;)
The Commentariat -- March 19, 2016
Afternoon Update:
I have an organization but it’s largely myself. -- Donald Trump (who else?) ...
... Maureen Dowd interviews Donald Trump.
New York Times: "... the Zika virus has begun spreading through Puerto Rico, now the United States' front line in a looming epidemic. The outbreak is expected to be worse here than anywhere else in the country. The island, a warm, wet paradise veined with gritty poverty, is the ideal environment for the mosquitoes carrying the virus. The landscape is littered with abandoned houses and discarded tires that are perfect breeding grounds for the insects. Some homes and schools lack window screens and air-conditioning, exposing residents to almost constant bites."
James McAuley, et al., of the Washington Post: "The man at the top of Europe's terrorism wanted list is cooperating with Belgian investigators, his attorney said Saturday, raising the prospect that he can shed light on the planning and logistics of the November attacks in Paris that exposed gaping holes in the continent's security system."
Jennifer Uffalussy of the Guardian: "A bill passed in the Florida legislature this week would effectively defund Planned Parenthood and other reproductive rights clinics by preventing state agencies from working with any organization that provides abortion care other than that for victims of rape, incest, or if the life of the woman is at risk. As the bill heads to governor Rick Scott for his signature, several state lawmakers who have insisted that plentiful alternatives exist for reproductive and sexual healthcare have cited a list of health centers that includes dentists, optometrists, and elementary schools."
*****
White House: "In this week's address, the President discussed his decision to nominate Chief Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court of the United States."
... I ask Republicans in the Senate to give Judge Garland the respect he has earned. Give him a hearing. Give him an up-or-down vote. To deny it would be an abdication of the Senate's Constitutional duty. It would indicate a process for nominating and confirming judges that is beyond repair. It would make it increasingly impossible for any President, Republican or Democrat, to carry out their Constitutional function. To go down that path would jeopardize our system of justice, it would hurt our democracy, and betray the vision of our founding. -- President Obama
The full transcript is here.
David Herszenhorn of the New York Times: "The fight over the vacancy on the Supreme Court shifted from close combat in the halls of Congress to a nationwide battle on Friday as senators returned to their home states for a two-week recess and Republican and Democratic leaders began aggressively making their cases in television and radio interviews, op-ed columns and public appearances. With little hope of a confirmation hearing before the November elections, the debate over the vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia is entering a critical phase -- away from the corridors of power in Washington." ...
... Mike DeBonis of the Washington Post: "Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois on Friday became the first Republican senator to call for an up-or-down vote on Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, saying on a Chicago radio show that his colleagues ought to 'just man up and cast a vote.'... Kirk faces what is perhaps the most difficult Senate reelection race in the nation...." ...
... George Will (Yup, George Will): "Republicans who vow to deny Garland a hearing and who pledge to support Donald Trump if he is their party's nominee are saying ... constitutional values will be served if the vacancy is filled ... by someone chosen by President Trump, a stupendously uninformed dilettante who thinks judges 'sign' what he refers to as 'bills.' There is every reason to think that Trump understands none of the issues pertinent to the Supreme Court's role in the American regime, and there is no reason to doubt that he would bring to the selection of justices what he brings to all matters -- arrogance leavened by frivolousness.... If Republicans really think that either their front-runner or the Democrats' would nominate someone superior to Garland, it would be amusing to hear them try to explain why they do." ...
... CW: I would not go so far as to say that Will speaks for the confederates on the Court, but he is very plugged into their club. So what Will writes well might be what John Roberts and/or Anthony Kennedy are thinking.
Abby Goodnough of the New York Times interviews women & providers who have suffered because of Texas's impossibly restrictive new anti-abortion laws. The Supreme Court is deciding the constitutionality of the law. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Emma Brown of the Washington Post: "Under federal law, the vast majority of schools don't have to test the water flowing out of their taps and drinking fountains, and many states and districts also do not mandate water testing at schools. Even when districts do test their water, they don't always tell parents about the problems they find. This is not a hypothetical issue, nor a new one. Acute lead contamination has been found in school water in many cities during the past 15 years, including Los Angeles, Seattle, Baltimore and the District of Columbia." ...
