;)
The Commentariat -- March 13, 2016
Presidential Race
District of Columbia: With 100 percent reporting, Rubio got 37.3 percent of the vote & 10 delegates, followed by Kasich with 35.5 & 9 delegates, Trump with 13.8 & no delegates & Cruz with 12.4 & no delegates. ...
... The Washington, D.C., Republican caucuses end at 9:00 pm ET. ...
... Katherine Shaver of the Washington Post: "Thousands of District Republicans -- usually such a small cohort that they joke about holding meetings in phone booths -- waited in long lines Saturday to vote in what many saw as the city's most influential GOP presidential primary in years."
Wyoming is holding "county conventions" Saturday which will "allocate twelve pledged delegates on March 12. The remaining delegates will be allocated at the state convention on April 16," per the New York Times. At 8:00 pm ET with all of the counties reporting, Cruz has 67 percent of the vote & 9 delegates, Rubio 19.5 & one delegate, & Trump has 7 percent & one delegate. That only adds up to 11 delegates, but then Republicans don't do math. Update: According to Politico, "Uncommitted" gets one delegate.
CNN: "Ted Cruz ... picked up a delegate in Guam, but the state's other five delegates remain uncommitted."
Dangerous Times. Karen Tumulty, et al., of the Washington Post: "An already ugly presidential campaign has descended to a new level -- one where the question is no longer whether Donald Trump can be stopped on his march to the Republican presidential nomination, but whether it is possible to contain what he has unleashed across the country. Violence at Trump's rallies has escalated sharply, and the reality-show quality of his campaign has taken a more ominous turn in the past few days.... The racially tinged anger that has both fueled Trump's political rise and stoked the opposition to it has turned into a force unto itself....
"But Trump should not be viewed in isolation or as the product of a single election, President Obama said Saturday at a fundraiser in Dallas. Obama said those who 'feed suspicion about immigrants and Muslims and poor people, and people who aren't like "us," and say that the reason that America is in decline is because of "those" people. That didn't just happen last week. That narrative has been promoted now for years.'...
"GOP political consultant Stuart Stevens, who was a top strategist for 2012 nominee Mitt Romney, said Trump's rhetoric is 'almost verbatim' what segregationist George Wallace was saying in his third-party 1968 presidential campaign." ...
... CW: It's nice to see the MSM & public figures catching up to what we've been saying here since last year. ...
... NEW. Kyle Balluck of the Hill: "Donald Trump early Sunday accused Bernie Sanders of lying by saying the Vermont senator's 'disrupters' aren't told to go to the GOP front-runner's events. Trump also threatened in a tweet that his supporters would go to Sanders events if the Democratic hopeful wasn't 'careful.'" ...
All I know is what's on the Internet. -- Donald Trump, Sunday, on why he accused a man who tried to jump on stage with him of probably being linked to ISIS
... Kevin Robillard of Politico: "Donald Trump ... said Sunday he would consider paying the legal bills for an elderly man who was arrested after sucker-punching a protester at a Trump rally in North Carolina, while defending his claims a man who rushed the stage at Trump rally was linked to ISIS. 'We'll see,' Trump said Sunday on NBC's 'Meet The Press. 'I'm going to take a look at it.'"
... Evelyn Rupert of the Hill: "Video from outside of Donald Trump's rally in Kansas City, Mo., shows at least five police officers using pepper spray against protesters." ...
... Evelyn Rupert: "Trump ... promis[ed] to press charges against people who interrupt his events from now on. 'I'm going to start pressing charges against all these people,' he said at a rally in Kansas City, Mo. 'And then we won't have a problem.'"...
... Update. Mark Tracy of the New York Times: "During the event, inside a grand old theater with inlaid carvings, a chandelier, a mezzanine and upper deck, Mr. Trump, notably hoarse, called on the police to arrest people who were merely demonstrating. He drew some of the audience's loudest cheers when he pledged, 'I'll file whatever charges you want.' The police escorted people out throughout the event, though they did not appear to have arrested anyone just for speaking up. At one point Mr. Trump held up the protesters as examples of the kind of people his campaign was massed against: 'It's all a little group that wants free lunch.'" ...
... Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "Donald J. Trump announced from the stage at a rally in Kansas City, Mo., that a man who had charged him at an event earlier Saturday was 'probably' linked to the Islamic State, appearing to base his statement on an Internet video that has been described as a hoax." CW: So, speaking of suing people, it sound like that guy has a pretty good case of defamation of character against Trump. On the other hand, all bets are off if Trump should become president because there's a good chance he would declare himself not-sueable. ...
... Jose DelReal & Jenna Johnson of the Washington Post: "An unidentified man charged at ... Donald Trump on Saturday during a campaign event ... in Dayton, [Ohio,] one day after increased security concerns forced his campaign to cancel an event in Chicago. The Secret Service quickly surrounded the real estate mogul after a man attempted to get beyond the barricades to the dais where Trump was standing. The man, whose motives remain unclear, was charged with disorderly conduct and inciting panic by the Dayton Police Department, according to an official familiar with the matter." ...
... CW: Trump told the crowd he was "ready for it"; that is, to take on the interloper, "but it's much easier if the cops do it." Yeah, right. Our superhero. ...
... It's All Obama's Bernie's Fault. Dave Weigel of the Washington Post: "In the wake of last night's canceled Chicago rally, Donald Trump has taken to blaming Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and supporters of his Democratic Party bid for president for incitement. He debuted the argument on Friday night's cable news coverage, as footage of protesters cheering 'Bernie' played under Trump's phoned-in interviews. He honed the argument at rallies Saturday. 'They were taunted, they were harassed by these other people,' said Trump at his [Saturday] morning rally in Dayton, Ohio. 'These other people, by the way, some represented Bernie, our communist friend. With Bernie, he should really get up and say to his people: stop. Stop. Not me, stop.' In a statement released Saturday afternoon, Sanders chose not to do that. 'As is the case virtually every day, Donald Trump is showing the American people that he is a pathological liar,' Sanders wrote. "Obviously, while I appreciate that we had supporters at Trump's rally in Chicago, our campaign did not organize the protests. What caused the protests at Trump's rally is a candidate that has promoted hatred and division against Latinos, Muslims, women, and people with disabilities, and his birther attacks against the legitimacy of President Obama. What caused the violence at Trump’s rally is a campaign whose words and actions have encouraged it on the part of his supporters.'" ...
... Alex Seitz-Wald of MSNBC: "When Ja'Mal Green, a prominent black activist and Bernie Sanders supporter in Chicago, saw that Donald Trump was coming to the University of Illinois Chicago, he knew what he had to do. 'Everyone, get your tickets to this. We're all going in!!!! #SHUTITDOWN,' he posted on Facebook last week. Little did he know they actually would shut it down." Seitz-Wald reports on how activists organized via social media & developed a plan to disrupt the rally. MoveOn.org, which has endorsed Sanders, assisted the protesters. This all happened within a four-day span.
... CW: The Audacity of Both-Siderism. Michael Barbaro, et al., of the New York Times write a classic both-sides-do-it report. If you want to know how Trump gets away with blaming Sanders for the violence at the Chicago rally, you need only read this above-the-fold New York Times "analysis." Why, it's kinda like the reporters got together with Hillary Clinton to blame the anti-Trump protesters. ...
... NEW. Evelyn Rupert: "Hillary Clinton penned an article in Medium Saturday, expanding on her previous apology for praising Nancy and Ronald Reagans' response to HIV and AIDS." Her essay is here. ...
... Abby Phillip of the Washington Post: Hillary Clinton's message about "political unity" in response to the violence at Donald Trump's rallies failed to even mention Trump &, by the way she invoked the massacre in Charleston, S.C., seemed to blame black protesters. "Later on Saturday, [perhaps in response to reaction to her initial statement,] Clinton addressed Trump more directly in a statement, criticizing him for encouraging violence at his rallies." ...
