The Commentariat -- Sept. 17, 2015

Internal links removed.

Presidential Race

Tom McCarthy of the Guardian: "Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump spent hours Wednesday night fending off attacks from rival candidates on a California debate stage as moderators struggled to enforce order among a clamorous group of 11 White House hopefuls. With the mood swinging from a rollicking family argument to uncomfortably personal confrontation to shared disdain for Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, the debate showcased a race with an unusual number of candidates from unusually diverse backgrounds making creative plays for the Republican base."

New York Times reporters ID what they think were the highlights. They also did some fact-checking, which is important, because most of the candidates told at least one whopper. ...

... Politico staffers fact-check some whoppers, too:

I dare Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama to watch these tapes. Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain. -- Carly Fiorina

Gee, I didn't know that. Maybe because Fiorina made it up out of whole cloth. -- Constant Weader

... More fact-checking from Glenn Kessler & Michelle Lee of the Washington Post. CW: These guys can't handle the truth. You wonder which ones know they're liars, which are ignorant followers of Right Wing News & which are just sociopaths.  ...

... Marc Caputo of Politico, long a Miami Herald political reporter, tells "the real story behind Trump's Florida gaming fixation." CW: So last night, Trump flat-out lied on stage about that. If you can't beat lazy Jeb!, how are you going to take on Putin & the Ayatollah, Donald? ...

... CW: I wish one of the moderators had had the guts to ask Trump about his supposed business acumen, which he touts as his primary qualification for the top job: National Journal: "Had the celebrity businessman and Republican presidential candidate invested his eventual share of his father's real-estate company into a mutual fund of S&P 500 stocks in 1974, it would be worth nearly $3 billion today, thanks to the market's performance over the past four decades. If he'd invested the $200 million that Forbes magazine determined he was worth in 1982 into that index fund, it would have grown to more than $8 billion today. ...

(... Speaking of Donald Trump's inheritance, it looks as if he came by his racism honestly -- he inherited that, too. Matt Blum of Boing Boing (Sept. 9): "According to a New York Times article published in June 1927, a man with the name and address of Donald Trump's father was arraigned after Klan members attacked cops in Queens, N.Y." Better known: "A 1979 article, published by Village Voice, reported on a civil rights suit that alleged that the Trumps refused to rent to black home-seekers.")

... There's one thing I'll tell you about my brother. He kept us safe. -- Jeb!, telling the Biggest Lie of the Night ...

... Charles Pierce: "I ran out of patience long ago with The Great Mulligan. C-Plus Augustus ignored the terrorist threat for nine months. He told his Attorney General to shift focus from counterterrorism to weed and porn. He told his National Security Advisor to worry about the Russians. He blew off a Presidential Daily Briefing and a CIA briefer. Then, on September 11, 2001, there were 3000 Americans who were not kept safe on his watch. He then stonewalled any real investigation of his negligence. He then launched a war of choice after allowing the architect of the attacks to go free. There were more than 4000 American soldiers who were not kept safe. And now his blithering brother suggests that time began on September 12, 2001. Scott Walker then chimed in about how it was all Barack Obama's fault."

Here are some take-aways from Noah Bierman of the Los Angeles Times.

Tim Dickinson of Rolling Stone picks the "top ten zingers of the ... debate."

Jonathan Chait: "The debate revealed a party wedded to the tenets of Bushism -- rabid, debt-financed, regressive tax-cutting, reflexive hostility to regulation, and a pervasive anti-intellectualism. Trump at one point implicitly defended his lack of foreign-policy knowledge on the grounds that the current administration had many knowledgable people (true) and the world was on fire (questionable). This open attack on brainpower would have been astonishing, except that Marco Rubio repeated it himself, declaring, 'Radical terrorism cannot be solved by intellect.'"

CW: If I had to go on a date with any of these guys, I would definitely pick Ben Carson. He's sort of the Candide of Candidates: well-meaning, soft-spoken & completely naive. Also, Best-Looking. ...

... Then again I liked the part where Lord Cornfields-of-Cornwall Bush (see yesterday's Commentariat) could not think of a single American woman who might merit a spot on the $10 bill & chose, instead, former Britsh PM Margaret Thatcher. Why not Queen Elizabeth? She's used to appearing on currency. O to be in England now. Confederate flag, my ass. How about the Union Jack? It is hardly surprising that Bush the Youngest is so fond of a country that retains a hereditary aristocracy & monarchy.

Gail Collins rues five hours of Republicans & Three Stages of Trump: "And then there was the completely, unbelievably irresponsible Trump of the finale who claimed he knew people whose daughter got autism from a vaccine shot. (This happened, he said, to 'people that work for me just the other day.') Remember when the vaccination issue destroyed Michele Bachmann;s political career? One can only hope."

Bernie Sanders live-tweets the debate.

Matt Grunwald of Politico: "Last night's Republican debate in the Reagan Library was not about Morning in America. It was more like Darkness at Noon. Jeb Bush did call for the party to embrace a Reaganesque sense of optimism, which he contrasted with 'the Donald Trump approach of "Everything is bad, everything is coming to an end."' But with occasional exceptions, usually involving the softer-edged John Kasich, the Trump approach dominated. For five hours, the candidates stood in front of Reagan's plane and described America as a declining nation in a dystopic world, as they pledged, to borrow a phrase, to Make America Great Again."

Margaret Hartmann runs down what some pundits had to say about each candidate's performance.

Steve M.: "Everyone from The Weekly Standard's Michael Warren to The Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart to Politico's panel of 'early-state insiders' believes that Carly Fiorina won last night's debate. I think she's going to get the biggest media bounce from the debate -- if you watch political TV or read pundits, you won't be able to avoid her for a week or two -- and I assume she'll get a poll bump as well. But I predict that a month from now she'll be back in the 3%-5% range, because she's just not the kind of woman Republican voters want." ...

