The Commentariat -- July 13, 2015

Internal links & defunct videos removed.

Afternoon Update:

Julie Davis of the New York Times: "President Obama announced on Monday that he was commuting the sentences of 46 federal drug offenders, more than doubling the number of nonviolent criminals to whom he has granted clemency since taking office.... In a letter written to each of the inmates in which he personally notifies them that their sentences have been commuted, Mr. Obama says he has chosen them out of the thousands who apply for clemency because 'you have demonstrated the potential to turn your life around.'"

Colin Campbell of Business Insider: "A contact-lens and eyeglass company is having a blast after realizing its logo shares similarities with that of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's (R) presidential campaign. Both Walker's campaign and America's Best Contacts and Eyeglasses feature a cartoonish, four-part American flag logo as the "E" in their names. The same flag icon is also their stand-alone logos when the text is removed." ...

CW: MIKE HUCKAB and RICK PRRY must be among Scottie's rivals who are really pissed.

Mark Berman of the Washington Post: "The executive committee of the Boy Scouts of America has unanimously approved a resolution that would drop the group's ban on openly gay leaders, a key step that sends the resolution to the organization's national board later this month. If the national executive board ratifies the change when it meets on July 27, it would become official Scouts policy, a little more than two months after the organization's president [-- former Defense Secretary Robert Gates --] cast the ban as an existential threat to the group."

*****

James Kanter & Andrew Higgins of the New York Times: "European leaders said Monday morning that they had reached a deal meant to resolve Greece's debt crisis and avert a historic fracture in the Continent's common currency project.... The deal announced early Monday allows only the start of detailed negotiations on a new assistance package for Greece. But the prospect of a new bailout program was expected to give the European Central Bank the leeway to continue channeling sorely needed emergency funding to Greek banks hollowed out by a long economic slump and the withdrawal of billions of euros in recent months by account holders as the country's financial crisis worsened." ...

... "Disaster in Europe." Paul Krugman: "There are only terrible alternatives at this point, thanks to the fecklessness of the Greek government and, far more important, the utterly irresponsible campaign of financial intimidation waged by Germany and its allies. And I guess I have to say it: unless Merkel miraculously finds a way to offer a much less destructive plan than anything we're hearing, Grexit, terrifying as it is, would be better." ...

... Here's Krugman's column: "This goes beyond harsh into pure vindictiveness, complete destruction of national sovereignty, and no hope of relief. It is, presumably, meant to be an offer Greece can't accept; but even so, it's a grotesque betrayal of everything the European project was supposed to stand for.... Who will ever trust Germany's good intentions after this?... The European project -- a project I have always praised and supported -- has just been dealt a terrible, perhaps fatal blow. And whatever you think of Syriza, or Greece, it wasn't the Greeks who did it." ...

... Matt O'Brien of the Washington Post: "Germany seems to want to humiliate Greece. This latest melodrama, playing out in Brussels as European finance ministers meet to discuss whether or not to approve a new Greek bailout, appears so nonsensical that it can be hard to believe these people are deciding the future of Europe. Although you wouldn't know it from the headlines, the truth is that Greece and Europe have been close to a deal for awhile now." ...

... Larry Summers in the Washington Post: "Financial problems are in some combination always about two things -- arithmetic that does not add up and a loss of confidence. Incremental steps that provide some but not large sums of assistance, that postpone but do not reduce scheduled debt payments and that defer decisions about the future to the future run the constant risk that they will not bring convincing arithmetic into view and will be insufficient to restore market confidence." CW P.S. Hillary should make me Secretary of the Treasury again because "I'm, like, a really smart person."

George Jahn & Matthew Lee of the AP: "Negotiators at the Iran nuclear talks plan to announce Monday that they've reached a historic deal capping nearly a decade of diplomacy that would curb the country's atomic program in return for sanctions relief, two diplomats told The Associated Press on Sunday." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Richard Cowan of Reuters: "Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, interviewed on the 'Fox News Sunday' television program, said the Senate is unlikely to confirm any U.S. ambassador to Havana nominated by [President] Obama. McConnell added, 'There are sanctions that were imposed by Congress. I think the administration will have a hard time getting those removed. This is a policy that there is substantial opposition to in Congress.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Howell Raines, former executive editor of the New York Times, in an NYT op-ed: "Southern Republican officeholders ... still act as if tomorrow will be exactly like today, their tenure assured by unbendable evangelical Christians and testy white suburbanites.... Dramatic changes in voter attitudes will shift the region's party balance, to the detriment of the Republicans.... However..., affluent, suburban whites remain myopic about the obvious signs.... Anecdotal evidence indicates that affluent Southern Republicans continue to believe that minority voters can be attracted with punitive polices based on the Paul Ryan model.... It is a quintessential Southern pattern. The region's most affluent citizens always resist the obvious at first.... The longer they take to get it, the greater the odds that multiethnic Democrats will finally break the Republican lock on the solidly red South." ...

... ** Hugh Howard, in a Washington Post op-ed: "To a surprising extent, the way the North remembers the Civil War is also deeply flawed and misleading.... It's simply wrong-headed to presume that average, mid-19th-century farmers and factory workers in the North harbored abolitionist sympathies. They didn't.... The war for Lincoln was explicitly about union -- until it became expedient to make it about emancipation. The Emancipation Proclamation was primarily intended to hobble the Confederacy's war effort, which relied upon slaves for provisioning and other support. Even among those who recognized that human bondage must end, few thought blacks were equal to whites." ...

