;)
The Commentariat -- August 17, 2016
Afternoonish Update:
Jonathan Cohn & Jeffrey Young of the Huffington Post: "The big health care news this week came from Aetna, which announced on Monday it was dramatically scaling back participation in the Affordable Care Act.... Aetna officials said the pullout was necessary because of Obamacare's problems ― specifically, deep losses the insurer was incurring in the law's health insurance exchanges. But the move also was directly related to a Department of Justice decision to block the insurer's potentially lucrative merger with Humana, according to a letter from Aetna's CEO.... In [the] letter to the Department of Justice, Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini ... made a clear threat: If President Barack Obama's administration refused to allow the merger to proceed, he wrote, Aetna would be in worse financial position and would have to withdraw from most of its Obamacare markets, and quite likely all of them." -- CW
Josh Gerstein of Politico: "Procedures allowing Michigan voters to easily cast straight-ticket ballots look likely to remain in place for this fall's election after a federal appeals court refused to restore a law that would have ended the practice. A three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion Wednesday declining the state's request to overturn a judge's order finding that the straight-ticket voting option was heavily relied on by African-Americans and that the state's attempt to ban it appears to violate both the U.S. Constitution and the Voting Rights Act." -- CW
Here's a weird follow-up to a story I linked a few days ago. Simon Romero of the New York Times: "A Brazilian judge on Wednesday issued an order to prevent Ryan Lochte and James Feigen, two of the American swimmers who claimed they were robbed at gunpoint ... by men who identified themselves as police officers ... during the Olympic Games, from leaving the country.... But Mr. Lochte, a 12-time Olympic medalist, had already left Brazil before the judge issued the order.... Now, questions about the Americans' testimony to the police are turning that embarrassment into anger, with many Brazilians wondering whether the athletes lied about the episode and smeared their country's reputation.... Investigators have not found evidence corroborating the account, according to local news reports...." -- CW
Not sure Akhilleus should be quite to so helpful to Trump, but he's just saved the Trump campaign a bundle on those ads Trump is supposed to start running this week: change the "2" in 2012 to a "6" & take the "c" out of Mickey Mouse to make it Mikey Mouse, and they're done. Production costs: $147:
Anthony Faiola of the Washington Post: "The second in command of North Korea's embassy in London defected to South Korea with his family, officials in Seoul said on Wednesday, making him one of the most senior officials to seek asylum there from Pyongyang's diplomatic corps. Defections of senior North Korea officials are relatively rare, and the flight of Thae Yong Ho to South Korea marked an embarrassing blow to the authoritarian government of Kim Jong Un." -- CW
Presidential Race
Zach Montellaro of Politico: "Hillary Clinton's campaign on Tuesday pushed back against rumors circulating on right-wing media sites that her health is failing... 'While it is dismaying to see the Republican nominee for president push deranged conspiracy theories in a foreign policy speech, it's no longer surprising,' said Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton's communication director, in the statement. Clinton's campaign also released a statement from her doctor, Dr. Lisa Bardack, who reiterated the Democratic nominee was in good health and said documents circulating under her name that said otherwise were fake.... Trump said in a speech Monday that Clinton 'lacks the mental and physical stamina to take on ISIS.'" -- CW ...
... Niall Stanage of the Hill: "Trump also alluded to a purported lack of vigor on Clinton's part last week, when he said that her speeches 'don't last long. They're like 10 minutes and let's get out of here. Go back home and go to sleep,' the GOP presidential nominee continued. 'Three days later, she gets back up and does another one and goes back home and goes to sleep.' Allegations that Clinton suffers from serious health problems have been heard within the conservative media ecosystem for several years, where they have flourished despite any solid evidence to support them." CW: Hillary should definitely give more hours-long, rambling, crazy dictator speeches to prove her "vigor."
Countdown to a Congressional Sieve. Mark Landler of the New York Times: "The F.B.I. on Tuesday handed over to Congress documents related to its investigation of Hillary Clinton's private email server after House Republicans pushed the bureau to surrender material it had gathered before it concluded last month that she should not face criminal charges. The documents were believed to include notes from the F.B.I.'s 3½-hour interview with Mrs. Clinton in early July, the last step in a lengthy investigation into her email practices as secretary of state that continues to dog her run for president." -- CW ...
... Matt Zapotosky & Karoun Demirjian of the Washington Post: "The FBI on Tuesday forcefully defended its decision not to criminally charge Hillary Clinton in connection with her use of a private email server as secretary of state in a letter to lawmakers that laid out its rationale for refusing to do so.... It marked yet another occasion in which FBI leadership responded to -- and in some cases, rebutted -- GOP claims about why the Democratic presidential nominee should have been charged." The letter, which Rep. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) released today, is here (pdf). It "seemed to take aim at some ongoing conservative criticisms of Clinton -- particularly that she was negligent in her handling of classified information and thus deserving of criminal charges." -- CW
CW: Even as we amuse ourselves with the disaster that is the Republican Party in the Era of Trump, we should remember that the Democratic party is now and has been for perhaps decades its own worst enemy. As Jeffrey Frank of the New Yorker asked today, "Why-oh-why has a country so large and diverse ended up with ... Hillary Clinton, who is neither liked nor trusted by a majority of Americans and is perhaps the Democrat most vulnerable to Trump's loathsome and increasingly strange campaign...?" And how is it, I would ask, that her only quasi-viable alternative was a cranky old guy who came from outside the party? There is something wrong with the two-party system, and it is the two parties.
