;)
Monday
Sep122016
The Commentariat -- Sept. 13, 2016
Presidential Race
If you get in trouble out there, just call him an animal fucker. -- Roger Ailes, to George H.W. Bush, just before a 1988 presidential debate between Bush & Michael Dukakis ...
... Jill Lepore has a long piece in the New Yorker on the history of presidential (and other) debates. CW: I would say I didn't know 93.5 percent of the content of the article.
Madam Secrecy. Amy Chozick & Patrick Healy of the New York Times: "Shortly after receiving a diagnosis of pneumonia on Friday, Hillary Clinton decided to limit the information to her family members and close aides, certain that the illness was not a crucial issue for voters and that it might be twisted and exploited by her opponents, several advisers and allies said on Monday.... But Mrs. Clinton's penchant for privacy backfired. On Monday, her campaign scrambled to reassure voters about her health, a day after she grew visibly weak and was filmed being helped into a van: unsettling images that circulated widely and led her aides to disclose the pneumonia diagnosis two days after the fact. In a phone interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper on Monday night, Mrs. Clinton said she had kept her diagnosis a secret because 'I just didn't think it was going to be that big a deal,' and tried to shift the discussion to ... Donald J. Trump.... 'It's really past time for him to be held to the same standards,' she said. Mrs. Clinton's aides acknowledged that they should have been more forthcoming and said she would release more details about her physical fitness and medical history this week, a concession to the political pressure that she is under because she chose not to reveal her diagnosis sooner." -- CW ...
Antibiotics can take care of pneumonia. What's the cure for an unhealthy penchant for privacy that repeatedly creates unnecessary problems? -- David Axelrod, former strategist for President Obama, in a tweet
There's a reason that we have had a long tradition in this country of individual candidates disclosing information about their health to the American public before the election. -- Josh Earnest, President Obama's press secretary, at a briefing Monday
... Philip Rucker & Anne Gearan of the Washington Post: "Clinton's decision [to keep her illness secret] set in motion perhaps the most damaging cascade of events for her in the general-election campaign -- giving fresh ammunition to Republican nominee Donald Trump, who lags in the polls, and spoiling a two-week offensive she had plotted before the first debate.... Had Clinton heeded her doctor's advice, she would not have gone to a glitzy fundraiser Friday night where she let her guard down and inartfully talked about Trump's supporters, nor would she have been spotted collapsing Sunday morning as she was rushed out of a 9/11 memorial ceremony.... Bill Clinton plans to appear in his wife's stead at two star-studded fundraisers Tuesday in Beverly Hills. He also will fill in for her at a campaign event in Nevada on Wednesday, aides said." -- CW ...
... Glenn Thrush & Brianna Ehley of Politico: "Hillary Clinton never lost consciousness, and never stopped talking on her phone -- and never put anyone else in danger -- after her near swoon at a Sept. 11 memorial on Sunday in New York, according to accounts offered by several people close to the candidate. The near-fainting spell, according to Clinton's staff, is a greater political problem than a physical one -- and the centerpiece of its Monday pushback strategy was a vow to release a far more detailed medical history of the 68-year-old candidate that proves she suffers from no previously undisclosed conditions.... On Sunday, Clinton began showing signs of light-headedness standing at the Sept. 11 memorial service next to New York Sens. Charles Schumer -- who on Monday disclosed that he too just got over a bout of pneumonia -- and Kirsten Gillibrand, the sources said, and they flagged aides to get her water. After a few minutes, the candidate and her staff determined that she needed to get out of the heat...." -- CW ...
... Oh, Good Grief! Kyle Cheney of Politico: "A former Democratic National Committee chairman says President Barack Obama and the party's congressional leaders should immediately come up with a process to identify a potential successor candidate for Hillary Clinton for the off-chance a health emergency forces her out of the race.... Don Fowler, who helmed the DNC from 1995 to 1997, during Bill Clinton's presidency, and has backed Hillary Clinton since her 2008 presidential bid, [said Monday], 'I think the plan should be developed by 6 o'clock this afternoon.'... 'She better get well before she gets back out there because if she gets back out there too soon, it might happen again,' he said." CW: Don Fowler is 81 years old, which might or might not help explain why he says such damned stupid things. ...
... Is That Ted Strickland's Excuse, Too? Darrel Rowland of the Columbus Dispatch: "... former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland [D], [a candidate for the U.S. Senate]..., said [Tim] Kaine is 'a wonderfully prepared person to be vice president, and to be the president if that ever became necessary.' The comment went viral after it was tweeted by The Dispatch...." CW: Strickland is 75. ...
... Adam Edelman of the New York Daily News: "Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) [who stood near Clinton at the 9/11 ceremony], revealed Monday that he, like Hillary Clinton, had also been diagnosed with pneumonia recently.... Schumer ... said he had been diagnosed with the illness several weeks ago.... Schumer spokesman Matt House told the Associated Press that the New York senator had also been diagnosed with pneumonia and took antibiotics and kept a lighter schedule while recovering." -- CW
... Yay! A Conspiracy Theory for Libruls. Cindy Boren of the Washington Post: "Bennet Omalu, the forensic pathologist who has made the NFL so uncomfortable with his discovery of chronic traumatic encephalopathy in the brains of deceased players, suggests that Hillary Clinton's campaign be checked for possible poisons after her collapse Sunday in New York.... 'I must advice the Clinton campaign to perform toxicologic analysis of Ms. Clinton's blood. It is possible she is being poisoned,' [Omalu tweeted, and later,] 'I do not trust Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump. With those two all things are possible.'" ...
