The Commentariat -- October 6, 2015

Internal links & defunct video removed.

Likely no updates today; I'm on the road again -- with no assurance I'll get where I want to go. -- Constant Weader

Binyamin Appelbaum of the New York Times: "Congress is largely responsible for the incomplete recovery from the 2008 financial crisis, Ben S. Bernanke, the former Federal Reserve chairman, writes in a memoir published on Monday. Mr. Bernanke, who left the Fed in January 2014 after eight years as chairman, says the Fed's response to the crisis was bold and effective but insufficient."

Cristina Marcos of the Hill: "Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is postponing House GOP elections for majority leader and whip at the behest of conservatives. House Republicans had been scheduled to vote behind closed doors Thursday for the two positions, but will now just vote on electing a Speaker to replace Boehner at that time."

Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: "The inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security said on Monday that he had reopened an investigation into whether the Secret Service played a role in disclosing embarrassing information about a House committee chairman who had been critical of the agency. The inquiry will examine statements that the Secret Service's director, Joseph P. Clancy, had made about when he knew that Representative Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah and chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, had once applied to be a Secret Service agent but had been rejected, according to the inspector general, John Roth." ...

... CW: Good. Let's keep be reminded that Jason Chaffetz, who now aspires to be third in line to the presidency, could not get a job guarding the president or his pets. (In fairness, people get turned down for jobs all the time for reasons, quixotic or otherwise. Maybe the Secret Service thought Chaffetz was too smart to be a bodyguard. Or too old.)

Benghaaazi, Declassified. Paul Waldman: "Democrats on the Benghazi select committee are apparently fed up with the Republicans on the committee deciding that testimony is too sensitive to release, then leaking selective parts of it to journalists. So they took it upon themselves to release the testimony of former Hillary Clinton aide Cheryl Mills, with more presumably to come." Here's the letter from committee Democrats to Trey Gowdy, via Waldman, & it's a doozy.

Michael Shear of the New York Times: "President Obama will travel to Roseburg, Ore., on Friday to meet privately with the families of the people shot at a community college last week, the White House announced Monday." ...

... Suzy Khimm of the New Republic explains why individual state gun control laws cannot go far enough to ensure gun safety without federal laws to back up & coordinate them. ...

... AND then, There Are the Local Sheriffs. Here is "Sheriff Glenn Palmer, of Grant County, Oregon, tell[ing] the Oregon Senate judiciary committee that he will refuse to enforce new gun laws, namely the 'universal background check'/gun registry bill, SB941." Video. Palmer also called the gun control bill "borderline treasonous."

Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court did not seem inclined on Monday to let a California woman injured in an Austrian train accident sue in American court." ...

... Paul Waldman: "The Supreme Court ... is poised to deliver conservatives a string of sweeping, consequential victories on issues covering a wide swath of American life.... While a couple of [the cases the Court will hear] may be in doubt, it's entirely possible that by the time this term ends next June, the Court will have driven the final stake into affirmative action, struck a fatal blow against public-sector unions, enhanced Republican power in legislatures by reducing the representation of areas with large Hispanic populations, given a green light for Republican-run states to make abortions all but impossible to obtain, and undermined the ACA."

Art via the Week.Jeff Spross of the Week: "A dark and unpleasant truth is that many economic elites actually have a vested interest in anemic job growth and a slack labor market.... [With] full employment..., workers [have] much more leverage to demand wage increases, so they claim a bigger share of all the income generated in the economy. Which means, by definition, the elite's share must shrink.... Full employment also takes power over the business away from owners and management and gives more of it to workers instead.... The rising 'servant economy' rests on a wide relative gap between high and low incomes.... Elites obviously don't want to completely tank the economy. But it certainly works for them if it stays modestly stagnant, maximizing the growth of the pie while minimizing worker bargaining power."

The Longest War. Greg Jaffe & Missy Ryan of the Washington Post: "President Obama is seriously weighing a proposal to keep as many as 5,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan beyond 2016, according to senior U.S. officials, a move that would end his plans to bring U.S. troops home before he leaves office. The proposal presented in August by Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, would focus the remaining American force primarily on counterterrorism operations against the Islamic State, al-Qaeda and other direct threats to the United States."

Liz Sly & Brian Murphy of the Washington Post: "NATO warned Russia to stay away from Turkey on Monday after the Turkish Air Force intercepted Russian warplanes that strayed into its airspace from Syria, underscoring the heightened risk of a wider conflagration as Russia escalates its intervention in the Syrian conflict."

