;)
The Commentariat -- August 14, 2015
Internal links removed.
Michael Gordon of the New York Times: "Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Cuba on Friday morning to attend a flag-raising ceremony at the American Embassy.... Three retired Marines who lowered the American flag when the embassy was closed in 1961 will present another to be raised by the Marines now assigned to the diplomatic post.... The embassy ceremony ... will be streamed live on the State Department website.... In the afternoon ... Mr. Kerry will have an opportunity to talk with Cuban human rights proponents and political activists at a reception at the official residence of Jeffrey DeLaurentis, who is serving as the top American diplomat in Cuba until an ambassador is nominated and confirmed." ...
... Francisco Jara of AFP: "US Secretary of State John Kerry will visit Cuba Friday to raise the American flag over the newly reopened US embassy, a symbolic capstone on Washington's historic rapprochement with Havana."
"What If Barack and Bibi Are Both Right? Jim Fallows & his readers present "a set of theories for what's really behind opposition to the Iran deal in Israel and the U.S." ...
... Jonathan Weisman & Nicholas Confessore of the New York Times: "Some of the wealthiest and most powerful donors in American politics, those for and against the accord, tried to get a word in with [Sen. Chuck] Schumer. [They succeeded.] Now, approaching a vote on President Obama's most important international priority, the fight is expanding, with tens of millions of dollars flowing into ad campaigns, and contributors leveraging access to undecided Democrats." ...
... Gershom Gorenberg, who lives in Israel, in the American Prospect: "To keep their seats safe, Chuck Schumer and [Rep.] Brad Sherman [D-Calif.] are willing to make Israel much less safe."
Emily Badger of the Washington Post: "Last week, the Department of Justice argued ... in a statement of interest it filed in a relatively obscure case in Boise, Idaho, that could impact how cities regulate and punish homelessness. Boise, like many cities -- the number of which has swelled since the recession -- has an ordinance banning sleeping or camping in public places. But such laws, the DOJ says, effectively criminalize homelessness itself in situations where people simply have nowhere else to sleep.... By weighing in on this case, the DOJ's first foray in two decades into this still-unsettled area of law, the federal government is warning cities far beyond Boise and backing up federal goals to treat homelessness more humanely."
Emily Steel of the New York Times: "The letters of the day on 'Sesame Street' are H, B and O. Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit group behind the children's television program, has struck a five-year deal with HBO, the premium cable network, that will bring first-run episodes of 'Sesame Street' exclusively to HBO and its streaming outlets starting in the fall.... After nine months of appearing only on HBO, the shows will be available free on PBS, home to 'Sesame Street' for the last 45 years. It is an unexpected union: the nonprofit behind a TV show created to teach children in underserved communities matched with the premium cable network that targets affluent adults with innovative programming." ...
... CW: If you want to know what's wrong with Republicans' defunding every entity of any social value, here's an example (altho PBS overpays its CEO, IMHO). Steel doesn't mention the GOP's repeated efforts to cut public broadcast funding. In 2012, Barack Obama did:
Boston Globe: "Three months ago, Harvard student Aran Khanna was preparing to start a coveted internship at Facebook when he launched a browser application ... that used data from Facebook Messenger to map where users were when they sent messages. The app also showed the locations, which were accurate to within three feet, in a group chat.... The app capitalized on a privacy flaw that Facebook had been aware of for about three years.... Within three days, Facebook asked Khanna to disable the app ... [and] deactivated location sharing from desktops.... And the company that Mark Zuckerberg famously launched from his Harvard dorm room withdrew its internship offer from this Harvard student, who apparently made the mistake of...launching an app from his dorm room."
Paul Krugman: "China is ruled by a party that calls itself Communist, but its economic reality is one of rapacious crony capitalism.... China's economy is wildly unbalanced, with a very low share of gross domestic product devoted to consumption and a very high share devoted to investment. This was sustainable while the country was able to maintain extremely rapid growth; but growth is, inevitably, slowing as China runs out of surplus labor. As a result, returns on investment are dropping fast.... China's leadership keeps imagining that it can order markets around, telling them what prices to reach. And that's not how things work.... If [China's] leadership is really as clueless as it has been looking lately, that bodes ill, not just for China, but for the world as a whole."
Presidential Race
... Via Driftglass in a post titled, "Gloria in Excelsis Both Siderism."
Dan Roberts of the Guardian: "US vice-president Joe Biden is nearing an imminent decision on whether to challenge Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination as supporters report a surge in interest from potential backers.... Biden is on vacation this week on Kiawah Island in South Carolina -- an important early-voting primary state -- but a source close to his thinking confirmed a recent Wall Street Journal report that he has been using part of the trip to sound out friends and family." CW: "nearing an imminent decision?" I myself am soon-to-be close to nearing an impending imminent decision that's just around the corner. ...
