;)
The Commentariat -- March 4, 2015
Internal links & defunct video removed.
CW: See also yesterday's Commentariat. I posted quite a few links (labelled "NEW") after noon.
Boehner Ends Another Crisis of His Own Making. Ashley Parker of the New York Times: "The House on Tuesday passed a bill that would fund the for the rest of the fiscal year, averting a partial shutdown of the agency after weeks of uncertainty, but inflaming conservative lawmakers. The legislation passed, 257 to 167, with only 75 Republican votes, and it now heads to President Obama's desk, where he is expected to sign it." ...
... Steve Benen: "Since the Republican victories in the 2010 midterms, Congress has become dysfunctional on a historic scale. Lawmakers have no meaningful legislative accomplishments since the Democratic majorities of 2010, and tasks that were once simple are now nearly impossible. But since January 2011, Congress has excelled in one area: manufacturing avoidable crises. If there's one thing a GOP majority has guaranteed, it's that the nation's legislative branch will careen, over and over again, from one self-imposed crisis to the next." Benen has the list. Very impressive. ...
... Scott Wong of the Hill: "The opening weeks of the 114th Congress have been nothing short of a disaster for Republicans, who declared upon taking control of both chambers last fall that the era of governing by crisis and fiscal cliffs was over.... Counting an emergency measure to keep the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) running through Friday, Congress has sent President Obama a total of only four bills, even as Republicans promised to get off to a fast start this session." CW: Mind you, this is a straight report, not an opinion piece. ...
... BUT "disaster"? Maybe not. ...
... Digby: "Who know what any of this really adds up to for the GOP but in their view it's been worth a lot. Over the course of these last few years of rolling from one crisis to another they have increased their margin in the House dramatically and they won a majority in the Senate. So I wouldn't expect these games of chicken to stop any time soon." ...
... Jonathan Bernstein of Bloomberg View: "Pundits and reporters have portrayed the chain of events as a disaster for the speaker, and are in jeopardy. So why do I think Boehner's 'defeat' was actually a brilliant maneuver? ... On one hand, the speaker gave the radicals and those who voted with them a moment of triumph when they spiked the bill. On the other, it was a good reminder for most mainstream House conservatives, who oppose Obama's immigration actions but don't want a shutdown, that the alternative to Boehner is chaos.... Boehner is wise to accept these 24-hour fiascos, even if they spread reports of coups against him. The griping is just for show."
Arhsad Mohammed of Reuters: "Iran rejected on Tuesday as 'unacceptable' U.S. President Barack Obama's demand that it freeze sensitive nuclear activities for at least 10 years but said it would continue talks on a deal, Iran's semi-official Fars news agency reported. Iran laid out the position as the U.S. and Iranian foreign ministers met for a second day of negotiations and as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a stinging critique of the agreement they are trying to hammer out." CW: Yeah, thanks for your help, Bibi. ...
... Here's the transcript of Benjamin Netanhayu's speech before a joint session of the U.S. Congress. Video of the speech is here. ...
... William Booth & Ruth Eglash of the Washington Post: "Israeli commentators generally gave the Netanyahu speech high marks, with supporters calling it one of the best of the prime minister's political career. Others said that the speech was rousing and demonstrated the support that Israel and Netanyahu enjoy in Congress, but that Netanyahu did not break new ground or offer a new way of dealing with Iran's nuclear ambitions." ...
... Thomas Erdbrink of the New York Times: "The tensions between the United States and Israel over how to address Iran's nuclear program and a politically divisive speech Tuesday by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to the United States Congress are playing to an eager audience in Tehran. The news media [in Tehran] has [sic.] highlighted the division as evidence that Israel is being isolated by its otherwise steadfast ally and analysts are examining how the rift might affect the outcome of the nuclear negotiations." ...
... Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, an Israel hawk, reflects on the possible impacts of Netanyahu's speech. ...