Matthew Rosenberg & Alissa Rubin of the New York Times: "The American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John F. Campbell, on Monday responded publicly to criticism over the American airstrike that destroyed a Doctors Without Borders hospital in the city of Kunduz, claiming that Afghan forces had requested the strike while under fire and conceding that the military had incorrectly reported at first that American troops were under direct threat. But General Campbell's comments, in a sudden and brief news conference at the Pentagon, did not clarify the military's initial claims that the strike, which killed 22 people, had been an accident to begin with. Doctors Without Borders has repeatedly said that there had been no fighting around the hospital, and that the building was hit over and over by airstrikes on Saturday morning, even though the group had sent the American military the precise coordinates of its hospital so it could be avoided." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Thomas Gibbons-Neff of the Washington Post: "The airstrike that killed 22 people at a Doctor’s without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan Saturday was requested by Afghan forces, not U.S. troops, according to the top U.S. general in Afghanistan." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

     ... New Lede: "A heavily-armed U.S. gunship designed to provide added firepower to special operations forces was responsible for shooting and killing 22 people at a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan over the weekend, Pentagon officials said Monday. The attack occurred in the middle of the night Saturday, when Afghan troops -- together with a U.S. special forces team training and advising them -- were on the ground near the hospital in Kunduz, the first major Afghan city to fall to the Taliban since the war began in 2001. The top U.S. general in Afghanistan said Monday the airstrike was requested by Afghan troops who had come under fire, contradicting earlier statements from Pentagon officials that the strike was ordered to protect U.S. forces on the ground."

Presidential Race

Vicki Needham of the Hill: "Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) labeled a new trade deal finalized by the Obama administration on Monday as 'disastrous,' and said he would work to defeat it. Sanders ... said the Trans-Pacific Partnership will lead to the loss of U.S. jobs, adding he was 'disappointed but not surprised' by the decision to complete it."

Hamlet on the Potomac. Dana Milbank: "Joe Biden is running for president, unless he isn't. He will announce his decision this weekend, unless he doesn't. Furthermore, Biden is approaching important deadlines for declaring his candidacy, unless those deadlines don't matter. His advisers really want him to run, except those who don't, and he has been sounding out potential staffers, or perhaps not. He finds the opportunity irresistible, except when he lacks the passion for it."

Anne Gearan of the Washington Post: Ahead of her testimony before the Benghaaazi! committee next week, Hillary Clinton's campaign is running a new cable TV ad highlighting House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy's boast that Republicans set up the committee as a political ploy to undermine Clinton's candidacy & that the scheme had worked.

Eun Kyung Kim of NBC News: "Hillary Clinton, in an interview Monday with Today's Savannah Guthrie, voiced her frustration with the process surrounding the Benghazi committee, lambasting the panel for turning the hearing into a 'partisan political issue.'"

Occasionally, I'd call and tell her she should pay them. She just wouldn't. -- Martin Wilson, Carly Fiorina's 2010 campaign manager

If we didn't win, why do you deserve to get paid? If you don't succeed in business, you shouldn't be the first one to step up and complain about getting paid. -- Jon Cross, Fiorina’s operations director for her Senate campaign

Right. Because a guy who fills a print order for mailers is responsible for a candidate's loss. -- Constant Weader

... Robert Samuels of the Washington Post: "In more than two dozen interviews, staff members, friends, contractors and operatives who worked on [Carly] Fiorina's 2010 campaign singled out one big problem: how the team managed its cash. Many said Fiorina spent too much on television ads with narrow appeal, while others said she was an anemic fundraiser who did not keep close enough tabs on her coffers. There also were concerns that some events were too lavish.... [Early on,] Fiorina reimbursed herself nearly $1.3 million she lent the campaign.... Those who waited the longest to be paid were small businesses with a few dozen employees who did the grunt work of the campaign...." (No link.)

... CW: Fiorina responded to Samuels' article by saying that "I don't think the Washington Post has much credibility anymore. They also said I wasn't a secretary." Fiorina also claimed her 2010 campaign had paid all its debts, which according to some of her creditors -- as Samuels reported -- is not true. As I recall, it also is not true that the Post reported Fiorina "wasn't a secretary." Various reporters, including some at the Post, have written that she worked as a secretary during a college break but that she didn't work her way up from the secretarial pool to the board room, as she likes to pretend. It's always rich when Fiorina questions someone else's credibility, especially when she does so while telling more fibs.

... CW: To be fair, Hillary Clinton didn't fully settle her 2008 campaign debts till 2013, & she had a guy to help her. However, it appears that the main person who didn't get payment for all his billed hours till years later was Mark Penn, whom Hillary had no doubt previously paid much more than he was worth.

Beyond the Beltway

Tim Ghianni of Reuters: "An 11-year-old eastern Tennessee boy was in custody for murder on Monday for shooting and killing an 8-year-old neighbor girl with a shotgun because she would not show him her puppies, authorities said."

News Ledes

New York Times: "A former top United Nations official and a billionaire real estate developer from the Chinese territory of Macau were accused on Tuesday of engaging in a broad corruption scheme, according to federal prosecutors in Manhattan. The former president of the United Nations General Assembly, John W. Ashe, a diplomat from Antigua, was one of six people identified in a criminal complaint outlining a bribery scheme that involved more than $1 million in payments from sources in China for assistance in real estate deals and other business interests. The case is highly embarrassing to the United Nations, which has vowed to act with greater transparency and accountability after past scandals."

New York Times: "Takaaki Kajita of the University of Tokyo and Arthur B. McDonald of Queen's University were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday for their discovery of neutrino oscillations, which show that neutrinos -- a kind of subatomic particle -- have mass.

