The Commentariat -- Sept. 14, 2015
Internal links & defunct video removed.
Presidential Race
Nick Corasanti of the New York Times: "... Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont will take his populist, progressive message to Liberty University, the Christian school in Virginia founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell, and deliver a convocation address on Monday morning." CW: The link wasn't working right when I tested it -- got a blank page -- but it's the only link there is, so maybe the Times will fix it.
Bradford Richardson of the Hill: "Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is up by double-digits on former secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Iowa and New Hampshire, according to a poll released by CBS News on Sunday. The senator is drawing 43 percent support in the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucus, besting Clinton by 10 points. Sanders is also drawing 52 percent support in New Hampshire, almost doubling Clinton, who sits at 30 percent support in the Granite State. Clinton, however, doubles-up Sanders in South Carolina, drawing 46 percent compared to the senator's 23 percent. Vice President Biden, who is considering a run for the Democratic presidential nomination, places third in all three states, drawing 10 percent support in Iowa, 9 percent support in New Hampshire, and a strong 22 percent backing in South Carolina." ...
... Charles Blow makes an important point here: Bernie "Sanders's ability to win Obama's supporters may have been made difficult by his associations. On Saturday, Sanders campaigned with Dr. Cornel West, who recently issued an endorsement of Sanders. West's critique of the president has been so blistering and unyielding -- he has called Obama 'counterfeit,' the 'black face of the American empire,' a verb-ed neologism of the n-word — that it has bordered on petulance and self-parody." ...
... Nancy Letourneau of the Washington Monthly: "I would also suggest that one of the reasons Sander's message fails to connect with African Americans is that - even in the midst of economic conditions that were much worse than today - Ellis Cose pointed out in 2011 that African Americans are the country's 'new optimists.'.... To the extent that optimism has dimmed more recently - it is in response to the shootings of unarmed Black men (often by police officers) and the lack of a 'just response' from our justice system. No matter how hard Sanders tries to tie that one to his message about income inequality and economics, it will fall short of connecting to the souls of African Americans."
Greg Sargent: "Today the Center for American Progress will release a new report that makes a detailed case that the GOP presidential candidates are all well to the right of [Ronald] Reagan, and actually represent a break from core aspects of his approach to the presidency." ...
Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: "An immigration reform group backed by business, political and religious leaders plans to air a hard-hitting television commercial that juxtaposes the words of three Republican presidential candidates against those of a revered GOP figure: former president Ronald Reagan. The National Immigration Forum Action Fund will air the ad in the coming days on CNN before, during and after the presidential debate that the network is hosting Wednesday night at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California."
Michael Grunwald of Politico: "... Donald Trump has scrambled the politics of crime by running as a pro-cop, anti-thug 'law-and-order' candidate, denouncing rioters in Baltimore and Ferguson, vowing to 'get rid of gang members so fast your head will spin.'" And as with immigration, his rivals are echoing his appeals to the angry id of their party's white base, distancing themselves from bipartisan reform. His brash pronouncements, brazen insults and absurd promises are not only dominating the 2016 political discussion, they're also driving the Republican policy agenda. And while most of the commentary about Trump ... has focused on his potential impact on the campaign, as well as the long-term future of the Republican Party, criminal justice is just one example of an issue currently pending in Washington that Trump could affect right now." ...
... Reuters: "... Donald Trump on Sunday said high salaries paid to chief executives were a 'joke' and a 'disgrace', often approved by company boards stacked with friends of such CEOs.... In particular Trump mentioned Macy's, which in July stopped selling his menswear line after he described migrants from Mexico as drug-runners and rapists." ...
... Emma Brown of the Washington Post: "In three pending lawsuits, including one in which the New York attorney general is seeking $40 million in restitution, former students [of Trump "University"] allege that the enterprise bilked them out of their money with misleading advertisements. Instead of a fast route to easy money, these Trump University students say they found generic seminars led by salesmen who pressured them to invest more cash in additional courses. The students say they didn't learn Trump's secrets and never received the one-on-one guidance they expected." CW: We've covered this before, but it bears repeating. It's easy to argue that these "students" were silly, greedy people, but conning the gullible -- and not just for votes! -- is sleazy. ...
