The Ledes

Sunday, September 15, 2024

Washington Post: “The five-day space voyage known as Polaris Dawn ended safely Sunday as four astronauts aboard a SpaceX Dragon splashed down off the coast of Florida, wrapping up a groundbreaking commercial mission. Polaris Dawn crossed several historic landmarks for civilian spaceflight as Jared Isaacman, a billionaire entrepreneur and adventurer, performed the first spacewalk by a private citizen, followed by SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis.”

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Thank you to everyone who has been contributing links to articles & other content in the Comments section of each day's "Conversation." If you're missing the comments, you're missing some vital links.

The New York Times lists Emmy winners.

New York Times: “Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who had captured the public’s imagination since 2019 after he was spotted wearing a harness seemingly designed for a camera, was found dead on Saturday in Norway, according to a nonprofit that worked to protect the whale.... [Hvaldimir] was wearing a harness that identified it as “equipment” from St. Petersburg. There also appeared to be a camera mount. Some wondered if the whale was on a Russian reconnaissance mission. Russia has never claimed ownership of the whale. If Hvaldimir was a spy, he was an exceptionally friendly one. The whale showed signs of domestication, and was comfortable around people. He remained in busier waters than are typical for belugas....” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Oh, Lord, do not let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., near that carcass. ~~~

     ~~~ AP Update: “There’s no evidence that a well-known beluga whale that lived off Norway’s coast and whose harness ignited speculation it was a Russian spy was shot to death last month as claimed by animal rights groups, Norwegian police said Monday.... Police said that the Norwegian Veterinary Institute conducted a preliminary autopsy on the animal, which was become known as 'Hvaldimir,' combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'There are no findings from the autopsy that indicate that Hvaldimir has been shot,' police said in a statement.”

New York Times: Botswana's “President Mokgweetsi Masisi grinned as he lifted the diamond, a 2,492-carat stone that is the biggest diamond unearthed in more than a century and the second-largest ever found, according to the Vancouver-based mining operator Lucara, which owns the mine where it was found. This exceptional discovery could bring back the luster of the natural diamond mining industry, mining companies and experts say. The diamond was discovered in the same relatively small mine in northeastern Botswana that has produced several of the largest such stones in living memory. Such gemstones typically surface as a result of volcanic activity.... The diamond will likely sell in the range of tens of millions of dollars....”

Click on photo to enlarge.

~~~ Guardian: "On a distant reef 16,000km from Paris, surfer Gabriel Medina has given Olympic viewers one of the most memorable images of the Games yet, with an airborne celebration so well poised it looked too good to be true. The Brazilian took off a thundering wave at Teahupo’o in Tahiti on Monday, emerging from a barrelling section before soaring into the air and appearing to settle on a Pacific cloud, pointing to the sky with biblical serenity, his movements mirrored precisely by his surfboard. The shot was taken by Agence France-Presse photographer Jérôme Brouillet, who said “the conditions were perfect, the waves were taller than we expected”. He took the photo while aboard a boat nearby, capturing the surreal image with such accuracy that at first some suspected Photoshop or AI." 

Washington Post: “'Mary Cassatt at Work' is a large and mostly satisfying exhibition devoted to the career of the great American artist beloved for her sensitive and often sentimental views of family life. The 'at work' in the title of the Philadelphia Museum of Art show references the curators’ interest in Cassatt’s pioneering effort to establish herself as a professional artist within a male-dominated field. Throughout the show, which includes some 130 paintings, pastels, prints and drawings, the wall text and the art on view stresses Cassatt’s fixation on art as a career rather than a pastime.... Mary Cassatt at Work is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Sept. 8. philamuseum.org”

New York Times: “Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy. Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album 'The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart' — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.... Bob Newhart holds up. In fact, it’s hard to think of a stand-up from that era who is a better argument against the commonplace idea that comedy does not age well.”

Washington Post: “An early Titian masterpiece — once looted by Napolean’s troops and a part of royal collections for centuries — caused a stir when it was stolen from the home of a British marquess in 1995. Seven years later, it was found inside an unassuming white and blue plastic bag at a bus stop in southwest London by an art detective, and returned. This week, the oil painting 'The Rest on the Flight into Egypt' sold for more than $22 million at Christie’s. It was a record for the Renaissance artist, whom museums describe as the greatest painter of 16th-century Venice. Ahead of the sale in April, the auction house billed it as 'the most important work by Titian to come to the auction market in more than a generation.'”

Washington Post: The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., which houses the world's largest collection of Shakespeare material, has undergone a major renovation. "The change to the building is pervasive, both subtle and transformational."

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Publisher & Editor: Marie Burns


Thursday
Sep292016

The Commentariat -- September 30, 2016

Afternoon Update:

American Public: Donald Trump has a ton of ties to Russia. Could be a big security risk. Shouldn't we check that out?

GOP "Leaders": Naaah.

Shane Harris of the Daily Beast: "Suspicion is mounting about Donald Trump's ties to Russian officials and business interests, as well as possible links between his campaign and the Russian hacking of U.S. political organizations. But GOP leaders have refused to support efforts by Democrats to investigate any possible Trump-Russia connections, which have been raised in news reports and closed-door intelligence briefings."...Akhilleus.

See Louis Nelson's report, linked below on Donald Trump's "3 am call" Twittershitstorm aimed at Clinton supporter Alicia Machado. Alan Rappeport of the New York Times: "Fact-checkers have found no evidence that Ms. Machado, who was featured in Playboy, appeared in a sex tape. Her critics may be referring to a risqué scene that she appeared in on a reality television show." CW: Whether or not Machado made a "sex tape" (and I don't care if she did), Trump's attacks on her are beyond disgusting. ...

... Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "While you were probably still sleeping, the 2016 Republican presidential nominee encouraged all of us to check out a 'sex tape' and offered a baseless conspiracy theory about his opponent helping the woman from the alleged sex tape get citizenship so she could take him down. And in doing so, Donald Trump did everything Hillary Clinton could have hoped he would, drawing out a now-week-long story about Alicia Machado, making things up and -- above all -- reinforcing all those very real questions about whether he has the temperament to be president." -- CW

Bible Banging 'Bama Bigot Booted. Boolah Boo! Kent Faulk of AL.com: "Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore has been suspended from the bench for telling probate judges to defy federal orders regarding gay marriage. It's the second time Moore has been removed from the chief justice job for defiance of federal courts - the first time in 2003 for refusing to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the state judicial building. The Alabama Court of the Judiciary (COJ) issued the order Friday suspending Moore from the bench for the remainder of his term after an unanimous vote of the nine-member court.... The court found him guilty of all six charges of violation of the canons of judicial ethics. Moore's term is to end in 2019, but because of his age, 69, he cannot run for the office again." -- Akhilleus

*****

Peter Baker of the New York Times: "From across the ocean and across the Green Line, they came on Friday to the mountaintop sanctuary of Mount Herzl to bid farewell to Shimon Peres, who did as much as anyone to build modern Israel and then became its leading advocate of peace. President Obama headlined a cast of prominent eulogists who praised Mr. Peres for his commitment to coexistence with the Palestinians and, in some cases, called for a renewed dedication to realizing that dream. 'The last of the founding generation is now gone,' said Mr. Obama, wearing a skullcap and standing next to Mr. Peres's coffin. He added that the work was 'in the hands of Israel's next generation and its friends.'" -- CW ...

Juan Cole: "President Obama vetoed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, but Congress has for the first time in his presidency over-ridden his veto. This is a disastrous law with potentially ruinous effects on the US economy and US policy. Individual tort suits against other countries had been forestalled by a doctrine of sovereign immunity, from which the United States and other countries also benefit. JASTA removes sovereign immunity for any state found to be practicing terrorism anywhere, apparently as defined by US court judges. Saudi Arabia is extremely unpopular in the US, more especially on the Left, but also among right wing Islamophobes. But however appealing it is to let the 9/11 victim families sue Riyadh for the attacks, it is wrong-headed every which way from Sunday." --safari ...

... Jordain Carney of the Hill: "A day after the House and Senate overwhelmingly voted to override President Obama's veto, GOP leaders are expressing reservations about legislation that would allow lawsuits related to 9/11 to go forward against Saudi Arabia. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) both said they were open to discussions about changing the bill, which Congress approved unanimously. 'I do think it's worth further discussions, but it was certainly not something that was going to be fixed this week,' McConnell told reporters on Thursday. McConnell also criticized the lack of a discussion about 'the potential consequences' of a very 'popular bill.' Ryan agreed that Congress may need to "fix" the legislation but said he wasn't sure when that would happen."...

     ... CW: I can tell you this: it isn't going to happen before Nov. 8. "A lack of discussion 'about the potential consequences,'" BTW, is a crockful of bull. The administration was screaming at the Congress about the dire consequences Juan Cole outlines in the post linked above. ...

... Jordan Fabian of the Hill: "White House press secretary Josh Earnest crowed after the top two Republican leaders suggested the measure needed changes less than 24 hours after Congress voted to override President Obama's veto. 'Well, it's hard to know where to start,' Earnest said with a smile. 'I think what we've seen in the United States Congress is a case of rapid-onset buyer's remorse.'" -- CW

$41MM & Nothing to Show for It. Boo-Fucking-Hoo. Stacy Cowley of the New York Times: Wells-Fargo CEO John G. Stumpf [CW: rhymes with Drumpf] "is forfeiting at least $41 million in pay. He vows that his bank will drop its sales incentive program -- blamed for prompting bankers to set up illegal and unauthorized bank and credit card accounts to meet their sales goals -- by the end of the week, not in January, as he had previously promised. But at a hearing Thursday before the House Financial Services Committee, nobody was impressed. If anything, the House lawmakers who interrogated ...Stumpf ... were even angrier and more hostile than their Senate counterparts who questioned him last week, before either of those steps had been taken. One by one, Democrats and Republicans alike took turns ripping apart Mr. Stumpf and what took place at the bank he leads." -- CW

Remember the Judicial Branch! Josh Gerstein of Politico: "Conservatives states are succeeding in getting friendly federal judges to issue broad -- often nationwide -- injunctions reining in federal government actions, thwarting key parts of President Barack Obama's agenda and imperiling some aspects of Hillary Clinton's platform. The tactic -- amplified by the 4-4 deadlock in the Supreme Court -- has already frozen Obama's immigration policy, is limiting his efforts to protect transgender rights and could hamstring Clinton's planned executive actions on immigration, labor and environmental issues if she wins the White House. The shorthanded Supreme Court is expected to start adding new cases to its docket as soon as Thursday, with the new term set to open Monday. But many legal experts say that if the high court remains split down the middle on key issues, the more important action will be in the lower courts, where the red-state-led onslaught is playing out." --safari

Ian Millhiser of ThinkProgress: "Last August, a federal appeals court refused to reinstate a lower court's order that would have dramatically weakened a voter suppression law in Wisconsin. It did so based on assurances by the state's attorneys that Wisconsin had already taken adequate steps to mitigate the law's effect on voters facing disenfranchisement. It turns out those assurances were not true. As Ari Berman reports for The Nation, voters in Wisconsin still face potentially insurmountable obstacles between themselves and the ballot box. And these are the very same obstacles the state told the appeals court that it would eliminate." --safari

Presidential Race

Nate Silver: "Like a lot of you, we at FiveThirtyEight ... await new polls. Until we get more of those, figuring out how the first presidential debate affected the race involves a lot of guesswork. Still, the data that we have so far suggests that Hillary Clinton has gained ground as a result of Monday night's debate -- it's mostly a question of how much her position has improved.... The polls show a reasonably clear consensus so far of Clinton being up by 3 to 5 points nationally. If that's where the numbers wind up settling, that would reflect a meaningful bounce for Clinton...." -- CW

** Paul Krugman: "... the candidates we saw Monday night were the same people they've been all along. Mrs. Clinton's grace and even humor under pressure were fully apparent during last year's Benghazi hearing. Mr. Trump's whiny braggadocio has been obvious every time he opens his mouth without reading from a teleprompter. So how could someone like Mr. Trump have been in striking position for the White House?... Part of the answer is that a lot more Americans than we'd like to imagine are white nationalists at heart. [But the main reason is that] she got Gored. That is, like Al Gore in 2000, she ran into a buzz saw of adversarial reporting from the mainstream media, which treated relatively minor missteps as major scandals, and invented additional scandals out of thin air." ...

