;)
The Commentariat -- Dec. 15, 2015
Internal links removed.
CW: You're on your own today. Don't forget to watch the GOP debate tonight. Let's hope Trump & Cruz -- who will be standing next to each other -- get into actual fisticuffs. Before you handicap the physical fight, better check out Trump's medical report, linked below. Meantime, do help out by using the Comments section to link to articles you find interesting. (Stick with politics, please.)
Ken Vogel of Politico: "The political operation created by the billionaire conservative mega-donors Charles and David Koch is quietly investing millions of dollars in programs to win over an unlikely demographic target for their brand of small-government conservatism ― poor people. The outreach includes everything from turkey giveaways, GED training and English-language instruction for Hispanic immigrants to community holiday meals and healthy living classes for predominantly African American groups to vocational training and couponing classes for the under-employed. The strategy, according to sources familiar with it and documents reviewed by POLITICO, calls for presenting a more compassionate side of the brothers' politics to new audiences, while fighting the perception that their groups are merely fronts for rich Republicans seeking to game the political process for personal gain."
Robert Pear of the New York Times: "In early November, President Obama challenged 20 communities around the country to compete with one another in signing up people [to the ACA] who were uninsured. The places were chosen because they had large numbers of uninsured residents or because people lacking coverage accounted for a large share of the population. A scoreboard prepared by the White House says that Milwaukee -- with a Democratic mayor who strongly supports the health law -- has made the most progress, followed by Detroit, Philadelphia, Chicago, Charlotte, N.C., and Atlanta. Oakland, Calif., Nashville, Tampa, Fla., and Salt Lake City were also in the top 10.... 'We are seeing unprecedented demand,' said Lori Lodes, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services...."
Eric Lipton & Michael Shear of the New York Times: "The Environmental Protection Agency engaged in 'covert propaganda' and violated federal law when it blitzed social media to urge the public to back an Obama administration rule intended to better protect the nation's streams and surface waters, congressional auditors have concluded.... Federal laws prohibit agencies from engaging in lobbying and propaganda."
Richard Oppel of the New York Times: "A top Army commander on Monday ordered that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl face a court-martial on charges of desertion and endangering troops stemming from his decision to leave his outpost in 2009, a move that prompted a huge manhunt in the wilds of eastern Afghanistan and landed him in nearly five years of harsh Taliban captivity."
Register Your Drones! Federal Aviation Administration: "The U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) today announced a streamlined and user-friendly web-based aircraft registration process for owners of small unmanned aircraft (UAS) weighing more than 0.55 pounds (250 grams) and less than 55 pounds (approx. 25 kilograms) including payloads such as on-board cameras."
Presidential Race
Dan Balz & Scott Clement of the Washington Post: "Following his proposal to temporarily bar Muslims from entering the country, Donald Trump has increased his lead in the Republican primary to its largest margin yet, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll." ...
If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency. -- Harold Bornstein (reputedly), who says he is Trump's doctor ...
... Russell Saunders & Betsy Woodruff of the Daily Beast: "Donald Trump's doctor released a medical report so silly that when we asked the American Medical Association about its language, their spokesman started to laugh." ...
... Colin Campbell of Business Insider reproduces the "astonishingly excellent" letter from Trump's doctor. The medical doctors among you will be sure to want to read it to find out how you're really supposed to write reports. Sometimes, apparently, it's appropriate to let your patients "help" you write the reports.
James Downie of the Washington Post: Ted "Cruz is the one contender who understands the far right and whose conservative bona fides are impeccable. If he were to be the nominee, it would be good news for the Democrats in the short term and the country in the long term. His ideologically extreme positions would hand Hillary Clinton an edge in what the fundamentals still suggest is otherwise likely to be a close election. And a Cruz loss would be most likely to end the myth on the far right that 'Republicans lose presidential elections when they don't run far enough to the right.'"
Sahil Kapur of Bloomberg: "The divide over same-sex marriage encapsulates [Marco] Rubio's dilemma: he's a young face in a party dominated by older voters. The Pew poll found that while a majority of Americans want gay couples to be able to marry, just 32 percent of Republicans and 24 percent of white evangelical protestants support it.... Surveys indicate that [HIllary] Clinton is more in tune with younger generations than Rubio on issues such as raising the federal minimum wage, normalizing relations with Cuba and loosening marijuana laws."