** Ashley Parker & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "Donald J. Trump has shaken up his presidential campaign for the second time in two months, hiring a top executive from the conservative website Breitbart News and promoting a senior adviser in an effort to right his faltering campaign. Stephen Bannon, the executive chairman of Breitbart News LLC, will become the Republican campaign's chief executive, and Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser and pollster for Mr. Trump and his running mate, Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, will become the campaign manager. Paul Manafort, the campaign chairman, will retain his title. But the staffing change, hammered out on Sunday and set to be formally announced Wednesday morning, was seen by some as a demotion for Mr. Manafort...." -- CW ...
You know, I am who I am. It's me. I don't want to change. Everyone talks about, 'Oh, well, you're going to pivot, you're going to.' I don't want to pivot. I mean, you have to be you. -- Donald Trump, Tuesday
... Robert Costa of the Washington Post, in a straight news story, "Donald Trump, following weeks of gnawing agitation over his advisers' attempts to temper his style, moved late Tuesday to overhaul his struggling campaign by rebuffing those efforts and elevating two longtime associates who have encouraged his combative populism.... Trump's stunning decision effectively ended the months-long push by campaign chairman Paul Manafort to moderate Trump's presentation and pitch for the general election.... Moving forward, he plans to focus intensely on rousing his voters at rallies and through media appearances.... [Stephen] Bannon, in phone calls and meetings, has been urging Trump for months not to mount a fall campaign that makes Republican donors and officials comfortable.... Instead, Bannon has been telling Trump to run more fully as an outsider and an unabashed nationalist." CW: The Clinton team must be dancing for joy. ...
... Greg Sargent: "Either Trump is delusional, to the point of being entirely incapable of appreciating why he's currently losing to Hillary Clinton. Or he has a diabolical plan to break apart the Republican Party and pocket a big chunk of it for himself, for post-election fun and profit. My money is on the former.... Trump remains trapped in the mental universe he inhabited during the primaries. That was a place where the size of his crowds at rallies actually did portend victories over less colorful and entertaining opponents.... One other explanation for Trump's latest moves comes courtesy of CNN's Brian Stelter, who suggested this morning that Trump may be positioning himself to launch a new media enterprise after a November loss. Bannon and former Fox exec Roger Ailes (who is also advising Trump), Stelter noted, would be just the team for Trump to do that." -- CW ...
... Steve M.: "I think Trump believes he's finally righting the ship. Campaigning the way he wants to campaign has to work, because he's masterminded 'a flawless campaign' (his words) -- or at least it was flawless until people who had doubts about his genius instincts began to meddle.... Trump has spent years imbibing the right-wing media message that 'real Americans' are all angry white Fox viewers, and that white liberals, white moderates, and non-whites who are skeptical of wingnuttery either don't exist or are undocumented aliens or only show up in electoral vote totals becaue of voter fraud. In this view, there's no difference between the Republican primary electorate and the general electorate -- those folks are 'taking their country back,' and everyone who's not them took possession of the country through evil subterfuge." -- CW
He's an evil genius. He doesn't work statesmen. He works dictators and all-round bastards. He sells the unsellable product. If you have a dead horse and you need to sell it, you call him. He works bad guys. They pay more, of course. -- Alex Kovzhun, an aide to former Ukraine President Yulia Tymoshenko, on Paul Manafort
... Luke Harding of the Guardian in a long piece on how Paul Manafort "got a strongman elected in Ukraine." "Strongman" is a putting it mildly: Viktor Yanukovych, a brutal Russian puppet who probably had one opponent poisoned and did have another jailed on fake corruption charges, ran the country like a fiefdom, & escaped to Russia just ahead of the pitchforks. "Manafort has denied any wrongdoing." ...
... CW: It would be harder in the U.S. for President Trump to go full-Yanukovych, but he could come close, and the rewards could be much greater. Think about it. He could declare some kind of Trumped-up war-on-terrorism emergency, suspend habeas corpus, charge any of his opponents (would that include McConnell & Ryan or would these mouseketeers continue to enable the U.S.'s first dictator?) with treason or other high crimes, lock 'em up & throw away the key. He could impose curfews on "certain areas" and send out some military force to "maintain order." And so forth. Meanwhile, Trump's "brain trust," with his complicity, would be using their association with Trump to rake in billions for themselves & Trump. We are one election away from government-by-"strongman." BTW, it isn't a crazy conspiracy theory when there's precedent for it. Manafort's former clients are the precedent. ...
.... Louis Nelson of Politico: "Donald Trump's campaign defended its embattled chairman, Paul Manafort, on Tuesday, pushing back against reports that the former consultant had received secret cash payments from a deposed Ukrainian leader with close ties to the Kremlin -- while being careful to distance Manafort from any possible wrongdoing by the candidate himself. Manafort's connections to Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russia former president of Ukraine, won't hurt Trump's campaign, vice presidential candidate Mike Pence said Tuesday, because 'he's not running for president.'" -- CW ...