... Matthew Duss of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, in Slate: "Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did President Obama an enormous favor Tuesday. Given the opportunity, on perhaps the world's biggest political stage, to articulate the best possible case against the nuclear deal currently being negotiated with Iran, Netanyahu came up empty. He whiffed.... Netanyahu had the chance Tuesday to offer a better plan, with the whole world watching. He failed miserably, and in so doing demonstrated conclusively that there isn't one." ...
... Ed Kilgore: "It's pretty shocking that Netanyahu was able not only to dictate a speech to Congress and its timing, but the scope of issues he'd need to address. It's less a reflection of his cleverness and audacity than of the peculiar needs of our country's Republican Party." ...
... Jim Fallows of the Atlantic: To Bibi, it's 1938 all over again. To others, not so much. Fallows runs down some of the ways in which Iran is not like Nazi Germany. ...
... Here's another excellent post by Fallows on how Netanyahu's objectives are at odds with the interests of the United States. CW: It would be nice if Republicans had the brainpower to see that they are undermining their own country's -- as well as the world's -- security interests by promoting Bibi's narrow worldview. Instead, Republicans still hold to a policy of Bomb-Bomb-Bomb Iran All of the Middle East Except Israel. That's worked out brilliantly so far (See Iraq, Libya). And it's so humanitarian. ...
... AND, to make Fallows' point, here's Ted Cruz. Betsy Woodruff of Slate: "Ted Cruz Compares Obama to Neville Chamberlain and Iran to Nazi Germany." ...
... Kevin Drum of Mother Jones: "There's really no Plan B here, and even the hawks are mostly reluctant to explicitly say that we should just up and launch a massive air assault on Iran." ...
... CW: Hey, let's check in to see how international policy expert & all-around fine human being Rush Limbaugh assesses the situation:
You look at how Obama has treated and does treat Netanyahu, you would think that Netanyahu was a white policeman from Ferguson, Missouri. I mean, that's the conclusion that you would come to. Or that he was one of the cops that choked Eric Garner, or he was one of the jurors in the Trayvon Martin case.
... ALSO, Sen. Lindsey Graham says he's sorry about making a crack about Nancy Pelosi's facial "surgeries." CW: Apparently Graham was unaware that when you say stupid stuff at a "private fund-raiser," some person in the room is likely to share it with the press. Someone might point him to Not-President Forty-seven Percent and, way two weeks back, to Rudy Obama-Doesn't-Love-Me.
Republicans Show Their Concern for Income Inequality. Jordan Carney of the Hill: "The Senate will vote Wednesday on a GOP-backed motion that would undo a controversial National Labor Relations Board rule that makes it easier for workers to hold union elections. Republicans are using the Congressional Review Act that allows lawmakers to undo regulation through a motion of disapproval, which needs a majority vote in both chambers. The motion can't be filibustered or amended, which will help it bypass Democratic opposition. If the bill gets to his desk, however, the White House says President Obama will veto it. Republicans say the rule is unfair to businesses."
... we expect the firms we oversee to follow the law and to operate in an ethical manner. Too often in recent years, bankers at large institutions have not done so, sometimes brazenly. These incidents, both individually and in their totality, raise legitimate questions of whether there may be pervasive shortcomings in the values of large financial firms that might undermine their safety and soundness. -- Janet Yellen, Federal Reserve Chair
Binyamin Appelbaum of the New York Times: "As this recovery gains momentum, and the labor market starts to look more normal, a new report offers a reminder that black workers once again are lagging behind.... Tthe problem is a good illustration of the limits of monetary policy."
Carrie Johnson of NPR: "A federal civil rights investigation of the Ferguson, Mo., police force has concluded that the department violated the Constitution with discriminatory policing practices against African Americans, according to a law enforcement official familiar with the report.... The full report will be released on Wednesday, but the source described two emails included in the report that were exchanged between police and local court employees. One says Obama will not be president for long because 'what black man holds a steady job for four years.' Another says a black woman in New Orleans was admitted to a hospital to end her pregnancy and then got a check two weeks later from 'Crime Stoppers.'"