... Yastreblyansky, commenting on Steve's post: "Hey, Fiorina may be 'well informed' -- I'd say well prepped -- but watching her trembling with emotion about a scene in a video that doesn't exist..., and advising everybody else to watch it too with the suggestion that we'd all get just as emotional as she is, suggests she's as detached from reality as Ronald Reagan ever was. That would explain why she thinks she was a successful CEO, too."

Trip Gabriel & Matt Flegenheimer of the New York Times cover the kiddie table. ...

... Charles Pierce: "Well, if there's one thing we learned from the prelim bout on Wednesday night from the Bob MacFarlane Gift Shoppe And Notions Department, it's that if any of the four of these guys gets elected, we're going to be at war somewhere, or in a couple of somewheres, very soon.... Not that any of them need that much pushing, but [Lindsey] Graham is setting the allowable parameters of the Republican party on foreign policy. And those parameters are bristling with guns."

Looks as if CNN is liveblogging the GOP debates here. CW: Because I had some gruntwork to do, I listened to most of the debates. I see now what Republican voters are so ignorant: it's because they believe these baldfaced liars. Also, Ted Cruz makes Donald Trump seem downright personable. What a horse's ass.

Ahead of the debate, some guy helps Li'l Randy take shots at the tax code. Because this is the responsible, adult thing to do:

... Then This Moment in Responsible Rhetoric. Mark Hensch of the Hill: "Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) says he will not hold back in attacking Donald Trump as a false conservative during the second GOP presidential debate Wednesday night. 'I think he deserves both barrels,' he said on Tuesday, according to The Daily Caller."

Goodfellas, Village Edition. digby in Salon: Donald "Trump sounds more like a cheap gangster than a politician most of the time.... The political media seems to be adopting his rhetorical style. Trumpism must be catching.... [Mark] Halperin has caught a bad case of it. Scalping and assaulting and stomping and pulverizing -- it almost makes Trump's little references to 'counter-punching' sound, dare I say it, a little weak...." digby then delves into "the desperate GOP establishment plots to take Trump down."

Ted vs. the Scorpion. Whatever horror the scorpion is supposed to represent in Ted Cruz's weird ad, Steve Stromberg of the Washington Post finds the ad -- and its dark implications -- "revolting." CW: That's because Stromberg assumes that Ted is the revolting character is the ad. Stromberg is right.

Simon Rosenberg, in Time, makes a strong case for more Democratic debates.

Real News

Sarah Wheaton of Politico: "President Barack Obama accused congressional Republicans of 'playing chicken' with the economy over Planned Parenthood on Wednesday. Speaking before about 100 members of the Business Roundtable, just blocks from the Capitol, Obama said Republicans would be jeopardizing not just the United States but global markets if their insistence on eliminating funding to Planned Parenthood leads to a government shutdown." ...

There's nothing particularly patriotic or American about talking down America. -- Barack Obama ...

... Kevin Liptak of CNN: "As Republican presidential candidates lay into his record, President Barack Obama on Wednesday chalked up the attacks to expected election-year politics but said there was 'nothing particularly patriotic' about their rhetoric. 'Despite the perennial doom and gloom that I guess is inevitably part of a presidential campaign, America is winning right now,' Obama said at a meeting of the Business Roundtable in Washington. 'America is great right now. We can do even better.'" ...

... Julie Davis of the New York Times: "President Obama warned Wednesday that his administration was ready to take action against China for cyberattacks carried out by Beijing or its proxies, publicly raising the specter of sanctions a week before President Xi Jinping arrives in the United States for a state visit." ...

... The President took quite a few deserved potshots against Republicans during his remarks& during the Q&A that followed. Very refreshing:

... Text of the President's full remarks is here.

President Obama meets with King Felipe of Spain:

** David Ignatius of the Washington Post: "The political circus surrounding the Iran nuclear deal shouldn't obscure the fact that President Obama won an enormous victory in negotiating the agreement and mustering the necessary congressional votes to sustain it. It's the most determined, strategic success of his presidency.... The outliers are Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the U.S Republican leadership, who reject an agreement most nations endorse. The political reality is that Obama outfoxed them at nearly every turn." ...

... Jordain Carney of the Hill: "Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) plans to force Democrats to walk the line on the Iran nuclear agreement, teeing up a vote on a contentious amendment on the deal. The Republican leader scheduled a procedural vote on an amendment that would block President Obama from lifting sanctions against Iran under the nuclear deal until Iran publicly supports Israel and releases Americans currently held in Iranian prisons. Under Senate rules, the vote would occur Thursday, which is also the deadline for Congress to pass legislation on the Iran nuclear agreement." ...

... Seung Min Kim & Burgess Everett of Politico: "For the second time in less than a week Tuesday, the Senate blocked an attempt by the majority leader [Mitch McConnell] to push a measure to scuttle the Iran nuclear deal through the chamber. The try-and-try-again strategy -- amounting to a repeated public shaming -- has become something of a go-to move for McConnell. Problem is, it's not working, at least if the metric of success is producing a different outcome.... McConnell further raised the stakes minutes ahead of the vote by threatening to force Democrats to vote on proposals that would require Iran recognize Israel as a state and release Americans held in Iran, [the votes to be held] likely on Thursday. Aside from Iran, the majority leader has forced multiple votes on funding for the Department of Homeland Security and human-trafficking legislation." ...

... Julian Hattem of the Hill: "A small but growing number of GOP lawmakers say that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) should invoke the 'nuclear option' to change Senate rules and prevent a filibuster on a resolution to kill the deal.... Less than two years after Republicans railed against Democrats for changing the rules to prevent filibusters on most presidential nominees, McConnell has ruled out using the nuclear strategy. But the call puts more pressure on the majority leader and illustrates Republicans' growing frustration with their inability to score significant victories in Congress, even while controlling both chambers." ...