... Kristen Welker of NBC News: "Vice President Joe Biden is spending part of his South Carolina vacation calling close friends to discuss a potential 2016 run, a longtime Democratic operative and a source close to Biden who had an extensive phone call with him this week confirmed to NBC News." ...
... CW Update. Now I know it must be true, because I read it in the New York Times. ...
... Philip Bump of the Washington Post: "The Clinton campaign has a little rocket booster that's probably kept stored in a small case near the entrance to its Brooklyn headquarters. It's labeled 'Joe Biden backers,' and as soon as the vice president announces that he doesn't plan to run for president -- assuming he doesn't, of course -- Team Clinton can break it out, fire it up, and widen the lead over Bernie Sanders by another couple of points." ...
... Former Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), in a Des Moines Register op-ed, endorses Hillary Clinton. ...
... Jamelle Bouie: "What's important about the email story -- what makes it so damaging for Clinton -- is that it highlights a key weakness (her secrecy and evasiveness), suggests misconduct, and is ongoing. So far, there's no end to the email saga, just a series of small revelations. Each one prompts a day's worth of coverage, and each one gives Republicans a chance to emphasize her least appealing qualities.... That Clinton used private email at all shows her flexible approach to rules and regulations and a secretive reflex for conducting official business.... She should have used her official email account, as a way to prepare for the worst and avoid undue scrutiny." ...
... Speaking of Drip, Drip. Chris Strohm of Bloomberg: "The FBI is seeking to determine whether data from Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's private e-mail server may still exist elsewhere, a U.S. official said.... Barbara Wells, an attorney for Platte River Networks, a Denver-based company that has managed Clinton's private e-mail since 2013, said in a phone interview Thursday that the server turned over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation 'is blank and does not contain any useful data.' But Wells added that the data on Clinton's server was migrated to another server that still exists. She ended the interview when questioned further, declining to say whether the data still exists on that other server and who has possession of it." ...
... CW: From the get-go, I have believed Clinton's staff must have backed up her correspondence & other material. It doesn't make sense not to do so, especially for material of such importance. I myself have backed up my vital correspondence re: crafts projects, travel plans & gossip about the neighbors. In addition, I've learned -- from watching too many teevee crime shows -- that law enforcement can often recover a scrubbed drive (in about 60 seconds, in fictional stories).
... Steve M. makes a strong case that Hillary Clinton's campaign is living in fantasyland. In his "don't panic" memo, campaign manager Robby Mook claims that "the reality is that the GOP brand continues to erode by the day." Steve counters, "It's always like this -- the public may not agree with the GOP on issues, and may have been repulsed by the recent words and deeds of prominent Republicans, but the brand always gets refreshed, and the political mainstream always tells us that there's no rot under the new coat of paint." ...
... The memo is here. ...
Ed Kilgore: "I'd say it's likely the memo was aimed as much at the MSM as any other 'elites.' It went pretty heavily into the demographic and geographical advantages any Democratic candidate is likely to have in a presidential general election. That's a little surprising coming from a well-known semi-'centrist' front-runner, since it suggests somebody like Sanders could win as well. But perhaps it's really intended to undermine the panicky thought that Democrats needs to pull somebody else into the race (presumably Joe Biden) in case HRC's troubles worsen."
... Or some other candidate ...
Andrew Kaczynski of BuzzFeed: "Supporters of Al Gore have begun a round of conversations among themselves and with the former vice president about his running for president in 2016, the latest sign that top Democrats have serious doubts that Hillary Clinton is a sure thing." ...
... Update. Michael Hirsh & Kate Bennett of Politico: "Despite some hopeful speculation among Democrats that Al Gore might jump into the 2016 presidential race in the face of Hillary Clinton's troubles, people close to the former vice president and Democratic nominee say he's not considering it."
Philip Rucker & Robert Costa of the Washington Post: "For many Americans, the Trump presidential campaign amounts to a billionaire talking endlessly, and entertainingly, on television. But here in Iowa, it's another story. Trump is trying to beat the politicians at their own game, building one of the most extensive field organizations in the Republican field. The groundwork laid by Trump's sizeable Iowa staff, with 10 paid operatives and growing, is the clearest sign yet that the unconventional candidate is looking beyond his summer media surge and attempting to win February's first-in-the-nation caucuses." ...
... Jack Shafer of Politico: "In the August 6th Republican candidates debate, Trump answered the moderators' questions with linguistic austerity. Run through the Flesch-Kincaid grade-level test, his text of responses score at the 4th-grade reading level.... All the other candidates rated higher, with Ted Cruz earning 9th-grade status. Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee, and Scott Walker scored at the 8th-grade level. John Kasich, the next-lowest after Trump, got a 5th-grade score.... Trump's rejection of 'convoluted nuance' and 'politically correct norms,' mark him as authentic in certain corners and advance his cred as a plainspoken guardian of the American way.... The role Trumpspeak has played in Trump's surging polls suggests that perhaps too many politicians talk over the public's head when more should be talking beneath it...." ...
