The Commentariat -- May 19, 2016

Afternoon Update:

Today in Responsible Leadership from the Guy Who's Not Hitler: David Graham of The Atlantic: "Disasters serve as the crucibles in which leaders are tested, and the disappearance of EgyptAir 804 -- though less than 24 hours old -- is already serving that purpose in the presidential race. Early Thursday morning, before Egyptian authorities (or anyone else) had made any statements about possible causes for the airplane's disappearance over the Mediterranean, Trump tweeted this:

Looks like yet another terrorist attack. Airplane departed from Paris. When will we get tough, smart and vigilant? Great hate and sickness!"

Akhilleus: At least he's right about great hate and sickness. Making political hay off the deaths of 66 passengers with zero knowledge of the facts is not the best predictor of the possibility of prudent action as president.

CBS News: "Morley Safer, the CBS newsman who changed war reporting forever when he showed GIs burning the huts of Vietnamese villagers and went on to become the iconic 60 Minutes correspondent whose stylish stories on America's most-watched news program made him one of television's most enduring stars, died today in Manhattan." He was 84. -- Akhilleus

Enlightenment in the Confederate Midwest: Sarah Ferris of The Hill: "Oklahoma lawmakers on Thursday approved a bill making it a felony for doctors to perform abortions, which opponents say is essentially a ban on the procedure. The Republican bill, which has been called the first of its kind nationally, will now be sent to the desk of GOP Gov. Mary Fallin. She has five days to sign or veto the bill before it automatically becomes law."

Akhilleus: Sorry ladies, the Supreme Court might say that you have the right to an abortion but they didn't say you had any right to a doctor. But hey, good luck with that coat hanger.

"Shame!" Rachel Bade and Ben Weyl of Politico: The House erupted in chaos Thursday morning with Democrats crying foul after Republicans hastily convinced a few of their own to switch their votes and narrowly block an amendment intended to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people from discrimination. It was an unruly scene on the floor, with Democrats chanting "shame!" after GOP leaders just barely muscled up the votes to reject, 212-213, an amendment by Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) that would have effectively barred federal contractors from getting government work if they discriminate against the LGBT community.

Akhilleus: Apparently Paul Ryan pulled a fast one to change the outcome of the vote by ignoring House rules including informing members of exactly which cowardly bigots changed their vote at the last minute. Darrell Issa was one. Disgraceful.

*****

Timothy Noah of Politico: "The Obama administration is shoveling out regulations nearly one-third faster in its final year than during the previous three -- all to beat a May 23 deadline to prevent a President Donald Trump from overturning them. The goal is to deny Trump the opportunity to kill those regulations under an expedited process should he be elected president and Congress remain in Republican control." -- safari ...

Rachael Wade of Politico: "Two weeks ago, in a closed-door meeting with Paul Ryan, Reps. Jim Jordanand Mark Meadows gave the speaker an ultimatum: They would force a House vote to impeach the IRS commissioner -- unless he allowed the Judiciary Committee to take action against John Koskineninstead...But after getting nowhere in the plea for action...Jordan and Meadows took matters into their own hands, threatening to use an obscure House procedure to push the measure to the floor.They got their hearing announcement less than a week later. It's exactly the sort of arm-twisting Ryan set out to avoidwhen he took the speaker's job last fall." --safari...

...Maybe it's just me, but this sounds like Politico trying to give the GOP and Ryan some "responsibility" cover. Does anyone really think Ryan gives two flips about burning down the IRS? Give me a break --safari

... Charles Pierce: "Paul Ryan Thinks Overtime Pay Is Actually -- Wait for It -- Bad for Workers." CW: You'll have to read the post to learn why Pierce concludes, "Biggest. Fake. Ever." Pierce is too kind.

