The Commentariat -- July 8, 2015
Internal links & defunct video removed.
Afternoon Update:
Nathaniel Popper of the New York Times: "The New York Stock Exchange unexpectedly shut down trading in all of its listed stocks late Wednesday morning.... A trader on the floor of the exchange in lower Manhattan, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that after the suspension began, traders were told that the problem was related to updated software that was rolled out before markets opened on Wednesday."
Anthony Faiola & Michael Birnbaum of the Washington Post: "Greece asked European partners Wednesday for a new three-year bailout, pledging to make reforms but leaving blank how far it was willing to go to meet cost-cutting demands as the country flirts with bankruptcy. In a one-page letter, obtained by The Washington Post, Greece proposed to take steps on key issues such as taxes and pension payouts as early as next week. It also pledged to take unspecified 'additional actions' to 'strengthen and modernize' its economy."
Ian Shapira of the Washington Post: "The Washington Redskins lost their biggest legal and public relations battle yet in the war over their name after a federal judge in Northern Virginia on Wednesday ordered the cancellation of the NFL team's federal trademark registrations, which have been opposed for decades by many Native Americans who feel the moniker disparages their race. The cancellation doesn't go into effect until the Redskins have exhausted the appeals process in the federal court system."
Jeffrey Collins of the AP: "The South Carolina House opened debate over the future of the Confederate flag Wednesday, deliberating a proposal that could remove the banner from the Capitol grounds, possibly before the end of the week."
*****
... (Andrew Higgins &) James Kanter of the New York Times: "Greece's newly installed finance minister arrived [in Brussels] at a crucial meeting of his eurozone peers on Tuesday without the new bailout proposal the group had expected to receive." CW: Not sure why the balance of Europe depends on a guy who's been on the job for half a day. Couldn't the other ministers come up with a less draconian plan & present that? ...
... New Lede: "European leaders, angered after Greece's new finance minister showed up for an emergency meeting in Brussels without a new proposal to resolve the nation's huge debt crisis, late Tuesday gave the Athens government until Sunday to reach an agreement to save its battered economy from a meltdown." CW: So, no, apparently these "European leaders" cannot behave like adults. They were angry???? ...
... The Times has live updates of events here. ...
... Eduardo Porter of the New York Times: "Major debt overhangs are only solved after deep write-downs of the debt's face value. The longer it takes for the debt to be cut, the bigger the necessary write-down will turn out to be. Nobody should understand this better than the Germans. It's not just that they benefited from the deal in 1953, which underpinned Germany's postwar economic miracle. Twenty years earlier, Germany defaulted on its debts from World War I, after undergoing a bout of hyperinflation and economic depression that helped usher Hitler to power."
Peter Müller & René Pfister of Der Speigel: "The Greek crisis required leadership and a plan, but Merkel was unwilling to provide either. Although she likes power, when push comes to shove, she doesn't know what to do with it. And now she faces the wreckage of her European policy." Thanks to Unwashed for the link. ...
... Scott Kaufman of Salon: "A group of prominent economists -- Thomas Piketty, Heiner Flassbeck, Jeffrey D. Sachs, Dani Rodrik, and Simon Wren-Lewis -- published a scorching open letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, warning her that if she doesn't 'provide the bold and generous steps towards Greece that will serve Europe for generations to come,' there could be 'far-reaching economic consequences across the world.'..." The letter, republished by the Nation (in English), is here. According to the Nation, "Global campaign group Avaaz organized this open letter to Angela Merkel on the back of a petition, signed by over half a million Europeans, demanding an end to the failed austerity program in Greece."
... Paul Krugman: "However things play out from here -- I find it hard to see a path other than Grexit -- the troika's program for Greece represents one of history's epic policy failures." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "From environmental and work force regulations to health care and contraception, congressional Republicans are using spending bills to try to dismantle President Obama's policies, setting up a fiscal feud this fall that could lead to a government shutdown. Even Pope Francis' planned visit to Congress in late September ... has added to the intrigue.... The House and Senate Appropriations Committees are churning out annual spending bills, dropping the bipartisanship that has long characterized the committees. The bills adhere to strict overall spending limits imposed in 2011 that Mr. Obama has already said he will not accept."