... CW: This is fascinating. The two candidates whose poll numbers rose after the big boys' debate were -- Trump & Kasich.
Presidential Candidate Exposed as Medical Doctor, Researcher. Dave Weigel of the Washington Post: "Ben Carson defended the use of fetal tissue for medical research Thursday, after a blog published excerpts of a 1992 paper describing work the neurosurgeon-turned-presidential candidate carried out using aborted fetuses. In an interview with The Washington Post, Carson called the revelation 'desperate,' and ignorant of the way medical research was carried out.... Carson, who has risen in primary polls since last week's debate, is among the Republicans who've condemned Planned Parenthood.... In a July interview on Fox News, after the first videos broke, Carson said that there was 'nothing that can't be done without fetal tissue' and that babies aborted at 17 weeks were clearly human beings.... Asked [by the WashPo] if Planned Parenthood should cease its fetal tissue distribution, Carson demurred. He still favored defunding the group, but would not call for the end of fetal tissue research so long as the fetal tissue was available." ...
... Jen Gunter: "While opining on the uselessness of fetal tissue research to Megyn Kelly Dr. Carson neglected to mention his own paper ... published ... in 1992. The materials and methods describe using 'human choroid plexus ependyma and nasal mucosa from two fetuses aborted in the ninth and 17th week of gestation.'... As a neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson knows full well that fetal tissue is essential for medical research. His discipline would have a hard time being w[h]ere it is today without that kind of work. What is even more egregious than dismissing the multitude of researchers whose work allowed him to become a neurosurgeon is the hypocrisy of actually having done that research himself while spouting off about its supposed worthlessness." ...
... Carson justifies his own use of fetal tissue because his "intent" was not to "kill babies." CW: So let's get this straight: it is fine to use fetal tissue in medical research, but it morally reprehensible to procure & provide the fetal tissue the noble researchers use. Maybe Dr. Carson -- an evangelical Christian -- believes "dead babies" will fly into the lab on their tiny angel wings.
... Unfuckingbelievable. Andrew Kirell of Mediaite: "Appearing on Fox's Your World on Wednesday afternoon, Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson suggested Planned Parenthood places its clinics in black neighborhoods as a method of controlling that population.... Carson told [host Neil] Cavuto: 'I know who [Planned Parenthood founder] Margaret Sanger is. I know that she believed in eugenics and that she was not particularly enamored with black people.... 'One of the reason that you find most of their clinics in black neighborhoods is so that you can find a way to control that population,' he continued. Indeed, Sanger's views on 'birth control' found overlap with the eugenics movement of her time (Sanger passed away in 1966), though the many differences have been repeatedly pointed out by Planned Parenthood itself." ...
... Charles Pierce: "This is Alex Jones stuff without the Oathkeepers. This is simply drool with verbs. He's in second place [in Iowa]. Behind Donald Trump."
Breaking. Iraq War Proclaimed a Great Success. I'll tell you, taking out Saddam Hussein turned out to be a pretty good deal.... I'm not saying this because I'm a Bush. I'm proud of what [George] did to create a secure environment for our country. -- Jeb Bush, in Iowa Thursday
... Josh Marshall of TPM: "After first saying that invading Iraq was awesome and then slinking back to 'if the intelligence hadn't fooled us', now Jeb Bush is back to saying that 'taking out' Saddam Hussein was a 'pretty good deal.'... Jeb will never get past this issue.... Even the language has that weird brand of tough guy braggadocio that can't break free of the yacht basin or even quite want to. Swaggering Biff." ...
... Sometimes a Doofus is a Lying Sack of Shit. Here is (clip) that LSoS saying, "The Iraqis wanted it to happen," where "it" refers to renegotiating Dubya's agreement for the withdrawal of U.S. troops so we could stay forevah & keep the peace. Just the opposite was true. Fred Kaplan: "... Obama did send emissaries -- among them former aides to George W. Bush -- to seek an amendment to allow a few thousand residual forces. The Iraqi government refused. Unless Obama wanted to re-invade the country, there was nothing to be done." Or, as top Army Gen. Ray Odierno put it in his "exit interview," if the U.S. had kept troops in Iraq against the wishes of the Iraqi government, "We would have been in violation of international law." Also, too, Jeb! has visited Guantanamo & observed, "this is not a torture chamber." So, nice place to stay. ...
... Paul Waldman: "What Iraq needed to secure its future was the one thing Americans couldn't give it: a political reconciliation.... It was the Maliki government's relentless sectarianism that created the opening for the Islamic State to emerge. And this is perhaps the most dangerous thing about Bush's perspective on Iraq, which can also be said of his primary opponents. They display absolutely no grasp of the internal politics of Iraq, now or in the past, not to mention the internal politics of other countries in the region, including Iran.... This was one of the key failures of imagination that led to the Iraq disaster in the first place." Read Waldman's recitation of the terms of the "good deal." ...