Vann Newkirk IIof The Atlantic: "Ever since the anniversary of Brown v. Board, [it] has provided an opportunity for assessing just how far the country has come since the Jim Crow days of naked segregation. The results have been, at best, mixed.... But one of the most enduring -- and least noticed -- areas of racial segregation even after Brown v. Board has been health care." --safari

Presidential Race

In The Atlantic, David Frum & Bob Shrum discuss the election cycle and its likely place in political history. --safari

Burned. Josh Marshall of TPM: "Over the last several weeks I've had a series of conversations with multiple highly knowledgable, highly placed people...[T]he 'burn it down' attitude, the upping the ante, everything we saw in that statement released today by the campaign seems to be coming from Sanders himself.... Sanders narrative today has essentially been that he is political legitimacy. The Democratic party needs to realize that. This, as I said earlier, is the problem with lying to your supporters. Sanders is telling his supporters that he can still win, which he can't. He's suggesting that the win is being stolen by a corrupt establishment, an impression which will be validated when his phony prediction turns out not to be true." --safari ...

... Nolan Mccaskill of Politico: "The latest controversy roiling the Democratic Party showed no signs of abating Wednesday, as Bernie Sanders' campaign put the onus of the rift splitting Democrats on Debbie Wasserman Schultz's failed leadership, accusing her of 'throwing shade' on the Vermont senator from the beginning.... Jeff Weaver, Sanders' campaign manager, pointedly accused Wasserman Schultz of undermining the Sanders campaign from the get-go and called into question her leadership."--safari...

...Steve M.: "I'm predicting that Bernie Sanders won't endorse Hillary Clinton. The contempt Sanders feels for Clinton and the Democratic establishment is now bone-deep. It's classic male anger, rooted in outrage at being disrespected...He's going to fight to the last primary, then he's going to try to twist superdelegates' arms, then he and his people are going to demand a platform that resolves every disagreement between himself and Clinton in his favor. And when the platform fails to repudiate the party's nominee on every point of disagreement, he's going to walk." --safari note: Houston, we have a problem.

...Enter the Strongman. TBOGG in RawStory: "Despite assurances from Bernie Sanders campaign manager that, 'There's not going to be any violence in Philadelphia.... I guarantee that,' it is almost a dead certainty that protesters are going to hit the streets of Philly in July and give the GOP and Donald Trumpjust what they need to avoid, if not a loss, a shot at avoiding an election wipe-out.... Enter Donald Trump, who will promise to make America great again by restoring law and order. In 1968, a deeply divided Democratic Party went to Chicago and promptly went to war with itself...In a country already roiled by riots in major cities, former Vice President and failed 1962 gubernatorial candidate Richard Nixon was able to resurrect his his all-but-dead political career as a law and order candidate." --safari

** The Little Woman. Gail Collins: "Hillary wants to be the first woman ever elected president of the United States. The economy is the central issue in the campaign. The fact that she's assuring voters that Bill will take care of it is ... totally wrong. It would be better if he wasn't on the scene at all. Let us count the ways." -- CW

Scott Lemieux in the American Prospect: "Sanders is having an effect on Clinton, but he is not causing her to change her stance, so much as he is compelling Clinton to emphasize her existing, more-liberal positions." -- CW

Katy Tur & Ali Vitali of NBC News: "Donald Trump met with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in New York on Wednesday, the latest in his efforts to strengthen his foreign policy bona fides. Trump's motorcade rolled into Kissinger's home around 3 p.m. where the low-profile meeting that lasted about one hour. Trump aides say the presumptive GOP presidential nominee and 92-year-old diplomat have spoken over the phone multiple times, and Trump requested the face-to-face." CW: Great! Man largely responsible (and quite okay with) mass murder of civilians meets with man quite okay with mass murder of civilians.