The Commentariat -- October 5, 2015

Internal links & defunct videos removed.

Afternoon Update:

Matthew Rosenberg & Alissa Rubin of the New York Times: "The American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John F. Campbell, on Monday responded publicly to criticism over the American airstrike that destroyed a Doctors Without Borders hospital in the city of Kunduz, claiming that Afghan forces had requested the strike while under fire and conceding that the military had incorrectly reported at first that American troops were under direct threat. But General Campbell's comments, in a sudden and brief news conference at the Pentagon, did not clarify the military's initial claims that the strike, which killed 22 people, had been an accident to begin with. Doctors Without Borders has repeatedly said that there had been no fighting around the hospital, and that the building was hit over and over by airstrikes on Saturday morning, even though the group had sent the American military the precise coordinates of its hospital so it could be avoided." ...

... Thomas Gibbons-Neff of the Washington Post: "The airstrike that killed 22 people at a Doctor's without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan Saturday was requested by Afghan forces, not U.S. troops, according to the top U.S. general in Afghanistan."

*****

Ha Ha. The fates are laughing at me. I am lost & alone in South Carolina for the foreseeable future, on the best-forgotten Strom Thurmond Highway. The crack South Carolina Highway Patrol directed me right into the area most deeply affected by this 1,000-year flood. There is no way out! Not sure how long I'll have power. Here's the New York Times' story on the rains & flooding. The front page of the (South Carolina) State has links to many storm-related stories. -- Constant Wader

Jackie Calmes of the New York Times: "The United States and 11 other Pacific Rim nations on Monday agreed to the largest regional trade accord in history, a potentially precedent-setting model for global commerce and worker standards that would tie together 40 percent of the world's economy, from Canada and Chile to Japan and Australia. The Trans-Pacific Partnership still faces months of debate in Congress and will inject a new flash point into both parties' presidential contests."

Mike DeBonis & Elise Viebeck of the Washington Post: "The Republican chairman of a high-profile House committee on Sunday shook up the race to succeed outgoing Speaker John A. Boehner, launching a challenge to the heavy favorite, Majority LeaderKevin McCarthy. The bid by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (Utah), chairman of the Oversight ... Committee, comes amid unrest from conservatives driven by doubts that McCarthy (Calif.) will be any more inclined than Boehner to embrace the right flank of the House Republican Conference. Chaffetz said on 'Fox News Sunday' that he was 'recruited' by members displeased with McCarthy's ascent and that he would 'bridge the divide' in the House GOP." ...

... Rachel Bade & John Bresnahan of Politico: Chaffetz pans McCarthy, saying he -- Chaffetz -- is a better public speaker than McCarthy. CW: I don't think that's "panning" McCarthy; it's just stating a fact. ...

... Contributor MAG notes that, buried deep in her column yesterday, MoDo had a point:

Chaffetz (Crabbe), Gowdy (Malfoy) & Goyle (Chaffetz).... See today's Comments thread.

... Jake Sherman, et al., of Politico: "Speaker John Boehner is considering delaying the internal election for House majority leader and majority whip, leaving only the party vote for speaker to be decided on Thursday, according to multiple Republican sources with direct knowledge of the deliberations. Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.) and and Rep. Jim Renacci (R-Ohio) are circulating a letter requesting a delay in the elections for the No. 2 and No. 3 slots in leadership. There is also widespread interest in considering a change in internal party rules that would force candidates to resign chairmanships and leadership slots to run for new office." ...

... CW: Good. Let's drag out this stuff. I'd like to hear more about how well the white supremacist candidate for majority leader is doing: Scott Wong of the Hill: "House Majority Whip Steve Scalise said Sunday he has secured the votes to be elected majority leader, the No. 2 job in GOP leadership." CW: Also let's see if he's as good at whipping votes for himself as he's been at whipping votes for stuff Boehner has had to withdraw at the last moment because Scalise can't count. Should Scalise's auld acquaintances be forgot, Amanda Terkel of the Huff Post brings them to mind.

... Rachel Weiner of the Washington Post: "When he steps down in October, Boehner will leave a legacy not just in official Washington but in the city itself, thanks to a private school voucher program he helped create and keep alive over the past 12 years.... Like his legacy inside Congress, Boehner's legacy in the District is divisive. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) has opposed the voucher program from the start. She has argued that it's both unaccountable and has been unfairly thrust upon the District, whose Democratic leaders bristle at congressional intervention and -- for the most part -- have objected to using public funds for private school tuition.... A 2013 Government Accountability Office report found that the voucher program was poorly managed. A 2012 Washington Post investigation found that hundreds of students were going to uncredited or unconventional schools.... Tuition at most participating private schools is too high to be covered by the vouchers.... (Catholic schools are popular choices for voucher recipients, in large part because tuition there is often lower.) The program is opposed by teachers unions, who want to preserve public dollars for traditional public schools. And a 2010 study found no statistically significant improvement in math or reading skills for voucher recipients...." ...

... Jonathan Chait: how a "sting operation intended to expose the alleged depravity of social liberalism instead wound up exposing the fragile psyche of the American right, which remains unable to handle the realities of holding partial power in a divided government without regularly freaking out."