... Crazy? Remember that Omalu, as Boren reports, "became known for the tenacity with which he pursued the deaths of several former Pittsburgh Steelers during his time in the city's medical examiner's office. Eventually, he convinced skeptics that players were suffering brain damage as the result of taking a number of blows to the head." CW: Boren doesn't report it, but it seems a number of Clinton's top staff also became ill at about the same time Clinton began showing symptoms. ...
... People: At least half a dozen senior staff were felled [by illnesses with similar symptoms,] including campaign manager Robby Mook. Two top advisers even needed emergency medical treatment, the source says. One top adviser diagnosed at a Brooklyn urgent-care center with a respiratory infection was being treated with antibiotics in the days before Clinton's diagnosis. Another top adviser was taken by ambulance to the ER after collapsing from what turned out to be severe dehydration, the source said." CW: So maybe not a totally nutty theory, though I'd guess it's more likely that a bug caused the illnesses rather than "Putin poisons Clinton."
** Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Ta-Nehisi Coates of the Atlantic: "The media's criticism of Clinton's claim [about Trump's bigoted supporters] has been matched in vehemence only by their allergy to exploring it.... What they have yet to come to grips with is that Donald Trump is a democratic phenomenon, and that there are actual people -- not trolls under a bridge -- whom he, and his prejudices against Latinos, Muslims, and blacks, represent.... For much of this campaign journalists have attacked Hillary Clinton for being evasive and avoiding hard questioning from their ranks. And then the second Clinton is forthright and says something revealing, she is attacked -- not for the substance of what she's said -- but simply for having said it.... The shame reflects an ugly and lethal trend in this country's history -- an ever-present impulse to ignore and minimize racism, an aversion to calling it by its name." CW: Read the whole post.
By Driftglass.Alexander Burns & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "Denouncing the allegation that his supporters were bigoted, Mr. Trump argued in a speech in Baltimore that Mrs. Clinton had shown 'contempt' for voters by deriding many of his supporters as racist and sexist, calling them a 'basket of deplorables' at a fund-raiser on Friday. At a rally on Monday night in North Carolina, Mr. Trump said Mrs. Clinton was running a 'hate-filled and negative campaign.'... He used a speech to the National Guard Association of the United States to defend his supporters at length.... 'If Hillary Clinton will not retract her comments in full, I don't see how she can credibly campaign any further,' Mr. Trump said, demanding an apology. He claimed that his campaign was doing 'amazingly well with African-American and Hispanic workers.'" -- CW ...
... Sean Sullivan of the Washington Post: "Trump spoke at an arena [in Asheville, N.C.,] where the atmosphere grew tense as protesters repeatedly interrupted his speech. Some of them made obscene gestures as they were removed from the premises. At one point, a man took a fighting stance and then pushed and grabbed male protesters and swatted at a female protester. The protesters appeared to be in an antagonistic verbal exchange with the man." -- CW ...
... Trump "Deplores" 50 Percent of Americans. David Corn of Mother Jones: "Despite Trump's purported outrage over the Clinton remark, the mogul has engaged in his own demonization of Americans that has echoed the '47 percent' comment that landed Mitt Romney in trouble during the 2012 campaign. More than once, [Trump] ... has dismissed tens of millions of Americans -- up to half of all Americans -- as shiftless people with no desire to work. During a June 2015 interview on Fox News with Sean Hannity, Trump declared: 'The problem we have right now -- we have a society that sits back and says we don't have to do anything. Eventually, the 50 percent cannot carry -- and it's unfair to them -- but cannot carry the other 50 percent.'" Corn cites numerous other similar Trump remarks. "Americans with no spirit, no desire to work, lazing about and feeling entitled -- Trump has long been deploring scores of millions of Americans. But for him and his backers, this is not a disqualification. Dismissing these Americans is no slip; it's a key feature of his campaign." ...
... CW: We should do the math. Trump deplores half of all Americans. Clinton deplores half of all Trump supporters. So, at the very least, Trump deplores twice as many Americans as Clinton does. Also, too, her remark was factual, while Trump's view that the "good people" half are carrying the "loser" half is bull. Of course in Right Wing World facts = what you want to believe or what you "feel." And self-proclaimed multi-billionaire Trump, BTW, isn't "carrying" anybody for all those years we can fairly assume he didn't pay income taxes (though of course even Trump can't evade all taxes -- like the sales taxes that he and all the "losers" pay).
... Henry Gomez of Cleveland.com: "I don't think it's a coincidence that, recently, readers have told me I should be 'on the other side of the wall' and that my background should 'disqualify' me from covering this election. These came ... from people using their real names.... Sadly, simply being a Gomez is enough to make you a target.... I have wondered how I can objectively point out that Trump encourages hate.... Perhaps I could show them messages like these ... 'Since we're stereotyping maybe we should start asking to see your green card. You a spic or a beaner?'" Gomez cites several other examples. Gomez is a third-generation American on both sides of his family. But still a "spic" or a "beaner." ...