Jon Swaine & Oliver Laughland of the Guardian: "The Department of Justice announced on Wednesday that after a six-month inquiry it has concluded no civil rights charges should be brought against [Darren] Wilson for killing Michael Brown. A grand jury in St Louis decided last November not to indict Wilson on state charges." Read on: this didn't satisfy Wilson's supporters.
Annals of "Justice," "General Amnesty" Edition. David Graham of the Atlantic: "The Obama administration is against intelligence officials leaking classified information -- but some conditions may apply. If you're a CIA analyst who talks to reporters, you might end up serving 30 months in federal prison or facing more. Even a reporter could end up being named a co-conspirator by prosecutors. But if you're a decorated general, a former CIA director, and a former member of the Cabinet, you might get off with a $40,000 fine and two years of probation. Just ask David Petraeus...." ...
... ** Marcy Wheeler provides some details of Petraeus's "indiscretions" that show the affair itself was a trivial sideshow: "For mishandling some of the most important secrets the nation has, Petraeus will plead guilty to a misdemeanor. Petraeus, now an employee of a top private equity firm, will be fined $40,000 and serve two years of probation. He will not, however, be asked to plead guilty at all for lying to FBI investigators[, which he did]. CW: Read the whole post. Let's hope the judge rejects the plea deal. It is as corrupt as is Petraeus himself. Several journalists have noted that pleading guilty to only a misdemeanor would allow General Betrayus to return to "public service." ...
... CW: Will the Senate now pass a resolution apologizing to MoveOn.org? Don't hold your breath. ...
I'm proud of the fact that basically you've had an administration that's been in place for six years in which there hasn't been a major scandal. -- David Axelrod, former Obama advisor, last month ...
... CW: Sorry, Axelrod, this is a scandal, a scandalous misuse of "prosecutorial discretion." I don't doubt that in view of Petraeus's prominence, Eric Holder signed off on this deal. This is classic Holder; he was a tool of the "connected" people going in, and he's a tool going out.
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd.
Michael Tomasky rips the New York Times' reporting on the Hillary e-mail story. Tomasky asserts that Michael Schmidt's Times report was purposely misleading.
CW: We learned last week that Bill O'Reilly lied to his mother. (Of course we learned that from Bill O'Reilly, so that could be a lie, too.) Now we learn that Bill'O also lied to children & teens for fun & profit.
Presidential Race
Patrick Marley of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin "Gov. Scott Walker on Tuesday embraced a move to ban abortion after 20 weeks after repeatedly declining to spell out where he stood on the issue in last year's re-election campaign. It is the latest example of Walker downplaying a major issue until after being re-elected and climbing to the top tier of likely 2016 presidential candidates. Walker did not campaign on plans to spin off the University of Wisconsin System as a public authority and now says he will sign so-called right-to-work legislation even though he insisted for years he would keep the measure from reaching his desk." ...
... See also Nadd2's commentary in today's thread. Also, as Nadd2 suggested in yesterday's thread, now that Hillary Clinton is in deserved hot water for her peculiar/stupid/careless decision to use her personal e-mail account for all her State Department correspondence, she can expect a pass from Scott Walker. ...
... Michael Schmidt & Amy Chozick of the New York Times: "Federal regulations, since 2009, have required that all emails be preserved as part of an agency's record-keeping system. In Mrs. Clinton's case, her emails were kept on her personal account and her staff took no steps to have them preserved as part of State Department record. An examination of records requests sent to the department reveals how the practice protected a significant amount of her correspondence from the eyes of investigators and the public.... The White House, in its first response to the news, said it frowned on the practice of officials using their personal email accounts.... But political groups and news organizations said requests for records related to Mrs. Clinton had repeatedly gone unanswered." ...
... CW: Schmidt & Chozick directly contradict Michael Tomasky's assertion, in the post linked above, that "The new regs apparently weren’t fully implemented by State until a year and half after Clinton left State.... Clinton left the State Department on February 1, 2013.... The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) didn't issue the relevant guidance, declaring that email records of senior government officials are permanent federal records, until August 2013. Then, in September 2013, NARA issued guidance on personal email use." Take your pick. ...