     ... CW: Every word Krugman wrote is right, including "and" and "the." There are reasons for the media's seemingly irrational coverage of Clinton. Clinton got Gored because the media got bored. Editors felt Clinton deserved equal time, and save the e-mails, she hadn't received it. So what's exciting about, "Clinton gives stump speech"? or "Clinton releases rational policy paper on K-12 education"? Pantsuit stories? -- Even the boys in the newsroom know better now. When the bottom line depends on click-bait, reporters are bid to produce a "scandal." Meanwhile, Trump ... well, the media could barely keep up. Add to that, editors assign approximately equal numbers of staff to cover the major candidates. Clinton reporters had to report something. And, needless to say, both-siderism is also in play. "Clinton Foundation saves millions of needy people; Trump Foundation an illegal scam" is so biased. Also too, it would be wrong to lose confederate readers when the media have worked so hard to wrest them away from Fox "News." (Corey Lewandowski.) ...

... Brian Beutler: "... editorials [endorsing Clinton], written by experienced conservative journalists, are implicit admissions that the overwhelming majority of horrifying, conspiratorial things conservatives and Republicans have said about Clinton over the years ... have been instrumentalist agitprop.... It is partly a failure of today's media that the public views Clinton only slightly less unfavorably than it views Trump, and sees her as far more dishonest than he. But it is also a failure that goes back a quarter-century.... Most years you don't count on your political nemeses to save the world from fascism." -- CW

David Sanger & William Broad of the New York Times: "Hillary Clinton expressed doubts about whether the United States should go forward with a trillion-dollar modernization of its nuclear forces at a fund-raiser in February, questioning an Obama administration plan that she has remained largely silent on in public. Mrs. Clinton also suggested she would be far tougher against foreign nations that hack into American computer networks and would kill one of the Pentagon's pet projects, a nuclear-tipped cruise missile. 'The last thing we need,' she told the audience, 'are sophisticated cruise missiles that are nuclear armed.' Her comments were contained in an audio recording of the fund-raiser that appeared on the website of The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative publication, which said it was gleaned from the hack of a campaign staff member. But it said nothing about who did the hacking." -- CW

USA Today Editors: "In the 34-year history of USA Today, the Editorial Board has never taken sides in the presidential race.... We revisit our no-endorsement policy every four years. We've never seen reason to alter our approach. Until now.... This year, one of the candidates -- Republican nominee Donald Trump -- is, by unanimous consensus of the Editorial Board, unfit for the presidency.... He is erratic.... He is ill-equipped to be commander in chief.... He traffics in prejudice.... His business career is checkered.... He isn't leveling with the American people.... He speaks recklessly.... He has coarsened the national dialogue.... He's a serial liar.... Nor does this editorial represent unqualified support for Hillary Clinton, who has her own flaws (though hers are far less likely to threaten national security or lead to a constitutional crisis). The Editorial Board does not have a consensus for a Clinton endorsement.... Whatever you do, however, resist the siren song of a dangerous demagogue. By all means vote, just not for Donald Trump." -- CW ...

NEW. Kelsey Sutton of Politico: "The Chicago Tribune on Friday endorsed Libertarian Gary Johnson for president, joining a handful of other newspapers around the country that have rejected both the Republican and Democratic presidential nominees." CW: When a reporter told Johnson of the Chicago paper's endorsement, Johnson asked, "What is Chicago?"

Louis Nelson of Politico: "While Hillary Clinton is riding high after the first presidential debate, Donald Trump is jumping down into the gutter. In the wee hours of Friday morning, the impulse-control-deficient Republican nominee let loose a torrent of tweets, calling former Miss Universe winner Alicia Machado 'disgusting' and accusing her of having [appeared in] a sex tape.... He wrapped up his rant with: 'Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting (check out sex tape and past) Alicia M become a U.S. citizen so she could use her in the debate?'" CW: This is a straight news report. ...

... Greg Sargent does some reporting of Trump's claims & concludes, "The ultimate irony of the whole tale is that the person who may have done the most to drive Machado to become a U.S. citizen and secure the vote for herself is [not Hillary Clinton, but] one Donald J. Trump. And if the preliminary evidence proves to be right, Trump is driving a lot more Latinos to vote in this election, too." -- CW

Esme Cribb of TPM: "Donald Trump complained about every part of the first presidential debate, from his opponent to the moderator to the subsequent poll results, during a Thursday campaign appearance. 'I had to put up with the anchor and fight the anchor all the time on everything I said,' Trump said of the debate's moderator, Lester Holt, at a rally in Bedford, New Hampshire. 'What a rigged deal.' He also cited online polls as evidence of his success, saying that 'every single online poll said we won.' On Tuesday afternoon, a Fox News executive sent a memo to staff that was leaked to Business Insider reminding them that online polls like the ones Trump touted should not be cited as though they were scientifically sound." See also "Tuck Chodd Has a Brief Moment of Clarity," linked below. -- CW ...

... Jim Fallows of the Atlantic: "Just after Monday night’s debate, Donald Trump said that moderator Lester Holt had done 'a great job. Honestly, I thought Lester did a great job.'... Three days later, right now as I type, Trump told a crowd in New Hampshire how rigged the debates had been and, in particular, how biased and unfair the 'great' Lester Holt was.... Is this an example of what is known in writer-land as 'keyboard courage' -- of Trump's being genial to people face-to-face and then excoriating them from a safe remove? Has he forgotten what he said less than 70 hours ago? Does he think no one will remember? Does he not notice or mentally process the contradiction himself? I have no idea. I will contend that no one like this has ever gotten this far in U.S. politics before, and by 'no one like this' I mean someone who seems either entirely unaware or entirely unconcerned by the disconnect between what he says and the world of observable truth." -- CW ...

... Drumpf Knows Best. Eli Stokols of Politico: "Everyone but Donald Trump and his most ardent supporters recognize thatDonald Trump lost Monday night's debate. And because of the candidate's stubborn disbelief in his ability to do anything but win, Trump lost the post-debate period too. Now he's doubling down. Despite warnings from fellow Republicans against insulting a beauty queen he disparaged for gaining weight and launching an attack on Hillary Clinton for her husband's well-known infidelities, Trump is now directing his surrogates to do just that.... And during a rally Thursday afternoon in Bedford, N.H., Trump himself referenced the scandals of the 1990s that he’s been congratulating himself for not talking about all week. 'The Clintons are the sordid past,' he said. 'We will be the very bright and clean future." -- CW ...

... Nolan McCaskill of Politico: "Donald Trump and his allies are refusing to let up on their attacks on former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, with Newt Gingrich shaming her for gaining weight during her reign and Corey Lewandowski suggesting she's an attempted murderer. The sustained assault has provided a wide opening for Hillary Clinton's campaign to drive home the narrative that Trump is a misogynist and a horrible role model for voters' children." --safari ...

     ... Paul Waldman: "The strategic genius of the Trump campaign is still in evidence.... Yes, let's have portly serial adulterer Newt Gingrich attack Machado's weight, while sadistic adulterer Rudy Giuliani goes after Clinton for not being able to keep her husband from cheating on her. I can feel that gender gap shrinking already." CW: Aw, c'mon, Paul. Newt is a serial adulterer, too.

By Driftglass.Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "Donald Trump isn't afraid of being labeled as the guy who avoids paying taxes. At all. [In an appearance on Bill O'Reilly's show,] Trump didn't say Wednesday night whether he has paid income taxes over the past several decades, but he did say that someone who avoids paying them is what the country needs.... 'I never said I didn't pay taxes,' Trump maintained. '[Hillary Clinton] said, "Maybe you didn't pay taxes." And I said, "Well, that would make me smart," because tax is a big payment.... One big problem with Trump's comments Wednesday is that there is a record of him paying no or very little income taxes. Of the five years for which we have a record of Trump's taxes, he didn't pay any or nearly any.... A second problem is that he did appear to say Monday night that his past avoidance of income taxes was 'smart.'" -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Gloria Borger, et al., of CNN: "Donald Trump is angry that his aides and advisers have conceded to reporters -- largely without attribution -- that the Republican nominee struggled in his first presidential debate. In a conference call with surrogates Wednesday afternoon, Trump aides made clear the Republican nominee is upset that his allies publicly acknowledged they pushed him to change his preparation and tactics before his next bout with Hillary Clinton. And he wants them to stop it immediately. The message was 'not subtle,' a source familiar with the call said. Trump wants his supporters to make an energetic defense of his performance and refuse to concede that he didn't nail it." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Nevertheless ... Dana Bash, et al., of CNN: "Some of Donald Trump's advisers are discussing an overhaul in how he prepares for his second face-off with Hillary Clinton, and one option being floated internally is asking Chris Christie to take a leading role to get the Republican nominee ready. The New Jersey governor, a long-time friend of Trump's, is one of 'the few' in the billionaire's inner circle who has always been straight with him, and was 'brutally honest' about his shortcomings after this week's debate, according to a source familiar with the discussions. There's no sign that everyone in the campaign agrees this is the right path forward. There's been a round of recriminations within the campaign amid fallout from the debate.Christie told CNN no request has been made." -- CW ...