... Ed Kilgore: "... we have to assume the people whining at ol' Mitch about this are aware there's this thing called a presidential veto that will absolutely with zero uncertainty be used to thwart their will on both the Iran deal and Planned Parenthood. I mean, they may not know the difference between Sunnis and Shi'a or that snowfall doesn't refute global climate change. But they probably know about vetoes. So they're asking McConnell to make a pretty big strategic change of course over a gesture.... [Or] Maybe they think the Senate should become like the House and the 'rule' for consideration of legislation is determined on a case-by-case basis. Or maybe they're just incapable of making a coherent argument."

Benjamin Mueller of the New York Times: "Jon Stewart, the recently retired host of 'The Daily Show,' exhorted Congress on Wednesday to permanently extend a law providing treatment and compensation to rescue workers who were injured or sickened by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The bill, which is set to start expiring next month, has long been a favored cause of the comedian, whose shows in 2010 criticizing the law's Republican opponents and showcasing emergency medical workers with health problems helped prompt its passage. The law, called the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, pledged federal money for the health care of rescue workers who had for years been forced to depend on mix of short-term federal, city and private money."

Rachel Bade of Politico: "Two senior Senate Democrats dismissed Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn's call for a special counsel to probe the Hillary Clinton emails controversy, calling it a political ploy. Judiciary and Intelligence committee ranking Democrats Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said the No. 2 Senate Republican's demand that Attorney General Loretta Lynch appoint an outside investigator would just be a waste of taxpayer money." CW: Good for Feinstein & Leahy.

Linda Greenhouse: "What's placed now in high relief by many of the current disputes is the tension inherent in religion clauses of the First Amendment. The amendment prohibits the 'establishment' of religion while also protecting 'the free exercise thereof.... The relative weight the court has accorded each of the religion clauses shifts over time, reflecting in broad strokes the concerns of the general culture as the tension between the two principles comes to the fore in different ways. The Roberts court has tilted quite far in the direction of free exercise, to the detriment of the values of pluralism inherent in the establishment clause. Inevitably, if history is any guide, a tipping point will come.... That process may have begun in the clerk's office in Rowan County, Ky. If so, we may have Kim Davis and her zealous lawyer to thank."

Neil MacFarquhar & Andrew Kramer of the New York Times: "This week, [Russian President Vladimir] Putin unleashed a diplomatic offensive, pushing to meet with President Obama, offering to hold military-to-military talks on Syria, and planning a big rollout for a Syrian peace plan when he speaks at the United Nations later this month. The stakes for Mr. Putin are high.... The Kremlin has been on the defensive, diplomatically isolated after its adventures in Ukraine and battered economically by sanctions, low oil prices and a weak ruble that is cutting into living standards. Rapidly depleting the rainy day funds that have staved off financial disaster so far, Mr. Putin knows he needs to get back in the West's good graces in a hurry, or at least change the conversation. Syria provides an ideal vehicle for that, while also giving Moscow a significant role in the Middle East and promoting Mr. Putin's long-term ambitions of re-establishing Russia as a player on the world stage." ...

... CW: To all the saber-rattlers (name any Republican) who said President Obama didn't know how to handle Putin: the joke's on you.

Josh Gerstein of Politico: "After decades of stiff resistance, the CIA on Wednesday released about 2,500 President's Daily Briefs and similar reports delivered to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson during a nearly eight-year span in the 1960s. The briefings detail the evolution of the war in Vietnam and responses to such events as the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Six-Day War in the Middle East." Gerstein embeds 13 of them.

Robert Pear of the New York Times: "The number of people without health insurance dropped last year by 8.8 million, to a total of 33 million, but there was no statistically significant change in income for the typical American household, the Obama administration said Wednesday." Because ObamaCare really sucks.

Ben Protess & Danielle Ivory of the New York Times: "Federal prosecutors are poised to settle a criminal investigation into General Motors, according to people briefed on the matter, accusing the automaker of failing to disclose a safety defect tied to at least 124 deaths. The case, which the prosecutors plan to unveil on Thursday, would cap a wide-ranging investigation that tainted the automaker's reputation for quality and safety and damaged its bottom line. The prosecutors will impose a penalty of nearly $1 billion on G.M., according to people briefed on the matter..., but they are not expected to include charges against individual G.M. employees."

Beyond the Beltway

Guardian: "An appeals court agreed to halt the execution of an Oklahoma man with just hours to spare Wednesday after his attorneys asked for time to review new evidence, including a fellow inmate's claim that he overheard the other man convicted in the case admit he acted alone.... [Richard] Glossip, 52, was scheduled to be executed at 3pm [Wednesday]. But the Oklahoma court of criminal appeals agreed to delay the lethal injection after Glossip's attorneys said they had new evidence. Among the material is a signed affidavit from another inmate, Michael Scott, who claims he heard [Justin] Sneed say 'he set Richard Glossip up, and that Richard Glossip didn't do anything'."

David Ferguson of the Raw Story: "The police chief of Surf City, North Carolina was abruptly forced into retirement on Tuesday after an emergency meeting with city commissioners regarding an angry Facebook rant the chief posted about the Black Lives Matter movement." You can read the full rant here.