Don't hold your breath. Peter Breinart of The Atlantic: "Donald Trump's war on the media threatens fundamental American principles -- making it crucial that responsible conservatives speak out...If Republicans rationalize Trump's assault on press freedom as a necessary, hardball response to the media's liberal, pro-Clinton bias, many journalists will treat that as a reasonable point of view. Thus, Trump's behavior will be legitimized. And, of course, if Trump is elected president, his power to intimidate and restrict the press will expand exponentially." --safari

David Frum of The Atlantic: "Republican primary voters have nominated Donald Trump. Republican politicians failed to stop them....[The GOP's] task ahead, in the Biblical phrase, is to pluck the brands from the fire -- rescue as much of their party as can be rescued -- while simultaneously minimizing the damage to party and country by the nominee their rank-and-file has imposed on them." --safari...

...Rise of the Confederacy. Chauncey DeVega in Alternet: "There are two consistent themes about the American right-wing in the Age o Obama. First, racism and conservatism is now one and the same thing. Second, the Republican Party is the United States' largest white identity organization.... The ascendance of Donald Trump and his coronation as the presumed 2016 Republican presidential candidate is the logical outcome of a several decades-long pattern of racism, nativism, and bigotry by the American right-wing and its news entertainment disinformation machine." --safari

...So yesterday we had Trump's wife assure us he's not Hitler (linked yesterday) and today his daugtherIvanka Trump assures us "he's not a groper" of women. Is this really happening? --safari

Mark Stern of Slate: "On Wednesday...Trump likely squashed any Republican fears that his judicial selection would be insufficiently conservative and signaled to those Republicans still unsure about supporting him by releasing his SCOTUS short list. The 11 names on his list are all staunchly right wing, more in the vein of the blatantly partisan Justice Samuel Alito than of the libertarian-leaning iconoclast Justice Antonin Scalia." --safari note: Stern gives a short run down on the top hits list. ...

... Paul Waldman: "You know what I'd like to see? Some interviewer ask him, a day or two from now, how many of these names he remembers. Because I'm guessing somebody just handed him a list, which he glanced at and said, 'Sure, that looks fine.' * It turns out that [Don] Willet, who's on the Texas Supreme Court, has been mocking Trump on Twitter for months. And some of them are pretty funny, like this one: '"We'll rebuild the Death Star. It'll be amazing, believe me. And the rebels will pay for it." -- Darth Trump.'" -- CW ...

... Bethania Palma Markus of RawStory: "A legal advocacy group for LGBT people has called one of theDonald Trump's prospective Supreme Court nominees 'the most demonstrably anti-gay judicial nominee in recent memory.'...In a 2003 legal brief arguing to uphold a Texas law criminalizing consensual LGBT sex,[William] Pryor compared it to "polygamy, incest, pedophilia, prostitution, and adultery' and argued that states should be free to prosecute gay people as criminals. He said the rights of LGBT people as a group are not protected by the Constitution." --safari ...

... Police Dogs, Da, Gays, Nyet: Donald Trump's list of Supreme Court nominees sounds more like members of the old Soviet politburo than temperate American jurists, according to Betsy Woodruff and Asawin Suebsaeng of the Daily Beast: "Monica Lewinsky connections, Twitter celebrity status, relaxed views on police-dog brutality, and comparisons of gay sex to necrophilia Donald Trump's list of potential Supreme Court nominees has it all. On Wednesday afternoon, the real-estate mogul rolled out eleven names of would-be members of the highest court in the land, and it was a veritable dream team of conservative judiciary icons. -- Akhilleus

A Trumpal Revolution? Fans of Mao are now fans of Trump, according to Jiayang Fan of The New Yorker: "America may still be reeling from Trump's victory as the presumptive Republican Presidential nominee, but many Chinese, watching from the other side of the world, view his ascent as natural: the rise of another strongman whose politics of exclusion and rhetoric of hate both reprise and reflect China's past and present anxieties." ...

... Akhilleus: Can we expect Donaldo to come out with his own Little Red Book any day now? Wonder what the Birchers think about all these commies cozying up to Drumpf?