Beyond the Beltway
Emily Yahr of the Washington Post: "Over the last year, more than three-dozen women have alleged they were sexually assaulted by Bill Cosby. On Monday, the comedian sued seven of the women, saying the 'malicious, opportunistic, false and defamatory accusations' are a mere play for money that has ruined his reputation.
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Reader Comments (23)
I had a physical in Aug. I thought the results were good but apparently they were 'astonishingly excellent'. In fact, I would guess that term now applies to most routine physicals.
So Adolf will be the healthiest POTUS ever!! Of course the fact that he needs a statin says nothing. After carefully evaluating the doctor's "report" (written by the patient) my guess is he will have a heart attack in the next few months.
(My favorite result was his BP 110/65. He was probably unconscious when the reading was done.)
Jonathan Chait on "Obama's biggest accomplishment––excellent piece. As he says, climate change is a difficult issue for politicians–-the costs of action are heavily front loaded, while the benefits lie far in the future.
Old men plant trees that they will never have the pleasure of sitting under.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/12/climate-deal-is-obamas-biggest-accomplishment.html
Everyone's favorite Twitter joke about Trump.
An explanation over on New York magazine why so many people seem to come up with the same Tweet or similar expression. "...a case of multiple discovery — the idea that scientific innovations are often discovered simultaneously by different groups of people." or that 'clever' thoughts (or maybe song lyrics or music??? et al) are a result of a kind of spontaneous combustion! ( http://nymag.com/following/2015/12/mysterious-origins-of-the-best-trump-joke.html )
One commenter named Funduro captivated me with his "Primadonald's the whiniest troll on the interwebz."
The Prima Donald. Good one.
@Marwin, Yep! Comatose probably when that blood pressure reading was taken. Prima Donald (thanks again, Fundaro) also shares bizarro hairstyles with his doctor. Just Google the good doctor and gasp at the images.
@Ak: (re Yesterday), glad we could settle things out of court!
The Daily Beast piece on the Trump medical opinion was hilarious; only The Donald would find a doctor in his image. One small detail that bemuses me is that the top doctor listed on the letterhead, Jacob Bornstein, has been dead for 5 years. That could explain a lot!
I love Marvin's comment about the blood pressure being taken when Trump was unconscious.....
Well, isn't that special! the Koch's largesse is on a roll doling out turkeys and foodstuffs to all those poor Latinos.Yet, their conservative message is less government "handouts"––etc. They have even hired their spokesman–-one Daniel Garza, head of the LIBRE initiative, who is going around to anywhere he can engage a large group of Latinos in order to give his conservative schpiel. Just shows what two brothers with money can do to hoodwink people to vote against their needs. Some will buy it, I'm sure, others will take the turkeys, but will not vote for them.
"Willie Stark:[based on Huey Long] “They tried to ruin me because they do not like what I have done. Do you like what I have done?” (The crowd roars.)"
From "All the King's Men"
I see we're on our own today (have a good one, Marie), but in reference to an earlier thread about the sheer numbers of humanity crawling over our overburdened planet, we are certainly not alone, no, no where near alone.
Just received and end-of-the-year summary from Human Rights Watch, which reports that worldwide 60 million have been displaced from their homes, mostly in the Near- and Far East and in Africa. Contrast this with the 4-5 million in the US who lost their homes when the Bush housing bubble burst. We were comparative pikers. For me the 60 million number is unimaginable.
Someone mentioned Paul Ehrlich's roundly criticized "Population Bomb," published I believe in the late 60's. The problem with his Malthusian analysis was the timeline he proposed, and of course by suggesting we must control population he implied effects on markets and the economy. No wonder he made enemies, some with lots of money who made it by destroying the planet and who looked forward to making more, endlessly. The Club for Growth (endless and dim-witted growth), for instance, financed many counter analyses, one of which I saw ten or so years ago in "Foreign Affairs" merchandising doubt about the ill effects of blind growth.
But it turns out population was a bomb, just one with a slow fuse. But instead of exploding all at once the pressure population puts on the planet continues to increase, overwhelming natural resources like food and water and maybe more critically people's ability to manage and govern themselves in a sane fashion.
An expanding stew of the displaced, poor, fearful, hopeless and angry provides a perfect, receptive culture for the growth of apocalyptic and murderous mass movements. That's exactly what we're seeing writ large in some parts of the world, and the same elements and behaviors are not entirely absent here at home. We have a Presidential campaigns based on them.
I remember an image from Ehrlich or elsewhere of overcrowded rats turn on one another and taking a bite out of their neighbor.
