The Longest Day

Today is the summer solstice, but Friday was probably the longest day for me. Here's what went wrong.

Reality Chex went down.

My gmail account went down.

My Twitter account went down.

My debit card has "unusual activity" on it, so I can't use it.

The movers showed up -- a surprise -- & left a lot of stuff strewn about the yard, which I have to shlep into the basement tomorrow. I can barely move through the house because it's full of boxes.

My back went out.

My Damned Cat (that's her name) disappeared.

Usually I can only manage three things going wrong at once. For some reason I'm doing okay today. I guess none of these things is too terrible or too unexpected. Life is complicated.

The Commentariat -- June 20, 2014

Internal links, graphics removed.

Republican Governors' Bad Day

"AND Crime Was of the Essence of the Scheme."* Patrick Marley, et al., of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: "Prosecutors allege Gov. Scott Walker was at the center of an effort to illegally coordinate fund raising among conservative groups to help his campaign and those of Republican state senators facing recall elections during 2011 and '12, according to documents unsealed Thursday. In the documents, prosecutors lay out what they call an extensive 'criminal scheme' to bypass state election laws by Walker, his campaign and two top Republican political operatives -- R.J. Johnson and Deborah Jordahl. This marks the first time prosecutors have disclosed the details of their probe." ...

... Monica Davey & Nicholas Confessore of the New York Times: "The allegations by five county district attorneys, released as part of a federal lawsuit over the investigation into Mr. Walker, his aides and the conservative groups, suggest that Mr. Walker's campaign expressly coordinated with the outside groups, including Wisconsin Club for Growth, to the point that campaign advisers also controlled some of the groups." ...

... NEW. Charles Pierce: "What we learned on Thursday, when the documents compiled by prosecutors were unsealed, is more than simply trouble for Walker and a shot below the waterline of both his local and national ambitions. It also is a window into the farce that the Supreme Court's decisions in various campaign finance and voting rights cases have made of our elections. Everything is a fake. Nothing ever happens by accident any more. 'Grassroots' are now largely useful only as camouflage for the same old corruption."

It's over, it's done, and I'm moving on. -- Gov. Chris Christie, to potential donors at Mitt Romney's "ideas retreat," June 14, 2014 ...

... Scott Raab & Lisa Brennan in Esquire: "... Paul Fishman, the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey..., has empaneled a second grand jury [to investigate unlawful conduct by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie & his allies], and the U.S. Justice Department has sent assistant prosecutors and FBI agents to work the case.... Fishman's challenge is to nail down specific criminal charges on several fronts -- the diversion of Port Authority money to fund New Jersey road and bridge projects; the four-day rush-hour closures of George Washington Bridge lanes in Ft. Lee; and a web of real-estate deals spun by David Samson, long a Christie crony, when he chaired the PA's Board of Commissioners as Christie's appointee."

* Apologies to Robert Frost.

Mark Landler & Michael Gordon of the New York Times: "President Obama said Thursday that he would deploy up to 300 military advisers to Iraq to help its struggling security forces fend off a wave of Sunni militants who have overrun large parts of the country, edging the United States back into a conflict that Mr. Obama once thought he had left behind. Warning that the militants pose a threat not just to Iraq but also to the United States, Mr. Obama said he was prepared to take 'targeted and precise military action' -- a campaign of airstrikes that a senior administration official said could be extended into neighboring Syria":

... It's All about Me. Martin Chulov & Spencer Ackerman of the Guardian: "A spokesman for the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has said he will not stand down as a condition of US air strikes against Sunni militants who have made a lightning advance across the country."

Ed O'Keefe & Robert Costa of the Washington Post: "House Republicans dramatically reshaped their leadership team Thursday by selecting Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to serve as the next House majority leader and Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) as the next majority whip.... Scalise currently leads the Republican Study Committee, a caucus of conservative Republicans, and has been in office since 2008. A lifelong Louisianan, he has sparred frequently in recent years with Boehner, Cantor and McCarthy over spending matters.