... AP: "Jeb Bush has declined to rule out the US resuming the use of torture -- with the Republican presidential hopeful saying brutal questioning methods might be justifiable and necessary in some circumstances.... 'I don't want to make a definitive, blanket kind of statement,' Jeb Bush told an audience of Iowa Republicans, when asked whether he would keep in place or repeal President Barack Obama's executive order banning so-called enhanced interrogation techniques by the CIA.... Jeb Bush said he believed the techniques were effective in producing intelligence but that 'now we're in a different environment.' He suggested there may be occasions when brutal interrogations were called for to keep the country safe. 'That's why I'm not saying in every condition, under every possible scenario,' Bush said. Later on Thursday in Iowa, Bush said there was a difference between enhanced interrogation and torture but declined to be specific. 'I don't know. I'm just saying if I'm going to be president of the United States you take this threat seriously.'"
... A Loaded Cigar. Lesley Clark of McClatchy News: "Former [Minnesota] Gov. Jesse Ventura says former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush had a box of [Cuban] cigars delivered to his Minnesota office to keep him from complaining that that the embargo against Cuba made the cigar aficionado feel 'like a criminal.' The claim -- which Ventura says dates to when the two were both in office -- came as Ventura spoke with former Donald Trump senior advisor Roger Stone on his Ora.TV 'Off The Grid' show.... He said Bush approached him and told him 'keep it down, I'll send you all the Cuban cigars you need.'... Stone suggested the alleged incident was an example of 'elite deviance: There's a group in this country that is so wealthy and so powerful and so politically connected that the laws don't apply to them.' The cigars, however, weren't Cuban, but Dominican, Bush's campaign says.... Bush has been a staunch supporter of the embargo and opposes President Barack Obama's recent efforts to restore diplomatic efforts with Cuba.... Ventura ... has long advocated for lifting the embargo." ...
... Marc Caputo of Politico: "Former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura said Thursday he was 'astounded' that Jeb Bush's campaign would deny a decades-old gift of Cuban cigars. The controversy centers on a box of Romeo y Julieta cigars Bush gave Ventura after a meeting of governors at the White House, where Ventura complained to then-president Bill Clinton about the 'ridiculous' Cuban embargo and how it should be lifted.... 'What happened to the truth?' Ventura said in a phone interview [with Politico]. 'They're trying to say that he sent me a box of Dominicans?...Why would they send me a box of Dominican cigars when I could go buy them in any cigar shop?'... Is there a chance that the cigars he got were actually from the Dominican Republic? 'No,' Ventura told Politico. 'The cigar box was sealed and the cigars each came in a silver tube that said "Cuba" on the side.'" ...
... Daniel Strauss of Politico: "Black Lives Matter has gone bipartisan. Protesters from the grass-roots movement disrupted a town hall event featuring former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in Las Vegas late Wednesday, expanding their targets after having focused in recent weeks on the Democratic presidential contenders. The disruption happened after Bush responded to a question about racial justice, saying 'we have serious problems and these problems have gotten worse in the last few years. Communities, people no longer trust the basic institutions in our society that they need to trust to create, to make things work.' Advocates in the audience then started chanting 'Black Lives Matter' as Bush left the auditorium, according to The Las Vegas Sun." CW: It isn't clear from either report whether Bush ended the session because he was through talking or left because BlackLivesMatter protesters shouted him down.
Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio unabashedly promotes his expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare, shows little appetite for relitigating culture-war battles like same-sex marriage and offers not much more than a shrug when asked about Hillary Rodham Clinton's turning over her email server to the F.B.I." His approach is working in New Hampshire. "Just a month after entering the race, Mr. Kasich is rising in the polls in New Hampshire, winning head-turning endorsements and drawing new voters to his events who were impressed with his debate performance last week."
Amy Chozick & Trip Gabriel of the New York Times: "... many Republicans, preparing to potentially confront [Hillary] Clinton in a general election, are looking anew at [Carly] Fiorina, who rose from being a secretary to running the giant technology company HP, as the party's weapon to counter the perception that it is waging a 'war on women.'" ...
... Julie Alderman of Media Matters complains that Chozick & Gabriel "ignor[ed] how [Fiorina's] policy positions are actually harmful to women." Alderman cites a number of Fiorina's anti-woman policy prescriptions. Thanks to Diane for the link. ...
... CW: Alderman's complaint isn't quite true. Quite a ways down in the article, the Times reporters write, "Mrs. Fiorina, an adherent of the Silicon Valley meritocracy where she spent most of her career, believes that while employers cannot discriminate based on gender, they should be able to decide how much employees are paid. She is against federally mandated paid maternity leave, a position the Democratic National Committee portrayed as being 'worse than the maternity leave policy in war-torn Afghanistan.'" These are two of the issues Alderman cited (and thus implied the Times ignored). The Times story also notes that Fiorina is an anti-feminist. I don't think the Times is obligated to list every one of Fiorina's positions that work against women, though they should have mentioned her rabid opposition to Planned Parenthood & reproductive rights.