CW: Say you're a high-school English teacher & a 14-year-old student shows you this gizmo to the left, which he says he made at home. What do you do? Ahmed Mohamed's English teacher thought the gizmo looked like a bomb & took it to the school principal, who alerted the Irving, Texas, cops. As we all know, cops are chosen for their inability to tell the difference between beef & mackerels, so we should not be surprised that five Irving, Texas, cops -- in their combined wisdom -- cannot tell the difference between a bomb-detonating device & a crude digital clock, nor can they tell the difference between an enthusiastic science-y kid (wearing a NASA T-shirt) & a mad goth bomber. They cuffed the kid, interrogated him, carted him off to the Irving police station (without allowing him to contact his parents) & accused him of bringing a "hoax bomb" to school. The school suspended him. Ahmed's parents & the Internets (also a well-known font of wisdom & reason) accused the cops & the school of racism & Islamophobia. Frankly, I'm not so sure Islamophobia has anything to do with it. Anyway, President Obama & Mark Zuckerberg liked the clock. It seems a bit clunky to me.

Way Beyond

Rick Lyman & Dan Bilefsky of the New York Times: "Hungarian police officers moved against hundreds of migrants on Wednesday, attacking them with batons, water cannons and tear gas after they tried to surge through a border crossing that had been blocked for a second day. The migrants tore down a razor-wire gate on the Serbian side of the border crossing, and were pushing through to a second gate on the Hungarian side when the riot police drove them back. Twenty people were injured, including two children who had been thrown across the fence into Hungary, and taken to a hospital, the authorities said."

AP: "A major earthquake just offshore rattled Chileans, killing five people and shaking the Earth so strongly the tremor was felt in places across South America. Authorities worked into the early hours Thursday assessing damage in several coastal towns that saw flooding from small tsunami waves set off by the quake."

The Commentariat -- Sept. 16, 2015

Internal links & defunct video removed.

CW: I am happy to report that here in the U.S. of A., Tuesday was a day without any serious political news. Ergo, most of today's Commentariat borders on -- or crosses over into -- the silly. Most of the "news" is speculation about how the candidates will fare in tonight's debates.

David Herszenhorn & Julie Davis of the New York Times: "Congress hurtled toward a government shutdown on Tuesday, with Republicans threatening to block a budget deal if it includes financing for Planned Parenthood, as President Obama prepared to join the fight by pushing Republicans to scrap a multibillion-dollar tax advantage for private equity managers.... The so-called carried interest provision ... [is] a tax break ... that the president has repeatedly proposed eliminating, and it is a favorite bête noire of Democrats condemning income inequality. Its repeal has little chance of passing a divided Congress, but it has gained new political potency in recent days, with two Republican presidential candidates, Donald J. Trump and Jeb Bush, endorsing it."

Jesse Byrnes of the Hill: "President Obama is weighing in on the discussion over political dialogue on college campuses, saying students shouldn't be "coddled" from opposing views:

It's not just sometimes folks who are mad that colleges are too liberal that have a problem. Sometimes there are folks on college campuses who are liberal and maybe even agree with me on a bunch of issues who sometimes aren't listening to the other side. And that's a problem, too. I've heard of some college campuses where they don't want to have a guest speaker who is too conservative. Or they don't want to read a book if it has language that is offensive to African-Americans, or somehow sends a demeaning signal towards women. I've got to tell you, I don't agree with that either. I don't agree that you, when you become students at colleges, have to be coddled and protected from different points of views.

     ... President Obama's full speech is here. ...

Josh Gerstein of Politico: "After decades of stiff resistance, the CIA is preparing to pull back the curtain -- to an extent -- on one of the most vaunted rituals in the intelligence world: the daily briefing delivered to American presidents on world events and global threats. At a conference in Austin, Texas Wednesday, the spy agency is set to release about 2,500 President's Daily Briefs and similar reports delivered to President John F. Kennedy and then to President Lyndon Johnson during a nearly-eight-year span in the 1960s. The briefings detail the evolution of the war in Vietnam and responses to events like the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Six-Day War in the Middle East."

... Jonathan Chait: "One of the problems with p.c. culture is that it allows the likes of Donald Trump to pass off their bigotry as opposition to political correctness (just as communists used McCarthyism to discredit all anti-communism).... Political correctness is most closely associated with campus life, because the academy is one of the few institutions in the United States where the left has the ability to impose its hegemony.... The right's inability to conduct rational internal debate is on daily display and has had disastrous consequences for the country and the world. The impingement of this illiberal political culture on mainstream left-of-center debate is a problem of nontrivial scale." ...

... Libby Nelson of Vox: What engendered President Obama's remarks on political correctness was a student's asking him "to respond to Republican presidential contender Ben Carson's proposal to cut off funding to colleges that demonstrate political bias.... 'I have no idea what that means, and I suspect he doesn't either.... The idea that you'd have somebody in government making a decision about what you should think ahead of time or what you should be taught, and if it's not the right thought, or idea, or perspective or philosophy, that person would be -- they wouldn't get funding, runs contrary to everything we believe about education,' he said. 'That might work in the Soviet Union, but that doesn't work here. That's not who we are.'"

Rachel Bade of Politico: "Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn [R], a former Texas attorney general and Texas supreme court justice, asked [Attorney General Loretta] Lynch in a Tuesday morning letter to appoint a special counsel" to investigate Hillary Clinton's e-mail usage. CW: Thanks for your concern, Senator. Now go away.

** James Carroll of the New Yorker: "Rather than seeing [Pope Francis] as a cult-worthy personality who represents something wholly new in Catholicism, it is better to understand Francis, even in his stylistic deviations, as the culmination of a slow, if jerky, recovery on the part of the Church from its self-defeating rejection of modernity." CW: Sorry to interrupt the nonsense with something worth reading.

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Special Halperin Edition. Ed Kilgore: "I guess this is Trump Panic Day..., and the best sign of that is not so much the reports of angst on Wall Street as the reaction of everybody's favorite Insider Journalist, Bloomberg Politics' Mark Halperin, who has written a piece mainly remarkable for its analysis of the GOP race as a death match where Donald Trump gets 'killed' or everybody dies! Right from the get-go, Halperin gets his thug on.... You get a mental image of Halperin sitting in a half-lit Italian restaurant with the members of Murder, Inc., planning their next hit. It's pretty hilarious, but that's how tense it's getting in the Republican side of the Village.... If it weren't for the real-life consequences, it would be tempting to cheer Trump on, if only for the comedic value of what he does to people like Halperin and his sources." ...