Emily Badger of the Washington Post: "... on Wednesday, the Obama administration will announce long-awaited rules designed to repair the [Fair Housing Act]'s unfulfilled promise and promote the kind of racially integrated neighborhoods that have long eluded deeply segregated cities like Chicago and Baltimore. The new rules, a top demand of civil-rights groups, will require cities and towns all over the country to scrutinize their housing patterns for racial bias and to publicly report, every three to five years, the results. Communities will also have to set goals, which will be tracked over time, for how they will further reduce segregation."
Dan Utech of the White House: "... [Tuesday], senior Administration officials were joined [link fixed] by Congressman [Elijah] Cummings [D-Md.] and Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake in Baltimore to announce a new initiative to increase access to solar for all Americans, including low- and moderate- income communities, and expand opportunities join the solar workforce."
Let Them Eat Cake. Lydia Wheeler of the Hill: "First lady Michelle Obama's signature school lunch regulations are coming under fresh fire from GOP lawmakers, who view impending reauthorization legislation as their best chance yet to dial back the controversial nutrition standards. Republicans are convening a series of hearings to highlight criticism of the regulations, a pillar of the first lady's initiative to curb childhood obesity in the United States. School officials say students are turning their noses up to the meals that cap calories and limit sodium. Republicans also assail the standards as executive overreach."
Robert Chalmers of Newsweek: Thomas Buergenthal, "the most distinguished living specialist in international human rights law, [who] served as a judge at the International Court of Justice for 10 years..., and [is now] Professor of Law at George Washington University: '... some of us have long thought that [Dick] Cheney, and a number of CIA agents who did what they did in those so-called black holes [overseas torture centres] should appear before the ICC. We [in the USA] could have tried them ourselves. I voted for Obama but I think he made a great mistake when he decided not to instigate legal proceedings against some of these people. I think -- yes -- that it will happen.'"
Campbell Robertson of the New York Times profiles Caddo Parish acting DA Dale Cox, who has come to believe "that capital punishment is primarily and rightly about revenge and that the state needs to 'kill more people.'... From 2010 to 2014, more people were sentenced to death per capita [in Caddo Parish] than in any other county in the United States, among counties with four or more death sentences in that time period." For more on how Cox exercises his philosophy of killing more people, see this New Yorker story by Rachel Aviv, which I linked a week or so ago.
Glass Houses. Justin Moyer of the Washington Post: "Bill Cosby etched his legacy in stone with a speech in 2004 that took black parents to task. It became famous as the 'Pound Cake' speech.... The Pound Cake speech ... was cited by a U.S. district judge as a legal justification for unsealing a deposition that was deeply damaging to Cosby.... Judge Eduardo C. Robreno said the speech, and Cosby's general posture as a 'public moralist,' made the deposition a legitimate subject of public interest.... 'The stark contrast between Bill Cosby, the public moralist and Bill Cosby, the subject of serious allegations concerning improper (and perhaps criminal) conduct, is a matter as to which the AP -- and by extension the public -- has a significant interest,' the judge wrote." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Sandra Peticini of the Orlando Sentinel: "A Bill Cosby statue is being removed from Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park, a Walt Disney World spokeswoman said Tuesday evening. The statue was to come down Tuesday night after the park closed. Disney did not have further comment."
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. In Salon, digby pulls together some journalists' recent observations to show how reporters feed off GOP oppo research & baseless accusations to paint Hillary Clinton as the devil incarnate.