... German Lopez of Vox: "It's impossible to say what's in people's hearts and minds, but we do have a lot of evidence from a number of nonpartisan polling firms.... The findings suggest a great majority of Trump supporters hold unfavorable views of Muslims and support a policy that bans Muslims from entering the US. Most of them support proposals that stifle immigration from Mexico, and they agree with Trump's comments that Mexican immigrants are criminals. And many -- but not a majority -- say that black people are less intelligent and more violent than their white peers." -- CW
... Dana Milbank: "Hillary Clinton may have been unwise to say half of Donald Trump's supporters are racists and other 'deplorables.' But she wasn't wrong. If anything, when it comes to Trump's racist support, she might have low-balled the number.... Research ... [has] found that Trump does best among Americans who express racial animus. Evidence indicates fear that white people are losing ground was the single greatest predictor of support for Trump.... Trump, on stage, rejected any notion of racism.... But moments later, he repeated the campaign slogan he borrowed from an anti-Semitic organization that opposed involvement in World War II. 'America First – remember that,' he said. 'America First. That's deplorable." -- CW ...
... Jonathan Chait: "The national media has spent a year and a quarter documenting in exquisite, redundant detail the rabid, anti-intellectual nationalistic bigotry of Trump's hard-core fanbase. But it has taken Hillary Clinton's affirmation to transform this by-now-banal observation into a scandal.... Clinton committed a gaffe because she acknowledged a reality that literally every other person in America, including Donald Trump himself, is permitted to speak aloud." CW: Read the whole post. ...
... Charles Pierce on the new, "reasonable" Donald Trump: "I think his ties to the lunatic right are so solid at this point that he doesn't have to worry about ginning them up any more than he already has. Doesn't mean he won't do it, but, if the elite political press continues to be his proxy in defending the kind of movement he's built, he shouldn't have to."
Calvin Trillin in a New Yorker "Shouts & Murmers" piece: Donald Trump "wears a floppy suit jacket and a baseball hat. What's he hiding? And have you noticed that his neckties -- wide neckties, really huge neckties, huge -- come clear down to his belt buckle? How does that happen with a man who is six feet three? That's all I'm asking. Is he malformed? Does he have a short upper body to go with the short fingers? Does he buy extra-long ties? Or are the neckties specially designed to hide the outlines of some stays around his midsection? I don't know, but that's what some people say." And so forth. Funny. -- CW ...
... Brian Beutler: "Hillary Clinton's gaffe was so bad it made Mike Pence refuse to call David Duke 'deplorable.'" When Wolf Blizter asked pence if he would call [former KKK grand wiz] David Duke deplorable, pence said, "No, I'm not in the name-calling business." "Republicans and no small number of pundits believe Hillary Clinton's dismissal of Donald Trump's 'basket of deplorables' is comparable to Mitt Romney's dismissal of people who pay no income taxes. There are many problems with this assumption, but the biggest is that the poor and working-class people Romney disparaged elicited sympathy, whereas the deplorables really are just that." ...
... CW: So I guess calling Hillary Clinton "the most dishonest candidate for President of the United States since Richard Nixon," as mike did last week, is not "name-calling." Aren't "deplorable" and "dishonest" both pejoratives? Or does mike think "most dishonest" is a compliment? ...
... Andrew Kaczynski of BuzzFeed: "Louisiana Senate candidate and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke says he's pleased that vice presidential nominee Mike Pence declined to call him 'deplorable' in an interview on Monday. 'It's good to see an individual like Pence and others start to reject this absolute controlled media,' Duke told BuzzFeed News. 'The truth is that the Republican Party in Louisiana -- I received the vast majority of Republican votes for United States senator before and for governor before that in my state. The truth is the Republican Party is big tent. I served in the Republican caucus. I was in the Republican caucus in the legislature. I had a perfect Republican voting record. It's ridiculous that they attack me because of my involvement in that nonviolent Klan four decades ago.'" -- CW: So hugs all around. Sweet. If you're wondering about the cause of pence's reticence, look no further than Duke's statement: pence doesn't want to cost Trump and himself any of the overt racist vote.
David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post: "... in at least five cases, the Trump Foundation may have reported making a donation that didn't seem to exist.... Five times, the Trump Foundation's tax filings described giving a specific amount of money to a specific charity -- in some cases, even including the recipient's address. But when The Post called, the charities listed said the tax filings appeared wrong. They'd never received anything from Trump or his foundation. [In one case,] the incorrect gift had been listed on the Trump Foundation's tax filings in a way that served to hide a real gift -- the improper donation to [Florida AG Pam] Bondi's group -- from the IRS." -- CW ...