Beyond the Beltway
Edmund Mahony & Matthew Kauffman of the Hartford Courant: "After a sweeping two-year review, the state Supreme Court outlawed capital punishment in Connecticut Thursday, saying the state's death penalty no longer comports with evolved societal values and serves no valid purpose as punishment. The 4-3 decision would remove 11 convicts from Connecticut's death row and overturn the latest iteration of the state's death penalty, a political compromise effective April 2012 that barred death sentences going forward but allowed the execution of inmates already sentenced."
Erik Eckholm of the New York Times: "A state appeals court in Colorado ruled Thursday that a baker could not cite religious beliefs in refusing to make wedding cakes for same-sex couples. The decision[, which was unanimous,] is the latest in a series of similar rulings across the country.... Lawyers for the cake shop said the appeals panel 'got it wrong' and that they would probably appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court.... [The baker, Jack "Phillips, told [a gay couple] that he could not design and bake a wedding cake for them because it would violate his Christian convictions, although he would be happy to sell them other baked goods."
News Ledes
Washington Post: "Prime Minister Shinzo Abe offered his remorse for all those who died as a result Japan's World War II actions on Friday -- the eve of the 70th anniversary of his country's surrender -- but avoided explicitly repeating the apologies of his predecessors."
CBS News: "Pentagon sources tell CBS News that reports are 'credible' that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) likely used mustard gas against Kurdish fighters in Iraq."
AP: "Greek lawmakers approved their country's draft third bailout in a parliamentary vote Friday that relied on opposition party support and saw the government coalition suffer significant dissent. The vote came after a marathon all-night session marked by procedural delays and acrimonious debate over the three-year, about 85 billion-euro ($93 billion) rescue package that includes harsh spending cuts and tax hikes."
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Reader Comments (16)
FYI, a couple of new pieces.
In the face of Fiorina's insistence that she is an original cast member of the Vagina Monologues, Media Matters' Judith Alderman published a litany of Fiorina's policy positions that are detrimental to women.
NY Times Ignores Carly Fiorina's Anti-Woman Positions To ...
mediamatters.org/research/2015/08/13/new-york-times...
Derek Willis of Propublica has introduced a tool that enhances the ability to research election funding: the FEC itemizer. I haven't played with it yet. It looks promising and much faster than other databases.
FEC Itemizer | ProPublica
projects.propublica.org/itemizer
Bombs, cigars, and fetal tissue, oh my! A plethora of information here: my favorite is the results of the Flesch-Kincaid grade level test. Looks like some (a lot?) folks can wrap their minds more easily around candidates that speak on a fourth grade scale. (IS this why Dubya got voted in twice?) Jill Lepore may be right: We keep trying to elect Andrew Jackson all over again. But it's early in the game and we have a long way to go. Recall that at this point in the last election Rudy G. was riding high.
And looking back is what Rachel Maddow is doing for several nights on her program: She's showing us old footage of candidates back in their salad days. Last night we saw Hillary back in 1995 giving that speech in Beijing on human rights–-a right ballsy thing to do at that time. Much fervor over her going, especially by the male GOP's. We see her trying to get her health care through congress–-echoes of "that pushy broad, who does she think she is–-the president?"
We saw Bernie Sanders as mayor of Burlington,VT.––elected three times–-pontificating on the same exact issues he is today. And back then he refused to wear a tie and the people loved him for it. Say what you will about Bernie, the indisputable fact is the man is consistent!
A word about Carly and her supposedly anti-feminist (and we could debate that term) stance. She never had children. (Her second husband had two daughters who lived with them––one became a drug addict and died). How life experiences effect the politics of a person is an interesting factor to ponder and one can come up with all sorts of scenarios but the fact that Carly wants to ban Planned Parenthood's funding, along with Alderman's (see Diane) list one has to conclude the lady doth indeed protest a lady's rights on many issues.
So now Jebbers is on about how wicked cool the Iraq War was, and how right his brother W(rong way Corrigan) was right about ever-y-thing.
Including....drum roll and sound of whip cracking....TORTURE!
Jeb(!) promises to bring back TORTURE. But not, like, all the time, but like, you know, the world is a much more dangerous place now and we gotta protect Freeedom! And that weak-kneed Obama person put the jumper cables back in the garage. Well, Jebbie is gonna take 'em out and start hooking them up to Mooslim private parts because tough. And freeeedom.
Also, he's been to Gitmo. And it's not bad at all. With a working iron (see Brooks, David on hotel accommodations) and a hair dryer in the bathroom, it's almost like you were staying at the Plaza. All you need is a room overlooking Central Park and you could just imagine calling for five star room service.
What is it about Confederate voters that makes all of these candidates try to one up each other as to how inhuman and murderous they promise to be? I really, really don't get it. Aren't they all supposed to be, like, Christians and stuff?