Presidential Race
Nial Stanage & Jonathan Easley of the Hill: "Hillary Clinton slammed Donald Trump for his comments on Mexican immigrants in the first national interview of her presidential campaign. 'I'm very disappointed in those comments, and I feel very bad and very disappointed with him and with the Republican Party for not responding immediately and saying, "Enough, stop," Clinton said in the interview with CNN's Brianna Keilar.... Clinton sought to link Trump, a GOP White House hopeful, to the Republican Party as a whole on immigration, saying 'They are all in the same general area on immigration.'" ...
... "Just Thinkin' about Tomorrow." Singing Backup -- Barack Obama. Brian Beutler of the New Republic: President "Obama is using his first-mover advantage not just to shore up his own legacy, but to set the terms of the coming presidential campaign favorably for the Democratic nominee.... Across the board, Republican candidates are committed to adjusting the status quo backward. They oppose the Iran negotiations, the normalization of relations with Cuba, and the very notion of an international agreement to curb global warming; they oppose administrative policies, like deferred action and overtime pay rules, that improve the lives of minorities and workers; and they oppose social legislation like the Affordable Care Act. Of the leading GOP presidential candidates, [Scott] Walker holds the most extreme view that the Supreme Court's decision to legalize same-sex marriage should be reversed and returned to the states. But all of these candidates oppose same-sex marriage... Taken as a whole, these issue positions will make it difficult for Republicans to cast themselves as forward-looking candidates." ...
... Hundreds of Ordinary Americans Join the Chorus. Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "Presidential campaigns have for decades fed talking points to surrogates who appear on national television or introduce candidates on the stump. But the [Clinton campaign's] effort to script and train local supporters is unusually ambitious and illustrates the extent to which the Clinton campaign and its web of sanctioned, allied super PACs are leaving nothing to chance.... But asking local supporters to use talking points could undermine the organic nature of grass-roots political interactions." ...
... Peter Beinart of the Atlantic does a good job of explaining Hillary's Bernie problem: she's tacking left this campaign & can't afford to alienate Sanders' liberal supporters, on whom she's counting to win in the general election. It's a quandary.
Charles Pierce: "... there is no institutional Republican party worth discussion anymore." Fox "News" is running the winger show in service of vanity candidates like Donald Trump & Ben Carson. ...
... CW: Pierce's view raises the question, does a political party's candidate have to be a professional politician? I don't think so (Dwight Eisenhower). No, I'm not comparing Donald to Ike. Pierce laments that two-term Gov. John Kasich (R-Ohio) won't make the cut for the first Fox "News" debate, & maybe that is terribly sad, but some of Kasich's sincerely-held beliefs (balanced budget amendment) are just as wackadoodle as Trump's incendiary & possibly fake ones (Mexican immigrants are criminals).
Claude Brodesser-Akner of NJ.com: "Democratic state lawmakers will soon introduce legislation that would force Gov. Chris Christie to resign from office because he is running for president.... State Sens. Raymond Lesniak (D-Union) and Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen), who are expected to co-sponsor the bill, said they are fed up with Christie's frequent absences from New Jersey this year in the run-up to last week's announcement that he's running for the White House. The bill would require Christie and any future governor to resign in order to run for president.... Christie has been out of state for more than a third of his second term and more than half of this year."
In a New York Times op-ed, Marco Rubio criticizes President Obama's normalizing relations with Cuba as a "Faustian bargain." CW: Marco doesn't outline what personal gains Obama was going for here; or he doesn't know what "Faustian bargain" means. ...
... Jonathan Easley of the Hill: "Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) on Tuesday pledged to bust the higher education 'cartel' in an economic speech laying out his vision for the country. Rubio promised to cut the corporate tax rate, shift the U.S. to a territorial tax system and curtail costly regulations that impair business. He vowed to enact immigration reform based on getting skilled workers into the country while protecting U.S. jobs and called for an overhaul to a higher education system controlled by 'a cartel of existing colleges and universities.'... The sum of Rubio's remarks were meant to cast him as a new voice in Washington, ready to challenge an old guard."