Beyond the Beltway (and Beyond)

CW Personal Note: I traveled across North Carolina yesterday & stopped at two bathrooms. Not a single transgender person accosted me. The new "bathroom law" is really working! (The fact that not a single transgender person has accosted me ever in 70 years should in no way diminish your view of the effectiveness & necessity of North Carolina's law.) However, I did nearly walk into a men's room by mistake where I might have humiliated some fellows, so I think North Carolina should deal with people like me by passing a law disallowing women to use public restrooms.

Emma Graham-Harrison of the Guardian: "Police have fired teargas at protesters calling for the resignation of the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, and shut down swaths of central Caracas to control the demonstrations, as the Caribbean nation slid deeper into political crisis. Wednesday's protests came the day after Maduro said the opposition-controlled parliament had become irrelevant and predicted that it might soon 'disappear.'" --safari

Juan Cole: Iranian members of parliament have approved the details of a bill that insists US compensate Iran for its crimes against that country. The bill comes as a result of a $2 billion judgment against Iran entered by a US court and backed by an act of the US Congress, on behalf of the families of Marines killed in a Beirut bombing in 1983...Iran won't see a dime. But it is the case that in a world where courts are making claims for universal jurisdiction, the US should be careful about litigating past political and military conflicts.Washington's list of crimes is so long that sooner or later it will boomerang on the US elites." --safari (Thanks to PD for the link)

Powered by nature. Arthur Nelsen of the Guardian: "Portugal kept its lights on with renewable energy alone for four consecutive days last week in a clean energy milestone revealed by data analysis of national energy network figures. Electricity consumption in the country was fully covered by solar, wind and hydro power in an extraordinary 107-hour run...News of the zero emissions landmark comes just days after Germany announced that clean energy had powered almost all its electricity needs on Sunday 15 May, with power prices turning negative at several times in the day -- effectively paying consumers to use it." --safari

Fearmongers? Ewen MacCaskill of the Guardian: "A startling claim that the west is on course for war with Russia has been delivered by the former deputy commander of Nato, the former British general Sir Alexander Richard Shirreff. In a book published on Wednesday, 2017 War With Russia, Shirreff argues that the events in Crimea have destroyed the post-cold-war settlement and set the stage for conflict, beginning next year." --safari

**The Rise of the Far Right. Sylvie Kauffman of the New York Times: "On Monday, the Western world may well wake up to the news that, for the first time since the defeat of Nazism, a European country has democratically elected a far-right head of state. Norbert Hofer, of the Austrian Freedom Party, claimed 35 percent of the vote in the first round of the presidential election on April 24. Now he is heading into the second round on Sunday with the two mainstream parties having been eliminated from the runoff and the Social Democratic chancellor, Werner Faymann, having resigned." --safari

News Ledes

New York Times: "Egypt and Greece mounted a marine search-and-rescue operation in the southern Aegean Sea early Thursday for an EgyptAir passenger jet with 66 people on board that suddenly disappeared over the Mediterranean shortly before it was due to land in Cairo. The reason for the plane's disappearance was unclear, but the developments touched off fears about terrorism and investigations in Egypt, Greece and France, where the plane took off." -- CW ...

... The Guardian has live updates here. The New York Times' updates are here.

The Commentariat -- May 18, 2016

Jonnelle Marte of the Washington Post: "The Obama administration will unveil a new rule Wednesday that would make millions of middle-income workers eligible for overtime pay, a move that delivers a long-sought victory for labor groups. The regulations, which were last updated more than a decade ago, would let full-time salaried employees earn overtime if they make up to $47,476 a year, more than double the current threshold of $23,660 a year. The Labor Department estimates that the rule would boost the pay of 4.2 million additional workers. The change is scheduled to take effect Dec. 1." --safari

The outreach to nowhere. Betsy Woodruff of The Daily Beast: "If Republicans want to grow their support with black voters in 2016, they might want to start internally. Over the past few months, all the D.C. members of its black outreach team quit. And the committee only hired one person, a Republican communications consultant who is only committed through November, to take their place. Black Republican leaders are miffed, and say the RNC hasn't delivered on its commitment to invest in outreach to black voters." --safari