... Charles Blow: "While America's history in skin-color politics is long and deep, this aversion to darkness -- particularly dark femininity -- and aspiration to lightness, or even whiteness, isn't only an American phenomenon. It's a global sickness informed by history and culture and influenced by colonialism and the export of popular culture." ...

... Aviva Shen of Think Progress: "A day after South Carolina lowered the Confederate flag flying outside the Statehouse, the NAACP Board of Directors voted Saturday to end its 15-year economic boycott of the state. The civil rights group introduced an emergency resolution at its annual convention this weekend in response to the removal of the flag from the state capitol." ...

... Cathleen Decker of the Los Angeles Times: Latinos' "voting strength [in California] is only half their proportion of California's population, [according to a report said. They hold 1 in 8 state Senate seats and an even smaller percentage of supervisorial chairs. That's symptomatic of a troubling turn for Latino politicians and voters. Together with other data, it suggests the possibility of a ceiling forming over a group that, until recently, thought it had limitless upward mobility.... The higher up the political food chain the job, or the less Latino the political district, the worse their odds of success."

Sarah Kaplan of the Washington Post: "That a wildfire has been able to burn so extensively and for so long in a rain forest [-- Olympic National Park --] is a testament to the severity of the drought that has wracked the American West from California to Alaska. Olympic National Park -- which occupies much of the Olympic Peninsula just west of Seattle -- just endured its driest spring in over 100 years and a winter snow pack that was a mere 14 percent of average, according to the Park Service."

Saeed Dehghan of the Guardian: "The spying trial of Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post reporter held in Iran for nearly a year, has resumed in Tehran behind closed doors at a critical moment in the ongoing nuclear negotiations between Iran and the west."

Simon Romero & William Neuman of the New York Times: Pope "Francis' silence on various sensitive issues was noted repeatedly throughout his tour [of Bolivia, Equador & Paraguay], particularly in Paraguay, where activists in one of Latin America's most socially conservative countries had hoped for more on issues that included gay rights, killings over land disputes and the persistence of widespread economic inequality.... While Francis met with social leaders and criticized an economic model that sacrifices 'human lives at the altar of money and profits,' he spoke in general terms, opting against mentioning specific cases...." ...

... CW: For what it's worth, I think that's what a religious leader is supposed to do. Francis is not going to appear before the U.S. Congress & say to Paul Ryan, "Get thee behind me, Satan." With the help of the Pope's generalizations, Ryan is supposed to realize of his own free will that he is a nasty piece of work, repent & go forth to do good works.

Helen & Margaret are back. Helen (June 27): "Never in my life did I think I would live long enough to see the gays persecuting the Christians instead of the other way around. That was actually a Fox Exclusive! I read somewhere that Glen[n] Beck has 10,000 to 20,000 pastors ready to die before gay marriage would become legal. Funny. I haven't seen any obituaries printed. Religious conviction has its limits I guess, but that really is one herd I would love to see thinned. Of course if a government is able to show more compassion than your church, maybe you should join another church. It's just so odd that all this hatred and discrimination seems to be emanating from a bunch of Republicans who claim to represent Jesus." Via Bill of Daily Kos.

Marie's Sports Report. AP: "The Buffalo Bills offensive line coach, Aaron Kromer, was arrested Sunday in Florida after shoving a boy to the ground and punching him, authorities said. The Walton County Sheriff's Office said the dispute arose after Kromer and his son confronted three boys about their use of beach chairs while fishing near their home. In a statement, the sheriff's office said Kromer grabbed the boys' fishing pole and threw it in the water before assaulting one boy. 'The victim stated Kromer also told him if he reported him to the police he would kill his family,' the sheriff's office said." ...

... CW: A few weekends back, a couple of kids commandeered my lawn chairs to sit in while fishing off the lake across the road. When I noticed this, I asked the teens to put the chairs back when they were through fishing as the chairs are fairly heavy. I failed to toss the boys' fishing rods, punch any of the boys or threaten to kill their families. Also, the boys did put the chairs back on my lawn. Football sucks. ...

** Jim Sleeper in the Atlantic: "The Puritans were America's first Very Serious People.... First, in attempting to emulate the earliest Christian communities, they turned their backs on the golden thrones of popes and kings and countenanced neither aristocracy nor destitution -- a revolutionary innovation in the early seventeenth century. Although they were often shrewd businessmen, they never argued openly that prosperity brings freedom and dignity, preaching instead that it carried communal obligations. Second, they weren't out to 'make history' through scientific planning or by discerning great movements of Hegelian Reason in their strivings, but by fulfilling the pre-established biblical typology of the Israelites' exodus from Egypt on a sacred mission to a Promised Land.... Third, the Puritans' biblically covenanted, congregational communities combined public purpose with personal integrity in ways that survive in present-day understandings of the interplay between individual conscience and rights on the one hand and civic obligation on the other."

Presidential Race

Peter Baker of the New York Times: "Even without the heartbreak of loss, this was bound to be a crossroads moment for a vice president who has spent four decades in Washington only to find an uncertain path ahead. [Vice President Biden] has not ruled out running for president again, and some friends are nudging him to, even if the political math does not seem to favor it. But he has good days and bad days, his mind never far from his late son, Beau Biden, and his staff is not planning further than two weeks ahead.

NEW. David Jackson of USA Today: "Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton unveiled her economic program Monday, including a call for corporations to share more profits with employees in a bid to increase take-home pay.... In slamming [Jeb] Bush for his comment that people need to 'work more hours' to help the economy grow, Clinton said that the former Florida governor obviously hasn't spoken to many actual workers. 'They don't need a lecture,' Clinton said. 'They need a raise.'" ...