... Dara Lind of Vox: "Trump appears to be shutting out not only people who want him to change direction but even people who are just telling him, descriptively, that the debate didn't work out well for him. Presidents need to be able to hear bad news." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Trump Conspiracy Theory No. 137. And He Knows It Must Be True Because He Read It in the Sputnik News. Jeremy Diamond of CNN: "Donald Trump on Wednesday touted a long-debunked conspiracy theory that [Google,] the most popular internet search engine, suppresses negative headlines about his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. Trump didn't cite a source to back up his claim, but the most recent report alleging this came from Sputnik News, a Russian state-owned news agency. 'Google search engine was suppressing the bad news about Hillary Clinton,' Trump said, apparently referring to Google searches during the first presidential debate on Monday night.... The remark was not an off-the-cuff ad lib -- it was included in the prepared remarks Trump read from during his rally speech Wednesday night." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Jonathan Chait: "Donald Trump's campaign is signaling that its new, post-first-debate message will be an attack on Hillary Clinton's finances, under the catchphrase 'Follow the money.' This is probably Trump's most fruitful avenue of attack.... And yet the notion that a voter ought to support Trump over Clinton on grounds of financial ethics or transparency is insane. Trump is corrupt on a world-historic scale.... How on Earth can a candidate run on the slogan 'Follow the money' while stonewalling any questions about his own money?" --safari

Paul Waldman on why Trump will likely do worse in the upcoming "town-hall"-style debate than he did in moderated debate. CW: I think Waldman is mostly right -- Clinton spent the early part of her primary campaign actually asking voters about their concerns & basing some of her policy papers on what they told her. But there's another Trump trait we've seen -- his ability to win by flattery. He is unlikely to bully the "ordinary people" questioners. Rather, he will agree with every questioner (even as he would be unable to supply a substantive answer to a specific concern) even if he has to take diametrically opposing stances from one questioner to the next. Some of the nuttiest things he said during primary season were in response to audience questions. And no matter how crazy an audience proposition was, Trump said, "We're looking into that."

Only the "best" criminals.... --safari

Donald Trump. Supporter of Communist Dictators for President! Kurt Eichenwald of Newsweek: Donald Trump knowingly violated the US embargo against Cuba. "A company controlled by Donald Trump ... secretly conducted business in Communist Cuba during Fidel Castro's presidency despite strict American trade bans that made such undertakings illegal, according to interviews with former Trump executives, internal company records and court filings.... Documents show that the Trump company spent a minimum of $68,000 for its 1998 foray into Cuba at a time when the corporate expenditure of even a penny in the Caribbean country was prohibited without U.S. government approval.... Once the [Trump] consultants traveled to the island and incurred the expenses for the venture, Seven Arrows instructed senior officers with Trump's company -- then called Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts -- how to make it appear legal by linking it after the fact to a charitable effort." -- Akhilleus: Love to see Kellyanne spin this one tomorrow morning. "Oh the Donald needed a few cigars. No biggie. And anyway, when he got there, Hillary was skinny dipping with Fidel." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

strong>... Marc Caputo of Politico: "'Trump's business with Cuba appears to have broken the law, flouted U.S. foreign policy, and is in complete contradiction to Trump's own repeated, public statements that he had been offered opportunities to invest in Cuba but passed them up,' Clinton campaign senior adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement.... Trump recently began making a big push to curry the support of Cuban-Americans who live in Miami-Dade, Florida's most populous county with the most Republicans, 366,000. About 72 percent of them are Hispanic, nearly all Cuban-American. They're one of the only blocs of voters in the United States who still favor keeping the embargo...." The Newsweek report is not going to go down well with those voters. -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Update. Josh Israel of ThinkProgess: "Donald Trump's campaign manager appeared to unwittingly confirm an explosive Newsweek story on Thursday, telling ABC's The View that a Trump company did indeed spend money in Cuba in 1998, in violation of a longstanding U.S. embargo that Trump has vociferously defended. Newsweek's Kurt Eichenwald reported on Thursday that Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts spent at least $68,000 in 1998 in Cuba...Asked about the report, Conway first tried to defend Trump by pointing out that the company ultimately decided not to invest in Cuba and therefore was 'not treasonous.'...Asked if she was denying that they spent the funds, she conceded: 'I think they paid money, as I understand from the story, they paid money in 1998.' --safari ...

... Update, Update. Jessie Hellmann of the Hill: "Donald Trump Thursday denied that his company invested in Cuba and violated the U.S. embargo. 'I never went to Cuba. I've never been to Cuba. I never did business with Cuba,' Trump said in an interview with WMUR in New Hampshire. There's nothing else to say. I never did business in Cuba. I'd tell you very openly if I did. I was not involved in doing business in Cuba.'... In another interview Thursday with NH1 News, Trump questioned the integrity of the reporter behind the article." CW: That's funny, because doing something illegal, then using a charity to hide the illegal activities is SOP over there at Trumpapalooza, Inc. ...

... Like This. Ben Schreckinger of Politico: "The New York attorney general is probing Donald Trump's reported use of money from his charitable foundation to settle a private legal dispute, a lawyer for the town of Palm Beach, Florida, confirmed. The lawyer, John Randolph, said that the attorney general's office contacted him to request documents related to a settlement Trump made with the town of Palm Beach in 2007 over unpaid fines. Last week, the Washington Post reported that Trump settled the dispute by paying $100,000 from the Donald J. Trump Foundation, an apparent violation of self-dealing rules that prevent officers of charitable organizations from using funds for their personal benefit." -- CW ...

... David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post: "Donald Trump's charitable foundation — which has been sustained for years by donors outside the Trump family -- has never obtained the certification that New York requires before charities can solicit money from the public, according to the state attorney general's office. Under the laws in New York, where the Donald J. Trump Foundation is based, any charity that solicits more than $25,000 a year from the public must obtain a special kind of registration beforehand. Charities as large as Trump's must also submit to a rigorous annual audit that asks -- among other things -- whether the charity spent any money for the personal benefit of its officers. If New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) finds that Trump's foundation raised money in violation of the law, he could order the charity to stop raising money immediately. With a court's permission, Schneiderman could also force Trump to return money that his foundation has already raised." -- CW ...

... The Ag-Grand-izement of Trump. Ike Swetlitz of Stat: "The annual fundraising bashes that Donald Trump hosted at his Mar-a-Lago Club for the renowned Dana-Farber Cancer Institute were showy affairs.... And his titles from Dana-Farber kept getting loftier: First, he was a Discovery Celebration Chair. Then a Grand Benefactor. Then a Grand Honorary Chair. Those titles did not come at a cost to Trump because he himself has not donated to the cancer center in years. His foundation, which has not included any of his own money since 2008, has given the hospital $350,000 since 2010. Yet Trump himself may have profited from the relationship: The hospital has paid Trump's private club up to $150,000 a year since 2011, and once before in 2008, to host the fundraising gala." Via Paul Waldman. -- CW

Jim Fallows: "After Donald Trump became the Republican nominee, he was asked on Fox News about his views on NATO and other American alliances. He gave his familiar '" they’re freeloaders' answer.... On Monday night, in his debate with Hillary Clinton, Trump essentially acknowledged that he might not be paying any federal tax himself.... I'm not sure Trump would recognize any tension between his own outraged demand that allies start paying their way, and his reflexive response that 'it makes me smart' for him to avoid paying his own way." -- CW ...

** Trump Doesn't Lie. David Robert of Vox: "... there is no answer to the question of whether Trump opposed the war in 2003. In fact, the question itself is a category error.... The question presumes that Trump has beliefs, 'views' that reflect his assessment of the facts, 'positions' that remain stable over time, woven into some sort of coherent worldview. There is no evidence that Trump has such things. That is not how he uses language.... He treats all social interactions as zero-sum games establishing dominance and submission.... People [like Trump] who simply do not have beliefs as such are impossible to predict and easy to manipulate. They are unable to make credible commitments, build trust, or pursue opportunities for mutual benefit. Putting people like that in a position of great power always ends in disaster." -- CW

Burgess Everett & Matthew Nussbaum of Politico: "John McCain pointed to the door of Senate subway train, telling a reporter recently to get out 'if you're going to ask about Trump.' Informed instead the subject was Mike Pence, McCain relaxed, as the Arizona senator and 2008 GOP presidential nominee invited the reporter to ride along.... McCain's willingness to talk Pence but dodge on Trump is shared broadly among his fellow Capitol Hill Republicans and reflects a genuine excitement about the Indiana governor who could be vice president...So far, however, there's scant evidence that Pence has the pull to bring Trump in his direction. And while campaigning and governance are different, on the trail, at least, Pence has been the one bending to Trump." --safari note: I love how the GOP leaders act like farts in the wind, showing up with vigor unexpectedly and then disappearing without a trace.

Meet Your Trump Supporters, Ctd. Caroline Linton of CBS News: "A North Carolina gun rights group is raffling off an AR-15, ammunition and a photo of Hillary Clinton that they say is 'very popular at the range.' Grass Roots North Carolina, a political lobbying group, is calling the raffle 'The Hillary Clinton Special.' On the webpage for the raffle, it says 'Of course, we won't tell you what to do with the photo, but when we ran a picture of Hillary on the front of our newsletter, we heard it was very popular at the range.'" --safari...

... Meet Your Trump Supporters, Ctd. Travis Gettys of RawStory: "A Pennsylvania mayor is being urged to step down for repeatedly posting racist content and remarks on his Facebook page. Charles Wasko, the mayor of West York, compared President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, to monkeys in multiple posts and joked about lynching the nation's first black president in another social media post, reported the York Dispatch.... A friend of Wasko's suggested lynching Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and other Democratic politicians.... The mayor did not respond to repeated requests for comment, but he posted two new items on his Facebook page -- one slurring liberals and another promoting Donald Trump for president." --safari...

... Meet Your Trump Supporters, Ctd. A mere coincidence, I'm sure. Travis Gettys: "The former Donald Trump campaign chair who was forced to resign after blaming President Barack Obama for racism sat onstage behind Mike Pence during an Ohio rally...and met Trump's running mate after his speech, reported the Youngstown Vindicator. Miller, who apologized for her comments on black Americans but did not retract them, said she and her son got front-row seats because they arrived early." --safari...