The Washington Post story, by Karen Tumulty & Anne Gearan is here. Clinton reportedly used multiple personal e-mail accounts. ...
... Ron Fournier, the sanctimonious dope at the National Journal, equates Hillary Clinton's private e-mail stupidity with her husband's lies about Monica Lewinsky: "... here again is a reminder of the 1990s: When cornered, the Clintons denied facts and demonized detractors. The most obvious example is Bill Clinton's lying about his affair with a White House intern.... Less remembered is an independent counsel's finding of 'substantial evidence' that then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton lied under oath about her role in the 1993 White House travel office firings." But Fournier, if he could get over his hyperbole, does have a point: "[Hillary] Clinton's problem is ... a lack of shame about money, personal accountability, and transparency." ...
... Julian Hattem of the Hill: "Hillary Clinton's exclusive use of a personal email account to conduct official business as secretary of State ... seems to have stayed within the law, experts say. 'What she did was not technically illegal,' said Patrice McDermott, a former National Archives staffer and the head of the Open The Government coalition, a transparency group. However, 'it was highly inappropriate and it was inappropriate for the State Department to let this happen,' she said." ...
... Andrew Prokop of Vox: "The specific legal issue at play here, however, doesn't appear to be Clinton's use of her personal email -- but instead, the failure of Clinton and her aides to properly keep records of her work-related communications from that email account on State Department servers." ...
... Shane Harris of the Daily Beast: "A Clinton aide, who asked not to be named, flatly denied that Clinton let slip any secrets through her personal email. 'Using her own email account broke no laws, and ... was used for communicating non-classified information only,' the aide told The Daily Beast." CW: Why the anonymity? Probably so Trey Gowdy won't subpoena her/him. ...
... ** Digby: "Maybe there's something truly nefarious going on. I'm open to believing it. But at this point what I see is that Villager hysterical impulse asserting itself once again.... Villager handwringing over how it doesn't really matter if it's true or not because 'it's out there' and it 'exposes her character', is cheap and shallow journalistic masturbation." ...
... Steve Benen: "Politically..., Republicans find themselves in an awkward position. The RNC issued a statement asking, '[I]t all begs the question: what was Hillary Clinton trying to hide?' Putting aside the misuse of 'begs the question,' the Republican track record makes this a difficult question to ask." Benen cites both Karl Rove, who got caught flouting the Official Records Act & Mitt Romney, who destroyed e-mails for the admitted purpose of hiding official correspondence. "... Republicans will have to somehow come up with an explanation for why Clinton's misstep is scandalous, while GOP officials and candidates who did the exact same thing are beyond reproach." ...
... Steve M.: "Remember the huge Mitt Romney email scandal of 2012? No?... Which is not to say that what Hillary did was justified -- it put her above the law and it suggests that she's hiding something, or at least that she has a neurotic tendency toward concealment even when there's nothing to conceal.... This reveals bad judgment, but it's not going to be an enduring scandal unless there's much more to it." ...
** Jaime Fuller of New York has an excellent rundown of what reporters have learned about Hillary Clinton's e-mail account scandalette. Here's one factoid: "John Kerry is the first Secretary of State to rely on government email." And another: "The regulations requiring Clinton to save emails weren't in place until after she left the State Department."
Beyond the Beltway
Lyle Denniston of ScotusBlog: "Sharply criticizing the Supreme Court for its recent actions on same-sex marriage, the Alabama Supreme Court on Tuesday evening ordered all state judges who have the duty to issue licenses to wed to stop doing so immediately for same-sex couples.... The seven-to-one decision, made in three opinions running to a total of 148 pages, put at least some of the sixty-eight probate judges in the state in the position of having to obey directly contradictory court orders.... Chief Justice Roy S. Moore, who had undertaken on his own to try to stop the state probate judges from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples..., did not take part in Tuesday's ruling. His absence from it was not explained." CW: Up next: secession. Really, this is extraordinary. ...