... A Web of Intrigue. Jeff Horwitz & Desmond Butler of the AP: Paul Manafort, "Donald Trump's campaign chairman, helped a pro-Russian governing party in Ukraine secretly route at least $2.2 million in payments to two prominent Washington lobbying firms in 2012, and did so in a way that effectively obscured the foreign political party's efforts to influence U.S. policy.... One of the lobbying firms Manafort and [his associate Rick] Gates [who also is part of the Trump campaign] worked with -- the Podesta Group -- has strong Democratic ties." -- CW
... Heavy Petting between Donaldavich and the Russians. Whoo. Simon Shuster (is that a real name? If the guy's middle name begins with an "N", I'll go home happy) of Time, covers the Russian take on Donald Trump's big foreign policy speech: "'Trump is not only our candidate,' [Alexander Dugin] told Time. 'He is the savior of the USA.'... Even during the Cold War, the Kremlin often preferred to deal with more conservative American statesmen, because they were less prone to cloaking their real agenda with talk about the need to promote democracy and human rights. That prejudice persists to this day, says Gleb Pavlovsky, who served as an adviser to [Vladimir] Putin between 2000 and 2011. 'There is that old ghost in the Kremlin machine,' he says, 'that belief that more conservative, more anti-liberal candidates turn out to be more willing to negotiate.'... [Russian TV] anchors continued to shill for [Trump's] campaign while casting his rival, Hillary Clinton, as the latest figurehead of the great anti-Russian conspiracy. -- Akhilleus (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... CW: Shuster is the real deal. Here's one of his stories on the fighting in Ukraine in 2014. Somebody named Vanya captured Shuster: "... without saying a word to me, he pulled me from the car and cracked me on the head with the butt of his pistol. It wasn't clear then, and it's not clear in hindsight, whether he counts as a terrorist, a freedom fighter or just an average thug." Apparently that's not the only time Shuster was captured by, well, somebody in Ukraine.
** Tweedledee to Coach Tweedledumb. Maggie Haberman & Ashley Parker: "Roger Ailes, the former Fox News chairman ousted last month over charges of sexual harassment, is advising Donald J. Trump as he begins to prepare for the all-important presidential debates this fall. Mr. Ailes is aiding Mr. Trump's team as it turns its attention to the first debate with Hillary Clinton ... on Sept. 26 at Hofstra University on Long Island, according to four people briefed on the move.... Two of them said that Mr. Ailes's role could extend beyond the debates...." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... CW: "My top guy is a Kremlin fixer, and his second is a serial sex abuser. You've never seen a campaign like this," Trump said. ...
... Update. Tom McCarthy & Ben Jacobs of the Guardian: "Donald Trump's campaign has denied multiple reports that disgraced Fox News creator Roger Ailes has been brought in to help the candidate prepare to face Hillary Clinton on the debate stage next month." -- CW
Mike Levine & John Santucci of ABC News: Donald Trump "is scheduled to receive his first classified briefing [today].... Trump is planning to take with him New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a former Defense Intelligence Agency director who has become an outspoken supporter of Trump, a senior campaign official said. Career staffers from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), the nation's top intelligence office, will be leading the briefing, which is expected to cover major threats and emerging concerns around the world." -- CW
Russ Buettner of the New York Times on how New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie cut $25 million off Donald Trump's unpaid tax bills: "Tax authorities sometimes settle for lesser amounts to avoid the costs and risks of further litigation, legal experts said, but the steep discount granted to the Trump casinos and the relationship between the two men raise inevitable questions about special treatment.... Public records do not create a clear picture of how the agreement was reached." -- CW
CW: In case you haven't noticed, everything about Trump & his associates reeks.
Politico: Donald Trump issued a 'pledge to the American people' on Tuesday night via his Facebook page, vowing to treat all Americans equally and 'reject bigotry and hatred and oppression in all its forms.' 'This is my pledge to the American people: as your President I will be your greatest champion. I will fight to ensure that every American is treated equally, protected equally, and honored equally,' ... [Trump] wrote." CW: So I guess we were all wrong about him.
Shane Goldmacher of Politico: "Donald Trump made a new and explicit plea for the support of black voters on Tuesday, saying the Democratic Party had 'failed and betrayed' them and accusing Hillary Clinton of 'bigotry' in the pursuit of minority voters. 'We reject the bigotry of Hillary Clinton which panders to and talks down to communities of color and sees them only as votes -- that's all they care about -- not as individual human beings worthy of a better future,' Trump said at a rally in Wisconsin." CW: There are bridges to Harlem, and Donald Trump is ready to sell them to you.
Molly O'Toole of Foreign Policy: In his so-called national security address, Donald Trump "either seemed to borrow heavily from the president he just last week said 'founded' the Islamic State or described actions that were divorced from reality.... Trump seemed to advocate for a practice associated with nation building that is broadly prohibited by international law: nation plundering." CW: A nice rebuttal to the stupid. Via Greg Sargent. ...
... Robin Wright of the New Yorker: "The speech was xenophobic in spirit but vague on specifics. The centerpiece of his plan is the Commission on Radical Islam, which he promised to establish as one of his first acts as President." -- CW
Richard Hasen, in a Los Angeles Times op-ed: "Donald Trump has begun claiming that the only way he can lose the 2016 presidential election is if the voting is rigged. But if there's a threat to the integrity of the election, it's coming from Trump himself, and the best response may be for Democrats and voting rights activists to take him to court to protect the franchise.... Over the weekend, Trump upped his dangerous rhetoric, suggesting that in November cheating at the polls in 'certain sections of the state' would hand Pennsylvania's electoral votes to Clinton.... Trump's 'certain sections' reference is a dog whistle to ... urban areas such as Philadelphia, with large black populations.... Trump's website is also recruiting 'observers' to stop 'Crooked Hillary' from 'rigging this election.' There's a reason most states have laws against anything that might be construed as voter intimidation near polling places.... If anyone is trying to rig the vote, it's Trump." -- CW
... Anecdote from Hasen's op-ed: In recent memory, the only publicized case involving someone voting in high multiples was a supporter of Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker when Walker was up for a recall. The voter tried to vote five times in the recall and seven more times in four other elections. He was easily caught, well before Wisconsin passed its strict voter ID law. The voter claimed amnesia; his lawyer argued he suffered from mental illness. ...