... Meet Your Trump Supporters, Ctd. Brad Reed of RawStory: "Although Donald Trump has repeatedly disavowed the support of David Duke and other white nationalists, they've never stopped loving him or his campaign. In fact, the Los Angeles Times has an interview with several leading white nationalist figures in which they crow about the ways that Trump's campaign has given them and their ideas publicity that they never would have had otherwise.... In return, it seems that the American neo-Nazi movement is giving Trump an army of grassroots volunteers who will proudly goosestep across the country in their quest to make America great again...'Virtually every alt-right Nazi I know is volunteering for the Trump campaign,' Andrew Anglin, editor of the white nationalist Daily Stormer website, told the Los Angeles Times. Infamous former Klan leader David Duke was similarly giddy about what Trump's campaign had done for his movement, and he told the LA Times that 'the fact that Donald Trump's doing so well, it proves that I'm winning.'" --safari.

safari note: Is anyone else seeing a very sickening, sinister pattern emerging here?

... "Watching the debate, the artist Barry Blitt recognized a significant moment in the Presidential campaign. Of all Trump's dangerous beliefs, Blitt said, his misogyny 'might just be his Achilles' heel.'" --safari

Annals of Journalism, Ctd. In a Brief Moment of Clarity, Tuck Chodd Abandons Both-Sider Credo. Brent Griffiths of Politico: "Chuck Todd tussled with Donald Trump's campaign spokesman Thursday.... 'Why do you think multiple polls, scientific polls have said Hillary Clinton won that debate by a 2-1 margin?' Todd asked Trump's spokesman Jason Miller.... 'I have to set you straight on that one,' Miller ... [said].... 'The polls that happened the night of the debate..., the ones that happen online, those all showed Mr. Trump winning in a huge way.' 'Those are fan polls, man,' Todd said. 'Those are polls that computer programmers can mess with, those aren't real.... I just don't understand why we are creating a reality that does not exist,' Todd said.... Towards the end, Todd followed up on suggestions by Trump that the search engine Google is rigged against him. 'Do you have any evidence for that?' Todd asked. Miller pointed to an article by Breitbart written earlier this summer." -- CW ...

... Annals of Journalism, Ctd., Gotcha Edition. Louis Nelson of Politico: "In an interview Wednesday night on [Fox 'News's] 'The Kelly File,' [Trump spokeswoman Kellyanne] Conway complained that Hillary Clinton has campaigned too hard on Trump's history with women and not enough on her own vision for America. Paraphrasing the GOP candidate's feelings after opting not to bring up Bill Clinton's history of marital infidelities, Conway said Trump's stance was that 'it's not nice that you're running hundreds of millions of dollars in negative ads against me, and he has a point.' [Megyn] Kelly scoffed ... that there is no expectation of niceness in presidential advertising, to which Conway replied 'but the ads should be true.' The Fox News anchor responded that Clinton's ads use Trump's own words. [Emphasis added.] Later, the two returned to the issue of Trump's checkered history of remarks about women." -- CW

For a few good laughs during these seriously rough political times, check out Seth Meyers' Presidential Debate:  --safari

Quite a Few Tokes Over the Line. Dave Weigel of the Washington Post: In an-hour long interview on Chris Matthews' MSNBC show, Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson had a self-described "brain freeze" -- he could not name one single "favorite world leader," even as Matthews & Johnson's running mate William Weld tried to help him out. It really was stunning. Weigel provides a transcript of the entire exchange. CW: MAG already highlighted this incident early in today's comments, but it is remarkable enough to flag again. Maybe Johnson was going to pick Putin, but he realized that name was already taken. (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Harper Neidig of the Hill: "... Hillary Clinton on Thursday mocked Libertarian Gary Johnson's inability to name a foreign leader by pretending not to be able to come up one herself when asked. When speaking with reporters on her plane in Chicago, Clinton was asked for her favorite world leader. 'Oh, let me think,' Clinton said sarcastically with a laugh. 'I like a lot of the world leaders,' she added. 'One of my favorites is Angela Merkel, because I think she’s been an extraordinary, strong leader during difficult times in Europe, which has obvious implications for the rest of the world, most particularly our country.'" -- CW ...

... As Nolan McCaskill points out, Clinton was also trolling Trump: "Trump has frequently attacked Merkel on the trail, panning her for Germany's intake of refugees, and will likely use that line against Clinton in the final stages of the campaign. 'Hillary Clinton is running to be America’s Angela Merkel, and we've seen how much crime and how many problems that’s caused the German people,' Trump said in a speech he delivered last month in Charlotte, North Carolina." -- CW

Beyond the Beltway

Amy Davidson of the New Yorker on the New Jersey Transit crash at the Hoboken Terminal: "Federal and state inspectors will spend days, perhaps weeks, examining the wreckage before they are able to announce a cause of the crash. One culprit that seems likely, though, is the particularly nasty politics of New Jersey, and of Christie's decision to block the legislature's efforts to fund transportation projects.... Christie had insisted that he would not fund the state's Transportation Trust Fund, which pays for major capital improvements and has been used for upkeep and maintenance, unless Democrats in the state legislature agreed to lower sales and estate taxes. They refused, and the fund went bankrupt." -- CW

Litterchur, Texas-Style. Derek Hawkins of the Washington Post: "Welcome to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, home to 140,000 prisoners and a list of 15,000 banned books.... The state's prison system, which is the largest in the country, has been repeatedlycriticized for censoring books for what detractors say are arbitrary reasons. Adolf Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' is allowed, but an illustrated history of World War II isn't. A 700-page defense of racial segregation is fine, but not Langston Hughes’s poetry. Kinky paperback memoir? No problem. Suggestive Shakespearean sonnets? No way." -- CW

Way Beyond

Julian Borger of the Guardian: "The UN’s chief humanitarian official said the people of Aleppo are facing a humanitarian catastrophe worse than anything witnessed so far in Syria’s brutal five-year war. Stephen O'Brien made the remarks to the UN security council on Thursday as Russia rejected calls to halt its bombing campaign on eastern Aleppo, saying it might consider a 48-hour humanitarian 'pause' instead...'Syria is bleeding. Its citizens are dying. We all hear their cry for help.' Meanwhile, US officials said they were still considering options for a 'plan B' policy in Syria, after the failure of the administration's 'plan A' -- the attempt to pursue a ceasefire with Moscow." --safari...

... Martin Chulov & Kareem Shaheen: "As the most intensive air bombardment of the war has rained down on opposition-held east Aleppo this week, an army of some 6,000 pro-government fighters has gathered on its outskirts for what they plan will be an imminent, decisive advance. Among those poised to attack are hundreds of Syrian troops who have eyed the city from distant fixed positions since it was seized by Syrian rebels in mid-2012. But in far greater numbers are an estimated 5,000 foreign fighters who will play a defining role in the battle – and take a lead stake in what emerges from the ruins." --safari

News Lede

Washington Post: "Federal investigators are assessing whether equipment failure, an incapacitated operator or other factors could have caused a packed commuter-rail train to barrel into Hoboken Terminal and slam into the station in a Thursday morning rush-hour crash that killed one person and injured more than 100 others. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) said the operator of the train, who was hospitalized and later released, was cooperating with the investigation. He will be interviewed by National Transportation Safety Board officials in coming days." -- CW

Comments Off
Thursday
Sep292016

The Commentariat -- Sept. 29, 2016

Mid-afternoon Update:

Donald Trump. Supporter of Communist Dictators for President! Kurt Eichenwald of Newsweek reports that Donald Trump knowingly violated the US embargo against Cuba. "A company controlled by Donald Trump ... secretly conducted business in Communist Cuba during Fidel Castro's presidency despite strict American trade bans that made such undertakings illegal, according to interviews with former Trump executives, internal company records and court filings.... Documents show that the Trump company spent a minimum of $68,000 for its 1998 foray into Cuba at a time when the corporate expenditure of even a penny in the Caribbean country was prohibited without U.S. government approval.... Once the [Trump] consultants traveled to the island and incurred the expenses for the venture, Seven Arrows instructed senior officers with Trump's company --then called Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts --how to make it appear legal by linking it after the fact to a charitable effort."...Akhilleus: Love to see Kellyanne spin this one tomorrow morning. "Oh the Donald needed a few cigars. No biggie. And anyway, when he got there, Hillary was skinny dipping with Fidel." ...

... Marc Caputo of Politico: "'Trump's business with Cuba appears to have broken the law, flouted U.S. foreign policy, and is in complete contradiction to Trump's own repeated, public statements that he had been offered opportunities to invest in Cuba but passed them up,' Clinton campaign senior adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement.... Trump recently began making a big push to curry the support of Cuban-Americans who live in Miami-Dade, Florida's most populous county with the most Republicans, 366,000. About 72 percent of them are Hispanic, nearly all Cuban-American. They're one of the only blocs of voters in the United States who still favor keeping the embargo...." The Newsweek report won't go down well with those voters. -- CW

By Driftglass.Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "Donald Trump isn't afraid of being labeled as the guy who avoids paying taxes. At all. [In an appearance on Bill O'Reilly's show,] Trump didn't say Wednesday night whether he has paid income taxes over the past several decades, but he did say that someone who avoids paying them is what the country needs.... 'I never said I didn't pay taxes,' Trump maintained. '[Hillary Clinton] said, "Maybe you didn't pay taxes." And I said, "Well, that would make me smart," because tax is a big payment.... One big problem with Trump's comments Wednesday is that there is a record of him paying no or very little income taxes. Of the five years for which we have a record of Trump's taxes, he didn't pay any or nearly any.... A second problem is that he did appear to say Monday night that his past avoidance of income taxes was 'smart.'" -- CW

Quite a Few Tokes Over the Line. Dave Weigel of the Washington Post: In an-hour long interview on Chris Matthews' MSNBC show, Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson had a self-described "brain freeze" -- he could not name one single "favorite world leader," even as Matthews & Johnson's running mate William Weld tried to help him out. It really was stunning. Weigel provides a transcript of the entire exchange. CW: MAG already highlighted this incident early in today's comments, but it is remarkable enough to flag again. Maybe Johnson was going to pick Putin, but he realized that name was already taken.