... The New York Times story, by Campbell Robertson, is here.
John Danforth, the former Republican Senator from Missouri & an Episcopalian priest, whose claim to fame is bringing us Clarence Thomas, delivered the eulogy for Missouri state auditor Thomas Schweich, who committed suicide last week. CW: Here's the part I find curious. Danforth blames dirty politics for Schweich's suicide, then launches into a related graf that begins, "Words do hurt. Words can kill." But Danforth says in the eulogy that he advised Schweich to be politically expedient & pursue any complaints about antisemitism sub rosa. Danforth admits he may have let down Schweich. Nonetheless, Danforth seems to absolve himself while blaming others. ...
... CW: I may be reflecting my own limitations here, but I feel certain an antisemitic whispering campaign was not the cause of Schweich's suicide. And neither was Danforth's failure to see it Schweich's way. Dirty politics is as old as the nation, & being "accused" of being Jewish is not normally life-shattering in a country where even the usual bigots strongly oppose antisemitism.
Not Photoshopped. Really.
Akhilleus asked in yesterday's thread, "Just wondering if Nelson (Mr. Morals) Shanks included the shadow of a TOW missile in his portrait of Ronald Reagan."
CW: Ha ha, very funny. If you were more into art appreciation, Akhilleus, you would know that the shadow behind Reagan in the Shanks portrait at left is of a Contra in camo. You can see where the Contra is wearing a bandana to hide his identity. Or else it's Davy Crockett.
See also yesterday's Commentariat for context.
News Ledes
AP: "Mark Lippert, the US ambassador to South Korea, has been slashed on the face and wrist by a man armed with a razor and screaming that the two Koreas should be unified. Pictures showed a stunned-looking Lippert staring at his blood-covered left hand and holding his right hand over a cut on the right side of his face, his pink tie splattered with blood."
Boston Globe: "The trial of alleged Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev" begins today.
Share Article
Reader Comments (22)
Over the weekend, Scott Walker was blasted by right-to-lifers for having a weak answer about abortion.
https://americanprinciplesproject.org/blog/walkers-terrible-sunday-interview-on-life/
Today, presto! He puts out a letter announcing he expects to sign a bill prohibiting abortion after 20 weeks (madison.com) we didn't even know the legislature was considering it, they're so busy passing right to work for less.
I bet he's glad to have abortion to focus on so he doesn't have to answer questions about HRC's emails.
Marie,
Yeah...that could be the shadow of a Contra in Camo (sounds like the title of an off-off-off Broadway play--either that or a chapter from Ollie North's autobi-dog-raphy), but it also might be the shadow of Jihadi Ron! After all, Reagan was sending high level weapons to our sworn Islamic enemies. What do you think Lyin' O'Reilly and his Ailes Assisted Hate Network would say were Obama to deliver in a secretive and illegal and unconstitutional manner, advanced weapons systems to ISIS?
Jihadi Ron. It's got a nice ring, doesn't it? And unlike all the bullshit lies and fantasies about Obama's Mooslim connections......it's absolutely, 100% provably true.
JIHADI RON!
He might as well have been cutting off heads himself, except that Nancy's astrologer might have complained about the timing, because, shit, a system worked out in ancient Babylon absolutely should be how we conduct our business in modern America: "Ron, Joan says that Mars is in Scorpio which means enemy anal insertion is not on the menu this month." "Well, damn it all, Nancy, what am I gonna do with all these jelly beans? Ed Meese says his ass is plumb full up. All those incriminating Wedtech documents had to go somewhere, ya know? Geez."
Sit down! Take a deep breathe! M. Stanton Evans is finally dead.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/04/us/m-stanton-evans-pioneer-of-conservative-movement-dies-at-80.html?ref=obituaries
Hillary uses the same email system as previous Secretaries of State. Benghazi!!!