Now his brother may have been a smug, incurious, doltish bully, but Jebbers has the potential to be a much worse president (and a bigger bully). And don't forget, both Poppy and the Decider each had their own recession and their own war. Jebbers will want one of each as well. Otherwise he'll lose out in bragging sessions when the family is up in Kennebunkport eating lobster finger rolls and carving up the world.
Oh, and by the way. The world IS a pretty dangerous place right now. Know why? BUSH FAMILY. That's why.
Re: Trump's staying power
It's often talked about how the plutocrats are constantly scheming over how to dupe the system and further increase their fortunes and power, huddled together in their dark, ivory towers. The thing about Trump is, he literally owns his own "Ivory Towers" in some of the most sought real estate locations across the globe.
I can't help but imagine him these days, in his top floor penthouse with his lips pursed looking out over New York all squinty-eyed with his combover all disheveled, hands clasped over the freshest edition of the NY Times with his name splashed all over, raving over his rising ratings and thinking, "President Trump, I could own it all."
For an egotistical maniac like Trump, he's on cloud nine right now. This is the publicity and name recognition he lives for each day. And it grows by the day too. At this point he's garnered enough attention from the rabid base to carry him a long ways in the race. I don't think he'll win the nomination (my bet's on Walker, official puppet of plutocrats) and he probably won't go 3rd party because he'll secure enormous concessions from the GOP establishment, but any talk of him flaming out soon is discounting the amazing staying power of Donald Trump's Ego.
And in more economic news as the media bloats with dire forecasts about the demise of Social Security in only twenty years, Washington State has it own teapot tempest over funding social programs.
With the most regressive tax system in the country, Washington's support for its schools has predictably declined over the years and the state supreme court, enforcing the clause of the state constitution that says it is the "paramount duty" of the state to educate its students, has taken notice.
http://news.yahoo.com/court-orders-sanctions-100k-day-against-washington-180648880.html
While Washington's education funding problems may be local, I see wider implications. Fixing the problem will require a new and different tax regimen, a obvious solution anathema to the state's Republican senate. Even our Democrats cower in the face of expected voter antipathy to taxation of any kind. And yet, there's the state supreme court over there, the putative law of the land, fining the state to the tune of 100K a day, for not meeting its responsibilities.
Politically, those of us here can look forward to months of entertainment as irresistible force meets immovable object.
And Social Security's "problems" have a similar, arithmetically simple solution. Scrap the cap. Render Social Security funding less regressive.
Again, the arithmetic is simple, but the politics is surely not.
When it comes to funding government services that benefit the vast majority, the teapot is getting bigger and today's tempest looks to become tomorrow's storm.
Anyone who has a hankering for a glimpse of life under Confederate "leadership" already has a number of real world examples if they can stand it.
For a look at how well Confederate economic plans work, we have the catastrophic failures in Kansas, economic disaster on a scale never seen outside a major depression. All self-inflicted by a mindless ideology and brainless "leaders".
And to see how life would be with all corporate financial and safety regulations removed, no oversight and no responsibility to anything but the bottom line, we can look to China.
As Professor Krugman points out, crony capitalism is wreaking havoc in that country. We have plenty of corporate cronyism as well although there are still a few nominal controls in place but the GOP is hard at work making sure things like consumer protection regulations are sufficiently chlorformed to the point of non-existence.
For a look at how we'd fare when Confederates succeed in letting the "marketplace" make all the decisions (safety regulations too expensive? Toss 'em out. How's that for a good marketplace decision?) we can look at the recent fireball over the port city of Tianjin. Officials have only a vague idea of what kind of chemicals were stored in the warehouse that was nearly vaporized in the explosion. They know about the sodium cyanide (pretty harmless stuff, right?) and a few others, but not everything. And they have no idea how it was stored.
Just imagine if this level of laissez-faire corporatism were to show up in the US. Oh, wait. We don't have to imagine. Remember West, Tx, a couple of years ago? A plant storing fertilizer and other chemicals which hadn't been inspected in almost 20 years(!) was also vaporized along with firefighters. The town is pretty much dead now. Rick Perry said he felt bad, but...
These are real world examples of the sort of life the current crop of GOP presidential candidates promise.
Throw in war, torture, no civil rights, no healthcare, mountains of guns, a police state, and no taxes on the richest, and you've got a Confederate paradise.
Elections matter.
(Which is why GOP officials are working hard to hide their own election stealing. Chris Kobach, Sec of State in Kansas--natch--who has been screaming for years about Democratic election fraud, of which there is none, is now being investigated by a Wichita State University math professor who has noticed unaccountable irregularities in election results controlled by the KS GOP. Naturally, Kobach is refusing to give her access to any of his possibly fraudulent paperwork. If the courts finally do give her access, how much will you bet me that those papers will have been "misplaced" or accidentally on purpose shredded. That's life in the modern Confederacy...)