... CW: I have no idea what Barbaro & Clinton really think, because, like Will Rogers, I only know what I read in the papers. And what the papers say is that the problem isn't Trump so much as it is the reaction to Trump & his ilk. The idea is that the rest of us should show more restraint & let the demagoguery proceed. I'll bet that's what a lot of well-mannered Germans thought in 1930s Germany. Sorry about the argumentum ad Hitlerum, but I kinda mean it. In the meantime, over the course of 24 hours, Clinton has managed to alienate gay voters, black voters & everyone in solidarity with their interests. Something is way off here. ...
... Marc Caputo of Politico: "Donald Trump claimed Saturday that he's 'asking law enforcement to check for dishonest early voting in Florida,' but neither the state's law enforcement agency nor elections officials have received any complaints or reports of voting irregularities." ...
... The Trump supporter who made a Nazi salute outside the Chicago rally to fend off protesters says she was born in Germany but she's not a Nazi. Great. ...
... The Nut Doesn't Fall Far from the Tree. Daniel Politi of Slate: Donald Trump, Jr., retweeted a claim by the "Supreme Dark Lord" that the not-Nazi woman was actually Bernie Sanders campaigner Portia Boulger in disguise; Junior complained "the media will never run with this." Perhaps because it's not true. Boulger, who doesn't look like the not-Nazi lady, was in Ohio. ...
... Robert Mackey of the Intercept: "For months now, Donald Trump has been complaining about the level of violence inflicted on protesters at his campaign rallies. Complaining, that is, about protesters -- who have been tackled and kicked, pushed, spat on, and sucker-punched -- not being subjected to nearly enough violence." ...
... Ezra Klein: "Violence is scary. But violence-as-ideology is terrifying. And that's where Trump's campaign has gone.... The great mistake the media makes with Donald Trump is to pretend he has no ideology.... Like most nationalists, the emotional center of Trump's ideology is an Us vs. Them argument.... He is a man with an evident appetite for suppressing dissent with violence, a man who believes America's problem is that it's too gentle to its dissidents. Trump is making an argument for a politics backed by force, for a security service unleashed from 'political correctness,' for a country where protesting has consequences. The results are playing out before us, night after night, on our televisions." ...
... Isaac Chotiner of Slate: "It was once easy to root for Trump to blow up the GOP. Not anymore." ...
... Rosie Gray of BuzzFeed: "Breitbart senior editor-at-large Joel Pollak ordered staffers in an internal chatroom to stop defending Michelle Fields, the staffer who was allegedly manhandled by Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski."
Beth Reinhard of the Wall Street Journal: "One day after he officially endorsed Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, former rival Ben Carson said he would be 'willing' to be his vice president.
Asked at a Republican Party fundraiser in Broward County, one of the biggest counties in Florida, whether he would be amenable to the No. 2 slot, Mr. Carson said, 'I've told Mr. Trump that if it was really going to make a big difference I'd be willing to.'" CW: Okay, then, one more thing I don't have in common with Ben Carson.
Yamiche Alcindor of the New York Times: "A day after many of his supporters protested at a rally for Donald J. Trump [in Chicago], Bernie Sanders defended the demonstrators and pointedly attacked the city's mayor, Rahm Emanuel, for closing schools and firing teachers."
Amy Chosick of the New York Times: Hillary Clinton said Saturday that Bernie Sanders "had not always been such an advocate [for healthcare reform].... 'I don't know,' Mrs. Clinton said. 'Where was he when I was trying to get health care in '93 and '94?'... The answer: 'Literally, standing right behind her,' a Sanders spokesman, Mike Casca, said on Twitter, posting a photo from a 1994 news conference that shows Mr. Sanders next to Mrs. Clinton when the then first lady spoke about the White House's proposed health care overhaul. A spokeswoman for Mrs. Clinton, Jennifer Palmieri," responded, 'Exactly, he was standing behind her. She was out in front.'"