... CW: Were I on the jury hearing the case against the fraudster, I could easily be convinced a person who voted for Scott Walker "suffered from mental illness."
James Hohmann of the Washington Post: "'God help us,' George Shultz said yesterday when asked about the prospect of a Donald Trump presidency. Ronald Reagan's secretary of state has compiled a 226-page 'Blueprint for America,' with contributions from 10 scholars at the Hoover Institution -- the conservative-leaning think tank where he is a distinguished fellow. The book is intended to provide the next president with advice about how to ensure America's long-term greatness, including sections on the importance of an open immigration system, free trade and entitlement reform. But it is a little awkward because the GOP nominee is running against each of those three concepts. He also seems uninterested in the finer points of policy-making." -- CW
Patrick Svitek of the Texas Tribune, republished in the Washington Post: "Former Texas governor Rick Perry (R) is defending Donald Trump's war of words with the family of a fallen Muslim soldier, saying the father 'struck the first blow' against the Republican presidential nominee and is not above criticism in return. 'In a campaign, if you're going to go out and think that you can take a shot at somebody and not have incoming coming back at you, shame on you,' Perry said in an interview Tuesday on CNN." -- CW ...
... digby: "I guess Perry didn't bother to watch the RNC because there was a lady there who personally blamed Hillary Clinton for the death of her son and said 'Hillary for Prison, she deserves to be in stripes!' --- for something that eight different investigations have shown she did not do. And the Democrats and Clinton didn't 'hit back.'" -- CW: Yes, but Mr. Khan got up there and asked if Trump had read the Constitution. And Mrs. Khan didn't say a word! Gloves, off!
One More Profile in Cowardice. Cristiano Lima of Politico: "Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner ended months of speculation Tuesday by announcing his support for Donald Trump's presidential candidacy, bolstering the Republican nominee's pitch in a state where his polling numbers have fallen recently." -- CW
Allegra Kirkland of TPM: "... Rudy Giuliani said Tuesday that he was using 'abbreviated language' when he claimed that the U.S. had seen no terror attacks carried out by Islamic extremists before President Barack Obama came into office.... 'I didn't forget 9/11. I hardly would. I almost died in it,' he said." CW: Yo, Rudy, "abbreviated language" is when you leave out the noun, the verb or 9/11. What you mean is that you used "elided language," which you apparently think allows you to skip over several incovenient incidents that occurred during Dubya's time in office. BTW, as you must have forgot, you've made this same claim before, & PolitiFact gave you a Pants-on-Fire rating for it.
Lauren Fox of TPM: "Trump adviser Al Baldasaro clarified for the record Tuesday that he doesn't think Hillary Clinton should be assassinated, but rather thinks she should be shot by firing squad for 'treason.' Baldasaro, who co-chairs Trump's veteran coalition, told MassLive.com Tuesday that he believes the media misinterpreted his comments.... 'What you in the liberal media consider rhetoric, I consider freedom of speech,' Baldasaro told MassLive." CW: Maybe somebody should explain to Baldasaro that freedom of speech -- or "rhetoric -- has limits: inciting violence and hate crimes, for instance, are unlawful.
Congressional Races
Maggie Severns of Politico: "Liz Cheney won the GOP primary for Wyoming's at-large House seat Tuesday, clearing the biggest hurdle to Congress for the national security hawk and daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney." -- CW
The campaign of New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan (D), who is challenging Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R), put out this press release Tuesday: "Despite the fact that Kelly Ayotte has made clear that she continues to support Donald Trump for President, she has repeatedly refused to answer whether she trusts him with the nuclear launch codes. Instead, Ayotte cited congressional oversight of the Oval Office, apparently unaware that the President can launch nuclear weapons unilaterally." CW: So, two-faced AND ignorant. Via Greg Sargent. As Sargent says, "This will continue to resonate."
Other News & Views
Adam Taylor of the Washington Post: "Vice President Biden received a cold welcome Tuesday in Belgrade, Serbia, as hundreds of ultranationalists marched through the city chanting 'Vote for Trump!'... However, the embittered 2016 U.S. presidential race -- and perhaps Biden's history of support for the NATO bombing of Serbia in the 1990s -- prompted self-described radicals onto the street." The Serbian Radical party, an "ultranationalist" group, which was behind the pro-Trump protest, has also aligned itself with Libya's Moammar Gaddafi. -- CW
Hackers Hack Hackers, & the NSA -- and Others -- Are Compromised. Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post: "Some of the most powerful espionage tools created by the National Security Agency's elite group of hackers have been revealed in recent days, a development that could pose severe consequences for the spy agency's operations and the security of government and corporate computers. A cache of hacking tools with code names such as Epicbanana, Buzzdirection and Egregiousblunder appeared mysteriously online over the weekend, setting the security world abuzz with speculation over whether the material was legitimate." -- CW ...
... David Sanger of the New York Times: "Most outside experts who examined the posts, by a group calling itself the Shadow Brokers, said they contained what appeared to be genuine samples of the code -- though somewhat outdated -- used in the production of the N.S.A.'s custom-built malware. Most of the code was designed to break through network firewalls and get inside the computer systems of competitors like Russia, China and Iran.... [Edward] Snowden..., in a Twitter message from his exile in Moscow, declared that 'circumstantial evidence and conventional wisdom indicates Russian responsibility' for publication, which he interpreted as a warning shot to the American government in case it was thinking of imposing sanctions against Russia in the cybertheft of documents from the Democratic National Committee." -- CW ...