Lauren Carroll of PolitiFact: "Critics of the House of Representatives’ Benghazi investigation have recently begun to make a strong claim -- that it is officially the longest congressional investigation in history.... In recent days, the claim that this is the longest-running investigation ever has gone somewhat viral. We saw it in The Hill, Salon, The New York Times, Esquire, MSNBC, ABC News and, notably, a Twitter account belonging to [Hillary] Clinton's campaign.... However, we found numerous examples of congressional committee investigations that have lasted much longer than the Benghazi panel's 17 months."

Capitalism Is Awesome, Ctd. When the Golden Boys of Our Gilded Age Dance at the Charity Ball. Paul Theroux, in a New York Times op-ed: "When [Tim] Cook of Apple said he was going to hand over his entire fortune to charity, he was greatly praised by most people, but not by me. It so happened that at that time I was traveling up and down Tim Cook's home state of Alabama, and all I saw were desolate towns and hollowed-out economies, where jobs had been lost to outsourcing, and education had been defunded by shortsighted politicians.... Mr. Cook, investor in and benefactor of China, is not only the guiding hand at Apple, but he is also on the board of Nike, which makes virtually all its products outside the United States.... To me, globalization is the search for a new plantation, and cheaper labor...."

Susan Page of USA Today: "'I think there was a reasonably good chance that, barring stabilization of the financial system, that we could have gone into a 1930s-style depression,' [former Fed chair Ben Bernanke] says now in an interview with USA Today. 'The panic that hit us was enormous -- I think the worst in U.S. history.' With publication of his memoir, The Courage to Act, on Tuesday..., Bernanke has some thoughts about what went right and what went wrong. For one thing, he says that more corporate executives should have gone to jail for their misdeeds. The Justice Department and other law-enforcement agencies focused on indicting or threatening to indict financial firms, he notes, 'but it would have been my preference to have more investigation of individual action, since obviously everything what went wrong or was illegal was done by some individual, not by an abstract firm.'"

Still Awesome. Charles Pierce: The absence of those "jobs-killing regulations" is killing workers: "It is the opinion of virtually every Republican presidential candidate -- and far too many 'moderate' Democrats -- that controlling predatory, murderous industry is a job best left to the states, like Texas. Apparently, just as the semi-monthly massacre is the price we pay for having a Second Amendment, the occasional loss of a town to preventable industrial accidents is the price we pay for having a Tenth. Freedom is a tough room."

Michael Shear of the New York Times: "On Monday, a group whose goal is to prevent gun violence will release a report urging the administration to issue a series of regulations that would clarify existing laws in an effort to reduce gun-related crimes. The group, Everytown for Gun Safety, writes that Mr. Obama could help protect potential gun victims from attackers, especially in cases of domestic abuse, by encouraging five relatively small changes to the way the federal and state governments interpret laws that are already on the books." See also stories on Hillary Clinton's gun safety proposal linked under Presidential Race. ...

... Scott Keyes of the Guardian: "After Thursday's mass shooting in Oregon -- the 45th school shooting in the US this year..., attention has focused on the state's policy of allowing guns on college campuses.... Oregon is one of fewer than a dozen states, along with more conservative counterparts like Mississippi and Utah, which allow concealed carry on college campuses.... A frequent refrain among conservatives is that violent rampages happen in places like college campuses and movie theaters precisely because guns are banned there.... (There is no evidence of a shooter ever selecting a target precisely because it is a gun-free zone.) In the Umpqua case, though, at least one student (and likely others) was carrying a concealed weapon during the massacre.... An armed Umpqua student, John Parker Jr, explained just how difficult, if not impossible, it would have been for an armed bystander to stop the attack."

Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The new [Supreme Court term], which opens on Monday, marks the start of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.'s second decade on the court and will reveal whether the last term's leftward drift and acrimony were anomalies or something more lasting. The court will decide major cases on politically charged issues, including the fate of public unions and affirmative action in higher education. It will most probably hear its first major abortion case since 2007 and revisit the clash between religious liberty and contraception coverage." ...

... Nina Totenberg reports for NPR.

Alissa Rubin & Ashley Southall of the New York Times: "Doctors Without Borders said Sunday that it was withdrawing from Kunduz, a day after its hospital there was hit by what appeared to be an American airstrike, leaving the remaining residents in the embattled northern Afghan city even more vulnerable. The aid organization also raised the death toll in Saturday's airstrike on the hospital, saying that three more patients had died, raising the total fatalities to 22 -- 10 patients and 12 staff members. The charity has said that at least three of the dead patients were children, and that 37 people were wounded in the attack.... The charity, known internationally as Médecins Sans Frontières, or M.S.F., called on its Twitter feed for an independent investigation, 'under the clear presumption that a war crime has been committed.' 'Not a single member of our staff reported any fighting inside the hospital compound prior to the US airstrike on Saturday morning,' it said. 'The hospital was repeatedly & precisely hit during each aerial raid, while the rest of the compound was left mostly untouched.' The Pentagon said in a statement on Sunday that an investigation of the episode under the auspices of the NATO military headquarters in Afghanistan would be completed in a matter of days. The United States military has also opened 'a formal investigation to conduct a thorough and comprehensive inquiry,' it said in the statement. The Afghan government has also vowed to investigate the airstrike." ...

