Not Again

As Tim Balk of The New York Times reported on Tuesday

Hillary Clinton suggested in a new interview that the Democratic Party’s loss in 2024 boiled down to a “terrible miscalculation” — President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s decision to run for re-election.

At an event in Manhattan on Monday, Mrs. Clinton told The New Yorker’s editor, David Remnick, that Mr. Biden had made a “terrible mistake for himself, his legacy and for the country” in trying to run again at age 81.

If Mr. Biden had decided to “pass the torch” and the Democratic Party had held a competitive presidential primary, Mrs. Clinton told Mr. Remnick, “whoever emerged from that contest — whether it was the vice president, or a governor, or a senator or anybody else — would have beaten Donald Trump.”

Chris Cillizza acknowledges that there has been a bit of a rivalry between Biden and Clinton but believes that the latter was correct to note that the President should have bowed out considerably earlier than he did. However, he argues also (at 7:20)

Now, would someone who emerged in an open primary process had Biden dropped out in the summer of 2023- would that person have definitely beaten Donald Trump in November of 2024?

No, I think there was sigificant unhappines with the state of the econnomy, with Democrats, with Joe Biden in particular, with how he had led the economy, how much he understood about the economy. So I don't think it would have- it's not just an easy fix, that they just nominate somebody else in an open primary process and that person beats Donald Trump. But the way that it played out by Biden staying too long, he should never have run for a second term, staying on for too long, the debate, the three weeks of is he going to stay on, is he going to get out- and eventually he gets out and Kamala Harris steps in without any primary or anyone voting on anything, that clearly doomed them, right?

Wrong.

Cillizza adds "I'm not sure the Democrats would have won anyway but the way that played out doomed them.

        "

Of course we don't know if the new candidate, assuming it was not the Vice President, would have won. And Cillizza, admittedly, reflects conventional wisdom, as does The Times' Balk, who wrote "Mr. Biden ultimately left the race in late July 2024, immediately putting his weight behind Ms. Harris, his vice president, but leaving her just three months to build her own campaign before Election Day."

Do you see what they're doing? In the case of Cillizza- a straight shooter- it is unintentional, and perhaps also in case of The Times. 

It's in the title of Harris' memoir about the general election campaign.  Whether it was the decision of the ex-candidate, the publicher or someone else, the title of the book was 107 Days, in part as an argument that the Vice President faced an uphill battle to win the election.

But she did not. Almost to the moment that Biden dropped out, the nomination of Harris was a fait accompli. In a review of her book, Vanity Fair explained that on that day

By 10 p.m. at the Naval Observatory, jigsaw pieces were still strewn across the kitchen table. But the puzzle of Harris’s nomination had been solved. She’d called more than 100 people. Not a single potential rival had challenged her. By Monday, Harris had the backing of a majority of Democrats in Congress. Within 48 hours she had the support of most delegates who would be at the convention. A senior adviser summed up Harris’s two-day marathon as a political tour de force: “A lot of people were like, ‘We need a process.’ Well, there is a process: getting the delegates to commit. We just needed to do it and we did it.”

Aside from incumbents, most candidates for a presidential nomination- especially in the Democratic Party- have to run a gauntlet before securing sufficient delegates. Not so, Kamala Harris, behind whom most prominent Democrats, including virtually any possible challenger, quickly lined up. The national convention was highly successful, Harris won her debate with Trump going away, the Party was united behind the nominee, enthusiasm was impressive, and victory seemed likely. However 

One hundred seven days later, as history will recount, Team Harris hit rock bottom. Yet it didn’t seem so as Election Day dawned. Though Harris was behind in the battleground states, her spokespeople were oddly upbeat. Appearing on MSNBC back on October 27, campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon had declared, “We are very confident we’re going to win this thing.” On Friday, November 1, senior adviser David Plouffe posted on X that late-​breaking undecided voters were going for Harris by more than 10 points.

A campaign has a gravitational pull, and chief of staff Voles was feeling it. “You get sucked into the momentum,” she said. “Like you believe it. I’ve been on winning ones and losing ones, and this felt more like [Bill] Clinton’s [in 1992] than [Michael] Dukakis’s [in 1988].” Voles wasn’t talking poll numbers or analytics, but intangibles. “The rallies were so big and so enthusiastic. People were lining the streets.” But Harris’s pollsters didn’t share the kumbaya cohesion.

Although Biden should have withdrawn from the race earlier, his failure to do so did not doom his replacement on the ticket- far from it. Harris had a great opportunity to win, especially given that the GOP had less timefor opposition research about her than it would have if it had been clear for months that she would be the nominee.  It was not the brief nature of the campaign nor the quality of her campaign; it was her.

After she lost to Donald Trump in 2016, Hillary Clinton could have opted to seek a rematch. However, she realized that she might not win the 2020 nomination and if she did, couldn't be certain that she'd win the general election. She understood the limits to her popularity and electability.

Individuals in or around Joe Biden in 2023 and the first half of  2024 refused to warn the President that he was old and appeared too feeble to mount a successful campaign for re-election. Now Harris, she of  the "107 days," is reportedly eyeing a run for the 2028 presidential nomination.  Self-awarness is not her strength. The Democratic Party cannot afford another loss. For the good of the Party, someone needs to read Kamala Harris the riot act. 

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Worthy Series, Worthy Subject

It was a few months ago when Bill Maher (video below) stated, I naively believed, the obvious. Two days after the Capitol insurrection, he remarked

I keep wrestling on this show with the hard questions of how do Americans, all of us, learn to share a country with ass_  _ _ _ _ you can't stand. I've preached and still do that you can hate Trump but not all the people who like him.  Seventy-four million Trump voters are not self-deporting and neither are we.