... David Fahrenthold: "A spokeswoman for Donald Trump's presidential campaign, seeking to rebut criticism of the GOP nominee's history of charitable giving, said that Trump has given away 'tens of millions of dollars' over his life. But spokeswoman Hope Hicks offered no details about that number, beyond saying that it included donations from the Donald J. Trump Foundation -- a charity that, despite its name, has been filled almost entirely with other people's money in recent years. Hicks also provided no information about how much -- if any -- of the donations she was describing had come from Trump's own pocket." mike pence also claimed Monday that Trump had given away tens of millions. "But Pence, also, did not provide details to back up that estimate."-- CW
The Kremlin Konnection. Gene Robinson: "Why does Donald Trump say such nice things about Vladimir Putin and Russia? What is Trump hiding in the tax returns he refuses to release? And are those two questions related?... 'Reasons to wonder' normally do not qualify as legitimate fodder for journalism, but these are not normal circumstances. Trump has broken with four decades of precedent and adamantly refused to let voters see his tax returns. His excuse -- that he is under audit -- is bogus.... Trump's chest-thumping 'America First' attitude toward the rest of the world seems to make an exception for Russia, and we need to know why." CW: Worth reading the whole post. Robinson lays out some of the clues that might explain Trump's affinity for Putin.
Hannah Levintova of Mother Jones: "LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman just made Donald Trump an offer that should entice the GOP nominee who claims to have donated millions to veterans: If Trump releases his tax returns by October 19, the date of the last presidential debate, Hoffman will donate up to $5 million to veteran groups. The original idea came from a crowd-funding campaign started by Peter Kiernan, a veteran of the Marines who was once deployed to Afghanistan. Kiernan said he would donate to 10 veteran's groups should Trump release his taxes and began raising money to do so on Crowdpac.com. In a Medium post published on Monday afternoon, LinkedIn co-founder Hoffman expressed his support for Kiernan's campaign, and upped the ante by promising to quintuple the final total raised by Kiernan, up to $5 million." CW: Sorry, gentlemen, but your plan would have a much better chance of working if you had promised to make out the checks to Donald Trump, Most Awesome Human Being Ever. Donating to a bunch of "loser" veterans? Meh.
Other News & Views
Julie Davis of the New York Times: "The White House said on Monday that President Obama would veto legislation approved by Congress that would allow the families of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to sue Saudi Arabia for any role in the plot, escalating a bipartisan dispute with lawmaker over the measure.... Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said Mr. Obama ... and would work to persuade lawmakers in both parties to change course. If he cannot, the measure could lead to the first veto override of his presidency, as the legislation drew the backing of lopsided majorities in both the House and Senate.... 'The concept of sovereign immunity is one that protects the United States as much as any other country in the world,' Mr. Earnest said." -- CW
Misogynists, Inc. Emmarie Huetteman of the New York Times: "Republican leaders looking to avoid a government shutdown one month before Election Day will have to jump a familiar hurdle: demands from some of their members to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood. When Democrats balked once more last week at approving legislation to combat the Zika virus because the measure included limits on Planned Parenthood, some Republicans indicated a willingness to re-evaluate their position." -- CW
Too Bad for Bigots. Liam Stack of the New York Times: "The National Collegiate Athletic Association said on Monday that it would relocate all seven previously awarded championship events from North Carolina during the 2016-17 academic year because of concerns over laws passed by the state that it said violated the civil rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. The N.C.A.A. said the decision by its board of governors was based on 'the cumulative actions taken by the state concerning civil rights protections' that conflicted with the organization's commitment to 'fairness and inclusion.'" -- CW
Jana Kasperkevic of the Guardian: "Wells Fargo will eliminate sales goals for all of its retail banking products by January, the bank announced on Tuesday. The decision comes less than a week after the largest US bank reached a deal with regulators and agreed to pay $185m in penalties for its illegal sales practices." -- CW
Emily Yahr of the Washington Post: "... Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte's 'Dancing With the Stars' debut was interrupted Monday night when protesters stormed the stage and were escorted out by security. It's unclear exactly what happened because the ABC cameras did not show the incident.... E! reports that there was a row of people wearing 'anti-Lochte' shirts who stood up during the incident, and were also removed from the building." -- CW
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Reader Comments (25)
Of course, "telling it like it is" is only okiyar.
@Gloria: Right. As Jonathan Chait points out in the post linked above,
"Back in February, Wall Street Journal editorial columnist Bret Stephens mourned that it had once been a slander that 'Republicans were all closet bigots,' but 'Not anymore. The candidacy of Donald Trump is the open sewer of American conservatism.' Stephens proceeded to argue that Trump’s carefully hedged disavowal of David Duke failed to dent his support — 'If anything it has enhanced it.' Now that Clinton has made the similar point in milder terms, absolving a larger proportion of Trump’s supporters than Stephens did, and choosing the gentler metaphor of a basket rather than a sewer, The Wall Street Journal editorial page is scandalized that Clinton was caught 'attributing hateful motives to tens of millions of Americans.' Americans! Hateful! In large numbers! How dare she!"
Not only is "telling it like it is" okay if you're a Republican, it's considered a yuuuuge asset even when it's yuuuugely untrue. When asked by media, Trump supporters say again & again that they're voting for Trump because "he tells it like it is." Meanwhile, he's the biggest liar in the history of modern politics. "Tells it like it is" is Trumpbot code for "He confirms my -- racist, sexist, xenophobic, nationalistic (pick one or more) -- views."
Marie
So the election of POTUS is all about the health of the female candidate. Nothing about the male candidate. Nothing about the economy. Nothing about international issues. Nothing about America.
"Telling it like it is" in fact is best when it's lies, which don't hurt like truth.