... E. J. Dionne: Hillary "Clinton's ideas reflect a wide center-left consensus on behalf of bottom-up or, as many progressives call it, 'middle-out' economics. They also underscore how the nomination challenge she faces from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) differs from the problem created for Republicans by [Donald] Trump. By pulling the political conversation to the left generally and toward specific benefits government could confer on Americans in particular, Sanders is creating new political space for Democrats and highlighting issues that most of them (including Clinton, if she wins the nomination) want at the heart of the campaign next fall. Trump, on the other hand, is pulling Republicans far off message...."

** Paul Krugman (regular Monday column): "Americans work longer hours than their counterparts in just about every other wealthy country.... But Jeb Bush -- who is still attempting to justify his ludicrous claim that he can double our rate of economic growth -- says that Americans 'need to work longer hours and through their productivity gain more income for their families.'... You see this laziness dogma everywhere on the right. It was the hidden background to Mitt Romney's infamous 47 percent remark. It underlay the furious attacks on unemployment benefits at a time of mass unemployment and on food stamps when they provided a vital lifeline for tens of millions of Americans. It drives claims that many, if not most, workers receiving disability payments are malingerers -- 'Over half of the people on disability are either anxious or their back hurts,' says Senator Rand Paul.... If [Jeb Bush] makes it to the White House, the laziness dogma will rule public policy." ...

     ... Krugman takes a nice shot (albeit in the usual indirect way) at David Brooks & his moralizing.

NEW. Jason Stein, et al., of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "After four and a half years of leading Wisconsin, Scott Walker laid out Monday his goal of winning the White House, launching his campaign to become the world's most powerful leader." ...

Scott Walker is a national disgrace. -- AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka

... Jenna Johnson of the Washington Post: "Dealing with legislation at home was supposed to be the low-drama part of [Gov. Scott] Walker's year. Instead, things ... in Madison have been in turmoil for months -- a complication for a governor building his presidential candidacy around his ability to get things done. Walker has spent much of the year feuding not only with Democrats -- a fight he relishes -- but also with fellow Republicans over proposals such as the Bucks' arena.... [Walker] has pushed hard to use $250 million in taxpayer money to pay for a new professional basketball arena for the Milwaukee Bucks...." ...

... Kimberly Hefling of Politico: "Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's trailblazing effort to weaken tenure protections at public colleges and universities is now a reality with his signing of a $73 billion budget on Sunday.... Specifically, the changes allow the University of Wisconsin system Board of Regents -- 16 of whose 18 members are appointed by the governor -- to set tenure policies instead of having tenure protections spelled out in state law.... The budget sent to Walker also includes other labor-related issues that frustrated unions, including a provision that rolls back a minimum pay protection for laborers working on local public construction projects like schools." ...

... Andy Borowitz has a preview of Walker's presidential announcement: "Serving notice that he intends to go toe-to-toe with the controversial real-estate mogul, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker used the official announcement of his Presidential candidacy to assure Republican voters that he is as horrible as Donald Trump." ...

... Robert Costa of the Washington Postt: "In an expletive-laden interview over soft drinks [Donald] Trump ... said he has no plans to change the way he's running for the Republican nomination, which combines his trademark showmanship, an outsider-populist credo that resists ideological categorization and incendiary comments that have thrilled conservative activists." ...

... Mark Hensch of the Hill: "'Meet the Press' on Sunday aired a video documenting GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump's various changes of heart on campaign issues. The clip -- titled 'Trump vs. Trump' -- shows the New York business mogul shifting his stances on abortion, ObamaCare and even Hillary Clinton, his potential Democratic rival in 2016. 'One of the reasons Trump is breaking through this year thought is because people feel they know where he stands,' says 'Meet the Press' host Chuck Todd in the video." CW: Which means that the Village People got together & sanctioned anti-Donald talk. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

... Jennifer Shutt of Politico: "Taking to Twitter on Sunday, Donald Trump used the escape of notorious drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman this weekend to criticize Mexico, the Media and fellow candidates for president. The mogul/reality TV host turned candidate for president, wrote: 'Mexico's biggest drug lord escapes from jail. Unbelievable corruption and USA is paying the price. I told you so!' He continued his posts through the day." ...

... Matt Chaban of the New York Times: An altar to Donald Trump -- a shop selling Trump stuff -- is stealing public space inside Trump Tower. City officials have been trying to get rid of it for years. "It is a New York peculiarity that an atrium lined with golden mirrors, Gucci logos and an 80-foot waterfall would qualify as a public amenity. Yet there are hundreds of these privately owned public spaces, colloquially known as POPS, dotting Manhattan and a sliver of Brooklyn.... In the case of Trump Tower, the developer, working on his first signature project, was able to add about 20 floors to the 66-story tower -- nearly a third of its total height -- in exchange for building public spaces and shops in the atrium." ...

... CW: Huh. I'm pretty sure if you or I set up shop in a public space, "city officials" would take about five minutes to shut us down.

Eric Bradner of CNN: "Sen. Lindsey Graham says Donald Trump is a 'wrecking ball' who has put the Republican Party's future on the line with his controversial remarks about Mexican immigrants. 'I think he's hijacked the debate. I think he's a wrecking ball for the future of the Republican Party with the Hispanic community and we need to push back,' Graham said in an interview with CNN's Dana Bash on 'State of the Union' Sunday. 'This is a defining moment for the Republican Party. We need to reject this,' he said." With video.