... Steve M.: "We've now entered the stage of this presidential race in which gullible reporters not only retransmit Donald Trump's nonsense but actually believe it themselves." Enter right, Mark Halperin. "Halperin has a narrative and he's sticking to it.... I guess the only people dumb enough to believe Trump's BS are Republican voters and mainstream political journalists." ...

... Charles Pierce: "America's cable-news executives ... lap up [Donald Trump's] every word these days like hogs going for the last corn husk on doomsday. You know the sucking up has reached critical mass among the elite political press when the inexcusably employed Mark Halperin begins slurping so loudly you can hear him from space.... This is a completely and self-evidently ridiculous man and the idea that cable news executives feel compelled to televise every waking minute of his campaign requires that they be flogged out of the business." ...

... Wait, Wait! We need to hear from Bill Kristol on this! Caitlin MacNeal of TPM: "The Weekly Standard Editor told CNN on Monday that he would be unable to back the real estate mogul. 'I doubt I'd support Donald. I doubt I'd support the Democrat,' Kristol said. 'I think I'd support getting someone good on the ballot as a third-party candidate.' Kristol told CNN that he would like to see former Vice President Dick Cheney or Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) run as independents in 2016." CW: You see, it is possible to be even more ridiculous than Halperin.

Presidential Race

Paul Waldman: "The big policy headline [Tuesday] comes from the Wall Street Journal, which delivers this alarming message: Price Tag of Bernie Sanders' Proposals: $18 Trillion.... Holy cow! He must be advocating for some crazy stuff that will bankrupt America!... While Sanders does want to spend significant amounts of money, almost all of it is on things we're already paying for; he just wants to change how we pay for them. In some ways it's by spreading out a cost currently borne by a limited number of people to all taxpayers.... And ... fully $15 trillion of it comes not from an analysis of anything Sanders has proposed, but from the fact that Sanders has said he'd like to see a single-payer health insurance system.... Since Sanders hasn't released a health care plan yet, we can't make any assessment of the true cost of his plan.... Given the experience of the rest of the world, there's a strong likelihood that over the long run, a single-payer plan would save America money." ...

... CW: Waldman closes with a truism too often lost on a lazy-minded electorate: "The question when it comes to government should always be not what we're spending, but what we're getting for what we spend."

Greg Sargent makes a strong case that Hillary Clinton should push for more Democratic presidential debates.

Dana Milbank turns to StopBullying.gov for advice on how to deal with Donald Trump. By substituting StopBullying.gov's advice for how to deal with a bullying "child" to "candidate," Milbank discovers that the advice on the site could be quite effective against the Donald.

Maggie Haberman & Matt Flegenheimer of the New York Times announce that over recent weeks Donald Trump has become a "better candidate"; i.e., he is beginning to follow some of the established campaign rituals like relying on prepared notes for his speeches & doing rope lines. CW: Could explain why his latest poll numbers are stagnant.

Kevin Liptak of CNN: "Donald Trump's campaign remarks about Mexican immigrants represent a play to the worst parts of society, Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday. Speaking at a reception marking Hispanic Heritage Month, Biden laid into the businessman turned GOP front-runner -- naming him twice -- as reverting to 'xenophobia' in a play for votes.":

Daniel Strauss: "The conservative group the Club for Growth unveiled its upcoming barrage against Donald Trump set to air later this week: a pair of 30-second ads that will air in Iowa and peg the real estate mogul as just another politician who supports liberal policies.... 'We have an amazing tax plan,' Trump said Sunday. 'We're going to be reducing taxes for the middle class, but for the hedge fund guys, they're going to be paying up.'" ...

... Joan McCarter of Daily Kos: "When we last checked in on one of many of Donald Trump's feuds, the Club for Growth was having a hard time finding takers for an ad campaign it was proposing against The Donald. It seems that 'some top GOP financiers' were worried that such an effort could 'backfire' since every person or thing that got sucked into a Trump fight loses. That's still a concern for many Republicans, but not all, apparently. CfG has managed to scrape together $1 million to run two ads in Iowa attacking Trump for being a closet liberal: "Which presidential candidate supports higher taxes, national health care and the Wall Street Bailout? It's Donald Trump," one of the ads intones.

Would Don Draper Ever Make a Mistake Like This? Can't We Get Better Ad Agencies? Eliza Collins & Daniel Strauss of Politico: "Jeb Bush's super PAC Right to Rise used stock video images from England and Asia for its new video, which seeks to contrast the former Florida governor's optimism about America's future with Donald Trump's pessimism about its present.... 'If we get a few big things right, we can make lives better for millions of people in this nation where every life matters and everyone has the right to rise,' he says. The only problem: The sun is rising over a field in Cornwall, England -- a clip available for between $19 and $79 on Shutterstock." CW: O, to be in England now that September's there. ...

... It's Morning in America Someplace All Over Again:

... AND Jeb! himself, according to Jonathan Chait, "has made a huge mistake": "When Marco Rubio proposed his massive tax-cut plan a few months ago, he left the details so vague it could not be analyzed.... The incoherence has been a boon to Rubio, who has been able to portray his plan as a departure from Republican orthodoxy, without any hard numbers that could (and surely would) disprove his spin.... But Bush has filled in enough details that his plan's impact could actually be measured. Citizens for Tax Justice has run the numbers, and it turns out a whopping 53 percent of the benefit of Bush's plan would accrue to the richest 1 percent of taxpayers.... 'Most of your tax cut goes to the richest 1 percent' is a really damaging attack line, especially when you're personally a very rich person named Bush." ...