Trump voters are not self-deporting and neither are we. This is analogous to the chliched "we're all in this together," oft-heard pertaining to the pandemic, grating to many conservatives, unrealistic to many liberals, yet with an undeniable truth. And it is true that Trump voters are no more likely to emigrate from the USA as, say, Democrats were after the election or re-election of George W. Bush.

I didn't realize "we ought to be able to live with people we disagree with" would be controversial. However, it appears that there are anti-Trump people who either expect Trump voters to "self-deport" or at least who believe their opinions don't matter. 

Woman who, almost unbelievingly, was once a journalist:

When I tell you the @nyt struggles mightily... here’s a good example. https://t.co/vcHrkJIHwV

— Soledad O'Brien (@soledadobrien) May 24, 2021

As part of its series on "George Floyd and America," the NYT "wanted to see if some conservative voters had shifted their thinking on Mr. Floyd and the continuing racial justice movement; Republican support for Black Lives Matter briefly rose after his death" and sponsored a focus group of Trump voters.  However disturbingly, most tweeters agreed with O'Brien: 

When will news orgs stop acting as if Trump followers are the only "real" Americans?

They do not. Those news organizations actually dwell on anti-Trump individuals, though they aren't categorized tht way. Nonetheless, they are the "black and brown" and white people active in the push for hate-crimes legislation, police reform legislation, expanding access to vaccines and other health care to underserved communities; and against environmental degredation.

When will journalists spend half as much time writing articles about the other 70% of Americans who do NOT worship Trump?

See above.

I don’t need to hear anyone’s perspective on the public murder of George Floyd. His murder was viewed around the world. Theres no nuanced discussion. Full stop...Period...Drop the mic...please spare us!

If the murder was significant enough to spur millions to protest in the streets, energize public officials who fight racial injustice, help fuel the push for criminal justice reform, and give a police officer- a police officer!- a lengthy prison sentence, it's sufficiently important to measure any particular backlash. 

trump supporters have much more in common with the nyt than they do with George Floyd.

My guess is that the ten (and maybe the rest) who blamed "the media for the fear that the Black community have towards the police" wouldn't agree. And the other four also probably would be angry  at being lumped in with The New York Times on anything.

Why in the world does ANYONE care what they think? We could ask kindergartners what they think? Or maybe villagers in Mongolia ? They’re all about as equally qualified to make social commentary on George Floyd’s legacy.

We care- or should- because not all Trump voters believe exactly the same things, nor do they always vote as they do for the same reasons. They're not going to accomodate Soledad O'Brien (as well as like-minded individuals) by packing up and emigrating.  And, well, they are Americans.

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The New York Times Did Not Try To Elect Hillary Clinton

There was a lot of news earlier today: feel-good exercise in fantasy wins an Academy Award for best movie; a President who reads his teleprompter as well as I read, well, Creole attacks a film director for how he reads his notes; Donald Trump preparing for his trip to see how much he can give away to his boyfriend in North Korea; Mike Pence trying to build a case for war withVenezuela.

And still I read (a month late)  an article by the Atlantic's Caitlan Flanagan about the confrontation between Nick Sandmann and Native Indian Nathan Phillips last  month at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C Flanagan ends, a little out of context, lecturing The New York Times because

You were partly responsible for the election of Trump because you are the most influential newspaper in the country, and you are not fair or impartial. Millions of Americans believe you hate them and that you will casually harm them. Two years ago, they fought back against you, and they won. If Trump wins again, you will once again have played a small but important role in that victory.

Certainly a large swath of voters dislikes and resents the media. Voters also dislike and resent Hollywood, yet continue to flock to theaters and watch award shows.   However, that does not mean the press in general, and The New York Times in particular, is not generally fair and impartial. 

Aware it is not widely perceived as objective, The Times was slightly partial in the 2016 election cycle. Sensitive to the charge of liberal bias and expected within a few months to be reporting on "President Hillary Clinton," the media was prone to bend over backwards on behalf of candidate Trump.

This was critically at play in the appearance beneath the fold of the front page of that same New York Times on on October 31, 2016 of the headline "Investigating Donald Trump, FBI Sees No Clear Link To Russia."

The article itself was more nuanced.  However, most Americans read only headlines, and appointment of the Special Counsel and revelations  over the past 21-24 months suggest that- though the headline may have been technically correct- it was extremely misleading. When in debate Hillary Clinton accused Trump of being a puppet of Vladimir Putin and the latter responded "no puppet, you're the puppet," the media largely ignored the issue of Donald Trump's entanglement with the Kremlin and Russian businessmen.

Gallup found that from July through September, the words Americans most heard around Donald Trump were the following, in order: speech, make, president, and immigration.  For Hillary Clinton, the most prominent was "emails," followed by "lie." While Donald Trump was telling whopper after whopper, "lie" didn't even make the cut for him.

Given that Flanagan wisely qualified her comment with "partly responsible," it would be unfair to the impact upon the election of  misogyny, ethnic bigotry, and discontent outside of coastal America after eight years of a failed Democratic administration. Sure, The New York Times played a role in Trump's victory. But it was less hatred toward it than the inadvertent bias it practiced in favor of the Republican candidate. 

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Going With The Flow, As Usual

On Monday evening, former President Barack Obama took the stage at the Baker Institute at Rice University with professional Republican James A Baker and historian Jon Meacham in an event geared to celebrate bipartisanship.

Obama brought his characteristic wit, intellect, insight, charm, and great good humor (edited video here). In his final response, he displayed the last when he stated "not only did I not get indicted, nobody in my Administration got indicted." Turning toward Baker, he added "which, by the way, was the only Administration in modern history that that can be said about." (The passive-aggressive manner made the crack about past GOP presidencies only more poignant.)

Stating "whether it was Cronkite or Brinkley or what have you" (the "what have you" could have included the great Dan Rather, but... Obama), the former president remarked (at 26:39 of the video below)

there was a common set of facts, a baseline around which both parties had to, uh, adapt and respond to and by the time I take office what you increasingly had is a media environment in which if you are a Fox News viewer, you had an entire different reality then if you are a New York Times reader.