It's not about me. Under this construct, nobody really cares about coming to Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina any more. It's almost about money. And what you're going to reward, over time, is the people with the most money. And you're destroying the early primary process. And I think that's bad for the Republican Party. -- Sen. Lindsey Graham, complaining about Fox "News"'s "dumb" rule that will allow only the ten top-polling GOP candidates to appear in an August debate

... David Atkins in the Washington Monthly: "... it's funny to see Senator Graham decide only now that policies that reward the people with the most money are problematic and unfair. That never seemed to bother him when it came time to cut earned benefits or assistance to the poor in order to give tax breaks to the wealthy. Senator Graham never seems to bat an eye when Fox News glorifies billionaires while denigrating the working poor."

Beyond the Beltway

Steve Mistler of the Portland Press Herald: Maine Gov. Paul LePage compares the IRS to the Gestapo, then "walks it back" by making it worse, claiming that the IRS was -- emulating the Gestapo -- "heading in the direction of killing a lot of people" by "rationing" health care. ...

... AP: "Democratic lawmakers said Sunday that another 51 bills have become law [in Maine] after Republican Gov. Paul LePage missed his deadline to act on them by midnight Saturday. But LePage has said he won't enforce the laws and is expected to take the issue to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court.... Among the bills that Democrats say became law after Saturday are measures to expand access to a drug overdose antidote and to provide insurance coverage for reproductive services to more women."

News Ledes

Arutz Sheva: "In arguably one of its cruelest acts yet, the Islamic State (ISIS) has reportedly blown up a baby as part of a demonstration showing how to handle explosives. So reports The Clarion Project. The unparalleled incident took place in Diyala Province, eastern Iraq, this past Friday, according to Sadiq el-Husseini, Security Committee Chairman of the province on behalf of the anti-ISIS forces there. He recounted the event to the local Arabic-language A-Sumeriah News."

New York Times: "Iranian and American negotiators made significant progress on Monday toward a historic nuclear agreement and have narrowed the list of final issues, several diplomats involved in the talks said. While the negotiators have moved closer to announcing an accord -- an announcement could come as early as Tuesday -- they said the deal remained fragile and warned that last-minute hitches could emerge as they review pages of text that define limits on Tehran's nuclear capacity and the lifting of Western and United Nations sanctions."

ABC News: "The estranged son of a respected Boston police captain was arrested July 4 by FBI agents as part of a counter-terrorism operation against alleged ISIS-inspired domestic terrorists, federal officials told ABC News today. Alexander Ciccolo, 23, of Adams, Mass., was taken into custody on gun charges after buying two pistols and two rifles from an undercover FBI confidential informant, federal officials said. In a search of his apartment, officials reported they found it loaded with possible bomb-making equipment including a pressure cooker, a variety of chemicals, an alarm clock, along with 'attack planning papers' and 'jihad' paperwork. FBI agents said he used the name Abu Ali al-Amriki and neighbors said he was a recent convert to Islam."

Guardian: "Video footage has emerged that appears to show the moments leading up to the fatal shooting of a teenage stone thrower by a senior Israeli army officer, seemingly contradicting the soldier's account of the killing. Doubts about the account of Col Yisrael Shomer, a brigade commander in the occupied territories, began to emerge last week in witness accounts and medical evidence collected by the Guardian, Washington Post and human rights groups. They suggested that 17-year-old Mohammed Kasbeh was shot in the upper body by Shomer as the youth was fleeing, not in the midst of a life-threatening attack."

The Commentariat -- July 12, 2015

Internal links & defunct video removed.

Afternoon Update:

George Jahn & Matthew Lee of the AP: "Negotiators at the Iran nuclear talks plan to announce Monday that they've reached a historic deal capping nearly a decade of diplomacy that would curb the country's atomic program in return for sanctions relief, two diplomats told The Associated Press on Sunday."

Richard Cowan of Reuters: "Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, interviewed on the 'Fox News Sunday' television program, said the Senate is unlikely to confirm any U.S. ambassador to Havana nominated by [President] Obama. McConnell added, 'There are sanctions that were imposed by Congress. I think the administration will have a hard time getting those removed. This is a policy that there is substantial opposition to in Congress.'"

Mark Hensch of the Hill: "'Meet the Press' on Sunday aired a video documenting GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump's various changes of heart on campaign issues. The clip -- titled 'Trump vs. Trump' -- shows the New York business mogul shifting his stances on abortion, ObamaCare and even Hillary Clinton, his potential Democratic rival in 2016. 'One of the reasons Trump is breaking through this year thought is because people feel they know where he stands,' says 'Meet the Press' host Chuck Todd in the video." CW: Which means that the Village People got together & sanctioned anti-Donald talk.

Jenna Johnson of the Washington Post: "Dealing with legislation at home was supposed to be the low-drama part of [Gov. Scott] Walker's year. Instead, things ... in Madison have been in turmoil for months -- a complication for a governor building his presidential candidacy around his ability to get things done. Walker has spent much of the year feuding not only with Democrats -- a fight he relishes -- but also with fellow Republicans over proposals such as the Bucks' arena.... [Walker] has pushed hard to use $250 million in taxpayer money to pay for a new professional basketball arena for the Milwaukee Bucks...."

*****

Sean McElwee of Salon: Studies show that the only people whose policy preferences matter are rich, white men. In fact, if you're a woman, there's a negative correlation between what you want & what you get. Researcher Nicholas Stephanopoulos: "As male support increases from 0 percent to 100 percent, the odds of policy enactment rise from about 0 percent to about 90 percent. But as female support varies over the same range, the likelihood of adoption falls from roughly 80 percent to roughly 10 percent. When men and women disagree, then, stronger female backing for a policy seems entirely futile." Even Democrats favor the preferences of whites.