HRC shouldn't walk this back. She should set the agenda with this and talk about the hate groups ("Do you really want to be associated with this?"), and the hurt groups, identifying the real culprits causing their pain. She has plans and policies to hammer home of how she wants to help them, not just toss Made in China slogans at them then disappear up her own orifice after the election while shady men in Colorado Springs subvert the government, write the legislation and rake in the revenue. Her policies will help them, regardless of their bigotry and intolerance.
These glass jawed people and the Tang-dyed candidate who hate political correctness!
What Clooney et al are doing with The Sentry is all related to the inequality issues we are seeing everywhere. We can't let the kleptocrats skim two or three percent, perhaps it's more, off the world's GDP, impoverishing and killing millions of people, while enriching themselves to an obscene level of what becomes useless wealth. Useless to them and useless to the world. Whether they do it through civil wars, tax evasion, resource pillaging, education scams, and other privatised government services, their methods are all part of a disease that needs to be eradicated.
The fun news for today. I watched Dancing with the Stars last night. For the first time they gave a robot an opportunity. His name was Rick Perry.
The media coverage of Hillary's physicality and her "basket" (rather than "sewer" as the WSJ coined it) of deplorables has been front and center to the point of shoving all other news aside. Rachel spent a whole program on the physical aspect going back to FDR, Eisenhower's heart attacks and Crone disease, JFK's Addison's, Poppy Bush losing his Chinese cookies because of the flu, video of Bill Daley, Bill Clinton's Commerce Secretary, fainting during a presser, quite a few videos of people fainting during Obama's speeches and last but not least Bernie being visibly shaken when a few fainted at his rallies. In other words––people faint! Presidents get sick! Some Presidents even do a pretty good job even though they have serious maladies. Yet we have gone apoplectic over Hillary's wooziness. Over on Fox Hannity and one of the many blonds were again speculating that Hillary may have Parkinson's and because she lies and is so secretive it's very likely she's got SOMETHING serious. As for the "deplorables" ––well, how dare she? What a shrew!
So now that the cats and the pit bulls are out of the bags what can we expect from these campaigns. I don't want Hillary to back down–-be more specific––spell out the numbers––state all those lies and keep at the "Where is your tax report????"
Yesterday on R.C. there was quite a bit of discussion about education. Here is an uplifting story of one black college in Texas that turned its football field into an organic farm and saw a very positive student transformation.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/one-college-turns-football-field-farm-sees-students-transform/
It ain't jus' us or U.S. (bit more on education and BREXIT).
British Prime Minister Theresa May to end ban on new grammar schools
Change in rule permits established schools to become grammars, new Catholic schools to open and faith schools to choose pupils based on religion (Note: boldface is my highlight) "what's going on in the UK?"
Appears the political situation across the pond is as muddled as our own ineffectual Congress. Reading several articles this morning, an old (1966) film popped into mind, "Stop the World, I Want to get Off" —somehow seems relevant to our times.
The turmoil and confusion surrounding BREXIT is just getting started.
Here, we need a TRumpEXIT.
Well said, Gloria. Thanks for the laugh about the guy with the nice hair cut and bad glasses, Marvin.
MAG: OR––MODERN ENGLISH'S I'll stop the world and melt with you–––much better scenario me thinks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuN6gs0AJls
@PD: Interesting end-of-the-world explanation by singer Robbie Grey, tho' I found use of it elsewhere giving me some pause "song facts":
"The song has been used in numerous television commercials, usually for food. Most famously, it featured in 1990 Burger King ads, but it was also used in commercials for Ritz crackers, M&M's and Taco Bell."
We laugh, ruefully, it's true, at the acronym IOKIYAR, because it's almost always lamentably accurate. Things that could destroy a Democrat are often blithely ignored as long as Republicans do them.
One of the most egregious, given the never-ending, sweaty pursuit of Hillary Clinton's emails, a case that has been fine-tooth combed until reduction to component molecules has been achieved, without finding anything but bad judgement, is the strange "loss" of 22 million--that's right, twenty.two.million emails by the Bush 43 administration. Well, you might say, these were probably emails covering things like interstate commerce policy and attendance of a statue unveiling, or what's on the menu for a state dinner to honor the Grand Poobah of Kirabati, or what to eat when watching the Super Bowl so as not to choke and pass out, or perhaps a simple reminder of the importance of subject-verb agreement.
Nope.
The "lost" emails happened to have been sent right around the time The Decider and his chief leg breaker, Darth Cheney, were lying about WMD so they could invade a country that had zippo to do with 9/11. That, and the emails from four years later when Bush and his AG were staging a nation-wide putsch against Democratic attorneys general who dared to stand up to their made up bullshit about election fraud.
A lengthy article in Newsweek finds that...
"Clinton’s email habits look positively transparent when compared with the subpoena-dodging, email-hiding, private-server-using George W. Bush administration. Between 2003 and 2009, the Bush White House 'lost' 22 million emails. This correspondence included millions of emails written during the darkest period in America’s recent history, when the Bush administration was ginning up support for what turned out to be a disastrous war in Iraq with false claims that the country possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and, later, when it was firing U.S. attorneys for political reasons.