Guess the Club for Growth and their colleagues had something right. They are growing something.
Blowhard Trumpy claims he'll be "the healthiest president ever"?
Healthier or in better shape than Barack Obama? I'd love to see Trumpy play some hoops on a team against Obama. And not playground runaround either. I wanna see him try to do full court. He'd be the woefully out of shape guy bent over at half court, grabbing his gut gasping for breath, barely venturing more than ten feet on either side of the court, and after 10 minutes of that, he'd be the guy puking in a bucket on the bench. At least then the vomit coming out of his mouth would be the actual kind. Meanwhile, Obama would be racing up and down the court pumping in threes and doing his best Bob Cousy ball handling impersonation.
Such a joke. He's the guy we all knew in college who bragged about everything but never measured up.. If you went to Florida on spring break, he'd remind you that his dad "owned" Florida. If you made a personal best running in a 10k, he'd brag that he once set the unofficial world record in the 10k. In street shoes. Only it's not recorded anywhere because the officials sucked.
Douche.
Here's a thought from P.J. O'Rourke, "Marco Rubio Is Bill Clinton’s Love Child!"
PD,
And we all know what happened to Willie Stark (Huey Long).
RE: Trump's triumphant medical assessment: His face is the color of a burned bum (I know because I accidentally fell on a space heater, having slipped getting out of the shower). This is usually an indication of (1) too much sun; (2) alcoholism; (3) high blood pressure; (4) skin problem; (5) a bad case of Scaramouchness
Vote for one just for fun.
The only error Erlich made was sounding too confident, hazard of being a good writer. A career using exponential functions has taught me that a minute change in an exponent can have a dramatic effect on the shape of the curve. Try it with your compound interest calculator.
Lifetime Grifters.
One would think that for propriety's sake, if not for the rigors of a full blown presidential campaign, candidates would take a break from speaking engagements which allow them to rake in the bucks from special interest groups.
But not the current crop of Confederates. Propriety? What's that? Ethics? Hell no. (Not that any of them had any to start with, but it's at least worth a shot to pretend).
According to Politico, at least three of the current crop of mental and moral midgets are still collecting speaking fees. Ben Carson, Carly Liarina, and Mike Huckabee. Surprised? Carson has made half a million off these highly unusual and questionable engagements since he's been roaming the countryside making up lies during his bid to put Jesus' picture in the Oval Office, right next to a bust of himself with a halo.
Republicans have routinely ripped Hillary Clinton for her speaking engagements and that was even before she announced. She has since given up all such gigs. But has anyone heard Republicans complaining about their own? Course not.
There are pretty strict rules about mixing personal money making scams and presidential campaigning. For instance, candidates are not supposed to use campaign funds to pay for travel and expenses when going to speak to special interest groups trying to curry favor with a presidential candidate. Since most of them, especially Carson and Huckabee, intersperse campaign appearances with paid speeches, I'm gonna say they don't give a shit about rules. But when have rules ever mattered to Confederates? Rules are for other people.
Oh, and these schmucks are not the first to do this. In the past Herman Cain and Rick (man on dog) Santorum have blithely skirted ethical concerns.
None of these losers ever had a shot anyway and they know that, so might as well go on the grift and further enrich yourself while you're out there hoodwinking the public and pretending to be interested in what's good for America, as opposed to what's good for your own bank account. PLENTY more grifting after they call it a day. Fox awaits.
These assholes just get more despicable by the day.
No Democrats, as far as I've been able to tell, either now or in the recent past, have been this unconcerned about either rules or appearances.
Conflict Resolution in the Confederacy.
Got a problem? Not feeling good about it? Maybe, fr'instance, you're disputing a hotel bill. How do you handle such a situation if you feel you've been overcharged, when talking to the staff?
Kill them. Or try to. Even AFTER his entire bill was voided by the owners of the hotel. He still threatened to kill them, then did his best to carry out his promise.
This asshole drove his truck into the lobby of a hotel in Texas, crashing into the desk, narrowly missing two women by inches. Seeing that they were still alive, he backed up and tried it again.
The guy had already spoken to a cop in the parking lot who offered to go in and talk to the hotel staff (again, after he got his way). But talking is not good enough in the Confederacy.
Don't know why he didn't just shoot them.
I realize making broad assumptions based on the actions of a single individual isn't a very good idea, but time and again we've seen the anger, the out of control anger, of wingers, amped up by Fox lies, the lies of Confederate pols, hatred of the other, hatred of the government. We're at a bad place, kids. When people can't even handle a simple disagreement--a disagreement they WIN--without resorting to violence.