Here's what I don't get about Clinton's e-mail practices, & it's pretty fundamental: why would a high-ranking government official who had even a minimal understanding of the Federal Records Act (passed first in 1950) ever co-mingle her official correspondence with personal correspondence?
Can't she tell the difference between swapping recipes for fruitcake & discussions of drone locations? If Hillary didn't want the world to know her secret fruitcake recipe, she should have, um, protected herself by using a different account for personal correspondence, because she had to know that any correspondence that was in any way "informational" re: government transactions had to be preserved under the Federal Records Act.
I realize there may be instances of overlap between professional & personal correspondence. For instance, "Please send me your recipe for fruitcake. I want to bake one to send to Queen Margrethe." But seriously. Stupid.
Marie
Update: Here's an answer to my question. I should have Googled before pontificating.
And now a word from your friendly neighborhood biologist (Warning for any Confederate readers...science ahead. Take cover and avert your eyes!).
Drones, drones, everywhere.
Where they hover I do not care.
Unless, that is, I were a bear.
(Should Ogden Nash be worried?)
According to an article in the journal Cell Biology, the appearance of drones over wild areas inhabited by bears causes dramatic stress increases measured by heart rate.
"All bears, including an individual denned for hibernation, responded to UAV flights with elevated heart rates, rising as much as 123 beats per minute above the pre-flight baseline."
Bears with a normal heart rate of 41 saw that number rocket up to 162! Most of us would be in an ambulance headed for the emergency room.
This is, of course, exactly the kind of study that Fox morons will point to and laugh. A reaction that indicates just how far removed we've gotten from an appreciation or even an understanding of how our own technological advances affect other creatures with whom we share an environment.
Just something to think about on a Friday.
@Akhilleus: According to the abstract of the study you cited, drones dramatically increase bear's stress but don't change bear behavior. I'm skeptical of the latter finding, because -- without needing any help from Stephen Colbert -- and am scared o' bears. When I go for walks in the woods around my place -- where there are bears -- I wear a "bear bell." Really.
Marie
Hillary's Blue Dress.
Call me naive but I'd been hoping for some time that this e-mail bullshit would crawl out into the woods and die in some muddy pool; or that Clinton would come up with a way to defuse it. Then again, I thought the same about Benghazi and Confederates are still riding that decrepit nag.
Now I'm really worried. This e-mail server thing could be Hillary's Blue Dress.
Look at what Confederates did with Bill's Blue Dress (okay, technically Monica's). It chewed up years of effective governing, back-burnered serious national issues, and almost got him impeached. And that was over a freakin' blow job, not national security issues.
The e-mail problem is (and not just potentially; it is) a much more serious thing. Whether you think it's not such a big deal (as I did for a while) or you think it the world's worst thing evah, as Confederates do, there is no getting around the fact that it was a terrible lapse in judgement on her part and if confidential material, even a few documents, were put at risk, that makes this a much different issue than inappropriate oral sex in the Oval Office, even though it does still suck.
Republicans got enormous mileage out of that blow job. They're going to ride this e-mail thing until it drops then they'll shoot it up with the TV and Wingnut Radio Drug and ride it some more. And even if she is elected, we will hear Fox and Fiends five years from now coming out with "....yeah, and what about those e-mails, and Benghazi...yeah, yeah..." It will haunt her for a long time, and that means it will haunt all of us as well.
This was a big mistake. And if idiots decide they'd rather have a blowhard egotist as president rather than someone they don't like and feel they can't trust, I will never forgive her.
She's starting to try to change the conversation and talk about policies and goals but, as with her husband, once the Blue Dress is waved in front of the TeeVee screens, it's all anyone will want to talk about. For years.
Christ! Now my heart rate is in Bear-sees-drone range.
Marie,
I believe you. I've done plenty of backpacking and mountain climbing in New England and along the Eastern seaboard states and I've run into a number of bears. One night during an ice storm on a West Virginia mountain side, a bear waltzed into our campsite to have a looksee. My brother got a backhand paw from outside the tent. Luckily we had tied up our food so the bear was only mildly annoyed and decided to have some fun with us. I've run into bull moose on the trail too, and even though they're potentially more dangerous than black bears, I've never been as concerned about them as with bears. Never thought about the bell idea though. Might have to try that, unless they interpret it as the Dinner Bell.
@Ak
You mentioned Kris Kobach and my eye started twitching. I'm not sure if this one was passed around on RC, but this one was a perfect example of the Brownback's regime above the law chicanery.
So Kobach signs off to build basically a giant barn on his land (officially labeled for only "agriculture use"). Then an unsuspecting inspectors shows up (grrr! fucking bureaucracy/regulations!!!) and what does he find inside?
"...a county inspector, Pat Wempe, found that Kobach had the framework inside the barn for a 1,250-square-foot, two-bedroom home with electrical hookups and plumbing for a kitchen, laundry room and bathroom..."