... Emma Graham-Harrison of the Guardian: "The attack that killed at least 19 people at an Afghan hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is the latest in a long line of bloody misjudgments by foreign forces in Afghanistan. Deaths from Nato airstrikes, which at their worst point killed hundreds of Afghan civilians a year, were a key factor in turning Afghan sentiment against foreign troops during more than a decade of war." ...

... Eric Schmitt & Tom Arango of the New York Times: "With alarming frequency in recent years, thousands of American-trained security forces in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia have collapsed, stalled or defected, calling into question the effectiveness of the tens of billions of dollars spent by the United States on foreign military training programs, as well as a central tenet of the Obama administration's approach to combating insurgencies.... The Pentagon-trained army and police in Iraq's Anbar Province, the heartland of the Islamic State militant group, have barely engaged its forces, while several thousand American-backed government forces and militiamen in Afghanistan's Kunduz Province were forced to retreat last week when attacked by several hundred Taliban fighters. And in Syria, a $500 million Defense Department program to train local rebels to fight the Islamic State has produced only a handful of soldiers." ...

... Phillip Carter, in a Washington Post op-ed, on why the U.S.'s "security assistance" programs don't work: "It fails first and most basically because it hinges upon an alignment of interests that rarely exists between Washington and its proxies.... Second, the security-assistance strategy gives too much weight to the efficacy of U.S. war-fighting systems and capabilities.... The third problem with security assistance is that it risks further destabilizing already unstable situations and actually countering U.S. interests."

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd." Charles Pierce: "Politico Finds a New Way to Call President Obama Uppity." ...

... CW: I had to fact-check Driftglass because of his seemingly-preposterous claim that Tuck Chodd had not only Rich Lowry & Ruth Marcus ("when you can't get David Brooks, David-Brooks-in-a-dress-will-do") on his Press the Meat panel of expert journalists, he added "Amy Holmes (of Glenn Beck's The Blaze) to bring in the unhinged, the shut-in and the doomsday preppers." Driftglass was right! Go to the videotape! Next week, how about Crazy Internet Guy? AND his cat?

Presidential Race

John Wagner of the Washington Post: "Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) drew a crowd of more than 20,000 [in Boston, Mass.] on Saturday night, building on the momentum of a week during which he posted a quarterly fundraising total that nearly matched that of Hillary Rodham Clinton, his chief rival for the Democratic presidential nomination. The boisterous turnout at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center appeared to far exceed a previous record for a primary candidate in Massachusetts: a crowd of about 10,000 that came to see then-senator Barack Obama eight years ago as he campaigned for the presidency, according to the Boston Globe." ...

... Margaret Talbot of the New Yorker profiles Bernie Sanders & discusses his popularity among younger voters.

Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "On the heels of the nation's latest mass shooting, Hillary Rodham Clinton will issue proposals on Monday to curb gun violence, including holding out the potential of using executive actions. Mrs. Clinton ... will announce the new proposals in separate town-hall-style events in New Hampshire, a state with a Democratic senator who has voted for some gun-control measures but where there is a thriving gun and hunting culture." ...

... Greg Sargent: Clinton's proposal challenges President Obama to do something and Bernie Sanders (& all Republican candidates) to address gun policy issues.

Worse than Cheney. Paul Krugman: "... you might expect people like [Marco] Rubio, who says he wants to 'unleash our energy potential,' and [Jeb] Bush, who says he wants to 'embrace wind and solar as engines of jobs and growth.' But they don't. Indeed, they're less open-minded than Dick Cheney, which is quite an accomplishment. Why?... Follow the money. We used to say that the G.O.P. was the party of Big Energy, but these days it would be more accurate to say that it's the party of Old Energy."

"Operation Wetback," Redux. And Yuuuge. William Finnegan of the New Yorker: Donald Trump's "political shortsightedness is astounding, and the idea that we would revert to the unsuccessful immigration-control methods of a dubious 1954 campaign is absurd and depressing."

News Ledes

New York Times: "An American Airlines jetliner with 147 passengers onboard made an emergency landing in Syracuse on Monday after the pilot fell ill and died, aviation officials said. The aircraft's co-pilot took control of the plane after the captain became incapacitated, and landed safely at Syracuse Hancock International Airport shortly after 7 a.m."

New York: "The Coast Guard believes that the cargo ship El Faro, which has been missing since Hurricane Joaquin struck the Caribbean, sank in the storm. The ship had a crew of 33, and 28 Americans were aboard."

New York Times: "Henning Mankell, the Swedish novelist and playwright best known for police procedurals that were translated into a score of languages and sold by the millions throughout the world, died Monday morning in Goteborg, Sweden. He was 67.