Beyond the Beltway

AP: "The death-row inmate Richard Glossip maintained his innocence on the eve of his execution in Oklahoma on Tuesday, while his attorneys went to court with what they said was new evidence supporting claims that he was framed. Glossip, 52, is scheduled to be executed on Wednesday afternoon at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. He was convicted of ordering the 1997 beating death of Barry Van Treese, who owned the motel where Glossip worked."

AP: "A university instructor told police he killed his girlfriend at the home they shared in Mississippi, where investigators found a note that said 'I am so sorry' and gave no hints that he was already headed a few hundred miles north to kill a colleague, police said Tuesday."

CW: Excellent news for writers. Under the protection of the U.S. Constitution, you can write "FUCK YOUR SHITTY TOWN BITCHES" on your speeding tickets.

Way Beyond

William Booth & Robert Samuels of the Washington Post: "Blocked by Hungary's new border fence, the river of migrants and refugees began to change course Wednesday and move west toward Croatia in a desperate gambit to forge a new route to Western Europe. 'Barbed wire in Europe in the 21st century is not an answer, it's a threat,' complained Croatia's prime minister, Zoran Milanovic, in a direct jab at the blockades by neighboring Hungary. He told lawmakers in Zagreb that Croatia would 'accept and direct' the migrants to transit the country -- comments that are likely to ripple through the social media networks used by the refugees and increase the march toward Croatia."

News Ledes

New York Times: "A Cuomo administration lawyer who was shot in the head during a predawn celebration before the West Indian American Day Parade last week died on Wednesday evening, according to a family friend. The lawyer, Carey W. Gabay, 43, was a bystander caught in a shootout in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, that the police believe to have been between gangs."

Washington Post: "Flash flooding in Utah has claimed the lives of 18 people, including 12 who died after two vehicles packed with families that had gone to watch torrential waters ran into a 'wall of water' filled with debris on Monday. Six Zion National Park visitors also died in the flooding, and one person who was at the park is still missing, ...."

The Commentariat -- Sept. 15, 2015

Internal links & defunct video removed.

Darryl Fears of the Washington Post: "Researchers knew California's drought was already a record breaker..., but they were surprised by what they discovered: It has been 500 years since what is now the Golden State has been this dry."

"The Ignorant Villagers," Now Playing. Sarah Ferris of the Hill: "Congressional Republicans say they are determined to shut Planned Parenthood down, regardless of whether it broke any laws. In more than two months of investigations, members have yet to turn up evidence that Planned Parenthood acted illegally, the same conclusion reached by a half-dozen state investigations. The Department of Justice has so far declined to launch a formal probe." ...

... "The Ignorant Villagers," The Prequel. Which reminds Steve Benen of a scene from "Monty Python & the Holy Grail": "The villagers decide they want to burn a suspected witch, and John Cleese offers proof of her evil ways: 'She turned me into a newt!' It's obvious, of course, that he's not a newt, leading Cleese to say, 'I got better.' To which the ignorant villagers exclaim, 'Burn her anyway!' Congressional Republicans decided they want to defund Planned Parenthood as a result of the health group's crimes. They then realized there's no evidence that Planned Parenthood committed any crimes. To which GOP lawmakers exclaim, 'Defund it anyway!'"

... Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post on Louisiana's attempt to rescind its Medicaid contracts with Planned Parenthood: "One, Republicans officials apparently don't care enough about women's health to make the effort to really understand it, since some seem to think women get pap smears from their dentists.... Two, this is a preview of what might happen if congressional Republicans succeed in their attempt to hold the federal budget hostage unless Planned Parenthood is defunded nationwide.... And three, it's probably also an indication of how well thought-through Republicans' plans to dismantle other major health-care programs are. If this is what repealing-and-replacing Obamacare would look like, be very afraid."

Here's a problem Charles Pierce notices: Our top spies, in the persons of John Brennan (CIA) & James Clapper, (NSA) don't understand why nobody likes them. They chalk it up to "cynicism" and "misunderstanding" "fueled by our adversaries." Pierce seems to think it's something about democracy.

AND, speaking of threats to our democracy, Simon Lazarus of the New Republic explains in short order how Bush II appointee Rosemary Collyer has "broken new ground" in pursuit of blowing up any remaining shards of our fractured federal government. You fans of Jonathan Turley should take note. It was he who thought up this radical idea & gave Collyer permission to copy it down & turn it from theory to practice.

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. The 2000 Election All Over Again. Matt Yglesias of Vox: "... reading mainstream political reporters characterize the Jeb tax plan as 'populist' or some kind of break with conservative orthodoxy paired with endless front-page coverage of every new micro-development in the Hillary Clinton email inquiry is giving me a very uncomfortable sense of déjà vu.... America's collective journalistic manpower has spent a lot more time and energy on scrutinizing Clinton's emails than on scrutinizing the content of Bush's economic policy. And that's a lucky thing for him, because what he's put out there is an appalling edifice of flimflam based on three claims that don't withstand cursory examination." ...

... Kevin Drum has the obvious answers to Yglesias's wonderment about the media's attention to Hillary's e-mails & inattention to Jeb!'s tax plan: (a) tax plans are boring (like Jeb!), & (b) there's no narrative: Hillary's e-mails have that and-then-and-then-and-then advantage over the release of a stupid tax plan: "You can't keep writing the same story over and over based on nothing more than yet another liberal saying that big tax cuts are stupid and won't do anything to help the economy." ...