Erik Eckholm of the New York Times: "A federal trial opening in Winston-Salem on Monday is meant to determine whether recent, sweeping changes in [North Carolina's] election laws discriminate against black voters. These changes were adopted by the Republican-dominated state legislature in 2013, immediately after the United States Supreme Court struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 when it ended a requirement that nine states with histories of discrimination, including North Carolina, get federal approval before altering their election laws. But the case, as well as one involving a Texas law requiring voters to show a photo ID, could have far wider repercussions, legal experts say -- helping to define the scope of voting rights protections across the country in the coming presidential election and beyond."

Propublica, republished in Salon, interviews Sonia "Sotomayor biographer Joan Biskupic on the long, tortured history of Fisher v. Texas, [the affirmative action case,] and why it's being reheard." CW: Has some interesting inside-the-Court back-and-forth. As many have said, the Court's agreement to rehear the case doesn't bode well for affirmative-action considerations.

God News

Jim Yardley & Binyamin Appelbaum of the New York Times: "Having returned to his native Latin America, [Pope] Francis has renewed his left-leaning critiques on the inequalities of capitalism, describing it as an underlying cause of global injustice, and a prime cause of climate change. Francis escalated that line last week when he made a historic apology for the crimes of the Roman Catholic Church during the period of Spanish colonialism -- even as he called for a global movement against a 'new colonialism' rooted in an inequitable economic order. The Argentine pope seemed to be asking for a social revolution." ...

... CW: I'll bet John Boehner is really, really glad he invited Francis to speak to a joint session of Congress this fall. Maybe Francis will endorse Bernie for president.

Michelle Boorstein of the Washington Post: "Seventh-day Adventists voted Wednesday that individual regions of the 18 million-member Protestant denomination cannot choose to ordain female ministers." Via Steve Benen.

Jon Schuppe of MSNBC: "A group of more than 600 churches has joined a small but growing movement within the religious community to call for and end to the war on drugs through legalization. The New England Conference of The United Methodist Church, representing more than 600 congregations, voted last month to support efforts to address the nation's drug abuse problem through 'means other than prohibition.'" Via Benen.

Presidential Race

** Nate Cohn of the New York Times had a conversation with Bernie Sanders. Sanders "believes he can mobilize a working-class coalition spanning ideological divides.... Few, if any, recent Democratic candidates represented the economic, populist left. The anti-establishment candidate of the last four competitive primaries all featured challenges from intellectual, professional-class liberals. [Jerry] Brown, [Bill] Bradley, [John] Dean and [Barack] Obama -- each educated at some point at an Ivy League university -- all fared well in Marin County, Calif., and Greenwich, Conn.; none appealed much to voters in the Appalachians or along the Rio Grande. Even the candidate who came closest to running as a populist, John Edwards, fared best among voters in Iowa and South Carolina who made more than $100,000 per year.... But so far, Mr. Sanders's support looks a lot like the liberal coalitions assembled by those other candidates." ...

... Todd Gitlin, in a New York Times op-ed, on "the Bernie Sanders moment." CW: BTW, Todd, one need not have been a hippie to support Sanders' agenda. It's about fairness to the all Americans, which is good for the country.

Sanders-Lite. Michael Grunwald of Politico: "In a speech Monday at the famously progressive New School in lower Manhattan, [Hillary] Clinton will lay out her economic theory of the case, and her main theory is that the incomes of 'everyday Americans' have remained too low for too long. At a moment when the left wing of the Democratic Party is flexing its muscles -- and flocking to the rallies of her socialist challenger, Bernie Sanders -- she will stick with the liberal populism that has dominated the opening months of her campaign, contrasting the good times on Wall Street and corporate boardrooms with the wage stagnation of the middle class. But an outline of the speech provided by a campaign aide suggested that she will strike less of a rabble-rousing tone than Sanders, challenging 'top-down' Republican policies without suggesting that capitalism is inherently rigged against families on the bottom."

Paul Krugman: "Maybe we were unfair to Mitt Romney; Jeb 'people should work longer hours' Bush is making him look like a model of empathy for the less fortunate.... Partly it's Bush trying to defend his foolish 4 percent growth claim; but it's also, I'm almost certain, coming out of the 'nation of takers' dogma that completely dominates America's right wing." ...

... KISS. Tom Boggioni of the Raw Story: Jeb! told the New Hampshire Union Leader that Obama's problem was that he used too many "big syllable" words & too much nuance, which together created "chaos" in the world. "Bush then advocated for more blunt and simple type of statesmanship -- reminiscent of the style of his brother, former President George W. Bush as well as Vice President Dick Cheney -- in dealing with world." CW: Yes, best to leave international policy to monosyllabic dimwits.

I think everybody knows that he's right. -- Former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) on Donald Trump's remarks about Mexican immigrants

Everybody except those pesky people who care about facts. -- Constant Weader

... The Arizona Republic is so excited about Donald Trump's appearance in Phoenix (Saturday afternoon) that it's liveblogging his speech. A lady out in front of the arena has a professionally-made sign that reads "Trump/Arpaio/2016/Make American Narcissistic Again". ...

     ... CW: Apparently Trump missed his attendance estimates by a bit. His campaign had predicted 9,000 would attend the rally. Ben Schreckinger of Politico puts the number in attendance at 4,000. "[This crowd today blows away anything that Bernie Sanders has gotten,' Trump said (10,000 people recently came out to cheer Sanders in Madison, Wisconsin)." Schreckinger has expanded his story since first posting it. ...

I'm, like, a really smart person. -- Donald Trump, speaking in Phoenix

... Zeke Miller of Time has more stupid/inaccurate stuff Trump said at the rally. ...

... Rory Carroll of the Guardian has a comprehensive report. ...