... CW: The opening phrase in Brown's report is key: schools don't test for lead because Congress decided the kids don't matter. Leaving drinking water safety to the dimwitted yokels who sit on local school boards is unconscionable. (If you're a school board member, sorry. Then again, you probably know better than I that the majority of your colleagues on the board are dimwits.) ...
The law? The law? I don't think anybody here cares about the law. -- Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.), in response to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy's testimony that Congress gave the states responsibility for enforcing drinking-water standards ...
... Dana Milbank: "Now [Republican] members of Congress are blaming the EPA for failing to stop the problem -- oblivious to the irony that they and their predecessors were the ones who denied the federal government the ability to enforce drinking-water standards in the first place. It's a vicious cycle: Washington devolves power to the states. When states screw up, conservatives blame the federal government, worsening the public's already shaky faith. Having tied the hands of the feds -- in this case, the EPA -- they use the failure as justification to restrict federal power further -- thus giving more control to the states, which caused the problem in the first place." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Eric Levitz of New York: Republicans must answer for Brownbackistan & Lesser Jindaland. "What has happened to these states should be a national story; because we are one election away from it being our national story. If any of these GOP candidates are [sic.] elected president, they will almost certainly take office with a House and Senate eager to scale up the 'red-state model.' Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said of Brownback's Kansas, 'This is exactly the sort of thing we (Republicans) want to do here, in Washington, but can't, at least for now.' Speaker of the House Paul Ryan's celebrated budgets all depend on the same magical growth that has somehow escaped the Sunflower State.
The Ghosts in the Machine. Matea Gold & Anu Narayanswamy of the Washington Post: There is "a growing cadre of mystery outfits financing big-money super PACs. Many were formed just days or weeks before making six- or seven-figure contributions -- an arrangement that election law experts say violates a long-standing federal ban on straw donors. But the individuals behind the 'ghost corporations' appear to face little risk of reprisal from a deeply polarized Federal Election Commission, which recently deadlocked on whether to even investigate such cases."
Colleen Flaherty of Inside Higher Education, republished in Slate: "Paying adjunct faculty decent wages would be prohibitively expensive, a new study finds. Even if the adjunct movement for better working conditions succeeds, most adjuncts will lose. That's one bold claim of a recent paper on the costs associated with a number of the movement's goals, such as better pay and benefits. While activists and scholars have been quick to criticize what they call the paper's inherently flawed logic, the study's authors say it is a first step in a more critical dialogue on the adjunct 'dilemma.'" ...
... CW: For a quick course on how university administrators (virtually all of whom receive six-figure salaries, plus benefits), this August 2015 Atlantic article by Laura McKenna is helpful.
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Nick Madigan of the New York Times: "The retired wrestler Hulk Hogan was awarded $115 million in damages Friday by a Florida jury in an invasion of privacy case against Gawker.com over its publication of a sex tape. The wrestler, known in court by his legal name, Terry G. Bollea, sobbed as the verdict was announced in late afternoon.... The jury had considered the case for about six hours. Nick Denton, the founder of Gawker and a defendant in the case, was found personally liable, as was Albert J. Daulerio, the site's former editor in chief." Denton will appeal.
Presidential Race
Ben Kamisar of the Hill: "... Bernie Sanders> will skip next week's AIPAC conference, making him the only presidential candidate in either party not to address the major pro-Israel conference." CW: So another reason I'm glad I voted for Bernie.
John Cassidy of the New Yorker: "... it is ... evident that, in the past ten months, [Bernie] Sanders has defied the pundits, alarmed the comfortable, and inspired the young. He has turned what looked to be a political coronation into a lively and hard-fought contest, forcing his opponent to modify her positions and raise her game. He has demonstrated that Presidential campaigns don't have to be beholden to big donors. And he has shown that, surprisingly enough, there is still a place in American politics for an independent-minded speaker of uncomfortable truths. What's more, he isn't done yet." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Reality Cartoon. Michael Cavna of the Washington Post: "Exactly 16 years ago [today], in an episode titled 'Bart to the Future,' the "Simpsons" predicted a Donald Trump presidency." Dan Greaney, who wrote the episode, doesn't think it's so funny any more: "He seems like a 'Simpsons'-esque figure -- he fits right in there, in an over-the-top way. But now that he's running for president, I see that in a much darker way."