Oh, yes. Barack Obama suggested that the credibility of Fox News is roughly that of the New York Times.  We should let that sink in.

He later (at 39:21) argued

When it comes to gerrymandering, it is absolutely true that Democrats do the same thing that Republicans do. If they're in control, then they will try to maximize the number of seats they have and vice-versa.

Up to a point, sir.  Before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in January 2018 found the congressional districts gerrymandered by a GOP legislature unconstitutional and effected a redrawn map

in 2012, Democratic candidates won slightly more votes in US House elections and Barack Obama won the state. But the state’s 18 House seats didn’t split 9-9 between the parties — instead, Republicans won 13 seats there, and Democrats just won five. No seats changed partisan hands in the 2014 or 2016 elections, either.

Vox noted earlier this year that in an ongoing saga in which congressional districts were radically gerrymandered

North Carolina is evenly or nearly evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, Republicans currently hold 10 of the state’s 13 House seats. In their quest for a House majority, even one or two newly competitive seats in North Carolina would be a major boost to Democrats’ chances of taking over at least one chamber of Congress....

But if you look at its congressional maps, Republicans have an incredibly lopsided advantage. That’s intentional; Republican state Rep. Dave Lewis admitted as much in 2016, during the redistricting process.

“I propose that we draw the maps to give a partisan advantage to 10 Republicans and three Democrats, because I do not believe it’s possible to draw a map with 11 Republicans and two Democrats,” Lewis said at a state House hearing.

The map was not redrawn before the elections, and thus the GOP  held on to at least nine of those seats (one still undetermined).  That's how they win elections.

It shouldn't be too difficult for a former Democratic president, consistently opposed and continuously attacked by Republicans- and especially by GOP TV- for being a Democrat to acknowledge that there are big and consequential differences between the two parties. But Barack Obama won't do that, uttering "Republican Party" or "Republicans" only to add to bothsiderism.

Unfortunately, that is none too surprising. Neither is it surprising that when evaluating his accomplishments at the end of the event, former President Obama noted how much he had helped the energy sector and big business generally.

He did not mention the Affordable Care Act or whatever other progressive initiatives he may have implemented. That may be because of the audience to which he was speaking. It may instead have been that he was particularly proud of policies which should have satisfied Republicans, or because there was little else he was responsible for. Whatever it is, one day, liberals or progressives will have to take an objective look at the years 2009-2016. Or not.

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What Have You Done For Me Lately?

New York Times White House reporter Peter Baker recognizes

that the nation’s economic fortunes depend on more than the occupant of the Oval Office and his policies, driven as well by interest rates, technological innovation and the health of the global economy — trends beyond the control of any president. Voters and historians nonetheless assign credit and blame to presidents for the state of the economy. When it comes to economics, presidents would rather be remembered as Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton than Herbert Hoover.

Whatever the proper assignment of credit for a nation's economy, the debate between President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump (and their supporters) over favorable economic indicators may have political impact.  In his coming-outspeech at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on September 7, the former president argued

And then the reckless behavior of financial elites triggered a massive financial crisis, ten years ago this week, a crisis that resulted in the worst recession in any of our lifetimes and caused years of hardship for the American people, for many of your parents, for many of your families. Most of you weren't old enough to fully focus on what was going on at the time, but when I came into office in 2009, we were losing 800,000 jobs a month. 800,000. Millions of people were losing their homes. Many were worried we were entering into a second Great Depression. So we worked hard to end that crisis, but also to break some of these longer term trends. And the actions we took during that crisis returned the economy to healthy growth and initiated the longest streak of job creation on record. And we covered another 20 million Americans with health insurance and we cut our deficits by more than half, partly by making sure that people like me, who have been given such amazing opportunities by this country, pay our fair share of taxes to help folks coming up behind me.

And by the time I left office, household income was near its all-time high and the uninsured rate had hit an all-time low and wages were rising and poverty rates were falling. I mention all this just so when you hear how great the economy's doing right now, let's just remember when this recovery started.

I mean, I'm glad it's continued, but when you hear about this economic miracle that's been going on, when the job numbers come out, monthly job numbers, suddenly Republicans are saying it's a miracle. I have to kind of remind them, actually, those job numbers are the same as they were in 2015 and 2016.

It doesn't work. There are three strategic approaches to the economy, which Republicans and the "liberal media" (common slur before "Fake News" replaced it)  assure us is humming right along. One is to ignore the issue, figuring it's not going to be a positive in November to whatever extent it's discussed. 

That did not work for the GOP on immigration, which the party largely ignored, Romney's "self-deportation" being essentially kicking the matter down the road. The immigration issue cost the GOP net votes until Trump came along and put it front and center.

Still, every circumstance is different and in an environment otherwise mostly positive for Democrats, avoiding the whole issue may enable Democrats to retake the House of Representatives.

Or the Democrats could- with a unified message- emphasizing that inflation, gas prices, and interest rates are up and opiate addiction is not abating, reinforcing the perspective voters had in November, 2016 that something is not quite right.

The third option is the one taken by Obama, which might be simply rephrased as "the economy is doing well, but it's the  economy President Obama crafted and left for President Trump."

This is a political loser. Voters associate the economy of the present with the current president, whomever he may be.  

Some realize, as Baker explained, that the President of the USA has only a limited impact on the economy. Most, however, do not read The New York Times, a majority of whom either will assume President Trump is responsible or will want to give credit to someone for the good economic times they hear we're living in. That someone inevitably will be the President, the current occupant of the White House.

Barack Obama is nobody's fool (except maybe Vladimir Putin in the fall of 2006, but that's another matter).  Twice uttering the name of the individual most responsible for exploiting resentments and threatening democracy was helpful, especially because Obama and anti-Trump politicians have been frightened to mention the name "Trump." His call to arms, or rather the voting booth, was valuable, as was his reminder that what Charlie Pierce refers to as the "prion disease" did "not start with Donald Trump." (Unfortunately, that did lead Obama down the path to birthsiderism.)