... Maxwell Tani of Business Insider: Trump made two "surreal" speeches yesterday, the first in Las Vegas, Nevada. Oh, & the 4,000 at Phoenix; according to Trump's campaign it was actually 15,000. CW: Schreckinger wrote that the venue holds only about 2,100, but Trump claimed the fire marshalls allowed him to pack the room. If so, shame on the marshalls. ...

... Daniel Kreps of Rolling Stone: "David Letterman made a surprise visit to Martin Short and Steve Martin's A Very Stupid Conversation stage show Friday night in San Antonio, and the former Late Show host used the opportunity to gleefully mock beleaguered presidential hopeful Donald Trump."

Josh Voorhees of Slate: If Ohio Gov. John Kasich makes it to the GOP debate stage, he could pose more problems for the candidates than will Donald Trump. It's easy for candidates to separate themselves from Trump's outrageous rhetoric, but Kasich's more nuanced views on immigration reform might force other candidates to be specific about their proposals.

Way Beyond the Beltway

Daniel Politi of Slate: "During an event to mark the 75^th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, the Duke of Edinburgh lost patience with a photographer: 'Just take the fucking picture!' TV cameras caught the moment that showed him looking 'visibly distressed' while 'grandson Prince William laughed at his outburst,' reports the Press Association. The photographer didn't seem very offended and seconds later can be heard saying, 'eyes on me.'" CW: Hey, if you're a 94-year-old guy married to the Queen of England, you can can whatever the fuck you want.

News Ledes

New York Times: "Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the infamous Mexican drug kingpin whose capture last year had been trumpeted by his country's government as a crucial victory in the bloody campaign against the narcotics trade, escaped from a maximum-security prison through a tunnel that led from a shower, Mexican security officials said on Sunday. The government detailed the escape in a news conference early Sunday. Mr. Guzmán, known by the nickname El Chapo, or Shorty, absconded through a passage tall enough for a person to stand upright and equipped with overhead lighting and a motorcycle on rails likely used to transport digging equipment and haul out dirt." ...

... Los Angeles Times: "It is the second time Guzman, head of the Sinaloa cartel, Mexico's largest and most lucrative trafficker of heroin, cocaine and marijuana, has been able to flee jail. The first time was 2001, from a different prison, when he famously hid in a laundry cart, and he remained a fugitive -- albeit sometimes a public one -- until his arrest last year. Guzman's escape is a major embarrassment for the administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto, which has prided itself for having taken down a string of top cartel leaders."

New York Times: "With just hours left for a deal to keep Greece in Europe's common currency, European finance ministers resumed negotiations Sunday after a day of fruitless talks and indicated that a decision on whether to cut Greece adrift or open the way for a new bailout would be left to a meeting later in the day of the the leaders of the 19 countries that use the euro." ...

... Washington Post UPDATE: "Bitterly divided European financial officials failed to agree on a path forward to save Greece on Sunday afternoon, passing the baton to a higher-level summit this evening of the 19 leaders of the euro zone to decide the fate of a country on the brink of financial collapse.... It was now up to Europe's leaders -- chiefly, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Françios Hollande -- to attempt to forge a compromise on how and whether to push forward on what would be Greece's third bailout in five years."

The Commentariat -- July 11, 2015

Internal links removed.

Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post: "Dylann Roof, who is accused of killing nine people at a church in South Carolina three weeks ago, was only able to purchase the gun used in the attack because of breakdowns in the FBI's background-check system, FBI Director James B. Comey said Friday.... The lapse was the result of errors not only by the FBI but by the Lexington County prosecutors' office, and Comey said he has ordered a review of procedures that led to the failure. The errors came to light as investigators examined a gun purchase Roof made two months before the shooting in Charleston." ...

... David Graham of the Atlantic has more details on the screw-up. CW: It seems to me the wait period for purchasing a gun should be longer than three days, bureaucracies being what they are.

Lisa Rein & Joe Davidson of the Washington Post: "Office of Personnel Management Director Katherine Archuleta resigned under pressure on Friday, a day after Obama administration officials announced that two major breaches last year of U.S. government databases holding personnel records and security-clearance files exposed sensitive information about at least 22.1 million people. Archuleta, who had been leading the personnel agency for just 17 months, had been under fire from Republicans and Democrats in Congress and federal employee unions in the five weeks since she disclosed a massive hack of the employment files of 4.2 million current and former federal employees. But calls for her resignation grew late Thursday after administration officials revealed the full scope of a second hack that compromised background investigation files of federal employees, contractors, applicants and their families."

** Dana Milbank: "Thursday's Confederate flag debacle [in the House of Representatives] is a direct consequence of House Speaker John Boehner's leadership strategy. Calculating that compromise with the Democratic minority will cause his conservative caucus to oust him from the speakership, Boehner has essentially chosen to pass a legislative agenda with only Republican votes. Because this leaves him a thin margin for error, it empowers the most extreme conservatives in the House, who have an incentive to withhold their votes if they don't get everything they want.... Boehner seemed not to know what to do about the mess his lowest-common-denominator leadership caused.... Here's one idea: Show some leadership." ...

... Cristina Marcos & Rebecca Shabad of the Hill: "House Republicans are hitting the brakes on consideration of spending bills after leaders yanked a measure from the floor this week over the display of the Confederate flag. The House was originally slated to consider the 2016 spending bill for Financial Services next week, but the odds are now low for it hitting the floor. Republicans are worried that Democrats could try to offer more amendments related to the display of the Confederate flag that could again tie the GOP into knots." CW: Yup, it's all Democrats' fault.