... "The Americans," Updated? Paul Szoldra of Business Insider: "According to ex-NSA insiders who spoke with Business Insider, the agency's hackers don't just put their exploits and toolkits online where they can potentially be pilfered. The more likely scenario for where the data came from, says ex-NSA research scientist Dave Aitel, is an insider who downloaded it onto a USB stick. Instead of a 'hack,' Aitel believes, it's much more likely that this was a more classic spy operation that involved human intelligence." -- CW
Carolyn Johnson of the Washington Post: "Aetna, the nation's third largest health insurer, announced Monday night the most significant departure yet from the marketplaces set up by President Obama's signature health care law. The company, citing $430 million in losses selling insurance to individuals since January of 2014, will slash its participation from 15 states to four next year." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Sarah Ferris of the Hill: "Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and other healthcare reform advocates are revving up their push for a 'public option' after Aetna's retreat from the ObamaCare marketplace this week. Sanders on Tuesday vowed to bring back debate on a government-run insurance option, one day after the nation's third-largest insurer announced a major pullback from the exchanges. The senator said he will reintroduce his legislation to create a 'Medicare-for-all' system in the next session of the Senate, 'hopefully' after Democrats regain control of the chamber." -- CW ...
... New York Times Editors: ObamaCare "has survived many setbacks, and it will overcome Aetna’s decision, too.... There have been questions about Aetna's motives. Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, said the insurer could be pressuring the Justice Department to drop or settle a lawsuit it filed last month to block Aetna's proposed $37 billion acquisition of Humana.... Congress should strengthen the marketplaces to ensure sufficient competition. For example, it could encourage more healthy people to buy insurance by extending tax credits to families that now earn too much to qualify.... The only sensible response to those problems is to improve the law." -- CW
Jonah Bromwich of the New York Times: The Louisiana floods are the result of climate change. "That's what many scientists, analysts and activists are saying after heavy rains in southern Louisiana have killed at least 11 people and forced tens of thousands of residents from their homes, in the latest in a series of extreme floods that have occurred in the United States over the last two years. That increase in heavy rainfall and the resultant flooding 'is consistent with what we expect to see in the future if you look at climate models,' said David Easterling, a director at the National Centers for Environmental Information.... 'Not just in the U.S. but in many other parts of the world as well.'" -- CW
Profile in Courage ... and Constancy. Jeff Toobin of the New Yorker profiles Bryan Stevenson. "In 1989, a twenty-nine-year-old African-American civil-rights lawyer named Bryan Stevenson moved to Montgomery, Alabama, and founded an organization that became the Equal Justice Initiative. It guarantees legal representation to every inmate on the state's death row. Over the decades, it has handled hundreds of capital cases, and has spared a hundred and twenty-five offenders from execution. In recent years, Stevenson has also argued the appeals of prisoners around the country who were convicted of various crimes as juveniles and given long sentences or life in prison." -- CW ...
Annals of Journalism, Ctd. Sydney Ember of the New York Times: "Gawker Media, whose fierce independence afforded it an unsparing approach to web journalism that influenced news organizations across the internet and the wider media world, was sold to Univision at auction on Tuesday, giving the freewheeling company an outside owner for the first time since its founding 14 years ago. Univision bid $135 million to beat out the digital media publisher Ziff Davis, according to three people with direct knowledge of the deal.... A bankruptcy judge is to officially approve the sale at a hearing later this week." CW: For years, billionaire Peter Thiel hounded Gawker by secrectly funding lawsuits against the news & gossip outlet; yesterday, the NYT gave him real estate for an op-ed I didn't read.
Beyond the Beltway
Angela Couloumbis & Craig R. McCoy of Philly.com: "Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane [D], who was convicted Monday of perjury and other crimes, will resign Wednesday, her once-promising career in state politics felled by a fixation on seeking revenge against enemies that led her to break the law." -- CW
Scott Dolan & Megan Doyle of the Portland (Maine) Press Herald: "An Iranian man who came to Maine as a refugee in 2009 became radicalized in his Islamic faith while living here and was fighting for the Islamic State when he was killed last year in Lebanon, according to newly unsealed federal court documents. Adnan Fazeli, 38, most recently of Freeport, came under investigation by the FBI for his connection to the terrorist group shortly after he left his job at Dubai Auto in Portland to fly to Turkey on Aug. 13, 2013, and never returned." -- CW
News Lede
Los Angeles Times: "Firefighters on Wednesday continued their battle with a brush fire that exploded out of control in the Cajon Pass and has rapidly scorched through 30,000 acres. Walls of flames forced more than 80,000 people to evacuate and destroyed an unknown number of homes in several rural San Bernardino County communities." -- CW ...
... The LA Times has live updates here.
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Reader Comments (19)
So the Trump campaign needs to be more 'combative' (in this case the word means a very loud mouth). Can't wait.
And according to the Trump campaign Clinton is ill and crooked. She has absolutely no policies to refute.
Last night, MSNBC ran Trump's "Law and Order" speech, which was a very dated attempt, as in tactics and language from the 1970's, to set "good" African Americans against "bad" African Americans. The white audience (he spoke 1 hour away from Milwaukee in a suburb with 1% African American) was quite subdued during the 8 min covering law and order portion. The rest was typical Trump poop nuggets falling freely from his mouth. He has trouble reading the teleprompter and thinking at the same time. His most memorable comment was how he was going to facilitate a "peaceful regime change." For a minute, I suspect he thought he was in Ukraine.