Elena Schneider of the New York Times: "Cpl. William Kyle Carpenter, an automatic rifleman who shielded a fellow Marine from a grenade thrown at them during a firefight in Afghanistan in 2010, received the Medal of Honor from President Obamaon Thursday":

Binyamin Appelbaum of the New York Times: "THE Federal Reserve is poised to keep purchasing large volumes of mortgage bonds, and potentially Treasury securities too, even after the likely conclusion of its prominent bond-buying program later this year. It is a prospect that reflects both the breadth of the Fed's campaign to stimulate the economy -- one initiative ending, others still running -- and the concern among many Fed officials that the central bank should not pull back too quickly."

Freedom's Just Another Word for Discrimination. David Edwards of the Raw Story: "Fox News host Mike Huckabee on Thursday compared the effort to prevent LGBT people from having equal marriage rights to fighting against Nazi Germany." AND, AND, I'm just like Martin Luther King, Jr., fighting for freedom from the Birmingham jail against equal rights from the Washington Mall. David of Crooks & Liars sums of Huckabee's claim in his headline: "Huckabee says MLK would agree that marriage equality is like the Holocaust."...

    ... CW: Here Huckabee manages in a few sentences to trivialize the heroic resistance fighters of WWII, the suffering, oppression & murder of millions of Jews & others AND the work of Dr. King while at the same time advocating against equal justice, the most fundamental of human rights. That's pretty impressive. And right on the verge of insane.

Zombies! Paul Krugman: "... the goings-on at Veterans Affairs shouldn't cause us to lose sight of a much bigger scandal: the almost surreal inefficiency and injustice of the American health care system as a whole. And it's important to understand that the Veterans Affairs scandal, while real, is being hyped out of proportion by people whose real goal is to block reform of the larger system. The essential, undeniable fact about American health care is how incredibly expensive it is...."

Tim Egan on WalMart, Starbucks & the do-nothing House Republicans.

AND the CIA Scraps Its Own Excellent Plan to End Islamic Terrorism Forever. Code Name "Devil Eyes." Adam Goldman of the Washington Post: "Beginning in about 2005, the CIA began secretly developing a ­custom-made Osama bin Laden ­action figure.... The face of the figure was painted with a heat-dissolving material, designed to peel off and reveal a red-faced bin Laden who looked like a demon, with piercing green eyes and black facial markings. The goal of the short-lived project was simple: spook children and their parents, causing them to turn away from the actual bin Laden." CW: It coulda worked! Seriously, if Republicans really wanted to know why the Benghazi attack was successful, they might examine the quality of agents the CIA hires. Obviously, "best & brightest" is not an employment requirement at Langley.

Presidential Election 2016
Walker, Christie

Marin Cogan of the National Journal interviews "a different kind of Democrat" -- Brian Schweitzer, former Montana governor. ...

... Joe Coscarelli of New York: "Along with contending that Eric Cantor sets off his gaydar, former Montana Governor and 2016 extra-long-shot Brian Schweitzer compared Senator Dianne Feinstein, loosely, to a prostitute in the new issue of the National Journal.... Right on cue, Schweitzer apologized for 'a number of stupid and insensitive remarks,' although he did not specify which." In another post, Coscarelli calls the graf from Cogan's story below "the parenthetical aside of the year":

(It wasn't the only time Schweitzer was unable to hold his tongue. Last week, I called him on the night Majority Leader Eric Cantor was defeated in his GOP primary. 'Don't hold this against me, but I'm going to blurt it out. How do I say this ... men in the South, they are a little effeminate,' he offered when I mentioned the stunning news. When I asked him what he meant, he added, 'They just have effeminate mannerisms. If you were just a regular person, you turned on the TV, and you saw Eric Cantor talking, I would say -- and I'm fine with gay people, that's all right -- but my gaydar is 60-70 percent. But he's not, I think, so I don't know. Again, I couldn't care less. I'm accepting.')

The Commentariat -- June 19, 2014

Obsolete videos removed.

Alissa Rubin & Rod Nordland of the New York Times: "Alarmed over the Sunni insurgent mayhem convulsing Iraq, the country's political leaders are actively jockeying to replace Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, American and Iraqi officials said Thursday. The political leaders have been encouraged by what they see as newfound American support for replacing Mr. Maliki with someone more acceptable to Iraq's Sunnis and Kurds, as well as to the Shiite majority." ...