But when Barack Obama remarks "let's just remember when this recovery started," it is self-serving. It's meant to restore a legacy that President Trump is trampling on and thereby rendering virtually useless. It's not intended to convince people to vote or to vote Democratic when they do.  Virtually no one cares when the recovery started, nor that jobs were created when Obama was President. They do care that it has continued under the incumbent, whatever the negligible impact of his policies, and that jobs have been created under the incumbent.

So Democrats have to skirt the issue or make the case that the lives of Americans have deteriorated since this president took office. Alternatively, the former President can continue to say "it's because of me, stupid" and preserve his legacy which, apparently, is what a lot of those eight years were about.

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Michael Schmidt, Presidential Publicist

Charlie Pierce, who says "over the past 30 years, I've seen my faher and all of his siblings slide into the shadows and fog of Alzheimer's Disease," observed in Thursday's interview by the New York Times' Michael Schmidt

the president* is only intermittently coherent. He talks in semi-sentences and is always groping for something that sounds familiar, even if it makes no sense whatsoever and even if it blatantly contradicts something he said two minutes earlier. To my ears, anyway, this is more than the president*’s well-known allergy to the truth. This is a classic coping mechanism employed when language skills are coming apart. (My father used to give a thumbs up when someone asked him a question. That was one of the strategies he used to make sense of a world that was becoming quite foreign to him.) My guess? That’s part of the reason why it’s always “the failing New York Times,” and his 2016 opponent is “Crooked Hillary."

In addition, the president* exhibits the kind of stubbornness you see in patients when you try to relieve them of their car keys—or, as one social worker in rural North Carolina told me, their shotguns. For example, a discussion on healthcare goes completely off the rails when the president* suddenly recalls that there is a widely held opinion that he knows very little about the issues confronting the nation

He adds "This is more than simple grandiosity. This is someone fighting something happening to him that he is losing the capacity to understand."  "So, no," he asserts, "I don’t particularly care whether Michael Schmidt was tough enough, or asked enough follow-up questions... We've got bigger problems."

The day after its reporter's chat with the President, the Times fact-checker weighed in with "10 Falsehoods from Trump's Interview with the Times." Though a good follow-up, it was insufficient for American citizens and voters given the tone and thread of Schmidt's interview because the Times chose to publish only excerpts.

Early on, Schmidt asks "but does that (not knowing when Mueller's probe will end) bother you? ands "But you’re not worked up about the timing" of Mueller's probe?  (This took place a day before Papadopoulos' role in initiation of the investigation was revealed.) He says of lawyer Alan Dershowitz (who has been on Fox News and elsewhere claiming there is no collusion) "He's been very good to you?"

Trump says of the senior West Virginia senator, "Joe's a nice guy," to which Schmidt responds "he is a very nice guy" and adds of West Virginia "it's a very popular place for you."

If you're wondering who talks like this, you've never been a parent coddling and encouraging her child as Schmidt does Trump.

Moreover, Schmidt successfully prompts Trump to repeat his campaign and presidential themes. "You would have run completely differently" were there no electoral college, he tells Trump, as well as the latter's catchphrase "believe me."

When the President remarks Paul Manafort "worked for me for — what was it, three and a half months?" Schmidt helpfully answers his question "a very short period of time."  When Trump fumbles around claiming that the probe is a political stunt, the reporter- sensing what Trump was fishing for- adds "dossier?"

After Trump claimed Democrats "made the Russian story up as a hoax, as a ruse, as an excuse for losing an election," Schmidt assisted him by responding  "So they had to do this to come after you, to undercut you?"

More seriously, immediately prior to asking "should they reopen that email investigation," Schmidt remarks "you control the Justice Department."

That's not President Trump insisting he controls the Justice Department, though he readily agreed. That was the reporter who inaccurately told a would-be authoritarian that he controls the Justice Department. This is The New York Times, the "all the news that's fit to print" New York Times.

The New York Times must release the full transcript. As Pierce suggests, we have on our hands a president, like Reagan 41, in the early throes of Alzheimer's Disease.  The press covered up the infirmities of John F. Kennedy and Franklin D.  Roosevelt decades ago. These are perilous times, and no time for the reputedly greatest newspaper of all to mimic congressional Republicans and become a doormat for a dangerous President.

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Not Cooling, And Experts Knew It

Controversy has erupted over the hiring by The New York Times of Bret Stephens as one of its op-ed columnists. The conservative Stephens had been deputy editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal and the choice of climate change as his opening column, in which he expressed skepticism of skeptics of climate change skeptics, only exacerbated the discontent.

Stephens now is posing as open-minded and objective. There was a time, however, when he stated

Well, in the 1970s we were supposed to believe in global cooling. In the 1980s it was the nuclear winter. In the 1990s it was mad cow disease. Global warming was the flavor of the decade. I can't wait to see what the next scare's going to be.

Similarly,  I read this morning a Newsweek article from the 1970s talking about global cooling. And it said the science is clear, it is overwhelming, we are in a major cooling period and it’s going to cause enormous problems worldwide. … Now, the data proved to be not backing up that theory. So then all the advocates of global cooling suddenly shifted to global warming.

As Fact Check revealed, the author of the article later asserted he "must admit mea culpa" because "in retrospect, I was over-enthusiastic in parts of my Newsweek article."

However, the notion that scientists generally or climate scientists specifically believed as late as the 1970s that global warming was the wave of the future is the myth that will not die.

The author of the fact check analysis, Gary Levitan noted

scientists had not yet determined the relative impacts of two factors on climate: greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, and aerosols, such as those that are spewed out by volcanic eruptions and burning of forests. Some papers in the early part of the decade predicted that increasing aerosol emissions could lower temperatures enough to trigger an ice age, but these conclusions were disputed. By the late 1970s, research had established that the warming associated with greenhouse gases was dominant over the cooling effect of aerosols.