In his Youngstown speech, DJT promised to set up a "Commission on Radical Islam", and to identify those who are engaged in nefarious activities.
Mel Brooks always has pertinent and prescient material, and this musical show-stopper on "The Inquisition" may be informative on the topic of hunting down heretics and non-believers. Sorry, it takes a few seconds to load
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnF1OtP2Svk
Un-F-ing believable! The Trump side show with its new support team includes a woman who makes Jan Brewer look like a beauty queen! A fat, big-mouthed jerk who looks like the cousin that you hope won't show up at the family Thanksgiving dinner, and Roger Ailes, who should neither be seen nor heard. And what a bizarre cast of supporting characters—Baldasaro, Flynn, Thiel, Sessions, "former" campaign manager Manafort, former former campaign manager Lewandoski, et al.
Meantime we have Ivanka currently traveling abroad with Wendi Deng (Murdoch) who has been alleged to having a little fling thing going on with Putin. If this were Hollywood, the scriptwriter would be fired. We've got a plot line of plotters, plodders and plotzing! Oy!
—the ultimate UNreality show.
So now we have the head of oxymoronic Breitbart News LLC (Loony, Lying Creeps? Have they ever reported a straight fact?) heading the Trump campaign, a marriage decades in the making. The midnight assignations with the Devil of rank racism and dark denial have been going on for forty or fifty years but it's now out in the open. Trump and Breitbart.
Never has a couple so deserved one another.
No doubt their issue will be disgusting, but at least their noisome spawn will be open to public view and scrutinized by all the media the Donald has determined is out to get him, when they report what he has said.
Disgusting certainly, but perhaps also fun.
More than just a ratfucker...
This morning I read that Donaldo the Muttonhead had reshuffled his clown car of a campaign yet again. But this time a new name had been added to the list of ratfuckers and evil operatives: Steve Bannon. This was an eyebrow raiser. Why? About a year ago, I read an article in Bloomberg about this guy. I had heard the name here and there but knew little about him. You really do need to read this piece, not just to get a sense of who this guy is, but to understand the breadth and depth of right-wing operations designed to subvert what these people deem "unAmerican" (ie, nearly the entire progressive agenda).
But this guy Bannon is a lot more than your run of the mill wingnut ratfucker. His background is nothing short of astounding. He's been in the military, worked at Goldman, went to Hollywood for some serious winger propagandizing, met the father of all ratfuckers, Andrew Breitbart and started his own war on Democrats and liberals with money to burn.
Truth be told, while re-reading this piece, I felt a little jealousy creep in. We have no one like this guy. He lives and breathes to murder liberalism. And he's smart. He's not some Louie Gohmert, Rush Limbaugh mouthbreather. His goal has been to move winger theories into the mainstream and he discovered that by including some actual facts in with the crazy, he could inveigle mainstream reporters to side with him in many instances, making them mules for his brand of Confederate heroin.
And here's what makes him really dangerous. He peddles the wingnut Koolaid, but he doesn't drink it. The old canard about how the media are all liberal shills out to send wingers to concentration camps is useful to fire up the knuckledraggers, but it doesn't help push the propaganda onto the first page of the NY Times. But Bannon knows what does:
"[Bannon's] insight was that the reporters staffing the investigative units of major newspapers aren’t the liberal ideologues of conservative fever dreams but kindred souls who could be recruited into his larger enterprise. 'What you realize hanging out with investigative reporters is that, while they may be personally liberal, they don’t let that get in the way of a good story,' he says. 'And if you bring them a real story built on facts, they’re f---ing badasses, and they’re fair.'"
And this, from Confederate apostate David Brock:
"'It seems to me,' says Brock of Bannon and his team, 'what they were able to do in this deal with the Times is the same strategy, but more sophisticated and potentially more effective and damaging because of the reputation of the Times. If you were trying to create doubt and qualms about [Hillary Clinton] among progressives, the Times is the place to do it.' He pauses. 'Looking at it from their point of view, the Times is the perfect host body for the virus.”'"
The perfect host body for the virus.
And the Times has been a very accommodating body for Bannon style Clinton character assassination viruses.
We take it as a truism that there is no one like Trump on the left. No one as vicious as Limbaugh or dense as Palin; no one as frenetically batshit crazy as Beck or, as we've been discovering, evil as a Paul Manafort. There's also no one like this guy Bannon.
In some ways, I wish there was. At least someone with this intensity and ferocity in pursuit of victory for their ideological goals. It's because of guys like this that a fading, failing ideology, represented by dimwits, kooks, and religious nutjobs, and losing electoral support by the hundreds of thousands every month, has enough power to stymie serious progress in this country and to push the candidacy of a dangerous authoritarian ignoramus. Sure, Democrats have smart people working for the cause but there doesn't seem to be the kind of passion we had in the 60's and 70's. Instead, we've gotten used to settling for whatever crumbs are left after Confederates have ravaged the dinner table.
We need that passion back. Maybe Bernie was able to ignite some fires, but what we need now is a coordinated plan to turn those campfires into a long burning progressive blaze.
And now Bannon is working for Trump. But there's a big difference between working behind the scenes to fuck over John Boehner and spread rumors about Hillary Clinton and getting someone elected to the presidency. Running a massive operation like a national presidential campaign ain't like turning the gears on a Tinker Toy machine. And there may not be enough time to turn things around completely. But what I'm looking for now is that one big dirty trick, that one piece of innuendo that catches hold, or that one slip up by Clinton. Trump can screw the pooch every day from now until the election but Clinton will be given no quarter if she screws up. The press, especially with guys like Bannon to lead them on, will eat her alive, so we're just one big problem away from stormtrumpers marching through DC preparing the way for the Trump coronation.