... Justin Sink & Alexander Bolton of the Hill: "President Obama is not close to seeking congressional authorization for airstrikes in Iraq. After a White House meeting between Obama and the top four leaders in Congress, all sides involved signaled they want to leave options open for handling a politically delicate and fluid crisis that threatens to leave jihadist terrorists in control of Iraq." ...

... The video of this photo-op, where we see Mitch McConnell -- if not John Boehner -- smiling & looking normal in the Oval Office just strikes me as bizarre:

... BUT then I remembered that several months ago McConnell released this video for news organizations to use for outside groups to use in their ads -- presumably in clips -- with stories about Mitch. Fake smiling is what he does:

Carl Hulse of the New York Times: "House Republicans will vote on their leadership on Thursday, but the outcome will essentially keep them in a holding pattern, with the real contest months if not years away.... The coming months will determine who can emerge as heir apparent to Mr. Boehner in the absence of Mr. Cantor and get established as the new voice and face of the House majority." ...

     ... CW: One possible scenario: Brat loses the general election to Democrat Jack Trammell, & Cantor gains back his seat in two years. This wouldn't give him back his job as minority leader, but he could still go for the top spot. This of course also depends upon whether or not Cantor & his family find the newfound mega-income that will accompany his loss too appealing to give up.

Rebecca Riffkin of Gallup: "Americans' confidence in Congress has sunk to a new low. Seven percent of Americans say they have 'a great deal' or 'quite a lot' of confidence in Congress as an American institution, down from the previous low of 10% in 2013. This confidence is starkly different from the 42% in 1973, the first year Gallup began asking the question."

** What DickKnew. Charles Blow: "... it's so galling to read [Dick] Cheney chastising this administration for its handling of the disaster that Mr. Cheney himself foresaw, but ignored." ...

** ... E. J. Dionne: "The Cheney polemic would be outrageous even if our former vice president's record on Iraq had been one of absolute clairvoyance. As it happens, he was wrong in almost every prediction he made about the war." ...

... Jonathan Chait: "Dick Cheney [Is] Not Completely Sure If Obama Is a Traitor." ...

... Here, Chait argues that we should be listening to the people who repeatedly got it wrong. Because, like, maybe they have good arguments now. CW: Also, Monkey Types Shakespeare Sonnet. After typing millions of random characters of gibberish.

Sam Kleiner in the New Republic: "With the capture of Ahmed Abu Khatalla, the alleged mastermind of the Benghazi attack, Senator [Lindsey] Graham [R-S.C.] is once again accusing Obama of being weak on terror for failing to try the suspect in the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay.... [Republicans'] attempt to push this case into a military commission is not only misguided, it is dangerous. In depicting disarrayed groups who perpetuate terrorism as unified actors in a 'war' on the United States, we send a signal that bolsters their credibility.... The Obama administration's balanced approach is spot-on, and hackneyed criticism from Republicans like Senator Graham once again misses the mark. This process of conducting an interrogation by the military and then putting the suspect in federal court allows for the military to do what it is best at and for prosecutors to do what they are best at. Republican attacks here are to be expected, but they have been proven wrong time and time again." ...

     ... CW: Seems to me there was a time when prominent Republicans behaved more-or-less honorably -- especially on matters of national security -- & raised objections to Democratic actions on issues with which they genuinely disagreed & had some sort of substantive evidence or philosophical reason for disagreeing. That "Republican attacks here are to be expected" is a sad commentary on the dissolute state of the party.

Jonathan Topaz of Politico: "One word — 'Iraq' -- was never mentioned at the unveiling of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's official portrait with Secretary of State John Kerry." CW: A reminder that so far George I Know There Are WMDs Here Somewhere Bush, Condi "Bin Ladin Determined to Attack" Rice & Colin "Weapons of Mass Destruction" Powell so far have not joined Cheney, Bremer, Wolfowitz, et al., on the op-ed pages & Sunday shows.

