The Commentariat -- April 8, 2015
Internal links removed.
Julie Davis of the New York Times: "President Obama's push for a historic opening with Cuba faces its first major test this week as he travels to a summit meeting in Latin America, where he hopes to highlight momentum toward ending a half-century of isolation from the island nation.Even before Mr. Obama was to board Air Force One on Wednesday, White House officials signaled that the administration was nearing a decision on whether to remove Cuba from its list of state sponsors of terrorism." ...
... Karen DeYoung & Nick Miroff of the Washington Post: "Cuba ends more than five decades of official isolation in the Western Hemisphere this week when President Raúl Castro attends a regional summit with up to 35 heads of state and government, including President Obama. The White House said there will be 'many opportunities' for conversations between the two leaders at the two-day Summit of the Americas that begins Friday in Panama, but noted that no formal bilateral meeting had yet been planned."
Dana Milbank on "the rush to humiliate the poor": Missouri's "surf-and-turf bill is one of a flurry of new legislative proposals at the state and local level to dehumanize and even criminalize the poor as the country deals with the high-poverty hangover of the Great Recession.... Last week, the Kansas legislature passed NPR study last year found that defendants are routinely charged for public defenders, room and board in jail, parole supervision and electronic monitoring devices -- items that were once free.... In their budget plans in Congress, Republicans propose 'devolving' food stamps and other programs to state control by awarding block grants with few strings attached." ...
... The Double Standard Imposed on the Poor. Emily Badger of the Washington Post: "There's virtually no evidence that the poor actually spend their money [on luxuries].... The strings that we attach to government aid are attached uniquely for the poor.... Many, many Americans who do receive these other kinds of government benefits -- farm subsidies, student loans, mortgage tax breaks -- don't recognize that, like the poor, they get something from government, too.... We begrudge [the poor] their housing vouchers, for instance, even though government spends about four times as much subsidizing housing for upper-income homeowners." ...
... Speaking of Double Standards.... Greg Sargent: "The debate is intensifying in Congress over what lawmakers should do to place limits on President Obama's authority to implement a deal with major world powers and Iran over the future of that country's nuclear program.... At the same time, however, the discussion among lawmakers has vanished entirely on ... whether Congress will vote to limit Obama's authority to wage war against ISIS. This double-standard was pointed out to me by Senator Chris Murphy..., who is emerging as a voice of sanity on Iran."
Judging Chuck. Ed Kilgore: "... if Schumer thinks representing New York means viewing Wall Street and Bibi Netanyahu as needy constituents, who cares if he's feeling no electoral pressure? So let's see how Schumer handles this year and next and then decide whether it's worth the trouble to stage noisy protests over this man's supposedly inevitable ascension to the leadership." ...
... Alexander Bolton of the Hill: "The White House is trying to bottle up bipartisan legislation that would give Congress 60 days to review a final Iran nuclear deal. The pushback may be having an effect": -- Senators Chris Coons & Mark Warner, who the GOP counted in their court, are now saying they're thinking about it. Also Ben "Cardin, who took over the top Democratic slot on the panel after [Robert] Menendez stepped aside in the wake of corruption charges, indicated in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer Tuesday that he wants to see changes to the bill to address the administration's concerns." ...
... Thomas Erdbrink of the New York Times: "Senior officials, important clerics, lawmakers and Republican Guard commanders [in Iran], who in the past have reflexively opposed any accommodation with the West, now go out of their way to laud Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and his team of negotiators [of the pending nuclear deal], as well as the government of President Hassan Rouhani."
AFP: "Washington deepened its involvement in the Saudi-led air war in Yemen on Wednesday as aid agencies scrambled to deliver help to civilians caught up in the campaign now heading into its third week. The Red Cross has warned of a 'catastrophic' situation in main southern city of Aden, where militia loyal to the fugitive president Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi have been holding out against Houthi Shia rebels and their allies within the security forces.... The US Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington was stepping up weapons deliveries and intelligence-sharing in support of the Saudi-led coalition."
Evan Perez & Shimon Prokupecz of CNN: "Russian hackers behind the damaging cyber intrusion of the State Department in recent months used that perch to penetrate sensitive parts of the White House computer system, according to U.S. officials briefed on the investigation. While the White House has said the breach only affected an unclassified system, that description belies the seriousness of the intrusion. The hackers had access to sensitive information such as real-time non-public details of the president's schedule."
Presidential Race
Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post fact-checks Rand Paul's announcement speech. You'll find a heavy presence of words like "misleading," "falsely," & "myth." ...
... Nate Cohn of the New York Times: "... libertarians remain too young and too few to present Senator [Rand] Paul with a realistic path to the nomination. He has to win over a much larger share of more reliable Republican primary voters, who will have considerable reservations about Mr. Paul's policies. The other problem he faces: Many of the voters most receptive to libertarian views tend not to vote." ...
[E]very piece of anti-discrimination legislation passed over the past few decades ignores one of the basic, inalienable rights of man -- the right to discriminate. -- Rand Paul, 1982, op-ed in Baylor U. newspaper
... ** Rutherford B. Paul. Ian Millhiser of Think Progress: "Rand Paul would be the worst president on civil rights since the 1800s.... Paul continued to espouse the same opposition to civil rights laws that he expressed as an undergraduate until months before his election to the Senate. And, while Paul has since learned to be more careful in his rhetoric, his public statements on the Constitution are entirely inconsistent with a legal regime that protects women and minorities from businesses that engage in discrimination.... Paul lives in a world of theory untouched by the lessons of history and evidence." ...