Caitlin Yilek of the Hill: Jennifer Epstein of Bloomberg tweeted a 1993 vintage photo of Clinton & Sanders conferring one-on-one & side-by-side, apparently about healthcare; at the bottom of the photo is a handwritten note from Clinton to Sanders: "With thanks for your commitment to real health care access for all Americans...." Includes photo with readable inscription. CW: Clinton is really off her game. Or else she thought Bernie had burned the evidence & she was free to make up stuff.
Other News & Views
Edward O. Wilson, in a New York Times op-ed: "Unless we wish to pauperize the natural world drastically and permanently, believing that later generations will be smart enough to find a way to bring equilibrium to the land, seas and air, then we, the current inheritors of this beautiful world, must take more serious action to preserve the rest of life." CW: I'd be happy to let the species Drumpfus donaldus go extinct; unfortunately, there's already a Drumpfus donaldus secundus, & he's just as much a mutant form as the primus.
Oh, Good Lord! Emma Brown of the Washington Post: "The Christian Educators Association International, an organization that sees the nation's public schools as 'the largest single mission field in America,' aims to show Christian teachers how to live their faith -- and evangelize in public schools -- without running afoul of the Constitution's prohibition on the government establishing or promoting any particular religion.... Although the Christian Educators Association is small, it is at the center of a pending Supreme Court case that has the potential to substantially weaken public sector unions in more than two dozen states. The association is a plaintiff in the case, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, which challenges the right of teachers unions to collect dues from nonmembers."
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Reader Comments (14)
Good morning all,
Inspired by the E.O.Wilson piece linked above, my Thought For the Day:
"The survival value of human intelligence has never been adequately demonstrated."
~ from 'The Andromeda Strain' by Michael Crichton
(A spokeswoman for Mrs. Clinton, Jennifer Palmieri," responsed, “Exactly, he was standing behind her. She was out in front.'”)
Is this spokeswoman insinuating that Bernie should have elbowed Hillary aside, put her in "her place" and stolen the spotlight, instead of just providing important symbolic support to her cause? Should everyone who is advocating for reforms be allowed a podium and a microphone so we can be clear that they're all there for the same intentions? WTF does this spokeswoman's response really mean?
I agree with Marie's observations that Hillary's communication machine has been going off the rails as of late. After starting out far too cautious about messaging, strategically straddling polls with enough wiggle room to later shed outmoded positions, now she seems to have renounced preparing a strategy altogether, choosing instead to spout off complete fabrications and subversive innuendos in a Quixotic approach of engaging in every ill-prepared battle while simultaneously marginalizing her bewildered allies. Maybe it's the Trump phenomenon that seems to be accelerating the campaign cycle and bringing instability and unease to those actually concerned about governance in this country. Certainly stress levels have been increasing as Trump revs up the nationalist fervor while the GOP continues full-obstructionism. Maybe she needs a massage and some spa treatment. What she definitely does need is to get her shit together.
So it is a crime to demonstrate against Benito. The problem is he really believes it. My greatest frustration is not his behavior, it's the lack of serious evaluation and presentation by the media. Hello America! The joke is over. Stop using the word clown, stop calling this a reality TV performance.
And if you want proof that America is really two places, just think about the story of the women running for a position controlling education in Texas.
HEIL TRUMP!!
@safari: Hear, hear! I think your recommendation for a massage and spa treatments might, indeed, do the trick. Hillary does seem off her game. Perhaps the Trump riots are unnerving to everyone––as Ezra Klein says "violence as ideology is terrifying." And yet––this brutal act of campaigning takes it's toll and I wonder whether after months of this you fall on your face a bit. I also think Hillary's handlers need to start eating better breakfasts––more Wheaties, the breakfast of Champions, rather than sweet buns and coffee. And Jennifer P. might want to reevaluate the standing behind in a picture thing––it usually means that person is behind you and your agenda unless he's planning to shoot you in the back.