Andrew Kaczynski of BuzzFeed: "Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul, speaking last week in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, said he believes a 50% tax rate leaves individuals 'half-slave, half-free.'... Paul said he believes that 'you have to give up some of your liberty to have government,' saying he was 'for some government.'" CW: So, not an anarchist. Excellent presidential qualification, Randy. ...
... ** Ed Kilgore explains why Paul's "philosophy" is so profoundly dumb: "Now obviously if you assume the very existence of a minimal government represents a grudging surrender of liberty, there's not a whole lot to 'debate' other than the point of which the 'slaves' are justified in revolting. What Paul is excluding by definition is the possibility that liberty requires government; that anarchy is not some ideal state of nature and that the untrammeled exercise of 'liberty' by some is in fact slavery for others. Thus Paul really does help us to understand the essence of 'constitutional conservatism.'...”
Dan Snierson of Entertainment Weekly: "Simpsons fans will find this turn of events nothing short of excellent: Seven weeks after tweeting that he was exiting the animated comedy, EW has learned that Harry Shearer -- the voice of Mr. Burns, Ned Flanders, Smithers and a flurry of other memorable characters -- has agreed to rejoin Fox's forever-running animated comedy." CW: Good news for Simpsons fans but bad news for the USA.
... Totally unrelated to Snierson's story:
... Brendan Prunty of the New York Times: "The P.G.A. Grand Slam of Golf -- a year-end exhibition among the winners of the four men's major championships -- was scheduled for October at Trump National Golf Club in Los Angeles. Instead, it will be moved to a yet-to-be-determined location." ...
What can be simpler or more accurately stated? The Mexican Government is forcing their most unwanted people into the United States. They are, in many cases, criminals, drug dealers, rapists, etc. -- Donald Trump, July 6
Trump's repeated statements about immigrants and crime underscore a common public perception that crime is correlated with immigration, especially illegal immigration. But that is a misperception; no solid data support it, and the data that do exist negate it. Trump can defend himself all he wants, but the facts just are not there. -- Michelle Lee of the Washington Post
Beyond The Beltway
Bill Chappell of NPR: "In a required third vote, South Carolina's state senators voted to remove the Confederate battle flag from its prominent place flying on the Statehouse grounds. The final tally was 36-3. The House will now take up the issue, perhaps as early as Wednesday. In both the Senate and the House, a vote on removing the flag will require a two-thirds majority." ...
... Florida Crackers. News 13 Orlando: "Marion County[, Florida] commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to put the Confederate flag back up at the county's government complex. The flag was removed Thursday and temporarily replaced with a flag with the seal of Marion County.... Within minutes of Tuesday morning's vote, the Civil War-era flag was seen flying once again outside the government complex as one of the five national flags which have flown over Florida since European explorers first landed on its shores more than 500 years ago. The other four are Spanish, French, British and American flags.... Reaction by Marion County residents who spoke with us Tuesday was overwhelmingly against the decision to remove the flag in the first place." ...
... Iowa Crackers. Josh Hafner of the Des Moines Register: "Three Confederate flags flew from a truck pulling a Marion County[, Iowa,] Republicans' parade float in Independence Day parades in Pleasantville and Pella on Saturday, leading to harsh criticism from the party's state chairman and resignation of two Marion County central committee members who owned the truck." Worth a read. ...
... Gun-Rights Leader Blames "Liberals" for Massacre. Miranda Blue of Right Wing Watch: "Immediately after a white gunman killed nine worshippers at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, last month, Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America started laying blame on the church's slain pastor, who was also a state senator, for supporting gun control and not allowing concealed weapons in his church. In an interview with Armed America Radio that was posted online last week, Pratt doubled down, claiming that the shooter, Dylann Roof, targeted a church 'populated by liberals' and pastored by 'Mr. Anti-Gun' because he knew his victims would be unarmed."