Birtherizing Romney. Ashley Parker of the New York Times: "Speaking in Salt Lake City -- home to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' headquarters -- Donald J. Trump questioned Mitt Romney's membership in the faith on Friday, asking a crowd at a rally, 'Are you sure he's a Mormon?' Mr. Romney, who was the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, comes from a prominent Mormon family, and he remains popular in Utah, which has a sizable Mormon population.... Mr. Trump has questioned the religious affiliation of his rivals before, including Ben Carson..., who is a Seventh-Day Adventist. But after Pope Francis recently suggested that Mr. Trump was not Christian because of his promise to build a wall along the Mexican border, the real estate mogul took offense, saying it was 'disgraceful' for a religious leader to question someone else's faith." See also "Tactical Mitt," linked below. CW: I think it's inappropriate to call a presidential candidate a sick fuck, but it's hard not to remark that Drumpf is a sick fuck. ...
... Matt Canham of the Salt Lake Tribune reports further on Trump's speech Salt Lake City speech.
... AND, speaking of sick fucks ...
... The Bullies' Bromance. Eliza Collins of Politico: "Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County is relishing the opportunity to host Donald Trump at a rally on his own turf Saturday -- and serve as the muscle at the same time....'Here I'm gonna be kinda wearing two hats -- in charge of the security there in the town and also participating, I would imagine, with Trump in the rally, so it makes it interesting,' Arpaio said in an interview with Politico, adding that it 'is going to be a lot of fun taking care of business there.'... 'I've had demonstrations against me constantly,' he said. 'He hasn't had that many demonstrators compared to me.'... Arpaio told Politico that he's endorsed many Republicans over the years, but 'this is probably one of the endorsements that I've really been excited about because of the nature of his character and being different.... This one I got a little special excitement.'..." CW: Yeah, Joe, we pretty much know by now what gets you off. You don't need to spell it out to kid-friendly news outlets.
Elliot Smilowitz of the Hill: "... Donald Trump is firing back after conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks called for the GOP to reject Trump. 'While I have never met @nytdavidbrooks of the NY Times, I consider him one of the dumbest of all pundits- he has no sense of the real world!' Trump tweeted early Saturday morning. 'Reading @nytdavidbrooks of the NY Times is a total waste of time, he is a clown with no awareness of the world around him- dummy!' he added." ...
... Here's Brooks' column, published Friday. It goes like this: "Donald Trump is epically unprepared to be president. He has no realistic policies, no advisers, no capacity to learn. His vast narcissism makes him a closed fortress. He doesn't know what he doesn't know and he's uninterested in finding out. He insults the office Abraham Lincoln once occupied by running for it with less preparation than most of us would undertake to buy a sofa. Trump is perhaps the most dishonest person to run for high office in our lifetimes." Et-cetera. Extra credit for citing Psalm 73:
Therefore pride is their necklace; they clothe themselves with violence.... They scoff, and speak with malice; with arrogance they threaten oppression. Their mouths lay claim to heaven, and their tongues take possession of the earth. Therefore their people turn to them and drink up waters in abundance.
... CW: Brooks might have included Psalm 73:3, but it probably hit too close to home: "For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked."
Jesse Byrnes of the Hill: "The editor-in-chief of a top Jewish-American newspaper is calling for a boycott of Donald Trump's speech at a major pro-Jewish conference next week. Jane Eisner of The Forward published a list& this week of suggestions for attendees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference. 'Top of the list is for AIPAC to disinvite the GOP presidential front-runner, who said he will speak Monday, or else give him a time slot between 3-3:45 a.m. or directly before Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. 'Let her eviscerate him. That'll give him a taste of what's to come,' Eisner wrote."
The Semantics of the Trumpists Are Not Strained. Tommy Christopher of Mediaite: Sam Clovis, a top advisor to Donald Trump doesn't think the riots Trump is predicting should he be denied the GOP nomination are "violence": "Clovis: 'I don't think he said violence, he said riots.'... Alisyn Camerota of CNN: 'Riots are violence, by definition.' Clovis: I don't accept that." ...