... Our Screwed-up Liberal Democracy Has Usurped Li'l Randy's FREEEEDOM to Violate Copyright Laws. Philip Bump of the Washington Post: "If you're looking for Rand Paul's presidential announcement on YouTube, bad news. As of writing, the video has been blocked by the video streaming site, thanks to a copyright claim from Warner Music Group.... Rand Paul's spirited cry against government intervention has been blocked from view because YouTube lets huge music companies preemptively apply copyright law." CW: Still down at 11 pm Tuesday. ...
... AND still down at 10 am Wednesday. Maybe Randy doesn't think this presidential announcement thing is important enough to get right. Or maybe he's planning to use this glitch to finger the vast left-wing conspiracy. Also, see Nisky Guy's commentary in today's thread. ...
... Here's a screenshot of Paul's presidential announcement video:
... McKay Coppins of BuzzFeed: "One of the high points from Sen. Rand Paul's presidential campaign kickoff Tuesday came when a black local pastor named Jerry Stephenson delivered an impassioned mini-sermon on behalf of the candidate.... After the event, however..., Stephenson got on the subject of the religious freedom debate and ... began musing about why he believed President Obama wasn't backing up conservative Christians. 'In five years we'll find out what [Obama's] real religion is,' Stephenson said." ...
... Emily Atkin of Think Progress: "Don't let Rand Paul fool you on climate change. He's a not-so-secret denier posing, if briefly, as a realist.
David Gram of the Atlantic provides "a cheat sheet" on GOP presidential candidates. He begins with this note about Rand Paul's announcement: "... he marked the kickoff with a speech at the Galt House Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky (The name seems a little on the nose.)"
Jamelle Bouie of Slate: "... late last month, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders helped push the Democratic Party a little to the left.... Social Security expansion has entered the Democratic mainstream, touted by lawmakers and pushed by presidential candidates like Martin O'Malley.... But the real test of Social Security's resurgence as a liberal cause is Hillary Clinton. When Social Security solvency meant benefit cuts, she was open to benefit cuts. Now it doesn't. But we don't know where Clinton will fall.... That, after all, is what primaries are for." ...
... Digby has an excellent essay on the same subject in Salon. She assumes Hillary Clinton will have "evolved," along with most of the Democratic party, on expanding Social Security. "... the people who stand to benefit the most from this are the most hardcore members of the Republican base. Will they turn down a raise?" ...
... Kate Brower, author of the book The Residence, which is based on interviews of White House service staff, dishes on Bill & Hillary Clinton in a Politico Magazine piece. CW: Expect a lot of this type of "journalism" in the coming year-and-a-half; I hesitated to link the story, but decided WTF. You can show better taste by deciding not to read it.
Beyond the Beltway
NBC 5 Chicago "Rahm Emanuel won his re-election contest Tuesday night and bested challenger Jesus 'Chuy' Garcia to remain in charge of Chicago for another four years, the Associated Press projects."
John Eligon of the New York Times: "... voters [in Ferguson, Missouri,] elected two black candidates to the City Council on Tuesday, increasing the number of African-Americans on the governing body to three. But in a blow to the protesters who had pushed for sweeping changes to the city's law enforcement and judicial policies after the shooting last August, voters rejected several candidates who had the direct backing of protest activists." ...
... Stephen Deere of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "Perhaps the most significant aspect of the results for Ferguson City Council was that 30 percent of the city's 12,738 registered voters cast ballots -- more than double the typical turnout."
Michael Schmidt & Matt Apuzzo of the New York Times: "A white police officer in North Charleston, S.C., was charged with murder on Tuesday after a video surfaced showing him shooting in the back and killing an apparently unarmed black man while the man ran away. The officer, Michael T. Slager, 33, said he feared for his life because the man took his stun gun in a scuffle after a traffic stop on Saturday. A video, however, shows the officer firing eight times as the man -- Walter L. Scott, 50 -- fled. The North Charleston mayor announced the state charges at a news conference Tuesday evening." It appears Slager planted the stun gun near Scott's body." Includes video. ...
... Judd Legum of Think Progress shows how the police department initially told the story before the video surfaced. "On Saturday the police released a statement alleging that Scott had attempted to gain control of a Taser from Slager and that he was shot in a struggle over the weapon.... By Sunday, the police department had clammed up...."
News Ledes
Boston Globe: "A federal jury found Dzhokhar Tsarnaev guilty on all 30 charges for his role in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that killed three and injured more than 260, ruining lives and limbs and a city's sense of peace. He was also found guilty in the murder of a police officer. Tsarnaev is now eligible for the death penalty." ...
... The New York Times story is here.
Guardian: "The former head of the CIA in Pakistan should be tried for murder and waging war against the country, a high court judge ruled on Tuesday. Criminal charges against Jonathan Banks, the former CIA station chief in Islamabad, were ordered in relation to a December 2009 attack by a US drone which reportedly killed at least three people."
Reuters: "US Secretary of Defence Ash Carter kicked off his first Asian tour on Wednesday with a stern warning against the militarisation of territorial rows in a region where China is at odds with several nations in the East and South China Seas."
Washington Post: Stan "Freberg died Tuesday in Santa Monica, Calif. at age 88.... Before National Lampoon and Saturday Night Live, way before, there was Stan Freberg."