Like Clinton, the Bush White House used a private email server—its was owned by the Republican National Committee. And the Bush administration failed to store its emails, as required by law, and then refused to comply with a congressional subpoena seeking some of those emails. 'It’s about as amazing a double standard as you can get,' says Eric Boehlert, who works with the pro-Clinton group Media Matters. 'If you look at the Bush emails, he was a sitting president, and 95 percent of his chief advisers’ emails were on a private email system set up by the RNC. Imagine if for the last year and a half we had been talking about Hillary Clinton’s emails set up on a private DNC server?'"
Think Jason Chaffetz (described by one wag as sitting on "...the top of the GOP shitpile in Congress despite the fact that he is dumber than a sack of Louis Gohmerts." Ouch!) will be sending out subpoenas to get to the bottom of this? So a private email server, owned and operated by the RNC was okay for George Bush, a president during a time of "war", but for a Secretary of State, it's permission for Confederates to suggest that she be imprisoned for life and/or murdered?
At the time, if you recall, anyone who dared to look crosseyed at the crosseyed Decider (which, if he ever made eye contact, might have fixed that problem, although he'd still be an asshole...) was charged, by Confederates, with treason.
So, to review, if you're a Democrat and wish to investigate serious criminality on the part of a Republican president, you're a traitor. If you're a Republican and you want to make shit up about a Democratic president and presidential candidate, you're a patriot. Well sure, that seems fair.
With a Democrat in the White House and likely another one on the way, all manner of scurrilous, untrue, and invented charges are allowed to stand and given the power of media sanctioning.
Sometimes IOKIYAR is an embarrassing head-shaker. Other times, it's criminal.
Headline: MOSQUE ATTACKED, Stuart News, September 13, 2016.
Expect more of these headlines. The encouragement of hatred of Muslims by a candidate for President of the United States is an implied endorsement in the mind of a deplorable.
There are many mosques and a never ending supply of deplorables.
The Mosque burned was in White City, A suburb of Ft. Pierce, Fl.
Every Mosque in America should have a fire watch every night to protect the Mosque from Trump's deplorables.
Police, politicos and citizens should help our Muslim citizens. .Freedom of Religion is protected by our Constitution.
A presidential candidate not understanding this is deplorable.
c
And on the notion of IOKIYAR, I can't get over how few--I've heard none so far--MSM reporters, are pointing out the incredible hypocrisy of Donaldo yelping about how important it is to treat people with respect and how Clinton's dissing of "his people", ie, the racists, xenophobes, Islamophobes, white supremacists, and garden variety morons, necessarily should exclude her from running for high office.
This really would be like Andrew Jackson complaining that Cherokees had no business criticizing him about that Trail of Tears thing, because a few of them said unkind things about the white soldiers who bayonetted one of the their kids after he refused to leave.
Republicans really do have it hard. So many trying to victimize them. Poor things.
@CW: The Lepore article had tons of information of which I was also not aware re the background of our so-called "debates." Loved this from the closing paragraph, which makes the case for having moderators "...with Trump, you need a lion tamer, a whip, and a chair.”
Glad to see other tardy arrivals to yesterday's RC education party, so I'm not alone.
Re: Charter Schools. Ditto everything that was said, but would add a few other thoughts.
Not only do charter schools often move tax money into private hands, more stealth mining of the disappearing middle here, and not only do they often do a poor job of educating children, but because charters can be either public or private their very existence further blurs the line between what is privately owned and what rightfully belongs to the community.
The Right likes that blurring because in their dim-witted ideology the community is always--again, resistance is futile--Public Enemy # One.
For the owner class, the perpetrators of the Right's self-serving ideology, private ownership of absolutely everything makes perfect sense. It's the only way to force every other possible moral, intellectual and aesthetic value into the shape of a dollar sign. Any person or group that does not buy into their view or who might stand in the way of their potential profit--the only way to keep score admitted into their closed universe--is the enemy.
Of course, that puts teachers' unions at the top of the list: a group, many of whom self-selected not to share their narrow money-grubbing values who also expect to be paid for their work stand in the way of maximizing stockholder value. Private charters and unions. Amateurs vs. professionals: All those annoying people with crazy ideas like the nutty proposition that a flesh and blood teacher is afar more effective instructor than a computer screen or that schools are about far more than academics.
But even public charters created with the best of intentions have negative consequences. Not only do they blur that same public/private line, thus aiding the wrong side in the ideologic war, but they are sourced int the fantasy that there is some no muss-no fuss elixir out there somewhere that make all our education (read: social, because they are inextricably linked) problems go away.
Of course, education's main problems are money problems, ironically located in precisely the same set of values the Right would like to universalize. And money problems, the largest of which is its uneven distribution, will not disappear if we don't admit them into the discussion.
Some have too little of it, which leads to all the well-docmumented impediments to education, which affect millions of our children. Some have too much of it, which is often accompanied by a privileged outlook that supports and perpetuates the class distinctions that the existence of public schools militates against. Privilege and public schools, again natural enemies.
We have a monied elite that would like to destroy public schools for any number of reasons. They'd like to profit from them. They'd rather not pay for them.
And they resent and fear public schools when they teach the wrong things, like real history, science and skepticism. Once again pitting our nation's public schools squarely against the the ideologic and religious Right.
So we have charter schools, as Akhilleus says, a poisoned apple... or the worm eating it from within...or a Trojan Horse, another promise with murder at its heart.
BTW, I don't like charter schools.
Ken,
Your put your finger directly on one of the more difficult (although it should be easy) of the money problems: distribution.