New York Times: "Three scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering 'therapies that have revolutionized the treatment of some of the most devastating parasitic diseases,' the Nobel Committee announced on Monday. William C. Campbell and Satoshi Omura won for developing a new drug, Avermectin, which has radically lowered the incidence of river blindness and lymphatic filariasis (elephantiasis). They shared the prize with Youyou Tu, who discovered Artemisinin, a drug that has significantly reduced death rates from malaria."

Guardian: "Islamic State militants have destroyed the Arch of Triumph in the ancient city of Palmyra, a monument that dates back to the Roman empire, Syria's chief of antiquities told the Guardian. Maamoun Abdulkarim said sources in the city, which was conquered by Isis after a week-long siege in May, had informed him the arch was destroyed on Sunday in the latest act of vandalism against Syria's cultural heritage perpetrated by Isis."

The Commentariat -- Oct. 3 & 4, 2015

Internal links & defunct video removed.

CW: I'll be out for all or most of the weekend. Also, the NYT seems to be having some problems: between 1:52 am ET & 5:40 am (so far), they haven't added any content.

Michael Crowley of Politico: "Vladimir Putin is weak, Russia faces a 'quagmire' in Syria, and critics of U.S. policy in Syria are talking 'mumbo-jumbo.' That was President Barack Obama's defiant take at a White House press conference on Friday afternoon, at which he fielded questions about Russia's surprise air strikes on Syrian rebels." CW: Sorry I missed this earlier; it wasn't on the White House schedule as of late Friday morning. ...

... Peter Schroeder of the Hill: "President Obama vowed Friday that he would not sign another short-term funding measure, pushing lawmakers to craft a long-term budget agreement. Speaking to the press two days after signing a two-month continuing resolution to keep the government from shutting down, Obama said that would be the last he is willing to tolerate. Government funding is now set to expire Dec. 11 after the latest agreement." ...

... The presser begins at about 19 minutes in:

White House: "In this week's address, the President emphasized that we need to do everything we can to strengthen economic growth and job creation":

... Also see clip under Presidential Race. ...

... ** Daniel Drezner (a fairly conservative writer) in the Washington Post: "The most obvious difference between tea party conservatives and [President] Obama is their divergence on a host of policy issues. But another significant difference is that the president, like [Speaker] Boehner, is a traditional politician who recognizes the limits of what can be accomplished without political support. This president has not been afraid to use his executive branch powers to enact controversial policies, but he also recognizes the hard limits of that approach." ...

Rachel Bade & John Bresnanhan of Politico: "House Oversightand Government Affairs Chairman Jason Chaffetz [RTP-Utah] is planning to run for House speaker, taking on Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy in what appears to be a long-shot bid to lead House Republicans, according to multiple sources." ...

.. Oops! I Forgot. Secret Service Director Joseph Clancey suddenly remembers he did know about agency personnel circulating an e-mail urging the Service to publicize the fact that Jason Chaffetz once unsuccessfully applied for a Secret Service job. Carol Leonnig & Jerry Markon of the Washington Post report: "The director of the Secret Service knew that unflattering, private information about a congressman was circulating among agency staff members before it was leaked to the news media, contrary to an earlier statement made to federal investigators.... President Obama picked Clancy as director this year against the advice of an administration panel of experts, who urged selecting an outsider to help improve the Secret Service. Clancy is a 27-year veteran of the agency." CW: Now, this is something actually worthy of an investigation by Chaffetz's House Oversight Committee, but I guess it would look bad for a public official to investigate why federal agents would break privacy laws to humiliate him. So Planned Parenthood. Because beating up on Cecile Richards looks so manly. And somewhere there's an Obama advisor saying, "Toljaso." ...

... CW: I'd say it's no coincidence that the White House just (Oct. 2) published a video of President Obama's commending the Secret Service (on September 29) for keeping safe the Pope & members of the U.N.:

Larry Buchanan, et al., of the New York Times: "Criminal histories and documented mental health problems did not prevent at least eight of the gunmen in 14 recent mass shootings from obtaining their weapons, after federal background checks led to approval of the purchases of the guns used." A case-by-case report of "how they got their guns." ...

... ** Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker: "... the only amendment necessary for gun legislation, on the local or national level, is the Second Amendment itself, properly understood, as it was for two hundred years in its plain original sense. This sense can be summed up in a sentence: if the Founders hadn't wanted guns to be regulated, and thoroughly, they would not have put the phrase 'well regulated' in the amendment." ...

... CW: We often discuss here how winger presidential candidates & crazy Congress inflame the nut-base with irresponsible rhetoric & careless legislative agendas. But few of these presidential hopefuls or elected representatives have done as much to validate & encourage the crazies as did Nino Scalia & the Supreme confederates in their 2008 5-4 decision in Heller v. D.C. Heller confirmed to these freeedom/gun-loving nuts that government officials had been depriving them of their Constitutional rights for 200 years, & now, by god, they were going to exercise those rights. While I don't deny that much of the right's antipathy to President Obama is racist & tribal, it is also no coincidence that he ascended to the presidency at the same time Nino instantly released the freeedom/gun guys from the long national nightmare of reasonable gun safety laws.