We've become so inured to the ubiquity of Trump inanity that it almost doesn't register that a presidential nominee is actually suggesting that Americans not vote for the other party's nominee because her speeches aren't as long as his.
What's next? She uses the wrong deodorant? Her hair color is off? She doesn't begin every sentence with "I", like he does?
(slowly shaking the head...)
Steve Bannon. DJT can't get enough Steves.
Diane,
I'm guessing the "good" African-Americans Trump is talking about must be the 1% who indicated their support for him, versus the 91% who will be voting for Clinton. In some polls Donaldo pulls a big fat goose egg from African-Americans. Zero percent. No wonder Confederates want to deny black voters access to the polls.
But hey, at least Trump now has a Breitbart stalwart. Breitbart, the site where African-Americans are only mentioned in connection to rapes and murders and where racism is only covered if it can be made to look as if Democrats are the racists.
That's sure to turn whole swaths of black America in Trump's favor. He might even have 1.5% support by election day.
Was Michael Moore's commentary posted here before? Apologize if I'm duplicating. He asks: Is Trump purposely " sabotaging his own campaign?" Appears recently posted on CNBC.
Moore: ... let me throw out another theory, one that assumes that Trump isn't as dumb or crazy as he looks. Maybe the meltdown of the past three weeks was no accident. Maybe it's all part of his new strategy to get the hell out of a race he never intended to see through to its end anyway.
There's more 'insider' dope as to how the run for the Presidency started with a different game plan for the Drumpf.
@Ak: Bannon (shudder) sounds like Lee Atwater on steroids.
“Why-oh-why has a country so large and diverse ended up with ... Hillary Clinton, who is neither liked nor trusted by a majority of Americans...."
As Obama observed, Clinton is the best prepared candidate for presidency in modern times. One could argue, historically, she is the best prepared presidential candidate period. However, she's not charming, young, or a thrilling speaker. She is tough, smart, persistent, measured and is happy to make big, serious decisions. She's a woman, which makes attributes associated with "presidential" not especially desirable. The trust issue...well I won't deny that she is a political animal. If she were a man, her focus on political achievement would engender admiration. I'm confident we wouldn't be looking at high unfavorables. The high favorables come from perception rather than a plethora of odious deeds. The perception of women is still viewed through the lens of the 1950's and in contemporary culture, sexual attractiveness.
H. Clinton wasn't the serial philanderer in her marriage, nor was she culpable for Bill's decisions or judgement. Isn't it ironic that Hilary is more tainted by Bill's philandering than Trump is by his own or by a spouse who bares all for the camera? The "better" candidate would have been male, white, "sharp / handsome" and likely had much less experience and competency.
I'm mightily sick of the continuous questioning "what can she do about the trust and favorbility stats". Short of growing a penis, pretty much nothing. The US is pathetic. Regardless of agreement about policies, Merkel, May and LaGarde (IMF) are all examples of tough smart, decisive women who are reminiscent of Clinton. American exceptionalism my entire ass.
Patrick,
Ha! Clearly, it's a thing. Maybe Trump secretly wishes he was named after a "real man" like Steve McQueen and not after a duck.
Tell you what, though. Should Trump adopt buccal speech (Donald Duck Speech) for his rants, they couldn't be any funnier, but they might be more fun to listen to, especially when, as Marie suggests, he goes on a tear and gives out with one of those two hour crazy dictator spiels. Because we all know, whoever talks the longest, is the best and most yuuuuuge.
And hey, once Donald decides he wants to spend money on TV ads, there's one already produced to tout his greatness.
@Diane: I don't know that "most qualified" on paper is much of an indicator of presidential excellence. Dick Cheney, after all, was highly-qualified to serve as veep. I think Barack Obama will prove to be among the country's best ten presidents, and he had very little experience. It has more to do with temperament, intellect, humility, empathy, "the vision thing" and moral compass. Clinton is fine on the first two. Not so sure about the others.
I also don't know that "handsome white guy" is the selling point we tend to think it is. If that were true, we'd be talking about President Romney & Democratic nominee Martin O'Malley. The last handsome white guy president we had, IMO, was JFK, and that was a long time ago.
Marie
Post-fact in Congress.
"Ayotte cited congressional oversight of the Oval Office, apparently unaware that the President can launch nuclear weapons unilaterally."
This should be a stunning revelation, that a United States senator, a member of her party's leadership team (appointed in 2013 as counsel to then minority leader Mitch McConnell), a member of the Armed Services Committee, and Homeland Security, sitting on subcommittees overseeing readiness, emerging threats, capabilities, and management, has no idea--not a fucking clue--about the chain of command for a nuclear strike. It's not like she's sitting on a subcommittee of the Ag Committee studying the relative nutritional value of the American beet crop. She's on the fucking Armed Services committee and yet has no idea how the ultimate expression of American force in the world is handled.
Stunning doesn't even come close, but this sort of rank ignorance of how government works is a staple, nay, the single most prevalent signifier of the Confederate relationship to government and governance, and by extension their sworn obligations to the American public.