Richard Lardner of the AP: "Buckling under conservative pressure, House Republicans pulled a legislative sleight of hand Tuesday and stripped a provision from the annual defense policy bill that would have required young women to sign up for a military draft. The decision triggered an outcry from Democrats, who cast the move as a GOP attempt to avoid a contentious vote on equality for women." --safari

Presidential Race

Thomas Kaplan of the NYT: "Senator Bernie Sanders prevailed over Hillary Clinton on Tuesday in the Oregon primary, according to The Associated Press, while Mrs. Clinton claimed victory in a tight race in Kentucky, the day's other contest...The close result meant that she and Mr. Sanders would effectively split the state's delegates." --safari

Ed Kilgore: "One thing is largely indisputable Bernie Sanders himself could help clear the air by informing his supporters that while there are many things about the Democratic nomination process that ought to be changed, no one has 'stolen' the nomination from him or from them...And the best step Sanders' supporters could take to promote their long-term interests in the Democratic Party would be to get a grip before they wind up helping Donald Trump win the presidency. And Bernie Sanders himself has a responsibility to talk his devoted followers off the ledge." --safari

Nick Gass of Politico: "Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown may support Hillary Clinton, but the Democratic senator provided one reason Tuesday that he might think twice before accepting an invitation to be her running mate: Ohio Gov. John Kasich would nominate his replacement if the ticket is successful." --safari

Anybody surprised here? Jonathan Chait:"Donald Trump realizes he has a bad image, and his solution -- other than trying to bully the news media -- is to solve it with lies." --safari note: with a little help from friends...

...Gabriel Sherman of New York: "According to a half dozen sources familiar with [Rupert] Murdoch's thinking, the media mogul has signaled he plans to fully back Trump in the general election against Hillary Clinton." --safari...

...Judd Legum of ThinkProgress: "On Saturday, the New York Times published a detailed piece on how Donald Trump has treated women throughout his life. The story was based on over 50 interviews and many of the women relay their experience through direct quotes...Nevertheless, Trump was able to find his most fervent defenders on Fox News. In a single day, May 16, people appearing on Fox News airwaves offered at least 15 different excuses and justifications of Trump's behavior toward women." ---safari

Reuters: "... Donald Trump said on Tuesday he is willing to talk to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to try to stop Pyongyang's nuclear program, proposing a major shift in U.S. policy toward the isolated nation. In a wide-ranging interview with Reuters, Trump also said he disapproved of Russian President Vladimir Putin's actions in eastern Ukraine, called for a renegotiation of the Paris climate accord, and said he would dismantle most of the Dodd-Frank financial regulations if he is elected president." --safari

Shane Goldmacher of Politico: "Donald Trump likes to say he has created a political movement that has drawn 'millions and millions' of new voters into the Republican Party. But a Politico analysis of the early 2016 voting data show that, so far, it’s just not true. While Trump's insurgent candidacy has spurred record-setting Republican primary turnout in state after state, the early statistics show that the vast majority of those voters aren't actually new to voting or to the Republican Party, but rather they are reliable past voters in general elections. They are only casting ballots in a Republican primary for the first time. It is a distinction with profound consequences for the fall campaign." --safari

Juan Cole: "The revelation that the Central Intelligence Agency provided the tip to the Apartheid South African government that led to Nelson Mandela's arrest should come as no great shock, though the public confirmation is perhaps surprising. Nor is it unconnected to the popularity of Donald Trump, who is proposing a new Apartheid regime with regard to American Muslims." --safari

**Gene Demby of NPR: "It's telling that [Jonathan] Chait finds it easier to imagine that huge swaths of Republican primary voters are childlike and naive, rather than folks who quite rationally dig Trump's direct appeals to their interests -- their racial interests. Maybe we should concede that these declarations are not incidental to his appeal among his supporters, but central" target="_blank"> to them. Calling them 'idiots' posits that they've been duped, when perhaps Trump is saying precisely what they want to hear." --safari