Dara Lind of Vox: "Trump appears to be shutting out not only people who want him to change direction but even people who are just telling him, descriptively, that the debate didn't work out well for him. Presidents need to be able to hear bad news." -- CW

Gloria Borger, et al., of CNN: "Donald Trump is angry that his aides and advisers have conceded to reporters -- largely without attribution -- that the Republican nominee struggled in his first presidential debate. In a conference call with surrogates Wednesday afternoon, Trump aides made clear the Republican nominee is upset that his allies publicly acknowledged they pushed him to change his preparation and tactics before his next bout with Hillary Clinton. And he wants them to stop it immediately. The message was 'not subtle,' a source familiar with the call said. Trump wants his supporters to make an energetic defense of his performance and refuse to concede that he didn't nail it." -- CW

Trump Conspiracy Theory No. 137. And He Knows It Must Be True Because He Read It in the Sputnik News. Jeremy Diamond of CNN: "Donald Trump on Wednesday touted a long-debunked conspiracy theory that [Google,] the most popular internet search engine, suppresses negative headlines about his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. Trump didn't cite a source to back up his claim, but the most recent report alleging this came from Sputnik News, a Russian state-owned news agency. 'Google search engine was suppressing the bad news about Hillary Clinton,' Trump said, apparently referring to Google searches during the first presidential debate on Monday night.... The remark was not an off-the-cuff ad lib -- it was included in the prepared remarks Trump read from during his rally speech Wednesday night." -- CW

*****

Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post: "Military personnel and veterans challenged President Obama, often aggressively, on his refusal to use the phrase 'Islamic terrorism,' his decision to open combat jobs up to women and the performance of the Department of Veterans Affairs at a town hall meeting [in Fort Lee, Va.,] Wednesday.... Obama's appearance came on the same day he announced that he was sending 600 more troops to Iraq, a war that the president thought he had ended when he withdrew U.S. forces from the country in late 2011. The additional forces will boost the number of U.S. troops in Iraq to just more than 5,000, ahead of an Iraqi-led offensive on Mosul planned for the coming weeks." -- CW

Jessica Silver-Greenberg & Michael Corkery of the New York Times: "The federal agency that controls more than $1 trillion in Medicare and Medicaid funding has moved to prevent nursing homes from forcing claims of elder abuse, sexual harassment and even wrongful death into the private system of justice known as arbitration. An agency within the Health and Human Services Department on Wednesday issued a rule that bars any nursing home that receives federal funding from requiring that its residents resolve any disputes in arbitration, instead of court. The rule, which would affect nursing homes with 1.5 million residents, promises to deliver major new protections." -- CW

Mike DeBonis of the Washington Post: "Congress staved off an Oct. 1 government shutdown Wednesday, passing a stopgap spending measure after House Republicans agreed to address the drinking-water crisis in Flint, Mich., removing a major obstacle in negotiations. The bill extends current government funding levels until early December, giving appropriators time to negotiate 2017 spending measures. It also provides year-long funding for veterans programs, $1.1 billion to address the Zika virus and $500 million in emergency flood relief for Louisiana and other states. The House approved the bill in a 342-85 late-night vote, hours after senators voted 77-21 to pass the measure. Lawmakers have now recessed until after the Nov. 8 election." -- CW ...

... Congress Overrides 9/11 Bill: Karoun Demirjian & Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post. "Congress on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly to override President Obama's veto of legislation that would allow 9/11 victims' families to sue the Saudi Arabian government over its alleged support for the terrorists who carried out the attacks. The votes in the House and Senate amounted to a sweeping, bipartisan rejection of the White House's argument that the legislation poses a national security threat because it could expose U.S. officials to similar lawsuits abroad. It is the first time during the Obama administration that Congress has voted to override a veto." ...

     ... Akhilleus: Pursuit of justice sounds nice but lawmakers left open the very real likelihood that they will walk this back after the election. Drive for show, putt for dough, as they say in golf. Most sane legislators understand the dangerous precedent such an override presents, but right now, they're driving for show. The chance that any 9/11 families will actually be pulling a member of the Saudi royal family into court is close to that of Donald Trump releasing his tax returns. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Jordan Fabian of the Hill: "The White House lashed out at the Senate Wednesday for overriding President Obama's veto of legislation that would allow U.S. citizens to sue Saudi Arabia over the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. 'I would venture to say that this is the single most embarrassing thing that the United States Senate has done, possibly, since 1983,' Obama spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters aboard Air Force One.... Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was the sole vote to sustain Obama's veto. Not a single Democrat came to the Senate floor before the vote to argue in favor of Obama's position. Obama expressed grave concerns about the measure in his veto message last Friday, warning JASTA would improperly involve U.S. courts in national security matters, including whether foreign governments should be considered state sponsors of terror." CW: Reid, of course, is retiring from the Senate.

Josh Gerstein of Politico: "FBI Director James Comey is passionately defending the integrity of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email setup, arguing that critics are unfair to suggest that agents were biased or succumbed to political pressure. 'You can call us wrong, but don't call us weasels. We are not weasels,' Comey declared Wednesday at a House Judiciary Committee hearing. 'We are honest people and ... whether or not you agree with the result, this was done the way you want it to be done.' The normally stoic FBI chief grew emotional and emphatic as he rejected claims from Republican lawmakers that the FBI was essentially in the tank for Clinton...." Comey also explained to Republicans who whined about the immunity deals that he gave limited immunity to "Clinton lawyers Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson to obtain computers containing emails related to the case" because 'Anytime you know you're subpoenaing a laptop from a lawyer that involved a lawyer's practice of law, you know you're getting into a big megillah." -- CW

Linda Greenhouse: "Would it be unseemly to suggest that only Justice Scalia's death has preserved democracy in North Carolina? There, I just did. Justice Scalia's absence is already having an impact on the new term in intriguing ways." -- CW

California Pony Express Delivers Message to Wells Fargo: Drop Dead. Romy Varghese of Bloomberg: "California, the nation's largest issuer of municipal bonds, is barring Wells Fargo & Co. from underwriting state debt and handling its banking transactions after the company admitted to opening potentially millions of bogus customer accounts. The suspension, in effect immediately, will remain in place for 12 months, State Treasurer John Chiang said Wednesday. 'Complete and permanent severance' between his office and the bank will occur if it doesn't change its practices, he said. The treasurer is also suspending his office's investment in Wells Fargo securities. 'Wells Fargo's fleecing of its customers by opening fraudulent accounts for the purpose of extracting millions in illegal fees demonstrates, at best, a reckless lack of institutional control and, at worst, a culture which actively promotes wanton greed,' the treasurer said in a statement."...Akhilleus (Also linked yesterday afternoon.

Presidential Race

Michael Tomasky of the Daily Beast: Both Hillary Clinton & Donald Trump left unsaid in the first debate many of the attacks they have made against each other. These issues or fake issues are bound to come up in the next two debates. -- CW

She doesn't have the stamina. I said she doesn't have the stamina. And I don't believe she does have the stamina. To be president of this country, you need tremendous stamina. -- Donald Trump, during the presidential debate, on what he meant by saying, repeatedly, that Clinton doesn't have that "presidential look," revealing his sexism, his inability to answer a question, and his stunted command of English ...

... Gail Collins: "Hillary Clinton is 68, and that's old for a first-term presidential candidate in this country. The one thing we can say with absolute certainty is that we'd hear about it every day were it not for the fact that Donald Trump is 70. Still, Trump seems to be finding ways to get at it." ...

... CW: The "stamina, stamina, stamina" thing is worse than the "presidential look" thing. Where the "look" means that women can't be president, the supposed lack of "stamina" means that women, especially older women, are too fragile, or something, to handle the pressures of the presidency. Trump acolyte Rudy Giuliani may have gotten to the "or something" when he said, "... after being married to Bill Clinton for 20 years, if you didn't know the moment Monica Lewinsky said that Bill Clinton violated her that she was telling the truth, then you're too stupid to be president."

Jim Acosta & Theodore Schleifer of CNN: "Donald Trump's campaign is instructing its supporters to use figures like Monica Lewinsky and Gennifer Flowers to beat back concerns about how Trump described a former winner of 'Miss Universe,' according to a copy of Wednesday campaign talking points obtained by CNN. Even though Trump and his children celebrated him for not bringing up the women associated with Bill Clinton's marital scandals during Monday's presidential debate, Trump is encouraging his supporters to do just that. 'Mr. Trump has never treated women the way Hillary Clinton and her husband did when they actively worked to destroy Bill Clinton's accusers,' one talking point reads. 'Hillary Clinton bullied and smeared women like Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers and Monica Lewinsky,' reads another." -- CW ...

... OR, as Margaret Hartmann of New York puts it, "Trump Campaign Has Sexist Plan to Fight Allegations of Sexism." Hartmann has a good synopsis of how the Trump campaign is out there playing Clinton's responses to her husband's affairs. ...

... Shawn Boburg of the Washington Post: Hillary Clinton's "detractors ... say that [she] has unfairly lashed out over the years at the women involved in her husband's indiscretions. Her responses have forced her to walk a fine line during the campaign on sexual assault issues, even as she builds strong political support among female voters.... The Trump campaign has argued that the issue facing Hillary Clinton as a candidate is not the behavior of her husband but the role she played in shaping responses to accusers. She discredited claims later revealed to be true and worked behind the scenes to help manage the allegations, according to former aides." Boburg cites instances of Hillary's trashing the women with whom her husband had had affairs. -- CW

The Big Guns Come Out. Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post: "[Michelle] Obama was campaigning in Philadelphia -- when she absolutely let loose on Republican nominee Donald Trump and his long-running birther insinuations about her husband.... 'Hurtful, deceitful questions deliberately designed to undermine his presidency, questions that cannot be blamed on others or swept under the rug by an insincere sentence uttered at a press conference.... If a candidate is erratic and threatening, if a candidate traffics in prejudice, fears and lies on the campaign trail, if a candidate thinks that not paying taxes makes you smart, or that it's good business when people lose their homes. If a candidate regularly and flippantly makes cruel and insulting comments about women, about how we look and how we act, well, sadly, that's who that candidate really is.'" Akhilleus: Whoa. What I wouldn't pay to watch Sniffles try to take on Michelle Obama. They'd have to have a meat wagon ready to cart off whatever's left. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Dana Milbank: Former Republican Sen. John Warner, whose long career made him an expert on the military, endorsed Hillary Clinton yesterday. "Warner -- endorsing the Democratic ticket while standing in Alexandria, Va., with fellow Virginian Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton's running mate -- spoke bitterly of Trump's description of the military as a 'disaster' and a 'shambles' with the generals reduced to 'rubble.'... 'Candidate Clinton maintained [her] composure throughout the debate; the other candidate, in my judgment, did not,' Warner said. 'She was firm but fair and, underline, respectful. That's one word that's totally lacking on the other side of this ticket.' Warner hailed Kaine, a longtime friend, as a 'beautiful man' of 'unquestioned integrity.'" ...

... CW: I suspect the main reason Trump says the military is a "disaster" & in "shambles" is that a larger percentage of black Americans serve in the military than there are in the general population.