Yeah, since building a house is a little more costly with regulations and building codes, he decided to say Fuck That and make his own rules. Sounds pretty wingerish I'd say.
And whatdyaknow, he gets off clean as a whistle because "he didn't know" or "something, something", "no favoritism here, yadda yadda", despite the fact that,
"there are nearly 30 violations of the administrative (code) in the Kobach case."
http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2015/jun/03/douglas-county-keeps-mandatory-building-code-fine-/
Then to prove that's he's even more of a piece of shit, just after he weasels out of that scandal, at the same time a well-known local chef wanted to set up a meat shop on some land about a mile from one of Kobach's homes to better source his meat from local farmers. But Kobach's an asshole and apparently hates people so he did his damnedest to torpedo the guy's plans, rallying up all his local contacts to try to whip up any opposition he could against a local guy's business.
Yeah, a local business, a real entrepreneur. The whole, "build it yourself, job creators" holy persona that should be getting 5 five treatment from these blokes.
Luckily the city ended up giving him the permit and Kobach went weeping back to his house barn, but it just shows you how much of an asshole that guy is. And to top it off, at the decisive meeting to yeah or nay the building permit, Kobach gets in front of the commission and pulls this one out of this heartless spine:
He, "raised doubts that the business would be able to abide by all the rules and regulations set forth by governing bodies.
"We're all supposed to know the law and every governing body is supposed to encourage and facilitate compliance with the law," he said."
FOR REAL!!! LOL! If I would've been there I would have thrown eggs and heckled for sure. That would've been worth paying the fine. You can't reason with people when they play by a different set of rules, and openly mock them too. Fuck that guy.
http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2015/aug/12/burning-barrel/
Another example of life in the Confederate paradise. You forgot to mention the extreme class warfare between self-designated royalty and the peasants....
Safari,
It's instructive that Kobach, who skirts the law, ignores regulations and does whatever he wants (because Confederate, and Kansas), knowing that he'll be let off without so much as a love tap, demands that everyone else abide by not just the letter of the law but each period, semicolon, dot, dash, and exclamation point of the law (never seen an exclamation point in legal text but there probably should be a few).
This is all of a piece with his hypocritical approach to fantasy election fraud. For years he has been the guiding light in the GOP for laws and underhanded schemes restricting democratic voters from polling places because of GOP complaints of vote tampering, none of which have ever been proven. All the while, he's been out in his illegally built, against regulations, non-code house/barn cooking up ways to game the system, perpetrate actual fraud, and steal elections for his party.
There's probably a technical name for this kind of pathology, but I'm gonna settle hypocritical dickhead.
E-mails, Shme-mails.
Improperly handled e-mails might be a Blue Dress for Hillary, but in other news, IOKIYAR. Again.
Apparently GOP superstar guv, Rick Scott of Florida, is putting the arm on taxpayers to take care of his legal expenses (a cool million so far) because he, like Chris Kobach, and untold numbers of wingers, don't give two little tiny bird turds about the law. Unless someone they hate has a problem with it.
You may recall that Scott is a crook. In fact, one of the biggest crooks in US history. He perpetrated an enormous fraud against US taxpayers back when he ran an HMO: "The scale of the fraud was so immense that Columbia/HCA Healthcare ended up paying more than $2 billion back to the federal government in the single largest fraud case in history." But he's a GOP superstar. Hard to imagine, right?
Anyway, Scott has been conducting public business (who gets appointed to what, who gets what payoff or contract, etc) using his private e-mail account to keep everything away from the eyes of Nosy Parker citizens and good government groups.
Now he (or rather FL taxpayers) has to pay the piper, including a settlement with another lawyer. It seems Scott wanted to take the guy's land so he could build himself a royal garden around his governor's mansion. Instead, he (or those taxpayers, again) has to pay the lawyer $700,000 for being an asshole who doesn't pay attention to things like THE LAW!
Ho hum. Another day, another GOP crook, another Republican fraudster, another Confederate hypocritical dickhead.
Waiting for Fox droolers to rip Scott for his e-mail wrongdoing.
Waiting...waiting...waiting...
Bears?! Damn thing pulled my bird feeder down earlier this summer, breaking the metal post at ground only 30 feet away from the screened porch. Repaired the post and put it back up. The next morning it was back on the ground.
The songbirds will have to go unfed until Brer Bruin goes back to bed for the winter.
Unwashed,
I had a bear come into my yard once, in a relatively inhabited area, and do the same thing. We decided to try that anti-squirrel bird feed shot through with hot peppers. Bear didn't care. He ate it all. Must have been a Tex-Mex bear.
One year, up in Baxter State Park in Maine, one of the guys in our group (stupidly) left an empty ginger ale can in his tent. We typically tie up all food and, if we're in a base camp, get rid of any trash so as not to entice any hungry animals. A bear came along and tore down the tent and bent the tent poles for good measure, just to get to an empty can. Man, those suckers can smell!