Paul Ryan Really, Really Does Not Want You to Have Health Insurance. Sarah Ferris of the Hill: Paul Ryan, Chair of the House Ways & Means Committee (R-Wis.) "on Friday vowed to keep fighting to repeal ObamaCare through budget reconciliation even as the tactic is losing support from some within the GOP.... When asked if Ryan would want to repeal all of ObamaCare using the budget tactic, he said yes, but added that he is still figuring out what can be done 'given the restraints of reconciliation.'"

Jonathan Bernstein of Bloomberg: "President Barack Obama's grade as top manager of the executive branch continues to sink. At this point, a C- would be generous. Cases of mismanagement at the agency level include:

• The Office of Personnel Management computer hack;
• The Snowden theft from the National Security Agency;
• The Department of Veterans Affairs scheduling fiasco;
• The healthcare.gov rollout;
• Unending problems at the Secret Service.

     "... These aren't policy failures. They're just cases where the government bungles when carrying out policy.... The problem isn't a bunch of Obama-appointed crooks or incompetents. Instead, Obama just seems indifferent to executive branch performance. At least until there are problems that draw national press attention." CW: Let's add the federal/state background-check system to the list of SNAFUs. ...

... AND here's another. Danny Vinik in Politico: In 2008, in the wake of Hurricane Katrinia, "Congress created three new programs to get loans to small businesses quickly. Since the new emergency lending programs were born, American small businesses have been hit by Hurricane Irene, Hurricane Sandy, and other disasters. And here's how many loans the new programs have secured for small businesses in that time: Zero.... This week the Small Business Administration came under Congressional fire for what appears to be a total failure to execute the mission of issuing emergency loans. A long trail of GAO reports details this record of failure, and the SBA's perplexing inability to explain why businesses haven't received a dollar yet...." ...

... CW: President Obama came into office with no executive experience; that is, he didn't know how to run a huge organization. I don't think any POTUS should spend his nights reading GAO, Inspectors General, other watchdog & media reports. But s/he does have to have a top dog in the administration who spends her days doing that -- and then kicking ass when these reports cite problems or potential problems. Obviously, Obama neglected to do that. That error of omission can affect millions of Americans as deeply as do many of Congress's glaring failures to protect the public. I'm with Bernstein; this is a real failure of governance.

James Risen of the New York Times: "The Central Intelligence Agency's health professionals repeatedly criticized the agency's post-Sept. 11 interrogation program, but their protests were rebuffed by prominent outside psychologists who lent credibility to the program, according to a sweeping new report. The 542-page report, which examines the involvement of the nation's psychologists and their largest professional organization, the American Psychological Association, with the harsh interrogation programs of the Bush era, raises repeated questions about the collaboration between psychologists and officials at both the C.I.A. and the Pentagon. The report concludes that some of the association's top officials, including its ethics director, sought to curry favor with Pentagon officials by seeking to keep the association's ethics policies in line with the interrogation policies of the Defense Department, while several prominent outside psychologists took actions that aided the C.I.A.'s interrogation program and helped protect it from growing dissent inside the agency." ...

... Spencer Ackerman of the Guardian: "The largest association of psychologists in the United States is on the brink of a crisis ... after an independent review revealed that medical professionals lied and covered up their extensive involvement in post-9/11 torture. The revelation, puncturing years of denials, has already led to at least one leadership firing and creates the potential for loss of licenses and even prosecutions."

Julia Preston of the New York Times: "Government lawyers labored on Friday to persuade federal appeals court judges [in New Orleans] to allow President Obama to move ahead with sweeping initiatives to protect immigrants in the country illegally. But the judges' questions seemed to make it ever more unlikely that the president's programs, which he has hoped would be a central piece of his legacy, would start any time before the last months of his term, if at all." ...

... Tom Dart of the Guardian: While a 3-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments inside the New Orleans federal courthouse about President Obama's Deferred Action for Parental Accountability -- against which a lower court imposed & injunction & another Fifth Circuit panel refused to lift the injunction --hundreds of demonstrators massed outside protesting the injunction.

Nina Totenberg of NPR: "Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Thursday provided an unusual peek behind the scenes at how the court did its work this term. It's true, she said, that the liberal justices tried to be disciplined about having their majority opinions, and even their dissents, speak with one voice in one opinion. 'The stimulus,' she said, 'actually began many, many years before ... when the court announced its decision in Bush v. Gore.'"

David Jackson of USA Today: "President Obama created three new national monuments via executive order Friday, setting aside more than 1 million acres of public land in three states":

Nick Gass of Politico: "President Barack Obama will become the first sitting chief executive to visit a federal prison when he goes to El Reno, Oklahoma, next week to meet with law enforcement officials and inmates as part of the administration's push for criminal-justice reform."

Angeliki Koutantou & Alastair Macdonald of Reuters: "Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras won backing from lawmakers on Saturday for painful reform proposals aimed at obtaining a new international bailout, but he faced a rebellion in his own party that could threaten his majority in parliament.The measures, which received an initial green light from the European Union and International Monetary Fund before a crucial meeting of the 19 euro zone finance ministers in Brussels, were passed with the support of pro-European opposition parties.With Greece's banks shut and completely dependent on a credit lifeline from the European Central Bank, the measures were seen as a last chance to avert financial collapse and prevent Greece from being pushed out of the euro." ...

... The Guardian is liveblogging developments.

Michael Gordon & David Sanger of the New York Times: "One of the last major obstacles to concluding a historic nuclear deal with Iran is a dispute over a set of United Nations sanctions that appeared to be resolved months ago and only peripherally has to do with nuclear weapons. The sanctions, passed in a series of resolutions by the United Nations Security Council beginning nine years ago, ban the shipment of conventional arms into and out of Iran."