Regardless of the email scandal revolving around Clinton's stint as the Secretary of State, I find it astonishing that the government hadn't already channeled all potentially sensitive documents onto secure routers and servers. I mean, we're talking about the Secretary of State here. Her/His job is to go around the world and push our various agendas through secret negotiations of multiple sorts, including information that often needs to be guarded confidential for multiple reasons.
It took until 2013 to officially put in place the protocol to monitor and manage email systems of high government positions? Our modern language is littered with cyberespionage and cyberwarfare and cyberspying and hacking and it took until 2013 to catch up with the 21st century? Astonishing.
The real scandal with the Hillary issue should be the mindblowing incompetence of our government officials to secure confidential information and winnow out any possible chances of breaches or leaking of important information. We've been discussing how the government has been hacking into everyone's emails with the NSA but now we have a potential reversal of fortunes: we're potentially relying on gmail and Yahoo! to protect the government from foreign hackers sucking up confidential information by nincompoops sending sensitive information out into cyberspace via gmail! Hopefully Hilary was aware of the potential dangers and she only used her email correspondence for daily blatherings with Bill, but if I were a foreign hacker I'd be hot on the case looking up potential other dimwits using personal emails for official business to see what kind of goodies I could dig up.
Here's a link to Rachel's show last night in which she exposes the Anti-Semitism in Missouri state politics: might shed some light on the suicide of Tom Schweich although I find it strange and very troubling that he would take his own life over this. The poor man must have been suffering from something other than fear of false rumors.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show#!#playlists
Re: Hillary hackers, on one paw NSA has the ability to record and recall every cellular data exchange in the world. On the other paw government regulation demands officials to save their messages. Seems to me to be a redundancy.
Did Hill's failure to secure her E-mail create problems? I don't know; here's one I cracked, "Bill, will be home late tonight. Please get a couple of quarts of Ben and Jerry's "Cherry Garcia". I'm going to pig out. Don't forget my dry cleaning. Money's in the bank from last nights fund raiser. Oh, and I told the CIA to back off of that little riot in Libya, C U later 😘😘😘 HC
It is interesting that almost no one talks about the fact that the negotiations with Iran includes United States, Russia, China, France and Britain and Germany (the P5 +1). So all of the major countries are involved but Bibi only talks to us. Yes, we are number 1 but it would be difficult to get the rest of the world to bomb Iran. Oh wait, that wasn't Bibi's alternative plan. No he had no plan, or no plan that he had the guts to actually say.
In the film, "The Shining," Jack Nicholson scares the beejezzus out of his already frightened wife by sticking his head through the door of the room where she's hiding and screams "Here's Johnny!!!!!" I'm afraid that this email business involving Hillary is just the beginning of the Republicans screaming through the doors, "Here's Hillary!!!" They have their big shovels out ready to dig up any dirt they can scare you with. Fox news was all over the BIG EMAIL SCANDAL last night.
Hillary made a rare appearance yesterday at an Emily's List 40yr. celebration conference: spoke of women's rise, women's rights, praising certain key players, but never mentioned anything about the email situation. Good for her.
WSJ is liveblogging the arguments from SCOTUS:
There's some discussion of standing...
RBG got right into the issue of standing. Alito, predictably, has set out his nicest tea tray with refreshments for the challengers. He's doing his best to make them feel at home and couldn't agree more with their lawyers about that nasty Obama. Kagan and Sotomayor are insisting on rationality. This won't go over well with the dwarfs...
This is why these cases should be streamed live. Video would be nice, but I'd settle for an audio feed perhaps with a background moderator letting listeners know who is speaking. Naturally, they would never have to mention the words "Clarence Thomas" unless he keeled over, and it wouldn't be hard to pick out the haughty snark-bark of the Dark Lord, but not everyone knows what Donald Verrilli sounds like or the lawyer for the plaintiffs.
I mean, what the hell, it's only the future of the country at stake.
But no, we have to wait for reporters to dash out into the hall and jot down what's happening so they can rush back in again.
It sounds as if there is an ongoing willful misreading of the intent of the law as to the federal government "coercing" states who don't want healthcare for their citizens, into setting up exchanges on their own, which is completely ass backwards (the government will step in and do it). If Johnny and the dwarfs decide to use this willful ignorance as the fulcrum over which to break the back of the law, this really will be a stunning victory for "moops" logic.
To Goldberg's #4, Netanyahu is an amoral dick and a bully and the Israeli equivalent of our seemingly interminable national treasure, Dick Cheney. My money's on Obama.
The usual 'bagger dolts are hippity-hopping around outside waving signs reading "Hands off my healthcare" to which any sensible person could respond "What healthcare, moron? Without the ACA millions would have NO healthcare." Such idiots. It looks like most of the signs have been professionally printed (a good sign of an organized demonstration, nothing grass-rootsy) which dramatically lowers the likelihood of all those embarrassingly misspelled signs like "Get a brain, moran!"
Only in America. So we are having a debate over whether or not citizens are entitled to stay alive. Well some are but not everyone.
King v Burwell is in the books. Arguments over. Lawyers packing up briefcases, everyone heading back to offices, Clarence Thomas being wheeled back to wherever it is he spends his days, 'baggers outside still screaming about the IRS.
Now on to really important stuff.
Hillary.....WTF!
Can the Clintons not do anything right? How can something this stupid jeopardize so much? And yes, I know, Republicans have done this for years but no one cares about that. It's like saying gangsters shoot people. Of course they do! That's not news. But if a Democrat crosses the street when the lights are against them, that's a three day story on Fox. So this email bullshit will have some serious legs.
I think I get why she did it. Hillary Clinton has had rabid wingnut dogs sniffing at her ankles since god was in short pants. She wasn't wrong about that vast right-wing conspiracy. She might have underestimated it, in fact. And I'm guessing she probably thought why give these assholes an in? Why let them snoop through thousands of emails and find a couple they could twist around? Unless she really was trying to hide something....But the fact is, they get to snoop through...at least a lot of them. They're public documents, fercrissakes.
But my larger question is why didn't anyone else, either at State, or in the Obama administration, notice this and say "Sec'y Clinton, my dear woman, what the fuck is this bullshit? I'm getting emails from hills@yahoo.com. What kind of shit is that?" Seriously folks, this was a giant, red, waving flag with spotlights on it and an umpah band with tuba players wearing lederhosen and funny hats playing at the foot of the flagpole.
Can't wait to hear Karl Rove and Mittens the Rat weigh in on this.
Is this really going to be Martin O'Malley v Jeb Bush?
Marie and PD Pepe: I agree about Schweich. I think he had bigger issues than a whisper campaign about being Jewish. I watched the Maddow piece last night and thought it strange, especially linking it to Frazier Glenn whatever his name is (in the piece they called him Frazier Glenn Miller, but, uh, no). There are lots of Jewish legislators. I don't think anyone gives a shit about that anymore. And, Marie, thank you for reminding us about Danforth's gift of Clarence Thomas. A gift for life.
@Nancy: I'm sure every one of us -- at least once in our lifetimes -- has been the subject of a whisper campaign, where we are "accused" of something that is either untrue or unfair -- or maybe true but hurtful & embarrassing. And then, well into the campaign, somebody tells us about it.
When I was in junior high school -- at an age when a person is probably most vulnerable to personal attacks -- I learned that for some time kids had been whispering that I came from such a poor family that I had been born out in a field -- like a cottonfield or cornfield or something, because my parents couldn't afford the hospital bill. The purpose of the rumor appeared to me to be to humiliate me.
The story flummoxed me because the field part wasn't true, although my family was poor. It took me a while to find out who the source of the story was, & when I did find out I confronted her. (I still remember her name more than half a century later, and yeah, she was definitely one of the mean girls.) She told me it wasn't a lie -- that I had told her that. After some probing, I realized that what I had told her weeks or months earlier was that I was born at MacDill Field. I probably didn't tell her, or else she didn't remember, that MacDill field was an Air Force base with, you know, a hospital on it, and that's where I was born, as my father was in the Air Force at the time.
If I had been prone to suicide at the time, could that half-false rumor have pushed me over the edge? I suppose so. But I wouldn't say it would have been the cause of my suicide. Something else -- a hormone imbalance, a real childhood trauma, whatever -- would have been the actual cause, not that girl's ignorance.
Sometimes of course a rumor may be part & parcel of a person's view of himself; for instance, when teens pick on or spread stories about gay kids, the nasty bits may be the immediate cause of a suicide, because those rumors or taunting feed into larger self-doubts. This is where I think bullying is really dangerous, and why people -- even teens -- ought to have the good sense not to do it. Suppose I had been haunted by my family's poverty -- I wasn't proud of it -- then the born-in-a-field story might have knocked me out.
Since we can't know the secret fears of others, bullying is stupid, not just because it's mean and bad form, but because it can have serious unintended consequences, which may be what happened to Schweich. On the other hand, he may have killed himself for some unrelated trouble. It's a sad case, but perhaps an unknowable one.
It seems to me Danforth was looking for an easy answer that fit into his belief system that "politics is too vile." In effect, he really used his friend's death for his own political purpose: to encourage "gentlemanly" policy discussions rather than focusing on personal attacks. I don't think he is necessarily wrong about that, although it could -- and certainly has -- led to a form of political correctness that can stifle important debate. For instance, if the Senate had been less squeamish about Clarence Thomas's harassment of women, maybe he would not have been sitting like a bump on a log in the courtroom today. Instead, they followed Danforth's "gentlemanly" lead & refused to hear charges by some potential witnesses against Thomas. There are downsides to propriety.
Marie
Marie, through a link above, offers us a peek into the addled world of Rush Limbaugh: Foreign Policy wonk.
Conor Friedersdorf, in the Atlantic, does something similar, albeit in a much more involved fashion. He selects just one example (there are hundreds) to demonstrate to conservatives exactly why they shouldn't get their foreign policy information from right-wing radio.
It's nice to see that he takes his time and carefully develops the case against wingnut radio as a source of any kind of information, but in this instance, he is working off the outrageous distortions and outright lies bandied about on hate radio over an interview given by Marie Harf of the State Department on ISIS.
Rush Limbaugh, predictably, is as baldfaced as they come, mixing statements and taking other sentiments out of context in order to make Ms. Harf say "We need to get ISIS murderers better jobs!"
Friedersdorf:
"Notice the brazenness of the mendacity. Limbaugh begins by telling his audience that he won't play them audio due to "a ban" on content from liberal MSNBC. Then, freed to make anything up, he proceeds to quote Harf saying something that she did not say."
Conor, my man, nice job, but really, all you needed to do was to say what everyone already knows: right-wing talk radio hosts are lying douchebags, not to mention the fact that although you make a nice case, plenty of telling details and examples of winger fabrication, exaggeration, misstatement, and blatant lying, how many 'baggers do you think will be reading this article? I mean, without moving their lips while they read?
Which is part of the problem. The insane choose to remain in the bubble where all they hear day in and day out is the same sort of indoctrination and ideological reinforcement.
Re: manage in a manger; Hey Marie, I heard a rumor that you were outstanding in your field; I believe it.
About suicide:
The stats about suicide are changing in all age demographics.
The most concerning have to do with the age 15-24 group: this is the most increased demographic and not just related to the reduction of deaths due to infectious diseases and congenital conditions. The increase is in the homicide/suicide category.
In the last 10 years, there has been an increase in percentage and absolute numbers of suicides in the 45-54 categories for both men and women, men slightly more than women.
There are no helpful explanations for these changes.
So hearing about the suicide of Schweich, in this older demographic, recently doesn't have a good explanation. So far, there aren't any.
@ Marie: Was telling my mister about that nasty girl who chided you for being brought up in a field––his response: But Marie confronted her––if she hadn't she never would have discovered the discrepancy nor would she have had the pleasure of setting that girl straight on the facts; she's been confronting and finding out the facts ever since.