... Nick Gass of Politico: "Ben Carson ... [said] he was not questioning [Donald Trump]'s faith but rather talking about his own. And he does not blame Trump for retaliating. 'I said something that sounded like I was questioning his faith. I really wasn't, I was really talking more about mine. But it was said in an inappropriate way, which I recognized and I apologized for that. It's never my intention to impugn other people,' the Republican presidential candidate said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal published Monday."
Katie Zezima of the Washington Post: "... the National Federation of Republican Women's annual conference" in Phoenix, Arizona, Ted Cruz courts the ladies. "His timing may be opportune: As front-runner Donald Trump has come under fire for a string of comments many see as anti-women, Cruz is trying to seize the moment to retain and expand his foothold in the GOP electorate.... Cruz wasn't the only presidential contender who saw the importance of the conference. But he was the only man. Former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina addressed the group Friday night. Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee sent his wife, Janet. Other candidates dispatched staffers." ...
... CW: Your modern Republican party: Fifteen or 16 presidential candidates, & only two of them, one a woman, bother to show up for the annual meeting of some of the most active & influential women in their party. It isn't just that Republican men have no respect for women; they have no respect for their own women, even ones who dedicate their time to support & work for these men. Pretty astounding. ...
... Katie Glueck of Politico: Carly Fiorina "won the straw poll at this weekend's National Federation of Republican Women convention, organizers announced on Sunday. The victory came after she kicked off the conference on Friday by mocking Trump's apparent criticism of her appearance. Fiorina pulled in 27 percent of the vote at the event held in Scottsdale, Arizona. Ted Cruz was the only other candidate to address the conference in person, speaking Saturday. He finished second, with 20 percent." CW: Yeah, the ladies like to be noticed.
Scott Bauer of the AP: "... Scott Walker on Monday will call for sweeping restrictions on organized labor in the U.S.... At a town hall meeting in Las Vegas, Walker will propose eliminating unions for employees of the federal government, making all workplaces right-to-work unless individual states vote otherwise, scrapping the federal agency that oversees unfair labor practices and making it more difficult for unions to organize." CW: When it comes down to it, Scottie is just a hideous human being.
Martin Pengelly of the Guardian: Chris Christie "said on NBC the media should 'stop blathering' about Bridgegate and insisted what mattered was how he reacted to it, and said it had not left 'a stain on my administration'.... 'What really matters, as Hillary Clinton is finding out, is how you react to a crisis,' Christie said. 'Not that there ever will be any crisis ... what did I do? When we had a crisis the next day I went out and took questions for an hour and 15 minutes, no holds barred. Let's wait and see if Mrs Clinton ever does one fifth of that on her crisis.'"
Beyond the Beltway
Jack Pearson of the AP: "Former tennis star James Blake, whose caught-on-camera takedown by a plainclothes New York City police officer prompted apologies from the mayor and police commissioner, told The Associated Press on Saturday that the officer who wrongly arrested him should be fired."
AP: "Despite his boss' objections to gay marriage, a deputy county clerk in eastern Kentucky says he'll continue issuing marriage licenses. Deputy clerk Brian Mason had previously said that if he has to, he would disobey his boss, county clerk Kim Davis, and issue licenses rather than refuse the orders of U.S. District Judge David Bunning. Monday was Davis' first day back to work after Judge Bunning jailed her for refusing to issue marriage licenses. Reading from a statement, Davis said she's not going to interfere with her deputies issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, but she says she isn't authorizing them and questions whether they're valid." CW: So if Mason takes a day off, people can't get marriage licenses in Rowan County??? This is not exactly a solution. ...