As author and professional skeptic Brian Dunning points out, "during the 1970s, nations worldwide took drastic steps to reduce acid rain and sulfate emissions." Even as they did, there

was a 2008 study in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society titled The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus. It was a survey of climate articles published between 1965 and 1979 in the scientific literature, rather than of those published in the mass media. The authors found that 10% of the articles did indeed predict cooling, 28% found the data insufficient to make a prediction either way, and 62% predicted global warming. In other words, 90% of climate articles in scientific journals in the 1970s did not conclude the Earth was cooling. 

The process by which millions of Americans came to believe that 1970s experts had predicted global warming characterizes the conservative means of formulating political opinions.. Although scientists roundly rejected the idea of cooling, the popular media was full of it (figuratively and literally).   Newsweek, Time, and an episode of Leonard Nimoy's "In Search Of" series were among the mass media outlets which promoted the theory that the earth was cooling. In a choice between scientific opinion and pop culture, the right will first choose the popular media, and  there will be no second choice. They will go for what they've "heard" every time.







A similar problem exists in the Abortion Hysteria Industry, in which a lot of people continue to insist that women die during abortions or that women develop breast cancer or suffer mental health problems as a result of the procedure. It's a special and particular problem among climate change denialists, but is a hurdle for the left across-the-board in asserting the need for change.






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Franklin Roosevelt, Indeed


No guffawing.  No fingers crossed.    Not even a smile crossed his lips.

Apparently, incomprehensibly, Joe Biden was deadly serious when today in Wisconsin

“I’ve watched him make decisions that would make another man or woman’s hair curl,” Biden told the crowd of 150 inside the Italian Community Center in Milwaukee, according to a pool reporter on scene

Biden, who has said he’s the last man in the room with Obama before a tough call, often attests that his boss has a “backbone like a ramrod.”

And today he said that mettle — and the “serious problems” Obama faced upon taking office — put the president in a class of his own.

“I think I can say … no president, and I would argue in the 20th century and including now the 21st century, has had as many serious problems which are cases of first-instance laid on his table,” Biden said. “Franklin Roosevelt faced more dire consequences, but in a bizarre way it was more straightforward.”

The vice president claimed that the complexity of the 2008 financial crisis presented challenges in a way the Great Depression of 80 years ago did not.

The suggestion that President Obama has had it more tough than Roosevelt 32 is loathsome.     As Digby notes, "I think we can all agree that the Great Depression and Hitler were just a little bit more difficult than dealing with this recession and Mitch McConnell."

The vice-president's boast about his boss' courage is hard to square with the facts, especially as they pertain to the Administration's national security policies.      Today, New York Times Editorial Page editor Andrew Rosenthal wrote

The Bush administration kept secrets largely for bad reasons: It covered up its torture memos, the kidnapping of innocent foreign citizens, illegal wiretapping and other misdeeds. Barack Obama promised to bring more transparency to Washington in the 2008 campaign, but he has failed to do that. In some ways, his administration is even worse than the Bush team when it comes to abusing the privilege of secrecy.

One example of this abuse is the government’s effort to block public scrutiny of its “targeted killing” policy – the use of drone aircraft to kill specific people identified as threats to the United States. The most notorious case is the Sept. 30, 2011, drone strike in Yemen that killed Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, who United States officials say was part of Al Qaeda’s command structure. Another American was killed in the strike, and Mr. Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, also an American citizen, was killed in an attack two weeks later.

The Obama administration has refused to make public the legal documents underpinning the president’s decision to order the killing of an American citizen without any judicial review before or after the attack. So far, it has not even made those documents available to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Accordingly, the American Civil Liberties Union has filed two lawsuits aimed at forcing disclosure. One predates the Awlaki killing, the other followed the attack. The New York Times is party to the latter: Our paper wants the government to release the legal reasoning behind the attack. The ACLU is asking for more: It also wants to see the factual information that led to the decision to kill Mr. Awlaki.

But the government is blocking any consideration of these petitions with one of the oldest, and most pathetic, dodges in the secrecy game. It says it cannot confirm or deny the existence of any drone strike policy or program.

That would be unacceptable under any condition, but it’s completely ridiculous when you take into account the fact that a) there have been voluminous news accounts of drone strikes, including the one on Mr. Awlaki, and b) pretty much every top government official involved in this issue has talked about the drone strikes in public. 

I generally agree with Bill Maher, and disagree with Glenn Greenwald, that drone strikes are an unavoidable tool in combating terrorism.     When an American citizen leaves the U.S.A. and plots, or aids, terrorist attacks, he ought to be subject to assassination.      But secrecy is not the mark of courage, and it's not too much to ask the Obama administration to release whatever written material exists to justify its policy, particularly when, as Greenwald points out, Obama and other officials "have repeatedly boasted in public about this very program."

It should be enough to boast, as Biden has, "the best way to sum up the job the President has done if you need a real shorthand: Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive.”       The ironic thing, given the Administration's pride in its drone program, is that the difficult decision made by the President was not in giving the go-ahead on Bin Laden but in eschewing a drone attack in favor of an operation on the ground by Navy SEALs in coordination with the C.I.A.        Approving the killing of America's greatest public enemy of the last half century should have been a no-brainer for Barack Obama; if he had decided to forego any operation, he would not have gotten the virtual pass from his political opponents that President Bush was largely afforded when he outsourced the effort to kill Bin Laden.       But the Navy SEALs prevailed, intelligence was preserved, and Obama earned a notch in his belt.