Presidential Race

Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "In her standard stump speech, Hillary Rodham Clinton talks about fighting income inequality, celebrating court rulings on gay marriage and health care, and, since the Emanuel AME Church massacre, toughening the nation's gun laws. That last component marks an important evolution in presidential politics. For at least the past several decades, Democrats seeking national office have often been timid on the issue of guns for fear of alienating firearms owners.... Gun control is one of the few issues on which Clinton has a more left-leaning record than [Sen. Bernie] Sanders, who represents a rural, pro-gun-rights state and has voted in the past for legislation to protect the firearms industry." ...

... Cameron Joseph of the New York Daily News: Bernie Sanders & Honora Laszlo, a local Virginia chairwoman of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, get into a row over Sanders' failure to support for some gun-control legislation.

Ed Kilgore: "... the sheer number of things a would-be GOP president is expected to promise to rescind, repeal, suspend, ignore, or defy is getting very, very long. It won't be easy for the eventual nominee to get through this vast list of reactionary commitments and then slide into a smooth rap that my campaign is about the future."

Philip Bump of the Washington Post: "No, Donald Trump isn't a frontrunner.... This new poll from The Economist (and the online polling firm YouGov, which does not meet the Post's standards for polling) does have Trump in first place, leading lots of people to declare him the frontrunner. That poll is iffy.... But even if the methodology were beyond question, Trump isn't the frontrunner for the same reason that there's been no clear frontrunner in any poll: margins of error.... What's a frontrunner look like? It looks like Hillary Clinton, who in most national polls could have a margin of error of 20 points and still have daylight between her and Bernie Sanders." CW: Oh noes! And I just got back from the hairdresser's sporting a celebratory comb-over.

Jeb! Talks the Talk; Walker Walks the Walk. Gillian White of the Atlantic: "This week..., Jeb Bush was harshly criticized for saying that the solution to some of America's economic woes could be solved if Americans worked more hours. Republican politicians in Wisconsin are trying to make this theory reality, with a proposal to allow seven-day workweeks.... Though Walker might not have a direct hand in the current seven-day workweek proposal, his [earlier] changes [gutting labor-friendly laws] have certainly helped set the stage for decreased opposition to such a bill."

The New York Times Can't Handle the Truth. Jesse Byrnes of the Hill: "Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's campaign is blasting The New York Times for not including the GOP presidential candidate's book on its influential bestseller list. It described the newspaper's initial explanations for not including the recently released A Time For Truth as 'cryptic' and 'false,' and suggested the Times 'does not want people to read the book.'" CW: Freedom of the press or something is at stake here, people. Coincidentally, what a fabulous fundraising tool for renowned author & political philosopher Ted Cruz. ...

... McKay Coppins of BuzzFeed: "Publishing giant HarperCollins is publicly pushing back against the New York Times' claim that Ted Cruz's new book, A Time For Truth, was disqualified from its bestseller list because sales were limited to 'strategic bulk purchases.' In a statement provided to BuzzFeed News, HarperCollins publicity director Tina Andreadis said the company looked into the matter and 'found no evidence of bulk orders or sales through any retailer or organization.'" ...

... BUT. Steve M. has more on how Ted (and maybe HarperCollins) tried to game the system. As for the Times' trying to suppress the work of a budding literary giant, "books by conservatives make the Times list on a regular basis." ...

... The Salon piece, by Scott Kaufman, which Steve cites, is here. Kaufman has more on confederate outrage. You never know if these people are ignoramuses or phonies. Maybe both.

Beyond the Beltway

Matt Zapotosky of the Washington Post: "A three-judge federal appeals court panel on Friday unanimously affirmed the public corruption convictions against former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell, thoroughly rejecting each argument from the onetime Republican rising star and declaring that they had 'no cause to undo what has been done.'"

Kevin Miller of the Portland Press Herald: "Maine Attorney General Janet Mills [D] said Friday that 19 bills held by Gov. Paul LePage have become law, dismissing the LePage administration's contention that the Legislature had adjourned. In a four-page letter released late Friday afternoon, Mills said LePage missed the 10-day window allowed under the Maine Constitution to either sign or veto the bills. There are another 51 bills sitting on LePage's desk, and under Mills' opinion, those also would become law unless LePage vetoes them by midnight Saturday." ...

... AP: "Members of Maine's Franco-American community are frustrated by Republican Gov. Paul LePage's self-deprecating humor about his French heritage. LePage said this week that the veto process laid out in the state's Constitution is very clear. He added that 'even I can understand it and I'm French.' Last week, he told reporters they were misusing a word and said 'that's coming from a Frenchman.'... Former state senator and representative Judy Ayotte Paradis of Frenchville said LePage is 'reinforcing the stereotype of the dumb Frenchman.'" CW: Actually, Ms. Paradis; every time LePage opens his mouth, he's "reinforcing the stereotype of the dumb Frenchman."

News Ledes

AP: "Bailout discussions between the Greek finance minister and his skeptical counterparts in the 19-country eurozone will resume Sunday after breaking up following more than eight hours of talks without any apparent breakthrough that will secure the country's future in the euro." ...

... Reuters: "euro finance ministers demanded on Saturday that Greece go beyond painful austerity measures accepted by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras if he wants them to open negotiations on a third bailout for his bankrupt country to keep it in the euro."

Washington Post: "Serena Williams won her fourth consecutive Grand Slam title and 21st of her career on Saturday by beating Garbiñe Muguruza of Spain, 6-4, 6-4, at Wimbledon. It is her sixth Wimbledon championship."