CW: Meant to link this yesterday. Tom Edsall of the New York Times: "Over the past three decades, Congress has conducted a major experiment in anti-poverty policy. Legislators have restructured benefits and tax breaks intended for the poor so that they penalize unmarried, unemployed parents -- the modern-day version of the 'undeserving poor.' At the same time, working parents, the aged and the disabled are getting larger benefits.... For the poorest of the poor, the results have been devastating."

Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post thinks that if Republicans take the Senate in November, House Republicans will be emboldened to impeach President Obama. This sounds a little wild, but as Capehart notes, "If Republicans are willing to ignore their leadership and jeopardize the full faith and credit of the United States, there really is nothing they aren't willing to do.... Obama is not on the ballot in November, but Obama is on the ballot in November. Democrats have it in their power to keep the Senate and save the Obama presidency from the all-but-certain asterisk of impeachment. Obama is not on the ballot in November, but Obama is on the ballot in November. Democrats have it in their power to keep the Senate and save the Obama presidency from the all-but-certain asterisk of impeachment."

In that little paper he owns, U.S. immigrant Rupert Murdoch writes an op-ed urging legislators to pass immigration reform. Firewalled. Google this blurb to read it: "There is rarely a good time to do hard things, and America won't advance if legislators act like seat-warmers."

Annals of Journalism, Ctd.

Brian Beutler of the New Republic: "... offering Dick Cheney or Doug Feith or Paul Wolfowitz column inches and airtime without also flashing neon culpability disclosures amounts to a conflict-of-interest error these editors and reporters and producers would never allow if they were soliciting somebody from, say, the American Petroleum Institute." ...

Kelly is right about this, a 2010 remark by Joe Biden of which I was unaware:

George Will Begins His Slow, Painful & Necessary Retirement. Tony Messenger, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial page editor: "Starting today, Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson replaces George Will [on our editorial page].... We believe that Mr. Gerson's commitment to 'compassionate conservatism' and his roots in St. Louis will better connect with our readers, regardless of their political bent. The change has been under consideration for several months, but a column published June 5, in which Mr. Will suggested that sexual assault victims on college campuses enjoy a privileged status, made the decision easier. The column was offensive and inaccurate; we apologize for publishing it."

CW: The other day I linked a column by Dana Milbank on the rude & unseemly treatment by members of a Heritage Foundation panel on Benghaaazi! & their audience to a Muslim attendee who asked a question. In a post titled "Dana Milbank's Heritage Disaster,' Dylan Byers of Politico, after having seen a clip of a portion of the forum, wrote a highly-critical review of Milbank's column. ...

... Milbank responds to Byers' criticisms & to Byers' practice of "armchair journalism": "... there was indeed a disaster: the sort of disaster that occurs when a journalist, from the comfort of his office, levels accusations based on a nine-minute clip of a 65-minute panel he hadn't attended. (Heritage didn't post the full video until well after the Byers report, and Byers didn't take me up on my offer to provide him earlier with my audio recording.)" ...

... Brian Beutler backs up Milbank. ...

... Update: Byers has a fairly classy response. Although he doesn't take back any of his original post, he points readers to Milbank's rebuttal & reports Milbank's major objections to his own critique. Not exactly a mea culpa, but not at all whiney, either.

Presidential Election 2016

Gail Collins: "Mitt Romney is back."

News Ledes

Reuters: "Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian separatists were locked in fierce fighting in the east of Ukraine on Thursday after rebels rejected a call to lay down their arms in line with a peace plan proposed by President Petro Poroshenko, government forces said."

CNN: "William 'Kyle' Carpenter lost most of his jaw and an eye when he fell on a grenade to shield a fellow Marine from the blast. His body shattered, one lung collapsed, Carpenter was nearly given up for dead after that 2010 Afghanistan firefight. Then he spent 2½ years in a hospital as doctors worked to rebuild his body.... On Thursday, he will become the eighth living veteran of U.S. combat in Iraq and Afghanistan to receive the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military award."

New York Times: "Two major studies by leading research groups published on Wednesday independently identified mutations in a single gene that protect against heart attacks by keeping levels of triglycerides -- a kind of fat in the blood -- very low for a lifetime. The findings are expected to lead to a push to develop drugs that mimic the effect of the mutations, potentially offering the first new class of drugs to combat heart disease in decades, experts say."