In the continuing struggle against terrorism- misnamed the "War on Terror"- the President has enjoyed significant success.         But secrecy is, as Greenwald notes, "the linchpin of the abuse of power."     If Mr. Obama really wants to exhibit the "mettle" ascribed to him by the Vice-President, the White House must stop leaning on the state secrets privilege, end its assault on whistleblowers, subject itself to normal oversight, and start turning an opaque presidency into a transparent one.








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It's The State(s), Baby

Once the U.S. Supreme Court refused to intercede, late Wednesday night Troy Davis was executed for the 1989 slaying in Savannah of off-duty police officer Mark MacPhail. Unfortunately, Mr. Davis probably did not commit the murder for which he was injected with a lethal potion in Jackson, Georgia. In an editorial Tuesday The New York Times cited reports of "police misconduct, the recantation of testimony by a string of eyewitnesses and reports from other witnesses that another person had confessed to the crime."

Unfortunately, the editors then went downhill, arguing

This case has attracted worldwide attention but it is, in essence, no different from other capital case. Across the country, the legal process for the death penalty has shown itself to be discriminatory, unjust, and incapable of being fixed.

After suggesting the Davis case reflects inequities "across the country," the Times proceeded to identify the states of..... Texas, and its "numerous" errors in the case of the capital case of defendant Duane Buck. Texas, according to Wikipedia, "has executed over four times more inmates than Virginia (the state with the second-highest number of executions in the post-Gregg era) and nearly 34 times more inmates than California (the state with the largest death row population). "

Something is amiss in Texas, as the cases of Duane Buck, Cameron Todd Willingham, and probably others would indicate. So, too might problems come to light in Virginia, Florida, and certain other states were the media to glance at operation of the death penalty there.

The need to do that is obscured, however, when The New York Times wrongly implies that the problems in the Davis case are endemic to the penalty itself. Instead, the death penalty (except for the federal death penalty, extremely rarely applied) is imposed on a state-by-state basis according to the statute in that particular state, with the procedure (within the parameters of federal guidelines) varying by state.

Texas is far more prone than any other state to execute offenders in part because judges on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals- which hears all direct appeals of death penalty sentences- are elected, rather than appointed. This renders those jurists more likely to uphold death sentences, which may make for an effective campaign issue among voters of the state, who overwhelmingly support capital punishment. Judges of lower courts in Texas also are elected and defense attorneys in capital cases may be appointed based more on political considerations (such as willingness to contribute to a judge's campaign) than on competence. In 2002, Times reporter Linda Greenhouse reported

The Supreme Court, acting in a case that has come to crystallize arguments over the adequacy of legal representation in death penalty cases, today let stand an appellate ruling that a Texas death row inmate is entitled to a new trial because his lawyer fell asleep repeatedly during his original trial.

The state apparently was unconcerned, Greenhouse reporting

The justices said nothing in rejecting the appeal filed by the Texas attorney general, John Cornyn, who argued that the appeals court decision had created an "arbitrary breach in the law" governing the effective assistance of counsel. The state's brief said the ruling, if allowed to stand, would invite myriad appeals by "imaginative" convicts trying to convert a lawyer's "impaired trial performance" into an automatic ticket for a new trial."

While 16 states and the District of Columbia have abolished capital punishment and others rely heavily on forensic science, especially DNA evidence, to determine guilt or innocence, the state of Texas has a relatively low bar to imposing a sentence of death. Perhaps other states also are not fastidious. In The Times' article of 2002, Greenhouse added

Just last week, in a death penalty case from Tennessee, the justices voted 8 to 1 in overturning a a federal appeals court's ruling that a defense lawyer's failure to make a closing argument at his clinent's sentencing hearing was a deficiency of such magnitude as to invalidate the death sentence.

In common with the case today, the Tennessee case, Bell v. Cone, raised an issue of how to apply the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of effective assistance of counsel: when is a lawyer's ineffectiveness sufficiently glaring that the defendant can be presumed to have suffered serious harm?

When considering state policies on taxes, transportation, abortion, same-sex marriage and almost everything else, attention is focused on that state. When we turn to consider capital punishment, a state prerogative, the urge to generalize from the specific, to view each state as identical, apparently is overwhelming.

There appears to be a pattern: North Carolina, Texas,Virginia, Tennessee, and Florida (which also executes many individuals) are all Southern states. A pattern does not causation make. Nonetheless, somebody should be asking whether there is a fatal flaw in the death penalty process in a particular state rather than assuming procedures are the same throughout a nation with widely divergent values, mores, and laws.

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The Republican Media- No. 23

David Broder was once a good political columnist, and the Beltway insiders blogger Digby refers to as "the Villagers" still respect him, for some reason. As a columnist, he's entitled to his biases. But what's The New York Times' excuse?

Broder wrote yesterday about the gubernatorial race in New Jersey between incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine and Repub challenger Christopher J. Christie. Not about the issues of taxes, education, or health care, but instead

As the Times pointed out, a television ad for Corzine, "about as subtle as a playground taunt," shows Christie "stepping out of an SUV in extreme slow motion, his extra girth moving, just as slowly, in several different directions at once. In case viewers missed the point, a narrator snidely intones" that Christie, the former U.S. attorney for New Jersey, "threw his weight around" to avoid several traffic tickets.

As if that were not enough, Corzine, who is 62 and conspicuously fit, has been running weekend five- and 10-kilometer races in cities around the state to demonstrate that he has kept himself in much better shape than Christie despite the 15-year difference in their ages.

I have no rooting interest in the New Jersey race, but the ad hoc Committee of Journalistic Ethics Enforcers has authorized me to condemn this advertising tactic. I very much fear that if Corzine pulls out a victory next month after trailing Christie for months in the polls, the precedent will be set for a really distasteful tactic -- the "fat boy" ploy.

If you believe, as I do, that the beautiful people already have enough of an advantage in this age of television politics and cable trivia, then the last thing we need is a wave of ads highlighting the fact that others are really ugly.