... Update: Gail Collins notes in today's column (linked below) that Clovis is quite comfortable with violent rhetoric: this week, Clovis "demanded that Republicans 'get on the train or they're going to end up under the train,' which sounds pretty firm." ...
... I don't think he meant literal riots. I think he meant political riots. -- Chris Christie
Today in History. The Trumpists proved the absurdist theory of deconstruction. Derrida rules. -- Constant Weader
** Michael Cohen of the Boston Globe: "On the most surface level, Trump, a billionaire who brags of his business acumen and his wealthy friends, could not be more different from [George] Wallace, who regularly described himself as 'a former truck driver married to a dime-store cashier and the son of a dirt farmer.' The parallels are not in the men's personal stories, but rather in the divisive, angry, fearful, anti-elitist, and resentment-laden politics that they used to spark their presidential aspirations. George Wallace won just 13 percent of the popular vote in 1968, but he birthed to this nation the idiomatic language of antigovernment populism -- a language that would be utilized by countless Republican politicians over the next four decades. Trump represents the logical culmination of that rhetorical tradition, but perhaps also its final denouement as a politically effective feature of American politics. Trump and Wallace are two sides of the same coin, but one man represents a beginning and the other the end of the line." Cohen has written a book on the 1968 election.
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Kyle Blaine of BuzzFeed: "While there are journalists who have aggressively challenged Trump -- notably Fox News' Megyn Kelly, NBC News' Chuck Todd, and CNN's Jake Tapper -- much of the coverage, including broadcasting his rallies and events live in their entirety, has been uncritical and even unfiltered, some of it conducted by interviewers unwilling or unable to provide much more than a platform for the candidate.... The Trump campaign, citing security concerns from Secret Service, dictated to the networks that their camera crews could only shoot Trump head-on from a fenced-in press pen [at campaign events]. The terms ... are unprecedented, and are more restrictive than those put on the networks by the White House or Hillary Clinton's campaign, which has had Secret Service protection for its duration. Facing the risk of losing their credentialed access to Trump's events, the networks capitulated." ...
... Kevin Drum: "Network news operations love to crow about their impact whenever they air some dramatic story that uncovers public corruption, but now they're pretending that thousands of hours of Trump coverage had no independent effect? Spare me."
Mark Hensch of the Hill: "... Donald Trump is urging his supporters to stop watching Megyn Kelly's show on Fox News. 'Everybody should boycott the @megynkelly show,' he tweeted Friday, referencing 'The Kelly File.' 'Never worth watching. [It is] always a hit on Trump. She is sick [and] the most overrated person on TV.'... A spokesperson for Fox News fired back at Trump.... 'Donald Trump's vitriolic attacks against Megyn Kelly and his extreme, sick obsession with her is beneath the dignity of a presidential candidate who wants to occupy the highest office in the land.'... Kelly on Wednesday hosted Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Trump's GOP presidential rival, on her show. She also tweeted a poll the following day showing that American women increasingly are viewing Trump unfavorably. Trump has since repeatedly referred to Kelly as 'crazy Megyn' on Twitter, accusing her of bias."
Tactical Mitt. Dave Weigel of the Washington Post: "While Gov. John Kasich (R-Ohio) headed to the second of three long-scheduled town halls in Utah, Mitt Romney announced that he'd be voting for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) in this coming Tuesday's caucuses. 'The only path that remains to nominate a Republican rather than Mr. Trump is to have an open convention,' Romney explained on his Facebook page.... '... a vote for Governor Kasich in future contests makes it extremely likely that Trumpism would prevail.'" ...
... Jessie Hellman of the Hill: "The John Kasich campaign criticized 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney for saying he will vote for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in Tuesday's Utah caucuses and then turned Romney's words from Monday back at him. 'The fact is the establishment has gotten it wrong this entire primary and it is unfortunate to see that Mitt Romney is getting bad political advice,' John Weaver, chief strategist for Kasich for America said in a statement late Friday afternoon. '... This is just the old establishment trying again to game the political system, but John Kasich's defeated the Republican establishment his entire career.'" ...