Where I live, we have homogeneous rich white Christian families on one side of town. On the other side, we have poor white families and a melting pot of languages, nationalities, religions (including Muslims), and customs. The melting pot analogy however, does not include income. There are no rich families on that side of town.
Now, we have two schools. One, on the rich side, a brand new state of the art school, gleaming and fine, with the best teachers plucked from the district, an enormous budget and test scores that make it one of the best in country. Of course, they had started with a lot of smart kids from well off stable families, meaning excellent test scores is more a matter of making sure the kids sit in the right chair every morning. On the other side of town, those kids have a fifty year old, dingy, cinder block structure that looks like one of those buildings they used in the 40's to see what would happen when hit with an atomic blast. Paint peeling off the walls and ceilings make all attempts to dress the place up even sadder. Over ninety percent of the kids are eligible for free lunches (something that pisses off the rich families). Families are beset by joblessness, some homelessness, drug problems, crime, and abuse, sexual and otherwise (all proof of how "immoral" these people are and undeserving of further assistance or a new school).
Could it be clearer who is more in need of the gleaming new school and fabulous teachers? But the county is more in need of great test scores and keeping the rich voters happy, and it's difficult to eke higher test grades out of kids who worry about whether they'll be able to eat that night rather than whether to do math homework before they write their English essay on their brand new $1,000 laptops.
All of which is a microcosm of the national problems. Confederates routinely write off inner cities and cut their budgets across the board, but wealthy white Christian neighborhoods? Shit, give each kid their own pool if they can manage a B.
Democrats are to blame for some of this as well for not fighting harder against the barbarians. But in any event, as time wears on, one generation after another is tossed down history's dumper. If these kids grow up and want to burn it all down, I'm not a bit surprised. But then, of course, wingers will make sure the slightest infractions while black will be met with yuuuuge prison terms.
Have we no Dickens to record these trials? No Victor Hugo? Where is today's Upton Sinclair?
More importantly, have we no champions of the poor in office? On the right, the answer is absolutely not. What we have is champions of those who would make money off the misfortune of others. And then go out of their way to increase the misfortune, just for shits and grins. A standard in Right Wing World.
And now they want the king of stepping on the poor and the outcast for their president.
Gentlemen, Ken & Ak: Adding to your posts...our education systems problems aren't just Charter Schools....In Connecticut, a Wealth Gap Divides Neighboring Schools, feature appeared in NYTimes on Sept. 11 "funding adds to inequality" case in point, a look at what is happening to side-by-side communities: Fairfield and Bridgeport.
And now a few words about rights and the interpretation and application thereof.
This past Sunday was the glorious opening day for most NFL teams. Football is back! But this year there's something else besides nickel packages and wide formations. Protests. Protests against the treatment of black Americans by law enforcement and a recognition that it's long past time to start a serious conversation about this problem. And it is a problem. And it isn't just a problem with perception. Blacks are arrested at much higher rates and are sentenced for far longer than whites arrested for the same offenses.
Of course uppity nee-groes pointing out such disparities are never going to be invited on for chitty chatty with Chuckie Toddie. They're more likely to be ripped for standing up and speaking.
So this past Sunday, the pre-game talking heads felt obliged to address the "Colin Kaepernick Problem" which is spreading like wildfire to players in other teams (black and white). One rant, in particular, encapsulated what seems to be the feelings of a certain group of white fans and pundits. Former quarterback Boomer Esiason ripped Kaepernick for "disrespecting the flag" by refusing to stand. His logic was something like this: a lot of much better people than him gave their lives so this guy can live free, including a lot of wonderful police officers. He has rights because brave men died to protect the Constitution. But he has no right to disrespect the flag because the flag is sacred. Moreover today (Sunday), being the anniversary of 9/11, is NOT the time for such displays of disrespect and a football stadium is not the place for these shenanigans.
Okay, Boomer. When IS the time? Where IS the place? For people who think like this, there is never a good time to advance difficult conversations about race. Never a good place. If it wasn't 9/11, there'd be another reason. "Oh, today is the 1,050th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings. Not a good time."
This is the same sort of the thing they told Branch Rickey when he decided to bring Jackie Robinson up to join the Brooklyn Dodgers. Not the right time. The country's not ready for this. Not the right place. Blah, blah, blah. Bobby Kennedy once asked, "If not now, when? If not us, who?" The answers, from almost the entire rightwing are "Never" and "No one".
And those are still their answers.
I remember watching the Olympics in 1968 with my dad. We watched American sprinters Jimmie Smith and John Carlos raise their fists in a black power salute. I looked to my dad and asked what he thought about that. He said we all needed to do what we thought was right (god, I miss my dad). On Sunday night, before the final game of the day, former NFL coach Tony Dungy (a black man) was asked for his thoughts. He recalled watching Smith and Carlos on the medal podiums at Mexico City. He related that his dad gave him almost the same answer as mine. Do what you think you have to do. Do what you think is right. Those men were excoriated by some for that salute, but it electrified the conversation surrounding race in this country.
And here we are fifty years later trying to have the same conversation. If nothing else, Kaepernick and his new cohort are shining a light on a dark area of our nation's social construct. It's predictable, of course, that racist snakes like Ted Cruz are now slithering out from under their rocks, speaking with their forked tongues that these "spoiled, rich athletes" need to be punished. Isn't it enough that we allow them to make money and entertain us? They have no right to speak. None! Punt, pass, kick, run, catch, block, and shut up.