Bryan Lowry of the Wichita Eagle: Kansas "Gov. Sam Brownback issued an executive order Tuesday prohibiting state government from taking action against clergy members or religious organizations that deny services to couples based on religious beliefs. Among other things, the order is intended to protect religious organizations that provide adoption services for the state from having to place children with gay couples if that conflicts with their beliefs.... The order explicitly protects religious organizations that provide 'social services or charitable services,' meaning that it extends beyond the wedding ceremony." Via TPM.
Jack Healy of the New York Times: "At issue [in a case argued Tuesday before the Colorado Court of Appeals] was whether Jack Phillips, a Colorado bakery owner, had broken state antidiscrimination laws when he refused to make a cake for a gay couple's wedding reception, citing his religious beliefs. With same-sex marriage now legal everywhere nationally in the wake of the United States Supreme Court ruling in June, his case is being closely watched as a test of the boundary between personal religious objections and legal discrimination."
CBS/AP: "A federal grand jury has indicted a former Tennessee congressional candidate for allegedly soliciting others in a plan to burn down a mosque in Islamberg, a predominantly Muslim hamlet in Hancock, New York. Robert Doggart, 63, allegedly planned to burn a mosque, as well as a school and a cafeteria in the community. Investigators said he sought others to join the plan through Facebook posts and in telephone conversations.... According to court documents, Doggart is a member of several 'private militia groups.' He ran as an independent candidate for Congress in Tennessee's fourth congressional district in 2014. The Department of Justice pressed charges in Tennessee, where Doggart still lives." ...
... CW: You may remember this story about Doggart, linked here last week.
News Ledes
New York Times: Bonard Fowler, the Alabama policeman whose killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson provoked the hstoric march from Selma to Montgomery, died July 5 at age 81.
New York Times: "The New York Stock Exchange unexpectedly shut down trading in all of its listed stocks late Wednesday morning.... A trader on the floor of the exchange in lower Manhattan, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that after the suspension began, traders were told that the problem was related to updated software that was rolled out before markets opened on Wednesday." ...
... Update: "Trading resumed late Wednesday afternoon, almost four hours after the shutdown began, less than an hour before the 4 p.m. closing bell." ...
... Politico: "The Wall Street Journal's homepage experienced an outage on Wednesday amid similar troubles at the New York Stock Exchange and United Airlines. The newspaper's homepage displayed a 504 outage, though other sections of the newspaper's website, such as its Markets page, continued to function. The outage came at a curious time, just hours after United Airlines grounded all their flights across the country due to computer problems, and mere minutes after trading was halted on the New York Stock Exchange. NBC News' Pete Williams reported that officials do not think the glitches at United and the NYSE are connected, and it's possible that with the NYSE news, The Wall Street Journal's homepage is crashing under intense traffic."
New York Times: "As diplomats [at the Iran nuclear talks] declared they were entering yet another overtime period on Tuesday -- the second since negotiators blew past the supposedly final June 30 deadline for concluding the accord -- they sidestepped any talk of a firm date for reaching one of the hardest but potentially most consequential accords in recent diplomatic history."
Palestinian Live Matter. Guardian: "A teenage Palestinian killed by a senior Israeli army officer last week was shot in the back and side while apparently fleeing, according to medical evidence and multiple Palestinian witness reports. Mohammed Kasbeh, 17, was among a group of stone-throwers near a major Ramallah checkpoint when they broke the windscreen of a passing brigade commander's car with a rock. He died after being shot several times in his upper body by the officer."
Japan Times: "Former Toyota Motor Corp. executive Julie Hamp will not be charged with illegally importing a controlled painkiller, investigative sources said Tuesday. Prosecutors decided not to indict the 55-year-old American after concluding that her action was not ill-intended and considering the fact that she has already resigned from her job."
AFP: "US President Barack Obama welcomed the leader of Vietnam's Communist Party on Tuesday to the White House for historic but 'candid' talks marking two decades of rapprochement between the former enemies. Nguyen Phu Trong is the first general secretary of the Vietnamese Communist Party to visit the United States and the White House, and was given the rare honor of an Oval Office meeting -- usually reserved for heads of state and government."