D.C.,
Thanks for the ticket to the Way Back machine. I read "Andromeda Strain" as a high school freshman, as my science fiction phase was at full throttle. It remains a distinctly memorable narrative adventure replete with fascinating bits of actual science, especially the medical variety, to go along with the fictive kind. I especially loved the descriptions of the decontamination process that included a blast of UV radiation that flashed off the top layer of the dermis, the better to ensure that not a molecule of contaminants could be carried into the clean room labs. Would there were such a process that could rid us of the contamination of Drumpfus Donaldus (thanks, Marie! A keeper).
On second thought, however, it appears that, as a species, both politically and spiritually, we need occasional exposure to the kind of virulent pathogens like the drumpfus, the better to revitalize the ability of the body politic to fight off such deadly infections.
I recall that, in Crichton's tale of near extinction, the only humans to escape horrible death from the extra-terrestrial plague were a crying baby and a steno sniffing drunk. I know what you're thinking, sounds like a description of the most prevalent types at a Drumpf rally.
Make of it what you will. I've been trying to come up with a better moral but leave us say simply that even a nasty little bug like is survivable. But prolonged exposure could have dire consequences.
Should have been "Sterno-sniffing drunk"...
The line up on this morning's "talking head derby" caught my eye. Of all the five major network news outlets, only one did not feature Herr Trump. Did CBS suddenly get religion or were they not on Trump's approved list?
:) Actually, Ak ...the first (another fat finger mishap?) version works for me!
Yes, some strange ladies out there...the church-lady one in Texas is a total nut job. The "I-wasn't-really-giving-the Nazi-salute" one in Chicago isn't any prize. Followed CWs link above to the Slate story...and discovered a bonus link about Brigitt Petersen aka Parrot Lady! Link to a 1988 Mike Royko piece on the parrot lost by United Airlines.
Mrs. Peterson is/was really into " parrots " Breeding, raising, selling. (Back then, Roykoi inserted one his choice bon mots into said article: "Incidentally, it costs $155, plus $35 for the carton, to ship a parrot to Hawaii. I mention that in case some tiny person wants to save money by sticking some feathers on himself and traveling as a parrot.")
Akhilleus,
Buzzards. Buzzards also survived the Andromeda Strain. Another similarity. (humming theme music from The Twilight Zone)
I wonder why it is Donald Trump cannot see that what he accuses the demonstrators of doing to his rallies is no different that what he's doing to the country.
So Clinton's campaign is showing the strain, and there are definite signs of raging paranoia animating the Trump ("all I know is what I read on the Internet") circus, and yet the conventions are still months away... What will it be like come November? I shudder.
Seems we're looking at the unintended but predictable consequences of our Citizens United fueled perpetual campaign season. Not even those who begin sane can maintain a high level performance in the public eye our new and nutty campaign cycle demands.
On another subject, would recommend the last half of the Thomas Frank assessment of the world trade in global virtue "Nor a Lender Be" in the April Harpers Magazine. (Can't link it or copy the address but Harpers will provide one free article/month, so Google should do it)
Frank writes about the commerce in easy virtue so common among today's billionaire class. The Clinton Foundation dies not escape his gimlet eye or rhetorical barrage....but since he is sane, Frank would still vote for her...
Why doesn't Jeh Johnson withdraw Trump's Secret Service protection unless Trump stops inciting violence at his rallies?
Nancy, that's a thought but it's never going to happen. Remember that the SS is the same group that was nowhere to be found when the man ran into the White House and almost made it into the (blah) president's quarters. I think they're taking their orders directly from Trump.
E.O. Wilson may the finest mind of our era, apologies to Einstein. Note that his optimum still predicts a mass extinction, albeit less drastic. I think he makes a small underestimation: that 50% reserves can be accomplished without undermining property rights. I cannot imagine anything more toxic to society, other than the population explosion, than privatization of natural resources, including land, imbedded irreversibly in millennia of tradition, where the spoils just go to the winners.
Andromeda was amusing, but Margaret Atwood's trilogy beginning with Oryx and Crake is not just chilling, but to us career biology academics, 100% plausible. And already well underway. Recall that she predicted the Taliban et al. in The Handmaid's Tale.