And since when does having money preclude Americans from the right to freedom of speech? I thought the entire Republican platform was based on the idea that free speech goes first to those who can afford it best. Should we tell the Kochs to shut up because they're rich and spoiled? No. Cruz and others like him are upset because this time, the rich people speaking are black. Full stop.
And that brings us back around to rights.
The Constitution. First amendment. Brave soldiers died so that we could enjoy these things. Yes they did. But now we're being told that, yes, there is a first amendment right, but now is not the right time to use it. Not the right way. Not the right place. Time to shut up and salute the flag, not dishonor it.
But people like Boomer Esiason make the same mistake flag fetishizers made around the flag burning arguments from 20 or so years ago.
The fact is that the flag is not sacred. What it stands for is the important thing, not the symbol. I understand that symbols have power, but only because they represent something important, something vital, something real.
Burning the flag or refusing to stand in its presence, is the ultimate proof that the freedoms it represents are real. If we can't stand up--and what more impressive place to make a stand than when the flag is being honored--and engage in difficult topics of great moment, then where is the freedom those brave soldiers died for? Is freedom of speech only available when it's "time" or when it's convenient? The power of that terribly important right is that it can be called upon when things are at their worst, when we need it most.
Hard won rights, to be put on the shelf until it's convenient are not rights at all. They're window dressing.
If wingers can live with a window dressing version of the Constitution, then they're not the great, valiant defenders of that document they always claim to be.
So I stand (or kneel, as the case may be) with Colin Kaepernick. Not the time, my ass.
@MAG,
Other points along the spectrum in CT include New England's first regional public high school, formed by six towns.
Also nearby, four of the most expensive private high schools; Berkshire, Hotchkiss, Kent, and Salisbury. Each with tuition equalling U.S. median household income, per kid.
Commenting on the public/private school divide and the Right's effort to eliminate the one or meld it with the other, I might have left the impression that I have no truck with any private schools at all.
Not true.
The Right presents itself as the responsible party, ready to throw itself into any breach where it feels individual rights are threatened.
So go for it, I say. Have your private schools. In this great land, you have the right. Defend it at all costs. Just pay all those costs yourself.
And speaking of private schools, a private university--funded, of course, with oodles of public money, I admit; during the sixties and seventies I know it had a very sick relationship with the defense department--was kind enough to grant me a large scholarship and provide me with far more opportunity to learn than I took advantage of. My warm feelings for that university were again confirmed this AM when I came across a recent book review in "The Nation," by Richard White, currently a professor there.
https://www.thenation.com/article/naming-americas-own-genocide
A wonderful piece of history I thought, not without sharply pointed current relevance. Recommended.
Off the track of today's discussions, but a fascinating and useful graph from one of our more arcane cartoonists:
http://xkcd.com
@Ken: "wonderful" isn't the adjective I'd use. That's some brutal history about the massacres and treatment of the Indians. Now I need a break to clear my head after reading it. But, thanks for the link and the exposure.
Whyte,
Great site. One of my favorites.
But don't show this to any wingers. Aside from the charges of lying, you may be considered a dangerous seer and proponent of magic, subject to banishment, and death. Besides, if they learned how to read this chart, they'd see that at one point, it took 1500 years to get the earth's temperature to rise a couple of degrees C but the prediction, based on current status, is that we will experience a catastrophic temperature rise (four degrees) that will take less than 100 years and wingers just could not handle that.
One extra factoid, I never knew that the creators of the Lascaux cave paintings were fans of Nine Inch Nails.
Pretty cool.
Oh, and here's one of my all time faves on this site, https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/"Relativistic Baseball".
@Unwashed: It seems to me one way to get more public money back into public schools is to give the public disincentives to send their children to private schools.
On this note, I suggest Discouragement Action. Maybe Affirmative Action implies racial bias -- which gives John Roberts a sad. But what if colleges & universities -- including private, prestigious ones -- gave more admissions "points" to graduates of public schools?
Of course the universities could continue to consider all the other factors of a student's background, but it seems to me a fair assessment could also factor in the high likelihood that non-scholarship private school grads had an iniquitous leg-up on many of the admissions standards: more parental guidance & interest in the kid's education, more extra-curricular opportunities, more supervision, smaller classrooms, better pre-test tutoring, etc. -- all of things that go hand-in-hand with private education. Hardly anyone would argue that a graduate of Miss Porter's School did not have an advantage over the kids attending, say Detroit high schools. Yet guess who has a better chance of getting into Harvard?
So colleges should assume the Phillips-Exeter grad had a big advantage over public school kids, & give him "demerits" when considering admissions. The unis should make no bones about it. They should advertise it. When parents figure out that sending their kids to a private boarding school or charter school works as a disadvantage rather than an advantage, they'll be less inclined to put their money into private schools for their little scions and less eager to scramble to get the kiddies into prestigious charter schools. And when rich or upper-middle-class parents decide to put their kids into public schools to give them an "advantage" in college admissions, they'll also demand better public schools and be way less interested in putting their tax money into charter schools & other private institutions.
Marie