This is fairly hilarious. Tom Kingston of the Los Angeles Times: "A week after Pope Francis met Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk jailed for her refusal to issue marriage licenses for same-sex couples, the Vatican on Friday suggested that she exploited the meeting to promote her views, denied that the pope fully supports her and cast doubt on her account of the encounter. The Vatican later noted that Francis did have a private 'audience' in Washington with a former student of the pope, Yayo Grassi, an openly gay Argentine who along with his longtime partner and some friends met with Francis." CW: Don't punk the Pontiff, Kimbo. ...

... Philip Pullella of Reuters: "One Vatican official said there was 'a sense of regret' that the pope had ever seen Kim Davis.... While [Vatican spokesman Federico] Lombardi declined to take questions on the incident, his assistant, Canadian priest Father Tom Rosica, laid the blame on the Vatican embassy in Washington, saying it had underestimated the impact of Davis's presence at the reception.... Rosica said he did not believe the pope was even indirectly involved in inviting Davis.... Asked if the pope had been set up intentionally by someone in the embassy, Rosica said: 'No, reading all of the information, listening to all of the facts, these things happen.'" ...

... Joshua McElwee of the National Catholic Reporter: "Rosica said the Vatican was unsure who the meeting was organized by, and that it might have been an initiative by the Vatican's ambassador to the U.S., Archbishop Carlo Vigano.... Rosica said ... Francis had personally approved Friday's press statement after a meeting with Lombardi on the issue." ...

... Jason Horowitz of the New York Times writes an informative background story on Vigano, who was at the center of the "Vatileaks" scandal & whose "exile" to the U.S. was a major demotion. CW: As contributor Diane & I have speculated, Vigano will go, & it turns out there's a ready-made mechanism to do that: "In January, Archbishop Viganò will turn 75, the age at which bishops must submit a formal request to the Vatican for permission to resign. These requests are not automatically accepted, and bishops often stay in their appointments long after. It seems unlikely, church analysts say, that Archbishop Viganò will be one of them." MEANWHILE, lawyer is Mat Staver is not helping his client Kim Davis's case: "... Mathew D. Staver said in an interview that the Vatican's version of events was 'absolute nonsense' and that 'somebody is trying to throw some people under the bus.'" Since Francis reportedly personally approved the official Vatican statement distancing the Pope from Davis, Staver is calling the Pope a liar. Even if he's right, which is doubtful, that's pretty stupid. ...

... Rosie Scammell & David Gibson of Religion News Service: "After breaking the news Tuesday night, Davis' camp said the meeting had been requested by the pope and validated Davis' efforts.... [Davis' attorney Mat] Staver on Tuesday told CBS News that the Vatican contacted him a few days before the pope was to arrive on his first visit to the U.S., because Francis had been following Davis' saga 'and obviously is very concerned about religious freedom not just in the United States but worldwide.'" ...

... Laurie Goodstein & Jim Yardley of the New York Times: "The church distanced itself on Friday from the case of [Kim] Davis, the Rowan County, Ky., clerk who defied a judge's order and refused to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples. It said 'the only real audience' Francis gave in Washington was to a former student of his. Contacted by phone, a former student of Francis, Yayo Grassi, said he had been granted a meeting with the pope. Mr. Grassi is an openly gay man living in Washington, and he said he had been accompanied by his partner of 19 years, Iwan Bagus, as well as four friends." (Also linked yesterday.)

Michael Shear of the New York Times: "Arne Duncan, the secretary of education and a member of President Obama's original cabinet, will step down in December after a long tenure in which he repeatedly challenged the nation's schools to break out of their hidebound ways." CW: Buh-bye. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Presidential Race

Noam Scheiber & Amy Chozick of the New York Times: "The International Association of Fire Fighters, one of the country's more politically powerful unions, has abandoned its initial plans to endorse Hillary Rodham Clinton for president, according to union sources. Harold A. Schaitberger, the union's general president, informed Mrs. Clinton's campaign manager, Robby Mook, in a telephone call on Monday. According to a union official, Mr. Schaitberger told Mr. Mook that the executive board and rank-and-file members -- the latter were recently polled -- did not support a Clinton endorsement.... In recent weeks, as Mrs. Clinton's numbers in some polls have sagged and she has faced an increasingly formidable challenge from Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, some labor unions appear to have had second thoughts.... 'Secretary Clinton doesn't sell well here,' said Roy L. McGhee III..., an I.A.F.F. board member who represents Texas and Oklahoma. 'I think the Republican attack machine, the media machine, has made sure of that. The vice president will do better. He's popular among firefighters.'"

Larry Lessig in Politico Magazine: "I'm running for President. Or trying. After raising $1 million in less than 30 days, I entered the primary on September 9 as the Democrat's only non-politician.... But [my] message is being stifled with the tacit approval of the Democratic Party leadership, who are deploying the oldest method available for marginalizing campaigns they don't like: keeping me out of the Democratic presidential debates." ...

... CW: The question is, should the Democratic party let every person who can put up $1MM participate in the debates?

Stuff happens. -- Jeb Bush, responding to Oregon mass murder ...