There are several things wrong with these claims:

- The ad (video below) does not suggest, infer, or imply that Chris Christie is "really ugly." "Fat," if that is what is insinuated here, is not "ugly." The latter refers to something that generally is considered to be overwhelmingly a matter of heredity, and largely beyond one's ability to correct. "Fat" is, well, something else.

- It's not unusual for a candidate to get himself photographed running or engaging in some active exercise- think Reagan riding a horse, GW Bush cutting brush, Obama playing basketball (golf, once the Democratic primaries ended).

- Broder has "no rooting interest in the New Jersey race?" That's arguable, given the parallel he draws between Corzine's ad and Representative Joe Wilson's shout of "you lie" to the President of the United States during a joint session of Congress- and between Chris Christie and Abe Lincoln.

For its part, The Times, in what remarkably was not labeled an "editorial" or "analysis," said:

But the unflattering depictions of Mr. Christie, a Republican who has long struggled with his size, have been the talk of the political world in New Jersey, with Democrats snickering and Christie supporters privately complaining. The governor’s latest ad, which featured the “threw his weight around” line and was expected to be seen by some viewers as many as 10 times, brought sharp reaction, even from those who like Mr. Corzine.

“There’s no subtlety there,” said Bill Baroni, a Republican state senator from Hamilton who lost 130 pounds starting 15 years ago. “That’s not a randomly chosen phrase. It’s purposeful. And it’s offensive.”

Of course, we're not supposed to note that the quote "from those who like Mr. Corzine" came instead from a GOP state legislator, possessing a keen interest in the election of his fellow Republican to the Statehouse. But neither the "old grey lady" nor Broder (no crack here about "grey" in light of David's age) recalled

In 2005, Christie was pulled over for speeding in Lambertville, New Jersey, and was cited for speeding and for driving in an unregistered, uninsured vehicle. The car belonged to Christie's wife, but the registration had expired about two months before.

Lambertville police director Bruce Coccuzza told the radio station that Christie's position as a U.S. attorney was discussed: "He identified himself." Christie's campaign says the candidate does not recall how it came up.

In the car with Christie, according to his campaign and the local police director, were his wife, children, and Michele Brown -- the friend and then-subordinate of Christie's in the U.S. Attorney's office, who has recently resigned because of an undisclosed $46,000 loan that Christie extended to her in 2007. The group was on its way to a football game that night at Christie's alma mater, the University of Delaware.

Normally, it is a strict policy in New Jersey to tow an unregistered car -- and in fact, a tow truck did arrive at the scene, according to the campaign. However, Christie was ultimately allowed to drive home. Coccuzza told the radio station: "From what I recollect I think she (the officer) even said at the time, 'If wasn't for the fact that you had a car full of children this car would be towed.'"

The tickets were marked "NO DEAL," which is traditionally used by police when they feel a driver behaved badly, and that the judge should not go easy in the case. Christie eventually paid a $250 fine, and the registration ticket was dismissed after he produced proper documentation -- though again, Christie's campaign has conceded that the car's registration was expired at the time.

Phone calls to the Coccuzza for further clarification were not returned, and we were later told he was not taking any more calls for the day.

A lot of people are bad drivers. But Christie, who apparently "identified himself" as a U.S. attorney to police who found himself somewhat uncooperative, is used to "throwing his weight around." As in this incident, posted in a blog written by New Jersey Network News reporter Zachary Fink:

On July 26, 2002 Christie was driving a leased BMW in the city of Elizabeth.

He was on his way to a swearing in ceremony for the Union County Prosecutor. But Christie apparently got a little lost. When he got to the intersection of Murray street and Clinton, he edged out and made a partial right turn the wrong way on a one way street.

Enter Andre Mendonca. The motorcyclist was riding down Clinton street (the right way ) and when he saw Christie in the intersection, the bike fell on its side and slid into Christie’s car, according to the accident report filed by the officer on the scene.

Mendonca was injured and taken by ambulance to the hospital. Not nearby Trinitas, but UMDNJ in Newark which has a trauma center. Reached by telephone this morning, Mendonca said he had no idea his collision was with the man who is now the Republican candidate for Governor. When I started to ask him questions about the accident, he said he “shouldn’t be talking about it.” Mendonca did say that Christie seemed very concerned for his well being and blamed bad signage at the intersection for what happened. Then he hung up on me.

Christie identified himself as the US Attorney to the officer who did not issue Christie a ticket. One Elizabeth official said that the officer then drove Christie to the swearing in ceremony.

News of this accident comes on the heels of an earlier story about Christie being pulled over for speeding in Lambertville ( see earlier posts).

We asked Christie about the accident in Atlantic City Friday and he was very curt with his answers. NJN South Jersey Bureau Chief Kent St. John asked if there was a lawsuit. Christie said “no” then “nope.”

But actually there was. According to the Superior Court Record Center in Trenton, Mendonca filed suit in 2004. The complaint filed in Essex County was later dismissed, indicating ( according to the Clerk ) an out of court settlement.

So Christie "identified himself as the US Attorney to the officer who did not issue Christie a ticket." Sounds a little like "throwing his weight around." (And claiming there was no lawsuit when one was settled out of court- apparently it depends on what the meaning of "lawsuit" is.)

Describing the more recent lying motor vehicle incident, the Philadelphia Inquirer noted

Some of his comments yesterday contradicted earlier accounts. Lambertville Police Director Bruce Cocuzza had reported that Christie got loud during the stop, but Christie described his demeanor only as "affirmative."

He's a former United States Attorney, with little else to qualify him to run one of the largest states in the nation. Not only does he- yes- throw his weight around, Chris Christie challenges the description given by a law enforcement official of a motor vehicle stop, implying that he was far more forthcoming than did the Police Director. That would seem to be cause for concern for New Jersey residents. And perhaps that's why an esteemed columnist, claiming objectivity, and the country's foremost newspaper don't want to look too closely at the incidents the Jon Corzine campaign has highlighted.