Mickey Rapkin ofDujour has a very long piece on Melania Trump where she affirms [Donald] Trump is not Hitler and the journalist wonders if he'll be attacked by Trumpites for asking her questions. --safari

Jamelle Blouie of Slate: "Guess the politician. He's a dangerous 'authoritarian.' A 'race-baiter' and a 'racist' who divides Americans for political gain. An [arrogant' celebrity of a politician who has no place in the Oval Office. An 'unqualified,' 'incompetent' fraud who 'simply does not understand what it means to be president.' Hell, he can barely give a speech...If you guessed Donald Trump, you would be correct on the merits. But the answer isn't Trump. It's Barack Obama..... Everything [the Confederates] said about Obama is true of Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president. And if Trump becomes president, the boogeyman they've railed against for eight years will be the actual chief executive of the United States of America." --safari

Beyond the Beltway (and Beyond)

Capitalism is Awesome (for a lucky few). Jana Kasperkevic of the Guardian: "The US's top 500 chief executive officers earned 340 times the average worker's wage last year, taking home $12.4m on average, according to a new report. The analysis by the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of US unions, found that the pay of executives leading the S&P 500 index of top companies actually dipped last year. In 2014 the same group earned 373 times more than their workers, earning on average $13.5m." --safari

Nicky Woolf of the Guardian: "Mexicos president, Enrique Peña Nieto, has called for the nationwide legalization of same-sex marriage, announcing that he had signed initiatives proposing that marriage equality be written into the country's constitution and federal civil code." --safari

Emily Atkin of ThinkProgress: "For Planned Parenthood, this election season means war. And you can't win a war without an army. So Planned Parenthood is building one: An army of pro-choice advocates trained in how to win political campaigns.... The training is just one part of what Planned Parenthood says will be the most expensive electoral effort in its 100-year history. Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards told ThinkProgress that her organization plans to spend at least $20 million to help win key Senate races and the presidency this November. " -- safari

Max Rothenthal of Mother Jones: "After the New York Times Magazine published a controversial profile of Ben Rhodes, the White House's deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, conservatives exploded in outrage over the article's portrayal of Rhodes manipulating the media to secure passage of the Iran nuclear deal. Republican senators have called for Rhodes to resign.... But, as our David Corn noted yesterday, one of the three witnesses has plenty of experience in planting "false narratives:"John Hannah, a former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney who played a key role in promoting the flawed intelligence behind the invasion of Iraq." --safari

The Commentariat -- May 17, 2016

Afternoon Update:

Patricia Zengerle of Reuters: "The U.S. Senate passed legislation on Tuesday that would allow families of Sept. 11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia's government for damages, setting up a potential showdown with the White House, which has threatened a veto. The Saudis, who deny responsibility for the 2001 attacks, strongly object to the bill. They had said they might sell up to $750 billion in U.S. securities and other American assets in retaliation if it became law. Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat and a...co-sponsor, said the bill is overdue. Asked if Senate Democrats would back a veto, Schumer said he would vote against Obama. -- Akhilleus

Kate Linthicum of The Los Angeles Times: "Bernie Sanders and Democratic party leaders clashed Tuesday over violence that erupted over the weekend at the Nevada Democratic convention, which party official blamed on a disgruntled group of Sanders supporters. At issue in the escalating argument: Whether the fire that Sanders has lit among millions of supporters with his critiques of Wall Street greed and political corruption will burn the party this summer." -- Akhilleus

Erin Kelly of USA Today: "With the summer mosquito-season fast approaching, the Senate voted Tuesday to advance a bipartisan compromise that would provide $1.1 billion to help public health officials battle the Zika virus as it begins to threaten the continental United States...The Senate compromise provides $800 million less than the $1.9 billion that President Obama has been seeking since February. But it is far more than the House is proposing. Republican House leaders introduced legislation Monday that would provide $622 million in Zika funding." -- Akhilleus

And Speaking of Zika...Norman Ornstein in The Atlantic predicted that this congress, which he considers the worst ever, "...will slap together something on Zika and opioids, and declare victory. Most likely, it will be too little, too late, and taxpayers will foot larger bills in subsequent years, while too many people will suffer, and too many will die." Ornstein writes that it is "...no exaggeration to call the current, 114th Congress the worst ever at least edging out the infamous 112th."