... CW: I'd add this: to most people, words like "taxes" and "budget" have highly-negative connotations. People don't like to pay taxes & they hate having to live within budgets. They don't want to think about them. Besides, most people aren't very good at arithmetic, so the complexities of federal budgets seem way too hard to even contemplate. As for the public's understanding of macroeconomics, well, HA! Moreover, "plan," as in "tax plan" seems too abstract to bother with. Yesterday during the Q&A session following Bernie Sanders' speech at Liberty University, he mentioned the Republicans' "immoral" budget. The moderator brushed aside Sanders' remark, saying something like, "I don't know much about budgets." I'm sure that's true. And it's a problem. Voters have no idea that at the legislative level, budgets & appropriations are policy. They determine not only how much you pay in taxes but where those tax dollars go. A legislator can speak "Populist" incessantly, but if she votes for a tax bill like the one Jeb! proposes or for a budget to Li'l Randy's liking, her supposed populism is a sham. Most voters absolutely, positively don't get any of this. It's much more fun to contemplate whether or not Hillary Clinton is a criminal/traitor who sent coded messages to Russian spy-hackers in her now-deleted yoga schedules.

Presidential Race

Nick Corasaniti of the New York Times: "Senator Bernie Sanders on Monday took the lectern at Liberty University, an evangelical Christian college, and repeatedly sought to build what he called 'common ground' with students, beginning with the foundations of Christianity itself: the Bible": ...

... Here's the full text of Sanders' speech, via Chris Cillizza of the WashPo. ...

... Evan McMorris-Santoro of BuzzFeed calls the speech "Sanders’ Peak Progressive Dreamboat Moment," & relishes Sanders telling "12,000 evangelicals what morality is." ...

... ** Ezra Klein: "Why Bernie Sanders's rise is more impressive than Donald Trump's." And why Bernie could have a more positive, & more enduring effect than Trump will.

Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post: "Hillary Rodham Clinton is suffering rapid erosion of support among Democratic women -- the voters long presumed to be her bedrock in her bid to become the nation's first female president. The numbers in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll are an alarm siren: Where 71 percent of Democratic-leaning female voters said in July that they expected t vote for Clinton, only 42 percent do now, a drop of 29 percentage points in eight weeks." ...

... The Unknown Works of a Fracking Queen. Mariah Blake of Mother Jones: "Under [Hillary Clinton's] leadership, the State Department worked closely with energy companies to spread fracking around the globe -- part of a broader push to fight climate change, boost global energy supply, and undercut the power of adversaries such as Russia that use their energy resources as a cudgel. But environmental groups fear that exporting fracking, which has been linked to drinking-water contamination and earthquakes at home, could wreak havoc in countries with scant environmental regulation. And according to interviews, diplomatic cables, and other documents obtained by Mother Jones, American officials -- some with deep ties to industry -- also helped US firms clinch potentially lucrative shale concessions overseas, raising troubling questions about whose interests the program actually serves."

Super-Doofus!... Nick Gass of Politico details how all the GOP presidential candidates have been trying to "out-Reagan one another." ...

     ... Charles Posner, et al., of the Center for American Progress: "... at critical moments on critical issues, Reagan took positions that are anathema to the leaders of today's Republican Party -- advancing sensible immigration reform, supporting pollution control, curbing nuclear arms, closing tax loopholes for the wealthy, and advocating gun background checks. As president, Reagan passed immigration reform with a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants. He also passed a landmark treaty on the climate and raised taxes 11 times. He even negotiated with America's main adversary, the Soviet Union, signing a treaty with the communist nation to reduce nuclear weapons."

Flim-Flam Men. Nicholas Riccardi of the AP: "Jeb Bush went to Detroit and talked about leveling the playing field. Marco Rubio wrote a book about helping the working class. Rand Paul is promising to expand the Republican Party beyond its traditional base. Yet all three Republican presidential candidates have offered tax proposals that would, for reasons such as nomination politics and tax rate realities, benefit overwhelmingly the wealthiest." ...

... CW: AND here's a dirty little secret that no one has been mentioning. Pundits criticized Jeb!'s tax proposal, for instance, because it would significantly raise the deficit. But that's actually a feature of GOP tax plans: (1) raise the deficit; (2) blame some outside factor -- say, Democrats; (3) cut safety net programs because they "are too expensive," & "are robbing our grandchildren." The plans, then, however bad the pundits say they are, are actually worse, because the longterm goal is to take even more from the poor & middle class when the resulting deficits "necessitate" "belt-tightening."

Donald Does Dallas. Matt Flegenheimer of the New York Times: Trump holds a raucus campaign rally in Texas. On the hardship of being a Big Star: "Like most Trump outings in recent weeks, the campaign stop doubled as a television event of sorts, a reality that Mr. Trump clearly relished during a characteristically meandering speech that lasted over an hour. Turning to the cameras assembled before him, he said that, unlike other candidates, he was required to produce fresh material for every stump speech. 'Every time I speak they put me on live television,' he said, 'so I have to make different speeches.'... He appraised himself as an unrivaled builder, a self-funder unencumbered by political 'blood money' and an all-around winner of the highest order." ...

... California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is running for governor, "welcomes" Donald Trump to California for the GOP presidential debate at the Reagan Library:

Joe Miller in Salon: It isn't just Trump "University." Miller exposes a Ponzi scheme that Trump fronted for years -- until the Wall Street Journal asked him about the millions he made from the Ponzi-modeled company. "Immediately he had nearly all traces of himself removed from its website. 'I know nothing about the company,' Trump told the paper. 'I'm not familiar with what they do or how they go about doing it, and I make that clear in my speeches.'... This is a blatant lie, and the truth behind it reveals something very dark in his character. At best, it shows that he's for sale. Worse, it betrays an utter disregard for those who would trust him...." ...

... Francis Wilkinson of Bloomberg: "Trump appears to be reinforcing, and validating, the anxieties of a sizable tranche of conservatives who fear that the world they've known, once neatly organized to favor white males, is slipping away.... There is no way for Republicans to give resentful conservatives what they want while simultaneously expanding the party to include more Hispanics and Asians (blacks will probably remain out of reach). If your goal is a whiter country, a less white political party must seem a very curious means for achieving it." ...