As far as the lawsuit, yes, when I was very young, I went into my father's company, had a real estate company in Brooklyn and Queens, and we, along with many, many other companies throughout the country -- it was a federal lawsuit -- were sued. We settled the suit with zero -- with no admission of guilt. It was very easy to do.... That was a lawsuit brought against many real estate firms, and it's just one of those things. -- Donald Trump, during the debate, on racial discrimination lawsuits the DOJ brought against Trump companies

On several levels, Trump's debate answer was misleading. This was not a case brought against many real estate firms; it was brought against Trump and his father. Trump did not get a better deal; he got essentially the same deal, or possibly worse, than the deal he would have gotten if he had settled before spending legal fees for two years. He also failed to live up to the deal and found himself back in court. While Trump touts there was no admission of guilt, that's rather typical in these sorts of settlements. The Justice Department simply wanted to get the Trumps to agree to rent to African American tenants -- which they failed to do even after agreeing to settle the case. -- Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post

Down in the Drumpfs. Jennifer Wang of Forbes: "Forbes' new investigation into Trump's wealth pegs his fortune at $3.7 billion, down $800 million from a year ago. A softening of New York City's real estate market, particularly in retail and office, where valuations are trending down, has diminished his estimated net worth. New information was also a factor. Of the 28 assets or asset classes scrutinized by Forbes, 18 declined in value, including his trademark Trump Tower on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue, his downtown jewel 40 Wall Street and Mar-a-Lago, his private beachfront club in Palm Beach." --CW

Katie Zezima & Jose DelReal of the Washington Post: "Donald Trump has a serious weight problem: He can't seem to stop criticizing the girth of others. For decades, Trump has commented on other people's bodies, particularly women who he believes had gained too much weight or were, in his word, 'fat.'... Trump's obsession with weight carries some irony for a candidate who boasts about his unhealthy eating habits, dining regularly on McDonald's hamburgers and buckets of KFC fried chicken on his private jet. By his own public accounting of his medical health, Trump is just five pounds shy of being considered obese under the body mass index. 'I work out on occasion ... as little as possible,' Trump said at a 1997 news conference during which he mocked the weight of reporters." CW: This is a straight news story. The reporters cite, among others, GOP strategist Tim Miller: "He's a middle schooler who is filled with insecurities and insults people to try to deal with his insecurities." ...

... Nicholas Kristof: "Something about Trump is paradigmatic of the most atrocious kind of seventh-grade boy: The boasts about not doing homework, the habit of blaming others when things go wrong, the penchant for exaggerating everything into the best ever, the braggadocio to mask insecurity about size of hands or genitals, the biting put-downs of others, the laziness, the self-absorption, the narcissism, the lack of empathy -- and the immaturity that reduces a woman to her breasts.... Middle school is the wrenching, jungle stage of life that we all must struggle through. Why would we subject ourselves to a 'leader' who is permanently in the seventh grade?" -- CW ...

... The Ages of Trump." Jonathan Chait: During the debate, "Trump displayed the factual command of a small child, the emotional stability of a hormonal teen, and the stamina of an old man, staggering and losing the thread as the 90 minutes wore on.... Trump, according to the people trying to help him win, is unable to pick good staff, manage his time, follow advice, or even accept the connection between preparing for an event and succeeding at it.... Republicans ... have treated their candidate's glaring unsuitability for high office as, at worst, a handful of discrete errors that in no way reflect on his character, and at best, the dastardly unfairness of the liberal media...." -- CW

Nancy LeTourneau of the Washington Monthly noticed the tack planned by Trump's debate staff (who spoke to the New York Times -- story by Patrick Healy & others linked in yesterday's Commentariat) to prep the candidate for the next debate. "... there is no discussion about how to work Mr. Trump's policies or priorities.... It is all about a 'disciplined, strategic attack' to damage Clinton....

     ... CW: I think the Trump staff has a pretty good strategy. They know by now there's no way Trump -- who speaks mostly to himself -- is going to learn anything about policy or current facts on the ground. There is a slight possibility, however, that, as a person most interested in his own performance, he can kinda learn how to seamlessly attacks on Clinton into the debate: Martha Raddatz: "Mr. Trump, I'm unclear on your nuclear strategy...." Trump (interrupting the girl reporter): "Hillary Clinton trashed Gennifer Flowers." ...

... Louis Nelson of Politico: Donald Trump's "campaign emailed out a 30-question 'debate preparation survey' to supporters on Wednesday, asking them which issues they thought were Trump's strongest on Monday night and on which issues he should focus on in the next debate. It also asks supporters if Trump should raise an array of issues, nearly all of them relating to one Clinton scandal or another." -- CW ...

... Ed Kilgore: "... the survey appears to represent an indirect apology for Trump's failure to cover the anti-Clinton landscape the first time around, along with a permission slip for him to go medieval on his opponent at the next opportunity. Another possible motive could be to set up expectations for what future moderators ought to be asking the candidates about, so that anything other than an inquisition of Hillary Clinton can be described as biased." -- CW

The Best People. Pema Levy of Mother Jones: "While campaigning for president, Donald Trump often boasts that he hires the 'best people.' But in 2007, he bragged that he hired a woman with no experience because she was hot. His comments came in a speech for the Learning Annex, an adult education firm that reportedly paid Trump $1.5 million per appearance. During the question-and-answer portion of the event, held in San Francisco, a woman in the audience asked Trump, 'How many jets do you have and how might I apply to be a flight attendant?' Trump immediately had the woman brought onstage, where he checked her out, wrapped his arm around her, and and then declared, 'You're hired.' Then Trump launched into an anecdote about a time he hired a woman based solely on her looks." Levy transcribes Trump's remarks. Also includes video. -- CW ...

... Trump Likes 'Em Hot, Ctd. Matt Pearce of the Los Angeles Times: When Donald Trump visited "the Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes..., the club's managers ... scheduled the young, thin, pretty women on staff to work the clubhouse restaurant -- because when Trump saw less-attractive women working at his club, according to court records, he wanted them fired. 'I had witnessed Donald Trump tell managers many times while he was visiting the club that restaurant hostesses were "not pretty enough" and that they should be fired and replaced with more attractive women,' Hayley Strozier, who was director of catering at the club until 2008, said in a sworn declaration.... A similar story is told by former Trump employees in court documents filed in 2012 in a broad labor relations lawsuit brought against one of Trump's development companies in Los Angeles County Superior Court." -- CW ...

... Then there was the time Trump criticized celebrity Kim Kardashian for being too "large" when she was pregnant. -- CW

Michael Diehl in a Washington Post op-ed: "I was thrilled to get a $100,000 contract from Trump [in 1989]. It was one of the biggest sales I’d ever made. I was supposed to deliver and tune the pianos; the Trump corporation would pay me within 90 days.... But when I requested payment, the Trump corporation hemmed and hawed.... After a couple of months, I got a letter telling me that the casino was short on funds. They would pay 70 percent of what they owed me. There was no negotiating.... Today, when I hear Trump brag about paying small business owners less than he agreed, I get angry. He's always suggesting that the people who worked for him didn't do the right job, didn't complete their work on time, that something was wrong. But I delivered quality pianos, tuned and ready to go. I did everything right. And then Trump cheated me." -- CW ...

... Daniel Denvir of Salon: "Trump appears, however, to have won a huge amount of support from small business owners and is likely confident that Clinton's attacks won't stick. Seeing is believing, and what many Americans see is a man who both literally and figuratively turns what he touches to gold.... Small business owners might also identify with Trump's braggadocio. After all, they are constantly lauded by every last politician as the moral and economic apex of American capitalism.... The Great Recession put a major squeeze on demand and financing and may have made small business owners receptive to the very economic nationalism that has frightened corporate titans.... At times of economic crisis, small business owners have a reputation for moving far right." -- CW

Hey, Trump supporters say whites & men have "too little influence" in this country, according to a new ABC News-Washington Post poll.

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Now He's an "Independent Journalist," Ha Ha Ha. Hadas Gold of Politico: "Former Donald Trump campaign manager and now CNN contributor Corey Lewandowski is no longer receiving monthly severance payments from the campaign. Instead, the campaign paid off the remainder of his contract in one lump sum, said a CNN executive with knowledge of the situation. CNN anchor Alisyn Camerota made the announcement on Thursday morning." -- CW

Annals of Journalism, Ctd. Margaret Sullivan of the Washington Post: "As if local newspapers did not have enough problems, with plummeting circulation and shrinking staffs, some recent endorsements of Hillary Clinton by [conservative] editorial boards look like more self-inflicted wounds.... Although research shows that most voters say a newspaper editorial had no influence on their vote, two recent studies suggest that there's one exception to that rule: when the endorsements are unexpected. Surprise editorials are the ones that count, as long as they make sense, given the paper's usual tone." -- CW

Beyond the Beltway

Trial of Alabama Chief Justice, Bible Bigot Roy Moore, off to a Roaring Start. Kent Faulk of Al.com. "The trial of suspended Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore began [Wednesday] morning before the Court of the Judiciary in Montgomery. The trial pits Moore and his anti-gay marriage stance versus the rule of law. Did a Jan. 6 administrative order by Moore encourage Alabama probate judges to ignore or defy federal and U.S. Supreme Court orders declaring same-sex marriage legal? Or was Moore simply giving a status update or advice to those judges regarding orders by the Alabama Supreme Court banning same-sex marriage licensing prior to U.S. Supreme Court's ruling making it legal nationwide...?" Akhilleus: Al.com is doing live updates all day on the trial. Supporters for both sides in attendance but Moore supporters seem particularly exercised. Bigotry never rests. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Here They Go Again. Eliott McLaughlin, et al., of CNN. "Activists dismayed by the police killing of an unarmed, possibly mentally ill black man in El Cajon, California, demanded Wednesday that authorities release video of the shooting and that federal authorities probe into the man's death. As of mid-day Wednesday, police had released little information about the incident, aside from a still photograph showing the African-American man, in what authorities describe as a 'shooting stance,' facing off with two officers in a parking lot. Police have not released the man's name. No gun was found. The Rev. Shane Harris, president of the San Diego chapter of the National Action Network, called releasing the photo 'cowardly.' Harris ... said he had spoken to the dead man's family." Akhilleus: I suppose this is the sort of person Trump is demanding we take the guns away from. A black man who actually has no guns. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Way Beyond

James McAuley & Michael Birnbaum of the Washington Post: "So far, Donald Trump's plan to build a wall along the Mexican border is all talk. Last week, France and Britain actually began building one along theirs. Construction started [in Calais, France,] on a roughly mile-long concrete barrier intended to separate a sprawling migrant camp from the tunnels that offer passage to Britain, the latest attempt in what has become a global effort to throw physical barriers in the way of historic streams of human migration.... Britain has contributed most of the money for the project...." -- CW ...