We're talking about officials elected to high office who don't know how many justices are on the Supreme Court. Who believe no one branch of government has power over any other (an astonishing collection of recent presidential candidates subscribe to this amazing belief), who believe states who don't like a SCOTUS decision can just ignore it, who don't know how many articles are in the Constitution. Then there are the "small" details of governance that completely elude them, but ignorance of which puts no brake on their decision making or their yapping about it, details like the purpose of the Ex-Im bank, what it does and how it operates. Don't know, don't care. But ready to kill it if it will get them an interview with Sean Hannity.
Ignorance of banking, of trade, of immigration law, of science, of technology, of education, of medicine, and of the Constitution are proudly displayed by idiots elected to know these things and to know how they function. Well, maybe not. It's more than likely that people voting for them are even more ignorant than they are and don't care about government anyway, as long as they can whack someone. Preferably someone not white and not wingnutty.
Truth, facts, operational knowledge, all optional.
Peter Pomerantsev, writing in the magazine Granta, suggests how we became a post-fact society:
"But for all their cynicism, the spin doctors and political technologists were, at this point [mid 90's], still trying to pull off an illusion of the truth. Their stories were meant to be coherent, even if they were low on facts. When reality caught up – the audience caught on to the illusion in Moscow and the stories about Iraq broke down and the stock market crashed – one reaction has been to double down, to deny that facts matter at all, to make a fetish out of not caring about them... 'When Putin lies brazenly he wants the West to point out that he lies' says the Bulgarian political scientist Ivan Krastev, 'so he can point back and say, but you lie too'. And if everyone is lying then anything goes, whether it’s in your personal life or in invading foreign countries.
This is a (dark) joy. All the madness you feel, you can now let it out and it’s okay. The very point of Trump is to validate the pleasure of spouting shit, the joy of pure emotion, often anger, without any sense. And an audience which has already spent a decade living without facts can now indulge in a full, anarchic liberation from coherence."
Kelly Ayotte's blank ignorance of what a president can do with nuclear weapons is a fact. But, as Trvmpvs proves every day, for many Americans, facts don't matter. Which is why Ayotte has a job in the Senate and Trump has a shot at the White House.
The insurance giant Aetna's decision to screw with the lives of Americans--for money--will be couched, in places like the Wall Street Journal, as a crafty negotiating strategy, which, I'm guessing is how mafia captains describe their threat to burn down a business should the owner not hand over protection money. This is blackmail. There's no other way to say it.
But they know they can get away with it because they have plenty of allies for blackmail and mob tactics in congress. Were congressional Republicans not so down with fucking over Americans and sticking it to that horrible nee-groe in order to help out business cronies, Aetna's bet wouldn't be such a lock. Besides, it's a two-fer. Both sides win. Aetna can go about their blackmail unmolested and Confederates will giddily look the other way because it gives them a chance to say the ACA is a failure.
It's rich (literally) that Aetna is crying poor mouth based on their losses in the second quarter which were around $200 million because their revenue for that quarter was $16 billion. Sixteen Billion. This is a little more than 1%. Not to mention the fact that that $200 mil includes losses from ALL sources, not just ACA subscribers. Losses from policies written for the ACA are just a percentage of that amount, but it sure sounds good to healthcare-for-the-poor-hating Confederates, a group which includes, well, all of them.
If there were any justice in the world, Aetna's blackmail attempt would spur the US to institute a single payer system and fuck all those insurance assholes. But there is such a thing as Republicans and that fact forestalls justice.
Always has. Always will.
Confederates: always the wrong side of history. Always on the side of evil rat bastards and greedy corporate douchebags.
@Akhilleus,
Yes, the Aetna story on the radio yesterday had my Bullshit Alarm going off. Aetna was citing losses in some rural counties as their reason for pulling out of entire states, and NPR was broadcasting it unfiltered.
Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini's letter saying, in effect: "Nice little ACA program you got there. It'd be a shame if anything happened to it..." hadn't surface at that point, and the radio story already didn't pass the smell test.
NiskyGuy,
If Confederates weren't so enamored with corporate blackmail that puts average Americans behind the eight ball, here's how the Aetna protection racket play would work out.
Unfortunately, Republican mobster wannabes in the real world are standing behind Tony Soprano's guys waving baseball bats and kicking customers to the floor.
Re Aetna (and so many other things):
Simple really.
That's what you get when the regulators possess less power than the regulated and why the Repugnants always want to shrink government even more. They want to be "free" to be the.....(see Akhilleus' epithets above; I can't improve on them)...they are.
And they also say there is no class war?
@Marie. Thank you for your thoughts. Agreed that "most qualified" as a candidate is not a given for presidential greatness. Indeed, Obama has an amazing intellect, works tirelessly to understand the complexity of governing and has exhibited a deep capacity for compassion and empathy. In short, I would also argue he will be eventually ranked in the top 5-10 of US presidents. He has spent 8 years running faster, jumping higher and exhibiting an unblemished record of personal morality while facing the constant onslaught of attacks on his legitimacy. Regardless, Clinton does start with a better experiential resume for president than Obama. But, are we comparing her to Obama, a once in a lifetime candidate who posesses nearly every attribute associated with presidential greatness or to other candidates? Cheney was a candidate for VP, selected by himself.
As for her empathy and compassion, not sure of her capacity. I do know, as a woman, empathy and compassion are often interpreted as weak. Grandmother and mother are more safe expressions of those attributes.
JFK came before I was even aware of handsome, but I suspect there are many who felt Reagan, as hideous as he was, represented "handsome". In the case of Romney, perhaps he got more votes than he would have gotten if he were not conventionally good looking. Who knows.
My point is that gender ( as well as race) is judged by different and more rigorous standards than a white male. Often, to the point of ridiculous.