And how do I know this guy is a winger? I don't. But look at the tape. Does this guy look like he reads the NYRB or supports progressive values?
And speaking of anger, hatred, and violence in the Confederacy...
You're gonna have to read this one yourself. This should cement Marvin's regular references to "Adolf" Trump.
Words have consequences. Word matter.
Akhilleus, for the first time in maybe 75 years we hear and see the word fascist repeatedly and yet no one looks at this seriously. The problem is in large part the clowns haven't got the guts or any interest in anything but themselves. Let see if someone takes on Adolf tonight. I doubt it.
Marvin,
I think in large part, the whole Nazi thing had, for some time, become a bit campy. We were (most of us) far enough away from the horrors of WWII with its death camps and mass murder so that we could stand at a couple of removes from the worst of that era. Barely 20 years after the war a TV sitcom based on life in a concentration camp was a comedy hit, featuring clever, resourceful allied officers and bumbling, inept Nazis. "I see nothing..." said the Nazi guard/imbecile Sgt. Schultz.
Nazis became standard pulp villains in pop culture entertainment. "The Boys from Brazil" and "Marathon Man" were scary, but more in the manner of horror movies where you know the monsters aren't real. The American Nazis in "The Blues Brothers" were mustache twirlers and the Nazis in "The Producers" were...well, you know.
I remember people calling Richard Nixon a fascist. He was an authoritarian asshole but not a by the book fascist. Henry Kissinger was another story. But after another 10 or 20 years went by, the rise of neo-Nazi movements here and in Europe were starting to be a lot less funny. The threatened march by the National Socialist Party in Skokie (one in six residents were Holocaust survivors) drew national attention to exactly how unfunny this stuff could be but the right-wing support for such displays of arrogant, authoritarian white supremacy remained largely under cover and stayed that way for a few years.
Reagan made public hatred and vicious displays of animosity safe again for the card carrying bigots. I mean, look where he kicked off his campaign! He made it okay to invent straw men (and women) in order to focus the attention of those bigots on groups and individuals who "didn't belong", who weren't "deserving", and who were "bringing the country down".
Fast forward another 20 years and the kind of hateful, paranoid rhetoric that used to be buried in whack job journals and cheaply made magazines sold from the back racks of smoke shops is now peddled gleefully by presidential candidates.
People better take it seriously because the stuff they've been saying "could never happen here" is looking more and more like it could happen here.
Whyte,
Yes, that darn math.
But there was another factor that has delayed the population bomb's explosion, causing it to flicker since Ehrlich's book, not burst into an immediate conflagration. Ehrlich didn't anticipate Borlaug's Green Revolution that provided wheat hybrids able to vastly increase world food supplies.
The irony here, of course, is the same crowd that denies both math and science when to do so serves their immediate ends is always looking to the same brainy boys and girls, who told them they were on a collision course with obdurate physical reality, to pull the chestnuts they have deliberately placed in the fire out yet again.
But wishful thinking aside, as the rising seas and the millions of homeless people in refugee camps tell us, there are limits to growth.
If only we could arrange things so that only the idiots who create the mess did the suffering.
Ken,
"If only..."
My hope for the New Year.
How fitting that the EPA gets called out for breaking federal rules for "engaging in 'covert propaganda'" to convince Americans that clean water is a worthwhile cause for their health and well-being (shame on them!), yet the federal government can't seem to take its overly cautious thumb out of its ass regarding truly damaging "(c)overt propaganda" spewing from the giant odious orifice blown open by Citizens United.
Seems to me like we're sending the hounds on the wrong hunt, no?
Or maybe the system is working just like it's supposed to...
@safari
Share your take on the EPA being called out by the GAO. I reread the article three times this morning to try and figure out exactly what was so terribly covert and underhanded about what they did. Lobbying? Propaganda?
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/15/us/politics/epa-broke-the-law-by-using-social-media-to-push-water-rule-auditor-finds.html
"Debate" Tidbit . . .
The camera-ready (oversized & jeweled) crucifix gracing Snarly Fiorina's décolletée.
Debate. Ugh. After five hours of driving a U-Haul truck (plus the loading) I checked into my hotel and went to get a small dinner. The debate was on in the bar. It was not the winding down I was looking for. I really wonder what planet these people have been living on for the last seven years with their "No Leadership" etc. My wife suggests Pluto, which is possible since scientists deny it's a planet.