... Liz Sly & Louisa Loveluck of the Washington Post: Life -- and death -- in war-torn Aleppo is hell. -- CW

News Lede

New York Times: "A commuter train crashed into one of the busiest train stations in the New York area during the morning rush on Thursday, killing at least one person, injuring more than 100 others and creating a scene of chaos and destruction, the authorities and witnesses said. The crash occurred around 8:45 a.m., when a commuter train traveling at a high rate of speed barreled through the barriers meant to stop it and finally stopped against a wall of the Hoboken Terminal building,officials said." -- CW

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Tuesday
Sep272016

The Commentariat -- Sept. 28, 2016

Afternoon Update:

Trial of Alabama Chief Justice, Bible Bigot Roy Moore, Off to a Roaring Start. Kent Faulk of Al.com. "The trial of suspended Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore began this morning before the Court of the Judiciary in Montgomery. The trial pits Moore and his anti-gay marriage stance versus the rule of law. Did a Jan. 6 administrative order by Moore encourage Alabama probate judges to ignore or defy federal and U.S. Supreme Court orders declaring same-sex marriage legal? Or was Moore simply giving a status update or advice to those judges regarding orders by the Alabama Supreme Court banning same-sex marriage licensing prior to U.S. Supreme Court's ruling making it legal nationwide?" Akhilleus: Al.com is doing live updates all day on the trial. Supporters for both sides in attendance but Moore supporters seem particularly exercised. Bigotry never rests.

Congress Overrides 9/11 Bill: Karoun Demirjian & Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post. "Congress on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly to override President Obama's veto of legislation that would allow 9/11 victims' families to sue the Saudi Arabian government over its alleged support for the terrorists who carried out the attacks. The votes in the House and Senate amounted to a sweeping, bipartisan rejection of the White House's argument that the legislation poses a national security threat because it could expose U.S. officials to similar lawsuits abroad. It is the first time during the Obama administration that Congress has voted to override a veto. 'Overriding a presidential veto is something we don't take lightly, but it was important in this case that the families of the victims of 9/11 be allowed to pursue justice, even if that pursuit causes some diplomatic discomforts,' Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who co-authored the bill with Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), said in a statement." ...

... Akhilleus: Pursuit of justice sounds nice but lawmakers left open the very real likelihood that they will walk this back after the election. Drive for show, putt for dough, as they say in golf. Most sane legislators understand the dangerous precedent such an override presents, but right now, they're driving for show. The chance that any 9/11 families will actually be pulling a member of the Saudi royal family into court is close to that of Donald Trump releasing his tax returns.

Another Unarmed Black Man Killed by Police. Eliott C. McLaughlin, Max Blau and Paul Vercammen of CNN. "Activists dismayed by the police killing of an unarmed, possibly mentally ill black man in El Cajon, California, demanded Wednesday that authorities release video of the shooting and that federal authorities probe into the man's death. As of mid-day Wednesday, police had released little information about the incident, aside from a still photograph showing the African-American man, in what authorities describe as a 'shooting stance,' facing off with two officers in a parking lot. Police have not released the man's name. No gun was found. The Rev. Shane Harris, president of the San Diego chapter of the National Action Network, called releasing the photo 'cowardly.' Harris, who said he had spoken to the dead man's family, was one of several speakers addressing reporters in front of the El Cajon Police Department." Akhilleus: I suppose this is the sort of person Trump is demanding we take the guns away from. A black man who actually has no guns.

California Pony Express delivers message to Wells Fargo: Drop Dead. Romy Varghese of Bloomberg: "California, the nation's largest issuer of municipal bonds, is barring Wells Fargo & Co. from underwriting state debt and handling its banking transactions after the company admitted to opening potentially millions of bogus customer accounts. The suspension, in effect immediately, will remain in place for 12 months, State Treasurer John Chiang said Wednesday. 'Complete and permanent severance' between his office and the bank will occur if it doesn't change its practices, he said. The treasurer is also suspending his office's investment in Wells Fargo securities. 'Wells Fargo's fleecing of its customers ... demonstrates, at best, a reckless lack of institutional control and, at worst, a culture which actively promotes wanton greed,' the treasurer said in a statement."...Akhilleus.

The Big Guns Come Out. Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post: "[Michelle] Obama was campaigning in Philadelphia -- when she absolutely let loose on Republican nominee Donald Trump and his long-running birther insinuations about her husband...'Hurtful, deceitful questions deliberately designed to undermine his presidency, questions that cannot be blamed on others or swept under the rug by an insincere sentence uttered at a press conference.... If a candidate is erratic and threatening, if a candidate traffics in prejudice, fears and lies on the campaign trail, if a candidate thinks that not paying taxes makes you smart, or that it's good business when people lose their homes. If a candidate regularly and flippantly makes cruel and insulting comments about women, about how we look and how we act, well, sadly, that's who that candidate really is.'" Akhilleus: What I wouldn't pay to watch Sniffles try to take on Michelle Obama. They'd have to have a meat wagon ready to cart off whatever's left.

*****

See also yesterday's Afternoon Update, which is chockful of links to commentary on Monday's presidential debate.

Presidential Race

Arizona Republic Editors: "Since The Arizona Republic began publication in 1890, we have never endorsed a Democrat over a Republican for president. Never.... This year is different. The 2016 Republican candidate is not conservative and he is not qualified. That's why, for the first time in our history, The Arizona Republic will support a Democrat for president. The challenges the United States faces domestically and internationally demand a steady hand, a cool head and the ability to think carefully before acting. Hillary Clinton understands this. Donald Trump does not. Clinton has the temperament and experience to be president. Donald Trump does not.... She has withstood decades of scrutiny so intense it would wither most politicians. The vehemence of some of the anti-Clinton attacks strains credulity. Trump hasn't even let the American people scrutinize his tax returns, which could help the nation judge his claims of business acumen." And so forth. -- CW ...

... John Wagner of the Washington Post: "... Hillary Clinton will score another high-powered Republican endorsement on Wednesday, according to a campaign aide: retired senator John Warner of Virginia, a popular GOP maverick with renowned military credentials. Warner's decision not to support ... Donald Trump, is intended to send a signal in the five-term senator's battleground home state and beyond that mainstream, security-minded Republicans should side with Clinton." -- CW

Greg Sargent: "Top Democrats say they're planning to escalate their attacks on one of the most glaring missteps Donald Trump committed during the debate on Monday night: When confronted over whether he pays nothing in federal taxes, he not only didn't deny it -- he seemed to openly boast about it." -- CW

A Good Time to Pack a Punch. Josef Adalian of New York: "As expected, Monday's opening showdown between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump drew a massive -- and record-breaking -- audience, with at least 80.9 million viewers tuning in across 12 broadcast and cable networks, according to Nielsen data obtained by CNN Money. That makes last night's 93-minute matchup the most-watched presidential debate ever, and represents a roughly 20 percent jump over the 67.2 million viewers who caught the first debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney four years ago. What's more, the 80.9 million figure will tick even higher once PBS is added to the tally, and it also doesn’t include the millions who likely watched online." --safari ...

Jonathan Mahler of the New York Times: "Per instructions from my editor, I was watching with the sound off. Alone.... She looked as if she was having fun. He, not so much.... He delivered 90 minutes of increasingly exaggerated pantomime, announcing the presence of someone who is restless, impassioned, emphatic and at times belligerent.... Even when it was Mrs. Clinton's turn to speak, Mr. Trump 't stand still. He fidgeted. He smirked. He grimaced. He squinted. He adjusted his microphone. He grabbed hold of the sides of his lectern. He rocked back and forth on his heels. He pursed his lips. He threw his opponent a disbelieving sidelong glance, and then an eye roll. He shook his head. He appeared to interrupt her, repeatedly.... Mrs. Clinton had a studied serenity.... She appeared unbothered, even amused, by Mr. Trump's apparent assaults." CW: See also Patrick's comment in yesterday's thread. He listened with the video off & the sound on.

Paul Krugman: "... it seems to be conventional wisdom that Trump did well in the first 15 minutes. And I guess he did if you are impressed by someone talking loudly and confidently about a subject he really doesn't understand. But really: Trump on trade was ignorance all the way." Krugman briefly explains why. -- CW ...

... Krugman: "... it turns out that Trump wasn't saying ignorant things off the top of his head: he was saying ignorant things fed to him by his incompetent economic advisers.... Should we be reassured that Trump wasn't actually winging it here, just taking really bad advice? Not at all. This says that if he somehow becomes president, and decides to take the job seriously, it won't help -- because his judgment in advisers, his notion of who constitutes an expert, is as bad as his judgment on the fly." -- CW

Robert Windrem & William Arkin of NBC News: "Donald Trump's confusing comments about nuclear weapons in Monday night's debate are not the first time during this presidential campaign that his statements have left nuclear experts wondering just what he might do if he gains access to the nuclear football. On Monday, Trump ... called for more nations to join the nuclear club. He ruled out a 'first strike,' but then revealed not just a willingness to use nukes but also a misunderstanding of the high-stakes balancing act the nuclear superpowers have pursued.... Trump ... also ... may not know the difference between 'first use' and 'first strike.' He responded to a question from [Lester] Holt about 'first use' with a statement about a 'first strike.'... 'First strike' refers to a nuclear power initiating nuclear combat and landing the first blow.... 'First use' is an un-official U.S. prohibition on the use of nuclear weapons against enemies who don't have nuclear capability." -- CW

Trolls Prefer Crazy Man. Luis Gomez of the San Diego Union-Tribune: While cable news networks and some news organizations ... declared Clinton a winner in the debate, Trump emerged as the winner based on a number of web polls and online forums like Reddit where the candidate's supporters dominate the conversation. By Tuesday morning, the hashtag #TrumpWon surfaced as the top trending topic on Twitter." -- CW

Amanda Marcotte of Salon: "... apparently, the sexist id is stronger than common sense, as demonstrated by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his legion of piggy defenders.... Watching Clinton kick his ass all over the debate stage last night exposed the raw insecurities of men across this great nation of ours. While Clinton usually gets yelled at by men for not smiling enough, her grinning visage as she watched her male opponent self-immolate caused this pouty reaction from Atlantic editor David Frum: 'Who told Hillary Clinton to keep smiling like she's at her granddaughter's birthday party?'... Whatever position your mouth is in, it's wrong, ladies!.... On Fox, Brit Hume says Hillary Clinton's face was 'not necessarily attractive'..." -- CW

He seemed unable to handle that big stage, and I really did feel that by the end, with the kind of snorting, the water gulping and the leaning on the lectern, that he just seemed really out of gas. -- Clinton campaign chairJohn Podesta, on Trump

He is an imperialistic gringo. -- Vicente Fox, former president of Mexico, on Donald Trump ...