... All this has Gail Collins thinking about the Republican convention. "Some people are talking about Romney parachuting in, which gives you an idea of their level of desperation."
Congressional Races
David Wasserman of the Cook Report: "... now that it's extremely likely that the Republican Party will nominate Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, congressional Republicans are entering uncharted and potentially dangerous territory. So many assumptions have been wrong this cycle that it's difficult to be definitive about another: that the House majority won't be in play in 2016.... 'They're about to detonate a nuclear bomb on themselves,' said one savvy House Democratic strategist following Tuesday's primaries. 'If Ted Cruz is your back up plan, you're screwed.'..."
Evelyn Rupert of the Hill: "Sharron Angle, a controversial Tea Party Republican who upset the 2010 Nevada GOP primary is reviving her bid for the Senate, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports." ...
... CW: In case you've forgotten Angle, here are a few of her most remarkable views.
Beyond the Beltway
John Sepulvado of Oregon Public Broadcasting on an organized group of right-wing elected officials who supported, participated & assisted in the militant takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, several of whom also supported Cliven Bundy's armed standoff with the BLM." One of them, Michele Fiore of Nevada, is running for Congress. Thanks to safari for the link. ...
... As Sepulvado points out, "The GOP-controlled Congress is also considering legislation that would remove the Bureau of Land Management's ability to enforce the law. The author of that legislation -- Rep. Jason Chaffetz (RTP-Utah), chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee & the star of a fairly long list of horribles.
Suicide by Cop. Amanda Marcotte, in Salon, on the killing of LaVoy Finicum & its consequences: "... while the FBI agents likely did pull the trigger too quickly, overall, it's impossible for an honest viewer to conclude that Finicum is anything but the villain of this story, a man so lost in his delusions of himself as a revolutionary that he deliberately chooses to end this episode with violence instead of surrender. That he puts the life of a teen girl in danger while doing it only reinforces the sense that he was anything but a martyr."
Kate Royals of the Jackson, Mississippi, Clarion-Ledger: State Rep. Karl Oliver (R-Winona, Miss.) "responded to an email from a Gulfport woman saying he 'could care less' about her concerns and suggested she move out of Mississippi." Oliver tells the Clarion-Ledger that his wife is a schoolteacher. CW: She probably should have told him to write, "I couldn't care less," because I do believe that's what he meant. But then he's either a denizen of Right Wing World, where up means down & could means couldn't, or of the brave new land of Trumpsylvania, where words mean whatever. Anyhow, he said for sure his response "wasn't rude." Who are we to judge?
Way Beyond
Anthony Faiola of the Washington Post: "The European Union and the Turkish government struck an accord Friday to contain Europe's largest migrant crisis since World War II, agreeing to a deal that turns Turkey into the region's refugee camp and leaves untold thousands stranded in a country with a deteriorating record on human rights.... Under the deal coming into effect Sunday, virtually all migrants -- including Syrians fleeing war -- who attempt to enter Europe via the Aegean Sea will be sent back to Turkey." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Alissa Rubin & Aurelien Breeden of the New York Times: "Europe's most wanted man, Salah Abdeslam, believed to be the 10th participant in the Paris terrorist attacks of Nov. 13, was captured on Friday afternoon during a police raid in Brussels, a Belgian official said. 'We've got him,' Théo Francken, a Belgian minister, wrote on Twitter. The country's two public broadcasters, VRT and RTBF, reported that Mr. Abdeslam had been captured and had a leg injury, and that the raid was one of four carried out in the Belgian capital." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
News Ledes
Washington Post: "A U.S. soldier was killed near the front line with the Islamic State in northern Iraq on Saturday, becoming the second combat casualty of the war against the militants, according to the U.S. military and Iraqi officials."
New York Times: "A Boeing 737-800 from Dubai with 62 people aboard crashed early Saturday during a landing attempt at the airport in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, Russian officials said. All 55 passengers and seven crew members were killed, according to a list of victims published on the website of the Rostov regional government. Vasily Golubev, the governor of the Rostov region, said strong winds appeared to have caused the crash, but Russian officials said other factors could also have contributed."
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