... @8:08 am ET, CNN is running a crawl which says Kim Davis won't issue marriage licenses to applicants, but she won't interfere with clerks who do. ...
... Justin Moyer of the Washington Post: Kim "Davis will return to work Monday morning as legal questions linger -- and a billboard in Morehead, Ky., where her office is located, openly mocks her.... 'We put up this billboard just kind of reminding her that from a religious perspective, the definition of marriage has been constantly changing, and this isn't actually about religion,' Davis Hammit, operations director of Planting Peace, told Reuters." ...
... Kevin Conlon of CNN: Rowan County, Kentucky, Kim Davis's attorney "Mat Staver said [Sunday] his client was fully aware of the law and of the court's ruling, but that she was still undecided about what she'll do if a same-sex couple applies for a marriage license in Rowan County. 'We'll find out what Kim does when she goes to work on Monday.'"
David Eggert of the AP: "Two disgraced tea party Republicans are gone from Michigan's Legislature, but their troubles may not be over as attention turns to a criminal investigation of misconduct including a plot to conceal their extramarital affair with an email of false and explicit claims."
Way Beyond
Rod McGuirk of the AP: "Australia's beleaguered prime minister was ousted from power in an internal party ballot on Monday as the ruling conservative party attempts to win back a disenchanted public by replacing the nation's polarizing, gaffe-prone leader with his more moderate rival. Prime Minister Tony Abbott lost a leadership ballot by members of his party, who voted 54 to 44 to replace him with former Liberal Party leader and Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull...."
Paul Krugman: "On economic policy, in particular, the striking thing about the leadership contest [within Britain's Labour party] was that every candidate other than [winner Jeremy] Corbyn essentially supported the Conservative government's austerity policies. Worse, they all implicitly accepted the bogus justification for those policies, in effect pleading guilty to policy crimes that Labour did not, in fact, commit.... The Corbyn upset isn't about a sudden left turn on the part of Labour supporters. It's mainly about the strange, sad moral and intellectual collapse of Labour moderates."
Melilla Eddy & Dan Bilefsky of the New York Times: "Austria, Slovakia and the Netherlands introduced border controls on Monday, as Germany's decision over the weekend to set up checks began to ripple across a bloc struggling to deal with the influx of migrants coming to the Continent. In Hungary, the authorities said that a near-record 5,353 migrants had crossed into the country from Serbia before noon on Monday -- even as Budapest continued to try to seal off that border, which is being reinforced with the construction of a 109-mile fence made with razor wire."
Melissa Eddy, et al., of the New York Times: "With record numbers of migrants pouring across the Hungarian border and rushing west, Germany, the country that had been the most welcoming in Europe, suddenly ordered temporary border restrictions on Sunday that cut off rail travel from Austria and instituted spot checks on cars. The German move came just one day before European ministers were scheduled to meet in Brussels to discuss a plan to distribute tens of thousands of migrants across Europe, with many governments, particularly in Eastern Europe, bristling at being forced to accept more migrants than they wish to take."
News Ledes
Reuters: "A Mississippi college professor was shot and killed in his campus office on Monday, and police said a fellow Delta State University teacher was 'a person of interest' in the shooting. Authorities said they were searching for geography and social science instructor Shannon Lamb in connection with the killing of Ethan Schmidt, an assistant professor of American history. Lamb was also a suspect in the death of a woman in Mississippi earlier on Monday, according to news reports."
AP: "Some 400 homes were among the hundreds of structures destroyed as fast-moving wildfires raged through communities in Northern California, leaving at least one person dead and sending residents fleeing along roads where some buildings and vehicles were still in flames."
New York Times: "Russia is using an air corridor over Iraq and Iran to fly military equipment and personnel to a new air hub in Syria, openly defying American efforts to block the shipments and significantly increasing tensions with Washington."
Washington Post: "An altercation between inmates that lasted about two minutes resulted in the death of four prisoners, the company that runs the Cimarron Correctional Facility in Cushing, Okla., said Sunday."