Patrick Healy, et al., of the New York Times: "Campaign advisers to Donald J. Trump, concerned that his focus and objectives had dissolved during the first presidential debate on Monday, plan to more rigorously prepare him for his next face-off with Hillary Clinton by drilling the Republican nominee on crucial answers, facts and counterattacks, and by coaching him on ways to whack Mrs. Clinton on issues even if he is not asked about them. Whether he is open to practicing meticulously is a major concern, however, according to some of these advisers and others close to Mr. Trump." -- CW

Philip Rucker, et al., of the Washington Post: "Hillary Clinton moved to capitalize Tuesday on a sharp-edged debate performance that exposed vulnerabilities for Donald Trump, excoriating his values and character in an effort to expand her coalition of women, minorities and young voters.... While ... [Donald Trump] insisted that he was not unnerved, he and his advisers grasped at excuses to explain why he did not perform better.... Like Trump's feud this summer with the Muslim parents of a dead U.S. soldier, the [Alicia] Machado episode rapidly emerged as a microcosm of the campaign -- and a test of whether Trump can expand his support beyond his base of aggrieved white voters, most of them men." -- CW ...

... The Drumpf & Rudy Show, Ctd. Alexander Burns of the New York Times: "Donald J. Trump lashed out on Tuesday in the aftermath of a disappointing first debate with Hillary Clinton, scolding the moderator, criticizing a beauty pageant winner for her physique and raising the prospect of an all-out attack on Bill Clinton's marital infidelities in the final stretch of the campaign.... As Mrs. Clinton embarked on an ebullient campaign swing through North Carolina, aiming to press her newfound advantage, Mr. Trump vented his grievances in full public view.... 'Anybody who complains about the microphone,' she said [to reporters on her campaign plane], 'is not having a good night.'... At a rally in Raleigh, N.C., Mrs. Clinton ... assailed Mr. Trump's comments suggesting he avoided paying taxes and welcomed the 2008 financial crisis as a buying opportunity.... [MEANWHILE, Rudy Giuliani] called Mrs. Clinton 'too stupid to be president.'" -- CW ...

Steve Eder & Patricia Cohen of the New York Times: "'That makes me smart,' Mr. Trump said after Mrs. Clinton brought up how he had paid no taxes more than two decades ago. When she suggested that Mr. Trump was still paying no federal taxes, and had not done so for many years, Mr. Trump offered another retort: 'It would be squandered, too, believe me.'... 'Tell that to the janitor in here who's paying taxes!' Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., speaking at a rally in Pennsylvania, said of Mr. Trump's statements. 'It angers me. It angers me.'" CW: The reporters cite records from past proceedings that indicate Trump paid no federal income taxes for at least five years, and his Atlantic City casino losses in the early '90s were such that he might have been able to "eliminate his federal tax bill for years to come." ...

     ... CW: Here's something I didn't know. According to Eder & Cohen, Mitt "Romney and his wife, Ann, even gave up $1.75 million in charitable deductions that they were entitled to, in order to make their tax return consistent with Mr. Romney's earlier claim that he had paid at least 13 percent of his income in taxes." That is, had he not been running for president, the Romneys' tax rate would have been considerably lower -- and much lower than mine.

** Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker: "Obviously there was something cheering and even comforting in the reality that Trump had 'lost.' But there was something disturbing in seeing Trump once again being normalized by being made part of an ordinary contest in coherence and 'presentation' and 'preparation.' In truth, that was the least of it, because what was really outside any norm of decency was what he thought even after you had dutifully distilled away the incoherence and the manic improvisations.... This was not a bad performance. This is a bad man." -- CW

Peter Beinart of the Atlantic: "Commentators are declaring Trump's answers a tactical mistake. But they're more than that. They show how unmoored he is from conservatism's conception of America.... America's most prominent conservative thinkers and politicians have called for both reducing government's power over the individual and strengthening traditional morality. They've squared that circle by emphasizing personal responsibility.... Donald Trump never talks this way.... For more than a half century, conservatives have put families and communities at the center of their conception of a better America. For Trump, by contrast, the heroes are self-interested businessmen and a brutally powerful state. Profit is good; law is good; culture doesn't matter.... The fact that [Trump's rhetoric] has proven so appealing to so many Republicans shows how weak conservatism's traditional message now is, even in the precincts where it was thought to be strong." -- CW

Shitstain Leaves Permanent Stain: Rachel Bade of Politico: "House Speaker Paul Ryan on Tuesday gave a robust endorsement of Donald Trump's debate performance -- even as other Capitol Hill Republicans said he missed opportunities and could have done better. The Wisconsin Republican, who has been highly critical of Trump's controversial comments in the past, said the GOP nominee gave a 'spirited argument' for Republican priorities, 'passed a number of thresholds' and showed 'he could go toe-to-toe with Hillary Clinton.'" -safari note: These full endorsements cannot be forgotten in history as the GOP tries to sell us Putin-lite. If it hadn't already been declared, "reasonable" GOP officials are an extinct species.

Lucia Graves of the Guardian: "Alicia Machado became an American citizen just in time to vote against Donald Trump. It's a vote that has been a long time coming. In May 1996, the Venezuelan beauty queen was just 19 years old when she was crowned the winner of the Miss Universe pageant, which had recently been bought by the Manhattan business mogul.... But when she put on weight soon after winning, Trump turned what should have been a golden year into the most traumatizing one of her life." --safari...

...**Jonathan Chait: "Before the first presidential debate, the defining confrontation of the general election was an inspiring speech by Khizr Khan, a Muslim-American Gold Star father.... During the closing moments of Monday night's debate, Clinton provided another Khan moment, and Trump, once again, could not help but reveal his own ugliness.... You can easily see why Clinton's campaign decided this was the perfect anecdote to display his grotesque personal qualities. It contains several elements all at once.... Life rarely works out in such a simple and dramatically perfect way. Terrible human beings usually know how to conceal their terribleness. Even a villain as impulsive and egotistical as Trump has the benefit of an entire political party and associated media apparatus throwing itself behind the task of concealing his hideous character through Election Day." --safari

Other News & Views

Mike DeBonis of the Washington Post: "House Speaker Paul D. Ryan and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi struck a deal late Tuesday to deliver federal aid to address the water crisis in Flint, Mich., potentially removing a major flashpoint in negotiations to keep the government fully operating past Friday." -- CW

Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times: "As John G. Stumpf, the chief executive of Wells Fargo, prepares to face a congressional tribunal on Thursday for the second time in two weeks, questions are intensifying about the bank's sham accounts scandal and its lethargic response to it.... Late Tuesday..., the company's directors ... announc[ed] an investigation into the bank's sales practices, the board said Mr. Stumpf would forfeit approximately $41 million worth of stock awards, forgo his salary during the inquiry and receive no bonus for 2016.... The Wells Fargo board also announced the immediate retirement of Carrie L. Tolstedt, the former senior executive vice president of community banking, who ran the unit where the fake accounts were created. She will forfeit $19 million in stock grants, will receive neither a bonus for this year nor a severance, and will be denied certain enhancements in retirement pay, the board said.... These actions by the Wells Fargo board, while welcome, were slow in coming." CW: I guess the board were shocked, shocked to find that thievery was going on in their casino.

Beyond the Beltway

Time for an Impeachment in Trenton. Kate Zernike of the New York Times: "Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey was told about the George Washington Bridge lane closings -- and that they were done to punish a mayor who had declined to endorse him for re-election -- during a Sept. 11 memorial service two days after they began..., [former ally David Wildstein] testified in federal court [in Newark, N.J.] on Tuesday. Mr. Christie, the witness recalled, laughed at the news. The closings of the access lanes in September 2013 continued for two more days, creating a catastrophic traffic jam.... But Mr. Christie made no effort to reopen the lanes and end the gridlock. Instead, his former ally said, the governor was clearly delighted and seemed to savor the scheme. And after learning that the Fort Lee mayor's persistent and urgent calls for help were being ignored, Mr. Christie said in a sarcastic tone, 'I imagine he wouldn't get his calls returned.'" -- CW

Travis Andrews of the Washington Post: "Police in El Cajon, Calif., about 15 miles northeast of San Diego, fatally shot a black man ... in a strip mall after responding to a call Tuesday afternoon that he was acting in an 'erratic' manner. In a press release, El Cajon police said the man, who remained unnamed, pulled an unidentified object, which was not a firearm, from his pants pocket and assumed 'what appeared to be a shooting stance.' At this point, officers fired on the man. He has 'passed away as a result of his injuries.'... A crowd gathered in the parking lot to protest the shooting, which follows fatal shootings this month of black men by police in Tulsa and Charlotte. -- CW

Tonya Alanez of the [Orlando] Sun Sentinel: Two former police officers in Lauderhill, Florida, were fired from their jobs after allegedly "coercing two women into performing sex acts." Now it "will cost the two fired cops $6.2 million, a federal judge has ruled.... Jane Doe 1, who claimed she was raped by [Officer Franklin] Hartley on the hood of his patrol car, was awarded $4.5 million in damages. Jane Doe 2, who said [Officer Thomas] Merenda coerced her into indulging his predilection for sexual pain by punching him in the testicles, was awarded $1.7 million in damages.... The federal verdict ... may amount to nothing more than a symbolic victory if the women are unable to collect from Hartley and Merenda. The pair continue to fight criminal charges resulting from the same incident in Broward Circuit Court." --safari

Way Beyond

** Marilyn Berger of the New York Times: "Shimon Peres, one of the last surviving pillars of Israel's founding generation, who did more than anyone to build up his country's formidable military might, then worked as hard to establish a lasting peace with Israel's Arab neighbors, died on Wednesday in a Tel Aviv area hospital. He was 93." -- CW

Jon Henley of the Guardian: "A top-secret cold war US military project and the toxic waste it conceals, which had been thought buried forever beneath the Greenland ice cap, are likely to be uncovered by rising temperatures within decades, scientists have warned. Camp Century was excavated by the US army engineering corps in 1959 around 200km (124 miles) inland from the coast of Greenland, which was then part of Denmark." --safari

Capitalism is Awesome, Ctd. Nick Davies & Oliver Holmes of the Guardian: "Officials at the highest level of an Asian government have been helping wildlife criminals smuggle millions of dollars worth of endangered species through their territory, the Guardian can reveal. In an apparent breach of current national and international law, for more than a decade the office of the prime minister of Laos has cut deals with three leading traffickers to move hundreds of tonnes of wildlife through selected border crossings. In 2014 alone, these deals covered $45m (£35m) worth of animal body parts and included agreed quotas requiring the disabling or killing of 165 tigers, more than 650 rhinos and more than 16,000 elephants." --safari

Luke Harding of the Guardian: "Flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine [in July 2014] by a Buk missile brought across the border from Russia and fired from a village under the control of pro-Russian rebels, an international criminal investigation has said. In a press conference on Wednesday in Nieuwegein, in the Netherlands, the Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team (JIT) said there was conclusive evidence that a Buk 9M38 missile hit the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777, killing all 298 people on board." -- CW: Another reminder to Vlad fanboy Drumpovich on what a "strong leader" Putin is.

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