... Yeah, He Really Said That. Inae Oh of Mother Jones: "While speaking to reporters during a campaign stop in Greenville, South Carolina, on Friday, Jeb Bush weighed in on the latest school shooting to take place in the United States, this time in Oregon, just a day before. 'We're in a difficult time in our country and I don't think more government is necessarily the answer to this,' Bush said. 'I think we need to reconnect ourselves with everybody else. It's very sad to see. But I resist the notion, and I had this challenge as governor -- look, stuff happens. There's always a crisis. The impulse is always to do something and it's not necessarily the right thing to do.'" ...

... Daniel Strauss of Politico: "The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza asked if Bush made a mistake with the phrasing. 'No, it wasn't a mistake, I said exactly what I said. Why would you explain to me what I said wrong?' Bush said. Lizza responded, 'Well you said "stuff happens.'" "'Things" happen all the time. "Things," is that better?' Bush said." Bush went on to say that people die all the time & "you don't solve the problem by passing the law."... "Asked to react to Bush's comment, President Barack Obama was blunt. 'I don't even think I have to react to that one, I think the American people should hear that and make their own judgments based on the fact that every couple of months we have a mass shooting,' Obama said at a press conference Friday afternoon. 'They can decide whether they consider that "stuff happens."'"

... Politico reprises some of the Doofus's "growing number of unfortunate comments." ...

... Matt Flegenheimer Jeb!, who last week revived the "free stuff" for black people meme, has had problems addressing issues important to minorities since before he became governor of Florida. What will you do for blacks if elected governor? "Probably nothing." CW: "Probably nothing" & "free stuff" do make nice bookends to an undistinguished, elitist political career. It's about time for Jeb! to quit the campaign trail & go back to ruining public schools, one of his signature causes.

Dana Milbank: "The day [Donald] Trump clinches the nomination I will eat the page on which this column is printed in Sunday's Post. I have this confidence for the same reason [Mitt] Romney does: Americans are better than Trump.... Consider what Trump said in Keene, N.H., this week about those fleeing Syria in the largest refugee crisis since World War II. 'This could be one of the great tactical ploys of all time,' he said of the desperate masses fleeing Syria's civil war. 'A 200,000-man army, maybe.... I don't know that it is, but it could be possible.' And what would happen to the refugees under President Trump? 'They're going back,' he said. To their deaths, presumably."

Paul Waldman: "... there's one thing that distinguishes [Ben Carson] from other candidates: ... only he fully embraces an apocalyptic vision of the American nightmare that is upon us.... If you listen to Carson, you won't have to wait long before he references some bizarre conspiracy theory or says something indicating that he thinks everything is about to turn to hell.... Conspiracy theorists ... seem to have slunk back away from the center of the conservative movement, at least to the point where Republican presidential candidates feel no need to court them. Except for one, Ben Carson. By all indications, he's doing it not by way of some clever political strategem, but because he actually believes what he says. Which is the most disturbing thing of all."

Beyond the Beltway

Catherine Thompson of TPM: "The sheriff investigating a mass shooting at an Oregon community college ... posted a ["truther"] video to Facebook in 2013 that raised questions about the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin posted a link to a YouTube video called 'The Sandy Hook Shooting - Fully Exposed,' which summarized conspiracy theories surrounding the shooting and quickly racked up millions of views, about a month after the massacre took place. The post was deleted or made private sometime after 2:30 p.m. Friday.... The viral video was quickly debunked in arenas as disparate as The Huffington Post and Glenn Beck's website TheBlaze...." ...

... At about the same time he posted the truther video, Hanlin wrote to Vice President Biden expressing his vehement opposition to gun control laws, which he believes violate the Second Amendment. He vowed to nullify "any federal regulation enacted by Congress or by executive order of the President offending the Constitutional rights of my citizens." ...

... Ian Millhiser of Think Progress: "The letter is also riddled with language commonly used by the 'Oath Keepers,' a right-wing veterans and law enforcement group that is closely associated with armed, anti-government militias.... Hanlin's letter also blurs the line between a matter that is lawfully within state officials' discretion and something much more akin to insurrection.... What Hanlin may not do ... is unilaterally assign himself the power to decide what is or is not constitutional and then refuse to 'permit the enforcement' of federal laws by 'federal officers within the borders of Douglas County Oregon.'"

News Ledes (October 3)

New York Times: "A United States airstrike appears to have badly damaged the hospital run by Doctors Without Borders in the Afghan city of Kunduz early Saturday, killing at least three people and wounding dozens, including members of the hospital staff. The United States military, in a statement, confirmed the 2:15 a.m. airstrike, saying it had been targeting individuals 'who were threatening the force' and that 'there may have been collateral damage to a nearby medical facility.'" ...

... CW: No, people you killed or injured are not "collateral damage." They're people, dead or barely alive. Own up to what you do in words, not in insulting euphemisms. ...

     ... Guardian Update: "A US airstrike appears to have hit a hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) in the Afghan city of Kunduz, killing nine staff members and injuring up to 37 people." CW: So we're now killing genuine heroes. What a catastrophe.