Anemona Hartocollis of the New York Times: "Tens of thousands of migrants and refugees, mostly fleeing unrest in the Middle East and Afghanistan, are desperately pushing their way through the Balkans as they try to reach Hungary before it seals its border. A team of New York Times journalists has met up with some of these migrants to document their journey." ...
... Alison Smale of the New York Times: "The partly decomposing bodies of at least 20 people assumed to be migrants being smuggled across Europe were found in a truck abandoned on a highway east of Vienna on Thursday, the police said."