Akhilleus: If anything, Ornstein is too generous in his assessment. He doesn't attempt to answer the question of "Why Johnny Can't Govern", but we all know why. Confederates hate government, don't care about governing, and couldn't do it if you paid them. Oh wait...

*****

Ian Millhiser of Think Progress: "On Tuesday, the Supreme Court handed down an unusual order seeking more briefing in Zubik v. Burwell, a challenge to Obama administration regulations intended to expand access to birth control. Under the regulations at issue in Zubik, most employees must include contraceptive coverage in their employer-provided health plan...Tuesday's order suggests that the Court is willing to give an 80% victory to the Obama administration. Though their current rules might be struck down, the Court appears ready to greenlight a slight tweak to those rules that would still ensure that most women employed by religious objectors obtain birth control coverage." -- Akhilleus

Garrett Epps of The Atlantic: "The United States Supreme Court, whose Oz-like roar until recently terrified all who heard, is now short a justice and is slowly coming undone. Its voice from the bench, like HAL's [the ominous computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey], is slowing and blurring. The Court's per curiam 'decision' in Zubik v. Burwell, announced Monday, is the latest evidence of its slide toward paralysis." -- Akhilleus

Presidential Race

Primary Day in Kentucky and Oregon: Eric Braden of CNN: "If Bernie Sanders is going to catch Hillary Clinton, he'll need to narrow the delegate gap -- significantly -- on Tuesday night. Two Democratic presidential primaries are taking place: Kentucky, with 61 delegates up for grabs, and Oregon, with 74 delegates. For Sanders, erasing Clinton's lead in pledged delegates (currently 1,722 to 1,424) will take winning about two-thirds of those that remain. That's to say nothing of Clinton's huge edge among superdelegates -- a project Sanders is saving for later." -- Akhilleus

Today in the Horse Race: NBC News: Hillary Clinton Holds Slight Lead Over Donald Trump. "Attention is now rapidly moving to the hypothetical match-up between the leading candidates with an emphasis on a Clinton and Trump contest. In this week's poll, Americans are nearly split between their choice of Trump or Clinton; her margin over Trump narrows from 5 points last week to 3 points this week to 48 percent to 45 percent." -- Akhilleus

If You Can Stand It: Dan McAdams, a psychologist, explores the mind of Donald Trump in The Atlantic: "Who, really, is Donald Trump? What's behind the actor's mask? I can discern little more than narcissistic motivations and a complementary personal narrative about winning at any cost. It is as if Trump has invested so much of himself in developing and refining his socially dominant role that he has nothing left over to create a meaningful story for his life, or for the nation. It is always Donald Trump playing Donald Trump, fighting to win, but never knowing why."

Akhilleus: Spelunking gear and disinfectant not included.

An Image None of Us Needs: "Last Week Tonight host John Oliver gave perhaps the best description so far of Donald Trump's tenuous relationship with the Republican establishment. 'Trump and the Republican establishment are like a teenage Christian couple who've made an abstinence pledge,' Oliver said. 'They are going to have sex. It is just a matter of time. But they still need to make a big show of resisting it for anyone who might be paying attention.'" -- Akhilleus

Another Minority Group Insulted. Emily Crockett on Vox: "In a Friday interview with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, Donald Trump mocked Elizabeth Warren by referring to her as 'Pocahontas'...'Trump’s inability to discern the difference between Sen. Warren and Pocahontas is no accident,' Cherokee Nation citizen Mary Kathryn Nagle told MSNBC's Adam Howard on Monday. 'Instead, his attack on her native identity reflects a dominant American culture that has made every effort to diminish native women to nothing other than a fantastical, oversexualized, Disney character.'" -- Akhilleus

Beyond the Media

It's All So Unfair! Charlie Pierce in Esquire: Noted Genius Billionaire Mark Zuckerberg Forced to Meet Glenn Beck [and other outraged Confederate "intellectuals"]. You may recall that, last week, there was another outbreak of conservative hemorrhagic outrage when a former Facebook contractor charged that people working at the social media behemoth were downplaying conservative entries in Facebook's "trending topics" feature...What's the point of having fck-you money if you can't say fck you to Glenn Beck? ...

... Akhilleus: What I'd like to know is whatever happened to that bullshit about freeeedom to run your own business as you see fit? Rand Paul wants nothing more than to toss black people out of his eye poking shop because freeeedom. Is anyone suggesting that Fox News live up to its "Fair and Balanced" lies? Certainly not. I guess that freedom business only applies to wingnut cranks and Confederate oligarchs.

Beyond the Beltway

Old Times There Are Not Forgotten. Emma Brown of the Washington Post: 62 Years after Brown v Board of Education, "A federal judge has ordered a school district in the Mississippi Delta to desegregate its middle and high schools, capping a legal battle that has dragged on for more than five decades...The order, written by Judge Debra M. Brown and released late Friday, comes 62 years after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling on school desegregation in Brown v. Board of Education. And it comes a half-century after Cleveland families first sued the district for continuing to operate racially segregated schools. 'The delay in desegregation has deprived generations of students of the constitutionally-guaranteed right of an integrated education,' Brown wrote. 'Although no court order can right these wrongs, it is the duty of the district to ensure that not one more student suffers under this burden.'"

Akhilleus: Hey, they were gettin' to it. Any decade now them darkies would have been allowed to sit in a classroom with the white kids.

Scott Walker's Voter ID Law on Trial: Jesse Opoien of the Cap Times in Madison, WI: "Attorneys challenging a series of Wisconsin voting laws implemented over the last five years argued Monday that lawmakers intended to discriminate against non-white voters by passing them. The trial began with a former Republican legislative staffer testifying that not only was that the intent, but some state senators were "giddy" to do so. 'Restricting access to the ballot box was not simply a consequence, but the very purpose of these laws,' lawyer Josh Kaul told the court, asking not only to have the laws struck down, but for a judge to find they were passed with discriminatory intent." -- Akhilleus

Way Beyond the Beltway

The Bush-Cheney Debacle Continues to Pay Dividends. Krishnadev Kalamur in The Atlantic: "Two separate sets of attacks in Shia-dominated parts of Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, have killed dozens and wounded several others, Iraqi officials said. ISIS claimed responsibility for two car-bomb attacks in Shaab, in northeastern Baghdad, killing at least 28 people. A third blast then hit Sadr City, killing at least 14 people. Those numbers came from the Associated Press. Al Arabiya, the Arabic-language broadcaster, has a higher death toll." -- Akhilleus

On Another Planet

Tea Party Not Far Enough to the Right. Betsy Russell of the Spokesman-Review (Idaho): "In Idaho's northernmost legislative district, Republican Party politics has been pulled farther to the right in recent years with the rise of the tea party. But now a new element is pushing the party farther still: the arrival of conservative Christian 'preppers' fleeing more populated states, who see the region as a 'redoubt' -- a place to settle and defend themselves when the whole country goes bad.

Akhilleus: These people seem genuinely unhinged. In addition to Idaho, they're targeting Wyoming, Washington, Oregon, and Montana. This is like whole towns taken over by Bundy type, government hating, evangelical law unto themselves types. They even have their own real estate operations alerting like minded loons to move there to help with the takeover. A longtime resident of the area and staunch, lifelong right-wing Republican is being attacked by the insurgents as a 'liberal authoritarian progressive' [who] accused her of 'gun grabbing' and wanting to 'tax more so she can spend more on her socialists [sic], pro-homosexual union allies working in governmental schools.'" Wow.