... Calling Doctor Carson. Steve M.: Wall Street, according to Politico, is "terrified" that Donald Trump might become president. Steve suggests that instead of being bewildered & frightened by Trump's rise in the polls & hoping Super-Doofus there will swoop in to save the day, the Streeters should get behind Ben Carson: "Unlike your current champions, he actually seems popular. And unlike Trump, he seems as if he'd be happy to pursue your agenda -- he certainly doesn't seem to have one of his own, apart from generalized right-wing revanchism and a distaste for 'political correctness.' But he's somewhat less rabid on immigration than Trump. He acknowledges that gay marriage is the law of the land.... On taxes, he likes tithing, which would be a huge tax windfall for the rich."

The Dull Boy. Anna North of the New York Times: According to family & friends, Jeb!'s reputation as "the smarter brother" stems more from his lack of social skills & his humorless demeanor than from any measure of intelligence.

Never Let the Facts Get in the Way. Jamelle Bouie: Scott "Walker's underlying idea -- that unions are deleterious to American well-being -- is unfounded. Yes, there are union abuses and union corruption. On the whole, however, the opposite is true: Unions have been an important ally for middle-class workers, and the fall of labor has widened the gap between productivity and pay, and increased income inequality.... Taken together, [his proposal] is an incredible change to American labor law -- a transformation that would greatly alter the relationship between employers and employees." ...

... Charles Pierce: "... reeking of desperation and flop sweat, [Scott] Walker has decided to appeal to that portion of the electorate which is nostalgic for the days of the breaker boys, starvation wages, and large-scale industrial accidents." ...

... CW: As for me, I just wish Scottie would sink into an ice-fishing hole at a pristine pond near Eau Claire & never again remind me that spawned in Wisconsin was a boy who would grow up to blow up that institution where Prof. Lovejoy once revealed that the Puritans were not all about making friends with the natives, & inspired my shocked realization that those public school history books which I had taken on faith were bigger cons than Santa Claus. Of course the Professors Lovejoy of this world are exactly the sorts of truthtellers that the Scotties of said planet have every reason to whack.

Beyond the Beltway

James Higdon & Sandhya Somashekhar of the Washington Post: "... a gay couple successfully obtained a marriage license [in Rowan County, Kentucky,] just before 11 a.m. -- putting an end to days of speculation about whether clerk Kim Davis would block the licenses. Shannon and Carmen Wampler-Collins quietly filled out forms as supporters of Davis, the clerk who was jailed over her refusal to issue marriage licenses, jeered at them about the 'sin' of homosexuality.... Deputy clerk Brian Mason handed the couple their completed paperwork, with gay rights supporters shouting, 'Thank you, Brian!'" ...

... Jeff Toobin of the New Yorker: "On Monday, [Kim] Davis said that she wouldn't stop her deputies from granting licenses, but she also suggested that marriages certified by mere deputies might not be legally valid.... Not too long ago, it was all but unquestioned that, in cases like these, civic obligation trumped religious expression.... But the broader conservative movement had other ideas.... Now Davis is seeking to extend the concept of accommodation [to religious beliefs] even more -- to government officials, like her, who want to pick and choose which legal obligations to honor. It's one thing to allow cafeteria citizenship; Davis wants cafeteria government."

Way Beyond

Helene Bienvenu & Dan Bilefsky of the New York Times: Hungary declared a state of emergency along its border with Serbia early Tuesday, threatening to prosecute and imprison migrants trying to enter the country illegally from Serbia.The Hungarian measures were a harsh new element in the European Union's struggle with the influx of migrants, as the bloc's cherished principle of open borders continued to fray." ...

... Maher Samaan & Anne Barnard of the New York Times: "For those who remain in Syria, life is a nightmare."

Eliza Collins of Politico: "Iranian President Hassan Rouhani wished Jews a happy new year on Sunday, a notable contrast from the clerical regime's long history of anti-Semitic statements. The tweet, which did not appear in Rouhani's Farsi account, according to the Associated Press, said 'May our shared Abrahamic roots deepen respect & bring peace & mutual understanding. L'Shanah Tovah. #RoshHashanah.'... Rouhani's boss, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has a history of making inflammatory statements about Israel and Jews. Last week, Khamenei said that Israel would cease to exist within 25 years."

Anna Fifield of the Washington Post: "North Korea Tuesday announced that it had restarted its Yongbyon nuclear reactor and was ready to use nuclear weapons 'any time' against the United States.... While Kim's regime is known for its bellicose rhetoric, Tuesday's claims are consistent with American analysts' interpretation of recent satellite imagery."

News Ledes

New York Times: "Five fraternity members from Baruch College in Manhattan will face murder charges in Pennsylvania for their involvement in the death of a freshman who was hazed during a rural retreat in 2013, officials said on Monday. A grand jury in Monroe County, Pa., recently recommended that five people face third-degree murder charges and that a total of 37 would face a range of criminal charges, including assault, hindering apprehension and hazing in Chun Hsien Deng's death."

Love in an Age of Gun Violence. New York Times: "A professor at Delta State University who was suspected of fatally shooting his companion and then another professor at the school was found dead Monday night, apparently with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The suspect, Shannon S. Lamb, who taught geography and social science education at the university, was pulled over around 10:30 p.m. by the local police in Greenville, Miss., about 35 miles to the west of the campus in Cleveland, Miss., the university's police chief, Lynn Buford, said in a phone interview early Tuesday. According to Chief Buford, Dr. Lamb ran into a wooded area. The local police followed him and, while waiting for backup, heard a gunshot. They found Dr. Lamb, who was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead."