The Commentariat -- Sept. 11, 2016
Afternoon Update:
Jonathan Martin & Amy Chozick of the New York Times: "Hillary Clinton on Sunday abruptly left a ceremony in New York marking the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks before it concluded because she became 'overheated,' according to a campaign spokesman.... Mrs. Clinton had arrived at the commemoration event around 8 a.m. and left at about 9:30. But for over an hour after that, her campaign would not offer any information about why she left early or where she was.... At about 11:40 a.m., Mrs. Clinton, wearing sunglasses, emerged from [her daughter's] apartment in New York's Flatiron district. She waved to onlookers and posed for pictures with a little girl on the sidewalk. 'I'm feeling great,' Mrs. Clinton said. 'It's a beautiful day in New York.'... Video from the event taken by an attendee captured Mrs. Clinton struggling to steady herself and then stumbling as she stepped off a curb. She required assistance from two Secret Service agents to get into her van. The video, which was posted on Twitter, immediately ricocheted across the internet." -- CW ...
... CW: So far Trump is behaving himself on this. We'll see what happens.
Theodoric Meyer of Politico: "CIA Director John Brennan pushed back against Donald Trump's claim that he could read disapproval of President Barack Obama's policies in the body language of the intelligence officers who gave him a confidential national security briefing.... Brennan said..., '"I know the briefers that have been briefing the candidates.'... Brennan said he was "fully confident" they [had not telegraphed a negative view of the President's policies]...." -- CW
*****
Kayla Epstein of the Washington Post: "The yearly ceremony at the 9/11 Memorial commemorating the victims at Ground Zero began at 8:40 a.m. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio was in attendance, as were ... Hillary Clinton, who was a U.S. senator for New York when the attack occurred, and Donald Trump." -- CW
AP: "President Barack Obama is joining the nation in remembering the nearly 3,000 people who died in the Sept. 11 attacks 15 years ago. Obama is observing the somber anniversary with a moment of silence in the White House residence at 8:46 a.m. EDT. That's when the first of four hijacked airplanes slammed into the north tower of New York City's World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Afterward, Obama will address a Pentagon memorial service." -- CW
Joanna Walters of the Guardian: "Christine Todd Whitman [R], who as head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under George W Bush at the time of the 9/11 attacks told the public the air around Ground Zero in New York was safe to breathe, has admitted for the first time she was wrong.... Whitman made an unprecedented apology to those affected but denied she had ever lied about the air quality or known at the time it was dangerous.... A week after two hijacked passenger jets were flown into the towers of the World Trade Center..., Whitman issued a statement. It said: 'I am glad to reassure the people of New York ... that their air is safe to breathe and their water is safe to drink.'... In 2003, the EPA inspector general criticized the agency's handling of the crisis, finding that the EPA had no basis for its swift pronouncements about air quality. Politicians, including the then New York senator Hillary Clinton, laid into the Bush administration, accusing it of deceiving the public." BTW, Whitman also gets in a dig at Rudy A-Noun-a-Verb-and-9/11 Giuliani, whom she blames for allowing workers to work on Ground Zero without respirators, as the EPA recommended. CW
Renae Merle of the Washington Post: "U.S. officials tout [Medtronics] as one of America's finest [companies]. It's actually based in Ireland.... The move ... has saved Medtronic more than $3 billion in taxes and helped the company fund an acquisition spree as it emerged as the world's largest medical device maker.... What Medtronic hasn't done is give up many perks of being a U.S. company. In addition to attending U.S. trade missions, which can help it find customers, Medtronic still holds dozens of government contracts. Since its inversion, it has been awarded more than $40 million in contracts, according to federal procurement data." ...
... CW: Congress could fix this. Thanks to little factors like, "The firm spent a record $5.3 million on its lobbying efforts in 2014, according to Opensecrets.org, including hiring former Sens. Trent Lott and John Breaux to help defend it against anti-inversion legislation introduced in Congress." You can also see the huge advantage this practice gives to big U.S. corporations that can afford to move operations (or shell operations) to low-taxing countries.
Samantha Sunne in a Washington Post op-ed, says she was arrested, cuffed & thrown in a New York City holding cell for four hours because she had put her feet up on the seat in front of her in an A-train subway car. (She was arrested around 2:30 am, so I presume the car was nearly empty.) "I was lucky I was white.... Criminalizing small acts can have major consequences for nonwhite and low-income people, who are disproportionately arrested and convicted for these infractions.... 'The kinds of things that [people of color] get arrested for, these innocuous acts, have been virtually decriminalized among white communities,' said Robert Gangi, director of the Police Reform Organizing Project." -- CW
Betsy Woodruff of the Daily Beast: "In a windowless room in a swanky hotel half a block from the White House on Friday afternoon, three of the most visible leaders of the alt-right movement held a two-hour press conference to discuss their affection for Donald Trump and their hopes for a white homeland.... The three alt-right leaders ... made two things very clear: They think white people are genetically predisposed to be more moral and intelligent than black people, and they do not want to share their envisioned utopian ethno-state with folks of the Jewish persuasion." Um, something about whitey-white people having better "microbes in their mouths." CW: More later. I have to go get my magnifying mirror, open wide & admire my super-microbes. I bet they're swell. Meanwhile, see more below on these "hard-working, amazing" anti-Semitic, racist Trump supporters.
Presidential Race
The Clinton & Trump campaigns are on hiatus today, so we could just have a day where Trump doesn't say some crazy shit. But don't count on it.
Michael Kruse of Politico: On September 11, 2001, Donald Trump boasted that with the fall of the Twin Towers, he once again owned the tallest building in Manhattan. Also ,"A decade and a half before pledging to 'bomb the shit out of' ISIS and proposing a deportation force and a Muslim ban, Trump didn't talk about retribution or leap to conclusions about who was responsible. In fact, he avoided identifying potential enemies -- any terrorist organization or Muslims in general. He spoke cogently and even poignantly about New York's changed skyline and the need to never forget.... As nightfall approached, Hillary Clinton joined congressional colleagues on the steps of the Capitol, standing next to some of her fiercest political opponents, singing 'God Bless America' with tears in her eyes. But maybe the most surprising difference between Clinton and Trump on September 11 and in the nerve-racking days and weeks that followed: She, not he, sounded like the tougher talker." -- CW ...
Nick Corasaniti of the New York Times: "For decades, news organizations have refrained from releasing early results in presidential battleground states on Election Day, adhering to a strict, time-honored embargo until a majority of polls there have closed. Now, a group of data scientists, journalists and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs is seeking to upend that reporting tradition, providing detailed projections of who is winning at any given time on Election Day in key swing states.... The company spearheading the effort, VoteCastr, plans real-time projections of presidential and Senate races in Colorado, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. It plans to publish a map and tables of its projected results on Slate...." -- CW
Michael Grynbaum of the New York Times: "For the anchors chosen to preside over this fall's presidential debates, the excoriation of [Matt] Lauer was a wake-up call signaling what modern viewers now expect from a moderator -- and a stark example of how media figures can become partisan flash points in a hyper-polarized election.... [Chris] Wallace raised eyebrows after saying that he did not consider fact-checking -- or 'truth-squading,' in his words -- to be a central component of his moderating role. His comments circulated again in the days after what was arguably Mr. Lauer's most memorable misstep, when he failed to challenge Mr. Trump's false claim that he had opposed the Iraq war.... There is also the presence of Mr. Trump, a candidate who freely dissembles in a manner rarely seen in a presidential campaign." ...
... CW Fact-Check: "Wallace raised eyebrows": No, Grynbaum, eyebrows weren't raised; ire was. "... dissembles in a manner rarely seen in a presidential campaign." How rarely? Absolutely never.
Theodoric Meyer of Politico: "Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both paused their campaign ads on Sunday, the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, a day when politics is traditionally set aside. But Clinton didn't hold back from criticizing her GOP opponent in a pre-taped interview with Chris Cuomo on CNN's 'State of the Union,' saying that Trump's rhetoric has made it harder to protect the country from future attacks. 'What unfortunately Donald Trump has done is made our job harder, and given a lot of aid and comfort to ISIS operative, even ISIS officials, who want to create this as some kind of clash of civilizations, a religious war,' Clinton said. 'It's not, and we can't let it become that.'... CNN's Jake Tapper said the network reached out to Trump about also making a Sept. 11 appearance, but that he declined." -- CW
Amy Chozick of the New York Times: "Republicans ... pounced Saturday on Hillary Clinton's remarks that half of Donald J. Trump's supporters fit into a 'basket of deplorables,' saying it showed she was out of touch with an economically hard-hit electorate.... By Saturday morning, #BasketofDeplorables was trending on Twitter as Mr. Trump's campaign demanded an apology.... By Saturday afternoon, Mrs. Clinton had acknowledged her stumble. 'Last night I was "grossly generalistic," and that's never a good idea,' she said in a statement. 'I regret saying "half" -- that was wrong.' She then used the opportunity to double down on her criticism of her opponent. 'It's deplorable that Trump has built his campaign largely on prejudice and paranoia,' she said, 'and given a national platform to hateful views and voices, including by retweeting fringe bigots with a few dozen followers and spreading their message to 11 million people.'" ...
... Hillary Clinton, at a fundraiser, Friday:
... CW: I think the percentage of Trump supporters who fit into that basket is greater than 50. It is impossible for a non-racist, non-sexist, etc. person to support Trump. ...
... Update. As I Was Saying... Judd Legum of Think Progress: "... whether Clinton is correct is a factual matter. Let's look at the polling data.... About two-thirds of Trump supporters believe Obama is a Muslim.... 59 percent of Trump supporters believe Obama was not born in the United States.... [A Reuters poll conducted in June] found that 40% of Trump supporters believed that blacks were more 'lazy' than whites and nearly 50% believed blacks were more 'violent' than whites.... A PPP poll of South Carolina voters in February found that 31 percent of Trump backers] supported banning LGBT people from the United States [& another 16% were 'not sure'].... Clinton appears to be more likely to be downplaying the issue than overstating it." -- CW ...
... Ta-Nehisi Coates of the Atlantic: "... nearly 60 percent of Trump's supporters hold 'unfavorable views' of Islam, and 76 percent support a ban on Muslims entering the United States." But don't expect mainstream reporters to fact-check Clinton on this: "... a reporter or an outlet pointing out the evidenced racism of Trump's supporters in response to a statement made by his rival risks being seen as having taken a side not just against Trump, not just against racism, but against his supporters too." So, report the controversy as a "both sides" story. ...
... John Wagner of the Washington Post: "Hillary Clinton's assertion that half of Donald Trump's supporters fit into a 'basket of deplorables' is not something for which she needs to apologize, her Democratic running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine (Va.), said Saturday in an interview. 'She said, "Look, I'm generalizing here, but a lot of his support is coming from this odd place, that he's given a platform to the alt-right and white nationalists,"' Kaine said in an interview with The Washington Post. 'But then she went on to say, "Look, there's also a number of his supporters that have economic anxieties, and we've got to speak to those."'" -- CW ...
Americans beset by 'economic anxieties' voting for any Republican is like going to Bernie Madoff for investment advice. -- Akhilleus, in today's Comments
... Josh Marshall of TPM: "Donald Trump has not only brought haters into the mainstream, he has normalized hate for a much broader swathe of the population who were perhaps already disaffected but had their grievances and latent prejudices held in check by social norms.... Trump is in the midst of a making one of the country's two major parties into a white nationalist hate group.... This election has become a battle to combat the moral and civic cancer Trump has injecting into the body politic.... Backing down would make Clinton appear weak, accomplish nothing of value and confuse what is actually at stake in the election." -- CW ...
... Issac Bailey, in a CNN opinion piece, lists some of Trump's "deplorables." "But what's most deplorable is the knee-jerk pushback against anyone who dares point out this reality, as though exposing the deplorable is worse than the deplorable things themselves.... (Trump) has lifted [the alt-right] up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people -- now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks -- they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America,' Clinton said. Trump has lifted them up. He has given them voice.... The only debate seems to be what percentage of Trump's followers are animated by his bigotry." -- CW ...
Wow, Hillary Clinton was SO INSULTING to my supporters, millions of amazing, hard working people. I think it will cost her at the Polls! -- Donald Trump, in a tweet
An "amazing" (whatever that means) and "hard-working" person can be a bigot, too. -- Constant Weader
... Dave Weigel: "... in the first real test of how the quote could be weaponized, [Mike] Pence came up with a fistful of nothing." First, he lost his notes & took a while to find them. Then he couldn't read them in a way that makes sense, so his audience had no idea what he was talking about. -- CW
David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post: "The Donald J. Trump Foundation is not like other charities.... For one thing, nearly all of its money comes from people other than Trump. In tax records, the last gift from Trump was in 2008. Since then, all of the donations have been other people's money -- an arrangement that experts say is almost unheard of for a family foundation.... In many cases, [Trump] passes it on to other charities, which often are under the impression that it is Trump's own money. In two cases, he has used money from his charity to buy himself a gift.... Money from the Trump Foundation has also been used for political purposes, which is against the law.... Trump's foundation appears to have repeatedly broken IRS rules.... In five cases, the Trump Foundation told the IRS that it had given a gift to a charity whose leaders told The Post that they had never received it.... The Trump Foundation still gives out small, scattered gifts -- which seem driven by the demands of Trump's businesses and social life, rather than a desire to support charitable causes.... [Trump] transform[ed] the foundation from a standard-issue rich person's philanthropy into a charity that allowed a rich man to be philanthropic for free." Read the examples Fahrenthold includes. -- CW ...
... Scammer-in-Chief, Ctd. Cameron Joseph of the New York Daily News: "Donald Trump's tale about why he took $150,000 in 9/11 money is as tall as the Downtown skyscraper he says he used in recovery efforts, according to government records. Though [Trump] ... has repeatedly suggested he got that money for helping others out after the attacks, documents obtained by the Daily News show that Trump's account was just a huge lie. Records from the Empire State Development Corp., which administered the recovery program, show that Trump's company asked for those funds for 'rent loss,' 'cleanup' and 'repair' -- not to recuperate money lost in helping people.... Trump's organization was one of a number of well-heeled companies that received funds from a state program aimed at helping local businesses whose bottom lines were hurt by the terror attacks.... It's unclear what, if any, help Trump provided to those affected by 9/11." -- CW
CW: I guess this is not politicking. Rebecca Savransky of the Hill: Donald "Trump visited Ground Zero early Sunday morning, where he spoke to former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R), New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) and New York Rep. Peter King (R). 'Fifteen years ago, America suffered the worst terrorist attack in its history. Thousands of mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and innocent American children were murdered by radical Islamic terrorists,' Trump ... said in a statement."
Cristiano Lima of Politico: "Larry King on Friday rebutted the Donald Trump campaign's assertion that the Republican candidate didn't know he had agreed to speak on Russian state television when King interviewed him." King said he was not in on the negotiations to do the interview, but Trump had appeared on his show before, so he should have known it would be broadcast on the RT network. -- CW
By Driftglass.Chas Danner of New York: "Speaking at a campaign rally in Pensacola, Florida on Friday night Donald Trump indicated that, as president, he would attack Iran if their sailors made improper gestures towards the U.S. Navy.... 'When [the Iranians] circle our beautiful destroyers with their little boats, and they make gestures at our people that they shouldn't be allowed to make, they will be shot out of the water.'... But while it's indeed worrisome, if not exactly news, that the apparent body-language expert is unable to follow plans, or scripts, or basic political norms -- in this case Trump, a major-party's presidential candidate, indicated that he would be willing to start an armed conflict with another country, not to defend America's citizens, interests, or allies -- but over injured pride.... Trump also questioned Hillary Clinton's mental health again on Friday, saying that he thinks she is 'an unstable person' and 'trigger-happy.' Earlier in the day, Trump had addressed the Values Voter Summit in Washington D.C. and criticized Clinton for being 'just too quick to intervene, invade, or to push for regime change with people we don't even know who they are, they take over, and they're far worse.'" -- CW
Amy Davidson of the New Yorker: "That, within a six-month span, Trump's estimates [of the 'real' unemployment rate] ranged from twenty, or 'close to twenty,' per cent all the way up to forty-two per cent suggest he's not using an overly rigorous model.... While a few of Trump's claims about the labor force might generously be considered merely hyperbole or gross exaggeration, the unemployment numbers he cites appear to be wholesale inventions." -- CW
More Notes from the Stupid File. A recent photo shows Donald Trump standing very close to a black man so he can't be a racist because "No racist would ever do that." CW: So there's a Trump supporter I guess you could label "amazing" (although not as "amazing" as Dom from Florida who won't vote for Clinton because he just knows she doesn't shave her arms & legs. See yesterday's Commentariat.).
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The gang was all here in New Hampshire with Marsha Blackburn, Kelly Ayotte, John Sununu and others "GOP Women's Chili Fest stews on Clinton"
Jim Scamman, (now isn't that a perfectly apt last name?)
"...who said he’s a cousin of Doug, attended Saturday’s event wearing a “Hillary for Prison 2016” shirt. He said he’s a Trump supporter and supports the GOP nominee because of his integrity. "
Integrity? Trump? Who are these people like SCAMman? Looks like one of those deplorables to me!
@MAG: I wonder how Scamman defines "a man of integrity." Maybe he means a person who admits he buys politicians (but not Pam Bondi!). Or someone who boasts about cheating on his wives. Or someone who takes credit for giving to charities when it was actually somebody else who did the giving. Or someone who cheats on his taxes. Or someone who admits he exaggerates/lies as part of his regular business practices. Or someone who stiffs mom-and-pop contractors. Or someone who belittles & insults everyone. Or someone who lies every day. And so forth.
Or maybe Scamman just means something as simple as "integrity" = "Make America White Again."
Marie
The Economist, "Yes, I'd lie to You", a thought provoking and worthwhile read and relevant to HRC's latest remarks. HRC shouldn't back down on this - she is finally setting the agenda. Talk about the disaffected trump voters and what she is going to do for them. Not for their votes, but for the moderates and undecideds.
Americans beset by "economic anxieties" voting for any Republican is like going to Bernie Madoff for investment advice. Voting for Trumpty Dumpty would be bypassing Madoff and handing your life savings to John Gotti. The first will call you up every now and then to try to convince you that made a great choice. The second will send a couple of goons to tell you that your investment will be completely lost unless you come up with another thousand bucks every first of the month. Oh yeah, and Mr. Gotti's wife needs new shoes so make that two thousand. Or else.
Sorry, the alt-right leaders got it wrong (think white people are genetically predisposed to be more moral and intelligent than black people). A very large scale experiment has recently been conducted to show that about half of Caucasians are some combination of immoral and dumb whereas more than 90% of blacks pass the test. The experiment is called the election for POTUS.
An underlying reality to the whole Trump "Foundation" scam is that, despite the obvious manipulations,
"...In two cases, he has used money from his charity to buy himself a gift.... Money from the Trump Foundation has also been used for political purposes, which is against the law.... Trump’s foundation appears to have repeatedly broken IRS rules...."
the Trump "Foundation" is still today running strong, completely unaffected by any harmless "fine" paid due to government oversight. These types of pseudo "charities", while somewhat created in the name of goodwill (besides the dodging taxes part!), have been completely perverted by the likes of conmen like Trump. And as long as they remain money-makers for these con artists, Trump will be there front and center hawking his yuuuuge contributions and steller philantropic self, hugging himself so hard he finally feels warm inside.
The fact that the government doesn't clean up this charity cesspool only gives Trumpbots a big fat green light. It's deplorable that Trump buys himself six foot paintings of himself with other people's donations, but until regulations get serious, expect more of the same.
Well I'm certainly glad to hear that mere proximity to black people disproves any possible racist sentiments, otherwise I might feel that this kid was in trouble:
http://histclo.com/essay/war/cwa/recon/kkk/kkk-2r.html
Thanks for clearing that up Mr. Trumpdouche! Whatever would we do without the perspicacious insights of such "amazing" people?
September 11, 2001 was another one of those days that we all remember where we were...but it's hard for them to imagine: "not the same impact" The current generation of students doesn’t have memories of Sept. 11. Getting young people who didn't experience the event to understand how it changed everything.
Portland Press Herald — "...She showed the class an infographic with circles that depicted the death tolls from various acts of terrorism, from relatively small circles for “the troubles” in Northern Ireland during the 1970s to a larger circle depicting the 168 killed in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. The circle for the nearly 3,000 who died in the 9/11 attacks is so big that the bottom half was cut off in the display she put up on a classroom screen. "
Something I become more aware of as I age...how 'big deal' events and prominent people suddenly seem to become footnotes. (A silly analogy might be, as kids my brothers and I rolled our eyes at the mention of Frick and Frack by our uncle, but today it's already "Chevy, who?").
We should never forget certain events.
@MAG:deaths from 911 2,996. Deaths from Ireland's "troubles" 3,568
(the Guardian)
@Cowichan: Good point. (Per Wikipedia on the Troubles: According to the Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN), 3,532 people were killed as a result of the conflict, from 1969–2001—tho' numbers differ slightly.
...and Approximately 52% of the dead were civilians, 32% were members/former members of the British security forces, 11% were members of republican paramilitaries, and 5% were members of loyalist paramilitaries.[183] About 60% of the civilian casualties were Catholics, 30% were Protestants, and the rest were from outside Northern Ireland.)
Long and bloody.