Just Another Carnival Barker

To be honest, Glenn Beck in his interview with The New York Times admitted, modestly, "you’ve never met a more flawed guy than me." Still, one sits up and pays attention when a popular right-wing radio talk show host and rising GOP TV star admits also

I say on the air all the time "if you take what I say as gospel, you're an idiot."

There are three ways to take this: 1) Beck believes his audience, most of which seems to take what he says as "gospel," is comprised of idiots; 2) Beck was talking rhetorically or in a theological sense, given that the concept of being flawed is an central tenet of Christian thought; 3) Beck was being honest and really believes it is ludicrous to take seriously what an entertainer says.

I couldn't figure it out myself until I became aware of the following video of the talk show host, in this case posted by The Young Turks.



Beck, the Times reporters wrote, said “I’m a rodeo clown,” then added a "coy smile" and hinted “It takes great skill.” Can an Academy Award be far behind?

The Republican Media- No. 20

PolitiFact has applied its Truth-O-Meter to the (in)famous Republican claim of up to $30 million in the recently enacted stimulus bill to protect the endangered salt marsh harvest mouse.

Among others, House Minority Leader John Boehner, Representatives Steve King of Iowa and Mike Pence of Indiana, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, the Washington Times, and the Drudge Report have maintained or implied that Speaker Nancy Pelosi engineered an earmark in the bill to support a project they have delighted in ridiculing.

Though of little concern to the critics, there is no such appropriation. PolitiFact explains that when relevant parties were asked to specify projects for the stimulus proposal, engineer Steve Ritchie of the California State Coastal Conservancy

.....prepared a list of the agency's shovel-ready projects and submitted it to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, both of which received money in the final version of the stimulus bill.

Three projects would turn abandoned industrial salt operations back into natural wetlands, about 26,000 acres in all. It turns out the mouse is an endangered species that likes tidal salt marshes, and it's mentioned by name as one of several species that will benefit.

But the projects themselves — the South Bay Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project , the Napa Plant Site , and the Napa Salt Marsh restoration — are intended to do more than just benefit wildlife. It's major construction work to create recreation areas and to restore marshland that will resist flooding and storm surge.

There is no money in the stimulus act for mice and Politifact graded the Repubs' charge as completely false.

But why would the mere recitation of a major Republican talking point constitute evidence of a pro-Republican bias in the media?

Because the legend of the salt marsh mice is not only a Republican talking point but also a New York Times talking point- that New York Times, the liberal bogeyman of Republican imagination. In an article of February 21, Sheryl Gay Stolberg writes:

Besides, there are political gains to be made by standing tough. Mr. Gingrich sees the stimulus bill as his party’s ticket to a revival in 2010, as Republicans decry what they see as pork-barrel spending for projects like marsh-mouse preservation. “You can imagine the fun people will have with that,” he said.

Neglecting to mention that the bill included no such funds was no mistake of a mere reporter but of the editor. Greg Sargent explains that a reader of his e-mailed Ms. Stolberg and received a response which read in part

I did write in the story I submitted that the assertion was misleading, but I’m sorry to report that language was removed by editors and that I didn’t notice the deletion. My initial text read like this:

“….as Republicans decry, often misleadingly, what they see as pork-barrel spending for projects like marsh mouse preservation....”

“Still, I think the wording as published was not inaccurate.”

Not strictly inaccurate- the article did not indicate the funds were in the bill, only clearly implying they were there- but grossly misleading. (And the original wording itself might have left the impression not that the project was absent but merely that it might not be considered "pork-barrel spending.")

Blithely repeating a Republican talking point as gospel, the New York Times demonstrated the tilt toward the GOP of the establishment media, cowed by farcical charges it typically exhibits a liberal bias.

Suspension of Gas Tax?

In an editorial today, May 1, 2008, the New York Times has blasted the call by Senators McCain and Clinton for a gas-tax holiday as "an expensive and environmentally unsound policy that would do nothing to help American drivers."

The Times should be lauded for noting "turning a tax off in May and on in September would be an administrative nightmare," a point I haven't heard, or read, elsewhere. Similarly, The Times correctly asserts "if a suspension in the excise tax reduced the price at the pump, it would encourage even more driving. This would simply push prices back up. Oil companies would be grateful, drivers less so."

Of course, if more driving would be encouraged, it would not be the "expensive" policy the Times cites because it still would bring in significant revenues from the gas tax- even more if it "would simply push prices back up."

The bigger problem with the Times eleven-paragraph editorial is its failure to represent accurately Mrs. Clinton's position on the gas tax. The Times itself, on its news side, had reported on Tuesday, April 29:

Mrs. Clinton said at a rally on Monday morning in Graham, N.C., that she would introduce legislation to impose a windfall-profits tax on oil companies and use the revenue to suspend the gasoline tax temporarily.

“At the heart of my approach is a simple belief,” Mrs. Clinton said. “Middle-class families are paying too much and oil companies aren’t paying their fair share to help us solve the problems at the pump.”

The Times charged "Senators John McCain and Hillary Rodham Clinton have hit on a new way to pander to American voters." Failure to mention Senator Clinton's support for a windfall profits tax on oil companies- apparently as a condition for suspending the gasoline tax- is so negligent as to make it appear an effort to distort Clinton's position, to make it appear as unwise as McCain's position. Times Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman a day earlier had explained "the Clinton twist is that she proposes paying for the revenue loss with an excess profits tax on oil companies. In one pocket, out the other. So it’s pointless, not evil."

Suspension of the gas tax, with its administrative confusion and cost, is probably not a wise choice, even with a windfall profits tax, which would eliminate or reduce the budgetary expense. But The New York Times, Senator Obama, and other critics must consider the regressive nature of the gasoline tax and continually escalating cost of energy in destroying the hopes of poor and middle-class Americans in a deteriorating economy.